The Bill Simmons Podcast - Burrow vs. Herbert, Ravens Concerns, Seattle’s Ceiling, and Trump’s Big Meltdown With Mina Kimes and JackO

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by ESPN's Mina Kimes to discuss rookie QBs Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, and Tua Tagovailoa; run through Bill's NFL QB tiers; and make some Million-Dollar NFL Picks (2:30) before talking with JackO about the 2020 presidential election and the turbulent vote-counting process following Election Day (1:03:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up on the Bill Simmons podcast, we're going to talk about the election and we're going to talk about week nine football and best rookie quarterbacks with Mina Kimes. It's a topsy-turvy podcast, kind of like the week in general. It's all next. It's the Bill Simmons podcast presented by FanDuel. Football is in full action. FanDuel's highest rated sports book is the best place to bet it all. We've been doing pretty well on million-dollar picks this year. I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good.

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tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com and The Ringer Podcast Network, where we've been doing an awesome job hitting the election. The Press Box with David Shoemaker and Brian Curtis. The Bacar Sellers Podcast. Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay. Catch up on those pods if you missed them.

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That podcast is called Wrighty's House and if you haven't listened to it, go check it out. Also check out the NBA draft coverage. We have the draft guide

has been great. Kevin O'Connor updated it this week. We check out the NBA draft coverage. We have the draft guide has been great. Kevin O'Connor updated it this week. We also have the Ringer NBA show where we've been hitting the draft. And Ryan Rossello had Kevin O'Connor on his podcast talking about everything. So coming up, Mina Kimes and I are going to talk about rookie quarterbacks, million dollar picks, whether we trust the Seahawks, whether we don't trust Buffalo and a whole bunch more. And then my buddy Jacko is going to come on just to talk about the election. He's been coming on this podcast for 13 years, 14 years, always talking about political stuff. So we're going to do it again. Why not? What better way to do it than this? That's all coming

up first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. We are taping this early afternoon Pacific time. Mina Kimes is here. You can see her and read her on ESL. Are you like semi-retired like me as a writer or no? Kind of? I do our, we do these insider panels where we- So you're semi-retired. Yeah, pretty much. There you go. So if anything happens over the next, I don't know, whenever from now to when we put the podcast up, don't blame us because the COVID news

is just coming fast and furious now. This actually seems like the first weekend where we might not have multiple games and we don't have to dwell on that too much, but it makes it weird to tape like, you know, I like to do my Thursday pod, do million dollar picks, try to figure out what's going on.

And there's so much uncertainty. What's it like to do a daily show on ES million-dollar picks, try to figure out what's going on. And there's so much uncertainty. What's it like to do a daily show on ESPN where it's just that uncertainty every day? Mercifully, it's live. NFL Live is live. My other shows are taped. The taped ones, it is a problem. Because we're taping this on Thursday

and tonight's Packers Niners and half the Niners cannot play. I mean, half were injured. I think they have like $80 million in salary on the IR or something. But then now both of their wide receivers are out. Kendrick Bourne maybe had a negative. It's unclear. So we just didn't really talk

about the game. I mean, we kind of can't. I don't know. But that's a weird one because they're being vague and muddling through. Well, somehow there was action on the Niners this morning. The line went from, I mean, uh, yeah, the line went from seven to six and a half. I'm like, who's, who's banging the Niners right now? I don't understand that. And plus Nick Mullins is the backup quarterback and they just played four days ago. And so I guess the Packers don't have any running back. So we'll find out what happens in that.

I wanted to talk about QB tears first. I asked you to come on and do million dollar picks with me because you've been red hot on the Levitard show. But I thought we needed something at the top that's not election related. I think everybody has fatigue. John King, just turning around, staring at the board, explaining how Philadelphia works for the 100,000th time.

We're going to talk QB tears. So this started from this premise. I was trying to figure out if I was going from 1 to 32, how high Joe Burrow would be on my list right now. If I had to win a playoff game in January, how high would Joe Burrow go? Because I've been so impressed by him the whole season. But then last week when they actually blocked for him for maybe the first time against that crappy Tennessee defense, and he looked like Tom Brady in his prime. And I'm like, what? But faster with more scrambles. And he had his backup

running back and he looks so good. I'm like, how high does this guy go? So first of all, are you as in on Burrow as I am? You did say Tom Brady in his prime. So it sounds like no, but I like him a lot. Well, I was saying he looked like that. I wasn't saying he was Tom, you know.

I know. I liked him coming out of college a lot. I was a little bit concerned cause we only had like one year sample size, but I think the same concern that I had then remains a concern now, which is, you know, there's a little bit of a ceiling on the arm strength and that's the contrast between him and Herbert. Who's this like sexy, big arms, super athlete. I mean, Joe Burrow's athletic too, but Herbert's like the toolsy guy and Joe Burrow's like the high floor guy. But I think we've seen that the floor is pretty high.

I think like watching him, I'm not ready to put him anywhere close to my top two tiers of quarterbacks, but he looks like a guy who can have an NFL career at least. So going for the next 15 years, who would you rather have? It sounds like you'd rather have Herbert. He's also younger. I think you get an extra four years with him, basically. Yeah, Joe Burrow's like 29 or something. Orlovsky and I got into it because Dan Orlovsky, who I do NFL Life with, was saying,

if I was to build around one young quarterback, it would be Joe Burrow. And I was like, young? Joe Burrow is the same age as Deshaun Watson, basically. And then he said he would take Burrow over Watson and I blew my gasket. I would probably lean Burrow just because the ways in which

Herbert has been good and he's been really good and that's been far more surprising to me than Burrow by the way. I was not a Justin Herbert buyer coming out of college and I've been wrong about that. But the ways in which he's been good, the big arm, playing under pressure, kind of like a home run hitter, that's the stuff that

tends to be less consistent and predictive. So if there was a quarterback who was more likely to regress from the first few games based on what we've seen so far, it would be, and in college, it would be Justin Herbert. He is the old school, fun as hell gunslinger. A little like what Favre was

like before Favre became Favre and actually won a Super Bowl. But the early, early Favre was just like, this guy's magnetic. Plus, I think it's really helped him that every time he plays, there's only like one or two other games. So all of us have watched like an insane amount of Chargers. We live in LA, so it's always on.

I guess I'll watch Chargers. Sure. But well, you know what I love about him though, Bill, is like he's like the opposite of Brett Favre. He's this like quirky introvert. And this was like the knock on him coming out of college because there's nothing that NFL teams hate more, I guess, than kneeling than introverts.

Okay. Like all the whispers of the combine were like, I don't know. He likes to read books and spends time by himself. And then he turns out to be this big arm, confident, sexy quarterback. I find that combination really intriguing because it's really rare.

Kind of the perfect guy if you're the Chargers and you're basically a tenant in somebody else's stadium. You have no foothold at all in any way, shape or form in LA. And he would be a top five guy you would want to have as the lead person in your franchise. Yeah. Going forward, if you're just trying to sell tickets and jerseys and gain excitement for somebody like my son who picked them up in fantasy, who's really got into football this year. And he's just like, you know, you're going to gravitate to the young guys. Anyway, Herbert's the most fun young guy to gravitate to.

He's throwing it 60 yards downfield. But every time they cut to him on the sidelines, don't you just feel like incredibly old? Every time they show his face. Oh, well, but for my son, it's like he feels like they're in the same age. They're both at the seventh grade. He honestly looks like he's 16. He looks, every time I see him, he looks younger and younger. And yeah, I think you were the one who said he looks like he's like in Every time I see him, he looks younger and younger. And yeah, I think you were

the one who said he looks like he's in a Disney TV show or something. Yeah, he's in High School Musical 4. Burrow looks old. I mean, he is old, but he also looks old comparatively. I like them both. I think they're both great. I love them both as well. I'm going to make the case for Burrow for you because I think your floor is too low. Okay. The thing that's been amazing to me is his demeanor. And I care about that almost as much as any other quality with a TV. Like during these games, especially a couple of these Bengals games where he just got the shit kicked out of him. Yeah.

And he was never phased, never seemed rattled, never had deer in the headlights, always in control of his surroundings. And the last two games, especially when against the Browns, when he was just every time down the field, they're driving on him and he's an assassin. And last week too, I think there's a wherewithal to him. That's just different. And it's felt different right away. There's something about him where Herbert, Herbert has this wow factor that reminds me a lot of Favre where there's something about him where Herbert Herbert has this wow factor that reminds me a lot of Favre where there's like two throws a game

where you're just like wow holy shit what was that and I think it's going to be really fun to watch them develop now the big question is going to be

where does Tua fit into all this because you know like my son bought these Panini blaster box cards. He had his birthday and this is what he wanted.

And it has the Herbert rookie and the Tua rookie and the Burrow rookie and Clyde and all the receivers. And Tua, he was all excited about. And I watched Tua last week against the Rams. Granted, first start, Aaron Donald, not ideal, but did not have any of the wow factor. And I wonder when we're going to see that, and it seems like that's why Miami's playing.

They want to find out over the next eight games, does he have it or does he not? If he doesn't show it over these next eight games, does that mean he doesn't have it or is he just a rookie? Well, and beyond that, does it mean they're going to move on? Because there's been whispers that part of the reason they wanted to play him this year was so they could evaluate him ahead of the 2021 draft, which is insane. That is something that never used to happen pre-Josh Rosen and Kyler Murray.

And now Washington's moving on from Haskins after a year and change. And it feels... It's not something I would do. I don't think there's enough of a sample size and it's kind of crazy to me. It feels like such a admitting you're wasting a draft pick unless like Josh Rosen. They got a second for him, which in retrospect is amazing. But I

that's that's the rumor now around Miami and it's complicated bill because they like actually have a good defense. Yeah, so they could content in the AFC East, but then they've moved away from the hot quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick, who we all knew was inevitably going to implode anyways,

to Tua to evaluate him in a season that's not a lost season. So the stakes are really high and weird. So they were 6-1 a week ago, which House and Sal and I all jumped on to win the AFC East tough game, tough game this week for them against Arizona. But you made the key point. Their defense is actually legit good. And the last three weeks,

I think has been a top five defense. They can rush. They can make plays. They could, they get turnovers. They can defend pretty well. I was surprised. It felt like one of those stupid Rams

games where all of a sudden they're going to be down three with three minutes left, but it never really happened. Miami kind of slammed the door on them. And what really jumped out in that game, other than how good their defense was, was Tua really didn't do anything. And I left that game thinking like, I don't know what I'm supposed to think. He didn't show me, he didn't show me like the speed to run around like a Kyler or Josh Allen or something like that. I didn't... Wasn't that impressive with his arm strength, to be honest? I thought it seemed pretty

flaccid, some of those throws. Yeah. I just created that word for throws. You don't want the flaccid throws. But I just didn't see anything. I get it. Yeah. He was more... His arm is more comparable to Burrow and he

part of the reason I like the fit when they drafted him was he is you spread the ball out, a lot of RPOs it made sense with Chan Gailey kind of what Ryan Fitzpatrick is doing you think Tua could potentially do that as well. Problem is he's a rookie going against Aaron Donald

playing behind a not great offensive line. Right. And so I just am reserving judgment on him for now. I think the defense is the best in the division and it's not particularly close right now. Agree. I mean, when I was watching the game, this would probably resonate with you,

when I was watching the Rams-Dolphins game last week, I was flashing back to the Super Bowl, the 13-3 Super Bowl, which everybody was incredibly bored by except for football dorks and Patriots fans, I guess, because Belichick came out with that defensive game plan against Jared Goff, I was flashing back to watching Goff in that game when he looked totally unprepared for all the zero pressures they were sending, the simulated stuff, the disguise coverages. That was straight up Patriots. And then it's like, oh, right. Brian Flores was their defensive coach back then. Of course, he's good at this. Of course, this defense is good. They're built exactly like the Patriots.

They have a shit ton of former Patriots. It makes sense that they have a good unit. It worries me more. Not that the dolphins have the best defense in the AFC East. And it's not close. It's honestly not close. They might have the best coach. Ooh,

come on. Come on. Don't do this. It's like, he's like 70 now. He's got like his sons and the coaching staff at some point it ends I'm worried about it

I didn't say I think this it's the first time I got a little worried I know when my dad turned 70 that's when he started mixing up the grandkids names all that stuff it happens this is an audio format so people can't see the look on your face,

which was really that look when someone's about to say something on first take that they probably don't believe, but they're about to just let it rip. Your light eyes were flashing with a demonic air light. You don't believe that. Now, criticizing Belichick, the GM, totally fair game this season.

But come on. Coach? Coach? Coach? So here's the counter. Obviously, Belichick's the greatest coach of all time. But he is older. I think what Flores has done, dating back to the second half of last season, has been a top four coaching job in the NFL.

I mean, you think of the turnover they had last year where they were basically like, we don't care about this season. Getting rid of everybody. We don't care if we go 0-16. And then he's like, no, actually, I'm going to try to win these games. And then what you see this year. And that's why the Arizona matchup, which I kept out a million dollar picks,

but it's two teams. Get one. It's two teams I feel like we'll know more after that game about both, right? I'm not sure. Arizona showed some stuff defensively the last couple of games, especially with their secondary. They're like a little frisky. And the offense, I think we all agree,

has some potential because of the game breakers. And then Miami, they can't run the ball. They're really going to need Tua to control the game with short passing, which we haven't seen him do at all yet. And they have this awesome defense. And the game could go a variety of ways. But after the game, I think we'll know

about somebody. We definitely learn a lot about Tua because whereas you could really make excuses for him against the Rams with that pass rush. Arizona, contrary to what you saw against Seattle, does not have a good pass rush. So Tua should have time to execute this offense.

And if he can in this game, then I would start to be a little bit concerned about him this offense. And if he can in this game, then I would start to be a little bit concerned about him on offense. Yeah. It could be a situation where he's awesome. I wouldn't be surprised by that. I hope so. That'd be fun. All the college football people in my life are like, stop it. He is the best college football quarterback we've ever seen. Everybody needs to slow down. Burrow had the best season. Tua was the most talented college quarterback any of us have ever seen that like everybody needs to slow down. Burrow had the best season too. It was the most talented college quarterback any of us have ever seen. So everybody needs to settle down.

It's going to happen in the pros. He, then he suffered incredibly devastating injury. I mean, I look at our mutual friend, Dave Damoshek isolated. This is a one V one matchup, a rarity in today's NFL.

Number one, number one. That's huge. Oh yeah. The actual rarity in today's NFL. Number one, number one. That's huge. Oh, yeah. The actual, yeah. Yeah. The battle for one. One is my favorite quarterback number.

So I'm already predisposed to both of these quarterbacks. Plus, Kyler's Korean. I find myself weirdly leaning Miami, and I'll probably regret it. Maybe it's just too much recency bias for that Rams game and that defense. I just think they're so well coached, like to your point about Flores. Can we go into the Kyler being Korean thing? Because I feel like this hasn't got enough play.

I feel like he's been in the shadow of Young Wae Koo for a while here. Kyler also has really embraced his inner Han, as we call it. He wears Korean stuff all the time. The Korean group texts I'm in are lighting up constantly. What a year for the Korean NFL

connection. I mean, Young Wae Koo, between the onside kicks and he had a couple weeks where he was winning fantasy leagues for people. He's starting in both of the leagues I'm in. I'm thrilled for him. I'm thrilled for Kyler. Taylor Rapp's not Korean, but he's Asian on the Rams. It's been big for us too.

Yeah, I know. I mean, think of the days when Heinz Ward was everybody. That was the guy who just grabbed onto the Heinz Ward. That was really it. All right. So we think Burrow, safest bet to be a superstar. Herbert, most interesting ceiling. I'm saying out of the three.

And then Tua, we just have no idea. It's an incomplete. No idea. I would say actually Burrow's not the safest bet to be a superstar. He's the safest bet to be a NFL starter for years. I do question- You're really down on him.

This is crazy. Dude, he's played like six, seven games, eight games. I mean, Joe Burrow, if you're listening, come to the Patriots someday. All right, let's. Eight games. I mean, Joe Burrow, if you're listening, come to the Patriots someday. All right, let's take a break. We'll do QB Tears. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance.

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Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right. I did QB tiers. I did 10 groupings. I sent it to you. I put Herbert intentionally higher than I actually had him to see if, A, if you read the list and then B, what your reaction would be.

But the first thing I'm going to say, the top tier, which I think is Mahomes, Wilson, and Rodgers. Now it's questionable whether Rodgers is on his own, like kind of 1B tier, whether he belongs on that tier with Mahomes and Wilson. That's a whole other argument. But usually we've had, you know, years past,

I would say dating back to the mid 2000s, we've always had four or five top quarterbacks. It's interesting to me in 2020, we really only have two and a half, depending on how you feel about Rodgers at this stage of his career. I would say he belongs. I still think in a big game, but it's so clearly Mahomes, Wilson, Rodgers, and then you start talking about everybody else. Is there anybody else you would even consider for that spot? This list is insane. I'm now, the Herbert thing jumped out to me first, but there are so many crazy rankings.

No, let's focus on tier one. No, not at the moment. I think your one B point is probably correct based on, obviously we're coming off of a Green Bay loss to Minnesota. That was more on the defense, which I don't know if we're talking about the Green Bay game, but that defense is a serious problem. Rogers,

you know, I think he is playing at a level this year and it's been really fun to watch because every game has been a little bit different with him. He's really operated within the structure of that

offense in a way that feels sustainable regardless of whether or not Devontae Adams is playing or Aaron Jones is playing. He's not doing the kinds of things that are like, okay, this isn't going to last for a long time. He's been really accurate. Obviously, he doesn't throw many picks and he looks really comfortable in that particular offense. That said, he doesn't throw many picks and he looks really comfortable in that particular offense. That said,

I don't think he belongs with Mahomes and Wilson at the moment who are, I think, just playing a different sport right now from everyone else. I agree. So, really he should be in the tier, like a mini tier right below, just by himself. Apparently,

oh yes, a mini tier, yes. The third tier is where things go haywire. Yeah, I think so. I'd say Brady probably belongs there too, if I'm being honest. I would say I would probably put Rodgers and Brady in the next tier if it was me. I still think with Brady, I think he

can look great on a certain week. I still think the right defense can break him. Well, we saw it. Chicago. Yeah. I still think the right defense can break them. Well, we saw it. Chicago. Yeah. I mean, with Brady, I think you and I,

when we talked about him before the season, I said, like, his arm's fine. The issue with him as he ages has been pressure. And it's showing up this year in the splits. Like, when you pressure him, his QBR, guards protect, everything just falls off a cliff. Fortunately, he's playing behind a very good offensive line.

Defenses are afraid to blitz him. And so he's just rarely under pressure. But, you know, like if they ran into like a Pittsburgh or again, Chicago, as we mentioned, there just aren't that many great defenses. But if you run into a defense on the right day that can generate pressure without blitzing, I realize that's like, you's like on a full moon.

Brady definitely struggles in that situation, whereas Mahomes and Wilson do not. That's the thing. Eventually, they're going to play a team in January or February that's going to have a defense. It reminds me a little bit of Giannis with the Bucs where you're like, man, this looks awesome

in the regular season. This is great, but I wonder what happens if, and then they finally played the wrong team and it fell apart. So second tier, I guess we'll throw Rodgers in the second tier. I'll move him down. So I had Rodgers, Brady. I put Kyla Murray in there for the upside. You think that's insane?

I mean, his passing numbers this year are just not good, man. I mean, which isn't to say, I think you do have to look at a quarterback holistically, but he's had some bad games. And until he can consistently pass into the short and intermediate areas of the field, intermediate in particular, I don't think he belongs in that tier.

All right. So I had Murray and Burrow and then Lamar as a sub-tier guy. Burrow, God. Well, I love Burrow. I'm sorry. You're not going to talk me out of it. So if we have Rogers, Brady as the three and four,

who is five in your mind? Deshaun Watson, who you have like way down the list has been really good this year. I've been wildly unimpressed by him this year. He's been really good this year. I just haven't been impressed. His team sucks.

He's been playing really good football. He's a really good quarterback, but his team is terrible. And it sucks because I don't see the path for them to get better. Well, he considered the internet first and second round picks. Yeah, not great. I really wanted them to trade JJ Watt and they didn't not just because I

you know wanted him to be a Seahawk necessarily but like I that team it's it's bleak it's bleak

so you would have Watson fifth all right I'm gonna adjust so you have you have I had Watson lower just because I just

have not been impressed by the Texans in general team sucks quarterback does the team suck or does the defense suck because that's a different does the defense and coaching suck or the whole team sucks because on offense you could argue he has pretty good

weapons and I don't know does he have like a way worse offensive line than 25 other quarterbacks? They're not great. And. But who does have a good offensive line?

There's like five teams. Well, it's no coincidence that Aaron Rodgers, who we talked about and Tom Brady, who are in tier two are new tier two have, I think, amongst the best offensive lines in football.

Mayfield has a good offensive line, but obviously isn't in these tiers. Mayfield does have a good offensive line and it just doesn't matter. All right, so who do you have in that next tier? Because then I would have,

if we're moving people around, then my third tier would be Murrow, Murray, Burrow, and Lamar. Murray because of the upside because I think, I just think he can pull drives and games out of Zess.

He's the fastest, like he is the scariest quarterback on his feet in the NFL right now. It's not Lamar. I mean, he is, he might be the fastest quarterback ever, right? Like when he turns the corner, it's over. So I think that's fair,

even though I think the throwing is concerning at times. And then Lamar, we're going to talk about the Ravens, I think at some point. We'll talk about it right now. Well, he's just... Their passing game has been garbage. And especially the better the team they play, the more inefficient they seem.

And at some point, we got to wonder what's going on here because they've invested a lot of capital at running backs, tight ends and receivers. They've spent multiple first round picks, free agent money. I mean, I actually, they've, they've under, I believe they've under invested on their offense and they're suffering now as a result. I mean, you're right to say that, you know,

they drafted a running back and I didn't. What about Hollywood Brown? That was the first round pick. But he's, he's the number two receipt. I guess what my point is like, they, what I was really hoping the Ravens would do would be to go out and trade for a receiver. Because when I watched that game,

it seems very clear to me that like Lamar has been very bad in particular throwing under pressure this year. And a lot of that is on him, right? Like he's, that should be, but it, like defenses are keying in so hard

on Mark Andrews and at times Brown. He needs that just go-to guy on hot routes, a slot receiver, a trusty veteran. He needs Jameson Crowder or he needs his Julian Edelman, basically. And there's no one on that team

playing the role this year. Yeah, but they drafted two of those guys last year who were supposed to be those guys. They just didn't become the guys. Maybe that's the right way to put it. You're right. They have tried to find guys. I just think they've chosen the wrong guys. But they're really young also, Bill. They have the second cheapest offense

in the NFL right now. So while they've invested draft capital in, I think they needed veterans. And that's what they didn't do. And also, this team's really suffered because of the offensive line losing Marshall Leanda, Hall of Fame guard.

Now they've lost Ronnie Stanley. Like, that's... That's a problem with that offense. None of this absolves Lamar. I'm just, you know... Well, from a million-dollar pick standpoint,

we're going to get to them. Yeah, we're going to get to that. They've passed the point of no return with that offensive line now. It's just not... If they could just get through getting a C+, they'd probably take it at this

point. They've lost their two best guys. It sucks. Yeah. No, I think you've got them in the right spot. So I agree. So where do you... How would you rank Big Ben, Breeze, and Ryan? Matt Ryan's... I would have Breeze way down this list

but you know I'm as anti-Breeze as probably anybody with a platform the fucking guy moves the ball down the field it's so frustrating to bet against him it's three plays per first down it's three plays to get 11 yards

that Kamara bails them out every five plays. And it's like, how are you guys moving the ball? But I always feel like he's going to do it. It's a great example of like how football escapes the viewer at home sometime because every single person watching

the Saints is screaming at their television. It's fucking going to Camara. What the fuck are you doing? Michael Thomas is not in the field. I don't know the name of that guy. And yet they can't stop it. And then he gets an additional five yards after the catch. Part of that is because Drew Brees, as much as he...

Who did you describe as flaccid earlier? The Tua. Okay. Well, you... That verb came out too early because Drew Brees, like that arm, I mean that dude pump fakes like you know, Joel Embiid at the three point

like he is not taking that shot downfield the guys like just come on and he looks at, you see these moments in the game where like Jared Cook is like 12 yards downfield and Drew Brees is looking at him and he's looking at him, they have this mutual understanding this isn't going to happen, you know this isn't going to happen. You know, this isn't going to happen. And yet he is still able to move the ball down the field because his ball placement is perfect. Okay. And that's

the kind of thing that I think escapes us sometimes at home. He's still incredibly accurate between zero and eight yards. And it turns out if you're like the most accurate quarterback in the world in that particular range, you can still have a functioning offense. Now, there's been games where that has disappeared and I don't have confidence in them down the road, but I call it the weekend at Bernie's offense and it's really difficult to stop

when he's that accurate. It reminds me of the old guy golf game. When you're playing somebody who like each drive is 35 yards behind everybody else, but then he's near the, and then it's like chip and a one putt. And you're like, you got a par? What just happened? And Breeze has just been doing that for eight straight weeks. I don't understand it. I've been betting against them pretty much every week. And they barely pull out these games. They never cover. The next group I had is... I moved Watson up on your command. Matt Ryan has been good the last few weeks.

Oh, we didn't... Yeah, but it's still like garbage time fantasy Matt Ryan. Big Ben is in the right spot. He's just at the point of his career, there's three terrible plays a game that he's going to make. And that's just where he is in his career. Yeah, he's... terrible plays a game that he's going to make. And that's just where he is in his career. Yeah.

He's... I keep inserting these terrible basketball analogies, but he's the point guard. He is just executing that thing and they surrounded him with this awesome group of playmakers. Just see how his wide receivers might be the best top to bottom. They're not the best high end, but

he's surrounded by at least b pluses you know what i mean and so like all he has to do is get the get the ball to them in space juju's getting crazy yards at you mentioned heinz ward juju is basically a heinz ward in their offense right now uh chase claypool's a monster like all ben is doing is facilitating and that's all he has to do he just needs to not turn it over. If you're a Steelers fan, your worst nightmare, which you've thought about more than 10 times is you're up three in the fourth quarter against some team in round one or round two,

you're favored by nine. You're supposed to win. You're, you're basically last six minutes and Ben throws the terrible pick. And then all of a sudden that other team's going down and you're like, oh my God, are we going to lose?

Because that stupid pick Ben just threw. That would be, I'd be so terrified of that if I was Stewart Smith. They know what I'm talking about. The next group is the Herbert, Josh Allen, Ryan Tannehill group. I like Tannehill more than most.

I actually think he's been really high level really since the halfway mark last year, but he still has that Ryan Tannehill stink to him that people don't trust him. I think he's been pretty good. I think he has been really good. I think there is a not

unsubstantiated belief that if you take away play action, and this is true, by the way, of half the quarterbacks in the NFL right now, like Baker Mayfield and whatever, but get Jared Goff. But there's a lot of people feel that if you take away play action, not the run game, play action,

he can't succeed as a dropback passer. I think sometimes it's true. Sometimes it's not, but he has been playing good football. Josh Allen. I need to see more. I'm not out. I'm not in.

I can tell you this. Wasn't afraid of him. Rooting for the Pats last week was afraid of the fact that I put Buffalo's money line in a couple parlays and just didn't trust him. He was not good in that game.

Yeah. And it's not like he doesn't have people to throw to. Oh, he's got an awesome group. Yeah. And it's not like he doesn't have people to throw to. Oh, he's got an awesome group. Yeah. I like his offense. So who knows with him? This next group of Stafford,

Goff, Cousins, Bridgewater, and Carr. I don't know. Depending on the week, like Teddy Bridgewater can look good one week. Then he can look like he did last week where you're like,

oh my God, how's this guy's starter? Carr can look good. Sometimes cars been good, man. I know quietly that Raiders. I, I picked them last week because I like that offense. I like what they're doing.

And Derek Carr has been throwing it downfield, which is, I had him too. We won't do might have them again this week. I don't, I don't like that game, but we'll talk about it. I guess.

Next one is Mayfield rivers and, and Wentz all together. I'm completely out on Wentz. I'm just all out. You should be lower. I don't want to be... Huh? Wentz? Wentz should be lower, yeah. Yeah. I was trying to be nice to the Philly fans.

Well, the next group would be the Foles, Locke, Newton, Fitzpatrick group. Fitz not even with a starting job, but... Locke maybe could move up a couple couple groups down the line I don't know could he become like a really solid mediocre quarterback maybe

I think that's probably fair we passed over Rivers he's actually been playing pretty well I might actually knock him up a few spots but he's always you know

a multi-interception I can't do it I can't do it with Rivers and then that last group, Tua, Jones, and Darnold. And then you have, after that, you have Niners, Cowboys, Jags, Washington, Roulette,

whoever's going on in there. But it's funny that those two New York quarterbacks are probably the two steady starters you would want at least half right now. Game to game. So a lot of these quarterbacks are going to potentially be on the market this offseason, which is going to be really fun and spicy,

especially as these teams move on ahead of the draft. Because the Jets and the Giants are both picking near the top. So who would you take if you were, let's say you are the Steelers and you were looking for Big Ben's successor and you're going to take a flyer, trade a third, would you take Jones or Darnold?

Darnold. I think Jones is... I don't think Jones can make it. He's too sloppy. You don't change when you're sloppy as a QB like that. The ball goes on the ground with him. Or in the other team. But you love Jameis. See, I mean,

honestly, I should have had Winston back here Winston I would have put with the Stafford Goff Cousins Bridgewater Car Group got through for 5200 yards last year yeah

Winston Winston on the Bears I think we're talking about the Bears but imagine if Winston was on the Bears if I had to

if I'm the Steelers and I'm like let's go try to get a successor for second round pick, somebody who's been in the wrong spot this whole time. I think I would go for Wentz. I think Wentz has had whatever advice he's getting. He's like the kid in college. He's just wearing the wrong clothes every day.

And you're like, dude, can we talk? Can we talk? Can we talk about some of these outfits? I just disagree with so many of the decisions he makes as a football player, but it can't just be, it can't just be him. I don't know if you can take that out of him.

Like he will not give up on a boy. Like you could, like someone could fire a gun on the field and like, you know, don't know i'm just i've been trying to think like what would it take like he just that dude will not throw the football away and it's frustrating because then at least twice a game he drops an absolute dive right like into the like outreached hands of four foot tall boss boss and scott and you're like oh my god where did that throw come from but then then on the next play, he's on the verge of getting sacked and he just won't throw it away

and then it turns into a horrible fumble and it's really hard to watch. That's the rub on him though, right? It wasn't before. No, but it's just like, I just look at Wentz almost like I would look at a basketball player

who was on the wrong team with the wrong habits thinking like, what if you gave him like a mentor and somebody who could really lay out all of the things you're doing wrong versus like, Hey, you're going to have to take three guys to sack me. And I'm never giving up on this play, no matter what happens. And I'm going to be, I don't know. I can't give up on him. All right. We're going to do million dollar picks. We're going to take one more break. and sounds, how your stomach feels as the RPMs build, how your wheels hug the curves, and how with the Pennzoil Platinum up to 15-year, 800,000-kilometer protection guarantee, your adventures will be many.

Pennzoil. Long may we drive. Available at your local Canadian tire. Enrollment required. Keep your receipts. Other conditions apply. See Pennzoil.ca slash warranty for full details. Okay, the real reason we got Mina, she's been red hot.

I sent you some games. Some games I'm looking at. Just for the record, did well again last week on Million Dollar Picks. We were up $539,000 for the season. Won $395,000 last week. And if the Giants didn't get that cheap touchdown at the end that almost tied the game, I would have swept the week. So here's what I'm looking at.

First one, Bears-Titans. Bears are six and a half point underdogs. They have a terrible offense. 27th offensive DVOA. They have a really good defense. And you could make a case with their offense. They played Indies D, Tampa's D, Rams D,

and the Saints D the last five weeks. So maybe that looks a little worse than it was. Then you have the Titans, the classic good offense, terrible defense team. They just cleaned house, did a whole bunch of things. There's questions about Mike Vrabel.

Should he have had a defensive coordinator? All that stuff. And Tennessee plays Indy next week. You know what that means. It's the look ahead game. We just saw it with Tampa, Tampa right Tampa has the Saints this week they're playing the Giants you have these games

you're just kind of trying to get through it you don't want to show anything good you don't want to do any trick plays anything crazy just kind of want to win the game and it always ends up being close I also think it's a pretty big game

for the Bears because their season's going sideways and the vibe last week was really weird. And yet their defense is really good. And I like getting the six and a half. Why wouldn't I take the Bears here getting all the points? So you're right to point out

that Nick Foles has played good defenses. Because right now they're resurrecting the Mitch Trubisky. Like the ghost of Mitch Trubisky has returned. And they're like, maybe that guy wasn't that bad. Maybe we shouldn't have broken up with him. No, no, no. But then he's hurt.

So that's insensitive. But my point is the first few weeks, Chicago played much easier defenses, which is partially why they won. The problem with this particular game is the entire Bears offensive line might be out. They're missing, let's see. Two COVID guys, right?

Cody Whitehair is hurt. And then, yeah, a couple COVID guys. So that's concerning. And while Tennessee's pass rush has been left for dead, it feels like, just from watching the Titans, when you watch, you see, I know this is the classic Jadavia Clowney thing, but he's so close to having a big game.

And then it always happens. So you remember last year in that Niners game when everyone was like, holy shit, Jadavia Clowney's like the best football player on earth. There's just one of those games. There's a couple, he always has a couple of those games. And I feel like this might be one of them.

I really don't like Jeffrey Simmons, who I think is very good against that interior of that Bears line. And then on the other side of the ball, while I love the Bears defense, I think they're really good. They're one of the best, four best, four or five best defenses in the NFL. There are a couple things

they struggle with. One is stopping the run. Roquan Smith has been better, but I was not surprised to see the Rams run on them with some success. And the other is defending play action. When you look at their splits versus play action versus non-play action,

it goes from top five in EPA per play to 24th. So what are the two things the Titans are very good at? Running the football and play action. So that are the two things the Titans are very good at? Running the football and play action. So that makes me nervous about this matchup. Well, and then you throw in

if the offensive line, this is what sucks about doing this on Thursday, honestly. The COVID stuff, right? Yeah. Well, it's like, who knows? They might actually have 60% of the offensive line

or they might be completely decimated. And the thing that would worry me if they didn't have an offensive line was even if the Titans went up 10 to three, the game's over. Because how are the Bears going to move the ball?

They can barely move the ball anyway, no matter. All right, so we'll hold off. We'll come back to this game near the end. But you're right. The COVID thing makes it too scary. Next one, I'm not scared of. You're Seahawks, minus three against Buffalo. I studied this game intently because it was my favorite team,

but I somehow bet Buffalo's money line because I thought my team had packed it in. They didn't have Gilmore. They didn't have Duggar. But no, they actually ran the ball right down the throat of Buffalo. Yeah. Cam kind of played well. Cam was pretty good. Damian Harris might be the best guy down the throat of Buffalo. Yeah. Cam kind of played well. Cam was pretty good. Damian Harris might be the best guy in the team.

Or is the Buffalo run defense just that bad? Which is relevant. But we knew Buffalo's defense. All the stats were basically indicating this team's disappointing. They can't stop anyone in third down. There were all these markers. And then the Pats

were basically like, we're not throwing the ball more than seven yards downfield and we're going to run the ball every play. And Buffalo's like, Oh, what do we do? So Russell Wilson, my guy, my friend invited me to dinner two weeks ago. We're back. We're back there. Cause I have followed this journey closely Bill and you went from hustle and bustle in love much the way you're now in love with Burrow you were in love with young Russell then you kind of backed off of it a little you you did you did the tone the tone changed but now it sounds like you're all the way back in we had the you know we battled in a Super Bowl and after that, it gets a little dicey.

We had to work through it. Every relationship has problems. He passed for me. He took the mantle from Rodgers, a guy I'm just never betting against. I haven't bet against Seattle in, I don't know, a year and a half. It won't be happening to them soon. I love this spot for them because their defense. Talk about how their defense looked last week.

So they looked really good for three quarters against Jimmy Garoppolo. They were actually, that was the most Jimmy Garoppolo has been pressured in his career against the Seahawks. They were blitzing him a ton. Bobby Wagner was a monster, monster in that game. Then things kind of fell apart versus Nick Mullins.

They did play some prevent. The game was over, though. So this week, they get Jamal Adams back, and they add Carlos Dunlap, of course, much needed to that pass rush, which makes me much more optimistic. I think this is a defense. I don't think they're ever going to be

one of the better defenses in the NFL, but because the Seahawks offense is such a buzzsaw, I think all this defense has to be is average. And I think they have that capacity, especially against a Buffalo offense that's really, really regressed from the first four weeks of the season. Buffalo looks like they're the rabbit team this year.

Looked good, got everybody excited. You know, the rabbit in the race, the guy that gets out really early on everybody and then by the halfway through the race, he's seventh. I didn't know that was a... You didn't know that was a phrase. But yeah, Josh Allen MVP talk was rampant. Rampant on my network.

Well, so here's what you got. You have Buffalo this week at Buffalo. You're at Los Angeles against the Rams next week. Home, Arizona on a Thursday. Revenge. Which is the week before Thanksgiving. And then it gets super easy. At Philly, the two New York teams.

At Washington, home for the Rams. At San Francisco, who by that time, probably everybody in the team will be injured by that game. So if you win this Buffalo game, there's like run the slate potential for our guy Russ, for my best friend, Russell Wilson. There's some run the slate potential. I don't know if you know this about me,

but I often pick against the Seahawks as an emotional hedge. That way, I don't know if you ever do this with the Pats, but if you win, you win. Did you? And so, you get at least some validation because at least you were right even if you feel bummed.

So, last week, I picked against Seattle even though I thought they would win. I think you're safe this week. I personally, I don't lose to say what I'll do, but I feel good about them against this very surprisingly bad

Buffalo defense. The all-time emotional hedge was Trump when he was like plus 180 heading toward the election. But it was like the karma rules. You just can't do it. But I love the Seahawks pick. And it's actually really one of like only three games that I really like. But two good offense, bad defense teams. But the Seahawks defense is

training up. Buffalo's defense really stinks and Wilson should light them up. You have the best receiver of all time, DK Metcalf, the Jerry Rice 2.0. And I think this is what Wilson was saying. I think there's blow up potential there. I don't understand why the lions three. That's the only reason that I'm scared. I feel like this line should be Seahawks by four. I don't think home field matters. I think,

yeah, I think it's less of a home field and there's still some respect for the Buffalo offense. So the first four weeks, um, because while Josh Allen has come back to earth, it's still a really good group of receivers, good coordinator.

Fair. And the way they played you guys, New England, a lot of that was by design. I think Brian Dable, who I think is a really good offensive coordinator, realized that New England mysteriously could not stop the run in that game

and just leaned on it pretty hard. Josh Allen just has not been throwing it deep over the last few weeks with any success. So that's the Seahawks' weakness is they've given up explosive plays deep. Again, Jamal Adams is back, so we'll see how that affects things. But unless he can do that, I can't

see them keeping up with Russell. Okay. Next game, Bucs Saints. Bucs are minus four and a half, which I don't like. Bucs are minus 230 to win the game, which gives us parlay potential with them. Here's the case briefly. We don't need to

spend a ton of time on this. I don't think the Saints are very good. I think the Bucs defense, regardless of what happened with the Giants last week, I think that was the classic look ahead. That was the classic look ahead next week. I don't want to judge that Giants game for anything more than what it was, which was they're playing a shitty team

and whatever. The Saints beat them already. The Bucks win this game. They're going to win the division if they win this game, I think. You also have a little Antonio Brown, a little Juice, a little Red Bull for the offense.

How long it lasts, I don't know, but when he's out there, he's going to be good. And I think that, I just think they're better. And I don't know, but when he's out there, he's going to be good. And I just think they're better. And I don't think Breeze is good enough to beat their defense from what I've seen from the Bucs' defense. So I like the money line

minus 230. I'm going to get creative with it. But what do you think of this game? I think the Bucs win pretty handily. I think there was some meaningful takeaways from the Giants game. You saw on the Bucs offense how badly they need either Chris Godwin or Antonio Brown. They will have that in this game.

They also, like, there was some really weird play calling on the part of Arians Lefwich. Like, they weren't calling play action until the second half. They kept running on first downs, like, really infuriating. They weren't hitting Gronk at all. The Saints are uniquely terrible at defending tight ends, so I imagine that'll change in this game. And then on the other side of the ball, I think the Bucs have the best... Not the best.

One of the three best defenses in the NFL. Agree. You saw, however, that you can beat them deep. Daniel Jones had dudes wide open. He just missed them. But Drew Brees can't throw deep. So I don't see that being an issue in this game. Thanks to those linebackers. Dude, they're so

fast. Levante Dave and Devin White are maybe the fastest linebackers in the NFL right now. And if there's anyone who can stop what we were talking about earlier, like Alvin Kamara, you know he's getting the ball. It's these two dudes. It's the perfect tease or parlay. But I'm also intrigued by the

four and a half. It's interesting. I always call that the Vegas zone when it's four and a half, five or five and a half because Vegas is like, eh, we don't know. We throw it in it. And it's four and a half, which means even Vegas is a little confused, but I just don't think the Saints are good enough. All right. So we're marking that one down. Two more that I like not quite as much as those last

two. The Colts plus two against the Ravens. So these are two top five teams in DVOA. We talked about how the Ravens offensive line has been demolished. And I like that the Colts are getting points. I guess they're one and a half now, I should say. I'm still waiting for the Jonathan Taylor breakout game. I don't know what happens.

The thing that worries me betting against Baltimore is the Phil Rivers. I just don't trust them, period. And that's my hesitation. So the Colts are kind of like what the Bears could have been, I think, like really good defense,

just an efficient offense that isn't super sexy. I don't think they rank really highly in just about any metric, but can move the ball downfield. They're really bad running the ball, which is confusing because that offensive line was so monstrous last year. But they're good. They can score.

Unlike the Bears, they can actually score. The problem is Baltimore's defense is really good. I think there's been a lot of overreactions to the Raven-Steelers game because the Ravens should have won that game. Yeah, they're up 17-7 two hours into the game. They lost because Lamar turned the ball over. It's as simple as that four times, right? That defense, and also the Steelers

made some interesting adjustments against that defense, but I think they are incredibly physical, opportunistic.'ve got like the ball hawking is secondary and now they go up against the quarterback who wants to have a multi turnover game. Like that is, as you correctly point out, like it is in him at any moment waiting to come out. And if you were going to pick an offense or probably a defense that would bring that out of him, it would be Baltimore. And that makes me really nervous. Well, it's Ravens by one and a half. So one possibility is teasing them to four and a half and just saying it's either a close game or the Ravens win. And betting that Phil Rivers isn't going to beat them by five or more. That's not going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen.

I don't think Phil Rivers beats them by five or more. You know, going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think Phil Rivers beats them by five or more. You know, the other thing we left out, T.Y. Hilton, it always happens. It's like Halloween, my son's birthday, and T.Y. Hilton getting hurt are the three necessities of late October. So he's hurt. He's missing practice.

He's got the red flag next to him in fantasy. This happens every year. I don't really love their receivers. And I just, maybe you're right. Maybe this is the Ravens game. So yeah. All right. So maybe we team those together.

Okay. Last one. Washington. Minus two and a half against Danny Jones and the Giants. Washington, fourth in defensive DVOA. So this would be a pure, I am picking the Giants. Washington, fourth in defensive DVOA. So this would be a pure, I am picking I hate this game. the Washington defense

to do their job. Yeah. But, if there's one quarterback in football who loves to turn it over as much as Danny Dimes, it's Kyle Allen.

And I, I was, I was really impressed with that Giants defense against the Bucs. I don't think they're good. They're not like a top half defense, but the secondary is good. James Bradbury is really good.

Jabril Preppers plays really well. And this just feels like a chaos game. I just feel like both these quarterbacks are going to turn it over a bunch. All right. Taking that one off. I don't like it. Get away from me. We'll go to long shot parlay of the week.

So there's a lot of candidates this week. I like to team two of them together. We've hit this three times in eight weeks and should have hit it more. We had some bad luck. So the candidates are the Jags are plus 225 to beat the Broncos. The reason that line is so high is because, who are they starting? Oh God, Jake Luton.

Jake Luton is starting. I may be saying his name wrong, but yeah. Jake Luton. Luton, yeah. So that's an option. You have the Bears plus 240 against the Titans. We talked about all the reasons maybe not to do that. You have the Panthers plus 400 against

the Chiefs. It's the kind of game Andy Reid likes to blow once a year. You're just like, wait, why are you losing to these guys? No, he does. Let's be honest, he does. He does, but I don't I think he's going to. I think they'll shred them. I think the Chiefs shred them.

You have the Jets plus 270 against a Patriots team that basically had their season end last week. Yeah, I think the Pats win this one pretty handily, though. All right, so you don't like any of the long shot parlays. What was the first one again? Remind me. And then we have Dolphins plus 175 to beat the Cardinals. So that's a pure two-a pick.

I kind of like that one. And then, hold on. And the Luton one. to beat the Cardinals. So that's a pure Tua pick. I kind of like that one. And then, hold on. And the Luton one. The Luton one was... Oh, you like the Luton one? What was it again? That one's plus 225. All right.

So if we do... I'm trying to see if there's anybody else that we like. Oh, nah. Jack's going to get their ass. Oh, nah. The Jags are going to get their ass. Oh, how about Lions plus 190 against the Vikings? Okay. So this one's wonky because it's Stafford. Right.

Because he's COVID, right? So you probably can't touch that. Okay. I don't know. I'm feeling good about the Dolphins this week. I don't know. Oh, one more. Cowboys plus 640 against the Steelers.

I know. Ridiculous. We don't know who's starting. It's either Cooper Rush or who's the other guy? So we don't have to do a long shot parlay then. I mean, it's...

I can't find the second team. It's your money. Well, but it's a... All right. How about this? The Jags... The Jags and the Dolphins are 8-1

plus 798 I think the Dolphins can win this game how about this I'll just not do a parlay and I'll just bet the Dolphins straight up plus 175 am I wrong to think that they can win this am I riding the high of the defense

and the Rams too much? I would rather bet them plus 175 than plus three and a half. Because if you're backing the Dolphins, just like, well, why not back them to win? Yeah. So the Bears, there's no way. I mean, there's not no way. I'm terrible on gambling podcasts.

For the reasons we discussed, I really think this is the game where the Titans defense looks decent. Okay. I know what I'm doing. You're not going to like it. Okay. Panthers-Dolphins is plus 1246

that's where we're going God all right here are the million dollar picks for week nine with help from Mina Kimes we are putting 400k

on the Seahawks minus three good we are putting 400k on ATs minus three. Good. We are putting 400K on ATS of the Bucks going down to plus one and a half

against the Saints. Love that. And the Ravens going plus four and a half against the Colts. A little nervous, but... And then we're doing a little 25K. Actually, we'll go less than that,

20K long shot parlay, Dolphins plus 175 with the Panthers plus 400, which would pay plus 1246, almost $250,000 if we win that. And then we're going to put 100K in the Dolphins plus $175K.

So we didn't get to a million dollars in spending this week, but I'll tell you why. I didn't love this week. I'm also on the road. My daughter has a soccer tournament. Anytime I have to watch the games when she's playing soccer, it's a disaster. So I'm scaling back. I'm doing the smart thing. I like that. I like that the way you're thinking. I mean, I'm protecting myself. From the woman who famously brought you, there's absolutely no way the Ravens lose to the Titans. I would cut off my own bleep if it happens.

Take these picks and run with them, folks. We can see Mina Kimes on NFL Live every day. Anything else you want to plug? Mina Kimes show featuring Lenny is my pod. I've still never been invited. Oh, really? You're always invited.

But Danny Kelly has been on. Kevin Clark's been on. Jeez, just not you. It's great. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry.

Thanks for the invite. I even have a dog that kind of looks like Lenny. Really? Yeah. Olivia. We have our three dogs. We've nicknamed my dog Willie. We call fish sticks because his breath smells like fish ticks that had been left in the

car for three days. Makes sense. Then Jesse, we call garbage water mouth because it smells like when the water's at the bottom of a garbage barrel. And then Olivia, we call diaper breath because it smells like when diapers go in those little things, like those little throwaway things, garbage, and then you forget to clean them.

We just have terrible dog breath in our house and it's like an epidemic. We don't know what to do about it. We brought like the toothpaste things, all that stuff. It's a disaster. Yeah. It's a disaster. I had a fish... No, a tadpole as a child named

Jesse because I didn't know if it was a boy or a girl. And Jesse was the only name I knew that could work for either gender. That's a good one. If there's any bad breath dog tips out there, send them to us. Mina Kimes, great to see you. Thank you. Good luck.

All right. My buddy Jacko is coming up in one second. I was trying to figure out how to talk about the election. Easily could have had a guest on to talk about all the same stuff that you're hearing everywhere else. I think our podcast, the Car Sellers Pod, the Press Box, Higher Learning, those pods have covered all this stuff brilliantly. And honestly, I just want to have my buddy Jacko on. We've been talking politics since we were in college. We were freshmen at Holy Cross. We were in the rooms next to each other. He was a Republican. I was like a floating Democrat. I remember when we were seniors, that was headed toward the Bill Clinton, George Bush election. And I remember we would just argue about politics in a way that wasn't as

kind of angry and divisive as it is now. And not to say that politics was a friendly place, but I think we all believed in democracy back then. And in whatever side you were on, you at least listened to the other side. And there was a give and take to it. And if the other side won, you're bummed, you're pissed, but you respected the process. And I think what we've seen this week with the stuff the president has done specifically, bitching about the election even before it happened and then everything he's done the last few days and really shitting on all these people in all these different cities and towns and counties who

are counting the ballots and staying up late at night and stuff like that. And he's saying they're corrupt. He has no evidence. He's basically trashing this process that is the foundation of the country that we have. And I watched that press conference that he gave today and it was just sobering and it was sad. And you just think like, man, this guy, the president is supposed to be one of the best people we have. That was one of the reasons we did the rewatchables with the American president this week. Because that's a movie that really believed in the institution of presidency and the possibility that a president might have greatness.

And at the end, the pivotal speech in that movie when he finally realizes that he needs to go at Richard Dreyfuss, who's been his antagonist, the guy, I think he plays Bob Rumson in the movie. Bob Rumson's been killing Douglas's character the whole movie. And then finally Douglas has to stand up to him and his whole staff is pushing him to stand up. And Michael J. Fox has this big speech, you're the guy I voted for. You've got to stand up for this, blah, blah, blah. And then Douglas gives this great speech and it's like, this is the greatness that the staff who's serving him believed in. And look, it's a liberal movie. It's a Sorkin movie. It's not about that. It's a movie about this is a job that fundamentally people expect greatness from, or at least goodness. the last four years with all the dog whistles, all the terrible things he's said and done,

his disdain for half the country, his willingness to try to divide as much as he possibly could to double down on the base that he had at the expense of everybody else. And you knew it was going to come to this week. I didn't know who was going to win. I figured Biden had a good chance. I didn't really trust the polls. I don't think people were honest about necessarily who they're voting for. And in general, I think there's a huge disconnect right now between if you're on one side, just having no idea what's going on with the other side. And the fact that people thought Biden was going to walk away with this, and you could see the betting lines and all that, you know, where Biden's basically a two to one favorite heading into this. And I was pretty skeptical and dubious and nervous.

I just wanted it to end because I really believe in the presidency. I, you know, it's not a hot take, but I think it's an important institution in this country, even if it hasn't been shown to be that the last four years. I think it means something. I think it means something beyond just getting political deals done. And the fact that you control the button and the fact that you're dealing with other countries and you're protecting people and the markets can surge or go down depending on one speech that you give, there's a dignity to it that even somebody like George W. Bush, who a lot of people hated by the time that he left the office, but I thought he, you know, when 9-11 happened, I thought he handled the next couple weeks with a certain dignity. You know, I didn't like his presidency.

I didn't think he was a good president. But there was a moment there where we really needed somebody to be in charge and we needed somebody to be a leader. And I've talked about this before, but Yankee Stadium, when he's got the bulletproof vest on at the World Series game and the whole country is still reeling

and everybody's soul searching and nobody knows what's going to happen, whether we're safe, what our life's going to be like, are we going to be able to fly again? All the things we're thinking about after 9-11, is New York going to be the same? And he came out and he threw a strike right down the middle with his jacket on and the

bulletproof vest. And it was a great moment. And I was thinking about it the other day because one of the things that's such a bummer about Trump is he has no great moments. He is just an egomaniac. He's inherently selfish. The qualities that he brings to the table that suck are so much larger when you have a job like that. All right, it's fine. You're a sore loser. I'm a sore loser. My son's a sore loser. He's a sore loser to a whole another level. He's ready to tear down the government because the ballots didn't go his way. And you just see stuff like that. And you think, man,

how are we represented by this person for four years? Where do we go from here? What is, how do we rebuild this? How do we repair this? And, you know, I think like we're so divided right now as a country. And to the point that I'm having my buddy Jack on in a second, he's a Republican. I'm not. We agree to disagree on a lot of stuff. We still have discourse. We talk about stuff. I'm worried we're losing that as a country. I think there's a fear of you say one thing wrong. You say a sentence wrong. Something gets misconstrued. Something gets pulled out of context, especially for somebody that has a platform like me. And there's a tiptoeing now

and there's a danger of just, you don't want to be the next one that's getting fired on. And so now we've retreated into our little camps where, and you see it even on Twitter, everybody is, everybody follows the people that think like them for the most part. And when we have something like this week where the polls are all saying one thing and then the election's happening and holy shit, 70 million people are going to vote for Trump and people are like stunned and staggered. And it's like, it's because there's a lot of people on one side, there's a lot of people on one side and they're not interacting at all.

They have their own channels. They read their own things. It's just really strange. I don't know how we come out of these next few months without really doing some soul searching on where we're going as a country. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a black person right now to see that 70 million people voted for a guy who blew dog whistles for four years. I don't know what that says. But I'm obviously concerned. I have a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old. And I think about what is life going to be like for them when they're adults?

What is our country going to be like eight years from now? Is it going to be angrier? Is the online stuff going to be even worse? Is there going to be more disinformation? How do we police this? I don't trust anybody making the decisions. It's a disheartening time. And, you know, so even though fundamentally, I think the people that really wanted Trump to lose, they feel like they got something of a win this week. The Republicans, like Jacko's going to come come on who didn't want to lose control of the

Senate and have this become a Democratic sweep across the board. They feel like they at least won something. And there's a foundation. It feels like even though there's a lot of people on opposite ends for somebody to try to rebuild this. I don't know if it's going to be Joe Biden. I think he's said the right things. He's tried to be a voice of calm.

He's made a point of saying, I want to heal things and I want this country to go back to what it was. We'll see if that happens. We'll see how divisive Trump tries to be over the next two, three months before he leaves office. But it's just a really weird disparity in time.

And for me, this is a podcast where I talk about sports and pop culture. I don't really, you know, when we talk about politics, I have my buddy Jack on and we talk about certain things. We make some jokes, try to get a sense of what each other's thinking and try to recreate the phone calls that we have. I just hope people continue to listen to each other, respect other people's opinions. And we don't turn into this country where you only want to listen to other people who think exactly like you and everybody else who doesn't think like you, you hate, you have no time for, you're against. There's got to be some sort of middle ground. That's the thing that really scares me going forward where there's just no middle ground

anymore. And we saw it today in this election. We had the most people that voted ever. And the election is going to be decided by a handful of thousands of votes in five different states. And I just hope that things do not escalate over the next few days. And I hope that the people who are counting all the ballots and stuff stay safe and all that stuff. But I really appreciate all the work everybody's doing out there. So anyway, with that said, we're going to bring in Jacko. All right. It's a tough one. But one of my oldest friends, Jacko, he's been on this podcast since 07. We've talked baseball.

We've talked sports. We've talked politics, dumb TV shows, life. This one, man, what a three days and kind of culminating a couple hours ago the president spoke in front of everybody he seemed like kind of sedated or drugged almost and was just rambling

about sure he is he's rambling about all the what happened in the different cities and these cities were fine because he's actually coming back in those cities. But Philly and Detroit, it's so corrupt. We don't know how corrupt they are.

He had no evidence at all. And it was honestly one of the worst moments in recent American history that this guy who represents our country and is supposed to be a leader, and he was acting like these videos you see of some little league coach in New Jersey who gets in a fight with the umpire

and won't leave the field. And this is our president. Exactly. I don't know how we, Biden's going to win. Biden's closing in on Pennsylvania. He's probably going to win Arizona. So by the time people listen to this, Biden will officially be the president.

But I think, Johnny, for me, such a sobering week in so many different ways, it doesn't feel like anybody won. When you see the turnout, not just for Trump, but for the message from all over the country, and you just think the country is more divided than it's ever been, it just seems like two sides that absolutely hate what the other stands for. And it feels like it's going to get worse. And unfortunately for us, the president is the guy with the big can of gasoline who's fully prepared to take everything down with him. He doesn't want to lose. If he loses, he's going to blame everyone else. And it's just going to be a miserable next couple of months.

What was your take watching everything? Well, I mean, it was an amazingly good election for the Republican Party, really. I mean, everybody figured they were going to lose the Senate. well i mean it was an amazingly good election for the republican party really i mean everybody figured they were going to lose the senate that biden won the white house that he would have you know a big majority in the senate they would increase their majority in the house and and amazingly it looks like the republicans certainly have a puncher's chance of holding the senate it's going to come down to these runoff elections in Georgia in January. But they, they won, picked up like at least 10 seats in the house. So, you know, you, for me, it gets rid of Trump and, you know, Biden that's hamstrung by Mitch McConnell and, and, uh, you know, a more powerful Republican house. That's, that's great for me from a conservative point of

view. But, um, and, you know, given everybody, all the, all the push to vote, you couldn't watch TV. You couldn't watch any sporting event without multiple commercials, reminding you to vote, make a plan, vote, you know, from athletes in every sport, actors and actresses and local news people, everything. Like, I mean, it's the best turnout we've had in this country, I think since like 1960, maybe, maybe even longer. So, I mean, it's good in terms of democracy that people participated and voted. And, you know, this is sort of like the messiness of democracy, the counting of the votes afterwards. And of course, Trump is never, was never going to go down easy. He was never going to concede or be

a gentleman about this. And he gets to engage in his favorite things now. Like he's like, well, if I have to lose, at least I get to do conspiracy theories, litigation and whining. So he's like, it's like, it's a good trifecta for him, even in a loss, because he always engages in conspiracy theories. So he will now make up these things out of whole cloth about wholesale vote fraud. Now, there's what, 120 plus million votes that were cast. Could you find anecdotal evidence of people that died that got a letter in the mail and maybe a grandchild or somebody filled it out mistakenly? Sure. But that's not enough to swing a state. He has these grand conspiracies about wholesale voter fraud, where ballots just appeared in polling places and were counted and not verified and not checked.

It's nonsensical. But he's got to give something for his supporters to beat on and to bang the drum on. So he loves that more than anything else. And it's depressing and it's despondent, but it's not out of character for him. It's totally in character for him. So it's not shocking. It was an amazing performance from a lying standpoint, because on the one hand, he's getting excited that they're have momentum in Arizona and they might come back in Arizona and Nevada where they have to keep counting boats. Right. But then you have these other cities that he's losing his giant lead

because they're counting the boats. So he just decides arbitrarily to complain about one piece of this, but not the piece of in any state that he might have a chance. Right. He's like, well, stop counting here, but don't stop counting here. Well, you can't do that. You don't get to pick and choose which states you still keep counting the votes in. It's nonsensical. The other fundamental piece of it was he had spent months and months telling his supporters to go and to go vote. Don't trust the mail-in ballots. Go in person. So all these people go and who wants to be in a line? A lot of them are voting in person. Whereas I think most smart people kind of just wanted to mail the ballot in.

It seemed a lot easier. Not that hard. Not rocket science to fill out some things and sign it. So it was very clear even before we had the election that the Democratic side was going to have more mail-ins. The Republican side was going to have more people in the thing, which then got rewarded right away. And you saw these instant results.

You're like, oh my God, they're leading. Right. I mean, you're right. I was just going to say that he spent months and months denigrating mail in ballots and saying it was stealing. It was fraud. Everybody should go on Election Day. So all his supporters who listen to his every word followed his advice and they they didn't do mail in ballots. They voted in person on election day. He built up a lead. And then he's lamenting the fact that, well, all these mail-in ballots are coming in and Biden's winning them 80 to 20. Yeah, because Biden encourages people to do mail-in ballots and you explicitly discouraged your voters from doing that. It's not rocket science. It's not shocking. If one candidate tells people to do one thing

and the other candidate tells people not to do it, guess what? When they come in and they're going to, it's going to follow that course, you know, it's ridiculous. Well, it makes you wonder if he, this was almost his get out of jail free card with if he lost, when you set all this stuff up in the months ahead of time, and then you lose and you could blame, Oh, don't trust those ballots. Exactly. I just don't know if he's smart enough to even think six months ahead like that. Maybe he is. I don't know. I think he was kind of priming the ground of like, well, I need to have an excuse because all the polls look bad and I'm going to blame these mail-in ballots and that they were all fraudulent and they're all fake and they're all made up. So he was already priming the ground with that. And then when they started coming in and

it ate into his lead in places or evaporated his lead in other places. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's ridiculous. What? So you mentioned the Republican party at the top, that there's actually signs of light because, you know, look, we've been been friends forever you're you're conservative republican for the most part with some exceptions being one of them um i i kind of vacillate back and forth uh depending on i i vote more on the personalities and issues that i care about things like that but um like a year ago you hit a pretty dark place. Even on this podcast, we talked about it where you said, the party's dying. I don't know what's, what do we stand for?

What are we doing? Like where are we headed? And now it actually feels like there's a little bit of momentum again. And look, I don't love some of the people that won. I can't stand Lindsey Graham, for example. But I do feel like I do care about democracy. And I do like that all these people turned out. And it's a bummer for me that 70 million people voted for Trump, a guy who has been blowing dog whistles the last four years

and who put all of us in danger with how they handled the virus. Just those two things alone should have made him unelectable. But I am glad that people were engaged and we're going to have, what, 150 million people voted? Yeah, probably. Something like that, which is incredible. So in some ways, it is a good week. And in other ways, it's such a bummer of a week because like,

imagine, you know, any black person, you know, and they're just looking at this like, wow, 70 million people voted for Trump. Right. Did you see what happened the last four years? And that's the part I can't wrap my head around. I'll never, I'll never understand Trump's appeal. I've said it a million times on this podcast. I I've never understood his appeal as a businessman, as a TV show host, as any, as a president, as a politician, as anything, it's completely lost on me. And when I watch these rallies and people are at these rallies, like it's, you know, the Beatles in 1964. And it's just like, I'm like, what is it I'm not seeing here? Like, what is it I don't get? And like, people really, you know, really go for him. And the funny thing you said in terms of like his dog whistles, which you're not clearly not wrong about, he got the best percentage of like

Latino and African-American votes of any Republican since Nixon in 1960. I mean, I don't know. Is it just that he's a celebrity and he's on TV? I don't want to denigrate people, vote for reasons they vote for, and maybe they like the economy, et cetera. But is it just like, oh, he's on TV and he's strong, but he has some appeal that Mitt Romney did not have, that George W. Bush didn't have, that George H.W. Bush, that Reagan, none of these other famous Republican presidents had any of this appeal to minority communities. He tries to shun these people and somehow gets their vote. I mean, it's like it's like an abusive relationship. I don't I'll never understand it. It's a it's the weirdest thing in American political history, probably. I mean, well, there's probably many other weird things, but it's one of the weirdest things in American political history that this guy who blows every day like outright beyond dog whistles and you still has this appeal.

It's incredible. It's mesmerizing. They were showing some of the maps and, you know, it's hard every time there's an election. It's hard not to think about previous elections. And you think like because John King will just drop these pearls of wisdom from 2004, 2012, stuff like that. And like John Kerry was pretty close in 04, like closer than I think people remember. And conversely, Mitt Romney wasn't that far away in 2012. You know, there's a couple of things that had gone differently. And you think like Trump swings a couple of votes here, a couple of votes

there. And it's, it's always amazing to me how close the states are every four years. When you think like, like I'm looking right now, we're taping Pennsylvania is within 49,000 votes there. They are of each other. This is a state they're going to get a couple of million votes. And we've seen this now with like six states, but over and over again, how split people are. And it really, I mean, not everyone's vote counts because like my vote didn't count in California other than voting for- And mine doesn't matter here in Connecticut. Right.

But like, if you're in like, what, nine states, your vote really matters. It might come down to your vote. Literally, it might come down to your vote, right? But- No, it's nuts. We are such a divided country. And like, if you look at like the, you know,

the coasts and the media centers and what you, you know, what people that are in the chattering class think you would think like, oh my God, Trump, there's going to be a repudiation of Trump. He's going to lose 40 states. You know, it's going to be a, it's going to be a bloodbath, but it's out in the quote unquote, real America, you know, he he's got this appeal and there's, you know, the, the, these, these other folks that are not on the coasts are, uh, it's like two different, it's like a couple of different countries at this point. It's, it's crazy.

Well, you think like, I had a friend asked me yesterday why I thought white people who made less than 50,000 a year in a million years would vote for Trump, given what happened the last four years. What would their incentive be? And I said, to me, it was more a vote about everything that wasn't Trump. It was about a reaction to cancel culture and the woke left and celebrities and being kind of being told what to do. And like, if you don't think like we do, you're dumb. And some of those people, they just kind of instantly rebel against it. I'm not defending it. I just think it's, it's where we are as a country. I, it's almost like they're hate votes. It's like when you hate listen to a podcast or you

hate watch a TV show, hate read some column. It's like they're like going on the Trump side is almost like their reaction to all this other stuff that they hate about what America is in 2020. Their fear of like, you know, you look at the stuff like the New York Post, the Hunter Biden thing, which seemed like a bogus story. But we also had this whole system in place with journalism where it's like, if you write a story and it's not true and you're defending somebody, then the legal process takes hold and you sue and that's how it works. Now we have, you know, all these different social platforms kind of deciding what is speech and not. And it works. Now we have, you know, all these different social platforms kind of deciding what is speech or not. And it's a really interesting argument.

And some writers, you know, like Matt Taibbi, people like that, have been really writing in the last few months about where is this going? Are we just, are we getting rid of free speech? And I think some people are worried about that. And I don't know, it's, I can't remember when the country's been this broken, I guess is my point. There's so many bad things happening all at the cancellations. And the regular person is like, well, five minutes ago, that wasn't a bad thing to say.

And now it's like, I could lose my job if I make that joke. Or if I say that, and that's something clearly offensive, but something, you know, borderline or was not borderline until five minutes ago. And, you know, the outrage culture of like college campuses where you're in this hothouse community on college and everybody's protesting and you're fired up on college about these, you know, seemingly really not very important issues. And that's now like expanded into the corporate community, into politics and people that are not part of that world are sick and tired of it. So a lot of it is like a middle finger to that whole college, super uber woke-ism. That bothers people. And you're right.

I mean, there is some level of hate voting there because it's like, well, you know when you're not going to ignore me when I go vote for Trump? And they almost disregard, really, that he did nothing for them the last four years and, if anything, probably put them in danger. Right. But he came to see them. He did all these rallies. Right.

And he positions himself as a man of the people. It's one of the strangest things I've ever watched from afar. It's this cult of personality thing that really has no rival to anything I've seen in my life. You know, one of the things I guess I've read about him is that having spent a lifetime on construction sites, you know, building buildings and hotels and whatever, he's rubbed elbows with all the guys that were doing like roofing and doing drywall and whatever and he spoke their language and he you know talks about the yankees or the or the mets or or the giants and how they

did that weekend and sports and sports radio he's conversing on pop culture he knows all that shit and like people people think it's not think he's not a phony with that now i don't particularly understand it but but people eat that up. And like you say, the fact that he has these rallies in Florida and Missouri and all these people are there and he's there fighting for them. That's what they perceive it as. And he does all this stuff of, well, they're not coming for me. They're coming for you. I'm just standing in the way. The elites are coming for you and I'm just standing in the way, you know, the elites are coming for you and I'm just, I'm standing in their way to protect you from them. So people believe that shit. And

that's, that's his appeal. It's, it's unbelievable, but it's, uh, that's his appeal. And I can look at him and think the guy's a complete buffoon who can't put two sentences together. And I'm mystified by how he's gotten to where he's gotten to. But I don't know. Maybe that's part of his appeal, too, is he doesn't speak the king's English. And so people are like, yeah, he's just like me. I don't know. You know, I watched the beginning of Tucker Carlson last night

just because I was so bored with CNN. I'm like, I wonder what the other side is saying. So I went over a couple of times to the Fox side. It was interesting. They were really playing up. You know, CNN had certain headlines like Biden closing in on presidency. We'd lead Garrett, all that kind of stuff. And you go to Fox and it's like lawsuits pending.

Right. Just very like doom and gloom. But Tucker Carlson started this thing about how, about how important it was that, you know, the Republicans won back a lot of these seats or protected them, things like that. And he's like, you have these Democrats. They want to, they want to change this country.

They want to add states. They want to change the electoral college. They want to do this they want to do that there's no evidence he wasn't pointing to anything i don't i personally have not heard the let's add some states and well people talked about that after the after the amy coney barrett nomination there were democratic there were democrat activists on twitter that were like we're going to make washington dc a state and we're going to make Puerto Rico a state. And that gets us four more Democrat senators, presumably, and more electoral votes. And we're just going to ram shit through.

And I thought the other one was Long Island was going to be a state. Oh, I don't know. I actually, after you talked about it, I Googled it. There were a couple of pieces on there. Really? It was like, we get to 53 states, that'll swing this, that'll swing that. And I was like, if I want to start changing states, that seems a little extreme. Yeah. You know, I was watching, last night my wife and I watched Recount, that HBO movie about the 2000 election, which is actually a really rewatchable movie just considering the context

of everything that's going on this week. And John Hurt's playing Warren Christopher. And I posted the video on my Instagram last night. He has this great speech about the world's watching us because we're like the last great democracy. And this is part of what democracy is, like figuring out who won an election,

counting every vote. This is what you do. And this is part of what democracy is like figuring out who won election, counting every vote. This is, this is what you do. And I was watching, I was like, yeah, that's, that's kind of the point. That's the point of what we're doing here, you know, for these three days. Um, and look, if, if it doesn't turn out great sometimes and the other side wins some, whatever, but that's still the country I grew up in and I want to exist. I don't think we need to blow that up. I think Trump was a real outlier in a lot of ways. I don't think we'll ever see it again. And I think the damage that he did is we're going to take years to recover from it. And that's just the way it is. I don't think we need to change systems.

Except when he runs again in 2024. Oh my God. Well, don't you think he's going to don't you think he's going to just create Trump TV? Yeah, I do. I do. Everybody seems to think I saw a lot of chatter today about he apparently in the weeks leading up to the election, he was already talking about like, you know, if I lose, I'm going to run again in 2024. And I mean, you know, a lot of the party is his party now. It'll be, you know, four years is a long time. So if, even if he, you know, he loses narrowly here and he's like, I'm immediately, I'm going for it again. One, he's not getting any younger. He's not exactly the most fit guy in the world. You don't know where you're going to be health-wise four years from now. Two, you don't know where the country is four years from now. They're automatically going to have a taste for more Trump or there might be a better candidate or there might be a better

candidate that comes along that's right so you can't automatically assume that he he's going to be the guy i'm trying to talk myself into this you can't automatically assume that he's going to be the guy in four years please god don't let him be the guy in four years but but i think he's super mad apparently at fox news because they called theirs they were like the first people to call years. Please, God, don't let him be the guy in four years. But I think he's super mad, apparently, at Fox News because they were the first people to call Arizona. And he claims that was suppressive of the votes somehow. I don't know. If you're in line to vote and you hear Arizona went to Biden, you're like, ah, well, good night. Just going to head home, I guess. So he's super pissed at Fox. So he probably has more incentive.

And that was apparently the plan in 2016 when he assumed he was going to lose is that he was going to start a rival TV network. So I think if he has the opportunity and somebody bankrolls him some money and he gets occupied in running the TV network and auditioning anchor women and et cetera, maybe he occupies his time and he decides I don't need the headache of getting back in and getting beaten around by the

press. And I'd rather just be on the sidelines throwing grenades. Well, that was that, that was, I thought one of the reasons it was so so fascinating Fox went against him. Yeah. With the Arizona thing, because part of me was wondering, they know he's going to be the competition. Are they going to turn on him? Maybe. They quickly kind of came back on his side. I didn't watch today after his dreadful speech,

but if they feel like he's going to be a threat to them, I'll be interested to see how they handle them because there's a whole path where they could basically say he's out. He's bad for the Republican party. We've, we've got to make America great again, but not with him. And we still have the Senate and let's go and we can still save this,

but we have to now get rid of Trump. He's bad for us. I mean, I think they, they are single-handedly, well think they are single-handedly, well, maybe not single-handedly, but they are largely responsible for him being the president, like for his rise, because they gave him all these platforms on TV going back 10 years ago, where he would call in and pontificate on the issues of the day. People wanted Donald Trump's

opinion. They thought people were clamoring for that. And that got him a huge following on Fox. And then they were building him up. And it was, oh, Donald Trump this and Donald Trump that. So they built him up. And maybe if they see that he's going to be a competitor, maybe they can tear him down. But I don't know. That'll be a good battle. Really interesting. I'll be, I'll just be watching the shrapnel go everywhere,

rooting for nobody. In fact, when the Yankees played the Astros, whatever the next playoff series is. Yeah. So, so Joe Biden takes it. He did just enough to win.

He, he basically game managed his way. And, I actually thought he did a good job the last couple of weeks. He's kind of kept the lowest profile, said all the right things, didn't get caught in any back and forth with Trump.

And he's clearly probably going to put in four years here. I would guess. I don't see him doing eight. No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't think he explicitly came out and said, I'm only going to run one term, but he's sort of alluded to that. You would never want to come out and make yourself a lame duck president right out of the jump. But I think he's essentially alluded to that, that he's going to be a transition to the next generation and the Democratic Party led by Kamala Harris now, obviously. So, yeah. And, you know, people killed him for like

shutting things down at nine in the morning and saying, oh, my God, how's this guy going to be president? You know, when he can't do anything past nine o'clock in the morning and made a lot of hay. But it's like when your opponent is destroying himself, why am I going to go out and try to make any news to distract from that? You know, let him be the whole focus of the whole campaign was on Trump. And it was basically just like, I'm not going to be Trump and I'm going to do things differently. And so it wasn't even so much like he had to make his own case. It was just he had to just not be Trump and not, you know, do anything to blow anything up. So, you know, it was like, you know,

ball management at the end of the game, clock management, when you got the ball, just, you just run the ball and, you know, kill the clock. That's what he did. And it worked. It's so bizarre that he wins the presidency, but the Democrats lose steam in the Senate. It kind of shows you how bad of a job, how bad of a job as a candidate Trump did, even though 70 billion people voted for him. The fact that there was clearly momentum going against the left and against the Democrats in a big part of this country

that felt like there was these two bubbles and everybody else was left out. Fuck this. We're grabbing it back. And yet, and Trump somehow couldn't win anyway. It's almost impossible. I mean, in 2018, when the Democrats ran really strong, took the House back,

it was because people couldn't vote against Trump. So they took it out on Republicans. But there may be some significant portion of voters, apparently, who weren't necessarily angry at the Republican Party. They just didn't like Trump. So this time you could actually go and vote against Trump, but then vote for a Republican for senator or for Congress or whatever.

So there were some of those voters too, I guess. Well, they seem, it's a pretty rudderless party for the most part. They're caught between like. Oh yeah. Different, different philosophies. There's no, I don't know. I don't, I, it just felt pretty rudderless to me.

And, and they were so focused on taking down Trump, which they should have been that it seems like they lost. I don't know. Some of the money they spent, like, are you really going to unseat Mitch McConnell? The guy's like a fucking Dracula. Well, that's the thing. To cut his head off, to get rid of him. Lindsey Graham, you're going to unseat mitch mcconnell the guy's like a fucking just dracula well that's the thing to cut his head off to get rid of him lindsey graham you're going to beat lindsey graham the fuck i spent 100 million dollars on you know trying to beat mitch mcconnell and something 75 i think to try to beat graham and it's like you could have spent that money elsewhere in more competitive races in georgia or in um north carolina or someplace or maine you know susan Susan Collins has been a senator from Maine for 100 years.

And then they, you know, tried to beat her and they went all in on that. And it's just like, these aren't the greatest locations for you. But, you know, one of the problems we have in this country is like the parties are not as strong as they used to be. Because in the old days, you know, they'd get in the back room and there would never be a candidate like Trump that would never, ever get to the nomination. And then they opened up the process through primaries and what have you. And now you can get anybody that can sway enough people, especially in a crowded field. And next thing you know, he's the nominee.

And in terms of the Senate, the parties would be able to spend money where they wanted. But now there's all these outside places to spend the money, he would not have picked, let's take down Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. He would have gone after the smaller states, right? He would have gone after Maine. He would have tried to overpower just to grab the seat. But just quickly before we go,

the CNN piece of this john king how many straight days could he do it do you think where he's explaining the same five beats over and over again he has to because you never know the new viewer that's going in but just over and over again and again you know got to it not all the votes are in not all the votes are in again but here's what that means and again again a lot of, you know, got to it. Not all the votes are in, not all the votes are in again, but here's what that means. And again, again, a lot of Democrats, you know, they're mailing in votes, a lot of Republicans they're, they're at the line again. I'm always fascinated. I'm always fascinated. They all have these maps, these interactive maps, and they can touch it and be like, well, this is Waukesha County. And here's what the demographics are. And here's how, you

know, leads Republicans or Trump needs to win are. And here's how, you know, leads Republicans or Trump needs to win here. And it's like, it's a lot of information to process on, on the fly on election night like that. And like you say, when things don't get updated very quickly, like just over and over again, it's gotta be tedious. And he sleeps, he sleeps like, I would have guessed he slept maybe three hours Tuesday night. Probably, I would think. The guy from MSNBC, Steve Kornacki, he's a legend at this too. He can tell you any county in the country, I think, and what the political breakdown of it is, which is pretty impressive. I'm amazed by how well he can use the touchscreen too, because I had to use some of that

when I was doing basketball for ESPN. And the touchscreen was a lot less elaborate than what John King's doing. And you're kind of like, Oh, Jalen, I would do these box drafts and you'd like moving the guy from four to three. It was really hard. John King is like a maestro.

There, the other great dynamic on CNN was the Rick Santorum piece where there was just a couple of times where everybody was like, really, dude? Like you just almost want to jump over the table at him. But there was some good debate. It was pretty riveting, depressing television there for three straight days and counting because it's still going on as we're taping this. Right. It will probably be at this for another couple of days and then we'll have the Trump lawsuit. So nothing will formally be decided probably for weeks from now, but it's going to be Biden as the winner.

Do you think I made our friendship mad when I was making fun of Wisconsin? No, no, he's used to that. Our friendship who's from Wisconsin, we always used to joke about how he was the indecisive guy and how he would be like, you know, he'd want to tell his roommate to fuck off, but he didn't want to. And he would be like, I want to tell him to fuck off, but I can't. So it became a running joke for 30 years. And then Wisconsin went into Tuesday night and didn't know who was going to win. And we started doing the, I want to vote for Biden,

but I can't. And then I, I thought he got mad because he disappeared from the text. Then he came back. No, I think he's fine. I think he's all right. I think he's all right. Yeah.

Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. It's weird that Ohio, it's weird that Ohio is not one of the up and down States. It just seems like Ohio. Yeah. Ohio's kind of always leans one way now.

Do we cover everything? I think so. All right. So Biden's going to be next president. We'll be making probably some weekend at Bernie's jokes over the next four years, but no question at the very least, the decent guy who seems interested

in actually, I don't know, setting an example for people. That seems like a bonus. Probably, yeah. It'll be fine. All right, Johnny. Good to see you. All right, buddy. Take care.

That's it for the BS Podcast this week. Thanks to Mina Kimes. Thanks to Jacko. Thanks to all the people out there counting votes. You're probably not listening to this. Maybe you are. Maybe you have your headphones on as you're crunching some ballot. But I really appreciate democracy.

There's a controversial opinion. You know what works? Democracy. You know what else works? All the people that go in there and take time out of their lives and stay up late at night and just try to get this done

because they believe in the country. And I do too. Have a good weekend. I want to see them on the way so I never say I don't have feelings with them. On the way so I never say I don't have feelings with them.