The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ravens Nevermore, Hail to the Chiefs, Hall of Fame Tears, and Empty Nest Sports Dad Syndrome With Cousin Sal | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

HBO and The Ringer’s Bill Simmons is joined by Cousin Sal to recap the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, including the Chiefs putting up 51 points on the Texans in a comeback win, the Titans stunning the Ravens, Seahawks-Packers, and 49ers-Vikings. They also Guess the Lines for the conference championship games, discuss the best and worst Super Bowl matchups, and talk future bets and subplots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's talk about the ringer.com where you can read. By the time you're listening to this, the Oscar nominations have probably come out, unless you're a night owl listening to this on a Sunday night, but we will be all over the Oscar nominations. The Big Picture will have a podcast probably within a couple hours. We'll be writing about them, all that stuff. Can't wait to see who gets nominated.

One of the few award shows that I actually really care about. And they usually do a pretty good job for who should be nominated. So we'll see what happens there. Two podcasts for me coming up. The Rewatchables with Quentin Tarantino. We did King in New York. That's going to be Wednesday night. Me, Sean Fantasy, and Tarantino.

This is one of the nine or 10 best pods I've ever been a part of. Tarantino, it's like going to film school. And we actually broke some news a couple of times in this pod. But if you love movies, if you love Tarantino, I implore you to listen to this one. And then Book of Basketball going up late Monday night. It's a pyramid podcast. Did I say who it was with, Kyle? You did. Reggie Miller.

Me and Shea Serrano breaking down Reggie Miller's career. So that's going to be Monday night. I think I'm only doing two BS podcasts this week. So keep that in mind as well. Cousin Sal coming up in one second. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right.

Cousin Sal is here. It's Sunday night. Just made it through a topsy-turvy round two. And, oh, hold on a second. Oh, come on in. Joe? Joe wants to introduce you, Sal. Hold on.

Joe. Sal, on behalf of everyone on the Bad Gamblers Hall of Fame, we want to tell you, you've been inducted into our 2020 class. Congratulations. Joe, I know you say you gained weight over the holidays, but is that really you with the big blue jacket? Thank you. Thank you for inducting me. That's great. Sal, this is incredible. Congrats, man. I'm so happy for you. This is great. Didn't know this was going to happen. I should tear up. I got to tear up. You guys start crying. God, what a day. I'm so glad we could share this together. Me and Coach Cower, I can't believe it.

So they induct Coach Cower into the Hall of Fame, which we just were roasting Damoshek, our friend, who's a Steelers fan. Um, me, you and Hench just killing him for 24 straight hours about all the coaches who should be at over coach Cowher. And then 24 hours later, Jimmy Johnson, he gets it. So yeah, that's the way to do it. Tough one for Dick Vermeule though. He's got to be like, what the, what the hell, what else did I have to do?

Yeah. For a guy who just spent most of his career crying in locker rooms, I mean, I think they're afraid of what would happen if they inducted him. He would probably never, ever stop weeping, right? He would see the guy and he would just immediately have been sobbing for three straight days. Yeah. But not only did he win a Superbowl, he inspired a pretty mediocre Disney football movie with- Oh, that's true. Yeah, played by Greg Kinnear. So this was a bittersweet round two for me. The Patriots weren't playing.

Yeah, I noticed that too. It was really weird. I got to say, it was the first round two in like a decade where no pats and I just got to enjoy football and enjoy gambling. Oh, wait, I didn't enjoy gambling at all. I got murdered. I didn't even gamble. I somehow went 4-0 against the spread and lost just a bundle of money.

I think you did the same last week, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so let's do AFC first, and then we'll take a break, and we'll do NFC. All right. Which game do you want to do, The Sunday game or the Saturday game? Well, I guess. Sunday game's a little more fresh.

It's fresh in our minds. Let's do Chiefs. Let's do Chiefs-Texans. So everything goes wrong for the Chiefs right away. It feels like the ultimate Andy Reid game. We've been here many times. Anyone who had the Chiefs in a tease, anyone who had Super Bowl money on them. And it's one of those moments where you're like, oh yeah, Andy Reid, what the hell did I just do? And then 21-0,

seems like the Texans are going in for their fourth touchdown and fourth and inches. And you and I disagreed on this. We were arguing about it. You hated this move. I did because I just felt like they were doing whatever they wanted. First, he calls a timeout. Bill O'Brien seems to think timeouts are like toothpicks at the maitre d' station at a restaurant. He's just grabbing them, just going through them. I'll use another one. What the hell? That's good. I like that. Thank you. So he calls a timeout to then set up the field goal when the alternative was you really try to go for the hammer. You go up four touchdowns.

Worst case scenario, they're trapped on their own five yard line. They have to go 95 yards to score seven. They settle for the field goal, kickoff, huge return. All of a sudden it's 21-7 and within five seconds, it's a tie game and nobody knows what the hell is going on or almost, no, the Chiefs took the lead. What was it? 28, 24-21, Texans up.. No, the Chiefs took the lead. What was it? 24-21? Texans up, and then the Chiefs eventually took the lead. At half, they had the lead.

But here's what I'll say. All right, Bill O'Brien, probably a bunch of mistakes, but I don't necessarily think that was one of them, not going for it on fourth and one. First of all, you say they're up four touchdowns. They're up four scores with the field goal. It's 24-0, all right? Yeah.

Last week in fourth and one, not a great play call. Deshaun Watson gets stuffed, but they don't put him in space. It's just a quarterback keeper. What's the play you want there? Because Carlos Hyde is... They're not going to be afraid of Carlos Hyde.

It's not going to be play action. You're going to be happy if it bounces off of fellas' hands or something. What's the play call? I thought Seattle in the second game today ran the absolute perfect fourth and one. Exactly what I want with an athletic quarterback. Play action. They have to obey the HB dive. Quarterback rolling out.

He has the ability to scramble or throw. And I think it's unstoppable if you have an athletic quarterback. That's the play. If I'm the other team, I don't ever want them to run. I don't know. I don't know that you have to respect the tailback dive there with Carlos. All eyes are on Watson. But again, O'Brien makes an atrocious call later on, so it doesn't really matter.

But at some point, you got to blame the team. 24-0. And they weren't even close to stopping them after that. Like you said, Hardman's return for gambling purposes, plus 325. The Chiefs were plus 325. You checked in with me. You said, when are we going to live bet the Chiefs? I said, I have the equivalent of two cars on the Chiefs right now not you know the hondo cords nothing nothing important but uh still i i couldn't bet him and then plus 325 but to win the half to win the half at 24 nothing they were 70 to 1 odds and they did it they won the half and just launched themselves from there so joke i texted you after o'brien settled for the field goal when it was

24-0. I was in the living room by myself with my dog, Willie, and I looked at Willie. I looked him right in the eye, and I said, the Chiefs are winning this game. I texted you, and I thought the odds were going to be 10-1. It was 24-0. I didn't think they had two first downs.

You were like, yeah, it's plus 325. Even Vegas was going, yeah, we're not really buying this yet. My issue with O'Brien, who I think is just perennially bad in all situations, you can't be aggressive one time or not aggressive one time and then super aggressive the next time. I'm with you there. It's a mindset. And I think what we saw yesterday with the Titans, the Titans never would have not gone for it on fourth one.

Now, granted, they have Derrick Henry, but their mindset was we're going into Baltimore and we're throwing haymakers and we're emptying the kitchen sink and we have to actually take the game from these guys. And Houston's like, ah, let's settle for a field goal. I don't ever want to settle when I'm a huge underdog on the road. I think he believed in his defense.

They were stopping Mahomes, you know, so you should be, you could believe in your defense. I think up 24, nothing. I don't think that's anything horrible. Were they stopping Mahomes or were the chiefs just dropping passes? Cause it felt like the latter. And I saw that and that drove me crazy with the Ravens too. Like these buy teams, it really seems like, I don't understand. It's one thing, I know you didn't play the week before,

but is everyone vacationing in a different spot? They're still practicing, right? The wide receivers didn't go to Belize, and the quarterbacks didn't go to Puerto Rico, right? I don't understand why they're that out of sync, both games. It's a tough one one because you would have thought the Niners had one week off, but they had a really big week 17 game.

And they were pretty crisp that whole Vikings game. The Ravens looked like they hadn't played in a month and a half. Right. And the Chiefs just kind of slow start. I mean, the long touchdown to Stills that made it 7-0 was just a great play. And it was clearly their huge play

that they figured out, oh, this play's going to work this week. They were all excited to run it. Then a stupid turnover. All of a sudden, it's 14-0. But I don't know. I really thought the Chiefs were going to come back. You did, yeah.

I think the difference, and I know Lamar versus Mahomes is going to be the hot take conversation all week, right? Right. There was one major difference between the two of them, and I think it's lack of experience with Lamar. But when things went wrong for the Ravens yesterday, Lamar just had the frazzled look on his face and he wasn't leading at all. There was never a shot of him talking to his teammates, encouraging people, seeming like

he was super confident. He kind of had a look on his face like, what the fuck is going on? Mahomes the whole time just seemed like he was in a sports movie, trying to rally everybody and just seemed super confident. I never felt like the Chiefs lost their confidence. Yesterday, it seemed like the entire Ravens team almost immediately lost their confidence. It was kind of shocking to watch. Well, I don't know if they lose their confidence. Did they gain confidence or did they just look at last year's loss against the Patriots and say, oh no, we're not suffering two terrible losses at home. Just different. I think Mahomes, first of all, we're not suffering two terrible losses at home. Just different.

I think Mahomes, first of all, they're so much faster than everybody. They really are. And as the game wears on, eventually it catches up to you. And speaking of catches, Kelsey, when he wants to catch the ball is the best. There's no one better. He's got no space. You create space. He doesn't have to.

Mahomes knows where to throw him the ball. They are just dynamite together. And I don't expect the AFC championship to be like either of the games, right? I don't think Tennessee could stifle the Chiefs for more than a quarter, but I also don't think the Chiefs are going to run it up like this. When you wanted to bet the Chiefs live, did you think the Texans were done scoring? Because they went on a 51-7 run, the Chiefs. True. I didn't think the Texans were done scoring.

I almost texted you about trying to talk through a Chiefs tease with the overbet. And I was just like, it's not my weekend. I'm on a downward spiral the last couple weeks. I'm just staying away. But I really did think this game, once I found out Chris Jones wasn't playing, it really did seem like the over was way too low. What did it end up with? It was in the 50s, right? The over under was, what was it?

I'm not sure. 51. Yeah, 10 and 51. Yeah. They got it alone. They met the 51 alone. I have a couple of Chiefs fans in my life, and they had a complete meltdown when the Chris Jones thing came out because they were like, that's our guy.

And what happened? He got hurt playing basketball in the locker room? I didn't understand it. I had no idea that was even in consideration that he might get hurt. Right. It was such a goddamn entertaining game, though. I mean, the first half seemed like it took two hours. We had the perfect announcers.

Romo was in rare form. He was, he was calling stuff out. He really had a grip of the momentum changes and what the offenses were doing. And as soon as the chiefs kind of unlocked it, you could just tell by the way, Romo was announcing it, that he just felt like they were going to score every time. Romo also, he was on your side about going for it on fourth and one, but I was starting to feel bad for him. I was like, he should bail from not only this game, but next week's game. I mean, honestly, Texans, Titans, run that on, run that on against all odds podcast. The ratings will go down, but, but I don't know where you put that game.

There was like a 12 minute stretch on Twitter when it became night at the Apollo about that Titans Texas thing. Kevin Clark was saying that they should flex it or send it to London. But I'm on the other side. I think the Titans are gloriously entertaining. And I will, for the rest of my life, never forgive myself for talking myself out of them in round two after I had been in the front seat of the bandwagon for two months. And we can talk about that in a second. Leaving the Chiefs game, we've seen the round two blow out many times. We've seen the offense look awesome.

And it's always a question of, is that offense actually really awesome or was their opponent really lousy? And I think it's actually, in this case, a combo of both. It might be a combo of both, but doesn't it pass the eye test that they're just so much faster, whether it's Cole Hartman or any of these guys in the secondary? Watkins always has a player or two in there. Tyreek Hill, even though he had the bad fumble manages to get open like it's really weird how they they manage to just I don't know

I think it's demoralizing after a while the Texans like I can't I can't keep up with these guys J.J. Watt like forget I think he blocked the pass and late in the third quarter but other than that like ineffective Damian Williams seems like he's, I mean, he's pretty up and down, but he's on an up curve right now. But yeah, the big takeaway from the weekend, we had a lot of Lamar stuff. I mean, just from an AFC standpoint, we had a lot of Lamar stuff. It was a Lamar celebration coronation for months. And now Mahomes is kind of taking it back. And Lamar is like, I was texting somebody a couple hours ago about whether Lamar would go to the Pro Bowl because he made the Pro Bowl. It's like, well, maybe he should, but it's just

amazing that Mahomes now is headed for this, whoever they're going to play. It's either going to be Rodgers or the Niners in the Super Bowl if they can make it. And Lamar is going to be in a hotel room in Hawaii, potentially. It is fascinating. It flipped. But your Patriots screwed everything up. I want to point that out. Another Hall of Famer, Tom Brady, screwed that up. And I do feel bad for Lamar.

And if you would put up, I mean, just you don't do it this way, but if you put Lamar's numbers in yesterday's game up against Tannehill's and you found out after the game, all right, these are the stats, who you want to bet, how much would we put on the Ravens? It wasn't even like there was a lot of garbage time, big chunk of yards there. I'll just not understand that Titans game. They're way better than I'm ever giving them

credit for. Their fourth down yard defense was... I don't know if we want to talk about it. We're ready to talk about it? It was too much to take. The last piece on the Chiefs, and then we'll go to the Ravens. If you had to pick anybody in the league to start a team with,

you'd probably still pick Mahomes, right? Yeah, I think so. If you had to pick anybody in the league to start a team with, you'd probably still pick Mahomes, right? Yeah, I think so. If you had to pick one person to start a 2019 playoff team with right now, it would probably be Mahomes, right? Well, instead of Derrick Henry? I mean, because he's still the scariest right now. Yeah, so that was my question. The way this playoffs has played out, amazingly, Derrick Henry might be the first pick now. Yeah. So that was my question. The way this playoffs has played out, amazingly, Derek Henry might be the first pick down. Yeah. There's a helplessness with him that I haven't felt in 40 years since Earl Campbell, where you're just like, oh my God, this guy's,

he's like a man amongst boys. It's untackleable. And you think about him in this Chiefs game next week. And if I'm a Chiefs fan, I'm terrified because the Ravens, there was some good stuff on Twitter and some good pieces last night and this morning about the Ravens were playing eight men in the box. They were doing basically when you play Madden and you do the engage eight, both teams were doing that where you're just like, look, you're not running it. You're going to have to throw it. I'm not letting you run. And then, and Henry was still running it.

So I don't, if I'm the chiefs and Chris Jones isn't playing next week and it's just a classic scenario of the Titans, you know, they're just going to try to keep the chiefs off the field. You know, Henry's going to have 35, 36 yards runs again. I just can't believe it because I did this on the pod with Mina Mallory on Thursday. I'd done all this research with Henry and there was literally no parallel in the history of football to him having those three games in a row. And I was like, well, there's no way he's going to do that a third time. And then so why would he do it a fourth time? So now he's going to have like 120 carries in a month, right?

He's already, I think he he's over 100 for the month. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, so I mean, he could be at like 135, 140 in four weeks. It's bonkers. It's bonkers, and you got Tannehill, who didn't eclipse 200 yards

in two games that he won, and that's only been done, the last three times that happened, the quarterback won the Super Bowl. Terry Bradshaw was one of them. It was in the 70s. It did seem like 70 stats all over again. I had a couple of devastating bets. I had the Ravens Chiefs tees, seven point tees.

I had Mahomes and Lamar will throw at least two touchdowns. Lamar only threw one. He had 14 different chances to throw the second touchdown. They were inside. I think they were inside the Titans 49 times. Do you see that stat? Yeah. And somehow he only got the one TD. So that sucked. And then the other one I had was Jimmy G interception with Tannehill interception. Titans go up big early. Tannehill, they take the car keys away from him. They're like,

we're good, dude. Just sit in the passenger seat. Yeah, he's thrown the ball 13, 14 times a game. You kind of have to get lucky to collect on that interception thing. And the Ravens, that's what I mean. Their drives, I want to give the defense credit, even though they ended up with big numbers, the Ravens, but they had three drives in

a row between the late second quarter and early third quarter that lasted 10 or more plays. They just couldn't punch it home, really. It was really, really frustrating to watch. I'm trying to find somebody who had a really good tweet. I think Will Brinson had a really good tweet about all the times where the drives ended for the Ravens in that Titans game. And they were on the Titan side of the field nine times. And somehow I had it. What did they end up with?

12 points. Yeah. I agree with you. That is one of those games that the, the, the different civilizations will be studying thousands of years from now being like, Hey,

what's up with this box score? Right. This one looked weird. Why did that guy have over 300 yards passing and over 100 yards rushing and they only scored 12 points? But if you watch the games, and Lamar Jackson had his moments too. Not great. Not good, even.

But wide receivers way out of sync. Sneed dropping passes. Penalties on punts that went into the end zone. When do you see that? Like the receiving team gets a penalty onts that went into the end zone. When do you see that? The receiving team gets a penalty on punts getting into the end zone. It was just some big plays. But the left cheek down, we learned for the first time this year that the left cheek down in the first quarter,

that counts as a touchdown. Everything that went against them could in that game. Big drops, really dumb penalties at the worst possible times. They were always like starting 15 yards further back than they should have and stuff like that. And it had all the makings. And we have seen this now. We are old enough that you kind of know in the first quarter, even that Texans-Chiefs

game, which was absurd and insane. Everything happened so fast. You just looked at the clock and you're like, which was absurd and insane, everything happened so fast. You just looked at the clock and you're like, oh my God, there's so much time left. I feel like the Chiefs can come back. The Ravens, once they fell way behind and once Henry clearly got going, it just had that ominous feeling. The crowd checked out. The crowd, the sphincters all tightened. Lamar, I thought, looked a little overwhelmed.

And just the whole team, the receivers, you start looking at these receivers and you're like, all right, who's actually getting open, making plays? You saw in Green Bay today, the biggest play of the game, you knew Devontae Adams was going to somehow get open. He got open. They don't really have anybody like that. And then the coup de grace was the Ingram thing.

If you bet on Baltimore, you put them in a tease, and you're like, man, my worst case scenario is they fall behind, and then they cut to Mark Ingram with the brace on his calf or whatever. And of course, it was within 40 minutes, there he was, with the thing on his calf. And that was it. And then it's just a lot of- And Tannehill, to his credit, even though he only threw 14 times,

when they were up 7-0, he threw that bullet to Raymond, I think it was, for like a 45-yard touchdown. That's it. You said it. Doesn't really matter who your defense is. Doesn't really matter who your quarterback is. You're up 14-0 with Derrick Henry.

You're going to win that game, or it's going to be close, and that's if you don't even score anymore. And they did. Well, we were actually, let's take a break and we'll keep going on this. Hey, simply safe home security is like getting commercial grade enterprise level security for your own home. Think about the security fortune 500 companies use.

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We were only on this podcast a week ago and I was telling you the Titans line was too high. Yeah. I believe in the Titans. This is stupid. I can't believe the Titans line was too high. Yeah. I believe in the Titans. This is stupid. I can't believe the disrespect, all that stuff. And then the week goes on, I start doing my Derrick Henry research.

There's no parallel really other than John Riggins in 1982 in the history of football to somebody, even with the kind of workload slash production thing Henry had done for two games in a row. And then you start looking at the advanced metrics for the Ravens this year. And they're like one of the six best teams of all time, according to the numbers. And I just talked myself out of it. I was like, I'm, and it was a classic overthink, but now I think about it.

The Ravens are the Houston Rockets of football, right? Oh, wow. Awesome regular season, incredible stats, unstoppable offense, quote unquote. And then we get to the playoffs and everything changes. The elements change. The weather's a little different. Teams can scout you. You have some time off. A couple things go. The threes aren't going in all of a sudden. You're like, oh, shit. Everybody's Sphincter's Titan.

And it felt like a Rockets collapse to me. It felt like one of those game six, game seven Rockets games. Okay, but what are we going to read into this? Let's just dismiss everybody who's saying Lamar Jackson's a fraud. He's not a fraud. We're seeing it little by little. Like, this is why you don't go heavy on a Lamar Jackson's a fraud and we know where the family that we're seeing, we're seeing it. We're seeing a little by little, like this is why you don't go heavy on a Lamar Jackson. Like, could it be just one bag?

I know he doesn't light it up in the playoffs, but you're not going to go out and draft the Tannehill type, right? The guy who can't break 200 yards in two games, right? So Lamar Jackson's still a nice little prize for the whole regular season. And for, you know, potentially three to five years or more. I think they need the receiver. Ironically, a bunch of teams need this, including my beloved Patriots.

The guy who's going to get wide open on third and nine. That's the piece that he was missing. And it didn't seem like his receivers were open that whole game. And he was forcing it into them too. But you know, like basically it was Andrews. There was a little Hollywood Brown, but Hollywood Brown was dinged up this whole season. I think there's some, there's, you have to be at least a little concerned about the durability, durability with him. Right. But he just didn't really have the playmakers that team. It, a lot like the Rockets, they were suited to do this

one thing really well. The caveat was like, well, what happens if you guys fall behind by double digits? And the other team is just like, you're not running. We're not letting you do this. What else do you have? And then it comes down to all these random dudes making catches. We saw today in the Seahawks game, packers win everyone's going to remember that they came through they got two first downs that guy drops the first down pass from wilson at midfield with three minutes left and that changed the game because that would have been another first down they would have been over midfield now it's second and ten then i forget what happens but all of a sudden they're punting it was that turner right yeah turner guy was wide open in the

middle of the field, and the Ravens had a bunch of those yesterday too. So many drops this weekend. That's what annoyed me most, more than anything. Cold weather. So the Derrick Henry thing, at what point did you start to give up yesterday on our Ravens-Chiefs tease?

At what point did you just completely panic? I think he had like a 25-yard run or something. I was like, ah, that's it. That's just it. They're not even close. I don't even know if they want to stop him. They don't want to. Earl Thomas, the stiff arm after Earl Thomas is talking trash the whole time.

Maybe that was it right there. I thought Tannehill was pretty good yesterday. I mean, he didn't really, wasn't involved that much, but anytime they asked him to do anything, he actually did it. Yeah. Like I said, that pass to go up 14, nothing, that was a statement pass. That's like, all right, I can kind of take off for a little, for the first, the first touchdown. It was an awesome catch by Johnny Smith, but the throw was also really good. Cause I was watching it going, ah, they're definitely, I thought they're going to throw it to AJ Brown, but it was definitely

the corner or something. He's smart, man. He's smart down by the goal line. Chung was out, right, for the Patriots. He goes right to his tight end from Harvard. That's it. If he has to make two plays, he makes them. Then he seems to be running so slowly,

but he'll break free for a first down, tiptoe down the sidelines. Well, let's break what we usually do a little bit. Let's do guess the lines do a little bit. Let's do Guess the Lines AFC right now. Is that 3.05 Eastern? On Sunday, it's the first game. What did I say? 8 or 8.5?

You said 8. I said 7. And it is 7.5, so we split that. Chiefs by 7.5 in Kansas City. Yeah. I can't decide if it's too high or too low. We both of us knew it was going to be around there, but is that just if Chris Jones isn't playing,

what's on his extracurricular, curricular, uh, schedule that like, is he playing highlight? I can't figure out. It'd be nice to find that out ahead of time. Do you feel like it's one of those games

that the Titans either win or they lose by 28? Yeah, I kind of do. Because what's... All right, so here's what we learned, right? We learned that the Chiefs, no matter what kind of lead you have on them, they're not dead because of their speed, because of their quarterback.

Mahomes had some good runs to himself. I think he had over 50 yards rushing. We learned that the Titans get up on you with Derrick Henry. You don't have a prayer. It's alien versus predator. Something has to give. I think seven, seven and a half is right though. I don't think you can make it lower than that.

I don't think I'm ever going to do another tease. I've been thinking about just retiring completely from the tease business. I feel like you've said that 150,000 times. This is really it, though. I'm like when Roy Jones Jr. kept coming back to the boxing ring, and then eventually he finally stopped fighting. This really could be it.

But God damn, they look tasty in the tease, the Chiefs. Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't you want them to advance there to the super bowl i mean if andy reed and again i wasn't even blaming the coach like oh andy reed did it again like well guys are dropping passes um they're not defending the pass i don't know it's fun to blame the coach and bill o'brien made mistakes for sure but uh andy reed now he's got to get the nod right for making the big comeback so one thing about that titans game that made me feel better the the upset against the ravens did you see that stat teams to win a playoff game over an opponent with five plus more regular

season wins they showed it at the end of the game yesterday. It's only happened four times ever until last night. The 1934 NFL championship where the 8-5 Giants beat the 13-0 Bears. I remember we laid the points with the Bears. That one hurt. Remember that? We teased the... Did we tease the Bears or we parlayed them

with the Blackhawks? The Bears and the Blackhawks? We did that? In 1934, yeah. That seems like something we would do. Yeah, I think we did that. In our previous lives. Before we were reincarnated as the bad gamers. We had the Canton Bulldogs. We won the money and we rolled it over.

Yeah, you're right. The 1987 NFC round two, Vikings-Niners. Vikings were 8-7. Niners were 13-2. I watched this game with the best man in my wedding, Vikings Niners. Vikings were eight and seven. Niners were 13 and two. I watched this game with the best man in my wedding, Jeff Gallo, huge Vikings fan. It was the Anthony Carter game. I think he had, what, 230 yards?

Right. It was Wade Wilson and Anthony Carter. And it was a monumental upset because this was the Niners. This was Montana and Rice. Sure. They ended up winning Super Bowls in the next two years. And the Vikings, who you're not going to believe this, but had a tortured history even back in the 80s, pulling off that one. Then the Giants-Pats, Super Bowl XLII, that one hurts.

I remember that. Six-win difference. And then the 2011 NFC Divisional, 9-7 Giants against the 15-1 Packers. So until yesterday, Eli had two of the four five-plus wins or more upset games.

Maybe that helps his Hall of Fame case. I don't know. I think so. I think that is big. And the fact that he beat your team twice. He didn't beat Joe Flacco. So this is the case for us still continuing to make teases for us, for the Titans to ruin our teas yesterday, two things had to happen that one of them has only happened four times in the

history of the NFL. The other one, the Derek Henry having the third straight game that he had of 32 plus carries 180 yards. That's never happened in the history of the NFL. Right. So two never happened, had to flip us and beat us. Not to mention the Ravens were like the fifth best team of all time by DVOA.

I stand by the teasers. I do. In this round, first round's different. This round, the favorites, the home teams, the bye teams, 16-4 in the last 20 games. Something like 13-7 against the spread. But if you want to take them straight up, they were 16-4 and another 3-1 after this week. So what is that, 19-5?

That's pretty substantial. Ryan Fitzpatrick sliding doors. Pats up four points, four minutes left at home. If we win, we're a two seed. KC goes to a three seed. We get KC, Tennessee in round one instead of round three, where we're getting it now. Pat's going to buy.

You assume Buffalo and Houston, same result. I love it. Talk through this. I love it. Keep it going. Well, I don't know who wins Tennessee KC round one. So we're getting round one Tennessee versus KC. Yeah.

You win the Superbowl. I think there's a case where Tennessee wins. We get to play Houston. All of a sudden we're in the AFC title again against Derek Henry, but he's had his three straight games. And then all of a sudden we're in the AFC title again against Derek Henry, but he's had his three straight games. And then all of a sudden we're in the Superbowl against Jimmy G. That's our alternate universe. Kyle,

you're right. You want some water? Kyle is gone. Kyle and I both feel better about the paths after this Tennessee Baltimore game. Yeah, I would, if I'm you,

I want Tennessee to win. You can make a, uh, wouldn't win the whole thing. You can make a case that the Patriots are the second best team, right? Yeah. Don't break it up.

I almost tweeted a hateable thing. I'm glad I didn't. Don't break this up. We're still good, man. We lost to the future champs. Plus we have Vrabel and Vrabel might cut his penis off. There's like John Wayne Bobbitt has to go to the Superbowl. You have to have John Wayne Bobbitt on against all odds. Oh, I love it. You're right. He's got to still be alive, right? You can't kill a guy like that. Definitely not. I think he's still around.

But if you had told Belichick, hey, you have to either beat Ryan Fitzpatrick or Tannehill to get to the conference semifinals, I think he might have broken a smile. I think it might have actually forced him to grimace. You know what? Grimace. The opposite of grimace. You know what? Grimace. The opposite of grimace.

Another crazy thing. Mariota is now three and one in the playoffs. Oh, I guess that counts. Yeah. Technically. Right. The dude's three and one. Now, now we have this Chiefs Titans game again,

where there's going to be highlights of Mariota two years ago, as we like to call it, the Joe House Bowl, where Joe House bet the Chiefs 20 line. Remember that? Out of nowhere, too. Classic. $50 bets all throughout the year, and then just lays a bomb. Hey, last year, Crown Royal launched the first off-the-field water break

to encourage fans of the game to moderate and hydrate, stay in the game, whether you're watching in the stadium, watching at home, or in a bar. Have a great time. Enjoy some Crown. just don't be that person that ruins it for everyone make the right call and take a water break so who made the right call this week or not um i am gonna go with mike for able for not necessarily shutting the door on his he might cut his penis off if they win the Superbowl thing. He hasn't come out yet and officially said, look, I'm not actually doing this. And now it's become a storyline that has threatened to dwarf any other storyline in the playoffs. We might have a severed penis after

a Superbowl win. How psyched is Crown Royal right now? Severed penis talk. Well, that'd be good. Some coaches say, Hey, I'll walk home from Philadelphia if we win the Super Bowl. And then they end up doing it or kind of doing some of it or whatever. This would be dedication right there. What if he said, you know what? A promise is a promise. That's right. No, Mike, no.

Put the box cutter down. I now go by Michelle Vrabel. Deal with it. Oh, man. We need Joe Tessitore to announce that one. Oh, my God! Mike Vrabel! So, what's your great call of the week?

Well, we touched on it a little bit, but my great call goes to the Hall of Fame and to Jimmy Johnson. My Cowboys, mastermind behind my Cowboys. 1-15 to start in 1989. I was calling him every name in the book, but then he went 36-12 the next

three years, two Super Bowls, and beat good teams. That's what you forget. Our friend Damoshek talks about Bradshaw and how the Steelers beat all the best teams in the 70s. Well, Buffalo Bills of the early 90s was the best the AFC had to offer for a long time. You beat Steve Young's 49ers. You beat Brett Favre. Nice job by you, Jimmy Johnson. Then when

he went to Miami, underrated career there. Instrumental in the draft, gets Zach Thomas, Jason Taylor, Patrick Sertan. They're not first round picks. They made 19 Pro Bowls combined. And of course, he pulled off the Herschel Walker trade. He should just get to the hall for that. Greatest deal of all time. Good call. Good job by you, Hall of Fame and Jimmy Johnson. I'm going to go even further.

I was shocked that he wasn't in already. Yeah, that was weird. Really feel like he was one of the most, probably the defining coach of the 90s. He should have, instead of crying, said, well, duh. And then just whatever. Finally. Crown Royal reminds everyone this football season, take a water break

and moderate to stay in the game. Did you do any googling of the giant freak guy who gives people the Hall of Fame news? I didn't know. What's his story? David Baker? Yeah. He's 6'9", 400 pounds.

Right. And apparently he was at some point running the AFL and was one of the guys when the AFL stopped. The AFL? How old a man is he? The Arena Football League, not the... Oh, okay. Yeah, not that one.

I was going to say. Nice wig or something. But I don't know why he's the guy he's the go-to guy for these did you understand that no i don't oh i guess because he's the ceo of the pro football hall of fame maybe that's well don't they go to the hotel rooms usually i feel like something goes on where they usually uh hit in hotels but i tweeted that this guy could be the greatest practical joker of all time, you know? Like before T.O. had gotten in,

he could go to his house and deliver pizza. And he shows up at the door in the big blue jacket and T.O.'s like flipping out and then he just hands him a pizza and walks away. I got to get this guy on my side.

We could do a lot of damage. I'm going to read from his Wikipedia for you. He's the president and CEO of Pro Football of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In his first three years of leadership at the Hall, the organization's net assets grew 161%. He was also instrumental in the inception of Johnson Controls Hall of Fame

Village and nearly 800 million mixed use developments around the Hall of Fame. On November 28, 2017, Baker received the March of Diamond Sports Leadership Award. Hold on. Dramatic pause. Baker left his early political career after being convicted of forgery in California

and became the fourth commissioner of the Arena Football League. Wait, what? Yeah. He started in the league as the new owner of the Anaheim Piranhas. It's just this random half sentence thrown into his Wikipedia. He left his early political career after being convicted of forgery in California. What the hell? What is that? So it says on NFL.com, he was once a city councilman, later mayor of Irvine, California. A decision in 1988 cast him out of politics entirely.

While attempting to win the Republican nomination for congressional seat, Baker forged a $48,000 check. He stopped payment on the check soon after Puyo got to the charge of forging a check and was sentenced to community service. He's my favorite Baker. My favorite Baker in the NFL by far. Everyone has a forgery mistake. Yeah, of course.

It's fine. So now he's the giant guy. So this new thing now where they surprise the whoever the Hall of Fame person is on the show. I feel like this is going to have a lot of legs. We just got to keep doing this now. I like it. It's like

when the little kid comes out to throw the pitch at the AAA baseball game and then his dad runs out of the stands. It turns out his dad came back from Kuwait or wherever. And the emotional hug. Those always get me. I love those. No, it's good. Everybody loved it. It was a nice surprise. Yeah. No one's going to turn it down. That's for sure. It's better than forgery. I'll tell you that much. Just sign here and you're officially inducted or don't sign. I'll sign for you, whatever. We're going to go to the NFC. So let's do today's game first.

The other game was kind of boring. Russell Wilson, the Seahawks are dead. It looks like it might be a 42 to three thrashing. And then Russell Wilson does his Michael Myers thing. And he's just so, so much fun when they just kind of throw the playbook out and let him just do his thing and all of a sudden it seemed really really realistic that they're going to win they get to stop three straight touchdowns they don't get the two point for the

cover which hurt felt like that was the jerry alexander got the blitz sack on the two point that one that that stung but um but then that's kind of what they needed to do the Packers in the second half their defensive schemes were awful yeah that was doing everything they wanted you pressure this guy sends it send it from the other side anything going on you have guys dropping passes why not why not do that so they get the stop crucial first down drop by a random receiver guy who I did. I think that was the only time the ball was even thrown to him all game. Yep.

And up having to punt on fourth and 15, would you have punted there? Yeah, I think you have to, I think you do because the Packers weren't doing a lot and Rogers converted to third and longs. Like he had to, yeah,

he, he had a, he had a step up to do it and there was nothing saying that they would. They were kind of running their offense, just a pun anyway, the Packers. If it's 4th and 4, 4th and 5, different story, but 4th and 11, right? Was it 4th and 9 or 4th and 11? Either way, I think yeah. I think it was 4th and 12, yeah.

It's funny that Packers team, both teams were very true to what their season characteristics were. The Packers could never play an entire good game. It was always like two and a half good quarters, two good quarters. And then they would take a big lead and then let their foot off the gas pedal. And the Seahawks were always behind every game.

They would always come roaring back and you would always count them out. And then all of a sudden, no, it's an 11-point game. No, it's a four four point game and i thought everybody was looking at the seahawks like okay i like all three favorites i'm talking about our betting friends and everything like like all three favorites to win i have to pick an underdog though because that seems lame i'll take seattle i was like everyone's on seattle but you know three weeks ago they lose at home to arizona two weeks ago. They play the Sunday night game.

They really get beat up for three quarters by the Niners and then end up. Russell does his Russell and they're, you know, they're right in it. Halster's tackled at the goal line last week. They beat up, they knock out Carson Wentz and then beat McCown, who we later find out is playing with a torn ACL for the whole game.

They won by eight points. Their plus minus for the year was plus seven. It's got to catch up to them. It seemed like the Packers played the perfect first half. They really did. To go up 21-3 to the point where they're even forcing Seattle to take their timeouts

when they're about to score inside the five. They made them use all three timeouts and they attempted a long field goal and then just went in the locker room 21-3. I was like, wow, they have this figured out. And doesn't Aaron Rodgers look like he's bored playing the game? So methodical that first half, at least. They remind me when they're cooking with gas and Aaron Jones is going and they have the whole thing. It reminds me of those 97, 98 Broncos teams a little bit. Yeah. Where you have this guy who was one of the 10 or 11 best QBs ever, who now they don't totally need.

But when they do need him, he's who he is. Right. And I love those Broncos teams. And they probably were the best team in 96 too. And Brunel went in there and just haymakered them. Oh, right. But that three-year stretch they had where Terrell Davis, they had good receivers, Rod Smith and McCaffrey, Shannon Sharp,

and then Elway, whenever they needed him, he could get that 39. And that was what Rodgers did today. Yeah. I will say, thoughmy graham's catch that clinched the game was a really nice catch we saw people drop that exact pass all weekend right not only that catch but after the half seattle comes down and scores it's 21 10 now and then the packers get it in their third and five and he catches like a 15 yard pass so those were two giant obviously the second one we remember because that got to go.

And the fact that he didn't go down, he kept chugging those legs and brought it past the yellow stripe was phenomenal. I mean, those third down conversions, that's the story for the Packers. Well, you know what I just read? Did you know the Niners could have taken him in the draft?

Is that right? Yeah. People were talking about it. Apparently he thought he was going there. He's good. We had him for dead. I, he thought he was going there. He's good. We had him for dead. I mean, maybe he stepped up against his old team. Maybe that was the big deal.

You can already feel the storylines that are going to get beaten in the ground over the next six days. Rodgers, San Francisco. The Mahomes has taken it back from Lamar, which we admittedly talked about on this pod. Is Derrick Henry putting together the best running back run in the history of football. Yep.

But those are all, I think, really fun subplots except for the Rodgers-Niners thing. Yeah, it's all legit. They're kind of done with that one for a while. You're done with that? Yeah, it's just like... You'd rather it be Jimmy G, Patriots? When they passed on Rodgersgers it was not a slam

dunk by any means it it wasn't even as bad as like lamar dropping to 32nd i thought that was like more egregious but you know nobody like lost their minds when rogers it was more a case of everybody had a quarterback and they were set and he just kind of fell. You understand he grew up in Northern California. They have to take him. They're not allowed to pass on him, really. It's unprecedented. Yeah. And Alex Smith had just good enough of a career that it's not like a Greg Oden, Kevin Durant thing.

Exactly. Oh, so then the other game, the first game of the weekend, the Minnesota-San Francisco game. San Francisco just played really, really well. That was the best start to finish performance by anybody all weekend. Yeah, so you look for the games where, all right, so one of these bye teams

or several of them are going to come out slow and sloppy, and the other team's going to have momentum. It was just the opposite. The Vikings look tired, and the 49ers are the opposite. The Vikings looked tired. And the 49ers are so physical. They beat them up. Now, they were in it for a second.

It was 7-0. And then Diggs, the touchdown. You thought they were going to pick on that guy Witherspoon the whole time. It was under thrown. And he still hit Diggs. And it was tied. But after that, nothing. Seven rushes, 14 yards in the first half of the Vikings. They were destroyed. Seven rushes, 14 yards in the first half of the Vikings. They were destroyed.

Seven or eight three and outs. People had been talking all week about how the Vikes were a good matchup for the Niners because they have a pass rush without actually having a blitz. And then you could feel it in the game. But they could get whatever pressure they wanted without just sending four guys, sometimes five. Right. And they made Cousins uncomfortable, the whole thing. That was brutal that they made the Vikings play that game like five and a half days after the last game.

Well, how do you do it, though? No, I know. It's just like somebody gets screwed on that every year. And this year it was them. But that was a tough one. Yeah. Like the Saturday game, this week's schedule was set exactly when the playoffs came out and we knew the seating so you didn't expect the vikings to win i don't know yeah it's it's they weren't supposed to play them is the problem but you also were not supposed to say you like that after every win i think we should talk about you like that for a second

because the downside to you like that is you have to win the Super Bowl if you're going to throw something out like that because then some fat lineman for the 49ers is going to say it in the locker room after the game to rally the troops and you're

going to look like a fool. You know what I mean? So make sure you win the Super Bowl, Kirk Cousins, if you're going to throw you like that around. Do you feel good about Jimmy G heading into the next round? Yeah, I kind of do. I just think that offense is so good. You could hide it. Now he threw the interception. It was a bad

pick. And I don't love when he runs play action, doesn't go through the progressions and he throws to a guy that's triple covered. Most of the time, it's Kittle. But there's so much trickery in their offense. You know, they're running draw plays, and then you still have the wide receiver in motion on a jet sweep.

You have linebackers having to worry about so much. I think Jimmy G got the nervous game out from under him, and I think he's going to be okay. I had faint hopes for 8. No heading into the weekend. And I really didn't like the slate that much this week. And I didn't, I was dubious that I could do the four and oh, but I had the Vikings plus seven and I'm watching the pregame and they do

the whole feature with the Shanahan's parents. And then they showed them in the suite. Like the whole Shanahan fan was there. I was like, Oh my God, they're not losing this game. I don't know. I just had that vibe. I was like, oh my God, they're not losing this game. I don't know. It just had that vibe.

Yeah. Just had a feeling. That feeling. They're showing his ankle. He's got like the Curt Schilling stitches situation, his ankle. And it just had, it just had the makings. But then when they hit Diggs on that touchdown, it was 7-7. There were signs of life.

But then, but even by halftime they're down four and it just didn't feel right it felt like uh you know it felt like they were headed for a rough second half especially the most complete team the 49ers yeah kwan alexander back that just adds to it i just think they're gonna be and it's funny it's gonna be such a different matchup for the packers whereas you're not gonna worry about jimmy g G down 10 in the fourth quarter, making a Russell Wilson type comeback on you. At least that's not going to be the priority, but they might grind you out enough that you're not even in the game. Aaron Rodgers is not even in the game in the fourth quarter. Well, let's do guess the lines in San Francisco. It's the late game. I have no idea what the weather situation is going to be. I put this in the

Vegas zone. I had San Francisco by five over Green Bay. All right. I said four. We tied on the first game, the actual line, San Francisco by seven. So you win the week, which makes it seven weeks to seven weeks and six are tied. So we go to the Superbowl seven, seven, six. That's pretty exciting. Holy mackerel. I mean, not really exciting, but it's as close as you can get. I said before the year, I was going to cut my penis off if I was able to beat you. Oh, I didn't know that. No, I thank God I didn't say that because I would, I'd be really nervous. I'd have to throw the last one. You think seven's too high though, right? Even, even saying five. You know, I really wanted to, I, I thought if you remove the Rogers

and the green Bay being a kind of a public team, all that stuff, I thought San Francisco should be favored by seven. But I thought the Rogers thing would be worth an extra two. Right. But it wasn't. Well, I mean, I guess you go by who impressed you more because the Niners were a seven point favorite over the Vikings. So for it to remain that way, you're basically saying the same team is coming to play you before the actual game had played. I really like this Niners team. The worst thing they have going for them is that I have a huge Super Bowl bet on them at plus 375. That's the biggest detriment to all of their hopes right now. Maybe they could buy that from you. Maybe they could

take some of that off your hands. And I somehow take Minnesota plus seven. I really have to stop making my picks on Thursdays. No, just pick one team. Go forward. That's it? Just ride it? Well, that's what I'm saying. I mean, let's root for the Niners. Oh, you can't really root for them, though.

That's the other thing, because of the Jimmy G thing. Wow, you're screwed here. What are you talking about? Jimmy G, if he wins, that's like a Patriot won the Super Bowl. Oh, I don't know about that. Kyle and I get to brag about it. Yeah, we believe in Jimmy G the whole time. It's true.

Kyle, tell him. He's right. He's right. Are you crazy? I think you're the only two Patriots fans who feel that way. That's nuts. Do a poll. Do a Twitter poll.

Yeah. He's one of us. He's one of our guys. Do the poll. He would have been one of you if you didn't let him go to the Niners. He definitely would have been one of you. Who will ever forget when Malcolm Butler, the incredible interception that wins us the Super Bowl, and they cut to Brady jumping up and down, and Garoppolo jumps over for

the hug, and Brady completely spurns him to go hug Josh McAdams. Right. That was when we knew. That was when we knew Brady was going to get rid of him. He wouldn't even hug him when he was in the Super Bowl. He's not even hug worthy. Yeah. He was always the other woman in the

marriage wow he was he was the nanny who was a little too hot to keep in the house brady's like ah we gotta get rid of this nanny i don't know i this is like uh this is like um what do i want to say here this is like be careful i feel like lines are going to be crossed. No, it's like Charlie Sheen rooting for... What's his name? The Meemours husband. The one that replaced him on Two and a Half Men. It's like, oh no, he's one of us. He's doing the same show. It's like, no, that's not true.

It's not true at all. Ashton Kutcher. Alright, so let's take a break and then I want to do What's the Most Fun Super Bowl. Hey, we have Clemson and OSU facing off for the National Championship. FanDuel Sportsbook giving you the chance to get an even bigger win when you bet on this game.

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First wage or only bonus issued a non-retirable site credit that expires seven days after receipt. Terms apply. Plus, physically present in New Jersey or Pennsylvania, first wager only. Bonus issued in non-retirable site credit that expires seven days after receipt. Terms apply. Minimum $1 Moneyline wager. Max $150 bonus. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or in Indiana, call 1-800-9-WITH-IT. Okay, we have four teams left.

We have the Chiefs at plus 110. We have the 49ers at plus 170. We have the chiefs at plus one 10. We have the 49ers at plus one 70. We have the Packers at plus six 50. And we have the Titans at plus 700 should say you and I in house had a lot of dialogue on the Titans at 60 to one before the playoff started. We did. Um, I mean, you had a lot of dialogue and I said,

I had a lot of dialogue where you guys laughed at me. You talked me out of it. I don't know why I listened to house ever. I mean, listen to the lot of dialogue and I said, I had a lot of dialogue where you guys laughed at me. You talked me out of it. I don't know why I listened to house ever. I mean, listening to house, it's the real life mush, but, um, but they were 60 to one and I have a lot of regrets. It would have been funny. Now they're a lot, they're less than 60 to one. They're seven to one now.

Oh my God. So most fun Superbowl. Well, first let's go. What do you think the league would want the most chiefs? I think Fox has the game and I know for sure they want, they want chiefs 49ers over chiefs Packers. Yeah. Not,

not by a ton, but chiefs 49ers is a, is a better marketing wise. I think they could do better. We do well with that. So chief, that's obviously second Chiefs Packers. So Chiefs Packers, our friends at State Farm,

would be the most excited about. They'd be excited. But you know what? Also with the Chiefs Packers, NFL 100, you can make the big deal out of that was the first Super Bowl, right? Oh, yeah. You got all that.

I don't know if they had considered that. I forgot about that. Yeah. So that would be the State Farm Super Bowl. Right. Chiefs 49ers. There's some Montana stuff. Montana would have to go to the Super Bowl now

and be interviewed. Who are you rooting for? Oh, I'm rooting for the Niners. That's my team. I want a Super Bowl there. You got Dee Ford in that game, right? Yep, Dee Ford. Dee Ford for the 49ers.

The Costa Chiefs. Dee Ford has a Super Bowl ring. It just has the Patriots on it. Oh, you see? What? We're back. I feel great about next year. We're back. I have to say, I went through this. I know you're getting Brady back.

I know you're going to break the mold and finally spend money on a free agent. Austin Hooper's available and Hunter Henry and you got, you know, Amari Cooper's a long shot, but you got receivers out there too. So I think if you actually do the right thing, you're going to be fine. We have the 23rd

pick. Yeah. Yeah, if the league doesn't take that away from you for cheating miserably again, yeah, you have the 23rd pick. Well, you know, Deflategate is the hidden secret sauce to why we didn't make round two this year. Is that what it is? again. Yeah, you have the 23rd pick. Well, you know, Deflategate is the hidden secret sauce to why we didn't make round two this year. Is that what it is? Yeah.

Yeah. Because if there's no Deflategate, first of all, we get the first round pick at the end of 2015, who would have been in his fourth year and who would have been awesome for us. So we lose that guy. Then Brady gets suspended four games. Who starts three of them and looks awesome?

Jimmy G. Now we can't keep him. Now Jimmy G's looking at 20 million a year because he looked awesome in these three games because Goodell's a jackass. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And because you guys cheated.

So this is basically the Flategate would create the Super Bowl here at Chiefs Niners. I like it. All right. That's the Flategate Bowl. It's beautiful. It really is. Well then, so then the other fun thing would be the Andy Reid part of it. If Andy Reid actually

made the Super Bowl. He's never made it with the Chiefs, amazingly. He's never won the Super Bowl. They only made it once. He had the classic Donovan McNabb 10-minute drive against the Pats. I was never nervous during that game, just in case you were- Remember how fast Terrell Owens looked in that game? It just came off a broken leg leg injury yeah right so what's your worst case scenario super bowl well i don't know i mean titans niners is the least interesting quarterback wise right i mean that's what you could make the derrick henry case till you're blue in the face but those quarterbacks are i don't know you don't even want to see a playoff game with those two titans niners would just be weird.

That would be like that year when the Titans and the Rams were the Super Bowl. We barely knew the Rams at that point. They just had the uninspiring. What was that bucks game? It was like 11 to seven McNair and Eddie George, right on that team. Yeah.

But my crazy was that late. The Titans did, but the, yeah, it was just, it was just two new teams that we didn't have a history with either of them, really. That was a weird year. Fell right on the spread.

Yeah. So they don't have the Super Bowl matchup odds. Well, you could just do a parlay team's image. You could parlay the championship thing. I mean, so the Chiefs-Niners is a little less than even odds, right? Since they're both seven-point favorites. Niners plus 170 still looks like a great bet to me. I already have them at plus 375, but I think they have the best team.

That looks fun. In a way, they're the only team. I know the stats say that the Chiefs are great against the run now since week eight. I'm not confident that they're going to stop Derrick Henry. The Niners, I think, could stifle him. Stifle him being like 125 yards. Well, then the other funny part would be

if the Titans made the Super Bowl in the games of Miami and it's Tannehill coming back to Miami. Oh, yeah, right. It would be hilarious. That's good, too. It's like, yeah, we gave up on this guy. Anything else we got to cover? I think that's it.

I mean, you're looking at it. You know, that Titans should either be the Ravens or the Patriots. I mean, there was a time, like, in the first five weeks, I remember saying to you, like, I love to see odds on Chiefs-Patriots-AFC championship because there's no way it's going to be anything else. And turns out I was wrong about that too. Before we

do Parent Corner, can you just talk, I don't want to give Lockett in too big of a plug, but just a terrible turn of events for that show with this Tennessee Titans. I don't want to give it any kind of plug. I mean, this is awful. I really don't want to go to, I won the crown and I still don't want to give it any kind of plug. I mean, this is awful. I really don't want to go to, I won the chair, the crown, and I still don't want to go to work because this, uh,

it's the worst case scenario. Cause you have Clay Travis who I work with. He's from Tennessee. He's a loud mouth. And all he did for weeks and weeks and weeks is talk about how Lamar Jackson's bad and he's not going to last the year. And he's, you know, this is not a guy they should be drafting. You know, we all could read between the lines and then his team beats lamar jackson right the hell's going on and he was calling it all week on your show all week he called it yeah yeah derrick henry's wearing the white did you see that white outfit he was wearing he's sent from the heavens all this stuff and it's gonna go for another week and it better not go for another two weeks after that. I do feel like I didn't know quite enough about Derek Henry's incredible high

school past. He might've been the greatest high school football player of all time. Did you see his, there's stats of his where he rushed for like 4,000 yards or something in senior year. There's some crazy number, but he was also the quarterback. That's what it was. It was like 4,000.

We gave, we gave clay shit for bringing up high school stats. Like, oh, that matters. Well, it seems to matter. Well, when they showed those old clips, it looked like the fast times of Ridgemont High when it was Forrest Whitaker just demolishing everybody. It was bonkers. That play they ran

I thought was one of the great goal line plays in recent memory. I loved it so much. The jump pass I feel like is almost as successful as the Brady QB sneak. It's like the second most successful play of all time. I can't ever remember it not working. I mean, it is the equivalent of a bootleg.

And if you jump high enough and you don't throw a duck three yards, it's good. Right. All right. Let's, uh, let's do parent corner. Hold on. We'll, on. Let's talk about our friends from CarMax. As always, Parent Corner is brought to you by CarMax. Simply the best way to buy a great used car.

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whether it's cup holders, vans, tires, whatever. You always get a seven-day money back guarantee to make sure all those little things become a big deal when you're looking for a car, whether it's cup holders, vans, tires, whatever. You always get a seven-day money-back guarantee to make sure all those little things are right for you. And full disclosure, Kyle kept the Mustang and named it Maxine. You can also get MaxCare for extra coverage, which is a great option for the neff. Stop by your local CarMax for details. Discover how easy buying a car at CarMax can really be. Sal, before you take the floor, I should mention your son won a medal at a wrestling event this weekend,

and there's also footage on your wife's Instagram of him actually finishing off an opponent. It was the most excited I've been on Instagram in quite some time. Well, all right. That's the B story to my parent corner. So let me, let me tell you the A story. So a couple of weeks ago, last week, um, my son notifies me that my oldest, I don't usually talk about him because he listens to parent corner. He's got a lot of downtime. He's on buses and stuff.

Yeah. He's wrestling meets and he listened. So I'm careful. Also, the other two is such little, uh, the turds that I don't even have to talk about they're so uh devious so i don't usually make a big deal out of the older one but last week he tells me and i watch football with him every week my fit my 14 year old it's in ninth grade and he says uh hey i'm not coming to football this sunday so what are you what are you talking about he's like i'm going with my friends to see uh frozen too. I said, no, you're not. We just watched 17 weeks of football. You're going to miss the playoffs or frozen too. He's like, yeah, I have plans. That's it. I was

like, what are you talking? That's this crazy. And then he's like, starts getting mad at me. I was like, all right, fine. Go to frozen too. That's fine. Go with your friends. And I was like, it didn't make any sense to me. And the next day. So, okay. So that's Sunday. So then like Thursday, I overhear him telling my wife that he wants to bring a girl to the house on Friday. And that he didn't go to Frozen 2 with his friends. He went with this girl. And I was like both relieved and confused because we had not heard about any kind of girl or anything. And now it's like, oh, my God, I'm way too immature to handle this. I have a million

jokes going through my head. What am I going to say? Make sure you don't tell her you love her. I had a whole bunch of terrible, terrible advice. And my wife is like, you better get your shit together. I know you can't handle this. I was like, well, what are we have to leave the house it's like no we shouldn't leave the house this girl's an only child the whole thing we got we have to be in the house but not in the same room as them so um we we do that i meet her she's very nice um they're sitting there watching um i don't know what they're watching like up on the couch or something. And my youngest one, Harrison, goes down to get water and snuggles up next to them. And now we're getting texts from him like, hey, call Harrison, get him out of here. Harrison comes up.

I asked him to simulate how they were sitting. It seemed pretty cozy. My wife is getting mad at me. The next day, today, he says, hey, I have a basketball game, but I'm not going to football with you afterwards. Same thing. He's with this girl. Very sad to me. Very sad to me, Bill Simmons. I lost him. I lost my football buddy to a girl. What are you going to do? Isn't it? It's the abruptness that hurts the most. Yes. Yes. I went for it. It was the same thing with Zoe,

who every week now, every weekend, the boyfriend's over at least one of the days. But yeah, it's just, we basically get dumped. Right.

It's like they broke up with us to date somebody else, even though we weren't dating. And my wife feels worse because with her, it's like, well, no one's good enough for my son.

You got that thing going. Right. I'm just like, oh, I lost, I need, you know, I need my, I think I have to

adopt a 15-year-old. I need a new football buddy. Someone's going to check my fantasy lineup. Someone's going to check my daily fantasy stuff. Someone I could talk to 24 hours a day about football. So if anyone's available, a new football buddy. We had two Saturday... The Saturday night before this one, we were all playing Monopoly. And it was like the first time we'd hung out as a foursome. My daughter had just spent like two of the last three days of the boyfriend and was playing Monopoly. Didn't really want to hang out with us.

It was like on her phone half the time. And I just flew off the handle. I, it was, it was like out of a movie. I was so mad at her. I was like, you know what? This is bullshit.

You never want to hang out with us. You're all about your phone and your boyfriend. And you're just terrible now. I can't believe how terrible. And I'm just going off on her. And she's upset. But then she's like, you're right. You're right.

I know you're right. And then she was super nice for like four days. Wow. Yeah. Then like Sunday, she's like, hey, can I watch football with you? And it was just out of pure guilt because she's neglected us for five months. But it changes them. Oh, so the wrestling thing.

So, okay. So he had five matches before we met this girl. Oh, for five. Got flattened like four times. This week, he wins his dual meet against Santa Monica Wednesday. Then comes in fifth. He wins three matches in the tournament in Santa Anna. Wow. It works, Simmons.

It works. This testosterone thing. It's unbelievable. Crazy. Yeah. Do I have the bros before hoes conversation with him or no? Well, you know, you were talking about how nobody's good enough for your wife with the son.

Yeah. Now that we have a window on what it's like when somebody's dating this child that you basically, you're wiping their ass for two years and you're just weaning them and then they all of a sudden are tall and then you get dumped. But can you imagine how terrible it would be if they settled on somebody that everybody hated yeah you can see why it destroys families when when somebody has the wrong pick for sure yeah it's like a wrong draft pick times uh a thousand times a million yeah well uh for my parent corner we talked about my son and his Amazon stuff last week. Right. Well, it turned out he had some money left on the, on the, uh, gift certificate. So my wife gets all upset because, um, there's a, it seems like a Michael Jackson poster

was one of the, he ordered three things. The first one was a Michael Jackson poster was one of the, he ordered three things. The first one was a Michael Jackson poster. And my wife was like, I don't understand. We watched that documentary with him. He should know. And it turns out it was, it was Michael, Michael, uh, Jackson vinyl. So there was that. The second thing seems like star Spangled Banner sweatpants.

But then this is the best one. He ordered a gold cross that is a baseball bats. It's a gold cross with baseball bats, which apparently he's now going to be wearing all the time. Because he's a rapper, but also plays baseball. So he needed a gold baseball cross. So those were his last three Amazon purchases. That's pretty inventive though, I would say. It's pretty good. So then the other thing we found out is he's been playing Madden KO with this friend he made online.

And no idea if this person's 45 years old or 12. But he claims he's 12 and he claims he's FaceTimed the person. Oh, no. And it's a kid who's his age who's in Northern California. And they play Madden KO together. And this is the extent of their relationship.

I was like, so you think you guys would ever actually meet? He's like, no, why would we ever meet? We just play Madden. I don't understand this next generation. I have a lot of fear and concern. Well, this is what kids do. It's like, no, why would we ever meet? Why would I?

They don't even want to see kids they know. They just FaceTime in the house or email or text in the house right strange times it is bizarre how about archie and zoe both with both we dump both of us that's i know this should be the season finale cliffhanger parent corner i think this is it will bill and sal get their kids back they're two months apart right the two of them grew up together basically uh yeah i actually i was going through my wife's birthday's coming up and i was trying to find some photos and yeah you sent some good ones and i found we there's just a slew of photos of all of our kids in the bathtub yep from i'm gonna say

zoe and archer probably two right and then. And then Jack and Ben are like babies. And for some reason, we decided to have them all in the bathtub. That was good. Just taking a long bath. I don't think they're flying anymore. Might be the last time my kid's washed. What do you have to plug for this week? Oh, what do we have?

Lock it in Monday through Friday, 430 to 530 Eastern. I am the king but uh it's mostly going to be clay travis bragging uh against all odds wednesday the general trifecta and i break down the two uh championship games plus i think i'm having dana white on don't be jealous but i think i'm having him on really calling in talking about mcgregor i've never had him on you haven't really i've never had him him on Yeah You know what I'm going to put in A good word for you No no Screw him

You can have him Take him I can't believe You haven't had him on Why not Is McGregor this weekend? Yeah it's this weekend And he hasn't fought

For over a year right? It's been a while But he's still a favorite Still a heavy Minus 300 Minus 350 favorite You know I need to come on against odds at some point

because there's some NBA gambling stuff to discuss. Oh, really? It's pretty wide open right now. I actually think there's some opportunity for some future bets. All right. People are pretty confused by just everything that's happening in basketball right now.

And the Clippers are starting to look like they might actually have to make a trade or something. Oh, really? That's one wild card. You don't think it's enough that they beat the Lakers twice that they don't really care that there are a few games back? No. All the Clipper fans I know are freaking out. They don't think they're big enough for the playoffs. Interesting.

So we got that. Yeah. The 2020, the championship odds, they're still the favorite at plus 250. Right. Lakers also plus 250. Bucks plus 325. Rockets 12 to 1. Denver 15 to 1.

Celts 18 to 1. Philly 18 to 1. Philly's soft. I'm sick of them already. Enough. Dallas 30 to 1. Here's the one that's actually two. Utah's 35 to 1 and Miami's 40-1.

There's a pretty good case that Utah should not have 35-1 odds and they should actually be like 12-1. I think they started at 30-35-1, right? No, then they got bet down because of the Mike Conley trade. But then they won like tons. They won like nine out of the last 10 or something. Yeah, so they started out pretty rocky. Conley was terrible. Conley gets hurt. They find their stride when he's out of the lineup. And they kind of figure out what their identity is. And they made a good trade.

They traded for Jordan Clarkson, a little scoring off the bench. But I think it's way more wide open than people think. And if you could have a team that could potentially make the finals at 35-1, they're a tough matchup for the Clippers, at least, because they go there.

Well, your heat lost to the Knicks tonight, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that was rough. They have a trade to make. Well, I'd love to talk to you about that. I'll check with Dana, see if there's time on our show, but yeah, maybe you can come on. All right. Cuz good job by you. Good job by you. All right. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Thanks to SimpliSafe, comprehensive enterprise level security for your own home. If there's a break-in, SimpliSafe uses real video evidence to give police an eyewitness account of the crime.

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Don't forget about the Book of Basketball 2.0 podcast. Reggie Miller going up late Monday night. And don't forget about all the great stuff on the ringer.com podcast network. Talk to you later in the week. I don't have On the wayside