The Bill Simmons Podcast - LeBron’s NBA Hell, PaoloMania, McCaffrey to SF, NFL Rookie Surprises and Week 7 Picks With Ben Solak and Peter Schrager

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons talks about attending Lakers-Clippers, other first-week NBA observations, and the 49ers trading for Christian McCaffrey (4:16), before talking to Benjamin Solak about waiting on the 2021 QB draft class, best NFL rookies, and a few Week 7 matchups, including Broncos-Jets, Bengals-Falcons, Patriots-Bears, and Giants-Jaguars (28:44). Finally, Bill talks with Peter Schrager of NFL Network and Fox Sports about the buzz around the recent NFL owners meeting, the ambiguous NFC West, and the QB position in New England (1:07:44), before making the Million-Dollar Picks for NFL Week 7 (1:47:58). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Peter Schrager and Benjamin Solak Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Search for The Ringer. And a bunch of awesome podcasts will pop up. On this podcast, we are going to be talking a little bit later to Benjamin Solak about the rookie classes from the last two years. What's going on with the Giants? Should we trust the Bengals against the Falcons this week? And then Peter Schrager is going to tell us about the owner meetings. Do we believe in the Seattle team? What should we do for a million dollar picks?

Had a slight profit last week. Can we keep the momentum going? That's all coming up later. And at the very top, I am going to be talking basketball because taping that part late Thursday night because I went to Lakers Clippers and also what I saw in the games. I watched seven hours of hoops last night. One thing I didn't watch was Yankees-Astros. And I'm kind of pretending this series isn't happening.

I have no idea what to do from a rooting standpoint because obviously I hate the Yankees more than life itself. And I never want them to have happiness. And I never want them to succeed. I never want their fans to feel good ever about baseball. So there's that. Then you have the Astros who freaking cheated

and feels like they got, I don't know, one-tenth of the shit you normally get when you are cheaters. So I kind of like the thought of them just not winning another World Series with this score. And then the one that they got was like the Astros, you guys cheated, you didn't deserve a title. So I was trying to figure out what I wanted to root for in this scenario. And I think this is where I landed, but I still really don't

want to watch. I don't want to bet on this. I don't want to feel like I'm leaning either way. But I think the best case scenario for a Red Sox fan, the Yankees beat the Astros in the ALCS, which again, I can't root for. I can't ever root for the Yankees. The only time ever was the 9-11 season, the playoffs. I got a little caught up because it meant so much to the city. That was like the one exception I'm ever going to make. Yankees beat the Astros. Astros get sent packing, which is important because they have the best of the four teams that are left. Yankees go to the World Series. Yankees lose the World Series. So the Yankees do the dirty work for us to get the Astros out of there, to go to the World Series. Their fans' hopes raised. They're probably favored in either matchup, whether it's the Phillies or the Padres. And then they blow

the World Series, is where I've landed as my favorite possible outcome for the 2022 playoffs that my team is sitting out. So there you go. Not going to be a lot of baseball talk on this podcast for the next couple of weeks because I am pretending the ALCS is not happening. I'm kind of enjoying Philly's Padres, but you can listen to the ringers Philly special if you want to hear Philly stuff stuff so there you go all right gonna bring in pearl jam and then i'm going to talk a little basketball tales from the staple center is next you All right, taping this.

It is a little past 10 o'clock. Just got back from the crypto center, whatever it's called now. God knows how long it's going to be called, whatever it's called. Lakers Clippers. I remember the days when the Clippers were the nail and the Lakers were the hammer.

Feels like those days are shifting. The Lakers are bad. They just are. LeBron, you know, you can see at the end of the game, the Clippers, LeBron can post up as long as he has some spacing. He can basically get to the rim against anybody, it seems like these days. And yet the Clippers just triple team him because there's no shooter that can hurt them. Westbrook had one of the most legendary bad games I think I've seen in person,

including a sequence. I was surprised they put him back in and they did. And I think he finished, what was he? 0 for 11. But the last two were especially brutal because the 10th miss was the shot clock breaking down. He passed up a three. He tried to be smart, drove to the basket, wasn't there, pulled it back. The spacing was off. Now we had to create a shot, air ball, and the crowd made a noise that you rarely hear with a crowd. It was like, I don't want to say like seeing a car accident.

It was more like hearing the pastor fart in church where nobody kind of knows what to do. There's just kind of this awkward silence. That was how I'd describe it. Then the 11th one, LeBron's triple team throws a pass out to him and he bricks the three. I don't know what they do with the Westbrook thing. You look at their schedule and man, it's rough

because now you could say, look, settle down. They lost to two of the best teams in the West. I don't know. They got Portland at home on Sunday and Portland's got wings and shooting. They have at Denver, at Minnesota, home for Denver, home for New Orleans, who's a juggernaut, Utah home, Cleveland home, at Utah, at the Clippers. I mean, they could be like, honestly, they could be like two and 10 to start be like too intent to start the season. New Orleans owns their pick. And if you are not in full panic, if you're a Lakers fan, I don't know what to tell you.

LeBron, look, amazing to watch somebody in year 20, watching his basketball genius, watching him try to navigate how to play with this team that's somehow worse than the 2018 Cavs. I was impressed. I was not that impressed by Davis. The Clippers side, John Wall looked great. Too early to tell with Kawhi. He looked rusty. They'll be there. And who is their

crunch time point guard? I think will probably be the subplot to watch for them. But the thing with LeBron watching him tonight, I was thinking it's funny that this was happening in Hollywood because this was like watching a great actor in a bad movie. And we got the fans get to be on the side watching them film the scenes and LeBron shows up and he's like, you know, Daniel Day-Lewis, but he's filming, you know, taken five and

just bad actors all the way around him. And he shows up on time and he delivers his lines and he's Daniel Day-Lewis and everybody else in the movie is awful. And then the moment they say cut, he's like out to his trailer. That was how it felt. There was a couple of times like him just, you know,

timeout and he would just go to his seat on the bench on the left. And it was kind of like, he was a little bit of a distance away from everybody else. He wasn't doing the LeBron leadership thing. He knows he gets it. And at some point he's going to, he can't get traded this year. And at some point he's just going to realize like we, we suck and I'm just going to try to score as many points as possible. He might have arrived at that conclusion today. Then the Clippers started triple teaming him. The Davis piece, I can't figure out.

I don't know what happened to the New Orleans guy. Everybody's like 2018 Davis is back, but 2018 Davis was above the rim and he was attacking the rim. Those were the two things he was great at. And there was a jump shot that kind of came and went. And now he's settling for the jump shot. And you know all the jump shot stats with him. They're awful. Anyway, interesting night, and the Clippers never felt for a second that they were going to lose that game.

More storylines. I watched basketball for eight hours yesterday and then watched Philly-Milwaukee today. I've watched an incredible amount of hoops. I'm just going to rip through really fast. These aren't quite overreactions, just things that piqued my interest. We'll call these interest piquers. Number one, Harden looks really good, but at the same time, they've kind of reassembled the 2019 Rockets.

Max is not delighted about it. Embiid is not happy. Last year, Embiid almost wins the MVP. It's Embiid's team. It's Embiid's city. It's all about this is Embiid's world. We're all living it. They bring in Harden. I just want to be a point guard and help out Joel. And I'm just here to help and whatever. Summer happens. Harden takes a little bit less. They get Tucker. It starts to feel a little more like the Harden rockets. And then you watch what's going on and it's a lot of the Harden just standing around. And the reason I mentioned this is because we know with the NBA that guys get unhappy and people start hinting that they might want out a little

faster and a little more aggressively than we always expect. Like think about Harden last year on the net. Seemed inconceivable that he was going to ask for a trade and then all of a sudden he was asking for a trade. I would watch the Embiid thing because you have the Knicks sitting there. They're run by Leon and Wes who were Embiid's guys when they were agents. They didn't make the Mitchell trade. They have this war chest of stuff.

And I guarantee they are throwing charcoal on the fire right now. Like, man, Joel, what's going on? Why is this Harden's team now? There's no way if they feel like Embiid is even remotely unhappy that they're not going to pour as much gasoline on that fire as they can.

I would just watch that storyline and not that, listen, why would the Sixers trade Embiid? They wouldn't. That's insane. But when a guy wants out in the NBA, what have we seen in the last few years? The trade begrudgingly happens.

And I would just watch this scenario because I promise you, Joel Embiid did not want to be in the 2019 Rockets. Now, you could say they lost to Boston, who could be the best team in the league. And if they're not, they're the second best, third best. And then they lost to Milwaukee, who is another top three team.

Don't overreact. Try not to overreact. I'm just saying, it doesn't feel like Embiid's team. It feels like Harden's team and we know how basketball works. So that story piqued my interest. Another thing that piqued my interest, Palo Banqueira. I know it's all been said now, I'm taping this a day after the game. I actually felt stupid that I thought anybody else should be the number one pick last summer. Because you watch that dude. He's so polished. The speed that he was playing at against Detroit where he's not rushing like a rookie would. It doesn't seem frantic. He didn't have any deer in the headlights.

He looked like he'd been played 100 games already. He was posting up. He's taking his time, working his way down the low post. He's passing out of the low post. He's running the break on transition, making plays in traffic. I was blown away. Honestly, I was blown away. I had no idea he was going to be that good right away. And you look at Orlando with him and Franz and man, that is, that is like a young core. If we're doing the young core draft, they have to be up there. So I'm really happy for Orlando that they finally nailed this and him and Franz together are going to be really hard to play. Like think about if they had to, like when they play the Lakers, who the fuck is going to guard those guys in the Lakers? Is LeBron going to guard him? They're going to have Davis guarding him?

Lonnie Walker? Like, give me a break. So that one, just Paolo, how good he was, I was shocked by. Here's another thing that piqued my interest. It's,

look, CP got sat during the comeback and people do that and you leave out the team sometimes that's, but that's playing well. He didn't look great. And he's old. He's from the 2005 draft.

He's one of the four oldest players in the league. We talked about this when we did the over under podcast with, uh, with Rosillo and house that at some point it becomes a logical that somebody is going to produce as a high level as a point guard, much less be an all NBA player. I really wonder how this will play out with him if his skills have slipped just a little bit, plus the playbooks out to make them work. And what do the Suns do? Does this become Booker's team? Just how does this all play out? I am way more interested in that than I was two days ago.

Portland is a team that was a little better than maybe I gave them credit for because of Shaden Sharp off the bench. Was not expecting him to be really good and comfortable right away as a rookie. The Dame piece though I look my dad was giving me his Celtics tickets

during the 90s after Reggie Lewis died when we had like 8 straight years of awful seasons and we had Dana Barros at one point ML Carr stupidly signed

Dana Barros for way too much money great guy great teammate but was basically just a you know a 5-10 3 point

shooter who couldn't guard anybody. Dame, at least last night, reminded me of 1997 Dana Barrows. And again, I enjoyed Dana Barrows, but that's not a compliment for a guy making $50 million a year. I didn't see the burst with him. I just didn't. And you go back to last summer when, you know, the Olympics, he was terrible. And it's like, is he hurt? Well, it turned out he was hurt. Then last season, he's hurt, he gets surgery. This has now been a year and a half, maybe more since we've seen Dame as like an elite guy and he's a small point guard. And if he loses that burst, now you're just a three point shooter,

but that's one, he might've just had a bad game. That's why, again, this just piqued my interest, but I'm going to watch that one a little more carefully because I didn't feel like he had the same burst. I didn't feel like he was going by anybody that easily.

On the other end though, Simon's look great. Sharp look good. You know, Sacramento didn't have Keegan Murray. They were in the game. And then Darren Fox, anybody that easily. On the other end though, Simons looked great. Sharp looked good. Sacramento didn't have Keegan Murray. They were in the game. And then De'Aaron Fox, yet again, had another terrible crunch time. He was awesome for 44 minutes. And then the last four minutes, missed two shots, two turnovers. And this has been the problem with him for four years, five years in the Kings is just crunch time decision-making. It's just never been there. Russell and I talk about this constantly when we have any sort of Kings

conversation. I still like that Kings team too. I thought their crowd was great and they were a guy short and it was Murray. So we'll see what happens when they come back. The Nets looked horrendous and some of it was explainable because they were missing two shooters, right? They're missing Harris and Curry. But what piqued my interest with them was Kyrie's just not a winning player unless some things change. The way he plays where it's just like, I'm basically a ball hog. I don't make anyone else better

and I don't really play defense. And I'm pretty much a liability defensively. He doesn't look like a star player to me. And, you know, again, Harris will come back. Simmons will be way less rusty, hopefully. And Curry, especially having Curry in the shooting and maybe things open up. But I didn't think Kyrie last year in the playoffs

was really good for most of game one. Had like a classic throwback Kyrie game and then wasn't good in the last three games and somehow gets a pass for that. My thing, people, you know, people ask me like, what do you have against Kyrie? I don't have anything against anybody. What I have a problem with is logic. And if people are pretending a certain thing is the way it is when it's not, that's always when I'm going to speak up. I don't know if he's a winning player in the way people think anymore.

And if I'm the Nets, I want those Laker picks. If I'm any other team in the league and I don't care about my future necessarily this year or I need to change my roster somehow. I want the Laker picks. Those things, the Lakers are a panic trade waiting to happen. They have to make this year's team better. They don't want to finish in the top seven.

And they're going to, especially after what we saw from Russ tonight, which was just a complete catastrophe. Russ and those two firsts, whether they're lightly protected, whatever, those are going to be available over the next couple of months. And the key with trading for Russ right now is you can trade them again before the deadline, right? You have to wait two months, but then you can spin them again. And I got to be honest, if I'm the Nets, I'm thinking about

trading Kyrie for Russ and the Lakers two firsts. I would want them unprotected, but you say the Lakers like, here's your way out. We'll give you Kyrie Irving and then you guys can sign him after the season. Give us those two picks. And the Lakers will be like, no, we'll give you one. But if the Nets hold strong and they make that trade, let's talk through this for a second. KD flips out. He gets mad. Well, you're under contract. What are you going to do? You can still take that Westbrook contract two months from now. You can flip it into a different asset. Use one of the two picks, keep the other ones or use both. If another star becomes available, you can patch together some of the

Kyrie stats or most of them with Patty Mills and with Seth Curry when he comes back. Remember how good Seth Curry was on Philly last year. He's in a contract here. He's motivated. And I would just think about it because from what I saw with the Nets last night, and granted it's New Orleans, terrible matchup. I get it. I just don't think defensively they can be a contender. So if I can't win a title with the team I have, why not reboot? Kyrie's not coming back there next year anyway. Why not think about... This Lakers thing, this is a once-in-a-generation chance

to get these two picks from a team that's going to panic. And I would consider if I was the Lakers. I would. Speaking of New Orleans, we love them in the over-under pod. That was one of our big picks. And we just thought from a talent standpoint, they had to be considered like a fringe contender,

I think is what we used. From what we saw from Zion in that Nets game, if he's going to stay like that the whole year and he's going to be healthy like that, they are more than a fringe contender. They're a legit contender. They have too many weapons. Every time they were, you know,

they'd be up 12 and then the Nets would get a basket. Oh, the Nets are making a run. They're up eight. And the Pelicans were like, cool. Zion, just go into the paint, barrel through three people and get us another layup. He looked like Zion from two years ago. So now if you're the Pelicans, you have this Lakers pick

that's going to be like top five, top seven. I don't even think you need to trade it. I like the team, especially if Trey Murphy's going to play like he did. I might just kind of roll it and then think like, holy shit, on top of all of this, this nucleus that's like the very least, like a second level contender.

Then we have that pick coming. Unbelievable turnaround. I thought 15 months ago, I was like, this is a mess. Zion's trying to get out of there. David Griffin has ruined this team. And then you think like the Herb Jones draft, they get Zion back, great McCollum trade.

And they really put something together. And it was, they, I bet, full confession, Raheem convinced me to bet on Brooklyn last night. That game was over in the first quarter with seven minutes left in the first quarter. You knew it. It was like, there's no way they're stopping the Pelicans. So I think, I thought Denver was going to be

the one seed in the West. And the really ballsy pick would have been, can New Orleans be the one seed in the West? Because that would have been like 30 to one odds. Keep your eye on New Orleans. I don't think that was necessarily a fluke. It was a great matchup for them. They piqued my interest.

Another team that piqued my interest was the Hawks. And I'll fully admit, I thought the Hawks were a playing team. I was dubious of the Murray trade and just how it would all look. But Congo is really important for them. We talked about this when we did the over-under pod but we felt like maybe he brings a better element, a little better defense, rim protection, some

rim roll stuff and if that plays out in Murray's defense and then they can keep Hunter healthy, you know, it all seemed conceivable but then when you actually saw it last night I think I might if I could do the over-under in my head, the Draymond thing and decided they need to trade him. There's some sort of Hawks trade that I think could be pretty fun.

Get Capella back. Maybe there's one more piece. I don't know. But I was trying to think of Draymond teams if the Warriors just said, fuck it. And I think that's a possible team. Denver, I'm not going to panic. They lose to Utah. Utah is going to be one of the... They have a lot of guys that can look good for any given night. And I think they're going to upset a couple teams the first month of the season before Danny's like, screw this, and just

starts fire selling everybody. But Denver's one guy short in the bench and I'll be interested to see how they handle it. When Jokic is out, you're just like, oh my God, really? So they have to figure that out and they have to get a little aggressive with that.

The Knicks with Jalen Brunson was the last thing that piqued my interest just because I think he actually became underrated because the contract and people going, oh my God, that's so much money. He's not even an all-star, but you know what? He's good. He's, he's a really good offensive player. He's smart. He's almost like one of those quarterbacks. That's a good, like a game manager. They're not like Justin Herbert. They're not going to have seven touchdowns, but when it's like in football, there's those quarterbacks

like freaking Matt Ryan, who's almost washed up at this point. But in those close games, they just have a poise to them. And I think that's what the Knicks didn't have the last couple of years.

So even though they lost that game in overtime to the Grizzlies, the Brunson thing, I thought you could see what they saw from a character standpoint, from an end of the game standpoint. So I thought you could see what they saw from a character standpoint,

from an end of the game standpoint. So I thought that was good. And I was glad because I like him. So I was psyched that the Knicks have a little hope. But again, trailing back to Embiid, I still think, just watch that situation. Watch the little quotes and the tweets because I think that could turn into something.

Before we go to the rest of the podcast, McCaffrey got traded tonight. Christian McCaffrey traded to San Francisco. It was for like a second and a third and a fourth next year, and then a fifth the year after. Everybody thought he was going for two firsts. It made me think how much more fun the NFL would be if we had more trades. Because it was like, I was in the Spotify suite. Spotify with a suite now.

Kudos to Spotify. I was in the Spotify suite for Lakers Clippers. And that trade happened and we're all like, whoa! And it became this talking point in the suite. And you just think like there's never football trades. And we're in basketball, there's whoa, whoa, all the time. But in football, really not as much unless you get around the draft.

And like we had the Russell Wilson trade last year, stuff like that. But that was like a rare in-season whoa moment. I just wish there was a way with the salary cap we could have more of these. But it bumped their line a little bit. They're unfandled. They're 14 to 1 to win the title. It got bumped. They were even odds today for the division. Now they're

minus 110. This trade torpedoed my Carolina bet officially. I had the wrong team. There's no fucking way they're making the playoffs team. I knew it was going to be the NFC South team. I had Carolina. It looks like it might be Atlanta, although I guess the Giants are going to count too.

Really nice trade for the Niners, obviously, because what do they care about non-first rounders, especially when they know the NFC is wide open and other than Philly, like why can't they be the two seed? Their division is way worse than I think people thought. But the McCaffrey piece of it was interesting to me because this happens with athletes sometimes. You see it happen with Mike Trout, right? Mike Trout won all those MVPs.

He was the best player in baseball for years and years. And the common sports fan had no Mike Trout experiences. We didn't get to watch him in October. We never got to see him in big spots. And he just kind of existed over on the side. But yet every time he did a draft or fantasy auction, whatever, Mike Trout's going for 65 bucks. And it was almost like you're drafting a zombie. McCaffrey was kind of like that for football. Carolina just never really mattered. And in the football draft I had, he was like 65, 70 bucks. And he was just this guy that

was happening over here. Or you'd see him on the red zone every once in a while. But it seemed relatively inconceivable we would see him in a big game. And now he has a chance. You think about some of these guys that get to play in January and February and how differently we feel about them, right? Like how Tyreek Hill,

all those big Chiefs playoffs games he was in. Now we feel like, oh, I have all of these Tyreek Hill opinions because I got to watch that. McCaffrey had no real opinions other than, yeah, the guy puts up stats. What's it going to be like now? 14 to 10, round two, they're playing at Giant Stadium because somehow the Giants have a two seed and they need to have a long drive. And it's like, can you have the ADR drive with McCaffrey? Can he hold up physically for four straight rounds? There are all these questions that are now going to be answered with him. But I thought it was a really cool trade. And with Carolina, I'm thinking as a Pats fan, because we're going to talk about a little bit,

I really do like this Pats team. Like Brian Burns, man. If you're having the fire sale, come send Brian Burns to New England. Let's make that happen. Let's add him to the defense. DJ Moore will be another one who, it'll be fun to just see him with a real quarterback. Who knows if he'll be able to find the right team.

Could be, I don't know, Baltimore? Possibly. But if the Carolina Fire Sail, fun little wrinkle for the season. They're owned by a hedge fund guy and he'll get it. He'll be like, we're bottoming out. We will have the first pick. So Carolina has thrown their hat now in the ring for the we will have the first pick.

It's hard to imagine them winning more than once or twice. More. Anyway. Those are my McCaffrey thoughts. We're going to wrap it up. Let's take a break. Coming back with Ben Selleck talking football. Football season, we are knee deep. It is still the perfect time to download FanDuel, America's number one sports book. Right now, new customers get a no sweat first bet up to $1,000. That is free bets back. If your first bet doesn't win, just sign up with promo code BS.

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All right, Benjamin Solak is here from the Ringer. We're going to talk about draft classes to start off. You liked the 2022. We're going to talk about that in a second. 2021 QB class. When do we start getting worried? I didn't even prep you for this. I'm just throwing it at you.

Lawrence, his win-loss record is now 4-18. TD interception, 17-17 for his career. And since Jets fans are terrified every time it's like third and eight. Trey Lance is hurt. Fields, I just don't know if he's a starting quarterback. He's 11 TDs, 15 picks for his career. You have Trask and Mond and Book and Ellinger. No idea what happens with them. And the best two QBs so far, just statistically have been Davis Mills and Mack Jones,

who is currently in a QB battle with Zappy, who nobody knew who that was four weeks ago. Did we miss on this class? What are you worried about? I think we certainly missed a little bit. One of the main things about Lawrence coming out was that there was this kind of golden child next to Andrew Luck title that was dropped on him. And then he watched the Clemson offense that they ran there. And it's like bubble screens, RPOs. It's not, it wasn't grown up, right? And so a big part of Lawrence's transition was from a tools perspective,

from an intangibles perspective, mentality perspective, and then the way he throws the ball and how it arrives. Yeah, it's all there. But like, he's going to have to grow up into an NFL offense. He's going to have to transition more so than guys like Zach Wilson and Justin Fields. That was not the narrative going in, but Wilson was playing at least like a Shanahan-inspired offense. Fields

was throwing common NFL concepts. Lawrence was running a ton of college stuff. And then his first coach was Urban Meyer, and that just went so, so poorly. This class, I don't feel like we missed on it too much in terms of the talent. But the lessons we're going to learn about development are going to be really big.

Because you get Lawrence in that sort of a situation. You get Fields in Chicago, where Fields looks not good, right? I was a huge Justin Fields fan. It's rough. Yeah, I hate the way he looks in the back half last year. I hate the way he looks through the first half this year. The Vikings game had nice moments. Washington game still had nice moments.

There's stuff you want to hang your hat on, but the totality of it is poor. And then you look at what's been around him, and you're like, could anybody have? Could I have dropped Johnny Unitas in here and he would have developed? The context just does not foster the development of the quarterback. The line is breaking him. He's getting David Card. The charting

services have checked, like, oh, the offensive line's playing well. Sure, but not really. And also Fields doesn't know how to behave behind an offensive line right now. He never learned how, right? And so you just have so many stunted spots of development, Wilson and Lance with the injuries, that it feels more like a missed opportunity on this class as opposed to like we really missed on the talent.

Yeah, with quarterbacks, especially the pedigree guys, it is crazy how they can just get broken. And we see it like in baseball, it happens with baseball closers, right? We had like going way back. The Red Sox had Calvin Shiraldi who was throwing high nineties was like everything, big, tall, closer, durable. And the 86 playoffs happened and he's just broken. He's just never the same after that. We've seen that over and over again. You see it, hockey goalies, there'll be some goalie that has a bad playoff series or bad post-season and they just crater and they're never the same. Quarterbacks like Carr is a good example.

I feel like it happened a little bit with Baker Mayfield because I think what made him, maybe physically he's, I don't know what kind of damage he's had, but that dude carried himself with a lot of confidence. And the guy in Carolina was like a broken man. And we've seen this over and over again with quarterbacks. I don't know where I stand on the Lawrence thing. I've lost money in the Jaguars three weeks in a row. And what was alarming to me just for the Lawrence future thing is I didn't really trust him. He seemed a little discombobulated. I'm not sure about his choices. I thought he was going to be so athletic moving around and just putting so much pressure on teams.

And it doesn't seem like that's really the case. I don't think his skill guys are that bad. ETN has been, I think, really bad. He's had big drops and bad moments for them for what you're expecting. But for the most part, I don't see the golden child thing with him. And that's like, how much longer does he have, in your opinion,

where we should start readjusting our expectations for him? I'm certainly happy to give him the rest of this year because of the Urban thing. I like every time I talk about the Jackson Lawrence preseason. Now, I always end up saying, like, we are underestimating how much Urban affected this team in the development. And even if it's like the only thing we talk about for the next 10 months, we're probably still underestimating. It was so detrimental to the culture of the team and in the development. And even if it's the only thing we talk about for the next 10 months, we're probably still underestimating it. It was so detrimental to the culture of the team

and to the development of the young players that to me it very much feels like a rookie season for Lawrence in that regard. The improvements that they made in the skill position players are to his benefit. The improvement they made in the scheme is to his benefit. And you see some of that in how he plays.

They do still need a little bit better speed because right now they throw a lot 10 to 20 range and they really don't throw past the 20. So they don't stretch the field as much as you like. So they do need a little bit more speed. But that point you make about Lawrence outside of the pocket, Lawrence mobility is so important because all we ever said at Clemson was like, it'll surprise you. This guy will beat you with his legs. You don't realize how quick he is. And then he gets to Jacksonville and for a year and a half, he's been a pocket passer. And it's like, it'll surprise you. He'll get on top of you. You don't know how quick he is. And then he gets to Jacksonville and for a year and a half, he's been a pocket passer. And it's like, he'll surprise you. He'll get on top of you. You don't know how quick he is. He needs to be

moved outside of the pocket a little bit more. He needs to be more willing to run and extend and to tuck. And critically, he has to learn risk management. The number one issue with Lawrence right now is he spent all of his time in Clemson never, never, never, never, never getting burned. It never hurt. Even when he made his mistakes,

they just trotted out a defense of first-rounders and they just stopped whoever was opposing him. Save for a national championship, it really was never a bad Lawrence game, a game where he made mistakes that hamstrung the team. So then you go to a second and goal, two

yards to gain against Houston, and there's no window. There's no throw. But he's never been burned before, so he throws it. He tries and there's no window. There's no throw, but he's never been burned before, so he throws it. He tries to jam into the window because he's never hurt, right? And so now I think you start to experience that hurt. You start to learn what NFL speed is like, how NFL teams can punish you off of one mistake, and you start to learn how to manage

risk. Managing risk is the number one thing a college quarterback has to learn in the NFL. What's worth it and what isn't? When is the juice worth the squeeze? And for somebody like Lawrence, who just always had premier talent at Clemson, to me that's a learning process that should take his whole rookie year, which to me this functionally is his rookie

year. Yeah, I don't know what his comp is from what I've seen. I'm trying to think of other successful quarterbacks I've seen, like with his size. He does move. Like when he rolls out, it feels like something good is going to happen. And then half the time he makes a bad decision. I'm not sure if you had to, let's

say one of these quarterbacks from this class is going to win a Super Bowl. Like Biff from Back to the Future is like, there's a 2021 guy who's going to get a Super Bowl. Who would you pick at this point? It's tempting to say Lance just because we don't know anything, so it

could still be good. You're just like, yeah, it's going to be great. The we don't know anything so it can still be good. You're just like, yeah, it's going to be great. The Lance thing worries me just because talk about development, man. He's attempting four passes in my lifetime. You know what I mean? It's really scary. He's obviously in such a great spot.

I think I would still guess Lawrence. Lawrence more so feels like I wanted him to be more at this point as opposed to Fields where it's like, I don't even know if you're recoverable. I think Fields still is just because of the scramble value uh like yeah a big thing i've been on this year with daniel jones and with jalen hertz is like man these quarterbacks

who've been scrambled really just save your offense they just pick up the floor so much so i still have some hope for for fields if you're in a different spot but that's not happening anytime soon i think jacksonville is a good environment i think doug knows how to develop guys i'd probably still take Lawrence. With that said, I would need Biff from Back to the Future to tell me one of them

was winning it before I would go and put my name on it. Yeah, seriously. Yeah, I get the Peterson thing, but I think the game management stuff they've done has been really dumb,

especially the last couple weeks. Like, fourth and one options and huge moments that swing momentum a game, stuff like that. I... Ellinger is the interesting one to me. Because what you just laid out fourth and one options and huge moments that swing momentum, a game, stuff like that. I, Ellinger is the interesting one to me because what you just laid out with Hertz and Mariota and like the league is kind of moving at least a little

bit with some of the QBs to these mobile quarterbacks. And that's, that's his calling card. Right. So yeah, I'm at some point, somebody will roll the dice with that dude. And I'll probably be in Indianapolis next year.

Yeah, I would not mind at all. Let's say like Indianapolis craters, which it's always funny because like Indy's terrible, but they're 3-2-1. So they're in a very good spot right now. But if they crater, I wouldn't mind seeing Ellinger play at all. Just for that point, right?

A scramble quarterback, it's not that he creates better plays. It's that he erases worse plays. Nine-yard sacks become three-yard runs. And that swing, in terms of expected points, is enormous. It's the biggest 12-yard swing you could ever get on a field. It's turning a sack into

a moderate gain. And so anytime you have a quarterback who can use his legs, his ability to erase negative plays is really big to raising your floor. And so, alright, get the guy out there and then see if he can become something more. And that's why the Jets with Zach Wilson are exciting because I wasn't the biggest Zach Wilson fan. Me neither. From what I've

seen, I'm not, you know, super encouraged. I think there's good notes and there's bad notes, but the Jets offense is good. The Jets offense works right now. They have a great running game and they've scrambled together this line well enough that they can get it done. They have good receivers. This team's working.

So that lets Zach keep playing. Zach doesn't have to make hero plays on every fourth down like Justin Fields to keep the team alive. He can just run the offense. That gives him the room to develop. The guys like Lawrence and Fields don't have as much of right now. Well, and he did have the Pittsburgh game. He at least did it in one moment.

They're down 10 in the fourth quarter, and they got two touchdownss and they won the game. That's not nothing. You know, he had 110 yards passing last week. This will be the week because I think Denver's defense is good. Like, I really do. I think, like, if I was in that Denver defense,

I'd be like, oh my God, we've scored seven fucking touchdowns this year. Like, can you guys help us at all? Like, anything? They're giving up, I want to say, just over 15 points per game and the offensive want to say, just over 15 points per game and the offense is scoring like just over 14 points per game.

It's like unacceptable, the disparity between how well the defense is playing the offense. But yeah, that game is tricky for me because talking about young quarterbacks,

Brett Rippon, who might start for the Broncos over Russell Wilson, can play a little bit. Like he can point and shoot. And this offense is in point and shoot mode right now. If you can just get the ball where it's supposed to be, when it's supposed to be there, we can actually move this thing a little bit like he can point and shoot. And this offense is in point and shoot mode right now. If you can just get the ball where it's supposed to be,

when it's supposed to be there, we can actually move this thing a little bit. That plus the talent of their defense, they might look a little bit more like we hope the Broncos might look. But the way the Jets are running the football is really tough to thumb your nose at. So Jets running game versus Broncos run defense

is one of the coolest things for me to watch this week. I'm excited about it. Yeah, you know, I love the by it. Yeah. You know, I love the blue chipper thing. The jets just have a bunch of blue chippers now because they've been drafting in great spots and the Adams trade was great for them. But Brees hall is breathtaking. Brees is awesome.

I mean, he's really every week. He's just jumping off the TV, Garrett Wilson, same thing, but they have real guys. And then some impact guys on D there. I don't feel like that's a fluky 4-2. You wrote

about the Giants this week for the ringer. And that 5-1 is a little more fluky. For instance, I thought this was amazing. Well, first of all, Football Outsider said, they're the second worst 5-1 team by DVOA since 1981. And I was like, that checks out. I've watched all the Giants games. I don't know how they're doing it. They have six 20 plus plays this whole season. Everyone else has at least 14 in the league. They have six. I'm like, that checks out. I watched them. I have no idea how they're pulling off these 15 play drives. And now here they are. They get to play this week against this dumb ass Jacksonville team. And this is like the classic, oh, the stat says I should take Jacksonville.

They've been burned too many times. No, it's like, oh, this is Jacksonville's home. This is the week they get it together. Too many people on the Giants. This line could be Jacksonville by six in two weeks. I'm going to jump on it now. And yet I don't want to take Jacksonville. I don't really want to go against the Giants.

What did you learn when you were doing the research on them? Yeah. So that this Giants team is the definition of scraping it together. Right. It's like a couple of dudes, you know, football gets together on a Tuesday and they go, okay,

what are y'all seeing? That's weird. Recently. Let's do that. You know what I'm saying? Like Martindale is the defensive coordinator. They blitz like crazy from a ton of different looks, right?

They had looks against the Ravens in their option running game that are, like, straight out of, like, Army versus Navy triple option stuff. Like, a linebacker behind a linebacker behind a linebacker, all perpendicular line of scrimmage. Nobody's doing this. What are you... Stop. What are you doing?

How are you doing this? They got six-round rookie corners starting, and they're still just playing man coverage with no safety help. Are you insane? Like, we can't do this. And then offensively, the nice thing about dable is he's been so many spots he spent time in college that he's just willing to try stuff man i mean they walk out in wildcat they walk out with three running backs and then three tight ends and they're motioning to full house and they're

running reverses and sometimes it's daniel jones tackle for a six yard loss other times it's matt burrito with an 18 yard catch on third, right? Like their conversion rate on third downs and fourth downs is really good offensively. And then defensively, their red zone stop rate's really good. They don't give up touchdowns in the red zone. Those are noisy, noisy things. Those are very high variance stats. And that's where they're making their money right now

is we force you to take three instead of seven. And then we put together these drives. We convert all these third and these fourth downs. That's going to go away, right? That's going to go away. Even? That's going to go away, even if the team continues to play as well. It's just noise. It's just the nature of stats.

And when that does, the chinks in the armor start to become more revealed, right? You start to realize, oh, this team isn't super complete. So yeah, Jacksonville makes sense as a bet, but you have to time the week just right where variance hits. And that's very hard to do,

especially against a team like Jacksonville, who, like you said, situationally, I think Doug's a good coach, but they've had their bad do, especially against a team like Jacksonville, who, like you said, situationally, I think Doug's a good coach, but they've had their bad moments. And so, yeah, Jacks minus three makes sense. They're definitely three points better than the Giants. I just am not sure that's going to manifest itself in the final score when the clock sits zero. Well, and then you also have

the Giants, who I think are one of the best coached kind of game management teams that we have this season. And I think it's Arthur Smith and Dayball for the coach of the year so far. Dayball's just maximizing them. Yeah, exactly. And that's the point of the chaos, right? It's because if you had Josh Allen and Stephon Diggs

and Gabriel Davis and yada, yada, whatever, you'd try to run something that's just like, all right, four wide, spread it out. Exactly what he was doing in Buffalo. Let's be better than you. Let's get our matchups and let's rely on what we know is good. What will show up week in and week out. But this is Daniel Jones

throwing to Richie James and David Sills and Marcus Johnson. It's not that. And so they have to be like a lot of other coaches would have been like, I'm going to start

installing my system. You're one. And we're going to see who can fit and who can't. And Dable said, what can I possibly do to get 17 points out of these guys?

He did the Belichick. It's just like, who do I have? All right, I'll figure it out. When they get into their running game stuff, it's very mid-2010s Belichick where they're like, hey, here's six offensive linemen and two tight ends. Do you like playing physical?

Do you like playing ball? We're going to see how much you like playing ball for 60 minutes. And then it's Saquon in the hole. And Saquon, for as athletic as he is and for as mobile as he is, he's still a big dude. He is not fun to tackle. So they get that extra lineman, they get those tight ends dude. He is not fun to tackle. So they get that extra line, then they get those tight ends in the line of scrimmage,

then they get very, very physical up front, which is, yeah, the moment you see it, you're like, yeah, there's the tight ends coaching the Patriots. We've seen that before. And Jones is physical, too.

Big guy. Football Outsiders had some fun stuff this week. Kudos to them. I always enjoy it every week. But they had the best teams with losing records through six games by DVOA.

And of course, Jacksonville made the list. These are all like two and four, two, three, and one teams who had DVOA basically over nine. I don't totally understand the DVOA numbers, but nine's solid. But you look at how those records finished. So it's funny, the 2000 Pats were the best team on this list.

They were 2-4 with a 24 DVOA after six weeks. They finished 6-10. Yeah. But the groundwork was kind of late a little bit for the last season. But anyway, the top 11 teams, they finished 5-11, 8-8, 7-9, 8-8, 7-9, 7-9, 10-6, 7-10, 3-11, 6-10, 7-9. So what's interesting to me about that is it's actually a horrible sign if you're 2-4 with a good DVOA based on the last 40 years of NFL history. Right. And I look at this Giants game and I'm like, this is kind of a nightmare for Jacksonville, right?

This is a team that shoots itself in the foot. They do dumb things. They snatch defeat from victory. I've literally watched them do it three weeks in a row. They've turned the ball over, fourth and one, just punt the ball. They don't. And it feels like this is a nice spot for the Giants. And I keep staring at that Giants plus three going, hmm. All these people that are getting suckered into Jacksonville. Anyway, that's one. And then the other stat that I thought they had that was amazing was Indianapolis, who since 1990 has the third worst DVO of anyone after week six that has a winning record. They're minus 23.4. They're 30th in offense and 31st in defense. And I'm like, that bears out too.

I lose money on Indianapolis every week. So that makes sense too. So you're talking about since 1990 through six weeks, they're the worst? Through six weeks. They have the third worst DVOA of anyone with a winning record. Makes sense. Yes.

And it's a disgusting formula to watch. And I'm very heavily fading the Colts down the stretch. And the reason is because Matt Ryan has held this thing together with duct tape and twine through six weeks in terms of getting rid of the ball. And like, oh, he wasn't sacked against Jacksonville. Watch that film. That 38-year-old cannot continue to be hit like that. And he's going to be.

Line ain't changing. It's the same guys. He's going to get hit every single week. And the quality of play is going to deteriorate the colder it gets, the older he gets, the longer that season goes on. So I'm very much in a position where like, okay, the Colts are 3-2-1, Titans minus 2.5, maybe

they'll take control of the division. No. I don't see them beating physical teams, especially as the season goes on. Yeah, they've scored 10 touchdowns this year and I think at least three or four of them have come at the end of the game when they had to throw a drive together and Ryan's almost been heroic. For the amount of shit he's been hit this year, it's crazy.

It'd be incorrect to say Ryan has been good, because he hasn't, because this process doesn't allow him to be. But relative to the hand he's been dealt, he's playing 7-2 off suit pretty well. He's doing what he can with what he's got. It's cool to see. 3-2-1 is an overachieve, to say the least, for that team. Let's take a break. We never talked about this year's draft, so let's do that after the break.

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Metrolinks. Alright, the 2022 draft you like. This is loaded with either blue chippers or red chippers across the board. What has been some of the stuff that's jumped out to you? Yeah, I think that we watched this class coming in and we were like, all right, it's a bad quarterback class.

There's not a lot of talent at star positions. Like, okay, this kind of sucks. Like, oh, wide receiver would be good. And wide receiver's been great. You took, if you're the Falcons, you took Drake London, you're happy with what you got. You great if you're the Falcons you took Drake London you're happy with what you got you're the Saints you took Chris Olave you're very happy with what you got even the Jets with Garrett Wilson like volume target wise they haven't really gotten where they wanted to be

with him but talent wise very good that dude has it yeah he's good he's got the stuff some of these players at non-premium positions or at least like positions that don't get as much cover in like the fantasy football world have been incredible. We have not had talent at corner come out

like we've had in the last two years combined, where JC Horn and Patrick Sertan came out last year, and then Sauce Gardner and Derek Stingley. Holy Moses, man. Sauce has been the best rookie with a bullet through six weeks, no question in my mind. This corner for the Jets, where the game he had

against the Packers was unbelievable. I mean, what he does in off cover, what he does in press cover, the ability to get into the catch point. He had the pass break up

on Alan Lazar when he was out of phase. Guys, corners are either short and quick or long and physical. And sauce is long and quick. They don't make it like that.

Right. You watch him move and it's confusing. He looks like he used to be playing receiver, right? It's like Jerry Judy on breaks, and it's confusing. He looks like he used to be playing receiver. It's like Jerry Judy on breaks, but this guy's 6'1", with arms that can touch his kneecaps without bending over. The sauce is incredible, and then Stingley's been extremely good.

He's what lets the Texans play man coverage. The Texans are a Lovey Smith cover two team. They play zone. And Derek Stingley took out Cortland Sutton for an entire game. He lost his moments. Sutton won his contested balls, but that's the toughest Sutton's been played in a year, man. The corner play that you're getting is extremely important.

My feelings are hurt. Why's that? I'm not mentioning Jack? Where's Panda Jack? You're talking about transcendent cornerbacks and rookie class. Panda Jack's not going to get mentioned here? Jack? Do we call him Panda Jack because of the Panda Express thing? Yeah, it's Panda Jack. I like Panda Jack. His interception against the Packers was not as impressive as Saucy's play against the Packers

because that ball was dying in the air. But he's been very good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was really good against the Browns last week. There's a swagger that I think the defense has for the Pats that he's a big part of. The Pats defensive, or excuse me, the Pats rookie class is one of the best looking classes so far. Strange looks awesome. Taekwon looks good.

When you were hyping up Taekwon's offseason, I was like, I don't know, whatever. Taekwon looks fast as all get out. He looks really explosive. Did you see how he's in that zone where they're just like, how do we just get him the ball? Reverse, bubble screen. Can we

get him seven touches? There was a third down. I think it was second quarter where Zappi forces it to Parker on a slant. Beforehand, he looked at the one-on-one route with Thornton. He didn't take it. Thornton cooked somebody off the line of scrimmage. Wide open. Great release.

That's all him. That's no emotion. He did it in preseason, too. Marcus Jones, the fact that Zappi was That's no like emotion. Yeah, yeah. He did it in preseason too. And the Marcus Jones they hit on, the fact that Zappi was able to play was amazing. I think like 10, they had 10 rookies contribute in some way to that Browns game.

Anyway, I knocked you off. So we love the cornerbacks. What else do we love about 2022? Yeah, so we love the corners. Obviously quarterback is not going to be in a strong situation. The defensive guys that we've gotten through the first round

have generally been pretty good. If you're the Lions and what you've seen from Aiden Hutchinson, you're feeling a little bit worried because Hutch has been okay. He hasn't been terrible. He hasn't been great. Kayvon Thibodeau with the Giants looks clearly better. Trayvon Walker with the Jags, who it was very fun to make fun of the Jags for taking Trayvon Walker first, looks a lot better. Walker's just so physical, right?

You don't get height, weight, speed at the edge position like this. He was playing interior for Georgia, and he kind of doesn't know what he's doing, so they just kind of point him, and they go, alright, just kind of run through that guy as fast as you can, and then he does. That's kind of all his scope right now, but that's okay because it's working for them in terms

of the chaos that they create. So him, Jalen Petray, the safety for the Texans is really, really good. Jaquan Brisker, the safety for the Bears is really good. The defensive back talent stands out. And then the edge talent, especially relative to a class that we didn't think was that good, stands out. So the early... I'll tell you,

Thibodeau jumped out last week. Yeah. In that Giants game. He was doing shit. Yeah. And when he first got back, there was definitely a, I got to get my sea legs under me moment. He was getting pushed around a little bit, like welcome to the NFL rookie. Plus also like,

I don't really trust my legs right now. And then that Ravens game. And it was like, yep, that's the kid I watched at Oregon. There was that moment where it felt like he was coming back. Two other guys I would mention, Jamison Williams, who we haven't seen yet,

who people felt like was the best receiver. And it seems like they nudged him back, but maybe like week nine, week 10. But when you add him to all these other receivers we've seen, wow. And then I'm going to say it. I'm going to take a deep breath first. Okay. I think

Pickett's pretty good. I like him. I'm not with you. I like him. I'm kind of in on Pickett. You're not with me. So what are we hanging our hat on here? That's my first question. Accuracy, toughness, what do we got? Poise?

Poise. I mean, I think he's getting rid of the ball quickly. I don't like, like poise to me is like, I don't feel hassled in the pocket. To me, he is willing to take a hit, but he still feels like he's hassled in the pocket. Like so much of what he is in terms of his target distribution right now is

where's the big guy? Can I get a contested ball up in time? Which is somehow this offense works. That should be their offense. What the hell else are they going to do? They can't block. George Pickens, if they had a real quarterback, Pickens looks awesome. I think some of that is the function of

the offense. But it's not like, and this was true of him at Pitt too. This was a narrative they had at Pitt that wasn't true. It's not like he's a guy who stands in the pocket and goes one two to three he never has been right he oh he looked down one try to get one open and then he'll start to get happy feet and he'll start to move i don't mind that too much relative to what he's dealing with right now like at least the offensive line is bad but i see like an accurate quarterback who's willing to take a hit that's that's good that. That'll make you some money in the league. Now, like I said, what am I hanging my hat on?

Arm strength isn't there. Athleticism. These are all just like average traits for him. So he doesn't move very well. He doesn't sling the ball very well. Is he like moving safeties with his eyes? Is he correcting stuff pre-snap? Like none of that's there for me right now.

So like I have proof of concept that he'll do it at the NFL level. He'll throw a catchable ball. That'll keep you rostered. But besides that, he hasn't done anything yet to me where I'm like, yep, there it is. If Kenny Pickett's successful in the league, that's what it'll look like. I haven't had that moment with him. Wow. That was an assassination of Kenny Pickett.

Was it? I thought I was... That was pretty harsh. I was trying to... I think the Steelers fans are coming after you now. Listen, first... He kept him in that Bucs game before he got hurt. Kept him hanging around. My dad's a big Steelers fan

and he thinks they should... He saw the end of that Steelers game and he thinks it's Mitch's time now. He said Mitch got motivated by the picket. Please don't. The only reason that happened was Mitch had no time

to think about the fact that he was going in. Right, they just put him out there and dropped him in the cold water. They should just start him like two minutes before the game and then he could just go in with that. I like picket. I don't know. They should just start him two minutes before the game. And then he could just go in with that.

I like Pickett. I don't know. There's something about him I like. And I do think for what they need, I like their receivers. And I just want to get the ball near them and let them go make some plays. And don't make any mistakes. I agree with you. That's the right way to play with your receivers. We disagree.

What about the two guys that Chiefs got? Because they had McDuffie and Karloftis. So McDuffie's been hurt. Karloftis is a solid

player for them. Karloftis was always going to be tricky because he's one of these edges that you draft that's never going to be like an eight plus sack guy.

You're going to get that like once every so often. But he's really good against the run. He does generate pressure that other people clean up.

He's like a yeoman dude. You know what I'm saying? He's going with his lunch pail and get to work. So Karloft has been big for them, especially because Karloft just can bump inside and play a little bit of like interior rushing stuff, which keeps Chris Jones in, in where you want him,

which is between the guards, right? Like remember last year they were screwing around and putting Chris Jones at edge. That was dumb. Now they put naughty Jones and, and Karloft is inside and they'll put Frank Clark is the one outside rusher. And that makes more sense. So they've. Now they put Nottie, Jones, and Karloftis inside, and then they'll put Frank Clark as the one outside rusher,

and that makes more sense. So they've been good. And then Brian Cook, their second-round safety out of Cincinnati. He's learned on the fly. Spag's defense is tough to get your teeth into. You do a lot of stuff as a safety in that defense. He's handling as best he can. Alec Pierce, the receiver for the Colts.

He's flashed. He's been solid. Luke Fortner, he's the center, the Jags class man, with Fortner at the center. Devin Lloyd, the linebacker, and Trayvon Walker, the edge. They hit on their first three in a big way. Lloyd's got some warts, but they hit.

And that's been a big part why, like, I think they've been a little bit of a surprise. The Falcons with London and then Arnold at the Katy, their second-round rusher. Like, some of these teams that have been a little bit better than we thought, a lot of it is early contributions from the rookies.

And that's something the Patriots weren't getting in the last few years. And then they finally hit on a couple guys last year, and then this year they really hit. Yeah, you look at the top five. Walker, Hutchinson, Stingley, Sauce, Thibodeau. The worst pick in that group is the Lions comfortably. Everybody else feels

great. And the Lions are like, hey, can you... He had that three-sack game, Hutch, and everybody lost their minds. None of those sacks are quality. They're all cleanup. They're all cleanups and games, which it's good to finish a play, but beat a tackle. You got to beat a tackle one-on-one and then stack with quarterback. You're going to be the number two overall pick.

He hasn't done it yet. The Lions are like hard knocks. Anybody remember when people really were fired up about that pick? Talk me out of Pat Spangles' tease. Alright, so I like the Pangles' tease. All right. So I like the Pats on the tease. I like the Pats to handle the...

It's going to be a rough night for Fields. Yeah. The whole Belichick thing of like, oh, you guys can't do this? Great. And then I think it's going to be tough. The soliloquy he put out on how well coached and how good the Bears are.

It's an immediate sign that he just does not respect you. Classic. I'm excited about that. The Bengals thing for me is that they lost DJ Reader, their nose tackle, really important key to their run defense, and also middle linebacker Logan Wilson, who they're kind of trying to convince us, oh, he might play this Sunday, but initial prognosis is that he's

not going to be able to go. That's the heart of the run defense, and if you lose that, they've been susceptible to the run. You saw what the Jets were able to do to them. The Cowboys did this to them a little bit. They lost to the running game. Now you get the Falcons. The Falcons are just a nightmare to prepare for. Why are the Falcons 6-0 against the spread? Because no other

team runs the Falcons stuff. So you have to get into work on Monday and be like, we've got to learn a whole new freaking defense when they put two fullbacks back there. They're running the option and they've got all these condensed guys and we have to deal with pits. There's just so much to deal with that other teams don't give you that it's hard to prep for them over a week. That running game plus the weakness of the Bengals run defense is what freaks

me out for that leg. So Falcons have been a trustworthy team for me so far this year. I would hope so. They're six and oh gets the spread. That's about as trustworthy as it gets. It's been that, and it's been their team total overs because that offense has worked. With that said, the moment I mention a team on

this podcast, they immediately shoot themselves in the foot the next week. So maybe it's my pro Falcons edge that will be strong for the Bengals. Or maybe it's my fault. Maybe it's just the stink of me this season just getting on you. Through five weeks, Million Dollar Picks was tanking, and I was having a great year. And then week six, I had the worst

week of my NFL, like last two years of NFL betting for me. And Million Dollar Picks finally went up. So we're just, we're in different wavelengths. I mean, if Tampa beats Pittsburgh, I would have had a huge week. That Tampa, holy smokes. I cannot tell you the amount of times I lied about the Tampa Buccaneers during that game. It was one of those

games where it was 2018 and they're like, here goes Tampa for the two point. And I was like, can I bet my life they're not going to get this? Can I bet my life on a tip ball? I've bet anything. Everything I have. Even the moment that the Steelers finally went up the touchdowns. They've been up by four, up by three the whole game. You're

like, okay, now the Bucs are going to go score the touchdown when it doesn't even put them ahead. When they have to go get the two. They're finally going to get their act together. Nonsense game. Mitch is completing third and fourteens over the middle. They completed three third downs of 10 plus yards in the final two drives. It's the first three of Mitch's career.

Why are you doing this to me? Can I give you a quick Cincy thing? Yeah, go for it. They lose to Pitt in OT week one. Burrow's terrible and they just look super rusty. They have four road games the next five weeks. The only home game they have was a Thursday night right after a Sunday road game.

They're 12th in DVOA. They're eighth in offense. And they're kind of hanging around at three and three. And now they have a little more favorable of a stretch here. But that's a pretty brutal start, right? Pittsburgh week one. Pittsburgh's always good in week one. And then just like road frenzy for a month,

and now things might settle down. They got Chase going. There was an NFL Films thing today. Chase had the grill last week. It was one of the reasons. And Burrow was wearing the jersey. Yeah, and Burrow. They're three-3.

They're hanging around. Baltimore hasn't pulled away. The AFC, you look around, it's like, alright, we got Buffalo. Pats are kind of coming on a tiny bit. KC's going to be there. Nobody in the AFC South. I don't know if I'm the Bengals. I'm like, we're

in a good spot here. We can win our division and we can be like a three seed. So to lose at home to Mariota, who's thrown 120 yards a game, basically the last three weeks, I get it. I've been watching it. It's been really impressive.

But I do wonder if we're overreacting a little to Atlanta. Like they catch like an unbelievable break with that Niners team last week. It was just banged up to smithereens. They've had games where they came behind late just to cover the spread when the game was over. That's happened twice.

And they have a really easy schedule after this. They go Carolina, Chargers, Carolina again, Chicago, Washington, Pittsburgh. So it's like, do they need this game? This is the game you throw away for them. You're a little banged up anyway. Your starting quarterback might not play. Yeah, Terrell and Michael Walker, their linebacker,

both limited practice. That's a big one to watch for this game. No, Terrell is a... Okay, Bengals might be a luck for sure. But we'll see. We don't have the Thursday reports yet. I don't know. Cincinnati tried to lose that Saints game, man.

It was ugly. They sure did. Yeah, film-wise was not pretty. Or was that a seminal moment for them where it was like, we could go, are we going to have a season or not? And they came up with a big play

when they needed it. It kind of was a little bit because that Chase 60-yard game-winning touchdown was really the first play they've had all season that really, really looked like they used to look last season. Where the ball would be out to Jamar Chase

and you'd go like, all right, eight-yard gain. And all of a sudden, he's 40 yards down the field. You're like, how are they doing this? So a little bit of that 2021 magic did feel back. Higgins is back. Yeah. I do think

Cincinnati is a better team than the general consensus. I just also think Atlanta is, and that's what makes it tough for me. But I agree with you. There's pixie dust on this Falcons run that's going to expire. I don't know if I like it this week just because of the run defense concerns.

I might sprinkle my pixie dust on it. We were talking before the show. Lou Anaruma knows what he's doing too. He'll work around Reeder and Wilson if he needs to. I like Tennessee against Indy. I'm just going to try to fade Indy because I don't believe in it. I can't see a world

where they're 4-2-1. I'm going to give you some underdogs. You tell me what you like and then we're going to finalize it with Schrager. Got Washington. Basically, four and a half.

They're in like that plus 180-200 range. We'll see where it ends against Green Bay. We have Pittsburgh at night against Miami. We have Jets-Denver. They're technically an underdog.

Jets are like one-point underdogs. And then Seattle. Who's been super frisky. Which one jumps out of those four to you? Seattle's my favorite. I trust that passing offense. I don't trust the Chargers pass defense right now. So there's a way that one becomes

high scoring. 50.5 point total. Which nowadays is like the rarest thing in the world. I think there's a chance to actually be like a little bit of a shootout. And I know in a shootout, you probably like Herbert more than Gino, but Seahawks have been around in shootouts and have hung around, won those games.

Washington by fading the Packers. That's made me big money the last couple of weeks. Talked about the Giants and talked about the Jets previously with Washington. It just feels dirty. I just don't like how it feels. You know, the Jets were like, I like the way both the Jets and the Giants could run the ball.

And I thought they had better offensive plans. This is like Taylor Heineke I haven't watched in a while. And Jahan Dotson went down during practice. Like, I don't know. I hate betting Washington. So I like it in theory. It's just every time my finger hovers over Moneyline Washington commanders, I feel discontent in my heart. Love the Jets on the Jets.

Well, hold on. I'm in Washington quickly. If the Packers lost that game, that's an official. Oh, the Packers on the Jets. Hold on. I'm in Washington quickly. If the Packers lost that game, that's an official. Oh, the Packers are bad. Right. That's that. That's you come out of that game

and it's like, write them off there. That team's not not coming back to lose three in a row like that. So weirdly, it's a must win. But we've also seen like they do have the recipe. Right. The strong pass rush.

I like Rob. I thought Brian Robinson looked really good last week. I think they could be able to run the ball on the Packers and then it comes down to like how sloppy are the Packers offense could be. We talked about all these rookies. We liked Watson's done nothing.

Yeah, I don't see the Watson thing at all. And that might have been the miss at all those first rounders. But in general doesn't seem like he likes the team doesn't seem like anyone's on the same page. There's a level of like, I don't know, unhappiness that I think is noticeable.

And this would be rock bottom for them. Yeah, they have so much work to figure out this offense. And I don't know if they have enough time in one week that feels like a bi-week sort of a thing. Especially like you spring up this Washington pass rush.

Montez Sweat's playing really good ball this year on the edge. I know Chase Young was the name, and obviously he hasn't been that. Montez Sweat's a true number one edge rusher, and then Allen on the interior is going to get it done for you. This Packers line is shaky. They're not playing as well as we're used to them playing,

and their offensive line coach, Adam Stanovich, is gone. He went to Denver with Nate Hackett, and I think that's a big part of the drop-off you're seeing. Yeah, and then the last dog you gave me was the Steelers, which I don't want such a Steelers. I like the opportunity to maybe picket the Dolphins line being too juiced up. Like, oh, Tua's back.

Everything's going to be okay. They've got problems on defense. They've got problems with their line as well. I just wish it were against the Steelers. Maybe I'm just still resentful because they beat the Bucs, but I don't trust this team as far as I can throw them. So Steelers for me are a tough dog, but it's the juiciest one of the bunch.

Plus 270 for a team that just came off beating the Buccaneers is interesting. I'll go into it more with Schrager, but I am really concerned about two in this game. And if you're Miami, do you use two the way you would normally use him?

Right? You don't really want him to get a hit and the way they used Tua in the past like he would take some hits and I don't think you want him to get hit at all and I think the Steelers are going to know that so then you're doing your defense accordingly where it's like they're going to get rid of the ball

as fast as possible. They're not going to want to put him in any position to get tagged so that makes it a little easier for them. I think their coaching staff where it's like they're going to get rid of the ball as fast as possible. They're not going to want to put him in any position to get tagged. So that makes it a little easier for them. I think their coaching staff has been, you know, they beat the Bengals. They almost beat the Pats, even though Trubisky was a fucking disaster in that game. The only game they got their ass kicked in was Buffalo.

So I think that line's too high is the thing for me. I think that line should be like three and a half, four. We didn't talk about the Jets. If it's ripping, I'm betting the Jets. And I know it's a sucker bet. And you can look at any website that has where the money's going on every game. And that's like flashing red flag. Everyone's betting the Jets. Stay away.

Don't go down this road. Too much money on this game. And I might get sucked in. The Jets aren't for real in the sense of like, they can compete in the AFC, but they are for real in the sense that the formula works. So if you play bad teams

who don't have a formula, don't have a system or a mess right now, you expect them to come out on top. Now, that's my thing with Rippon and why I like the Jets. I have the Jets from earlier in the week. I probably won't add to it

is because I would not be surprised if Rippon plays, the offense looks better add to it, is because I would not be surprised if Ripon plays, the offense looks better than it did with Russ. That would not, like, Judy moves a little bit, Sutton moves a little bit. They got Greg Dulcich back as well, who was clearly very important to them

because they threw to him a ton. I would not be surprised if this offense looks better and Denver starts to look a little bit more like they should. And then we can all be really dramatic about that for a while. Well, with the Jets, too, in a tease, one thing they've shown in a couple games already this year is even if they're down 8, 10, 15, whatever, their offense can

get these quick touchdowns. They're definitely a garbage time team. And I think that, I always look at that if there's bigger spreads. Like, can I get, what's the team's garbage time potential? And there's some teams that are good garbage time teams. I think they're one of them. Jets will be a tease team for me, for sure. You have to go do time teams. I think they're one of them. All right. That's a team for me for sure. You have to go do another pod.

Good to see you as always. Good day. Appreciate you, Bill. All right. Our guy, Peter Schrager is here. We did the picks together last week and had had a slight positive week. No, no, no, no, no. Not we kicked ass last week.

I'm so excited. I was like pumped up by how we did. Slight, moderate, good week. We did great. Well, not according to the Buck-Stewarts game. That killed the overall number. But yeah, we had the Giants against Baltimore as a swing in two parlays. One of them hit Seattle and the other one, New Orleans. Who was in it? I feel like we're getting our mojo back. We had the Patriots big. Oh, yeah. So speaking of mojo, let's talk about the league meetings.

Yeah. Where is, in my opinion, the best place to have words exchanged between two 80-year-old billionaires, which is what happened this week. So there's a lot of stuff floating around. What were you able to find out? What did we sort out? What happened? Yeah. So I first want to start off with Jim Irsay's comments coming on after this meeting, again, the hallway. Let me explain how this whole thing works. There's a couple of them throughout the year. One of them's in New York, one of them's in Atlanta, and then they alternate between Florida and Arizona in the spring. That's

the big one. The one in the spring is where every media company president, the Fox, the NBCs, the ESPN, they're there. You've got all the coaches and their wives and you got all the GMs, the presidents. That's the major one. This one's a little smaller. It's in New York City. It's held in a hotel downtown. And it's just the owners and some of the presidents and then it's the league folks. So they hit all these different agenda items. And they talked about the Snyder thing in the room and then it's the league folks so they hit all these different agenda items and you know they talked about the snyder thing in the room and i i wasn't in the room obviously um but have enough sources who were and they talk about it and like here's what it is it's an ongoing investigation when we get this investigation done trust us we will we will have our you know our revelations we'll be able to weigh in on it but it's basically like

we're doing the investigation we understand this is all thing ursae goes and then like finds the gaggle of reporters which to their credit are like we're got to get a comment on something and he starts weighing in and i think a lot of the other owners were like what we were just in a room with the doors closed and he didn't say anything and then you put this out there and a lot of the media commentary was like okay here's the break in the dam like once one of them speaks on it, and I think even Kevin Clark was like, this feels like one guy talks and then the avalanche is coming. But I think the response was actually like, dude, you were in that room. You didn't say a P. Now you're going to go to the media and say all this stuff. So I don't feel like that's going to

be the case where there's going to be 31 other owners being like, yeah, let's get Snyder out of here. I do think they're waiting for how this investigation turns out, but it was a really strategic play and an interesting one by Jim Irsay, the owner of the Colts, to come out there and publicly go against the rank of, hey, there's another fellow owner, I'm going to go at him. And then Snyder's comment was almost dismissive on the way back. And it was just dismissive completely of Ursae as a whole and what his comments were. So Ursae in that room is obviously one of the owners, but I'm not sure he's the Pied Piper and his voice represents the entire room, which for better or not, maybe he was speaking. And if he did feel that way, that's great. I think they

would have really appreciated if he said it within the room so that they can have an open dialogue as opposed to him talking about it in a hallway to a bunch of reporters. Sounds like that reflects how America works now, where people would rather just say stuff publicly or on Twitter versus saying it to your face. Fair. The other thing that was big was obviously the Jones and the Kraft thing that you alluded to.

Wait, can we talk about Irsay for one second? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please, please. So he does the, come investigate me. I'm not afraid of this. I would argue no NFL owner except for maybe Jerry Jones probably has more baggage than Ursae does. I was really surprised he was the one that's like, come at me.

It's like, dude, Google's right there. I don't think it's hard to come at you, but obviously he just doesn't care anymore. No, and I think there's a lot of that. I'm putting myself, for Ursae, it's like all my dirt's out there. It's out in the open. Come and pick it apart. You know what I've had in my past, but he's

also rebuilt his life in a way. He's completely sober, and he's really philanthropic, and he's got the McAfee appearances where there's like this, like, oh, this is the cool older uncle thing with Jim Irsay and his daughters are doing great things in the mental health space. So like there is this 2022 version of Irsay where maybe it's like, I've got nothing to hide. I'm doing what's right. I like it. It is kind of, it is kind of liberating to see like, hey, you know what? And it's funny,

we had him on Good Morning Football and he's a personality and he spends a lot of his time doing music, but not in a Dolan kind of way where it's like, everybody come listen to me, play music. And you've got to listen to me and my band here in a small thing. I've got Glenn Fry opening for me or whatever it was that like Dolan would do in this case, it's like, I'm going to spend $5 million on Roger Waters' guitar and I'm going to play that thing. It's one of those deals. And he's just like,

I'm living my best life and I have nothing to hide and I'm going to speak out. And he spoke out for sure. And I think it surprised a lot of the owners, but it wasn't the voice of necessarily all the owners, if that makes sense. Well, he's the son of an owner, right? The rich kids who inherit the teams have provided us more comedy, more intrigue, more laughs, more hilarity than really anything in basketball and football and baseball. It usually either goes wrong or they're loose cannons because they were given everything they have. And they have a huge, huge, huge complex about it, which makes it great. And I think there's also this division of the owners now. And this is really in the weed stuff, but to know that-

Yeah, no, I love this stuff. This is stuff that, I think it was Mark Leibovich wrote a really good book called, I forget what it was called, but it was about the NFL and the owners and how they all operate and made some ripples. It's a good read if you want, but in that room, there's such a dynamic. And to your point, you've got the self-made guys. I say self-made guys, but the ones that have done this and they bought the team and they want to have their voice out. Then you've got the generational guys. And they usually started from nothing.

They're basically like the there will be blood guys. They usually had some sort of not awesome family or they had to scrape everything together and had all these small victories that led to ultimately them owning it. Spot on. So you've got the Jerry, you've got Tepper, you've got Kraft, guys that made their empires and they've done savvy things throughout. Then you've got the old school generational guys. And we're talking about the Rooney family, the Mara family. They got in super early when teams weren't expensive and they just held on to the asset. And that's the family business. And it's like the Spanos family with the Chargers, that's the family business. And the Bidwills in Arizona, that's the family business.

And then you've got the next generation, which some of them can go either way, but there's this weird dynamic of like, okay, you have the team because grandpa got you the team. And then you've got the team because of it. And whose voice is respected most. And it's in a lot of ways why for years, Jerry and Kraft have had the loudest voices in the room because I think there's the utmost respect for what they've built and what they've brought to the league and did it on their own bootstrap. So it's all really interesting. Yeah, they were successful for a reason, whereas Bidwell, Ursae, Mike Brown, whoever's running Pittsburgh now, all those guys basically

inherited the team. Like Prince Charles becoming King Charles just because he was related to the queen. Sure. And then if you imagine in the room of the dynamics where they're all voices are equal, that's where it is. And then the next thing is Ursae, the publicly funded stadium. That stuff is huge in that room.

And it's not a bad thing, but it's like, okay, you're going to weigh in. A lot of these guys, that stuff matters. I just paid X amount of dollars to build this stadium in my own pocket. So all this stuff, it's all like you would put any group of 32 alphas in a room and see how it all works out. There's going to be- I heard it's worse for football than basketball. Well, because-

Because basketball, there's a mixture of young and old. Football really has, and they got rid of Richardson finally, but football really has these crusty old, this is how the world works guys. Private equity has no place in the room. So it's not allowed in the NFL. In basketball, you can have the hedge fund guy who puts it all, that's not allowed in the NFL. Or the wheeler dealer who put together the giant group and he's got charisma. Yeah. I've got this athlete and this thing. No, it's just like, you got to have the money and no minority owners are allowed in the room. So on these other leagues, you could have a minority owner, 25% always invited to the thing. We're like, no, no, no, no.

Just the majority owners. By the way, when you said no minority owners, I didn't know whether you're talking about minorities or minority owners, because you could argue that either is true in the room. Yeah, it's 32 white guys. Yeah, and I meant minority share as far as like, and I think in basketball,

they split it up a hundred ways sometimes and everybody's at the table. And they'll bring the team president and it'll be in representing the owner. Yeah, it's way more inclusive. The NFL is not. NFL is like, we're swinging our dicks. I paid for my team and this is my seat.

And there's a little bit of that Omerta thing that goes into it where it's like nothing leaves these walls. Let's respect these walls. But stuff has left the walls for the last few years. And stuff in recent years are starting to leave those walls. And the Jerry and the crafting, I know we want to make it. I

heard afterwards that Jerry was like, oh, I didn't disrespect craft and craft wasn't offended. So it was great for the headline and it was definitely accurate, but I don't think anybody was like, Kraft and Jerry are going after it necessarily. I think that's just how they talk. Well, there is a piece of it where, and it seems like Jones has been pretty consistent on this. Why am I paying a guy

for future performance when I don't know what the future performance is yet? Can we at least have him have the performance first? He said this multiple times. That's been his biggest thing is about, you know, the Goodell compensation package. And I think a lot of this is just like, where he's going to hit these financial goals.

If he gets these goals, then he'll hit this and he'll also have a salary. And Jerry's whole point is like, well, the goals, we've already signed the 10-year media deal. We've already got this marketing deal. We've already got-year media deal we've already got this marketing deal we've already got that going on we already got this stadium coming like what goals is he hitting that we don't know are coming he's going to obviously surpass those goals so i think jerry wants not putting words jerry i think he wants moving goalposts as far as uh each year let's see what those goals should be as opposed to

hey he's already hit those goals let's compensate him him for it. Well, isn't it funny that the NFL mirrors the actual political climate in the world or in America where the leaders are just getting older and older and that's just the way it is? Like, Kraft and Jones are a combined 161 years old and those are like,

I mean, you could argue those are the two most powerful guys in the league. Cronky's up there. Cronky, by the way, that was another owner thing that came out where he has to pay St. Louis. He's covering the NFL now and it's like 560 million. So he leaves St. Louis, goes to LA, builds the stadium that cost, I think, three times more than they expected it to cost, right?

It's 5 billion. They have a ton of debt with it, even though he's got, I guess, endless pockets, but now it's even more money. This turned into like a $6 billion endeavor to build the stadium. I really wonder if they would do it again, if they could do a do-over. And you know what happens? At the end of it, it says, okay, who fits this bill? And Stan says, well, we all should chip in. I mean, look what I did. I brought NFL to LA. We got this new awesome stadium. We're the number two media market. And the old school owners- And Mike Brown's like, wait, what? I didn't ask for that. I mean, why should I pay for that? So it ended up coming to a compromise. But I had an owner tell me that during this process, it's one of the most difficult situations for the league that they've had as far as the owners go, because it's so much money. And it was a lot of that new blood versus some of the old blood as to how

this thing should go down. And, and owners had to take sides on it and they came to an agreement. I don't think either side is thrilled with how it turned out, but they can turn the page and say, okay, let's move on. At least it's done.

Crocky was like that guy at a big dinner with 15 people where everybody's getting a burger. And Crocky's like, I'll have the porterhouse for two. He's basically Joe House. I'll have the porterhouse for two. Can we split the bill 50 ways? Yeah.

But he also is under the assumption that it was being split going in no matter what. Yeah. Well, so is Joe House. I don't know if Joe House was told maybe necessarily by others that, hey, we're all going to be- It's a Joe House move. I'll eat $150 of food and you'll eat $20. It's so funny you say that. Let's split the bill in five ways. We go out to dinner

with a couple, my wife and I, and the guy is a great friend and I always cringe because we'll go and he orders the 1942 tequila or the really expensive... I like it. It's a bold move. You like it. It doesn't give a shit and then it's split the bill and you're just like, mother.

It's bold. It's the Joe House. I can't wait till he hears this. I don't do that. I always throw in more. Okay. No wonder Russillo didn't show up. He heard. I know. Fucking Russillo. A lot of owner drama,

which is fun. We also have some drama in the NFC West where we have a Rams team that I think might just suck unless they make another trade. We have a Niners team that, once again, is battling a shitload of injuries. We have an Arizona team that's playing later tonight that the fumes are just coming off them

like they're a corpse in the attic. And then this delightful Seattle team. America's team. An enchanted fan base. The Russell Wilson trade is, at least so far, worked out as one of the best NFL trades in recent history. They're fun to watch. Pete Carroll's been rejuvenated.

There's Ewing theory potential, even though Russell Wilson wouldn't know how to reconcile that. And now we're looking at them yet again in underdog parlay this week, but give me some Seattle stuff. It is the best building in football right now. Like when I say like the vibes are good, it's underestimating just how excited they are. And it's because of all the contributions from these young guys that were, they weren't told it was going to be a rebuilding season. Pete came in and was like, we're going to compete. We're going to win games. And you're talking about two starting offensive

tackles that are rookies. That is unheard of in the league. It's Charles Cross and Abe Lucas, their first and third round picks, both doing really well. Now, Kenneth Walker is the main guy back there. He won the Doak Walker Award. He doesn't know any better that he's not supposed to be running for 97 yards and breaking every tackle. He's the guy. And then they've got these two defensive backs that no one... Tariq Woolen is a fifth round pick out of Texas San Antonio. He has interceptions in the last four games. He hits, he causes turnovers. And then you've got Kobe Bryant, the other one, who's a fourth round pick out of Cincinnati, who's on the other side of Sauce Gardner. And no one was talking about all these guys contributing, all these guys playing well.

And then you add in the Geno Smith factor where it's like, we've talked about it. He's on his fourth consecutive one year deal with the Seahawks, doubled down on himself four times, 32 years old, and he doesn't make mistakes. He's running Shane Waldron's offense like Shane Waldron was hoping Russell Wilson would run it last year. We've got the system. You've got the legs. We can make this thing work. They are a significantly improved team this year than they were last year. That's without Jamal Adams, without Russell Wilson, and with all these veterans pretty pleased with how this thing is going as far as the locker room goes. Not that Russ was toxic by any means,

but there is this shit. There are no expectations. Let's go be really good. They're three and three atop the NFC West. I enjoy watching them. It reminds me of the Darren Williams trade with Utah in basketball. When he was a guy, they'd made the conference finals with him a couple times he was on the redeem team he's in the redeem team doc it was him versus Chris Paul

for most of the second half of the 2000s and who's better who do you got I was always a Chris Paul guy but was clearly one of the best

it was definitely definitely an argument definitely one of the best 12 players in the league and out of nowhere they traded him and they traded him. And they traded him.

He had just, Jerry Solner just quit. He was having some issues. And both sides have talked about it since. But it was one of those out of nowhere basketball trades that never happened. We're like, oh my God, they traded Darren Williams and the Nets. You know, they needed a face. They gave up, I think, Derek Favors. They had the rookie from Georgia Tech.

Favors. Whole bunch of stuff. And we thought, think, Derek Favors. The rookie from Georgia Tech. Favors. A whole bunch of stuff. And we thought, wow, that's amazing. Utah just punting. I can't believe they did that. And then within a couple of years, Darren Williams is moving in this different phase of his career. By 2016, the Cavs are bringing him in as this veteran free agent.

But he just kind of lost it. He went from all NBA, I'm in a Chris Paul argument to, is this guy even a starting point guard anymore? And he looked the same, right? Yeah. And everybody's just kind of like, what happened here? Why, why can't this guy go by anybody anymore? Why is the shooting gone down? Why does he not seem like a winning player anymore? That's what the Wilson thing looks like to me, where I think it is what it is and we can blame the injuries and stuff, but there were the signs in the last two years we're headed this way. And then you look at the Geno side of it. It also makes sense to me because he has shown flashes. It's not inconceivable. This is not some career thirds. This is not like PJ Walker all of a sudden being the third best

quarterback in the league. So I don't know. It's on the one hand, an amazing story. And then the other hand, it's like there were seeds being dropped all over the place that this was at least conceivable, including by our guy, Steven Ruiz, who had Gino like 17th in his QB power pole

like before the season. I'll tell you, I talked to all these agents during free agency and Gino had offers and he waited, like totally sat out the first round of free agency. April rolls around and it's like, all right, it's Drew Locke or Gino and he goes with it. And then we had Pete Carroll on the draft. I worked the draft broadcast for NFL Network

and day three, we interview all the coaches. It's great access and they actually are very, not vulnerable, but there may be more open in that little window where it's draft time. And I asked Pete a question live from the draft from Las Vegas. I'm like, all right, so Drew Locke, you trade Russell Wilson, what do you see in Drew Locke? And he immediately was like, well, Geno Smith is a wonderful young man. And then he goes in this Geno thing and I'm like, wow, okay, that's weird. But sure enough, Geno was the guy from day one,

the second he signed. Locke and him are going to compete, but Gino was that dude. They all rally around him. And the Shane Waldron piece is good. He comes from the McVay world. And people last year were like, the McVay tree, there's only so many branches. We're done with it. But this is the offense they were expecting. They're very multiple. And they involve the wide receivers, Locke and Metcalf, but they have a lot of tight end play. And then that running back, you put in Penny, you put in Walker, you put in whoever, they've got the lanes to do it. They are a pleasure, a pleasure to watch. And I'll tell you, they're playing the Chargers this week.

Four and two Chargers don't feel like a four and two team. I'll say that. Well, they had that. It was the Monday night game against New Orleans when Gino played. And I remember he threw a pick. There were drives like a pouring. I remember it was like pouring rain. It was like a weird game.

Was it last year against Pittsburgh, you mean? It was a Sunday night game when he came in off the bench. Maybe that's what it was. But one of those two games. Oh, you're right. He did it. He had a Monday night game. You're right.

But there was one of those games where, and he threw a pick. And you could see he was, I remember he was like holding his head. He was like, I fucking blew it again. That was my chance. There was like momentum. I don't think I even took them that week. We were made of taking them under our guard. It was like, it's like, kind of like Gino. You're right. I'm psyched that he's doing this. Cause like, this doesn't happen in basketball. Nobody becomes the best player on a team when they're 32. You are who you are by 25. Baseball, sometimes you have the late bloomers,

but football quarterbacks, it's weird, man. What was that one Case Keenum year? He was like 29 when they came within the cost of making a Super Bowl? He was third on the depth chart. He was behind Teddy who got hurt. I think Bradford was also there. Then it's like, all right, Case Keenum, go in and he takes them to the NFC and he was behind Teddy who got hurt and I think Bradford was also there and then it's like alright Case Keenum go in

and he takes him to the NFC Championship game it happens Nick Foles it happens like there are guys that just need to be put in the right position and be given that confidence that you are the guy once and for all and for Geno it wasn't just his Seattle years like obviously he was the Jets quarterback as a rookie and he beat Brady one game

and it was like exciting but he was he was a part of that crazy Eli Manning situation where they benched Eli and McAtee was crushed in New York and that was that. And then he was in San Diego too. He was a backup for Phillip Rivers. So Gino has waited his time and gosh, at this point, it's crazy. So they're at the Chargers this week, and this is one of the games we're honing in on for underdog parlay. Solak liked it too. How many Seahawks fans? 40%? 45? That team travels. That's a two and a half hour flight. There's weirdly a lot of Pacific Northwest people in LA. So from that standpoint, they're going to have fans. Chargers team is weird. I thought Herbert, what did he throw the

ball like 57 times last week? 57 times each time for about one yard. It was the weirdest game. Got the shit kicked out of him. I'm so down on the coaching of that team. I don't like the offense they run. I don't think Staley really knows what he's doing. It looks like JC Jackson, who's been hurt all year, that looks like that might be, at least

for year one, a whiff. And just in general, the team, Keenan Allen's been limping around all year. Keenan Allen. No idea what to expect from him. And Eckler's really, really small, man.

It's hard when you're running backs 5'7". They have to bring Sonny Michel in for the short yarder stuff. Sonny Michel's been on, what, four teams at this point? He is what he is. He's going to,

if there's one yard to get, he'll get the one yard. He's not going to get three. I just don't see the explosiveness with them. And I don't think it's fixable either with what we have with this year's team. Well, injuries all over the offensive line too. So you've got this Broncos team just flying and just hitting Herbert and all these angles. And Herbert is a warrior. I mean, this guy gets crushed. But the game plan was very peculiar on Monday. And I think I would say that with everyone who watched it, at the end of the first half,

they were like, let's burn the clock for that Hail Mary at the end, very odd. And then Herbert threw 57 passes, but didn't complete one more than 24 yards. And even that one was like a pass and a run after catch. So it's like, they're not unleashing him. I thought that Joshua Palmer, number five, the kid out of Tennessee, the Canadian Burner, is going to have this great season because I'd heard that all summer. He hasn't really gotten going.

I don't know what's up with that offense and their defense has played well. But to your point, at no point do I watch that team and I'm like, oh, that's a four and two team. It's very fortunate they are. Corey Lindsley maybe comes back this week. Maybe. Their center, but that seems iffy to me. And then Zion Johnson, how many holding penalties

did he have? Yeah, he's a rookie. Monday night game. He's a rookie. Now Hopkins is out too. So two things with this game. One is that I think Seattle can actually win it. The other is that Seattle plus five and a half. I really like, cause you figure the coaching from the chargers, that's worth three points toward the Seahawks. Then you have backup kicker. That's another three and they have garbage time potential cause they can score. So even if the chargers are up 11 with four minutes left, I still feel like the Seahawks can go down and get a cheapie. So I kind of like both of them and I do think they could win. Let's do it. Well,

the question for me on Fando right now, Kyle, turn the full of shit. Tick tock camera on Seahawks 10 to one to win the division. Niners are even odds. Rams are plus 145. And the Seahawks are 10 to 1. And I will give you the standings right now

because they're not that far away. And you think like, how many more Niners did you use before this becomes a disaster? Oh, all three teams are 3-3. Cardinals played 9-2 and 4. There's a world where 9 and eight wins that division or ten and seven, but especially nine and eight

is in play. Absolutely. The Rams are so banged up at offensive line and look so inept that I can't with good confidence come out and be like, well, they're coming out of the bye week and they're going to blow over. They have an old cop playing center who's doing the best job he can and they hope to get Brian Allen back.

No, dude. Let's be honest. They're a cross off with this offensive line. It's atrocious. top playing center who's doing the best job he can. And they hope to get Brian Allen back, but no, no dude, let's be honest. They're a cross off with this offensive line and the running game. Like cam acres is just out. He's done. So probably the worst running back crew in the whole league. I would say from a talent standpoint, if that it's in top three, they've one receiver Stafford looks like he's just,

you know, the blues brothers car. And I don't see the roadmap for them. Really hard schedule. Whereas you look at Seattle, they have Chargers this week. If they somehow pull that off, but then they have home Giants. They still get to play Arizona. And I guess their tough games are they got two Rams games left.

They have the Chiefs. They got an easy Carolina game. But I just look at their schedule and it feels like at least eight wins. It's at 10 to one? You might as well. I don't think it's crazy. The Niners thing is like that would still be who you'd pick. But at some point you can have too many injuries.

They're not there yet, but they're like a week away from being there. There's also this weird way that that division works that the Cardinals seem to always beat the Niners. The Niners always beat the Rams. The Rams always beat the Seahawks. And the Seahawks always do pretty well against the Niners. So if you're looking at it that way, Pete Carroll knows this division inside and out. If anything, no one's got his number in that division. Yeah. It's been a rock, paper, scissors division for a long time. The Cardinals being a potential disaster, I think could really help them. And again, they could win tonight, but. If they win tonight, it doesn't mean they're not a disaster. Let's just put that out there.

I will say this. I wasn't, yeah, true. Well, Cliff, especially the stuff, and you guys have been talking about it on your show where two years ago, Cliff's like, yeah, if I'm not calling the plays, just shoot me in the head. There's no reason for me to exist. And now we cut to this week. He's like, yeah, maybe I shouldn't call the plays anymore. It's like, what? You told us this was the one thing you would never accept. I kind of love this version of Cliff.

He's like, eh, fuck it. Let's go. Let's try. We're going to do whatever you want. Let's go get Robbie Anderson. Let's do this. I don't get the feeling that this team, built as it is right now, is going to do whatever you want. Let's go get Robbie Anderson. Let's do this. But I don't get the feeling that this team, built as it is right now,

is going to go on some wild run. I actually think that Hopkins coming back does a great, great thing for the offense, but I don't know if they're going to be... That's not championship division quality. I don't know. Well, let me ask you this. What's worse? Denver

trading for Russell Wilson and all this stuff they gave up and then giving him that contract or the Cardinals giving Kyler the contract when they didn't have to give him a contract. They didn't have to do anything. They could have just rolled it over. And if they had to,

they could have franchised them next year. Instead, it felt like they panicked and they wanted some sense of stability. It's like, well, now our GM, our coach, and ourB, at least all three of these guys are under contract, but it's like, none of us thought this recipe worked and now you've tripled down on it. So in a weird way, I think the Cardinals is worse. The Denver's at least defensible. Russell Wilson, proven track record, changing teams. Sure. And you need to make a splash. You're the new owner. It's like, I get the path for that.

I did not get the Kyler Murray thing at all, at all. Denver owner inherits all this, the big contract, the new first year coach. The Denver owners can look at this thing and say, all right, well, we weren't a part of the Hackett hiring. Okay. If it doesn't work out, we can fire Hackett. We're worth billions of dollars. We'll pay the money, just like Tepper. I'll fire Matt Rule. I don't care about the $40 million. You might be worried about it. I'm not. The Arizona one, that team, they're not one of these big wheeler-dealer teams. And that's the first big extension that they've ever done like this. Kurt Warner never got it. Carson Palmer never got that. And it's like, they went all in on this. And I don't think the Cliff and Kime extensions mean that they're,

you know, lock safe for next year either. But Kyler certainly is. And you watched that game last week. It's funny because fantasy football is such a, such a, you know,

sometimes, you know, someone texted me. It was like, I didn't watch the Cardinals game. Kyler had a hundred yards. Was he running all over the thing? It did not.

No, I don't know. I don't know where those hundred yards, it did not feel that way. I watched the game and it looked like Kyler was frustrated from the second it got going. Body language is awful. Atrocious. The worst every week on my

four TVs. The worst body language is him every week. The statistical resume has been awful. There's some stats where he's one of the three worst starting quarterbacks we have. You never feel like they're going to do anything smart at any point in the game. It reminds me a little of the Kyrie thing with the Nets, where the perception is that Kyrie is a superstar and that he's a winning player, right? And yet the winning has not happened in the playoffs for him for the last few years. Last year they got swept.

He doesn't guard anybody. He doesn't really make, he's never made teammates better. He's never been like an eight. But he had 60 against the Hornets in April. Right. He's great in that where people go, whoa, Kyrie's cooking again. And then you bring up the shot in 2016, which by the way was now six and a half years ago. It's a big shot.

Six and a half years ago, six and a half years ago. Um, but you watched last night against the new Orleans and he literally has nobody to guard in the four. He's was, had a terrible shooting night. Doesn't make anyone better. And it's like, at what point do we call this person a star anymore?

Because he doesn't seem like a star to me. And I'm starting to hit that point with Kyla Murray. It's like, you can be this breathtaking player. You can pull those fourth, those fourth and goal from the seven plays out of your butt. And you're great. You're good at that. But when I'm actually watching running offense, you're just not good at it. And it doesn't seem like your teammates respond to you. And there's something wrong here. I can see it on my television. And that's what they have to fix. The Rams game last year was an alarming, alarming, alarming thing. That playoff game, everything that happened, how bad it got, how it kept spiraling. And then they're like, you know what? Maybe some money will fix this. It's brutal. We've said it before. It's the couple that's

having an issue and then they decide to have a kid to figure it out. You've mentioned that analogy. It's spot on. It's like, all right, now let's get married and have a kid when things weren't going when we were dating. Let me switch topics to a more positive topic before we do million dollar picks.

What do you think the over-under for Patriots regular season wins is right now? They're three and three. Nine and a half. On FanD three and three. Nine and a half. On FanDuel, it's eight and a half. Tasty. With the Bears coming this Monday night. Which feels like four and three. You go through the rest of the schedule.

They have Jets at the Jets next week. Home for Indy. Matt Ryan might be like in five parts at that point. Bye week. Home for the Jets. At Minnesota. Home Buffalo.

At Arizona. At Vegas. Home Cincy. Home Miami. At Buffalo week 18. Buffalo will have quenched the one seed three weeks earlier. I don't see how they don't win nine games.

And I think they're going to win 10, to be honest. You and I and everyone else in the media treated that offensive coordinator situation like it was Watergate. We were talking about it. I ask you now, as we see Zappi having a little success and two blowouts versus two bad teams, has it clicked? Has it figured out? Or do you still have concerns about who's calling the plays and all that stuff? Because it's not a storyline anymore. And is it just they figured it out or it's because they won and it's like, all right, we'll put it in our

back mirror. I think they knew what identity they wanted. They made it too complicated. When Zappy came in, they simplified it a little bit and now I think they know who they are. And also, honestly, Harris getting hurt in a weird way helped because Romandre just has them all the time now and he's the fucking man. But I think they know who they are.

I think the coaching stuff was justified because nobody had ever seen this happen before. But they look really crisp. I also think the offensive line did not play this well the first three weeks. And Mack didn't play well. But they were in those games.

They were in the Miami game. They lost. Pittsburgh hung around and maybe even could have stolen it if Trubisky was good. And then week three, Baltimore, they just fucked the game up. And Lamar did Lamar stuff in the whole second half. So all reasonable.

Green Bay, if Zappi, if they trusted in them at all, I think they win the Green Bay game. If it's Zappi from two weeks later. The one thing I don't get with the Pats is people are like, well, they lost to two of the worst teams in the league, Detroit and Cleveland.

Who cares? Go to that game. Detroit was the best offense in the league. Yeah, they were moving the ball on everybody and they were running the ball really well. And then Cleveland was favored last week and people were like, Cleveland's going to run all over the Pats.

Pats run defense, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know. I actually don't feel like they're getting enough credit. And I think on Monday night, I would lean toward they're actually going to kick Chicago's ass and people are going to be like, oh shit, this Pats team.

Because we've seen it. The people that watched every play of the Pats, we saw it in that Green Bay game. It started clicking. This is a good team. I know it's a good team. It's interesting. So, you know,

Mac, we're doing this on Thursday. I think when Mac's ready to come back, he'll come back and he'll get that opportunity. And if he fucks up, they'll take him out. You got it. I don't think this is, you know, it's not necessarily Bledsoe Brady, but it is one of these deals where it's like, all right, well, we got a guy and we're not married to you for the next 20 years just because it took you in the first round. I think,

I mean, I work with Jason McCourty who was with the Patriots for three years and he, he's really getting good at TV bill and like really smart. I'm with you. I'm actually saying that because you're on the show, but he's way better than he was two months ago. I know this. And he's starting to lay into it. And he's like, this is more like Cousins and Griffin than it is about Brady and Bledsoe. If you're there every day, okay, there's two young guys, but this coach, just like Mike Shanahan was, he's not married to the fact that he was a number, 15th overall pick. He's married to what's going he was a number 15th overall pick. He's married to what's going to be the best thing for this team.

And eventually, in Washington, Cousins was the guy, as opposed to Griffin, who went number two. Also, J-Mac had his charity function on Monday night, and Devin was there, but so were all the Patriots players. And I'm like, give me something, bro. What'd you get? And he's like, I talked to Mac. He's in good spirits, and he didn't bowl because he didn't think it would be a good look

for him with an ankle injury out there bowling. He's like, but Zappy was there too. And Zappy, he's got a little bit of this howdy doody thing that the guys are rallying around and the guys are like, oh, Zappy's the man. So both well-liked. It's all positive. I don't feel like there's anything negative. But they like each other. It's going to come down to like, Mac's going to get the job back. Mac, don't make mistakes anymore. If you make mistakes,

we're going to start the other guy. So this is on you. Just don't make mistakes. Because if you don't make mistakes, we're going to beat most of the teams. And the defense is playing well. And they've got all those guys named Jones. They've got like seven guys named Jones in the defensive backfield. It's amazing. And they're all good. They're all playing good. Buffalo game, really both of the second and third Buffalo games, but especially the playoff game

where they were just slow. And then it's like, how do we fix this? We need speed. And they went for speed on both sides of the ball. The fact that they, Strange is good and their O-line, they can, all those guys can block. People will see it on Monday night. We're teasing the Pats. I'll give you two choices. Okay. Bengals Falcons, which Solak tried to talk us out of because he likes the Falcons. Maybe not to win, but he thinks that's a bad matchup. The Bengals have some run D issues. Okay. Could do that. Or we could do the Jets against QB, TBD, and a really weird Denver team that's only scored seven touchdowns. You can bring the Jets to plus seven and a half.

Are the Jets favored in that game? No, Denver's favored by one and a half. Let's do the Jets. I feel like they're feeling themselves right now. Or we could do each. We could do the Pats tees with each. Cut them up in half. I like that. I like that.

I like that option. I feel good on the Patriots too. Or we could put the Jets in underdog parlay, which would get us... Jet Seahawks? Jet Seahawks is plus 485. There's so much Geno Smith and Jamal Adams connections there with Jet Seahawks.

You're right. That's got to be one of them. That's got to be it. This is the Geno connections there with Jet Seahawks. You're right. That's got to be one of them. That's got to be it. This is the Geno Smith bet. Jet Seahawks. Tell me how you feel about the Steelers in Miami and this whole Tua situation in general. I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I just find it hard to believe they're going to put two in harm's way this week.

I mean- What if he gets like his third, I don't know. He gets another concussion. Like, so what does that mean? He's going to be getting rid of the ball in two seconds. They're not going to ever run.

Like they're not going to let this guy get hit. I don't think their offensive line is very good. I think their defense has been pretty good this year from what I've seen. But, um, you know, Steelers are going to have trouble, I think covering the two receivers.

I just want to throw it out because the Steelers are plus 270. Ooh. I also, there's something, and, you know, you go to this Sunday night game and there's all this buildup and they need this game because they've lost three in a row and we haven't had two. And I think it's just like Tyreek Hill under the lights, Jalen Waddell under the lights. You got the 50th anniversary of the 72 Dolphins. The living members are all going to be there. You got this whole feel. And I feel like, I don't know,

Miami doesn't usually have a huge home field advantage, but I feel like this is going to be like Dolphins must win game. And I don't know if the Steelers have the guns to go up on offense against that Dolphins team. Can I give you one more wrinkle that you didn't mention? Please. Who's on the Steelers sideline for this game and the coaching staff? What up, Flo? Brian Flores. Does this have all the makings of Steelers beat the Dolphins in Miami followed by

Tomlin giving Flores the game ball? Flores got completely fucked over in Miami. He's suing the league now. It's like, couldn't you see it? The Sunday night thing. And near the end, the guys coming over to Flores

and tapping one at a time. Did you see how quickly Tomlin shut it down? I almost respect Tomlin. They're like, all right, so Flores goes, I'll tell you this right now.

I'm not going to say a word about this story for the rest of the week. So I'll just leave if that's what you guys, and it's like, all right, there you go, Tomlin.

That's why he's Mike Tomlin. Great coaching job last week, Pam. But look, it's sitting there and I just I think that has to be factored in I think the plus 270

is an interesting flyer if you team it with one more like by the way yeah you do Seattle and Seattle

or I'm sorry Washington and Pittsburgh together is plus 968 and Seattle and Pittsburgh is like I think 11 to one. Something like that. So, you know, just in the spirit. Green Bay can't lose to Washington, can they?

With Tyler Heineken. Seahawks Steelers, 10 to one. Seahawks Steelers. So the case for Washington is, you lose it, they lost their starting quarterback. It's like, all right. I know. It was Carson Wentz.

Good pass rush and maybe the Packers are bad. Yeah. That would be the case. I would think that the Packers, they can't come out of that game with a loss. Are you down with Tennessee minus two and a half against the Colts?

Yes. Tennessee owns the Colts. Yes. Derek Henry will do what he always does. Runs for 120 yards and pushes off Colts defenders. All right, it's time. Million dollar picks, week seven.

Last week, Schrager rejoined the actual making the picks segment. Give it to me. Let's go. And we came out on top, dude. Up 149K. Let's start. Getting a little momentum. A tep. Let's start. It's getting a little momentum. A tepid let's go.

Down 2.56 million for the season. But we are going to try to win it back. The New England Patriots at home on a Monday night. I believe in this team. Playing the Bears, who kind of have to play one-handed at all times, which is the perfect Belichick opponent. Monday night, I think this Pats is an extend the lead team.

We are throwing them in a tease. Okay. Against the Chicago Bears on a Monday night with the Cincinnati Bengals. Teasing the Pats down to minus seven and a half. Teasing the Bengals down to a half point. They're playing Atlanta. Atlanta's record against the spread is?

Undefeated. 6-0. 7-0 is like flip a coin seven times. Even Anton Chigurh would have trouble coming up with heads seven times in a row. Atlanta has a little stretch in the schedule coming up after this Cincy game. They get to play Carolina twice. Chargers, Chicago, Washington, Pittsburgh. You figure like...

A little cushion that might overlook this one. Yeah, this is a game. We need it, but we don't totally need it. It's not in our conference. And they have the Bengals 3-3. A seminal moment of their season. Jamar Chase, 60-yard touchdown, saving the Saints game.

Coming off this horrible stretch where they played home on the first week. Four out of the next five on the road. Now they're back home. Get it going again. Let's figure out. We have six weeks of tape now with this weird Atlanta team we can look at.

And I think the Bengals put themselves on the map as like, hey, don't forget about us in the AFC conversation. I'm with you. Pat's Bengals tease, we're putting 700K on this. We are putting 300K on the Tennessee Titans

minus two and a half against Indianapolis, a team that has just cost me money three times in ways that have really hurt my feelings. Football Outsiders had, they are one of the worst DVO teams,

DVOA teams ever. Oh, wow. With a winning record after week six. One of the worst ever in the history of football in the last 40 years. And it seems inconceivable to me that that Colts team that I've been watching could go four, two, and one with Matt Ryan just getting annihilated week after week. Tennessee kind of owns them too, right? Yeah. They've been in the last four times in Indy and they've had their way. and Derrick Henry always plays well against these guys. I think Vrabel's got something on

Frank Reich as far as an edge. I like Tennessee in this one. More physical team. Putting 300K in Tennessee minus two and a half. Do a little 200K flyers on two teams we really like also for underdog parlays. For 250K on Seattle plus five and a half.

Going to the LA Chargers where there's going to be, what, 45% Seahawks fans. Those ugly green jerseys. Might see some Sean Alexander jerseys. Could see a couple Jim Zorns. Nice. Maybe a Bosworth.

A Bosworth jersey. Bosworth, a little large in 80. I like that. Yeah. We'll have the whole, will we see a Russell Wilson Seahawks jersey? I don't know. But we're going to grab them plus five and a half against a really weird

Chargers team that I think has been poorly coached this season. Backup field goal kicker. They have a way of scoring 19 points when they should have had 30. And I have questions about their offense and just some of their decision making. Their offensive line riddled with injuries.

Right. Seattle plus five and a half, grabbing that. And then, man, this is the most public bet on the board. And you can feel free to talk me out of it. But the Jets plus one. Ride the wave. In Denver. Ride the wave.

Everyone is on the Jets. Literally everybody. Ride it. Let's ride. Everybody's on them. I'm going to look both ways before I cross the street even though I hear trucks and cars. It doesn't seem like a logical bet

because everyone's on it, but they are believing right now. They're too young to know any better. They don't understand that you're not supposed to... You know what? I'm backing off. I'm just going to put them on their car. It's an in-the-pick back-off. Mid-pick, guys. A first time. Bill Simmons

backing out mid-pick. We had it in the books. We're taking it out. We're going to do it for underdogs. So 250K, Seattle plus 5.5. We're going to do underdog parlay. Seattle and the Jets. Both have to win. Jets and Denver. Seattle against the Chargers. Plus 5.18. We're putting 50K on that.

Come on. Let's go. 518. Plus 518. And then finally, a little flyer just for me. This is yours. I have no interest in this one. This is all you. Go.

It's a little 25K flyer. Seattle. And the Pittsburgh Steelers. I don't see Pittsburgh. You do. Make the case. The Brian Flores, this was for you game. The, oh my God, maybe Tua shouldn't be starting an NFL game yet.

Maybe they're going to be super cautious with him. I just think it's worth a flyer. The odds are great for Pittsburgh's plus 270 for the game, throwing them with Seattle. We're just going to put a little 25K taster on them at 10 to 1. And that's it. Those are the Million Dollar Picks for week seven. Let's go. Peter Schrager, great to see you as always.

Love seeing you, man. Thank you. On the wayside Never once said I don't have A few years with him On the wayside On the wayside Never once said I don't have A few years with him