The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Alien from France, Plus Million-Dollar Picks, Bad QBs, and the Sneaky-Scary Niners With Peter Schrager and Ben Solak

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

The Ringer's Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on top NBA draft prospect Victor Wembanyama after watching two exhibition games against the G League Ignite, as well as where he ranks among the best NBA draft prospects of all time (2:07). Then, Bill is joined by Peter Schrager of NFL Network and Fox Sports to discuss some bad NFL QB play through four weeks, as well as the 49ers' impressive defense, the Rams' slump, and more (22:37). Next, Bill is joined by The Ringer’s Benjamin Solak to discuss some matchups and kick around some NFL bets for Week 5, including: 49ers-Panthers, Bengals-Ravens, Buccaneers-Falcons, Cowboys-Rams, Chargers-Browns, Eagles-Jaguars, Patriots-Lions, and more (1:04:30). Finally, Bill makes the Million-Dollar Picks for Week 5 (1:33:01). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Peter Schrager and Benjamin Solak Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Check out the ringers at local sports podcast, New York, New York with John Jastrzemski, getting ready for the Yankees and Mets in the playoffs off the pike with Brian Barrett, feeling a little Celtics optimism. Sean Grandy was on to talk about that. The full go with Jason Goff, Chicago sports, not a lot of optimism there, but maybe it'll be coming this winter with the Bulls. And then last but not least the ringers Philly special, which is every week and Eagles party. Go check them all out on the Ringer Podcast Network. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports.

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I love the first month of the season because you have to go into the season thinking, I think Pittsburgh's going to be good. I think the Chargers are going to be good. I think Seattle's going to be good. And then trying to back what you think in those first few weeks and then zag the other way if you were wrong.

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We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I popped on two Ringer podcasts this week. One was Slow News Day with Kevin Clark. A lot of Patriots talk, a lot of Tom Brady talk. Couldn't fit it into this podcast, so went on over there to talk about those things. And then another thing we couldn't fit in that I was super excited to talk about, Aaron Judge, Barry Bonds, what's the real baseball record? How do we treat the steroids there? I talked about all of it with Derek Thompson on Plain English. Great podcast. Go check out Plain English if you haven't. We talked for about an hour about what do we do with all these baseball records that some people don't fill our baseball records. Is that fair? Should that matter? How do we decide what the steroids error even was? We hit all these things.

It's really good. We're going to put it on my YouTube channel this weekend as well, which is youtube.com slash Bill Simmons. You can also follow me on TikTok, my name on there as well, and Instagram as well, which I think is SPTGY33. So there you go. Coming up on this podcast, I'm going to talk about the alien, Victor Wembyn-Yama at the top. I have some big picture thoughts. And then Peter Schrager is back

and Ben Solak is back and we're going to do million dollar picks and talk about what the hell happened to quarterbacks and a whole bunch of things. Great podcast coming up first. Our friends from Pro Gym. All right. Before we get to all the football stuff, I want to talk about the alien.

I don't know what we're going to end up calling Victor Wambanyama. I wrote down some nicknames. Ironically, I called him an alien on a tweet on Tuesday. LeBron, they interviewed him after the Vegas game last night, and LeBron said LeBron compared him to an alien, and the reason he did was because this guy is an alien. We've never seen anything like this. He's 7'4". It feels like he's taller than 7'4".

He looks 7'5". He moves in a way that is just so unusual for a tall guy. The tall guys always look either a little clumsy, a little stiff, either they got the Holmgren thing where their back's a little bit up, just something's always, look, this guy moves like he's 6'5".

I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't understand the... We'll get into all the checklist stuff. But for nicknames, either we just call him Victor, call him Alien or The Alien. I kind of like Alien. Could call him Predator too. Call him UFO. Call him VD the Extr extraterrestrial. It doesn't really matter. The point is we have not had somebody like this lingering in front of a season, in front of a draft, in front of a lottery in a long, long time. I'm going to do a couple of things here.

We're going to talk about the best center prospects ever first. The best center prospect ever was Will Chamberlain. Will Chamberlain didn't really belong in college. They had all these rules back then where you had to stay four years. He stayed, I think, three in Kansas. Then he played for the Globetrotters. He didn't enter the league until he was 23. He could have come in in 19 and he would have been awesome. So it's got to start with Wilt and then Kareem right behind him.

Kareem was 22 when he entered the league. He was in UCLA for four years. First year, couldn't even play as a freshman and was just. And it was just clear he would have been one of the best seven players in the NBA his last couple of UCLA years. So he came in and he is now one of the three best players of all time. Those two stand apart. Now, both of those were before my time. I was there for Patrick Ewing. I was actually living in Boston with my dad when he was at Cambridge, Virginia Latin, and everybody thought he was at Cambridge, Ridge, and Lattin, and everybody thought he was Bill Russell. He ends up going to Georgetown over BC.

People were furious, myself included. I still like BC at the time. His freshman year at Georgetown, don't look at the stats. He was like 13 and eight with like three blocks a game. There had never been anybody like that defensively since Russell on a college basketball court. And I would say second year Ewing, or maybe one of those first two years where it was

just clear. It was like, what is the ceiling for this guy? This guy is going to be one of the best 15 players ever. His knees kind of went on him. I think there's like almost two Ewing's. There's like the 80s Ewing. And then by the time we get into the 90s, when his knees are going, he's got those big knee pad things on. Wasn't the same

guy. But he is the best center prospect I've ever seen in my lifetime. Bill Walton, a lot of people would throw on there. He obviously dominated it at UCLA. And I revere that guy. I had him in top 35 in my book, even though he had a couple NBA seasons, just everything you'd want from a center. I was there for Hakeem and Ralph Sampson. And Hakeem was just this ball of athletic. You didn't even know what it was. You knew it was something. You didn't know if he was going to be able to put it together, but athletically, we had not seen a center like that. It was even unclear if he was the center. He was just this 6'10", I don't know what. And then as he developed the footwork as an NBA player, I mean, it actually turned out even better than you might've thought. To put Hakeem in perspective, he went first in the 84 draft.

MJ went third. Nobody complains about this. Hakeem was the right pick, even though MJ was third. MJ should have been second. Sampson was the other one. And Sampson as a high school player and a freshman had the same kind of buzz that I think we're going to get from Wemba Nyama. There was a big Sports Illustrated cover where it was like, hi, I'm Ralph Sampson. I'm a high school player or whatever. I can't remember it, but it was like this iconic high school cover, or SI cover.

And he goes to Virginia. He's immediately good. The Celtics are trying to get him because they have the first pick in the 1981 draft. Red Auerbach is trying to convince him to come out and he ends up staying at Virginia.

Red Auerbach's furious. They end up trading the pick for Kevin McHale and Robert Parrish. Not a bad trade. And Samson stays all four years in college and it's a huge mistake because he only plays a couple really, really good years for the

Rockets to make the finals in 86. He gets hurt, but he's got to be in the conversation. And then there's probably a slight drop off to Anthony Davis and Odin. So I really have six great center prospects, Wilt Kareem, Ewing, Walton, Hakeem, Sampson. And with Wim Benyama, the question is, is he the best guy since Kareem? And I actually think he is. I watched both games. I watched them intently. I made a little checklist, like wow factor, 10, just a 10. Just can't even believe what was going on with even the shots that he was missing. He's missing like these Kevin Durant fallaways.

And the fact that he's going up for alley-oops, he has to duck his head because it's going to hit the rim. I've been watching basketball my whole life. I've never seen anything like this. Even Samson wasn't quite like this. I'm going to call this the KG factor. So KG was a tall guy.

KG was secretly 7'1", but he carried himself like a 6'5 guy. You never So KG was a tall guy. KG was secretly 7'1", but he carried himself like a 6'5 guy. You never felt like he was a tall guy. He moved like a swing man. He moved like a 6'5 guy. And when you think about the big centers, they all kind of move like centers. This was the thing that always scared me about Greg Oden. I didn't like watching him run. He seemed like a big body that didn't totally belong on a basketball court. Weminyama moves like the same way Giannis does. And some of these tall guys that the height almost doesn't matter, but it does matter because he's seven foot five. And the fluidness of just the way he moves at his age is just so unusual. Like think about him compared to Hashim Thabit, some of these other big guys we've seen.

His fluidity is like a 100 out of 100. I don't understand it. I don't know where he came from. Again, he might be an alien. The competitiveness and the activeness, I was really surprised by. Like he dove for loose balls. He's challenging everything.

His team was falling behind. He would get mad. He would start taking shots. There's a nasty side to him, which I have mean streak as a 10 too. And the competitive activeness I also have as a 10. Scoot was the same way. We'll talk about Scoot in a second, but Scoot's like an alpha.

He's an aggro dude. And I think that's a quality you just have to have if you're going to be great. So, uh, when Binyama has that, the shot blocking 10 out of 10 is too low. I, it's like a 13 out of 10. It's not just the shots he was blocking. He's just there and it's changing every decision everyone makes, every floater, everybody near the basket, every, you get a pass, you think you're

going to do a layup, but you're like, where is he? The where is he factor with him is 100 out of 10. Passing pretty good. He's not Bill Walton, but I thought he tried to be creative. He definitely gets in there. The rebounding I think was really good. I think it will even get better. And then the shot making I have as a nine and a half, he showed a variety of crazy stuff. There was one in the first game where he got the ball on the left block. He spun like he was going out of bounds. Then he turned in on the guy and then fell back and did like a little one-handed off the backboard shot. And it was like a Mikhail Hakim thing. And I mean,

if he starts doing that shit, Jesus, he also has 28 foot range, which we should mention. The, the thing, the reason I have him is nine and a half and not a 10.

I didn't see a jump hook really with him. And I was thinking like, if he develops a sky hook, cause this was that, that was what made Kareem special. Kareem was also seven foot four. Kareem was also fluid like this guy was. He was just an unbelievable athlete. Never really got hurt other than when he broke his hand do the wrist flick, nobody's blocking it. So I think that's what is so alarming about what we saw those two games. It's like, this is the worst this guy's ever going to be.

So when we put this in perspective of the best prospects ever, I'm just going to my lifetime, the last 30 years, This was the list I made. he saw his teammates, the explosiveness, the athleticism, the unselfishness was really what was magical about him. And it seemed like there was a magic crossed with LeBron possibility with him even in high school. And he was unforgettable. I think Zion at Duke for me, where just athletically, the wow factor with him, much like Wambanyama, was a 10. I'd have him second. Durant in 07. I was the leader of the Durant bandwagon. I was going crazy for him the entire season.

I had him over Oden in that draft. I was just like, I will bet my life this guy will be one of the great scorers we've ever had in the league. How could I bet this? You obviously can't. I have those three. I have Duncan in 97. I have Shaq in 92. And I have C-Web in 93. And those are the six best prospects I've ever seen. I would have Wimbanyama, I think, ahead of LeBron for just like, oh my God, what is this? I don't see any way he's not an incredible player unless he gets hurt. But you could say that about

any player. And maybe that's part of the magic with LeBron was that his size, you would think like, well, this guy has a chance to be as durable as anybody. Well, Mediama, there's just no way he's not going to be one of the best players in the league. It's impossible. He would have to get hurt. From what we've seen at the age he's at, he's 18. So he's really, this would be going into his freshman year in college if he was an American. The stuff he's doing is just way ahead of the curve. And I was thinking about just under 20 people I've seen in my lifetime. I mentioned freshman Patrick Ewing, 07 Durant, C-Web, who I think gets the short stick on this stuff because people remember the NBA career. And his NBA career was good, but also a little disappointing. I value his NBA stuff, I think, a little higher than most.

But the two Michigan years, that's the best power forward prospect I've ever seen. It's still the best power forward prospect I've ever seen. The passing, the athleticism, the rebounding, he was a badass. The timeout really changed, I think, a little bit of his career. We talked about it in the book of Basketball Pod, but best power forward prospect I've ever seen. Durant was the best shooter prospect I've ever seen. Ewing was the best center prospect I've ever seen. And LeBron was the best,

what the hell is this, swing man prospect I've seen. And I want to throw in Samsonson there as well, because Sampson seemed like an evolutionary Kareem when it was happening, especially those early Virginia years where it was like, he actually wanted to be on the perimeter. He wanted to run the offense from 25 feet away. He wanted to shoot jump shots and he took a lot of shit for it, he would make way more sense with the way basketball is played now. But really that's the five. Freshman Ewing, 07 Durant, 93 C-Webb,

and Freshman Ralph. I guess that's four. And then Wemba Yama would be five. There's other guys that jumped out, but they were older, like Bird and Magic and MJ. But those guys had been in college for a couple of years.

For him to be where he's at, at this been in college for a couple of years. For him to be where he's at, at this point, it's just bonkers to me. And I'm all in. I don't know. There's probably the stock is probably like Apple five years ago. I don't care. I'm buying all the stock. It's the highest stock that we've probably ever had for an under 20 guy. I don't care. Last thing before we get to Scoot. So KOC asked me where Wemba and Yama would rank on the trade value list right now. And I went through the list that I left off with in the summer, which was Giannis was number one, then Luka,

then Jokic, then Steph, Ja, Embiid, Tatum, Edwards, Mobley. Milwaukee's not trading Giannis for him.

Dallas is trading Luka for him. Denver's not trading Jokic for him. So cross those three off. Golden State is having a seven-hour meeting. And actually, it might be a two-day meeting. They might sleep in the office so they could have more of the meeting the next day. And then ultimately, they'll decide we can't trade Steph. He is an absolute hero. He's an icon. He's the reason we're able to build this arena. We're going to regretfully pass, but it will be a two-day meeting. Guys will have BO in the office. There's going to be leftover Chinese food all over the place. One guy screaming, this is crazy. This guy's the future of basketball storming out. But I think they keep Steph. Other than that, everyone trades

their guy for Wemba Yama. Jah, Embiid, Tatum, Edwards, Mobley, start packing. So I think he would be fifth on the trade value list, even though he plays in France and is a year away from being in the league. So there you go. I'm all in. If I was Utah, if I was San Antonio, if I was Charlotte, if I was Indiana, if I was whatever team starts out slow and didn't expect to not have that great of a season, like maybe like a Washington, I don't know.

I'm all in. I'm tanking away. I'm starting G League, guys. I'm doing weird shit. I'm coming up with fake reasons guys aren't playing like COVID. Oh, he got COVID again. Yeah, test him and switching COVID tests. Whatever I have to do, I want to get in that lottery in those top four spots where I have a chance in this guy. And the irony is Scoot is also can't miss. I was thinking about can't miss swing guy, like guard types like him. You could see it.

He got hurt in the second game, unfortunately. But in the first game, the aggro quality of his game is just really jarring. Like guards aren't supposed to carry themselves like this. It's very John Morantish, but he feels like he's just a little bigger than Ja. He showed every single conceivable piece of an offensive game. He could shoot, he could drive to the basket. He's a really good passer. So, you know, Luka, I was in on L that whole year. Derrick Rose, Memphis Derrick Rose,

I think I was probably a little higher on than others, but just athletically, just clearly blonde. And then Iverson in 96, I would say it would be the three. I'm not counting Zion because he was more of like a power forward than a guard swing guy. But, you know, every time these guys come in, there's always like a of things you can poke holes at. Even Paul Pierce, who was a really good college player, but he fell to 10 and it's like,

is he too slow? What is this? Ray Allen was another one. Ray Allen was a can't miss. This guy's going to come in the league and average 20 points a game. But it was like, can he create his own shot? Scoot's going to have the ball a lot and he's going to be awesome. And the great, great, great, great, great thing about this draft, which has only happened a couple of times in history is before this season has started, we know who the characters are. I went back and tried to figure out when was the last time this happened? Well, in 2014, we had Wiggins and Jabari. We tried to make that a thing. Neither of those guys were really that up for it, but I went to the showcase game before the year. There was a buzz and Bede was there. So we had it that year. Durant

Odom, we had it the most famously. Odom was getting all the hype and then Durant just kicked ass at Texas. And watching him at Texas was, I think the last time I truly loved college basketball. I watched as many Texas games as possible. They were playing him at center. He was just so good. And I'll never forgive Rick Barnes. Rick Barnes, you know what you did. You sucked. 1997, there was a Duncan Keith Van Horn thing that developed during the year to the point that people were wondering, should Keith Van Horn be the first pick? Which was a really good litmus test for whether you're a moron or not. The answer was no, he shouldn't. Shaq Mourning was a thing in 93, especially as the year developed.

Mourning felt like he was in college for eight years. I think that was part of the problem with it. But I think people knew Shaq was one, but Mourning was a great consolation prize. Hakeem and MJ, don't need to go over that. And then Bird and Magic, which built over the course of the year. The difference was the Celtics already had Bird because they which built over the course of the year the difference was

the Celtics already had Bird because they picked him the year before weird loophole but that built built built in an awesome way this is different

because Wemba Nyama is not going to be in college and neither is Scoot Scoot's going to be in the G League Wemba Nyama's from France and this kind of epitomizes

what the league is now right you have the modern day version of Bird and Magic from a draft battle. Only one guy's in the G League and the other guy's playing abroad, overseas. So hopefully neither of them will get hurt.

But I do think this has a chance to be the best one-two punch in a draft since Bird and Magic. Like if we're really going to go through. Shaq and Mourning was really good too. Hakeem and MJ, they weren't one-two punch in their drafts in Spur to Magic. If we're really going to go through. Shaq and Mourning was really good too. Hakeem and MJ, they weren't one-two. MJ should have gone second. But this is going to be

something. We're going to be talking about this a lot. We're going to be talking about weird feeds, watching this dude on his French team, seeing if he can develop some sort of jump hook, sky hook thing over the course of the year. I think Scoot's going to make the G League

a different kind of property this year. If he's that exciting, what we saw Tuesday night, if he's just doing that on TV, this would be the first guy the G League's had that people are going to actually be excited to watch. And then mention the tanking, but the tanking will get to the point that by February, we're going to have to start talking about how do we change the rules? What do we do? What have we created?

I don't care about any of this right now. All I know is the league is as deep and as great as it's ever been. And we're adding these two guys at the very least that have a chance to be first team all NBA guys for multiple years. And then in Wembanyama's case, really has a chance to be one of the great centers of all time. This could be in the Wilt Kareem category of players. That is not hyperbole. I guess his nickname is going to be the alien, maybe UFO. I don't know. We'll figure it out. But something happened this week. I wish I had gone. It was really special to watch and I'm pumped and a lot, everyone who loves basketball is. So there you go. All right. We're gonna take a break. Talk about football. Football season's underway. Now's the perfect time to download

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So why not grab some Miller Lites today? Your game time tastes like Miller time. Must be legal drinking age. All right, our guy Peter Schrager is here. We didn't have him last week. He was in London doing London things, watching some goofy football, Minnesota,

New Orleans, as strange as possible. But now you're back in the States. The Giants are actually playing abroad this week against the Packers. We don't know who their quarterback is going to be Schrager. And that leads us to the quarterback discussion that I think we have to have. The quarterback play has been abysmal.

They asked Brady today on the podium, like, what do you see when you're watching the football? And he's like, I just see a lot of bad football. He's right. And the football has been really erratic, skittish. We've seen leads blown, but most importantly,

just a ton of bad quarterback play. What happened? I thought this was going to be like the decade of the quarterbacks. Why did it go the other way? No, dude. And I think you're spot on. And I start going through my reasoning. Okay, is it because the preseason's shorter?

Is it because guys aren't playing as much? Is it because there's not a lot of contact in August in these training camps? And it's not what it used to be. But a lot of this football, as good as the parody has been, and there's only one undefeated team remaining, every team has at least had a tie or a win. The football has been kind of shitty. And I say that as an employee of the NFL, it's not as crisp as we're used to seeing. And from our stars, you're talking about Brady struggling, talking about Rogers struggling, you're talking about Brady struggling, talking about Rogers struggling,

you're talking about Stafford. You go right down the list. I mean, we did this exercise off camera, I think on Good Morning Football, and I'll do it with you. If you go through the NFC, Jalen Hurts has been the best quarterback in the NFC. Who is number two as far as NFC quarterbacks this year, objectively? Who do you think it is? Like just somebody playing well? Yeah. Who's playing the best football? Not who's got the best career. Like if you're saying who's had the best first four weeks of the season,

who would you say it is? I would probably say Rodgers just because I think they've dropped a couple touchdowns from him. Like if he gets that 75-yard Watson one, if he gets the Dobbs one last week, that's an extra 120 yards and two touchdowns for him, basically. I don't think he's been

that bad, but yeah, after that, I mean... Yeah, Goff has been... It's hard to say about that they've been playing kind of crap teams, but now he's had a bunch of injuries. But yeah, you're right. He's putting up stats. How about Geno Smith? If you were to say...

How about Cooper Rush? If you were to say in August, like, here are the four best quarterbacks in the NFC a month through the season, which was supposed to be Dak and Stafford and Brady and all these guys. If you were to say it's Cooper Rush and it's Geno Smith, like that's why the NFL is amazing. You could laugh at it all you want, but like those guys are playing the best at the position. And I don't know if Rogers has played well. I would push back on you and say, I don't think he's played well.

I think there's these first half of these games. Like they are so out of sync. And with the exception of that bears game, like, I don't know. I think they got really lucky and you saw the, the image. And I think Bakhtiari tweeted out of like the floor with that huge gasp of

relief at that final field goal, like to escape that game against Bailey's happy. I think that's how I feel every Packers game so far that they've won. It's like, gosh, that was a struggle. That was tough. Like aside from the Bears game, it just feels like they're getting by, but I don't think Rogers has been lights out. I don't think so either, which is why it's funny that he's probably been the second best NFC QB. I mean, it's almost by default because you wouldn't say Kyler Murray. He's been bad.

Bad. You wouldn't say Brady. Nope. You wouldn't say Stafford or Cousins. Then you get into the golf territory. I think going backwards though, I just wrote down like all the quarterbacks that I think are either bad,

pretty bad, or like a notch below mediocre. And I wanted to see if there were more in the NFC or the AFC. In the NFC, we have Fields, we have Mayfield, we have Danny Dimes. Can I interrupt on Baker? Baker has objectively been maybe the worst quarterback in football this year. And when I came out before the season, I was like, I think Darnold could still be the starter. I was laughed out of the room. I don't know what people thought they were getting from Baker because last year, as banged up as he was objectively, was not great. He's had some good moments, but yeah.

Okay. Sorry. So Baker, I think. Well, that was, Baker was a misfire by me because I was thinking, well, two years ago. Sure. He made round two. Like, it's not like he's never done anything in the league, but I thought that week four or the last week performance, whatever week that was.

Yeah, it was week four. Against the Cardinals. Awful. Sorry. Bruncitis Bill is here. Not remembering what week it is. He was so bad in that game that I'm actually surprised he started this week because if I'm Matt Rule, I am now in job protection

mode. Even if I'm throwing P.J. Walker out there protection mode. And even if I'm throwing PJ Walker out there, at least that's not another Baker Mayfield week. Anyway, Fields, Mayfield, Danny Dimes, Wentz, who if he doesn't have blocking, is just a complete train wreck. Then you kind of move into that Cooper Rush, Mariota, Andy Dalton group where it's like,

don't hurt me. They keep you in games. Yeah. You can't get totally hurt. Yeah. Like Mario around Mario has been fumbling a lot, which is like so frustrating if you're a Falcons fan. Cause it's like, just, just don't hurt us. Like that's all we're asking. And Dalton last week was more than serviceable. And I think that level of quarterback play as sad as this is like, don't hurt us might be superb in the NFC this year. Then you have Goff and Gino, who, same thing, don't hurt us,

but also you can have a moment. For a quarter, shit's happening. Whoa, wait a second. Did I evaluate you wrong? And then they'll do something dumb. And then I think finally Jimmy G. Jimmy G good? No, I think Jimmy Jimmy G. Jimmy G good? No.

I think Jimmy G mediocre. I think that's the... Jimmy G is the line. And then after that you have Cousins and Stafford and Murray none of whom are playing well. But I think the pedigree you have to put them over all those guys. And then you have Brady and Rogers and then Hertz who's playing the best right now.

But I listed 1, two, three, five, ten of the 16 QBs in the NFL in the NFC mediocre or worse. So you're like, well, the AFC's got to be better. Eh. Pickett,

Zach Wilson, Davis Mills, the seven inning starter of the NFL. You throw seven, but then the bullpen's always winning. Brissette, who's been, I think, better than people expected, but he really hurt them

last week. He did. Bridgewater, who's good at covering games. I'm not sure you want him taking the playoffs. Mack Jones, hurt right now. Matt Ryan, who I think time has passed him by. And Tannehill.

So that's eight. So we have 18 quarterbacks, I would say, are mediocre or worse. That is more than half the league. Now, I looked at the QBR from the last few years, right? And QBR, it's a little bit of a flawed stat, but I think it's better than QB rating. So you go like 2021 and 2020, we only had four QBs below 40 QBR below 40 is like I'm bad

okay 50 plus QBR we had 21 in 2021 and 23 in 2020 even going backwards 2019 23 2018 23 2017 21

so it's always at least two thirds of the league 60 plus QBR 12 and 21, and then going backwards, 15, 13, 13, 11. Okay. So the 12 is like the Mendoza line on that one. You're going to get 12. Yeah. What do we have this year? 70 plus, three and 21, five and 20, seven and 19, three and 18, 17 and four. Okay. This year, we have 9 below 40. Wow. The record before that for the last five years was 4. So we have doubled the number of bad QBs. Now, smaller sample size.

For the 50 plus QBR, again, 21, 23, 23, 23, 21, the last five years. This year, 13. Gosh. Less than half aren't even at 50. Then the 60 plus, we're at 10. Last year was 12. The year before was 15. And then we have seven in the 70 plus, which is high. So basically we're top heavy and bottom heavy. And then the middle is lower than expected. Now, again, small sample size. And I think you make a good point about the preseason. And we've had some wide receiver injuries. I'm sure that's not helping. Brady, I think you make a good point about the preseason. And we've had some wide receiver injuries. I'm sure that's not helping.

Brady, I think, would be higher if he had a healthy crew. And we've had some offensive line injuries. But this is bad. The way... All right, so the Giants are 3-1. The Falcons are 2-2. Mariota's throwing 70 yards a game. Daniel Jones is attempting...

Both those teams are running the shit out of the ball. I think the Giants go with these three tight ends and it's like... I say this almost in a lovingly way. It looks like I'm watching JV football, watching the Giants with three tight ends running run left, run right, bootleg, play action, go Daniel Jones.

And that's what it takes to win because Giants have no receivers right now. Giants offensive line is playing well. Let's use that as our strength. I think these offensive coordinators are kind of throwing out the aesthetics. And in Arthur Smith's case, they ran the ball 14 straight plays in the second half for 172 yards in the second half against the Browns. And it wasn't Cordero Patterson. It was Caleb Huntley and it was Avery Williams. And it was this guy, Tyler Algier, who's a fifth round pick at a BYU who played linebacker in college. Also like these offensive coaches, Dable and Smith, of course they want to put on the tape of like, look how pretty I can do

this and design it. But I also think it's like, we've got a scratch to get by with what we've got. And in these quarterbacks with Daniel Jones and Marcus Mariota, this might be the best way to win games. It was stupefying to watch. It was like, oh, Cleveland's fine. They got this. The Atlanta can't throw the ball at all.

Patterson looks hurt. And then, as you said, millionaire Artie was just like, fuck it. Let's go. Millionaire. You're underestimating. Billionaire Artie just said, fuck it and started. So out of the guys that are not playing well right now, we have Cousins and Stafford. We have Kyler Murray. I'm going to cross out Brady just because these guys have been hurt. Derek Carr and Russ. And I think Burrow's going to be fine too. The one that worries me the most is Stafford, which leads us to Rams, Cowboys, and just the Rams in general. They can't block and he's got one receiver and he's got below average

running backs and on defense, no more Von Miller. So it's basically, if you take out Donald, you can actually like move the ball on this team. It's just quadruple team or who cares. I don't see really a roadmap for the Rams to rally. Now we always overreact after the first four games and I want to be careful

not doing that. But that said, like the, the recipe they had last year, just even removing Beckham and Von Miller from what they had last year, just feels really unusually substantial because that was a top heavy team to begin with. And it doesn't seem like they've replaced those guys. The Allen Robinson just doesn't get open anymore. And I think that was a real misfire by them. So I don't see the roadmap for this team to really turn it around. We were worried about this before the season. Have you seen anything that makes you less worried? I don't want to go through all the names because it gets to the point where it's like, you're just naming names and who

cares? Great. You know, the linemen, but they've had four different offensive line combinations through four games. They're down to their third center right now. They're down to their third right guard right now. Noteboom, who's filling in for Whitworth, I think they expected more from as the left tackle. Havenstein's fine on the right side. This is getting into Rams offensive line talk, but that stuff's real. That stuff's real. When you've got the third string center blocking and you've got guys trying to center blocking you know and you've got guys trying to stop nick bosa who is just blowing up every single play it's real and then you get to the alan robinson thing it's not only just alan robinson van jefferson's not there he's hurt you

got odell's not there you've got skrull nick now playing fullback he's not even you know an elite wide receiver and you know cup they're riding they're riding Cup to the point where like, I don't see how that's sustainable. Cup is on pace for 173 catches. The record I think is 149. Like 250 targets, something like that. They throw to Cup every play. And not only do the defense, I mean, Hufanga read that play from a mile away and that's going to start happening. But also health-wise, Cooper Cup can't catch that many balls and be that much of a load on this thing. And I know that's not the goal. And I know the goal is to get Allen Robinson open. Allen Robinson had two

catches for seven yards. It's not sustainable. So to me, I don't know if Robinson just suddenly wakes up again. Another guy did not play this preseason, did not have any chemistry with Stafford. All I heard over the summer was how great they looked in practice. And Robinson's taken the roof off. I haven't seen it once. Um,

I don't know, Bill, like I, you know, obviously we talk about the connection that I have with McVay and that coaching staff over the years. Like I, I'd be disingenuous right now.

You'll be honest. Yeah. I'd be disingenuous right now. You'll be honest. Yeah. I'd be disingenuous right now to come on here and be like, it's going to be turned around. I don't, I don't fret it. Like, I also think the Niners have this crazy,

like dominance over them. And I know they beat them last year in the playoffs, but like, it is almost like a mental roadblock right now for the, for the Rams to get back past San Francisco, but they play the, they play the Cowboys this week. I have no confidence.

The Rams are going to suddenly light up this Cowboys defense, not with Micah Parsons breathing down his neck. Oh, they'll be coming on underdog parlay when we're doing that a little bit later. The reason I bring up the Rams piece, I don't know if people see the San Francisco thing yet. And the defense last week, which was incredible.

Great. Like, flat out incredible. Really, really, really dominant and impressive and just kind of frightening. On FanDuel right now, what do you think the NFC West odds are? Oh, I'd say the Niners. Who do you think is favored? I'd say the Niners have to be favored after what happened Monday night. The Rams and Niners had the exact same odds, plus 120.

Interesting. I don't see any world where the Rams should have the same odds as the Niners had the exact same odds, plus 120. Interesting. I don't see any world where the Rams should have the same odds as the Niners. I was doing homework for a million dollar. San Francisco first in DVOA through four weeks. Their defense is fourth pass, first rush. Remember they were beating the Bears in that monsoon? Yeah. 10-0.

And Fields had those two playground touchdowns when plays broke down, right? In the fourth quarter. were beating the Bears in that monsoon. Fields had those two playground touchdowns when plays broke down, right? In the fourth quarter. Since then, they've allowed 17 points in three games. They're playing Carolina this week. Carolina's 28th in DVOA. They've scored 78

points in four games. They have 56 first downs total, which is last in the league. They're 31st in offensive DVOA. Third down, they've only got 25.5%. They've converted on third down. To me, this feels like San Francisco absolutely annihilates Carolina this weekend. And then people go, holy shit, how good is this San Francisco defense? I was really impressed last week. And also, like, Ryans is going to be the head coach, hot du jour guy.

And you could just kind of see the roadmap for like a 31-3 blowout and people going, oh shit, the Niners. But we're not there yet. No, and people might not be buying it because of the offense. It's still, I mean, even Jimmy's touchdown pass to Debo, it was like an inch away from being intercepted. And then Debo just does what

Debo does, which is just incredible. You know, after the catch stuff, Jimmy has not practiced with this team and then suddenly, so he's still picking it up. Um, you see the injuries, obviously at the running back position, you see some other players that you're like, Oh, they're offensive line. They lose Trent Williams and they, they continue to just keep on rolling. And I think to give credit where credit is due, a guy like Hufanga, who was a fifth round pick at a USC and looks like he's the next Troy Palomalo. And I say that obviously with hyperbole, but I didn't just say that. Ronnie Lott said it this week. And Richard Sherman put that comparison out there. And Charles Woodson puts out that comparison. Aikman said it. Aikman said it. These are guys that watch football and Hufanga works out with Troy Palomaro, but

they had a decision to make last year. That was their sore spot, safety position. And Joukowsky-Tart was up for free agency and they could have just brought him back and said, bring back the gang and let's go. Or they could have signed one of these players like Marcus Williams from the Saints or a bigger name guy, a honey badger. And they're like, we're going to roll with Hufanga who makes next to nothing on our salary cap. And we're going to just take the lumps. And it's like the Niners time and time again, do not go and sign the splashy free agent. And they build from within. And that includes a guy like D'Amico Ryans, who in 2017 was a quality control coach and now is a defensive coordinator. And like you said, it's going to be one of the hot defensive coordinator

slash head coaching names that you get throughout January. I think there's something to that. They don't uproot their team. They don't bring in all these different guys. It's like, aside from Trent Williams, that signing was a big one and that trade was a big one. They're not the team that makes a splashy free agent move or goes out and gets the big guy in a trade.

They kind of build from within and that's why they're never going to fall off too far. So how long is Trent Williams out? What's our best estimate? Not sure. That one could be a couple of weeks, could be whatever, we'll see. But it's not going to be like half the year.

I don't think so, but you never know with these big fellas. Because they got, looking at their schedule, Carolina this week, I think they're catching Carolina at a nice time. And I've said this,

I said this on Sunday. You're off on that. You're off. I thought it was going to be Carolina that how the fuck did that team make the playoffs and I actually think

it might be Atlanta. I know. And Atlanta's got injuries too. I thought it was somebody from that division, but yeah, it could be Atlanta. Anyway, they play at Carolina could be Atlanta. Anyway,

they play, uh, at Carolina and at Atlanta next two weeks, home Casey. Ooh, that's a good one at the chargers by week home for the Rams. And then home Arizona. So those are all probably the Trent Williams won't be playing games.

And then when you get to the, to the last part of this season, it gets a little bit easier. They got a Seattle game in there and a Washington game in there, home for Arizona, et cetera. But it feels like an 11-6 type season, maybe a 12-5.

And I don't think the Rams can get past 10-7. I could be with you on this. And I'm not to be dismissive, but I go back to what we said earlier. If Jimmy doesn't hurt them, they can do that. But if Jimmy throws the Jimmy Garoppolo out pattern that just floats a little bit and it's a pick six, we got to dig out of that. There's a real deflating piece to that. So again, bare minimum from Jimmy. Bare minimum. He'll hit all his incentives. He'll make $16 million. He'll be a free agent or they'll

bring him back, whatever it is. But you get the bare minimum from Jimmy Garoppolo in this year's NFC, that might be the one seed. Yeah. And keep Debo healthy would be the other one. That guy makes me nervous. He's like the John Moran of football for me. He takes one terrible hit a game. Oh, no, that's not it, is it? And then he gets up. He plays with such reckless abandon. And it's funny, now in the draft and Charles Davis, I'll quote on this, he calls it finding Debo, almost like finding Nemo. Every draft prospect now is like, he could be a Debo Samuel type. And it's like, no, no, he can't. That's one of one that dude, sorry. Maybe there's a couple out there in the NFL, Cordero Patterson comes to mind, but Debo Samuel is a special player and it's about his toughness as much as his playmaking ability.

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Really? Really, really. This message is brought to you by Metrolinks. All right, so we've hit our last two underdog parlays that you and I have done. There's a lot of tasty underdog parlays that you and I have done. There's a lot of tasty underdog parlays this week. Can we do a quick tangent on just the fact how much it breaks my heart that you and I are two for two and you're having this horrible season on million dollar picks. Do you know what it feels like knowing that once upon a time you and I would just roll out of bed, do these million

dollar picks? Listen, it's fine. I'm a team player though. It's early. It's early. I'm a team player, but like I would do these picks and then I go to sleep and then I wake up in the morning and you're doing and it's like Solak's got 17 different over-unders and we're losing all of them and I'm like

selfish come on now no shots at Solak I like Solak I'm saying my million dollar picks there's purity to these things you know what dissension

this isn't a Jordan Poole Draymond Green thing here no I like a lot of the underdog parlays this week in fact this is the first week where I've written down like six. I like all of these. I think that's one of the problems with the early weeks is the lines were all tight.

Now we're having a little separation. But just going down the line, the Bengals are playing on a night game at Baltimore. And they're plus 150. They beat the hell out of them twice last year. The second time Baltimore had no secondary anymore at that point. And Lamar wasn't there. Second game, right?

Um, Baltimore coming off a tough loss. So you'd be like, all right, that scares me a little. I do like what I'm seeing from the Bengals. There was a great thing that, uh, Orlovsky and the NFL Live crew and Mina and everybody did

about teams running out of the... Did you see that? Teams running out of the shotguns? It was like the nerdiest eight minutes. It was just great. I loved it. That is like porn for me. It is so good. It is sports TV as it should be. It was them talking about the difference between the shotgun and taking it under center and how hard it is to stop out of under center. I mean, it was great. But to that point, why isn't there a place for that on TV every day? There is. I think that show does it.

That's the first show ESPN's had in years that goes into that kind of level of analysis. It was great. Good directing too. Oh, it was great. So inside baseball.

I mean, it was on satellite. Oh, and the host, Rutledge is like reteeing in the right way and And it's not just get to commercial. Like, all right. Anyway, that's TV sports nerd stuff. All right. Well, Mina made the point. The Bengals had hit the point in those first couple of games. And I've watched every Bengal game. Cause that's like one of the big teams I've backed this year where you kind of knew what they were going to do before the play.

And Burrow is, if he was trying to hand off out a shotgun, all the stuff they were doing, it just like, wasn't working. And now they've mixed it up the last couple games. He was under the center, meanest at 25% of the time in the fourth game. And I just feel like they're finding their stride a little bit. They have to unleash Chase, which is the last piece of this. I'd like to see them use Mixon a little bit more too.

But I like their defense. They're 2-2, but I feel like that out of all the 2-2 teams, I'm probably a little more bullish on them. The offensive line stuff we talked about before where they got demolished by Michael Parsons and they got demolished by TJ Watt.

I'm not sure. My take is those two guys are kind of unique. I just like the matchup. I think it's an either team can win game. So if I'm getting plus 150, that feels like an underdog candidate to me. Make the case for the Ravens. Talk me out of it. Oh, I actually

am all in. The case for the Ravens is this. They've lost five straight games at home. They are 18-2 the last 20 times they play in primetime. Harbaugh's guys are now feeling it. They're hearing it. Marlon Humphrey, who I don't know if you've ever had a chance to meet,

he's going to be a TV guy when he's done with this whole thing. He's really good with media, and he's really candid. And he was like, we sit in the cafeteria, and we've got Stephen A on. We've got NFL Network on. We've got all these shows on, and they're just shitting on us as a terrible defense. And meanwhile, I look in the room, this is Marlon's words. He's like, I'm looking at Marcus Peters, looking at Marcus Williams. I'm looking at Chucky Clark and looking at Kyle Hamilton.

Like we can't be this bad. Like this can't be what we are at some point that defense stops the bleeding. And the point would be primetime game at home. This is like, all right, the Bills game was one thing. The Dolphins game was another. No more. We're not letting this be the story of our season. And it's early enough where we can fix things. That's the case for the Ravens. Yet I might be with you, dude. I think there's something about this Bengals team and how bad that Ravens pass defense has been. That is not a good matchup for Baltimore right now. Bengals defense, 16th in DVOA. We have enough games now that DVOA

is at least a little interesting. Bengals, 7th defensive DVOA. Really, it's been the offense. It's been the sacks, the interceptions in game one. It was the fact. They do something that drives me crazy. What do you got?

I just don't just play mixing. I know. The Patriots used to do this where they would go, it's time to bring in Brandon Bolden on third down last year. It's like, we have Ramondre Stevenson. He's right there. I promise you he's better than Bolden. And they bring in P Ryan.

I would just, I would have mixingon and Chase out there all the time with Higgins. Just like, these are our guys. Come stop us. You're running what? 70 plays? I'm watching my son's high school season. Guess what? Our best two receivers play all the plays. They don't come out. That's what you do in football. These are our guys. Let's throw them out. So anyway, I'm trying to think of that. One of the ways I've been trying to get off the cold streak is trying to think like,

what are the narratives coming out of the week? Yeah. Like last week, Chiefs Bucks was perfect, right? Oh, the Chiefs, they're back. Mahomes, what were we doing? Uh-huh. I think this could be a Bengals are back week. Okay.

The Ravens have allowed the most passing yards in the entire NFL. All right. Burroughs 5-0 including the playoffs versus bottom five pass defense. As you mentioned, he had over 900 yards against this Ravens defense last year. He had 525. Wait, hold on

for a second. Do you believe with some of these guys because you've talked to a lot of these dudes. Yeah. When you've had success against a specific team that it carries over from year to year, regardless of the players? Because I always felt this way with Brady. I always felt like he had certain teams where it's like, oh yeah, the Bills,

where it's just like, Brady owned the Bills. I see that logo. The Bills, great, yeah. I think Brady was honestly 31-2 against the Bills. And Burrow right now is obviously rolling against the Ravens. The only caveat to this is that they employ a different defensive scheme. Last year, it was Wink Martindale, who's with the Giants now, but they would just blitz, blitz, blitz.

Their new defense, which is headed up by a guy named Mike McDonald, who actually was with the Ravens for years, but then was with Michigan with Harbaugh's brother the last season, was anointed as like, he's the guy that's going to fix the Ravens' defensive woes. He's a brilliant wonderkind, the whole thing. Their defenses sucked and they get thrown all over and it's no better than it was when they were blitzing everybody. So I think in that case, the only thing would be there's a too small of a sample size for Burrow and let's give it another season before we say he's

got it. But in those two games against a different defensive coordinator like Burrow and Chase were unstoppable. Great. So who are we putting with the Bengals? Here are our candidates. Both of us kind of like Atlanta in this Bucks game.

The money line is ambitious. The money line is ambitious. The money line is you get like plus 360, something like that. But I don't know if we necessarily need to do that. On Fandle, they have these alt lines. So the money line is plus 350. Okay. But you can get the alt line.

All right. Falcons plus four and a half. And if you put Bengals with Falcons plus four and a half, that's plus 560. The case for the Falcons, keeping it close. We just saw the Chiefs run on the Bucks last week. I didn't think that was possible. They did it though. Brady's banged up. Brady's getting divorced. Brady's old. Brady has this look on his face like, this kind of wasn't what I signed up for. What's the meme?

It's your boy Affleck with the cigarette outside. Oh, yeah. Right. That was a great one. The NFL meme said that one. Cole Beasley came back retired. Quick retirement. He doesn't have that slot receiver dude.

He doesn't have Gronk. In the red zone over and over again, it just seems like other than Evans, there's nowhere for him to go. Godwin doesn't seem healthy yet. Doesn't seem like they're sure about what's going on with the running game. The offensive line is a lot different.

And this just seems like a lot of points. I've watched football for four straight weeks and it is not a 10-point difference between the Bucs and the Falcons. I think they had three rushing yards, the Buc and like today i'm watching byron it's thursday i'm watching byron lefkowitz's press conference and he's talking about you know things that they gotta do to get the run game going and it's like bro like the passing game's awful too like it's not this isn't a run game issue and you know they used and i think tariko was really good on this

on sunday night they they used They used Leonard Fournette, I think, on 85% of the offensive snaps the first three weeks. Then last week, you're like, why is Rashad White, this rookie in there? Because you can't just have Leonard Fournette out there for 100% of the snaps. At some point, you need someone else to step up. This team is not as deep as I thought they would be going into this roster-wise. Their offensive line is not as good as it used to be. And I don't think Brady's been very good. So all those things together,

the Falcons truly nothing to lose this season playing in a very physical style. The last thing that bucks want to see and whether Kyle pits and Cordero Patterson are out there, it's not like their game plan is going to totally change. It's going to be keep the ball away from Brady, shove it down their throats with these running backs. And I think that Tampa Bay showed a lot of flaws and I get it. I texted you during the week last week. I'm like,

you know, I'd stay away from Bucs chiefs. I just, the Bucs, and you talked about it with Sal, but like the Bucs family members were all, it was like Noah's Ark what they were dealing with last week where there were dogs, there were 18 dogs, there was a rabbit, they were relocated to Miami, and then they had to come back. And I know one of the staff members ran out of gas on the way back. And I know Levante David was in six hours of traffic. None of that's good. As much as it's like, hey, we're going to rally and galvanize, none of that's good. I just think that kind of has a lingering effect of like, what the hell?

Our season's in disarray right now. And if they're ever primed for an upset, this is the week. That's one candidate. Even if it's plus four and a half, which you get good odds on, we can get that to plus 560 as a parlay. Then you're just rooting for a close game. There's cheap touchdown potential at the end, even if they're down 11. So there's that. We mentioned Cowboys Rams before. Cowboys are plus 194. I'm a little nervous because we haven't had the, whoa, the moment got big for Cooper Rush game.

We've seen this happen with quarterbacks. I remember Brady's rookie year. Did it ever happen? Tom Brady, we got it. Oh, it happened. He had a really bad game against. Did he? It was, I think it might've been the Dolphins actually. He threw four picks.

He looked terrible that first few weeks there's always the stinker I just don't know if the Rams defense is good enough to produce the stinker but I really think like from a line standpoint I think they can dominate the Rams on both sides of the ball so that is plus 635 if we want to do Cincy and the Cowboys. I don't know. McVay historically has had his way with the Cowboys. They beat him in the playoffs a couple of years ago. We beat him last couple of seasons. And this feels like it's rubber hits the

road time. They don't want to go two and three. But that said, you nailed it with Sal. I don't see a huge Rams contingent drowning out that Cowboys fan base. I don't know if the home field matters at all in this game. And if Micah Parsons decides to blow up the game, he can. So I would stay away from this one just out of, I can't see the Rams going two and three, but I certainly wouldn't say that's a lock by any means. Yeah, Dallas is getting five and a half in the game. That's a lot though, isn't it?

It's a lot when you think this is going to be a home game for them. So if Dallas was home against the Rams, it would probably be Rams by three. Yeah. So they're giving the Rams two and a half extra points for a game just because they get to sleep in their own beds. I don't really understand that. All right. So that's a possibility.

Listen, Seattle plus 205 against the Saints. To me, those are two bad teams, whether we want to put them in an underdog parlay. I don't know, but the Saints defense is a lot better than the Lions defense last week. On the other hand, I don't think the Saints, they're just, I don't know, they're all over the map for them to be favored by that many points. I think it's like six. Seems dumb to me. So throwing that out. Cincy and Seattle is plus 662. And then the last one, the Browns.

Hurt my feelings last week. Okay. Just going to say that. They're playing the Chargers. In Cleveland. Two and a half point dogs at home. I love the homegers. In Cleveland. Two and a half point dogs at home. I love the home dog thing with them. Plus 114 for the game.

And playing a Chargers team, flying across country, or half across the country. Still banged up. JC Jackson came back. Bosa's still gone. Keenan Allen's, I guess, going to play, but he's not 100% healthy.

They still don't have their left tackle. He's gone for the year. Center might come back. I don't know. I was surprised by the line. I don't know. Jamari Salyer is the sixth-round rookie playing left tackle who filled in for Slater,

and he was awesome last week. They don't have Garrett on the other end. I feel like this could be the same. Is Garrett definitely out? I would be shocked right now. I'd be shocked if we get him. I wouldn't go with Cleveland. That's a cross off.

That also feels like Herbert goes bonkers. He does those every few weeks too. Okay. All right. So those are all underdog picks. So we like Cincy plus 150, Falcons alternate line four and a half plus 560 is where we're going. Yeah. Or you want to throw in that Cowboys want to do three teams or no, the five and a half.

I like that too. That's a lot. The Cowboys five and a half. All three of them. All three. We've never done that. No, but we're in desperate times. You remember what happened in industry when they tried to have a threesome.

It just completely ruined it. I just binge all season two. Is there a more underappreciated show? It's so good. I just watched, Bronkite is Bill watched season one of Industry. I'm like, where have I been? How good is this show and then I was starting

to get mad and then I realized like oh 19 people told me to watch this show I'm an ass same thing with me and I feel like your guys on the watch

they all yeah no listen but like is there a better character than Eric I love Eric oh my god

he's so good I'm like Mark McGuire I'm not here to talk about the past and all the people that told me to watch that show and I ignored them that show's fucking awesome it's so good. I'm like Mark McGuire. I'm not here to talk about the past and all the people that told me to watch that show and I ignored them. That show's fucking awesome. It's so good. Thank you for saying it. Also, the

two lead actresses are fantastic. I don't know who plays Yaz, but I think she's the hottest thing in the world. Oh my God. Harper Stern. Great. Tangent. Quick straight ups.

The Jets aren't going to beat Miami, are they? You know what? No. Stay away. Teddy covers. It's like 41 and 20 against the spread. I almost feel like the Jets would rather face Tua than Teddy because Teddy is such a game manager and what he can do. He's not going to make mistakes. And that defense is so opportunistic. They only win when they get those interceptions. So I think the Dolphins win, but I think the Jets keep that close. Well, it's Dolphins minus three. Yeah. I think that's a pretty accurate line. It's

probably going to be a four or two point game. What do you see with the Jets defense that you'd like just out of curiosity? They were good last week. Quinn and Williams is unblockable right now. Between Williams and Lawson and that safety group, which gets crushed here in New York, they've been playing well. Sauce is good at corner and

Reed's good at corner. Good defense. Tennessee minus two and a half against the Seawords. In D.C., when... How about when circling the drain?

Shout out to Tennessee being at two and two and I still don't know who their school guys are other than Derek Edmonds. Isn't it nuts? You know what? They have not given up

a point in the second half the last two weeks. They haven't had Harold Landry, their best defensive end. And they're still just good on defense. Their defensive coordinator is actually a funny, not a funny, but a good story. So Shane Bowen is his name. And he was at Kennesaw. Then he was at Ohio State with Urban. And Vrabel took him to Houston and took him to Tennessee. But he was a defensive coordinator in 2020 when the Titans had a historically bad defense and like all the Titans fans, he was actually a linebackers coach,

but he was calling the plays with Titans fans were like, we need a new DC. We need a DC. And Vrabel like doubled down and was like out of spite, almost like, no, I'm sticking with my guy. And he,

now he's going to, now he's going to be the defensive coordinator. And Titans fans were outraged. Two years later, they're like the, the best, most unheralded defense. He's 36 years old, and it's like, stick with your guys.

Don't just fire and bring in whoever. And they play for this, dude. They've got a rookie. I want to say his last name is Weaver at a pit who no one had on anyone's draft. He's got four sacks. He's flying all over the field. They get the most out of their dudes on defense. They don't give up a lot of points.

And with the Buffalo game aside, Tennessee, they're going to be in every game. That's just how they are. And I think Tannehill is going to be able to find a way to win. Probably taking them. Just wanted to get your thoughts on San Francisco money line against Carolina. I don't see a ton of points in that game. There's a bet you could do. San Francisco, Moneyline.

San Francisco, all under for the game. Points. 49 and a half. What are the odds that those two teams can get to 50 points? Not good. You'd need defensive touchdowns and weird shit. Yeah. Hufanga.

Right. You could throw those two. Jacksonville minus 340 against Houston just have to win A little comeback after they blow the Philly game that they left on the table Those three together plus 106 Let's do it

Alright so those will be the two I'm not That Jacksonville game I looked at it It was fine smelled it I tossed it away I think you throw away the four Trevor Lawrence fumbles including one that

nobody caused the fumble he just had a spasm they're in Philly in a torrential in a rainstorm wipe it away they're good

and they're well coached I feel I feel bad dude I was just shitting on Solak earlier that kid's good he's really good at what he does can I just put that out there I'm sorry dude

you just get your picks right is this like when Draymond apologized to Steve Kerr? I think it is. I think I'm having my moment. This is it. I'm feeling like that. I'm making the picks. You guys are just my conciliaries. This is on me. This is on Brock Hightest Bill to turn this around. I know. We're just having a bad year.

You start pointing fingers. Did you feel like Judge is the real home run winner? I went on Derek Thompson's podcast and talked about it for an hour today. Do you feel like that is the real home run winner? I went on Derek Thompson's podcast and talked about it for an hour today. Do you feel like that's the real home run record or are you going to go with 73? No, I think the American League home run record is a record that we all cherish and really care about. The American League. Can you name three other American League records?

I love it. Here in New York, it became a thing. He's about to break the AL home run record. I'm like, wait, didn't Bonds have one? But yeah, but that was the National League. I'm like, all right. Didn't Sosa hit 63 times? National League.

I'm like, yeah, no, I can't get into that. I'm sorry. This is why Yankee fans have really become sad human beings. They haven't won a title in 13 years and they're celebrating the American League home run record. Now, I think they should have gone Yankees. Team record would have been a much more fun way to go. Yeah, that's cool. We beat Maris and Mantle and Ruth.

Who has Cal Ripken's consecutive games in the National League record? I would love to know. Is it Steve Garvey? Where do we start doing these league records? I don't even know. It's probably Steve Garvey. Might be, right? Wasn't he always playing league records so stupid

the AFC South passing leader you know I liked when people were like it was the clean record what does that mean what does that mean

how do we know when steroids stopped and ended do we know it's ended once Brett Boone and Brady Anderson put their bats down the entire thing changed

we were done after that. Yankee fans. All right, Schrager, what do you got to plug? Anything? So much. Fox NFL kickoff, Sunday mornings. We're on fire. Our show's doing great.

Sean Payton in the house, 11 a.m. Eastern. And then our good morning football show. We just got back from London. It's been good. I mean, good shit all around. And I saw Kyle Brandt today on that show, like wearing like a snazzy suit. Dude,

Kyle, he wasn't like a wrestler. I think Kyle had like a job interview after the show. He was, hair was parted and like he wore a suit and usually wears like, was he going to industry season three casting? What was going on with him? Dude,

he's going to go work for Pierpont and he's going to sell some healthcare stocks. I have no idea what Kyle's wardrobe situation is. And then Bill, I don't know if I could promote it or not. I might be doing a podcast of my own for the NFL. So keep an eye out for that. It's going to be a different kind of podcast than we've seen in the past where it's more,

I think the basis of it is going to be a little bit just like, hey, news of the day, let's get a quick thing where we can get my takes and some good guests. Hopefully you'll come on and join one time. I'm available. All right, Peter Schrager, good to see you. Appreciate you always, dude. All right, Ben Solak is here.

Why is scoring down this season? Schrager and I talked about quarterbacks and how the quarterbacks have been terrible. Are there other reasons why the under is hitting at a crazy rate and the scoring is down and football is not as fun to watch? Oh, football is still fun to watch. No, it is obviously fun to watch, but you don't have to. I love four yards and a cloud of dust, baby.

Back to basics. This is the pendulum swing, right? When we talk about developments in football, we talk about a pendulum back and forth. All right, Kyle Shanahan offense, Sean McVay offense, under center, condensed sets, run the wide zone, right? Get teams into play action looks. Okay, well, now no one can play cover three anymore, right? Everything's open against cover three, so we're going to play quarters. We're going to play cover two. Now, there's two deep safeties. And all of a cover two now there's two deep safeties and all of a sudden once there's two deep safeties the explosive passes go way down

throwing the football is tougher and you get teams like the lions teams like the seahawks teams like the falcons gap runs baby we're gonna pull a guard we're gonna pull a fullback we're gonna hit you in the jaw we're gonna run five yards five yards five yards five yards and then we're gonna get to our play action pass game so this is this is evolution in football right if defenses are gonna live in too high which is what we're seeing increasingly this year, scoring is going to go down. Explosive pass play is going to go down. Drives are going to become a lot more incremental.

Running the football's back, baby. And then all of a sudden, the pendulum will swing the other way. This is good for my new income Patriots. Yeah, they've been building for this. Some would say maybe for too long, but I should probably hold my tongue about the Patriots. I was very anti-Patriots covering last week

and they shut me up pretty good. Well, I mean, you didn't realize Bailey Zappi was going to come off the bench like Willis Reed. How could anyone predict that? Zappi experience. Alright, so what you just laid out, it's helped some teams in the first month, but ultimately, we're

still going to need explosive plays at some point. The explosive play teams I still feel like are going to be heard from because that's just, we're not going to throw away what happened the last seven years of football. On the flip side, if what you just laid out, it feels a little gimmicky on defense, then that's what makes the Niners defense, I think, even more interesting. Yeah. Because I was in awe of what they did to the Rams on Monday night. And I know the Rams have a weird offensive line.

We talked about it a little with Schrager, but it was more than that. It was the Niners. There was a level of speed and like intensity with them that I was unprepared for. The exact correct words

are speed and intensity. The Niners play, they got some goblins back there. They play with their hair on fire. And so much of that is tied into D'Amico Ryan's. D'Amico was playing Mike Linebacker a decade ago, right? D'Amico is a young, previously been a player guy. He understands how to light the fire and he understands which guys have the fire in them, right? Talanoa Hufanga is kind of this sensation, but he typifies what they're

going for here where, all right, he's a little bit limited athletically. He's kind of a straight line athlete, but he loved to hit. He loves to run and he loves to hit. And if we can get him moving downhill, if we can get him coming downhill and attacking, we're going to be able to maximize him. Kwon Williams, the nickel, and then they replace him with D'Amador Lenore.

Emmanuel Mosley right now leads the league in terms of defensive backs with stops at the line of scrimmage. This is a secondary that wants to come up and hit. And then linebackers, Fred Warner, Aziz Alshair, Dre Greenlaw, fast, physical. They want to come up, they want to hit. And then we have a four down front, Nick Bosa, Samson Aboukham, Charles Amenahou. They're light, but guess what? They're fast and they want to hit. And so you have this very physical tone setting approach. But then you need good rules, good discipline, and a good vision. You need this thing to be holistic. You can't drop seven and play zone coverage as much as the 49ers do without having a really, really good rush four,

without having a great four-down defensive line. And you can't have as dominant of a four-down rush without the ability to play blanket, get good zone defense, come up rally and tackle, stop teams from throwing the ball quickly. So this goes hand-in-hand. You cannot have one without the other. The fact that it's this holistic and has been for multiple years now,

multiple defense coordinators too. This is exactly how Robert Sala was doing it when he was there. Speaks to Chris Kostrick, who's the defensive line coach. Got those boys playing outside of their God-given minds for the fifth year in a row. And also to Kyle Shanahan.

Because Shanahan's vision of the game, his understanding of how schematic football works, feeds into his defensive staff because he can watch an opposing offense and understand these are their spots, these are their buckets, these are their counters, this is what they want to be.

And that gives information to his defensive staff that other places don't have. So San Francisco is one of one defensively. They play the 4-2-5. Nothing creative, nothing special. Oh, pulling the scheme from college. Nuh-uh-uh. We're going to line guys up and we're going to hit you. And we're going to see if you like it for four quarters.

And pretty much nobody does. Well, they've given... You throw away the fourth quarter of the Bears game. And they've given up 22 points in the other 15 quarters. And that Bears game was the monsoon with the two crazy field touchdowns.

What do you think about Baker Mayfield's chances against him this week? This is going to be one of the most disturbing games of football we've watched. This is going to be an unpleasant viewing experience, even if you love defensive football. You're going to feel bad by the end. This Niners-Panthers game reeks of head coach fired on Monday

because I think it's going to look like a haphazard poorly coached bad execution don't want to be out there college team that's just getting boat race just big brother little brother Duncan in the driveway for four quarters San Francisco runs such a clean operation with such good athletes and Carolina is such a mess that I think the difference is going to be stark and depressing. And I think that embarrassment pushes David Tepper to a point where he has to do something about Matt Rule. So big on Niners to cover, big on the under in this game, and big on Matt Rule first coach fired.

We'll imply that all the way out. Well, if we think this is possibly a blowout, maybe there's a little Niners blowout bet we could do here. On FanDuel, Niners minus 19.5 is plus 370. Niners minus 20.5 is plus 420.

Niners minus 27.5 is 9-1. 27.5. That's a rushing touchdown on every drive. That's the scary thing is that the Niners always get into sit on the football mode under Kyle Shanahan. It's going to be hard for them to sustain their blowouts

even when they're dominating. This is where you need alternate team totals because I'm going to be on Panthers under, but I want to take Panthers under all the way down to like seven. You know what I'm saying? Like this feels like that sort of a game with the defensive line,

offensive line disparity with the Niners ability to hold onto the football. It feels that ugly for Carolina. Well, don't we have alternate? We have some of that stuff, right? We have total touchdowns for the Panthers under one and a half is minus 116. Yes.

So you say one touchdown total? So we could do that, I guess. Yeah, you can take team totals in like the half and the quarter and you can kind of correlate out for the whole game. You can also parlay it, which is one of the best ways to strengthen up your team totals

is these player prop markets are always going to be juiced to the over, right? You can also parlay it, which is one of the best ways to strengthen up your team totals. These player prop markets are always going to be juiced to the over, right? And so take Panthers team total under and parlay it with Mayfield under passing yards, McCaffrey under receiving yards. Just do one-offs with every single one of these. And if the Panthers come under their team total, it's very likely a majority of those hit for you. And that's the way you just kind of juice up the actual return on some of these bets. Tell me which one you like more. San Francisco Moneyline with San Francisco Alt under 43.5 is minus 107. San Francisco Moneyline, San Francisco Alt under 49.5.

They'd have to get the 50 points to beat us, putting in Jacksonville minus 340, and that is plus 106. So Jacksonville would also have to beat Houston. Which one do you like more? I like it because it feels to me like Jacksonville-Moneyline plus 106. That's where I'm at with this Niners-Panthers game. You're going to have that level of confidence in it. It's nice

to kind of put yourself in second legs with other games. And with Jacksonville and Houston, Houston's done such a good job of hanging around this year. I joked on the, I think it was the Friday show, that Houston's built a team meant to lose by six points. That's just how they've built this squad. It's just respectable one-score loss. So I can

see them covering against Jacksonville, but I do not see them beating Jacksonville. I call them the seven-inning Texans. They throw seven good innings. Absolutely. The bullpen comes in, blows the game, and it's like, oh man, we lost again. Even against the Chargers, they're getting boat raced. And then 17 unanswered points. Very respectable loss. Cover the spread.

Great work, everybody. See you here next Sunday. Only they didn't cover the spread because I had the spread. No. You had five and a half. What? They lost by four? I thought they lost by 10. Didn't they? Chargers-Texans. 34-24. Chargers scored late. Chargers scored late. They did score 17 unanswered to get it one possession and then the Chargers scored seven. You know why I remember that they didn't they? Chargers-Texans. 34-24. Chargers scored late. Chargers scored late. They did score 17 on answer

to get it one possession and then the Chargers scored seven. That's on me. You know why I remember that they didn't cover? Because I had the Texans and it hurt my feelings. No, they cut it to within three

and it was like, oh my God, this is amazing. They're going to win. And they did not. The Packers, I threw the Packers-Giants game at you as the Packers being the money line spot in that.

Now, granted, it's a neutral location. People seem to be a little worried about the Giants in that Packers game. I was asking around my football friends, like, oh, I don't know. They could kind of do what the Pats did. What am I missing? Because to me, this feels like a Packers,

hey, let's get our shit together. Let's lay the smack down. This team doesn't have a quarterback. Let's take out Barkley. The receivers will make a couple plays and we win by 20. What do you see with that? Because that's what I see.

I very much think we can get there. I think the Packers need that sort of a game. If you look at the Packers' schedule, they have a couple of soft opponents, Giants, Jets, and then things get really, really tough. They face a lot of the NFC Giants, Jets, and then things get like really, really tough. They face a lot of the NFC North, a lot of the good teams in the NFC. So as they kind of look out

in their next month and two months, they, I think, will view some of these games as get-right games and feel the need to kind of finish all four quarters and get some emphatic wins. But I am at the point with Joe Barry

where I don't trust it. I just simply, I've lost enough money on the Packers in his entire tenure there, and certainly the beginning of this season, that I do not have faith in his ability to take away what the opposing team does well. Right now, the Packers are the prime example defensively

of we're going to bend but not break. We're going to try to get you into a negative, into a third and long, and then we're going to rush you. We're going to come with simulated pressures. We're going to get aggressive. But on first down and second down they are bottom 10 in the league in terms of yards per play allowed and then on third down they're like top two lowest

first down conversion rate they only win on third downs well then you go and you look at a Giants team that with Daniel Jones in has been willing to run the football get the QB involved in the running game run a ton of play action boot Jones out get the QB involved in the running game, run a ton of play action, boot Jones out, and then get him involved in the running game that way as well. I won't touch this game until I know about Jones. But if Jones is in this game, with the way that the Packers are soft against the run,

especially on early downs, this does look to me like a game where the Giants can keep up scoring-wise. The model for the Giants, in terms of how they play ball offensively, is the Bears. The Bears are similar in terms of how they play ball offensively is the Bears. The Bears are similar in terms of very heavy on early rundowns and roll Justin Fields out. And you look at Packers Bears, you go, wow, the Packers won by 17. We're fine.

And then you remember that the Bears rushed for 180 yards and 27 carries. They were running the football. They were moving it. They were failing to execute late. So as long as the Giants are more successful playing points on the board, the running defense is too susceptible for me with the Packers right now to feel good with them against the Giants. Pat's same thing. Pat's ran the ball with Ramondre and Harris, but I

think once the Packers realized in the fourth quarter that they just weren't going to trust Zappi in any sort of real spot, and they're going to run as much as possible. I feel like the Packers put the clamps down a little bit. All right, we'll get rid of the Packers. We both like Tennessee against Washington, though. Yeah.

This is a tricky one for me this week because I took Titans minus two and a half on Monday, and I said, yeah, because this line's going to move through the three, and it's at one and a half right now. So it's moved opposite what I expected earlier in the week, which always freaks me out. I can't tell you why. I don't think injury-wise

there's anything that's been surprising this week in terms of availabilities and inavailabilities. I think that the difference in defensive line to offensive line play, which is a really big theme this week, is too drastic for Washington to cover. Even with the Harold Landry inavailability, the Titans have done a good job dialing a P on quarterbacks, especially through the interior.

Jeffrey Simmons, Nico Autry. This Washington line is weak at multiple spots. And as we know, Carson Wentz is the single worst pocket manager in the league. Washington tried to protect Wentz with play action early in the season. They were a very high play action team in week one, week two. And as they've slowly realized that, oh, there's just no way to actually protect this guy from himself. It's just coming down and it's coming down and it's coming down and it's coming down.

So they're going to try to be a run-first team behind a bad offensive line, facing a good run defense and a good front. They're going to get in the third and longs and then they're going to go into their drop-back passing game. And I said on last week's pod, I'm always scared of fading Washington because they have this explosive pass play potential. They throw down the field, Jahan Dotson, Terry McLaurin.

I'm still worried about that. But Tennessee looks too good up front there. And then on the other side of the ball, Tennessee's running game has got its sea legs under it too good up front there. And then on the other side of the ball, Tennessee's running game has got its sea legs under it a little bit. They had some changes on the offensive line. They weren't good through two weeks, but Derek Henry's looked more like his old self in the last few weeks.

I have enough faith in Tennessee right now at two and a half and certainly at one and a half. But I do not like it when lines move against me throughout the week. So give me a little bit of pause. I have good news. It's two and a half right now in Fandle. There we go.

I'm with you, and I think it's funny that Washington gets home field advantage points in this. Because you figure, like, Tennessee is probably favored by three on a neutral field, so Washington gets, I guess, a half point for sleeping in their own beds. I don't really get it. I'm in on Tennessee. I think

you mentioned how Matt Rule, this could be a he gets fired on Monday. I think Rivera is getting close, too. It's a Rule on Monday. I think Rivera is getting close too. It's a Rule versus Rivera showdown right now for first coach fired. Which, and when Rivera gets fired, Jack Del Rio becomes your interim? Does that even make you feel better? Don't you just feel even

more embarrassed once Jack Del Rio takes over as that coach? He probably gets fired too. They'll probably just get rid of both of them. Clean the house. Do you have Miami Jets thoughts? Miami minus three? Yes, I do. And that I think that the drop off in offense from Tua to Teddy

is not that great. I think that Teddy gives them a lot of the same stuff. Yeah, the offense isn't going to look the same. It's going to look a little bit different, but Teddy can move them down the field effectively the same way that Tua has been. So I like some overs in that game at 45 and a half. I like some Dolphins team total over in that game overall.

The reason I'm worried about the spread is I wouldn't be surprised if against this Jets defense, Miami tries to find a way to learn how to run the football. They are really bad right now. Run blocking and with their backs. They don't know if they want Edmonds or Raheem Mostert to be their primary ball carrier. They don't know what their best concepts are. They don't have extra guys that can fold into the running game.

So much of San Francisco's running game with Mike McDaniel was get Kyle Uchik on the field, get George Kittle on the field, get Brandon Iyuk and Juwan Jennings blocking. They have none of that right now. I'm worried about with Tua out, them investing a lot in the running game in this approach.

And so I'm a little bit worried overall about those bets, but it does feel to me like when the market moves strong back up quarterback, we have to devalue the Dolphins. There is opportunity there. So I haven't taken them yet. I probably will end up by Sunday, if we're being honest.

I think so too. Only I just don't think the Jets are good. Hot take. Wilson back makes them weird because Wilson's good for explosive plays and that always makes them tough. And he's got Garrett Wilson now too. Wilson and Wilson.

If two concussions ago was the quarterback, this line's what? Miami five and a half? Yeah. Five and a half, six was my first thought. I just don't feel like there's a three-point difference between him and Bridgewater. Sorry. We'll find out. What game have we not

mentioned that you like? I like the over in Lions Patriots. I'm at the point where I'm just taking Lions overs until they burn me, and I don't think they're going to burn me anytime soon. You can run on this Lions defense. That's exactly what the Patriots want to do. And then the Lions potentially getting a Monroe St. Brown back this week

is certainly helpful, but they've shown the ability to move the ball regardless, and you can run on the Patriots. I like the over in that one. I'm on quite a few dogs this week. We talked about the Giants. I think that the Bears have a good chance to cover against the Vikings. Like Atlanta to cover against Tampa. There's a few positions where I think as we get to week four,

a lot of preseason power rankings get updated in terms of like modeling with new information after you have kind of a four week sample size. That's when a lot of sharp handicappers and certainly a lot of books start to update their models. And I think that that puts a little bit too much confidence in some of these spreads for teams like the Buccaneers and the Vikings who look good record wise, look good good catch-all metrics-wise, and then you start to get into the nitty-gritty

and you're like, oh, wow, Minnesota can't stop the run and that's the only thing the Vikings do. Right. Or excuse me, the only thing the Bears do. That feels like a problem. There also is discomfort around the David Montgomery injury, but Khalil Herbert, the backup, has been just as effective. He's good, yeah.

Yeah, he's a lot of fun. Herbert is my... I was on Herbert overs last week. I was on Herbert anytime touchdown. They got inside the 34 times and couldn't find a way to punch the ball in. But Herbert anytime touchdown right now is right around plus 150,

which even if Montgomery plays, is fine value. If Montgomery doesn't play, it's crushing it. And so Montgomery overs, Justin Fields overs, and Bears to cover is what a lot of my parlaying will be built on this week.

Same thing with Detroit last week. We hit on all the Jamal Williams stuff. We're doing that again. The books are worried about these backup running backs, but the Lions and the Bears love them. They love to use them. And so Williams, Fields overs, that's where I'm... Excuse me, Herbert and Fields overs.

That's where I'm looking at for that Vikings-Bears game. What if I offered you the Pats money line with an adjusted over of 39.5 at plus 110 odds? Yes. Pat's Moneyline is a little bit shaky just because for as easy to clown on as the Lions defense has been, I'm 100% there with everybody. Aaron Glenn is a madman in terms of blitzing. And if he's getting a rookie

quarterback in his first technical career start, second career action, the stuff he's going to dial up is pretty wild. The Packers do not blitz. We do not blitz, Joe Barry. We do not send pressure. We do not send extra. Aaron Glenn is the exact opposite. First and 10, they'll send cats. They are an

aggressive approach, and I think that's going to lead to turnovers, fumbles, mistakes, short fields. And so I like the Pats as a better team than the Lions writ large, but Glenn against Zappi has me worried on Pats' money line. What if I offered you Pats plus 3.5

with the over 45.5 plus 142? Yeah. That feels good to me. I like that quite a bit. What if I adjusted that over down to plus 43 and a half? Would you like that anymore? Yeah. You're not 44 and 45.

You're not picking up. 44 is a solidly key number. Yeah. I like getting the 44. That's good. All right. Hold on. I'll give you that one too.

That will be on FanDuel. 43 and a half is minus 154. We're at plus 119 with that. New England plus 3.5 over 43.5. This is a big parlay week for you. You're trying to find some legs. I'm trying to. I'm switching

the formula this week where if I'm doing parlays, I want it to all be involved in the same game. Just as a tester. Yeah. I'll keep messing around to correlate. Just as a tester. Yeah. All right. I'll give you... I'll keep messing around with those.

Give me one more. I'll give you a game where I like some correlated parlays, and that's the Cowboys. Cowboys against the Rams. The Rams are five and a half point favorites. Rams are certainly, like, you know, a better team in terms of recent performance. Rams' depth chart's not good.

Like, I'm writing the Rams for this Friday, and a big part of the offensive issue is like, oh, they should have talent, right? Like, they tried to draft Tutu Atwell and sign Allen Robinson, and neither one of them worked. So now Ben Skoronek's out here getting reps. You know what I mean?

Bernard Powell's getting scheme touches. It's just a thin team. They spent so many of their draft picks on trades and everything that they're very, very thin. Well, and they lose Beckham, and they lose Miller, very thin. They lose Beckham and they lose Miller before the season. Doesn't seem like

they replaced either of them. Nowhere are the losses more evident than on the offensive line where there's no more Andrew Whitworth, there's no more Austin Corbett and they're dealing with these injuries. Now a Dallas team comes to town that if there is a team that has a front that holds a candle to San Francisco's, it

is Dallas's. And it's on a short week for a Rams team that is continuing to deal with injuries. They're going to shuffle again and have to put new guys out there. So Rams winning, I think, is very reasonable, very possible, whatever. But if Dallas wins, this is a game where the Rams

don't score a ton of points. This is a game where the under is probably likely. So if you're looking to get juicy on like plus 198, I think that you're carrying the under on that no matter what. You're missing, if you're missing that, you're missing on defensive special team touchdowns, which can happen, but sucks. So if you're looking like, I personally like Dallas on the spread the most,

but if you're looking at plus 198 on the money line and then under 43 and a half, you get above that a little bit, get like under 47 and a5, you feel pretty safe. Sounds like you're brewing a Solak same-gamer. You haven't hit one yet. You've come damn close. Jamal Williams I gave out last week, and Jamal Williams was good. I felt good about that one.

Lions-Seahawks was an incredible game for me last week. That's the game of the year so far, because we were just Rashad Penny and Jamal Williams every way to Sunday. They both scored a ton. They both ran for a ton. This week, if you're same gaming, I like Bears rushing overs, Fields in for Herbert,

and Herbert anytime touchdown. Or, I like your ability to get Cowboys money line in the under, and then the Niners money line in the under. Dallas, 6th EVOA. Rams, 26th. What was that thing I mailed you where I was like, I couldn't even understand what it was

Justice Piscata of Acne Pack and Company puts out team power rankings by adjusting net yards per attempt, which is basically just hey, we're adjusting for touchdowns, we're adjusting for interceptions and turnovers, how well are you moving the ball down the field, and the Rams are extremely inconsistent in how they move the football. The Cowboys, we talked about this a little bit on the Ring or Friday show.

Why is Cooper Rush playing so well? It's because they get under center in first and 10, and teams load the box to top Zeke and Pollard, and they go, oh, we can throw a play-action pass. That's pretty cool. They're being so aggressive throwing the ball on early downs, which is awesome. It's the right way to call offense.

The moment Dak comes back, they're not going to do it anymore because they don't do it with him. They say, oh, we have a big boy quarterback. We're just going to drop back on second and seven. Come on, man. Hit the easy button. So for as long as you have Cooper Rush there, the Cowboys offense becomes trustworthy because the play calling is smart for working around their backup quarterback.

So the top five teams, according to, what's it called again? Adjusted net yards per attempt. Philly, Buffalo, Dallas, Tampa, San to, what's it called again? Adjusted net yards per attempt. Philly, Buffalo, Dallas, Tampa, San Francisco. Dallas third. Eagles-Dallas next week suddenly is becoming a really weirdly good and exciting game. Bottom five.

Raiders, Rams, Giants, Cardinals, Seawords. Yeah. Because they're bottom five. Which we didn't mention, but Eagles is a top five team. Cardinals is Seawords. Yeah. Because they're bottom five. Which we didn't mention, but Eagles is a top five team. Cardinals is a bottom five team. I respect the worry of the trap game. I respect the worry of traveling out west and playing a different time zone.

I think the Eagles are also way, way, way better than the Cardinals. And so the five and a half point line is juicy. I do like first half lines in that game because the Eagles have been such a good first half team and the Cardinals have been such a good fourth quarter team. And so if you're going to bet Eagles, Cardinals against the spread, I like first half a lot better game because the Eagles have been such a good first half team and the Cardinals have been such a good fourth quarter team. So if you're going to bet Eagles-Cardinals against the spread, I like first half a lot better

than I like full game. I'm so glad you mentioned that because this has all the makings of the Eagles go up 24 to nothing and then all of a sudden it's a one score game and Kyler has the ball with like four minutes left and you're like what the hell just happened? Incredible stat for the Cardinals

is that of the first downs, first and tens, that they have then converted that series to a new first and ten or a touchdown. So successfully ending that series with a new first down or a touchdown, 11% have come on fourth down conversions. That's in, the next closest is like four. It's unbelievable how, forgive me,

awful and offensive this team's play calling and offenses for three downs. Then on fourth down, Cliff goes in the headset, Kyler, please. And then Kyler covers the fourth down. It's ridiculous.

What do you think of, so Fando has these race to dot, dot, dot bets. So like race to 10. First team to 10 points. Philly minus 176 race to 15 Philly minus 200 I like race to 10

but I don't like race to 15 race to 20 is Philly minus 215 and then race to 5 is Philly minus 156 but I thought that minus 176 for the race to 10 was kind of fun. I just said, you know, it's minus odds.

Yeah, it's funny. That's basically script betting. Like how does the team perform on the script? And then how would they adjust? And I usually take that in terms of like first quarter totals. But it is nice to be able to take that in terms of the race to 10. You're begging for a headache when a team goes for seven instead of kicking three. And like, you know, they could just get to 10 there's you're begging for a headache when a team goes for seven instead of kicking three and like you know they could just get to 10 points but instead they like try to convert a fourth and

five of the 26 or something uh but i i in this game certainly i do like that i i view this game as even if the cardinals like get an opening drive script score or whatever the eagles have just been dominating sent after the second drive of each game third driving on they've been so so so good the moment that both teams get off the script they have to make adjustments this coach just dominating after the second drive of each game. Third drive and on, they've been so, so, so good. The moment that both teams get off the script, they have to make adjustments. This coach just has to put the lights out through four weeks. So first to 10, but also like first half spreads.

That's where I like the Eagles in this one. What's your Super Bowl hype feelings on the Ringer's Philly special show right now? What level are you at? Like an eight? Yeah, I would say so. I think that the most harrowing thing right now, the most sobering thing, I wrote about the Eagles for Wednesday, is that the offenses that are the most similar to the Eagles

in terms of how they're working this year are like the Ravens from a couple years ago and the Cardinals from a couple years ago. Mobile quarterback, live in the shotgun, read option and RPO. The Eagles are a little bit more spready than like the Ravens ever were, a little bit smarter in the passing game

than the Cardinals ever were, but still, both of those offenses get to December and January and start to slow down. They really start to fade. And is that Russian quarterbacks can't last for a whole season? Is that these offenses are too simple and defenses catch up? We don't really know. We're kind of on a new frontier in terms of shotgun read option, RPO, college inspired offenses.

But when I was writing about that Eagles offense and I discovered, oh, their analogs, their comparisons are like the Ravens and Cardinals the last few years, I was kind of like, okay, well, I know those offenses as them that fade in December. And so I'm very curious to see what this looks like over the next few months. Pats plus three and a half.

Pats over 39 and a half. Eagles get to 10 points before the Cardinals do. Plus 187. Why not? I think so. It's pretty good, right? It's pretty good. This race to 10 is interesting. I've never framed it this way,

but I very much want to look at it, especially relative to teams kicking field goals or going for it on fourth down. The Eagles will go for it on fourth and goal. And so a race to 10 is basically a race to 14 when you have teams like the Eagles and the Cardinals who going for it on fourth down, because the Eagles will go for it on fourth and goal. And so they're a race. The 10 is basically a race to 14. When you have like teams like the Eagles and the Cardinals who go for it on fourth down. So that's the curious thing that I don't really know how to fold into that

market. Remember the Eagles are also dealing with injury at Jake Elliott, their kicker. They might be playing a Cameron Dicker at place kicker in this game. And so now you're scaring me at it. Now it's not as race to 10. It's not as much fun. What's Eagles first half? Three and a half?

Three and a half. You like that more? Yeah. Especially if it's juiced at 110 instead of 176. To me, that makes more sense. First half spread... Minus three and a half. Yeah.

It's juiced at minus 105. I like it. Get rid of the race to 10. I wasn't excited for the race to 10, but that's fine. That gets us to plus 257. That feels really good. I'm with you on race to 10

when the team's kicker is healthy. You know what? Let's monitor the race to 10. Yeah. I want to look at it. Let's give it a look this week. Kyle and I will study it this week. Week six, Thursday, million-dollar picks,

race to 10 check-in. I'll come with notes any last thoughts before we go um talk about all the games they want to talk about uh oh I'm gonna 100% build insane Chiefs to score 90

points uh Monday night football stuff you the Chiefs are kind of like doing a little internal talking about how the Raiders behave last time they came to Arrowhead Patrick yeah there's like a little clip of him the Chiefs here during practice doing a little internal talking about how the Raiders behaved last time they came to Arrowhead. Patrick Bohan was done. Yeah, there was a little clip of him. The Chiefs here during practice, like, oh, remember how those guys came in here last year?

So I would not be surprised if we see a Kansas City just 40 bomb against this Raiders team. It's a better defense than they beat last year, but it's still not a good defense. And so that's a fun one to look at for when you're chasing Sunday's losses. It might get a little wild on Monday. Ben Solak, great to see you as always.

Thanks, Bill. All right, Million Dollar Picks, week five. It has not been a good season for your buddy, Bronchitis Bill. You have two choices here. You can either root for me to rally or just fade the living hell out of me. It's fine.

I either want to do really good or really bad with my picks. Right now, I'm doing really bad. to rally or just fade the living hell out of me. It's fine. I either want to do really good or really bad with my picks. Right now I'm doing really bad. For the season, we are down $1.709 million. Thank God this wasn't real money. The good news is I've been down like this before. I really have. I've rallied back and we're going to rally back this week. And if you don't believe me, fade me. And if I lose again, great, then you won. Let's go appetizers first. We're going to change the format of how we do this. Some appetizers start you off. $100,000 on the following. Cowboys plus five and a half at the Rams. Is it really at the Rams? It's a Cowboys home game. It's going to be like

60,000 Cowboys fans there. They have a better defense. The Rams are a mess. All of the advanced metrics, the DVOA, they're telling us the Rams are a mess. They can't block. They don't have enough good players. I'm getting the Cowboys a plus five and a half. I'm grabbing it. Great. Cooper Rush, take us home for one more week before you have that meltdown four interception game. That's one. Tennessee minus two and a half against the Washington Seawords. They are on the road as well, Tennessee. It doesn't matter. Washington has no home field advantage. I'm going to start a new thing here. The Dahmer apartment game of the week where two teams stink, but we're jumping on one of them anyway. I don't think Tennessee is

very good. I know Washington isn't very good, but Tennessee, they're somehow two and two. Nobody can figure it out. They're very well coached. They sometimes don't screw themselves up. Maybe they'll do it this game. Maybe not. But I like their trenches in this game against a Washington team that cannot block. And as Carson Wentz, as quarterback, getting less than three, great. Tennessee minus two and a half, grabbing that for 100K.

And then last but not least, a little parlay. This is 100K plus 257 on the Patriots adjusted to plus 3.5 at home against Detroit. Alternate over 39.5 for that game. And then Eagles first half, talked about this with conciliary Ben Solak, Eagles first half minus 3 three and a half. All three of those things need to happen. Plus 257. Another appetizer for you. Wait, I got more apps. I got two Bengals underdog parlay bets. One of which hopefully FanDuel will boost. FanDuel, come on. Bronchitis Bill is ice cold. Boost one of my bets, please. The Bengals, plus 150, night game against Baltimore. I think either of those teams could win. So we're grabbing the plus 150 and we're putting them with two different teams.

One is the Falcons. Alternate line, four and a half against Tampa Bay. It's in Tampa. Kyle Pitts might not play. I'm still not worried. The Falcons have figured out this weird gimmicky, you can't stop our run game. Guys are going in all different

directions. We're winning games where Mariota only throws for 71 yards. We're winning games when we rush for 14 times in a row. I don't understand it. We're going to ride them. And if you do Cincy plus 150 Falcons alternate line plus four and a half plus 560, let's put 50K on that. And then Cincy plus 150 with the Cowboys to actually beat the Rams, plus 194 is plus 635. We're putting 50K on that as well. Okay. The big one. I don't think I've ever bet this much money on a million dollar picks game. Thank God this money isn't real, but we got to get rid of some debt. This is the classic thing they tell you not to do. This is the thing casinos love. I don't care.

Bronchitis Bill is here to save himself from real life Bill. We're doing a parlay that is plus 106. San Francisco to beat the Carolina Panthers. They have the best defense in the league. Carolina can't stay out of their own way they are 28th in DVOA 78 points in four games 56

first downs 32nd in the league 31st in DVOA offensively third down they're only converting 25.5% of the time now they're going against this maniacal Niners defense give me the minus 290 for San Francisco give me the all under for the game. We're bringing it all the way up to 49 and a half.

Are these two teams going to score 50 points? No way. And then we're throwing in Jacksonville minus 340. Comeback win. I still believe in the Jags against Houston at home. They're minus seven favorites. We're going to grab the money line. All three of those plus 106.

We're betting a million dollars on that game. It is million dollar picks. We're betting a million dollars on that game. It is million dollar picks. We're betting a million dollars on that parlay. Week five, the comeback begins. Those are your million dollar picks for week five. All right, that's it for the pod. Thanks to Ben and thanks to Peter. Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing.

Thanks to Dylan Berkey and Steve Cerruti as well. I will be back on this feed on Sunday. If you get bored of me, go check out Plain English with Derek Thompson and Slow News Day with Kevin Clark. I was on those podcasts as well. And I will see you on Sunday. I don't have feelings with him

on the wayside on the wayside I don't have