Guess the Lines Week 1, Micah Parsons Trade Damage, and an NFL Futures Draft With Cousin Sal

14:26Cousin Sal:best player right but that's the thing is usually when these guys become available

14:32Bill Simmons:there's there's still not arrow pointing up toward like the apex of their career they're usually like ah they probably peaked two years ago but they can still be at near that level for a couple more years. This was like the rarest chance you could ever have of getting somebody that hasn't even maybe been the best version of himself yet. You know? And I think then to trade him in the NFC is the other thing that has to drive the nuts. You're like, really? You can't just send him to fucking Denver or Tennessee or somewhere, anywhere? Yeah.

15:00Cousin Sal:Jerry, you have history with Green Bay, right? Like, you know, first of all, the Mike McCarthy stuff. All right. There was that weirdness there. The third and 20, obviously, with Rodgers years ago in the playoffs. You had the Dez catch. Stay away from the Packers. They're not in our division, but they're our enemies. He's just a mess.

15:20Bill Simmons:It's a complete mess. We covered this in the NFC over-unders. You did not like this Cowboys team to begin with from a season standpoint. It was pretty top-heavy. Yeah. And now you've lost one of the number one person who made the team top-heavy, and you have these picks coming that you don't even get to use for April. It almost makes more sense to zag now and just kind of tank the season. But I don't think they're going to do that either.

15:44Cousin Sal:No, you're right. They'll be somewhere in the middle and it'll suck. And I guess, yeah, theoretically, if I had them at six or seven wins, what does it matter if they have three or four right now? It doesn't.

15:54Bill Simmons:And you're in a good conference. They could conceivably be one of the worst teams. You're going to have this Thursday night game that we're going to do against the Lions where they're playing this awesome stacked Eagles team. and all the announcers, it's going to be NBC and it's going to be Collinsworth. I just can't believe they traded Michael Parsons. I would rather slip my throat with a razor blade than do that. You just know that's going to be three hours of it.

16:23Cousin Sal:Something's missing with this Cowboys defense. I can't put my finger on it. Is he still with Al? I don't know. Did you make that announcement? Al, Michael Parsons.

16:36Bill Simmons:Was it Mike? Oh, yeah. Come on, man. Let's get it. My first guest, the Lions mistake. Mike. Michael Parsons. He just wrecks games. He wrecks them. He wrecks these games, Mike.

16:49Cousin Sal:Mike, why am I calling you Al all year? You got to correct me by week eight.

16:54Bill Simmons:Mike, are you Al or are you Mike? Just a train wreck. Listen, we're both old enough to know these trades. There's going to be no scenario where this is a good trade. None. the Packers are going to be one of somewhere between first and eighth, I would say in the league, right? They're going to have at least 10 wins, probably 11. They might even be really good and be like a one seed, which would be hilarious. Um, you play them this year, don't you?

17:24Cousin Sal:Yeah. It's week four, you know? Yeah. And I'll go around there. I can't root for them now. So I'll sell some of that. I mean, after we got off with the pot, I bet some Packers to win the NFC and love to win MVP. So I'm happy to sell some of that at a huge discount to anyone listening.

17:39Bill Simmons:I did that. I did a little more that week once I laid out all the research for our podcast because the odds were still really favorable. Buffalo Green Bay, I think, was 45 to 1 as a Super Bowl matchup.

17:52Cousin Sal:Before the trade? Before the trade.

17:55Bill Simmons:Oh, you better. Yeah, Love was in the 20 to 25 range. But I took all that league stuff seriously. when the Packers thing probably came out 72 hours before that they were really intrigued. And then the day we were taping the podcast, which was last Wednesday, somebody had a report that Dallas was at least listening to calls. And anytime I hear that, it's like the trade's happening. Because once you're actually like, oh, what do you got? Now you're just leveraging everyone against each other. If you have somebody like Michael Parsons and I call you and I'm like, hey, I'd love to trade for Michael Parsons.

18:28Bill Simmons:And you'd be like, cool. you're hanging out. But the fact that they were listening to the calls, he knew it was a wrap.

18:34Cousin Sal:I know. I just thought a stubborn Jerry wins over everything. You know, it's funny. It's funny, but the same fellow we talked about who has been in the front office and knows his, I was like, he was on the road. He's like, what did they get for him? I was like, uh, he said, I said, uh, he said two, two first. I'm like, keep going. He said, wow. All right. Three. I said, no, keep going for, I was like, no, go the other way. Go, go the other way. Go backwards. He's like, you're kidding me. Two? That's terrible. Can you guess a 30-year-old defensive tackle? How about that one? Yes. Yeah. Throw that in there.

19:07Cousin Sal:I feel bad going after Kenny Clark. He's a fine player. Good player. Yeah, seems solid. Might be a part.

19:14Bill Simmons:Everyone loves him in the locker room, apparently.

19:16Cousin Sal:Yeah.

19:18Bill Simmons:I just like, the one thing that I got to throw my body in front of was people comparing this to Luka Doncic's trade. This was not the Luka Doncic's trade. No. In basketball, you basically need three guys to compete for a title. And one of those three guys, if it's one of the 10 best guys in the league, you always have a chance.

19:36Cousin Sal:Yeah.

19:37Bill Simmons:Football, really, it's the quarterback is the only untouchable position. In any other position, you could talk yourself into a scenario where you could win that. There was some stuff about how Von Miller was the last elite pass rusher to win a Super Bowl. That was 2015. 15. So if you're building your team around, and this is like, you know, the most important guy on your team, the track record is it is a little harder to win the Superbowl. You need the quarterback. Right. In the Luca case, Luca is the quarterback. That's like trading Mahomes or trading Joe Burrow or whoever. So I can't compare it to that.

20:09Cousin Sal:And the shock value was a 10 because there were not even any rumors about that. Right.

20:14Bill Simmons:And no offers other than this one Laker offer. We didn't know at the time that they were going to miraculously stumble into Cooper Flag. And now that's actually a really good trade. So maybe you'll miraculously – maybe can you win the NFL lottery? Have you looked at it? What are the odds?

20:28Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think we could do that. I said we could get Arch Manning probably for a fifth-round pick now, but we'll see.

20:35Bill Simmons:Maybe 32. Oh, man. I watched college football a day yesterday. You would have been proud of me. Nice. It was kind of boring. The OSU game was terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Arch Manning. I, so I bet on OSU only because of the, this seems like a pretty big moment for this guy with the spotlight and being in Ohio state. But the flip side of that is I parlayed it with Clemson because I don't want to call him out or mention him by name, but Van Lathan told me LSU wasn't going to win and that Clemson was going to kill them. So I parlayed that together. I really like Nussmeier.

21:12Cousin Sal:Yeah.

21:13Bill Simmons:I think that dude has it. Like, that's the other thing with Dallas and some of these other teams. Like the Saints, if the Saints are awful. And you end up with Nussmeier, whose dad played for, you know, the Saints. Whose mom was a Saints cheerleader. Right there in New Orleans. Who went to LSU, who grew up there. And that's like, if I'm New Orleans, I'm throwing away the season, which might be what they're doing. That seems like where it's going.

21:35Cousin Sal:Yeah, Nussmeier was the best of the quarterbacks who had a decent matchup. They were good quarterbacks who went against Division 45 teams last year. last night. He seems like a leader.

21:45Bill Simmons:And then I like the fact that he grew up. I was reading up on him watching the game last night because it just seems like he checks all the boxes but also has some real charisma. Whereas I thought that was a rough one for Arch.

22:01Cousin Sal:Yeah, Arch was bad. I mean, what do you have, like 38 yards going into the fourth quarter? He missed like 10 guys.

22:07Bill Simmons:I mean, and even on that final drive, that third and five throw, the guy's wide open. and it's a six-yard out, and he couldn't hit it.

22:13Cousin Sal:But I know.

22:15Bill Simmons:The problem with college football is these games don't actually matter. You lose that game. Yeah, you can lose the game and be fine.

22:22Cousin Sal:Those two games, both teams, both of them will make the playoffs, all four, probably.

22:26Bill Simmons:Well, do you want to do guess the lines, or do you want to just quit this season? Listen, I'm happy. You seem so sad. I think when you have this look on you, you don't normally have this look until the Cowboys are one and four

22:36Cousin Sal:in week five or something. I thought we could. I counted Dallas-Philly as a loss, so whatever. I wasn't going to go crazy, but, but going in, I'm happy to be doing this. Like what a stupid summer gambling. This was like, what, what color is the dildo going to be? Is it going to be green? Let's be green. And then they'll throw it at the women and we'll laugh. This was a ridiculous asinine summer. So let's gamble on football. I'm ready.

22:59Bill Simmons:It was the worst. It was the least amount of sports. I think we've had all decade. Cause even if you go back to 2020 and 2021 COVID 2020, but then when the bubble came back at some point, yeah, the bubble came back. And then in 21, the NBA season had been moved back because they started it later. So we had that. And then I think, didn't we have the Olympics that year too afterwards? Then we had World Cup. Then we had, I just felt like this was the first time we had nothing going on.

23:28Cousin Sal:Yeah, no great soccer, no Olympics this year. The Little League World Series, you could barely bet on these teams. They're too unpredictable. I don't know.

23:37Bill Simmons:Yeah, it turns out 12-year-olds probably aren't as reliable. Big letdowns. We're just watching documentaries about women falling off yachts, off cruise ships. Right. That's all we have. We're in true crime. We're going to take a break and then we're going to do week one guest lines. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. The NFL is back. As you know, FanDuel is making week one even bigger with a chance to win a share of$2 million. You heard me correct. in bonus bets every game day. That's right, two million. Here's how it works. Opt in, place an anytime TD bet on any week one NFL game using your profit boost.

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24:53Bill Simmons:Opt-in must apply profit boost token on select market prize pool to be split equally among all eligible participants who made the correct first or last TD pick. Bonus issued as not a job with bonus bet. It's expired 21 days after a seat. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLE. Visit rg-health.com. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Verizon. Rookie debuts, underdog stories, bold trades. Talk about refreshing. You know what else is refreshing? A brand new phone with Verizon. Get a new phone on any plan with select phone trading and my plan.

25:35Bill Simmons:Lockdown at low price for three years. It's a deal for everyone, whether you're a new or existing customer. Swing by Verizon today. Three-year price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate only. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers. All right, Sal, you beat me in Guess the Lines last year. Yes, I did. So maybe there's hope for the Cowboys because the Cowboys went in the NFC East and you beating me and guess the Lions is about the same on a miracle scale. Before we start, there's eight Sunday 1 o 'clock games because we have a Thursday night game, you're Eagles-Cowboys.

26:12Bill Simmons:Then we have Friday night in Brazil, Chiefs-Chargers. And then we have eight Sunday games. And I'm curious what is how are you going to rank these from a multi-view standpoint? We have Bucks-Atlanta, Cincy-Cleveland, Miami, Indianapolis, Carolina, Jacksonville, Vegas, Pats, Arizona, New Orleans, Steelers, Jets, and Giants, Washington. So for me, obviously, Pats, Vegas has to be one of them. But I also think that's a pretty good game. And two new coaches and two new, you know, Gino, new quarterback, all that stuff. Giants, Washington is a must. I really want to see that game. I'm excited for it.

26:55Bill Simmons:I can't wait. I still don't know what the line is. and then after that I don't know would you have Tampa Bay Atlanta as the third one

27:02Cousin Sal:well you have to have yeah that's in the top four we're picking four right yeah the four yeah it's it's your team it's Tampa Atlanta it's Pittsburgh Jets just from a narrative point of view right you got to see a couple quarters of that do you feel Rogers going back yeah do you well Is that going to be like 6-3 in the fourth quarter? Interesting. I hadn't considered, do you? Yeah, but that's what it's about.

27:31Bill Simmons:I would argue the fourth one. So I think that the guarantees are Tampa, Falcons, Vegas, Pats, and Giants, Washington. By the way, you can get all of these on YouTube TV if you get Sunday ticket. I think I'm most interested in Carolina Jacksonville for the fourth one with the Travis Hunter piece. Are you? Yeah. Let's consider this. Are you? From a multi-view standpoint, I'm interested to see when he comes out. Like when it's like, oh, third and 11, there's Travis Hunter. Like I'm just immediately going to be fixated on the TV. Plus like if there was ever a setup for Jacksonville to look good as a fantasy team, as a Trevor Lawrence team, all that stuff in week one, it's going to be this Carolina game because their defense is terrible.

28:17Bill Simmons:So I think I'm leaning toward that one as my fourth, but I might be in the minority. It sounds like you would go Pittsburgh Jets.

28:24Cousin Sal:Well, I'd go Jets, but I don't think I'd put Giants-Washington in there. I don't care about that. But I think you're right about Carolina-Jacksonville. Just a crossover garbage South game. Get it out of the way. Let's see which Teal team wins.

28:35Bill Simmons:Oh, I'm in for Giants-Washington. I think that's going to be a good game. Yeah. Yeah, I'm excited for that one. All right, let's do it. Guess the lines. So I give the matchup. Sal and I guess lines ahead of time. And then Sal's going to toast the actual line. We did a couple wrinkles for this. We both sent each other lines like a month ago because it's become, with all the gambling discourse, it's become impossible to avoid the lines, although I've somehow avoided them. So we have the caveat, you could move this by a point over the course of four weeks. Like if, for instance, Dallas traded the best player on their team, that would be a scenario where you could move at one point.

29:12Bill Simmons:Give a better example, something that would actually happen. Or somebody got hurt or whatever. So our first game is Thursday night. Eagles-Cowboys, it's in Philly. I got to ask, why isn't this a better game? Usually this first Thursday night game is a good game. Why isn't Washington in this spot? How did we end up with the Cowboys, a team nobody thinks is even going to go 500?

29:35Cousin Sal:It's just they have to give them the six-pack of primetime games, right? It has to be Philly at home, defending champ. And I looked through it. There were some other options. I could have gone some of their AFC matchups. But I'm happy with it. Get it out of the way so I can fully enjoy Sunday. But you're right. Yeah, this could have been a Sunday night game in Week 10 or something.

29:55Bill Simmons:Chris is going to be calling Mike Al, or maybe just I'll be calling Mike Al. Yeah. All right. So I have the Eagles favored by 9.5 over the Cowboys. Oh, okay. So you moved that. I moved by that point.

30:08Cousin Sal:I said 7, and it's 7.5. So I get that. It was actually as low in some spots as 6.5, and the Micah trade moved at a point, which doesn't seem to make sense. I don't even know if he was going to play this game if he had suited up in Big D anyway. The only thing I can think of,

30:28Bill Simmons:there's been a bunch of Week 1 stats that are pretty good because they have so much good history of bet-making and odds shifting, all that stuff. Week 1 divisional home underdogs against the spread since 2010. 23-7 and I think that's the only reason that that line's not 9 but how are we not teasing or parlaying the Eagles with something

30:52Cousin Sal:it's the teaser game of the week and shame on you if you didn't have some college along with this to carry over but it could also be Kenny Clark's Vandal revenge game, who knows shame on you unless you had Clemson because Van Lathan told you

31:06Bill Simmons:LSU was going to lose fucking Van, never listening to him again we should mention, so we're doing this gimmick this year that we talked about on the over-unders, the Ringer 107. We're betting five games per week. And we have six shows going against each other. And on Thursday, I'm going to do my five picks. You're going to be doing yours. So you're on Ringer Gambling. We moved stuff around this year. Very excited about it. Ringer Gambling show is Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. And you're on at noon every day live on YouTube. And on Tuesday, you're with Tate. on Wednesday you're with House. House and Dabundo.

31:41Bill Simmons:House and Dabundo. And then on Friday, who's your Friday team?

31:45Cousin Sal:Dabundo and Danny Heifetz. And that's where we'll pick our five, right? So each show picks their five. So that's going to be you and Dabundo.

31:53Bill Simmons:Heifetz is just going to host that part because his fantasy football show is also going to be in Ringer 107. We're going to have the Ringer NFL show in there. The Thursday gambling show is in there. Shio Kapati on the Ringer NFL show, he's in there. and we're making five picks a week. The catch is four straight up. The fifth one could be a straight up or a money parlay as long as it's minus 120 or other. The Thursday night games are not eligible. If they were, I would absolutely be putting Philly money parlay in with something. Interesting. What's the scenario where you beat Philly? Like just you throw for 430 yards and get like a weird special teams touchdown.

32:35Bill Simmons:That's the only thing I can think of.

32:36Cousin Sal:I mean, a lot of fumbles on the four Tush Push fumbles that we've never seen before. I don't know how it would happen. Tush Push just stops. Kenny Clark's just stopping the Tush Push by himself.

32:47Bill Simmons:They changed the rule in the middle of the first quarter. Maybe that's it. That's how we win. One thing with you, you do have a good special teams. And they shifted the kickoff this year so that it's actually more beneficial to the return guys and you have a good return guys. So maybe you'd have to get a touchdown there. He'll probably have six or seven kick returns, so that's good. What do you have penciled in for George Pickens quits on a route and then yells at Dak heading back to the huddle? Like week four range, or do you think he would do this this early? I thought you said play four.

33:19Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, week four is out. Oh, there's so much to look forward to. Brian Schottenheimer's got it. He's going to have it all under control.

33:26Bill Simmons:You should just watch the Netflix documentary over and over again. I'm going to do it. All right, Friday night. We're going back to Brazil. So I'm proud of you for remembering this.

33:35Cousin Sal:This is one, three years ago, you would have botched this and said, this is at LA, you know. Good job by you. Yeah.

33:44Bill Simmons:Thank you. Chiefs Chargers. No home field advantage because we're in Brazil. I have no idea if the turf's going to be good. The Chargers, as we discussed in the over-under pod with the Rashawn Slater out for the year, stomach punch. Right. Which, when you get one of those in August, it feels like that's just a bad omen for the year. The one thing they do have going for himself, Harbaugh, 5-0 against the spread in week one as an NFL head coach. So there you go. Plus the division head-to-head week one stuff is pretty favorable for the interdogs. I have Chiefs favored by six and a half. What'd you have?

34:25Bill Simmons:Too high? You know,

34:26Cousin Sal:I mean, you know this is in Brazil, but you don't seem to know this is in Brazil. I had two and a half, and it's three. It's fine. I'm a little rusty. I'm working the rest off. You're betting the Chiefs? I mean, you should bet the Chiefs. You were so off there.

34:44Bill Simmons:I think that line's going to go up to five and a half, six by game time. Why wouldn't it? Nobody likes the Chargers this year. There was two of our favorite bets was the Chargers under this year.

34:54Cousin Sal:No, everyone looking to take the Chiefs. We don't think they're a playoff. Everyone wants to take the Chiefs from 15 wins to eight. And I mean, look, I think why it should be higher. There's seven and oh against the Chargers in the last seven games. I almost I feel like Harbaugh has the most pressure on him as a coach for week one.

35:10Bill Simmons:This is a ridiculous line. I think the line should be at least six. I'll be vindicated. All right. Wow. So you're beating me two or already. Yeah, a little rusty. I'm like the Cincinnati Bengals of guess the lines. The week one, I'm just a mess. There's a cash out button if you want to hit it now. You want to check out of the week. Sunday marquee Detroit at Green Bay do we see Micah Parsons in this game do you think

35:36Cousin Sal:yes I do

35:37Bill Simmons:yeah he's going to do good there's some favorable Packers stuff here including in the first three games of the season since 2019 they're 15 and 3 against the spread I thought the Lions would be favored a month ago. I could only move my line a point. If I really had to do this, I would probably make the Packers favorites, but I have the Lions by a half point over the Packers. A half point doesn't exist? You can't do that. Well, I had them at one and a half, so I moved it a point and I'm at a half point. That's not a real thing. Well, that's my pick. Bet a team that doesn't exist. Go look at the robot.

36:17Cousin Sal:All right. You win. I said Detroit by one, so whoever you have by half wins because Green Bay is favored by two and a half now.

36:26Bill Simmons:Yeah. So I would have guessed if I wasn't handicapped by the original guess, I would have said Packers by two. Okay. Interesting. So, well, you lost. Take the loss. The week one division home underdogs, again, 23 and seven against the spread. So that feels like by the time and we're doing Ringer Sunday pregame again on Sundays on YouTube, on the Ringer Gambling YouTube channel. So that feels like you guys will be talking about that as like a rat line. Packers-Lions, where everybody's on Green Bay, but the line is like one and a half. And you're like, why isn't this line higher? I'm suspicious of Packers money, Packers momentum, all that stuff.

37:09Cousin Sal:I wonder where that settles. Now I look at that, I'm like, wow, Detroit plus eight and a half on teasers. Pretty damn good week one, especially with all your underdog division things. By the way, maybe we make a blanket statement. Whenever we talk about teasers, everyone else should go do something else. Go clean out your pantry or something.

37:27Bill Simmons:Yeah, because nobody does teasers anymore. And they don't win. They change the juice too much. Well, we're basically doing money parlays now, so we could call them MPs.

37:35Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in this case, moving Detroit from two and a half to eight and a half was... Anyway, I'm curious to see where that settles.

37:42Bill Simmons:Can I do a random get up guy? Oh, yeah, let's hear it.

37:47Cousin Sal:Okay.

37:50Cousin Sal:I'm going to yell.

37:54Bill Simmons:I know it's week one, but this is a must-win game for the Green Bay Packers. They cannot lose this game and go one game back against Detroit. It will haunt them the whole season. Great.

38:06Cousin Sal:Thank you. I love it. Thank you. 500 ,000 views just for that.

38:10Bill Simmons:Must win. Is this a must-win for Green Bay in week one? Guess what? There are no must wins until December, but have your content. The watchables. I have one, two, three, four. Do you count Pat's Raiders as a watchable? Yeah, I think so. Or is that a fairly watchable? No, it's good. All right. Well, I guess I have five watchables. It's a good week one, considering we shot our wad on Thursdays and Fridays too. Okay. Bucks Falcons. I know we don't like the NFC South, but there's a lot of fantasy guys in this game. Yeah. It's a scary stretch for Tampa because they basically have two receivers. They have no worse, at least for this game.

38:53Bill Simmons:And then Atlanta is missing their starting right tackle, blindside protector for Penix and the guy who is his backup. I'm just really interested to see what happens in this game. I have, I had to move this. Oh no, I got Bucks minus one.

39:10Cousin Sal:Bucks minus one. It is. In Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah, I said Atlanta minus one and a half for all those reasons. They're coming in a little bit gimpy. They're injured. But you're right, or righter. Tampa Bay minus two and a half. So you get that one.

39:28Bill Simmons:We should mention you picked Tampa Bay to make the Super Bowl.

39:30Cousin Sal:I like them to make the Super Bowl. And we talked about this game in particular in our NFC rundown. Like, don't panic. If Atlanta wins by 17 this game, just wait. Tampa will be there when the cream rises to the crop and Atlanta will eventually turn back into the Falcons.

39:47Bill Simmons:I know it's week one. Uh-oh. But this is a must-win game for the Atlanta Falcons. They could take control of the NFC South. They have them at home. They have to get this game.

39:57Cousin Sal:You know, you should do that for all 32 teams, how it's a must-win, and then cut it up and then send it out to the various cities.

40:06Bill Simmons:They'd be great. I'm going to almost syndicate it. Yeah, syndicate it. rant, your get-up rant. So I put this as a watchable, which is ridiculous because probably in five weeks this would be in the poopfecta. But Jags Panthers, just solely because of Travis Hunter, I'm in. And I'm probably, at scale 1 to 10, I'm probably like a 9. I'm being excited just to watch how where he plays and how that unfolds during a game, but I might be too high. I also think this is the setup for the... Every week one we have a team that looks awesome and fools everybody. Right. And I think it could be Jacksonville this week.

40:48Bill Simmons:They're home. They're playing Carolina. Bad defense. Coker got hurt on the Panthers, who I think was looming as a little fantasy sleeper guy right after they traded Adam Thielen. So now the Panthers are down, down at receiver. Their defense stinks. And I could see the Jags lighting it up. And people have been like, Trevor Lawrence. has he officially arrived? That's like settled down. I'll be one of them. Settled down. He has not arrived. Carolina's defense is terrible. Oh, come on. I have the Jaguars favored by two at home against the Panthers.

41:22Cousin Sal:All right, I get this. I said three and a half, and it is three. Oh, okay. I know you out there. Yeah, I think you're right, though. These are two quarterbacks people want to be good. Make the case for Carolina to win the NFC South after they go 1-0. Make the case for the Jaguars, even though I have them to win the AFC South. But yeah, this could be biggest overreaction game.

41:43Bill Simmons:Yeah, Brown came back for the Panthers, but I'm pretty sure he can't play all 11 positions. I haven't checked that, but I think he's only one of the 11 guys on the defense. 49ers Seahawks is going to be... I mean, the Seahawks, I've gone all in. I think they're the nobody believes in us team. And then you go on the flip side with the 49ers where no Iuke, obviously. Jennings doesn't seem like he's playing in week one. So they're down on receivers. Seattle's home. I think they're going to be underdogs. I have the 49ers favored by two, and obviously it's going to be no surprise the Seahawks will probably be in my ringer 107 on Thursday.

42:28Cousin Sal:You get this. I had San Francisco by one. You had the 49ers by two, right? Yeah. Yeah. I am by one. 49ers favored by two and a half. Yeah. By the way, I have a theory now. It's early. It's too early. We've only gone through like six games. I think two and a half, which we've seen three times now, is the new one and a half. Is the new one and a half?

42:50Bill Simmons:What do we call the one and a half? The Mentos? Tic-tac. Tic-tac.

42:53Cousin Sal:Yeah, because one and a half calories. Yeah. Yeah. So we have to figure out what two and a half is.

42:58Bill Simmons:We'll take suggestions. I feel like the Seahawks, this is a must-win week one game for them too, but I'm not going to do it. You're not doing it? This is a must-win game for the Seahawks. Get up! Coming up next, top five pass rushers. Rams-Texans is just a really good game. It's in LA. There will not be a lot of Houston fans there. I don't did we find out if they're left tackles playing for the Rams? I guess that's going to be like just monitor all week yeah the blood clots like just it's a stay away for me even thinking about betting until we find out what happens with that guy. I have Rams minus two at home you changed that you shouldn't have I had two and a half and it is two and a half I did change it I changed it because the left tackle might not play and Matthew Stafford is in traction.

43:58Bill Simmons:Blood clots, Sherry. He's so scared of blood clots. I thought it was worth going down. Yeah, traction and blood clots are scary. You've always been weirdly afraid of blood clots. I don't know.

44:08Bill Simmons:This feels like a, hey, Texans defense, let's see it. Nice spot for them, right? Little shakiness on that Rams offensive line. Stafford maybe not wanting to get hit. Like, let's go get our guy. We got the best secondary in the league. Let's just blanket some receivers. I like the spot for the Texans. I do not like the spot for the next team. The Patriots are home for the Las Vegas Raiders. And I had this penciled in as a guaranteed win about a month ago. I have no idea if Christian Gonzalez is playing. And this is like a big topic right now with the Pats, on the Pats text threads. Hench may or may not have texted me about it 17 different times.

44:50Bill Simmons:He's the best player in the defense. He's the shutdown cornerback. He hurt his hamstring a few weeks ago, and there's just been kind of radio silence on it. So I would watch that. On the flip side, the Raiders linebackers are really bad, and this could be an immediate Trey Van Henderson breakout game. But it's a little scary that the Pats look like you're just, oh, yeah, something scares me about this game.

45:13Cousin Sal:It is scary for you because you're a slight favorite, I'll tell you that. We haven't gone over the number yet. And if you lose, though, you have to change your entire opinion of your team for the worst. So I wish you a lot of luck in the words of James Babydahl Dixon. Pat's minus one and a half was my pick. Our new favorite number, two and a half. And I think I get it here. Where is it? Yeah, I said three. It's two and a half. You're killing me. What's your lean in this game? I think New England. I think New England, but probably in a stupid way. I'm not sure how.

45:49Bill Simmons:I might try to buy the win and take the Raiders. This could be 21-20 where they don't cover,

45:54Cousin Sal:but they win, right? Dumb shit.

45:57Bill Simmons:Fairly watchables. We got Steelers-Jets in Jersey. A hilarious matchup. It's good. It's a double revenge game, but neither guy is good enough to get revenge. So I don't know what we would call that. It's like, oh, Justin Fields' revenge game. It's like, is it? And then Aaron Rodgers. you can barely move. Revenge game. I don't know.

46:22Cousin Sal:Another word starts with R-E, but I won't say it. But yeah, revenge.

46:27Bill Simmons:Steelers, I have the Steelers favored in Jersey by three and a half. Oh, you moved that one too. I did.

46:36Cousin Sal:I went three, kept it at three. It's two and a half. You gotta be kidding me with these two and a halves.

46:43Bill Simmons:Damn, you're used to it. I already lost. It's going to be hard for me to not want to pick the Jets when we get to Sunday. No, to pick the Jets on Sunday as a home dog. And yet I don't want to. And this is a non-bet. If you bet on this game, you're just desperate to bet on shit. Don't tease this game. Don't parlay it. Just play it straight up if you're going to do it. Anything is possible in this game.

47:11Cousin Sal:This is just sit back and watch it and laugh. It's like you're watching Dumb and Dumber 2 with the kids. You don't need any stakes going in.

47:20Bill Simmons:Could you see the Steelers winning, but winning by a point and not covering? That's a fun one. And what's the Cousin-South special for this game? Oh, I haven't seen it.

47:29Cousin Sal:I don't think they've learned it yet. Do they not have them yet? They don't have that yet. They should have that a week before. That would be Jets to be winning at half, and then the Steelers to win the game. So you probably get about 6-1 on that. Same game parlay.

47:42Bill Simmons:I'm on Fandle right now. Don't they have the half-bats? First half spread. You do the money line or just the spread? Oh, first half winner. Yeah, do it like that if you can. Pittsburgh minus 110. And then we do Pittsburgh minus... Oh, no, we want to do the other one at minus 110. This is some riveting stuff. We'll figure it out. Gaha's going to have to cut at least some of this. Jets to win the first half. Oh, plus 524. 524.

48:17Cousin Sal:Okay. Yeah. There you go. It could happen. Get it off the board. They did it five times at cash last year.

48:23Bill Simmons:Honestly, you know, FanDuel, they just continue to improve the product, but also they're using some AI. I think they told the AI to factor in the Cousin South special.

48:32Cousin Sal:Did they really? Wow.

48:33Bill Simmons:Even if they spit this out at eight to one, lower it like by 300. Oh, well, I think that's illegal. I think that's minus 800 two years ago. Is it bad for the network if I sue FanDuel for that? Because I don't think that's right. I don't think they like the Cousins House special. It was too lucrative last year. Washington is home for the Giants. I just wrote down under this one. Oh, boy. Why do you like this so much? I do. I like this one. Underdogs of six and a half or more in week one since 2006. 49 and 27 against the spread. We already mentioned that division underdog bet. That's 23 and 7. Every Giants fan I know.

49:13Bill Simmons:And the Giants fans, I think, are realistic. with teams. It is not a fan base. They've won. They don't need to do the false positive. They're just like, yeah, we suck. We're never going to win with Daniel Jones. I don't like our coach. The Giants fans are in on this season. Across the board, they're like, I like the team. I like everything I'm reading. Dart is going to be in by week five. We're going to have this crazy pass rush. We're going to be able to run the ball a little bit. Neighbors is a freak. Dayballs and coaching for his career basically right now. So I have Washington favored by eight.

49:50Bill Simmons:Really?

49:52Cousin Sal:I said six. I mean, I think your stat that you led with is going to, like, they have to keep it between six, six and a half with the underdog in the division. I said six, it's six and a half. Yeah, I'm just kidding. Absolutely slaughtered. I'd like to

50:07Bill Simmons:apologize.

50:08Cousin Sal:I mean, everyone thinks the Giants fans, they lead with the, and they have a great defensive front, but those four guys aren't going to score 20 points a game.

50:17Bill Simmons:It is one of those fronts, though, that if they can get a lead or hang around, I think they're in great shape. If they're down 10, then I get a little worried. But I don't know. I'd be scared of that game. Every year we have the team in that minus 6 to minus 7 range get upset in week one. Last year was the Bengals against the Pats. It's just locking down. You know what's happening. Here's another candidate. Broncos, home against Tennessee. They're in that range of, you know, be careful. Bonex, 8-0 is a favorite. Rookie QBs having to play on the road in week one. 8-21 straight up. 13-14 against the spread since 1970.

50:59Bill Simmons:Number one pick QBs since 1970 in their first start. 5-22, 8-20 against the spread. So all kinds of lines. And then the Broncos, when they won last year, they'd win big. I love the Broncos. I picked them to make the AFC title game and win the AFC West. And I have the Broncos favored by 7.5.

51:19Cousin Sal:Yeah, you stayed with that. You didn't change it. It is exactly 7.5. I went 7. So you win that. And welcome to the jungle, Cam Ward. Yeah, I went big on that last year, the rookie quarterback not winning. And it was Caleb Williams against Will Levis. I think it was in Tennessee. I think it was. Tennessee was winning by 17. And then Levis made some. You were so mad. Yeah. He was the rookie quarterback there. He made throws you'd never seen before and never will to blow that game. I think that's why he doesn't start in the NFL anymore.

51:50Bill Simmons:That could be it. Yeah. Poopfecta. I'm putting the Broncos in a Moneyline parlay. I'm just telling you now. I hope that line stays around the same. I specifically haven't looked at lines, done anything. But after we're done with this, I'm going to, there's going to be some moves. Poopfecta. Colts Dolphins it's in Indianapolis you could argue this could be in the fairly watchables but no Jalen Waddell not positive who the Dolphins starting running back is going to be there's some A-chain maybe playing maybe not we'll know more of next week the Dolphins have the stink on them almost to the point that I could see a zag where they're actually start out pretty good people are like oh nobody saw this coming I have Colts by one and a half

52:39Cousin Sal:you picked that exactly right I said Colts by one and yeah Dabundo and JJ have a very large stake riding on this game this is both their teams this is pathetic this is the healthiest the Dolphins will be and they're a dog to Danny Dimes this is pretty bad for them

52:59Bill Simmons:yeah I was gonna so we both went under them at seven and a half and we had some people in our life like watch out bro I don't want to say who it was it was like watch out bro we're going to be better than that bro they're not even favored in this game so how are they seven and a half for over unders is this can I lock you into a cross off after this game you can lock me into not putting any money on this game because there's no way I'm betting on Daniel Dimes ever

53:27Cousin Sal:but the 0-1 team do we cross off we like to get rid of one a week I mean can we cross a ball off now

53:33Bill Simmons:you want me to you want me to say this is a must win? I need like a shirt and tie and a jacket for the must win get up thing. So you're saying must win for either team.

53:44Cousin Sal:I think in terms of our cross-offs, which are bulletproof, no cross-off has ever made the playoffs before.

53:50Bill Simmons:Can I nudge you in a slightly different direction for this idea? Go ahead. This to me is like whoever loses, first coach fired, favorite immediately. You're like minus 200 now in that.

54:01Cousin Sal:Yeah.

54:01Bill Simmons:Right? Because like if Steichen loses this, you're now the favorite. And if McDaniel gets embarrassed and killed, they're now the favorite.

54:11Cousin Sal:I think that's a good way to go.

54:12Bill Simmons:Yeah. Bengals-Browns. Bengals at Cleveland. They have that weird... They suck in the first two games of every year. Joe Burrow 1-9 against the spread in the first two games in his career. The Browns, I can't even figure out who's starting and running back for them. I'm in this guillotine fantasy league right now. And it could, it literally could be anybody. It might be Nick Chubb. He's not even on the Browns anymore. And he might be one of the starters. I have no idea who's starting for them. That should be Ford eventually. Flacco is the QB. There's some Samson guy involved. Miles Garrett is still there.

54:54Bill Simmons:So congrats to him. It's in Cleveland. I don't trust Cincinnati. I will definitely not be parlaying, teasing the Bengals in any way, shit perform. I have the Bengals minus eight.

55:07Cousin Sal:Okay, I get this. I said six and a half. It's five and a half. Vegas zone.

55:12Bill Simmons:Our first Vegas zone.

55:13Cousin Sal:Yeah, division game. For all the reasons. I mean, he's one in ten, this Zach Taylor, in the first few weeks of the season. So, I think that's why they have it at five and a half. I think I said Harbaugh has the most pressure week one. This Zach Taylor's another one. If he loses another one of these clunker games to terrible Cleveland, come on. That's enough. This might make the four box, though.

55:35Bill Simmons:If this is close in the third quarter, we may have to put that up. Somebody's sneaking into the four box from these bad games. Somebody will get bounced. Last one is Cardinals in New Orleans.

55:48Bill Simmons:This is another one that I'm probably too low. I was stuck with the original pick I had. I think it's higher than, but I'm stuck with what I have to guess. I have Cardinals minus four in New Orleans. It's probably higher.

56:00Cousin Sal:Yeah, why are you stuck? I said three and a half, and it's five and a half, so you get it. Wait, I got to add these up now. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Oh, I'm still winning eight, six. I thought it would be at least six. what world is Arizona who I love this year laying five and a half on the road you get beat by Rattler so be it I'm putting this on a teaser

56:28Bill Simmons:counter don't tease Kyler Murray just don't why are you doing that you can't it's one of the rules it's like one of the foundational rules of the 2020s is don't put Kyler Murray in a tease you can't Don't do it. I like them too much this year. This has to be a W. All right. So if you're doing the Symbotic strategy, my Symbotics that I created 15 years ago, whoever you really like, you just have to back them in week one. So this is the perfect spot. My question for this is, if the Cardinals are really good, and we don't know that yet, but in week eight, we will know that. What would this line, we'll look back, we always look back at these week one lines.

57:09Bill Simmons:They're like, wow, the Cardinals were only minus five and a half. That would be like minus 13 now. Yeah. So could that be the candidate for this?

57:16Cousin Sal:Yeah, that could be something like that. Right. Well, the Saints are already tanking. It's not even Halloween.

57:21Bill Simmons:Or it's, wow, the Cardinals were favored by minus five and a half on the road. How fucking stupid were we?

57:27Cousin Sal:How would the Saints not favored? Jesus. Remember what the Saints did last year with a more promising quarterback crew there? They won. They scored 40 points in each of their first two games or something against my team and then just fell apart.

57:39Bill Simmons:We never talked on the Over Under pod about your feelings on Kellen Moore as a head coach. Because your feelings weren't exactly excited as your offensive coordinator. I can't say you were like a giant Kellen Moore fan.

57:52Cousin Sal:No, no. And I'm happy for him and everything. But I think this is the worst spot a coach has been thrown into in a long time.

58:00Bill Simmons:It is definitely a I needed a job kind of spot. you know, because you don't ever want to go to a situation with a bad ownership group that also doesn't have a quarterback. But if you think like, can I just hold on for a year and then we get Nussmeyer, now I'm feeling pretty good.

58:16Cousin Sal:Yeah. And this was the last spot to fill, right? Because I had to wait for Kellen Moore and the Super Bowl to end and everything. But there was a point where you're like, wow, maybe Kellen Moore doesn't want this and nobody wants this job. Maybe they're talking still in May about who's going to coach this New Orleans thing. It's all of a sudden Hugh Jackson is the head coach.

58:32Bill Simmons:Sunday night, fantastic game. Bills-Ravens. It's in Buffalo. You can't do better. No. This is the best possible AFC game from an entertainment standpoint. Sorry, Kansas City. It might be the best game you could just put together, period, for a week one. Ironically, I did pick Buffalo minus two and a half for this one.

58:54Cousin Sal:Yeah, I did too. And it's one and a half. So it went back to the old one and a half, our friend. But yeah, this is, I don't know. I'm trying to think of what our reaction, is it going to be an overreaction coming on the pod after this? If the Ravens win by a field goal, the new kicker brings it off the upright at the buzzer, and you're going to be like, are the Ravens a team to beat for the rest of the decade? And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down. Yes, you're right, they are.

59:20Bill Simmons:And then everyone kills us. I have the Ravens losing this game. I mean, when I did all the prep before the season, I had this as NL. I have them two and two coming out of the first four and then winning everything after that. As you know, I'm all in on the this is Josh Allen's year. I picked them to win the Super Bowl. And I just think you have to win this game if you're the Bills. I wouldn't call it a must win, but this is a good – we're here. The AFC is going to actually run through us this year and we're going to smack the Baltimore around a little bit.

59:56Cousin Sal:What a great game. I'm very excited. it. It's very hard to beat at home. We talked about this is mid nineties bills again. They have like three losses in two and a half years at home.

1:00:04Bill Simmons:So I'll see you right after the game live on my YouTube channel that will also run as a podcast is a video podcast on Spotify, but we're going boom live, ready to go. You won't be sad because the Cowboys will have played 72 hours earlier. So you'll be in a good mood. I can't wait. Monday night, Bears Vikings in Chicago. Justin Jefferson, mild hamstring strain. Not sure what's going on with him yet. Adam Thielen, age 35, they had to trade for him because Addison's out for three weeks. J.J. McCarthy in a possible Arch Manning spot playing in Chicago and with a lot of pressure on him and a lot of eyeballs.

1:00:51Bill Simmons:And yet I think the line is only Chicago minus one and a half.

1:00:56Cousin Sal:it's Minnesota minus one. Wait, let me make sure I got this. It's Minnesota minus one and a half, and that's what I had.

1:01:03Bill Simmons:Holy mackerel.

1:01:04Cousin Sal:So that's what it'll be. And that's a win for me.

1:01:07Bill Simmons:Yeah. So I promise you I'm going to be taking the Bears in Ringer 107. You can lock that down right now.

1:01:14Cousin Sal:Could this be the Levis-Williams game from last year where the year two quarterback goes against the year one quarterback? And we just assume that we – but then, like, Caleb Williams sucks this year. I don't know. I wonder. I wonder.

1:01:27Bill Simmons:Oh, interesting. Wow. I'm really surprised the Vikings are favored. Because on the over-unders, the Bears are 8.5 and the Vikings are 9.5. Right? The Vikings are not healthy and the Bears are. Right. I think this line shifts. I'm going to predict. I think by game time on Monday, I think this is Bears minus 1.5. It's too much Minnesota love here. Yeah, I don't get that. Rookie QB on the road. plus like the chance to bet on a home dog on a Monday night in week one in a division matchup. Like too many things for that. Sorry, I'm tallying here.

1:02:02Cousin Sal:It's like signing a golf cart at the end of the round. You're like, the win won't count. Oh, you're like Tommy Fleetwood. Yeah, I have to sign Sal. Just got to make sure I nail this. 10-7, 1-0 on the year. Okay, good. Now I could talk to Jim.

1:02:15Bill Simmons:Not a strong start for me. I'm just glad I know the lines. Okay, we're going to take a quick break then. Quick parent corner. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Countless hours in the gym, a thousand shots before tip-off, day after day on the same court with the State Farm stanchion right there. That's right. The best players put in the work. And State Farm is the same way with insurance experts who put in the work as well. Whether you get a digital quote or reach out to a local agent, State Farm is there to get to know you and help you select the right coverage that fits your life and your budget.

1:02:52Bill Simmons:Putting in the work is what separates the good players from the great. And that's why you want State Farm on your team. So get the coverage that's right for you. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. All right, parents, PayPal's on your team this back to school. I've been there myself. You're paying for sports gear, backpacks, sneakers, laptops you've likely got multiple carts your favorite online stores well that's when paypal comes in with the assist paying for no interest no fees truly game-changing subject to approval learn more at paypal.com pay in for paypal inc nmos 910 457 and now it's time for draft recap presented by our friends at yahoo fantasy yahoo fantasy the best place to play fantasy football this season.

1:03:46Bill Simmons:The season starts on Thursday, September 4th. You can do the new Yahoo Fantasy guillotine leagues. Lowest scoring team gets eliminated instantly. You play with your friends with the new draft with friends mode. You can do a private league, do a public league. Knock yourself out. Yahoo has everything. It's the best place to play. We did our big ringer, Yahoo Fantasy draft, snake draft last week. Controversial. I took five quarterbacks. I didn't like the options. I had the first pick. By the time it got back to me, I wasn't that excited about just grabbing one, got to the fifth round. Some guys were gone.

1:04:18Bill Simmons:I was like, screw it. I'm just going to keep taking awesome guys. And then I'll address the QB later. And I just rolled the dice. Caleb Williams, Trevor Lawrence, Michael Penix. I just kept taking guys, hoping one of them hits like Baker Mayfield hit last year. Was it a great strategy? I don't know. Did I have fun? Yeah, I did. And if it worked, I look like a genius, which is all I care about. The season is almost here. All you have to do is draft now at yahoofantasy.com slash ringer. All right, Parent Corner. We've been doing this for a long time. My kids are grown up. You still have a younger one.

1:04:57Bill Simmons:For my Parent Corners this season, I'm going to really have to lean on my parents versus my kids because they're way funnier and way more interesting. That's fine. So I'm just... All parents are eligible for Parent Corner And Sal and I are hitting the point where our parents are old. We're taking care of them in a lot of different ways. And the comedy is just coming pretty fast and furiously at this point. But you still have young Harrison entering the sixth grade, plus Jack still in high school. And I feel like you have more comedy weapons than I do. So you go first.

1:05:34Cousin Sal:Zoe Jr. in college. I have Archie Jr. in college.

1:05:38Bill Simmons:Zoe's like a 30-year-old at this point. Plus, if I did a parent corner about her, she'd fucking kill me.

1:05:42Cousin Sal:Well, that's the whole thing. So that's out. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's listening now. Well, I recommended years ago you adopt someone because it's a kid and you could still do it. And I could put in a good word for you with our friend Brad, who I got custody of. He's also he's screaming in another room right now for no reason. I don't know why. He's screaming at the UCLA quarterback last night, 10 o 'clock at night. Captain. How is he a captain? Just nuts. I mean, and so we get custody of him every Labor Day weekend. And the whole visit is just an overload of beef ribs and orange shasta cola and napping and screaming at commercials.

1:06:22Cousin Sal:But when you say get custody, it's not like he belongs to somebody else.

1:06:26Bill Simmons:You basically inherit him for Labor Day weekend.

1:06:29Cousin Sal:Yeah. Yeah. So Jimmy Kimmel Live is off for a couple weeks. So he hasn't seen people in a while. So we bring him out. Right. And it's always fun. Kids love him. But so I'll give an example of some of the things he says. Well, first of all, we went for barbecue. The waitress said he ordered a beef rib, which is his favorite. She says it's on the menu. And she's like, no, we don't sell those anymore. He walked off. He walked off. And we didn't see him for two minutes. And the waitress is like waiting, like just waiting, confused. And then he comes back. He just stood up and left? He stood up and walked off.

1:07:03Cousin Sal:And I thought it was for comedy. But then like two minutes, it was like a solid. two minutes. I was like, all right, but just wait here. Cause I don't want you to have to come back. And then he comes back and he accuses her of not looking hard enough for beef ribs. Like they're back there somewhere. I know they are. And she doesn't get the joke. And then five minutes later, we had a totally new waiter as it was. So that's, that's just an example. Good idea. Yeah. Um, yeah, he's in the basement. He's looking at the shitty little trophies. My kids have amassed over the years. And he tells them, uh, listen, if you ever choose to commit murder, do not leave your trophies in the trunk of your car because that's the first place the cops are going to check and it's going to seem like you were looking to flee and so they're like all right but um my favorite parent corner life advice thing is what he said to them yesterday he had sits and dies like listen there are seven billion youtube shorts posted by parents where they think their kids are doing something smart or funny and out of the seven billion only four kids total are smart or funny So don't ever post videos of your stupid kids.

1:08:06Cousin Sal:They're not going to be smart or funny. Nothing against you. It's just math. It's not personal. So that's my parent corner. What did they say? What was the response to that? More confusion, laughing, can't tell. By the way, I more or less agree with that.

1:08:21Bill Simmons:Didn't you also, you had a thing where you, you walk to get ribs, but the bar was too packed and then Brad couldn't walk back. So you then had to walk back and get the car to pick them up. He was, he wasn't capable.

1:08:32Cousin Sal:He has an inexplicable limp for the last 25 years. And it was kind of walking back to my house. It was kind of uphill. And I was like,

1:08:38Bill Simmons:But why did you decide to walk anywhere with him? Well, because it's Labor Day weekend.

1:08:44Cousin Sal:It's crazy. I can park by you. I'd be closer than if I can try to get a spot. So I don't know. Yeah, we bit off more beef rib than we could chew there.

1:08:54Bill Simmons:What is Brad on the iPhone? What are his steps every day, you think? Is it over a thousand?

1:09:01Cousin Sal:Well, his phone hasn't worked in six weeks. He is pacing around a lot. So a lot of Shasta soda, cola.

1:09:11Bill Simmons:My parent corner. So my mom has just gone up seven levels as a character. Nice. Including when David Chang asked me to be on Dinertime Live and I wanted her to, the recipe for meatballs. She thought that I wanted her to make the meatballs and was preemptively upset about it, that she'd have to cook on a Monday and do all this work. And it was a misunderstanding. I gave her four days to prepare. But the problem was she had made ravioli for my son and me when my wife was away, but didn't tell us she was making it. We didn't ask for it. You know, she lives far enough away from us. It's hard to get.

1:09:52Bill Simmons:And she made the ravioli and she's like, hey, I made you guys ravioli. You got to come and get it. and Ben's, you know, he's about to be a high school senior. He's the least reliable person probably on the planet. I don't even ask him to go get me a water at this point. And then I was like legitimately busy doing stuff. So it was never able to get over there, which then made her mad. And she had a grudge about it for like, like two, three weeks that she cooked us the ravioli and we never came to get it, but we never asked for the ravioli. So I had to like navigate that whole thing with her. But as you know, with the moms, they, they start taking stuff personally.

1:10:25Bill Simmons:But the thing I noticed this, so she watches these movies. She, she subscribes to Brit box and all this stuff on Amazon. And she watches all these different things, but can't remember the title or who was in the shows.

1:10:38Cousin Sal:Right.

1:10:39Bill Simmons:And then tries to tell you about what the program was. Right. So she was telling me about some movie the other day. Couldn't remember who was in it, but it was like, you know, the English lady, there's a lot of English actresses that didn't really narrow it down for me. And then it was something and there was a just couldn't get it. And I was thinking there should be a Shazam for moms. And I can't remember if SNL maybe did a version of a sketch about this. I can't remember. But something like where they start describing what the show is and then I can just put it in the app. And it translates your mom where she's like so it was on Amazon that English lady was in it and she gets murdered and then there's, but it's really good.

1:11:24Bill Simmons:You got to watch it. Like there's just barely enough breadcrumbs to know what the show is. And then I put it into my app and it's, and AI spits out like, that's actually the new movie with Kristen Scott Thomas. There is no spy thing. She has three daughters. And that's just, we just basically mom translator. I think she needs it.

1:11:42Cousin Sal:You shouldn't have said anything because it's too good. It's a good idea and you should have just pursued it and done it.

1:11:46Bill Simmons:I just like done it by the time. I called Alec, had him like fund it.

1:11:50Cousin Sal:Call our buddy Alec. You should call it Shazama, like a grandma kind of thing. Shazama. Does your mom do this? All the time. Where she just gives you recommendations? Yeah, it becomes like a game of charades. Like, oh, she was in the movie, but then she broke up with the guy and then they had a baby. It's not Jennifer Aniston, but she looks like her.

1:12:08Bill Simmons:Right, right, right. Yeah. So when you get, you hit a certain point after you've had a couple kids and lived your life, you just can't remember anyone's name anymore who's in a movie or TV show. Is that where we've landed?

1:12:21Cousin Sal:But it ends up being six degrees of... We could navigate it at this age because we remember the act of like, okay, I know he was in this thing, so I'll go to his IMDb or I'll go to that show, that movie's IMDb.

1:12:32Bill Simmons:Yeah, like if you give me Scarlett Johansson, I can now go in and be like, all right, Scarlett Johansson. So this sounds like a rom-com. I like Shazam. I think that's great. Shazamma. That's very, very helpful.

1:12:42Cousin Sal:It'd be great for them remembering your friends too, although that would be a little more difficult to detect right? Whatever happened to that one guy who lived over on Hammond Road and yeah, his father went to jail for a minute. Brad? Yeah.

1:13:01Bill Simmons:I randomly over the course of a couple weekends saw a bunch of my old friends and it brought her delight to no end when the old friends get together. It really makes them happy anyway. Shazamma! A new parent corner. A house that could be a half-baked idea. I have to pitch it to Wilds. All right. So we're going to take a break. Come back. The last thing we have on this podcast is we taped on Thursday. We did our whole back and forth NFL futures draft that you did really well on last year. I did.

1:13:32Cousin Sal:I won.

1:13:33Bill Simmons:I had both the offensive

1:13:34Cousin Sal:rookie and defensive rookie of the year. So that's how I, that's how I want it.

1:13:37Bill Simmons:Yeah. So we just went snake fashion. We did a Fogo to Chow style. We just kept throwing props at each other until we ran out. It's a half hour.

1:13:43Cousin Sal:There's a lot of dead air, but it's nice. It's a nice breezy listen, but I do have a couple plugs here. I We got to talk about a couple things here. Three days a week. Oh, let's do it. Three days a week on the Ringer Gambling channel. That's me. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. Live. Live at noon ET on the Ringer Gambling thing.

1:14:00Bill Simmons:And you're also going to be posting shorts and all kinds of quick stuff. Posting shorts.

1:14:03Cousin Sal:I have an interview with Michael Irvin this week. I only have like a million things to ask him. Tuesday starts with Tate. We'll go over the college week. Tate went three and one with his picks. Kid's good. We'll talk about Bella Cheat's debut as an underdog against TCU Monday and looking ahead to week one NFL. By the way, heavy MJ rumors on the sideline for that North Carolina game. Yeah, there's some rumors. So there could be two Jordans, the girlfriend Jordan and the Michael Jordan. Double Jordan. Real quick, I'm hosting an eliminator pool, 250 ,000 to the winner. Splash sports, cousin Sal's loser take all.

1:14:34Cousin Sal:But finally, our friend Tony's turn to kick someone out of our fantasy league on Tuesday. And I just want to say that Tony is the most talented fellow I have ever met. He was amazing as Mole and John Quincy Adams in Windy City Heat, as Niall Standish in Crank Anchors, Jake Bird, possibly the funniest character in late night history. He cooks, he snowboards, he fixes shit. He's a renaissance man, incredible family. His youngest son went off to college this week. Just a special talent, great guy. Can't say enough about him. I don't know if you have anything nice to say about him.

1:15:08Bill Simmons:I mean, once upon a time, me, you, and Tony shared after our friend Daniel got fired. we took over his office and it was me and you and Tony and it's some of the best memories of my entire life just getting to spend that much time with the T-Man so whoever he chooses to vote out on Tuesday I'm sure it'll be a really good smart pick that he put a lot of thought into and if it happens to be one of us I'd still respect the hell out of him because he's that great of a guy yeah sounds like you're pandering

1:15:35Cousin Sal:like I really meant what I said but you're sound a lot like pandering but that's fine one of the funniest people ever

1:15:42Bill Simmons:One of the nicest people ever. Huge fan of the Celtic City docs. Sent me a nice long text about it. And just somebody I really treasure as a human being.

1:15:50Cousin Sal:Yeah. Good job, Tony.

1:15:52Bill Simmons:Don't fuck this up, please.

1:15:53Cousin Sal:Who's the favorite to get voted out? I don't know. It might be the guy wandering around looking at everyone's trophies in the next room over here.

1:16:01Bill Simmons:I'm not sure. All right. Well, I'll see you on Tuesday. Sorry about Michael Parsons. We'll be back. Give me a quick good job by you. Good job by you, buddy. Good job by you. We'll be back with the futures draft right after this. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24 seven and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right.

1:16:38Bill Simmons:It's a new Workday. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra Whether you're racing to build the biggest sandcastle Seeing who can throw the fastest pitch Or competing In a championship match It's always better when there's a prize on the line Like Michelob Ultra Smooth, refreshing, and so satisfying After all that hard work Superior's worth playing for Michelob Ultra, Superior Light Beer Enter for a chance to win Superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes At Michelob Ultra.com Superior access Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch. Michelob Ultralight Beer. St. Louis, Missouri.

1:17:16Bill Simmons:All right. You'll be watching and listening to this on a Sunday, but we are recording this late Wednesday afternoon. Futures draft. Second annual. We had such fun with this. Who won last year? I did.

1:17:30Cousin Sal:This one I won, you crushed the over-unders. I had both rookies of the year. Right.

1:17:35Bill Simmons:So it's basically one unit, and if there's all kinds of... If you do a 10-1 and it hits, we'll keep track of it. What we do is somebody gets the first pick, somebody gets the next two, somebody gets the next two, and we go that way. Futures that we like. I'll give you the... Do you want the first pick or second and third? What do you want? Second and third. Okay. I'll go first pick then. Philly, Casey, and Baltimore ought to make the playoffs minus 110. Oh, it's over. You lost. I'm locking it down. Thank you. Oh, that's good.

1:18:09Cousin Sal:That's good.

1:18:11Bill Simmons:We've been doing this for I don't know how many years where we put together a parlay like that and you say, who's losing that, Simmons? Right, right, right, right. I can't come up with a team that loses that. It would have to be a Kansas City catastrophe.

1:18:24Cousin Sal:That was it. It's the only thing I can think of. And we went through that. That's even odds about? Minus 110? Yeah, minus 110. Yeah, okay. All right, you have the next time. All right, I will go. in this order for the AFC North, Ravens, Bengals, Steelers, Browns. Plus 310.

1:18:42Bill Simmons:Okay. Plus 310. So you think Pittsburgh will be the three seed is basically the bet. It's a smart bet. Yeah. You're basically going Cincinnati versus Pittsburgh for that two spot. I agree with you. I think that's a good one. I like that. All right. What's your next one?

1:18:58Cousin Sal:Oh, that's right. I get two. All right. I'll do this one. This is very tough. NFC North. I know you don't like this. Lions, Packers, Bears, Vikings in that order. Lions, Packers, Bears, Vikings. Plus$1 ,300. Ooh. It's tough. It's like a newborn figuring out a Rubik's Cube, but I have to take a chance here. You would reverse Packers and Lions, right?

1:19:22Bill Simmons:Yeah, I would do Green Bay winning that one as we covered in the NFC podcast. Yeah, the NFC North, I'm surprised you mess with that this way in the draft. I know.

1:19:31Cousin Sal:It's alright.

1:19:32Bill Simmons:This is what I'm going to beat you. Got a lot more. Alright. I'm going to do a homer pick for this next one. It's the New England Patriots to finish in second

1:19:45Cousin Sal:place in the

1:19:47Bill Simmons:AFC East is plus 170. As we discussed, I don't see any scenario where Buffalo loses the AFC East unless Josh Allen gets hurt. I don't see the Jets or Dolphins passing the Pats. Plus 170 great odds. I would almost rather bet that than the playoff. I think those are better odds than the playoff odds. So I'm grabbing that. That's pretty good.

1:20:11Cousin Sal:I wrote that down, by the way. I had second or third. Let's say you were a millionaire. Let's say you put$100 million on plus 170 and$100 million on plus 220. You can't lose that. They're coming in second or third.

1:20:24Bill Simmons:So the only way you lose that is if Drake may get hurt basically. Yeah. Okay. And my other pick, which I really like, and I'm surprised you didn't take it off the board. This is on Fandle. This is one of the ringer specials on Fandle. New Orleans or Cleveland. Yeah. Under three and a half wins. Minus 130. That's good. So one of those teams has to suck, basically. And I think both of them might suck. I actually wish you could do both of them at the same time. But I just don't see any scenario where both of those teams win four games. You could have that wrapped up by Thanksgiving somehow. I feel good about that.

1:21:04Bill Simmons:I like backing the teams with the worst quarterback situations in the entire league.

1:21:08Cousin Sal:All right, you're up with two. All right. I'm up with two. All right, I'm going to steal this from you because I know you like it. Jordan Love, MVP. 20 to 1, you said? 25. 25. Great. I'll take it. Love Matthew Golden. Love that offense. Really smart. I should have taken that.

1:21:24Bill Simmons:God damn it.

1:21:25Cousin Sal:Carolina, Cleveland Giants. In December, he's in the conversation, the 20-to-1. You got one more. I'm going to go Chase, Offensive Player of the Year, plus 800. You know, everyone's picking this guy first overall in every fantasy. That's probably the reason. Henry and Barkley slow down. I think this leaves the door open. That's 17 touchdowns and 1 ,700 yards. So wide receivers do. Hasn't won in three years.

1:21:49Bill Simmons:This is how you won last year. You won big odds. Yeah, you get big numbers. What do you care? Big chances.

1:21:53Cousin Sal:Even odds. That's smart.

1:21:56Bill Simmons:well I'm going to have to take a division oh I already did that one though you want to tap out well we're doing Fogo to Chow Rules love it which means we just keep doing props back and forth until somebody quits someone throws up yeah okay

1:22:16Cousin Sal:I'm going to do those aren't great odds on that fine I'll do this one You rattled now.

1:22:27Bill Simmons:No, this is a good one. I'm surprised you didn't take it. The odds aren't great. Miami, Cleveland, New Orleans, and Tennessee all missed the playoffs.

1:22:34Cousin Sal:Yeah, wow. I have it right there. Plus 105. Yeah, it was like even a 105. Shit.

1:22:41Bill Simmons:So who screws that up, Tennessee?

1:22:43Cousin Sal:Nobody. That's good.

1:22:44Bill Simmons:Tennessee maybe going 9-8, getting a 7 seed. I mean, it's your Brown Saints bet, but you're giving yourself more leeway.

1:22:53Cousin Sal:three or four more wins.

1:22:55Bill Simmons:Well, I'm going to double back up on it. I won't do that. I already did that. Okay. This is a good one. I like this one. Denver or Green Bay to be the one seed in their conference. Plus 550. Just a fun way to bet on Green Bay to be the one seed, but then you get the Denver odds. That's one of those two. Yeah. Denver or Green Bay plus 550 as the one seed

1:23:23Cousin Sal:that's on there they don't have first coach fire but they have Denver or Green Bay

1:23:27Bill Simmons:Denver or Green Bay I get to bet on Matt LaFleur and Sean Payton I get Bo Nix or Jordan Love good times alright you're up with it

1:23:35Cousin Sal:alright I will say alright I'm gonna do the NFC South I shouldn't but Tampa Bay Atlanta Carolina New Orleans plus 500 I like that I feel like there's some hedging to be had in there. Plus 500, that's it? Plus 500. What do you mean that's it? That should be more? New Orleans is kind of locked for fourth. Yeah. What's your next one? I'll get one more. Aiden Hutchinson, defensive player of the year. Plus 700. I think he gets a sympathy vote. He puts together numbers like he did last year. Plus 700. Plus 700. He had seven and a half sacks in five games. He was on his way to shattering. Definitely a personal high, but for the year...

1:24:16Bill Simmons:Well, if you remember, I had him in our futures draft, and he was like 14-1. Yeah. That one really hurt. Okay. We're going to go Burrow most passing, plus 500 that he has the most passing yards in the league. I was a little scared of the most passing bets, but in this case, I think he's the only guy who could actually throw for 5 ,000. Yeah.

1:24:41Cousin Sal:He played 17 games.

1:24:42Bill Simmons:He hit a lot. What did he have last year?

1:24:44Cousin Sal:Close. Yeah.

1:24:45Bill Simmons:Yeah, he's the only one I could see doing that.

1:24:46Cousin Sal:That's good, 5-1.

1:24:47Bill Simmons:That's good. And then I'm going to double up on Joe Burrow. Burrow throws for 4 ,500-plus yards. I saw this. And the odds on that one are plus 165. So it's almost a little bit of a hedge on my most passing. Basically, if he gets hurt, I lose both. You're up.

1:25:08Cousin Sal:These individuals are so tough because of the week 18. You don't know. All right, Emeka Buka. I screamed about that a lot. Offensive rookie of the year, 16-1. I think it's Bucs. Offense is going to be dynamite. Lots of opportunities. Lots of favorable matchups with Godwin in or out. Who knows? You said it. Brian Thomas type year, 1 ,300, 10 touchdowns.

1:25:28Bill Simmons:It's really good.

1:25:29Cousin Sal:16-1 on that? 16-1. Jesus. The number one overall pick has won the award only once in the last 13 years. I thought that was interesting. It was 40-1 earlier in the year, but I'm going at 16-1. Okay. What's your next one? Next one, Mike Green, defensive rookie of the year. This is a guy on the Ravens. Oh, you're going deep cut. Deep Poi was his nickname in college at Marshall for defensive player of the year. So he could be explosive. I know there's personal issues maybe. Dominated the senior bowl. He left the senior bowl early. He was like that good. The Ravens were second in sacks last year, so it's 22, edge rusher.

1:26:05Cousin Sal:Don't forget that name. What are the odds? 1 ,100.

1:26:09Bill Simmons:Would you describe our friend Brad Matt is having personal issues. All of them. Every single personal issue. Every conceivable personal issue. Okay. I'm going to do Denver makes the playoffs and Cincinnati doesn't make the playoffs. That's a parlay for plus 230.

1:26:30Cousin Sal:You like that one? Yeah, that's pretty good. Denver playoffs, Cincinnati. Interesting that you could do that. There was a day when there was no way you could double dip.

1:26:39Bill Simmons:You know why we could do that? because that was a ringer special on FanDuel. That's great. And then... I don't need to do that yet. Okay, here. Let's do this.

1:26:48Cousin Sal:Maybe.

1:26:50Bill Simmons:Geno Smith, P. Carroll, Tom Brady, Brock Bowers, and the Las Vegas Raiders. Eight plus wins. Plus 150. I think they go at least eight and nine. That's good. I had to grab that one.

1:27:04Cousin Sal:That's solid. What do you got? All right. I have... okay there's a new award did you even know this protector of the year I saw that Penny Sewell consistently earns like the highest blocking ratings PFF you know includes leads the NFL with the 95-1 PFF 23-24 Deion Dawkins and Andrew Whitworth got together and created this war I don't know if they threatened but there's a new OC I get it but if he plays this game I don't see it mattering Penny Sewell plus 460 the only one who could challenge him is Big Dom, considered a protector? I do worry about that. That's almost exactly what he is.

1:27:49Bill Simmons:What's your next one?

1:27:51Cousin Sal:Robert Sala, Assistant Coach of the Year. Oh my God, that's an award? Yeah, baby. Is that on FanDuel? Sure. Plus 800. Wait, I got to look this up. The A Cody. What site are you on? Is this season leaders or awards? Awards. It's like the last one.

1:28:06Bill Simmons:Oh my God.

1:28:07Cousin Sal:I didn't realize it went that far. Pick one. Those are fun.

1:28:13Bill Simmons:Oh, well then I'm doing Aiden Hutchinson comeback of the year plus 270. Let's take that right off the board because I didn't see that was available. You don't like Rogers? No, I do not. And then, oh, the assistant coach of the year. A lot of good choices.

1:28:36Cousin Sal:Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Take Matt Patricia. I know he's a college guy. I'm not ready to do that yet.

1:28:48Bill Simmons:I'll do this here. Green Bay over nine and a half wins. Chicago over eight and a half wins. Plus 370. Hmm.

1:28:58Cousin Sal:I think that hits. Feeling good about that one. You need them to split, right? Yeah. Okay. That's a good one. All right. We mentioned this. We were talking about this at Hercules. hurts to have the most rushing touchdowns plus 800 it's ridiculous yeah he doesn't they didn't change that rule for neanderthals i don't know why that tush bush is there is 42 rushing touchdowns in three years he's always around 15 uh cook had more than him last year gibbs and henry they only had one more i think i like hurts plus 800 i'm trying to think who beats this out of those guys

1:29:34Bill Simmons:No, just in general.

1:29:35Cousin Sal:I mean, Barkley's right behind him if they want to make an example of it. Travion Anderson? What's your other one? Mike Evans, 1 ,000-plus yards minus 130. 11 in a row, right? Every year he's played, he's had 1 ,000 yards. That's a great bet. Minus 130? Minus 130. Week 18, home against the Panthers. What number would you be comfortable at for him? I mean, you saw last year what they did. They stacked it up. They just threw to him every down. They were winning, and they threw to him.

1:30:07Bill Simmons:Yeah, so he'd be like at 840 yards, and they're just going for it.

1:30:10Cousin Sal:I wrote down 650. I think he can get 350 yards in that last game. All right. Those are mine. That's really smart.

1:30:17Bill Simmons:Did you do an AFCs bet? I don't think so. All right. Well, I'm going to do it. I thought you did it. What did you do at the top?

1:30:27Cousin Sal:I did NFC South, NFC North.

1:30:30Bill Simmons:Buffalo, New England, Jets, Dolphins. exact order, plus 600. I'm going to step in on that.

1:30:37Cousin Sal:I love that.

1:30:39Bill Simmons:Yeah, I just like the odds, because Buffalo, New England, lock those down, and then you're just arguing about the last thing. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's pretty damn good. And then... Oh, this is a fun one. Nico Collins, most receiving yards, 10-1. Really? So that's basically... That's Chase missing like two games with calf tightness, Jefferson being J.J. McCarthy'd, and then all of a sudden Nico Collins has the most... Yeah, that's everyone in the league missing two games. Yeah.

1:31:12Cousin Sal:Yeah, that's good. All right, I'm going to go Baker, passing touchdowns plus 900. Ooh. Most passing touchdowns, 41 last year. No sign of slowing down. Plus 900. Okay. And I'm going to go... love 30 or more touchdowns plus 190.

1:31:31Bill Simmons:We both love love.

1:31:32Cousin Sal:There we go.

1:31:35Bill Simmons:Plus 190. All right. I'm going to do Trayvon Henderson for Offensive Rookie of the Year, 16 to 1. Oh, that's good. The case is if you look at Jameer Gibbs' stats as a rookie for Detroit, and he ended up with almost 1 ,000 rushing yards and 500 receiving yards or something like that. I actually think Henderson can do better than that. So it's him versus Zegbuka versus, who's the other receiver, Golden? Golden versus Gentry. Yep. Yeah, Gentry's going to go away. I mean, Gentry's the safest pick. Yeah. And then I'm going to take this right off the board. Dak Prescott, 4 ,000 yards, plus 105. Shit.

1:32:15Bill Simmons:Suck on that.

1:32:17Cousin Sal:All right. How do you not take that? I have another Dak one. I mean, it's a little bit of a swing.

1:32:23Bill Simmons:Hold on. The Fogo to Chad Waiter just came over. You guys doing good? You're good. We're fine. Keep bringing it. Keep bringing the stake.

1:32:29Cousin Sal:Wait, so Prescott, 4 ,000 plus?

1:32:31Bill Simmons:Yeah, plus 105. Okay. Basically, he would have to get hurt not to get that. Especially because you don't have any running backs.

1:32:39Cousin Sal:Right.

1:32:40Bill Simmons:He's going to be throwing the ball like 40 times a game.

1:32:43Cousin Sal:Yep. I'm not going to argue. How about Prescott? Most passing yards. He had 4 ,500. He's one year removed from 4 ,500. That's plus 900.

1:32:55Bill Simmons:You're taking that? Yep.

1:32:55Cousin Sal:I know you have a borough there. And I'll take. How about this? Travis Kelsey under four and a half touchdowns. He had three last year. He's, you know, he's gonna be worried about fricking flowers and seating charts and who's going to be fighting with who and, you know, which in laws hate each other. He's going to be counseling for all this. He's not going from three to five, even if the 35 year old remains healthy. Plus one 12 under four and a half.

1:33:27I have...

1:33:31Cousin Sal:Oh, this is a good one.

1:33:39Bill Simmons:Let's do three or more NFC North playoff teams plus 330. Wow. You like that one? Mm-hmm. Basically, one from the NFC East, one from the NFC South, two from the NFC West. and I'm home free. And then here's the other one. I mentioned this when we did part two with the NFC.

1:34:06Cousin Sal:Michael Penix

1:34:09Bill Simmons:led college football in interceptions, or at least this conference, had 11. He's going to be chucking the ball, slinging it around. I have him for most interceptions, 14-1. I think I would have taken that at 8-1.

1:34:23Cousin Sal:So isn't this one where there's no other option? You want to take if there's no other option, right? Because you need this guy to play to have the most interception.

1:34:31Bill Simmons:Well, that was the other thing I was thinking. I wanted to take a younger QB that might, I mean, he had four season-ending injuries in college, so maybe not the best guy for that. But I thought 14-1 were good.

1:34:42Cousin Sal:What do you got? Chiefs touchdown every game. Oh. Plus 110. Last four years, 75-2. Only two out of 77 games Did they not score a touchdown One was two years ago against Denver They had three field goals One was last year, week 18 That's the one that's sticky They lost 38-0 I think it's as close as Even money lock as you can get So what are the odds? Plus 110 Okay And then I get another one

1:35:10Bill Simmons:Yeah

1:35:11Cousin Sal:Detroit, to make the divisional round To make it to at least a divisional round Plus 130 So they can get a bye Like they did last year And then you automatically win or they can win 10 games like I have them and then they have a home game probably against an inferior team. That's what I have. I don't think they're in a ton of danger of missing the playoffs. That's why I pick plus 130.

1:35:32Bill Simmons:Alright, long shot. Denver and Green Bay make it the championship weekend. The final four. 33-1. Just make the final four. Good to go. And then... I'm going to bet. Where's the other one I had? Oh, man. Am I starting to run out of it? That's all right. No, I don't want to run out of it. It really was.

1:36:03A Philly Green Bay NFC title game. Hmm.

1:36:10Bill Simmons:What do you think the odds are for that? 12? 20 to 1.

1:36:15Cousin Sal:Really?

1:36:15Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:36:16Cousin Sal:Oh, that's good. I didn't look at those. I should have looked at some of those. Those are run. We call those runway bets. When you're leaving a Fandle state, you're like, I got to get 40 bucks on these, all these matches.

1:36:27Bill Simmons:Fandle should do ads for runway bets when the flight attendant's like, sir, sir, can you please, can you please put your phone away? You're like, hold on, I got two more minutes. Yeah, there's going to be a huge brawl,

1:36:38Cousin Sal:six rows from here that you're going to have to tend to in a few minutes.

1:36:41Bill Simmons:But yeah, so you were convinced Fandle was paying off pilots to stay on the runway for six extra minutes in states where gambling was legal.

1:36:48Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think they were in cahoots with Spirit Air. That's the only thing that kept him going.

1:36:54Bill Simmons:I think it's smart.

1:36:57Cousin Sal:I'm going to go Darnold most interceptions plus 1 ,100. I looked at it. He's had as many as 15. He'll be right there. Jonathan Gannon, Coach of the Year. I thought the tap out was coming.

1:37:11Bill Simmons:Gannon?

1:37:12Cousin Sal:Gannon, Coach of the Year plus 1 ,400. Do or die a year for him. I think it's his award. if you can take them from under 500 to the vision title. Interesting. There you go. There's my two. I have a – I'm going to bet on a couple young QBs here.

1:37:31Bill Simmons:Tennessee over 5.5 wins. New England over 7.5 wins, plus 185.

1:37:39Cousin Sal:Mm-hmm.

1:37:41Bill Simmons:And then I'm going to do the one, the only, Brock Purdy, 4 ,000 yards. plus 105 that's good I had a party one too

1:37:54Cousin Sal:plus 105 yeah party 4k plus 105 okay alright I will go alright this is the Giants fan Meathead fan special Meathead Giant fan long shot future play okay Cam Scadabo oh to record one or more receiving touchdown, one or more rushing touchdown, and one or more passing touchdown in the regular season. 29-1. Could you see it? So TD triple crown? Yep. Pass, rush. 29-1. 29. Could you see it? Like, yeah, did you see Jerry's face when Week 18 in a meaningless game he threw a 15-yard? That's fucking great. Who cares? We're 2-16, whatever. Did Scadabo, did he throw passes

1:38:48Bill Simmons:in college? Like, is there some, were you studying YouTube clips of it?

1:38:51Cousin Sal:He had a rolling play where, I don't think it worked from what I saw, but 29 to 1.

1:38:58Bill Simmons:What's your other one? Wasn't that two? That wasn't it? You did Scatterbow, TD Triple Crown, 29 to 1.

1:39:04Cousin Sal:Oh, don't either. You tapping out? Matthew Golden over 700 and a half. That's fine. Minus one, 10. Matthew Golden over seven? 700.5.

1:39:15Bill Simmons:700. Oh, man. That's a good one. Plus 110.

1:39:21Cousin Sal:We can end this. Whatever you want to do.

1:39:23Bill Simmons:No, because I'm going to take Abdul Carter for defensive player of the year at plus 185. That's a layup. How is that not a minus odds at this point?

1:39:36Bill Simmons:And I need to get in on this coach of the year.

1:39:44Cousin Sal:Do it. It's fun.

1:39:47Bill Simmons:I mean, Vrabel at plus 750 staring at me. No, you know what? I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do the assistant coach of the year. Let's take a flyer. Clint Kubiak. Oh. 16 to 1 for coordinator of the year. He's the offensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks.

1:40:14Cousin Sal:I'm going to be so pissed if that's what beats me.

1:40:16Bill Simmons:It's like just people talking about his zone blocking and how he gave Darnold comfort.

1:40:22Cousin Sal:Shit, that's going to win, isn't it? 16 to 1. Cam Scadabo better be passing. All right, you got two. All right. I have two.

1:40:32Cousin Sal:Hutchinson over 12.75 sacks. 12.75. Why is it 12.75? Because a half is an actual measurement in the sacks. Oh, my God. So you could get, you could find 12.73. I don't want to veer anyone off with Fanville. You can find 12.725. Seven and a half and five games. 19 in his last 22 games. There's JJ McCarthy, Caleb Williams, who takes a lot of sacks. Flacco, Russ, Stafford the statue. Rodgers, if he's still standing in December. I like this. So what are the odds? Minus 112.

1:41:02Bill Simmons:Okay.

1:41:03Cousin Sal:You can get to 15. What's your other one? My other one.

1:41:10Cousin Sal:Panthers in third place in the NFC South plus 185. They can come in second but they can't come in first or fourth.

1:41:19Bill Simmons:Panthers in third place plus 185. I have to look.

1:41:25Cousin Sal:I'm not tapping up. I'm not tapping up. It looks like it did.

1:41:30Bill Simmons:I'm going to do Buffalo for the one seed. Okay. The Nets plus 250.

1:41:39Cousin Sal:And then I had... What is the other one? Miami under 5.5 wins plus 260. Wait a minute. Is that real? Yeah. What's their regular one? 7.5? Yeah. Okay. That's pretty good. That could happen. What do you got? I'll do Bill's Bucks Super Bowl plus 5 ,000 plus 5 ,000? yeah and I'll do Bill's Bucks I'll do 50 to what? I'll do Bill's Super Bowl plus 750 ooh this is their year the Tommy Fleetwood Bills you took that from me the Kieran Culkin Bills Sabrina Carpenter who else won first thing this year I have

1:42:35Bill Simmons:I'm going to double up on Buffalo Denver title game in the AFC 23-1 that's pretty good I would need Denver to win the division for that one to hit and then where is the other one I had

1:43:00Bill Simmons:wasn't there one I thought we had one

1:43:02Cousin Sal:Oh, there it is. It's not going to help you out.

1:43:08Cousin Sal:I don't know if I want to do that. You're done. We don't have to find a new round. That's fine. I don't want to do that one.

1:43:13Bill Simmons:I'm going to do New Orleans and Cleveland. Both finished in fourth place. Wow. Plus 158.

1:43:19Cousin Sal:You don't have that already?

1:43:21Bill Simmons:No. I had a different version of it.

1:43:23Cousin Sal:All right.

1:43:24Bill Simmons:Doubling up on it. What do you got?

1:43:27Cousin Sal:All right. Cardinals division plus 380. Ooh. it's a long shot and plus three 80. I like it.

1:43:42Cousin Sal:Let's see. All right. I'm, I'm doing something stupid. I know I said a lot of bad shit about Kyle pits, but what if this is the year seven 50 yards or more plus three 80,

1:43:57Bill Simmons:seven 50 yards plus three 80.

1:44:01Cousin Sal:Yeah. How did you even find that? Well, 525 says regular over on there. Okay. I need to find... Oh, yeah. Okay. I'm going to do San Fran misses the playoffs. Plus 160. Okay.

1:44:28Cousin Sal:And I'm going to do...

1:44:32Bill Simmons:Seattle division plus 500. All right. Double up.

1:44:37Cousin Sal:Sure. On those two beauties. We talked about this in the first podcast. Chargers lose in the wildcard round plus 290. I don't even have them to make the playoffs, but this seems like everybody should have this every year. Can we just get it out of the way? What are the ads? Plus 290. They're either going to lose a Shakey's game or they'll be hosting essentially a road game. Okay. Oh, and then I got another one. Yeah.

1:45:03Cousin Sal:I'm going to go Adams under 925 and a half minus 110. Under? Yeah. I don't trust Stafford being around for a lot of that. Under

1:45:15Bill Simmons:1025 and a half?

1:45:17Cousin Sal:925 and a half. Odds were what? Minus 110. Minus 110. Okay.

1:45:28I'm going to

1:45:29Cousin Sal:Houston win the division at plus 110. Okay.

1:45:38Cousin Sal:And then I'm going to do...

1:45:45Cousin Sal:I'm running out now. There's no shame. Could be a tap out. No shame. I'll do variable coach of the year plus 750. All right. Okay. Let's see if I'm excited about any of these others. Tapping out. Bills beat the Dolphins home and on the road, minus 135. Bills Dolphins sweep? Bills sweep the Dolphins. That's plus odds? No, no, minus 135. Seems like something you could do individual weeks, but I'm going to parlay it together. September 18th and then November 9th. Yeah, do that. I like that one. And I'll go Connor Under 875 and a half Rushing Why under? What's the thing you like about him? I got a little secret It's going to make me look like an asshole But if you take all the running backs under There's like six who are out for the year By week six or seven You know It is true You can kind of split there But I don't like that Not bad He's going to be 32

1:46:50Bill Simmons:I'm going to do Indy under Five and a half wins that is plus 250. You like that one? Nice, yep. Sure. Plus 250. And then I'm going to do...

1:47:11Cousin Sal:What was the other one I had? I don't know if the balls did that. I'm starting to run out now.

1:47:21Bill Simmons:Let's do... Yeah.

1:47:26Cousin Sal:Should we blow a horn to wake the audience up or something? Chargers, no playoffs, even. Yeah. That's pretty good.

1:47:36Bill Simmons:Want to do two more? Sure. All right. Or I get one. I went first, so you get two more. I get one more.

1:47:47Cousin Sal:All right. Sorry.

1:47:55Cousin Sal:Fields, six-plus rushing touchdowns, plus 115. Hmm. He's had eight, four, and five the last three years. Hit five in 10 games last year. Already has one in preseason. And what were the odds again? Plus 115. I like it. And then Cup, under five-and-a-half touchdowns. Under? That's minus 154. It's a big, big, but come on. There's got to be some decline a little bit there. I don't see a lot of scoring. Missed 18 games in three years. minus 110. So you have one more pick?

1:48:29Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:48:31Cousin Sal:Don't fuck this up.

1:48:32Bill Simmons:I'm going to do Buffalo over Green Bay in the Super Bowl. And I have no idea what the odds are.

1:48:40Cousin Sal:I don't know if they have over. They might just have.

1:48:43Bill Simmons:So Buffalo Green Bay Super Bowl?

1:48:45Cousin Sal:Yeah. They will.

1:48:47Bill Simmons:Which is, what's Buffalo Green Bay Super Bowl? Let me find it. Because that's my actual pick. So I should probably have money on that. 40 to 1 that they meet up. 40 to 1. That's my last pick. All right.

1:49:00Cousin Sal:We're tapping out of the Fogo and Chow draft. Thank you, Mr. Wainer.

1:49:03Bill Simmons:I don't feel like we had enough player props, but I think the problem with player props is that guys get hurt and get screwed. You mean just like over-unders? Yeah, just those over-unders. I never know who to trust. I like the quarterback throwing ones, but remember last year I had Trevor Lawrence, Caleb Williams, and somebody else will throw for 4 ,000 yards each. Right, right, right. Didn't happen.

1:49:20Cousin Sal:It's more fun. It's more fun to take the big odds, guys.

1:49:22Bill Simmons:All right. cuz great job good job buddy all right that's it for the podcast thanks to cousin sal thanks to gahau and eduardo and saruti as well i will be back on this podcast possibly with a two-parter on tuesday uh with a big guest too so stay tuned for that and then uh don't forget about the rewatch of what's coming monday night movie 400 american gangster don't forget about all of our awesome football content don't forget about the ringer gambling show live every day noon et on the Marin Gambling YouTube channel. And I will see you on Tuesday.

1:50:10Bill Simmons:Must be 21 plus in President's Lake States for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus in President of D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem? Call 100 Gambler or visit rg-health.com. call 1-887-897777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpline ma.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-887-8HOPENY or text HOPENY in New York.