Is the NBA Too Afraid of Football? Plus, Jets Dysfunction and Million-Dollar Picks With Wosny Lambre, Joe House, and Peter Schrager

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Coming up, going to talk to House and Big Waz about the NBA Cup. Big picture.
Did this work? How can we fix it? What should it look like next year? So we did that. And why does the NFL cast such a shadow over the NBA? It makes me mad.
Anyway, we talked about

that too. Then Howe stayed for million dollar picks.
Then Peter Schrager came on to talk about

dysfunction with the Jets, the weird Christmas schedule, and all the strange coaching stuff

that might be happening pretty soon. It is all next.
First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right.
It's 2 p.m. Pacific time.
Joe House is here because we're going to do million-dollar picks in a little bit. Big Waz is here.
He was just in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup. Is it still going or is it finally over? I mean, I was only there for the semifinals.
I got back on Sunday. But it's done.
I heard the Bucs won and Giannis played well. Oh, is that what happened? All right, yeah.
So walk us through the Vegas piece of this and whether it's a good idea, because I really want us, the three of us, to help the NBA. I think the NBA needs help in a bunch of different ways with their scheduling and some of their idea generation.
But what worked for you in Vegas and what didn't work for you? I think I like the idea of having two games in one location, sort of an all-day kind of basketball extravaganza. Like, I personally enjoyed that aspect of it.
The arena is, you know, pretty much up to snuff in terms of any normal NBA arena so like just the the kind of logistics of how it works as a basketball venue is completely fine so you felt like it was like March Madnessy a little bit like you go there's two games in a row the house is nodding happily 100% um I thought that was great i think you know what it reminded me of honestly um especially early on in these games as they're sort of getting going was being at the dunk contest and the three-point contest in indianapolis last year it's like you know i'm here to watch but like nobody it feels like nobody there is very impassioned. It's like, you know, neutral observers, basically.
But as the games get going and the result gets closer to being finalized, people got into it. It's just because there's not a lot of partisans there.
That's what the atmosphere felt like. It felt like, you know, when I was watching the three-point contest last year, until Steph and Inescu got to the finals, there wasn't that much juice watching it.
But like, once it's like, whoa, Steph might lose to a WNBA player, the energy sort of got ratcheted up. And I think that's kind of what it felt like being in vegas is like early on in the game the crowd is like everybody's sort of getting settled in and then when you notice that like all right the game's in the balance people were really into it house the finals watching on tv it reminded me uh not a little of the bubble oh interesting Where the crowd was blacked out.
I couldn't really tell if the audio was bad or if people were just in a coma. I couldn't tell how many people were there.
And Giannis was just killing it, obviously. He killed it the whole time he was there.
But something about it doesn't work. I'm sure it works if you're there, if you work for the league, if you're in the teams.
it's like, this is great. We're all here.
But I feel like there's a better idea. So where'd you

stand just on the semis and the finals? Well, there's, there's two things at work. Um, in the

first place, the games were rock fights. I mean, the shooting across the board in the semis and

the finals was bad and, you know, Oklahoma city going five for 32 from three, that's not pleasing to the eye. They were all unders.
If you were gambling on this and playing on the unders, you're quite happy with outcomes. But Waz really hit the key point, which is how can you get the partisans there? How can you get the fans that will show up with the passion? And this is the difference between this year's iteration and last year with the Lakers.
The Lakers had an easy, easy, easy way to import, you know, a bunch of enthusiasm. And it was very cool because it was the first one.
How can you get that? This is why I was shaking my head enthusiastically around the idea of this being kind of like an NCAA deal. The difference is there's big chunks of fan bases that have traveled to that place to root for their team.
So it's live. It's live from the tip.
How can we get that? That's the part BS that I want to say. Part of it for me is like, you know, I've read and I've heard all of the hand ringing.
Like the bottom line is if the Knicks and Warriors were in this final, there would have been an atmosphere. It would have been, you know, a huge deal.
But we didn't get that. We got the Bucs and OKC.
These are not two national brands. These are not two, you know, fan bases that have massive, like, fan bases all over the country.
The way the Knicks and the Lakers do, like, you know know if you've ever been to a Hawks game when the Knicks are playing them it's half Knick fans in there you know same when you go to uh when when the Lakers play in places like Phoenix and Denver it's like a bunch of Laker fans there right and so you know the two teams in there I think was problematic for me personally, and I'm not somebody who's ever like, you know, given Adam Silver his props. I think the teams played hard.
The teams played like as if there were stakes. All the ancillary stuff I think needs to be figured out, but the most important thing that the players cared and tried their best, I think that's the biggest sort of takeaway for me.
Well, that's why I care about this as a topic because fundamentally the premise behind the tournament works because the games are more fun to watch. So you start there.
You said something that I think is a bad sign for the league and maybe ties into the stuff I did on Tuesday on my pod. Oklahoma City is the best team in the West and and they have Shea, who's the fourth best player in the world or the fifth best player in the world, depending on what your rankings are.
Giannis is the second best player in the world, maybe the first best player if you want to have the Yoko Giannis conversation. I don't want to do that here.
And it's playing out of his mind and is the most fun version of him that he's been in a game. So on paper, it's a great matchup, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee.
And yet you laid out like, oh, it's too bad the Knicks weren't in there. It's too bad the Warriors aren't in there.
Maybe that's just what the league is. And even when I was going back and trying to figure out all the unicorn situations that have happened over the years, almost every time it's somebody in a big market, right? It's Magic and Bird, Boston, LA.
It's Michael Jordan in Chicago. It's Kobe and Shaq in LA.
It's Curry and the Warriors happening in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. The only real time where we had a marquee kind of thing was LeBron and Miami and Cleveland.
And LeBron almost became like his own franchise to some degree because he became so big. But House, just structurally, if we put the semifinals in New York, and either you had both games at MSG or you had one game at Barclays and the other game at MSG and it had to be, you could hustle back and forth and potentially get both.
And then you had the finals two days later at MSG and now we have celebrities. Now it's way easier for people to come in and out.
Now there's like vibe and energy and we're playing it in the most famous basketball arena we have. Isn't that just better? Maybe.
Because we were very, very close to having this be the Hawks against the Rockets. Like, Saturday, that was a viable possibility.
New York fans would have showed up for that. I'm not sure.
Like, I don that that vegas is a bad choice as a venue because it it it delivers um the promise of other entertainment it you know new york is hard especially is that what we're calling it now entertainment you mean like adult entertainment we're old enough now to talk about these things in ways that keep it light.

But entertainment you mean like adult entertainment we're old enough now to to to talk about these things in ways that they keep it light um but i i don't know new york in december like that that's a whole thing right like everybody's up in new york right that's fair yeah you're right time is marvelous um but that leads to the second part of the question is is december the right time to have the NBA Cup? I think that's a great question, honestly.

I think part of the question is is december the right time to have the nba cup well you know that's a great question honestly um i think part of the the thinking is like we want to really juice and goose um attention on very early nba games which traditionally uh people just didn't you know gravitate towards because obviously and like people need to understand that like no matter what the NBA Cup does or is it's not going to be as popular as football like we need to we need to let go of that as a even a concept or an idea like Americans love football more than they do basketball and that's okay a lot more a lot more um and that's okay I just think it's about one, the Giannis and Dame thing. I mean, the Giannis and Shea thing.

And I've talked about this on on group chat. I think David Stern's dream of these hyper corporatized, you know, focus group to death athletes.
You know, they don't get busted for weed. They don't scare corporate America.
They are the perfect corporate automatons.

But guess what?

People are not attracted to that. They're not compelling figures.
Even Nike and Giannis, like selling Giannis as this cute, cuddly teddy bear. That's just a mistake.
Nobody knows a single thing about Shea Gilgis Alexander, except that he wears funny clothes. And he does interviews with 11 of his teammates.
That's it. Nobody knows anything about these guys.
Yeah, Giannis had that clip when he, that from 2015, when he, the Bucks and the Bulls had that series and he got mad at Mike Dunleavy and he did the 50-foot charge and just knocked him into the first row. Like, Giannis is not like just a cuddly dude.
That dude has an edge that they try to pretend he doesn't. I don't know why they would pretend he doesn't.
Well, that's the angle to play up. Part of the thing that you guys are talking about is the league's affirmative choice about how it's going to market this season, which is a transition season.
And you captured it, BS, on your pod earlier

this week, they have chosen

from a marketing standpoint

to give glory

to this exiting

quickly class

of superstars that have defined the league

over the past 10 to 15 years

at the expense of a player like

SGA.

Or Tatum, or Tyrese Halliburton, or all these dudes in their 20s that they should be trying to elevate. Yeah.
Yes. Right.
Exactly. You know, what's what's SGA is defining moment.
Ask and we're NBA heads, but ask anybody in an NBA kind of community. Tell me SGA is, you know, the clutch thing that's happened.
Giannis, I love. There's a moment here to really go ahead and lean into where he's at, which is averaging 21.5 points per game in the paint, which hasn't been seen since Shaq in 99-2000.
We talked about Giannis and his potential of replacing Shaq at that point. Let's do that.
Let's make that be Giannis. Giannis, we know.
Yeah, it's a great point. Giannis has a ring.
Let's go with Giannis. It just feels like there's two things that they did wise that I just, the more I look at it, I just don't like.
One is they could have used the Olympics and even like the Netflix Starting Five show. Like just push new people.
Put the fucking Wagner's on Starting Five. Let's hang out with those goofy Germans and see what their life is like.
Like, let's try to develop new people. And then the Olympics, same thing.
Should anyone over 30 even be on the Olympic team? Maybe we should have, it should be all like, you know, younger players are in their prime players or guys trying to have a moment. Cause we were in this situation in the beginning of the 2010s with Durant and Russ.
And remember, it was the same conversations about, well, who wants to watch OKC? It's a whole bunch of young team. They should be putting LeBron on and Kobe and the Celtics and Carmelo.
And meanwhile, all the real basketball people were like, I fucking love watching that OKC team. Right.
And then it took a while. It took a while.
Finally, 2014, when they played the Spurs, it felt like we had enough history with OKC and they became a thing. But I don't know why they don't push the younger guys more why they're so beholden to the guys who have already done it.
And to me, it's just about ratings, but the ratings are going down. So it's not working.
Yeah, look, I agree with you on the Netflix front. Look, sorry, Bill, but Jason Tatum went on that damn show and said he loves his mom, he loves his son.
I could have told you he was going to be born. I mean, that was just misery in terms of selling this product and being like, these are compelling guys interesting people great athletes this man went

up there and said he loves his mom his son and he hoops really hard like it's just not gonna work

and you know again and i'll say this again their most popular young guy was who ja moran right yeah

we talked about all this and bottom line is nike and them did not get their hooks into him and

turn him into a corporate product since he was 12 years old. Like they have the rest of these guys.
These dudes are so anodyne. They don't say or do or look.
Nothing is interesting about these guys. I enjoy watching them hoop.
As people, I'm completely like, bro, uninspired. There's just nothing there.
And, you know, again, the guys who are willing to be a little bit out there and different don't comport with how the league sees itself as a company. Like how's this guy Kyle Kuzma? Hey, Kyle Kuzma's willing to say stuff in public.
I like that about Kuzma. He's willing to say shit.
These other guys, like,'t know, man. They're just so afraid of any backlash of anything.
They don't want to jeopardize it. It's just not fun.
I'm thinking with the cup, this ties into another thing that makes me mad. They're so afraid of football to the point they take inside the NBA, which is just the Thursday show.
On Thursday nights, I watch the NBA and they're like, we have to move it away from football. Football's eating our lunch.
They move it to Tuesdays. Doesn't feel the same.
They have this NBA cup. They decide the semifinals are going to be Saturday because it's the one day we can kind of get away with not going against football.
And then they keep everybody there for three fucking days because they don't want to go

against a Monday night doubleheader, which by the way, was Minnesota against Chicago

and Kirk Cousins' corpse against the shitty Raiders team.

It's like, what are you afraid of that for?

Maybe go try to beat them head to head.

But they're doing all this stuff where they're just retreating and they're so scared of the

NFL.

And meanwhile, it's like, maybe you should try to throw some counter punches. The NFL is going to beat you either way.
Even the WNBA, which we thought it was all crazy, the WNBA playoffs are going head-ticket against the NFL. Guess what? They did okay.
They had fans. They had their own fan base and people watched that shit.
House, why are they so scared? I just feel like when you operate from fear, you're going to lose every single time. See, I don't know that I subscribe to the idea that they're operating from fear because they did stick this cup into the portion of the NFL season that is like really, you know, we're deciding playoff outcomes now and they are on nights of the week when there isn't necessarily NFL.
Now, I don't like the fact that Inside the NBA is on Tuesday. And, you know, the Amazon games are fine, but none of that Thursday night football is must-see TV for me.
Hold your spot. But here's the real problem, and they're never going to do this.
The stupid season shouldn't start until Christmas. And the NBA Cup in February would be effing magnificent because football is diminishing starting on Christmas Day, basically.
We're getting less and less games. The playoffs start.
And during the week, you have full run to go do whatever you want. So taking the whole thing and starting in Christmas time, new years and plan, let's, let's take over, you know, the, the season as football goes away, that's what makes the most sense.
Yeah. You're talking 70 game schedule instead of starting near the end of October.
You're starting maybe like third week in November, you're easing into it. And then you really kick into gear and Christmas.
Cause one of the things I was thinking with the cup was you made the point earlier, the games are, the games are all really fun. The courts are fun, but we only had four games in this super complicated scoring system trying to lead to, Oh, and then these four teams made it and this team didn't make it because their point differential was plus 36.
How about this? Have more fucking games. Like instead of four NBA cups, let's have six.
Let's have seven. Let's get it so that it goes all the way through.
And then we get to January and then the week to do it. In my opinion, there's that week between the conference title game and the Super Bowl.
It's a dead week. Nothing's happening.
Football has finally calmed down, basically starting Sunday night and just try to own that week. Right.
You have like, you basically have a clean slate. You're going against nothing.
You're going against, you're not going against college football. You're not going against anything and make that the signature week.
They're going the opposite way. Not only do they wrap up all this stuff, but the trade deadline is on the Thursday of Superbowl week.
That's another one I don't get. The trade deadline is one of the most fun days of the season.
You're just burying it in the Super Bowl when all your media members, all your corporate, everybody is just talking football, football, football. So Waz, to me, this is just easy structural stuff I don't get.
Yeah, the thing about more cup games, it will make it so that it makes it easier for the best teams to actually play, um, in the further rounds to actually advance. And so you probably wouldn't get an Atlanta, um, in there, although I'd love watching Atlanta.
Um, or would you? Cause maybe Atlanta is one of the best teams in the East. Why? Maybe you would get Atlanta.
Hey, that's fair um and yeah again i do think you know fixing the window that they put it in but to me it's like it's a promotion issue like adam silver needs to get his don king hat on like this guy's just not a promoter he does not know they just don't know and maybe it And maybe it's the networks. I don't know.
You know what I mean? They don't know how to eventize these products. And that to me is the main issue.
People don't see these things as essential viewing. They know the season is 82 games long.
They know that effectively a loss in January is just like ho-hum. Who cares? Every single game doesn't matter.
And the league just needs to be better, more effective at promoting their product, getting people to feel like this is essential. Because the idea that people aren't interested in the NBA, I think is BS.
I think plenty of people are still interested. Obviously, like the highlights, the recaps, they do numbers online.
People still want to know about the results and all of that stuff. It's just the NBA needs to impress upon people that these games are worthy of their time, worthy of their commitment.
Well, House, I mean, we go so far back. We remember when like USA and ESPN started showing cable games, right? We were like, oh, it was amazing.
All the teams. Oh my God.
That's what a Clippers arena looks like. You just, you had no idea.
And then the SportsCenter highlights are taking off the same time. We were just so starved for any sort of NBA action.
Now it's flipped the other way where, you know, it's like having the most full fridge possible. I was telling somebody the other day, I, I, I feel like I watch as much basketball as I ever did, but I watch it completely differently.
Now I don't care if I see the ESPN game on Wednesday night as it's happening. But what I do is I try to watch as many fourth quarters as I can.
Or if like, I'll look at the game recap and it'll be like, oh, Houston did had a 37 to 10 run in the second quarter on Wemby. I'm like, all right, I'm going to watch that and I'll just cue it up.
And it's so much more on demand. And House, I don't feel like that reflects in the ratings.
So when they say the ratings are down, I'm not positive I believe it. I do think that they have a star issue, which I talked about Tuesday.
They don't, like, House and I didn't miss Michael Jordan in the 90s when he played a playoff game. It was just, it was non-negotiable.
You didn't miss Jordan in the playoffs, period, unless, like, you had a substantial event that superseded it. Otherwise, you watched Jordan.
They don't have a guy like that now. Yeah, I mean, it's LeBron.
It's supposed to be LeBron, except for where LeBron at 40. It's not LeBron at 40.
And it's not really Curry either. That's right.
But those are the guys on television. Look at the schedule.
Look at the ABC schedule. I think, you know, the hard thing is nobody sits down and watches basketball games.
You don't sit down like, oh, the game's about let me go get my chair. Right.
It's not football. And, you know, using linear TV ratings as a measuring stick for overall success is clearly outmoded, outdated, makes no sense whatsoever.
The fact that the league signed an 11-year, $76 billion deal means that those folks who are paying that money have ideas about how to capture eyeballs in the interest of those consumers to push their stuff that makes sense to them. And they don't think that people are going to come sit down in their chairs and watch a goddamn basketball game in February from the beginning of the game to the end of the game.
It's all the ways that we watch it. It's what you and Derek Thompson talked about.
People consume the hell out of basketball, but they don't consume it by sitting in a chair and watching it. It's a little bit of a false description, a false assessment to say the ratings are down.
Well, Waz watches every Hawks game. I kind of do at this point.
This one is kind of got a Dyson Daniels bed spread. So I'm also like a bit of a radical thinker on the schedule and stuff.
One, I think I don't even think 70 is enough of a cut. I think it should be literally round Robin.
You play each team one time at home, one time away, a week so like 60 so when we get expansion it's like a 62 game schedule that's it one and one so i sign up for that everyone i've ever mentioned that who's in any sort of decision making ownership they're all like don't even talk about that on a podcast it will never ever happen it's too much money there's no way and it's like you guys already made all this money that's and that's and that's the point like all of these owners who were told are the most visionary business people ever because they ran some hedge fund blah blah blah blah blah they can't figure out how this extra shortfall in money that they got from this big big big ass 11 year contract from all of these networks, as House mentioned, how reducing inventory and making it more scarce, they can't figure out a way to monetize that. I find that to be just just baffling.
It does. But it does the competitiveness of of the games.
Just there's more urgency because whatever whatever. It also makes the end of the regular season more interesting because if you have a situation Philly's in now, you might not even make the playoffs.
So every game matters starting game 20. 100%.
And also, I'm a bit radical on league paths. I think we should abolish it.
This is my favorite Woz take. I haven't heard this.
If you have to watch the NBA for work, if people say, oh, that's self-serving for you, Woz, whatever. I'm just saying, if people have to watch it for work, all right, we'll give you League Pass.
If you want access to it, we're charging you a crazy premium, which to me, that means whenever people want to watch the NBA, they got to watch it with the league's partners. I like I don't see what's so bad about that as an idea, because, again, I grew up in a context of no league pass and was completely fine with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and NBA on NBC.
Like, I don't know. Like I said, you're saying like national games, you get your own team your own team.
Like, if you live, like, House in Washington, he gets to still watch the Wizards. Yeah, you get your own team in your market.
Yeah, just like how the Jets and Giants got forced down my throat when I was living in New York. But maybe you get to pick, like, three other teams.
And then if you want the whole package, it's, like, $1,000. And it's just it's just completely prohibitive.
There's some idea there that make it scarce. I'm not against that house.
Or maybe they're just, that's it. You get your own team.
You can pick three other league pass teams. Other than that, just enjoy that.
No, we're not giving them three other teams. So that's it.
You're going hardcore. You watch your local team and you watch your national team.
Okay's two days a week that nba um games are sergeant wise he's laying down the law that's it that's it that's it and also they do need to do something about the bootlegs um i was talking to somebody who works in this sort of area um in terms of how young people consume sports, specifically the NBA.

Like how it was explained to me, it's like how people of my age viewed Napster, where it's just like once we found Napster and LimeWire and all this other stuff, we literally

stopped believing in the concept that we would go to Sam Goody and buy a CD.

It's like, no, I get this for free.

I'm not paying for it.

I don't have an ESPN

subscription. I damn sure don't got

Warner Discovery.

I am just pilfering an illegal

stream. They need to find something to do about

that. And I know I can hear people right now saying,

how many people could possibly be

streaming stuff this way? I'm telling you,

it's a sizable amount of folks.

I think

he's right. I remember we did the Juice WRLD doc for HBO and Max.
And it was just like, it just got pirated out of control. And that was the first time I was like, oh, wow, this still was happening on like a major level.
But you're right. Especially as we head to this next era where you're going to need Amazon.
You're going to need Peacock, you're going to need cable to get ESPN or whatever the ESPN package is. And you'll have to pay for the league pass stuff too.
I mean, it's our job, so we get all this stuff. But yeah, I've said it a thousand and hundred times.
The schedule is the number one way to fix this. And they won't.
They just won't. It would make it more special.
The guys would be playing. They'd be healthier.
They wouldn't. Even what they did recently with this weird bye week where there were no games and stuff, it actually made me miss the NBA.
I was like, last night, where the fuck is the NBA? Dude, and Doc said this in the pregame availability. He said one of the cooler things about this is we had time to prepare for our opponent, almost like a playoff game.
Again, everything gets better when we're not stuffing all of these freaking games together, playing three games in five nights in three cities. Yeah.
This is a no brainer schedule. It's no-brainer.
Everything would be better with less games.

So maybe they'll get some of the money back.

76 million.

Maybe it should be 60.

This is the issue, right?

And I don't have a good solution for it.

It's easy for us to talk about less games.

There's the 41 home games for places where people actually go to the games. not here in Washington, but in places, cities where the team is relevant.
That's real money. That's revenue in.
That's people walking into the door, buying food, buying merch, you know, populating the surrounding restaurants and bars and stuff. It's an ecosystem that matters.
And that matters. And you know, how do you walk away from that? How do you, where's the right? It's beyond the franchise.
There's Sportico did this thing in the franchise values, which I always think are corny. Cause there's no real way to know.
It only takes one dumb person to be like, here's 11 billion. Um, but they had the pie chart of how the Celtics, uh, I think it was Sportico, maybe it was somebody else.
They had a pie chart of all the Celtics revenue because they don't own their own arena. And they had it earmarked for the Celtics making $102 million from the playoffs.
Wow. Assuming they made, you know, got to like four rounds.
And you could see, I was like, Jesus Christ, that's a crazy amount of money. But I, you know, that's part of why some of these bigger market teams, they go all in on luxury tax because they feel like it's almost like a bet.
You know, can we make that money back the longer the rounds go? I, if, if they put me in charge, I would at least go to 70 games. I mean, you could talk me into the 60 would be even better 62, but they won't.
This is is something Steve Kerr has been. Steve Kerr at one point, I think he like hand wrote a long letter to Adam Silver, like in the last year, like it was like the 1840s.
Like he's, dear Adam, it is Steve Kerr. I'm here on the outskirts of Wyoming writing a letter with a feather and a pen.
But he wrote a letter like just like basically begging him to cut the schedule down. And I remember talking to Doc about this last year when he got back in and he was trying to take over the Bucs and he was just like, we just don't practice.
Like I just got here with our staffs change. His Doc's teams just don't practice generally.
He's like, we still get to practice and I don't get to play as much golf. No, he, but he was saying, and this is something any coach I've ever talked to, they always talk about this.
There's these schedule bumps where you just can't work on anything and you end up like in a hotel conference room in some banquet room running like, like how you're going to do, how you're going to charge the, the guy with the ball and shit like that. So I don't know.
All right. So short term Vegas next year for this or no was I'm fine with Vegas, but they need to figure out a mechanism by which they can get the fans of

the actual teams in those buildings.

I don't know.

I'm like, I haven't really put too much thought as to how they would go about doing this.

Again, I'm biased.

Like you guys, I love Vegas.

So I think it's a great place to host something like this past weekend.

It was also the freaking rodeo championships.

Shania Twain had a concert there were cowboy hats entertainment it's just a great place to entertainment an event so maybe the answer if they if they strung it out to six games instead of four they moved it to january and they really that this is going to be a direct contradiction of what I said about not being, being wusses about going against football, but you target that week between the conference championship and the Superbowl, which we know is open every week. We know when it is.
So this year would be February 2nd. Yeah.
And we can make it. We can make the tweak be, if we're going to spread it out, we can make the tweak be the semis end up being home arenas.

And then the final, you know, you make it.

Not only do you make it, you know, the destination or whatever it is,

there's enough space.

Because I don't know why the semis and the finals have to be so freaking close to each other.

Like, they don't do that in the Champions League solution? How about Tuesday's the quarterfinals. Then we go to Vegas Friday, Sunday the week before the Super Bowl.
And it's just Friday night doubleheader. Sunday's the final.
Everyone just goes to Vegas one weekend. You're in Thursday or Friday morning.
You're out Monday. You're not going against football at all.
You have six games instead of four to determine exactly. You're going to get the right order probably of the teams in some form.
You might have one outlier. And the only thing we would know for sure is that the Washington Wizards won't be there.
Well, the reason that's great is because the buildup to it is occurring in the month of diminishing football. We're not having 16 games on Sunday.
We had two more in January after Christmas that lead up to the quarterfinals. Yeah.
And in terms of fans, like how much would it cost to just, here's 5,000 tickets. If your team makes it, we're going to give them, you know, we have 5,000 free tickets.
Please take the ticket and go. I mean, you're not going to pay for people to go, but where you're at least have access to the arena, it can't be, it can't like really be, uh, you know, cost negative.
Maybe Emirates Airlines could fucking get private jets for everybody. The PJs.
Yeah, the PJs for the fans. Oh, the party plane.
Okay, so partyC, party plane. Did we lay down this for a fix? Six instead of four.
Target that weekend before the Super Bowl weekend. And maybe have the trade deadline right after on like the Tuesday.
I mean, here's the thing. The trade deadline sucks now.
They ruined it. The collection.
They did. They apron it.
There is no trade deadline that's relevant anymore. By the way.
Again, I feel like I'm always bashing Adam Silver. Like, the guy did a good job.
He went and got to enrich the players and the owners with this new TV deal. He is an absolute magnet for corporate money.
Like, they invented the NBA Cup. The next year, they're like, oh, we got the Emirates.
The Emiratis are paying for it. Like, he is a master at that.
But this whole thing about we want to be like football and have parity, and so let's make it impossible for good teams to stack talent and trade's just an impossibility now. This was a mistake, guys.
It was a mistake. The Nuggets can't even trade for Jimmy Butler, who would probably be dying to go there.
And they can't do it with the fucking apron. It's like, well, Zeke Nagy has to be in it, and please don't look at Michael Porter's back x-rays, and we have no picks.
Yeah, it's really sad. All right, Waz, great to see you.
Who's winning the title, by the way? I picked the Dallas Mavericks before the season. I don't know if I've unleashed this take on you.
I saw the Celtics as the 2016 Warriors coming off a championship, smoking everybody all regular season, faced the Cavs in the finals the year before, just like the Mavericks. I think the Mavericks and the Celtics are going to rematch in the finals.
And Luka Doncic, like LeBron before him, is going to find a way to win his first NBA championship, y'all. What do you think of that? I love it.
It's incredible. I think that's a good way to give.
No, I mean, as a guy who was an early embracer of that Dallas Mavericks, they really changed the entire trajectory of their franchise at the trade deadline last year. Speaking of trades not mattering anymore, Daniel Cafford and P.J.
Washington, And then they did an incredible job in the offseason building up around those guys and getting rid of some pieces that didn't fit. 12-2 in the last 14, Bill.
I don't. I think, unfortunately for them, I think OKC might be their kryptonite team.
That's the one team that just too much speed athleticism. I guess what they have going for them is just Jalen Williams and any game that means anything.
I need to see the first FGA moment. They're going to be in your mentions, Bill.
Oh, Lord have mercy. Just have one awesome game when there's a real spotlight on.
Come on. Who are you talking about? We all believe in Jalen Williams.
Jalen Williams. Yeah, right.
We have another one. He stunk in the Dallas series last year.
He stunk in the second NBA. a lot of Jalen Williamstock I'd like for him to come through I mean the other reason they lost they just couldn't hit a three which is now you think he's going to be alright yeah I have OKC Dallas I still feel like I want to see what happens with the Butler trade because see Butler, Butler's clearly, this is happening soon.
And if Houston got him without changing too much what I like about them, I'm intrigued by them too. House, can you imagine Eme and Jimmy Butler? How fucking alpha that team's going to be if they keep Dylan Brooks? They're like a biker gang.
It's exciting. I do love, I love that.
I mean, who knows what the outcome would be this season's playoffs, but it would be much more interesting. And E-Mail looked at LeBron and called him a bitch and asked him what he was going to do.
That happened last year. Put him and Jimmy Butler? I just think that's happening imminently.
So we'll see where he goes. All right, Waz, great to see you.
We'll take a break. Come back with million-dollar picks.
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Visit rg-help.com. This episode is brought to you by Vrbo Private Vacation Rentals.
With Vrbo, you always get the whole house so you and your fellow fans can cheer on your team in peace. What's worse than watching a game with somebody who's not rooting for the same team you're rooting for? Nothing.
But that's why if you book a vacation house with Vrbo you know all the people

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alright house

week 16 is here

we had a rough week 15

first time I got my ass kicked

by a weekend in a while

lost 510,000

for million dollar picks

but we're still up

for 1.254 million

and I like a lot of the stuff

this week

Thank you. ass kicked by a weekend in a while.
Lost $510,000 per million dollar picks, but we're still up for $1.254 million. And I like a lot of the stuff this week.
The only thing that really changed for me last week, and I was just wrong, like Pittsburgh, Philly, whatever. Some of the losses, like whatever.
I just had the wrong side. I get it.
Seattle Green Bay I had way wrong. I thought this is the time Seattle is going to show everybody that they might actually be like a little sleepery.
And instead, Green Bay absolutely kicked their ass. And Green Bay, I almost wish I had gone into that game thinking one of these two teams is going to emerge as the NFC sleeper.
I was shocked by how they got their ass kicked. What did you think of that game? So here's my overreaction to the entire week.
And it really does, you know, it's expressed most perfectly by that game. I will confess just for myself, I got lulled into a sample size that wasn't really reflective with that Seattle defense.
And throughout the card in week 15, I chose the defense over the, the, the offense. And in each instance, the superior, the team with the superior offense beat the crap out of the team.
Like Philly, Pittsburgh. Yeah.
Green Bay, Seattle. Yes.
Tampa went into the Chargers. Buffalo, Detroit.
That was another one. Right.
Right. Right.
Tampa Chargers. I stayed away from that.
Thank God. Yeah.
The Seattle defense, they had, they had done Arizona twice and the jets and the Niners when they were banged up and it made us kind of threw us off a little bit. So they were, they were good numbers.
They were like, you know, look at all the ways that they've improved and they're, they had health and you know, they were very, uh, it was a compelling case. It just didn't hold any water.
Yeah. So when I was going through the games this week, you know, look, if I'm going to lose a week, I'm going to go back to the drawing board.
I'm going to, I'm going to get back in the lab, try to figure out how I can get better. And I was really looking back, really trying to go over some of the numbers versus the schedule and who played.
And we have these Saturday games, Texans-Chiefs. Mahomes isn't playing.
Texans are favored by two and a half. Mahomes comes back, it seems like.
Now it's Chiefs by three and a half in Houston. And the numbers would say, hey, watch out for Houston in this game.
They have the number one defense and DVOA. They're going to be able to really pressure the Chiefs.
They just haven't played enough good teams, and they haven't looked good in the games they've played. I'm just looking at this going, are the Chiefs really going to lose in Houston to this Houston team that can't seem like they can stay out of its own way offensively.
That can't really block. And definitely unquestionably has a good defense.
But I don't want to say they're the good bad team. But they're kind of one level above that but below the Chiefs Ravens Bills level.
You know what I mean? So this game to me was the most confounding and the hardest for me to try and choose a path. And I'm halfway inclined to bet on Houston and grab the Houston money line on the possibility that all of the Mahomes stuff is smoke and mirrors.
Because Kansas City is smart enough to try and give itself an advantage on everything. So part of the advantage would be having Houston's defense prepare for Mahomes and then come out with a Wentz game plan.
I wouldn't put it past Kansas City in any way, shape, or form. The challenge is the Chiefs defense stinks.
Their secondary is bad. And they haven't been able to do anything since week eight.
I mean's you know look at the numbers they're a bottom 10 pass defense so it's a stay away from you it is i mean even though i think in in the second half especially joe mixing these nuts joe mixing these nuts like that's that's the pathway houston can't score in the second half so if they get get up 17 to something, and then they do what they do, which is score a touchdown or a field goal in the second half, and they try and run mixing these nuts 15 times, that's their path. And you're up against Carson Wentz.
But I just don't trust that we're going to see a healthy Mahomes. And I don't like that Kansas City defense one bit.
The other thing that worries me about it is just when the team also then has to play on Wednesday. I just don't know what that does.
We talked about this a little last week. I don't know what that does mentally for how you have an edge for that game, any of that stuff.
They're planning, right? They're planning for Saturday and Wednesday. The Chiefs are doing that right now.
How can it make sense to have Mahomes in any kind of diminished capacity in the Saturday game? And yet, I don't want to stay away from the other Saturday game because I think we see it the same. The Ravens minus six and a half Steelers.
There's a lot of stuff with Lam, and watch out if the Steelers own him. I think without Pickens, I just don't see the Steelers getting there.
It would have to be almost the greatest hits of bad Raven Steelers games from a Baltimore perspective. Missed field goals, Lamar doing something dumb, the tipped interception, all kinds of stupid shit.
The 50-yard pass interference that the Steelers get to give them a new drive. We stayed at the craps table with the Steelers, I think, one week too long last week.
They're 10-4. I think if they're 10-5, that's fine.
I don't know. The problem for them is that they go to Wednesday against the Chiefs, 10 and five.
That's hard. Yeah, but they're still making the playoffs.
Yes, they are. And Baltimore lost them already.
So if you're taking Pittsburgh, you're saying we're almost taking their touchdown underdog. On top of it, they would be beating Baltimore twice in the same season.
Baltimore would be nine and six after this. So they'd be like a six or seven.
I don't know. I just think the Ravens win and I don't want to lay the points.
I just want to take their money line and put it with stuff. Yeah, because every trend that's out there says that against the spread, this is a great opportunity to get in on Pittsburgh.
I don't want to have anything to do with Pittsburgh with no T.J. Watt.
Let's see what, like, even the diminished T.J. Watt.
Their record without T.J. Watt is abysmal.
And every number goes out the window if he doesn't play. Now, it seems like he's going to play.
The practice reports, of have him in the mix. But if he's diminished at all, then I don't love it against this Ravens offense.
It's going to be cold. This feels like a Derrick Henry game.
The front seven for Pittsburgh didn't really get home against the Eagles offensive line. Well, that's the other thing.
They got their asses kicked last week. They got their asses

kicked.

I think the Ravens offense is as good as the

Eagles offense.

We're marking down Ravens money line.

Ravens money line. That's the way to play it.

I have news flash for you. I want

to do either all money lines or adjusted

underdog lines this week

and tie them with a couple games.

But let's hit the games really quick.

Eagles minus three and a half against Washington.

This is another one where I think I just like the money line.

Yeah, great.

I just want to grab the Eagles money line and put it with something else.

I don't trust the hook.

I don't 100% trust this Eagles team.

And I bet in this situation before, as

have you, where you bet the Eagles and Jalen

Hurts just has a super weird game

and has some weird injury that they're

not sure how much he's hurt

and he's throwing a triple coverage.

He's got the busted finger on the

non-throwing hand.

This comes down to two things, other

than the Philly being way better than Washington.

They have the best running attack in the league. Your team is 28th against the run.
Washington is the third best running attack in the league. Philly's number one against the run.
Your team hasn't looked really that good in six, seven weeks, and you've been calling it out week after week, talking about like, yeah, the schedule's catching up to these guys a little bit. They were overachieving early.
It's starting to come back to earth. I just don't think they're in the same ballpark as Philly.
I don't trust the hook. I don't trust the cheap TD.
I'd rather do Philly Moneyline. Anything to make you nervous? Your instinct is lined up with my instinct because I've seen enough of these Philly-Washington games, even in seasons where there's been dramatic difference, much more pronounced difference in the quality of the team.
Remember that Monday night game that Washington beat them? Yeah, Washington ended the Eagles' winning streak that season. It was just 2021, I think, whatever, a handful of seasons ago.
But the right way to play is to take the team that has the better players. They just want to be as reductive as possible.
And have something to play for. They're playing for a one seed.
It's not like they're like, oh, I don't know. Should we try this week? They were trying to get a bye week.
I mean, again, Washington, I'm so happy. I love this team.
And they did get right. They looked awesome against Tennessee.
They kicked their ass. They looked awesome in the first half against the Saints.
But they still like that defense. It's the thing why when you called me last summer, you were like, can Washington make a run here? And I was like, the only problem is the defense.
Now, they've made a run. It's really incredible, but put me on the money line.
There's a right way to play this. And you're basically in the playoffs.
You just got to win the Atlanta game or the Dallas game. I agree.

I'm thrilled.

Those are the two games.

Although, taking Kirk Cousins' corpse out of there,

you're probably sad to see him go.

I'm going to workshop.

Can I?

Is Penn XD's?

No, it doesn't work.

It doesn't work. Yeah, Kyle's going to have to bleep that.

Viking Seahawks in Seattle.

And this isn't a reactionary.

Seattle sucked last week, so I want to now go against them again because we really try not to do that. If anything, that's like the worst thing you can do.
We try. I am a petty better.
Yeah, me too. And Seattle, I'll be honest, Seattle hurt my feelings last week.
I was wounded. They weren't in that game.
What's wrong? I was like, the Seahawks hurt my feelings. That game was over.

I was like, oh, I just lost this.

I watched the first seven minutes. You knew.
Oh, this buddy is gone. Yeah, you knew.
Bye-bye. It started like four, one o'clock West Coast time by 1.30.
I was like, all right, cross that off. Yeah.
So I just think this is a horrible matchup for them. I don't like the matchup at all.
Minnesota's defense,

the Minnesota's ability to throw

to either receiver, have explosive plays, mix the running game in, and I also think Minnesota's good. The line is Vikings by two.
I think this is Vikings are a top five team. Seattle's, we learned last week, is somewhere in the middle.
And this is just bad luck. They played Green Bay and the Vikings back-to-back at home and those games are just really hard.
And I think the Seahawks are going to lose. Well, it would be hard enough if Gino wasn't hurt.
You cannot under any circumstances countenance even a 5% chance that Sam Howell will be playing quarterback for Seattle. Right.
Or injured Gino doesn't sound great to me either. I don't even like 100% healthy Gino that much.
This is another test of the thesis. We just did this with Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
Take the team with the better offense. Minnesota, Seattle.
I'll take the team with the better offense. I know who it is.
Minnesota's secondary, gettable. We've been watching some teams, you know, quietly pass the ball on them, especially in second halves.
Seattle can't do it. We haven't seen Seattle's offense really do anything for feels like six weeks now.
You know what happened? Yeah. Metcalf got hurt and just hasn't looked the same.
Lockett, I guess, is at like a different point of his career. I'm not sure what happened to him.
Kenneth Walker got hurt, so now it's just one running back. And then JSN's been their awesome receiver, but that's only going to take you so far.
All right, so we agree. The Vikings are minus three, and I don't care because we're going to use the money line for them too.
Yeah, fine. Great.
So we'll pass on the Raiders, pass on the Lions. I looked long and hard at Rams-Jets for the Jets side.
I thought when it was three and a half, the Jets have actually been playing pretty well lately. I don't trust the Rams, a lot of momentum behind them going west coast to east coast, but I just don't want to bet on the Jets, especially with all the dysfunction this week that i'm going to talk about later with peter schrager this athletic story that came out and garrett wilson today gives a quote later in the afternoon about do you think you'll be with the jets last year he's like honestly i don't know like it just there's a dysfunction smell from them that i don't like so i feel like's a stay away.
But what's not a stay away for me

is another dysfunction-y team.

The 49ers in Miami.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

49ers plus one and a half.

Which one is the dysfunction-y team?

Both of them.

The Niners, I feel like,

probably should be favored in this game.

As weird as their season's been.

Adjusted on FanDuel to plus four and a half. I think we can get a little frisky with some people I want to put them with.
But just fundamentally, Niners plus four and a half. Does that sound appealing to you? So what's weird is to me, why are you going in that direction? I'd rather lay points with the niners because i think that they're but i'd like to be it like do it like niners minus two and a half like you know something going that direction where they underdog because right now they're an underdog in that game the money line is minus 106 it's like you know i'm not going to disparage my my great friend great friend, the host of the Sunday pregame show, Sunday pregame.
I'm not going to say that's a JJ underdog money line play. Even though JJ does, you know, sometimes get close to the line in terms of his dog.
But minus 106 isn't even a dog. So let's go.
If we're going to get on San Francisco, let's get on him. Let's lay a little points.
Let's take it in the direction we think it's going to go. San Francisco first half game is plus 165.
I'm just mentioning that. Let's see.
So minus. The odds just aren't great for those.
It's unfandal minus 12 for the minus 2.5. They don't.
Well, they, they Christian's going to get mad at you now. I know we just can't get any value.
Yeah. Well, they know that's like a smart move to bend it.
So they want it. They want to keep you.
So the money line is plus one Oh six plus one Oh six. So it moved a little bit.
bit it moves a tiny bit but not enough to me you're just better off doing the plus 106 yeah but i can also offer you plus four and a half at minus 215 that we could put with usick one of the many things i want to put with oh okay yeah that's what i was thinking well i i was going to do this later, but let's just say that Niners plus four and a half with Usyk is plus 141. Because Usyk is like a minus 150 favorite.
Yeah, he's like minus 145 range. Okay.
All right, we'll come back to them. We both like the Niners.
I really like the Bengals, but I refuse. I'm just not doing it.
I'm just not. I don't trust them.
Just stay away. Good luck to them.
I know they have a chance to make the playoffs if anyone happens with Denver tonight. I will tell you.
I'll confess right away. You have the Bengals in a tease already? No, I have them in money line positions.
They are a leg as a money line. Well, that was my question.
Do we do Bengals money line? I I just don't trust their defense. Oh, you can't trust it.
DTR is the quarterback now for the Browns. I don't know what that's going to look like.
Oh, I have an idea. I have a thinking suspicion.
Cards minus four and a half in Carolina. I watched the cards pretty closely against the Pats.
They're not very good. I don't like four and a half.
That's ridiculous. Bucs, Cowboys, another stay away with that Bucs defense.
And then the two big ones for me. The Bills to beat the Patriots.
And the Packers to beat the Saints on Monday night. No Camara.
Rattler's going to play. I think I wanted to vote Week 16 to just that being in every bet that we have.
Both of them are minus 1,100 on FanDuel. And could we use those teams together as swing bets with other money lines that we like? We haven't done this all year.
Oh, I mean, I feel like we haven't done it in five years. This is like, it's an old school, old, like get the anchor and then you build around the anchor.
It's an old school anchor strategy.

Oh, the old Moneyline

parlay. Welcome back to my life.

Pats, home

for the Bills, laying, are getting

14 and a half. DeBundo today on the

Ringer and his excellent gambling column

recommended the Pats plus 14,

cold weather, blah, blah, blah.

I just don't see any scenario like Barmore got scratched. I don't see any scenario where the Patriots beat the Bills.
Like, none. All they've been doing all week is talking about the coach.
And then Packers-Saints, Monday night, Packers still playing for stuff. Saints, I don't know what they're playing for, but you got to watch them firsthand last week.
Did they impress you in any way? No, no. They did a great rope-a-dope.
By having Washington prepare for Boudoir Photo Hayner, the guy whose real attribute is an NFL quarterback or the pictures of himself, getting him out and putting Rattler in, it messed up the Washington defense. And you still should have won by 10.
You had first down in the nine-yard line. You could have kneeled three times.
Also, the game was 60 minutes and four seconds. So if we're going to mess with the clock, we're going to give teams extra time to get touchdowns, then you're in trouble.
Alright, so going back to where we were before, Bill's money line, Packer's money line is the anchor. We're using the anchor strategy this week.
Love it. Put that with the Vikings money line, minus 104.
Okay. That's a nice even money play.
Put that with the Eagles money line, minus 120. Fine.
You put that with Usyk, minus 104. Yep.
See, we're doing it. And we laid out the manic strategy with, uh, on Tuesday about Usyk.
Why just, just all in on him. Um, we could also use Usyk as an anchor with the Ravens money line, Ravens money line, Usyk plus one 21 Niners plus four and a half with Usyk plus 141.
Jets plus 7.5 and Usyk plus 128.

My bad. Niners plus four and a half with Usyk plus 141 Jets plus seven and a half and Usyk plus 128 my bad Ravens money and Usyk was plus 121 so all of those are plus and now we just get to move that shit around I'm going to take the Jets off for reasons we discussed but we do have the other can't do the Jets so Niners plus four half, Usyk plus 141.
And then the Ravens money line, maybe that's the move. And I think that's it.
We just use anchors of Usyk undefeated, the best boxer of the last few years, and then Bills Packers money line parlay, and we just go. I mean, this is great.
We took an unwatchable slate of games on Sunday because it really is one of the worst slates of the season. And look at all the fun ways we have this split up.
This is great. So you don't want to put the Chiefs in with the Bills and Packers? I don't.
I mean, I'll take the L for thinking that the Browns were going to not turn the ball over six times against the Chiefs at home. I'll take the L for that.
But the Chiefs weren't very impressive. Their offense really didn't look great.
And that was with the Holmes, you know, most of the game healthy. And we're going to stay away from the Bengals' money line.
I don't know. I've already bet Bengals money.
Make the case right now.

Make the case for the Bengals.

The heart wants what the heart wants.

And what the heart wants is the Bengals to be in the playoffs.

I want the Bengals to win out.

I want Denver to lose out.

I want both the Colts

and who's the other team that has to lose a game.

I want the Bengals as the 7th seed.

I want the Cincinnati Bengals

as a 7th seed.

I want us to wake up

with them on wild card

I'm going to be up with them on wild card weekend up against the two seed in the form of who's going to be the two seed. Is it going to be, it's either Buffalo or the Chiefs, right? And it's, yeah, it could be, yeah, it's Buffalo.
It's either Buffalo or the Chiefs. That's an incredible wild card weekend game.
Buffalo-Cincinnati. That's our Saturday night Amazon game game.
Can you imagine how good that would be? I honestly think it's going to be the Chiefs because I think that Mahomes, they're going to make a decision about it in any event. Cincinnati with Usyk minus 102.

Great, great, great.

All right, so we're putting a lot on Usyk. Jesus.

We're putting a lot on

Bengals.

If these lose, this is on you

and Chris Mannix. It's not on me.

As I'm on the record,

Usyk and Pereira

and the UFC, I'm just betting them every time they decide to do combat until they lose I'm doing the blackjack I'm stacking my bets on those two guys and it's been working for multiple years Usyk hasn't lost ever and he's been so much fun to bet on this would be be the wipeout. Million dollar picks week 16.
We are up 1.254 million dollars coming off a bad week where we learned some lessons. Looked in the mirror a couple of times.
Don't take bad offenses. Explain the anchor strategy to the audience.
One more time, House. Old, Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, you find a

team that you like on the money line

and then you start building around them. We have

two teams that we like on the money line

this week, both Buffalo

and Green Bay.

Huge money lines, minus

$1,100 each. Massive.
So you

don't get a lot of value, but on

Fandle, you get some value. And then

you start grabbing teams at lesser odds that you like, again, just

on the money line and try and build up around even money or to a plus side and try and build

up a little bit of bankroll for those last minute Christmas gifts, BS, because I still

got some shopping to do.

So we're using two anchors.

The first one are the Buffalo Bills just to beat New England

in New England and the Green Bay Packers just to beat the Saints. Two of the worst teams right now though.
The Pats are one of the four worst teams. Saints are one of the 10 worst teams.
Putting those two money lines together with the Vikings with their money lines. So the Vikings are minus three in Seattle.

And

we're just gonna...

Something about the minus three, we're just going to take the, let's just take the money line on it. Take the money line.
Sam Darnold's due to throw a pick. I mean, he's been looking outstanding.
Yeah, they might win by one. We're just covered.
Just win the game, Minnesota. So that's minus 104.
No offense to Seattle. We still have a bunch of bets with them.
Nice little hedge against our bets too, though. That's right.
And then the other one is the Eagles money line, which if you put with the Bills and the Packers, the Eagles just to beat Washington, they're minus three and a half point favorites. You put those three together minus 120.
So we're going to put 200K down on those two events.

200K on each bet.

Next one, the Ravens money line on Saturday against Pittsburgh.

This will probably be a weird, ugly, strange game.

The weather's going to be freezing cold.

Bad weather.

It's a Derrick Henry game.

We don't like the Ravens minus six and a half,

just the money line.

We're putting that with Alexander Usyk, who hasn't lost in his life as a parlay plus 121. Excellent.
Excellent. We're going to put 200K on that.
Niners plus four and a half adjusted in Miami. We get to bet against Tua.
What's more fun than betting? It's wonderful. DJ Mike McDaniel.
It's great. Yeah.
Niners adjusted plus four and a half with Usyk is plus one 41. We'll put one 50 on that.
Put a little less. Fair.
Fair enough. And then Bengals money line with Usyk.
That's minus 102. Bengals just to beat the Browns and whoever the hell is on their team this week.
No Nick Chubb. They're on their third quarterback.
I don't know if they're trying to tank. I do don't know they had their first round pick.
What do you want to put on that one? 200 or 100? 100's enough. Let's not really bet on Cincinnati.
Yeah, we'll do a little 100K just for fun because it's Sunday and there's no games. And it starts the momentum for Cincinnati to get to the playoffs.
I mean, we'll know from the Denver outcome whether or not that's reasonable. Denver and the Chargers.
The anchor strategy. You don't want to put Chiefs plus three and a half in this? Chiefs plus three and a half.
Oh. With Usyk? A little 100K flyer? Well, so that I will, yes.
So that, what's the number? Let's hear the number. All right, I just looked it up and we're doing this house.
Chiefs adjusted to plus four and a half with Usyk to win plus 112. That's a hundred K.
Well, the only thing that the, you know, gives us any challenge at all with that is, is Carson Wentz. If Carson Wentz ends up being, but the four and a half, that's, that's Wentz protection.
We'll call that Wentz protection. You know, what's great about that house.
I kind of believe in that little redheaded former assassin Carson Wentz to be good for one game and to try to get himself like a three-year $50 million contract as next year's Baker Mayfield with somebody. Yeah.
No way. I'd actually be excited if he played.
Alright, that's our last one. Chiefs plus four and a half with you sick.
100K in that. Those are the million dollar picks for week 16.
So you did a fairway rolling end of the year awards with our guy, Nate. Yeah, the rollies.
We had a handful of categories. We wanted to sum up the year.
Our good buddy, Brendan Porath from the Shotgun Start podcast came on. And we just ran through all of the big events.
I mean, Bryson as the as the breakthrough performer of the we call the comeback because, you know, he's been on the outs. And look at look at Bryson, king of the golf world.
Our Dirk Diggler stud of the year went to I'm pretty sure it went to Xander Shoffley for winning two majors right? I sure would hope so. He had that in him and then we had the Haktua creator of the year and we gave that to the Louisville Police Department because that was the viral moment in the golf world.
Nobody knows who Scotty Scheffler is, including the Louisville Police Department. The dudes at the front door of the golf course trying to drive in.
They don't know who he is. That was the biggest moment in the entire world of golf.
So yeah, we had a good time with the Rollies. We got to get a trophy for it.
Did you give the Hawk to a, here's my Bitcoin, I'm going to take all your money award? Or was that, that wasn't handed out? Well, there are some candidates for that for sure in golf, but you know, we, we, that, that can make the list for next year. Well, how about the new lib commissioner is the brother of somebody who was our favorite basketball player we ever played with at Holy Cross.
So many great times with Shawna and every interaction I've had with Scott O'Neill. What a great dude.
It's a great guy. Tremendous.
We really, really love playing with his brother. He's got to be retired at this point.
Who, Shawna? Yeah, there's no way. He's still playing in his mid-50s.
It was so great to just see him and be like, oh man, let's get on Sean's team. Let's get on Sean's team.
You get the ball. Nice little bounce passes on the break.
Great stuff. All right, House.
Happy gambling. We will see you, I think, next year.
We'll be here next week for Million Dollar Picks. Fingers crossed.
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Don't forget to check out the official Hacks podcast on Spotify. All right, we're taping this.
It is 2.30 Pacific time. Peter Schrager is in our New York Spotify Ringer studios looking super snazzy.
This is the most professional we've felt in a while. Really weird stretch of the schedule right now.
We have two Saturday games with teams that are also all going to be playing on Wednesday. Do you think the league will ever do anything like this again? Is this a one-time thing? I think they're hoping to do this every year.
It's unprecedented in how it all worked out, Bill. So when they first thought of this Christmas day extravaganza, they were like, we'll have two games and we'll give it to a high bidder.
Netflix got involved, obviously, and gave a lot of money. And it was like, all right, we know we have a Wednesday game and they're going to be, you know, premier teams because Netflix is paying top dollar.
But how do we account for player safety the best way we possibly can? Like, well, you can't play Sunday, then Wednesday. Let's make it Saturday, then Wednesday, which means now four of these teams in the AFC, who just so happen to be four of the top seven teams, are playing three games in 11 days in late December.
Unheard of. And the way it worked out, and we're recording this on Thursday, and it doesn't matter who wins tonight, but originally it was supposed to be Bengals versus Browns on Thursday night football.
And Amazon has the ability to ask to flex out. And a month ago, they went to the league and said, can we flex out of Bengals-Browns? That's a terrible game.
Can we get out of that? And the league said, there's no game to really put there. The only option would be Chargers-Broncos in LA, but we can't do it because of league bylaws.
The Broncos have already played one road Thursday night game. And one of the major rules was you will never play two Thursday night road games.
So they go to Sean Payton and they say, look, you're going to say no, but we're going to present it to you. And Payton was like, fuck it.
Put us on Thursday night. We want to be on prime time.
We want to go into that building. I want to play them on a Thursday night.
Now, the result of all that, a month later, is six of the top seven teams in the AFC are going to be playing two games on five days rest. And four of the top six teams in the AFC are going to be playing three games on 11 days rest.
Meanwhile, there's a team up there in Western New York, the Buffalo Bills who play the Patriots on a Sunday, the Jets on a Sunday and the Patriots again on a Sunday and already looking at that playoff run. Well, and then you have, it works out for the Broncos because he's like, yeah, yeah, fuck it.
Let's go. We'll go right in.
And meanwhile, the charges are all banged up. Yeah.
So you're giving them three less days to heal, which I thought probably was an unintended consequence. Yeah, over and over again, it just seems like everything's working out great for the Bills.
This is, it worked out really well for them. I don't know how they pulled it off, but the KC, the whole Mahomes goes down, then Netflix is worried about their Wednesday game.
But then Mahomes, I heard Raheem say this on the Rear and Gambling show today, where Mahomes is like LeBron, where he gets these injuries and it seems like he's going to be out for six weeks and then he's fine two days later. He's just one of those guys.
Yeah, I think he's going to play Saturday against Texans. You know why we know he's going to play? Because the line moved six points.
That's been the word out of that place all week that the one seat is very important to them. They're not going to fake it and say, well, Mahomes is safety.
Like they want that one seat and they want that week off. And I've spoken to multiple sources in that building that, you know, if Pat says he can go, he's going to go.
He has earned that from the coaching staff and they're not looking to protect him physically. I remember a couple of years back in the divisional round against Trevor Lawrence, he bangs up the ankle.
Everyone's worried, what's he going to do? What's he going to do? He doesn't finish the game, but then he does play against the Bengals in the AFC Championship game, and he runs for that first down. And he just hobbled through it, but he got through it.
I thought we might get a very Carson Wentz Christmas. I think the NFL and Netflix would not have been thrilled.
I don't know if Beyonce and Mariah Carey and the rest would have enjoyed it. Burt Kreischer and Nate Bregazzi and the rest.
I don't know. But in this case, it looks like you're getting Mahomes and you're going to get all the fixings with it.
And it's going to be Chiefs versus Steelers with Mahomes. And the stakes couldn't be higher because I think it matters.
There's one other stake beyond the one seed and all that stuff it's Mahomes kind of lost his spot in line this season you know and he and now he's turned into this well when the playoffs come he's going to turn it on but I think from just from an entertainment standpoint and from honestly a ceiling standpoint Allen and Lamar Jackson have just been better even Burrow's been more fun to watch And Mahomes is just grinding these games out. It always looks like he has seven injuries and he's having one of those seasons you have when you're 37, but he's still in his twenties.
And he's, he's played, you know, a lot more games than probably some other quarterbacks the last few years. And the weapons have been in and out.
He, the tackle situation has been dicey. I get it, but it's just interesting.
I just think Allen and Lamar have blown him out of the water during this regular season. But you also feel like we're going to get to the playoffs and Mahomes is probably going to yank it back.
And I think that's why the number one seed is so important. Give us an advantage.
Give us something over these teams. Remember, the Bills beat them head-to-head.
So if they were to lose two of the next three games, then they succumb and they have to go on the road. And they don't want to do that.
They want the one seed. They want the week off.
They think it's important. The offensive line has been a disaster.
And they put DJ Humphries in there for one game. He lasted one game.
And then Joe Tooney, a guard, is playing left tackle for a team that's the one seed in 13 and one. It's pretty incredible.
Not a great and not a great you know the numbers weren't crazy sack wise but he was under pressure the entire game last week against cleveland and you look at what houston's bringing this weekend and between daniel hunter and will anderson they have the second most sacks in the nfl that's in christmas you you know you have this one on saturday then on christmas you think tj watt's gonna play you assume cam hayward and all those guys are out there. He's going up against two of the best defensive front sevens in the league over the next two weeks.
If they win both of those games, though, they get a bye and they can rest week 18 and the next week during the wildcard round. So I did a thing on Sunday with Sal about the year Allen's having and how actually it's a bad sign for Buffalo Superbowl hopes.

When you have these teams with the awesome quarterback having the MVP year

combined with a defense that can't really stop anybody.

The signs are bad.

Like you went through the list.

I heard.

Yeah,

I went through it just in general,

but then this,

this week,

Aaron shots had a tweet.

What's he got about basically in the last 30 years, 11 teams went 9-5 and then made the Super Bowl. And the reason he did it was because for DVOA, which has been an essential part of kind of studying following football most of the century, the Ravens are 9-5.
They're shoved aside a little bit right now, I think, especially as Buffalo's gotten the thing, but 11 out of 30 teams have made the Super Bowl and some good teams like 2016 Atlanta was nine and five. The 2002 Raiders, you can go on down the line, 2023 KC last year.
And I don't know. The fact that they're number one in DVLA and not being talked about, they have this Pittsburgh game coming up this weekend.
They're six and a half point favorites against Tomlin and the Steelers when Lamar has struggled against them for his whole career, basically. But I do wonder if they're starting to get a little sleepy.
Like I was looking at their title odds, their AFC odds, and maybe they're the undervalued team because everyone's on Green Bay now in the AFC. I was was a week late on that one maybe it's baltimore in the afc what are your baltimore thoughts i love baltimore this year i think they got the perfect bye week they needed it more than ever they got it they come out they beat up on the giants last week where lamar throws five touchdowns yeah and now they're getting healthy and it's look the eight of nine it's real and you know the last ravens quarterback to beat the Steelers was Snoop Huntley.
And a lot of those games, yeah, and a lot of those games were decided by one score or less. And the Steelers just found a way at the end.
Even the last time they played, you remember that Peyton Wilson interception on the sideline with Justice Hill? They still had a chance at the end with the two-point conversion, but there was so much confusion. Lamar afterwards is furious on the sideline.
And it's like, all right, well, if you can't beat them in close games, how do we have our faith in the Ravens? I think since that game, they have gotten healthier. And I think the bye week was important.
What I think is going to be very interesting on Sunday, which, I mean, you're talking about the greatest sports viewing day, if you're a football fan ever, is this Saturday. I mean, it's right there smack dab in the middle, 430 Eastern.
You got Brady and Burkhardt on the call. Justin Tucker is going to have to make a kick here.
And Justin Tucker is going to have to come through. And last week he made one and they had a lot of field goals and a lot of touchdowns and it was fine.
But like Justin Tucker is going to have to make a kick or two in some inclement weather against the Steelers. And I think it's important that Justin Tucker gets right because that's how they play football.
And especially against the Steelers team, it's always a one score game. Going against the guy who now has the Justin Tucker championship belt.
He's got the belt. Chris Boswell headed for 200 fantasy points.
Yeah. So Baltimore's first in offense, Pittsburgh seventh in defense for DVOA, and yet Pittsburgh got their asses kicked by Philly last week.
And I thought it was a more alarming game than a usual loss because they lost in ways that I wasn't, I just weren't on my bingo card, like them just getting manhandled, them giving up a 22-play drive to basically finish the game. But if you're a Steelers fan, you look at it and you go, well, we got screwed on that penalty where there was a clear video after of the guy, Darius Slay punching our guy.
Darnell, Washington, yeah. And then they're driving down.
It seems like they're going to maybe tie the game and Najee fumbles. And it's like, yeah, we're a little closer there than you thought.
I thought they got pushed around and manhandled and beaten up. And now they're heading into these next two games, Saturday, Wednesday.
This just feels like this all flipped at the worst possible time. What are your Pittsburgh feelings? I think your instincts are right that they have dominated in the trenches and Russell has not made mistakes.
And like in this game, Cooper DeGene has the fumble. Hertz makes the early mistake.
You're like, OK, here come the Steelers. And then they just couldn't close that gap.
And then, like you said, in real time, it felt like two hours at the end of the game. It was just, and like, it was such a long drive that like Brady and Burkhardt are doing banter about Belichick during it.
Like you snuck in like, yeah, you snuck in like, like empty the bag. We have to find something to talk about because this game isn't in hand right now.
Uh, that's worrisome if you're the Steelers, cause their whole mantra has been keep the game close. Russell will make a play at the end and we'll run the ball down your throats and we'll stop you on defense.
And they couldn't do that against a more physical team in Philadelphia. But there is a mental edge here.
Tomlin's coming into this thing. We've won eight of nine.
We've won games with everyone from Duck Hodges to Mason Rudolph to whoever. We can beat the Ravens.
We have no fear going into this building. Yeah, part of me wonders, and I've been riding them the whole time, part of me wonders if they outkicked their coverage a little bit this season.
Just in general, you look back at some of the games they won, some of the schedule stuff. Their most impressive win was probably that first Baltimore game just for really pulling it out and seeing it.
But it just shouldn't matter this much that George Pickens is hurt. I like George Pickens.
He's their biggest threat, though. I know, but it shouldn't be just an absolute deal breaker to be able to, you know, because then they're running the ball all the time, but they're running it for three yards of carry because everyone knows they have to run the ball.
Because my thought is, like, I wonder if this is a lamar a lamar oh i can't be no doubt here we go and he looks great pittsburgh loses again and it's like holy shit pittsburgh's in attack i'm trying to think of whatever narrative comes out of that game and that feels like the likely narrative to me and then it's a quick turnaround because four days later lamar's got to go play the texans it's like this crazy round robin. But Kyle Brandt and I on Good Morning Football, we always talk about the most valuable player industrial industry complex.
Like we've even made this thing like starting in week two. It's like, who's the MVP? Who's the MVP? And I put it to bed last week, maybe a little premature.
And I was like, Josh Allen's done. Like, it's over.
Like, why are we even let's not just do this for the sake of a segment. And the amount of feedback I got from people around the league, not fans being like, slow down.
Lamar's got better numbers and Lamar's games are all showcase games over the next few weeks. So on Saturday, when everyone's watching, Lamar's going to be able to have that showcase game.
And then on Wednesday, on Christmas, when everybody's watching Christmas afternoon, Lamar can have that showcase game. And by the end of it, we're not going to see Josh Allen on national television for the last month of the season.
And you might say, well, who gives a shit about national TV? The people who vote are writers who are usually in press boxes and just looking at box scores afterwards. But on Christmas day and on a Saturday, they will be watching.
And if enough hysteria gets going and Lamar can finish this thing out, it is not over yet. Lamar could steal this and get his third MVP.
On Fandle right now, Allen's 9-1, basically. He's a 9-1 favorite.
And Lamar is plus 650, and that feels out of whack to me because Lamar having an awesome game against Pittsburgh. And then what you said, everything else he's doing is going to be like major games.
Josh is going to be on my top right multi-view for the Pats-Bills game, and that's about it. He's just going to be in witness protection.
With all that said, there is another scenario where Lamar sucks against Pittsburgh again, and Pittsburgh wins 18 to 16, and Justin Tucker misses a couple field goals.

The whole thing.

Speaking of awards, I wanted to ask you this.

Yeah.

I hate when people do interviews and they say, I wanted to ask you this.

I should just ask you.

My bad.

I'm still trying to get better at this.

Forgive me.

No, you'll get there.

Coach of the year.

Ooh.

Do you know who the favorite is?

Have you looked at this?

I haven't. I would imagine, I'm going to give it to you, 12 and 2, Kevin O'Connell know who the favorite is? Have you looked at this? I haven't.

I would imagine, I'm going to give it to you, 12-2 Kevin O'Connell is probably the favorite right now.

So he is. He's the only one with minus

odds. He's minus 190.

Dan Campbell dropped a little bit because his entire

team got hurt, apparently. It was his fault.

But hell of a locker room speech at an interview

in 97-1 in Detroit. I guess the pregame

speeches only go so far. Sean Payton

6-1. Dan Quinn 10-1.
Tomlin 15-1. McDermott 30-1 in Detroit.
I guess the pregame speeches only go so far. Sean Payton 6-1.
Dan Quinn

10-1. Tomlin 15-1.
McDermott 30-1. And then you have to press the see rest of the bets link to go on FanDuel to go to Sean McDermott 30-1.
Sirianni, Bowles. Where's Andy Reid? There's Andy Reid at 35-1.
Is this like a Belichick thing? He's not allowed to win? Yeah, he's done. He's three wins away from 300 wins in his career, and no one has even mentioned that.
They're 13-1. All they do is win.
How is he not the number two guy to be able to bet? I just don't understand that. He's succumbed to any respect for any of that, and then we'll see him in January.
It is amazing how this award is given out. Usually it's a first-year guy who gets his team into the playoffs and it's like a quick bump.
And we've seen that from McVay and from Matt Nagy and from Stefanski. It could have been Harbaugh this year if they'd gone like 11-5 or 11-6.
Brian Dable was that. This year, I think the O'Connell thing is happening because people are just like, they keep on winning.
And if you look at their team, it's a bunch of castaways, whether it be Darnold, Aaron Jones, Jonathan Grenard, like you go right down the list. It's all guys who were with other teams last year, but let's not, let's not underestimate just what Andy Reid is doing their roster every week.
We are underestimating it because it's the 10th best odds on Fandle right now. And apparently nobody's betting on him.
Yeah. And what's going to be amazing, we're going to go through the coaching hires and Spags is not going to get a single look again.
I'm just telling you like it is. No one's going to interview Matt Nagy and their GM is going to remain.
And their number two GM is Mike Borgonzi. I think he's excellent.
I don't even know if he's going to get one of these GM jobs. So it's going to be like, all right, they do it again.
And they're just going to bring everyone back next year. It's this fine, well-oiled machine, and they don't get poached.
It's incredible. You think like all the weapons they lost, the fact that they had the bullseye on them all year, all the close games they played that they had to pull out.
I think he would be my number two choice. I actually think what O'Connell's been doing on Minnesota, that team is so well coached and so well prepared.
Salvaging Darnold and turning him into a guy that's now probably a 30 to $35 million a year guy in the open market. Amazing.
He's made it a real decision for them. And I would also say, I work on the Sunday kickoff show on Fox and early on in the season, Michael Vick, my colleague, who's now the new head coach of Norfolk State, shout out to Norfolk State.
Michael Vick was like, you know, Darnold's kind of like a game manager. And then he goes on this run where he threw five touchdowns in a game.
He had to take them 90 yards outside in Chicago in overtime. Did that.
He also, you know. A few fourth quarter, like they need to drive here.
He's come through. Yeah.
That's not game manager. That is, okay, we're going to put the ball in Sam's hands and like, let's let him lead

us the way.

Interesting one this weekend in Seattle.

I would think they would win.

And then they finish up the season with the Lions and the Packers.

And that's where it's at.

It's like, all right, everyone's waiting for that.

And those are the two games to end the season.

But if the Vikings win out, Bill, they are the number one seed in the NFC.

And that's incredible.

If the Vikings win out, regardless of what happens to anybody else?

Yeah, they are the one seed.

They would have all the tiebreakers.

I mean, Detroit probably needs that one seed more than any team has needed a one seed in a while.

I don't know how much it's going to help.

I might be off Detroit right now.

I don't know, man.

Well, did you see that?

Somebody had the graphic of all the people on IR by each team.

Detroit had 22 guys.

Let's do this. I don't know, man.
Well, did you see that? Somebody had the graphic of all the people on IR by each team. Detroit had 22 guys.
I have it here. Detroit had 22.
Then the next team was the Browns at 18. Yeah.
And the Dolphins and Giants at 15. So the Lions had basically, if you go to like the fifth most IR team, they have almost, you know, 60% more than like the fourth player.
I've never seen anything like it. I don't even know.
Like I know you have some Lions connections. Do they even have an explanation for how they could have this many injuries? No, it's heartbreaking.
Do you look at the training staff and go, what are we, are we doing something wrong? I don't think so. I remember the 2029ers had something like this where just early on in the season, it was like Bosa's out and then Garoppolo's out.
But the crazy thing is, they're still finding ways to put up points. Now, the David Montgomery loss is real.
That one sucks. Montgomery's very important to them.
That was when I closed the door on my Lions one seed bet. It might be be.
They could basically do the Buffalo where they just outscore everybody. But what really made them special was that Montgomery Gibbs combo.
I know. I know.
It was a top three running back situation anyone had. Now they don't have it.
I know. And we had, you're going to love this.
We had Taylor Lautner on our show, Good Morning Football. Taylor Lautner of Twilight Saga of twilight who by the way is a great dude and loves the nfl and he has a podcast with his wife who appropriately is also named taylor and they had aiden hutchinson on as their guest because he's a diehard lions fan and we're promoting it and like hutchinson's like if we make the super bowl i'm back if we make the super bowl we're back and that came out the same exact day as Dan Campbell's riveting radio interview.
And it's like, on paper, it makes no sense that this team that is down 22 guys, most of them on defense, and are using third and fourth and fifth string players in key positions down the stretch, should compete. And then you talk to anyone there, and it's like, why can't we just be one of these teams of destiny? Why can't we be one of these magical teams? And who knows, if you get to the Super Bowl somehow, you get Aiden Hutchinson back, and suddenly you find yourself in New Orleans and you got a bunch of crazy Lions fans who haven't seen a world championship game since 57.
The Pats had a year like that where Troy Brown was playing Nickelback and it just felt like everything was going wrong the whole year and they still almost made the Super Bowl but they had the Brady-Belichick infrastructure. It's a little different.
Jared Goff who's never won a Super Bowl and Campbell who's never, you know. We've seen teams, the Colts had years where it just felt like their defense had passed the point of no return and they were somehow in the AFC title game.
I'm not willing to rule them out but I gotta say the Montgomery

thing, that was the one

that made me go up. Their defense

sucked anyway. They were gonna have to win

like Buffalo's gonna have to win.

That Colts team, I think it was the 06 Colts team

that won the Super Bowl. They had the worst

defense in the league and they'd given up

like 250 yards to

Ron Dane and Dominic Davis

and the Houston Texans like the last week of the season and then playoffs come and it's like, we need to win three games. Can we string it together? And they did.
And the home field always, always matters when you can get it. So if Detroit can find a way to just hold serve and maintain home field, if they win out, they're the number one seed.
Yeah, but you know what's been lost though? I think if they're healthy, I really do think they win the Super Bowl and they're the best team. I think starting the year for whatever their talent was and the situation and the guys at the points of the careers they're at, I think they had the best team.
And I think that's why I feel so wide open now because sometimes you just, remember there was that year, the year Brady got hurt, 08. Yeah.
When all of a sudden we just ended up with that weird Pittsburgh, Arizona Super Bowl. It's like, what the fuck is this? Arizona came in with eight wins on the regular season and hit a run.
Don't you feel like something weird like that could happen this year? I'm prepared for like any Super Bowl matchup, right? The NFC to me is so interesting. The AFC, you've got your powers and like they all...
The NFC, would you be shocked if Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers upset a team in the wild card and they beat the Vikings at home? Same for the Rams. They just scored 37 on the road against whoever, of course.
They scored 40 points on the number one defense, the Chargers, and put up 500 yards of offense and didn't punt. And you're like, oh wait, what the hell's's going on in Tampa? Like, they might be the team.
So this could be that year. And the NFC, like, the Eagles could finish with 13 straight wins.
And yet, I don't know. Like, does that feel like the Eagles are going to run away with the NFC? I don't feel that way.
I think the Vikings and the Packers can give them a battle in the Lions too. So I'm excited for this year's playoffs.
If you're just saying talent now for who's left, it seems like the Eagles have the most talent in either conference, just all sides of the ball. If you're just going to do a ranking of grading all the players.
And yet I don't even think the Eagles fans, even the Eagles fans have like their guard up with it. And there's always seems to be weird stories popping out and chemistry stuff.
And so part of me wonders, is that a red herring? And then the other part of me wonders, like, every time there's smoke like that, it never turns out well for the team. So I don't know what to think of them either.
They would have to be the team that if gone to your head, you would pick, but I don't feel good about it. That 2017 Eagles team, they lose Wentz and I was the the sideline reporter for Giants-Eagles.
And Spagnuolo was the coach for the Giants as an interim coach. And everyone was off the Eagles at that point.
And then Foles comes in. And I remember talking to Foles and Peterson and Brandon Graham and all those guys.
And this is right before the dog masks. And it was like, the world is against us.
They don't believe in us. We're the underdogs.
And like, that really, that really worked. Can you still do it again? And now the thing is, you know, Jalen Hurts throws for a couple, you know, a hundred yards to two receivers and then comes up and he's like, is that what you all wanted? And it's like, no, no, no, no.
We didn't do this. The media didn't do this.
Brandon Graham, your teammate went out on a radio interview and said that you guys weren't friends. Like we didn't do this then sirianni and clinton hurt are having this really like heated thing on the sidelines where jalen jalen carter is laughing in the and it's like no no guys that the cameras caught that like that happened that was real and it's like yeah the media is trying to pull us apart so they find a way to galvanize there in philly and i'm sure she'll and whoever else you have on the philly special can break it down far greater than i can but like they feed off that tension, but there isn't a lot of joy in the Philly and I'm sure Sheil and whoever else you have on the Philly special can break it down far greater than I can.
But like they feed off that tension, but there isn't a lot of joy in the Philly fan. So that's what's the noticeable thing.
They don't like it. It's always like tense and stressed.
And it's like, it's not, it's not this fun ride. Yeah.
Even watching the Eagles, it doesn't seem like a team that's having like the most unbelievable time ever together. And I don't know.
You notice different vibes from different teams. Maybe they'll come together.
I wouldn't rule it out. But you did make me think of something.
And maybe it's like two weeks too early to figure this out. But who is the best candidate for the nobody believes in us team in the playoffs? Because that Eagles team is a great example.
That 2017, Wentz goes down.

Everyone writes them off.

Oh, they're done.

And then it's the force that has been kind of the most dominant playoff force

year after year after year.

Is it Detroit?

Does Detroit have the best nobody believes in us?

Yeah, I feel like everyone's fleeing that bandwagon.

We don't even believe in them anymore.

Yeah, I think everyone's fleeing that bandwagon.

And Dan Campbell's the perfect nobody believes in us coach. And Chris Spielman's fleeing that bandwagon.
We don't even believe in them anymore. Yeah, I think everyone's fleeing that bandwagon.
And Dan Campbell's the perfect nobody-believes-in-us coach. And Chris Spielman's in that building.
He's the perfect nobody-believes-in-us guy. I feel like they'll feed off that.
And that is your team. And then I think if there's another one of them, the other one that you would say is the Houston Texans, who are going to easily win their division.
They're going to play the Chiefs and the Ravens over the next two weeks,

and they might win two of those games, one of those games,

and no one's going to pick them.

And everyone's going to say, oh, whatever.

The thing with them is they're the, no, no, fuck you.

Nobody should believe in you guys, Steve.

You guys are barely winning.

I saw you losing the Jets on a Thursday night in person.

No, it's your fault.

You can't even score 20 points.

You can't block.

I would say KC last year was a good example of this when they lost that Raiders game. If people were like, I'm out, I'm out.
They're not going to do it again. It's done.
I'm out. Aiden O'Connell beat them.
I'm out. And I thought they used that to their advantage.
Yeah, the Vikings are a candidate, but O'Connell doesn't have that deal with him. I feel like you need a coach who's going to really dig deep.
Sirianni does that. Dan Campbell does that.
I've heard stories of Sirianni going really deep with film references and showing movie clips. I remember Dan Quinn, when he was back with Atlanta, would call me on a Saturday night just to bullshit before my Fox show.
And I'd be like, give me something. And he's like, well, I showed a Sugar Shane Mosley fight last night because the situation was this.
And I'm like, dude, these guys, they go deep for what can motivate. That's Campbell.
That's Sirianni. Kevin O'Connell's more like, guys, we got this.
We can do this. One game at a time.
There's none of that hate and none of that toxicity of us against the world. It's more, I believe in you, which works also.
Yeah, because I think Pittsburgh is maybe entered the waiting room for this convo, especially if they lost to Baltimore this week. But we're like, all right, we're done.
They're out. Fun run.
I can't believe you won 10 games. You guys are out.
Watts hurt now. And then Tomlin feeds off that.
But yeah, I would say Detroit has to be the odds-on favorite it. Maybe Tampa too with just not being considered at all.
And Tampa's had some good wins. Their offense is excellent.
Like they're over 400 points already, you know, and they dropped 40 in the Chargers. You think about it too.
They lost their offensive coordinator from a year ago. He took the job in Carolina.
Then Liam Cohen comes in and Liam's put up better numbers with Baker, which is incredible. And what's fun with this team is they lost four games in a row.
Mike Evans was her. Chris Godwin was her and everyone wrote them off, but they just went ahead and just kept on winning.
So now they're the hot team. You know who didn't write them off? Me and Sal, because they were in the, such a bad division.
Nobody is allowed to be, even Carolina, you could barely write off. It was seven wins going to be our champ in this division.
What do you need in that NFC, AFC South? 30? You need less than 30 wins? What was the combined bet you guys did? Yeah, we're getting that. It's under 30.
We're getting that. The Panics Cousins thing was coming for a while.
And I knew when they did that mile an hour stat for Cousins, it was 36 miles an hour. You could see it the way they called the game with the Raiders where they just weren't going to let him do anything.
Is there any way to spin this? Let's say I'm Arthur Blank. How are you spinning this to me? Is it like, hey, look, this is why we had to invest in Penix.
These are assets. If you go one for two, it's a win.
What do you say to Arthur blank at this at this point well i think the first pat on the back goes to kwacy adolfo mensa and kevin o'connell up in minnesota who had a franchise quarterback and said we're gonna let him walk out the building something nobody does without a plan b we're gonna go to the draft and we're gonna pick up a free agent but i remember talking to kevin he's like it's heartbreaking we love we love him but we he's 36 years old coming off an achilles injury like yeah we can't give him 100 million dollars the falcons did and your argument for the falcons is like all right let's see what we get with with cousins i give him a little bit of credit and that they eventually did pull the plug because this he's gonna make 90 million dollars guaranteed from the atlanta falcons for 14 weeks of football and they're paying him that and they're like we're not gonna just play you because you because we're paying him that. We're going to then go to the backup.
But why didn't they do it before the Raiders game? Why not give Pennix that Raider game? I don't understand that. I reported it on Fox a couple weeks ago because he looked horrible cousins for three straight weeks.
The second week of it, they were playing the Chargers at home and I reported, I'm like, Pennix didn't take any first squad snaps this week. It was all scout team.
And they were just like, we're going with cousins. We're riding this out.
It's almost too little too late. But this does open things up a little bit.
Like Zach Robinson's a good offensive coach. I knew him when he was with McVay's staff in LA and he was the quarterbacks coach.
And he does all sorts of cool like QB waggle, outside the pocket stuff

and I know how excited he was when they drafted

Pennix because he's like, that's really cool

and down the line when the time comes, we'll do really neat

stuff with him. I think you're going to see

an entirely different offense over the next three weeks

and a lot of stuff with a quarterback that isn't a

running quarterback by like

Lamar or Jim Daniels. But he can at least move.

But he can move. Kirk Cousins cannot

move. He cannot move laterally.

That game against the Raiders on Monday night

I mean, he scored a touchdown early and it was

Thank you. like Lamar, but he can move.
Yeah. Kirk Cousins cannot move.
He cannot move laterally. That game against the Raiders on Monday night.
I mean, he scored a touchdown early and it was like, pump your chest. Like, told you got, no, like he couldn't move.
It was a crazy game to watch. And that was the fourth straight week he's done that.
Yeah, it's weird because week one, he looked like that. And then everybody took the Eagles in week two, which is now looking back, one of the weird results of the season.
The game's over. Somehow they don't.
And then all of a sudden Atlanta has the bomb. Saquon dropped the pass.
Yeah. Atlanta comes flying back down the other way, and it's like, Kurt's back.
And it turned out he wasn't back. But look, we've seen teams get out of these giant, awful cap hit things.
Russell Wilson, Denver, you know, takes a huge hit with him, and they're somehow going to be like a 10-win team this year. So it's not awful.
To me, more interested, like this makes the season more fun now that we get Penix. You suddenly get this new guy.
With all these weapons and it's like, what if this guy's good? This could be like, because I have a chance to maybe, you know, it's not a puncher's chance to maybe catch Tampa if Tampa has a dumb loss. Can I break a little news here while I'm live on the podcast with you? I just got a text.
The Jets have completed interviewing Jim Nagy, who is the senior director of the Senior Bowl for their GM position. So they're interviewing a lot of guys.
So I'm just interjecting with a text I got from a source. Is that kind of breaking news or like half breaking news? It's news.
Jets interview news? Yeah, they interview the guy. Let's take a break.
I want to talk about the Jets after that because there was a crazy article there. So a big athletic article today about the Jets and the ownership and the Suns and EA ratings and Jerry Judy.
This became an immediate everybody texting everybody the same thing. It's on every NFL team's Reddit.
It just became one of the stories of the year. A lot of anecdotal stuff that I think had been floating around, plus some new information.
And guess what? The TLDR was like, hey, the Jets are super dysfunctional, which we knew already. But I think what I didn't realize was how kind of medley Woody Johnson is.
And people had always said when he was doing the ambassador thing, it was nice. Woody's out.
But then when he came back, that's when it got a little crazy again. So in retrospect, both of us were bullish on the Jets.
You were even more bullish than I was. But this team was so dysfunctional.
It's not like we didn't know they were dysfunctional. So what made any of us think that this team was going to suddenly become functional? And is there any way out of this with this owner? Yeah, that article dropped today.
And it was like, I got a lot of you and a lot of that stuff. I can't discredit a lot of it.
That in diana's article with mike silver and zach rosenblatt and like look when woody took that uk ambassador job from president trump in 2017 his sons brick and jack were 11 and 9 and it's like you know 11 years old and nine years old he goes away christopher johnson his younger brother takes over and suddenly like the jets building it was was like, all right, they're leaders in social justice. And Christopher Johnson's giving Kelvin Beecham like an opportunity to speak on behalf of the team.
And it was right through all of like this turbulent time in the NFL and the jets were leaders in the space. And it was like, gosh, like everyone was, was pretty impressed with the jets organization.
And then they hire Sala, they hire Joe Douglas And then Woody comes back and his sons are suddenly, you know, of high school and college age. And then you go to these Jets games and you see the sons pregame and they're like on the sidelines and they look cool.
And then they got the blazer on and they got the sunglasses on and they're walking the sidelines. And it's like, this is a freshman at Harvard and a kid in boarding school and their dad and mom own the New York Jets and they have all access to do.
I don't spite the kids and I don't spite the owner, but what it is, it is true. These kids are around.
And I actually, I feel bad for Brick, the older one, because everyone says he's actually a good kid. And it's like he's getting lambasted in this article.

The Madden thing, I'm not going to discredit that things like Madden ratings could come to mind.

I've spoken to sources.

The Jerry Judy trade wasn't happening because the Cleveland Browns offered something better.

And that's why it wasn't because his Madden rating wasn't what it was.

But I will say, I don't know if this will be breaking it, but Joe Flacco was was with the team two years ago and flacco was a good veteran in the locker room for zach wilson they go and they get rogers and like the plan was let's get rogers and like i could tell you that ownership was like i i don't know if we want to go that direction like let's let's let's go with rogers and let's go with zach and let's figure out what else we do like i don't want a big pay joe then joe goes on to win comeback player of the year. Little things like that where I know the owners.
It's true. I know that Woody was sometimes in the draft will show displeasure if it's a pick he doesn't like.
That is fact. I've heard that from ex-employees and that's a lot of this.
There are a lot of ex-employees from the Jets right now. Which is always the most dangerous thing for a piece like this.

There's 20 people who are like, fuck it, I don't like that guy.

Here's two stories.

What the fuck?

I lost my job.

The Jets went through a turbulent time in 2014, 2018, and now it's this year.

And it's always when they get rid of a certain group in the front office.

And then what do they have to lose?

They'll tell stories.

And a lot of it's probably their vantage point.

And there's half-truths and real truths. But at the end of the day, this ain't the Pittsburgh Steelers.
No. You know, this isn't the Kansas City Chiefs.
Like, there certainly is some fissures and issues with, like, some of the ways things go down. But, like, I think all they want to do is win.
It's not like they're not giving

the GM the green light to go get

Aaron Rodgers or to go trade for

Devontae Adams, but

I can't discredit the article.

Here's the thing, though.

Wickersham and I talked about this last week because I genuinely think one of the

reasons Belichick went to college was

he was like, if it's not the right

franchise situation with

the right kind of ownership, there's no meddling son of the owner, anybody kind of messing with me, I probably don't want to do it anyway, right? So after I put that pod up, some different people reached out to me. And a friend of mine was saying, you should do something on your pod about the difference between NBA owners and NFL owners.
Okay. I would love to hear that.
You know that world. I know the NFL world.
The Jets ownership thing, that's in a lot of buildings, dude. So that's the thing.
He was saying, what's different about NFL owners versus NBA owners? NFL owners, they own these big, giant, billion-dollar companies. They're in a suite.
They're detached from the fans. They get to do what they want.
They'll put their son in charge here. They'll do whatever.
But there's still a sense of detachment. Whereas NBA owners, they're in the crowd.
They're with the game. They're kind of in the mix for...
And the type of people that have been buying NBA teams aren't like these NFL, just these super rich families passing down the team to

different generations. The NBA, a lot of the owners they have are people that either came up with the money themselves because they were rich or, you know, they thought outside the box or they were some family that bought in or there's somebody like that Matt Ishbia who's like the self-made guy who's like, I know how to do everything.
And it's like all over the place. And, but the point is like, there's so many of these jet situations in the NFL and I don't feel like there's the same in the NBA.
There's different levels of owner incompetence in the NBA, but it's, it's somehow a different lane than NFL incompetence. Like the jets have been like this for 15 years, right? Yeah.
I mean, look, I think the NFL has a different structure with ownership. So in NBA, you can be a rich finance guy and you can buy a team.
With the NFL, A, private equity can only now own up to 10% of a team. They only let six different private equity companies even play a role in that.
That's brand new. And for the most part, all of the owners are majority owners and it's been handed down family, generation, generation, generation.
Like the Bengals ownership- Or they bought it in the 90s or the 80s and got it at a certain price and they just have all the power. But like the Bengals ownership group, that's their main income,? Like that's their business.
They own the Bengals. You look around and you go all the way to like the Rams, like that's a new owner, right? So the Cronkies, like they obviously have a whole sorts of real estate stuff and they own all these different teams.
But there are a lot of teams where the owners are families and it's handed down generation to generation. And like the Steelers are one of those teams.
But over the years, Jimmy Haslam had a minority stake of the Steelers. Then he goes and buys the Browns.
David Tepper had a minority stake of the Steelers. Then he goes and becomes the majority owner of the Panthers.
You're not going to be a Johnny come lately in this circle and just be like, I got a lot of money. I want to buy an NFL team.
That's not how it works. And like in New York, like Gary Vaynerchuk always says, I want to own the Jets.
Like, and Gary V wants to own the Jets. I think in different leagues, like that's a possibility, but the Jets, the Johnsons aren't selling this thing.
Like they're just not. And they might give a minority piece to someone here at some point, but like they'll always be 51% owners.
And that's for most of these teams and the minority piece for it, for these owners, like if you were to be a minority owner and you know, this week we saw Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady are now minority owners of the Buffalo Bills. All right.
And Josie Altidore is a minority owner and Lewis Hamilton's a minority owner and Condoleezza Rice is a minority owner. And you can go all the way.
What is that? It's nothing other than I could say I own it. I can go to the dinner party.
Season tickets. And I get season tickets and I got a spot.
I go to a couple of meetings. Yeah.
I go to a couple of board meetings and that's it. This was figured out in the NBA over the course of the last 20 years because these groups would buy franchises, but really like one guy was in charge and you would have these people putting in real money and they're like, fuck, I'm not, I'm not in charge of anything.
What do I get other than saying I'm an owner? And then someone being like, but aren't, but you're not that guy. And he's like, yeah, no, no, no, but I am an owner.
And there's enough people with egos. You always talk about the rich guy tables and it's like, there's so few of these teams available that to say I'm even a 0.1% owner is, is some cachet in a Washington DC beltway dinner.
You know,. There's all these different minority owners of the commanders.
That's social equity. It's something.
Right. But they still, I think the newer owners that buy teams like that and have minority groups, they're strategically picked to bring one value thing to the whole equation that they kind of need, whoever it is, whether it's somebody who's forward-facing, somebody who's really smart, somebody who might know how to build a new arena.
I think when I look at some of the NBA stuff, the family that operates the most like an NFL team, like the dysfunctional generation by generation NFL team that just is the Lakers. Interesting.
that's the team where the dad had the team really from the 70s on. He passed it down to his kids.
They'll never get rid of it. They don't have the kind of crazy money to, you know, like basically their money comes through the team.
That's it from the Lakers. But there's like 10 NFL teams that operate like the Lakers.
I think the Giants are like that, even though I know people speak highly of the Maras. The Giants have been one of the most dysfunctional franchises for over a decade now, and they don't seem like they have a plan.
And obviously, the Tish's bought in as well, and that goes generations too. So now you have multiple generations of Tish's and Maras say, you know, there's a big enough family there where

those people do different things outside of football and have like, like the Arizona Cardinals,

Michael Bidwell's business is the Arizona Cardinals. Like he was actually a lawyer by

trade and his dad passed the team down and now his ownership is the Cardinals and the Spanos

family. Like they all work there.
There's a lot of them. And I really like John Spanos.

And I've grown to become very friendly with Dean Spanos.

But that's the family business now.

So it's this billion-dollar company,

but it's being operated by families.

It's a multi-billion-dollar company. But then some of the people that have come in the last decade,

ShotKan, Tepper.

Tepper.

Haslam.

Haslam. And then the new Washington new josh harris yeah yep um which is like the new kind of modern owner where they're buying these franchises but it's just part of a bigger portfolio for them right it's not like harris living or dying with the success of the team who is the nfl owner that was like sitting on the bench like cuban with the Mavs forever, right? Arthur Blank.
Arthur Blank was the guy, to be honest. One of the biggest companies in the world.
And then he just shows up and he'll come down the sidelines. But it's funny how the stakes somehow seem lower for the football owners because just owning a team in this league that is like one of the best businesses in the world, you've already won.
You're going to make a profit. I mean, the Jets raised season ticket prices this year.
I mean, amidst all this, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they,

they, owning a team in this league that is like one of the best businesses in the world, you've already won. You're going to make a profit.
I mean, the Jets raised season ticket prices this year. I mean, amidst all this, the PSL owners were given an email like, Hey, the tickets are being jacked up next year despite season.
I look, knowing that process, they're going to interview everybody for a GM job. And I would go in there and my advice to those GMs would be, you have to find a way to finesse the egos in the room of obviously what he's going to want to hear, what your thoughts are.
But you're going to also have to tell them straight up, I can also manage all of this because there is a next generation coming. His kids aren't going anywhere.
One of them's a freshman in college, the other one's in high school. They're only going to get older and more power and more emboldened.
And it's like, if that's a problem as a GM, like you need to have the backbone to be able to say like, I can't have that around or I don't want that around. And the same for the coaches.
That's the truth of it. So the owners aren't going anywhere.
I find it so naive for all these fans being like, just sell the team. Sell the team.
They're 100% not selling the team. Even Snyder, who they were, they're basically trying to set his franchise on fire and he wouldn't sell the team like they're 100% not selling it even Snyder who they were they're basically trying to set his franchise on fire and he went so the team what are some good examples of how it should work that aren't just like the Steelers passing a franchise down like to me it seems like the Cronkies with the Rams just realizing like hey we have a good front office and a great coach let's just trust trust these guys.
That seems how it should work on paper. Yeah.
So Stan Kroenke obviously owns it. His son, Josh, who plays a bigger role with the Nuggets and with Arsenal.
Everybody likes him. Josh is great.
And he's in his 40s and he's not, look at me, not, you know, hey, I'm in this. He's just, he's there and he operates and he's very involved.
He's the positive upside of a legacy kid. I would say you'd point to him as like, that's a success story of a legacy kid.
I would also say Chargers, John Spanos, who works in the front office. Like he's also like, people see him out there and he like, isn't about look at me and very involved.
But the Cronkies though, their front office is interesting. So you've got those guys.
Then the president is a guy named Kevin Demoff, whose father Marvin was an NFL agent for many years. And Kevin's been there since St.
Louis. And then under him, it's your GM, Les Snead, and this other guy, Tony Pastors, who kind of manages the Cronkies as well.
And it's like, they're all swimming on the same thing upstream. And Demoff also is the president of the Avalanche and the Nuggets and the Rapids and

it's like there's a lot of different entities and it's all under this cronky sports banner but Stan and Josh are never going to come in and tell Sean McVay I don't like the play call I can't say that's true for every owner around the league right yeah it's funny and that's something you can't control it's it's I own the team I want to have my voice heard you know yeah because it seems like all these guys have

the son

who, or in Jerry Jones's case, the daughter that everybody likes, Charlotte, who everybody thinks is good. But everyone has the son for the most part.
And then if you ask other people, I'm talking NBA, NFL, whatever, like, so what's the son like? And it could go one of three ways. They could be like, oh, he's

good. He's really good.
It's almost like

surprising. Or they'll be like,

eh, you know, he's pretty sharp, I guess.

Or he's Tommy Callahan. He's Tommy boy.

Well, then there's the third one where it's like,

what's the son like? And they go,

you know.

And then

you're like, oh, it must be a disaster.

Yeah. This guy must be the absolute fucking worst.
Which is why I to give a pass to woody's kids who got killed in this athletic article yeah they're your they're under 20 they're my son's age what are you doing you're telling like i remember before the super bowl in arizona and i don't know if i should share it but i will we're walking around the field it was a fox super bowl so i have all access and i'm walking around with with michael vick, Charles Woodson and Sean Payton and Goodell comes over and Jay-Z's there. And there's this conversation and I like eek to the back cause I know my place in these things.
No one wants to see my dad. So I'm like, and then like, you know, I see Woody's kids on the field and they're like taking photos with Jay-Z and I'm like, I would do the same thing if I was a 17 year old kid at the Superbowl and my dad owned the jets.
And like, do you spite him for that? No, it's the job of everyone else to say, OK, we need to put up some walls here and see like what we're going to do. But where it gets dangerous is like the Jaguars, where ShotKhan, who owns a bunch of stuff and is just got an incredible amount of money and they've spent money in the arena.
Football team's a mess. The son's kind of running the team, but he's also running AW full-time.
And a soccer team. And the soccer team.
And if you're Belichick, and even if that was a job that was, you thought, oh, if I wait a month, maybe they'll just give me the car keys. It's like, what is that job? I have a weird ownership situation.
I'm in Jacksonville, Florida, and I have no idea if my quarterback will ever be good. And those will be my mid seventies.
Like I, the more I think about it, like I actually really like that North Carolina job for him because college jobs these days, unless you're in a perfect NFL situation, like I think Harbaugh chargers, that's like a perfect situation. Totally.
Right. Or the being like- They needed him and he wanted them.
Broncos, they needed him. And he's in LA.
Broncos, same thing. We need you, Sean Payton.
And here are the car keys. And I just don't think that situation is there for anybody.
Like if you're Vrabel now, and I think Vrabel's the best candidate of all these guys. If you're Vrabel, what's the situation where you're like, oh, oh, that's a no-brainer.
I got to do that. Is it even Cincinnati? Look, going back to Belichick, there could be two truths.
I know Lombardi comes on your podcast and we love Mike and I've exchanged texts with him. There could be two truths that, A, this was an amazing situation for Belichick to fall back on and B, he had no NFL.
There was no NFL job. But also, to their self-awareness, there was no job that they wanted.
So it was in both ways. But that's my question.
What's the job this year? But if you're Vrabel, can you be out for two years? I don't know. I'm not talking about him.
I'm talking about Vrabel. Yeah, I'm saying for Vrabel, can you wait two years and just say, well, I'm going to be picked, I'm going to wait for a better opportunity? That's the problem.
You're basically waiting for the Pat's job. If you're waiting the extra year, you're like, this Pat's thing's going to go badly.
I'm just going to wait until it falls apart. And you're walking into a situation where they didn't give you the decency of an interview last time around.
Well, that's because Kraft hired the guy guy five years ago and they and they didn't even go through the process if you're brable well what the what you know and the story i got today that i think went out that greg bedard who i think is very plugged in so that you can get a brable mcdaniels and like the whole band can go back to new england when everyone thought that was the crew go not brable but everyone thought mcdaniels, Patricia, Belichick hasn't hired any of those guys yet. I think they got to work out contracts with those guys.
So you might be able to get the band back together up in New England. I mean, would you want to go back there if you're Vrabel after they didn't even give you the look the first time? I don't think it was a slap in the face that they didn't give him a look.
I think the Mayo thing had been done for a couple of years. So that was one of my questions for you actually to do a little coach watch.
Yeah. Because we have Jets, Saints, Bears open.
Uh-huh. Watching the last three weeks of the season.
Peterson, I'm guessing that's a wrap in Jacksonville, right? Yes. I would think.
So there's four spots.

Dayball seems like he's coming back.

And my guess is

they'll give him one more year and then

they'll hire new people

for the front office and that's how that plays out.

But maybe they won't hang.

I think the GM is safe in New York.

I think Joe Shane is safe.

So Dayball's not safe.

I don't know if he's 100% safe. I would think if it's up to the Maris, they would love to just get the season over with and keep both of them.
Okay. Let's pencil that in.
There have been planes above MetLife the last two home games saying, please end this misery, fire them all. That's the one thing the Maris can't stand when the fans are not in the building or it's an embarrassment.
Joe Judge was... Joe Judge was, say, 14 weeks through the season two years ago and then he ran a quarterback sneak with Jake Fromm and lost it in his press conference and it was like, we have to fire you.
That's where Dable's at right now, I think. You just can't melt down.
That's a big talking point right now with the Pats fans because if there's... If you really are completely all out on Mayo...
And I was 100% out and then a couple of the players stuck up for him this week. So now I'm like, all right, I'll give it one more week.
But Drake May stuck up for him. Dietrich West stuck up for him.
But he's been just awful. And he talks.
There's this meme of like, Gerard Mayo. Yeah, he says something.
Gerard Mayo makes terrible decisions, says something at press conference, and then walks it back, but sort of also puts a foot in his mouth. It's been debacle.
I think he said four times this year in the preseason where he said something that everybody's like, wait, what just happened? And then the next day he had to clarify something I said yesterday. Yeah.
And I don't know how many more of those he gets. The Arizona game was alarming, but they got Buffalo this week.
They got Buffalo in the last week, which might actually mean something for Buffalo. So to me, Mayo's on the coach watch list, even though I don't think Kraft will fire him after a year.
I don't think they want to either. I think they would love to not admit a mistake.
You know what I mean? And they would love to ride this thing out one more season. But the thing is, that's fine that they don't want to admit a mistake and maybe he deserves a second year.
The difference is Vrabel, I just think Vrabel is a great coach. If that's going to cost you Vrabel, you're in the same situation like the Jets were in where they could have had Vrabel a year ago probably and they brought back Salah and it clearly wasn't going to work.
Pierce on Vegas? Interesting. I mean, look, I've been told- Depending on how the next three games go? I can't say I'm positive he's coming back.
Same, but I also can't say I'm positive he's gone. I also think it was reported by Ian Rappaport this week and I know it's accurate on the quarterback spot that Brady's not just going to be a silent owner and posing for photos.
Brady's going to have a voice in this and it's going to play a role. And so I know there's no great connection, but they are former players.
And obviously Brady and Pierce have a relationship from their playing days. But I think Brady plays a role in this as well and they're going to value his opinion.
All right. Here are the three I got to get your take on.
And I'm watching this for the next three weeks. There's always a surprise.
I can't believe they let go of that guy, Coach. The nominees.
Mike McDaniel in Miami. They just gave him a huge contract extension, but Stephen Ross' money's not an issue, so okay, go on.
Shane Steichen in Indianapolis. Okay.
Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco. Those would be my three.
I'd be shocked if they were let go one day after the season, but I also wouldn't be shocked. And then I guess maybe you could put Zach Taylor in there, but I actually think there's a chance the Bengals could make the playoffs.
And also, not to talk about finances in that kind of way, but the Bengals are not looking to pay two coaches at once. Right.
When you decide to have a team of half rookies and undrafted free agents, maybe you don't want to pay two coaches. So McDaniel, Steichen, Shanahan, rank in order of what would surprise you the most.
Shanahan would surprise me the most. I know it's a very, very dark year there in San Francisco.
Knowing Jed very well, knowing John Lynch very well, knowing Kyle very well, they're trying to be upbeat. But this season started with the lockouts, which was sour as it was.
And then their first round pick got shot. And it was like, okay, that's a major adverse situation.
Let's try to work through it. Then they proceeded to lose their running back right before the season.
That was their offensive player of the year in the league. And then like, I don't want to be, you know, like you've had players have real tragedies in their life.
Like Trent Williams lost a kid this, this, this season, like real dark stuff on top of all these injuries. And it's like, just get to the finish line.
And I't think kyle shanahan's gonna pay the price for this year it's one of those truly brutal um the official year from hell seasons it's the official year from hell team that like as bad as things have been in new york with the jets like the the niners like that's real life stuff and it has been so bad and they're just trying to stay above it when they beat the bears in that game like there was like a feeling of like great relief and like just that we got a win and and last week was atrocious on thursday night at home in front of their crowd losing 12 six to the rims like it's just get to the end i don't think kyle shanahan unless he has some major blow up with jed which i don't think is happening uh steichen and ursa, I don't know enough. I know Ursa was just absolutely sick to his stomach over Carson Wentz losing to the Jaguars in a week 17 game a couple years ago.
And it's like, he's out. Get rid of him.
But I don't know if that's the relationship with the coach here, that he would make a rash decision. But disappointing season there.
And then Mike McDaniel, they gave him a monster, monster extension before the season. But Stephen Ross is one of the wealthiest owners in the league.
And this thing has gone way off the rails and nothing would surprise me because that's the same owner who fired Brian Flores when no one thought that was a possibility a couple of years ago. Yeah.
And that goes back to what we talked about earlier with these. These owners are just so different than the NBA owners.
Stephen Ross is like, ah, fuck. Yeah.
How many coaches are my parents? Ah, fuck it. I don't care.
What does he care? He's got a kajillion dollars. Some of these guys are old.
And that's a really, really attractive job. As attractive a job as there is, is living in Miami and being the coach of the Dolphins because you have an owner with endless money and you have a really nice place to live with no taxes.
These hot coaches, that's a really attractive place to go. Yeah.
I mean, that's for the Pats fans who have been horrified by how sloppy the Pats have been and the terrible strategy and just how awful they look. The thing that a lot of us have focused on is that Kraft's just in his 80s.
And you don't have a ton of these seasons left, right? And you can't be like, yeah, let's see one more year. They're in such a unique situation with Drake May on a rookie contract, where it's the single best asset you could have in sports.
And they have a lot of work to do. And do you want to set that back at you? I don't know if you do.
Yeah. And it's Jonathan plays a big role there.
Like Jonathan Kraft plays a major role there. Another son of an owner.
And I think they really, really were, the way that whole thing went down with Belichick at the end, I think they really wanted this year to work out in some way. And it has absolutely gone terrible.
Off top of your head, how many teams have benched a quarterback this year? Benched or injury? Benched? Benched. Four.
Ten. Okay.
It's a lot. Cousins, Levis, Daniel Jones, Brissett, Fields, Jameis, Richardson, Flacco, back and forth, Bryce Young, Minshew.
And I'm counting that Hainer guy. Hainer, Rattler, somebody got benched in that.
I don't know. There's benchings all over the place.
That's one third of the league benched their quarterback this year. How are we getting worse?

Not good.

Not good.

And yet, you could say that

at the top of the league

with Burrow and Lamar and Allen,

you've got some of the best quarterback play

we've ever seen.

There's such a gap between

the great and the bad.

And it's,

you either have one or you don't.

And that's just where we're at.

Am I crazy to think

Zach Wilson should have gotten

one more chance with somebody

to at least start a game?

He had that whole year

last year and stunk.

Is he like 24?

I don't know.

He's the third string

in Denver.

How is Wentz not

quarterbacking a team either?

That's another one.

I mean,

even the Chiefs,

there's been a lot of dialogue

with the Chiefs

where they're like,

how is this guy a backup?

He's so good.

It's like,

well,

you got to look at that Indianapolis game. All right, next topic.
The Calais Campbell release. We rarely see, so Miami is officially out of it.
You rarely see, this happens in basketball right before the March 1st deadline. You rarely see a guy get released by a team who could actually hop onto a playoff team and have a dramatic impact, but I feel like he could.
He could. Have you heard anything on this? The last one was, I think the Chiefs signed Terrell Suggs at the end of the season.
He won a Super Bowl with them back in 2019. And it was like, Sizzles on our team, let's go.
Calais is the ultimate ambassador of the league, Walter Payton man of the year, and I think he was done right here. And I think he will sign with the Ravens likely, which is a team that I think he was- Oh, you think it's the Ravens? I think it's one of these teams.
Like he played with the Ravens and was a beloved Baltimore Raven. And if there's a place for him- What if it's the Bills? Could be the Bills.
Could be the Bills. But he'll go to a contender and he'll play a role and he'll make a big play in a big game.
You know that. What if it's like the Packers? I'm just, I'm on pins and needles wondering where he goes.
It's like the hardest asset to just stumble into in week 17

would be a guy in your defensive line who could push it.

Defensive tackle, yeah.

And he's a great teammate.

I have no insight.

I mean, Rosenhaus is his agent.

I could probably get some info in a quick moment.

But as of now, I would think Baltimore, to me,

always with Calais Campbell,

that's where he was such a badass for them. If he actually wants to win a ring, go to the Chiefs.
Go to the Chiefs. Just go to the Chiefs.
Just be next to Chris Jones. Just bang some bodies around.
Okay. You watched Aaron Rodgers' entire Netflix doc.
No, just the first two episodes. Did you watch any of it or no? I refuse to watch it.
I know your team Jimmy Kimmel and Cousin Sal, but you won't even watch it? It has nothing to it. I would actually watch it despite Jimmy.
It's my friend. No.
I just don't want to spend valuable TV time with Rodgers. But you're a filmmaker.
I watched Not Rock, doc. I texted you.
This is a good doc. I'm not trying to...
My friend Doth have made it. Those guys are really good at what they do.
I'm sure it's well done. I just don't want to hang out with Rodgers for two hours.
I would tell you this. And I know we've had a lot of discourse on the player producing editorial control.
Look, this isn't Ken Burns baseball. This isn't an objective look at this thing.
It's Rogers' story. But the second episode, he goes on this ayahuasca trip with Jordan Poyer and Adrian Colbert and Poyer's mom.
And it's like, it goes to places that I don't know exist. And it's interesting.
The first episode, it really is good football shit, man. Really? Yes.
It is a football doc too. I telling you you go and you forget how close he was when he was uh with the packers and all those games and packers fans were saying like no no we know but like you know the giants they beat him when he was a 15 and 1 quarterback 19 straight wins he loses the giants in the playoffs the falcons in the anfc championship game um all those 49ers losses the buccaneers a couple years ago but what was really interesting is that you get into rogers like and he's always searching he's like seeking for something that i almost feel just a lot of empathy and sympathy like he's a single guy in his 40s right now and he's like i'm searching i'm searching i'm searching and there's this hole but he says he wins the super bowl in 2011 and his whole life's goal was proving everyone wrong and proving all those division one schools wrong.
And he mentions Purdue said like, you're just not athletic enough for Purdue and he couldn't win a playoff game. And they show a clip of Mooch on NFL network being like, until Rogers wins a playoff game, he's not one of the elite guys, wins the playoff game, wins the Superbowl.
And he says wakes up the morning after the Super Bowl and it didn't fill his cup.

And he's like, what now?

And that was 2011 and he's still searching.

And I feel like that's a side of Rodgers I haven't seen.

And there's no, you know,

there's no love lost amongst him and the family.

And there's all this sort of stuff that you're like, dude,

like it's hard for me to really rationalize

why you feel this hole in your life.

But like, I don't know, he's pretty vulnerable in it. And I think the football shit is pretty good.
Jesus. You almost made me want to watch the first part.
Enigma. It's only three episodes too.
It's not this seven episode. There's been a lot of bad sports docs.
You know this. And a lot of them are like, this could have been a nice 60-minute piece that ran on the network.
Like, I don't need to watch this. But I'm telling you, this one was well done.
And you come away and you're like, pretty good football. And whether you like Rodgers or not, you're like, that's an interesting deep dive on a dude who gave you all access.
Well, so you're saying I should watch this over La Palma, the Norwegian disaster flick where everything's dubbed or series. That's the number one TV series on Netflix right now.
Is this the number one? I don't know. La Palma.
I gotta see it. I like when you start watching those and then five minutes in, you realize their mouths aren't moving with the words.
You're like, oh, now I get it. These people are Norwegian.
I watched one based on the guys from The Watch a couple years ago. It was like 1973 about German Dutchutchland and i'm like i'm gonna watch this show and i'm like i can't do it like andy greenwald loved it what's the show do you know what i'm talking about i was like 72 in germany and it was like this show that ran on german television they're like the number one show i'm like all right i trust these guys i like chris vyan i like green and then i gave it like a minute i'm like i can't i tried those guys love it they love getting super weird with those ben and I'm like, all right, I trust these guys.
I like Chris Ryan. I like Greenville.
And then I gave it like a minute. I'm like, I can't.
I tried. Those guys love it.
They love getting super weird with those. Ben and I were watching, we were both working at the kitchen table last night, watching Halloween Six with Paul Rudd.
Yeah. That's a classic movie.
He's just going for it. Took the check.
Went for it. Just really, really, really into Michael Myers.
It's just an incredible performance. The best part about that, Paul was on like, he was like doing like Cider House Rules and like went from Clueless to doing just Broadway and all these things.
And he like did that movie and he did a movie that was like filmed in Japan over the course of two weeks where he had to bleach his hair blonde. And he's like, those are my movies.
I'm like, all right, I'm going to go for it a little bit. All right, we have to go because my computer's about to run out of batteries.
It was fun. Schrager, great to see you as always.
You're the man, dude. Thanks.
All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Peter Schrager.
Thanks to Joe House and Big Waz. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti for producing as always.
I'm going to be back on Sunday live with Cousin Sal. You'll be able to watch it on YouTube as we're doing it.
It'll be on Spotify video afterwards as well. Enjoy the weekend.
Enjoy the greatest sports day in a while on Saturday too. It should be super fun.
Can't wait to talk about it Sunday. Have a good weekend.
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