The Colbert-CBS Drama and NFL Leap Team Possibilities With Matt Belloni and Nate Tice

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Speaker 1 The Bill Simmons podcast is presented to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find a bunch of awesome shows and podcasts. You can find a great website.
You can find the rewatchables.

Speaker 1 We do that every Monday night. We did species this time around.

Speaker 1 We're getting weird. We got weird in July because we have the 400th movie coming.
August is going to be action-packed. I think I'm going to do one-name movie month in August, but

Speaker 1 August is going to be, this is the last one for us. I wanted to get a little wacky.
You know, it's July. There's no sports.
Nothing's going on. Everybody's on vacation.

Speaker 1 But we're about to kick into a pretty good year here. Anyway, Species, a movie that would not be made in 2025.
Me, Van Lathan, Chris Ryan. This is a very funny podcast.

Speaker 1 So you can check it out on Spotify. You can check it out wherever you get your podcast or in the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.
So I cut down to Sundays,

Speaker 1 at least for July, which is great.

Speaker 1 I needed to refuel some batteries, work on some

Speaker 1 Spotify Ringer stuff. And most importantly, I needed to start prepping for the football season.
I have a whole process. It's weird.
I'm the only one who really understands it. I have to do everything.

Speaker 1 I type everything in by hand. I type in the schedules.
I type in everybody's odds.

Speaker 1 I do these weird player rankings. I'm like a psycho, but it's this whole process.
So I'm at the end of phase one of it.

Speaker 1 So later in this podcast, we're bringing in our friend Nate Tice, and we're going to talk about

Speaker 1 three levels of teams that could make a leap in 2025 because you guys start thinking about the futures, what's going to happen. So that's coming up later.
Big football

Speaker 1 conversation with Nate, but leading off with Matt Bellany, who hosts the town for us. But we got to talk about Stephen Colbert, CBS,

Speaker 1 Trump, Skydance, Paramount,

Speaker 1 everything that's going on. How does this affect Jon Stewart? Is Late Night TV Dead? There's just so many storylines with this that it's the rare podcast where we're leading with Hollywood stuff.

Speaker 1 So that's all coming up next. I had a whole NBA thing I was going to do, but I think I'm going to save that for a later podcast.

Speaker 1 So that's it. That's what I got for you.
Matt Bellany, Nate Tice, Hollywood football. All next.
Let's take a break and then Pro Jip.

Speaker 1 All right, Matt Bellany is here. He hosts a great podcast called The Town for the Ringer.
You can also read him on Puck. And we have Friday news dumps in media.

Speaker 1 And there's been some great ones over the year. When you get to July, you can almost pull off the Thursday news dump, Matt Bellany.
And CBS did this.

Speaker 1 They shockingly, although I guess it wasn't as shocking as maybe it felt when it happened, shockingly got rid of Stephen Colbert's show in May. It's going to be gone.

Speaker 1 This could be the death of late night TV on CBS.

Speaker 1 And as you've covered in Puck and you covered on your podcast on Friday, we are moving toward a different era of late night, which might not even be an era.

Speaker 1 Were you surprised by this when you heard the news?

Speaker 3 Yes. The short answer is yes, because I didn't think they would pull the plug like that.

Speaker 3 I thought there would be a protracted cuts and salary reduction and and an attempt to save the show rather than simply cut bait.

Speaker 3 But at the time, I didn't know, and I think most people around town did not know how much money Late Show was losing each year because CBS had kept that pretty quiet.

Speaker 3 And once I got into the numbers, it makes sense there that they would say, you know what, this is not salvageable.

Speaker 3 This is not a matter of Colbert taking a 30% pay cut, firing some people, getting rid of the band, all the things that we've seen in other areas of late night.

Speaker 3 There was just a big chasm because the show costs more than $100 million a year to make.

Speaker 3 Depending on who you believe, it's well over $40 million that it's losing or about $40 million, which is what my sourcing says.

Speaker 3 Now, there are some caveats to that and some ancillary revenue that's not counted there, but

Speaker 3 that's just not tenable. And then you have the politics angle, which we can discuss.
But no, once you get into the numbers, it's not surprising.

Speaker 1 I have the the politics angle saved for the second piece of this. The first part, so you reported $40 million a year.
It's losing,

Speaker 1 which seemed high to me when, but I'm not going to say I don't believe it, but it seemed high. I always wonder with studios, we see this all the time with back-end deals, with movies.

Speaker 1 And, you know, they can kind of rig numbers however they want.

Speaker 1 How confident? I know they're telling you 40 million.

Speaker 3 Well, my sourcing is telling me.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're sourcing.

Speaker 3 You're hearing. But it's not just coming from one source.

Speaker 2 Let's just say that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 I run these numbers by many people in the ecosystem of a show.

Speaker 1 But we've seen people go the other way with this, where if they want to brag about something, they could say, oh, it's making this.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's generating this amount in revenue, which is what they often will say, not accounting for the costs. And late show is a complicated thing because it's produced by CBS Studios.

Speaker 3 So essentially, CBS, the network, pays CBS Studios a license fee for the show. So it adds another level of complexity.

Speaker 3 We saw this with Family Guy years ago, where Family Guy was technically losing money for Fox.

Speaker 3 But because Fox produced the show, it was making money because they sold the show all over the world in syndication, other rights, where they were making a fortune on it, even if they weren't.

Speaker 3 making money on Fox. Now, that is not an option that is available to a show like Late Show with Stephen Colbert because it is an American topical comedy show.

Speaker 3 It doesn't have much value after it airs on the linear channel and on the YouTube channel. It just kind of goes away.
So that you take away that revenue.

Speaker 3 You take away the fact that it's a much smaller show on digital footprints. It has about a third the YouTube subscribers as Jimmy Fallon.

Speaker 3 does on the tonight show half of what kimmel has and then you look at the other value that colbert has for CBS, where he doesn't do a lot of other things for CBS.

Speaker 3 He produced the late night show after midnight,

Speaker 3 which got canceled after Taylor Tomlinson left, but he's not hosting the Macy's Day parade like Fallon is. He's not doing Millionaire for ABC like Kimmel is.

Speaker 3 It's those two guys have much more of an ingrained relationship with their network than Stephen Colbert does. He just hosted a show.

Speaker 1 Right. So he definitely, the show lost money.
There's no question. They could probably get creative about how much

Speaker 1 they're saying it. You made the key point, though.
It didn't have the same social media footprint as the two Jimmy's, especially because they can make a bunch of money on the YouTube side.

Speaker 1 This goes backwards, though, because you have to really go to COVID, where that's really when the ad money started to shift for all these, for all these shows.

Speaker 1 Partly because of COVID, the writer's strike.

Speaker 1 But then you also have just habits are shifting, you know. When was the last time real time?

Speaker 3 When was the last time you, Bill Simmons, cozied up to a late night show at the 1130 hour and just sat and watched it?

Speaker 1 I'm always going to watch it on streaming or on, I'll watch a YouTube clip. The only time I can remember doing this recently was with Jon Stewart's first show back.

Speaker 3 I will occasionally watch Stewart if I'm like up and I will flip over.

Speaker 3 But Colbert was getting 2.5 million viewers on average on Linear, which shockingly in this day and age, it was the leading show, according to that metric, on broadcast.

Speaker 3 Now, if you talk the Fox News guy, Greg Gutfeld gets more, but that's a whole other thing. It's got

Speaker 1 11.

Speaker 3 And the audience is like, you know, literally hooked up to an IV because they're so old.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 the fact that the leading show got canceled, I think, is shocking to a lot of people.

Speaker 3 But the stuff that you just talked about, the digital and the other things, that's where it comes into greater focus. And you're like, oh, okay, I get it.

Speaker 1 Well, so here's what I don't get.

Speaker 1 So the model's changing. They're still making all these late night shows in the same expensive way they were doing it 20, 25 years ago, right?

Speaker 1 Where you have, I don't know how many people work on a late night show, but it's a 2000 show. They say 200.
Colbert said 200. Colbert.
Yeah, it's insane.

Speaker 1 175 to 200 people working on a show that you're delivering four nights a week, usually taking summers off 40 weeks weeks a year.

Speaker 1 So it's so in the old days, the motto for the late night show was, well, this is eating innings, like almost like a starter that can throw 250 innings at baseball.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, every five days we get to trot this out.

Speaker 3 And it used to be a younger demo. It used to be a place where younger people would go to CBS because usually the primetime audience was older and the Letterman audience was younger at the beginning.

Speaker 3 And it was really the only place that you would get to see

Speaker 3 you know, big stars like Leo DiCaprio or, you know, George Clooney on these networks because they would come on the late night show. And it was sort of a cachet thing.

Speaker 1 Well, it was the number one stop if you were promoting anything.

Speaker 1 And then, as we saw, really, in the last, I would say, since the 2016 election, when podcasts became, you know, moved into the conversation for all that stuff. I just thought it was weird to me.

Speaker 1 There wasn't any innovation with the model. And I think there wasn't innovation because these shows made a shitload of money until recently, until those two events.

Speaker 1 I think they kind of didn't want to change. It was like, well,

Speaker 1 if it ain't broken, don't fix it. But when you think about it, you have all these people that work for a show.
You have really talented hosts. And you have this social media, you know, all these.

Speaker 1 all these side things you could be doing to just kind of do the show the same way you did it 10 years ago doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 So the part that does, that surprises me, Matt, is they didn't go to him and say, Hey, let's make a real effort to try to fix this. The show loses money.
Late night is changing.

Speaker 1 How can we do a completely different show? Maybe you only need 10 people that work for the show. Maybe it's just you doing one long guest.
We'll pay your salary.

Speaker 1 We'll have a couple of producers, and that'll just be the show four days a week. Instead, they were like, we're out in May.
This is a wrap. This is done.

Speaker 1 And we'll get to, you know, some conspiracy stuff with that. But to not go to him and say, how can we fix this when he'd been there for, I don't know, a decade, I was really surprised by that.

Speaker 3 I think it's hard to do that to a show where there are employees that have worked there for 10, 20 years and a host that is used to making a certain amount, $20 million a year is what I've been told.

Speaker 3 And to say, we need to do something completely different. These people that have been supporting you since you started on this network, 70% of them are going to be gone.

Speaker 3 And this salary that you've been making and you've been building up your entire career, you're going to make half as much as you can. Yeah, but they did it.

Speaker 1 They did it by canceling the show. They did it anyway.
They did it. If you're doing it anyway,

Speaker 1 why isn't there a plan B for it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's true. And I just think from my sourcing, the response I got to that was it's almost like a level of respect with a host and with a team where it's like, we can't just gut it.
Like,

Speaker 3 there is a certain amount of cutting we can do to these shows that they are still recognizable. You can still do the Seth Meyers show without a band.
So, they said, Your band is gone.

Speaker 3 You can still do these shows four nights a week without cutting so much to the bone that they're not, they don't feel like nightly talk shows.

Speaker 3 So, they cut all these shows, tonight shows, four nights a week, Colbert, four nights a week. So, there is, but if you start going beyond that, and my understanding is that the

Speaker 3 value and

Speaker 3 the loss discrepancy there was so large that it would have been such a fundamentally different show that it was just hard to have that conversation. That is my understanding.

Speaker 3 Now, we can get into the other reasons as well, but

Speaker 3 I do kind of understand how you either do it or don't. The other thing is CBS owns that building, the Ed Sullivan Theater.

Speaker 3 And if you look at what they've been doing across the company, they sold Television City in L.A. They sold BlackRock in New York.
They are going to sell the Ed Sullivan Theater for a lot of money.

Speaker 3 So, what do you say to Colbert?

Speaker 3 Oh, and by the way, you're going to move to a tiny studio uptown that is going to make your show look like it's, you know, John Oliver, where it doesn't feel like a nightly talk show.

Speaker 3 Like, it just, I don't know, when you start to really look at it, you say, okay, what are we even doing here?

Speaker 1 Right. And maybe this is just a format that now when we're in this TikTok, Instagram, YouTube era, and we have a Kajillion podcast that maybe this is, maybe this is the natural end of the format.

Speaker 1 I know everybody's been talking about it forever. Kimmel's openly talked about how this is probably his last deal and then maybe do something else.
And maybe this is just, maybe this is how it ends.

Speaker 1 Like when we were growing up, you watch Carson live at 11.30. Like,

Speaker 1 you know, and if you missed it, there was really no way to see what happened unless you started taping on a VCR or something.

Speaker 1 And now it's like, if anything happens, but if anything happens on a late night show now, I'll be able to see the clip the next day. Of course.
So you've removed all of the

Speaker 1 necessity to watch it in the moment. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And you talk about innovation and the lack of innovation in the format. I disagree a little bit, only in the sense that the stuntification of late night, I think, is an innovation.

Speaker 3 And the acknowledgement that

Speaker 3 means the viral moment with Olivia Rodrigo, Rihanna and Seth Meyers daydreaming.

Speaker 1 That gets from 10 years ago. Yeah, and that's the mid-2010s was even like you go back to Jimmy Dew and the, I'm fucking Ben Affleck, I'm fucking Matt Damon.
That was 2008.

Speaker 3 Totally agree. But the Cordon show, for instance, largely existed to produce those moments.
They knew nobody was watching at 1230. They didn't even really try.
at 1230.

Speaker 3 They put all their efforts into these franchise bits and segments that not only could live on digital, but became other shows. They were selling Carpool Karaoke, the series, to Apple.

Speaker 3 They were selling, you know, there was

Speaker 3 all sorts of things that they sold. They were partnering directly with advertisers to create segments that would live on the 1230 show, but mostly were there for YouTube.

Speaker 3 So I think they were tweaking it. It didn't change the fact that these hour-long shows were, you know, monologue, bit,

Speaker 3 A, celebrity, B, celebrity, musical guest, good night. Like that didn't change, and maybe it should have, but I don't know.

Speaker 3 I just don't think anything could have really stemmed the tide of the viewer erosion that we've seen.

Speaker 1 People just aren't watching stuff.

Speaker 1 And I know Colbert had a big rating, but CBS, I mean, my dad loved CBS. He was devastated when Blue Bloods got canceled.
Mine too.

Speaker 1 Half of that audience is keeled over on the couch with their heads gear to to the right and just whatever is on is what's getting a getting a rating.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't, I don't even know what the answer would have been if I'm CBS and it's like, let's, let's put something different in here. What should we, let's bring in Theo Vaughn?

Speaker 1 Maybe we could get Theo. Like, they're not doing that.
So I don't know. Theo Vaughn doesn't want that job.
No, no.

Speaker 1 Well, that's that was the interesting thing with Taylor Thomason because they renewed the show. Yeah.
And she said, I actually quit. I don't want to do this anymore because

Speaker 1 I was saying this to somebody that a few months ago, actually, Nate Bragatzi, who is an awesome guy who sells out NBA arenas all over the place, right?

Speaker 1 Anytime he wants, he could just go to another 10, 15, 18, 20,000 venue and do comedy for two hours and he makes a ton of money.

Speaker 1 That's the kind of guy in 1989, we would have been like, oh, could he be the next 1230 host? And the chances are there's no fucking way he's doing that.

Speaker 3 No, he would have taken that job 30 years ago. Look at your guy, Shane Gillis.

Speaker 1 shane gillis would be absolutely groomed for a talk show of some sort or a big studio

Speaker 3 is shane gillis too edgy to have a talk 30 show we would add all or he would have done an r-rated comedy for a big studio and had his moment trying to be a movie star he's not even trying to be a movie star he's you know doing his own comedy tour he did his own show that he brought to sunday no he didn't bring it he did his own show and he sold it to netflix after he made it right because he just did it on his own Like he doesn't need these platforms because these guys have such big touring businesses on their own.

Speaker 1 Well, I look at somebody like Kimmel. When Kimmel got the ABC show, which I was lucky enough to get hired for and get to meet him and get his whole crew,

Speaker 1 you know, he's on the man show.

Speaker 1 They have this spot at 12. It's going to be 1205 ABC, right, after Nightline.
And it's him versus Jon Stewart. And it's like this coveted piece of TV real estate.

Speaker 1 If you took 2002 Jimmy now and just put him in a time machine, he wouldn't want to host a late night show.

Speaker 1 He would want to, you know, he would, he would probably try to either have some sort of daily serious Stern show or he would want to have like his version of a big podcast that's four or five days a week.

Speaker 1 I don't know if he could have toward a late night show. Right.

Speaker 3 First of all, he would have already had a following on digital that he owned as his following.

Speaker 1 True. Right.
Yeah, so he would have owned the man show. They would have been putting out the clips.
Exactly.

Speaker 3 And he would have had to look and say, okay, do I want to tie myself down to a late night ABC show for Disney? Or do I want to own my destiny and grow? And yeah, maybe I'll host the SBs.

Speaker 3 Maybe I'll do other things like Shane Gillis just did. But I don't need that.
Best thing that ever happened to Shane Gillis was he got fired off SNL before he ever aired.

Speaker 1 Right. Maybe you're right.
No, you're 100%.

Speaker 3 He would have gone into the churn and become another one of those people where five years later, we're all saying, oh, well, they have careers afterward. And nobody's saying that about him now.

Speaker 3 He's a power.

Speaker 1 Right. No, you're right.
I think with

Speaker 1 the, when we talk about like the future of late night, which basically there is no future.

Speaker 1 You don't think there's any future.

Speaker 3 See, that's that is the question.

Speaker 1 But to me, it's like SNL is still getting huge ratings. And a big piece of that is that it's live.

Speaker 1 And I do wonder if, and ironically, Jimmy was the one that his show is called Jimmy Come Alive because he did it live.

Speaker 1 Wasn't that just a couple of weeks, well, it was a couple of months, actually, but there are all these reasons why we couldn't do it that way anymore. Yeah, you were there.

Speaker 3 I was not there. I've heard some stories.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, it wasn't a great model, and it was very unreliable, and a million things could go wrong every day.

Speaker 1 But ironically, that might be the model that works now for late night, where it's like, this is live. You don't know what the fuck's going to happen.

Speaker 3 Hold on to the next wild card in all of this is what the streamers are going to do about this kind of comedy. Because so far, the late night host model has largely not worked on streaming.

Speaker 3 There was a Hassan Minaj show. There's been efforts to take these broadcast shows.

Speaker 1 What are you saying? Largely, it's never worked. There hasn't been one success.

Speaker 3 Oliver and Bill Maher do okay on HBO Max.

Speaker 1 Oliver and Bill Maher, Bill Maher launched in 2004 and Oliver launched

Speaker 1 2014.

Speaker 3 These shows do well on the service, whereas late night with Stephen, the late show with Stephen Colbert did not do well on Paramount Plus.

Speaker 3 And Kimmel's numbers, I don't know what Kimmel's numbers are on Hulu, but I'm betting they're not great because the clips are all free on YouTube.

Speaker 3 For some reason, the Bill Maher and John Oliver shows, they are churn protectors at HBO Max, meaning people are subscribed to those services for those shows and are their fans.

Speaker 3 And if you cancel them, those people will be pissed and may leave. And they keep people coming back to an app that is not the first choice for a lot of people in streaming.

Speaker 3 So they have a pretty big value to HBO Max. Netflix, where no one show is particularly important to Netflix because they have so much, they have not been able to launch this kind of comedy.

Speaker 3 And we just this last week got the numbers for Mulaney. And Mulaney did not try to do a mainstream talk show.
Everybody's live with John Mulaney. It was, I watched it many times.
I'm a fan.

Speaker 3 It was not a mainstream show, but I was surprised at how few few people watched. He got 1.6 million for the first episode, and it went precipitously downhill from there.

Speaker 3 And it averaged 500,000 viewers for the entire season. Not great.

Speaker 1 I don't think he cared about having a giant audience for that show. I think he wanted, I think they gave him a lot of money to do whatever the hell he wanted.

Speaker 1 Yes, he wanted to make a very better show that people would love. A small group of people would really, really love.

Speaker 1 And it might get nominated for, I guess it didn't get nominated for awards, but it didn't.

Speaker 3 But there was only three categories. He got nominated, I believe, in some small category, but it was renewed.
They did, they ordered two seasons. So we'll see if they actually air the second one.

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Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by Velveeta. Game Day is all about the tailgate spread.
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Speaker 1 If you look at the last 10 years of

Speaker 1 talk shows, whether they're weekly or daily that have launched. And I would like to include myself that lasted less than 20 episodes.

Speaker 1 None of them worked. Not one of them.
I don't think any of them made it.

Speaker 1 And I think the number is actually

Speaker 1 way bigger than you'd think. These shows are not

Speaker 3 hitting. Sam B had a moment.
Sam B did okay for a while.

Speaker 1 It got canceled. It did.
Yeah, I guess she let that one maybe lasted two years, but

Speaker 1 what's interesting is we've had a million successful podcasts, right?

Speaker 1 And we've had podcasts that are weekly, like even Poehler's podcast recently, but then we'll have the ones that are three, four, five times a week. Pohler's a perfect example.

Speaker 3 Poehler would have had a talk show in

Speaker 1 2022. She would have been on NBC 1230.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Amy Poehler would have been a hot commodity and she would have gotten a show somewhere daytime or

Speaker 3 evening, whatever she wanted. Conan is a great

Speaker 3 test case of the new normal here because he made it. He had the 1230 show.
They moved into 1130. Didn't work under those terms of the time that he was there.
They'd kill for those numbers now.

Speaker 3 Then he went to TBS and in cable, it kind of worked for a little while because there was still an audience there.

Speaker 3 Then didn't make sense in cable, went to do his own podcast and he's never been more popular.

Speaker 3 He got demoted to podcast territory, quote unquote, and it made him even more popular to the point where Turner gave him a travelogue show, which got nominated for emmys and he hosted the freaking oscars and he got a kennedy senator award you know like conan's never been cooler and he's arguably been like put into the wilderness it's crazy i mean that the only shows that are the outliers are saturated live

Speaker 1 um marr and oliver like and then Kimmel's motto, I still think Kimmel and Fallon are really, really, really relevant on YouTube. I mean, they have massive, massive channels.

Speaker 1 If something happens on those shows, everyone's going to see it. And they were able to crack the code on that.
But that doesn't explain why those shows have to be on at 11.35 at night every night.

Speaker 1 And here's the question that gets dicey.

Speaker 3 Is Olivia Rodrigo and

Speaker 3 you know, name your big star, Tom Cruise? Is Tom Cruise going on Fallon if it's just a digital show?

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably not.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 3 Tom Cruise's people are sophisticated. They know the currency of him going on Fallon is not the 1130 audience.
It's whatever he does and says travels the universe online.

Speaker 3 But there is a kind of imprimatur of quality and prestige that the tonight show has with a certain audience. And when you're scrolling through YouTube, it's not just Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon.

Speaker 3 doing a stunt with a celebrity. You can get that on Hot Ones.
You can get it on Chicken Shop Date. You can get it on a Million Marin.
You can get it on Bill Simmons.

Speaker 3 But there's something about the Tonight Show that is a differentiator. I don't know how long that branding matters, especially to young people, but it still does kind of matter that it's a TV show.

Speaker 1 The tonight show will be the last one left.

Speaker 3 So you have the tonight show and you're last man standing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I don't even know if it'll be Fallon necessarily. I just think that you never know.

Speaker 3 Someone will get that show and it will outlive Fallon.

Speaker 1 I think the Tonight Show and Siren Live will never, when we're alive, those shows will always exist. Those will be the two.
Kim will show as soon as he's done doing it, that show will be done.

Speaker 1 Nobody's replacing that. The CBS has already punted it.
Yeah. But I think the Tonight Show is enough of an institution.
I don't know. Like, let's say you're running NBC.

Speaker 1 Do you want to be the person that got rid of Saturn Live in the Tonight Show? You're not? Nobody's doing that. I agree with you.

Speaker 3 SNL is a different thing because they can significantly cut the budget of that show once Lauren is gone, and it's still SNL.

Speaker 1 It may not be as good.

Speaker 1 They could also make more shows if they're in 20 a year. And they sit out the summer when 900 things are happening.
Like, I can't believe they do that.

Speaker 3 It's partly because of the way the show is made. It's so difficult to make it the way they make.

Speaker 1 It's an opportunity for somebody to compete with them directly in a real way.

Speaker 3 They could do a summer stunt SNL for four weeks in July and sell ads into it and capture all the news, and people would watch. But Lauren doesn't want to do that.

Speaker 1 No, maybe Lauren's on Paul McCartney's yacht for most of the summer. Yeah, maybe the next person would.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 3 So, but so who do you think is next? Seth obviously has a target.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I hate speculating on what shows.

Speaker 1 You know all these guys. No, no, it's not, it's not even, yeah, I do know, but it's not even that.
It's you could just see where it's heading.

Speaker 1 I think what was interesting about this Colbert thing, beyond all the stuff we already talked about, is

Speaker 1 you know, there's real conspiracy angles with this, with this Paramount being settled. Colbert was killing

Speaker 1 Trump in the settlement this week. Two days later, the whole thing happens, and they

Speaker 1 executed it pretty pretty fastidiously. Yes.

Speaker 3 So, where do you fall on the conspiracy scale? Do you think this is 10% politics, 90% politics?

Speaker 1 I think the show lost money. And I think they, whatever this merge, this is my take.
I don't have full inside information. This is just me reading the tea leaves and being a smart person.

Speaker 2 I think I'm a smart person.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 this merger is going through.

Speaker 1 The new guy doesn't want to take over CBS Paramount. And the first thing you do is get rid of Colbert.

Speaker 1 But I also think the merger wasn't going through unless they start kowtowing to the president with stuff like this.

Speaker 3 Oh, so you think it was a quid pro quo? We will not approve your merger unless you fire Stephen Colbert.

Speaker 1 I don't think it was that. I think it was a concern

Speaker 1 that this would be the type of, I mean, as we're recording this today, he just said how he wants Washington to

Speaker 1 become the Redskins again, or he's not going to approve the new RFK stadium. I think this is a piece of a bigger chess move where it's not just this.

Speaker 1 I'm genuinely worried about Stewart's show and the daily show and whether that's going to be next.

Speaker 3 I think that there is some kind of macro agreement between Paramount, the new owners, David Ellison and crew, and the Trump administration to wipe the slate clean of media that Trump does not like.

Speaker 1 Does Bill think that? I don't know. Does conspiracy Bill think that? 100%.

Speaker 3 Listen, it's impossible to know.

Speaker 3 Trump could announce tomorrow tomorrow that this was all his plan, and I don't think I would believe him if he said it. So we'll know.

Speaker 3 If the Daily Show is canceled on Monday, we'll know exactly what's going on.

Speaker 3 Daily Show, by the way, also not a profit center, but we do, but the Daily Show is on Comedy Central.

Speaker 3 There has to be a certain amount of original programming on these cable networks to justify their carriage fees. So the economics are a little different there.

Speaker 3 It's also a lot less expensive to produce the Daily Show than it is to do a show like like late show.

Speaker 3 But if they just cut bait on Jon Stewart and the full daily show, then we know that this is pressure.

Speaker 1 Well, then it's not even worth discussing. I think the irony of this is the daily show and that Jon Stewart move was not even just a home run for them.
It was a grand slam.

Speaker 1 It completely reinvigorated the show. It reinvigorated him.
Yes. It's been awesome content.
And they've been bragging about it.

Speaker 3 That's the thing. They put out a press release last week about how Stewart's ratings are up.
you won't you don't do that if you're planning to cancel the show yeah that but that's the thing it's it's

Speaker 1 there's so much money at stake and so much real estate with whatever this merger is that if this is the casualty it's like oh just get rid of those two shows like you know how these freaking super crazy rich people like they

Speaker 1 only cost us headaches Yeah, I'm just like, I don't want to deal with this show.

Speaker 1 I don't want this to be my problem when it comes in. I thought it was was interesting that

Speaker 1 you reported on this about how, what's his name, George Cheeks?

Speaker 3 George Cheeks is the.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's multiple CEOs, right?

Speaker 3 They have three CEOs running Paramount, but Cheeks is in charge of CBS.

Speaker 1 And Chris McCarthy is the one in charge of Comedy Center, who is very instrumental in bringing Stewart back.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 1 And we also don't know which one of these CEOs, who has the most juice. Do they have equal juice?

Speaker 3 No, we do know that Chris McCarthy is expected to leave the company and George Cheeks is expected to stay.

Speaker 3 So, my theory that I have voiced on the town is that I think George Cheeks is signaling to the new ownership with this cancellation that he can make the tough, unemotional decisions on money-losing sacred cows like Stephen Colbert.

Speaker 3 And if it happens to

Speaker 3 please the president at a time when Skydance could really use the president to be happy with them, then that's an added bonus. So I would say I'm less conspiratorial than maybe Conspiracy Bill is,

Speaker 3 but I do acknowledge the cloud of politics that is hovering over all of this. I just think that CBS has been looking at this a long time.
They know that this is not getting better.

Speaker 3 It's not like they take a little pay cut here, survive for a year or two, and then they come back when the ad market comes back. The ad market is not coming back in linear television.
And

Speaker 3 if you're looking at this unemotionally, shows that are not making money should not be on the air.

Speaker 3 And we're going to see, I think, with the new Skydance regime at Paramount, a significant cut in the original programming on CBS and all the channels. We're going to see prime time get gutted.

Speaker 3 We're going to see, you know, morning and afternoon.

Speaker 1 Did primetime already get gutted?

Speaker 3 It's been gutted, but CBS has been one of the few that is hanging on to scripted programming during prime time.

Speaker 3 If you look at CBS, they have less of the reality and news programming during prime time than NBC and ABC do. And they've been justifying that because they say their audience is older.

Speaker 3 They're still watching TV. They still have these hits.

Speaker 3 And they can sell those shows to streaming services later, either their own or another one, or they sell them over to syndication overseas or wherever.

Speaker 3 I just think that that money is coming down down. So maybe CBS stops programming Friday nights.

Speaker 1 Maybe they're going to go on there. By the way, they can do what ABC does, just run a three-hour Bachelor in Paradise episode, which is what they did on Tuesday night.

Speaker 1 Or three hours of Bachelor in Paradise.

Speaker 3 Yeah, or they have Kimmel do two hours of Celebrity Millionaire on ABC.

Speaker 1 Well, they do show. They do.

Speaker 3 They do Celebrity Wheel of Fortune. They have Elizabeth Banks doing Press Your Luck during prime time.
They have Steve Harvey doing a judge show.

Speaker 3 There's a judge show starring Steve Harvey on ABC in primetime. It's kind of amazing.
And they do that because it's cheap. And the economics don't justify the amount of money they spend on scripted.

Speaker 3 CBS is making a couple comedies this year. They're making a comedy called DMV.

Speaker 3 And the economics on that show, they're shooting it in Montreal. They're paying people nothing.
It's like a fraction of what a half-hour comedy used to cost on CBS.

Speaker 3 They're just cutting, cutting, cutting, and not doing originals on broadcast because these are like newspapers and magazines now.

Speaker 3 They are dying businesses and the only way to make money on them is to suck them dry. Just cut all the costs and take the revenue as long as you can.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 we said in the earlier part of the 2020s, these networks were just going to become sports, late night, and morning programming.

Speaker 3 News.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and now the late night piece is going away. There's one part I don't understand with the Colbert piece.
Conspiracy Bill doesn't understand it and Bill doesn't understand it either. Timing?

Speaker 1 Why say until May?

Speaker 3 Okay, so.

Speaker 1 I don't understand that part. Like, why not just say after September sweeps or November sweeps, we're done.
We're going to December. There's no more Colbert show.
Why go all the way through May?

Speaker 3 Well, first of all, his deal goes all the way through May. So they're paying him regardless.

Speaker 3 And secondly, The way that producer deals on Colbert work is the producers on the show are signed from September through August. That's actually why this was coming up now.
People are like, why now?

Speaker 3 You know, if they, if they, if this wasn't related to the merger, then just, you know, wait till the deal closes and then fire him then.

Speaker 3 The reason they had to do it now, according to sources, is they have these deals with producers that go from September through August.

Speaker 3 And they were going to have to go to these producers and say, honestly, your deal is only going to go through May next year, not August. So,

Speaker 3 what is Joe Blow producer going to think when he hears that? Oh, the show is being canceled. Secondly, they had a negotiation coming up.

Speaker 3 Your guy, Baby Doll, he would have started to make noises about a new deal right around now if they wanted to keep Colbert for a new deal.

Speaker 3 And my understanding is that there were some questions like, oh, do we want to get into it with them? Do we want to do this? And it sort of forced the issue now.

Speaker 3 Colbert is the one that wanted to announce it now. CBS CBS was not positioning this to be announced right now.

Speaker 3 I think they knew what the optics would be on this, but Colbert was like, if the show's ending, I need to let my people know right away. First of all, they need to look for other jobs.

Speaker 3 Many of these people have been here for a decade or two. It's not easy to get another job in this world that you need to give them time.
And secondly, it's going to leak. These things never hold.

Speaker 3 So if it's going to leak, he want, they told him Wednesday night.

Speaker 3 He said, I'm telling my people on Thursday before the show, put out whatever whatever press release you want, and then it'll air on the show Thursday night and done. And he did.

Speaker 3 And I think the fact that he's got 10 months in the chair to do whatever he wants is going to be pretty interesting.

Speaker 1 So I just want to say I deliberately did not talk to Baby Doll about any of this because he was going on vacation.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, he might not be home either, but I haven't talked to him about any of this.

Speaker 1 We're taping this on a Sunday. And I think it's really important we're we're taping this on a Sunday because, as far as I know, Jon Stewart has a show on Monday.

Speaker 1 And that is going to be the most fascinating show that we've had since the Letterman extortion,

Speaker 1 whatever that episode was, which we didn't know was coming.

Speaker 1 First of all, Jon Stewart is already rich. Yes.
And he's already done a million Kajillion things, and he could give two shits. Yes.
Right?

Speaker 3 For him, it's about his reputation.

Speaker 1 That's it. He doesn't, he does.

Speaker 1 He's going to stand up for his dude. And this is it.
This is, in my opinion, one of the most important shows he's ever done. There's no way he's not going to talk about it.

Speaker 3 Well, the question is, does he quit on the air?

Speaker 1 I think it's in play. I think it's actually a must-watch show.
Like that.

Speaker 1 Like, it comes on at eight o'clock here. Like, I'm definitely watching that live.

Speaker 3 So here's a good question. If Stewart just dive bombs the entire company, quits on the air, drops some F-bombs, names, names, the whole thing, do they air it? Because he tapes.

Speaker 1 I don't think he'll do that because he's got a whole staff working for him. Yeah.
And he's going to be,

Speaker 1 but I also think he's going to have to stand up. And I think everybody would have his back about

Speaker 1 how he's going to feel about this. But yeah,

Speaker 1 if they cancel the show, I think he'll be fine.

Speaker 1 I don't think it'll be fine for a lot of people that work for it. I think he'll feel bad about that.
But this is the whole point of the show: he's going to, he has to stand up to this.

Speaker 1 This is, this is 25 years of him on Comedy Central, basically. Like, you know, I just don't, he doesn't, he's not sitting this one out.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And does this issue metastasize to a larger paramount question? They're negotiating right now to bring back the South Park guys.

Speaker 3 And South Park, you know, they've had this is South Park's dispute is over money. They have been fighting with the new regime because the skydance people have to approve the Paramount deal.

Speaker 3 And my understanding is that they are working towards a settlement. But do those guys go nuclear on them? I don't think they will because they like making the show.

Speaker 3 And literally, it's they're going to make billions of dollars in their next deal.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 3 others could feel differently. There's a whole

Speaker 1 but I disagree, though, because I think they're in the same spot as Jon Stewart. Those guys have made a fucking crazy amount of money already.
And don't know.

Speaker 1 The whole point of that show is they stand up to shit like this.

Speaker 3 That's true. They could still do it and not quit.
I'm saying, do they quit?

Speaker 3 I don't think the South Park guys quit

Speaker 1 or just do it for somebody else.

Speaker 3 Well, they can't do South Park for anyone else.

Speaker 1 No, but they could just create a paramount ownership property.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they could do that. They got a Kendrick movie coming out next year.
They could do other things, but they have shown over almost 30 years that they really like doing South Park. And

Speaker 3 I think that they will fuck around with the owners, but I I don't think they will quit.

Speaker 1 Well, this is unprecedented territory. It really is.

Speaker 1 We have a show get canceled and people's first reaction is,

Speaker 1 did the president make this happen?

Speaker 1 That was so crazy.

Speaker 1 It is.

Speaker 3 Guess who owns the network that has the number one show in late night? Fox, Rupert Murdoch, who Trump sued on Friday.

Speaker 3 Because Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal and they did the Jeffrey Epstein Donald Trump story. And Murdoch has been an ally of sorts.
He gets into his spats with Trump every once in a while. But

Speaker 3 Fox is owned by the Murdoch and now they're in litigation with the president. It's so crazy.

Speaker 1 I think this has a chance to be the weirdest Hollywood year ever. Oh, really? Because we have five and a half months left, and I just feel like we're headed toward like this was the first salvo.

Speaker 1 I just feel like there's more coming movies of the movies with,

Speaker 1 in some ways, the movie business is back,

Speaker 1 right? Maybe a little bit. Sure.
I'll give you that. IMAX and you know that, like, there's been, there's been some positive momentum.

Speaker 1 And then on the other hand, like, I don't know what's going to happen with the award season. The TV season, like,

Speaker 1 who the fuck knows? Are there even going to be a network show that anyone cares about anymore?

Speaker 3 Certainly not. It's going to have to delay.

Speaker 3 That's not happening. Will the office spin off work, the paper?

Speaker 1 Right. And then also, like, that's going to peacock.
But all these other non-Netflix streamers are now starting to really cut back on the content they're making.

Speaker 1 And this is going to be the first time I think people are going to feel

Speaker 1 a real void. Like, just not, it's not going to be this t-shirt cannon shooting out shows every now.

Speaker 1 It's going to be, you have these, like, I just watched the Netflix, the missing lady show on the yacht. Which one that was?

Speaker 3 The missing lady of the week on Netflix?

Speaker 1 Missing Lady on the Yacht, whatever that one was called. I watched all three episodes.
Did you watch Poop Crew TV now? Of course I watched Poop Cruise. What do you tell me talking to?

Speaker 3 It was number one on one of the charts one week.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, the number one franchise on Netflix right now is called Train Wreck, and it's an unscripted documentary franchise about things that happened in the 2000s and 2010s that made cable news headlines, but Gen Z didn't know about and millennials kind of forgot about.

Speaker 1 That's basically Bubble Boy. It's like, wait, what's this Bubble Boy? And now my daughter's watching that going, Dad, what's up with Bubble Boy?

Speaker 3 Right, exactly. The fall of Brett Favre.
What happened there?

Speaker 1 Right. Well, and then you have like shows like Games on Summer I Turn Pretty Season 3.
My daughter is like approaching it like it's a Super Bowl. I know.
Yeah, it's just TVs.

Speaker 1 I think what's really changed the most is that

Speaker 1 the monoculture of a TV show, I think, is just, I don't even know like what my daughter's generation shows that they're going to share other than Stranger Things.

Speaker 3 Wednesday.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's, but it's like less than 10. I know.

Speaker 3 And Stranger Things, check me on the number, but I believe when it ends at the end of this year, Stranger Things will have made and aired like 60-something episodes over 10 years. Yeah.

Speaker 3 It just, it just takes so long to make these shows now that there's no such thing as like, oh, it's September. We're back in school.
Let's check out the new season of the Cosby show.

Speaker 3 Like, there's 22 of these coming. Like, it's just not the same anymore.

Speaker 1 I was on a text thread with some friends who were my age. There was this thing that was online.
It was the entire Nielsen ratings of the 76, 77 TV season.

Speaker 1 It was like 100 shows, and it was like one to 100. It was like Laverne and Shirley, happy days.

Speaker 1 And we were on the thread. And I was like, I don't understand how I watched 70 of these 100 shows as they were happening.
Like, I'm just going down the line. Like, I definitely watched that.

Speaker 1 I watched that. I mean, I was an only child.
I guess I had a little bit of a sports. And you were clearly watching players.

Speaker 3 I was like sports and movies, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but, and maybe I didn't watch all of them, but I felt like I did. And anecdotally, I felt like I knew at least what was going on a little bit.

Speaker 1 And now it's like, what are those shows like that now?

Speaker 3 They're just well, if you look at the number, the top 100 shows from last year, like 90 of them are football games.

Speaker 1 I know. Well, what was interesting about 76, 77, what number do you think Monday Night Football was in the ratings? Oh, fascinating.

Speaker 3 Clearly, not top 20 because you you would have mentioned it.

Speaker 1 It was 20th.

Speaker 3 It was 20th. Okay.
So it was still big.

Speaker 1 Still big, but not like happy days big.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 3 And still they didn't figure out that if they did that three nights a week, people would also watch three nights a week of football.

Speaker 1 Well, that was in addition to Sundays.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, that's the only thing that in the end, it's just going to be sports that survives.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 I mean, and that sports is now so expensive that these companies can't really afford much else. CBS is a perfect example.

Speaker 3 Like they are looking at this renegotiation that the NFL can do after they change control because they have a right to renew it.

Speaker 1 They're going to of course do it.

Speaker 3 They're going to extract, extract, extract.

Speaker 3 That's why I think it wouldn't be surprising to me if the NFL like got a night of television on CBS or an hour twice a week to do highlights during the season or some propaganda show about how great the NFL is in your community.

Speaker 3 Like something, they'll get something out of CBS and they'll be able to take some games away probably to sell them to Netflix.

Speaker 1 Well, the prices of, like when ESPN sold off some of their college football playoff games, I couldn't believe that. I mean, we're about to find out what happens with UFC.

Speaker 1 And I think Netflix is going to get the UFC

Speaker 1 numbered pay-per-views.

Speaker 3 Dana White said this past week that he's looking forward to being in business with a global platform.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So what is that? Well, so it's, it's two deals.

Speaker 1 It's the numbered pay-per-views and then it's kind of the rest of it and you know if it's going to amazon or netflix or whoever it's going to be the numbered ones yeah i'm guessing he doesn't mean apple even though they technically are a global platform but i'm betting it's amazon or netflix it's got to be one of those apple's back oh you think so f1 they're rejuvenating they're gonna be a bottom of this now i like it back baby but but it doesn't bother you that that movie is probably not gonna be profitable in theaters

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that goes back to our accounting thing that we talked about before. I know, I know.
It could be, they'll probably say it was super profitable, and the answer is probably in the middle.

Speaker 3 They will say it has tremendous value on the service. And great.
We'll see if it pops up on the Nielsen chart. I bet it will because it's got a lot of attention.

Speaker 3 You know, they said that about Killers of the Flower Moon, which definitely lost money in theaters, but they got a ton of Oscar nominations.

Speaker 3 Tim Cook got to tweet about Leo DiCaprio and Martin Scrocesi, and it was a sort of brand halo for Apple. And if that's why they're in the entertainment business, then God bless them.

Speaker 3 Because so so far, at least, it's certainly not to make money.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 that is true. I will say,

Speaker 1 and I've been critical about some of the Apple shows for the last couple of years, but I do feel like they, I have a better sense of what an Apple show is now, even than when we talked about it on YourPod, you know, six months ago.

Speaker 1 There is some sort of a blueprint now with like the one big star,

Speaker 1 some sort of angle.

Speaker 3 They are the star fucking.

Speaker 1 Somebody in the picture. Yeah, it's the star fucker network.

Speaker 3 If Jim Cook doesn't know who the person is, they can't do a show.

Speaker 1 Right. Like if they could put John Ham with like kind of a torn suit on and like a fancy house behind him, they don't even need to know what the show's about.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 3 And they had hits this past year, at least a couple. Severance was a big hit for them.
Like it was on the charts, which the Apple shows never are except for Ted Lasso.

Speaker 1 I can only tell you, I look at everything selfishly from a ringer perspective and what we can do, prestige TV, podcasts, and the watch. And can you just give us shows that we could talk about?

Speaker 1 Apple was in the mix this year for us. Like we had really from Presumed Innocent last year and several times.

Speaker 1 Your friends and neighbors, like they had some stuff that was like, all right, we got to get on the board. Oh, you were not on board with the studio.

Speaker 3 You're not on board with their 23 Emmy nominations.

Speaker 1 No, I would. Well, you didn't get one, though.

Speaker 3 I did not get one.

Speaker 3 Please don't bring that up.

Speaker 1 By the way, it's unfair that you said I was not on board. I watched

Speaker 1 every episode of the episode of the episode. I watched every episode.
We did an episode of the first three episodes. All right.
I watched all of them.

Speaker 1 I actually thought the last couple episodes were really good. I thought it was a really uneven show.

Speaker 1 I really respected it. I watched every minute of it.
And my problem with it ultimately was I didn't know who I was supposed to be rooting for, which might have been the answer. Maybe nobody.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 Seth Rogan's character, it's like, I just didn't like the character. And I was supposed to be rooting for him.

Speaker 3 They lean heavily on the fact that Seth himself is so likable that he can do some dumb and kind of despicable things and you're still supposed to like him.

Speaker 3 I happen to think Seth is great and I do like him even in a role like that, but I hear your criticism.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I just felt like they could have tilted him more.

Speaker 1 Did you get a lot of recognition from that? What happened?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I want to know, did your life change?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 3 Are you kidding? Other than people texting me, no.

Speaker 1 And although I do get recognized, like at a Dodgers game, you went to a Dodgers game today. Were people just pointing at you? Like, hey, that's the guy from the studio.

Speaker 3 Are you kidding me? Not at the Dodgers game, at like Sundance or at like the polo lounge on a Friday afternoon. Yes, everybody knows, but people know me from the town now, too.

Speaker 1 And from my newsletter, so it doesn't, yeah, they know you because you work with Craig Horlbeck. They're like, hey, that's the guy who works with Craig.

Speaker 3 I bring Craig to movie premieres. Nobody wants to talk to me.
They all want to talk to him.

Speaker 1 He's a handsome guy.

Speaker 1 He's much more personable to me.

Speaker 1 He knows a lot about fantasy football, which I do not.

Speaker 3 And he's got very deep movie knowledge from the Rewatchables. He's the only 30-year-old that can quote risky business.

Speaker 1 I know. We're indoctrinating him in the 80s and 90s, including species this week.

Speaker 1 He texted me about species.

Speaker 3 He's like, I can't believe this movie existed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's his reaction a lot of the time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What were they thinking?

Speaker 1 Matt Bellony, pleasure to see you as always. We can read you on the puck.

Speaker 1 on uh on puck news and we can listen to you on the town an awesome podcast produced by craig korbeck and theringer.com and the ringer.com yes uh good to see

Speaker 1 this episode is brought to you by rain x so right now you might be thinking about leaving work early to make it home in time for the game or what you're going to make for dinner but what i'm pretty sure you're not thinking about

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Real talk for a second. You think you're crushing it with sleep?

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Speaker 1 iPhone 11 or later required. All right, Nate Tice is here.
We're recording on a Sunday. He's a second time new dad.
He works for Yahoo. You can listen to his podcast and read him there.

Speaker 1 He's been on this pod a few times.

Speaker 1 First of all, how much sleep are you getting? Are you prepared for NFL when you don't sleep? Yeah, no, I'm okay.

Speaker 2 Actually, like the old background of coaching and scouting kind of helped me prep for this of like surviving on two to four hours and a lot of coffee. But no, we're good.
We got a good rhythm.

Speaker 2 My wife is a champ.

Speaker 2 That's what I'm leaving it at. She's been an absolute champ.

Speaker 1 I've had a nice break. They do 95% of the work.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I got into NFL. I have the same process every year in the last like 10, 11 days, dove in, did my process,

Speaker 1 had a good time actually doing it. Some things jumped out to me and where I wanted to land to talk to you.
I'm not ready to have any full scale opinions yet, but

Speaker 1 the jump-a-level teams. I want to start there because that's a good way to think about the season as a whole, each conference, who's going to move up from one level to another.

Speaker 1 I don't want, I don't go negative. We'll go positive because it's sunny out here in Southern California.

Speaker 1 it's it's uh good times you know not a lot of stress but there's three different types of teams that jump a level we have the playoff team to legit contender the blah team to playoff team and the out of nowhere team which is just they're just staples now now we don't bat an eyelash when somebody like the broncos or the commanders or the chargers when they just jump five six wins this is just what happens which group is the hardest group for you to figure out out of those three groups i actually would say the playoff team to legit contender because I think that's the hardest

Speaker 2 crap, you know, hardest tier to break into, you know, kind of a legit Final Four team, you know, that it can make that any single year, can withstand some injuries, has a dude at quarterback or at least an offense that can roll that way, has a run game, has a defense.

Speaker 2 And like not a lot of teams have, can check all those boxes.

Speaker 2 You know, we saw what the Eagles did. The Chiefs are kind of their own thing.
They're the mid-90s Houston Rockets. They're kind of just always, they're always their own thing.

Speaker 2 But like every other team, all the Mortal teams, like this is what you need to have.

Speaker 2 And it's just really hard to check all those boxes of truly having a run game, truly having an explosive passing game and vice versa on defense, being able to stop those things on defense.

Speaker 2 So that's the hardest one to break into because it's just, it's just hard. It's just really hard to build that legit team.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're talking this little crack between the two tiers. So last year, the Lions were the team that made the jump.
And that was the team I went all in on last year.

Speaker 1 Picked them to win the Super Bowl. That did not happen.
But, you know, they laid the groundwork the previous year. They had a really good playoff loss.

Speaker 1 If you can have a good playoff loss, good foundation. They kept their two coordinators and it just felt like everything was lined up and you could really see it.

Speaker 1 I had a little more trouble coming up with the team this year, but I had four candidates and I'm going to take the next few weeks to figure it out.

Speaker 1 But the four candidates I sent you, and I'll give you the conference odds on FanDuel for each of these, but the Rams were at plus 850, had a really nice, as we look back, a really nice loss to the Eagles, right?

Speaker 1 Kind of had the Eagles, even at the tail end, they're in the 15th round, just throwing haymakers with the Rocky. Jalen Carter plays away.

Speaker 2 Two Jalen Carter plays away. That's what it was.
But yeah, they were very close to getting them.

Speaker 1 So there's one. Yep.
Tampa, 13-1 with some wide receiver injuries last year.

Speaker 1 And just were just frisky the whole time. And they're bringing all 11 starters back on offense.
Worfs is going to be out for a a couple of weeks, but so that's team number two.

Speaker 1 The Texans, I just have to put in at 12 to 1 to win the conference just because of how good the defense was in the playoffs specifically.

Speaker 1 And you'd think like they kind of had the year from hell in a bunch of different ways with some receiver injuries. And, you know, they did trade Tunsil.

Speaker 1 I'm not crazy about their offensive line, but that's another one. Then

Speaker 1 the fourth one is the one that surprised me that I included in here is the Broncos at 13 to 1.

Speaker 1 Made the playoffs,

Speaker 1 felt like they overachieved just to make the playoffs, had all the makings of, oh, we'll get to this year and they'll take the dip back.

Speaker 1 There's some reasons why that might not happen. The one team I don't have in here is Washington because I think they were officially a contender.
They made the title game. You can't put them in there.

Speaker 1 Of course. All right.
So Rams, Bucs, Broncos, Texans, which one did you get the most excited about?

Speaker 2 Rams.

Speaker 2 And it's just because they have, you know the why maybe you get excited about the texans the rams kind of a version of this where they have the great equalizer in a playoff game and that's a pass rush and they have a dude at quarterback and they have you know a laric jackson their left tackle uh is going to be out with blood clots and i know you know about players on your team having blood clots and what they can do to a season so like but that's that's this one wrinkle and kind of like the theory of the rams this year but devontae adams still has plenty left in the tank like he is still a difference maker.

Speaker 2 But the thing is, I think Puka Nakua is not getting kind of the credit of what he actually is. I think some people think he's a beneficiary of the offense.
Like, no kidding.

Speaker 2 That's every top receiver is a beneficiary of the offense, but he's a legit top five receiver in this game. He's an actual elite guy.
Now Devontae Adams is like a 2A, you know, in this offense.

Speaker 2 And, you know, Cooper Cup is no longer there. Cooper Cup has really fallen off and is really not the difference maker.
He's become a kind of very isolated type of player and how they have to use them.

Speaker 2 But they drafted Terrence Ferguson, and he's a tight end from Oregon, really athletic. They're going to use more tight ends.
This is where I'm envisioning this offense.

Speaker 2 And I think it's going to be just a better version of what we've seen the last couple of years. When this offense has been healthy, I know that's an if.

Speaker 1 It's a big if.

Speaker 2 They have been supernova. Like not even, not just like, oh, a top offense.

Speaker 2 One of the better offenses we've seen in the last 20 years level of good. And we saw it last year.
Remember the Vikings game?

Speaker 2 I think it was a Thursday night game when they finally, Puka Nakua comes back and they just go crazy. That's what this team could be.
So it's a fine line. That's why the odds are what they are.

Speaker 2 But man, they have a pass rush. The defense is more funky than outright good, but the pass rush is good.

Speaker 2 And so that's why I think they have a really, you know, they actually have a snowball's chance in hell to win this, this, not just division with that's really, really tough division, the NFC West, but the conference as well.

Speaker 2 So pass rush, passing game, or run game.

Speaker 1 That's a really good team. Is it a tough division? That's one of the things I'm staring at with the research.
I keep hearing how tough the NFC West is, and I'm staring at it going, eh?

Speaker 2 It's really frisky. It's a lot of good units.
Like, there's a lot of good defenses. There's a lot of good run games.
Like, it's a lot to prepare for.

Speaker 2 I don't think any of them are elite, but it's a lot of good.

Speaker 2 Like, I think any four of those teams are playoff teams because I'm going to get to another one in a little bit, because maybe that's why I'm angling this way.

Speaker 1 Okay, I got you.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, Puka.

Speaker 1 I think he's for your, for the smart guy, NFL people,

Speaker 1 he's like, just

Speaker 1 studying him on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the blocking, all the kind of football player stuff he does. He's whatever that weird team is.
It's like the LNBA for the NFL Super Nerd team.

Speaker 1 He's in there. He's like catnip.

Speaker 1 Adams, I'm really intrigued by with the

Speaker 1 just being in a good situation again.

Speaker 1 I just, I thought Rogers was terrible last year. I thought their offense was terrible.
The coaching was terrible.

Speaker 1 Then you go back to Vegas where he was in that Netflix show famously, just, you know, almost seeming like he didn't want to get killed.

Speaker 1 He hasn't been in a good situation really since probably the second to last Green Bay situation.

Speaker 1 And now he's in number two. And if that, if they hit with that tight end, everybody's already trying to pump him up as a fantasy asset.
But

Speaker 1 that was the team that jumped out to me too in the NFC.

Speaker 1 I do think there's a Bucs case. And I want to study more about

Speaker 1 how long Worfs is going to be out. But

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 that that's just a team that has an identity i know what they are and they have one of the best four lines in the league offense um so we know they can block we know they're gonna be able to move the ball we know they're gonna be able to score i like the division they're in uh schedule is gonna be a little harder this year but that's i think it's probably one of those two teams right is there any other team i get i i guess no other team even really qualifies Yeah, I mean, this is kind of cheating, it feels like, because of the record last year, is if JJ McCarthy is just okay or better, the Vikings did a lot of nice things this offseason to kind of maybe shore up their volatility.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 just the offensive line and the defensive line, you know, getting Hargrave, getting

Speaker 2 Hargrave and Jonathan Allen in there, just some real beef. So it's just, they don't have to be as funky, you know, on the defense.
They actually have some guys that can just win as well.

Speaker 2 And they have some other players that are really good. And just the offense, too.
I think this offensive line, we've got Wayne, got Mason from San Fran.

Speaker 2 You know, Aaron Jones is still there, but now they have a one-two punch. And because they have Justin Jefferson, they get a lot of like unique looks.

Speaker 2 Devontae Adams got these looks too, actually, which is why I think this Rams appearance could be awesome.

Speaker 2 But they get so many soft boxes that they can just pound away at them, get five, six yards a pop. Just like it's nothing.

Speaker 2 And so now they finally have built a line and they got Jordan Mason to be the hammer with Aaron Jones. And now they got a guy that can just really pound away four or five, six yards.

Speaker 2 So the Vikings, I'm just keeping my eye on because I really, it's just McCarthy has to just be okay, 18th quarterback or better in this off. And this team can, you know, know, there's an angle here.

Speaker 2 There's a line here that they can really make it.

Speaker 1 I hate them from a future standpoint because there's no way to be right or wrong. Who the fuck knows with McCarthy? He's coming off a major knee injury.

Speaker 1 He's never started an NFL game before, and everything hinges on whether he's good or not. And it could go any direction.

Speaker 1 And anyone who says, like, I know how this is going to play out, like, there's no way to know.

Speaker 2 It's 14 to 1 for a reason.

Speaker 2 I will say that. So to win the IFC championship.
Yeah, it's 14 to 1 for a a reason.

Speaker 1 Well, and they won 14 games last year before everything fell apart in the span of eight days. We went from thinking, could this team actually win the Super Bowl

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 all of a sudden Sam Darnold's on his way to Seattle? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so that team broke my brain.

Speaker 1 And then we go to

Speaker 1 the other side with the Broncos and the Texans. I don't.
I personally don't think the Texans O-line.

Speaker 1 No. If you're in the bottom five or six

Speaker 1 with your O-line, and there's really, you can rank them any way you want, but I don't see how, I don't see a scenario where they're not in the bottom, bottom crew. And that part worries me.

Speaker 1 And the bigger thing, and I'm sure we'll be talking about this over the next six weeks, is what do we have with CJ Stroud? Because it feels like we overreacted to year one.

Speaker 1 I don't want to also overreact to year two, but he, you know, he took a major step back last year for most of the year. And I don't know what I'm getting from him.

Speaker 2 No, I, I, with Stroud, no, I get it.

Speaker 2 He started actually developing a couple bad habits because of this this old line, but I still really trust him because the new OC, the new coordinator, is going to give him a little bit more say in the offense.

Speaker 2 The old offensive system, what Sloic, Bobby Sloic, came from is the Shanahan offense, which doesn't really let the quarterbacks kind of drive the wheel.

Speaker 2 You know, they really kind of, you know, puts a lot of bumpers on the offense. They put a lot on the center and the offensive system to work.
Stroud is very smart, like and really cerebral.

Speaker 2 So I'm curious how this is going to look. But what you're saying is about the offensive line is why I'm worried too.
It's just because it's it's different doesn't mean it's better.

Speaker 2 I know they had some like bad vibes, but last year, the guys they added, so they added Kenyon, oh no, they got rid of Kennyon Green, but then they got Ed Ingram and Lincoln Tomlinson.

Speaker 2 So Kenyon Green allowed the third highest pressure rate among guards last year, among starting guards. Ed Ingram was first, and Lincoln Tomlinson was fourth.

Speaker 2 So, you know, yeah, it's different, but it's, you know, is it really going to be any better? Because that's what you added. It's going to be a little bit better because of the vibes.

Speaker 2 But again, I don't think the run game is going to be trustworthy. But I am, I do like Stroud a lot.
Their division, that division is so wonky.

Speaker 2 The AFC South, and again, they have the I think the defense is going to be really, really good because of the pass rush. They have decent linebackers, and I think their DB room is really good.

Speaker 2 They got Derek Stingley,

Speaker 2 other guys, too. Yeah, the secondary is going to be really good.

Speaker 2 So, if they're again, if healthy, but I think the offensive line is still going to be weakness, even if they have a lot of different names and faces out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the case for them is the defense they threw in the playoff game,

Speaker 1 you know, and the the pass rush and like there's a pass rush, secondary. All right, I can see something there.
And they, you know, they fix the receiver room.

Speaker 2 But it's, you just got to think the conference they're in. And NFC is so much easier to find value, I think, betting-wise, as we're talking about that, because it's way more wide open.

Speaker 2 The AFC, it's like you got,

Speaker 2 you know, who you got, you got the demons at the end. You know, you got Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, shoot, even the middle-tier teams, Justin Herbert, all these guys, Joe Burrow.

Speaker 2 So it's like that's the AFC is just so much tougher at the top. They already have the contender guys.
You know, that's more the middle ground that's interesting.

Speaker 2 While the NFC, it's like, whoa, I think it can go any which way.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I did my first stab at my player rankings because it really helped me last year where they do all the, and the AFC South was just the worst of all the divisions from just the standpoint of talent.

Speaker 1 And I was surprised. I didn't think they would be coming in last, but

Speaker 1 offensive lines, Houston, Cincinnati, the Giants, Seattle, Jacksonville, and then maybe New England. Although, I think if Will Campbell's good, the New England's line might actually be okay.

Speaker 1 So, that he's kind of the swing, but that those are probably the five worst plus New England if Campbell doesn't make it. So, the

Speaker 1 other team there in the AFC,

Speaker 1 the Broncos.

Speaker 1 I was prepared to write them off, and they weren't going to have enough firepower, harder schedule this year. AFC West is going to be really hard.

Speaker 1 I don't know. The Broncos might be good.

Speaker 1 I find myself leaning toward them as maybe that's a playoff team that can actually make a leap up and be like, whoa, the Bronx.

Speaker 1 Like they kind of subtly fix some of the issues they had with the weapons standpoint. They have to hit on both their rookies, but they have a top four line.
Their defense is good.

Speaker 1 They spent some money on the defense,

Speaker 1 and they have one of the best five coaches in the league.

Speaker 1 So I think the case for them would be the Chiefs fall backwards, the Chargers fall back a little bit because their schedule is going to be harder, and then Vegas is Vegas and maybe they can climb up.

Speaker 1 There's no chance the Broncos can win that division, right? For you? You just have the Chiefs penciled in forever?

Speaker 1 Put it this way.

Speaker 2 I think the Broncos are alive to win it, but I do think the Chiefs are better this year in the weirdest way.

Speaker 2 So I do think it's still the Chiefs division.

Speaker 1 Make the case for the Chiefs being better. Let me hear it.

Speaker 2 I actually am high on the offensive line, they added both guys.

Speaker 2 So yeah, I think there's going to be some up and downness, but this is a quarterback used to that up and downness.

Speaker 2 I also just think some of the defensive guys that they had, I think that's going to make more sense if they're healthy on the back end. I keep saying if they're healthy, but this is true in the NFL.

Speaker 2 This is how you have to look at these things.

Speaker 2 But I do think that they still have the dude at quarterback.

Speaker 2 And I think Rashi Rice coming back, and now, no, I mean, suspension pending, but I do think that he is a lot better than people are giving him credit for.

Speaker 2 And what's going to add to the explosiveness of the offense, I think maybe Travis Kelsey kind of knows his role now, too.

Speaker 2 Kelsey was interesting last year because he's definitely dropped off as a receiver, but it was probably his best blocking year ever because he was kind of,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 2 he's never been into blocking. He knows how he gets paid and why, you know, why he's very famous.
But last year, he kind of knew his role. Like, it was kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 It became like Robin Lopez almost.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 he's just scrapping setting screens, you know, getting the offensive boards. But no,

Speaker 2 I have more faith in the the Chiefs this year than I did last year in the weirdest way. And maybe it's just because I'm being lazy mentally, but I do think the Broncos are a better team.

Speaker 2 I think this defense could be the best defense in the NFL.

Speaker 2 And I think the Broncos added some juice with the skill players that I really liked. Like I've really come around on Pat Bryant, their third round pick.
It was a little high, but I do like the pick.

Speaker 2 And then RJ Harvey is going to add just a little bit of juice in the running back room. That's what their running backs were just bad last year.
And the O-line is a top 5-0 line.

Speaker 2 That's how you win a a playoff game. Like, I could see the Broncos being a playoff team easy, but I don't know if I still think it's the Chiefs to lose.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what's funny about what you said with the Chiefs? By the way, the Chiefs are minus 110 on Fando for the division.

Speaker 2 Chargers plus 280.

Speaker 1 The Broncos are plus 330, which I think is too high. I think that should be a little closer.
But the funny thing with the Chiefs, I agreed with what you said.

Speaker 1 I also feel like the case for them, at least from a talent standpoint, is they should probably be better because it's weird. Last year was the year from hell for them in some ways, right?

Speaker 1 But then they were 11-0 in one-score games, so it's like year from hell, but then also this crazy luck over and over again for the first three-fourths of the season.

Speaker 1 You feel like even if the one-score luck balances out, the health luck is going to flip it the other way. Um,

Speaker 1 that division is going to be a bitch, though. Like, like Vegas was a walkover last year, and Vegas is not going to be a walkover.
They're going to actually be hard to play.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Vegas is going to be so funky. They're the ultimate knuckleball team.
Like, it just Geno Smith is a legit quarterback, and then they have Chip Kelly, who's going to just,

Speaker 2 I'm very excited for Chip Kelly back in the NFL and as an OC, not as an NFL. So he can just sit in his lab and do what he wants to do.
I think it's going to be one of those.

Speaker 2 And their defense is interesting, too. You know, it's not.
They lack a little bit of firepower along their lines, but they still have dudes. You know, Max Crosby is a dude.

Speaker 2 Christian Wilkins, if he's healthy, is a dude. And of course, they got Genti, the running back.

Speaker 2 And Brock Bowers on offense. So I look at them as like a seven-win team that's going to just be really annoying because of what they do on offense and defense.
Definitely like a,

Speaker 2 what do you call it, a league pass team.

Speaker 2 That's what the Raiders are kind of for me.

Speaker 1 They're a league pass team, and they're also a do not throw them the team they're playing in a three-team tease or some sort of big parlor because the Raiders are plus nine and a half and somehow just beating somebody outright.

Speaker 1 They're a stay away from me.

Speaker 1 I think out of those four teams, Rams, Bucks, Broncos, Texans,

Speaker 1 I think now it's July 20th. It could change.

Speaker 1 We still have the training camps are going to start. There's going to be all the stuff we learn from all the media pieces and all the coverage and the day-to-day stuff.

Speaker 1 And like, there's so many variables. Like, Ted McMillan might come into Carolina and just be, people are just going to be like, I'm blown away.
Every day this guy does something.

Speaker 1 Like, it could be one of those situations, like, all right, now I have to revise this Carolina thing if this guy's going to be Mike Evans right away.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's going to happen, but we have, or Hampton on the Chargers. Like the season, the preseason might start and everybody might be like, this guy's incredible.

Speaker 1 Or the guy you mentioned on the Broncos, Harvey. Yeah.
What if he's just awesome?

Speaker 1 You know, and we went from like, as you said, the bottom five running back crew in the NFL to all of a sudden they have this dude on pace for 1400 yards.

Speaker 1 So we don't know yet, but these are just kind of the leans, I think. I think those are fair.

Speaker 2 And this year, too, just this class, there's a lot of what players consider were more good than elite, a lot more green chip guys than blue chip guys.

Speaker 2 And that's the thing is, when you get a lot of that, there's a lot of variance, though. There's a lot of guys that could rise a lot higher.
Like the team was right in taking this guy.

Speaker 2 So that's where I think there's just a lot more surprises when you get that. Like, okay, this is, you know, it's kind of just an interesting class, and especially the positions.

Speaker 2 You know, there's a lot of running backs that can make an impact. Caleb Johnson with the Steelers going to, it was just the whole time it was, he has to go to his own team.

Speaker 2 He has to go to his own team. He has, and then he goes to the Steelers who only run zone.
And it was like, okay, well, this could work.

Speaker 2 Like, even, even whoever's playing at quarterback, but it's like there's at least a path there to, okay, this guy actually in this offensive system, because they have an interesting offensive line too, that they can sneak up on teams.

Speaker 2 They can beat some of these bad teams that just can't stop the run. And I know that sounds just so simplistic, but that's what the, that's what football is.

Speaker 2 It's like, if a team can run five yards a time at a time, they're not going to recall anything else. They don't need their new quarterback to do anything.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like there's any meat left on the bone nicks bone? Or did what we see last year is basically what it is?

Speaker 2 Everything's going to come down to what he can do on third down. But this is kind of how I pictured him.

Speaker 2 Like a lot of, he has some creativity to him. He's a great athlete and he's got an absolute rocket of an arm.
It's sometimes he technically will be accurate because he throws underneath a lot.

Speaker 2 And Sean Payton did a hell of a job to kind of figure out the offense with him. But that's the thing is he built it for his rookie quarterback.
Can he make the leap? Usually we'll see a lot.

Speaker 2 It all depends on third down. I don't think there's a lot more because he's older, and this is just how he played in college too.
You know, a cheetah doesn't change its spots kind of thing.

Speaker 2 Like this is the type of player he'll be, but it's good enough to start. It's good enough to win a playoff game, I think, because of just how they built this offense.

Speaker 2 So I don't think there's as much meat as maybe the other guys of his class. And I think that was kind of the expectation when they drafted him, too.

Speaker 1 We're taking a break and then we got to race through the rest of these because I really want to clear the floor for you for Timberwolf Summer League combo, but we're taking one break.

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This episode is brought to you by TikTok. Sports fans love to discover the next greatest player of all time.

Speaker 1 TikTok applies that passion to the whole game.

Speaker 1 You'll find fans breaking down games, people teaching the math behind advanced stats, even communities showing how sports connect to bigger cultural moments.

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Speaker 1 Every day there's something new to discover on TikTok. All right, next category is the blah team to the playoff team.
I would describe blah,

Speaker 1 you're like seven and 10, you're eight and nine,

Speaker 1 a couple things happen,

Speaker 1 nothing memorable. Maybe you had a bad injury.

Speaker 1 Or in the Bengals case, you had just had crazy bad luck in close games. In Miami's case, maybe your quarterback seemed like he should have to retire from football and then he didn't.

Speaker 1 In Atlantis case, maybe you spent a ton of money on a guy who turned out he was a corpse and then you had to bring in the next guy.

Speaker 1 In the Niners' case, maybe every single thing that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong. So our nominees, so last year was the 24 Vikings,

Speaker 1 who

Speaker 1 they were fine. Nobody really had any high expectations for them.
Then boom, they're 14 and three. The year before it was the 23 Lions and the Browns made big jumps.

Speaker 1 So our nominees this year from this weird range, the Bengals 9-8 last year, Colts 8-9, Miami 6-11.

Speaker 1 That's AFC. So let's do AFC first.
Bengals, Colts, Miami.

Speaker 1 Who intrigues you?

Speaker 2 Bengals, just because the offense.

Speaker 2 But that's of that group.

Speaker 2 That's not like, I'm not like really excited.

Speaker 2 I'm not as, I think this is what the Bengals are. They're in this range.

Speaker 2 Like they are a nine-win team. Maybe you can get to 10.
But because just I, there's so much just, I mean, they haven't signed their first-round pick still.

Speaker 2 They're just the defense I still don't trust.

Speaker 2 I respect that.

Speaker 1 Why would you? The defense is terrible. Why would you trust it?

Speaker 2 And look at the division they're in and the conference they're in.

Speaker 2 Again, it's just that it's hell in the AFC if you don't have at least a viable side, at least a top half side on both sides, you know, offense and defense.

Speaker 2 So it's based on how many points they can score, you know, and I do respect the offensive vision. I've actually really have liked Zach Taylor's slash Joe Burrow.

Speaker 2 I'm sure he has a lot of input, like the changes they make year to year.

Speaker 2 Like, I really do think everything the defenses throw at them, they always find new little wrinkles, even if it's a, you know, maybe not the most varied offense.

Speaker 2 Like, the closest comparison is the Colts and the Otts with Peyton Manning, like where it was just like, they ran their seven plays. You got to stop them.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of the level they're at right now. But it's a lot like those Colts teams of the Ottawa.
What was their defense like?

Speaker 2 You know, it's just based their, how good they are is based on how good their defense was.

Speaker 2 But I don't, it's just, that's such a tough division and conference that it's hard to say that they can be anything more. It's where other teams have to drop around them, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 I don't get the Bengals case.

Speaker 1 It's July 20th. I might change my mind, but I just look at

Speaker 1 they're the guy in fantasy who spends $170 on three guys and then tries to fill out the rest of the roster with the one-dollar guys.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what they did.

Speaker 1 And after the draft, he's like, I have Chase and Higgins and Burrow. And you're like, cool, you've no running backs.

Speaker 2 It's a lot like the Saints with Breeze for a while. And remember them in the 2010s? He's thrown 5,000 yards, but they're winning six games.

Speaker 2 It's a lot like that. They're just a weirdly...
shaped team because they didn't hit on defense like they needed to.

Speaker 1 Well, the combo of overpaying, well, they didn't overpay. They properly paid their three guys, but they paid them like

Speaker 1 Premier.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They paid Chase and Burrow, like top five guys.

Speaker 1 They got a slight discount on Higgins, but he's still making a lot of money. But they're also a cheap franchise.

Speaker 1 And so like when the Chiefs today, before we started recording, they signed Carl Aftis for like a $90 million extension.

Speaker 1 And I've made this joke over and over again. I'm going to keep making it.
I don't understand the NFL salary cap at all.

Speaker 1 It doesn't seem like this isn't like the second apron where your Timberwolves have to be like, Can't afford Alexander Walker who pushed us over this second apron. There is no any apron in the NFL.

Speaker 1 And she's like, Yeah, Carl Aftis, and we'll just keep pushing the money that way. The Bengals don't do that at all.

Speaker 2 Teams are starting to complain about that, though. Right.
They saw what the Eagles are doing. They're like, okay, okay, okay.
You guys won your title.

Speaker 2 Let's stop this, but I don't know. We'll see how that

Speaker 1 CBA is going to change anytime soon. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I look at the Bengals and I'm like, if you're going to

Speaker 1 spend big money on three guys, you can't also then be cheap.

Speaker 2 The other teams in that group is just hard. Like the Dolphins are like, what are the Dolphins?

Speaker 2 They are such a, they have an awful DB room.

Speaker 2 Awesome front seven. I'll say that on defense, but then on offense, it's like, I can't trust the offensive line, even if I do like pieces.

Speaker 2 They kind of just feel like they're in an identity shift. They keep talking about how tough and physical they're going to be.
But it was like, oh no, you guys are winning with a lot of speed, though.

Speaker 2 So like, and then the Colts, it's,

Speaker 2 i i i know what daniel jones is uh even if i really like what the run game is going to be and i was i i still have a garden on anthony richards richardson island and and actually i and actually maybe like a picket fence on riley leonard island like so you own property on anthony richardson island i i do i do like a garden really i just thought there was a chance he could be like culpepper like you know you gotta remember what i what i saw what i grew up with so i still have a garden I used to have a house, but I sold it.

Speaker 1 Here's the difference, though. Culpepper was this big-ass dude who was actually pretty durable, at least for the first part of his career.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 His knee exploded. Well, then his knee exploded.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
But I mean, he would take big hits and get up. Richardson seems like

Speaker 1 accurate.

Speaker 1 That helps, too. But Richardson seems like it takes big hits and stays down.

Speaker 2 Yes. And that's what led to the turmoil last year where

Speaker 2 his teammates were openly complaining about him. He couldn't do that.

Speaker 2 That's where I kind of sold. But then he played some games where he kind of like against the Jets who were kind of had the white flag.

Speaker 1 But I've said it's a garden.

Speaker 2 Now you're making me say it's just a flower, just one plant.

Speaker 1 One pot.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 I think Miami has a chance to be absolutely terrible. And I already, it's one of the only future bets I've already made was to bet the adjusted unders on them.
I don't see it at all. What is it at?

Speaker 1 Well, I think it moved, but I did one of the bets I did when I was in Indiana was I did,

Speaker 1 I think I did under seven wins for them or under six wins or something, like whatever. I think it's moved a little bit.
I also think McDaniel is in first coach fire territory.

Speaker 2 Feels weird right now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it feels like,

Speaker 1 let's see how this goes. I think their division, you know, the Pats are going to be better and the Jets might actually be like a whiff frisky.
And then you have Buffalo in there. So I don't know.

Speaker 2 Jets are going to be a bad team beater.

Speaker 2 That's why I call them.

Speaker 2 Because they have a run game and they have a defense that's going to be good too. So it's like, and just a mentality.
So they're going to be like a bad, like, you better bring it.

Speaker 2 Like, I can see them. I can see they're going to be that classic team that wins three at the end of the season.
Yeah. And everyone's like, oh, Aaron Glenn's got him coming around as they finish 6-11.

Speaker 2 You know, but he was one of the last three, you know, but a lot of close games. But the Jets, the Jets' run game, that whole line is pretty, pretty badass.

Speaker 2 And they got a little run game with Justin Fields and stuff. So yeah, watch the Jets run game this year.

Speaker 1 I don't see them being

Speaker 1 a high points offense, but I see a lot of like 16 to 13, 19 to 12.

Speaker 2 Greg Maddox starts.

Speaker 1 10 to 9.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. A lot of fast ones.
I don't really like any of those choices either for the AFC. And by the way,

Speaker 1 it's perfect to be like, you know what? I don't like Bengals Colts or Miami.

Speaker 1 In the other division or the other conference, Falcons, Dallas, and the Niners. Falcons were 8-9.
Dallas, 7-10, Niners, 6-11. Penix to me is a follow-up to that J.J.
McCarthy point I made earlier.

Speaker 1 I just don't know.

Speaker 1 What if he's just not good? We have no idea.

Speaker 1 There were flashes, right? Did you like what you saw?

Speaker 2 Yeah, he's kind of like Cutler to me, Jay Cutler, where it's the highs are high, and he has a huge arm, but sometimes it's the varsity blues scene where the Cowboys get knocked off the horse.

Speaker 2 You know, like that, it's just once in a while, you don't know where it's going. Yeah.
And And that's the thing.

Speaker 2 So, I think he's volatile, but I think the run game is gonna be good, and I think that he has enough highs that it's gonna like, yeah, there's gonna be some games where he comes alive, but I think that defense is just gonna be bad.

Speaker 2 I don't think they'll be able to stop the run, so and they play in a division with the Bucks, the Panthers, and the Saints, who all like drafted first-round linemen and invested in a run game.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I'm not, I'm staying away from the Falcons, even if Pennex is okay.

Speaker 1 Niners, everybody's on, yeah, um, it's a 10 and a half. They're

Speaker 1 10 and a half is too high. It's schedule related and it's like injury luck related.
And I get it, but I just think they lost a lot of dudes.

Speaker 1 And, you know, from a receiver standpoint, everyone's like, well, then Ayuk will be back. And it's like, Willie, when's he coming back? He

Speaker 1 blew out his knees in October. Like, we're just throwing him back in, just running up and down the field for three hours.
I'm not buying that yet.

Speaker 2 And it's just a tough, another, you don't think so, but it's a tough division. They have the easiest schedule in the NFL.

Speaker 3 That's, that's, and man, they

Speaker 2 I do think they're better because on defense, uh, I think that they went about this offseason like what how they should have, not only just getting Robert Solow back in the building, but they're they became really bad against the run.

Speaker 2 Uh, they leaned into the bit a little too much, they really wanted to be like, We're feisty, we get upfield on the front, like ah, ears pinned back.

Speaker 2 But you know, they went and signed Javon Hargrave, who I complimented for the Vikings, but for the 49ers, he just actually wasn't what they needed because he was just

Speaker 2 risk-reward. And they already have that with Nick Bosa, who's their dude.

Speaker 2 But it's just kind of like, okay, all right, if we don't get him right away and get this TFL, that's a six-yard gain, and Fred Warner has to clean it up.

Speaker 2 And I think now, but I having said all that, like, so this stats, and I know EPA is kind of can be a little volatile if you don't have a huge data set, but this is a nice season long.

Speaker 2 So since 2019, the 49ers against the run, EPA per rush, ninth, 2019, ninth in 2020, first in 2021, second in 2020, 22, 2023, 28th, 2024, 28th.

Speaker 2 And how they play defense is very,

Speaker 2 they play quarters. So it's very like, I wouldn't say soft, but it's more like, hey, we rallied to tackle.
Like we have really good linebacker and Fred Warner. We have feisty safeties.

Speaker 2 And I think what they did was, okay, first round pick, Mikel Williams, who is going to enter the league as maybe against the pass, he's going to be more of a developmental guy, but he's like awesome against the run.

Speaker 2 And so I think they ate, you know, ate their vegetables a little bit this offseason. So

Speaker 2 I kind of like that on defense to really help them out because that was more of a blemish than I think people realized last year.

Speaker 2 And I think, of course, you have Kyle Shanahan, which, so if guys are healthy, like you said with the receivers, like it's easy.

Speaker 2 I think it's an easy nine wins, 11 wins, like the win total is, that's a little, that's a little sketchy to me. You know, I think this is a 9-10 win team, but definitely a proved team.

Speaker 1 Williams, 10-1 on Fando for Defensive Rookie of the Year. Okay.
That one jumped out at me because he only had Abdul Carter and Jalen Walker ahead of him.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and Carter has, they have too many dudes on the Giants defense. You know, I mean, so his stats might not be crazy.
Like, you know, he might be good, but yeah. Now, I'm high on Michael Williams.

Speaker 2 Even if, you know, he might not be a high sack guy this year, but man, this guy's, I think, going to be a two-way against the run and the pass, gonna be a really good player down the road.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I got to look at the Niners more. I want to find out more about IU because I think they're going to have a lot of trouble throwing the ball.
The McCaffrey stuff has already started.

Speaker 1 He's in the best shape of his life. And so we get to do that.

Speaker 1 The dude works out for 12 months. His career.
Every year, it's like, oh, this is the year he's coming in.

Speaker 2 His year in Germany again, the blood spin. You know, he's getting all that.

Speaker 1 I don't trust it. Is it cool if I don't trust it? I just don't assume he's going to play Mr.
Straight once anymore. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And that's what's tough.
I trust the run game, if that makes sense, but CMC makes the whole offense like supernova.

Speaker 2 So it's that if you trust that, but I do think they're obviously going to be better just because they have to be. They

Speaker 2 faced so much bad luck last year.

Speaker 1 Well, Dallas nominees. Yeah, Dallas.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Falcons, I just think we put to the side.
Who knows? Dallas,

Speaker 1 there's a pretty interesting case for Dallas, which would be fun for me because it really determines cousin Sal's mood on Sunday nights. But,

Speaker 1 you know, they're getting some guys back, some injuries. They had a good draft.
Dak's back.

Speaker 1 Coaching change. There's some signs.
Coaching change is always good.

Speaker 1 If it's, I know people weren't that fired up about the Brian Scheinheimer thing, but you know, when teams, people weren't fired up about Dan Quinn. Who the F knows?

Speaker 1 Is there a Cowboys case at offering? We know they have the quarterback. They're going to be able to block.

Speaker 1 They'll have a pass rush. Their D-line, that whole area is among the best in the league.
Maybe?

Speaker 2 No, definitely maybe. I think they are definitely going to be a

Speaker 2 winning team. You know, now this NFC is going to be wide open.

Speaker 2 I think not only the offensive line, they drafted another guy in the first round, Tyler Booker. But so they have some real beef.

Speaker 2 But then they also, their offensive coordinator is Clayton Adams, and they signed him from the Cardinals. He was the offensive line coach with the Cardinals.

Speaker 2 And I really like this because this is kind of what the Lions kind of, I would say what the Lions did outright, but it's like having a

Speaker 2 full-faith OC who is actually no line guy. This is actually what the Packers did.
It may be a bear. So Schoenheimer is the play caller, but the OC is technically like the run game coordinator.

Speaker 2 So I think that was actually just, if you just read read between the lines, this is a commitment to what they're going to do.

Speaker 2 And this is where Dak can really beat Dak is control the game before he's won the best before the snap, can kind of controlling everything.

Speaker 2 So you get the strong run game that, hey, you're going to play us like this because now they have George Pickens.

Speaker 2 And Pickens, I didn't like for everybody, but I like George Pickens for the Cowboys because he is a great stylistic fit. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't think he, I think he's a two. Like, I don't think he's a true number one guy because who is a number one guy? CeeDee Lamb.
CeeDee is a slot. He's what I call a power slot.

Speaker 2 He's best from the slot or best as a Z who is off the ball and can move around. That's a flanker.
George Pickens is a true X.

Speaker 1 He is on the

Speaker 1 straight line.

Speaker 2 Straight line. Goes and stop routes.
Dak Prescott, for better or for worse, loves throwing stop routes, which is a 10 yards or 12 yards and turnaround stop. That's literally what it sounds like.

Speaker 2 It's kind of an archaic route now because how defenses play, but he likes them if you're accurate and you have a dude that can win. Pickens is amazing at him.

Speaker 2 So I actually think that was great. And this frees up CeeDee Lamb to move all over the formation.
So

Speaker 2 he makes sense more to the Cowboys than I thought maybe to other teams. So I really like that fit for a few reasons.
On defense, they have the dude, Micah Parsons.

Speaker 2 I really liked a sneaky signing they had, Jack Sanborn, who's with the Bears.

Speaker 2 You know, they got face injury at linebacker, and that's maybe they're still a little more iffy against the run.

Speaker 2 I think they'll be okay but they're gonna be great against the pass because they're pass rush but sanborn i think will help shore it up until overshone comes back like that i thought that was a sneaky good signing for them that he can end up being a decent linebacker starter just an okay starter for him but that's what they need desperately need that uh right now well and they threw away their uh they threw away their running back position again which i don't totally understand yeah i i yeah i i didn't like that i do like the run it's one of those i like it's maybe like how the broncos were where i really like the run ball the blocking and the run game but maybe the running backs are going to be frustrating.

Speaker 2 Guess who's who they have? Javante Williams, who was with the Broncos last year.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't love their

Speaker 1 you know, that when we do these FPI, whatever the hell the schedule thing, yeah, I don't totally love it because I think teams change so much from year to year.

Speaker 1 I just look at their first eight weeks, like they start out there at Philly in the first game of the year. Like, that sucks.
That's like almost a guaranteed 0-1. They have Giants at home

Speaker 1 at Chicago week three. Like, what if Chicago is pretty good? Home Packers week four, at Jets, at Panthers, and then they're at Broncos week eight.

Speaker 1 So it's like you look at that and you go, can you get to four and four? Can you be four and four coming out of that? Could you get to five and three? Or is it probably looking like a three and five?

Speaker 1 So it's going to be somewhere in there, and that's going to determine how they go.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, absolutely. Oh, man, that is a tough slate.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't like it. It's one of those where you look at it and go, ah,

Speaker 1 I don't really like any of these games.

Speaker 2 And even matchup-wise, it's not exactly ideal. It's like those are teams that can.

Speaker 1 When does he come back?

Speaker 2 I have no idea.

Speaker 1 He might have been the second half of the season.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's do, we'll make this quick.

Speaker 1 The out of nowhere teams, which have become more and more of a lock. This we had the Broncos, Chargers, and Washington.
This is one of the reasons I did so well last year is I nailed these last year,

Speaker 1 which makes me almost, I'm almost coming to grips with I'm going to get killed this year because I did too well last year. But I sent you all the playoff odds, all the teams.

Speaker 1 Give me like three that jump out to you as like a possible out of nowhere leap.

Speaker 2 Again, I lean towards the NFC and

Speaker 2 there was a nice stat I got from NFL research this week. It was thing is we were at 35 straight years.
So since 1990, that four teams that didn't make the playoffs made the playoffs next year.

Speaker 2 We're at 35 straight years.

Speaker 1 I always try to do three in each conference. Last year, there there were only four total that flipped.
Usually it's six. Okay.
And you usually have to just try to figure out the six. The math.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's why I just keep looking at the NFC because I just think it's so up and down based on the quarterbacks. You've already talked about some of the young guys.

Speaker 2 And just, it's like, you know, the Packers could be a good team, but like, I look at the Cardinals

Speaker 2 as the first team that comes to mind for this exercise because not only just because I like their offense.

Speaker 2 But I really, really, really intrigued by their defense. They faced the fifth easiest schedule.
Again, we know how that can change and everything. I think the offense, I know what it is.

Speaker 2 I don't think it can maybe get to that top five, but I think this could be a top 12, top 10 unit with a good run game, explosive offense. The big thing for me is I don't know who can take the top off.

Speaker 2 So it might maybe feel a little tight.

Speaker 2 They got to expand Marvin Harrison Jr.'s role. So, but I trust the offense in the weirdest way.
And even if Kyler Murray could be up and down, he was better last year.

Speaker 2 That was one of his most, that was his most consistent season ever.

Speaker 2 So if they can just even get that, but the defense, this defense last year was the 10th best defense in the EPA or the second half of the season.

Speaker 2 It coincided with a lot of guys coming back from injury.

Speaker 2 They lost, they had the fourth most Justin Gabes loss according to what's now FTN fantasy, which used to be football outsiders, outsiders guys, but those guys, but they were 10th in the second half of the season.

Speaker 2 They had the sixth highest pressure rate in the second half of the season. They got Baron Browning.
They added a whole bunch of new faces on defense, like real talent, draft and free agency.

Speaker 2 Uh, they get guys coming back from injury, like BJ Ojolari, who missed his second year, but had a solid rookie year, signed Josh Swede, Dalvin Tomlinson, drafted uh Walter Nolan in the first round.

Speaker 2 So they added real talent, and they were a top, again, top 10 defense without this talent last year.

Speaker 2 So the Cardinals, I think, are going to be at the very least frisky and a team that I think there was one plus 125 on the odds that you sent me.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 1 they've been one of the most bet teams during the offseason.

Speaker 2 Secrets out.

Speaker 2 This was a lot more fun taking May

Speaker 1 than it is right now in July. Well, counter.
Can I counter?

Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Who are the blue chippers on this team for you?

Speaker 2 Trey McBride. Right.

Speaker 1 Tight end. There's one.

Speaker 2 Paris Johnson Jr., left tackle.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Buddha Baker, safety.

Speaker 2 I would even say they have another safety, Jalen Thompson, who is like borderline.

Speaker 2 But I agree with, I know where you're going with this. It's a lot more green and yellow,

Speaker 2 more like above average to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's what when I did all my preliminary rankings, I

Speaker 1 had those. I had Johnson, Harrison, McBride, and Baker, and Harrison's barely.
I mean, he certainly didn't earn it last year. We're going more

Speaker 1 up to a college pedigree, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, he's going to be, he, he's just like his dad. It's crazy.
Like, he, it's, he's literally a bigger pedigree.

Speaker 1 I think he's just like his dad. No, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I had to. Who?

Speaker 2 No, I don't know.

Speaker 2 No, but I do think that they were trying to make him a true ex, like I talked about with Pickens. He's not that.
He's a route runner. He's a guy that has to move around the formation.

Speaker 2 And so I think they pigeonholed him in the first half of the season. And I think they're figuring out a little bit, but they need to do it.
It's one of those I have to see.

Speaker 2 Like in theory, it's like, yeah, they can do it, but it's like, I still have to see it.

Speaker 1 There were games where you didn't even know he was playing. He was one of those.
It was like Brasillo's Tobias Harris joke. It was like, hey, there's Marvin Harrison.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize he was out there the last two hours.

Speaker 2 No, he had some empty games.

Speaker 2 They faced, I talked about that cover two stuff. He was getting the respect of that already.
But then I was kind of disappointed in the Cardinals' passing game to go like, okay, open them up.

Speaker 2 Like, you're getting these cover two looks.

Speaker 1 All right, move them to the slot.

Speaker 2 I don't know. You know, so it's one of those I want to see this year.
But if they, if they figure it out, they got a lot of good pieces, I do think.

Speaker 1 They had that stretch. I think they won four straight.
We got all excited about them. They were overachieving.

Speaker 1 And then they just fucking cratered. Oh, I mean, it was a cratering.
And they lost that Carolina game. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Carolina.

Speaker 1 Oh, the Carolina game is brutal.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I just, I don't trust Kyler Murray at all.

Speaker 1 I do not have them marked down. Maybe I'll change my mind as I keep reading the newspaper stuff.
All right. Give me your second one.

Speaker 2 Second one,

Speaker 2 where are my notes there? Oh, okay. Second one was the Bears.

Speaker 1 Popular case.

Speaker 2 I'm going to dig in.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 Again, I do believe in Ben Johnson.

Speaker 2 I believe in coaches that don't blink.

Speaker 2 I just, I think that that's going to, I think he is very, very detailed. And I think he's working with a quarterback that is more detailed than people are giving credit for.

Speaker 2 I think we've talked about this before, but I like the O-Line additions. Like, Joe Tooney is a top five guard.
He is. Joe Tooney played tackle at the end of last year with the Chiefs.
It was bad.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 it was very unfair.

Speaker 2 The thing with the Bears is for years, and I would say since Olin Crutz basically retired, so over a decade ago, they have had just a hole at center and it's really helped or helped cripple their quarterbacks their young quarterbacks i i'm a big believer in having a solid center at the very least to take the load off a young quarterback they went and got they you know kind of overpaid it a little bit they got drew dahlman but drew dahlman at the very least is a top half center in this league a top 10 center in this league he has to be specific they have to use a lot of zone but they're now working with a play caller that can runs a lot of zone and ben Johnson.

Speaker 2 And I think it works with the quarterback because they're going to do more boot and more play action and more movement to their offense.

Speaker 2 There's a lot more on this, more than just, ooh, good play caller from good offense goes to offense with quarterback. It's more than that.
There's a lot of stylistic fits that make sense here.

Speaker 2 Caleb was a really good quick game and screen thrower because he's so creative and throw sidearm and throw all these funky throws. Ben Johnson calls a lot of receiver screens.

Speaker 2 Like that, that's one of the sneaky parts about this lines offense. I'm on Russell Brown was getting so many receiver screens.
Khalif Raymond, even Jameson Williams, all these guys.

Speaker 2 Now they get with DJ Moore, who's awesome on receiver screens. Roman Dunesay is great on receiver screens.
Even the tight end Colson Loveland's great on little outside receiver screens.

Speaker 1 So I'm digging it.

Speaker 2 I finally am actually like kind of buying the hype. I was not hyped last year.
I saw the holes in the old line. I'm like, this is...
This might not go great. I know who the play caller is.

Speaker 2 I know how this old line is. This might not go great.
This year, I'm actually buying it because of Dahlman of Tooney, even Ozzie Trapillo, who they drafted on day two.

Speaker 2 There's just a lot that makes sense stylistically. And I like the defense.
Having said that, they faced a third-hardest schedule. So

Speaker 2 that's a little bit of the part of this, but I do believe in what I saw from the flashes of Caleb Williams, even though I think a lot of people are low on him right now. I think this is going to work.

Speaker 1 The offensive line stuff's real. I mean, I was doing, and shout out to Brandon Thorne, because I like when he does his rankings, but he did a good job.
There's a couple other things, you know,

Speaker 1 the ones that really watch it and study it. and what, like, you just got to trust them because I'm not going to be able to know who the good right guard is on whatever.

Speaker 1 But it really looks like they have a top nine or 10 offensive line now. And that was the reason last year fell apart among the, you know, it was the coaching and the offensive line.

Speaker 1 They fixed the coaching. They're going to be able to block.
They have weapons. They spent money.
Defense should be okay.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 is Caleb good? I think is going to be what we find out because I do feel like I just think Drake May is a safer bet than Caleb as long as he

Speaker 1 as long as he can avoid these big hits that he was taking last year

Speaker 1 but I just think feature not a bug with with Drake just don't just just go out of bounds don't put your don't put your head down you're in the NFL you're not in the ACC anymore put just go out of bounds it's fine

Speaker 1 but uh

Speaker 1 but yeah I I see the case for the Bears but I think it's a pretty popular one what if you had to pick an AFC team who would you pick AFC out of nowhere.

Speaker 2 Oh, AFC out of nowhere? Oh, man. I had, I think I wrote one down.

Speaker 1 Just say the Pats. Come on.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was the Patriots, wasn't it? It was the Patriots. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think I texted you this, but what's cool about Will Campbell is

Speaker 2 I think his floor is just so high that no matter what, he's a best five enabler, which means no matter what, the Patriots have their best five offensive linemen out there because he can play, I think, all five spots.

Speaker 2 And there's something to that. Like that, that is something that is really beneficial to an offense.

Speaker 2 He's also a high IQ guy because he was calling out blitzes last year as a left tackle, a true junior left tackle, just stuff like that, just little things you see on tape, true leader type.

Speaker 2 Like not only that, they got Garrett Bradbury, who was iffy last year. He gave up a lot of pressure last year with the Vikings.

Speaker 2 But I did like their third-round pick. I like Jared Wilson

Speaker 2 from Georgia. I thought he's more of a big athlete, different than what you usually see at center, but he really took to it.
Like he's a guy I was really high on at this draft process.

Speaker 2 So I actually, and I like that he doesn't necessarily have to start right away, but I do think I really like the upside of what he can become.

Speaker 2 And again, I talked about having a good center quarterback pairing. I think that's paramount to a good offense.

Speaker 2 So yeah, of course, I just have to talk about the offensive line, but that's because we're the success is going to come from. And then

Speaker 1 think about it, though. Last year, they had a zero out of 10 coaching staff, and they had a zero out of 10 offensive line.
So if you're going just 20 points for those two units, they get a zero.

Speaker 1 And now maybe Rabel, maybe he can be like a seven or an eight out of 10 and maybe the offensive line can be a four. And so that's got to be worth like four wins.

Speaker 2 There's something to like people always think you have to go from shit to like great. There's something from just going to shit to not shit.

Speaker 1 you know, from a zero to a four,

Speaker 2 a one to a five or a six. Like that, you can get a huge, well, I was just talking about the Bears.

Speaker 2 Drew Dahlman just has to be above average, and it's like four tiers better center play than the Bears have had in years.

Speaker 2 But same with the Patriots, but it's just their entire offensive line. And Cole Strange is coming back.
Cole Strange has had moments and stretches where he

Speaker 2 looks like a good starter. It's just that it's just been few and far between with the injuries and stuff.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. Well, I'm already over

Speaker 1 with the Pats.

Speaker 1 You like the Cowboys.

Speaker 2 Where are they at now? Seven and a half?

Speaker 1 Eight and a half? The Pats are in the plus 156 range to make the playoffs, which seems way too low. Cowboys are plus 186.

Speaker 1 You also, like, when you talk about this exercise, and I'm going to be talking about it a bunch on this podcast, but you almost like, it's like a nightclub.

Speaker 1 Somebody's got to come out to bring a new person in, right? So to me, if the Bears are going to get in there, Green Bay has to leave. Right.
Green Bay, that's the spot. You know, for Arizona,

Speaker 1 it's probably the Minnesota spot. if they're going to grab one of them, right? Because I think we both think the Rams are going to be.
They bumped up the Rams too.

Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly. And it's it's like, all right.
And then we just bumped up the 49ers as well. So it's who is not making it?

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 And that, that's what's

Speaker 2 bullish on the Seahawks too, more than most people are, too. I will say.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 make the case because I do feel like their over-under seems at least a win too low. And I thought Sam Darnold versus Gino seems like sideways, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 1 Year two of the coach.

Speaker 1 I thought they had a really good draft. I thought they had one of the four or five best drafts, right?

Speaker 2 Yep, I agree. And I think their defense is going to be like legit, legit.
McDonald's defense usually takes a minute to click.

Speaker 2 And because just because it's so varied,

Speaker 2 they run a lot of a lot.

Speaker 2 People say, oh, you got to copy the McDonald's scheme. It's like, well, that means you're running everything.

Speaker 2 But no, they shored up once they got Ernest Jones last year. Their linebacker play got better.
Their defensive front is going to be really good. They got a lot of different body types, too.

Speaker 2 They got gap shooters, pluggers. Leonard Williams really came along, who they traded for last year, but they have a lot of talent up front.

Speaker 2 But also, they have really talented DBs. Devon Weterspoon is all-pro worthy in the slot, and he's going to get weaponized in this defense.
But I agree with you.

Speaker 2 I think Darnold is a sidestep because I think the offense's floor is going to be higher. They put a lot on Gino last year with a play caller that seemed to be in over his head, as it turned out.

Speaker 2 Now they get Kubiak, and I think that offense, they're going to run a lot of zone, a lot of boots. Darnold's fine in that, and he'll bring some highs to the offense because he's going to go for it.

Speaker 2 He's hell or high water. He'll bring some lows too, but I think that's kind of part of the offense.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 We're going to lean on the defense, have a zone run game, and have some volatility with our pass game, but we'll live with it.

Speaker 2 I'm, yeah, I'm higher on them. They cut Noah fant today, which was interesting, but I still like A.J.
Barner a lot, their tight end, and the guy they drafted, Elijah Arroyo. But no, they...

Speaker 2 I'm higher on them than most because I think that defense is going to be pretty, pretty good. And I think the offense is going to be better than people anticipate.

Speaker 2 They drafted, I keep going and going, sorry, but Grey Zabelle at guard.

Speaker 2 I like Ola Wilawatimi at center. I like Charles Cross, the left tackle.
And again, going from shit to not shit.

Speaker 2 Not saying this is going to be a top five offensive line, but a zone boot offense helps the offensive line. So they can be like 18th or 20th.
And I think that I see a vision here.

Speaker 2 Like, I think a higher vision than maybe others do.

Speaker 1 Two good drafts in a row, which is always. I like their draft last year.
I thought they got a couple good guys out of that. So, yeah, there's,

Speaker 1 I would, I personally like the Seattle case more than the Arizona case, but this is why we have all this time to think about it. All right.

Speaker 2 That's why

Speaker 1 we left just enough time. We left just enough time for the Minnesota Timberwolves.
And the buzz already started that they got to do well this year. Anthony Edwards is going to start looking around.

Speaker 1 God,

Speaker 1 why do we have to do this with the NBA? I never understand it. It's ridiculous.
Can't we just have good things? He likes Minnesota. The team's good.
They made the conference finals two years in a row.

Speaker 1 What are we doing?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Dean Moore covers the Wolves, does a great job.
He laid it all out.

Speaker 2 He's like, Anthony, no one can make more money than Anthony Edwards if he stays a Timber Wolf, like ever, because he was the number one pick and he's already made all pro or all NBA teams.

Speaker 2 And so, you know, it can hit a higher number. He's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 Have we looked at the youth of this team?

Speaker 2 Like the Summer League squad was like, that was a lot of fun to watch when you have some legit NBA guys out there as opposed to like Tyus Jones is your best player.

Speaker 2 You know, it was like, you know, TJ Shannon was way too good out there. And you can see Edwards was at every game and he was hyped up for all the guys and stuff.
And yeah, he's not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 I don't think.

Speaker 1 Well, you know what else you have coming this year, which I'm really excited about? The

Speaker 1 full bringing Garnett back into the fold. Yes.
Because that's been one of the big tragedies.

Speaker 1 He hated Glenn Taylor. There were real reasons for it.

Speaker 1 All he wanted to do was be a big part of the Minnesota Timberwolves, but he was going to wait until, so now you're going to bring, they'll retire his number this year. I don't know.

Speaker 1 The vibes are good. And by the way, you made the conference finals two years in a row.
Right. The team's doing well.
Things are things are okay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And shoot, and Joan Berenger, who I admit I watched five minutes of before the draft.

Speaker 1 The highlights were good.

Speaker 2 Oh, my goodness. He's second youngest player in the draft, which is always going to get me going.

Speaker 2 He catches everything. Like,

Speaker 2 I'm pretty astounded by him. Like,

Speaker 2 he moves like a star. And I know I'm getting way ahead of myself.
Five summer league games, four, four and a half.

Speaker 1 He was very fluid. I, I, I, very fluid.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It was, it's some, there's something there. Like he catches, he has a good feel for space.
He's stronger than, he's not just this lanky athlete.

Speaker 1 A little French connection with Gobert. Yeah.
Obviously, Gobert learned from him. Kind of tipped him off.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I know. It's uh, I was pleasantly surprised by his summer league.

Speaker 1 I, he's when do you give him some Dillingham, though? And like, how does this Dillingham thing work? Because

Speaker 1 I mean, I thought the offseason was a miracle that you got to keep Nas Reed and Randall. I didn't think that in February, that seemed impossible to me.

Speaker 1 I didn't understand what was going to happen with the lack of a market and how all these guys were basically screwed.

Speaker 1 But just to keep, it seemed like you're going to keep one of those three and you kept two of the three. You lost Alexander Walker, which is the easiest guy to replace.

Speaker 1 But Dillingham now has to be good next year, or at least as a bench guy.

Speaker 2 It was interesting, and I talked to Rob Moore again about this, but he, or Dano, I'm sorry, he had a point that he brought up then, the Summer League is they used Dillingham in a different role each game.

Speaker 2 Okay, you're the primary creator in this game, you're off-ball in this game. And some of that was how the defenses were playing, but it was a really interesting.

Speaker 2 I thought his best game was when he was off-ball and as opposed to a primary creator. And I thought that was,

Speaker 2 you know, slashing and then making the extra pass.

Speaker 2 I thought, you know, what's really nice too is he can shoot off the bounce. And that's huge because of how he wants to play.

Speaker 2 He's a great oop thrower as well, which is something Ant is very weirdly iffy at, but that helps as well. It just opens up that part of the offense.

Speaker 2 He is not my cup of tea usually at my types of players.

Speaker 2 You know, dribble heavy, undersized. That's not usually what I prefer.
But the thing is, is they have a good size on the team to insulate that.

Speaker 2 There's not three of these undersized guys. Everybody else is jumbo on the Timberwolves at their position.
So I do like that fit with it.

Speaker 2 I just think he's going to take some time and he needs, he's, he needs to play. He has to figure out what he can and can't get away with.
But this is a team that wants to make a run. So

Speaker 2 that's the balance that I think Finch has to fast.

Speaker 1 A far beast trade bait.

Speaker 2 TJ Shannon being legit is making everything feel a lot better to me, at least. I think he's going to really be a really nice player.

Speaker 1 The Conley piece is the piece that, unfortunately, you're in the same boat that the Celtex were in with Horford last year, where he can look good in the regular season, especially if he's only only playing two games a week.

Speaker 1 But once you get in that playoff grind and you're playing every other day, and in his case, you have to go through OKC, the most frightening team of all time, if you're a guard, and he's going to be 38 next year.

Speaker 1 It's just not, you're just not beating OKC if he's playing big minutes.

Speaker 2 And it's terrifying when he's out there. You can feel it's NBA playoff basketball, and it's really nice to have a team to watch again

Speaker 1 throughout it.

Speaker 2 It's so crazy, and this is what the NFL is week to week. We talk about matchups, but it's so crazy in the NBA when you just feel a guy getting picked on because it's so open in the NBA.

Speaker 2 It's five on five, so you know who's getting isolated, who's getting picked, who has to, they're making switch onto the ball.

Speaker 1 What's the NFL equivalent of that?

Speaker 2 Running at a guy,

Speaker 2 like if the guy can't hold up against the run and you just like an undersized linebacker, an undersized De Anderson.

Speaker 2 He's a good player like, you know, like Bryce Huff or Hassan Reddick, really good against the pass, but it's like, okay, well, you're undersized.

Speaker 2 We'll just run a tight end and a right tackle at you over and over again, and we'll get six yards.

Speaker 2 Like, that's kind of what it is, or man-to-man coverage, and a guy can't, guy, guy just can't keep up with the other dude. That's what the NFL is, like the best coaches.
It's just like,

Speaker 2 you watch. Yeah, you talk about Sean McVay and what Kyle Shannon do, Sean Payton, Andy Reid, and they do all the motion and stuff.
All they're doing is manipulating.

Speaker 2 the defense to get into a certain look so this guy is exposed or this defense is exposed. And it's just, you know, know, same thing in the NBA.
You see all the picks and switches and all that.

Speaker 2 It's like, oh, they're just trying to get this guy isolated 25 feet out. So it's fun to watch.
Like I'm trying to get more into NBA tactics.

Speaker 2 I'm picking it up a little bit.

Speaker 1 Well, everyone was so freaking hunt heavy that,

Speaker 1 you know, it was interesting to watch that OKC Indiana series when,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 there was just so much movement at all times.

Speaker 1 It was like this level above hunting. It was pretty cool.
And then, of course, Hal Burton blows out its Achilles.

Speaker 1 Game seven falls apart.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 By the way, before we go, what's the thing you're, the single thing you're most excited about with this 2025 NFL season as you dive into things? What's your number one thing? Oh, man.

Speaker 2 All the second-year quarterbacks.

Speaker 2 That's cheating, but all of them, because I think every story of them is going to be significant. Can commanders stay up top? What is Caleb Williams? I'm high on him.
What's Drake May?

Speaker 2 I'm super high on him.

Speaker 2 Can Bo Nix improve? Can Michael Panix be anything? What is J.J. McCarthy? Because I think all those teams can be sick, can make noise

Speaker 2 in some way, shape, or form. So I think that's my cheating answer.
But yeah, the second year QBs, there's a changing of the guard happening right now.

Speaker 2 We're feeling it with Mahomes and Allen and

Speaker 2 Lamar and Burrow and all these guys. There's more coming.
We got some real talented dudes coming through, and I'm excited to see them all take a leap.

Speaker 1 Well, and then this draft next year.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I did my,

Speaker 1 Jesus. I did my QB rankings, and I moved Mahomes out of the alpha spot for the first time this decade, and I put Josh Allen in there.
Okay.

Speaker 2 I love Josh Allen.

Speaker 1 One guy has to get the highest thing. And I'm just like, I just think, listen, whatever.
I'm not going to do a 40-minute Mahomes conference.

Speaker 1 I just think Josh Allen's the safest bet at a quarterback in the NFL right now. And I think he has to be the alpha.

Speaker 2 Right? I think there's a three-man tier with Lamar Allen and Mahomes.

Speaker 1 I agree. But if you you have to pick one.

Speaker 2 I have Mahomes in two minutes, man.

Speaker 1 I'm just talking regular season.

Speaker 1 Regular season. Yeah, Josh Allen's a force of nature because it's just he has to be the regular season alpha at this point.

Speaker 1 Man.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just because the Bills' offense is better. That's what it just looks like.

Speaker 1 He's fake.

Speaker 2 Like, Mahomes is fake, but Josh Allen's actually fake. Like, he's a creative player.
He's with

Speaker 2 Cam Newton times two to me because I think even just throwing-wise, he's doing even more. But yeah, no, I think Allen is, to me, is the clear two.

Speaker 2 I still have Mahomes just because of respect of what he does, but I think Allen is a clear two to me. I mean, that's why he's defending MVP.

Speaker 1 What are the great Allen stats was that the

Speaker 1 14 sacks for Buffalo last year? Yeah. Like,

Speaker 1 it should just get factored into your QB stats somehow. That was always a great Brady Manning stat.

Speaker 2 He gets kind of, I kind of have been really fighting this with Josh Allen and trying to like support him here.

Speaker 2 He's become one of the most cerebral quarterbacks in the NFL, NFL and he doesn't get any credit for it because he's just such a freak athletically.

Speaker 2 But he has become one of, I talked about CJ Stroud getting more control before the snap. Allen's gotten that the last two or three years and he is great at it.

Speaker 2 It's just that he doesn't get painted that way. Burrow kind of gets it painted this way.
You know, some other guys do. Allen doesn't get painted this way and he's one of the best at it.

Speaker 2 He calls out blitzes. He changes protections.
I got reels of it on Twitter, but it's just he has become like a complete guy outside of just the freakiness.

Speaker 2 And I think that even Mahomes, too, all these top guys are very cerebral, but I think Alan kind of gets really underrated with that. Like he's one of the smartest QBs and he gets full control.

Speaker 2 And then he just is a 0.0001% athlete on top of it, which also helps.

Speaker 1 Alan, then I had the next group. Alan, the alpha, the blues, Mahomes, Burrow, Jackson.
I put Daniels in there. I think he has to be.

Speaker 1 You got to see one more. So you would know.
I've got to see one more year.

Speaker 2 He's top 12, I would say to me.

Speaker 2 I got to see a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Well, this is why it's a work in progress. I'm glad I asked you.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, and then I'm high on Jordan Love more than most people.

Speaker 2 I think his, he played banged up last year. He doesn't take sacks.
He can hit all that high throws. I'm high on the Packers, too.

Speaker 2 And I never even talked about him because I really like Love and some of the other stuff they did.

Speaker 2 So I'm super high on him.

Speaker 2 I had some other guys pretty high.

Speaker 2 I had Stroud at 10 because

Speaker 2 I think he's going to have a decent year, even with the low line stuff i just think they're gonna give him more control and i like the receivers i like the cup of guys they drafted and everything are you pro anti or in the middle with purdy

Speaker 2 uh i'm in the middle i mean i've said i'm broccnostic okay i've been i've been agnostic but i i like him more than i used to i they last year was really cool to watch watch him kind of like they gave him more to do they uh they don't use play action as much and they let him just truly drop back and be a quarterback and like go and progress.

Speaker 2 And it's kind of cool to watch them kind of give him the reins to do it. So like I've become more, and he can create a little bit.
He's a really good thrower on the move.

Speaker 2 I used to be kind of lukewarm on Purdy, but now I like him. Like

Speaker 2 I like him and enjoy watching him because he's got some balls on him too.

Speaker 1 25 to 4 for MVP. Your guy, Jordan Love, is 25 to 1 as well.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Odds are it's going to be Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson. Just put those bets in now.
All right.

Speaker 1 Nate Tice, go back to your newborn baby and your other child and your wife and Tim Goolf, Summer League Highlights. Thank you.
Anthony Andrews is staying. Kevin Garnett's coming back.

Speaker 1 Football's coming. Things are looking up.
Great to see you. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2 Thanks for having me. Always fun.

Speaker 1 All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Nate Tice and Matt Bellany.

Speaker 1 Don't forget new rewatchables is coming on Monday. Species, a movie that you can find on streaming services.

Speaker 1 We're going to really ramp up in August. I'm just warning you now.
I'm getting all my little one, little dopey movies I wanted to do out of the way in July because it's time to do it.

Speaker 1 But we have some really good ones coming up as we head to 400 movies on the rewatchables. Yeah, getting close.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be back again on Sunday, a week from now. So we are sticking to the Sunday schedule, and that's the plan.
And I'll see you in a week. Enjoy the week.

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