NFL Over/Unders, an Oscars Preview, and a Brady-Pats Feud | With Cousin Sal, Sean Fennessey, and Seth Wickersham

12:32Bill Simmons:Do they play the NFC? Why do I have NFC South written here? Is that what it is? Did I already make a mistake? We're only not even 10 minutes in the pod. This is why we're taping. Oh, I did write that wrong. You're right. NFC South, right? AFC South, NFC South. bolts outs, which is typically good. I'm so fired up I made a mistake this early. So that's a pretty good combo. Baltimore is the first one. Baltimore's odds are plus 950 to win the Super Bowl on FanDuel. New coach. The Big Max Crosby trade, so they cashed in on their first round pick. I had 10 and a half.

13:10Cousin Sal:I think 10 and a half would have been closer to the truth. They have them at 11 and a half. They have him favored to win the AFC. Wow. 11 and a half? That is a giant number. Yeah. I don't want to give it away, but there's not too many 11 and a halves out there. You know, Crosby's great. They lose Linderbaum. They lost a couple of linemen. They lost another edge rusher. They lose some defensive players.

13:35Bill Simmons:Derrick Henry, a year older. Lamar either is healthy the whole year or he's playing five games. Right. So that's my first one. I'm going to put a slight under. But some of that has to be the division and the schedule. 12 wins would be a great season for them.

13:55Cousin Sal:Yeah. Coming off last year? 12 and 5. Burrow will be a little better. Who knows with Pittsburgh? But they always split anyway. I don't know. Yeah, that division is tough. But somehow with that schedule, I mean, they're coming off at 8. They're not going to get 8 again. No. I'm not going to go so crazy about Crosby.

14:13Bill Simmons:Cincinnati. third place schedule for them. Baltimore was second place schedule, by the way, forgot to mention. I had trouble with this one. It was either a seven and a half or an eight and a half. They spent some money on some defense. They're going to have a top 15 pick, but I went eight and a half for them because of the schedule.

14:32Cousin Sal:I think in real life, they're eight and a half, but Fandle made them nine and a half because everybody pounds their over. Everybody thinks there's a playoff team every year. Double digit wins. They came off, what, six last year? Yeah. and you know they're expected to come in second in the division so

14:49Bill Simmons:was this because of the Joe Burrow Jessica Alba rumors that have already been debunked

14:53Cousin Sal:they're debunked wake up Burrow you're not dating Alba but you will have to face Crosby Garrett and TJ Watt six times this year

15:02Bill Simmons:oh Jesus I mean if TJ Watt can look like TJ Watt again that's six tough ones but yeah that's a good point Miles Garrett and Crosby for a fourth time I mean, the thing with Baltimore, I did like that trade. There's some horrible histories for giving up two first rounders for a guy. It's basically 0-14, unless you want to give one to Stafford for saying that was a success. But they also, as part of that trade, dumped Goff in the trade. Right. So I don't even know if his value was the first rounders. I was just looking at this. Did you see this list of all the guys? It was Sauce Gardner, Micah Parsons, Russell Wilson, Matthew Stafford, Laramie Tunsil, Jamal Adams, Khalil Mack, Jalen Ramsey, Jay Cutler, Ricky Williams, Keyshawn Johnson, Jeff George, Eric Dickerson, and Herschel Walker.

15:55Cousin Sal:So it's like... Is this Dancing with the Stars?

15:57Bill Simmons:This is all guys who've been traded for two first rounders in the last 40 years. Right. And the only one you can say was a legit win so far was Stafford, but Goff was in that. Right. So you're doing this, you're like, this is just, you're trying to buck history. But I love the idea of Crosby on a good team. We used to talk about him all the time on this pod. He's just, every game, we're like, holy shit, that guy's amazing.

16:21Cousin Sal:He's for sure great. But yeah, back to the two first-round picks, it hurts even more when you say goodbye to one of the best offensive linemen in the game. You can't even replace Linderbaum because you don't have first-round picks now for a little while. So that's why I think, I don't know, maybe it's right around 11 or 12 anyway, but I wouldn't go over here. It's a lot of money for a center.

16:46Bill Simmons:It's like we've reset the center market. You haven't just reset it. You've blown it up and recreated it. But I do wonder if there – one thing I noticed with the free agency spending, it seems like if teams feel like they can get a top five or six guy at the position, they value that more than whatever we normally value at the position. because the Kenneth Walker contract was like that too. He basically got premium money, but it's like, well, he is probably one of the six or seven best running backs now. So if you're going to do it, you might as well pay for somebody like that.

17:17Cousin Sal:Yeah. Yeah, I think so. If you weren't going to get Jeremiah Love, because people like getting the running back on a rookie deal, right? So if your draft range falls outside of that, you kind of do have to scramble and make a move like Kenneth Walker.

17:31Bill Simmons:Yeah, McShay had a thing in his newsletter today about could he just slide out of the top 10, even though McShay thinks he's the best guy in the draft. Interesting. Usually the history of the draft is the best guy never kind of makes it past seven, eight, no matter how much of a non-need position it is. But in this case, now that Kansas City's out, who's going to be the team? Could it be Tennessee? Could it be Washington? I don't know. Pittsburgh, I had this at seven and a half. Remember, they're playing the first place schedule too, on top of the fact that I guess Aaron Rodgers comes back, new coach.

18:11Bill Simmons:What'd you have for this?

18:12Cousin Sal:You nailed it. Coming off 10 wins last year, you're right. Seven and a half is the over. And so now we're just, they're not even making it eight and a half. It used to be eight and a half for Tomlin every year. Like, oh, this is fun. This is a fun little game. Let's keep up if he goes nine and eight or gets under there though. But Mike McCarthy has cut a little less slack there, seven and a half. And yeah, absolutely. It's the schedule that's going to hurt them.

18:32Bill Simmons:And Cleveland has to be among the lowest. I had four and a half for Cleveland. This is high. Six and a half. I got to check this again. Six and a half. So that said to Sean Watson bump? I have to check this. That's crazy. So FanDuel is saying to win your over on Cleveland, they have to go seven and ten? What are the odds of that happening?

18:56Cousin Sal:Six and a half. The over is plus 135. So it's juice to the under minus 160. But yeah.

19:02Bill Simmons:That should be at least one win lower. Because when we did this last year, some of the stuff really moved. Like, I remember the Pats jumped up one. A couple of them dropped one. I don't think any dropped. Your Dallas one dropped. Right. I don't think any dropped two, but they'll usually go up or down one.

19:20Cousin Sal:So that would be the one you jump on now. So I would go Jets under and Cleveland under. I mean, you've got to be in it for a while with Cleveland under.

19:30Bill Simmons:Well, don't... Do they have two first-round picks or one? I'm looking this up. They have the six pick in the draft. No, they have one in the 20s, too. Whose do they have? They do? I don't know. They have one in the 20s. That's what I have in my notes. So maybe they think they can boost up with the draft.

19:52Cousin Sal:Ten picks in the 2026 draft. Two first-round selections. Oh, they got it from the Jacksonville trade. That's what it was.

19:58Bill Simmons:The Travis Hunter trade. right right oh god yeah and then mason graham was good last year deshaun back

20:07Cousin Sal:they're fine easy schedule that cincinnati game to end the year schedule yeah they hung around

20:13Bill Simmons:some home defense is good i'm not gonna say that's a lock for an under yet all right afc south they're playing the afc north and they're playing the nfc east including your team i had nobody in this division at 10 and a half. The first one I had was Houston. Nine and a half.

20:31Cousin Sal:Exactly right. Coming off of 12 wins, right? Nine and a half. They're favored to win the division. Plus 165. Nine and a half. Seems fair. Seems fair. This division on the whole probably overachieved

20:46Bill Simmons:last year. I feel like late May we're probably talking ourselves into the over. Yeah. CJ had a bad playoff game. He's fine. Some good tank Dell buzz. Just be going. Jacksonville, I had eight and a half because first place schedule combined with no first round pick this year because they gave it away in the Hunter trade. So eight and a half seemed vicinity.

21:11Cousin Sal:They left them at nine and a half. I think because, I don't know, there's only a handful of teams that have a four and a half difference between their wins and losses, wins from last year in projection. So they had 13. It's tough. I don't know. We go back and forth praising Trevor Lawrence. Not so much praising him, but we thought he came off his best year. Yeah. So it'll probably be a battle between those two teams.

21:37Bill Simmons:Indianapolis, another team that doesn't have a first-round pick who just spent a lot of money on Alec Pierce and then had to trade Pittman. Daniel Jones coming back from the Achilles. Third-place schedule because they fell apart near the end. I had them at 8.5.

21:53Cousin Sal:Exactly right. eight and a half. Yeah. Eight last year, obviously tanked towards the end because a quarterback went out, but the Pierce signing is pretty, what did he get? Four, one 14, 26 years old. I really wanted him for the Pats.

22:07Bill Simmons:I just feel like the guy had nine quarterbacks in four years. Just put him with Drake. Let's see how it goes. But, and then Tennessee was one that I had circled as one that I might want to have some action on the over because they're, they're fitting a lot of the profile. Like they're getting weapons. They have a high pick. I think Salah as the coach combined with some of the stuff they did to try to put some support around Cam Ward. I thought it was – I just thought they were so poorly coached last year. You put anyone relatively confident, that's got to be worth a couple wins. Anyway, I guess six and a half.

22:46Bill Simmons:Really?

22:46Cousin Sal:So you might want an over at six and a half. I thought you were going to guess five and a half. It is six and a half. Okay. But that to me is similar to the Browns. Like I know they play a last place schedule, but there are some of these teams that are there every year struggling to get their fourth win in December, you know? Yeah. They spent some money in free agency too.

23:04Bill Simmons:Yeah. Franklin Myers. They kept a couple of good guys from last year's team. Like they never traded Simmons, you know, where it felt like that was the most obvious thing ever for them to finally trade them. And they just didn't. Cam Ward year two. I feel like that's probably a mid-July podcast segment. Could the Titans be this year's Patriots?

23:25Cousin Sal:Well, then you got to think someone's going to fall off then, right? So you're leaning Jacksonville because you always are. It's okay.

23:32Bill Simmons:Indianapolis, I think, would be another one where you're just putting a lot on Dana Jones next year. Right. And you have the entire organization is probably in blow-up land if things don't go well next year after that Sauce Gardner trade. Jacksonville, who knows? I thought Etienne was really good for them last year. I was surprised that they let him go. He's gone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he went to the Saints.

24:00Cousin Sal:Yeah. Yeah, look, this is remarkable for this division. You have two teams projected for nine and a half. Those are over 500. Indy's over 500. Yeah, it's a huge win. We've really grown with the AFC South. It's not even like Tennessee is three. They're six and a half. They're right in there.

24:18Bill Simmons:I have planted my flag on Brian Thomas Jr. trade island for the Patriots.

24:26Cousin Sal:Oh, interesting.

24:26Bill Simmons:Did a lot of recon on him. Okay. His rookie year, I think he was the fourth guy who had 1 ,000 plus yards and 10 plus TDs. and the other ones were like Beckham, Randy Boss, and Jamar Chase. And then last year was like just, you know, awful. But if a year ago, that guy, you could offer them two first-round picks, they would have said no, right? Yeah. So could you steal him, I guess would be the question. Right. But I'm intrigued by him.

24:57Cousin Sal:It's crazy because I like Jacksonville to win the division. It's one of the few things I got right last September or August, whatever. but most of the conversation centered around Travis Hunter and Brian Thomas Jr. And one of them literally didn't show up for most of the season. The other one didn't, you know, so it was what Jacoby Myers trade that really got them going.

25:17Bill Simmons:Yeah. Well, and Parker Washington too, coming out of nowhere. So I wonder if he's expendable. Wait, not that. Okay. AFC West, they play the AFC East and the NFC West, which if the Pats are good, that could be five really good teams on your schedule. but at least four. Chargers, second play schedule for them. A lot of injuries last year.

25:44Bill Simmons:They, to me, feel like, I don't know how they win less than 10 games. So I had them at 10 and a half.

25:51Cousin Sal:So, Fandle has them at 9 and a half. This is one of the few that Fandle is off from other books. Don't ever go to other books. There's no point ever doing it. You wouldn't do it but I just do have to point it out. If you like the under, go somewhere else. If you like the over, which I think you do, take the nine and a half now. They're an 11-win team from last year.

26:11Bill Simmons:They spent some money. They got a few of those lower level, not splashy for agents, but the guys on that next tier, they have guys coming back. I still think their offensive line could be really good. They kept Khalil Mack, which I was surprised by. Right. You know? And then we get to talk about, is this the best team Justin Herbert's ever had? Is he ever going to come through when it matters? I'm excited for those conversations. Football's going to be back, Sal. We're going to be back. It's happening. Five and a half months, baby.

26:41Cousin Sal:This time last year, KC was what? I think the rest of the division, one of my bets was even odds to win the division instead of KC. Now it's all bunched up. It's nice.

26:52Bill Simmons:I'll tell you the one thing I'm not doing this year, and we have a lot to prove with our over-unders. We did not have great years last year. off here, but we also knew it. We knew last year was off. I didn't love it. There are only a couple ones I felt strongly about. We got a lot to prove next year, but I like this Chargers team. Kansas City. I thought this was really hard. You could have told me seven and a half, eight and a half, or nine and a half. Seems like Mahomes is going to be back. They signed Kenneth Walker. They had the ninth pick in the draft. There was a moment when they did that McDuffie trade when I thought, are they, is this a tank season?

27:34Bill Simmons:But maybe not. Maybe they just didn't want to pay McDuffie. They got the, I think the 29th pick in the first round back. So they'll be able to put in two rookies. And it's kind of the Chiefs way of like, let's try to patch together some D-back stuff, take some chances on young guys. Kelsey's coming back. I went all the way up to nine and a half, so.

27:54Cousin Sal:Bill, you could have gone to 10 and a half. No. And I would have said, you're A-OK. Yeah. And this is the biggest difference in terms of positive progression, I guess it would be, because they won six games last year. It's 10 and a half? It's 10 and a half. They're favored to win the division of plus 165. Oh, my lord. And they're 10 and a half. I'm stunned by that. It's a lot.

28:15Bill Simmons:We haven't even seen Mahomes walk yet.

28:19Cousin Sal:Isn't this the Bengals thing, though, too? Like, everyone's betting these two teams to make the playoffs. You got to keep the Chiefs in double digits because when they're healthy, you just figure that they're going to win those one-score games again, right? If he is walking like we think.

28:34Bill Simmons:Well, we talked a few times last year about how sloppy the Chiefs were last year from a coaching standpoint. And that Andy Reid and that whole coaching staff was starting to feel a little gamey. And then stuff's come out since the season. They brought Eric sleeping with the enemy. Shout out to Chris Berman. they brought him back as the OC again I think he was as shocked as anyone but they brought him back to try to have a little more tough love in the locker room and stuff but from the way that team was coached last year 11 wins seems ambitious not to mention some shakier character guys just trying to be fair a little on the shaky side never really kind of know what's going to happen with the Chief Well, I liked it at 9.5.

29:24Bill Simmons:I don't think I like it at 10.5.

29:26Cousin Sal:Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it's just like this is just a darling pick, so the Vandal doesn't want to get burned either way. And you're right. The AFC East, if the Patriots are good again, who knows? And the Bills. And then you got three NFC West teams who are very good.

29:43Bill Simmons:Denver, first place schedule. I have them at 9.5.

29:49Cousin Sal:It is 9.5. I would have thought it was higher. I would have thought 10.5. This is another 4.5 game regression, right? They won 14 last year. This is the most disrespected team in the NFL. You see why the Patriots could come down 4.5 games. The schedule's all different. Denver was pretty good last year for the most part. You may not love their quarterback, but for God's sakes, that defense was good. And for them to be slated for third place in that division at plus 220, yikes.

30:16Bill Simmons:Well, some of that is Vegas is not going to be a pushover this year, combined with the first place schedule, combined with they play Buffalo, the Patriots, and all the NFC West teams. Just a harder road. So it makes sense to me, but I wouldn't have been surprised by 10.5. All right, Las Vegas. I didn't feel great about it, but I went six and a half because of the money they've spent in the draft picks and the draft capital and Mendoza being able to play right away, potentially. Six and a half seemed fair.

30:47Cousin Sal:Yeah, I mean, look. I would have said six and a half if I knew Cleveland was six and a half and Tennessee was six and a half. But Fandle has them at five and a half. And there's a lot to get excited about for Vegas, obviously, with Mendoza. And he's going to be putting his hand on Linderbaum's tuchus there to take snaps. But the coach, you got it all. I just don't know. I don't know. Wow.

31:10Bill Simmons:So they have the Raiders a win below Cleveland and Tennessee. Right. And what about the Jets? And the Jets were five and a half.

31:22Cousin Sal:I don't know. Again, I get burned every year taking the Raiders to make the playoffs or do something stupid. Yeah, that was your worst one last year. But who knew that P. Carroll was done with coaching four years ago? If you look at Gino's numbers, it wasn't that the contract was bad, but his numbers the last three years, like if you cover up the name, he had like Baker Mayfield type numbers. And then last year it was just unplayable. Awful, yeah.

31:51Bill Simmons:Man, that feels low to me, especially when you throw in the fourth-place schedule and who knows with the Chiefs. But I guess they're just afraid of the AFC West. All right, so the highest over-under we have, amazingly, is Baltimore at 11.5.

32:07Cousin Sal:Right, for the AFC, yep. No doubt.

32:12Bill Simmons:That does not add up to me.

32:13Cousin Sal:Buffalo's right there. Does that add up to you?

32:15Bill Simmons:that they feel like the odds on one seed in the AFC, according to this, is going to be the Baltimore Ravens.

32:24Cousin Sal:Right. With only 12 wins. Yeah.

32:28Bill Simmons:Very strange.

32:30Cousin Sal:I don't think they know what to do.

32:31Bill Simmons:So if you had to bet on a one seed, who would you bet on?

32:38Bill Simmons:Like knowing what we know now, looking at this whole thing laid out.

32:44Cousin Sal:Just your East has so many. It's really tough. You might have four wins with those two games. The East is playing 74 wins and the North is playing 63 wins, taking out first place and everything. I might, for fun, take the Chargers right now.

33:04Bill Simmons:So funny you said that. That was one of the ones I was like, I think that Chargers one goes up to 10.5. Especially if we see what they do over the next couple days, plus the draft. I think that's my favorite one. Chargers 9.5. Yeah.

33:19Cousin Sal:It's a moderate risk, I think. I mean, we have enough to go on to know that they're going to be decent and compete.

33:25Bill Simmons:So we like, the two that we like the most are Chargers over and Vegas

33:30Cousin Sal:over 5.5 are our two favorites. It's tough to have two in the same division, like landing on both the overs, but I'm also on the Jets under there.

33:42Bill Simmons:well the Jets under five and a half you still like it

33:47Cousin Sal:I really are they playing 20 games this year did they move that I don't know

33:52Bill Simmons:I still feel like by probably like with that little when there's that little siesta between the NBA conference finals and the finals we have like four days and we've already figured out who we're taking in the finals and then we start looking at the over unders I feel like that's when I'll make my Cleveland under bet Cleveland under. Yeah, that's what I'll be like, what am I doing? They're not winning seven games, but something scares me about, like, why would it be six and a half?

34:19Cousin Sal:With Cleveland? Yeah. Which quarterback are you excited? Are you excited about Watson coming back? It's like, oh, Watson's coming back. It's like, yeah, Watson's coming back. Is that good? Right. I don't know. If you were to say how many three touchdown games or two touchdown games will Watson have for the rest of his career and count on zero or one fingers, I think, at this point.

34:41Bill Simmons:We will take a break, and then we're going to go to the NFC in your favorite division, the NFC East. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. March is here, and Uber Eats is delivering deals all month long, every game day. We've got some games coming up. Score big savings on all the delicious food you need to turn your couch into center court and fuel your fandom, as there's some tournament games coming, whether you're ordering in or hosting the whole crew. Uber Eats is serving up deals on wings, burgers, pizza, from your favorite restaurants, plus game day snacks from top stores. Bracket busted?

35:15Bill Simmons:Still holding strong? Cinderella story or top seed? Well, however the madness unfolds, these deals will keep going all month long. Visit the game day hub on Uber Eats for all the latest deals. Start saving today. So the NFC East, I think has the hardest combo that anyone has. NFC West and AFC South. because all the NFC West teams except for Arizona are scary. I don't know what to make of the AFC South, but even at Tennessee could be kind of a scary game. But just in general, I'm not a huge fan of that combo. Philadelphia, first place schedule again. I went 10 and a half.

35:57Cousin Sal:You have to.

35:59Bill Simmons:They're just 10 and a half every year. It's like the new Pittsburgh being 8 and a half.

36:02Cousin Sal:Right. It's 10 and a half. You want to play with the other teams in division, it's fine. but you can't make it. I mean, I'm not on their over right now as we speak in third week in March, second week in March, but the way they knuckleball their offense to 11 wins, I think it would be a miracle almost like it was this year. But it has to be 10-9.

36:21Bill Simmons:So if they traded A.J. Brown for a low first and like a third or two seconds or whatever, would that make you more or less likely to like that over?

36:31Cousin Sal:I think the more draft picks they have, the better. I would like that. That's how I feel as well. That is the one thing they do well, right? They draft and ignore A.J. Brown. That's the other thing they do well. And I still feel like, I just feel like the Pats, A.J.,

36:46Bill Simmons:now it's 3.15 Pacific time. You think it could still happen, huh? I do. I think it's still realistic. There's too many intertwining things going on. And maybe it doesn't happen until later, but nobody's been able to explain to me why Philadelphia would want to run it back with$50 million for Jalen Hurts and$60 million for the two receivers when they have this GM who's great at drafting everybody and bringing in guys year after year and a draft that people seem to like the wide receivers a little bit more as we get in the second, third round. I just can't imagine they're going to be like, let's run this back.

37:24Bill Simmons:He'll be definitely happier this year. He's not going to be happier. Yeah.

37:29Cousin Sal:No, I'm with you. And it's still not even one of the top five I don't think receiver rooms in terms of, uh, in terms of pay, like the bills, we laughed at the bills wide receivers forever. And they're still like, Oh, Oh, shavers. Do we pick shavers up? Right. They're second. They're the second most expensive. I guess they got rid of Samuel now. So maybe they cut, but they added DJ more, but they added DJ more. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, uh, it's weird. And obviously Cincinnati first Dallas third on that list.

37:58Bill Simmons:So Washington third place schedule for them. A ton of injuries last year. Some cap stuff that I think they're still sorting out. We called this. This was one of our better ones. We don't get a lot of pats on the back for last year. I have seven and a half for them.

38:15Cousin Sal:That's exactly right. Coming off five wins, but you can't make it six and a half, right? Still a very good quarterback. They signed Owa, who had ten and a half sacks with the Chargers. So that's a good signing there. So I wouldn't touch it right now. I was more against him last year. Let me ask you this.

38:35Bill Simmons:If they pick Jeremiah Love with the seventh pick, does that go up to eight and a half?

38:42Cousin Sal:Could he be worth a win? No, nothing's worth a win. There's not one move that's worth a win right now. Right?

38:50Bill Simmons:I'm just trying to picture playing that team if Daniels is healthy and they add Love, who everybody loves. just, you know, like for McShay to have him as his, the top player in the draft, I think that's pretty significant.

39:03Cousin Sal:Did Jente move the Raiders a half a win or a win? No, well, they couldn't block.

39:08Bill Simmons:And then Geno Smith just throwing the ball at the other team. That's true. And Pete Carroll doing the Joe Biden on the sidelines.

39:19Bill Simmons:But, but yeah, a healthy Daniels with love with some of their receivers. like McLaurin will be healthy. Like he had his classic like held out, got hurt season last year. Right.

39:34Cousin Sal:Yeah, that seems... Maybe it didn't even have to be love. Like I also thought Kenneth Walker could have helped them. They can get like somebody, you know, there's a couple scary names out there.

39:44Bill Simmons:So it wouldn't be that bad. Your team, the Dallas Cowboys. Let's do it. Second place schedule. It's funny. I have them ahead of Washington. I have Dallas at eight and a half because I just think they want to win. And we don't know all the moves they're going to make, but when I say they want to win, it's like at the expense of any sort of anything down the road, like I've just prepared for anything with them, trying to figure out how do we fit Trey Hendrickson in here? How do we trade up for this guy? Like they're just so win now because their owner is 120 years old that eight and a half feels like the right number.

40:26Bill Simmons:That's it.

40:26Cousin Sal:It's eight and a half. You can't make it any higher. You can't make it lower because everyone's going to bet Dallas, right? Yeah. Bachelor party in Vegas, whatever, out of spite so they could be mad at him. But yeah, listen, I can't go too crazy, but we're under the cap now. We restructured CeeDee Lamb. Dak Prescott broke up with his lady. There might have been some bachelor, bachelorette party weirdness going on, but whatever. He's got to put that in the rearview mirror. We signed Javante Williams, who everyone laughed at. Like, oh, that's going to be the toughest 600 yards you'll ever see. Two for 20, right?

40:59Bill Simmons:Something like that.

41:00Cousin Sal:Okay, so we got, you know, it's not Derrick Henry, but it's good. So you're right. That Hendrickson piece would be gigantic. You know, that Gary signing is okay.

41:10Bill Simmons:That feels like the most predictable Cowboys move of all time. Yeah. The Cowboys have agreed to terms with Trey Hendrickson, and then they can take a victory lap about, we traded Parsons for two firsts, and he got hurt, and then we were able to turn one of those into Williams. And now we have Hendrickson and we're smarter than you.

41:28Cousin Sal:More than Jerry being 120 years old and freeing up this. He's got some drinking money now. He's under the cap. He's got to prove that this Parsons thing didn't kill him. Yeah.

41:38Bill Simmons:So Hendrickson, you throw money at. And then the other thing that's definitely 100 % happening is the George Pickens holdout. That can last. That'll be fun. It's got to last until July 1st, two weeks of August. So we can lead first take like five, seven times. Who's going to blink? Jerry's done with this guy. I'm ready for... We just know how that's going to go.

42:01Cousin Sal:Yeah.

42:01Bill Simmons:Okay. The New York Giants. New coach. High draft pick. QB coming back. A lot of talent. We all thought they may be underachieved with the roster they have. Neighbors coming back. Neighbors coming back. Who knows? Maybe they trade for Brian Thomas Jr. I probably went too high, but I threw down the seven and a half for this.

42:27Cousin Sal:Good call. I would have gone lower than that. Seven and a half is right. Coming off a four-win season. And this is a sexy pick right now. And I think Fandle recognizes that.

42:36Bill Simmons:Well, everybody, we always worry when this happens. And it's not like we invented this because a lot of people are on it. But that fourth place, easy schedule, new coach, new QB, whatever. Two of the three are all three. and it became a really good way to get great value, like with the Patriots last year, which I felt the strongest about the Patriots last year of anything we talked about. Because I was just, I don't understand how we're not going to be better. We had the worst coach team of all time. I don't understand how the Giants won't be at least four wins better with everything they're doing and having a competent coaching staff.

43:11Bill Simmons:I guess the question is, how confident is Harbaugh? He was about to get fired when Lamar got there. Lamar kind of covered up a bunch of stuff. I always thought he was a good coach, but I didn't like the last couple of years.

43:23Cousin Sal:Yeah. It's like, is he gone? Well, let's bring Max Crosby in now because we can do something. We don't want to get him credit for this. Are you sure he's gone? Yeah. Look, he's coming into a night. Boy, the Giants are like so weird, right? With their quarterback. Like we knew very early on Jackson darts the guy, right? Yeah. And he's a good, like he's a personality also. And then you don't want to sit him the last month of the season because he got dinged up a little bit, but you don't want to sit him totally. but he changes his game completely. He's not the same quarterback. So it was a very strange Giants win.

43:55Cousin Sal:Scadabo gets hurt. Neighbors gets hurt, right? Their defense maybe didn't perform like we thought. They signed Isaiah Likely. That could be good, right? Like, you know. I like that one. I like that better. He also needed to leave the Ravens.

44:06Bill Simmons:It felt like he was just involved in too many controversial plots for them in games. Right, right, right. He just needed a change of scenery.

44:13Cousin Sal:For sure. So yeah, so Harbaugh's got his guy there. So yeah, but seven and a half. To double your wins is tough though, right? So you got four. I have it. You love it. You're going over. Lock it in. Go ahead.

44:26Bill Simmons:No, I'm not going to lock it in, but I do like it. I do think they fit. Well, two things that would have to happen is your team would have to be not as good as people think. That could happen. And Washington, same thing. Yeah. But there's a chance. We talked about this a lot last year with the NFC West, and we were pretty right. that we thought there could be three playoff teams that came out of that. And that division turned out to be, you know, that division in the NFC North basically carried the conference. This division is definitely better. Washington did two years ago. Yeah. NFC North, easy.

45:07Bill Simmons:NFC South and the AFC East are their two divisions. The easiest out of all. So you're basically getting all of those weird NFC South teams plus the Jets of Miami. That's just six winners. And if you're Minnesota, you get the fourth place schedule too. So they're another candidate. What if Kyler Murray goes there? What if somebody else goes there? What if they figure out quarterback combined with some of the talent they're at have? Anyway, Green Bay, they're a blind 10.5 for me with all the talent. Second place schedule for them too. So I went 10.5.

45:46Cousin Sal:Yeah, 10 and a half is right. Coming off a nine-win year, there's... Well, I won't tell you what their odds are for the division because you'll figure out maybe Detroit from that. But I like them this year. I feel like they're Chicago from last year. They had so much... So much had to go wrong for them to lose the two games they did to the Bears. And they had... You know, they were unlucky the rest of the way.

46:06Bill Simmons:Are they just the team that we like every year? And every year they let us down and we're like, I like them, I still like them.

46:12Cousin Sal:And it's just for seven years they're going to let us down? The Bengals with the... Lighter colors, maybe. Yeah, maybe that's it. So they lost Dobbs to the Patriots today.

46:21Bill Simmons:They win Jenkins, which I was surprised by because I always thought he was one of the highly respected interior linemen in the league. We'll see what they do in the draft. I'm sure they'll end up with two more receivers. I don't know. Did they miss the golden pick? We never really heard his name last year.

46:39Cousin Sal:Right. Well, he's banged up for a while. Yeah. Just to me, they were the unlucky team of the year. I agree with that.

46:46Bill Simmons:Well, a team that was not the unlucky team of the year was the Chicago Bears. First place schedule this year. Lost their center, who abruptly retired. So they got to figure that piece out. They traded DJ Moore. And just a lot of talent. And I thought they got a great year from Caleb. I went nine and a half. Is that it? That's it. That's exactly it. I'd like the over for that. You'd like the over? I do. I think the Bears... I don't know. I'm pro Bears. I wouldn't put it down as a lock, but I'd be hard to believe that they're just not a playoff team anymore. So you must not like the Lions, or do you think there's three playoff teams?

47:29Bill Simmons:I do not like the Lions. I know there's some good signs with them in the third-place schedule and maybe getting healthier. I had nine and a half for the Lions.

47:38Cousin Sal:So they're ten and a half, and they're favored to win the division, only slightly over Green Bay.

47:43Bill Simmons:I don't get that at all.

47:44Cousin Sal:and then the Bears So what's the case for that? I think it's exactly what you said third place schedule how long we're going to keep Dan Campbell down maybe they see Montgomery leaving as a it goes what to Houston I think they see that as a positive for the offense but they signed for checkout today to be the Montgomery right yeah I don't know

48:03Bill Simmons:if that's going to work

48:04Cousin Sal:I don't know you know they still had a lot of injuries so when you say they're they're an unlucky team also but I'm going to give them one more year because I think the window but when you say

48:16Bill Simmons:the Lions have a lot of injuries isn't that every year with the Lions I kind of have to factor that in at this point and the offensive line I think is a lot different that was one of the cases we forgot to mention this with Cleveland like their offensive line which I think was at one point really good and then was pretty good but I think every guy from that offensive line is gone heading into this season right like all five guys are gone I think with the Lions the offensive line that two years ago is not going to be there in the same way. So, I don't know. That, to me, I could see that team. Raheem loves the alt-unders and the alt-overs where we just go like four or five wins.

48:56Bill Simmons:That could be an alt-under team for me.

48:59Cousin Sal:Yeah. I mean, that's all scheduling, right? So, if that's a third-place schedule, they'll play everyone individually. They'll play what? Was Dallas third? I mean, all of those. Washington was third. Yeah. Yeah. San Francisco they'll get. Yeah, those kind of teams.

49:14Bill Simmons:Maybe it's not so easy. So it sounds like you like the Lions.

49:19Cousin Sal:You think they have another year, though. You've got to talk me off the Lions. You're going to have to talk me. I don't love the Bears, but what's going to be interesting is the Vikings. So what is it? Is it Rodgers or Murray at this point? Mac Jones? Rodgers, Murray, Mac Jones, Cousins. Could it be...

49:42Bill Simmons:Let me see what pick they have. Or could it be like a draft pick until they go back to the well? Really? Yeah, so they're in like the low teens.

49:54Bill Simmons:It sounds like the McCarthy thing is headed toward a conclusion.

49:58Cousin Sal:Definitely, but I don't know if they want to admit failure that much to just draft somebody. I think you do if you feel like you're going to lose your job if you don't admit failure, right? If you're O 'Connell? I guess so. Yeah, the GM was... Although, yeah, they got rid of the GM.

50:13Bill Simmons:Yeah. O 'Connell must have been like, I told you not to get rid of Sam Darnold. They were like, but wait, you were telling us you were on the phone every day for an hour with J.J. McCarthy. Right. I have the number 7.5.

50:28Cousin Sal:Yeah, so it's 8.5. So this entire division is over 500, or I guess 8.5 would be 500, and then Chicago's 9.5, and Green Bay, Detroit, 10.5.

50:38Bill Simmons:All right, so let's really capture this moment. because we mentioned that they have the easiest other two divisions that they're playing. This is what happened last year with the NFC West and all the overs ended up hitting and were like two, three wins lower than what the overs were. So here we have Green Bay 10.5, Chicago 9.5, Detroit 10.5, and Minnesota 8.5. I mean, they're basically saying that's a 39-win division. It's a lot. There's one division every year that gets into the 40s. Last year was the NFC West, I think.

51:13Cousin Sal:Right. But that's not a good one. Well, let's think about it. So, I mean, are they just saying 2-0 across the board against the Dolphins and Jets? Is that two free wins for everybody? Somebody will get tripped up there. I mean, I'd love to know who the Minnesota quarterback is. Yeah, I know. That would help. That would definitely help. I guess, do Rodgers. Who are we rooting for? Rodgers? that's a fun division if it's Rodgers better than going back to Pittsburgh I think

51:43Bill Simmons:I like the idea of Rodgers going back there and being in the NFC North one last time and playing the Packers doing the Favre thing exactly Favre thing literally the Favre thing NFC South they play the two North divisions so one of my predictions before we do anything I did not have a single team over seven and a half in this division so I'm just going to flag that for you now Atlanta Falcons third place schedule.

52:13Bill Simmons:They did the impossible. They went from cap space in the eighth pick to Kirk Cousins overpaying him, coming off an Achilles, drafting Michael Panix super early to everybody's complete shock and dismay. And now they're buying up Cousins. Panix got hurt yet again, which I think is his fourth one. And the recipe for all of this was signing Tua, who's just done as a productive quarterback. There's no scenario where he's ever going to be good again. It's impossible. I don't see it. If that's who you bring in, what are you doing?

52:50Cousin Sal:I appreciated NFL Twitter really, really stepped up yesterday. I mean, they were like great memes. Like when Tua signed, they show like Falcons and free agency. They show guys picking up trash, just rapid fire, picking up trash. two will put his house up for sale in Miami and it's a blue tent going for$72 ,000 I love it, like two maybe mentally challenged lefties throwing a football to each other on the beach, that was pretty good there's a quarterback room for Atlanta I love it, I don't know what Stefanski thinks of this, he's like man send me back to Cleveland at least we knew there was no plan there but what the hell also you're in the NFC South why not just bring back Cousins

53:36Bill Simmons:I guess the money, it's easier. I saw if they get rid of them before the date, it's$22 million dead cap this year and$12 million next year, and they just figure that's easier. But any scenario where two is not my quarterback is the scenario I'm picking. Because that guy's not a competent starting quarterback anymore.

53:55Cousin Sal:Speaking of incompetent, we laugh at Tapa, like the Carolina. I mean, they ended up winning the division somehow. We laugh at that owner. What is Arthur Blank doing? What is going on? Jerry Jones must be like, hey, what about, come on. Let's go with the senile jokes here. Seriously.

54:12Bill Simmons:And they lost Algier, who I liked Algier and Bijan together. They didn't even lose him for that much. Anyway, I said 7.5 for this.

54:22Cousin Sal:7.5 is right. Coming off eight wins, 7.5.

54:25Bill Simmons:We forgot to mention they traded their first round pick in this year's draft to the Rams. Oh, yeah. Which is now going to be the 13th pick. for James Pierce, who is in one of the worst non-football news stories that we've had in a couple years. Just, you know, if you believe the alleged report, it seems like an absolute maniac. And that's who they lost their first-round pick to. So this was not... I'm going to say not a strong two years.

54:52Cousin Sal:I thought it was the best coaching job out there just because of the division and how little is expected of the winner, right? Couldn't agree more. You're going to be close with your prediction here. but I don't know 7.5 for them

55:06Bill Simmons:I had 7.5 for Tampa who just lost Mike Evans so they're 8.5

55:12Cousin Sal:don't agree with that at all I don't know why I mean they it looked like they could have 11 wins last year at some point and then they just decided not to play football anymore who was the running back they got

55:26Bill Simmons:was it Gainwell

55:28Cousin Sal:oh they did get Gainwell right

55:30Bill Simmons:I like that I thought Gainwell was a good... I was hoping the Pats would get him. I thought he was the best player on the Steelers' offense last year. Every time their offense would fall apart, they would just throw him a screen and he'd go for 14 yards. He was good. Knocked three guys over.

55:46Cousin Sal:He scored a little bit. He was fine. I mean, that could complement Bucky Irving pretty well. Carolina, I also had 7.5. So the division-winning Carolina Panthers are at 6.5. Oh! I would have had him at 7.5 too. I would have blindly just gone 7.5 for all the problems.

56:04Bill Simmons:I think that might be my... They do have the first place schedule, I guess.

56:07Cousin Sal:Yeah. They signed Jalen Phillips and Devin Lloyd. The Jalen Phillips one was a good one.

56:17Bill Simmons:So do they have a draft pick this year? Yeah, they do. Yeah. So they're in the low teens with their draft pick. I like I thought I thought McMillan that was a home run that pick turned out Coker who missed the first half of their Holy Cross's own Jalen Coker he's back I don't that seems really low I don't get that at all can we talk about

56:42Cousin Sal:Kenny Pickett who they signed to why teams keep giving him jobs five teams since 2022 he's drafted in 2022 he's drafted four years ago he's been on five teams what about That's remarkable. You have to not suck and not be good. He is right where you have to be. I don't think we'll see this again. So you think you have to be terrible but also tantalizing? Yeah, think about it. I don't know in any other industry this would work because you have a resume that's not good.

57:17Bill Simmons:I thought the weirdest one of all the signings, and it wasn't a major signing, but when the Chiefs got Minshew back for one year, eight million, Minshew back for one year, eight million. Did they get him back? I thought that was the sign. Or the Cardinals signed him. Who signed him? I think the Cardinals took Minshew. Did I screw that up? Leave that in because I want people to see that even their heroes can make mistakes.

57:43Cousin Sal:Yeah, one year for the Cardinals. For the Cardinals. Yeah.

57:47Bill Simmons:So is he going to start? Did they watch tape of him the last couple of years? I mean, I was like the biggest Minshaw guy, and even I like gave up on it.

57:55Cousin Sal:Right, right, right.

57:56Bill Simmons:Remember he started that Chiefs game last year?

57:58Cousin Sal:Yeah. He was just awful. You gave up on figuring out what team he's on. Yeah. Listen, there's a lot of moving parts in 32-team league.

58:10Bill Simmons:Anyway, that's my favorite one, that Carolina over. I don't care if first place schedule, NFC North, AFC North, like whatever. How is that team not going to win seven games? They have a lot of talent. They were right there with the Rams. They threw some punches in that playoff game.

58:25Cousin Sal:That's true. They'll play the Eagles. They'll play the... Who's NFC North? Chicago, I guess. And then they'll play the Rams, right?

58:36Bill Simmons:I like that team. I thought they were pretty well coached, too. Yeah, because Atlanta... Atlanta was going to be my sleeper for that division, and then Tua was just like, okay. We don't have to.

58:50Cousin Sal:It's annoying enough that we're even talking about this division. Yeah, let's move on. Let's not, until November, make a pick on it.

58:57Bill Simmons:Here's one. Here's another fourth place to first candidate. The New Orleans Saints, six and a half. Sure. Is my guess for them. Is that right?

59:05Cousin Sal:That's exactly right. Okay. Plus 350 to win division. I thought there was a little bit. They signed Fant at the end, we mentioned. Not bad. Quarterback's a gamer if you want him to cover. I'm a fan of Shuck.

59:18Bill Simmons:as we discussed over and over again last year. I like the ETN signing. That means to me they're probably going to trade Kamara. We'll see if they bring Olave back. They have their first-round pick. I mean, honestly, you put these four teams together and it's like, who can I get the best odds on to win the division? You'd probably just bet that team.

59:40Cousin Sal:Yeah, I think they're the best plus 350 or better out there for a division. What do they have for the division? They're plus 350. I mean, your Bears are plus 382. I thought Vegas at 20-1 caught my attention for a split second. Always. Always. 20-1, it's like, Jesus.

59:57Bill Simmons:I mean, the Patriots were 20-1 last year. Yeah. Yeah, New Orleans. I guess the downside for New Orleans would be worst run team in the league, most medical staff situations, really almost like a negligent ownership and probably won't be spending a lot of money. So that would be reasons not to take them.

1:00:17Cousin Sal:Well, you got teams that can't get out of their own way in Tampa Bay and Atlanta with their front office move, you know, where their moves, free agency moves. And Carolina with a fourth-place schedule. So, you know, could get lucky.

1:00:31Bill Simmons:NFC West, they're playing the NFC East and the AFC West. Some tough ones in there. Seattle, first-place schedule for them. I wanted to go 11 and a half and I just couldn't get there. I did 10 and a half for them.

1:00:48Cousin Sal:You're right and you're wrong. It's 11 and a half on Fandle. You want to go somewhere else, you could find a 10 and a half. They jacked it up.

1:00:54Bill Simmons:Okay.

1:00:54Cousin Sal:This is one of the four or five that they're different with some of the main books. But yeah, coming off 14 wins. And that's kind of what you need to win this division, it seems. They got some guys plucked, right?

1:01:07Bill Simmons:They kept Shahid over Kenneth Walker, which I thought was really interesting. if you could only have one and they were around the same money Shahid was like 2 million more, 3 million more would you have kept Walker Charbonnet is coming off ACL so they're going to have to address running backs somewhere, it wasn't in free agency yet but I was surprised they didn't bring back Walker, it almost made me wonder like, what did they know

1:01:34Cousin Sal:there might be a little trade in there coming up there, right four of coming up, but I like Shahid for, they get him for like 50 million for three years.

1:01:43Bill Simmons:He was on my Patriots list because they were just kind of figuring out how to use him too and to try to make those like weird explosive like flip passes and stupid shit with them. Devastating returner. 11 and a half. So they think that Seahawks go 10 or 12 and 5 with a first place schedule. Okay.

1:02:04Cousin Sal:They jacked these up like they, it was like kind of a reverse of what they did with the NFC South with these lines.

1:02:10Bill Simmons:Well, Rams, so that means I got the Rams right because I had them 11 and a half. That's right.

1:02:15Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:02:16Bill Simmons:Second place schedule for them.

1:02:18Cousin Sal:So that's, I don't think you're going to get 11 and a half for the Niners, right? So that's, how many 11 and a half? So is that three total? It's just the two in the West and then Baltimore. It's three in the Ravens, yeah. That's it.

1:02:28Bill Simmons:I feel like typically we have more. And the Rams did the McDuffie trade. They basically spent, we didn't love their D-backs last year and thought that was one of the reasons that they didn't make it to the Super Bowl and they didn't like the D-backs either because they spent real capital trying to replace everybody. Adam's coming back.

1:02:48Cousin Sal:Get your freaking special teams in order. Just do that. Yeah, they should have spent free agent money on a special teams coach.

1:02:54Bill Simmons:That's it. Adam's coming back for one more year. We'll see. Stafford, I'm sure we'll hear 49 different stories about his body and he might want to retire and he'll be back. San Francisco. I had a hard time with this. It was either 9.5 or 10.5. I landed at 10.5. Third place schedule for them.

1:03:16Cousin Sal:It's 9.5. Coming off 12 wins. It was 10.5 last year when we freaked out. 9.5 this year. But again, Mike Evans, 3 for 60.

1:03:28Bill Simmons:It's a tough one. A lot of guys coming back on injury. They basically... I mean, they didn't dump Ayuk. He had dumped himself. I guess they're going to let Jennings go. So you're basically replacing Iuke and Jennings with Mike Evans, who, as anyone who had him in fantasy knows, he's just going to miss four to five games a year somehow at this stage of his career, right? You're not getting four straight months out of Mike Evans. Now you have McCaffrey, who's another one, like four straight months from him is a miracle. Brock Purdy was hurt last year. Pearsall got shot last year. Yeah. I can see the nine and a half.

1:04:07Cousin Sal:It makes sense. It does. And Evans, you know, first of all, that's not a guy who needs to be speedy. I guess you lose your speed in your 30s or whatever, right? Makes sense. But he gets the 50-50 balls a lot, right? So speed might not matter as much, but those hamstrings is definitely a deal at 32. Also, you have bad injury luck.

1:04:26Bill Simmons:I was going to say, you're bringing his hamstrings next to the electromagnetic factory. I didn't even think of that. No kidding. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should have gotten the most durable guys ever on that free agency.

1:04:39Cousin Sal:What are you getting Mike Evans for? We get shit on every day. Let's move under a pigeon coop. Let's do it. Let's test fate. Yeah, that's something.

1:04:48Bill Simmons:That's like if we signed our friend Daniel and moved him right next to a sports bar. Or any bar. Yeah. All bars. I love it. Last one is Arizona. I slapped the five and a half on this.

1:05:08Cousin Sal:Yeah. Well, now that you know they have Minshew, what are you doing? I'm going to keep it there. Five and a half still.

1:05:14Bill Simmons:Fourth place schedule for them too, obviously.

1:05:16Cousin Sal:They have it at four and a half. It's so weird that they won't move these teams off. Well, I mean, I guess just because they're looking at one and five against Rams, Seattle, San Francisco, unless something drastically weird happens there.

1:05:29Bill Simmons:So you think Fando was in the over-unders war room and they wanted to go five and a half and somebody said, I think there's going to be a Jacoby Brissett-Minshew QB battle. And they're like, all right, drop it one.

1:05:40Cousin Sal:Four and a half. That's what it is. Minshew gets to bring his clipboard in that battle. This is the one win. Yeah, 30 to one to win that division. Wow.

1:05:49Bill Simmons:So we don't have a favorite NFC one. It sounds like yours. Detroit 10 and a half is in your favorite one.

1:05:56Cousin Sal:No, no, no way. Green Bay, I think, would be mine. I know nobody likes it. Green Bay 10 and a half.

1:06:04Bill Simmons:I've been burned by them before I probably

1:06:07Cousin Sal:750 to win I like them more the conference taking a shot at them at like 8 to 1 or 750

1:06:14Bill Simmons:I'm probably leaning toward Carolina or New Orleans 6 and a half one of those being over mid-year with the south with these freaking south 7 and 10 stop it stop it Chuck can't get 7 wins the guy was incredible last year they're riding him I would stay away from NFC West because I think they did a good job with those good job by Fando there with the NFC West Mike they really really nailed it they nailed it to the.5 Mike NFC North the Chicago one still I need to know more about what Chicago did but that 9.5 still feels like there could be some action and then I guess the Giants I guess by default at 7.5 might be my favorite one

1:06:58Cousin Sal:I have that as a semi-lock it's a good one I would get it in that could go up because I just think more and more people are going to like the Giants I mean that's another way to look at this

1:07:10Bill Simmons:what's going to go up what is the get in now price because the Patriots last year when we did this was clearly like that's going up Chargers 9.5 to me is going to go up I think that ends at 10.5 right yeah 9.5 10.5 that's going to jump Giants probably doesn't go to 8.5 so you might be fine waiting that one out. But that Carolina or New Orleans at six and a half just seems low to me still. So maybe those are the get-in earliest.

1:07:37Cousin Sal:It's a low. I mean, have we seen that low a number? NFC South has 29 wins. 29. We bet that. Didn't we bet like under 32 or something? We did. 29. That's nutty.

1:07:51Bill Simmons:Remember when we bet the Clippers would make the playoffs and the Warriors weren't going to make the playoffs? That's looking good. Is that going to happen? Steve Kerr's complaining about the schedule now. I'm feeling great. Yeah. Clippers looked good last night. Nice win last night by them. I do like that. Unfortunately, we lost most of our bets. We lost most of our NBA futures because we had Milwaukee tied to half of them.

1:08:14Cousin Sal:I said the other day to the fellas, I think the East is going to be crazy. I think you could pick four conference finalists and you'll get them wrong. I'll give you a shot. Go ahead. Yeah, right. Who's going to be in the conference finals?

1:08:29Bill Simmons:The Celtics were the big disruptor, right? Right. The funny thing is there's four teams. And Charlotte is probably a year away. And then I would say it's four teams. And then Miami and maybe Charlotte as the all-time wild cards for the... You watch something stupid like Orlando gets in there against the Celtics or something dumb.

1:08:48Cousin Sal:I mean, we saw with Miami as an eight seed, right? Weren't they an eight seed with Butler?

1:08:52Bill Simmons:Yeah, Orlando just all of a sudden figures it out for four weeks. Crazy. Yeah, I'm prepared for anything. Okay, so your single favorite over-under was?

1:09:03Cousin Sal:I'm sticking with it. I'm going Cleveland under. Sorry. That's too many. Too many at this point.

1:09:09Bill Simmons:My single favorite is Chargers, nine and a half over. But we'll see. We'll see more signings to come, more draft picks to be made.

1:09:16Cousin Sal:Yeah. We touched on it, but do you think there's any single move that would move these, aside from just natural momentum of gambling, any move in free agency or draft that would move a number one game.

1:09:31Bill Simmons:You mean a move along the lines of Shams reporting 18 minutes ago that Tyrese Maxey will be re-evaluated in three weeks?

1:09:38Cousin Sal:Yes, like something like that. Like, does that move the Eagles line, even though he's a sixer? Three weeks?

1:09:43Bill Simmons:They now no longer have Maxey, Joel Embiid, and Paul George. They're battling for the eighth seed.

1:09:49Cousin Sal:They're like minus 450 to make the play-in. That's nuts. That's a six seed right now. So maybe Milwaukee's not dead.

1:09:55Bill Simmons:We might not be dead with our Milwaukee one yet. I know. Yeah, you're right. I think the one that could move the needle, to answer your question, is if Washington picks Love 7th. Love. Okay. I could see that. And then do a couple other smart moves. And at some point, we look at the finished product and we're like, oh, it's kind of potentially explosive team here. They got no offensive coordinator, so that would be mine. Is there any other one that you would go with?

1:10:22Cousin Sal:No, no. No, because it would have to be Rodgers, Cousins. I don't think any of those guys. Murray, I don't think any of them do it.

1:10:29Bill Simmons:What about Harry Styles, that linebacker? The singer, Harry Styles.

1:10:34Cousin Sal:Is it Harry? I don't know if it's Harry.

1:10:36Bill Simmons:What's that style?

1:10:37Cousin Sal:He's fine. Nobody training up for him is going to move the lines. Can I make a recommendation with these combine numbers? Have you looked through the history of the fastest wide receivers from John Ross to... Xavier Worthy's the best of them. It's disgusting. You don't want to be the fastest guy. Run with an anvil on your pants or something. You want to have a 4-5

1:11:02Bill Simmons:and be good at the cone drill.

1:11:05Cousin Sal:Yeah, exactly. And I think teams are onto it too. Like, oh yeah, you're the fastest dude? All right. Not taking you to the fifth round.

1:11:13Bill Simmons:You know who wasn't onto it was Bill Belichick for years with the Patriots. He would always get seduced. He liked that. Over and over again. All right, Cuss. All right, I'm glad you're hanging in with Noah.

1:11:22Cousin Sal:Let's do it. Look, we got March Madness coming. We're going to do something at the Kimmel Club. FanDuel's sponsoring this. Right. March 26th. This is Sweet 16 week.

1:11:30Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:11:31Cousin Sal:The Bundle will be there. Tate Frazier will be there. Simmons is plus 850 to make an appearance. Get in on that now.

1:11:39Bill Simmons:Plus 850. Yeah, it might even be 10 to 1. Oh, come on. All of a sudden, you hate Vegas. What's the matter with you? I hate Vegas. I'm about to right after you we're talking to Sean Fennessey about the Oscars and the Michael B. Jordan numbers or he's now a minus I bet him for best you did it already okay yeah I'm wondering if it's just a Leo backlash vote but we're gonna talk about that with Sean Fennessey in a second cuz we can find you on the Ringer Gambling Show Monday, Wednesday, Friday and then I'm sure you'll pop on when we get close to the draft on this pod good to see you good job by you you won't even know it I'll pop on good job by you belly Hey, every Wednesday, I've decided to look through the NBA slate and make a parlay.

1:12:20Bill Simmons:And there's no rules for these parlays. I can do anything I want. I hit the first parlay last week. Hopefully, you didn't miss out. If you did, you have a brand new chance this week to get in on the action. I'll be tweeting my parlay out on Wednesdays. But just so you know, I am looking at Minnesota and the Clippers because I went to the first Minnesota Clipper game in LA two weeks ago. The Clippers didn't have a point guard. Garland was a back get. They still hung around. Thinking about parlaying that with Charlotte at Sacramento because Sacramento is tanking for the year. And Charlotte is on a two-game skid and needs a win.

1:12:57Bill Simmons:So there you go. That's at least two of the legs I'm looking at. The bet will be live in the FanDuel Sportsbook app on Wednesday. Don't forget to use a profit boost token to increase your potential winnings before you place it. We call it the PBT. FanDuel, play your game. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Imagine a game where you're on the court solo. No coach, no teammates, no one in the stand. Stressful, right? Sometimes life can feel like that too. That's when State Farm, they show up. They're on the bench, ready to help you find the right coverage when it matters most through an agent, online, or even on the app.

1:13:37Bill Simmons:State Farm with the assist. Coverage options are selected by the customer. availability and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Tax Act. Like an expert coach, Tax Act offers step-by-step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way, add expert assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you with expert full service. Tax Act helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads.

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1:14:52Bill Simmons:Just go to linkedin.com slash Simmons bill terms and conditions apply. All right, Sean fantasy is here with taping this, uh, on a Monday afternoon, actually a day before the podcast, we just did rewatchables. You're part of CR month. We did To Live and Die in LA, which we recorded for next week. Been very fun. But Oscars is this week, and we have a live big picture, which you're going to do right after the Oscars on Netflix, but also on Spotify. But we're doing that. The show will end, and you'll be on there. Will you be surprised by something major that happened during the telecast on that live show?

1:15:31Sean Fennessey:So, I think I think so. The last two weeks has been very, very fun. And the previous three months of Oscar prognostication and awards tracking, I think, has been kind of boring. And then the race got very exciting very quickly, which leads me to believe that we're going to have a very fun and interesting Sunday. However, I haven't made my predictions yet. I'm about to make them on the pod later this week. And I'm starting to lean towards a lot of chalk. And I've looked at the betting favorites. I've looked at every precursor. I've looked at the history and the precedents here. And I'm starting to bore myself a little bit with what I think is going to happen.

1:16:11Bill Simmons:That's never how it plays out, though. There's always one shocker. But, you know, I got to say,

1:16:17Sean Fennessey:Amanda Dobbins has been pointing this out on the big picture. Like, the last few years, very early in the season, everybody just decides what the movie is. And that movie tends to dominate for long stretches of time. Everything, everywhere, all at once. Oppenheimer, Onora. those movies were betting favorites for long stretches of time. So one battle after another has been the betting favorite for a long time. And it has steamrolled the competition at all the precursors. So, you know, we'll see.

1:16:45Bill Simmons:Well, if you had to bet on anything that would seem like a safe bet, it would be one battle and PTA winning.

1:16:51Sean Fennessey:I think PTA for director is locked.

1:16:54Bill Simmons:Yeah. Picture is not locked because Sinners, you know,

1:16:59Sean Fennessey:what you're hearing a lot about is the vibes in the room at the SAG Awards. When Michael Jordan won and when the cast won Best Ensemble, people in the room were like levitating. They were so happy because that cast is so loved. That movie is so loved. It's the most nominated movie of all time. 16 nominations. But if one battle loses, it will be probably the most unprecedented upset in Oscars history just based on what it has done so far. Now that doesn't ultimately matter because the voting window is short and people might just be really thinking about sinners and loving sinners right now and voting for it.

1:17:33Sean Fennessey:But a movie has never had the collection of, and these aren't just like critics awards. These are awards from the guilds, which is a lot of people that vote for the Academy Awards, the producers, the directors, SAG, the editing group, the cinematography group, like One Battles won everything there. And also sinners has won best film at zero award shows and at zero precursors. So you're talking about a, it would be a pretty historic upset if Sinners win.

1:17:59Bill Simmons:We'd take a quick detour. Okay. Because you've triggered something that I've been meaning to say to you. Great. You know, I always talk about how we need a sports czar. We also need a culture czar. Okay. Which I'd like to nominate myself for. I don't know if I'm qualified enough. I think you're probably exactly who we should pick. Thank you. Too many award shows now. Yeah. We just have too many and I don't know where we went wrong. And it's, it just feels like people are getting dressed up week after week after week. I feel like Seth Rogen has given 40 speeches where he's just thanked whoever and he can't believe he's up there.

1:18:36Bill Simmons:And it's like, you actually can believe he's up, you're up there because you've been giving a speech every Saturday night since like September. Yeah. I've just had it. Like, can we just go back to Oscars, Emmys, Grammys? I'll give you the Golden Globes as like the fun wild card and then the rest of the stuff let's not televise them anymore let's just stick with four

1:18:57Sean Fennessey:so I think that the number of televised award shows has not increased dramatically but I do think that the Oscar machine has gotten noisier so for example there's a lot more attention paid in the kind of like Oscar media movie media to things like the Producers Guild and the Directors Guild Awards those shows are not on television they're not televised at all I went to the Directors Guild Awards this year it was really really fun and you can see why people like doing this. Why this is such a cottage industry into itself because it's a nice night out. You get dressed up. You see a lot of friends.

1:19:26Sean Fennessey:I've been to a bunch of them. Yeah, it's a good time. But to me, the real devil's work is March 15th Academy Awards. Way too fucking late. There's just... This should be... I firmly believe this should be the week between the championship games and the Super Bowl. Like, it's the end of January. Oh, you go January? Yes. And it's like, force the Globes to move up. I realize that that's the Grammys. The Grammy should pick another date. The movies are getting really far from people's minds. We're 11 months since Sinners was released in theaters. That's a long time. Mid-March is way, way too late for the way the culture operates.

1:20:02Bill Simmons:So how did we end up in March? Weren't we in February for a while?

1:20:05Sean Fennessey:It has fluctuated. Last year was in early March. Sometimes it's later in March. Sometimes it's later in February. Historically, it's all across that kind of two-month corridor. My theory is that this is good for business. It's good for the business of the awards industrial complex. Video on demand. Yes. HBO Max.

1:20:25Bill Simmons:It's good.

1:20:25Sean Fennessey:It's good for media. You know, it's good for us. I mean, for the pods, like people want to hear us talk about the Oscars. That's consistently like it's a horse race. So there's something exciting about it. But I don't know, just covering it like it's just the same conversations over and over again. It's the same people at the same parties. Just a lot of redundancy.

1:20:42Bill Simmons:I was laughing. You were doing IGs of each movie counting down. and I was like, I'm pretty sure I know where Sean stands on F1 and you've been talking about these movies for a year.

1:20:52Sean Fennessey:I know. You know, I'm a little bit sick of it, obviously. It's gotten exciting because there's more unpredictability, especially in the acting races, which has been cool. But this is just too long. It's too long.

1:21:01Bill Simmons:I like your February idea. So we at Super Bowl, which it seems like they're going to drag out the Super Bowl now too.

1:21:07Sean Fennessey:If the Super Bowl is like February 8th, make this Oscars February 1st. That would be great.

1:21:11Bill Simmons:Right. Either do it the week between Championship Super Bowl or the week after. I would accept that which perennially has been like the NBA All-Star game has kind of tried to grab that and some other stuff in general everybody's just getting way better at the calendar yes and I've talked about this on my pod before about UFC WWE all of these different plays like oh third week in August there's nothing we'll target there you're seeing it with World Baseball Classic right now and some of these other things that we just didn't have 20 years ago but the Oscars should be signature OG should own the weekend.

1:21:45Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:21:45Bill Simmons:I'm with you that March feels late. I saw Sinners. I saw it with Van. It was like over a year ago. It came out in April.

1:21:52Sean Fennessey:It was an April 2025 movie. So it just feels a long time ago. And that's not the only reason. There are plenty of movies in Oscar history that have like come out earlier in the year, but just pushing it deeper and deeper kind of sucks. But there is like a whole complex around the BAFTAs. There's a whole complex now around the Actor Awards because they're on Netflix. Like all of this space has been made because the Oscars keep deciding to be in March. And they are the most powerful award show. It is still the second most watched thing in most Americans' homes after NFL football, the Oscars. Even though it has shrunk a lot in the last 10 years, it's still big.

1:22:26Sean Fennessey:The Oscars is awesome. Yeah, it's great.

1:22:27Bill Simmons:Yeah. Well, we have the biggest one, and we can talk about the movies and who we think should win, which you've already talked about many times, so I know your answers. But the most interesting one is the best actor. where Chalamet, if he had just been kidnapped by gypsies and brought to New Zealand for four months, would just be running away with the award. And it's this old Hollywood story of, first, you can do too much. Second, you could say a couple of things that people can go on to. And at some point, you hit this mode that I always call the, ah, fuck this guy mode. And it's hard to get to.

1:23:08Bill Simmons:and you need to have some success and you need to do just a couple things that make people basically stop rooting for you. And I don't want to say start rooting against you, but they stop rooting for you. Well, and I think he's hit that point now where people are like, all right, enough.

1:23:27Sean Fennessey:Let's break it down. He wins the Actor Award last year and he gives a speech about pursuing greatness for his performance in A Complete Unknown. Which I kind of enjoyed. I loved it. Yeah. It was a very swaggering athlete-style speech. He called out who he thought the greats were in acting, and he wanted to be just like them.

1:23:44Bill Simmons:Which is, by the way, his kind of spiritual backbone is sports and music. And he's, generationally, this is the people that he loves talk like this.

1:23:56Sean Fennessey:Yeah, he's a New York kid. Talk your shit. Like, that's the kind of guy that he is. I love it. I've always liked it about him as, like, kind of a persona. That also was basically the soft kickoff of the Marty Supreme marketing campaign. Because everything he did in the run-up to the release of Marty Supreme was like a stunt to show how swaggy he was. And I think that some people found that a little eye-rolling, but it obviously worked because the movie did really well, despite being a period piece about a ping-pong player. And so if you take all that stuff away, a lot of that stuff that I think was annoying some of these voters potentially, the movie doesn't get to$100 million.

1:24:33Sean Fennessey:and if the movie doesn't get to 100 million then he doesn't have that same primacy as like the guy of his generation as a movie star because this was the last step open an original movie by yourself so he pulls that off but then as soon as he pulls is that the first time he did that right? it is yeah because I mean he did Wonka and Dune and other movies that are all based on IP this was an original movie and nobody does that anymore it's really hard to do so he got that but then the price to pay for that was you're overexposed people think you are this guy instead of it being a part of the marketing strategy.

1:25:04Sean Fennessey:And you add on top of that that the Academy historically doesn't really like young guys anyway.

1:25:09Bill Simmons:I would also throw in he's involved in the extended Kardashian universe, which some people have a visceral reaction to.

1:25:18Sean Fennessey:They do. So he's got some marks against him. You know, if you're talking about a subjective, objective opinion, he's obviously an insanely talented actor. Like, and he's very comfortable carrying movies on his shoulders. I love Marty Supreme. Marty Supreme is not the most likable character in the world. There are a lot of people who tend to vote by which characters they like and not just whether or not they think a performance is good. So that's a factor. I don't know what the hell is going on in this race, though, because even though Michael B. Jordan is the favorite, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around him winning because he also has won nothing all the way up until the Actor Awards.

1:25:53Sean Fennessey:And it almost felt like he won in part because there's so much affection for the movie and he's an industry veteran now, right? He's pushing 40. and also it's a sort of like a not Chalamet vote. There's a little bit of that going on.

1:26:04Bill Simmons:So I thought Leo was going to be the not Chalamet vote and like even Fando has that prediction app. There's gold derby. There's some difference. MBJ is basically as we're taping this on a Monday afternoon is a slight favorite.

1:26:17Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:26:18Bill Simmons:And Chalamet is in the plus 140, 150 range, which is crazy because he was like a prohibitive favorite for a while. He was. and Leo is you know he's 13-1 14-1 range

1:26:31Sean Fennessey:there it's weird because there's also not a lot to support either of these predictions so this just shows you how kind of at CIM on this category in particular but I haven't ruled out Leo or Wagner Mora for my picks I just oh yeah make the Mora case the Mora case is that we've got a much more international academy he's 20-1 he's very very well liked in the industry and he's also very personally well liked by pretty much anybody who comes across him I interviewed him seven years ago, one of the most genuinely charismatic and thoughtful guys that's ever been on the pod. He's also been laser precise in campaigning with the Academy as opposed to just like, Oh, you, did you win the golden globe or not win the golden globe?

1:27:10Sean Fennessey:Or did you win the critics choice award or not win the critics choice award? He hasn't given as many speeches as you'd want to, but one, you've got to consider that Brazil is as a stronghold in the Academy voting two he's a overseas actor who has done a lot of stuff in America and in the English language he was in Narcos you know like he's very well known three there's a lot of admiration for the secret agent there's not a ton of data that supports this take but I've kind of been hanging on it for a while that if he's standing up there I'm not going to be stunned I think it's

1:27:41Bill Simmons:possible how about that you have four of the five actors you wouldn't be stunned when was the last time we had a category like that

1:27:47Sean Fennessey:A major acting category, I can't remember. The other thing, too, about SAG, I shared this with you over the weekend. SAG for Best Actor and Best Actress has only been predictive in three out of the last six for the Actor Awards. That's kind of a shaky category. SAG is a weird group of people. It's a huge body, and less than 5 % of the people who are in the body vote for the Academy Awards. So it doesn't really tell you a ton about who's going to win all the time. It wasn't nothing, though. It wasn't nothing. He gave a great speech, and Viola Davis had that awesome moment of giving it to him. So it was very memorable.

1:28:18Sean Fennessey:So if like members were watching, they clocked that and they saw that. They probably felt it the way that we did. It was such a cool win for the Actor Awards.

1:28:25Bill Simmons:Well, also how many best actor, black actors have won? Not very many. It's less than five. It's three, I think. Three, yeah.

1:28:33Sean Fennessey:I think it's Denzel, Sidney Poitier, and Forrest Whitaker.

1:28:38Bill Simmons:He checks the boxes from the, this kid's been in Hollywood for a while. He's paid his dues. He's done all kinds of things. He got a taste of it with Fruitvale. I think he's really well liked. He is.

1:28:51Sean Fennessey:He's the opposite of Chalamet. We don't really know anything about Michael B. Jordan. He's not a very... He's done a good job of... His persona is very modest. So people like that. They like when they don't know anything about the person. Daniel Day-Lewis has won this award three times.

1:29:04Bill Simmons:Right. I mean, Frances McDormand won three times. I don't think she campaigned any of the three times, right?

1:29:10Sean Fennessey:So that to me, what you just said there is the case for Leo. which is that Leo has been more present this year. He's very, very admired across the industry, obviously, in part because he always picks good projects and people really respect that about him. He's in the movie that is the best picture prohibitive favorite. There's a world where... Also, people love him in this movie. He's great in the movie. Yeah. And he's not... Like, he wasn't at the Actor Awards because he's just making a movie with Scorsese because people are like, he's about love of the game. That's his thing. That's what he's into.

1:29:41Sean Fennessey:He loves making movies. He wants to make movies with great filmmakers. His next movie after this, Heat 2 with Michael Mann in his 80s. You know what I mean? We think.

1:29:49Bill Simmons:I'll still believe it when they're filming it. So, I don't... There's also some fun Leo versus Timmy stuff here where you're talking about the last guy who was able to get to every time I release a movie. It's almost like what I used to talk about with the NBA where how many guys in the league guarantee you 46 wins no matter who's on the team. And Leo was the only guy who could guarantee you a release forever. And now Chalamet may be the next guy. Can you believe Brunson

1:30:19Sean Fennessey:is one of those guys now? The Knicks are about to have their third consecutive 50-win season. That hasn't happened in 40 years. They have a really good, expensive team, though. Come on. Don't yuck my yum.

1:30:29Bill Simmons:Even Giannis doesn't guarantee you 46 wins anymore. He's not even going to be 500.

1:30:33Sean Fennessey:It's true. I'm giving Brunson all the credit.

1:30:35Bill Simmons:Right now, it's probably Jokic and... Ant? I don't even know. Ant might not even get to 46 wins this year. Jokic might be the only guy who guarantees you 46 wins no matter who's on his team okay Leo is one of those guys Leo

1:30:51Sean Fennessey:yes

1:30:52Bill Simmons:I'm trying to think of a scenario what kind of movie he'd have to make so Body of Lies was probably the last one he did that didn't do that well and since then he's been J. Edgar J.

1:31:03Sean Fennessey:Edgar

1:31:04Bill Simmons:oh J. Edgar that was a bad decision by him but it was Clint Eastwood I mean that was I know but that wasn't a good

1:31:09Sean Fennessey:not a great choice

1:31:11Bill Simmons:wasn't a good choice by him

1:31:12Sean Fennessey:but that's I mean, it's so rare. There's like three or four movies you can point to over the last 30 years where you're like, eh, I don't know about this one.

1:31:17Bill Simmons:It's funny because I saw one battle and there were people in the theater really laughing throughout the movie. There were some people that thought it was just absolutely hysterical. I didn't laugh once and I didn't get that part of it.

1:31:28Sean Fennessey:I'm so blown away by that.

1:31:29Bill Simmons:Yeah, I was like, all right. You've only seen it one time, right? I've only seen it one time.

1:31:33Sean Fennessey:Him in Sensei's apartment on the phone trying to get the password is the funniest fucking scene of the year when he's yelling at Comrade Josh.

1:31:41Bill Simmons:It didn't get with me

1:31:43Sean Fennessey:because you know we don't always share tastes but stuff like that we always I don't know I feel like we're always on the same page with that sort of thing

1:31:48Bill Simmons:I do have to see it a second time I've seen Sinners like four times Sinners was my favorite movie of the year I don't know why I mean movies take you different ways you talked about on the rewatchables no I know I really you know I just I just thought it was just really cool and it took me for a ride I didn't know where I was going I probably saw One Battle a little bit late so the hype was already there which I do think can affect you when you see it it does it was also like fucking exhilarating and awesome and if it wins there's this whole PTA piece too that I think is going to be pretty great

1:32:20Sean Fennessey:yeah he's 0 for 11 in his career at the Oscars so he's more than overdue he's also widely revered in the Academy as like one of the greatest living filmmakers if you talk to most filmmakers under 40 his name comes up in the top 5 of their favorite directors among most people

1:32:34Bill Simmons:he's a 10 to 1 favorite Kutler I think is the only one who could take it mm-hmm Coogler's 8-1, apparently, on FanDuel. I'm sure this stuff will change. With Coogler, it's one of those things that if he won, it would be shocking, but I wouldn't be like, oh my God, I can't believe that just happened. It would be shocking. But I do think people really like that dude, and sometimes the Oscars comes out as a popularity contest. True.

1:33:04Sean Fennessey:I think, to me, the more likely outcome is one battle wins best. note is that PTA wins director and Sinners wins best picture than the inverse. I think it's very unlikely that Kugler wins best director and One Battle wins best picture.

1:33:17Bill Simmons:I mean, what's going to actually happen is it's going to win One Battle, win both.

1:33:20Sean Fennessey:Probably. The director thing feels pretty tight to me because PTA won a DGA. He's due. He checks all the boxes. He's been dominant all the way through. People want him to get one.

1:33:30Bill Simmons:Kugler's time is coming. He's younger. Yes.

1:33:32Sean Fennessey:Also, One Battle is dedicated to Adam Sumner, who is his longtime AD and was a producer on One Battle and is a really, a very widely liked person and he passed away last year. He was the AD on many Steven Spielberg movies. Like, this is an industry award. Like, you got to remember that. Like, these people, a lot of these people have worked together. They know each other. This isn't like voting for the NBA MVP where it's like a lot of people in different cities just watching TV and deciding or watching games and deciding, you know, even though there's a fraternity of journalists, it's not the same as when, with like people that work in the film industry.

1:34:04so I think it's one battle

1:34:07Sean Fennessey:but I don't feel confident

1:34:10Bill Simmons:do people really think like if MBJ won people would be surprised but do you think that's considered a great performance or a very good performance

1:34:19Sean Fennessey:I think it's considered very good I think there's a case for it is very great because it's two performances obviously because he's playing smoke and stack so he's doing a lot there I did point out when we did our secret agent revisit last week though that Wagner Moore is technically playing three people in a way in The Secret Agent. He's playing the same guy, but one guy before witness protection and another guy after witness protection. And then he's also playing his son in the future. And he also gives a very layered, deep, complicated performance that shows you which guy is which in certain ways.

1:34:51Sean Fennessey:MBJ, I think he's just not as showy an actor. And I think he's also at his absolute best in Kugler movies. And he's given some uneven performances in other movies. So I think some people are... a little resistant to him.

1:35:03Bill Simmons:I think that helps his case for this, though, that it's a little bit of, I didn't know you had that in you. Which is how I felt. I thought I had figured out whatever his ceiling was as an actor, and he went above it in this movie.

1:35:15Sean Fennessey:I thought he was fucking awesome. Him and Cooler together is just a great thing in movies. It's just cool when you get a pair like that where they come along and they're doing that Scorsese-De Niro thing where you know they're going to make at least three or four more movies together. You know, he's going to evolve as an actor where he's going to start to be more like Delroy Lindo than Michael B. Jordan at a certain point. He's going to take on like old guy supporting parts. So just the idea of that union, I think, makes people who love movies. The idea that there's two guys who are under 40 who are doing that right now in the biggest movies of the year is really exciting.

1:35:45Bill Simmons:Best actress, Jessie Buckley. It's a wrap. It's a wrap. It's not even going to bounce off her that she was in a bad movie.

1:35:53Sean Fennessey:She was just in one of the biggest bombs in the last 10 years and no one cares. She's going to win in a walk. There's a story going around that she doesn't like cats.

1:36:02Bill Simmons:You hear about this? I like her even more.

1:36:05Sean Fennessey:She forced her husband to re-home his cats when she moved in with him. And I don't care. I throw my life away for her.

1:36:14Bill Simmons:She's the greatest. She's the best. There's video of her singing in bars and all kinds of crazy stuff.

1:36:20Sean Fennessey:Did you go back to her talent show competition days on YouTube? Great voice. Just an amazing singer. I don't know if I've given you this take.

1:36:29Bill Simmons:I thought it was the best male or female performance this decade.

1:36:33Sean Fennessey:You did. I did share Cate Blanchett and Tar with you as a counterpoint.

1:36:42Bill Simmons:I thought Hamnet was incredible. Okay. The first hour or whatever. Is it your number two movie of the year? I thought the last... So there's two different conversations, right? It's like the movies start to finish, but then almost like extended moments or long scenes or stretches. where I think this movie had a lot of great, memorable, iconic stretches. You know, like even in Sinners when the vampires finally get in, into the bar, like just that whole run where you're like, oh my God, it's like what we call in rewatchable stuff. Okay, motherfucker. Like classic. The one battle when we, they had a bunch of them like when we were with Del Toro, but then really the car ride will be, that's going to be the ultimate.

1:37:30Bill Simmons:I thought what she did in that big final climactic scene was as good as I've seen. It was way more moving than I thought. I just thought she was just incredible and at a whole other level with some of the great actors ever.

1:37:48Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I agree. I really held the first hour of that movie against it, though.

1:37:54Bill Simmons:Yeah, but it's almost like it redeemed itself and then some.

1:37:58Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I just, I can't pretend it didn't happen. Like that whole approach to that world, the performances, what Paul Meskel's doing in the movie, the patience that it makes you have to get to them having a family, which is something that we know walking into the movie that we're waiting for, I just felt like it was really, really, really languid in a way that I didn't really vibe with at all. But I don't, I've been saying it since I saw it over the summer that the final 40 minutes is tour de force shit. and part of it is like they're performing Hamlet

1:38:30Bill Simmons:it is Hamlet

1:38:31Sean Fennessey:like Hamlet is captivating and watching someone be captivated by Hamlet and having this personal catharsis with it is really cool but

1:38:38Bill Simmons:I was also upset that he didn't get nominated but it was a deep year but I thought Paul Mesko was I thought especially in the last half hour I thought he was really good

1:38:47Sean Fennessey:I think the script does him a little bit of a disservice in the movie he does the to be or not to be thing while like standing on the ledge I was like this is a little on the nose for me just putting that out there

1:38:56Bill Simmons:Did you interview Chloe?

1:38:58Sean Fennessey:I didn't, and I never have. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

1:39:02Bill Simmons:Well, she's going to win. I told you I couldn't stay in the Rose Byrne movie, least popular movie in the Simmons house this year.

1:39:08Sean Fennessey:I enjoyed it, but I specifically understood what it was trying to accomplish, which is, I think, like alienate some people and show you how alienating it is to feel like that character, you know?

1:39:17Bill Simmons:I didn't like it. Okay. Best supporting. So Sean Penn is like basically a two and a half to one favorite at this point. Do you think this is going to happen? Skarsgård is plus 350. I'm surprised Del Toro didn't get more momentum, but I think because he's already won. Whatever. Delroy Lindo at 9-1.

1:39:38Sean Fennessey:Del Toro's only in 12 minutes with one battle after another.

1:39:42Bill Simmons:I have thought Skarsgård was going to win for a while for a variety of reasons. He fits the Oscars profile in a lot of ways of the old guy. Let's get him one. Had a stroke four years ago. He's really good in the movie. he's got his son and like very like fun Hollywood family situation yeah and I think people would be fired Sean Penn's won a couple times he's got some

1:40:08Sean Fennessey:zany takes out there Sean Penn he's got some takes a bit of a character

1:40:11Bill Simmons:this could be a little fuck that guy in there who who should win um

1:40:22Sean Fennessey:it's a complicated question because Skarsgård to me is a lead and sentimental value It was an amazing film. And it is a film that makes you think it's about Renata Reinsva, but I think it's just as much about him. And I think he is asked to do the most. And he's making a film in Scandinavia where his career launched and he's made so many great and important international films. I always liked him as an actor. Good Will Hunting, you know, he's elite Fields Medal winner. I... What Benicio is doing in One Battle, though...

1:40:52Bill Simmons:Oh, take your Fields Medal, Sean. You can have it.

1:40:57Sean Fennessey:it's convenient that I'm named Sean. Yeah. Benicio is pretty sick. You know who's really good? I really did not like Benicio Del Toro's Frankenstein, but Jacob Elordi is incredible in that movie. And what he does as the creature is really unique. And he brings something really new to this like 100-year-old character. It's interesting because

1:41:17Bill Simmons:nobody really liked that movie that much. It's got its defenders for sure. I've not been one of them. Because I was thinking when we drew and we watched almost 20 years from now, when I'm in a nursing home and you guys are coming in to film with me, I'll be like, Alordi, how did he get in there? You're going to be in a nursing home

1:41:35Sean Fennessey:in 20 years?

1:41:35Bill Simmons:I don't know, maybe. Hopefully not. 50 years.

1:41:37Sean Fennessey:I hope you're okay in 20 years.

1:41:39Bill Simmons:60 years. Alordi will be the one that we're kind of like, wow, how'd that get in there? Nobody's talked about that Frankenstein movie for 20 years. Yeah.

1:41:47Sean Fennessey:But I don't think it's a bad nomination at all.

1:41:50Bill Simmons:I think the Euphoria cast just giving us him and Zendaya and Sidney Sweeney. Like three of the biggest under 35 stars we have. It's like impossible. I mean, don't forget

1:42:04Sean Fennessey:Coleman Domingo, who's way more famous now and Oscar nominee. Austin Abrams, who was just in Weapons and is about to be the star of the new Resident Evil movie. I just saw Faces of Death the other day. The star of it is Barbie Ferreira, also from that. Oh, she's back. And Maude Apatow, who obviously was known before that because of her father, but just directed her first movie that's coming out later this year. So when's the last time a show threw off legitimate movie star potential like that? That's like seven people deep.

1:42:32Bill Simmons:I don't think that's happened with the cast that told me lies. I'll do respect to them. No, I don't think so. So I would bet on Skarsgård for this, and I think he's going to win anyway. Sean Penn was mesmerizing in the theater.

1:42:44Sean Fennessey:It's a little cartoony. You got to remember that in this particular category, the Academy loves villains. this is Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men this is Heath Ledger's Joker you know this is like this is where the Academy likes to award its bad men so that's the case for Sean Penn

1:43:04Bill Simmons:I think this is 50-50 and then Best Supporting Actress feels like we're gonna be surprised I don't know what the fuck

1:43:10Sean Fennessey:is gonna happen

1:43:11Bill Simmons:Amy Madigan feels like this happens with the Oscars every year with the older actor everybody's like it's gonna be her time or his time and then they just get kicked in the teeth on Oscars yeah Yeah.

1:43:21Sean Fennessey:Glenn Close has been getting her head blown off for decades now. I think I'm going to predict Amy Madigan. I don't know. I remember vividly, I was at the Telluride Film Festival in the fall, and I was sitting next to a person who was an award strategist. What a job. That is a real job. And I said to them, you know, I think there's a really good campaign to be made for Amy Madigan. Because she's really liked in the industry. She's had a 40-year career. She's a real professional. And this movie is a big hit. A lot of people saw it. And she's doing a very dramatic thing, a lot of makeup, you know, a lot of like a transformation.

1:43:54Sean Fennessey:The Academy loves a transformation. And I remember him going, hmm, interesting. Now, I'm not saying I inspired that. This was going to happen no matter what. But it's come a long way from her being like, wow, this is a weird horror movie that Amy Madigan shows up in for 10 minutes to potentially Academy Award winning part. I think I'm going to pick her. She also gave a great speech at the Actor Awards and people remember that stuff. I mean she was Field of Dreams Field of Dreams 35 years ago at the PTA meeting yeah talking about book banning it's great in that movie I always liked her stayed with Ed Harris they're still together yeah they famously did not stand for Elliot Kazan when he won his honorary Oscar very memorable Oscars moment

1:44:36Bill Simmons:alright so if you had to predict a holy shit I can't believe that happened category which one is it

1:44:43Sean Fennessey:Wagner Morrow winning best actor would be holy shit okay that would be crazy the odds are like

1:44:48Bill Simmons:three percent we have to i have to bring this up just because it's been such a big part of my uh column from way back when about the hammer yeah for the oscars i shouted you out last week about this yeah yeah um it's something i i was always fascinated by and then it's become a they've kind of blown that segment out sometimes they have people singing to it there's been times when there's too many celebrities too many famous ones that died where they have to they almost can't have the hammer and this year i think is the biggest oscar year of famous people that i can remember where we have redford we have rob reiner uh duval diane keaton and gene hackman did happen

1:45:30Sean Fennessey:hackman count was he on was he at the end of last year's telecast i can't remember whether he is or

1:45:35Bill Simmons:isn't that we still have at least like uh major heavy hitters four crazy ones and my guess is that they're going to do little segments and the show will probably be a little longer than it normally is. Gosh, I hope so. My guess would be they would have to do four special segments for those four and then do the In Memoriam for the rest.

1:45:54Sean Fennessey:I would be so happy with that as somebody who loves clips and learned about loving movies from watching award shows and learning about what other movies people were in. I think that's a great way to kind of slide people into movie history.

1:46:04Bill Simmons:Also, four people that are worthy of it.

1:46:07Sean Fennessey:Oh, no. I mean, they have to do it for... It happens in there. All five of them are iconic figures. They're incredibly important to the evolution of movies from the 1960s, 70s, 80s into the present day. There is a dead giveaway about this, though.

1:46:20Bill Simmons:Well, that they're announcing these special people they're doing?

1:46:22Sean Fennessey:Well, that Barbra Streisand's going to perform. Yeah. And probably going to perform Memory, and that would make Redford the Hammer.

1:46:30Bill Simmons:But I think that's going to be its own segment. Okay. They already said Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are going. For Rob Reiner. And Rob Reiner should get his own segment. Totally agree. All kinds of reasons. And then if you're going to do that, you also have to address the Duval and Diane Keaton. And maybe you could say those are the focal points of the memoriam. Diane Keaton, I think, you know, for her stature and just as one of the best actresses of the last 50 years, it'd be weird to be like, let's just celebrate the guys and skip over Diane Keaton.

1:47:04Sean Fennessey:Her and Jane Fonda are the signature stars of the 1970s.

1:47:07Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:47:08Sean Fennessey:So. I hope they do that. That would honestly be great. It's obviously terrible that we've lost all these people. But I don't know. The Oscars is tricky with this. Like sometimes they just forget people in memoriam. You know? It's not foolproof. So I hope they devote a lot of time to it.

1:47:24Bill Simmons:After Duvall died, I banged out Tender Mercies with my wife who had no idea what was going on. I was like, we're putting this on. I want to watch a Duvall movie. And it was on 2B. Did you like it?

1:47:34Sean Fennessey:It's fucking great. It's a beautiful movie.

1:47:36Bill Simmons:And I called my dad the next day to check in. And I was like, I watched Tender Mercies last night, figuring that he would like it because it checks a lot of his boxes. And he was like, just watched it two days ago. It's one of my all-timers. Like, really loves it. Wow. And it's a movie that didn't do that well when it came out. But I thought one of the things that was so interesting about Duvall was how many kind of different people were lurking in his body where he also had this Texas, you know, country western singer alcoholic domestic abuser trying to turn his life around just quiet movie guy but was also tom hagan and the great santini yes and the guy from colors and the crew boss and days of thunder yes apocalypse now yeah and and the apocalypse now guy so the movie that i watched

1:48:25Sean Fennessey:the night that he died is called the eagle has landed which is a world war two world war two thriller, um, seen through the eyes of the Nazis. It's about a, a complicated scheme. And in the movie, he plays a, a German Lieutenant and the cast is mostly English actors playing Nazis. And he's an American actor playing a Nazi. So he affects a German accent in the movie.

1:48:51Bill Simmons:Oh, it's interesting when that happens.

1:48:53Sean Fennessey:And all the English actors are just doing English accents. So it's a very odd movie to watch like Michael Caine's in it. He played Stalin in an HBO movie. He had a really big, weird career.

1:49:07Bill Simmons:He had some comedy stuff in the 2000s. Kicking and screaming. But he also pretty much never bad in a movie.

1:49:14Sean Fennessey:You've never been like, oh, that was a lousy Duvall performance. Could you think of one movie where you're like, he sucked in that? It doesn't really work that way with him, which is pretty special.

1:49:23Bill Simmons:Yeah, I'm hard-pressed to think if Hackman counts for this year, we've had a more impactful five. I don't know.

1:49:30Sean Fennessey:You probably got to go back to when that first generation, you know, that 30s and 40s generation of actors were dying. And if there was a moment... They were dying young, though. Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. Like in the 70s, there might have been, you know, Douglas Fairbanks and, you know, people like that who were passing away all at the same time. But for us, since we've been alive, this feels like it's the most loaded.

1:49:49Bill Simmons:Before we go, we have to... Goldman's book is next to you to the left. Yeah. Goldman, the number one champion of show us the fucking votes. Did we ever figure out how we can't find out what the votes are?

1:50:01Sean Fennessey:No, man. You know my latest idea for this, right? What is it? I don't know if I've done this on the show before. If I have, tell me. It's not just that we should know the votes, but I think that the show should be a series of sequential reveal. Oh, yeah, yeah. This is a good one. So every 20 minutes, we learn another film has fallen out in the Best Picture race. and then if you want to be

1:50:24Bill Simmons:It really only works for the best picture race where we drop four and we end up with like or five we end up with four at the end

1:50:31Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think

1:50:32Bill Simmons:Yeah, I like that

1:50:32Sean Fennessey:But that would be really exciting Now this year which is really like a two horse race it's not as interesting but just for the viewership I think it would be for the common viewer who doesn't follow this stuff closely when like F1 goes out first you know, you'd have a lot of people be like, oh fuck I like F1 What's wrong with these people? You know? I don't know I think that would be really fun if they tried that. That's a really good idea. And I'm really wondering if the Oscars going to YouTube, if they will make any modifications in a few years.

1:51:01Bill Simmons:Is that this year? No. It's 28.

1:51:02Sean Fennessey:It's going to be a few years. Maybe 29. It might even be 29.

1:51:06Bill Simmons:I thought it was an awesome movie year. It was. Really memorable. I think part of it had to do with we didn't have COVID anymore and we finally were back and actually making movies and we also had good filmmakers making movies and we had good actors and actors in those movies. So we just felt like COVID feels very far away now for movies. Yeah, I felt like... That we just need to make better ones.

1:51:27Sean Fennessey:It felt like a nice balance of the industry making franchise movies that were not based on previous movies. Like, you had your Minecrafts and your F1s, but then you also had auteurs making big kind of tentpole-y movies like One Battle and Sinners and the industry rewarding them, you know, and being like, this is what it should be, guys. Like, give$100 million to really creative people and let them try something new. That's what makes Hollywood special.

1:51:54Bill Simmons:So that would be the positive spin. Then the glass half empty spin would be, yeah, Ryan Coogler and PTA. We had some real ass people making movies. That's not going to happen every year.

1:52:04Sean Fennessey:Well, this year we got Christopher Nolan and David Fincher, you know, like it happens. It can happen every year if we want. The year after that, we got Steven Spielberg this year. We got Jordan Peele in 2027. Like this is, we're fine. Greta Gerwig's been a movie out this year. Like we can do this. It's fine. Do we need dynamic pricing for movies? Ooh. It's been pitched. Is it Barry Diller who's been pitching this? Somebody had this idea pretty strongly.

1:52:26Bill Simmons:I just think the Odyssey should... It's almost like maybe just in LA and New York, but it should just be like, it's a fucking free-for-all. You could easily... Name your price.

1:52:34Sean Fennessey:You could easily charge 50 bucks to go see it at the City Walk and people would pay to see it in that IMAX. Oh, I think you'd go to higher.

1:52:39Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:52:39Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:52:40Bill Simmons:Especially because they only have like two or three IMAX theaters.

1:52:43Sean Fennessey:I don't really want this though.

1:52:45Bill Simmons:Oh, I don't think that... I don't want it either, but if it's a way to help save movies, I'm ready to at least entertain all suggestions

1:52:52Sean Fennessey:yeah movies are just they're a mass communion event and they're like a regular they're an every person art form that's part of what's so great about them is it's the same ticket price for everybody it's not like you get to sit in the orchestra and you get to sit over here we're doing it together that's the whole beauty of the thing so I don't I'm a little I want movies to be saved but I'm really resistant

1:53:10Bill Simmons:maybe one theater that becomes the free for all theater where it's like the 730 like best IMAX possible for the Odyssey. And it's like, should we open that? You know what? Name your price. Yeah. Well, that would be a good business. It's$730 a ticket

1:53:27Sean Fennessey:for Dead Center. You got to have really good sound and a good screen in there if you want that to work. It's got to be the best ever.

1:53:34Bill Simmons:That's been the other thing that's happening where even like the shitty screens are really nice. Like, it's like, oh no, I'm in the laser theater. It's like, all right, I'm still having a great time.

1:53:43Sean Fennessey:You know, I took, Eileen and I took Alice to see Hoppers yesterday at the AMC at the Americana. And we sat in the Dolby room, which was like a nicer premium thing, but not the nicest room. And it was like being in a fucking amusement park. The seats are huge. It's incredibly comfortable. You feel like you're in your own world. Like if you're willing to pay for it, movie going can be way more comfortable than it was when we were kids. Like we were sitting in these rickety old chairs and everything and the floors were sticky. Like it can be nice, especially, I mean, in LA we're very spoiled because we have so many options.

1:54:16Bill Simmons:although we don't have the arc light still

1:54:19Sean Fennessey:no it's fucking bullshit such bullshit

1:54:22Bill Simmons:it's an absolute disgrace I blame everybody just keep naming people let's blame them too just reopen it the politicians like there should just be things that should never disappear in different cities right Boston has their stuff New York has their stuff LA has their stuff the arc light the Chinese theater here I agree are just like should never go away

1:54:44Sean Fennessey:well I mean one really good thing that Netflix did was that they came in, they bought the Egyptian, and they completely refurbished it. And that's now a beautiful movie theater. We did a live show there last year. It was awesome. We watched Inglourious Bastards there. It was amazing. And to me, I think you're right that the Arclight, which is a historic movie theater, should be a civic landmark. And they should make it, honestly, put it in the hands of the government for all I care, and have it be an open and active movie business all the time.

1:55:11Bill Simmons:That's when I really had it going. like pre pre-kids to summer 2004. I'm just writing three columns a week for ESPN. And then I'd finish something and I would just tell my wife like, yeah, one o 'clock Arclight. I might play two.

1:55:28Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:55:28Bill Simmons:You might see me at six. Not sure yet. Yeah. You're going to run out there for Collateral and Cinderella, man.

1:55:35Sean Fennessey:You know, I'll see you on the other side.

1:55:37Bill Simmons:I could talk myself into a second one. Who knows? We'll see how it goes.

1:55:40Sean Fennessey:Yeah.

1:55:41Bill Simmons:It's really the days.

1:55:42Sean Fennessey:I'm still doing that. And I have a kid. It's a perilous lifestyle. well the best was in the in the 90s in boston when i had nothing to do so it was like the movie

1:55:53Bill Simmons:we've talked about this on rewatchables the movie releases sometimes it was like holy shit i i might

1:55:59Sean Fennessey:be able to do three can i run jade three times in a row we we only had like two really good movie

1:56:06Bill Simmons:theaters i mean that's the other thing the movie theaters that we're doing a good job of having good movie theaters la is is amazing right now i mean there are a lot of us has a couple good ones I mean, I know New York City does. If you're not in a major city,

1:56:16Sean Fennessey:it's a lot harder now because a lot of the smaller stuff is closed. I feel bad for a lot of people out there who really want to go see movies that have to drive a long way. There's a little bit of like an IMAX epidemic where there are not enough IMAX theaters. They should really open more and build more because people want them. I know I think it's Chicago. You have to drive like a long way to get to an IMAX screen. Yeah, yeah. So there's some issues with that stuff. But I mean, when we worked at Sunset Gower, that was the shit. That was like, we're going to the Arclight every Friday. every Friday after work that's when we walked over there it was the best so yeah I really miss it movies good year A minus yeah

1:56:51Bill Simmons:I hope the Oscars are good 05 A minus even though it was over two and a half months ago when it ended

1:56:55Sean Fennessey:yeah it's just too late dude it's just way too late

1:56:58Bill Simmons:alright well have fun on the live show thanks on Netflix probably around 730 PT

1:57:05Sean Fennessey:1030 ET are you gonna wear a tux

1:57:07Bill Simmons:I am are you really yeah spoiler alert what's Amanda gonna wear is she gonna get dolled up

1:57:12Sean Fennessey:Yeah, we decided to go super black tie this year. Oh, wow. This is really exciting.

1:57:17Bill Simmons:Pretty excited. All right, congrats. Thanks. Now it's time for the With the Assist segment presented by State Farm. In basketball, the best players don't just go it alone. They lean on teammates, coaches, even fans to push them to be better. And we've seen some pretty iconic assists over the years. You got Bird and McHale. You got Magic and Kareem. You have Pippen and MJ. Lately, we have Jokic and Murray, who won a title together. probably could have won a second one if Murray hadn't gotten hurt. And this year are having their best combo individual stat season ever. And Denver's been struggling.

1:57:51Bill Simmons:They've been like 500 for basically two months because the supporting cast got injured. But if anything happens for them in the playoffs, it's going to be the magical combination of Jokic, one of the best players of the last 50 years, along with Murray, who's having the best season he's ever had and has made the all-star team and his potential Hall of Fame player and how those guys use each other. In a playoff series, we only have to go four and three to advance to the next round. So Jokic and Murray, that's one of my favorite combos. And like basketball, life is easier with great assists. State Farm is here to dish one your way, a little like Jokic to Murray.

1:58:27Bill Simmons:They're not just an insurance company. They're a teammate who's on your bench ready to list and assist and help you get the right coverage when it matters most. State Farm with the assist, coverage options are selected by the customer. availability and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Venmo. Supporting your team never gets old, but here's something new. You can now pay for your game day wings and rep your team at the same time. How? By getting your college colors on your card. Score more with the college branded Venmo debit card. Get up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash.

1:59:01Bill Simmons:sign up at venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Select schools available. Venmo stash bundle terms and exclusions apply at venmo.me slash stash terms. Max$100 cash back per month. This episode is brought to you by Alexa Plus. Just say the word and the all new Alexa Plus will do more so you don't have to. Chat naturally about anything from scoring concert tickets to brainstorming your next travel destination. Alexa learns your style, anticipates what's next and makes it happen. And now Alexa plus is free with prime on your Amazon devices like echo and fire TV.

1:59:42Bill Simmons:Learn more at amazon.com slash Alexa plus. All right. Our friend Seth Wickersham is here. He has been writing for ESPN for a lot. How many years now for you? Dude, 25 years. 25 years. Oh my God. So website, magazine, website in the magazine. There's really, the magazine has become the website. Okay. And you have a book that came out a few months ago called American Kings, which it's basically a deep dive on the quarterback position, a position that we have just not figured out. And I want to talk about that in a little bit, but what we want to talk about first was Tom Brady, a guy that you have covered and written about and just has a bizarre relationship with the Patriots that I don't feel like has gotten enough attention since he's the greatest QB of all time and the greatest Patriot of all time and brought six Super Bowls.

2:00:32Bill Simmons:So Max Crosby gets traded. They have a bunch of suitors. The Patriots are allegedly one of the suitors. And it comes out in the reporting after they traded to Baltimore for two first rounders that the one team Brady said there's no way we're traded in there is the New England Patriots. This is on the heels of him saying he didn't have a dog in the race in the Super Bowl. And just some general vibes of his relationship in New England, even when he came back when they did this statue. I heard that he got paid to come back because he wasn't coming back for free. What happened the last seven years to flip this and is it worse than we thought between him and Kraft?

2:01:08Bill Simmons:Because I am endlessly fascinated by this. Well,

2:01:12Seth Wickersham:it's totally weird and I think that the other thing that makes this kind of Brady aspect interesting is that one of the reasons that Max Crosby wanted out of the Raiders is because of our old friend Alex Guerrero, who, of course, depending on the way you look at it, either caused a bunch of problems in New England or was just somebody that Belichick didn't want around. And so he banned him from the building back in 2017. And so there are all kinds of aspects of it that kind of are Patriot-centric here. But I think that when it comes back to Brady and the Patriots, I think Brady and Belichick are a different thing.

2:01:55Seth Wickersham:But I think when it comes to Brady and the Patriots and Kraft, there were a slew of things that I think happened. We're starting back in 2010 when Robert Kraft and Jonathan Kraft had to get involved in Brady's contract negotiation. We're talking about 2017 when Brady unveils the big TB12 brand, runs into a bunch of problems with Belichick in the offseason, basically tells Kraft that he wants to go to a different team and Kraft has to figure out a way to keep it together. And that's in Garoppolo range too,

2:02:28Bill Simmons:where Garoppolo's the backup and they're wondering if he's looming as the next guy.

2:02:32Seth Wickersham:Exactly. And then you have, they beat the Rams in the Super Bowl for the second time in 2019. And then he comes back, wants his contract redone, you know, really a statement that he'll, you know, retire a Patriot. Remember he wanted to play until he was age 45 and he did. And really what the Patriots gave him was a one-year deal with a little bit more money and an opt-out to be an unrestricted free agent. And remember, he put his house on the market the day after that deal was announced. And so I think...

2:03:04Bill Simmons:And everyone in the Brady camp was like, it's no big deal. It's just a coincidence. But none of this was a coincidence.

2:03:09Seth Wickersham:It's never a coincidence. And I think that's how Brady talks. You know what I mean? He's never going to hold a press conference and do what Kobe Bryant might have done. You know, I mean, this is how he talks to the public. And I think that At the end of the day, Belichick opened the door for Brady to walk out, Kraft backed him, and Brady went on to win a Super Bowl with another team. And so I think that all that stuff is wrapped up in it. I mean, remember, Joe Montana was traded from the 49ers to the Chiefs, and it took like a decade for the ownership to try to get him back involved after Eddie D had kind of flamed out and had to give the team to his sister.

2:03:47Seth Wickersham:I mean, some of these great athletes just hold these epic legendary grudges. And, you know, you see a little bit with Brady in a cute way, like how he wasn't following the Patriots on Instagram. And that broke, you know, Super Bowl week also. So I think that's the gist of it. But we can go deep on any of those things.

2:04:04Bill Simmons:Peyton Manning and the Colts. That was another interesting one. Brett Favre and the Packers. Another interesting one. And so normally, you know, maybe a 50-50 chance that it doesn't end awesome with the team and the QB if they feel like the QB who's established himself as like this incredible alpha dog, I've done everything. As the skills start to decline, you get the wrong coach in there, the wrong GM, something weird with the owner, a cheaper owner, whatever. And it goes sideways. I wonder if this was as simple as this was about money and Belichick and Brady. a relationship that you were reporting about.

2:04:43Bill Simmons:And I didn't want to believe it for years. I remember getting mad at you a couple of times. But clearly some stuff happened in the 2010s that they worked together for too long. They started to wear on each other's nerves. Belichick, who's a pretty logical guy, or at least he was in the 2010s, he's basically playing this like the Seattle Seahawks non-timeout before the Malcolm Butler play, where he's just like, I'm playing the odds here. Nobody's playing quarterback till 45. I want to still coach. I want to still win Super Bowls. And it's unrealistic for this guy to go past 40. I need alternatives.

2:05:20Bill Simmons:And meanwhile, you have Brady going, I'm playing till I'm 45. I'm doing this. And then you have Guerrero in there who's like this weird shaman, you know, doing whatever. You have TB12, whatever the deal Kraft made with Brady to build that whole center there. And it just became a Molotov cocktail ending with them not committing a long-term deal to him in 2019, heading into the 2019 season. And that feels like, that's where I wonder if him and Kraft, it's a little deeper rooted than maybe we knew. Where he felt like, yo man, your team is 10 tupled in value since I showed up. Maybe 20 tupled. You've won the most valuable franchise in the league.

2:06:03Bill Simmons:You were the black sheep of the Boston sports scene for decades. Now you're the role model of the entire city and you're the role model of the league. I did that. Belichick did that. And now you're telling me to basically take a one-year deal and walk off into the sunset. Fuck you. I wonder if it's as simple as that.

2:06:23Seth Wickersham:Well, and I think that there's a collective aspect of, and this is, I think Brady actually is underappreciated. Look, it's hard to find anything in Brady's life that he's underappreciated for but i think that like when it comes to eating shit and his capacity to eat shit it's really kind of remarkable because there's no way that dan marino or john elway or aaron rogers would put up with some of the stuff that brady put up with and like look in 2010 brady wants a new deal and even though he had always taken below market deals he was willing to do it again but he didn't want to do it quite as drastically and the patriots actually wanted So Kraft ends up getting involved because months and months go by and nothing happens on the Belichick front.

2:07:06Seth Wickersham:The Krafts get involved, and this is in training camp. And the Patriots wanted to sign Brady to a longer contract, actually, than he wanted. And the reason why he wanted a shorter one was because he knew that Belichick loved to trade guys as soon as they got a little bit older and a little bit expensive. So forget about age 45. We're talking about age 35, 36. Yeah. And so the Patriots ended up caving and he got the short-term deal that he wanted. They sweetened it and extended him in 2013. And then once they went five, six Super Bowls, Brady's saying like, you know, look, what we've accomplished is unprecedented for a coaching quarterback.

2:07:50Seth Wickersham:Like, I want to retire here. And Bill was just never on board with it. Remember, he presented Kraft with a study once that showed how quarterbacks dropped off the cliff after age 36, which by the way is accurate or was accurate at the time. And Brady keeps defying the odds and then he still can't get that long-term deal. And then in addition to everything else, you know, he's still, you know, Belichick mocked him after the AFC championship game against the Jaguars when, you know, he had his hands sliced open and he's like, you know, we're not talking about open heart surgery here. I mean, Belichick, it was so hard for him to give an inch when it came to, public displays of affection for Tom.

2:08:32Seth Wickersham:And, you know, that was the world in which he was raised. I mean, he was raised in a loving family. And I think that, like, he always kind of wanted Belichick's not only approval, but just kind of like, hey, we're in this together and we're going to ride it out and go down as the greatest ever by far.

2:08:48Bill Simmons:I wonder if Deflake Aid had anything to do with this, too, where Belichick basically ran for the hills when Deflake Aid broke, right? He seemed way more concerned about, I don't know what the fuck was going on over there. I wasn't involved at all, and I don't think that went over well. So you have that. You have Garoppolo two years later looming as the next kind of replacer. You have Garoppolo.

2:09:09Seth Wickersham:You have Alex Guerrero. Yeah, and then Guerrero piece.

2:09:12Bill Simmons:But I understand the Guerrero piece, though, because when you're – I'm sure Vrabel's like this now with the Patriots, where you have this team. Everyone's aligned. The medical staff, the coaches, everybody's like one thing. and the Guerrero thing was kind of over here. And then some of the other Patriots started drifting over. I thought Brady maybe didn't see that that was not awesome for the Patriots. But there's another thing here. And it ties into what's happening right now as we're taping this on a Tuesday morning with Kraft, who I don't want to call him cheap, but let's just say he hasn't been extravagant these last 10 years.

2:09:56Bill Simmons:Right. And there's been some, I think Philly has been a good example of a team that is really smartly, um, use the NFL salary cap to their advantage where you like spend, spend, spend, spend the cap keeps going up and you're basically like treating it like this dinner check that you can just keep ordering and you don't have to pay the check. Um, Kansas city has done this too. Kansas city gave that giant long contract to my homes a few years ago. and they restructured that this year and they restructure it and all of a sudden they can sign Kenneth Walker. The Patriots never did that with Brady.

2:10:28Bill Simmons:They never did the 10-year, $320 million deal, whatever, that you can pay somebody a lot up front and then basically redo it, restructure it, and you're basically borrowing from this Brady contract ATM, like what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. And I've never got a good answer for why they didn't do that.

2:10:49Seth Wickersham:and i think it was philosophically belichick also look look there's there's few ways that especially belichick tweaks craft that hurt a little harder or cut more to the core than when he talks about cash spending i mean it really bugs robert craft and you know in a lot of ways you can't blame him but i think the other aspect of that is that the patriots are always about the next year so they didn't want you know they always wanted to do what was best for the latest iteration iteration iteration and like when you had brady at the end of his career he wanted to be more involved in personnel remember he took that he took that that sort of below market deal but it was an extension in 13 and then they let welker go right and so he was pissed about that yeah even though they ended up you know that let edelman grow into a good player and it ended up working out but he was upset about that and at the end of his career he was really interested in personnel and you know Belichick was never going to let a quarterback have that kind of say I mean I think he involved Brady in a lot of really interesting and unique ways but there was no way that he was going to have Brady in on these scouting meetings and I think that was interesting because remember the Belichick method is to take young guys and give them all kinds of football work in this great football education and let them in the room and then have them funnel information to Bill who ultimately makes the decision.

2:12:12Seth Wickersham:And here Brady was, having been in the NFL for 20-some years, he wanted to try to have a say in some of these things and that wasn't going anywhere in New England.

2:12:23Bill Simmons:I wonder, first, if they had done the long contract like what the Chiefs did with Mahomes. I wonder if that flips this completely. And the other thing I wonder, if they had done something near the end where it's like, finish your career here and you'll get a piece of the team at the end on a discount. Basically what the Raiders got with him. They never did that either. And from what we know from the crafts, you would have had to pry even 1 % from his sweaty hands. It just never would have happened. So near the end, the two most, they weren't underreported, but they were kind of underappreciated stories.

2:13:03Bill Simmons:was him looking for an escape hatch during his last Pat season with either Miami or New Orleans. There was a lot of reporting about this and it was kind of a crazy story that I never felt like, God, it's just you. And I think all the Patriot fans were like, I love Brady. I'm going to kind of look the other way on this one and pretend this never happened. The Miami thing was a real thing that it seemed like he had going during the last Patriot season as he's in the same division with Miami. And that fell apart at the end. But what did your reporting say about that?

2:13:39Seth Wickersham:Well, and like, look, Ben Vohen of the Boston Globe did a really good job of reporting on this. And so did Jeff Duncan down in New Orleans. I mean, the other interesting piece is that Sean Payton was in the middle of both of those. And they're both represented by Don Yee, who's a fantastic agent. But those were his two biggest high-profile clients. So you have Sean Payton, who, as he told me, felt like he could never get a jump ball in New Orleans, either from a free agent or especially the league office, the type of things that the Krafts kind of enjoyed for a long time. And then you had Brady leaving, and for a while, Peyton walks away from the Saints, and he's all set to go to Miami.

2:14:21Seth Wickersham:Now, the question I have, and I never was able to figure this out, is if Brady... Well, rewind. mind in 2000 brady's looking he's a free agent and the saints looks like it's going to be the

2:14:33Bill Simmons:place that he either strongly considers or ends up in what not 2000 what year 2000 2020 2020

2:14:41Seth Wickersham:and so he i think san fran was the number one on his list he would be close to his parents he could play for kyle at the end of the day you know the niners were really interested in him but they just felt like they couldn't do it to Jimmy coming off a narrow Super Bowl loss. So Brady turns his attention and New Orleans is really interested in him. It looks like Breeze is going to retire and Sean desperately wants to coach Tom Brady. Breeze ends up coming back and that blows that entire thing up. Brady ends up in the box and of course ends New Orleans season in the playoffs. and then you have two years later so remember brady retired for a period um after his second year in tampa and i think he was so frustrated with the way that things were going um you know look i think there were some personal issues going on at that point too but the bruce arians tampa bay buccaneers were nowhere close to the bill belichick new england patriots i mean it's like going from Harvard to Florida State.

2:15:42Seth Wickersham:And so he retired and was looking, it looked like everything was going to come together in Miami. Now I think he was going to be an executive there because the Bucs still held his rights, I think. And so I think he was going to go to Miami, Sean Payton was going to be a coach and he was going to be an executive there. But Brian Flores and his lawsuit ended that. And so that's how we ended up, you know, with Brady, looking at the Raiders and, of course, Sean Payton in Denver.

2:16:13Bill Simmons:But wasn't there also the scenario near the end of his Pat's career where he was looking at Miami and maybe Sean Payton jumping to Miami? And that was the thing I remember from his last year. Yeah. Where there was going to be some sort of combo thing that they never really figured out. Right.

2:16:28Seth Wickersham:Well, remember, some of the meat of the Flores lawsuit was tampering charges against the Dolphins involving Brady. And so, yeah, that was a key element of it also. You know, again, like that entire situation just kind of imploded.

2:16:45Bill Simmons:But I mean, because the alternate universe is they just keep giving Brady a 10 year deal and keep rolling the money over. And he just plays with the Patriots for 25 years and gets a piece of the team after and everybody's happy. Instead, he's in Las Vegas where he gets a small piece of that team and he's in charge of seems like in charge of front office stuff. Combined with he's announcing games on Fox, which I thought he got a lot better last year. I actually really enjoyed him by the end of, by the playoffs last year, I thought he was excellent. Me too, yeah.

2:17:18Seth Wickersham:But the other weird thing about the Raiders is he's on the headset for the coaches during games. I mean, like there's people at the smarter teams around the NFL who saw him on the headset. I think our friend Peter Schrager was the one who pointed it out during the Monday Night Football broadcast, who just loved it. I mean, that speaks to a level of dysfunction.

2:17:41Bill Simmons:Well, and the Guerrero thing, too, that came out, too, that was The Athletic wrote about, that they thought he was like Brady's spy in the locker room. Basically, that was crazy.

2:17:51Seth Wickersham:Well, not only the spy, but they're advocating a certain methodology when it comes to helping players prevent injuries and recover from them that, you know, that brady is that is the lone shining you know testament to yeah and there's a lot of you know passing of traditional principles of western medicine within that and in the center of it is alex guerrero who really doesn't have a lot of credentials other than he's tom brady's guy and he was willie mcginnis's guy and so that i think is the problem i mean these are professional athletes. And I think that they had a big issue with him in all of those ways.

2:18:32Seth Wickersham:I mean, remember, he has this vague title. I think it's wellness coordinator. And part of it is because there are rules about who can work with players. And I think that the reason why he doesn't have, I'm making this up, a chief medical officer as a title is because of that. He doesn't have those

2:18:52Bill Simmons:credential right well they check a lot of boxes for the fourth place the first place team with the fact that they traded crosby for the two picks they have mendoza maybe he's good right away they had kubiak from seattle they spent a lot of money in free agency this week and we've just seen this recipe before we saw with the patriots last year we saw it with the commanders two years before. But the dysfunction around the team makes me wonder, should we start looking for another fourth place to first place team? I don't know. We have six months to stare at it. I can't get over that.

2:19:29Seth Wickersham:Well, really quick. What do you think about Mendoza? Do you think Brady looks at him and sees part of himself reflected in him?

2:19:37Bill Simmons:Very possibly. I know he was a little fascinated by him, right? But the thing is, I think... My thing is, he's going to go first. The people, like the draft experts, like the guys we have, like McShay and Danny Kelly, people like that, they don't feel like he's the best part in the draft, but he's in the vicinity, which I think is okay. I think when teams get in trouble is when they take the 13th best guy in the draft first. Seems like he could have him wherever in the top seven, but he's at least... He can kind of sniff the number one spot, which makes it a little more palatable and there's also nobody else in the draft which is the other thing but um yeah he seems like a brady kind of guy really smart got better every year in college like really driven um just seems like the kind of guy brady would have responded to i don't i don't know if brady would have been i just like he i don't think he would have been a raw tools lower active type of qb i don't think that would have been right do you agree with that yeah i mean i think it's

2:20:39Seth Wickersham:interesting because in one sense you have mendoza who's you know he faced a couple crossroads in his career in college where this easily could have gone the other way and maybe he doesn't really have much of a college career and i'm sure that brady can relate to that in his own way and yet another aspect of it that i find interesting and brady has talked to me about this over the years and he's i think he's mentioned it elsewhere it's just like how lucky he was to be under the radar at a young age the fact that when he was a rookie nobody was paying any attention to what he was doing when he was out there with the practice squad guys after practice throwing balls in the dirt and cussing up a storm right and how much respect he has for guys like peyton manning and elway and these guys who were the had so much attention and pressure and accolades and and eyeballs on them and that they were able to to make it work and they were able to live up and maybe even exceed those expectations.

2:21:37Seth Wickersham:Those two dynamics are really fascinating to me because there's no way that the Raiders are drafting a quarterback that Brady doesn't like. I mean, I don't think that's... We can just say that. And I'd be really curious which parts... Again, the biggest question in sports is how do you find greatness in a quarterback? Brady completely turned that question, whatever theory we had for it, Brady's career turned it on its head. And I'm curious what parts of it he sees in himself and what he does.

2:22:05Bill Simmons:Well, one thing we've learned from football and basketball is that great players don't necessarily have that skill set to figure out. If anything, they're probably a bad judge because either their expectations are too high or they look at it as like two glass half full versus like just a cold evaluation of it. So I have no idea if he has that skill set or not. I wonder with Kraft, if you had to do this over again, I feel like he would just run it back the way it played out with the Pat sucking for four years, but ending up with Drake may Rabel showing up and them not being beholden to Brady, him not giving an ownership piece to Brady, even though it was clumsy and weird.

2:22:48Bill Simmons:And it's led to a very strange relationship with Brady and the team. I don't think craft probably cares. And And in general, like, it's a weird one because the team does not spend like other teams would in the position they're in now. And you could even feel it a little bit in free agency. You could feel it in the way they didn't take care of some situation. They lost Tonga to the Chiefs, who they could have just spent money on in November and December, and they had a little contract thing with them, and they ended up not doing it, and then they lose them. It's the little stuff like that that you don't see.

2:23:23Bill Simmons:like teams like Philly and the Rams, they just spend the money and that's who they're competing against. So they got to the Superbowl last year and a lot of it had to do with schedule and, you know, the luck of the weather in Denver that day and Stidham. I don't know if they were a Superbowl team, but they, they got some good breaks, but going forward, they have this incredible chance with May on a rookie deal.

2:23:43Seth Wickersham:And I just wonder if they're going to blow it or not. I mean, remains to be seen, but like, I think going back to what you were saying, I think it hurts Kraft that Brady self-identifies as a Raider. And I think that, you know, I mean, going back to 20, so I don't know if he would do it exactly the same. I mean, going back to 2010, you know, Brady's paranoid that Bill's going to trade him the moment that, you know, he starts to see a decline. And, you know, Kraft told him, look, I'm not going to tell Belichick what to do, but if he decides that he wants to move on from you, I'll give you what you need to have some agency over your next destination, whether that's, you know, letting you pick your trade partner or just being an unrestricted free agent, whatever that is.

2:24:31Seth Wickersham:And so, you know, that ended up playing out in 2020. But I just think that like, it hurts Kraft deeply that Brady goes and wins the Superbowl as a buck and that he comes back to New England and beats them as a buck. And, you know, he's sitting there with Belichick as they're slogging through these losing seasons. Just getting madder, madder. Where they're losing games like 10 to 3, right? Yeah. And then, you know, as soon as Kraft has a chance, he has Brady back at the stadium. I mean, I think he's doing anything he can to remind Tom Brady that, you know, these people love you. And I think that Brady knows the fans love him and he'll always have a good relationship with Kraft.

2:25:13but you know he has

2:25:16Bill Simmons:that I don't see I don't know I think when I think that was a really important moment when he said he didn't have the dog in the race I know for a fact I think that crafts were like what the fuck you know Vrabel is caught up in coaching for the game but Vrabel is like his buddy like they had this whole extended crew that would go to the Kentucky Derby all these different places like Vrabel, Wes Welker Izzo all these guys Vrabel is one of the guys and so is Brady. That's his real friend. That would be like if Joe House was coaching for the Super Bowl and I was like, yeah, I don't have a dog in this race.

2:25:51Bill Simmons:I thought it was really weird and kind of to me it said something a little bigger about his relationship with the team.

2:25:59Seth Wickersham:Absolutely. And I think that Brady might look at the fans one way and the crafts the other. Whereas he can love them and he knows that he cosmically won. But he won't forget that you know, they allowed him to walk out of that building. I mean, you know,

2:26:13Bill Simmons:these are like, at some point it's six years later, you have a statue, like you're a patriot, but I, that's the point. It's like, I don't think he thinks that way anymore.

2:26:22Seth Wickersham:No, but you know, Joe Montana does a documentary where he starts criticizing George Seifert. And this is 30 years after the fact, right? John Elway does a documentary where, you know, Dan Reeves who is deceased can't even defend himself. and they crap all over Dan Reeves in that documentary. You know, I mean, I think that like the level of scar tissue that the greats, you know, accumulate over the years, even though we intellectually know it, we still kind of are surprised by how deep it goes.

2:26:55Bill Simmons:Yeah, as you were saying that, I was thinking if I did a documentary, would I take shots at Skipper and Walsh or not? I might, who knows? No way. All these years later, I don't know. Maybe I'd be bitter about something. Yeah, the Brady thing's really weird though. And just that him being in Vegas of all places. Anyway, all right. While you're here, you did, you're basically like psychologically profiling the quarterback position, which is impossible. And as the years have passed, we are exactly the same at either, it's basically 50-50, having no idea who's going to be good, who's going to be not.

2:27:30Bill Simmons:And as I get older and I look at this stuff, Um, the only thing I really, that I've really landed on is fit combined with competitiveness seems to be the two things that give you the best chance. Um, Caleb was somebody you spent a lot of time on in the book. I read the book, I don't know, five months ago. So I'm, I'm remembering from, you know, retroactively Caleb, somebody that I really feel like could have gone either way and ended up in this awesome situation with the right coach, the right season. You could see him growing. I don't want to say he was changing, but it was just stuff was bubbling to the surface with him.

2:28:13Bill Simmons:And now I think he's an incredible spot. Whereas like if he had just gone to Arizona from day one, been on a, you know, a typically crappy Cardinals team, developing bad habits, running for his life, every play. There's a version where it just goes Kyler Murray land. So is there anything else I'm missing other than fit and competitiveness?

2:28:33Seth Wickersham:Yeah, I mean, context matters so much. I mean, where you go ends up so much. You know, it just mattered. And I think that like, one of the most interesting aspects that I think about, and this is one of the reasons why I think someone like Mendoza will probably be a good pro, is I spent a lot of time with Kevin O 'Connell for the book. And remember, Caleb Williams, I reported in the book, wanted to play for Kevin. I mean, they loved each other during the draft process. It was never going to happen. but Caleb kind of fantasized about it and so KOC he's a four-year starter at San Diego State he ends up getting drafted by the Patriots he figures he'll sit behind Brady for a year and then you take what he learned to another team and start for 10 years and have a great career and he never could catch on I mean his career was over in like in a year and that that devastated him.

2:29:23Seth Wickersham:And so when he was first, you know, giving up on his dream of playing and getting into coaching, he went back and he looked at all the game winning drives from Elway and Dan Marino and Joe Montana and Tom Boney, especially, and wanted to know, it was very autobiographical. He's wondering like what he lacks. And when he watched them, he realized that all of these unbelievable throws that you see Elway make, these kind of highlight reel throws were never really in those situations like those situations were dominated by them doing the mundane simple stuff at the highest level like if you watch joe montana against the bangles in super bowl 23 i mean almost every pass on that last drive was a check down and when kevin o 'connell was trying out for teams he was trying to make that john elway throw and he realized that was like the very worst thing you should do and i think that like the ability to take what's there and to not get sacked and And, you know, just keep the chains moving while you're learning how to play, I think, is one of the most kind of hidden factors in, you know, quarterback development.

2:30:30Seth Wickersham:It's one of the reasons why I think that, like, Brock Purdy has done well, is because he knows, he knew to do what the coaches told him to do until he had, like, developed enough knowledge on his own where he could make decisions a little bit more for himself. Now, a lot of quarterbacks struggle with that. I mean, Caleb Williams spent his entire life making those highlight reel throws where he runs left and throws from his ankle. And it goes 70 yards in the air. But those situations hardly ever come up in the NFL. It's really like embracing the mundane that I think is the prelude to being an effective NFL quarterback.

2:31:05Bill Simmons:Decision-making, efficiency. I think toughness is a huge part of that. I really grew to like Tyler Shuck last year. I thought he was good. He had some of the stuff you're talking about, but he was also like a tough motherfucker. Like he took big hits. He'd run out of the pocket. He was just, he just kept getting up. And that was one thing. There were two things that stood out in those early Brady years. Cause I was in right away with it. Like I was living in Boston that year, Brady versus Bledsoe became the only thing anyone talked about. And I was always team Brady because I felt like there was an efficiency with how he did everything, where there was play action.

2:31:43Bill Simmons:just the ball was always in the right spots and he was tough and he took some big hits those first couple seasons that there's some good Instagram you know or YouTube clips of just him getting popped he would immediately get up and he was just a just a tough motherfucker and you just knew it and he did everything like really well nothing great and then the greatness came probably probably four years in I really felt like the third time they won the Super Bowl the Pittsburgh playoff game, that was the one that was like, wow, this guy's like... We were hoping he would be basically the Bill Russell to the Manning-Will Chamberlain.

2:32:21Bill Simmons:But somewhere in that third Super Bowl season, it was like, wow, this guy, holy shit, where's this gonna go?

2:32:27Seth Wickersham:He's incredibly tough. And I mean, I remember when they played the Chargers in the AFC Championship game during the 0-7 season, the undefeated year. And they played that game. It was an ugly game. Chargers easily could have won, really, if Philip Rivers had been healthy. And Brady gives his press conference, and I was there, and I was watching him when he exited. And there was like a step that they stepped down. And when he did, his leg buckled. I was completely stunned. And he limped around a door so fast. And I think that like most people there kind of missed it because they were hustling to get into the locker room.

2:33:01Seth Wickersham:And then it comes out that, you know, he had this high ankle sprain in the Super Bowl and still went out and played, got his ass kicked in that game, but fought like hell. throws a 67-yard pass with seconds left that really Moss could have, if he had made more of an effort on, maybe he catches that. I think that when you talk about Caleb Williams, one of the things he showed me as a rookie was that he was tough as hell. I mean, he got sacked a lot and hit a lot, and a lot of it was his fault. But there was a game, and I think they were playing the Lions on Thanksgiving Day, if I remember right, but he ran to the right, and he got hit on the borderline of it being legal right on his knee and i mean it looks like one of those hits where you're like this guy's done yeah and his season's over and he got right up and i think that like the things that have that caleb's proven is that he's got that magic which you know nobody can predict and then he's also just tough as hell and i think that like the the the ways that he'll grow as a quarterback will be you know incrementally when he learns to take the easy throws and keep the chain moving.

2:34:08Seth Wickersham:And no, that'll come with time. But I think you're right. And the toughness factor is something you can't know until you know, because there's no way to replicate how hard these guys get hit in the NFL.

2:34:18Bill Simmons:There's also the damage you get from the first couple of years you might not be able to bounce back from. You start getting the eyes in the back of your head once your head's on a swivel. Lombardi always used to talk about the eye contact drops down toward the line instead of looking over the line. That was a fear with Drake May that first year when he was just getting the absolute shit kicked out of him. This year, it wasn't much better. And then in the playoffs, he just got annihilated. And I still feel like he was... They'll never tell us how hurt he was because they were probably lying on the injury report.

2:34:54Bill Simmons:But I think it was the accumulation of all those hits combined with the fact that he's such a tough guy. It really felt like he was breaking down by the end of the year. and that's where you don't want because three years from now that's not going to

2:35:06Seth Wickersham:be headed in a good place if they don't fix that yeah there was that clip of them that went viral there was nfl films and josh mcdaniels is telling him on the bench like you know i know it's hard but you know you're never going to forget this feeling you have a chance here and i bet you anything he was talking about not you know battling through denver's defense yeah or the I think it was because his shoulder was really, really bothering him. And I'll be interesting to see. I mean, like, what do you think a bad game like Drake may had at the Super Bowl can derail a guy sometimes? I don't think it will with Drake, but I mean, does that concern you with him?

2:35:46Bill Simmons:Yeah, I think the Pats fans, it was the combination of all the hits he took the four games. The fact that he just didn't seem like the same guy by the time we finished the Super Bowl. and they weren't even running plays they normally ran for him, right? He used to be so good on the run to his right. They just stopped doing that, which really made me think he was hurt. His guys weren't getting open anymore either, which was the other thing. I think they cut ties with Diggs partly because he kind of peaked in that Bills game in Buffalo and after that was never really the same and never really open in the same way.

2:36:22Bill Simmons:So it's a fast anyone, much tougher schedule. Yeah. The offensive line, they got Vera Tucker, but they really have to hope that Will Campbell's better. We don't know how hurt he was. But I only think you have so many seasons in a row where you're just getting hit like that. And I think Vrabel was telling him, when you're scrambling, you have to just go down. You have to slide. Because you could see it all year. He was not reckless. And that's the same thing Harbaugh will do with Jackson Dart this year. But long-term, you look at what the Chiefs were able to do with Mahomes for those first couple years where they were just able to kind of protect him in the formative years.

2:37:02Bill Simmons:And that's what Chicago wants to do with Caleb, right? They lost their center this week, or last week, he retired suddenly. And they had a really good offensive line to begin with. That's what Denver was able to do with Bo Nix. Just block for our guys. So Vegas, Brady's like, I'm going to overpay. This is by far the most we've ever paid a center in the league. But I want to make sure that this guy doesn't get his ass kicked in year one so i do think that's part of it we had jim plunkett when i was growing up in new england who was just discarded to san francisco you know after a few years because he just got the crap kicked out of him it took him years to come back and he was like

2:37:41Seth Wickersham:the first of those guys that you see now with anyone that the jets pick and you know where like and mostly you know until caleb with the bears where you know he looks like a bust and then he goes to a different team and he has phenomenal success and it shows that context matters well that's the darn sam darnold thing too right exactly and gino you know what i mean baker mayfield to an extent i think that like the only question i have about drake is i would like to see him perform a little better in two minute situations against like the best teams like i remember that second bills game yeah where you know new england really just they couldn't stop him and they couldn't stop Josh.

2:38:19Seth Wickersham:And, you know, they were at home. They needed this game and Drake got the ball. And I think they went four and out. If they didn't, it was pretty close to that. And this wasn't like a really dynamic Bill's defense that he was against. You know, I wonder, like, again, I think Drake's going to be a phenomenal player, but like Caleb and Bo Nix have been better in those absolute clutch situations, I think, than him so far.

2:38:45Bill Simmons:And the start of games too was another thing that was, he would kind of settle in by the second quarter. You, when you, when you were working on this book, the big draft was the three guys, May and Daniels and Caleb, that we all had a chance to, we all felt like they had a chance to be special. And Drake was the one people seemed to be the most split on. So I'm sure you were talking to teams like, yeah, he's, we don't have them in the top 10. We don't see it. He's too erratic. And then other people that love them.

2:39:16Seth Wickersham:and I spent a lot of time with him and his family and I mean the one thing I loved about Drake if I were looking to draft him and it reminded me of Brady was that he came from an incredibly loving yet really competitive family I think that like when he a key moment for him that's kind of overlooked is when he decided to not go to Alabama and he decided to go to UNC because right being a may who goes to UNC is not just a normal decision because he was risking something worse than, you know, having a losing season or not panning out. It was that at Thanksgiving, he would sit at the table with his brothers and he'd be the one who hadn't, you know, done what they had done.

2:39:59Seth Wickersham:And instead, he ends up becoming, you know, a phenomenal prospect. I thought the most interesting thing with Drake coming out of the draft was Belichick's opinion of him because, you know, he was really, really dismissive of Drake in some ways, especially when it came around, you know, how young Drake was and how little experience he had. I mean, that was pretty clear. He liked, you know, Drake's arm, but he really didn't think that he was seasoned enough to maybe be picked that early. And, um, you know, I always wonder like how much of that is him giving an honest assessment and how much of that is where Drake ended up going.

2:40:38Bill Simmons:I never really bought that one. That felt, that felt like a little little vindictive by him. As you studied all these quarterbacks and talked to all these people, was there anyone in the last 20, 25 years that people were like, still don't understand why he didn't make it? Still don't understand what was missing. Not sure this guy's the outlier. Or was there a reverse of like, I can't believe this guy made it. I still don't understand. You can't replicate what happened with this. Maybe Purdy was the guy for that. I don't know.

2:41:08Seth Wickersham:yeah i mean brock stands out but brock was so you know he was mr irrelevant and so you know nobody was talking about him really that much i mean people are thinking he's going to be an unrestricted free agent i think the thing that's interesting is just that like you had that series around the turn of the century where you had like kurt warner and brady and jake the loam and and bulger to a certain extent you had these these guys who were coming you know low draft picks coming out of nowhere and leading their teams to these phenomenal seasons. And then things kind of settled down. Like we didn't want to admit it quite as much, but just about like every good player as a quarterback who ended up panning out was a first round pick.

2:41:49Seth Wickersham:I mean, there's a couple exceptions, but for the most part, they were first round picks. And so I think that like, even though we're so bad at this, yeah. And now, now we're back on the other side of things. But, you know, I think that, like, the weirdest thing about college is just that you can't trust, you know, statistics at all. It's like the equivalent of, like, performance inflation and grade inflation, where it's like Mike Leach and Hal Mumme created these dynamic offenses that opened these huge windows for quarterbacks that just don't exist in the NFL. and they help you win games. Bailey Zappi, your boy, owns the touchdown pass record for most touchdowns in the season in college.

2:42:30Seth Wickersham:I mean, he can barely hang on in the NFL. And so, you know, I think that that's the most interesting thing. It's just like you cannot trust any statistic for a quarterback coming out of college.

2:42:40Bill Simmons:Yeah, you can't even, accuracy was always a good one. But then there's been some guys like the Josh Allen types where they're like, yeah, we fixed it. He's now accurate. And it's a little like, and the NBA was shooting where there were guys over the years, like Kawhi Leonard was a good one. He fell out of the lottery because he couldn't shoot three-pointers. And then the Spurs were like, yeah, we fixed it. And then he was fine. So, yeah, to me, the competitiveness, the efficiency, toughness, and then, you know, obviously the Johnny Menzel types where it's like this guy might not be able to handle success.

2:43:17Bill Simmons:Yeah, total train wreck. This guy might not be able to handle being the focal point of a franchise.

2:43:22Seth Wickersham:And I wrote about it in the book, but Sean Payton, you know, developed this kind of analytics formula that he did on his own, which was like a failure metrics where he looked at negative plays that college quarterbacks had and divided them by attempts and came up with a certain number to see, you know, how often they had negative plays. And so, you know, Sean looks at, at, at sacks as a quarterback stat. He doesn't look at it as a, an offensive line stat. If you look at Russell Wilson in Denver, through his first 50 starts, he was sacked maybe three times higher, more than Bo Nix was in his first 50 starts.

2:44:02Seth Wickersham:And in that draft class, Bo Nix had the best, or I'll say the lowest failure index. And that's originally, look, he knew he wasn't going to get Caleb, but everybody else might be in play. and because of Nick's, you know, because he took so few sacks, high completion percentage, hardly ever fumbled, despite playing in, you know, rainy weather sometimes, he felt like, okay, this guy processes quickly. And it's just one team, but that's a way that he tried to take analytics about the hardest thing possible in judging a quarterback, which is quick thinking and processing speed, and try to project it forward.

2:44:42Seth Wickersham:and so far it's worked out okay. I mean, Mahomes was, I think, by far the best ever at his formula. But generally speaking, it's worked and I think it's held up pretty well in the NFL.

2:44:59Bill Simmons:Last thing, after your book came out and people read it, was there one comment from anybody in the league that read it about something in the book that made you go, Oh, I didn't realize I was on to something there. Was there anything that surprised you?

2:45:15Seth Wickersham:The coolest thing about it was that I played, I'm not trying to be the Uncle Rico of Alaska here, but I played quarterback in high school. And I failed at it and it wasn't great. And those things, I always was curious about it. But I wrote it for quarterbacks of all different kinds. At some point, I wanted any quarterback who read it to feel like maybe there was a phrase where their life felt it intersected with it. And the coolest thing was just like Steve Young, Alex Smith, like some of these guys who read it and I chatted with them is just how much of themselves they saw in the book, even in moments where I wasn't writing about them.

2:45:55Seth Wickersham:So I think that was the coolest thing.

2:45:57Bill Simmons:Well, Steve Young was a good one, right? Because he's somebody that if he wasn't wired the way he was, it just would have been too much too soon. USFL was a mistake, never got a chance. and then he has an eight-year career and he's out of the league. And it's like, oh man, remember Steve Young? He was so talented. What happened to that guy? But he just kind of wouldn't let it happen.

2:46:16Seth Wickersham:He's a great philosopher, like quarterback philosopher. Like Dan Marino doesn't know a day in most of his life where he can't throw the ball wherever he wants, whenever he wants, right? And Steve had to work at it. And so few of these guys, you go back to what we were saying earlier, where the greats often can't coach because they can't explain the things that they did. Whereas Steve can actually explain it in really fascinating, honest, vulnerable terms. He's just a great guy to shoot the shit with about quarterbacks because he sees where other people see analytics or reads, he sees cosmic powers, which I think is really fascinating.

2:47:01Bill Simmons:I remember Dilfer maybe the third year I had my podcast he was on, it was the Mark Sanchez draft there were a bunch of quarterbacks and Dilfer said on the pod about if you had all these guys together and we're headed somewhere and I needed somebody to drive the car, I would toss the keys to Sanchez and I was like, oh, the car keys test I like this, but he was like that's the kind of alpha Sanchez is, now I mean these days you probably wouldn't want to toss the keys to him. But it made me wonder, because I always thought charisma had to be a piece of this too. This is the last thing we'll say and then we'll go.

2:47:41Bill Simmons:But you're in a huddle with these dudes. It's a 70 ,000 seat stadium. There's an incredible amount of pressure. Half of the guys in the huddle are bigger than you. And at some point they have to believe in you. And this was what I saw happening with the Patriots with Drake during the year. the little anecdotes of the way they were talking about him was like, oh, this is good. That they're talking about, well, when we have our guy, we have a chance against anybody. There has to be some sort of bigger belief in the guy for the season. And you kind of know it when you have it and you know it when it's not there too.

2:48:17Bill Simmons:So I feel like that all ties together somehow.

2:48:20Seth Wickersham:Yeah, Dilfer called it dude qualities. When I was interviewing Steve for the book, Steve Young, I asked him, I'm like, what are all the hats you have to wear as a starting quarterback for an NFL team? And I mean, he leaned back in his office and he just starts going. So matinee idol, field general, spokesperson for a multi-billion dollar organization, you know, chief cheerleader, breathtaking asshole at times. Like, you know, all of these things. How about wide receiver therapist?

2:48:49Bill Simmons:Like these wide receivers, like you constantly have to make sure they stay invested and you're going to get the ball this time. And I'm sorry I missed you. and you're just constantly like massaging them.

2:48:58Seth Wickersham:It's like daycare manager. Yeah, totally. Just trying to keep them happy

2:49:02Bill Simmons:so they don't check out. Exactly.

2:49:03Seth Wickersham:It was like all of these hats that had nothing to do with making reads and throwing the football. And I think that's why, you know, I wanted to write the book because when you decide to be a quarterback, you're not just doing it because you throw the ball well. You're taking on all of these other identities and qualities that, you know, can help form you can help destroy you later in life. Like all of these things that I wanted to write about, but are essential for playing quarterback at the highest level.

2:49:34Bill Simmons:All right, it's called American Kinks. You got Father's Day's coming up down the road, Mother's Day's coming up, but something to read as we miss football all the time during the off season. What are you working on? Anything big? Any big story coming?

2:49:49Seth Wickersham:You know, I spent the entire playoff run with Sean Payton in the Broncos. I had full access. So I wrote about the fourth down. That story was great.

2:49:56Bill Simmons:I love that story. Yeah, because he blew the game. That one decision crossed him the Super Bowl. You loved how it ended. Yeah, I did. I loved how it ended, but it was also interesting.

2:50:05Seth Wickersham:But I had never done this before where I was spending like 14, 15, 16 hours in every meeting watching every decision get made. And so I accidentally reported an entire book on that. I don't want to write a book, but it's going to be a really good story, I think, on ESPN when I get it done.

2:50:22Bill Simmons:Nice. All right, cool. Good to see you, Seth. Thank you. good to see you man alright that's it for the podcast thanks to the cuz thanks to Wickersham thanks to Fantasy thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as always and I'm going to be back on Thursday with one more episode of a very fun sports week don't forget Fargo up for the new rewatchables and I will see you on Thursday

2:50:55Bill Simmons:I don't have a few years with them. On the wayside. I'm a person I never...

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