The Bill Simmons Podcast - Biggest NFL Bummers, JaydenMania, Hot Food Takes, and ‘Mr. McMahon’ With Sheil Kapadia, Dave Chang, and David Shoemaker
Episode Date: September 25, 2024The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Sheil Kapadia to ask the question "What is going on with the Eagles?" before Sheil gives his five biggest bummer seasons through three weeks (1:35), Then Bill ta...lks with Dave Chang about Jayden Daniels's incredible performance on 'MNF' vs. the Bengals, finally having a QB in Washington, Joey Chestnut vs. Kobayashi, and more before Bill fires off some food takes (36:13). Finally, Bill talks with David Shoemaker about the making of the new Netflix documentary 'Mr. McMahon,' premiering Wednesday, September 25 (1:21:23). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Sheil Kapadia, Dave Chang, and David Shoemaker Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right,
Shio Kapati from the Ringers here.
We're keeping this on Tuesday morning,
West Coast time.
We're going to talk about disappointments and train wrecks,
but let's start a tiny bit positive.
You host the Philly,
the Ringer Philly special for us.
You also were on the Ringer NFL show, but
the Eagles, their
defense actually showed up in week three
after not touching Kirk
Cousins in week two.
Hurts is still all over the place.
You're in a division where Dallas
looks bad. Washington might be exciting with what's happened with Jaden Daniels.
We'll talk about that with Chang later.
Where are we with the Eagles?
Is this team just an enigma?
What is it?
Yeah, I think it's the perfect season for Eagles fans.
I might have said this on your pod last year,
but when they win games, but the fans can still be filled with rage,
that's like the sweet spot for a Philadelphia sports fan.
And that's kind of what spot for a Philadelphia sports fan.
And that's kind of what it feels like it is.
I mean, Nick Sirianni couldn't have had a worse start to the season.
I mean, a coach on the hot seat,
and he is making bizarre decision after bizarre decision.
The on-field product, it's like, are they good?
Are they not?
They're okay.
I think the floor is high.
So I don't know.
I think you're right.
They're an enigma.
Let's see more. But it's just like any Sunday, anything can happen with this team. Did you ever get an explanation for
why he went for it at the end of the first half on fourth and one with a run play with no timeouts
left when the only good outcome would have been scoring a touchdown? No, it's really interesting
because they're one of the few teams in the NFL where the owner is like pro analytics and is like, we will give you the resources, follow what the chart
says every time.
And that's been one of the big storylines of the season is that Sirianni is not doing
that.
He's kind of going rogue and he's like, I got to follow my gut.
And it's like some coaches have earned the benefit of the doubt with that kind of thing.
He's not one of them.
Like he's coaching for his job.
So it's like one of the only situations where ownership,
this would be a big deal for them.
And you're right.
I mean, he goes forward in that spot.
He says he overrides the play call from Kellen Moore.
So the organization hires Kellen Moore as the offensive coordinator.
And then in this high leverage spot, fourth and one,
Sirianni says to the media that he overrides the play call
and it's a disastrous play call.
So he said he thought it was a good call.
You get a couple shots at the end zone after that.
But just another bizarre decision.
That's really characterized their entire season so far.
That was beyond bizarre.
Sometimes you can see the outcome where like,
all right, I get it.
He's being aggressive.
That there was no being aggressive about it because there was no scenario where that worked
out unless the runner just broke through and ran for 15 yards and scored a touchdown.
Otherwise it's a loss.
Every other scenario is a bad outcome.
I've never seen anything dumber than that.
I thought when, uh, when they were down 12-7, I thought for sure they were
going to lose. And then I thought he might get fired after the game. It was that bad. And then
all of a sudden, two Saints collide. Goddard, the one guy on the field who you have to cover,
somehow gets open for 60 yards and they steal the game. But you're right. It's like, how do you feel
good about that if you're an Eagles fan other than Jalen Carter was an absolute all-time monster in that game. So I don't know what else you would feel good about.
Saquon, Saquon, he might've saved their season. Yeah, you're right. I mean, they're down three,
nothing in the fourth quarter. Devante Smith goes out with a concussion and it was like,
is this going to be rock bottom for this tenure? And then Saquon reels off a 65 yard touchdown run.
So he might've like, we might look back if they
make the playoffs or if Sirianni saved his job and be like, Saquon Barkley saved the season in
week three. It's funny because Swift leaves and goes to Chicago for $24 million. The Giants decide
they don't need Saquon and I guess signed Devin Singletary. And then the Eagles are like, we'll
take Saquon. But it was so funny. The Bears like, we'll take Saquon. Um, but it was so funny,
like the bears probably should have just signed Saquon, right? If they're going to spend 24 million on Swift, maybe spend 35 million on Saquon. Maybe don't do Keenan Allen, maybe try to
get alignment, but it's just, it's so funny when you see the season start and then you realize like,
well, why didn't they just, why didn't they go this way?
Why spend 24 million on Swift
when you could just spend 36 on Saquon?
Anyway, he's been awesome.
I mean, I think he's the favorite
for Offensive Player of the Year now in FanDuel.
And he's played like it.
Yeah, he has.
And I've been of the school that like,
oh, running backs, you know, I don't know.
Do you want to spend that much
on a guy going into his seventh season?
And he's just kind of like totally changed my mind on it through three weeks. He's just been a revelation where it's like, there are plays where you can pause it.
And you're like, there's nowhere to go here. And then you look up and it's an eight yard run. And
then those 12 yard runs that are blocked for 12 yards, he turns into like 40 yard run. So, uh,
aside from the one drop he had, you know, at the end of that Falcons game in week two, two, he's just kind of saved them. I don't know where they'd be without him.
All right. Let's talk, since we just went positive on Saquon, let's shift and we'll
go disappointing. I asked to do five favorites, five train wrecks, five disappointments. What's
the title? I did five biggest bummer seasons through week three. So the fan bases are just
like, oh, this isn't kind of going the way we were hoping it would go. So I was trying to figure out the
right way to phrase it through three weeks. So that's what I came up with.
So five biggest bummers. We're going to go five to one. So your fifth biggest bummer is who?
San Francisco 49ers. They're one and two. They blow a 10-point lead against the Rams. I'm not
writing them off, but if you were a 49ers fan going into the season
and you're like, this kind of feels like a Super Bowl hangover season
with all the offseason drama.
Now Christian McCaffrey's going to Germany, Bill,
which you've been on this for like 10 years.
It's not good when a guy goes to Germany.
Yeah, I got a bunch of texts.
They're like, oh, Germany, watch McCaffrey.
Here he is.
Yeah, it's like you've been making that joke for a decade.
And now it's actually a headline.
Christian McCaffrey is going to Germany to get his Achilles checked out.
So that's not great.
They played it without Debo Samuel and George Kittle on Sunday.
Their defensive tackle, Javon Hargrave, is now likely out for the season.
So it's like all these things together.
And I actually think Brock Purdy's playing well.
Like their offense had over
400 yards of offense on Sunday without any of those guys. He was really good. So that's the
bright spot. If you're a Niners fan, you're like, we still have Shanahan Purdy's playing well.
We can still save this thing, but just the injuries and then the way the defense is
playing and you're one and two, it hasn't gone the way you would have liked.
Yeah. So we're thinking about this three months from now and the Niners are fine.
We're like, oh, remember after week three, we'd probably look back and go, well, Minnesota
defense week two, they're buzzsaw, right?
Week three, bunch of injuries.
They're up 14, nothing, fake punt, game flips, and the Rams just kind of steal the game.
And then we panicked.
We're like, oh my God, the Niners. And then all of a sudden they were fine.
I guess the Hargrave thing was the one that really made me pause.
Because now you're going to be able to run on them, I would assume, unless they have some
secret dude off their bench who's just going to come in and stuff the run. I already felt like
they were a little vulnerable.
It felt like you could move the ball on them
and throw on them,
especially if you're behind.
And now it feels like you're gonna be able to run on them.
Combined with like,
they pay Ayuk,
who hasn't really done anything.
They get this crazy game out of Jennings.
Debo and Kittle getting hurt is the least surprising.
You know, like I'm just factoring that in.
Those guys, eight games a year.
But my big fear for them Sheil is that the NFC West might be really good it might just be one of those
where we might have three play out Sal and I talked about it Sunday there might be three playoff teams
and I don't even know which three it's going to be I've been really impressed by Arizona I think
they're legit like a little frisky so you know I look at the Niners and I go, are they one more injury away from being the year from health team? Because right now it's either them or the Rams for the year from defensively, they make that coordinator change in the offseason,
and now they've got injuries.
And their defense was not good in that.
I mean, their defense and special teams blew that game.
I really don't think it was the offense's fault on Sunday.
So you're right.
I mean, there's no walkover in the NFC West
where you just chalk that up to a win.
The Cardinals can score.
The Rams can score as long as Stafford's healthy. And then the Seahawks can kind of win in different ways. So yeah,
I'm with you. That division's going to be competitive all the way through.
Do you agree with me on Arizona? Because I thought they've had two losses
and I really thought both losses were good losses. I think you can have good losses. I was impressed
with how they hung with Buffalo. I was impressed with how they hung last week. I just, I think they're in these games.
They hung with Detroit.
Detroit was felt like they were going to go up by 30 and they just never did.
Yeah.
I think offensively I buy into the Cardinals.
I think Kyler was a little bit off last week,
but he was really good the first two weeks.
So I think they're going to be able to move the ball and score most weeks.
They might have like the most gettable defense though in the NFL.
Yeah.
Like the Lions couldn't
put them away last week,
but I just think
if you look at it
week to week,
I mean,
they just don't have
players on defense.
I don't know what scheme
you draw up there.
So that's what I worry about,
but I think they'll play
entertaining games
and I think their offense
is going to keep them
in a lot of games.
Don't sleep on how bad
Washington's defense is.
I mean, Burrow,
I don't think Cincinnati, I don't think they punted yesterday.
They didn't.
All right, so on the Niners, last thing.
It's probably more fun for the NFL
if they have a year from hell season,
just because that's going to infuse
some new blood in the NFC.
The big picture piece, though,
of this is the last year with Purdy
on the deal that he's on.
And you start thinking about windows of the NFL, which are always three, four, five years, maybe.
And then you really have to reinvent your window. And it, you know, that was my feeling with them
heading into the year. Like what, what's the window of this team? Can they sustain it? Can
they extend it? And this has not gone well. And now having McCaffrey hurt, the reason you got
McCaffrey for not even reason you got McCaffrey
for not even having to give up
the first-round pick
is because he's injury-prone.
Well, he lasted a year,
he got injured.
So there's some red flags everywhere,
but Rams have red flags,
Arizona's defense,
Seattle's already banged up,
has lost a couple guys
they can't block,
so fascinating division.
All right, let's go.
Your number four biggest bummer.
Number four is the Chicago Bears, and I was deciding, should I put them on here? Because
if you're a Bears fan, you're like, we still get to watch Caleb Williams every week.
We still have hope. There's some excitement here. But the infrastructure around this guy
is a complete disaster. They are 32nd in offensive DVOA through three weeks. They
have the worst offense in the NFL. Their
offensive line is a mess. Do you want to guess what their running backs are averaging yards per
carry? It can't be more than like three yards a carry, right? 2.3 yards per carry, Bill. 56
carries for 130 yards. They had this sequence against the Colts where they have first and goal
from the four yard line. They go direct snap to Khalil Herbert. Then they go two more runs to Khalil Herbert.
And then on fourth and goal, they run one of the worst plays you'll see all season speed option
with so bad. They lose to who loses 12 yards on fourth and goal from the one like we watched a
lot of football. I've never seen that before in my life.
So I was thinking if The Athletic came out with an article this week and was like,
the Bears haven't been practicing this season. I'd be like, oh, okay. Yeah, no, that's what it looks like. It's looked like that since week one. So this isn't like a Caleb Williams take. This is
just like, do they know what they're doing there? Because the Colts maybe had the worst run defense
in the NFL. They couldn't run the football on them.
Caleb Williams, I think, dropped back to pass like 52 times in that game.
They're having issues with just like calling timeouts
before two-point conversions and stuff.
They don't look like a well-coached team.
I thought their formula coming into the season was very good defense.
And can you create like a mediocre offense?
Can the line be good enough?
Because I think that would have been good enough
to make the playoffs.
And their offense just right now is a complete disaster.
So the Bears, to me,
as someone who picked them to make the playoffs,
and now they're plus 290 to make the playoffs
after three weeks,
they're having a bummer of a season.
They can't block.
Yeah.
They are number one in the they can't block rankings. Somehow ahead of the Patriots, who also can't block. Yeah. They are number one in the they can't block rankings.
Somehow ahead of the Patriots, who also can't block.
But that play you mentioned, that fourth down play,
I had all the games on, and they were in the left corner TV,
and I'm watching everything.
And I knew it was fourth down, but two things happened.
And then I look back, and I just see a Bears guy going backwards.
And I'm like, wait, what?
Why is that guy going backwards?
I thought it was fourth down. And they somehow ran a play that had somebody go backwards eight yards.
The coaching, it's really tough to say this with Sirianni and Doug Peterson and some of the
coaching disasters we've seen this season. But I think Iberflues is up there as they seem the
least prepared. The coaching decisions during the game are bad. It doesn't seem like they have an
idea how to use timeouts or challenges. And then for Caleb, when they can't block for him,
they still have them going back and, you know, going backwards and trying to look for guys for
four or five seconds. He doesn't have four or five seconds. So, you know, before the season,
Jaden Daniels was, I think, six to one for Rookie of the Year. And Caleb was plus 120.
And we talked about it on our future pods.
I know you did too.
We're like, why are those odds so different?
What evidence do we have that Jaden Daniels
isn't in as good of a situation as Caleb?
And everyone was saying,
this is the best situation anyone's walked into.
They can't fucking block and their coach sucks.
So not a good situation.
And you need a coordinator in 2024 where if you
don't have a great offensive line, they can scheme around it. Like we see that with guys,
Mike McDaniel, Kyle Shanahan, you look at those teams and you're like, oh, they don't have the
best offensive lines, but they figure out ways to scheme around it. And Shane Waldron of the
Bears, like I was like, all right, this guy, it seems like an upgraded offensive coordinator.
They're not doing anything to scheme around their offensive line weaknesses.
And now you look at Seattle, he came over from the Seahawks and it's like, Seahawks
look like they're, you know, they're operating a little bit better without him.
So now you have to revisit that coaching decision.
So yeah, if I were a Bears fan, I would just be like, we can't let Caleb Williams develop
bad habits this season where it's like next year or two years from now, it's like, oh,
well that rookie year, they couldn't block for him. And so he started bailing from the pocket or,
you know, he sustained an injury that that has to be like their number one goal for the rest
of the season. I thought it was going to be their goal going into last week because they're facing
the Colts. It's like that should be a get right game. And meanwhile, they still can't run the
football or protect him. Who leads the league in Zach Wilson's this year of going back to pass,
immediately panicking and rolling out to the right and then throwing it out of bounds?
Because it's Caleb or Deshaun probably in the finals for that, right?
Yes. That's got to be Deshaun Watson, who we will get to here in a minute.
Okay. Let's go. What's your number three bummer?
Three is the Cincinnati Bengals. And I have been in on the Bengals. I've been saying,
don't the Bengals are going to be fine.
And they're oh,
and three bill,
but their offense is really playing.
Well,
they have a top five offense by any metric you look at.
You mentioned it Monday night.
They did not punt.
They did not turn the football over seven possessions,
four touchdowns,
two field goals,
and a missed field goal.
If they would have gotten one stop on
defense, one forced punt, they win that game. They're one and two. We're saying, wow, Joe Burrow,
Jamar Chase, that looked great. The Bengals kind of turned their season around and they can't get
a stop on defense. And so now they're 0-3. We're since 2000. I think one team has made the playoffs
after they're 0-3. And so the bummer is just that, like if you would have told me before the season, Bengals
are 0-3, what would we have said?
We would have said, oh, Burrow's not healthy.
Oh, did Jamar Chase get injured?
Oh, the offense, you know, it's just not working.
No, Burrow's healthy and playing well.
Chase is out there.
Higgins is back.
The offense is working and they're still 0-3.
And so now you zoom out and you say, well, they might lose Higgins
after the season. And how many healthy
seasons are you going to get from Burrow
going forward? I mean, hopefully a lot,
but you don't know. And so I feel like they're kind
of wasting a season right now at
0-3, although I might be the only person in the
world who's still like, I'm not totally
out on them. It's a long season.
Let's see what happens. But yeah,
they've just dug themselves a
hole unnecessarily. Yeah. I'm looking at the 0-3. So, wow. 2018 Texans was the last one, 11-5.
Before that, 1998 Bills, 10-6. 95 Lions, 10-6. That's in the last 30 years. There's been three total.
Not likely, yeah.
I'm kind of with you.
Look, their defense sucks.
I don't know what happened to it.
They didn't have a pass rush at all.
I don't think Hendrickson's healthy,
but it just feels like you can move the ball on them
whenever you want.
We've seen that over and over again,
but I liked how they played against the Chiefs.
I liked how their offense looked last night
against a crappy Washington defense.
The question for me is, what's the seven seed win total?
If it's nine, I can't count them out.
If it's 10, that means they have to go 10 and four down the stretch.
They're in a really hard division, right?
And their defense isn't good.
And 10 and four doesn't seem realistic to me,
but 9-5 is inconceivable.
Yeah, it's
defensively, I don't know what their answers are.
They had a couple defensive tackles out
last night, but it's like you have to
figure something out. I mean, their run defense
was an issue last year and going
into the season, and it hasn't been fixed
at all here.
So I don't know that there is a fix. I think
they could be a feisty team. I think their offense, like if you just look at it historically,
if you have a top five offense, you're in the playoffs every year. Like you could take everything
else out of it. And there's almost no precedent for having that good of an offense and not making
the playoffs. That's why I'm not totally counting them out, but it does feel like, man, what a
wasted opportunity they were. What seven and They were what? Seven and a half.
What were they?
Seven and a half point favorites in week one against the Patriots.
Something like that.
And then seven and a half point favorites on Monday night.
You lose both those games.
Like they went into the season with an easy schedule.
And now two games that were supposed to be easy wins.
You lost both of those.
So the Pats loss was indefensible.
I mean, they scored 10 points against the Pats.
Yesterday they didn't punt.
So in two weeks, in week one,
they seemed like a team that hadn't practiced
or run any preseason reps.
In week three, their offense actually looked good
and it still didn't matter.
I can't count them out yet
because what did we see?
The Packers last year were 3-6 and made the playoffs.
Yeah, something like that.
So if the Bengals can get to 3-6,
but there's teams I like more
in the AFC,
I guess would be the counter,
right?
Definitely Buffalo.
Probably the Jets.
There's an AFC South team.
I'd like Pittsburgh
more than Cincy.
I just think their defense
is better than anyone
in that thing.
I would take Baltimore
over Cincy at this point.
And then Chiefs.
And I, Where do you
stand on the Chargers?
It's, I mean,
now that Herbert's dealing with the injury,
they have one way they can win. They can't
win in multiple ways. Maybe their
defense continues to play well and they
reel off a couple 50-yard runs each
week. I think they're going to be well-coached and I think
they're going to be competitive and feisty.
I'm not sure that they're going to make the playoffs, and I think they're going to be competitive and feisty. I'm not
sure that they're going to make the playoffs, but I think they'll
be in the mix. So they had
a bunch of injuries off that
week three game. So they're going to
lose to the Chiefs this week. Suddenly they're 2-2
and maybe they're just going
to be too banged up this year. And if Herbert
re-injured that ankle, then that's not going to
be right for a couple weeks. So maybe they're out.
So maybe we have one AFC West team, one AFC South team. I think that's safe. Buffalo and the Jets.
So that's one, two, three, four. So that would be three from the AFC North.
Yeah. They got a chance. I'm not counting them out.
Right. Yeah. Well, especially like if Cleveland, I'm sure they're coming up right now.
They're next.
So maybe it is nine and eight. Nine and eight is doable. All right. Who's your number two bummer?
Yeah, it is the Cleveland Browns. And there's really a case for them to be number one. I mean,
you look at this team. I don't think we've appreciated how terrible Deshaun Watson has
been. When we talk about it, we're like, oh, he hasn't lived up to the hype. He hasn't been quite what they expected.
Last three years, Bill, 39 quarterbacks have had 500 dropbacks.
He ranks 36th in success rate ahead of Davis Mills, Zach Wilson, and Bryce Young.
It's time to take the kid gloves off when we talk about just his on-field performance,
let alone the off-field stuff.
He's been one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL for three years.
Wasn't he one of the worst Browns quarterbacks ever?
Austin Gale had a tweet about that.
The Browns have had two and a half decades of terrible quarterbacks,
and he's at the bottom.
Yeah, they're 31st in offensive DVOA.
They've had offensive line injuries.
I understand that.
The quarterback makes the offensive line injuries. I understand that. The quarterback makes
the offensive line injuries worse.
He's got to be one of the worst
quarterbacks to block for.
He's a disaster under pressure.
He's getting sacked
on 12% of his dropbacks.
And so now what do you do
if you're the Browns?
Because of the contract they gave him,
which was the only way
they were going to get him
because they were the only team
that was going to give him
that guaranteed contract.
The minute they gave him that deal, he became the most powerful guy in
the organization other than the owner. Because now if you're the owner, you say we're tied to
him for two more years. You're going to bench him for Jameis Winston and we're paying our backup
$46 million per year and we gave up all that draft capital. So that's one option. Two is you keep
trotting him out there. I mean, I don't know where that's going to get you. You've had years to figure this out and now you have your
worst offensive line situation. So you can't do that. And then look ahead to the off season.
Can you run this back in 2025 with the same coach, the same GM and the same quarterback and say,
it's going to be different this year? I don't think so. I think the coach and the GM are pretty
good. I think they would get hired pretty quickly if they were out there on the open market. And
now you have this lawsuit and these allegations of sexual assault. So is he going to be facing
a suspension? It's just like, this is one of the most hopeless situations in the NFL. They have no
chance to compete in the AFC with this guy. And they also have no way out of this.
Yeah. I remember this happened in the
Celtics in the mid 2000s. They traded for Vin Baker, you know, max contract. And he had a bunch
of problems that turned out he had alcohol issues and he's just contract just went forever. And the
way the salary cap worked, you just looked at it and this was like two, I might've even written
about at the time, 2003, 2004. And you just look at it and you go, oh my God, there's no way out of
this for three years. We're in the salary cap league and one of our max spots is just a throwaway
zero. And this Cleveland situation is way worse than that because it's the quarterback position.
Really, it seems like the only move is to bench him. But now you have sullen, angry,
overpaid Deshaun Watson on your bench who might, God only knows what he could do for team chemistry.
But I don't see any other solution other than to just send him away from the team. Just be like,
we'll send your checks every two weeks. If I'm the owner, and I guess that's what this guy
has them thinking, you guys got to
make this work.
If you don't make this work, I'll bring somebody else in to make it work.
It's the owner has to realize this has no chance.
And it doesn't seem like that's happened yet, right?
Because they would have replaced him already.
Yeah.
I mean, because he signed off on it.
Was he a driving factor?
Yeah.
So it's like-
Well, he's the one who guaranteed the money when Watson's like,
I don't want to go to Cleveland.
And Haslam's like,
what if we guarantee all the money?
Exactly.
All right, I guess I'll go to Cleveland.
I mean, think about it.
No quarterback's gotten that since.
There've been a lot of great quarterbacks who have signed deals since.
And we thought, oh,
is this going to set a precedent for quarterbacks?
Nope.
No other team has been willing to do this
with any other quarterback.
They got desperate.
They signed him to that deal. They're one
and two. They have the hardest remaining schedule
in the NFL. If you look at the betting markets
and just like, you know, team win
totals and Super Bowl odds. And so there
really is no way out for them. I mean, if you
look at it, they just... And Chubb, they
said, oh, maybe Chubb can come back week five.
It's like, I have Chubb on all my fantasy teams.
They're saying like week nine.
It's not going to be week five.
Yeah, the offensive line injuries, everything.
So Russell Wilson has had the biggest dead cap hit in NFL history,
which is just like the amount of money on your salary cap
to people who aren't on your team.
That was $85 million.
I think Watson would be like double that.
Yeah, it's like $170.
It's like $170 if they cut him.
So it's like, is that feasible? At some point, you're just going to be like sunk cost, nothing we can do,
but I don't know if they're going to be at that point yet or not.
You know what's funny? You would think in the 2020s, we have the history of all the mistakes
people have made over the last however many decades of football or any sport. We have way
better advanced analytics
telling us how to make decisions. We have smarter people. We have even podcasts are smarter and
shows are smarter. And there's all this good information we have now. And yet we've seen
three of the biggest mistakes in the history of the NFL, Russell Wilson, the Bryce Young trade,
and Deshaun. I've been following the NFL for five decades.
Those are three of the biggest mistakes since I've been a football fan and they all happened
within the span of three years. It's crazy. How are we still making mistakes like this?
Yeah. I was thinking about it with the quarterbacks especially, and we'll talk
about Trevor Lawrence in a minute here, but watching Josh Allen last night, it's kind of like
there is no swing big enough to acquire a player like Josh Allen. He is going to lift everyone
around him. You can make mistakes elsewhere on the roster, and you're probably going to still
win 10 or 11 games. So when you have a chance to get a guy of that caliber, you can take almost
any big swing and it'll be justified. But how many of those guys are there? Three,
maybe four.
And now you have this big middle class of quarterbacks where it's like,
do you want to make excuses for this guy and say he's good and the situation
around him?
Or do you,
do you not want to like,
you could make,
have those arguments for basically guys like six through 20,
you know,
we could say,
well,
they're good here because their offensive line is good.
They're bad here because their scheming is bad.
And so you can't take the big swings
unless you just have a great feeling
that it's going to be one of those top four or five guys.
Otherwise, the big swings for just like a competent guy
who can be good under the right situations,
those don't make sense.
They're too high risk and too low reward.
I would include Dak Prescott in that for $60 million a year.
And I might be able to find Sam Darnold
or Geno Smith or Baker Mayfield
and have an extra $50 million a year
to spend on other parts of my roster.
The problem is if you don't find those guys
and it's like, oh shit,
now we have this guy instead,
then it's trouble.
All right, that leaves us with number one.
Then you're the Arthur Smith Falcons. Yeah, then you're the Arthur and you're just punting's trouble. All right, that leaves us to number one. Then you're the Arthur Smith Falcons.
Yeah, then you're the Arthur
and you're just punting every year.
All right, once the Jacksonville Jaguars
is going to be a big storyline this week
with the way they played on Monday night.
I talked myself into the Jaguars
going into the season.
I know you did too.
Yeah.
And there was reason to.
They were eight and three last year.
Trevor Lawrence battles four different injuries.
They get bad turnover luck.
They're dropping passes all over the place.
It's like this team could rebound and win nine or ten games.
They draft a Brian Thomas Jr.
Yeah.
I was in.
There was a case.
Now they're 0-3, and we all know what's going to happen
is that Doug Peterson's going to be out of a job sometime
between now and the end of the season.
And then there's going to be this conversation that I just mentioned. Is it Trevor Lawrence or is it the scheme and the coaching and the
supporting cast and they mismanaged the roster? Last three seasons, Bill, Trevor Lawrence has 39
turnovers. That's second to Josh Allen. And Josh Allen has so many high-level plays that I think
the turnovers are completely overrated because he makes up for them almost every single time.
That just hasn't been the case with Trevor Lawrence.
He has 25 fumbles over the last three seasons, second to Justin Fields.
And the worst part, if you're a Jaguars fan, why they're number one on the bummer list
is that he's playing like the worst football of his career right now.
I mean, before he was really good at avoiding sacks.
Now he's getting sacked on 11%
of his dropbacks. His accuracy is not good. He's not dealing with pressure. He had that interception
Monday night. And so I think what happens is so many people cling to what their draft
evaluation was of a guy. And they're like, no, he had all the tools. He was a generational prospect
that we just become blind to what we've seen four years in the NFL.
There's not much precedent for a guy having 53 starts in the NFL. And it's like, well,
he's not great yet, but he's going to become great. Most of the time, we know at this point
in his career. And so if you're a Jaguars fan, I'm not saying he's bad. I still kind of like
Trevor Lawrence. He's young. I think he'll maybe have a moment down the road here or a season down
the road where he looks really good. But I do think we need to kind of reset our expectations and be like, this isn't
the guy who was getting drafted one overall. This is a guy we've watched in the NFL and he's had
what one above average season as a starter. The first three years were explainable.
Yeah. Right. Urban Meyer last year, he got hurt. So so and that was one of the reasons
I was totally into them in year four
it was like here we go he's gonna be
healthy they finally got him a deep
weapon like this is this is it
we're on and it went backwards
and unfortunately
I've watched all three games I have him
on a fantasy team I have Jack
futures and I really thought
they were going to cover
and possibly win last night.
And within, what, a half hour?
You knew.
You knew where it was going.
I don't know what the answers are.
Like Ruiz was on my pod last week
saying they're going to fire Peterson
and bring in Belichick
and it's going to happen.
Is Belichick going to put up
with some of the shit Trevor Lawrence does?
We've already seen that.
We've already seen that with Mac Jones and Cam Newton and some of these other guys.
I don't know what it is, but it does make me wonder,
should they have waited to do that extension?
What was the benefits of doing the extension?
Because you still have the franchise tag thing, right?
You've never actually seen him be awesome.
And you're just going to give him $275 million.
Why not wait?
I think when you do that, then you're going to be paying even more to your...
Kind of taking a gamble that this guy is going to be good enough.
I also think that it's okay for them to have given that to him.
Because you know how coaches
and teams in the NFL operate. If Trevor Lawrence
was on the trade market right now,
I think you'd be shocked
by what Trevor Lawrence would get. Would he be worth
more if he was on his original
contract versus this giant extension?
Yeah, that's true. Then the team
that trades for him, though, probably is like, well,
as part of the trade, we have to sign
him to a new deal as well. So I understand why teams do it. When you think
you have a guy, you kind of want, you know, you go earlier rather than later because teams do get
desperate. And if you really need to move off a guy like the Eagles had to do with Carson Wentz
a few years ago, he was the worst quarterback in the NFL and they got a great draft capital
from the Colts. So I still like lean towards pay. You know,
if you think, if you feel good about it, go ahead and pay them. Cause it's kind of like you,
you always talk about with the NBA, it's still an asset. You're still going to be able to move
off of them unless it's like a Deshaun Watson type situation. But, uh, yeah, he hasn't had
the moment yet. And now it's just going to be like, all right, he's going to be on his third
coach in what five years, another offensive coordinator.
And what's it going to look like?
Maybe it'll happen for him.
It still could.
I think he can certainly be a solid starter, but kind of the guy we expected. I was thinking about this.
If you flip Josh Allen and Trevor Lawrence, those two quarterbacks on those two teams, I kind of think the Jaguars are a pretty good team and the Bills are struggling to make the playoffs.
Now, it might be unfair to compare him to Josh Allen, but that just kind of tells you the gap between
sort of the elite guys and where someone like Trevor Lawrence might be right now.
It's pretty rare to just not have a moment for the first four years of your career
and 60 plus starts. And then all of a sudden the light switch goes off.
To borrow the NBA analogy, and then we'll go, it's a little like where the Bulls board
was Zach Levine, right?
Where it's like, well,
this guy scores 25 points a game.
He's not a franchise guy,
but we don't want to lose him either.
And here's a lot of money.
And now they can't even trade him.
And I do feel like we've seen teams
get into that bind with quarterbacks
where like, well,
if we don't have them,
what are we going to do for a quarterback?
It's like, yeah, but you're a quarterback
you can't win with.
I think the difference here is,
and I include the two of us,
we both thought he was going to make a leap this year.
There's some sort of disconnect
between the talent and what we're seeing.
That throw he made, that Hamlin pick,
that was wide open.
Only him and Anthony Richardson are making throws that bad in the league
right now.
Anthony Richardson is the all time hit or miss guy.
Lawrence isn't hitting,
like he's just missing.
And I think that's the difference.
All right.
That was our bummer list.
She'll Kapadia.
You can,
you can listen to him on the ringer NFL show and on the ringer Philly
special,
read them on the ringer.com.
He had a piece today.
Good to see you.
She'll.
All right.
Thanks for having me.
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This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite.
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Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. All right, my friend Dave
Chang is here. We haven't done a pod in a while together. I'm not really sure why because I see
you all the time or talk to you all the time, but somehow we forget to just put the headsets on and start talking. And we have a lot of stuff to talk about because you have a quarterback right now.
It is beyond exciting, Bill. I got to be honest. I actually shed a tear last night out of sheer joy. I legit cried and I don't care. I'm letting the world know. You literally were brought to tears by Jada Daniels,
27 yard falling backwards,
getting crushed touchdown pass at the end zone.
Yeah.
And then hearing Joe Buck and Troy Aikman say,
we have the real deal.
Like it's been almost 30 years since we've had a legitimate quarterback.
I mean,
and I was talking to other commanders slash Redskins fans.
We are blessed to have Joe
House and Nathan Hubbard, other fans in your life that love this team. And one of them, one of my
many friends said it felt like they were an MDMA. That's how ecstatic we felt. All of us. It was
unbelievable. But one of the best days I've had in a long time. We first got to know each other
when I was still writing for
Grantland and I did a piece about how it was impossible to make Daniel Snyder sell the team.
This was 10 years ago. And you were talking about putting together a coalition of money
to try to buy the team. It's funny, the prices that were being thrown around back then are
probably like five times lower than what it is now.
Really?
Can I raise a billion dollars?
It was going to take like $2 billion and now it would be like 6 billion for sure.
Right.
But that's how bleak it was.
And then it got worse and then it got worse and then it got worse.
Did you,
it almost felt like the Washington football was kind of not dead,
but it felt like it was going on life support with the fan base.
Where were you mentally?
It's been a dark time.
A lot of sadness.
Because for those that are old enough, we're talking about watching the then Redskins at RFK Stadium.
That was life.
That was what sort of every week needed to start off with was a Redskins
win. And, you know, you had the Smurfs, you had the hogs, Joe Gibbs, that was all I knew. And I was,
you know, born in a time where we had every opportunity to go to the Superbowl every year.
And it's been heartache and sadness since Dan Snyder took over the team. And it's been
a blessing that he's disappeared from my life.
I wonder if he's watching.
You think he's watching these games?
What happens when you sell your team?
Do you root against them?
How spiteful do you think you get?
Oh, yeah.
I've been thinking about that.
Does he keep like a box seat for himself?
Who knows?
Yeah, because at the Clipper Games, Sterling's, I guess, ex-wife now,
whatever she is, she
still goes to the games and say it's courtside. And I think that was part of the deal. She's like,
I'll facilitate this, but I still have to go to the games. And she's there rooting for the Clippers.
And it's like, this is weird. Your husband destroyed the team for 30 years. Why are you here?
I mean, he will go down as one of the top five worst owners in sports history. Don't you agree,
Bill Simmons? Did you ever have interactions with them? And yes, I agree.
I've seen him from a distance and I would talk open shit about him. When we had a restaurant
in DC, we would hand out fortune cookies and on the back of the fortune cookies, it would give you,
you know, whatever fortune and the backside would say, fuck Dan Snyder. And he knew that I disliked him and he did not love me from what I was told.
So it was weird.
The last season he owned the team, I got an invitation to sit with him in the owner's box.
I was like, I'm definitely not.
Oh my God.
Why would he do that?
I don't know, man.
But I'm just, it's like the witch is dead.
God bless.
Robert Griffin III, that was what, a fun, I guess, four months.
He's not as exciting, I don't think, as Daniels.
But at least back then, it was like, hey, we might have our first quarterback since the good Mark Rippon year.
Yeah, I mean, he won rookie of the year.
He beat Andrew Luck that year.
And, you know, that was Kyle Shanahan running that offense.
We had all those
coaches sean mcveigh etc and uh who knew that that was going to be the only year we actually had a
decent quarterback a good quarterback something that we could be excited about and i was thinking
last night what it must be like to be a patriots fan where you had 20 plus years of the same
quarterback yeah since 2000 i think we've had 27 different starting quarterbacks and
knock on wood that this guy stays upright he is very thin and he plays fearlessly so I pray to
God that he's in my life for 20 years that would be as maybe after getting married my two sons
that would be number four if he stays around for 20 years well I was watching yesterday I don't
have him on any fantasy teams and I didn't bet on the game. I don't have any futures with Washington.
I had no interest at all in the game other than just watching it because I like football. I have
a Cincinnati under, so I guess like a tiny rooting for Washington, but I'm watching it.
And he just, this is what he did in college. This is why I was afraid the Patriots were going to take him. He takes these two hits a game.
And each time he takes the hit, you just are convinced he's not going to get up.
But he always gets up.
And you see him compared to these giant football players.
Even when they were down by the goal line a couple of times, you're like, well, there's
no way they're going to be able to sneak with him.
He's 160 pounds.
But he makes it all work.
And there's a presence to him in a,
in an it factor that,
I mean,
yesterday was his coming out part.
There's no question,
but this is stuff he was doing in college that all the LSU fans were saying,
this guy has it,
this guy has it.
But yet there's always the injury thing with him.
That's kind of lingering over every play.
It's like watching those crazy wrestlers on, you know guys who are doing the jump across the ring and jumping out. And you're like,
oh my God, is this guy going to live? That's kind of how I feel watching Daniels.
Exactly. I mean, that's why Joe House was labeling him RG4 because he might just not last like three
or four games. So maybe just by luck, he's going to
stay upright. It's why I sort of wanted to draft Drake May because he seems sturdy and he's young.
And I remember pre-draft, I was very upset that, you know, you were going to get him or
thinking that Jaden Daniels is going to be a bust. But I think it, I think we might have
picked like this version of this year, CJ Stroud, like all the hype was on caleb i wanted him i wanted drake and
you know happy to be wrong here because outside of the the the thought of injury knock on wood i
hope nothing ever happens to him like he plays with heart he sort of has that sort of intangible
quality that you always talk about in your book of basketball, right?
That need to sort of spread the wealth
and deflect sort of attention to everybody else.
He's also this glue guy that you want.
And I don't think we've had that in the DC area
in a very long time, since Mark Rippon days, for sure.
The other funny thing was the quarterbacking has been so bad.
And then last night you had Josh Allen, who was unbelievable,
and Daniels in his game.
And they were the two most exciting quarterbacks I watched all week.
And they were kind of happening simultaneously on two TVs.
Daniels is so much fun.
You don't want to leave the room when Washington's on offense
because you know what's going to happen.
That last touchdown, Bill.
I mean, watching Ryan Clark do the replay
with Scott Van Pelt after the fact
and just seeing him get crushed,
absolutely crushed,
and to throw a perfect ball.
Those are the moments that never happened to us.
They happened to the Patriots.
They happened to every other team except us.
And honestly, I screamed
so loud. I had not been that
ecstatic at a sporting event in a long time
since basically being in New York
during the two weeks of Jeremy Lin. Arguably
the best two weeks of my life as well.
That was amazing.
People will have no
idea. What's been the best asian sports moment of like what
like where otani like going for 50 50 do you would you put that up there or not really for sure we
i have a lot of debate with my asian friends about this do people understand that we might have
the number one talent, most talented,
greatest baseball player of all time,
potentially.
And it's just not getting enough buzz mainly because he doesn't speak
English.
Although I think he speaks enough English to,
to,
to bet poorly on.
Yeah.
We sound,
I talked about a little on Sunday about people who are better at whatever
they're doing in sports
than anyone else who does the same thing.
And it's not a long list, but it's definitely Otani is one of those people
and Brandon Aubrey, the Dallas Cowboys kicker.
And I'll tell you who's better than all of them.
As great as Shohei is, Joey Chestnut is better at hot diet eating
than anything else that anybody could possibly do.
So you went to that.
You saw that in person.
Yeah.
Chestnut versus Kobayashi.
Had you been to one of those before?
No.
Why would you go do a thing?
It's one of those sporting events, if you can even call it that, that you would just
write off immediately.
Like, why would you possibly want to watch grown adults stuff their face with food?
That's not something you watch. It's like face with food. That's not something you watch.
It's like a news clip.
That's about it.
And I have to say it was one of the most compelling things I've ever witnessed in my life.
For sure.
So what was compelling about it?
The fact that think about this.
I was watching his jaws bigger than Kobayashi's, but to eat a hot dog in 1.5 bites, a whole one, like,
I just, and 83 of them at that, it was hypnotic.
It was mesmerizing.
In fact, the three Olympian swimmers that were sort of the warmup act, they were sitting
behind me during the competition and they were amazed, right? They
tried to eat like a 50 chicken wings as quickly as possible and they were ill. They said, listen,
if you had two hours, an hour, yeah, not a problem, right? People don't understand that
it's not a fact that you couldn't eat a lot, but it's the duration of time to eat that in 10 minutes. It's just not something you can comprehend. So I don't say that with any hyperbole. It was one of
the most amazing things I've ever seen. When I was watching this last one, I always wonder
how nobody has choked yet. How we haven't just had a mistake. You would figure all these different contests
that are televised,
something would go wrong
and all of a sudden there's five pounds of hot dog
in somebody's throat.
And what would they do?
Well, I asked and they train
to prevent that from happening.
You know, how they train?
I don't know.
I don't know.
But they work to not choke.
It's something that they practice
during the week in their
regimen.
What did he feel like the next
day? What does he feel like a week?
I wonder what kind of body trauma that
is to eat that many hot dogs in 10 minutes.
83 hot dogs in
10 minutes. We talk about
this after a big meal, right? The next day,
how many
number twos is that going to be like how many how many number twos is that going to be
seriously wait how many how many number twos is 83 hot dogs yeah that's got to be five five to ten
at least have you ever tried to do any of those quickie eating things or no no the only thing i've
ever done was a hartford current uh had a hot wing eating contest, like the hottest hot wings.
And I won lunatic of the week. I was on the cover of the Hartford Current in 1999. That was it.
I thought what was interesting about that chestnut thing was that
Kobayashi, there was some sort of rivalry slash hatred and it brought out this other level of
chestnut. Like he had never eaten that many hot
dogs before he was so fueled by the competition the animosity toward kobayashi and i don't really
understand what's happened with those two and what they could possibly be feuding about like
they just both eat a lot of food i know i i thought that was manufactured as well but it's
not they clearly did not like each other they They kept separate. They did not talk to each other.
They didn't look at each other.
They didn't even glance at each other.
Actually, the most
surprising thing, I don't know if it was picked up on TV,
there was a woman bawling
during
the announcing of
Joey winning and I was like, what the hell is going on?
It turned out to be Kobayashi's wife
who was just
sobbing uncontrollably.
Yeah, it was pretty sad, actually.
Did he ever hold the Asian Sports Championship belt?
Or can he qualify?
Because right now, Otani has it.
You know, I should put him in the Hall of Fame.
I think technically he does make it, but I can't.
You know, what I'm waiting for, really,
the person that would pass Otani for me
is a 6'6", 6'7", 6'8",
basketball player that plays like Anthony.
If Anthony Edwards was Asian,
I would stop everything I'm doing.
I'd buy a Winnebago
and I'd go to every game.
It would be all I would do. I would be the number one fan because that would be it. That would be
the last piece of the puzzle for me in my life. Somebody that is a genetic freak.
But now you're just going to have to settle for Jaden Daniels and having a fun quarterback.
Can we announce right now he eats at all your restaurants for free?
Not only that, Jaden Daniels, I'll cook for you anytime you want. I will be your private chef.
You can come on any of the shows I do. You have carte blanche for sure.
So you've done how many dinnertime Netflix shows at this point? How many have you done?
And we should mention it broke you down physically within 20 episodes. You actually
had to have back surgery. This is the most traumatic. It was your version of Kobayashi
eating 83 hot dogs. So we started this project with Netflix as a sort of six episodic thing.
It turned out to be 27. Along the way, I had to get disc replacement surgery. It's a high-stress event. Tuesdays, 4 p.m., we're back on second season on October 8th.
So you thought this was going to be six episodes,
and they're like, actually, we'll take 27.
Actually, the one person that said
that we're going to have many episodes was you.
You're the one that said it was going to work.
Well, I saw the studio.
The show made sense sense and you could tell
Netflix was using you like some sort of weird Guinea pig, right? They don't know live stuff at
all. And when you showed me the control room and there was like this whole other wing of your
studio and there was like 50 people back there all figuring out the lab, I was like, Oh, I see
what Netflix. so when like
they announced the football thing i wasn't surprised because it felt like you were the
foot in the water to figure out how live would work on netflix it was the first thing they did
right um i believe we were the first live series uh that wasn't sort of limited and certainly the
first live cooking show yeah sure but it makes sense because
if you're doing live there has to be some sort of unpredictability to what what you're watching
and with the cooking which which you hate but it's actually good for the show something might
go wrong as you're cooking i mean for those listening if you haven't watched the episode
with bill simmons and burt kisner, you should watch it.
I think we got to get Bill back on again.
I love Bert, but Bert certainly was talking a lot.
I burned out a high usage rate.
I just set some picks.
I just rebounded and moved the ball and set picks.
I want to get you on the show cooking.
Okay?
We did talk about that. That about what the world needs to see i want you to make your red sauce or something and let the world know that bill
can actually cook well i can only cook like four things but i can i can cook and some of the stuff
i can cook are now you know there's there's been a lot of, uh, it upsets me, but there's some food
that we grew up with that is now considered, um, bad, dangerous, unhealthy. What are you talking
about? Mac and cheese, mac and cheese. Okay. Can we get this out of the way? No, that's not true.
This is one of the things, and Bill has really perfected the art of goading me into doing things I don't want to do.
That's why we have French fries named after him at a restaurant in LA.
Yeah, that's true.
That's why he wants to challenge me on things.
He claims that he makes the best mac and cheese anywhere.
I just said, no, that's not what I said.
You've already dismissed me.
I said I could make mac and cheese as good as
something that an actual chef could make because i don't think mac and cheese is that hard you just
have to load cheese and make it taste good that is basically what i said you're claiming you make
the best mac and cheese in the world i just don't think the bar is that high and i think a lot of
people could make a really good mac and cheese.
And I think my mac and cheese is delicious.
But it's all store-bought.
And you find that completely offensive.
And I get it.
No, it's okay.
Sarah Lee had semi-homemade on the Food Network.
This is how Bill Simmons cooks.
It's okay.
Whatever it takes to win.
But you never took that personally and decided to make your own mac and cheese in a restaurant no because i i don't want to embarrass you on the one thing that you think
that you're good at we did it with the fries i made the mistake of telling you that i thought
the four seasons of beverly hills at the bar which i only had once had awesome fries and you're like
what and then you got furious and you took the fry challenge when i was on your show
you made that what was that your show, you made the,
what was that called?
The thing you made?
The Tim Parmo,
which is the Timpano
based out of the movie Big Night
with Stanley Tucci.
And it's basically this giant lasagna
in a pot with multi layers of things.
It takes many hours.
And, you know, live TV
is you want to do things
you've never done before.
And to sort of
take it out of the pot the way we did that was scary i didn't know it was going to work and
uh it was actually one of the highlights use food from a bunch of different good chefs too
yeah we put everything that's an italian american sort of culinary staple right chicken parm
pasta rigatoni etc et cetera, meatballs.
We actually, you know, your mom made meatballs for the show.
Right.
And she was all excited about it.
All right, we're going to take a break
and then I'm going to enrage Chang with a food take.
Now it's time for a special part of today's episode
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This episode is brought to you by Movember.
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now. Just search Movember. All right, Chang, I was going to do this on your podcast, but I thought
it'd be more fun to invite you on mine. Every once in a while, I have a food take that makes
you so mad you can't even respond for a couple seconds before you then respond. And then you
just berate me for the take. Because you've been priming me this for a couple seconds before you then respond. And then you just berate me for the take.
Because you've been priming me this for a couple months now. You won't even share me.
You wouldn't let me know like two months ago. You wanted to wait for this moment to let the world know, this hot take. We've lost the narrative with pizza.
We've gone too far. I blame some of the people we know and pizza that I love to eat.
But we have now drifted down the river
away from our pizza center point
and it's become all about the dough
and how it's cooked
and the kind of bread
and the ingredients
and the tomatoes have to be perfect.
And it's like, you know what also is good?
A fucking slice of pizza.
How about cheese and sauce with a thin crust and it comes out of the oven and it's cheesy and the
cheese is melting all over my mouth. And I actually have a whole bite, you know, 10 bites in a slice
versus two. And then it's just a bunch of bread with the best possible ingredients and arugula
and all these dumb things. You know what's good? Cheese and pepperoni and a
lot of tomato sauce cooked with cheese getting brown on top. And I don't know why we just can't
keep doing that. Why do we have to change pizza? I love pizza. Why are we moving in this new
direction with pizza? And all the chefs and all the best food people are like, this is a great
direction. It's awesome. And it's like, it's like is it are we sure wow that's not
necessarily a hot take if you're wrong because i didn't know that the listeners of the ringer
on spotify or listen to dave portnoy this is crazy this is this is fucking crazy bill
this is my one bite take yeah you're basically saying like pizza's got to be this one thing. It is beautiful,
that pizza.
Yes.
You're saying it's got to be
this throwback idea
of a simple slice of pizza.
Right?
Cheese pizza.
I get it.
I like a big,
triangle piece of pizza
with,
I like sauce on it.
I like cheese.
I want to make sure
the cheese is cooked enough.
And I don't like a lot of bread.
And every time I go, I was at Bianco's last week.
I love Bianco's.
It's fantastic.
I think he has a couple of the best pizzas I've ever had.
But I'm also, I don't like to eat the crust.
Some people do.
I don't.
I just like the pizza part.
What do you mean you don't like the crust?
Come on.
I'm not a crust guy.
I'm not.
But that's the thing.
Now I'm looked down on that I'm not a crust guy. I'm not. But that's the thing. It's like now I'm looked down on that I'm not a crust guy.
I'm a sauce and cheese guy.
What about the sauce and cheese community with pizza?
Yeah.
There's nothing wrong with the crust.
It's fine.
Why do we have to get so artsy fartsy with pizza?
Why can't somebody be like, you know what we're going to do?
I'm going to make the best version of the pizza that you grew up eating.
And it's going to be big squares. Like when we go to New York, all the New York
people are like, oh, our pizza is the best. Oh, there's nothing like New York pizza. It's like,
it's just these giant slices, but they're really good. Yeah. You and Dave Portnoy,
you are the only two people in the world that want pizza this way.
I'm not the only two. There's other people.
No. Listen, we're talking about our good friend not the only two. There's other people. No.
Listen, we're talking about our good friend,
Chris Bianco.
The reason why people are talking about pizza
and they're so infatuated with all of the ingredients,
the toppings, and the sort of single origin flour, etc.,
is because of Chris Bianco.
I get it.
And it's delicious.
And I've been there probably 12 times in the last year.
But I guess it's better today
than it's ever been before in America.
There's high level pizza.
So this is like its own category.
It's almost like, don't call it pizza.
Call it, use it, create a new word for it.
And then the old school, cheaper,
less thought put into a pizza that I also really like.
And I feel like that's getting
shoved out to the side. Why can't we also spend time trying to make that kind of pizza better?
And we have both, both leagues, basically like two conferences in the NFL. Well, I know there's
a couple, what you're asking for are like the old school slice shops. And I believe that that is
going to make a comeback in Los Angeles, in New York. Oh, so here I am. Yeah, let's go. It's everywhere. It's never gone anywhere, Bill.
I'm tapping into something.
Listen, I'm going to give you a comp
that you might understand a little bit better
because I believe it's sports adjacent.
How would you feel today
if you had someone on your podcast
that was in basketball
and they would say,
well, Americans still produce the best basketball players in the
world. That's it. America is the best at basketball. What would you say to that?
It's true.
What about all the international players?
There's a lot of good international players, but I think there's still more good
American players versus any other country right is that going to
continue you think or is it going to be maybe one side of the seesaw will be foreign players
american players which right now is like this and it might end up tilting as the years go i think a
lot of a lot of people would say that the best pizza in the world is in Italy, right?
And there's many kinds of pizza in Italy.
I think it's safe to say that America produces the best pizza in the world across the board
and all kinds.
And that's why I don't think the slice of pizza that you're talking about has gone anywhere.
It's just there.
There's just more shine on these more bespoke artisanal pies, right?
That were sort of the progeny of Chris Bianco.
So let's come up with a name for them. It's like a high-end pizza. It's like pizza 2.0.
Yeah. But original pizza, the sliced pizza that, again, your son probably doesn't really know that much about, right?
It's not the pizza that you get delivered from domino's or papa john's it's it's yeah it's it's like the slice that you would get on your college campus at two in the morning
i want the best possible version of that where it's yeah i feel like we're not making that as
much anymore i have trouble finding that especially in l.a now granted i know we're in a
weird pizza spot in l.a but also I think the younger generation, they don't necessarily
gravitate towards that. They want
the pizza 2.0.
Can we
bring in Kyle? Nephew Kyle,
can you come into this just as a
tiebreaker and somebody
who's eaten a lot of pizza?
Do you like
pizza 2.0 or pizza 1.0?
1.0 1.0 easy
I don't mess around
can you explain to Chang Wang
it's just what it's like
bacon egg and cheese I just don't feel safe going around
trying to find them out here there's
a couple of names that people told me I stick to it
if there's a weird logo on the pizza
place I probably won't even go in if it's
if it's like it looks gimmicky
Kyle you're a son of New York how the hell would you even think about eating a bacon egg and go in if it's like it looks gimmicky. Kyle, you're a son of New York.
How the hell would you even think about eating a bacon egg and cheese in California? That's ridiculous.
You don't want to admit the truth.
Some people just want pizza 1.0.
And every once in a while, go nuts.
I'm like, I'm going to do the pizza 2.0.
But sometimes pizza 1.0 is great.
Pizza 1.0 isn't like a Roy Hibbert center.
It hasn't died.
It's here.
They're everywhere.
I feel like it's dying.
You can go to LAX and get it.
All the best chefs care about Pizza 2.0.
Chris Bianco actually has a Pizza 1.0 at the row.
He has that other pizza shop.
You don't go there.
It's delicious.
They make the Pizza 1.0 at the Bianco one?
Yeah.
Pane Bianco.
Have you not had Pane Bianco pizza?
I haven't.
It was always about to be open and I haven't been there yet.
Well, put it this way.
Imagine pizza 1.0 with pizza 2.0 ingredients, quality level.
That sounds amazing.
Yeah, it exists, Bill.
It's here.
I will say the Rosa Pizza at Pizzer bianco is the most creative pizza i've ever
eaten still the one with the pistachios and onions and what cheese is that and that uh it's just
mozzarella but the audience they may be confused here because they might think this endangered
species of pizza 1.0 isn't there i'd argue that one of the things that is happening right now across America,
New York Times had an article recently that there's better pizza ever in every city. It's
better to eat pizza now. And it's not all Neapolitan pies, which are thin crust.
The 1.5 version is what I'm talking about. That classic sliced New York style pie,
but it's not made with crappy ingredients.
And for example,
one of the reasons I don't love that dollar slice pie in New York city,
Kyle,
you know what I'm talking about?
When you're a drunk,
they're great dollar for a slice of pizza.
You can't beat that.
But the ingredients are sort of just,
eh,
they're good enough.
Now,
what if you made that kind of pie with the best quality ingredients? And that is happening.
So pizza 0.0 is drunk pizza.
Yeah.
That's like, I think the best drunk pizza I've ever had is the Prince Street pizza.
Those big, giant Sicilian squices where they put like 700 pepperoni on each slice.
And it's 2 in the morning.
It's like, ah. You need to soak up all of that booze
so that's
0.0
1.0 so you're telling me that the
1.0 version
is coming back
2.0 is a lot of
new toppings a lot of people
putting their own spins on pizza
but I'm with you I like all the pizza we're going to agree to disagree A lot of new toppings, a lot of people putting their own spins on pizza.
But I'm with you.
I like all the pizza.
I'm just saying.
We're going to agree to disagree.
Yeah.
I have my next food take for you.
Let's hear it.
Clam chowder.
We're doing it wrong for the most part.
And the reason I know this is when you actually have good clam chowder,
it makes you mad at all the other clam chowder. So Simmons family, Cape Week, my dad's family, they all got together and chatted. We
went to lunch at the Chatham Bars Inn, whatever it's called. And they have clam chowder there.
And it was the best clam chowder I've ever had. And they did a couple of different things.
And I just think it should be translatable to all the other people who make the clam chowder. One, not too thick. Two,
not too many clams. People make clam chowder. They just like throw 700,000 clams and just like
every bite. It's like the right mix of like the potatoes have to be soft. It's not too thick.
They also put this, they did this bacon. It's like these bacon bits they put like in a little
circle on the side so you can mix the bacon bits in. And they had like the right crock, which I think is another piece
of the clam chowder experience. Like the crock is super important and it was really good. And I just
feel like everyone else who makes clam chowder should just go there and see what they're doing
and just emulate it because it's always too thick. There's always too many clams. It's always in the
wrong kind of bowl. Um, and I think clam chowder people mess up more than it's good too thick. There's always too many clams. It's always in the wrong kind of bowl.
And I think clam chowder, people mess up more than it's good. And I just want us to be better at clam chowder. Bill, I don't disagree with that hot take, but I have a hotter version of that hot
take. All right, let's hear it. Probably no one will agree with me, particularly no one from the
New England area. I, David Chang, make the greatest clam chowder in the world. I really do.
What?
Yeah.
When have you ever made clam chowder?
What the hell are you talking about?
I make clam chowder all the time.
For who?
And we're talking about the New England stuff.
Me, my family.
You have not had it.
I guarantee you,
if you eat my clam chowder,
you're going to be like,
man, that is the best clam chowder I've ever had.
So without giving away your secrets,
what is the secret?
So number one, it starts with the root.
You're right.
Most clam chowder is garbage because they add cream
and they add other things that sort of emulsify it
and makes it too thick, right?
Yeah.
And also the potatoes.
You said it right.
You can't sort of keep it in there
because as it cooks as you
continue to serve it it's going to break down and that's another reason why because it's full of
starch that the the soup will get too thick so you sort of have to cook things separately and add it
adding the bacon bits or the lardons is is a great idea i actually will steal that one. But the one thing that I do that changes
the clam chowder is I don't add the clams until the very end. I cook the clams separate.
Interesting. So how come?
Clams become like the texture of a rubber to a number two, like pencil eraser. It's terrible.
Right. So you also need to have enough broth clam. So people may add too many clams,
but not enough clam broth. So I'm just saying, are you celery, pro celery in your New England
clam chowder or no? No, I'm not really. That's a little too ambitious for me.
All right. Now I'm going to have to make clam chowder for you. And when I make it,
my only ask is that when you taste it, you got to let your audience know that Dave was right.
This is the best clam chowder I've ever had.
So the mistakes, first of all, I don't believe you.
You're not from New England, so there's no way.
There's no way you'll know how to make the perfect clam chowder.
I'll just challenge you right now.
Second, the mistakes people make with the clam chowder, I really want them to stop making it.
It doesn't have to be like a fucking milkshake.
Well, first of all, Bill.
Clam chowder, they want to do it like,
oh, it's creamy.
It's like, no, it doesn't have to be that creamy.
It's actually better when it's not that creamy.
What we need to do is stop other cities
from making New England clam chowder.
San Francisco, I don't know why the fuck
they make clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl.
One of the dumbest sort of combinations
you could possibly do, right?
Clam chowder is put on too many menus. Number one. It's a great point. I don't understand
the bread bowl ad at all. It's like, how can we get more starch into this? Let's have a bread bowl.
I don't need a bread bowl. I mean, if you go to your like corporate cafeteria and they serve
clam chowder, that's a no, you do not get that. Don't order that. You got, you got to get it from a clam shack something like that where you hear
the new england accent where it's you don't even understand what they're saying like these are
signs that it's going to be a good chowder or you know i have to make it free that's it well the
other the cousin of this is the french onion soup which i think it's screwed up a lot no no no but
just the same mistakes with the French onion soup where people will
put in just too many onions.
Right? Or they'll
try to do it in a bowl that's not the perfect bowl.
If you're doing the French onion correctly,
you want the cheese to burn
on the sides of the crock. Of course.
You want it to not have too much onion in it.
You don't want too much bread in it. It's got to have the right...
French onion soup has a high
margin of error. It's got to have the right. French onion soup has like a high margin of error. Like it's really hard
to not enjoy
even a mediocre bowl
of French onion soup.
I always get it
knowing that it's probably
a B minus to a C minus.
And I want to be
pleasantly surprised
if it's better than that, right?
Going back to the chowder,
here's another maybe hot take
that people may not even know exists.
I think the best chowder isn't the New England clam chowder. It's Rhode Island clam chowder, here's another maybe hot take that people may not even know exists. I think the best chowder isn't the New England clam chowder.
It's Rhode Island clam chowder.
Do you even know what that is?
It's clear.
It's just a clam broth with some potatoes and bacon in there.
It's super light.
It's great.
Typical Rhode Island.
They always have to do their own version of
something accents clam shouter i got one one one one beef with one of your hot takes of lake because
yeah you are really peppering your podcast and the podcast that you're on the ringer
with a lot of food takes and a lot of food the veal cherries yeah you said the veal chop
is this thing that's hit or miss i I don't think it's ever a miss.
It's always, if it's not cooked enough, if it's too fat, if it's too fatty,
there's a bunch of ways it can go wrong. I don't think I've ever had a bad veal chop.
I don't know what that means that it's hit or miss. I think most people would say that
the veal chop is one of the most dependable things you can order.
So you think I should change that analogy
to French onion soup?
But I don't even know if that's the right wing too
because most people enjoy the French onion soup.
Like, I don't think I've had French onion soup so bad
that I was like, oh, I don't want to eat that.
I don't know what it is.
So what's a good analogy?
Because for people listening,
the one that I used to throw was Devin Achey and the Dolphins running back where it's like the hit or miss scenario of spending $45. fish, right? At any kind of restaurant. It's not even too fishy. You're like,
why did I get that? I'm enjoying everything else except this. Everyone else ordered the right thing. I don't know why I decided to order fish. And it's usually a hit or miss. Usually,
if it's good, you feel great. You feel like you won the ordering.
But if it's bad, you feel like you need to go. Well, that leads me to hot take,
food hot take number three, which will either be the one you agree with the most
virulently, virulently, violently, can't speak, or the one you get the baddest about. So as I said,
I was in the Cape for like eight days and I really do think seafood in New England and off the Cape
is the best seafood.
There's Maryland people who are like, fuck you, we have the best crabs.
I get it.
This is totally provincial.
With that said, scallops in Massachusetts and especially on the Cape, I just love scallops.
And the reason I think I'm in the right on scallops is it's the one thing you order
where you always feel like they kind of cheated you on the portions, right? It's like, oh, I have
the scallops like for an entree. And it's like, then it comes out and it's like six scallops.
Like they could barely, they could barely spare the scallops. It's like, man, I wish I had nine
scallops. These are delicious. Um, so anyway, I had scallops and must have ordered it four or five times
in like eight days.
I was just putting it with everything.
So two things off this. One,
why hasn't anybody come up with scallop chowder
yet?
There is scallop chowder. I've never had
it. I've never seen it. I would order it every time.
It's usually seen
I have like a scallop corn chowder.
That's like weirdly a classic combo.
Feels like scallops are sitting there. Anyway, we came back from the Cape and my wife was at the farmer's market and they have a really good fish place at the farmer's market. I was like,
let's get scallops. We'll buy a bunch of scallops. I'll finally have enough scallops.
So she pan fried the scallops, did these breadcrum scallops i'll finally have enough scallops so she she pan fried
the scallops did these breadcrumbs and it was absolutely delicious and i was like why aren't
scallops a bigger deal scallops are the fucking best and i don't know i think scallops is the
most underrated food i can't believe bills i'm i'm gonna agree with you here we finally have
and i'm not just saying this for saying it it's true scallops
underrated but also one of those things where i think people either get them frozen
or they're sort of past their sell-by date and they get ammoninated but you need them fresh you
need them like right basically pulled out of the ocean and when i mean fresh we get them at the
restaurant they're literally pulsating they They're alive, right? Right.
You can eat them raw.
You can pop them in your mouth like they're an M&M.
And why scallops are so good is they have a high sugar content.
And when they're cooked and you get that caramelized, scallops are just one of the most delicious things you could possibly eat.
And the fact is this.
If you had to ask me where the best scallops in the world are, I would say maybe like the cold waters off of France. But I would bet that if this was like a world cup of scallops around the world, we're
basically France or Brazil, like New England area. It's that good. The scallops that are produced in
the New England area off the Cape Nantucket, it's, it's yeah, we're number one. Number one, America produces that region.
Everywhere else, not so good in America.
The only place scallops are really, truly made is Maine to Nantucket.
So, yeah.
So, what is your number one way to prepare a scallop for an entree that you're buying into?
Because I like the lightly breaded kind of scallop with some lemon on it. Maybe something
a little spicy, but not too spicy. And then you want the big fat, just stick your fork in and go.
So I'm a no bread kind of guy. I understand, but I like the tiny Nantucket Bay that are like
really, really small. I can eat those literally raw because they're so sweet. Or if you're going
to cook them very quickly, just a little bit of butter, a little bit
of lemon juice, salt and pepper, and that's all you need.
But I would probably say the thing that I love the most of those giant hockey puck main
diver sea scallops that are just super sweet and one of my favorite things to eat.
And I think that is just simply pan roasted, a little bit of butter, salt, pepper. That's all
you need. Maybe a sprig of thyme, but it's hard to get because again, it's only really produced
in that area and you don't want to get it frozen. That's just a fact. So if we're getting on the
West Coast, it was found, they shipped it. It was in ice for two days. It was in the fridge.
I don't think I've ever ordered scallops in California. Ever.
I don't think I would either. But when I'm in
New England, I want to get them all the time.
So it's interesting because people
always, when they ask about
Massachusetts, what's the food?
And people always say lobster roll.
And lobster rolls are good.
But to me, the scallops
and the right kind of clam chowder
are the two best New England things that I feel like I can't get anywhere else.
I got to do this thing for Amazon Thursday Night Football.
We're going to compare the iconic foods of different cities.
I've asked you this already.
I want to know if your answer's changed.
When we do the New England Patriots versus whatever team, What is the food that is most representative of New England?
Is it the clam chowder or lobster roll?
I think people would say the lobster roll,
but I don't necessarily agree with it.
But as a local, you would say it's not lobster roll.
It's chowder, right?
I would say the clam chowder.
That's where we're going to go.
But a lot of people would say lobster roll.
And really the stealth answer is scallops.
Cause I just feel like that the scallop level in that area is just so much
higher than any other area in the United States.
There's no contest.
They're not going to say like cod or something like that.
Cod's kind of boring.
Even though cod's good,
baked cod's good.
I'm a fan.
It delivers the goods
especially if you put
some stuff in it
and get
you know
get a little excited about it
alright so we
basically this is all
leading to
could somebody ever
create a scallop pizza
pizza 2.0
with scallops
no no no no
that should never happen
maybe that's a challenge
for you on
so next time I come on
maybe it's like
maybe it's like a,
maybe it's like a scallops thing.
How do we get the scallops in LA fast enough?
So they're not,
you know,
we can get them live in the shell.
So that's one way you can do scallops.
So maybe that's what we do.
Like the whole fish thing.
All right.
Yeah.
You have to go.
Congrats on having a QB.
Don't forget dinner time with Dave Chang.
When,
when you come back?
October 8th.
And when are you doing
Amazon football stuff?
Next week should be my first bit
for Amazon Thursday Night Football.
And you have a podcast
with The Ringer as well.
You're a busy man.
That's right.
Good to see you, Dave Chang.
Thanks, Bill.
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All right, David Shoemaker is here.
We've worked together since 2011 at Grantland and then at The Ringer this whole time. He is involved in the Mr. McMahon documentary we did on Netflix.
You can see him in HD.
He's in, I think, every part, all six parts.
He's in the glue guy spot for the documentary where you make these things and you need somebody
to kind of walk you through stuff, set stuff up, do the big picture things.
How long was your interview for that?
Good question.
I mean, listen, we did it in phases, right?
By the time that it was time for me
to do the glue work we had done most of the material but they were already making cuts of
the documentary yeah so i did i did a bunch of interviews sitting in my living room just like
on a zoom call like this and then they and then they sort of use those as placeholders and then
i went and sat down for i think it was a couple of days,
just sitting in front of a camera,
you know, just in a, in a.
It's weird, right?
It's weird to do those.
Cause after a while,
you almost forget you're being filmed
and that it's going to be shown on HD everywhere.
Yeah. It's, it's very strange.
I do, you know, I've done a lot of this stuff,
you know, in various forms over the years.
And, uh, and in some ways it's very comfortable.
And also I've had a lot of these conversations with the people who are interviewing me for the documentary. We've talked about all
this stuff before. So in some ways, it's comfortable. And in some ways, your eyes
go into soft focus and you realize you're sitting in front of a million bright lights
in an empty office trying to act like you just were interrupted while you were doing your work
and make it seem natural.
So it's very strange.
So we were working on this documentary really since pre-COVID was when we started doing the, I think, the deal.
And then really started working on it in detail once Chris Smith came aboard in 2021, 2022.
Oh, yeah. It was before COVID.
The first time, I mean, I remember the first time I met Chris
was at a little bar in Soho
that's been there
for a million years.
And we just like,
you know,
he just wanted to talk
about wrestling.
And you set us up.
That was obviously pre-COVID
because we were out there
in public.
And it was,
that's a,
man,
it seems like so long ago now.
Yeah.
And I don't want to say too much because I don't want to prejudice how people watch the
documentary.
We really want people to sit down and watch it.
But just the backstory of it was Vince wanted to do a documentary and the WWE, because I
had done the Andre the Giant doc and he was like ready to tell his story.
And a big thing for us is like, well, if we're going to tell your story, it's got to be everything. It's not, we're not doing a hagiography. We're not doing
autobiography. Like it's got to be warts and all. And he's like, I'm ready to talk about everything.
And so the next step was finding a director. And the best thing was with Chris was he wasn't a
wrestling fan and we decided it would actually be more interesting. Let's get somebody who doesn't
know this and just,
we immerse him into this world and he's experienced everything for the first time.
And then we can kind of help him with the wrestling stuff.
So we get all these interviews and we're going and probably working on it for
over a year,
a year and a half.
Yeah.
And then the first wave of stuff happens with Vince.
And for the next two years, we're trying to figure out,
oh, will we have to audible on the fly again? What is this going to mean? What's this going to mean?
There's a couple of times where I think both of us thought this thing's going to get shelved.
This won't happen. But the big thing for me, and tell me if you agree, we were trying to
do a balanced portrait, as balanced as we could of somebody who
for 50 years had this outsized impact on not only completely changing professional wrestling,
but culture, television, cable, the pay-per-view model, the streaming model. There was just nobody
like him. There was no promoter like him. And so the big thing was like, how do we capture that impact? And then the second thing was, who is this guy? What's real and not real? And that's where we kind of gravitated toward with the doc. But then all of a sudden there's a twist here, there's a turn here. And was there ever a point where you were like, this is never happening?
I mean, listen, it's such a big project and especially being as, you know,
entrenched in the wrestling world as I am,
there is, I mean, the whole thing just felt so daunting.
You know, I mean, it was like, it was an absolute yes.
The idea was brilliant.
You have to do it, right?
But as someone who does this kind of, you know,
works in this world so much, I'm just like, i don't know if we'll be able to get there you said vince
was eager you know was actually wanted to do the documentary at first which is 100 true
but i mean i don't think vince it sounds so weird to say i'm not sure vince knew what it meant to do
the documentary and and i'm not sure that he knew what story he wanted to tell
or i don't even know if he knows who he is enough to tell that story you know i mean there was a
whole it was really hard just to even when he was you know pseudo eager on the first phase of the
documentary it was really hard to get beyond surface with him you know and and chris did a
good job chris smith did a did a good job of sitting in
front of him and just sort of staring him down until some things started coming out yeah um
but it was it was it's it's it's the he's vince is even prior to everything coming out uh over
the past couple years is just the most bizarre subject to try to do this kind of project for because
even when he was eager he wasn't you know there on time or you know on the days that he was supposed
to be there and they always had people with them there was always people kind of lingering in the
background making sure nothing weird happened yeah and like reminding him of the things in his past
and and and uh just there's always a team you know and there was and it was always i mean and reminding him of things in his past.
There's always a team.
Everybody, listen,
Chris Smith, the entire production team, have done so many documentaries of this sort and of all sorts. They've been working in this world forever.
Chris is one of the best ever to do this.
This is the guy that did the Tiger King. None of the best ever to do this. To say, I mean, yeah, this is the guy that did the Tiger King.
And none of them had ever experienced a working situation
like we encountered in Stanford, Connecticut, right?
I mean, we would show up to shoot and then just be all day long
be getting updates from Vince's secretary about his ETA,
pushing it like six hours, eight hours before the shoot,
pushing it back an hour, pushing it back another hour, pushing it back another hour.
And then he would roll in at 11 p.m., pitch black with his little crew around him and shake
everybody's hand and say, thank you for being here. And then go into hair and makeup and just
emerge in the same outfit that he was wearing for every shoot. It was just such a bizarre situation.
Yeah, and we were in this situation
where we kind of knew everything.
Like, we're making this documentary,
we're making it for people on Netflix
and around the world
and hoping 100 million people watches it, right?
Yeah.
So we're making it for everybody.
And we made a decision,
the A story is about Vince.
Yeah. The B story is about Vince. Yeah.
The B story is about the 50-year history of wrestling.
And there's a lot of beats to it.
And there's no way to just separate those
because the last 50 years of wrestling
is Vince's story and he's part of it.
And you can't separate those in any way.
But there's so much wrestling.
There's, I don't know how many dozen episodes
of Dark Side of the Ring at this point.
And WWE's own in-house documentaries.
All the documentaries they've done.
The Undertaker stuff.
There's so much wrestling content.
So I'm sure the die, die, diehard wrestling fans
are going to watch this and be like,
oh, I knew all that.
I didn't learn anything from it.
So that was a big obstacle for us. It's like, yeah, a lot of this stuff's already out there, but what's not out there be like, oh, I knew all that. I didn't learn anything from it. So that was a big
obstacle for us. It's like, yeah, a lot of this stuff's already out there, but what's not out
there is like, who was this guy? How did people relate to him? How do people feel about him now?
You could feel that in the interviews, like the way people talk about him, like they're
reverential about him, but they're also seem like they're a little afraid of him. Just trying to capture
this big,
invincible dude who also had a lot
of skeletons and demons and did some bad
stuff, let's be honest.
Yeah, some incredibly bad stuff,
it looks like.
It was...
People
did seem a little bit apprehensive
to be in front of the camera, and these are all
trained wrestlers and actors and people that wouldn't to be in front of the camera. And these are all trained wrestlers and actors
and people that wouldn't normally be...
Some of the biggest performers of the last 50 years.
Yeah.
Is this okay with Vince?
He said, I could do this?
Yeah.
And yeah, I mean, I think it was being...
Not just talking about Vince,
but talking about it on the record
and for this kind of project.
I think in the back of everyone's minds,
even before the allegations came out, they knew that this they they were they were
going to be you know logged into history for whatever they were saying um i mean you're right
about the about the all the stuff that's come before all the other documentaries i mean part
of what makes vince a really difficult character and in some ways a really interesting character
is his timeline is inextricable from WWE.
He has very, there's very little
personal life there
for us to go into, right? I mean, because
he and the
company are entirely
intertwined. So we do tell
a lot of the history of WWE
and a lot of it is, you know, you're
staring down the history, the timeline,
the big events that they've already laid out in the past, i mean and and in some ways you're dependent on that and
you try to you know break free of that as much as possible um but really it always comes back to
events and it always comes back to just his version of events him staring into the camera
and trying i mean and and trying to explain himself and for
the first time in his life you know just to talk about himself this way for the first time that
he's ever done a lot of times he couldn't no he absolutely and i think that's there i think that's
there for everybody to see it's it's a it was a it was a very very unique experience i mean i mean
listen i talk to people wwe all the time and they always ask,
I mean,
from the moment
we started doing this,
they would always ask me,
what was it like
to be in that room
with Vince?
What was it like?
Did he really sit there
for four hours
and just answer questions?
You know,
you're just like,
yeah,
whatever.
He's never done it.
I mean,
the amount of access
just in terms of hours
of him sitting still
and asking questions
is entirely unprecedented. And, you know, done it. I mean, the amount of access just in terms of hours of him sitting still and asking questions is
entirely unprecedented.
And, you know, a lot
of that stuff's in there.
You and I have seen all the footage.
We've seen so many cuts of this. I'm sure
there's diehard wrestling fans that would just pay anything
just to see the raw footage of Vince sitting
there because it's the
volume that's the real amazing
thing.
But I think the story... No, we have four hours on the cutting room floor that I think this easily could have
been 10 parts, but we didn't want to do it that way.
We wanted to...
There was so much.
We had four hours of Vince's interview on the cutting room floor because he sounded
like a frog one day.
You know, like he didn't have a voice, you know?
I mean, there was so much good material.
But I think that the story that Chris and his team were able to tell is pretty amazing.
Yeah, I think if I had to describe it, where it landed was all the stuff that happened with Vince the last two years.
How did we get here?
Yeah.
How did we end up in this spot from mid-2022 on where he's about to sell the company and then all the skeletons start popping out and then
it just keeps getting worse and worse. And then every time it feels stable again,
something else happens. How did we get to the last two years? And I think, you know,
that's where, that's where we got with it. I think as a wrestling fan, there's so many like
small things that I felt like I was, you're, you're a 10 out of 10 with the,
what,
you know,
I'm probably like an eight or an eight and a half.
There were so many things I had no idea.
Just sprinkled.
Even like that gorilla monsoon was supposed to get the WWE.
And he did like,
there was like 50 things.
And part of our job,
but we would tell Chris with the,
the cuts,
like,
yo,
you got to keep that in.
He's that, that's never, you got to keep that in.
That's never been out there before.
I'm sure somebody like Dave Meltzer probably knew a bunch of this stuff,
but I don't think most people did.
Quietly, my favorite thing in the whole documentary,
I can finally say this out loud,
because as a pure wrestling nerd, barely involves Vince.
But we all know Vince has talked before about how his favorite, how his idol,
his childhood idol was Dr. Jerry Graham,
this wrestler that worked for his dad with the bleach blonde hair and drove the fancy cars.
And Vince just wanted to be this guy so much.
There's a, if you watch closely,
there is footage of Dr. Jerry Graham entering the ring
in which, to me, it looks like he does the original version
of Triple H's water spit.
Oh, wow.
And Triple H has never said
that there's an origin story for it,
but Dr. Jerry Graham sure does it in that clip.
So when I saw that the first time,
I almost fell over in my chair.
So, all right, this thing's coming out.
What happens next like what what would be your
prediction for the next week or so because i i think we both have complicated feelings on it
because the the documentary we're working on for the first two years of the decade ended up having
a more for a bunch of pretty awful reasons. And then it easily could have shifted that that became the documentary.
And we really tried to stay at least somewhat true to the documentary we're
trying to make from the beginning.
But now what happens over the next week or so?
I honestly have no idea.
Yeah, I don't either.
I really don't.
I mean, you mentioned, and we should say, I mean,
WWE was involved at the beginning and is no longer involved in the documentary, right? So like, I don't uh i mean you mentioned and we should say i mean wwe was involved at the beginning and
is no longer involved in the documentary right so like i don't know they were not involved in
final cuts or any of that stuff yeah they're and um but we did have access to their entire library
yeah everything we wanted that was part of the deal and then i think that the most appealing
thing to me is that i think a lot of docs have gone that hagiography route, that autobiography route.
And I don't feel like this is it.
We really tried to have balance in every direction as much as we possibly could.
And whether people agree that that's how it played out, I don't know.
But there's just not a lot of documentaries that have balance like that anymore.
And I think that was really important to all of us no i mean i think there was some there was
certainly a benefit i mean obviously vince wouldn't have sat down initially if he didn't you know if
he wasn't comfortable doing it and and obviously we were able to make a doc the documentary that
we did because we had that freedom then in the end to to to not be bound by him um i think it
really worked out for the best.
But in terms of what happens next,
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, the people that work at WWE
might have got, you know,
might have snuck screeners somehow,
but for the most part,
they're going to be seeing it at the same time
that the world sees it.
So, I mean, I know your phone will be blowing up
and my phone will be blowing up
just with people who are seeing this stuff
for the first time.
It's really hard.
I mean, I don't know without this documentary
what the future of Vince McMahon,
what the future of WWE looks like.
And presumably,
there won't be any relationship there going forward.
Well, but the irony of this doc coming out
when it has and what's happened with Vince,
the company is the strongest it's been since when the late nineties,
the early 2010s,
this has been a,
an absolute gravy train for them.
They have the most stars they've had in a long time.
They're making money hand over fist.
They're about to start this new,
uh,
raw deal,
ironically on,
on Netflix,
um,
which I think probably helped us save the documentary
and the fact that Netflix was paying all that money
for Raw.
it's weird that all that stuff's happening
without Vince, who was the
number one, number two, number three, number four,
number five reasons the company's in this spot
it was in originally.
One of the strangest postscripts
to the Vince McMahon story
is that for years, even when wrestling fans
like you and me could look and say that it wasn't true,
there was a perception from Vince inside WWE
in the media world at large
that Vince had this magic pixie dust or whatever
that he was the thing that made wwe so great right that
it was his creative genius that made pro wrestling as we know it so great and we could like i said
we could look at it be like come on like there's other people that could do this job but now it's
been proven to be totally untrue there's other people in charge now and the company's twice what
it was when he left you know and and um obviously his his contributions to the business are unmatched uh but but he's you know i think
that magic had been gone for a while and now it's on display for everybody to see how great the
company is doing it really is a very bizarre time for this to be coming out but you know fitting
in in a certain way. Yeah, it's weird
because there's been a lot of books
written about him.
They've done a million documentaries
about everyone in the WWE universe
to varying degrees of quality.
But I felt like I knew a lot.
But when you see it all put together,
I think the one thing
that really surprised me,
and maybe this will come through
for people who watch it,
is just how many times it intersected with pop culture in these kind of influential ways that I don't think maybe wrestling, and a couple people say that during the doc, like you kind of don't understand that wrestling, which is over here and people make fun of it. It's for booger eaters, all that stuff. And then it's like over and over again is crossing over into all these parts of business and culture.
And I think seeing the landscape of that over 50 years, I thought was really interesting,
especially the way that Vince saw over and over again, pieces of turf, opportunity,
the way that he thought about business just really aggressively over and over again.
So from that standpoint,
I hadn't really pieced it all together in my head
until Chris did it.
Yeah, I think that watching it,
people really get a vision of that
that they might not have gotten before.
I think wrestling fans in particular,
like you said,
some of them will feel like they've seen all this.
And you have been to a lot of these places in history before.
Yeah.
The story that's being told,
I think is bigger.
And I think in terms of a documentary that you can watch with,
you know,
your wife,
with your girlfriend,
with your friends who weren't into wrestling or whatever.
I mean,
I think that this is going to,
this is going to be,
this is a story that's being told in such a way that it can really be
appreciated by just anybody
I mean it's
which was our goal
we weren't trying
to go for the
1% diehard
wrestling fans
we were trying to
get everybody
to watch it
yeah
you know
and at that
if we were making
this just for you
and me
it probably would
have been
a lot more
hardcore
and there would
have been
some stuff
in there
that you know
my wife
wouldn't have
cared about
sure
I mean
if we had made the Andre documentary for just you and me it wouldn't have been some stuff in there that my wife wouldn't have cared about. Sure. If we had made the Andre documentary
for just you and me, it wouldn't have been
the documentary that people still talk about
now. It wouldn't have been the documentary that
brings non-wrestling fans
to tears every single time.
It's an
incredible
daunting
task to take something like this on.
The thing you have to know is the wrestling fans, the diehard ones, are it's an incredible daunting task to take something like this on. Um,
so I, I,
well,
the thing you have to know is the wrestling fans,
the diehard ones are,
they're all maniacs.
They all really give a shit.
They've all seen everything and they're probably not going to like whatever you make.
Right.
Yeah.
You just have to go into it knowing they're going to watch this anyway,
but they're probably going to be unhappy with five different things.
Sure.
I mean,
Cody Rhodes wins a world title at WrestleMania and there's some number of
people sitting in the football stadium saying,
man,
that should have been ricochet or whatever,
you know what I mean?
Like there's,
there's all,
and they're wrestling and that's why they,
and they,
and they believe that they're a hundred percent right and that everybody
else should probably agrees with them.
Right.
I mean,
that's,
and that's,
we're all,
that's,
that's what being a wrestling fan is all about.
So sure.
There's going to be parts of the documentary where you say,
you know, why didn't they ask this question?
Why didn't they double down?
Why didn't they go more into this?
I mean, there's a lot of reasons why,
but you're telling one big story, right?
And not every single little thing is going to be there
just the way that every different person wants it.
Those are the decisions that you and Chris
and everybody involved had to make.
What was the biggest cutting room for Ouch for You?
For me, it was the whole Evel Knievel story that we had to take out.
Oh, God, that was so good. I thought that was so good. I'm going to try to see if Chris can put that as
a deleted scene or something. Because we had a bunch of stuff from Vince in the
72 to 76 range that just for the story, sometimes
you have to cut stuff because it's just better for the way the
narrative moves,
but you're like,
Oh man,
I don't want to lose that.
But we lost that evil can evil bit.
There was an early cut of that.
That was like the first thing we even,
we ever saw from Chris.
Oh yeah.
It was the lead of the second episode.
And we were,
Oh my gosh,
it was so great.
I mean,
there's a lot of that stuff.
I mean,
you mentioned all this stuff,
the influences on culture and the way that culture influenced wrestling. There are a lot of moments like that that you get into the weeds
a little bit with Vince or with other people and it just doesn't fit with the
bigger picture. Even though we're trying to trim this down to six
episodes, I mean, it's a ton of real estate. Yeah, six hours. Six hours that easily
could have been ten and probably in certain people's hands would have been
ten. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were some quieter moments with Vince could have been 10 and probably in certain people's hands would have been 10 yeah yeah i mean
there were some quieter moments with vince uh where you know you could see him on the verge of
getting really introspective um they just don't really make sense in a documentary like this you
know i mean how long can you just stare at his face like wondering what he's thinking but as but
when you're watching it happen in real time or even even on the first cut, you're just like,
God, that's so good. That's a real moment right there. But then you realize you have
so many other big moments that we really have to hurry up and get to
that people really want to see.
It was certainly the strangest documentary process
I've ever been involved with. I will say, though, I've worked with
a lot of people, and I've done a lot of these at this point.
I just could not believe how good Chris and his team were. I've never worked with a team
quite like that. We had the final cut of the sixth episode of this with 14 cuts.
I've never worked on anything that had more than five or six or something of an episode.
And each cut was different. And it was just, I think all of us at some point, you just realize like, hey, we've spent so much time on this. This now has to be good. And those guys, these are just really hard to make. And I hope people appreciate that when they watch it. There's so much precision and care and time to every editing choice, how things move. It's amazing to watch. It was, it's true. I mean, you,
you watch so many cuts that you just go blind to it at a certain point,
but that team never went blind.
Right.
I mean,
they just,
everything was just incredibly well done.
And Chris,
I mean,
like you said,
we picked somebody who wasn't a big wrestling fan.
Um,
he's an expert at making documentaries about odd subcultures,
you know,
and he came in,
uh,
with wide eyes and just threw
himself into it. And
I mean, it's almost like
we had conversations that were almost like, you know, when you watch
wrestling with like a young, with your kid, when
they're little, they're just, they ask you a question
and you ask, but you ask, they ask a question
that's just so clear and obvious
that you haven't thought about it since you were
five or whatever that you're just like,
oh, well, let me think about that for a minute.
You know, and there were just so many moments I had
just like sitting at a coffee table with Chris,
just like going over notes, going over video, going over, you know, whatever.
And we were doing the kind of in the researching phase.
And yeah, I mean, just watching him get invested, get enthralled, and figuring out this story was just so incredible.
And I think that the final product, his vision really comes through.
Mr. McMahon on Netflix. It's premiering September 25th, so basically late night.
We'll see how it goes.
Shoemaker, what a ride for us.
Yeah, we'll both go into hiding
after this interview
and reemerge, you know,
post-apocalypse.
We'll see what happens.
All right.
Good to see you.
You too, man.
All right.
That's it for the podcast.
Thanks to Kyle Creighton
and Steve Cerruti for producing.
Thanks to Shio Kapadia
and David Chang
and David Shoemaker. Don't forget
the new rewatchables went out Monday night.
We did Over the Top.
You can find it on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.
You can find all this stuff from this podcast on the
Bill Simmons YouTube channel and you can find
Mr. McMahon on Netflix
September 25th, late night September
24th. I will see you on this
podcast on Thursday. On the wayside, I'm a person never lost.
I don't have to be alone.
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