Drake Definitely Beats Buffalo, Baker for MVP, a Bad QB Draft, Guess the Lines, and Parent Corner With Cousin Sal

11:41Cousin Sal:Well, you thought that was gone into the year. You had them as a seventh seed. Yeah, then they lost to Las Vegas, who hasn't won since

11:46Bill Simmons:and who looks like they're one of the worst teams in the league.

11:49Cousin Sal:You're back at it. You're back at it. It is anyone's game. I still think the Bills are the premier team in the AFC, although you would think that the smackdowns at home would occur. They had a little trouble with the Saints last week, too, before they got right at the ship, and then this week. Interesting. Interesting. This is why we watch every week.

12:10Bill Simmons:You go back, you look at the Bills' first four in that 41-40 Ravens game that seemed so awesome and seemed like it was going to be an AFC title preview. We don't feel that way anymore. They beat the Jets. Everyone's beating the Jets. Beat the Dolphins by 10. They beat the Saints who hung around. They couldn't beat the Pats today. They don't really have an awesome start-to-finish win yet, whereas I look at a team like Denver that's 3-2. It's two plays away from being 5-0. but has some good start-to-finish performances. I thought they were great today. If you're just talking about best both sides teams in the AFC right now, I'm not saying it's going to last, but I think Denver has probably bring the most things to the table out of all the AFC teams.

12:55Bill Simmons:Buffalo is Josh, which is the difference.

12:56Cousin Sal:Well, that was the defense, right, that we thought would show up at some point that we saw last year with Denver. They were excellent. I think they dropped him five or six times, Hurts, probably five. But yeah, really good. And we killed Knicks all week in the last two weeks, and his QBR is bottom four, bottom five. But he made some big throws too.

13:17Bill Simmons:House called him out on the podcast because he really wanted to take the Eagles' money line. It was like if Bo Knicks sticks it to us, so be it. He's been blah, blah, blah. And he was really bad for the first two hours of that game and then kind of rose. Can we do Mike and the Mad Dog for the rest of the Pat schedule? Do you want to be Mike or Mike or dog?

13:36Cousin Sal:I always like being the dog. You be the dog. I'll be Mike. Yeah.

13:40Bill Simmons:Patriots are three and two.

13:44Cousin Sal:Week six at New Orleans. This is a tricky, tricky game, Bill. A little bit of let down. We saw what they did in the Superdome. Don't give it a W just yet. But I'll tell you what, we'll give them a win. We'll give them a win. Okay. At the Titans. Against his old team. You know, they both had this circled on the calendar. It's got to be a win. They don't win this. Forget it. So if they, I forgot to be Mike.

14:10Bill Simmons:So, so dog, if they, if they beat the saints and Titans, they're five and two home clean, home Cleveland week eight.

14:17Cousin Sal:I know that defense comes alive, but again, this is a Vrabel victory right here. I think you get three in a row or including this build. Yeah. You're going to win that one. So that I'm going to be built for a second.

14:29Bill Simmons:No, I'm going to be built for a second. Yeah. they're already on a two-game winning streak. So beating Saints, Titans, Browns would be a five-game winning streak. That feels too good to be true. Six and two. They're either five and three or six and two, I think, realistically. All right, back to you, Mike. Week nine. Week nine, Atlanta home.

14:50Cousin Sal:All right, now I'm going to be Bill for a second. Anytime Panics has walked up against this... No.

14:59Bill Simmons:Atlanta's home? It's a new... Yeah. All right, we'll scrap back at the dive. Week 9's Atlanta. Week 10's at Tampa. That's a tough one. Week 11, Thursday Jets. I don't know what quarterback the Jets will be in at that point. Week 12 at Bengals. No borough. Week 13, home for the Giants on a Monday night. Week 14, bye. Week 15, Bills. Week 16, at Ravens. Week 17, at Jets. Week 18, Dolphins. This is why I picked them to make the playoffs. That's some fucking crazy schedule. They have three hard games.

15:33Cousin Sal:You know, this has gotten so bad that I'm now looking at them to win the division. I hate that I'm doing this. This is great. Plus 360?

15:43Bill Simmons:That's actually about right, right? They're plus 360 to win the division? Oh, look at you now. Look at you. No, that seems low. Well, Buffalo has, I mean, just their hard world games left at Atlanta, at Houston, at the Patriots, at Cleveland. I mean, they have an easy schedule too. This is the whole thing with the AFC East, where we thought there might be two.

16:04Cousin Sal:If you can beat them again at home, that's, of course, it's your division to take, I think.

16:08Bill Simmons:By the way, when we talk about we have a quarterback, thank God. Like, you have that with Dak right now. Like, Dak's been great this season. He's like 30.

16:18Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah.

16:18Bill Simmons:I know, but he's, you know, I think Dak, people kind of forgot. I don't think he had the greatest year last year, but watching all the TVs today, he was one of the most confident guys by far. Oh, for sure.

16:29Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah. I just don't know with the Jets. I really don't know. I can't give that too much creedance. But, you know, he's doing this without CeeDee Lamb. He's tossing the ball and, you know, it's getting good results. And without offensive linemen?

16:43Bill Simmons:Yeah. You guys are missing a whole bunch of people. Yeah. So, just quickly on that game, Cowboys-Jets. Fields now 0-26 when the other team scores 21-plus points. I think that's the most amazing stat in the NFL. So if you get to 21 points, Fields can't win, basically. 0-26. Think how many games that is. That's almost two seasons of games.

17:06Cousin Sal:Yeah, even your defense could score and it wouldn't help you because you're scoring less than 20 there. Wow. Yeah, I feel bad for that, coach. I don't want to say they're the worst team in the league, but when you don't have wins five weeks in, you're right there. And it feels like Aaron Glenn's, the team's punking him, right? They can't tackle. They have four, like you said, fields four and a half yards per pass, I think. Allowed five sacks to the Cowboys who had five sacks all year. You know, that said, we're a game and a half behind the Eagles with a home matchup against them. So NFC East is ours.

17:40Cousin Sal:I can't believe we're not favored. I was going to ask you. No. 9-7-1 is a possible Cowboys record.

17:50Bill Simmons:I'm just saying it's possible. Is that a playoff spot in the NFC? Is that a seven seed? Oh, I think so. 9-7-1.

17:57Cousin Sal:I think so. I think there'll be a 9-8 battling at the end. But we have a really tough, I don't want to Mike and the Mad Dog this, but we have a very tough one. We have a tough stretch. Games like weeks 12 through 17 is bad.

18:09Bill Simmons:It was an interesting game today because like Sheil had a stat that the Jets had the most 10-plus plays, 10-plus yard plays today. They had 19 10-plus yard plays. They actually moved the ball. They got stopped on a couple fourth downs. They had a fumble inside the 10. They're also defensively, I can't believe the stat's true, but I read it on ESPN, so I'm assuming it's true. They're the first team since 1933 to not have a defensive turnover in the first five games, to not have a single turnover. That happened since 1933, apparently. Wow. Yeah. How's that possible? But I guess it's possible. Oh, my God.

18:52Bill Simmons:It's almost 100 years.

18:53Cousin Sal:I feel, now I feel extra bad for Aaron Klein. Because that's, he has to count on at least three turnovers through five weeks. Right. That's despicable.

19:01Bill Simmons:Well, that was supposed to be his big thing, right? Right. So then, I think Rich Cimini is one of the guys who covers the team. He said that first half that they played was on par with the Gase era. The worst of that. The worst of, what did he say, the Cotite era. Like, the worst coaches they've ever had. It was the worst half he'd seen since he'd been covering the team. I thought he said Gase era.

19:22Cousin Sal:I was like, what? What is this?

19:24Bill Simmons:Remember Adam Gase? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the coach in high school. Flowing out, yeah, yeah. So on the Cowboys, are you Ewing Theory? Do we have to send Ewing Theory committee to Dallas? Like, what are you thinking? I just won all ties.

19:38Cousin Sal:You never won anything with Micah Parsons. I was bummed we didn't tie. I wanted like 14 ties at the end of the year. I wanted to go like, you know. Like eight, six, and three? No, not even that much. Two, three, and 11th. 11th, you know, like an English premiere record or something. But yeah, I'm all right. I was overall happy with the 40-40 performance, and I'll be all right again until like November when it gets tough again. So we should beat the Panthers, and we have trouble with them typically. And so let's see what happens next week.

20:10Bill Simmons:Well, you seem fairly well coached, at least on offense. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good. You know, you like that round.

20:17Cousin Sal:I haven't seen that. You see that roundup, the locker room speeches by the coaches? I didn't see his today.

20:23Bill Simmons:Was it good?

20:24Cousin Sal:Yeah, he said the players usually sit in the back of the plane. Today, the players sit in the front of the plane. That's what happens when you get a road win. So that's nice. Saving some steps.

20:34Bill Simmons:Well, it feels like there's an incredible amount of pressure on those speeches now. Yeah, right, right, right. They got a guy with a 4K HD camera, seven inches from your face, and you basically have to turn in a Pacino on any given Sunday every week. And you've got to remember who the four people who get the game balls and you got to go around, you got to make eye contact with everybody. You got to have the right enthusiasm. Like, what if somebody is just not good at that? They just tell them no cameras.

20:59Cousin Sal:Then they're not going to get the Oscar. They're not getting the coach of the year award. I mean, I really do think everything else equal, those dumb speeches make a difference. You know, not that Dan Campbell's won too many of them, but I think he's great at that.

21:11Bill Simmons:Do you think Dennis Green must be wherever he is? I don't know if he's dead or alive, if Dennis Green is like, man, I really miss my era. If we'd been in this era being filmed with the post-game speech with the 4K camera, I would have been fucking Newt Rockne. Yeah, yeah. It would have been amazing.

21:29Cousin Sal:Is there a class you should take before that? Is that as important as everything? So that you should take a class to just kick ass in 40 seconds in a post-game? It's longer than that.

21:39Bill Simmons:It's like four minutes.

21:41Cousin Sal:Oh, the ones they show up.

21:42Bill Simmons:You have to remember different things. I like when they throw the game ball and the guy has to then talk.

21:50Cousin Sal:Yeah, right.

21:50Bill Simmons:And it's like the nickelback or the kicker. You're like, yo, we got a great group of guys in here, man. We got to keep it up, man. Let's keep working. And they just kind of, they don't know what to say. They need to coach those guys too. Yeah, they're just not ready for it. And then some guys will be amazing. All of a sudden, they're turning into a preacher.

22:12Cousin Sal:Some go too long. They should maybe play them off or do the comedian thing where they shine the light or something. But yeah, it sucks all the energy out. The long snapper doesn't need to go for three and a half minutes.

22:22Bill Simmons:My favorite was last week when we talked about that Ben Johnson one last week. He was basically like, this is what we knew. And it was like, the other team could have had a field goal and he would have lost. All they had to do is make a field goal. You're not giving a speech right now.

22:38Cousin Sal:Well, we could talk about the Titans when we get to them. But that speech can only include about what the other team did to fuck up and not how great your team was.

22:46Bill Simmons:But the Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel, the FanDuel Sportsbook app. You're home for all your favorite NFL bets from yards to touchdowns to who will win. And when the Chiefs and Jaguars play Monday night, tonight, FanDuel giving all customers a 50 % same game parlay PBT or a 30 % any bet PBT. I think the Chiefs are going to win. I believe in the Chiefs on a Monday night. Um, I'd probably do something with chiefs money line, um, some sort of high adjusted, adjusted over, like put in the thirties, uh, the Lawrence interception I think has to be in there. And then, um, something with Kelsey, like three catches and you're good to go.

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24:03Bill Simmons:call 1-888-789-777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra, the official beer partner of the NBA. You know the NBA season's almost here when that anticipation kicks in. What trades worked? What rookies are popping? Which teams might flame out by Christmas? I already had my guard up with this season because the Celtics, obviously a team in a little bit of flux. And then Jason Tatum posted like a minute of him working out and looking really good. And it broke my brain because for the first time I was like, wow, he might actually be back in the second half of the season.

24:43Bill Simmons:What's that going to mean? Whatever happens when I'm watching all that unfold, I'm doing with the Michelob Ultra in hand. Superior Light Beer, just 95 calories. There are a lot of moments worth playing for, but the ones that taste the best are served cold. Order Michelob Ultra and fill up your fridge as we gear up for NBA season. Cannot wait. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2025. Anheuser-Busch. Michelob Ultra Light Beer. St. Louis, Missouri. The gambling event of the year. Now, we already had one of the stupidest gambling moments in a long time with that Philadelphia block field goal touchdown that we all thought was like, well, we won't top that this year.

25:23Bill Simmons:We topped it. Cards-Titans, I think, is the bar. I think it was a 9.9 for if you bet on Arizona, just your energy. So my first question is, did you bet on Arizona? All over the place.

25:38Cousin Sal:All over the place. I had them, the Ringer 107, minus eight and a half. Loved it. Had them Moneyline Parlay. Loved it. Had them in multiple eliminator pools to a point where, you know, when a team blows a spread for you, you're like, good, screw them. I hope they lose the game. And even though I knew I was going to be out a bunch of eliminator pools and money and everything else. I still hope they lost the game. And then they lost the game. You got that spiteful. Yeah, that spiteful. Now I'm angrier. It's funny because people ask me, my wife is like, don't you get tired of watching the same games over and over?

26:08Cousin Sal:It's like, no, no, no. They're not the same. Because in this one, an idiot dropped the ball at the goal line with no one around them. And then another idiot intercepted a ball and then fumbled it. And then a second moron, instead of jumping on it, kicked the ball. Pretty cool, right? Every week it's something different.

26:22Bill Simmons:But 21-6. We just talked about this last week. We were talking about the degrees of stupidly ruining your own touchdown. Because who is the guy who did it last week? The guy in the Colts. And they'd be 5-0 maybe if he doesn't do that. The Demarcato today, this was the worst one. He's slowing down and dangling it. He's Michael Jackson dangling the baby over the balcony. And just run over the goal line. You have one job. Just keep going. Do it in the end zone. run into the end zone and then dangle it.

26:59Cousin Sal:Right.

26:59Bill Simmons:I like, and also like we have proof of concept that this is stupid because multiple people have done it and then gotten excoriated for days and weeks afterwards about how done they were. And now it's still happening.

27:10Cousin Sal:Yeah. The touchdown drop at the goal line is like, it causes life changing stress. I really feel it does like for gamblers and fans of Arizona. Like, yeah, it's affecting the health of like tens of thousands of people. I know we want to get rid of like red dye and Skittles. It's fine. You know, it's shitty for you. No one's arguing, But betting on guys dropping the ball for no reason is just as much damage to Americans. I feel like they should, first of all, you should have to pay a million dollars if you do that. I don't care where you have to find the ball. I think it's a fine. A fine and jail time.

27:41Cousin Sal:Three years in prison. You hear that? And Murray DiMocardo, what a terrible person he turned out to be.

27:47Bill Simmons:Oh. Awful.

27:48Cousin Sal:He's going to try to do better.

27:50Bill Simmons:He's going to learn from his mistakes. Not with my money backing him. I think I said this a couple years ago when this happened, and I'm just going to reuse the point I made because it was one of my better points. I think you just black out when you're about to score a touchdown. I think you lose your mind. That guy's running. He had a 76-yard touchdown, right? He's running full speed. He got through. You're sprinting down. Everybody's cheering. You see the goal line at the end. You're on the big scoreboard. You can see yourself, and you're running and you're just like, I think you just like blackout.

28:22Bill Simmons:You're out of your mind.

28:23Cousin Sal:How many touchdowns have we seen where they don't drop it at the goal line? They don't black out. How many touchdowns did this guy? I think you lose your mind. What other explanation is to drop a ball before you go to the goal line? Probably had a thousand touchdowns in high school. You don't think - Give me another explanation. That's my working explanation is you black out. He blacked out? All right. Yeah, he blacked out. He should say that. He should say that.

28:45Bill Simmons:I wonder how, I hate that. All right, so because the other explanation is I thought it would be fun as I crossed the five to dangle the ball and see how close I could come to losing it while I held on to it. That's the only other explanation. I guess, guys. That's insane.

28:59Cousin Sal:Just do stupid things. You know what? Can I say something in his defense, even though I hate his guts? I do. I'm not sure they should overturn that, honestly. It could have been over the— It seemed pretty close. Just leave it. Why do this to people?

29:10Bill Simmons:We'll just keep it a touchdown. Well, so I didn't even want to watch this game. Yeah. And there were only four late games. And it was just perfect for the multi-view. And I always think it's weird when there's like three in the multi-view. And there really wasn't a great. Yankees was a blowout. Yeah, it was just like, all right, so I'll keep it on. So you have that play. But then Ward, who wasn't good for three-plus quarters and then got really good in the fourth quarter, but he had a bad pick. I don't think the guy caught it. Like, they kind of glossed over that. Like, he caught it. He rolled over and then he just threw the ball in the air.

29:46Bill Simmons:And it's usually like, I have no idea what it is. As we talk about every week, I don't know what's a catch, what's not. I guess it was a catch. But then we ended up reenacting the Dave Casper Raiders play, which was one of the great plays of our childhood. It was like one of the first great gambling moments. I forget. They're playing like the Chargers maybe. And then it's the last play and he's about to get tackled and he just kind of fumbles it and they just start kicking it forward. And then the Raiders land on it in the end zone because they cheated all the time at everything back then. and they had to change the rules after that play that you couldn't do that.

30:17Bill Simmons:And yet somehow the Titans did it today.

30:20Cousin Sal:Right. And yeah, like I said, disgusting, kicking it over. And, you know, so I'm just trying to figure out the spread, right? So the eight and a half, 21-6, DiMecardo should score. It should be 28-6. The game's over. Game set match. Definitely not losing the game at that point, right? I don't think they're - 95 % covering at that point. Yeah.

30:41Bill Simmons:Yeah, you would need the two touchdowns. Well, the other thing is they score and they cut it. It was to nine with the extra point coming. And instead of going for two, they went for one and missed the extra point. Right. Which made me think I actually had a chance. And so Arizona was still Arizona minus nine. So they did like a little dick tease for the Arizona bets. Like, no, no, we're still going to fuck this up for you.

31:02Cousin Sal:I had a bunch of those dick teases. With Cincinnati too, I had them. I just got to stop with bad teams and bad quarterbacks. Just the worst.

31:10Bill Simmons:I mean, as you know, I just would never put Kyler Murray in a tease or parlay ever. It's one of my rules. Although another one of my rules is don't bet on the Europe game, and I still continue to do that. It's not early enough. So did you see that clip where it's possible he got a mild concussion from the shotgun snap?

31:27Cousin Sal:Yeah.

31:28Bill Simmons:You can't really even make this up anymore. He got his belt. It almost was like Tim Anderson, Jose Ramirez kind of like did one of those. and they had to take them off. That was another thing that happened in this game. But that wasn't, we mentioned all these things. The highlight of the game. Yeah, go ahead. The highlight. It was Spiro Didis and Adam Archuleta are our announcers.

31:52Cousin Sal:Yeah.

31:53Bill Simmons:Tennessee has the ball they're down to and they're driving and they're clearly just settling for a field goal to win the game. And Spiro goes, Tennessee isn't thinking about the field goal. They're going for the win. it's like well field goal does get them so i think adam archuleta feels bad so now they're setting up the field goal and they're like killing time and adam archuleta does this monologue that includes the sentence this could be a devastating loss for the arizona cardinals oh really doc you think so you think being up 21-6 and then dropping the ball on the goal line and then blowing blowing a giant lead and then losing at home and now you're two and three you think that was a devastating one?

32:36Cousin Sal:He felt bad for Spiro. He one-upped

32:39Bill Simmons:them there. Interesting. Yeah, the producer was in his earpiece like, yo, you got to say something dumb. Spiro just really blew it right there. You got to one-upped him.

32:47Cousin Sal:Listen, we should just be thankful these analysts are staying out of prison. If they can't make sense, whatever.

32:56Bill Simmons:I don't even know what to say about that

32:57Cousin Sal:story. Yikes.

32:59Bill Simmons:Anyway, Arizona, you liked. You picked them to win the division?

33:03Cousin Sal:Yeah, I did. I did. And I was about to say, they're going to be the worst 3-2 team of all time. But now they're 2-3 and they're just the worst 2-3 team of all time.

33:14Bill Simmons:They are who we thought they were. I had an up and down over-unders for the win totals. I have a division that I think I'm going to get every single team run. AMC South. Yeah. I went 0-4 in the AMC South. I had Indy 7.5 under. Houston 9.5 over. Jacksonville, 7.5. I think I went under on them. And then Tennessee, 5.5 over. And I think it's going to be a clean sweep. And there are some other divisions I nailed, but it was like, wow. I just did not figure out anything that was happening.

33:44Cousin Sal:As laughable as those teams are, if Jacksonville beats Kansas City tomorrow, the AFC South might be the most competitive division, might I say, in this AFC.

33:56Bill Simmons:I texted you and Hinch today. I think they switched bodies with the AFC North. Right. Although now New England's back in this. No, the AFC North, not the East. Yeah, yeah. Right. The Baltimore, Cincy, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, that's the new AFC South. Those teams all suck. I'm with you. 9-8 is probably going to win that. Pittsburgh fans will be like, no, no, we don't suck. We're really good. No, you're not.

34:15Cousin Sal:They'll be good. You don't have a good team.

34:18Bill Simmons:All right, Eagles, Broncos. Let's talk about that. 17-3, Denver comes back. I know Romo's your guy. I'm just going to be mildly critical. What happened? He's right over my shoulder here.

34:31Cousin Sal:Be careful.

34:32Bill Simmons:Romo Nance were asleep. It's 17 three Denver. All the yardage in the first downs were pretty even. And next missed a couple throws. And they're like the game's over for them. Even when it was 1710. I don't know. And then all of a sudden Denver's driving again. And Romo's like, Jim, I don't know. All of a sudden this is a game. And it's like, it's been a game the whole time. The Eagles have done jack shit on offense. The Denver defense has been amazing. This has always been a game. But then I defend them for a second. Yeah. Defend them. God. The Eagles put them to sleep. They're boring.

35:04Cousin Sal:We said they were boring. Offensively. Who did the sleeper hold? Adrian Adonis? Adonis. Who's the number one sleeper holder? Roddy Piper over my other shoulder.

35:12Bill Simmons:Who's our number one sleeper guy? Was it Adonis?

35:16Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah. Roddy Piper and Adonis. Philly's the Adrian Adonis. Yeah, yeah. That's it.

35:22Bill Simmons:He's dead. They can't invite him to a game.

35:24Cousin Sal:That's true. That's true. He would be good on the offensive line. Not a well-liked lockerer guy, Adrian Adonis.

35:30Bill Simmons:No. Yeah, yeah. A lot of bad stories about him. Lots of leather jackets, Hell's Kitchen, fights in the locker room. Some shoots, fights in the locker room, like a legendary locker room fight. I can't remember with who he got his ass kicked. But wasn't boring. Wasn't boring. Eagles are boring.

35:45Cousin Sal:Yeah, very boring. And they got screwed a little bit. I don't care because of the Eagles, but that was a bad, unnecessary roughness call at the end. He's going for another yard. He's clearly going for lunging. So, I don't know. I wouldn't have called that, but they should be able to hold a lead against Bo Nix. Made some good throws, but that was it.

36:05Bill Simmons:But like I said, that's the Denver team we were waiting to see all year. Well, so they got the running game going, which started on Monday night. You could see it against Cincinnati. Harvey, right as they were just trying to put a drive together, Harvey had a really nice run around the right side where they had him, and he just had the speed and got around, and it felt like it got them a little juice. And then I thought Nix finally looked like the guy from last year, in the last hour of the game. He made some big-ass plays and some good runs. Their sideline was locked in, and I loved them when they went for two.

36:37Bill Simmons:That's the perfect example of he's been talking since the summer, preseason, whole thing. I like this team. I think we're really good. Even when they lost those two games, we're good. We lost to good teams. We're a good team. And then he proved it. He went for it on two, ran a great play, and then went 18-17.

36:55Cousin Sal:I don't remember seeing that. with like seven, wasn't it like seven minutes left when he went for two? Or was it four? No, it was like half the quarter left. It was, yeah, halfway through the quarter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was ballsy. Yeah, like that coach, man. He's good. And you know, now we're going to talk Denver all of a sudden plus 290 to win the AFC West. We flip-flop on this a lot, but. Well, how about this?

37:16Bill Simmons:They're three and two. They're two plays away from being five and oh. Their next five, they're playing the Jets in London next week. They're playing the Giants in week seven. to playing your Cowboys in Denver in week eight, at Houston week nine, and then Raiders on Thursday night week 10. That's at least four and one.

37:34Cousin Sal:Wow.

37:35Bill Simmons:Unless they really screw the pooch on one of those.

37:37Cousin Sal:Wait a minute.

37:38Bill Simmons:And Pete Carroll might have just retired by then. So you think this...

37:41Cousin Sal:He should hope that's it. It might just be like that.

37:44Bill Simmons:Him and Belichick should just go into the assisted living together.

37:47Cousin Sal:So nine and a half wins, because Vandal's great with these updated win totals, is minus 125. They're going to get to 10. If they play anything there today, they'll get to 10.

38:00Bill Simmons:Jets, Giants, that has to be two wins in a row. You just have to win both of those. Your team, you know, I think your team can move the ball, it seems like, on anybody. I don't know. It doesn't really matter who the team is.

38:13Cousin Sal:You don't agree? Yeah, we can. I just, that defense is going to show up or not show up week to week. So it bothers me.

38:20Bill Simmons:At Houston Week 9, there was a CJ Stroud resurgence today that I would just tell everyone. Be careful. He's going against that ravaged Baltimore team.

38:29Cousin Sal:He was telling us, be careful. What did he say earlier in the week? He's like, I feel like an old man. I feel old. It's just not coming together. Yeah, I can't move the way I used to. He was 23. Used to.

38:39Bill Simmons:Four months ago. One thing on the Eagles, have you noticed that they've kind of assumed the identity of the Chiefs last year? I was wondering if it was like that movie, It Follows, in New Orleans in February after they beat the Chiefs. They just took their being.

38:54Cousin Sal:where it's like

38:56Bill Simmons:they're just in these games but it doesn't feel right but their record's good and their stats are okay and they're always one play away from being fine and yet it just doesn't seem like everything's right and I don't even know what it is other than the malaise of watching the Eagles. I know their corners are weird.

39:18Cousin Sal:All the good teams because the Ravens used to be the team that could score but not hold a lead, right? How many double digit leads that they blow in the fourth quarter. It's always a Harbaugh number against them. I feel like that's what we're seeing out of the Eagles. Up big against Tampa and then gigantic plays and Tampa's right back in it, right? This week, same kind of thing. Unlike the Chiefs, who struggle to get to 17 points by the fourth quarter for the most part, this Eagle, I don't know what's up with them.

39:45Bill Simmons:I really don't. Paying a lot of money for those receivers that they seem to just take out for a Sunday drive and that's it. And then Barkley just hasn't done anything yet. And, you know, in the Pats in 04, when they got the Corey Dillon, the last Super Bowl they won in the 2000s, they got this awesome Corey Dillon year. And he was like rejuvenated and it was great. And then they brought him back for the year after and it was kind of a year too late for him. I don't think that's the case for Barkley because he's pretty young, but he does not look like the Barkley from last year. So I would love to know.

40:16Bill Simmons:I know the offensive line's not the same.

40:18Cousin Sal:That's it, I think. Yeah.

40:20Bill Simmons:But it doesn't even feel like they're using them in the same ways, like on those little flare passes and wheel routes. I don't know. They just haven't unlocked him. So when I watch them, he just doesn't jump out of the TV anymore, and I don't really understand why.

40:33Cousin Sal:No. And you pay a lot for that TV. That's like a$30 ,000 TV. If you want him to jump out of the screen, he should be able to do it. No, yeah, he caught that touchdown. That was a nice bubble pass. It wasn't that much? No, I don't know. That's what you're thinking of our cousin. That's right. Craziness. Yeah, he caught that touchdown pass, but you don't really expect, you don't see the 25-yard run. Yeah, the touchdown pass is a good example.

40:58Bill Simmons:That shit was happening all the time. He would have games last year where he just single-handedly won the game. Yeah, sure. And that really happened this year. The other one that was really fascinating was Buck Seahawks.

41:08Cousin Sal:Yeah.

41:10Bill Simmons:And we were texting afterwards, and I was already on it, about Baker MVP. What is it now? Did it go down? It was 13-1 after the game. And I'll set this segment up properly after. He's still 13-1. Still 13-1. Okay. So in the fourth quarter of that Bucs-Seahawks game, I went on FanDuel and looked at the odds for him for MVP, and it was still 15-1. And I was thinking, nobody has played better than him this year, period. No doubt. And it was weird because, of course, on NBC after, they're talking about Dak and somebody else. They're like, no quarterbacks have played better than these dudes. It's like, you mean other than Baker Mayfield, who has four last minute drives already and who's been absolutely fucking incredible and lost Bucky Irvin and lost Mike Evans and didn't have Werfs and Godwin for the first couple of games of the year.

41:58Bill Simmons:And just every game keeps them in and has this competitive spirit. Like he's clearly the MVP through five games. I don't know if it's going to last, but how is he not like, it's not even an argument.

42:11Cousin Sal:Let me just say, well, we're doing this live. this line is going to be plus 850 tomorrow based on this conversation. That's how much I believe. I'm not kidding. Why is he fourth? First of all, Mahomes is ahead of him at 6 '1".

42:24Bill Simmons:He's got Josh Allen, Mahomes, and Love ahead of him. It's outrageous. He's playing so much better than those guys.

42:31Cousin Sal:And Allen's been good, but not as good as Mayfield. And he's so exciting. He's such a highlight reel. I mean, I know Allen is too. He runs all over the place. But what was Baker today? First quarterback ever to have 375-plus passing yards and fewer than five incompletions in a regular season game. He's just really, like, this is nonsensical. I guess our thing is that you have to be a top two seed. Why wouldn't they be a top two seed at this point? I like their chances better than the Packers at this point.

42:58Bill Simmons:Well, the fact that they're 4-1 already. Yeah, could they get to, like, 12-5? Yeah, that 13-1 is just, I mean, Stafford's 14-1. Who's having a better year, Baker or Stafford? I'll tell you this. I had Seattle minus three. it was a roller coaster ride and at some point they took a seven point lead down the stretch and they just had to get a stop which they hadn't done for two hours because they had no defensive backs left and it was you know it's our guy mike mcdonald finally grew a pair and went for it on a fourth and two and got it for a touchdown which he should have done two other games this year he finally gets it at least um but baker got the ball and i was just like he's gonna go down and score Like how many quarterbacks in the league right now would just be like, that fucking guy's going to go down and score.

43:43Bill Simmons:Like, I know what's going to happen. And he just took them down. He basically won receiver, a tight end. Rashad White, who's a backup running back, who looked good today. But he just patched it together and just made plays.

43:55Cousin Sal:Can I say something? It sucked just because I bet them to make the Super Bowl. I think we should put Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl because they're the most entertaining team right now. For the Super Bowl, we get the most entertaining halftime show, right? We don't necessarily get the best. Otherwise, we'd have Paul McCartney every year. Same thing with the anthem. Let's just put them. We can play out the games as long as we come to an understanding that the Bucs are going to be in the Super Bowl. I mean, he's great. He shouldn't be fourth in MVP. He should be at worst second. He'll be 8-1 tomorrow.

44:25Bill Simmons:It's an insulting line. I'm with you. If we're handing out awards after five weeks, he clearly gets the most fun player of the 2025 season so far award. I don't think there's any question. And this connection he already has with Egbuka, who everybody loved before the season. We talked about him a bunch, and he's even better than I thought he was going to be. I mean, he was absolutely unbelievable. He was open over and over again, just torching these Seahawks second stringers. That was a tough one. And then on the flip side, Darnold was great. And at the same time as Gino was self-combusting yet again, and then it ends up he throws a pass that skids off someone's helmet and it's the game-ending interception basically.

45:12Bill Simmons:For less money than Gino.

45:13Cousin Sal:Yeah, they were 49 for 56 combined. They had scored touchdowns on seven straight drives. Halfway through the fourth quarter, I think both teams averaged 12 yards a play or 12 and 10 or something like that. I don't love every game to be like that, but definitely a Baker Mayfield game is fun to watch like that.

45:31Bill Simmons:certainly not a game I was expecting from the Seahawks. No. I thought I was a big believer in their defense, but they just passed the point of injuries. You spilled your water? I was looking to see where we were on time because we're going to... Well, I'll do a couple games really quick. Washington over the Chargers. Chargers are up 10-0, then they die. Their offensive line is gone, and it seems like they might have been the rabid team. I just feel like Denver and the Chargers have switched spots in the hierarchy. And to no fault of the Chargers because of the injuries, right? They should have known.

46:08Cousin Sal:As soon as this game, when they wouldn't make this game three, it was two and a half. Two weeks ago, we were all saying, oh, Chargers, the toast of the AFC West, they're going to run away with it and everything. Yeah, Ted Washington's banged up, even with Jaden Daniels coming back. It was totally ratlined. But he was like 12 for 14 in the first half. Like, yeah, I guess they were up 10-0. Then they just, nothing. Nothing at all out of them. Eventually the line gave up.

46:32Bill Simmons:Lions kill the Bengals. I think we can officially say maybe losing Aaron Glenn and Ben Johnson was an unequivocal disaster. They're going to be all right. They seem okay. Cincinnati's two and three still. The last three weeks, they've been down in games 28-3, 28-3, and 48-3 in the last three weeks. They've been down 25, 25, and 45.

47:00Cousin Sal:Why were they my best bet today? I don't know. No idea. And then that cock tease at the end.

47:05Bill Simmons:There were a lot of gambling trends supporting Cincinnati plus 10.5. Like that big of a home dog. Them coming off a huge loss. Detroit has a road. What do they care? Outdoor game.

47:18Cousin Sal:Even the worst teams don't get blown out by the spread three weeks in a row. Browning. Are we going to rank these things? What are we doing?

47:25Bill Simmons:We're doing it after the break. Is Joe Burrow a possible MVP candidate for you still? We do this sometimes. If a guy leaves a team and they immediately fall down by 100 points combined in the next three games, should he get some votes?

47:39Cousin Sal:I was going to flip it. Yeah, the answer is yes. He should be ahead of Jordan Love, I think, at least. But what is his injury? Like, would they be much worse off with him in there right now than Jake Browning? Joe Burrow, like, in a foot cast? Yeah, just put him in. Like, with a walker?

47:54Bill Simmons:Sure, yeah. He wouldn't throw four interceptions. He'd be the first guy to start an NFL game, but then also be allowed to board an airplane early. Right. When they bring in the old people and the people on crutches.

48:06Cousin Sal:I like it. Bring them in.

48:08Bill Simmons:Saints over Giants, the kind of game that you regret winning in January. When you look back and you're like, why do we have the fourth pick? Oh, we won that fucking Giants game. And Scadabo fumbled.

48:21Cousin Sal:Scadabo was blaming his gloves like my 12-year-old does. and Little League Baseball. Like, it's the gloves. I need new gloves. That's why I've shrugged out three times in a row.

48:32Bill Simmons:This was the classic. There wasn't enough to gamble on today. And I never, ever put two bad teams in a parlay. And a Sunday morning classic, like, I really think the Saints are going to win. I really think the Jets are going to win. I'll put those two with the Colts. And it's like four to one odds on a parlay. Like, I'm just going to jump all over that. And then you're like, what did I do? You're just watching Justin Fields rolling to his right and whipping it out of bounds. You're like, what did I do? I know the rules at this point. Don't do this.

49:08Cousin Sal:But, yeah, I mean, five turnovers for the Giants. They should still be able to beat the Saints, but that was a clinic they put on today.

49:18Bill Simmons:Panthers over Dolphins. a big one for all my Dolphins futures. I really needed them to lose this one for the 19 different Dolphin win under bets. But Carolina has somehow won two of their last three and then gotten blown out in the other game. Bryce Young, he can't get going until he's down 17, it seems like. Right. It's like the boxer that needs to taste their own blood. He just needs to see Andy Dalton potentially warming up, and then he kind of activates. They ended up, but they had 418 total yards and 26 first downs.

49:54Cousin Sal:That was a fun game. I don't know if you had the audio on. Collins is the play-by-play guy, and he made it like it was the last Super Bowl ever. The basketball guy. Yeah, he's our friend Alec. He's like, yeah, that's the Hornets guy. That's our guy. I was like, that's great. And it was him and Schlereth, I think. And yeah, that was a very exciting game, even though you kind of knew the Dolphins were going to blow it. They are really something else.

50:16Bill Simmons:Yeah, something about Tua in the last two minutes of these games. I don't see them getting those six wins for any reason. And then the last one, the Texans killing the Ravens that we talked about CJ sucking us in. But the Ravens down one and four, and it seems like they rest Lamar next week, then they have a bye. So they might be one and five heading into the bye and then maybe try to make a run. But I was looking at the year from health teams the last three years because I couldn't remember who was who. The 2024 Niners, they had gone 12-5. They were 6-11 last year, so they were the year from hell team.

50:50Bill Simmons:A bunch of injuries. 2023 Vikings, that was the Cousins. Achilles, they were 13-4, dropped to 7-10 that year. And then the Rams, the year after the Super Bowl in 22, they went from 12-5 to 5-12. They had all their injuries.

51:05Cousin Sal:The Bengals aren't on there?

51:07Bill Simmons:The Bengals, part of the year from hell is, yeah, you had to have been really good the year before. They were okay after their Super Bowl year? I guess it was two years after that.

51:16Cousin Sal:No, they were okay.

51:18Bill Simmons:Yeah. So those were the last ones. So this officially feels like we're on a streak.

51:23Cousin Sal:Well, it's awful with Baltimore. And like, you know, not even in a joking way. They lost a former player this week. It just seems like it's all like freaking falling apart from them. Yeah. And, you know, Derrick Henry. Injuries all over defense. Yeah. Yeah. Now bringing it back to nonsense, like you got Derrick Henry and Jamar Chase and all these studs with these weird old quarterbacks.

51:45Bill Simmons:I don't know. It's tough. This message is brought to you by Mariner. It takes the right team to help develop an athlete's talents. Managing your money works the same way. You've ever thought, am I getting the most out of my financial plan? You're ready for Mariner. With Mariner, you get an advisor backed by a full team of specialists. So everything's working together toward your goals. Take the next step in your financial journey with Mariner. Investment advisory services offered through Mariner LLC. and SEC-registered investment advisor. For more information, visit mariner.com. This episode is brought to you by America's Cookout Classics, Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer.

52:21Bill Simmons:This summer, we're celebrating 250 years of America cookouts with all the classics, Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer. I love hot dogs. Anytime it's a cookout, you have to have multiple kinds of hot dogs. I need a different kind of food, like some people like the burgers and the turkey burgers. gotta have the right playlist in place gotta grill some vegetables but for the most part you really need the hot dogs and I need multiple types of mustard too make sure to top the burger with only the best Heinz ketchup and Kraft singles I'm a ketchup and burgers guy dress up your sides to impress all summer long with Kraft Real Mayo and Kraft dressing no matter how you cook out you'll find the same favorites on every table Heinz, Kraft, and Oscar Mayer shop at your local retailer Vikings, Browns a 6.30 stink fest for us in the Pacific here you came back, when did you come back?

53:17Bill Simmons:Yesterday?

53:18Cousin Sal:I was back Saturday, yeah

53:19Bill Simmons:I'm excited to talk about that and we have Carson Wentz versus Dylan Gabriel and I honestly didn't think Dylan Gabriel was that bad, he's at least accurate, he's tiny like passes will get deflected I won't be told my grandkids about him, but he's like fairly competent and it made me think with all the bad QBs we saw today, we had to have a bad QB fantasy draft, which we did last year. When there's a week like this where there's so many of them, we just have to, for posterity, rank them. So I'll give you the first pick. Worst quarterback you saw today.

53:50Cousin Sal:Yeah, and I don't want to insult anyone, right, on this list because, you know, if you don't win this week, there's always, there are about a dozen. Prove us wrong. Yeah, Mariota or Fields, it could be your week next week when we do this, you know? Yeah. But, all right, I'm going to go for it here. and I know he came back and maybe covered on a teaser or something for Cincinnati, but I think it's the guy who you and I jinxed just four weeks ago by naming him the best backup in the league. Yes, we did. Taking Jake Browning. He had eight interceptions in four games and didn't even have one in the 28-3 game that he lost.

54:25Cousin Sal:But here's a stat you can't beat, and I think we threw this around on a text chain. At one point, Jamar Chase led the Bengals with three tackles, and that means your quarterback is the worst in the league. So congratulations.

54:37Bill Simmons:What an unbelievable stat.

54:38Cousin Sal:Yeah. Yeah.

54:39Bill Simmons:Yeah, there's two other things. And it really jumps out on the multi-view and the ability to watch all these games. The reaction of somebody after an interception. It's like that final, when somebody's just in a slump as a QB and it's just like, I don't know, my girlfriend just broke up with me kind of body language. You just feel like their vertebrae are sinking into their body. He had that once. and then the receivers. Chase was like, I'm fucking done with this. He had that body language going by the... There was nobody more unhappy to get yards than he was in the second half. He was like, get me the fuck out of here.

55:18Cousin Sal:I think, you know, I'll add to that, that look that Chase gives, that means all week it sucks. That means, yeah, I knew it in practice. If you're a little, like, stunned, like, oh, man, we were completing this. You know what I mean? But he gave that look like, yeah, this is an everyday occurrence.

55:34Bill Simmons:It's got to be brutal to be in that situation as a QB when, you know, he was good as the backup. He's clearly lost a little something, but now you have this pressure. You have Chase and Higgins. You don't have an offensive line. You're not playing well. There's no backup. There's nobody threatening you, and you just, like, can't get it going. It's a very good choice. I had to take Geno Smith.

55:58Bill Simmons:It just seems like it's over. he has nine interceptions already in five games and there's like a storied list of people who have done this and it's all some of the worst quarterbacks you can remember from the last 30 years the Raiders of course about a couple of them um I I can't believe how bad he's been and he's been bad beyond the interceptions like we talked about that week two Monday night game right against the Chargers when he was just sailing the ball over the place like we were joking about his eyesight last week. They gave him$75 million for two years. They gave up a third round pick for him, and he's worse than the guys they had last year.

56:36Bill Simmons:I was looking at who they had last year. It was maybe two years ago. Oh, here it is. It was O 'Connell, Minshew, and Ritter. 19 touchdowns, 16 interceptions. Gino's six TDs, nine interceptions right now. Not to mention all the other stuff. And he won his first game.

56:57Cousin Sal:Yeah, this is all the last three.

56:59Bill Simmons:And he looked pretty good against the Pats. He was making big passes. In 23, they had O 'Connell, Jimmy G, and Hoyer. They were 16 and 19 that year. 16 TDs, 19 picks. But those are the last three years of Raider QBs. If you go through the Raiders on Pro Football Reference, Carr comes in, they draft him, and they get like nine years out of Carr that are like, fine. He made the playoffs that one year. It was pretty up and down. He had a couple of bad years. but for the most part, it was like, okay. Yeah. Right. It was like a, like a C plus. It was one year week 14.

57:30Cousin Sal:He was like tops at MVP odds. I remember. And then he got hurt or something, but yeah.

57:34Bill Simmons:Yeah. I know. It was okay. But then you go before that, like they had Carson Palmer for two years. They had Marcus Russell. They had that guy, Andrew Walter. He's going through. It's like, oh, I forgot about that guy. Whoa. I forgot about that guy. They have a million of those. and Gino is supposed to solve it.

57:54Cousin Sal:And now have a million and one. Yeah, he threw some balls today that not only should a 13-year vet not know to throw. Anyone who's ever watched football, anyone who's ever watched a friend play Madden shouldn't make some of those throws. Right. And I can't believe he was in at the end. Like even the Colts took out, even the Colts put Richardson in it.

58:13Bill Simmons:That was amazing. I loved when Richardson came in and they cut to, he almost had a fumble or he had a pass deflected, he caught it. Yeah. And then it cut to Danny Dimes on the headset, just like laughing. It's like, you may not be done, Dimes.

58:26Cousin Sal:They thought we were competing. You may have to come back in.

58:30Bill Simmons:Yeah, I wrote down. So the Raiders are one and four. I wrote down. Turns out mid-70s Pete Carroll, a washed up Chip Kelly, a multitasking Tom Brady, and apparently washed up Geno Smith and the son of Al Davis were not the dream team. In retrospect. Of course, I picked them to be the seventh seed in the playoffs. so I have some regrets. It was them, Jacksonville, or Indiana, or Indianapolis, and it looks like the other two.

58:56Cousin Sal:You know, all the talk about, Brady shouldn't be allowed in the booth. He can't be interviewing these players. He can't do this. He's going to get inside. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Geno Smith, your quarterback. I think Brady solved the debate.

59:07Bill Simmons:They're fucking terrible.

59:08Cousin Sal:They're like, what kind of inside information is he getting? He should say something tomorrow. He should be like, I hope this puts an end to all the talk about my cheating and my infiltration of these interviews.

59:19Bill Simmons:If I wasn't getting all this inside information, we wouldn't be one in four. Yeah, right. So Gino has the most interceptions in his first five games since Zach Wilson in 2021. Nice.

59:33Cousin Sal:That is rarefied air. Yeah. Not good. Not good at all.

59:39Bill Simmons:Okay. So I took, I'm taking Gino second. You're up next. Oh, we're not doing the two. You don't get two? Okay. Oh, you want me to do two? No, you can go. Let's go back and forth. You go.

59:48Cousin Sal:All right. I'm going to say my guy. It does have to be someone played today because I'm going to say Joe Mullen. No, it has to be someone today. It has to be somebody that played today.

59:58Bill Simmons:Yeah, Joe Mullen didn't play.

59:59Cousin Sal:Yeah, but he did knock over a fan in his yard for the pass. I did see that. He doesn't count that. I think Cooper Rush, I don't think it gets much worse, honestly. He was a good backup for the Cowboys, and he can win games, but no more. Not even confident in his checkdowns anymore. You talked about Dylan Gabriel. at least he gets the ball out fast for his checkdowns. You know we're going to see that for a rookie. Cooper Rush, it's over. Sorry, you have decent receivers. You have Derrick Henry. You should move the ball better than you did.

1:00:27Bill Simmons:Yeah, the thing with Gabriel, he kind of wasn't like, I'll be telling my grandkids about him, but at least he was throwing nine-yard passes to players in spots where they could catch the ball, which sadly is passing for confidence in 2025. It looked like he practices. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, ah, that was a nice, it's a tight end, really enjoyed being able to catch the ball right in front of his helmet like that. I'm taking Justin Fields. I've just, the 0-26, I think, is one of the craziest records. I just can't believe that if you're rooting for Justin Fields and you have this invisible thing for the other team where it's like, man, if they get to 21, the game's now over.

1:01:10Bill Simmons:I've never seen anything like that. But the thing is, he's always, he'll always have two, three plays that, kind of make you not want to give up on him yet. And he'll be like 38 and be like, ah, see that scramble? I don't know.

1:01:24Cousin Sal:Right. Yeah, the 40-yard run goes a long way in keeping him out of the basement for this draft. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Who do you have with it? All right, I'm going to... You know what? I'm going to say Cam Ward right now. I had him next. You did? Yeah. So entering this week, the Titans had three touchdowns after a month of football, offensive touchdowns. And really the only reason they won today is because a fumble was kicked around and some idiot dropped the ball at the goal line. So maybe he'll get it together. But right now he's got to be high on this list. The good news is Cam Ward versus Geno Smith.

1:02:00Cousin Sal:We've got to bet on that game next week. That's a Sunday coming up.

1:02:03Bill Simmons:Yeah, yeah. He had a good last like 40 minutes of the game. He actually started making some plays but he was the first two plus hours was bad. I'm taking Brissette with my next pick just because he played He came in and immediately threw a pass that the tight end blew his knee out trying to catch. And not to laugh at that, but it was just like classic. Shouldn't be helping the team doctor out for sure. They didn't score for the moments he was in there. But it was just, I got flashbacks to when he was the Patriots quarterback last year. Who do you have next? I have four, five guys left on the board.

1:02:36Bill Simmons:It's getting interesting here. Wow. All right.

1:02:38Cousin Sal:I have Arch Manning because I don't think... That's a wrong podcast. I'll save that for Tate on Tuesday. is it just do I have to take Jackson Dart over Spencer Rattler at this point because he won I don't know

1:02:55Bill Simmons:I didn't have Jackson Dart in this spot

1:02:56Cousin Sal:alright I'm going to go Rattler even though he won and he can't get to the Sean Kaiser Trophy that's alright he's 1-10 now but he still has to be on this list he's Kizer's off the hook

1:03:09Bill Simmons:he gets to keep his record I don't think Rattler's awful. Okay. Do you think he's awful? He actually can make some plays. Yeah, I think they're done. I don't trust him. That's it. That's it for them. I have Bryce Young next only because he's fallen behind over and over again. There's been four times this season where there was a 10-minute stretch of people online or Panther fans being like, that's probably it for Bryce Young. He's never going to start another NFL game. And then he just does The Undertaker. All of a sudden, he's up again and he's rejuvenated. But the Dolphins are really bad. And...

1:03:54Bill Simmons:yeah, I don't really see it with Bryce, unfortunately. All right.

1:03:58Cousin Sal:You probably don't have this guy on the list, but I'm going to say Carson Wentz. I had him on my list. Early in the morning and I wanted to be entertained more, but I think a good way to do this list is, how about this? If you find out they're injured, are you okay with the backup coming in? And when Carson Wentz went out around halftime, I'm like, oh, what does this Brosmer guy look like, the backup for the Vikings, University of Minnesota quarterback that no one cared about in the draft. So if your guy gets injured, you say, let's see what you got. Let's see what's next. I think that's it. And Carson Wentz, you know, I don't want to cut him too much slack.

1:04:34Cousin Sal:He's got Cheston Jefferson. He's got Addison. He's got great receivers and should move the ball better against the Browns. I know they won, but come on.

1:04:41Bill Simmons:I don't know who the announcers were today because I was barely awake. But at one point, I forget who. Somebody who was involved with the Eagles or something. who is him? Oh, Jim Schwartz.

1:04:54Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:04:55Bill Simmons:And he was like, Jim, we were talking to Jim Schwartz this week and Jim Schwartz said they would have won the Super Bowl with Wentz. That year he got hurt. Like, that's how good he was. They would have won the Super Bowl with him. Do people actually believe this?

1:05:08Cousin Sal:I don't know. I mean, that was your dumb team.

1:05:11Bill Simmons:Nick Foles left his body for three weeks. I don't know if Wentz would have done that. I don't know. We'll never understand what happened with Nick Foles, but he did. I would have liked my chances more.

1:05:21Cousin Sal:Is Jim Schwartz a defensive guy? Yeah. I think he was just being nice.

1:05:26Bill Simmons:Can I take Brosmer here? Yeah, if you want. Is there a first name for him?

1:05:32Cousin Sal:I don't think he... They're not going to release it until like week nine. He's just Brosmer. He's like Kramer. Yeah, he's Brosmer. It's a great entrance. I'm taking him next.

1:05:42Bill Simmons:All right, two picks left.

1:05:44Cousin Sal:All right, I'm going to say Anthony Richardson. Just the side of him kind of got me sick. I know he didn't do much or anything or hurt his team and he played for a winner but I have to put him on that list

1:05:55Bill Simmons:I actually had a thought the most fun outcome is the Raiders trading for him right it's like the perfect storm of everything the Raider, Geno they come up with some fake injury for Geno maybe he's hurt he had a rotator cuff we didn't realize but we've acquired Anthony Richardson for fifth rounder, Brady's going to mentor him. Brady's going to get information from his coach meetings when he has coffees with coaches and they give him the entire game plan for the week so he can say nothing when he does the telecast.

1:06:27Cousin Sal:I like that. Get him on the cheap AR 15 going to the Raiders. It all makes sense.

1:06:33Bill Simmons:Gunslinger. Al Davis would have loved this guy. He's like Daryl LaMonica.

1:06:41Bill Simmons:So Tua and Gabriel are still on the board.

1:06:48Bill Simmons:and Gabriel's not better than Tua. As much as I would love to do it for the content, I'd have to take Gabriel here and leave Tua to you as the last pick.

1:06:58Cousin Sal:All right, let's – maybe we just – we button this up with – Tua has to be drafted. Yeah, because I have Kyler here too, honestly. Are you sure Kyler's better than Tua at this point? I mean, how many games like this are we going to see? He has to do better than 220 and 25 yards rushing versus the worst team.

1:07:19Bill Simmons:So you're taking Kyler. I'll take Tua. Okay. There you go. Listen, that's a great case. I will say this. If they had announced during the game, if they had stopped the ball after he almost got concussed by the shotgun snap that he didn't see and they stopped and they're like, congratulations to Kyler Murray, who had the shotgun snap inexplicably hit his head when he wasn't looking for the 37th time. It's an NFL career high. Like, I actually would have believed that.

1:07:48Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:07:48Bill Simmons:That happens to him eight times a year. Is any quarterback ever more surprised by shotgun snaps?

1:07:56Cousin Sal:I like it. Another guy doesn't practice. Nobody knows the ball's coming down. Yeah, that was a Looney Tunes episode. That really was. Drop ball, go lines, snaps to the face mask. Stupid team.

1:08:10Bill Simmons:Do Arizona and Carolina play this year? I'm going to look this up. Because that's like our perfect match. Oh, they already played. They played. Yeah, that was the game. I'm making my own point already because it already happened. Because I was going to say the perfect game would be Kyler Murray versus Bryce Young. Because they would take an early lead and then Bryce Young would make a late comeback. And that's actually what happened in week two.

1:08:32Cousin Sal:That's when Arizona's wins, right? Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:34Bill Simmons:All right. So your team was your bad QB fantasy draft. You had Browning, Rush, Ward, Rattler, Wentz, Richardson, and Kyler. Yeah. And I had Geno, Fields, Brissette, Bryce, Brosmer, Bob Brosmer. Bobby Brosmer, yeah. Bobby Brosmer. Brian Brosmer.

1:09:00Bill Simmons:Gabriel and Tua. So a couple lefties. I don't know whose team's better.

1:09:05Cousin Sal:Jackson Dart goes unscathed.

1:09:06Bill Simmons:Good for you. He should go and say it. He's not bad. I think he's better than everyone we just mentioned. Would you rather have Jackson Darth than any of those guys?

1:09:14Cousin Sal:It's fine. It's just some of these teams are going to end up with two and three wins. And I couldn't even tell you which is which. There's some really bad ones. So right now we have seven one-win teams and a winless team.

1:09:28Bill Simmons:So we have eight teams that are one and four or on five. All right. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser. But Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.

1:09:59Cousin Sal:We are live from Fetty's house. Guests are gathering around the TV, even with a big storm outside. Are we worried about the feed? Nope, they have Xfinity Wi-Fi.

1:10:07Bill Simmons:Get reliable fiber-powered gig Wi-Fi with Peacock included to stream the beautiful game this summer. Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply. New gig internet members only. Speeds vary. Use of fiber coaxial cable. Peacock offer for Peacock Premium with ads currently$10.99 a month value. Activation required to access content. Terms apply. Peacock must be activated within first 90 days. Manage existing subscriptions to avoid multiple charges. Third-party subscriptions continue until canceled. Let's go to Guest Alliance. Week six. Eagles Giants. We get to watch Jackson Jart. By the way, you won the first two weeks.

1:10:37Bill Simmons:I won the last three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People think I'm cheating again. I'm back, baby.

1:10:42Cousin Sal:Well, let me just say something, because you're going to think I'm cheating, but I got the Thursday night game exactly, and I got the Sunday game, the first two we go over, the Europe game. So this is not how I would cheat. I would cover it up a little better, but go ahead.

1:10:56Bill Simmons:Okay. Eagles at the Giants. I have the Eagles by seven and a half. That's it.

1:11:01Cousin Sal:All right, we tie.

1:11:02Bill Simmons:It is seven and a half. Oh, okay.

1:11:05Cousin Sal:See how you blocked me there?

1:11:09Bill Simmons:Yeah, I looked at 6.5, 7, and 7.5, and I tried all three. And 6.5 felt too late. 7, it just felt like a 7.5. But I also wouldn't have been surprised if you had told me it was 9.5 because the Thursday night with what we saw from the Giants.

1:11:25Cousin Sal:Well, you know we have to be scared a little when we put them on a teaser because they're not going to lose two games in a row.

1:11:30Bill Simmons:Right.

1:11:30Cousin Sal:This is a seven-point tease, I think. Yeah, I'm with you.

1:11:33Bill Simmons:So I think the move is you grab the Chiefs tomorrow, seven pointies with them, with the Eagles, and then a third team.

1:11:40Cousin Sal:Oh, really? All right.

1:11:41Bill Simmons:Well, let's go through these because you might just see them clearly here. London game. I had no idea what to do with this. Broncos, Jets.

1:11:54Bill Simmons:By the way, poor London. Why do we do this to them? It's a war crime. Some of these quarterbacks we throw their way. is the goal for London we just make money because they'll go watch anything because I think so the goal is to try to get them to love professional football and become real fans of the sport right we're sending them the worst teams over and over again or these teams you would never want to watch and there are these 21 to 17 these shitty games why don't we send like real people over there real people like send them like Josh Allen versus Patrick Mahomes or like just one game where they'll be like whoa

1:12:30Cousin Sal:yeah if we're gonna have three or four in London or whatever, one of them needs to be decent, right? We gave them the Vikings twice. If it was Patriots-Bills, that would have been fine for Sunday morning. I'm with you.

1:12:44Bill Simmons:I went for... I wrote down Broncos minus 7. I think I might be low. Jesus. I picked two exactly and I can't gain any ground on you? 7? Yeah. Well, there's your teaser, right? I don't know if I'm doing the... I'm 0-2 with the Euro games. Today I did a Browns under, a Browns money line under with the Colts. And I felt great about it. And then the Browns didn't win. The Browns money line under. The Browns money line with the under in the Browns game with the Colts money line. I did that as a parlay. Well, why'd you like the Browns so much? Because the Vikings had no offensive line. I just thought their defense was going to win it by themselves.

1:13:31Cousin Sal:Denver should win just to win. I mean, coming off the high of winning in Philly

1:13:38Bill Simmons:and then losing to Justin Fields in London. By the way, by 10 o 'clock on Sunday, the Giants and the Jets could still have one win. Oh, interesting. We should really be monitoring this. The Yankees fell behind 2-0 in this Blue Jays series, which I'm just stunned by because I just thought they were going to kill the Blue Jays. this could be in the running for like a week from hell for the New York sports Yankees get bounced embarrassing Thursday night game embarrassing London game Yankees are gone, Mets season was a disaster now everything's like riding on the Knicks did you think the Mets season

1:14:21Cousin Sal:wasn't a disaster? no, I hadn't even thought about it until you mentioned it should we do the same thing with Philadelphia though? Eagles lose Phillies lose game one Penn State? No, but the Eagles lose.

1:14:32Bill Simmons:Penn State?

1:14:33Cousin Sal:The UCLA? Yeah, that was bad.

1:14:35Bill Simmons:Yeah. The Eagles fans like this, though. They never want to be too happy. That's true. And now they get to complain all week. They're like, what are we doing? Why don't we use the receivers? What's going on? It's the goal bar effect. God, it's probably being used. They like being angry.

1:14:46Cousin Sal:Yeah, they're upset. Yeah, they like it.

1:14:47Bill Simmons:They're in the right spot. Sunday marquee game. I couldn't believe this was the marquee game, but I think this is what it should be. Bucks in Tampa against the San Francisco 49ers. I think is the best game. Definitely. I think Tom Brady will go to this game and get all bunch of insight. Oh, he shouldn't be allowed. He shouldn't be allowed. He's going to find out so many things. It's going to help the Raiders.

1:15:14Cousin Sal:This is the only reason the Raiders are only losing by 25 and not 50 because he's got the inside scoop.

1:15:20Bill Simmons:A friend of Brady was saying that Gino would have 19 interceptions if Brady wasn't in these meetings learning things. How does Bucs minus two and a half sound?

1:15:31Cousin Sal:Oh, come on. Yeah, it sounds like you're cheating because now you're three for three with exact lines. That's what it sounds like. I had three. I thought the Bucs should be three. I haven't seen anything. Bucs minus two and a half. I can't win. Well, I'm throwing a real hitter right now. I have some bad picks too coming up. This sucks.

1:15:49Bill Simmons:Why isn't this three? I think it ends up at three, right? Well, because we don't know if Purdy's playing or not. And that's bad or good? I don't know. Well, Mac Jones has one leg. seems to be enough. I was proud of my guy, Mac Jones. I thought he, you know, I, I always felt like there was, maybe we overrated him too much in the beginning, but it also really felt like he was just broken by the experience of being on these last Belichick teams.

1:16:18Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:16:18Bill Simmons:Right. And like just lost his confidence. Like a little Baker Mayfield is Baker, Baker Mayfield got waived and is now we're calling him the MVP. So I don't know. You can lose your confidence, but yeah,

1:16:28Cousin Sal:I mean, Seanahan must be just giddy. I mean, this is the guy he wanted at three anyway, right? Yeah.

1:16:37Bill Simmons:Watchables. Yep. I only have one. Jags, Seahawks in Jacksonville. Yeah. Pretty good game. Putting in the tic-tac zone. I get the Jags minus one and a half.

1:16:52Cousin Sal:I mean, this is unprecedented fucking cheating going on.

1:16:57Bill Simmons:I swear to my kids.

1:17:01Cousin Sal:Your kids.

1:17:02Bill Simmons:Did I hit this? You hit it. You got four in a row. Perfectly. Yeah, they should put this on the main page of YouTube right now. Four for four.

1:17:11Cousin Sal:This is nuts. All right. I had Seattle. I thought Seattle would lay one. I guess. No, they had too many injuries. This could change a lot depending on what goes on tomorrow. I thought I was too low on that one. Yeah, sure you did. Look at this.

1:17:24Bill Simmons:I mean, they're out on Witherspoon. Durant's out.

1:17:30Cousin Sal:yeah i like instead of rooting for history you're as bummed out as this is the shithead who dropped the ball at the goal line now demarcato he blacked out that's what he

1:17:42Bill Simmons:shouldn't have said in the post-game press conference i blacked out i don't remember what happened have you guys ever scored a touchdown that's what i should say anybody here ever scored a 76 yard touchdown yeah you don't understand what happens you black out it's really exciting. I just blacked out. I didn't have enough sugar today.

1:17:58Cousin Sal:I think you should say stroke. I say I had a stroke. Now you're eligible for comeback player of the year next year.

1:18:04Bill Simmons:I'm going for an MRI. I might have had a stroke. Fairly watchable. I was at five. Now there's some pressure. What does it matter? Colts, Cardinals, Indianapolis.

1:18:18Cousin Sal:I got this exact. If you get this, I'm pressing leave meeting and I'm walking the F out of here. Go ahead. I have it in the Vegas zone. Yep.

1:18:31Bill Simmons:Colts, five and a half.

1:18:34Cousin Sal:Wow.

1:18:35Bill Simmons:Wow. What a run. No one's even gotten three in a row. You have five? This is the record for us. You know what's funny? I had four and a half before that Arizona loss. Then I bumped at a point. Let's just do parent corner. Why do we have to hit the rest of these games? This is unbelievable. I'm like the Bishop and Caddyshack. David Weaver.

1:19:00Cousin Sal:You're still up 5-3 because I have three, but that wasn't enough. You have five.

1:19:03Bill Simmons:I'm going to lose this one. Go ahead. I don't even know if this is a fairly watchable. It might be a poop one. But Chargers at Miami. Yeah. A lot of pressure on this. I have the Chargers minus two and a half. Okay.

1:19:21Cousin Sal:We tie on this. but neither of us are close to the actual line, which is charges by four and a half. Oh. They put that in the Vegas zone. That's a lot. One of these teams beats the shit out of the other. I can't remember which it is, but they seem to play every year.

1:19:38Bill Simmons:I don't know. What's the weather going to be like in a week? Do we know? October. In Miami? I think it'll be okay. October 12th, Miami weather.

1:19:49Cousin Sal:What's going to surprise you here? 78. Yeah.

1:19:54Bill Simmons:What is it? It's going to be 83.

1:19:57Cousin Sal:Oh, I think that's a massive advantage.

1:19:59Bill Simmons:I'll give you an extra one for that.

1:20:01Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:20:01Bill Simmons:It's going to be 84 on Saturday and 83 on Sunday. I think that's a real advantage for them. I think these teams get tired in the second half.

1:20:09Cousin Sal:That is a little warmer than I thought.

1:20:11Bill Simmons:They're like baking in the sun.

1:20:12Cousin Sal:Right. Man, man, that makes me worried. Wasn't it hot in Carolina today too? I mean, the Dolphins were terrible, Dan.

1:20:20Bill Simmons:Was it? I don't know. Probably. All right. Steelers-Browns. My streak's over. This is in Pittsburgh. Right? Yep. The Steelers aren't that good. But the Browns have good defense. So I'm going to make the Steelers five and a half.

1:20:45Cousin Sal:You know what? Starting next week, I'm going to drink a hot water and lemon by the gallon. Did I hit it? You hit it exactly.

1:20:53Bill Simmons:I said six. See, now people, nobody's going to believe this. What do I have to swear on?

1:20:59Cousin Sal:I don't know. I mean, you're not a very good actor. I'll say that. So you got, I think you're being legit here. I don't know what to say.

1:21:09Cousin Sal:All right. Six out of seven, exactly? I'm feeling the schedule. I've been watching a lot of football. You should, I mean, this is going to be interesting to see if you make money this week. I think I might hit this next one. That's probably low too, right? Wouldn't you be surprised if they lost that game? That should be higher.

1:21:28Bill Simmons:The problem with the Browns is if they get a lead with their defense against Rodgers. If they were up 9-0 or something, I could see them.

1:21:37Cousin Sal:Pittsburgh was off, right? And Cleveland's coming. Yeah, Pittsburgh was off. And Cleveland's coming back. But Cleveland's coming for Europe. That's a huge rest advantage there.

1:21:45Bill Simmons:It's a parlay game. Rams, Ravens. So are we assuming no Lamar? because I did my guess with no Lamar.

1:21:53Cousin Sal:I'll give you a hint, not that you need it. Yes, no Lamar if you read into this line. Okay.

1:22:00Bill Simmons:Well, I'm probably too low anyway because I said Rams minus three and a half.

1:22:03Cousin Sal:Okay. I said five. It's seven and a half. Oh. Yeah, they've had enough.

1:22:11Bill Simmons:So I've hit six exactly, but I was off by two and off by four.

1:22:15Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:22:16Bill Simmons:Wow, seven and a half is high. It's kind of a kitchen sink game for the Ravens. They'd be 1-5 heading into a bye. You're doing flea flickers. You're doing double passes. You're doing everything.

1:22:30Cousin Sal:I'd like Baltimore a lot more if the Rams hadn't lost that stupid, stupid-ass game on Thursday.

1:22:38Bill Simmons:That really was stupid. I'm tired of... I'm at my limit of the guys fumbling as they're about to score a touchdown. This used to happen once a year, and now I feel like it's happened every week. Even if they get punched in the head? Yeah. Nobody, yeah.

1:22:52Cousin Sal:I mean, I don't like when you feel like you can't count on anything, like when it's bad play calling by Sean McVay, right? We've got to be able to count on the good coaches. There's not too many bad coaches, quarterback combos.

1:23:04Bill Simmons:But that's, I talked about this on Thursday's pod. For some reason, he has a blind spot on these fourth and ones, right? Did you feel like that was going to be a good call by him?

1:23:13Cousin Sal:Well, no.

1:23:13Bill Simmons:I always feel like he messes those up.

1:23:15Cousin Sal:He's got to be able to audible out, right? When everybody is loading the box, It never works. Tail back up the middle. Pat Saints, initially before the Buffalo game,

1:23:29Bill Simmons:I had Tic Tacs on for this, but I think they have to be minus three in New Orleans. So I went Pat's minus three in New Orleans.

1:23:36Cousin Sal:It is Pat's minus three. I said two and a half. How many have I hit? Seven? That's seven exactly. That might be the record. This is ridiculous. We've got to give you a parade here or something. One, two. That's a pretty easy one, though. Three, four. I guess. I'm just a half point off everything.

1:23:56Bill Simmons:Poop fact of three games, including your team. Dangerous game. Cowboys at Carolina.

1:24:03Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:24:05Bill Simmons:If it's going to be hot in Miami, I'm guessing it's also going to be hot in Carolina. I have Cowboys minus three and a half in Carolina. Should we hire someone to do it? What did you say? Minus three and a half, Cowboys.

1:24:20Cousin Sal:I can't believe this after a while, right? Like, I can't just sit here and get insulted. Is it three and a half? It's three and a half. I said three. Eight. Oh, my God. Jacobi. There's not much I could do here, Jacobi. What a day. The Pats beat the Bills.

1:24:37Bill Simmons:And I'm on fire. Let's just stop this now. No, now I got to see if I can get to 10. Well, I don't know. We'll see. I already have the guesses. Are you scared of that Carolina game?

1:24:48Cousin Sal:Oh, yeah. I was scared of watching the documentary when we lost that game. Michael Irvin had a good game. Oh, yeah.

1:24:55Bill Simmons:You have the Steve Berler. Yeah. Yeah. This has all the makings of you go up 10-0 and then all of a sudden it's 24 to 14 Panthers.

1:25:05Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:25:06Bill Simmons:Yeah, we lost to them last or two years ago. We already lost. Spiro Ditas is saying it's a huge comeback. Raiders-Titans. I mean, it's in Vegas. I...

1:25:21Cousin Sal:I have Raiders minus two. I don't think I hit this one. Oh, wow. Well, you should lose like four for that. I said four, and it's six and a half. What? Let me recheck. Yeah. Six and a half. You love Vegas on a teaser. You love them. No.

1:25:42Bill Simmons:I just think, what did we say the home field advantage is now? One and a half? Yeah. Do you think the Raiders are better than the Titans? I mean, one of the things we didn't mention with the Raiders is they don't have Bowers.

1:25:55Cousin Sal:Right.

1:25:56Bill Simmons:Bowers clearly fucked up his knee after week one. He tried to play the last two weeks. He wasn't explosive at all. They benched him in today's game. And I just think without him, they don't. That's like the only receiving weapon they have.

1:26:11Cousin Sal:I don't know what to think because the Titans go down, you know, 14, 17 points every game. So it just depends on if there's a Kyler Murray type to let him back in it.

1:26:22Bill Simmons:Last game is Packers. Packers in Green Bay facing the Bengals. I was way off on this. Go ahead. You're way off on this? Oh, yeah. Well, Detroit was favored in Cincinnati by 10.5 and killed them. So the Packers have to be favored by 13. Okay.

1:26:44Cousin Sal:I said 11. It's 14 and a half. Oof. Yeah. They can't screw around here.

1:26:56Bill Simmons:Might have to break out the old 13-point teaser for that one. Take it out of the closet.

1:27:02Cousin Sal:Got a leg. You can do whatever you want this week. I don't see how you lose any of these games. You're all over everything.

1:27:08Bill Simmons:Would you see the home teams today? What was it? They were 3-9 outright. for this week, for week five. Home teams today, just winning or losing. Really? We're three and nine. Not counting the Rams too. The Rams also. Including the Rams. Yeah.

1:27:27Cousin Sal:Yeah, that makes sense as I look at my ledger. Yep. Yeah, didn't make a lot of sense.

1:27:32Bill Simmons:Okay, Sunday night, Chiefs-Lions, a great game. Mm-hmm. And I put it right in the tic-tac zone. And I said, Chiefs minus one and a half.

1:27:41Cousin Sal:All right, well, I've lost track now. But yes, you hit that exactly. It's one and a half. I thought Detroit would be favored by one. But I guess you can't just keep making. That's my ninth one. I might get to 10.

1:27:53Bill Simmons:There's two Monday night games.

1:27:55Cousin Sal:Because I have such a headache. I feel like it's like 15. But if you say nine.

1:27:59Bill Simmons:Is this better or worse for you than losing the Cardinals bet when the guy you're about to go up 28-6?

1:28:06Cousin Sal:This is Demercardo and the Mets blowing whatever it was.

1:28:11Bill Simmons:The funny thing is I'm going to get no credit for this because everybody's going to think I cheated. Well, yeah, they should. The only one who knows he didn't cheat is me. And I'm like wildly impressed by myself. I've never done this well. I don't think you would cheat this way.

1:28:22Cousin Sal:I don't. I really don't think so.

1:28:24Bill Simmons:I certainly would have to be a lunatic to cheat this way. Well, yeah.

1:28:31Bill Simmons:It's the freaking hot water. It's doing it. Let's go for 10. Monday night. Bills at Atlanta. Two games again. How are they just going to keep doing this? I don't mind it. Hmm. I went Bills minus two and a half in Atlanta. Oh, you lost this one. I said five. It's four and a half.

1:28:50Cousin Sal:Another one where I'm off. Well, they're not going to lose. I mean, wouldn't you be shocked if they lost this and tonight?

1:29:00Bill Simmons:Everyone's betting Buffalo here. I think Atlanta is a pretty solid home team. They had the week off. I haven't seen Buffalo play a complete game yet, and we're heading into the second week of October. I don't know. I think Atlanta could win this. Okay. I wouldn't feel awesome about betting Buffalo on the money line. Last one, my last chance to go for 10, which would easily be the record. It's Washington at home on a Monday night against the Bears without Terry McLaurin, but with Daniels. And I have Washington in the Vegas zone. Is it in the Vegas zone?

1:29:40Cousin Sal:It is in the Vegas zone. I've watched a minus four and a half.

1:29:46Bill Simmons:You did it.

1:29:50Cousin Sal:You did it.

1:29:50Bill Simmons:10!

1:29:52Cousin Sal:There is a crazy -

1:29:53Bill Simmons:Were there bye weeks this week?

1:29:54Cousin Sal:Thank God there was two teams on bye, Houston and Minnesota, because you would have had 11. So I got 10 of the 15 I hit exactly. Yeah. That's never happened before. I don't think six or seven has ever happened. We're launching an investigation. I don't know what to tell you. You, Comey, you're all going down. Wow. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You know what it is? What is it? Here it is.

1:30:19Bill Simmons:Here's the secret right here. You're not looking up.

1:30:21Cousin Sal:It is. Yeah. Is that a urine specimen? What is that? No, it's water with lemon. With lemon. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. Good job by you. Wow. 12-7, and you lead four weeks to two. Oh, man. I am rattled by that. That was impressive.

1:30:38Bill Simmons:I should have, when I was going for 10, I should have held my iPad right over the camera and then dropped it like Demercado. Just dangled it. We'll have to replay that. Just lost it. So, seven-point teaser or parlay type of things. Rams, Ravens, if Lamar isn't playing, that's pretty enticing. Eagles, Giants, Broncos, Jets would be the three. That's one of those, which team is blowing this for us?

1:31:09Cousin Sal:I don't think it's complicated. Philly and Denver.

1:31:15Cousin Sal:Philly, you have to do. Thursday night, Sunday morning, you're done. Yeah. Don't even wake up for that game. All right.

1:31:25Bill Simmons:You want to hit some parent corner?

1:31:27Cousin Sal:Yeah, not really. I want to go to sleep.

1:31:29Bill Simmons:I'm really mad about this. Today's parent corner brought to you by Workday. Are you a forward thinker? Then you need an HR and finance platform that thinks like you do. Workday, the AI platform that helps propel your organization, your workforce, and your entire industry into the future. Workday, moving business forever forward. Parent corner. Let's hear it. You were in Brooklyn with your whole family. Was your family in Brooklyn or no?

1:31:54Cousin Sal:No, they were home. And that's what goes on here. So I didn't really have much interaction with them. um yeah but uh yeah i was there for eight days and i was like you know do i have to bring something home i guess i should bring something home so i bring home a bunch of uh yes but jimmy kimmel live sweatshirts and t-shirts and hats not free and not cheap but i do get a 20 discount and i met with uh oh thanks like everyone's like yeah it's like you know i got 12 you're handing them out at the show Yeah. I was like, yeah, I paid for these. It's nice. It was actually hard to get because they were selling out.

1:32:32Cousin Sal:So I had to put them to the side. Yeah. 12 year old, 17 year old wife. And I was thinking to myself, what age do you stop bringing gifts home for the kids after a business trip? And I thought about it. Go ahead. Probably like nine. I would say nine. Yeah. I thought about it and I threw a lot of numbers around and I wanted to hit it exact, much like you did 10 times today, whatever you did on the guest alliance. And I figured that age is whatever age they started getting everything they fucking ever asked for in life is the age. Like, why do we have to bring back anything to signify, of course I missed you.

1:33:13Cousin Sal:We FaceTimed, we called, but you also get whatever you want. Like you get Roblox bucks in every PlayStation game or app or Amazon gift cards or fishing poles or boogie boards or Topgolf out. It adds up. It's a Statue of Liberty globe, a snow globe. I'm certainly not getting anyone a Mets jersey from New York. I feel like I did the okay thing. Half-price Soto jersey?

1:33:38Bill Simmons:Yeah, it's enough. It's good. Maybe the Venn diagram is exactly the same age as Elf on the Shelf. Whenever that stops, that's when you stop bringing gifts on too.

1:33:49Cousin Sal:Okay, so two, three years past the Easter Bunny, and I hope no kids are listening, but the other guy, the big guy, yeah.

1:33:57Bill Simmons:Big beard guy, John Walsh?

1:33:58Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah, yeah, John Walsh, yeah.

1:34:02Bill Simmons:That's it, I don't know, so no one's happy. All right, so converse question, or like parallel question, how many years do you have to be with whoever you're dating or married to before you don't even think to bring them home something when you've been away for a week? Right, same thing. That's probably like three, four years? Yeah, sure. Because then if it's like after like 11 years and you bring them something, they just assume like you cheated on them when you were away. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, why are you giving me this? Right. What are you up to? Exactly. It's like, I don't know. I just wanted to get you a sweatshirt.

1:34:34Bill Simmons:Right. Why?

1:34:35Cousin Sal:That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Now, versus if you send them flowers just on a random Wednesday, that's, to me, that's nicer. Not that I would do that, but that's nicer than, you know, bringing gifts home. So I know.

1:34:49Bill Simmons:What was your best? was Billy Kimmel in Brooklyn? He was there.

1:34:52Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:34:53Bill Simmons:Yeah. He was good. I just want, I just want, we're going to have our cousin come on parent corner. I think next week.

1:34:59Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:35:00Bill Simmons:I got to see, so little Billy, who's in the perfect parent corner age.

1:35:05Cousin Sal:So funny.

1:35:06Bill Simmons:I haven't seen you this delighted by anybody in a long time. Um, because it's good. Cause it's not your son. So you, you're like, you're the perfect amount of distance, but you're related to him. And he's a complete shit stir. and he was just shooting people with a water gun and messing with 20 people in this very tense office, and you had the tongue in your cheek.

1:35:28Cousin Sal:You were just delighted. People all dressed up. It's the first show back. This is in L.A., the first show back, and Billy knows right where the water gun is. It goes right for his mother, who turned right in. Shoots her in the ear. Yeah, it's like block or charge. I don't know what we call this, but she walked right into it.

1:35:43Bill Simmons:She's wearing a dress. It's like the biggest show in the history of the show. She's just firing a water gun at her. so did he have any good Brooklyn moments

1:35:50Cousin Sal:yeah I mean first of all great crowds 10 ,000 people over 5 days there were like 125 ,000 ticket requests and no shenanigans like I was worried like all takes is one or two whatever so all big fans all big energy highlights I mean you could call me grandma Sal instead of cousin Sal because I had about 25 grandma slices of pizza while I was there all different spots did you weigh yourself before and after the trip or no I didn't tomorrow though I'm tripling up on the a Zep bound. So I have to, have to get, get it in order. It's going to be lemon and hot water the rest of the year till Christmas.

1:36:25Cousin Sal:We took our aunt Chippy on a tour of rats in New York city. Oh my God. Yeah. She didn't like it too much. And she was very upset with us, but I think the highlight was Seth Meyers was on the show and requested to meet me. And he is a big, big fan of ours. Yeah. He's a long time guest Alliance guy. Yeah. And he's a big fan of mine and yours before the hot water with lemon fiasco. Now he's just a fan of mine. But he was like, you got to go after this. Don't ever let him forget about that lemon thing. That's crazy. And here you are hitting 10. Yeah, he texted me about it.

1:36:58Bill Simmons:And I reminded him that you were sharing a milkshake with Rob Mills. No one cares about that. You're going to share a vanilla milkshake.

1:37:05Cousin Sal:Fine, still milkshake. 49-year-old man.

1:37:10Bill Simmons:It sounded like it was a great week. The Matt Damon thing was the highlight.

1:37:14Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah.

1:37:14Bill Simmons:Oh, yeah. That was great. The Matt Damon was really, really funny. So mine, listen, very few times will I use this platform just to complain, hoping for change, but also just complaining. I don't really like when people use platforms for that. But my daughter plays college soccer. She's a Div 3 athlete. And all these different leagues have these different systems for streaming the games to the parents because obviously the kids are from all over the place. People still want to, there's nothing more fun than watching a kid play sports. So we played a NESCAC team. NESCAC is the one with Amherst and Williams and Bowdoin, all those ones.

1:37:58Bill Simmons:And they're playing in Bowdoin and it's like the most, but they have, it's called NSN Sports. And they have this beautiful HD wide feed and you could see the whole game and the picture was perfect. And it was like, the game was on ESPN too. And we're like, my wife and I were like, this is amazing. Like this is like the best telecast of a Zoe game ever. And then on Saturday, we go back to the app that's for her league, the new Mac league. Right. And it's called flow sports. And it's this app that when it works for 20 straight minutes, it's a fucking miracle. And sometimes that sometimes it's just gone.

1:38:34Bill Simmons:And it says technical difficulties. There'll be 20 minutes left in the game. Sometimes it doesn't start. You log on before the game and And you're just like, I just hope my daughter's game's on. I just, I really, and then it's like, oh, there's the field. So this one, they reached a new one on Saturday. They've never done this one before. I felt like Flow Sports had played all of the hits for just how to fuck with parents of these players. This one, there was just a test pattern. That was, it was a field of the game. There's some three-year-old, a wide shot of the field, one camera. There's some three-year-old working the camera.

1:39:10Bill Simmons:They're just zooming in and out. It's like if you give your son an iPhone and he's like, ah, um, and then on top of it, the test pattern. And every time the camera would move, if like somebody kicked the ball, the test pattern would come on. So about 20 minutes in, we're like, we might have a seizure. Like, should we keep watching this week? We have to watch it. It's always game. And it's just test pattern, game, test pattern, game, test pattern, game. Flow sports. It's like$10 a month. And I went big on wrestling.

1:39:38Cousin Sal:I think it started with like wrestling.

1:39:40Bill Simmons:They have all these sports. And there was, I Googled them and there was this big article about Flow Sports. They have so much money and resources and things are going great. It's like, things aren't going great. Your cameras suck. Every telecast, it's a 50-50 whether I'm going to see my daughter's game or not. I live 3 ,000 miles away. Show the fucking game. Figure it out. Get better cameras. Use your resources for all these colleges. You have this great economic thing going on. You have people like us that are just away from our kids. We'll pay any amount of money to watch our kids play. Figure out the fucking cameras, Flow Sports.

1:40:16Bill Simmons:Don't suck this much. That's my rant for parents. I like it.

1:40:19Cousin Sal:I like it. They're done now. You crippled that. You made it worse. You crippled that company.

1:40:25Bill Simmons:Flow Sports and Tylenol, out. You know why I'm so upset? Because I'm still recovering from the seven seizures I had from the 97 ,000 times they flashed the test pattern.

1:40:33Cousin Sal:Well, it helps you guess the lines, obviously. Yeah, that sucks. Maybe all the seizures help. So anyway, how many games do you think they're doing simultaneously? Not to stick up for them here, because I don't know what's going on,

1:40:45Bill Simmons:but they probably have hundreds going on at the same time. Yeah, but at some point, if this is a business, the things shouldn't flake out. No, it's not a business anymore. NSN Sports. The NESCAC certainly has a good camera. Flow Sports. Just have a meeting, play this whole rant in the meeting at 10 o 'clock. And I really want you to all look at each other in the conference room.

1:41:11Cousin Sal:Wow.

1:41:11Bill Simmons:And figure the fuck out what you're going to do long-term with this. This is a great product you have. Parents love watching their kids play sports. Just figure it out. It's true. There's another game on Wednesday. Like Zoe's playing Wednesday. Am I going to be able to watch the game? Is it going to cut out? Like, we'll never know.

1:41:29Cousin Sal:Oh, they're going to fly you out first class now to make sure you don't miss your right on the field.

1:41:33Bill Simmons:Just have the feed. I don't need anything. Just have the feed work. I speak on behalf of all the parents out there and I know there's got to be so many more parents that like fucking hate flow sports how much is it? 10 a month? yeah something like that if they say they're going to have it it's two months away from 2026 like we should be even I have a good camera for the podcast now think how long that took like we're all getting better at this stuff anyway that was Parent Corner

1:42:00Cousin Sal:from Progressive just killed herself

1:42:04Bill Simmons:it was Parent Corner brought to you by Workday.com. You can learn more about all their great stuff there. They are a more competent company than Flow Sports. All right. So what do you have going this week? Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Ringer Gambling Show. I got a lot. Yeah. House is coming this weekend, by the way. Oh, he is? Oh, you're doing that? I don't know if you're coming for football. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Let's get that going. You don't know if you're coming for football on Sunday.

1:42:29Cousin Sal:Tuesday with Tate. Wow. Penn State and Texas suck. We're going to talk college. We're going to talk pro. to talk baseball, what's going on with Coach Belichick. Wednesday with House and our nephew, DeBundo. Friday with DeBundo and Heifetz. And then our award-winning pregame show. By the way, that was a great fit. That was like a, look, stand back. And I'm like, what I'm doing in life is pretty cool. I'm like, well, I'm on with my buddies on this pregame show. And I'm like, I'm going to bet the Vikings on that last drive, plus 250. Of course, I lost it all during the day. But I'm going to bet them.

1:43:00Cousin Sal:I like this. This is still the Browns. And then we discussed it. We're on the air talking about it. And it won. I was like, this is very cool. So there you go. Bring a pregame show. Any baseball picks before we go? Anything you're excited about?

1:43:13Bill Simmons:How could you pick any of these games? Do you like any of this? I thought the Yankees were going to, honestly, I thought they were going to kill Toronto. I'm not saying that. Yeah. As a reverse jinx thing. When Bashek got scratched, combined with Toronto's bullpen. But the thing is, they've never even had to go to the bullpen because they killed them in two games in a row.

1:43:32Cousin Sal:Yep. Can I say something that's...

1:43:35Bill Simmons:Detroit-Seattle is a good series, though. I think that one's going to go seven.

1:43:38Cousin Sal:I'm old man-ish with this thing because I don't like when the playoffs don't resemble the regular season. And when these guys... I mean, Seattle had a freaking shutout going and still used five pitchers. I know it ended up 3-2. They allowed one earned run. You need to see five pitchers when your guy is throwing a gem, doing the best he's ever done. So, anyway. But it's fun to have all the three.

1:44:02Bill Simmons:Would you put like a number for how many you could use in the first seven innings or something?

1:44:07Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think just, I don't know. I guess you can't do that because of injury and everything. But I also think all these games should air on Flow Sports.

1:44:19Cousin Sal:Toronto Yankees on Flow Sports. I just...

1:44:23Bill Simmons:Imagine getting a camera to Canada? Oh, man. Just Flow Sports. Just do better. I'm not... Just do better. not asking for a home run just just get hit a single to the opposite field it'd be great all right cuz uh this was a true pleasure today congrats to my new england patriots congrats to me for the 10 uh thanks to eduardo and gahau as well um you can have the rewatchables tomorrow night jeremiah johnson we're doing that one uh you got task prestige tv podcast we've been

1:44:53Cousin Sal:covering that every week are you watching task yeah i am i'm way behind though task is good uh

1:44:58Bill Simmons:And then my wife and I watched the first three episodes of the Ed Gein Netflix thing. Really disturbing. Like almost too disturbing.

1:45:07Cousin Sal:Might not continue. Really? Oh, so maybe I don't have to add it to my team.

1:45:11Bill Simmons:I don't know if you do. I'm on the fence. I got John Candy. I got all these others. John Candy's coming. All right. That one's coming too. All right, Sal. Good job by you. Good job by you, buddy. Thanks, everybody.

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