The Broken Chargers, Mahomes 3.0, Zombie Deshaun, the Masked Backup, First Coach Fired, and Guess the Lines With Cousin Sal

14:17Bill Simmons:So for people who missed that game, the Chargers fumbled five times and recovered all five fumbles, including Herbert getting strip sack, basically on his goal line where he just had the, was holding the ball like Michael Jackson holding the baby off the balcony. And somebody just took it and it somehow ricocheted forward 10 yards. right to a teammate and they kept it right and it was becoming one of those games you're like oh my god this is like an all-time horseshoe i've never seen a team fumble five times to get all five back then the sixth one finally got them yeah they were driving uh the running back fumbled but and then herbert near the end just had a really really truly horrific interception for the nail in the coffin followed by they come out of commercial and and we all saw it on our thread because house took a picture of it but uh it was mcdaniel talking to herbert and both of them seemed bummed out and it almost seemed like watching two people on a park bench breaking up when you're like walking your dog in a park you're like those people breaking up uh the energy was just terrific herbert did not have a 20 plus yard pass in this game that he completed yeah and they're playing the raiders it's not like they're playing a good team they're playing i guess the two and no raiders kudos to them but come on i saw something great said the chargers are the

15:33Cousin Sal:second team in NFL history to lose back-to-back games by double digits with both coming at home against teams that had sub 200 win percentages the previous season. The other was the 1926 Racine Tornadoes, who I lost a teaser. I don't know if you were on the teaser with that, but no. Yeah, they, and they play just one more game before.

15:54Bill Simmons:I think I stayed away from the tornado second racing tornadoes with the weird thing is now we knew the middle of the line was going to be suspect because we argued about this before the year you like them i was i made me nervous um joe alt today three false starts allowed a safety not great um after the game they asked khalil mac what harbaugh said to them this is his quote you tell me if this is alarming at all honestly i black i blanked out the whole time i don't really know my mind was on the game steal still but i feel like it had something to do with picking up the pieces and getting this thing right That was Khalil Mack's recap of Jim Harbaugh's speech.

16:33Bill Simmons:I blanked out the whole time. So we got first coach fired. I mean, we have some doozies. We have Harbaugh. We have Todd Bowles, who's 3-10 in his last 13. And lost today after, I can't wait to talk about that. And then Dan Quinn, who got his quarterback injured for the year. We have three really good candidates now. Right.

16:54Cousin Sal:Quinn, I think, is favored right now. I don't know. Harbaugh was like 50 to one on, you know, wherever you could do this stuff going into the year. But yeah, they're not even listening to the coaches. I don't know what it is. Like, yeah. When you say like all false started three times, like McDaniel, I know he's, I want to make fun of him because he's fun to make fun of, but also let's make fun of him. This has got to be his thing, right? Because they have protected him with everything else going into this. This doesn't resemble anything that looked like when Herbert was successful.

17:23Bill Simmons:Yeah, there were good stats offensively for him in Miami, but then you think back, you know, like he was doing that kind of gimmicky offense with Tua. But they had Tyreek. They had Waddle, who was great today. They always had fast running backs, and, you know, maybe the talent made him look better than he was. Well, the home crowd loved what they saw. You got to give them that. So many Raider fans. Unbelievable. Somebody sent me a video of after the game, they're in the bathroom, and it's all Raider fans chanting, and there's some poor guy in a Herbert jersey taking a piss and they're like kind of taunting him and the guy leaves and he kind of files out hoping he's not going to get punched and the guy goes in with the phone to pee and there's a Chargers jersey in the urinal and that was the end of the video but that's where we are.

18:09Bill Simmons:We're also getting Chargers jersey there. Also, they're receiving emails like this one from Owen from Richmond. After watching Herbert throw a late game interception and fall Owen to do a JV Raiders team, I've come up with a new nickname for our former nerd, King QB, Justin. Yeah. But because whenever the nerds try to defend this perennial loser, they always defend with, yeah, he's never won anything. But before giving a litany of excuses, he's the player equivalent of Wayne Kiffin. Okay. Good. That's not bad. Justin. But Justin. Yeah. But it's because we did, because you, you might be winning the Drake maybe argument with the way he's playing.

18:49Bill Simmons:Yeah. Yeah. Raiders are now two and O with no Brock Bowers basically. And they're playing in New Orleans last week. And I test wise, cause we're in the, we're in the PT over here. So there's only four games today. There was five, but I w I feel like I've watched every snap of, of the Raiders and the chargers. Yeah. I didn't like the chargers at all. I didn't have the balls to take Raiders plus six and a half, but I really talked on multiple pods. I was just like, they're not good. They're slow. I don't think they're well coached. They, they, they look like they don't have it. Raiders. I don't know.

19:21Bill Simmons:I w I kind of want to see it. Yeah. Cousins was flinging it around. Like he, he, he had like eight or nine. It felt like, like real long passes. And he missed a couple too of guys that were open, but I don't know. They were fun to watch. I enjoy, I kind of enjoyed them.

19:38Cousin Sal:He has six touchdown passes to wide receivers. No one has ever heard of in their lifetime.

19:44Bill Simmons:None of them are starting in any fantasy league. Maybe Tucker will next week.

19:47Cousin Sal:Yeah, nobody even drafted any of these guys. There is a little bit of Ewing theory, right, with this Brock Bowers as he shaves his heel bone or whatever the hell's going on until he gets back in there.

19:58Bill Simmons:Yeah, they're not bad right now. They're not bad. They do. The two teams before the year that fit the profile I always look at for worst of first, replacing a bad coach with maybe a better coach were them and the, I'm blanking. Nobody else. No, no, and then the Giants. The Giants, yeah. And I couldn't get there with either of them, especially the Raiders, because it just didn't seem like they had enough talent.

20:26Cousin Sal:Well, the division is loaded. You figure the Chargers are going to win 10 games, so how many wins are you going to give the Raiders?

20:32Bill Simmons:Right. The Chiefs are going to be good, too. And there was, at halftime of the Denver game, they looked like they were going 0-2. So I don't think, I honestly don't think it's overreaction to say the Chargers season is in real trouble. Like they're minus 300 or whatever it is for a reason. I think there's a talent issue. I don't think they can block. I don't, the coach seems like they're tuning them out. And I do think there's a chance he doesn't make it through the season now. We talked about it last week. It's like, huh, I even asked Tom Palacero about it if it was conceivable. Now I think it's like legitimately conceivable.

21:07Cousin Sal:Well, and if they had the Raiders every week or if they were in the AFC South, maybe. But I'm going to look at their schedule. I didn't write it down. But you saw the next seven, right?

21:18Bill Simmons:Well, these were the two easy ones.

21:20Cousin Sal:Right. This is what it looked like.

21:23Bill Simmons:They were playing the Cardinals and the Raiders to start. And you're like, well, they'll go 2-0, and then they're going to dip. Well, now they're 0-2, and now they're hitting the hard part. But they played Buffalo and Houston, all these things.

21:32Cousin Sal:Five of the next seven are on the road. at Buffalo, at Seattle, home versus Denver, at KC, at the Rams, home versus Houston, at Baltimore. Come on.

21:43Bill Simmons:So do you think Harbaugh is coaching by the end of that?

21:47Cousin Sal:I think he is. I don't know why. I think they'll respect him enough to keep him around. I would see.

21:54Bill Simmons:You're not looking at this correctly, though. I'm not just talking from a Chargers side. I'm talking from a Jim Harbaugh, fuck this, I'm out.

22:01Cousin Sal:Oh, if he sticks around, yeah.

22:02Bill Simmons:Right. Because we've seen him. He looks around, you know, the moment everything's not going his way. He'll start sniffing around because he's got to get another job out of this one.

22:13Cousin Sal:McDaniels takes over as McDaniels, the head coach. That would be fun.

22:18Bill Simmons:I would not recommend that one. So we have three retroactive week one games that we have to look at that we didn't know what they meant. And now I think we know. Arizona beat the Chargers. it was very hard to handicap that Arizona Seattle game this week like we had Tony Tokens on uh on Ringer Wise guys he loved Arizona Raheem took Seattle but the thing was like Arizona was awesome in that Chargers game they put together six long drives like they were really really impressive offensively and then the flip side was like well what if the Chargers suck and that's why they look that way well now the Cardinals play Seattle this week and they get murdered now we know so And now we know their charges suck.

22:59Bill Simmons:So that's, I think, one. Isn't it great?

23:01Cousin Sal:Let me just interrupt you. The psychology behind this, like week one, we could overreact and people could call us out on it. But so what? It's clickbait and it's great. We could keep going. Week two, we're even more experts, bigger experts. Right. We know everything now. Now we have some data. We've watched two whole games. Yeah, right. Okay.

23:19Bill Simmons:Well, the second one was Pittsburgh barely beating Atlanta. And you and I on that Sunday pod that we did last week. And I was just like, I watched that game. I think Pittsburgh's offense is terrible. But, you know, and Atlanta looked a little friskier than, I don't think Atlanta's good. It's a bad time for, anyway. People got mad at us, by the way, after that. People got mad. Oh, Rodgers, he was taking chances downfield. They were like 4.8 a play. They were lower today. We were accused of not watching that.

23:48Cousin Sal:The Steelers went over the mighty Falcons last week. I did watch it, and I didn't think they were good.

23:53Bill Simmons:I didn't think they could run the ball. A couple passes.

23:55Cousin Sal:It's fine. Yeah.

23:56Bill Simmons:And I didn't think Rogers wanted to get hit, which is true because we saw it again today. So the lesson from that one is what if maybe we overrated Pittsburgh? I know I did. I had them 10 and 7. So now we know Pittsburgh. Yeah. And then the last one was Philly barely beat Washington. I was like, what does this mean? Is that a fluke? Or is maybe Philly's not that good? And then you watch today. They barely beat Tennessee. tennis scene now granted it's 170 degrees on the field or whatever but um i think i think our suspicions were confirmed on philly too right so mad at that team yeah we're gonna do we're gonna

24:32Cousin Sal:say they're not very good forever and they're gonna be like 14 and 3 because just that's just how they played ball but and the titans money line was one of my best bets of the ringer wise guys so i was so angry after this i challenged big dom to a fight on twitter i said once i get this kidney stone pass. I'm going to get in shape and he's in trouble. I can tell you that much.

24:51Bill Simmons:I'm mailing you my kidney stones.

24:52Cousin Sal:Yeah, that's it. Throw my, toss my stone at his face. Yeah, I don't, what are they really good at? They don't, they don't, they don't even block as well as they used to.

25:03Bill Simmons:Wait, I got to find that cam. Turf temperature, 157 degrees. Is that real? Cleats were melting, which sounds like a fake thing, but I, my daughter played a soccer game once where that happened to multiple kids on the team. Really? it really does where it was, I don't know how hot it was in the turf, but it really, I have seen it happen. Um, Hertz was a monster on the last drive. And in general, it feels like the Devante Smith Hertz thing. And there's something, something there to hold onto, but running 33 for 89, 2.8 to carry against the fucking Titans. Barkley got hurt early. I, the, the big, like big picture question for me is did barkley is he just another victim of the big usage too many touches season and this is when they got the contract but this is we've just how many times

25:55Cousin Sal:have we watched this now yeah and that's why it's frustrating when tank bigsby and freaking will shipley are leading the way in the backfield on the road i mean this is really one that salla could

26:05Bill Simmons:have stolen but really tough one uh admirable uh tease under which couple people in ringer 107 had. Teased the Eagles down a minus one. Teased the under up. That did hit. But for the most part, this Rams-Giants game tomorrow is so fascinating because the Giants really could take that division if they can emulate what they did last week and just that could kind of be what their identity is. Keep Dart and Scatterbow healthy. We're going to take a break and then we have to talk about the Bermuda Triangle game of the Browns and Bucks, which we're going to talk about right after this. The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by FanDuel.

26:44Bill Simmons:Monday Night Football just got a lot more rewarding on FanDuel. Giants, Rams, and a reward escalator. What happens on the field can unlock even more profit boost. Bet Monday Night's game with a reward escalator token. You'll find it. If both teams score in the first half, you'll get a 25 % profit boost. If any player goes for 100 more receiving yards, you'll get a 50 % profit boost. And if there's a defensive or special teams touchdown, you'll get a 100 % profit boost. This is a tough game to handicap. You really have to, um, you have to figure the Rams. Oh, and one playing the giants, the Rams with a ton of rest, they'd be in a good spot.

27:25Bill Simmons:I would almost go like Rams with like a minus nine and a half, put it with some Stafford stuff, go nuts and do a profit boost or go the other way and bet the giants money line. I need a lot more time to look at this game, but regardless, download the Fandu app. Make this your most rewarding season ever with Fandu. 21 plus select states are 18 plus DC or Wyoming. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fandu.com. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. It's the small moments where we have the most fun sometimes, like having a friendly little competition with your friends.

28:06Bill Simmons:sees the fastest or we can put better in the backyard or who can get to somebody else's house or the better route, whatever it is, even better. If you put some Michelob Ultra on the line or a refreshing way to up the stakes, like me and house are going to pick games against each other on Thursday. It's the NFL season. Maybe we keep track in ways of a Michelob Ultra six packs. I'm happy to do that. Maybe Michelob Ultra will make a special BS podcast or ringer six packs. And then we could, we could barter them back and forth, whatever it is. By the way, they should do that for us. Superior is worth playing for.

28:44Bill Simmons:Michelob Ultra Superior Light Beer. Enter for a chance to win superior soccer, basketball, and golf prizes at Michelob Ultra.com slash superior access. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026. Anheuser-Busch Michelob Ultra Light Beer. St. Louis, Missouri. So the game of the day for a variety of reasons, was a game that I lost on a couple teases, but I did hit on a 13-point tease with the Bucs to plus four and a half. Don't ask. It's ridiculous. The Bermuda Triangle game, Browns-Bucs. We thought this was our last chance ever to bet against Deshaun Watson, the embattled Browns quarterback, who was playing the guy that they gave up to basically trade all these picks and sign him.

29:29Bill Simmons:Tom Pellicero did a great newsletter about it this week in the sweep. And then Deshaun comes out legitimately outplays baker mayfield and ends up even though he's only 3.7 air yards per attempt but he's 24 for 30 for 238 and kind of hit a groove in the second half like he was just going back four steps just quick passes out he was completing third downs he hit boston for a nice run and catch touchdown and all of a sudden the bucks are down and everybody in the planet has the Bucs and the Tees. Now they're driving. They're over midfield. They're two minutes left. And they're like, oh, we have to stop the game.

30:10Bill Simmons:It's lightning. Which happened yesterday too, the North Carolina game. Oh, yeah. Baker's driving. Did you feel like Tampa was going to score? Because I personally did. You did? I did. I thought they were going down. I thought this was, the weather wasn't that bad. What point of the afternoon? Before it was cold? Before it was cold. No. Yeah. I was like, no, no. We got this. Baker's just being a dick. There's no way he's losing the Browns. So you felt like it was a loss.

30:36Cousin Sal:Yeah, because when they did go to the break, so it's second and four at the 28 with two minutes left for like two and a half hours. And it kept staring us in the face. The live line was Tampa minus 148 or something.

30:49Bill Simmons:Oh, I didn't think they were going to win after the break.

30:51Cousin Sal:Oh, after you didn't think. Yeah, I didn't think they should be favored.

30:53Bill Simmons:No, I'm saying before when they were going down, I just thought they were going to win and then it stopped.

30:57Cousin Sal:Oh, so you think that screwed them. Yeah, interesting.

30:58Bill Simmons:It felt like divine intervention. shades of 2016 World Series when the Cubs got the miracle rain delay. Deshaun got the miracle rain delay to keep his job.

31:09Cousin Sal:Okay, but I thought it should have favored them. They got to... We can go over the play calling after they came back. And by the way, that delay when we have money on the bucks, that was like you're playing blackjack and the dealer holding a six and she can't flip the card for two hours because the guy next to you doubled down or split and is waiting for a marker. It's like, oh my God.

31:28Bill Simmons:The pit bus has to go.

31:30Cousin Sal:over. This is my winning bet. Can I just have other bets that depend on this? And we stayed for two and a half hours to decide if we wanted to hedge. It was so long that I missed

31:40Bill Simmons:it. You guys were texting the game was over and I was like, I've been waiting for it to come back. They gave us, it just disappeared. It was gone for two and a half hours. Good for you. At a pivotal point, I was all excited to put it on my multi view and then it was just over and then so I rewound it and watched it and, you know, guy drops a touchdown in the corner. And it was really like, to me, it was, it was if they had kept Mike Evans, they win the game because he would have caught that pass in the corner and they would have won. They'd be one-on-one, but they let him go. They had a rookie who missed it.

32:10Bill Simmons:And then he misses, like Buka wide open, right over the middle for the winning touchdown. He was terrible.

32:16Cousin Sal:Second and four, so they have the advantage here. Like the defense is stuck in mud if you're going to run. They have new cleats. They have clean socks. Bucky Irving runs for three on second and four. Easy three. third and one he runs for six and now they use a timeout they have him reeling and baker throws like a six yard pass then incomplete to hearst way off offensive holding so now you're back at the 23 baker runs out of bounds and sails and he was sailing balls all over the place and ball splashes and hits the mascot it just sucked i don't understand he's also there's the good version

32:51Bill Simmons:of him but the bad version of him is just terrifying to gamble on right you know there's traffic. He's good enough to move around even though there's guys all around him. But then he's also just dangling the ball around and you're convinced he's going to get strip-sacked for five seconds or from behind. I thought he was really bad.

33:09Cousin Sal:They are such a tough watch. I begged you not to bet an NFC South winner. I begged you.

33:15Bill Simmons:Not only did I bet them the last two weeks, I had futures on them. They're 3-10 in their last 13, which I wish I had thought of. There was an incredible Twitter video. I think I mailed to you. of this guy in the corner waiting for them to walk. Yeah. To the runway after the game. And he's like, I'm going to yell Baker when he comes. And then Baker's coming. He's like, Baker, you suck. You suck.

33:37Cousin Sal:They're just yelling at balls. This is great. I, by the way, I'm fully on board with that. That poor bastard. And others were there for seven hours to wait, to see Baker blow that drive. I think they should be allowed to even go in the locker room. You don't want like the victims families get to yell at the defendant. Like, I think that's how it should have been.

33:55Bill Simmons:Baker for two and a half hours. I sat in the concourse.

33:59Cousin Sal:Look at Baker's face. He's showing no remorse. And that's why he should ever play again.

34:07Bill Simmons:A reader, a listener named Brian Godish wrote in Todd Bowles was dead man walking at the end of last season. How could you have had such faith in Tampa going into this season? You're usually all over these things. He's right. I usually am all over these things. Why did I like Tampa? I think I was just thrown off by how bad the division was. Wow. They stink. They can't block either, which is the weirdest thing to me. The Browns were kind of in their business. And I got to say, like, I thought that was a pretty encouraging win for the Browns. You know, they're on the road. It's super hot. The weather's bad.

34:43Bill Simmons:It was, everybody thought it was Deshaun's last game. Mankin, after the game, he was saying, Browns are going to Browns. Fuck that. which was he was talking about the Tomlin quote. Tomlin, right.

34:53Cousin Sal:But it seemed like that galvanized them. I mean, after two weeks, after the first week, they could claim they won the Miles Garrett trade, right? Because Gary gets hurt. After the second week, they could claim, oh, we made the right decision for moving on from Baker. Like, you know, in a real, I'm being sarcastic, but for God and Jared. Not really, though. You're not wrong. And Jared Verse, like, didn't do anything. Like, he had, like, one pressure. But you're right. They were in on every play. Like, if Baker couldn't step up through the pocket and run, that was just going to collapse on him and it'd be a disaster.

35:22Bill Simmons:Pete C. from New Jersey wrote in, I know we all lost money on that inexplicable Bucs game, but should we all be secretly thanking Tampa by losing to Cleveland, they bought us at least two more opportunities to bet against Deshaun and recoup our losses, including week four Thursday night home against the Steelers. That has all the makings of an all-time national hate watch. Did they do us a favor? I did think about that. Is there a Ponzi scheme move? Just keep going against the Browns week after week. I did think he was pretty good in that game I can't believe I'm saying it

35:54Cousin Sal:and they play the Panthers this week yeah this practical drill continues with Deshaun Watson

35:59Bill Simmons:well you would say we were texting with House about this we were you'd think the Bucs 0-2 15 % chance to make the playoffs when you start at 0-2 and yet you look at the NFC South well you're right on the Falcons Falcons working cross off Carolina 1-1 New Orleans 1-1 and Tampa 0-2. You might have been right. You did that whole thing about 7-10. It's going to be four 7-10 teams. 7-10 is going to win this division. It's looking pretty good. We'll see.

36:33Cousin Sal:I could be right about one thing from August.

36:36Bill Simmons:Some other things maybe not as right.

36:39Cousin Sal:Is Atlanta a real cross-off or are we waiting? It's too early?

36:45Bill Simmons:No, I think Miami is the first cross-off.

36:47Cousin Sal:We're ready to do it? Yeah.

36:50Bill Simmons:That's our first cross-off, the Miami Dolphins?

36:52Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah.

36:53Bill Simmons:They're horrible. I mean, that San Francisco game, it was minus 13 and a half, and you just had to treat it like a college game and not be afraid of it and just bet it, right? Like UCLA last night was minus 14 against Purdue, which was a push, and Purdue's a lot better than Miami is. But I think like five weeks from now, we look back and think that that line should have been 19.

37:16Cousin Sal:Yeah. Well, I'm a jackass because I took Miami as one of my Ringo 107 picks. Yeah, what was your rationale? That was the time zone thing?

37:24Bill Simmons:Australia?

37:24Cousin Sal:Time zone. They didn't care about this. They could win this game by 10. And then you look and it's like they have one pro bowler versus 54 combined for San Francisco. It's like you do with the points. You know how you evaluate teams. You get points. All right. Yeah, that's all you just need to do. I'm trying to find outscored 62-19 in two games and it feels like much worse.

37:47Bill Simmons:So did we learn that this time zone thing might actually be overrated? That if you're flying in a huge jumbo jet when everybody's got really comfortable seats and all this football team shit, maybe it's not that bad?

37:59Cousin Sal:I guess so. I mean, what the Rams did wasn't smart, right? But no. Yeah.

38:04Bill Simmons:Well, San Francisco has real wide receiver issues now. Because Robinson got hurt today. Evans is already banged up. They lost all their other guys. You know, why do they play guys?

38:16Cousin Sal:They know they're the 49ers and have to sacrifice three bodies a game. So why is Evans in there in the third? Was it the third quarter or fourth?

38:23Bill Simmons:That's true. They should have told Evans, you're playing 10 snaps. Get out of there. Most interesting game that's going to seem like sour grapes for me because I took a huge position on Texans for the year. I was all in on them. Picked them to make the Super Bowl. I was underselling the Bengals. Did not believe all the hype, the schedule stuff. And the Bengals beat the Texans. and on the face of it, it was a legitimate win. I'm not taking the win away from them. But I also watched the entire game and it was a really stupid game.

38:53Cousin Sal:You were popping off about the lopsided stats. Oh my God.

38:56Bill Simmons:The Texans, they fumbled a field goal snap, which happens once a month. How many times does the holder fumble a field goal snap? Is that a once a month, just any team? Yeah. If I gave you like in October, minus 0.5 fumbled snaps from the holder in the entire in every game in October. Would you go over or under? Oh, I think I'd go over it. In October, it's getting a little colder,

39:23Cousin Sal:but yeah, this week, yeah.

39:25Bill Simmons:It's a rarity. I'll say that. They have another, so that's inside like the 25. They have another horrible fourth and one call, which is like a Texans Groundhog Day thing where it's just fourth and one. Let's want a really slow developing kind of 45-degree angle run. and the guy will get tackled. And they kind of controlled the first half, I thought. It's 0-0 forever. And then Chase makes just one of the best catches of the last couple years. And I have no fucking clue how he caught this. And all of a sudden, it's 7-0 Bengals, and you kind of know the game's over. Houston rushes for 14 carries, 18 yards.

40:03Bill Simmons:Stroud throws for.353 with no Nico Collins. And Burrow honestly sucked in the first half. and I thought turned it on in the second half and was better, but he was in duress. He got sacked five times. He was maneuvering out. Like he was being chased. They only had 12 first downs. They got outgamed by 107 yards. Sal, they punted eight times.

40:25Cousin Sal:Yeah.

40:26Bill Simmons:So their defense is definitely better, but I'm still not 100 % sold yet. I'm sorry. I can't get there yet.

40:32Cousin Sal:I'm trying to figure out how much we would have bet on the Texans if we knew that they would win the first downs 22 to 12 and they would hold Barro to under 200 or maybe he had 207, including the sacks, maybe he goes on their butt. What about eight punts?

40:45Bill Simmons:Eight punts? Eight punts.

40:46Cousin Sal:And I don't think it's Stroud's fault. Like, they had 18 rushing yards, like you said, from their running backs. Thought he was really good in that game.

40:53Bill Simmons:I really, I thought that was, like, the best I've ever seen him play. I didn't even know who he was throwing to. It was like Booty. It was whatever the receiver they took last year who didn't have the torn ACL, Noel. Right. Yeah, and who ran the ball, too.

41:07Cousin Sal:Like, he was one of the better running backs.

41:08Bill Simmons:because I had it on the T. I had it on the permanently on the lower left TV, but no sound. So I didn't even know who he was throwing to half the time. It was just like, there's another guy. But the Bengals,

41:20Cousin Sal:the problem is a lot of smart people. And also Anthony, the bundle pick Nico Collins as offensive player of the year. So if he's not, and I know it, I clicked a little today, but if he's not in that offense, it is going to be tough sledding. Some of these games.

41:34Bill Simmons:Right. So we have the Bengals week one. they get four fumbles from a Tampa team that then proceeded to take a huge dump the next week against Cleveland. Then this game, they beat the Texans, no Nico Collins. They kind of just didn't beat themselves was how they won. Let the Texans kind of beat themselves. I hate to be a dick when they're 2-0 and their defense is clearly better. Like, their defense is clearly better. They have, like, a little more of an identity. There's no question. But I would not put them as a contender at this point.

42:04Cousin Sal:Well, I mean, it helps when the Ravens lose dumbass games like they do, right? Right. And we don't like the Steelers, so it'll probably be decided the last game of the year. But yeah, I think they still have trouble protecting Borrow, which is always going to be a problem. Yeah, I don't know. I read into the narrative, too. He was throwing lefty in practice, screwing around, but he also had a really tight back. And it looked like he might not even play. Dumb on us.

42:32Bill Simmons:the best way to put it would you do the bet again I think I might if you just run that back no I just feel like if they played that game 10 times I think they probably each win 5 whereas like the Tampa game I had huge regrets from like within an hour oh my god this team's a mess

42:51Cousin Sal:you got a lot of money you could keep losing on losing bets I mean you would do the bet again it's fine

42:58Bill Simmons:Ravens Saints Baltimore this was the annual September game I was texting with Mallard about it. It's, I don't even know. What other September traditions do we have? I guess Labor Day?

43:10Cousin Sal:Labor Day. Fantasy football drafts. Survivor comes back. Fantasy football drafts.

43:15Bill Simmons:The Ravens losing a stupid game. Saints are down 14-3 at halftime. Didn't matter. Never turned it off. Was waiting for them to make a run. What's the nickname for them? Would you go with the big never easy? For the Saints? Yeah.

43:28Cousin Sal:Well, I was thinking, I was putting it more on Tyler Shuck because we try to come up with a nickname for him. But I think every game is going to end with a Tyler Shuck comeback and then announcers are going to be like, oh, did he get in? Did he not get in? All right, it depends what they ever called on the field. It's like, so I think we need to come up with a name for when he's right on the goal line and the game hangs in the balance and we wait on the booth review. Just a tip? Just a tip is good. I was trying to do Shuck. Shuck around and find out. Like, we got to find out. We got to figure out.

43:58Cousin Sal:Mother Shuckers? Yeah, the Mother Shuckers.

44:00Bill Simmons:He leads the NFL in passing. Do you have any explanation for why Derek Henry had five carries after halftime?

44:09Cousin Sal:So I know the lineman went out. That was big. But yeah, they scored three points in the second half and he had five carries. And it's awful shit what they do. Like this is their 11th home loss when winning by more than a possession in the last half dozen years or something. Like this is really weird.

44:27Bill Simmons:I thought the line was too high. I did not take Saints for Ringer 107 because they played overtime last week, and that always scares me. But losing the two receivers. Rashad Bateman, who had a big game today, but was available in every fantasy league. I picked him up. I had. Did you finally pick him up the last day? I did. I'm one of them, yeah. Like on Thursday and Friday, he was just sitting there for anybody to take because I think we've all had him at this point. Right. Marlon Humphrey said after the game, there's consensus among the team that everybody is tired of seeing us doing what we just did.

45:01Bill Simmons:And Lamar, we should mention, had a singularly atrocious end of the game pick. Right. Really bad. Really, really, really awful. Yeah. But it's September and they're missing Zay Flowers. And I'm not going to overreact to this.

45:18Cousin Sal:Well, and you want to kill quarterbacks because that's just the way this goes. But people get mad at the Allen-Lamar comparison. And it's like, here's how you can compare them. Their defenses cannot get stops in the fourth quarter in big spots. It's almost the same for both of them. So maybe this wasn't a hardball thing. Oh, you got to think hardball was just loving this. If they're going to lose anyway, double-digit lead.

45:41Bill Simmons:He had a great time. I will say this about the Saints, who I've enjoyed the last two weeks. Shuck, he's definitely a heat-check QB. You can see it as he's starting to feel it. The two receivers are just good. Olave and Vele are both good. They get open. They can catch in traffic. They have speed. And the tight end's good. Johnson. Right? And now when they have Kamara and A-chan, we're supposed to call them now. Yeah, yeah. They have just a lot of explosiveness. So I think any game like that where they're big underdogs, I almost think like they're an automatic pick at this point for me. If they're getting more than a touchdown, yeah, or second half.

46:20Bill Simmons:They're a cheap touchdown team, but they move the ball. You know, I don't really – are they going to make the playoffs? I don't know. They're not going to go 9-8 or 10-7. They don't need to. 8-9 might be good enough. 7-10. Vikings-Bears.

46:38Bill Simmons:I wasn't really focused on this game because it really felt like nothing was ever happening. They didn't want us to look. I don't know how much you watched of this. I did have it on one of the big ones. It was 3-3 or 6-3 for three hours.

46:51Cousin Sal:This was opposite of Detroit-Buffalo, right? Where every SGP in this one just burned in hell. It was just bad. And then the, I don't know, like when Ben Johnson's like saying, we're going to break the points record, he's got to remember that it's, he's a coach of a team that we're, the weather's awful for their, all their home games, you know, right in September. So I don't know. It's a bummer. We all like Caleb 4 ,000 yards plus and bring a wise guys. I think he was their favorite quarterback this year. I know he's not done for the year, but this is, this is bad.

47:24Bill Simmons:It just, we, we have like Achilles, PTSD at this point and the way he went down, it just seemed like it was Achilles for 10 minutes. And they showed the replay. There was an unbelievable, somebody had a Twitter video of a cameraman, just no announcers, but somebody who was on the sideline taking the video. And Caleb goes down the crowd, he's scrambling and the crowd's going nuts, right? Cause they think he's going to, it's like, and then he gets trips. It's like, Oh, and then he rolls over and the crowd goes oh and then he tries to get up and rolls over and it's like a third oh it's like a simpsons episode it was like they're just getting kicked in the nuts but it was like 70 i don't mean to make fun of it it was it's like really crazy right crowd like reacting to this and slowly realizing that he was hurt and yeah it seemed like he was out for the year and he's crying he's got the towel over his head and then it turns out it's a hammy then there's one 40 minutes later

48:20Cousin Sal:where they're all on their phone checking Twitter like

48:22Bill Simmons:hamstring.

48:27Bill Simmons:I thought Tyson Bajin was going to win it for them. I like him. He's one of my favorite backups, but he was terrible when he came in. So they go 59 points last week, three this week. And Colton Loveland is officially, is it him or Drake May for fantasy murder of the year so far? Of non-injured guys. Well, Loveland was one for three today, right? Zero points last week, one for He was going for 20, 25 bucks in fantasy leagues. Right?

48:54Cousin Sal:Second or third tight end. Yeah.

48:57Bill Simmons:Yeah.

48:58Cousin Sal:Yeah, I would say Loveland. And it doesn't seem to get better. But I guess we can give credit to the Vikings defense, right? They kept the Bears under 300 yards at home. After, like you said, put them 59. But I think it's like, just get out of our way, Carson Wentz. Just complete 10 or 11 passes and let Brian Flores work his magic.

49:18Bill Simmons:Brian Flores has to get a job in the National Football League. You're going to be seeing that a lot this week. Carson Wentz, 11 for 20, 143 yards, no touchdowns, no turnovers. Minnesota, 11 first downs. It was enough. They scored nine points. Did what they had to do. But that's a... That one's kind of smart for the Bears. I feel like you got to win that one at home against Carson. Carson. They had 14 plays in the red zone.

49:51Cousin Sal:The Vikings had one. It was that fumble. Was it Swift that fumbled? That was...

49:56Bill Simmons:Yeah.

49:57Cousin Sal:They were right there.

49:58Bill Simmons:So then the other quarterback injury was a little more serious. Jaden Daniels, who has now been injured in four of his last five starts.

50:05Cousin Sal:Yeah.

50:05Bill Simmons:This one was a bad one. It led to the... They're showing the replay and Tom Brady screaming, oh, shit! Yeah. On national TV. So we injured QB so far. Daniels, Caleb, Darnold. and Herbert psychologically, and maybe Drake Bay as well. Daniels is the only one who seems like he might be gone, gone. But I don't know what the prognosis is on that. This is the one he had last year, right?

50:30Cousin Sal:And he got injured, and he came back, and then he had it again. And if you look at it, it looked bad. Like, it's bad. We're used to seeing that with legs and everything, but there was extra whatever hanging from his arm. And it's like, you know, I'm a Cowboys fan, but you can't root for injuries. You just can't. I don't know who I'm talking to right now, but when you look at it, it's like, You're talking people out of rooting for injuries. Yeah, please don't root for injuries. Because then you get Bajan and you get Cooper Rush and you get Jack freaking Strand and Carson Wentz and Marcus Mariota and Justin Herbert.

51:01Cousin Sal:No, but it's week two. And what's this going to look like? What's this going to look like in a month?

51:06Bill Simmons:Not only do you get Jack Strand, you get fans cheering when Jack Strand comes in because he's a better option than the guy you just had to watch for two hours. Washington, 0-2, the season's over. you easily could have talked me into making them a cross-off team.

51:24Bill Simmons:They might be in the hunt for the number one pick. You got to think about it because Daniels is going to be a huge extension after this year, and it's like he's played one of three seasons. It's a bummer for them.

51:36Cousin Sal:I mean, they could have won that game. Even if he doesn't throw that, whatever, if that pass goes incomplete, they were going to win that game. The Cowboys defense. You felt that way? They allowed 20 points, but it could have been another 40. I mean, Daniels did overthrow, right? He had wide open guys overthrown. There was a couple drops. This defense is just, they hit hard, which is fun, but there's like six guys moving from a 4-3 to a 3-4. And you just, I don't know, they just look way out of place.

52:05Bill Simmons:So I'm not going to win my Cowboys over 10.5 wins back?

52:09Cousin Sal:It's just going to be a dumb team again, I think. I'm just glad. I got house owes me a Fogo de Chow dinner because, uh, or side bet that'll get excited, but, but nothing.

52:18Bill Simmons:Can I, can I come to that?

52:19Cousin Sal:Yeah, that you can come to.

52:21Bill Simmons:Yeah. Thanks. Um, I wrote that in my notes. Mariotta is like the mass singer. I can't believe we're still doing this. I don't even know what that means, but it's like season 50 of the mass singer. It's another, it's another eight game starting stretch for Marcus Mariotta. Like who wants this at this point? Washington fans don't want it. I don't want to bet for or against it. Nobody wants it on their fantasy team. He doesn't even seem like he wants it. Who wants him to start NFL games?

52:53Cousin Sal:It was like you don't know who the backup is, and then they come in and they take the mask off. That would be good. That could go too, yeah.

52:58Bill Simmons:The mask backup? Right. Oh, my God. It's Deshaun Kaiser. What's he doing here? All right. So you're not enthused by your team. My team, as you know, nothing good happens when you play the Pittsburgh Steelers. Just guys get injured. Dumb fumbles happen. People lose confidence. Penalties. You just never feel good after. That was a no sweat game for you, though. You only needed one explosive play.

53:27Cousin Sal:We lost on Wenu, though.

53:28Bill Simmons:We lost probably our right guard. It's probably our most consistent lineman. T.J. Watt rolled up on him. Right. Posadona Vrabel. He used that. Posadona, I wouldn't say he's as crisp. There's some clock management stuff that he missed today that I was like, oh, Vrabel doesn't usually miss that stuff. Our DBs were decimated by the end of the game. And it didn't matter because Aaron Rodgers was on the other team and he was really, really, really awful. and we were hitting the shit out of them and I had a great time. Yeah, why not?

54:09Cousin Sal:Nothing's changed for that team, right? How long has this team been the exact same way? Like seven years, the Steelers?

54:14Bill Simmons:I feel like it's grimmer now. Like Rodgers was 39 for 187 today and then took some big hits.

54:21Cousin Sal:39 attempts for 187 total.

54:28Bill Simmons:Metcalf's a mess. Gonzalez, like, I don't know what the final stats were, but he guarded him most of the game and defended him and followed him around the field. And Metcalf was just, got crushed. The biggest thing to me, and I know Doudo got hurt during the game, but I thought the same thing last week. They can't really run the ball either. They're not, at least last year with Gainwell, they had this pass-catching running back kind of angle. This year, they don't even seem to have that. So they have no running game. It's really just Metcalf and Friar moves. This guy, Jeremy Bernard, had a couple plays today.

55:00Bill Simmons:But I would say from a skill position standpoint, it's one of the grimest situations in the league, right? Yeah, it's bad. Whose skill, which, would you want Pittsburgh's guys over anybody else's guys?

55:14Cousin Sal:Well, the Raiders without Bowers, except they're making it work.

55:17Bill Simmons:But you get Gente, though. Yeah, I get Gente and Bowers with the Raiders.

55:20Cousin Sal:Dolphins. Miami, I get A-chan. A-chan, yeah. Right? Etienne. I think he wants to go by Etienne now.

55:26Bill Simmons:Oh, he flipped the other way?

55:28Cousin Sal:Yeah, they switched. Yeah, yeah. Chargers, I get

55:31Bill Simmons:O'Mara Hampton and I get, uh, I get McConkie.

55:34Cousin Sal:I love that. The Chargers are in this conversation now. But I'm trying to think, like,

55:38Bill Simmons:who has worse skilled guys than Pittsburgh? You're right. You could see in the pregame, Tom, and I was like, yeah, it's really hard. Like, he had to buy a bike. I'm glad I got him.

55:48Cousin Sal:I do have to read some. I'll read an Aaron Rodgers stat because he still remains the only quarterback who accused my cousin of being the Epstein file. So if there's another one, I'll read this. All right. So Aaron Rodgers has attempted 12 passes, 20-plus yards downfield, all their first two weeks without a completion. It's the most deep attempts in a two-game stretch without completion in four years. And the Pats blitzed him. This seems to be the thing to do. Just blitz him on 18 dropbacks. They're most in a game since 2024. Good job by them figuring it out. He had 43 yards passing on the blitzes.

56:19Cousin Sal:Eight pressures, two sacks, one interception. It's pretty easy.

56:22Bill Simmons:I hit this one on Ringer 107. I thought the line was a little too low, and I thought the defense could win by itself. what I wasn't counting on was McDaniels who had his second straight horrific play calling game I just don't know what he's doing and I don't feel like he has a feel for the team but there's like a real Drake May conversation now like every Pats fan text right I'm on my dad is probably the most upset about it he doesn't understand what's happening he's like this is what happened to Mac Jones I'm like don't say that don't utter those words but I'm gonna call

56:58Cousin Sal:him after this. I know it's going to be late by him, but I'm going to call him.

57:01Bill Simmons:Drake May has been a mess. He just has. And even when they've hit big plays, he's been short on the throws. He was short on the flea flicker in week one. He was short today to Dobbs. That should have been a touchdown. He knows he's not playing well because he said in the post-game press conference he seemed like he was bummed out. Why don't you just

57:22Cousin Sal:stick with the injury thing? I would even buy it, I think, now. He doesn't throw the same ball as he did last year, right?

57:28Bill Simmons:No, he's got there's some happy feet stuff happening with him it's it he was so awesome last year and i don't know how they get him back how they get his confidence back but he does not look at the same confidence he is a little bit of the yips yeah he does um now that now if you're defending him you're gonna say they play seattle in week one who just dismantled arizona too and might have the best defense in the league pittsburgh's front seven is excellent right yeah he lost a.j brown in the first hour of the season. They don't really have another, they don't have digs from last year. They don't really have a receiver you trust.

58:04Bill Simmons:But this is why they nailed the second tight end, this Raritan. They took him the third down. He's made big plays in both games. He's an excellent blocker. I don't know why they don't play him and Henry together more and just go bigger and try to run and use more play action and just try to get Drake more confidence. But over and over again, it just seems like he's rolling out and just, I don't get it. You'll be okay.

58:27Cousin Sal:He's supposed to be better this year, not worse. You'll put up 40 against the Dolphins and who else? There are a couple cupcakes on there.

58:37Bill Simmons:I'm concerned. I didn't like when my dad texted the Mac Jens thing. It upset me, set me off, knocked me backwards. Broncos-Jags. This was interesting because about halfway through this game, I was like, holy shit. Should we look at AFC title ads for the Jags? They look like a juggernaut. And all of a sudden, their offense stopped doing anything. Their defense is not good. And Denver did the thing that they used to do last year where they start out slow, and then all of a sudden they put together a good hour, and you're like, holy shit, they're winning.

59:10Cousin Sal:Yeah, and you look at Bo Nix's stats.

59:12Bill Simmons:How did he get to that?

59:13Cousin Sal:He was so bad.

59:14Bill Simmons:Yeah, he has 298 yards. I watched the whole game.

59:16Cousin Sal:Yeah, nuts. It looked like another game they were just going to give up, and they're not scoring a lot. but Vance Joseph's defense was good. I guess we couldn't expect it to go sour two weeks in a row. They needed to show up, and they did. They're also down two running backs now. They have that rookie Coleman now. We got a bunch of carries, so maybe that's the offense. But the most promising thing for Denver, I thought, was working Waddle in there. He had eight grabs for almost 140.

59:41Bill Simmons:He's really good. Their defense looked like they actually remembered to tackle this week. Denver for the year, 6 for 22 and third down. they're one out of four first and goal actually scoring not not great but um i i thought it was an important win for denver because if they're oh and two and nicks isn't good there's some real stuff now you and then everyone's gonna talk about the play caller should payton take the play calls back like it's just another week of that um the jags could kind of get away with this but I thought they had a nice chance here. And now I have more questions than answers with them, especially with the defense.

1:00:20Bill Simmons:The reason I didn't think they were a playoff team was because of the defense, and you saw it in the second half. Right.

1:00:26Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:00:26Bill Simmons:September, it's altitude. I get it.

1:00:29Cousin Sal:I don't love the root and tootin' deal. Anybody have like 65 yards? I don't think like... He seems like a backup. But they need like a third and four or something. It's still going to be heavy on Lawrence's shoulders.

1:00:41Bill Simmons:Seattle and the Cardinals. I wrote down Mike McDonald. He's like a jacked Belichick. Did you see him? Oh, yeah. On the sideline?

1:00:53Cousin Sal:He was wearing the medium t-shirt,

1:00:56Bill Simmons:just doing this whole thing. Yeah. But they looked awesome. I got to be honest, I can't really tell the difference between Drew Locke and Sam Darnold. At least against a lousier team. But I thought Locke was legitimately solid today.

1:01:14Cousin Sal:It's interesting. I had a reverse thing. I said, I wonder if the Seahawks said, Hey, NFL, we're giving you Drew Locke to feast on for two weeks. If you can't figure out how to beat us, then we're just going to steamroll everybody now. And he had 235 yards to Brissette's 95. Brissette was trailing the whole freaking game.

1:01:33Bill Simmons:my one red flag with them is the short yardage stuff yeah until i know charbonnet is coming back but when it's like third and one fourth and one stuff near the goal line i don't they don't have that one battering ram guy um it's a lot of like finesse running backs they get in the word may the jsn i know i'm not unveiling anything he was incredible i wonder if he's like an actual

1:01:56Cousin Sal:seahawk like i don't even know if that's real a bird but his routes are ridiculous the way he He glides and he like fakes and doesn't even have to plant his foot. He like, he doesn't slow down to deke the defender. He's just before, before he had this, before he has the ball, it's 17 receptions and four touchdowns this year with true lock thrown to him.

1:02:16Bill Simmons:There was a great clip of him when he, how he got open on that 82 yard touchdown. Is that the one? He made it like he was going to the right, but he used his head and by his head, he made the guy move. And it reminded me of like those old magic Johnson clips where magic Johnson would do the no look and he would just be going his body would be going in different directions from the ball and you're like what's happening? Yeah. I can't imagine would he be the number one person you'd be terrified to try to defend? Oh yeah. Not like today's game? Just to be embarrassed I think as a receiver I think he would be the one I'm most afraid of.

1:02:50Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:02:50Cousin Sal:It's still Aaron Hernandez is first the most terrified but smart. Yeah. I like that.

1:02:57Bill Simmons:I have Mac Jones Drew Locke Stetson Bennett Tyson Bajant and I think Mario to fifth that's my backup QB list right now my backup QB power rankings oh interesting yeah I don't know if there's any others you'd like I didn't look I feel like Matt Jones and Locke are the only ones that could actually come in and keep steering the car straight on like an 11 win team right

1:03:25Cousin Sal:let me look through here yeah I mean we might be seeing Trey Lance soon enough I did not have Trey Lance Who the hell knows Might get there

1:03:34Bill Simmons:I'm not counting at Arizona yet I think that was a different in class But I think there's I think for three-fourths of the league I think they're going to be able to move the ball The big story of this game Chris Myers was the play-by-play in this game You don't say Yeah, I got some emails about it He This is Ben in Guadalajara said I'm guessing this is the first time ever of defending Super Bowl champ is that Chris Myers call their game the following year. That's a compliment. Yeah. And then Rick at San Diego said biggest upset of the day. Imagine Chris Myers surprise when he found out he'd be calling the defending Super Bowl champs instead of Atlanta, Carolina.

1:04:16Bill Simmons:It is amazing he didn't get an Atlanta, Carolina. It's true. Because it feels like they've tried to torture him with the worst game every week.

1:04:24Cousin Sal:But they actually threw him a bone. They sent him to Seattle. this time. I think the biggest upset is that you got an email from Guadalajara and the guy's name is Ben.

1:04:34Bill Simmons:Speaking of Panthers-Palcons, Cooper Rush, your guy, 10 for 17 for 86 yards, two picks and a fumble and bench for a guy named Jack Strand who got a big ovation from the crowd because everybody was excited it was a Cooper Rush. Minnesota State's Jack Strand is here. Jack Strand.

1:04:55Cousin Sal:Chris Myers isn't here to see it. Yeah.

1:04:57Bill Simmons:There's some good stats about how bad the Falcons are, but there's only been four teams ever that had no red zone plays in the first two games of the year. You saw this? Yeah, I did see that. 08 Rams, 97 Lions, and the 92 Pats.

1:05:11Cousin Sal:Mm-hmm.

1:05:12Bill Simmons:A team that really, really got my gambling to go to another level because they were so bad I had no team. Oh, yeah. 92. That was like the first year I was like, I got to have some rooting interests. and I think we went one in 15. It was really bad.

1:05:27Cousin Sal:Well, let me ask you this. Out of those teams that didn't have a red zone possession in two games, did any of them have three primetime games in a row following week two?

1:05:38Bill Simmons:That's coming.

1:05:38Cousin Sal:Because that's what the Atlanta have and Falcons have. What is going on? What happened?

1:05:43Bill Simmons:I looked up why didn't the Falcons keep Cousins and it was because if they did, his salary would have been a big$67 million cap hit for 2027. I still would have kept him. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what the cap hit would have been otherwise. He might just be too annoying. There's some interesting Bryce Young stuff going on. If you go back to week 18 last year and the wildcard game in these first two games where he's 250-plus pass a year. It's four straight games. Good fantasy stats. Throwing the ball 35 a game. You watch them and it's like McMillan and Coker and Darren Waller, they actually have weapons.

1:06:23Bill Simmons:and Bryce, I thought, was good again.

1:06:25Cousin Sal:I'm laughing because of what we did to Heifetz. You remember, right? Tell the story, yeah. Well, Danny Heifetz, who runs the Ringer Fantasy League, he's very, very, very much into it. And he passed and passed and passed for 10 rounds on a quarterback.

1:06:39Bill Simmons:He did the, I'm so smart, I'm going to get my quarterback later move.

1:06:42Cousin Sal:And so we're like, hey, you know what we'll do? There's 14 quarterbacks taken. Let's each take a quarterback in the next 24 picks or whatever. so Heifetz doesn't get one. Well, he was the end of the round,

1:06:54Bill Simmons:so he wasn't coming back for 22 picks.

1:06:57Cousin Sal:Right. So he... We basically picked the top 25 quarterbacks and left them with Bryce Young. Now he has the last lap. Six touchdowns, 600 yards plus for Bryce Young.

1:07:08Bill Simmons:Bryce Young, Cam Ward was left.

1:07:11Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:07:12Bill Simmons:Shuck wasn't even there. Shuck was taken, I think. I took Jackson Dart. That was really fun. Um, we'll take another break for the podcast, but we'll keep going here live on Netflix. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, NFL Sunday ticket kickoffs coming. And with NFL Sunday ticket and YouTube TV, you get every game, every Sunday, all in one place. New users can get NFL Sunday ticket for eight payments of just$30 a month. New users pay$240 or eight, eight non-cancelable payments of$30 a month. first charge of purchase. Availability varies with NFL Sunday ticket for out-of-market games and YouTube TV for local and national games.

1:07:50Bill Simmons:YouTube TV required. Terms, restrictions, and embargoes apply. Commercial use excluded. No refunds. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I already have my dream job. I run the ringer. Argue with Chris Ryan, AKCR, but even dream jobs have not so dreamy parts. You know, the work that slows you down never seems to go away. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They're like digital teammates who actually do the job, start to finish. No handoffs, no homework. That means more time for the work that actually matters, which for me is talking about whether the 86 Celtics can beat the 96 Bulls, which they could.

1:08:26Bill Simmons:To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit ServiceNow.com. Guess the lines. You beat me in week two. We tied in week one. Thursday night, is a class put it this way i am not going to be taping live after the thursday night game this week why i'm gonna i'm gonna bank the podcast and just put it up because it's packers falcons and uh i'm not staying up late to watch that okay and do a podcast i'm just gonna do it won't go if you're worried about that yeah um and again as you mentioned packers this week for them Saints Monday, Ravens Sunday. We have to watch this team three weeks in a row. Panics might be back, and they're making this seem like, well, Panics might be back.

1:09:15Bill Simmons:It's like Panics was one of the six worst starting quarterbacks in the league last year. Right. You can't be this excited about Panics being back.

1:09:22Cousin Sal:Well, I know you saw a lot of stats and everything, but the one that I like was I think their quarterback rating is 38, eight and it would be 39 if they just spiked ball on turf every time. Did you see that? It's not even, I'm not making that up. Maybe that stat, that trend should go away, that metric. Maybe we're just saying that's a bad metric, but yeah.

1:09:47Bill Simmons:They're calling it the kidney stone offense. Sunday's marquee game. I think this is what it is. You didn't pick a lot.

1:09:55Cousin Sal:We didn't guess.

1:09:56Bill Simmons:Oh, you're right. So part of guess the lines is we have to guess the lines, which I just didn't do right.

1:10:00Cousin Sal:Skip the lines. We'll call it. Yeah.

1:10:02Bill Simmons:My guess was Packers minus seven and a half. All right.

1:10:05Cousin Sal:You're going to get it. I went nine and a half. It is only six and a half. Oh, oh my God.

1:10:12Bill Simmons:That's a lot of credit to Michael Penix. Hear ye, hear ye. Get your free teaser leg here. It's the Packers. You just made me realize I accidentally skipped the Jets game. You might have skipped my notes. I just had a lot of, no, that was the biggest one I skipped. Yeah. Um,

1:10:33Bill Simmons:well, when we get to the line, well, cause cause the Packers favorite in this game. Yeah. If you watch that Packers Jets game in a rainstorm, um, I know the Packers ended up winning. I did not leave that game remotely impressed with the Packers who had 199 yards, 16 first downs. There were one for nine third down. Their running backs were 18 for 63. They had 14 penalties. And I don't know how the Jets lost that game. They had it. There was some incredible clock management near the end with Aaron Glenn. He did something near the end that I don't even really fully know how to describe, But he explained himself.

1:11:13Bill Simmons:Well, he wanted to give them the ball in overtime, not knowing who was going to win the coin toss. Right. Was that what he said? I didn't really even... He explained it.

1:11:22Cousin Sal:We didn't want to be pinned back because we wanted to set up for overtime or something. I don't know what the hell he was saying. It was fourth and two.

1:11:28Bill Simmons:There was like 58 seconds left. And he could have called timeout and tried to get the ball back. Now, in his defense, he is Geno Smith as a quarterback, and maybe he just wanted to get to overtime. but he let them run the clock all the way down take a delay a game um do this whole thing where all of a sudden the packers got to try a hail mary um which wasn't successful but there was no scenario where they should have been in any sort of touchdown danger whatsoever um they should have declined the delay game it was all like basic madden shit um and all of a sudden the the jets are in danger with a hail mary for a second then they get to overtime and it's just as bad but uh The point is, the Packers are not good, I don't think.

1:12:10Cousin Sal:Do you think they're good? Well, they became the first team since 1941, the year my father, a giant Jets fan, was born, to lose a game, the Jets, holding an opponent to less than 200 yards, having an opponent with 100-plus penalty yards, and a positive turnover margin. No, they're not very good. I was wrong about the Packers.

1:12:30Bill Simmons:Six and a half. That is proof that it's a Thursday night game. against one of the three worst teams in the league and they're not even a touchdown favorite. So there's your answer. I think if the Jets won that game, I wonder what happens with LeFleur. I know he got an extension, but you're talking about a pretty big defender.

1:12:49Cousin Sal:It's looking bad. I know Jaden Reed went down big. He seems to be okay, but yeah, they could not move the ball. Their offensive line looked really bad.

1:12:58Bill Simmons:Offensive line's bad. I don't really like any of their running backs. They do have the nerd king, Jordan Love. Sunday Marquis, Jaguars home for the Patriots. This is a really good game. One of these teams will be 1-2 after the game. And the other one will be 2-1. Wow, is that right? Yeah, yeah, I just looked that up. Can they tie? All right. I have the Jaguars minus 2-1⁄2 against the Patriots.

1:13:21Cousin Sal:Oh, I had 1-1⁄2. It is, in fact, 2-1⁄2. You get that.

1:13:27Bill Simmons:Yeah, I figured that's what it would be. We'll see with the weather. There's some weird Nor 'easter stuff happening on the East Coast this week. I don't know.

1:13:35Cousin Sal:Really? Already you have a weather report? Yeah. There's going to be a Nor 'easter on the East Coast. But I think that's a nice matchup for the Pats

1:13:44Bill Simmons:because the Jags defense is bad, and that's kind of what they need. They need to go against a defense that's not that good.

1:13:49Cousin Sal:Oh, you just crushed your karma.

1:13:51Bill Simmons:I'm just saying. Yeah. I'm just saying. They kind of need to be in a shootout where Drake May, our quarterback, Drake May can make some plays. It feels good to say it. I have five watchables. The first one would normally be a fairly watchable, but because the Chargers are 0-2 and they're playing in Buffalo and Josh Allen is on a rampage, I think it has to be a watchable. Buffalo and the Chargers in Buffalo. I have Buffalo minus 7.

1:14:26Cousin Sal:Oh, so you cheated today. I see. it's you know I don't cheat I said six Fandle is sick of Chargers shit they're just like yeah this is seven

1:14:36Bill Simmons:I made a mental note from a year ago when we did week three that they do with the 0-2 teams I think they bump it a little bit toward the 0-2 teams expecting our season's on the line kind of shit yeah I think normally this should be like eight and a half but because the Chargers are 0-2 oh you would think it would go

1:14:52Cousin Sal:interesting so I thought it would be lower I think it was like week 15

1:14:55Bill Simmons:no I think it would be higher Chargers are bad

1:15:02Bill Simmons:it's a hundred percent chance I'm putting the bills in the tease bills Packers good don't even worry won't be the Packers and it won't be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next one is the Lions and the Jets Lions are home with their terrible defense the Jets are on the road probably a good idea to get away from their fans and I can't believe I I think this is less than seven, but I have Detroit at home favored by six.

1:15:29Cousin Sal:We split it. I said seven, and it is six and a half. That's fair. That's fair. The Lions are weird. I don't think if you're using them in an eliminator, there's no team I'd be comfortable using the Lions against in an eliminator. Just the way they play. Even though they're better than most teams.

1:15:49Bill Simmons:I'm not with their secondary. I didn't think Gino looked bad today, especially in bad weather. It was kind of a Geno recipe for him to do dumb shit, but it didn't happen. He had two third and long conversions early on,

1:16:03Cousin Sal:and then he ran for one, like third and seven or something. He converted. Yeah, I thought it was good. It was like 247 or something, touchdown.

1:16:09Bill Simmons:Wasn't bad. Bengals are at Pittsburgh. Not a must win for Pittsburgh because they're one-on-one, but this is... This will be a nice test for the Bengals because the Steelers front seven was getting there. Not that the Pats have the best offensive line, but I have the Bengals as a road favorite. I have the Bengals by two and a half.

1:16:32Cousin Sal:All right, good. I get this. I said three. It is three and a half. Oof.

1:16:37Bill Simmons:Wow. When's the last time the Steelers have...

1:16:41Cousin Sal:It's just not a lot of scoring, right? Like this is... Their games are always 18-16 against the Bengals, it seems.

1:16:47Bill Simmons:In the Tomlin era, this was an automatic. I'm taking the Steelers. I don't even care. I'm not even looking at the injury report or the weather. It's like there's no way they're not covering the hook. Three and a half. We'll see with Joe Burrow. Niners are home for the Cardinals. I probably shouldn't have put this in the watchables, but with the Niners, with their weird receiver situation, I think the Cardinals can hang with them. I have the Niners by eight and a half.

1:17:12Cousin Sal:Oh, come on. I got it exact, and I wanted it for myself. It's eight and a half. That's what I had. that's a tease that's your teaser no i'm saying it's a possible tease i'm a little afraid of the

1:17:25Bill Simmons:cardinals though i like their running backs it's weird because it's so stupid to triple down on a position that the nfl has decided is pretty dispensable but i i do like all the running

1:17:36Cousin Sal:he's so inconsistent brissette he didn't have a pass over 10 yards or complete a pass over 10 That was 2004 Brissette today.

1:17:44Bill Simmons:Last one. Going to Brazil. Yeah. Your team, your dumb team playing the Ravens. You're sending me and Mallory, right? I mean, she'd go. That'd be fun. I think we could talk her into it.

1:17:58Cousin Sal:She's having a tough time between the Ravens loss and the Herberts or quarterback.

1:18:02Bill Simmons:She's a pick-me-up. Oh, Herberts or quarterback. I forgot. I gave Ravens minus one and a half for this.

1:18:08Cousin Sal:All right. Let me see. Okay. That's what I had and it was wrong. It is three.

1:18:13Bill Simmons:Oof. So this will be a big topic this week. I'm going to read an email from a Brazilian listener named Kai, C-A-I. He said, I want to warn you about the condition of the Maracanhas field, the stadium where the Cowboys versus Ravens game will play in week three. I hope I said that correctly. The soccer teams that play there complain about the condition of the pitch after every single game. it's honestly embarrassing for Brazil considering Maracana is one of the temples of soccer. Tell Sal that's you to expect a game with lots of slipping and possible injuries to his team because this game is going to be played on a pasture.

1:18:55Bill Simmons:Oh and please, whatever you do, don't bet on this game. That's from a Brazilian listener just begging us to stay away from this game. I might add this to the gambling manifesto When a podcast listener from Brazil begs you to stay away from a game being played in Brazil, stay away. I think that's smart.

1:19:16Cousin Sal:Also, Brandon Aubrey is going to be slipping all our best players. He's going to be missing extra points and shit. Sounds terrible. You know what? I'm not going. What was that game?

1:19:26Bill Simmons:What was it? Two years ago? It was Eagles-Packers maybe on a Friday night. It was like in Rio or somewhere. And it was the same thing. The field was an abomination. Yeah.

1:19:36Cousin Sal:There was one that canceled because the field wasn't ready. It was at Mexico.

1:19:39Bill Simmons:Yeah.

1:19:40Cousin Sal:We'll have to reach out to our, maybe that's what it was in Mexico. Yeah.

1:19:43Bill Simmons:All right. Fairly watchables. I probably put this in the wrong category. This should have been a watchables after knowing what we saw with the Colts tonight, but Texans are at Indianapolis. Two, Oh, and two teams. Is this a loser leaves town match? Oh,

1:19:57Cousin Sal:wow.

1:20:00Bill Simmons:I know the Texans did make it last year after going on three.

1:20:03Cousin Sal:Yeah. I mean, the Colts were eight and two and they didn't make it. So I don't think you could say one way or another for that. this division.

1:20:11Bill Simmons:I hit this exact. I think you could do it too. I had Texans minus two and a half. That's it. That's exactly right. I'm doing way better this week.

1:20:20Cousin Sal:You are. Better field. When you get the lines ahead of time, I think it's probably, can't miss.

1:20:28Bill Simmons:I don't appreciate that. Texans minus two and a half Colts.

1:20:35Cousin Sal:I might stay away from that. I don't care what the field conditions are there. I don't love that at all.

1:20:40Bill Simmons:How many D-backs are Indianapolis going to have for that? Okay, next one is in Washington. It is the Seahawks at Washington. I feel like these two teams play every year. They're not in the same division.

1:20:54Bill Simmons:I wanted to push this above seven, and I couldn't get there because of Drew Locke. So I said Seahawks by six and a half.

1:21:00Cousin Sal:Oh, come on. Push it. Push it above seven. Push it. Push, push. What is it? You said six and a half. That's what it is. I said seven and a half. So what is that with Darnold? Eight and a half? I was looking the other way. It's Mariota against his defense. Right? That's going to be awful. That's probably a teaser game.

1:21:23Bill Simmons:Mariota kind of killed the quarterback show. I never watched an episode of it, but that Netflix show with the quarterbacks.

1:21:29Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:21:29Bill Simmons:And Mariota was like, his experience wasn't going well and he basically bailed near the end. Like in the most interesting part. Well, he's a Masked Singer guy. He can't control all the shows. The Masked Singer, Marcus Mariota. Oh, my God. It's Joe Milton.

1:21:49Bill Simmons:The Masked Backup. That would be unbelievable. That would be so exciting to see the Masked Backup come out. It would be good.

1:21:57Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:21:59Bill Simmons:Is that Andy Dalton's music? Oh, my God, Andy Dalton. Take his keys. Bucks, Vikings in Tampa.

1:22:12Cousin Sal:Please don't let me bet on this, Sal. I'm off five points. I'm already skeptical. What the hell's going on here?

1:22:20Bill Simmons:It's in Tampa. Chance of really weird weather. I just tic-tac-ed it. I did Bucks minus one and a half.

1:22:27Cousin Sal:I said Bucks two and a half. It's Vikings minus two and a half. No. No. There really is. Wow. They're all in. on Carson Wentz in this defense. Holy mackerel.

1:22:40Bill Simmons:You're telling me Carson Wentz is a two-and-a-half-point favorite on the road against a team that's not one of the five worst teams in the league. Well, I have to say,

1:22:52Cousin Sal:now that I think about it, if the Browns had so much success pressuring Baker, if Brian Flores just does the same, is Baker going to complete a pass? I don't know what to expect.

1:23:03Bill Simmons:Brian Flores deserves a chance to be a head coach. There should just be an ESPN channel where they just rotate guys in with a suit where it's really tight in their neck and they're just yelling at us. Everyone's afraid to say no. It's not true. I'm not in charge of an NFL team. You're yelling at me. I'm just on my couch. Poop facto, we have four games.

1:23:29Bill Simmons:Panthers are at the Browns. one of these two teams is going to be two and one. I mean, honestly, I should have put this in the watchables. And you could have even talked me into game of the week because we never thought Deshaun was going to start this game. And now he's going to start. And I have no idea what the fans are. This definitely isn't a multi-view for me. 100%.

1:23:50Cousin Sal:Can I tell you what happened with the Panthers-Falcons to me today? What? I had... So, all right. So, I do the three games. I have a big screen that splits into four. And that's not obnoxious. Everyone could have a big screen right now. It's the one thing that has gone down in value. Like it's gone down$1 ,000. It's crazy.

1:24:09Bill Simmons:TVs are five times cheaper than they ever used to be.

1:24:13Cousin Sal:Don't buy bread, buy bigger TVs. So that's it. So it's split into four boxes. So I have the three games I'm betting on the most on one, two, and three. And then the fourth one I have in a YouTube TV four box. So now I have seven games covered. the shittiest game goes on my computer monitor and it was carolina atlanta and it wouldn't let me load and i was like this is this is karma for all the shit i talk about about the nfc south it's not letting me watch it and i was like you know what i'm fine i won't watch that game at all i was guess what you didn't miss anything i didn't miss anything and i'm gonna do the same with this one that you're calling the game of the week the browns and panthers i've never figured

1:24:51Bill Simmons:out whether i like the red zone or not with the multiple tvs the red zone no because there was eight today and I wanted to have six. I had the red zone in the top left because of the two smaller TVs in the big TV. But then the red zone is always like, it's either a little ahead or a little behind with one of the other games. And they kept going to the Pats game and they were a little ahead of the Pats game, which, you know, I'm focused on, on the TV. I'm now I'm doing this and I was, I got it out. Yeah. I did what you did.

1:25:20Cousin Sal:That's it. That's it. You'll be in a straight jacket by the end of the three hours. You're trying to sync up everything.

1:25:25Bill Simmons:Well, speaking in a straight jacket. You're going to be in a straight jacket if you bet on Panthers-Browns. I have the Panthers in Cleveland favored by three points.

1:25:37Cousin Sal:I think you're going to beat me this week. I have one and a half. It is two and a half. You get that. I've been pretty good this week. I have a good feel. You're winning nine to five.

1:25:47Bill Simmons:I would have done really well with bets this week if it wasn't for Tampa against the Cleveland Browns. I still did good.

1:25:55Cousin Sal:I, I, I love it's one of those rare weeks where I lost money, but I'm not mad because I could, I could have lost a ton. I could have, right. I could have had the, uh, all those teaser teams, the chargers. I only had Tampa, but the chargers were one that lost. Who else? Who was another?

1:26:08Bill Simmons:Who was the other chargers, Baltimore, Tampa?

1:26:11Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:26:12Bill Simmons:Yeah. Yeah.

1:26:13Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:26:13Bill Simmons:Fando. I bet Fando they're calling whatever, whatever date Thursday was that bills lions is apocalypse Apocalypse Day because they lost every same game parlay you could have possibly put together on Thursday. But I think they probably did a little bit better today. Yeah. They'll get back. Chiefs at Miami.

1:26:38Bill Simmons:Wow, I'm seeing this for the first time. I picked Chiefs minus eight. Might be too low.

1:26:44Cousin Sal:I said eight and a half. It is ten and a half.

1:26:47Bill Simmons:I made that guess before they put up 33 points on the Colts. Oh, I hope I don't choke now. I had to send my picks to Eduardo like two hours ago, so I can't even cheat. Start popping up on the screen. I can't even change my guesses as we go.

1:27:06Wow.

1:27:07Cousin Sal:Accountability is a sad thing. I know.

1:27:11Bill Simmons:Three-team ten-pointer with the Chiefs. Is it my future?

1:27:16Cousin Sal:Yeah, it's got to be. Now we have to look at the retainers.

1:27:19Bill Simmons:You know, it turns out Malik Willis isn't that good. He was fine against the Raiders. It seemed like a great idea based on this extremely small sample size in December of a couple good games he had. But it turns out maybe he's not that good. And there's a reason maybe Tennessee gave up on him after a couple years. Yeah, but the Dolphins are okay with it. Yeah, they're fine. They're doing what they need to do. So, Giants-Titans. I mean, we have no idea with the Giants because that game's tomorrow night. It's in New York. I had Giants by four and a half. I probably missed that one.

1:27:53Cousin Sal:All right. I had... No, you're closer than I am. I said three and a half. It is six and a half.

1:28:00Bill Simmons:Six and a half? Jesus.

1:28:03Cousin Sal:They just don't score the Titans. I mean, they essentially scored on... It wasn't a pick six, but it was run all the way back.

1:28:12Bill Simmons:they're in a weird spot with cam ward i don't know what i would do if it was my team where i i don't feel like he's the answer but you also watch something like bryce young and you think maybe maybe this yeah maybe this is like a souffle it's got to stay in the oven for a while

1:28:30Cousin Sal:right but um if you lose to two new york teams in three weeks everything has to be reevaluated

1:28:38Bill Simmons:Saints Raiders this shouldn't have been the poop factor I should have put this in Fairly Watchables it's in New Orleans I think this will be a fun game I'm excited to watch it and I have the Saints by one and a half let me find it

1:28:52Cousin Sal:Saints by one and a half is what I had also Saints by three is the number so I beat you

1:28:59Bill Simmons:yeah yeah we'll still do the other two we're tied for the season I'm gonna take out my starters with three

1:29:04Cousin Sal:okay I'm putting in my

1:29:06Bill Simmons:My mass backup quarterback.

1:29:09Cousin Sal:Here's what's weird about this game. I'm putting in Gino Toretta. Which mass singer are you putting in? It's a 425 start and the Saints are home. Like if it was in Vegas, I could see.

1:29:24Bill Simmons:So how many late games do we have? I think they did the 8-5.

1:29:27Cousin Sal:They finally listened to us?

1:29:29Bill Simmons:I think so. I think so. So we have 2, 3, 4.

1:29:35Cousin Sal:Arizona, San Francisco,

1:29:36Bill Simmons:Minnesota, Tampa, Baltimore, Dallas, and Vegas. There's four. That's good. We just named four for the multi-view. But it's funny that that's the one they would add to the four o 'clock. I like it. Thank you, NFL. All we want is four in the late games. Just give us four.

1:29:51Cousin Sal:We do. And I want them all to start at 425. I don't like this 406 crap. 405, 406, and then two start at 425, and I'm going through the thing. But I can't add the 425 until it actually turns 425. And then there's always an overtime game anyway that they're not going to click at 425. It's fine, 425. We'll still have 20 minutes before the late game.

1:30:13Bill Simmons:Well, I'm the chief multi-view officer of the Sunday ticket, so I'll put your complaints back. Put in a word. My other complaint is if you stay on Packers-Jets, but that game is turning into the next, like the Cowboys-Washington, sometimes they'll move, even though you're on the Packers-Jets, they'll move it to the Cowboys-Washington game, and then you have to, like, scramble and sometimes the game will just be gone. Like something gets screwed up. I don't want that to happen anymore.

1:30:40Cousin Sal:Right. Well, that's why I had to do Tampa. I had to have Red Zone on for my TV, my computer because I'm like, I don't know when this game's coming back and I lost it on the, you can't retrieve it because it's gone to another game. I'll bring it up in our

1:30:54Bill Simmons:Monday multi-view meeting. Sunday night, Rams at Broncos. I thought the Rams should be favored. Wait, did you forget Vikings Bucks? Or did we do that? We did it. Vikings minus two and a half. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Sunday night, Rams-Broncos. I've made the Rams as little of a favorite as possible. Rams minus one and a half.

1:31:15Cousin Sal:I said two, and it is two and a half. So I get that one.

1:31:21Bill Simmons:That's a fun one. I mean, Puka, we don't even know if he's playing tomorrow, right? I don't think he is. No Miles Garrett.

1:31:29Cousin Sal:Is he definitely out? Yeah. Well, that line went down a point too. Six and a half.

1:31:37Bill Simmons:The Rams landed. Yeah. Monday night, Eagles at the Bears. No Caleb Williams. Tough beat. Lucky ass bitches.

1:31:47Cousin Sal:Hate it.

1:31:48Bill Simmons:Yeah, the Eagles can be 3-0 with like the flimsiest 3-0 of all time. And their fans will do the thing where they pretend they don't think the team's that good but like in their little side chats. They'll be shocked if they lose. If we could just be 11-1, we get this guy back, and Howie will do something, and they'll do their whole thing.

1:32:07Cousin Sal:Right. So they get Jaden Daniels' first game off the injury. They get whatever Cam Ward version of that was today, and now they get Tyson Bajan.

1:32:18Bill Simmons:Yeah, I want to look at the rest of there. Yeah, so they have at Bears, home Rams. I'm sure Pucco will be on the IR by that point. at Jacksonville, home Carolina, home Dallas, at Washington, first eight. They'll be like seven and one. I have Eagles minus one and a half at Chicago.

1:32:40Cousin Sal:Wow. I said five and a half. Well, I guess we tie. It's three and a half. Well, I said six and a half. Yeah. All right. So we didn't tie. You get that one. Give me the W for my stats. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Don't cheat. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Thirteen. Thirteen to eight. Big win for me. Yeah.

1:32:59Bill Simmons:Big win for me. Interesting week next week. I love week three. It's really, you're really getting it from some of the 0-2 teams. This is like, this is it. There's no going back if we lose this one. Did you know that psoriatic arthritis may progress over time and could cause permanent joint damage if left untreated?

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1:34:17Bill Simmons:There's driving and then there's driving with peace of mind. Knowing you're behind the wheel of Consumer Reports' safest new car brand, Mazda. The Mazda CX-50 hybrid comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features. So confidence isn't an upgrade, it's a given. Mazda, move and be moved. Visit MazdaUSA.com. Discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com. to learn more. All right. Today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. In parenting and in sports, the best game plan is having the right tools at the right place. That's why the new PayPal app brings shopping, paying, earning rewards, and managing your accounts together in one spot.

1:35:00Bill Simmons:Plus offers, deals, and stackable rewards show up every time you open the app.

1:35:06Cousin Sal:You're up. I know PayPal very well with my kids. Let's go, how I get them money. All right. So my middle guy, Jack, is a senior in high school. and we're figuring out the driving thing with him. He's not there yet. But so for now, I drive him to school every morning, except for Fridays when we do the Ring of Wise Guys early. We have to be seated. We have to go over the outline for a while. It takes a while. So I drive him to school. He took the super early class. So he's home by one every day so that he can get a job. Although I see no evidence of that happening soon. So my wife's busy. She's making sandwiches for the boys while riding a SoulCycle.

1:35:46Cousin Sal:I don't know what she's doing, but she can't help. So he goes, but when I can't drive him on Fridays, he's late every time. I was like, hey, you got to leave the house. If you're walking, you have to leave the house by 7.10. If I drive you, we can leave by 7.17 and you can make it by 7.30, but you have to leave by 7.10. He's not out the door at 7.10 and he's late. And I keep getting emails every time. Now there's been like three Fridays. Tardies. Yes. it's tardies it's imperative that your child be in class on time the school may take disciplinary action if this becomes habitual if you feel your student was marked already in error please have them speak to your teacher to clear up any confusion thank you so I get mad at this I'm like these are stupid emails he's like well when I walk there's a light at the top of the hill what do you want me to do cross against traffic and I'm like now this is my problem and so no I don't want you to cross against I want you to leave at 710 and so you can make it I don't get these emails so now I call him Tardy Marty.

1:36:46Cousin Sal:And he hates it. Tardy Marty. I'm like, oh, here comes Tardy Marty. Even if he made it to school five days in a row on time. Like, Tardy Marty. He's like, I don't like that at all. He's like, you know how you can stop that? Stop being so tardy. And then I'm like, what do I care? You know? Like, why am I getting so worked up? Like, there are no real consequences here. He's not going to get thrown out of school. They push everyone to graduate, right? They're not going to do shit. He's going to graduate. Maybe he could lead

1:37:13Bill Simmons:he could lead the league in tardies this year.

1:37:15Cousin Sal:Yeah. Get something. I'm sure you got like a plaque for that or something, but it's like, you know, is he not going to win a Nobel prize because he's tardy? Like it's, this is his problem. If there are consequences and there are none. So I'm not going to care anymore. Jack, you can go to school at two o 'clock if you want. And I'm going to also, I'm going to make a blanket out of all the tardy emails. I'm going to print them out and make a blanket out of them. So that's a, that's what tardy Marty gets for.

1:37:40Bill Simmons:I thought for sure. Your parent corner was going to be kidney stone related. Oh, well. You've been playing in pain on the podcast since when? Thursday?

1:37:49Cousin Sal:I've been playing since Thursday. I had to get it checked out. I'm flying high right now with this kidney stone thing, but I'm timing out my pain meds like a meticulous scientist. They're dynamite pain meds. They're really... I have a newfound respect for Brett Favre. I might send you a dick pic, actually, after parent corner, but I don't know what I'm going to do. But yeah, I have to get this taken out. It's too big. It's 10 centimeters. It's not going to pass through my urethra or whatever. And so they have to zap it. They have to put you, they have to put like a camera in something up there and they zap.

1:38:23Cousin Sal:I know it's not good. It's not good, but it's painful. It's painful now, but it's supposed to be even worse if it passes.

1:38:31Bill Simmons:Maybe you'll come out after they, from the anesthesia and you'll find out they traded CeeDee Lamb. That's right. That was a big moment.

1:38:40Cousin Sal:a second rounder. Oh, I can't go under. You're right. That's when bad things happen.

1:38:44Bill Simmons:You have your wife be like, is C.D. Lamb good? He just got traded. Right. It's Jack Tardy. What's going on? It's one of my worst nightmares. So what did you do wrong? I think you have to look in the mirror. Usually when you get kidney stones, it means you didn't drink enough water.

1:38:58Cousin Sal:I don't know. They always say to drink water. It is weird to me that just a piece of one of your organs could break off and just float around and you could be in trouble because you have to get rid of it. I don't know what I do wrong.

1:39:09Bill Simmons:doesn't seem great i'll drink some more water um i took ben to the uh ucla game yesterday which is uh they played at eight o 'clock they played purdue um we hadn't we hadn't really hung out for like a long stretch in a few weeks i've been busy he's been you know his girlfriend was leaving and the whole thing so we haven't really like hung and so take them it's eight o 'clock game it's in uh the Rose Bowl is for people listening who don't know where it is. It's in Pasadena. It's in this bizarre. Yeah. You don't even understand it. The Pasadena's got this really nice stretches and neighborhoods.

1:39:45Bill Simmons:And you just would not imagine like, oh, take a right there and a right. And then there's this huge football stadium. It makes no sense. It's like the opposite of Lambo. You go to Lambo, it's like, take a right at the Target. And then you take a left at the grocery store. You know, it just feels like. Rose Bowl makes no sense. It's beautiful. um there's so much energy around the usla program wearing a hat uh our guy bob chesney uh they haven't been good and i think since like the jim mora era um and they hate usc and usc's got lincoln riley and now they're like you know and um they were favorite it was i think seven plus wins was was even odds basically right yeah well they win this they're three and oh they have Oregon and Michigan on their schedule.

1:40:32Bill Simmons:Both which seem scarier games for road games than I think they do now.

1:40:36Cousin Sal:They'll score 40 against good teams

1:40:38Bill Simmons:but both beatable, right? Definitely. And they had this running back that he took from JMU who's like going to be like a Heisman contender if he keeps scoring three to four touchdowns a game. So anyway, good energy. Great back and forth game and my son and I got to like basically go on the sidelines for um which i'd never done before um and you can be in like the 20 yard line to the end zone um on either side right so you can go and then if the ball goes to the other end you race to the other side and you basically and they're right there and the team's right there and it was like incredible and my son was having a great time it's like michael irvin of the ucla

1:41:21Cousin Sal:taking selfies at the corner of the end zone

1:41:24Bill Simmons:so and it's an awesome game it's back and forth and UCLA goes up in the fourth quarter and it's like they might have it in hand but having a great time and my son's like hey I'm gonna bounce I gotta go to this thing but I've had an awesome time it was great I was kind of crestfallen because we hung out for like six hours but one of his friends was in town and he's like we're gonna go out and he's recording studio. I got to go and I'm just going to, but I had an awesome time. And then, uh, then he ditched me with 10 minutes left, but it's, I almost got a full football game out of him. That's just where we are with our kids at this point.

1:42:00Cousin Sal:No, you got a full foot. That was a five and a half hour.

1:42:03Bill Simmons:It was a five and a half hour hang. Yeah. We left the house at five. The game was running long. It was like an 11, but it was still, you know, it was great.

1:42:11Cousin Sal:Did you know he had this plan? Did you drive? No. What did you do?

1:42:14Bill Simmons:Yeah. We drove together and then he Ubered out. I had no idea. It was a classic thing that our kids do where they don't they tell us half the story yeah i'd love to go they don't we don't know that they have this other thing happening um but so i was psyched that we got to spend so much time together and you saw i won three you know but that's good i did get dumped in like the seventh day it's an official game i think i was like i don't know if i can do better than this we're on the sideline of an awesome game with an undefeated team and it's like i got i got to bounce i got this recording recording thing so anyway rose bowl schmo's bowl tommy's laying

1:42:47Cousin Sal:some tracks down. I got to get the hell out of here.

1:42:49Bill Simmons:That's what it's like to have kids. That's today's Parent Corner brought to you by PayPal. More security is always a win. And the new PayPal app has you covered with past keys of biometric security, plus purchase protection on eligible items, all working together so you're safe every step of the way. Download the PayPal app to get started. See paypal.com slash protection terms. PayPal is what I use on eBay. Forever. Yeah.

1:43:12Cousin Sal:It makes sense.

1:43:13Bill Simmons:I've had PayPal. I don't even know how long I've had it at this point. Like I've had When you start thinking of some of these things that we've had our whole, like I've had Amazon since 1998.

1:43:22Cousin Sal:Right.

1:43:23Bill Simmons:And you can go back and you can look at all the things you bought. Can you really? Oh, yeah. You can go back and look at every single thing. The first thing I bought were a bunch of DVDs in 1998, like actual DVDs. I might do that right afterwards.

1:43:36Cousin Sal:After I call your father. You'd be blown away.

1:43:38Bill Simmons:For me, it was like DVDs and books for like five years on Amazon. And then they started adding stuff.

1:43:45Cousin Sal:Can you do that with PayPal too?

1:43:46Bill Simmons:I'd love to see who I gave money to in 2008.

1:43:48Cousin Sal:PayPal would be a lot more interesting.

1:43:50Bill Simmons:Wait, I don't remember giving my son$200. When did that happen? Right. Well, he had to take an Uber to get away from me. All right. So what's your kidney stone plan on Tuesday?

1:44:04Cousin Sal:That's it. Somewhere Tuesday or Wednesday. These offices aren't open tomorrow for whatever reason. And that's going to do it. But I'm going to plug away. And we're going to get that thing zapped. Maybe I'll show it to you. Maybe I could pull it up next Sunday.

1:44:16Bill Simmons:I mean, the more details and the grosser it gets, I think people would want that.

1:44:20Cousin Sal:But we got Ringer Wise guys. Gave out a bunch of good bets this weekend. Yeah. Ringer Wise guys. And oh, if you had a bad beat, take advantage of FanDuel's BetProtect program and have a new site. You'd think this is ridiculous, but BetAkes.com where you could show your losing ticket. And if you had a horrific football loss like Baltimore or Tampa Bay Moneyline and you show enough anguish, I'll reimburse you. B-E-T-A-C-H-E-S.com. Did you see Vanderbilt, NC State? Can we talk about that for a second, that ending? I had never seen an ending like that, I think, ever. NC State up three, getting three and a half points, six seconds left.

1:45:01Cousin Sal:They go to take a safety at the two-yard line. The quarterback.

1:45:06Bill Simmons:Why didn't he just run out of the end zone? What's the big deal?

1:45:08Cousin Sal:He feels that he needs to bleed the whole clock. I think that's the only thing. I mean, he could have just run out of the end zone, and then there's three seconds left. And then they punt it, whatever, sky high in the air. No, he drops back. He gets, right before he goes down, he gets strip sack. And it's a touchdown for Vanderbilt, who kicks the extra point and covers.

1:45:26Bill Simmons:I still think the Pasarczyk one is the best one ever of these. Yeah. Because that completely changed how they played football. After that, they put the two guys behind, and they were so terrified that was ever going to happen again. Right. And it just never happened. Ran it back. It became famous. It was like a famous, the Giants are terrible moment that looked at them until they finally got good. But this one was pretty great. Did people, the only thing is, did people actually bet on NC State versus Vanderbilt? Sure. Did you know people had bets on that?

1:45:55Cousin Sal:Yeah, yeah. I've already seen a few. Did you ever bet on it? No, I didn't have. I stayed away from it. But it's funny, you said the Pasarczyk thing. I think you replied to my thing, like Pasarczyk is the worst, the fumble. And people are like, you're too young. You guys are too young to know Pasarczyk. I'm like, actually, we're not.

1:46:12Bill Simmons:They said we were too young? Yeah. That was a huge deal. We're too old. That was the only way we knew Herm Edwards for like 20 years. And all of a sudden, he was a coach. It was like, the Posarcik guy's a coach? Do you think he got a job because of that? I don't know. That was nuts. That was such a weird moment.

1:46:28Cousin Sal:If Flores had a Posarcik moment, would he be a head coach right now? I don't know.

1:46:33Bill Simmons:He needed it. Yeah, we had that. We had the guy do the snowplow to open up the piece of turf for the Patriots. in the Pats Dolphins game in the early 80s. Right. We had the game where there were no announcers. It was just whistles. Right. You could hear the crowd. And that's with no graphics either.

1:46:52Cousin Sal:I think they added a couple graphics just to be nice or something.

1:46:55Bill Simmons:Yeah, we remember three TV channels back then. We saw this a lot. All right. Thanks to Eduardo and Gahau and Chris from the Ringer side. I don't know if you saw, but we were at in the What Chaos Hockey Pod. They're launching with us end of September. The best hockey pod. They're coming to us in time for the season. Very excited to have them aboard. Let's make some futures.

1:47:21Cousin Sal:They've got to give us two winners. Over-unders or a division winner

1:47:25Bill Simmons:or something. We should make them do something.

1:47:28Cousin Sal:You feel good about your Red Sox? They're playing the Yankees almost definitely, right?

1:47:35Bill Simmons:Yeah, there was a case for the Red Sox to potentially tank and try to be the sixth seed, which I felt like they were doing because they kept pitching Patrick Sandoval every five days. It was like, are we trying to tank? I think he's 0-7 in his last eight starts. But no, we'll see if they can get the actual team that we're supposed to have back in time for a Yankee series. But now no judge. Judge is gone. But you'll still be an underdog.

1:48:00Cousin Sal:You want to beat the Yankees in the first round as an underdog. That's the best.

1:48:03Bill Simmons:So we have Toley and we have Suarez and we have Gray, who all can get to the seventh inning against those guys. And then if it becomes... I mean, Chapman, of course, got hurt right down the stretch. But I don't know about the bats. You know when you just watch a baseball team too much and you're just putting in like... When we get into like fucking nut crunch time in like October. Do I trust this guy? Do I trust this guy? We don't have a lot of guys I trust.

1:48:31Cousin Sal:Yeah. Well, this is the year. I mean, the American League has what? Four teams over 500? You can get to late October with that.

1:48:39Bill Simmons:Well, I mean, the Texas-Houston division, Texas is in the lead now. They're 500.

1:48:43Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:48:44Bill Simmons:Houston seemed like they were headed toward having it wrapped up. And Texas had Quantrill pitching his ass off. Right. And he just got put on the injured list.

1:48:52Cousin Sal:Believe me, I'm looking. They're minus 170 to make the playoffs. I'm thinking there we go the other way.

1:48:57Bill Simmons:Their bats have been hot for like five weeks.

1:48:58Cousin Sal:Yeah.

1:48:59Bill Simmons:Then White Sox Indians, hard to take either. Like, to me, the Rays, Like we played the Rays on Saturday and they beat us in a classic, like stupid Rays game where, you know, Cam and Arrow hit one up the catwalk and he got to get another at bat to get a single. And then, you know, we have a pass ball and then they get a dink hit and they win. And it was just like, okay. We had a guy get thrown out at third. Like they're just good at all these little things. And I watched a team like that and I'm like, these are the fucking kind of teams that win. Right. Like just like smart plays, timely catcher throws out somebody at third base.

1:49:35Cousin Sal:Great seventh inning guy. Right. Pitchers that aren't even expected to go past four innings. I don't even know what to compare it to. Like Princeton basketball or something? I don't know what it is. Yeah.

1:49:45Bill Simmons:All their starters can get to the sixth inning. They have a really good closer. Camonero is terrifying. I think he's, out of all the guys I watched this year, he's the second scariest guy other than Alvarez, who's the most terrifying. Yeah. It's going to be fun. We're going to see a good spot of the season here. Well, the ultimate revenge, right, would be if it was Tampa and the Brewers. And that was our last World Series before we had like a two-year lockout.

1:50:08Cousin Sal:Oh, right, right, right. Yeah. Just small market. Yeah. I'll root for that.

1:50:12Bill Simmons:All right. Sal, good luck with the kidney stones. We'll listen to them. Ring our wise guys. Good job by you. Good job by you, buddy. Bye, Netflix.

1:50:24Bill Simmons:Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and president DC or Wyoming. Opt-in required bonus issued as nominal drawable profit boost tokens. Restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fandler.com. Gave them a problem, call 1-800-GAMBLE or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-79-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplineMA.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana.

1:51:06Bill Simmons:Call 877-770-7867.

1:51:13Bill Simmons:Every game day you show up for your team. Now it's your time. We go deep! We go deep!

1:51:23Cousin Sal:Ask your prescriber about WeGoV, semaglutide injection 2.4 milligrams, a GLP-1. Call 1-833-4-WEGOV or visit wegovy.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about WeGoV. Why wait? We go V!

1:51:43Bill Simmons:Every game day, you show up for your team. Now, it's your time. We go V! We Go V.

1:51:53Cousin Sal:Ask your prescriber about We Go V. Semaglutide Injection 2.4mg, a GLP-1. Call 1-833-4-WEGOV or visit wegovy.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about We Go V. Why wait? We Go V.