The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Very Best NFL Offense, Fantasy Football Tips, and KD’s Pause Button With Ben Solak, Danny Kelly, Steven Ruiz, and Matthew Berry

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

The Ringer's Bill Simmons shares his thoughts on sports happenings during his break from podcasting (2:26) before he is joined by Danny Kelly, Ben Solak, and Steven Ruiz to discuss who will be the highest scoring offense for the 2022 NFL season, as well as the best scoring title odds (24:13). Finally, Bill talks with NBC Sports' Matthew Berry about his departure from his longtime position at ESPN, tips for prepping your fantasy football big board, the benefits of shifting to a super-flex league, Matthew and Bill's top-five fantasy prospects, QB rankings, and more (56:11). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Matthew Berry, Danny Kelly, Ben Solak, and Steven Ruiz Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And then The Ringer NFL show. Every day is breaking down a different big subplot of the season. Ringer gambling show, same thing. They've been doing futures, like best division bets, best long shot bets. We are covering football all over the place. We're soloist podcast

as well. Coming up on this podcast, I have a little something at the top. I'm going to try something in the first segment. And then after that, Danny Kelly, Ben Solak, Stephen Ruiz from The Ringer. We're going to try to figure out who is the highest scoring team of the 2022 NFL season, which you can now gamble on, which we'll talk about during the segment. And then last but not least, Matthew Barry, formerly of ESPN, formerly we were teammates at ESPN, now he's at NBC. And we're going to do our annual fantasy preview. He's going to tell us why he made the move to NBC.

And fun to talk to him. As always, it's all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, we're taping this on a Tuesday afternoon. When I was on my break, I was messing around with ideas for a segment that I could do at the top of the podcast, like 10 minutes, 12, 15 minutes, whatever. Just things that weren't totally worth the segment, but I wanted to talk about it anyway. Like things that are like basically too good for tweets, not quite good enough for their whole segment. So I was thinking it's a little like happy hour where somebody shows up at four o'clock and you have the half price app, the apps like, Hey, you want some mozzarella sticks?

You want some chicken wings? It's a little like that. These aren't entrees. They're more appetizers. Then I was thinking in beautiful girls when they go to a stinky's bar and he's trying to get them to eat the apps. He's like, I got free apps.

I got free apps. So I guess I would call this segment free apps. Call it happy hour, but I feel like there's a million happy hour TV show gimmicks. I'm going to go free apps for this, unless somebody can come up with a better name. I have some free apps for you. First of all, the Kevin Durant saga, which allegedly is over. They released a joint statement today, the Brooklyn Nets. they said kd joe sai and his wife rich climbing katie's business manager steve nash and sean marks all met somewhere and they all agreed that this saga is now over they're moving on kevin durant will be a brooklyn net so i immediately went to twitter and thanked him for the two months of content for The Ringer on behalf of everyone on The Ringer. It was great. Podcasts, written pieces, all wonderful stuff. We know the real reason this saga is ending because there wasn't a team desperate enough to trade him. And because Brooklyn smartly said, we're not trading him unless we get an unbelievable offer. And that's it. We're not giving away. We're not trading him for 40 cents a dollar.

This is what I predicted on this podcast two months ago. That desperate team never came. But I don't think the saga is over. I think it's on pause. I think both sides know that once the season starts, things change. Teams become unhappy with their rosters. Players become unhappy.

You just never know. So this is a hedge your bets move by everyone involved. You end the drama. Josiah clearly put his foot down. And you just say, let's go into the season. Let's see if we can figure this out. Maybe Ben Simmons will be healthy. Maybe Kyrie will be happy.

Look at our roster. What if TJ Warren's healthy? Try to talk yourself into some sort of reality that Brooklyn's a contender. What's interesting is I think there are odds to win the title on Fandle or 701 before all this started. Now they're back at 701, which I just disagree with because this is a team that got their ass kicked by the Celtics. The best case scenario for this would be the 2007-2008 Lakers. Kobe has the trade request that summer. He wants out. Depending on what you believe, he almost went to Chicago. He definitely almost went to Detroit.

That one seemed to be true. I think it was Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince and lots of picks and Jerry Buss, who one of the best owners of all time and eventually a really good character on an HBO show. He put his foot down and he said, what are we doing?

We're not giving away Kobe. This guy's one of the best players in the league. Stop. Ends up keeping him. So I went back and I looked up that 2008 Lakers season because everything changes on one of the darkest days for Boston fans or people hate the Lakers when the last 15 years that other teams reacted like fantasy football owners who didn't realize that their drunk friend just traded their best quarterback and didn't even chop the quarterback. at an outdoor bar, having a great time, killing time, killing 48 hours until the Pats went 19-0 against the Giants. Guess what happened? Pau Gasol gets traded.

I can still see it on that little TV. And we're like, wait, that's all? That's all they gave up for him? That's it? Kwame Brown? Crittenden? It's like they freaking stole him. Where was everybody else? We're having a heart attack about it.

And then two days later, the Pats lost to the Giants. Not the most awesome weekend, other than it was a birthday trip for my dad. But the Lakers are 28-16 on the day of that trade. Kobe scored 46 that night. They were 29-9 after the trade. They were 65-17 the next season. And my point is this.

If you're going to say that the parallels to this situation are the Kobe thing 15 years ago, they still need the Pau Gasol type trade. And what all of this does is it buys time. Like, could Simmons be in that trade? Could it be Kyrie Irving on an expiring contract? Could they patch some pieces and maybe it's Joe Harris and a couple of contracts and they're taking on somebody else's expensive asset because somebody wants to dump salary or they want to

reboot or whatever? They're buying time to see if they can get their version of the Pau Gasol trade. Right now, I don't think they have one of the three best teams in the East, and I don't even think it's really arguable. I think the Celtics are better. I think Milwaukee is better. I think Miami is better. And then if whatever we get from Harden, if Harden is closer to three years ago Harden than the last two years Harden,

then Philly's probably better. But regardless, they bought themselves some time. And if you're KD, what are you going to do? You can be as mad as you want, but you're under contract for four years and they weren't going to trade you for 30 cents a dollar, which brings me back to my point. I don't think this saga is over.

I think it's on pause. So that's my first one. My second free app for you. It's a free app, Kimmy. Not bad. I don't mind it. I was thinking about the concept of the Friday news dump, which is just,

I think the roots of it started in Hollywood, but now it's all over the place and sometimes it happens in sports. The Friday news dump, when there's bad news, you want to get out there. A lot of times people wait until 5.30, 6 o'clock on a Friday night because it's the best time to kind of drop something and then

there's not some news cycle after. I remember this happened to me right when I had my HBO show. They got rid of the guy who ran HBO, Michael Lombardo, and it was a classic Friday news dump. It was like 3 o'clock Friday. I was like, oh my God, what's happening? What's the reverse of the Friday news dump? I think we have seen over the last year or so with this just bizarre reporting scoop infrastructure that we have now that I don't think anybody really likes. There's this new thing, especially in the NBA. I don't see it in the other sports. It's really NBA driven where on a Monday, there's some story that comes out

that is supposed to basically get the news cycle going for the next 24 to 48 hours. And in some cases, you can see the reporters basically holding the story until that Monday so they can start the cycle. And the goal is like, you drop that thing, the story comes out, and then First Take talks about it. All the podcasts can talk about it.

It's on PTI, and the cycle starts. It's the opposite of the Friday News dump. I think it's called the Monday News Reach is my working title because it's never really awesome news. It always feels flimsy. Maybe it's the Monday flimsy news, something like that. A good example yesterday, Sham Sharania on The Athletic, he wrote a piece about how the Grizzlies were kicking the tires on Kevin Durant. And then you read the article and it's like, yeah, they have a bunch of picks, but John Morant's off limits and so is Desmond Bain and so

is Jaron Jackson. It's like, wait, does that mean the Grizzlies are interested in Kevin Durant? Because I'm sure they're interested in him if they could get him for 10 cents on the dollar. That sounds great. Yeah. Here's Steven Adams and some crappy picks. Over and over again on Mondays, this seems to happen. There was another one where it was like, if you go back on the Mondays, it's always like, Kyrie Irving would love to go to the Lakers. It's like, I'm sure he would. I'm sure he doesn't want to be in the Nets anymore.

I'm sure he would love to go to the Lakers. But guess what? The Nets aren't taking Russell Westbrook back. So you see these things where it's either, it's planted by somebody, it's planted by somebody who has something to gain from it. It's either a player that is trying to get some new narrative going

about what city, what team, what their future is going to be, or it's the team trying to lay down something. But either way, there's always some sort of agenda and it's always on a Monday now. So the Monday flimsy news reach, I don't know. We need some sort of title. If you have any ideas, send them to Kyle. He looks at his Twitter replies. My next one for you, I was on a text thread with Red Sox fans because we're all going

nuts about this Red Sox season. And people get mad when the Boston fans, because we've had so much success over the last 20 years, I guess we're just not supposed to care anymore when the teams go south. We're just be like, oh, we're supposed to be grateful that we had all these titles. We're not supposed to care about sports anymore. I never understood how that worked. So they win the title in 2018. It is the best start to finish Red Sox season ever. It is also the 100th anniversary of when they won the 1918 World Series. And within a year, they traded Babe Ruth. And I was never a curse of the B&B, no believer. It was more of an organizational failure thing that doomed this team over and over again. You go through the Ted Williams era, you go through

the 60s, they work out. People like through the Ted Williams era. You go through the 60s. They work out. People like Jackie Robinson don't sign them. They were the last baseball team to not have a black player. You go to the 70s. They have the best young team probably of the decade. And by 1981, the team's been decimated over and over again. It was organizational incompetence.

And that was why the Red Sox always fell short. And yeah, there was DNA and there was the fatalism. And you could feel it sometimes in Fenway. I wrote an entire book about this. It's called Now I Can Die in Peace. 04 flips, the Red Sox get their mojo. We become just another expensive sports franchise. They win four titles from 2004 to 2018.

The fear is that the organizational incompetence era is back. It is not like I'm not going to do the, oh, they traded Mookie and it's the curse of the Mookie bets. I don't believe that. I do believe in the organizational incompetence. And you look at everything they've done, really, we're looking at three years now from how they handled the Mookie thing on down. And off the Pike podcast, Brian Barrett did a great job of laying out just how terrible

the GM Heimblum was the last 10 months, just every inexplicable decision. My fear is that if now the old Red Sox are back, which I really hope that's not true. They have a good farm system, whatever. But that Mookie trade, as we get further and further away from it, you look at the Dodgers, I looked at the standings of the Dodgers are 84 and 36. Mookie's a big piece of it, obviously. My fear is that Mookie trade is going to start to take this outsized kind of historical importance. And that was what I was on a text thread about because we knew in the moment, much like if you go back and you read anything about the late 1910s when they traded

Babe Ruth, it's like, you're trading Babe Ruth? That guy's amazing. Why are you doing that? And it was because they had an idiot owner. In this case, they already blew with bets. It feels like they've blown it with Bogarts, whether you want to pay him 100 plus million, who knows. But then the Devers piece is the other major piece of this, that you have this guy in his mid-20s whose the arrow is pointing up. You could have taken care of him for the year you didn't.

And I'm just getting a little worried the old Red Sox are back. It feels like the owners who, you know, they're trying to build this Fenway Sports Group empire. They're trying to get an NBA team in Las Vegas. That is not me guessing. That is a fucking fact. I'm telling you,

they're trying to get an NBA team in Las Vegas. They bought the Penguins. They have Liverpool. They're trying to build this whole sports armada, basically, and they forgot about the Red Sox. So the Mookie trade, I'm just flagging it now. I really hope like seven years from now, that just doesn't become one of theirs.

Because that's what I grew up with, with fucking narratives and people going, oh, then when we had the Carlton Fisk, and you just go all the way through, I hope the old Red Sox aren't back. Next thing for me, I was thinking about the Sean Watson thing

in the NFL and obviously a reprehensible saga start to finish. It just couldn't have gone worse, really for anyone involved. The Cleveland Browns, horrible for them. It just couldn't have gone worse, really, for anyone involved. The Cleveland Browns, horrible for them. They just couldn't have come off worse. Watson couldn't have come off worse. Changed the story 10 times. Just impossible to root for at this point. Goodell,

yet another disaster for him. At this point, if you go a scale of 1 to 10 of Goodell fuck-ups, Ray Rice probably a 10. Bounty Gates an 8.5. I would say this was start to finish at least an 8. And it's going to linger through the season. What's interesting to me about the Watson thing is, and maybe this was I was writing pieces for ESPN and for Grantland at the end of the 2000s, into the 2010s. And people were really critical of football, really critical.

Like we had all really had it with how violent the game was, how they were denying the concussions and the CT, the old players. And it just, there seems something fundamentally, like almost evil about the sport and how it was run. And all these rich billionaires just wreaking havoc over cities, forcing them to build stadiums, over the ex-players, their moral compass. Everything just seemed way off to the point that it was starting to affect

how people felt about football, including me. And I still loved it. I love gambling on it. I love playing fantasy and yet love the Patriots, obviously. And we had a great ride with Brady and the crew, but there was something unseemly about football. And, you know, deep down, you're just kind of like, I wish I didn't like football this much. And I don't feel like I was the only one who felt that way. And I certainly wrote enough pieces about it in the moment where it was like, man, this is just pretty brutal.

Just all things considered, the human element of it, how they regard people, how they regard social situations. Like it's just, I just wish I didn't like this league. And then you think like the, then the Kaepernick situation happens and the national anthem and it's just on and on. It's just the league would just keep shooting itself in the foot. And, and then the pandemic happened

and guess what? People really miss football. Now I feel like football is more powerful and impervious to criticism than ever before. If anything, this stuff seems to just bounce off people now. Like this Watson story was horrible. It was just horrible. Like my daughter doesn't care about football, but if she was a big football fan, I can't even imagine the conversations I would have about this with her. And yet, ultimately, it's like people expect it now.

They expect the worst from football at all times, and they don't really care. It's like we've all kind of looked at this, and we've made our peace with it, how we feel, and we still watch it, and we still care, and we just assume that a lot of times stuff is going to happen that is just really fucked up. And in some cases, just socially unconscionable. I don't know where this goes, but I do know that the NFL is worth more money than it's probably ever been worth before.

The rights that they're going to get from the media, the next media deal. It's going to dwarf everything. If you go look at the most popular broadcast of the year, it's like NFL, NFL across the board. Like even the NBA was trying to get momentum on Christmas. The NFL is like, fuck you. They put their games there on Christmas. They get five times the rating. And it's just like the NFL is unstoppable. And I think the difference in 2022 versus where we were in that 2008 to 2015 range was we still felt like there was a way that maybe things could change. Maybe there was some better way that the NFL could be. And I think now in 2022, everybody kind of sees it for what it is. And if you don't want to watch it anymore, you don't. And if you do want to watch it, you accept all awards and they're fucking ugly.

But the Watson thing, I think tied into that, where it just feels like this is going to happen every year with this league, where there's yet another thing and you go, huh, that fucking sucks. Jesus. And then, you know, you go, huh, that fucking sucks. Jesus. And then, you know, you've already kind of made your decision.

I can't believe the NFL, out of all the sports heading into like the mid-2020s here, has weathered the storm better than any of the other ones. Like even like you think about the rule changes, like baseball, as the sport became more sophisticated over the last 20 years, it really hurt how much we enjoyed the sport, right? The shift, all the pitching changes,

the emphasis on stats, the fact that we can't really argue about the stuff. The sport became way more localized. It became slower to play. We had to put the fence around the stands because people kept getting hit with foul balls because they're looking at their phones. And just in general, like baseball just feels like, I was watching that Jeter documentary and baseball feels like it's in a worse place than it was 20 years ago. Basketball, you could argue in some ways is in a worse place, some way it's in a better place. I don't know with the style of play. It has shifted so far

toward the threes that you could argue, even though that might be a little more interesting for fans and the spacing, but there's a generic way that it's played now that I'm not positive is great. I'm also not sure that Steph Curry, that three-pointer should be worth two points to the way it is. Should Steph Curry be the most dominant player in the league over Giannis? So you could argue either way, right? With football, pretty much for the on-the-field product, everything is better, right? They made the game way safer. They protected quarterbacks in a totally different way. They made offense more fun and they made the game significantly less violent. So you could argue football from 2007, just as a competitive sport, the way it's played to now

is in a much better place. So just conundrums everywhere with football. It's a very strange time to be a football fan. And I think post-pandemic, when people were just looking for anything and football came back, that felt like the moment when we just kind of, yeah, we just kind of move on. So, okay. We're going to take a break. We're going to come back. We're going to talk to the fellas from The Ringer. Kick off week one with FanDuel, America's number one sports book. Join today to get started with $150 in free bets guaranteed.

When you place your first $5 bet, just sign up with promo code BS to get in on the action. Then you can turn game day into payday all season long. We are about to do a segment where we're going to try to figure out the highest scoring team for the 2022 NFL season. There are ways you can bet on this. We are all going to give our picks. So stay tuned for that segment.

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1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York. Tennessee red line is 800-889-9789. And in West Virginia, 1800gamber.net. This episode is brought to you by Prime Video. You know me, I can't go a day without sports. I really can't. And now Monday nights are all about hockey. That's right.

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Crosby, the NHL is best. They're all on prime prime Monday night hockey. It's on Monday. It's on prime. All right. Bringing in the big guns here. Danny Kelly,

Ben Solak, Steven Ruiz, first appearance on the BS podcast. We're going to try to figure out the best offense in the NFL through the proxy of highest scoring team. Why does highest scoring team matter?

One, we can bet on it. In FanDuel, I actually basically forced them to do prop because it's been out there, but now it is on FanDuel. But two, Solak, a pretty good indication that you're going to be good at football if you score a ton of points. Turns out, my research

says this is a good thing to score lots of points. Yeah, this is one of those things that we really got to break down in depth here, but when you score a lot of them, tend to win the football games. It's funny, though. When you go and you look back, the top scoring teams is actually like really

volatile i thought it was just going to be like the best offenses every year and go ahead there's only one team in last five years that's won the scoring title that in the year previous was even in the top 10 of top scoring teams right like the cowboys won it last year they were 16th the year before packers won in 2020 15th the year before ravens in 2019 13 2020, 15th the year before. Ravens in 2019, 13th the year before. When the Rams won it in 2017, they had been the last team in the league, 32nd in 2016. They obviously got McVay and that kind of changed their fortunes a little bit. But it is

a bit of a one-off, which makes it fun. She's not like, oh, who do we bet? The Chiefs or the Bills? You can bet zany teams here and be very justified. Ruiz, did you know Minnesota scored the most points last year? I'm sorry, Dallas? Because I did not know that. And by the way, it was pretty

convincing. They finished with 530. Tampa had 511. They were the only teams that averaged 30 points a game. The third team was Buffalo at 483. So you didn't know that? No, I was shocked when I looked it up today. Because all I remember is conversations in December and January

where everyone was like, this scheme sucks. This offense sucks. They need to evolve it. So yeah, when I looked that up, I was like, so maybe we don't need the best team. We don't need to pick out the best team. Maybe it's not the Bills or the Chiefs.

Maybe it's someone else. Do you know what the secret sauce there was? What? So the Buccaneers outscored them in terms of passing touchdowns. They had 43 to Cowboys 40 and rushing touchdowns. They had 18 to the Cowboys 15.

But the Cowboys had nine return touchdowns. Defense. Because they had so many pick sixes because they were generating so many turnovers. The next closest in terms of return touchdowns, which I think is like defense and special teams, was Miami with six. So the Cowboys were there at nine. So

basically, we're going to try to figure out who's going to win the scoring title. But if somebody across the league decides to Trevon Diggs, we're all screwed. That's not happening. That juiced the stats. I look back at the last six years, there was only one, two, seven, eight, nine,

11 teams in the last five years that averaged 30 points a game. I would have guessed way higher than that. Um, last year we had two 2020, we had five Green Bay, Buffalo, Tampa, Tennessee, new Orleans, 2019. It was only the Ravens five 31. That was like the big Lamar season. He was, they were 42 points out of the next team in 18. We had Casey with five 65, um, Rams five 27, New Orleans five Oh four. And then nobody in 2017, Danny, am I crazy to think this is going to be a high scoring year? Like, I feel like we could have four to five teams in that 500 plus range?

What do you think big picture? I hope so. I hope that this year, last year, I think the pendulum swung to the defense a little bit. It felt like the too high stuff started to take over. It was confounding even the best quarterbacks in the NFL. You started seeing more dink and dunk stuff. I don't know if it's going to

happen, but maybe teams started to figure out or at least just practice it more in terms of how they're going to attack these two high looks and maybe they get more efficient. Maybe they start to score more points. I think the quarterback situation is better in the NFL than it has been in a long time. Agreed. So that to me, those couple of

variables could maybe swing the pendulum back towards the offense a little bit. Plus, isn't there going to be a stronger emphasis on illegal contact? That is like the NFL juicing the system. They're like, we want more points. We want teams to stay on the field and third down.

You know what I mean? This is going to be a major factor potentially. So, yes. I think there's going to be more points this year. They always sneak that in. Oh, yeah. This is totally intentional, too, by the way. They want offense. They want to make it as hard on the defense as possible, which is sneak that in. Oh, yeah. This is like totally intentional, too, by the way. Like they want offense. They want, you know,

they want to make it as hard on the defense as possible, which is it sucks for defenders, I suppose, but it's good for, I think, like the fans. I think with the emphasis thing, we always hear about that in the preseason.

And then what do you think? Eight out every nine times it doesn't stick. The one time is when they really started to crack down on people touching the quarterback. I forget what year

that was, but that's when they were like the whole year they stuck with that. But for the most part, they'll throw these things at us. Oh no, we're doing this this year. Better watch out. And then before it's gone. A legal contact is a weird one because they've emphasized it twice before. They did it in 2004

and then the illegal contact flags went from 79 to 191, which is a substantial chunk. And then they did it again in 2014 and that went from 52 to 148. So I don't think the illegal contact emphasis endures because this

is the third time now they've done it. I don't think it lasts through the seasons, but in the season in which they emphasize it, we tend to get hammered with it, especially early in the season, which just blows. I don't know if it has too much of an impact. So you think it overs? Are we going overs the first four weeks? I don't know how much of an impact. I don't know

what it is week to week. In 2004, scoring went from 20.8 points per game to 21.5 points per game. So small jump. That was one of the highest scoring seasons of that era. And then in 2014, it went down. It went from 23.4 to 21.5 points per game. So small jump. That was one of the highest scoring seasons of kind of that era. And then in 2014, it went down. It went from 23.4 to 22.8, I think. No, 22.6, excuse me.

So I don't know what it does season to season-wise. Like I said, maybe it's just like early game spikes. I haven't looked at it in terms of week to week, but the illegal contact emphasis does tend to have like a one-season impact, which again, blows. Danny, this might be Seattle's offense. Maybe they take advantage of this. This is the key. The Flacco just chuck it downfield and hope

for a flag. Receivers in traffic. Who's the better quarterback for that approach? Is it Drew Locke or Geno? Do you have a quarterback that can throw 40 yards? I mean, Drew Locke is more willing, I think, to push it into triple coverage. So, you know, that could be a good thing. This is our secret.

Are you aware of how big of a Geno Smith fan you have on the podcast for the first time here? Tell us, Ruiz. Let's hear it. I've been a big Geno fan. Don't bring up Ben McAdoo and Eli Manning around. This goes back to the Giants days. The Geno truth are over here. Here's my thing. Giants fans,

shame on you. You guys could have saved yourself five years of hurt if you guys just let Geno play out the rest of that year and then not convince the Giants front office to run it back with Eli Manning. Then you ended up with Daniel Jones as a result. You ended up drafting a running back second and overall. I'm going to cut myself off there. I'm not going to

go any further. Well, it is one of those sliding doors moments. And there was a good ESPN feature about it a couple years ago when he got punched by his teammates. By his teammate. I forget the guy's name. I.K. Ancompali, I think it was. And he was the starter in preseason.

They had a pretty good offense. And it was literally his career was never the same. And by the time he was healthy, the team had gone in a different direction. And that was it. But when they started him, what was that? A Thursday night game or a Monday night game last year? I've always kind of liked him too.

I remember betting on the Seahawks in that game. It's like, ah, Gino. Was that the Saints game? Did you win? I think it was the Saints game. I think they covered, but they did not win, right? Yeah. It was one of those.

Didn't you lose at the tail end? Danny, did you block last season out of your mind? Yes. Absolutely. No idea. No memory of those. Didn't you lose the talent? Danny, did you block last season out of your mind? Yes, absolutely. No idea. No memory of that. So before we talk about the favorites, I think we all kind of like the same sleeper.

Or maybe some of us do. Solak laid it out at the beginning, talking about the variance, the volatility, the Rams going from 32nd to first. I'm staring at the Vikings are 22 to one. Lousy division potentially. Worst case scenario, mediocre division. But if Green Bay is not as good as maybe some people think,

could be a bad division. Pretty easy schedule. Thielen's back. A lot of Thielen buzz right now. A lot of fantasy sleeper buzz with them. Good running back situation. They have one of the best receivers in the league. Cousins has put up the numbers. Now they got rid of Mike Zimmer.

A little offense-friendly coach. I don't know. Solak's smiling. What do you think, Solak? It's because of the Kirk Cousins puts up the numbers argument where it's like, I refuse to believe it because it's Kirk, but also to believe it because it's Kirk, but also that's what Kirk is.

Kirk is empty stats, like winning, like having being the most successful offense, scoring the most points on offense and also like going 10 and seven and getting creamed in the wildcard round. It's just like the most Kirk thing. It'd be the Kirkiest of all Kirks. And like, I can see it happening for that reason.

I agree that when you get like outside of the top groups the Vikings are one of the most enticing uh groups besides the Kirk aspect of everything what still does give me pause is the Kevin O'Connell look because I don't I don't think I know just yet what Kevin O'Connell is and I would love to say with confidence that because of what Cooper Cup was to the Rams last year when Kevin O'Connell was running that offense, that O'Connell is the guy to solve this Kirk feeding Justin Jefferson issue that's kind of been festering

in Minnesota for a couple of years. I'm not confident enough yet to say that. If I were, I'd be like all the way on board. That's my pause besides also Kirk Cousins being the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings. Yes, because following in the footsteps of offensive guru Mike Zimmer is going to be real tough for Kevin O'Connor.

Clint Kubiak, baby. He was a visionary in terms of NFL offense. I think there's a way that you can really build a good argument for this, even if it's maybe not going to happen. I've actually sent this to you, Bill, before. The Kirk Cousins versus Dak Prescott career numbers are almost

exactly the same, minus the rushing yards. I'm not actually saying this. Look at the stats. They're almost identical. If you covered up the names, you would have no idea which guy was which guy. Just two fourth round quarterbacks succeeding in the exact same way. Ruiz is groaning,

but you know what else is identical? Their playoff success. Because Dak doesn't have any. And to me, like the Dak thing, I get it. People love him and whatever. He's a great guy. But the proof is in there.

He just hasn't done it on a big stage. And he's basically the same guy's cousins. But everybody hates cousins. So we're not allowed to say this. I don't know. And by the way, who put up the most points last year? Dak. I was about to say.

The other Kirk Cousins. I have to ask, is this Kirk Cousins' appreciation or is it Mac Jones' cope? Because I feel like when you get used to that type of quarterback, you start to appreciate quarterbacks like him. That's a real thing. You know when Tom Brady was like, I guess he was talking about

Derek Carr. That's the rumor going around. You're going to stay with that guy? When you're Tom Brady, you look at Derek Carr as one of those bad quarterbacks. But when you have a mediocre quarterback, maybe you appreciate Derek Carr a little more. I'm saying you got... I think you need to remember what Tom Brady was

and have higher standards for your quarterbacks. The Mac Jones slander out of nowhere. I don't understand it. Catching strays. I am not a Kirk Cousins fan, just for the record. I have had him on fantasy and it was shocking how many times you throw him in there and you kind of feel pretty comfortable that he's going to get 25 to 29 points. He does put up stats. You do not want to bet on him ever in a tease where you've teased him down

from 8.5 to 2.5. You just need them to win by a field goal and that's when he kills you. All you do is you live fade the Vikings. Just wait until they go up nice 14 to 3 in the second quarter and you go, and now we bet on the other team.

Somehow, Kirk finds a way to throw four touchdowns and then the Vikings still score 23 points. I know that's mathematically impossible, but Kirk finds a way to throw four touchdowns and then the Vikings still score 23 points. I know that's mathematically impossible, but Kirk finds a way. They play the AFC East and the NFC East. If I was picking divisions, those would be

two of the three I would probably want. They also have the Bears twice. They have Detroit twice. I don't know. It's certainly not a lot of ones. So you mentioned Brady. Tampa, which I think they're one of the favorites in here.

They are plus 950. So the odds right now, Buffalo's plus 650, Tampa plus 950, Casey's 10 to 1, Chargers 10 to 1, Rams 11 to 1, and then it starts to get bigger.

The Tampa offensive line thing has, and combined with Brady just disappearing for 10 days, and the new coach, I have some real concerns about Tampa now. And I think there's a difference between trying to look at stuff to get worried about versus actually being legitimately concerned. And what I see is a 45-year-old quarterback who hasn't had a full training camp, who retired and unretired, and now an offensive line that was excellent

last year that is going to be lucky to be mediocre this year. Ruiz, what do you see with Tampa this year? I'm not concerned about the offensive line. I'm going to go the other way with it. I think having a bad interior, which is, that's where the injuries have been in the retirements. They've lost Marpet, they lost their left guard the other it. I think having a bad interior, which is that's where the injuries have been in the retirements. They've lost Marpet.

They lost their left guard the other day. I think that's going to prevent or kind of dissuade Byron Lefkowitz from calling a lot of runs because the type of runs they do call, they need a strong interior. So maybe Brady drops back even more than he already was. And there are

already like a high pass rate team. And then he's going to get rid of the ball quickly. He's not going to take sacks. And they have just too many weapons for teams to man them up and kind of disrupt their timing. I think Brady's going to be able to get rid of the ball in like 2.5 seconds every snap. And it's not going to be an issue.

Well, he's done that before. You agree with that or disagree, Danny? I think that there's reason to pause a little bit and maybe not, you know, make them the favorite or whatever, because look, they have injuries on the offensive line. Now, Mike Evans is out with like a hammy. Chris Godwin's coming back from an ACL. Antonio Brown's no longer in the picture. Gronk is at least not going to start the season on the team. So the weapons, I think, are significantly downgraded, at least for a while. So that is another factor. But at the same time, they have a lot of depth at the receiver position. There's a lot of pretty intriguing guys. I know in the Dynasty fantasy world, like Tyler Johnson, Jalen Dard,

and a couple of these other guys, people are pretty excited about them. They're just... Dynasty fantasy world. What a grim world that is. That's my community. That's my community right there. The world where Mina Kimes

is looking to see if she had Dalton Keene on her Dynasty roster when it got waived. Yeah, exactly. That's rough. Uh, the other thing with Tampa, a rough schedule this year.

It's so, so like anything to add before we move on, I'm crossing off Tampa. I don't see them getting that. I'm, I'm, I'm worried. Cause I think the book has always been interior pressure on Tom.

Make that, that area in which he wants to step up, make that area. He wants to manage as muddy as possible. When the Saints are able to shut down the Bucs and kind of that model that Dennis Allen's put out now for a couple of years, it's with rushing with form, running a ton of games.

And when you put young guys, guys who haven't had a lot of snaps at left guard, center, which is where they're weak right now, you're going to get miscommunications and problems. I think you just see that that interior mucking is really the bad spot. I think if the Bucs could have chosen do we lose guys on the interior? Do we lose guys on the outside? They would have picked

outside without blinking. Stephen's making a face at me, but I'm right. No way. No team would pick that. No team would pick that. That's ridiculous. I think you can help that out with scheme more easily as opposed to having Luke taking left guard snaps for some reason. So to me, I'm worried about it. I'm also... I wouldn't want to be taking the Bucs, especially at snaps for some reason. To me, I'm worried about it. I wouldn't want to be

taking the Bucs, especially at the second highest price. To me, that's not necessary. Buffalo, which I was surprised was the favorite, I think it makes sense until you actually think about it. One, it's a cold weather team. You think of the last

six games of the season for them, just December on, they're at New England, home Jets-Dolphins, at Chicago, at Cincinnati, home New England. So none of those are like, you know, great shakes. They have a tougher schedule too. The case for them, other than the fact that we know their offense is going to,

I think we would all have them probably in the top six if you were just ranking your favorite offenses, is what you said at the top, Solak, about defenses scoring. So if they're piling up, especially you see these really good teams, they're up 40 to 14 in the fourth quarter and they get that one last pick six

or fumble or whatever with three minutes to go. So the defensive stuff, I think would be an asset for them. But in general, it's weird. Everybody says they have the most talented roster, and I don't know if I agree. I think they have a really good team, but I don't feel like this is this crazy loaded roster.

What do you think, Ruiz? Yeah, and I think they have offensive line issues too. And I think those offensive line issues matter more with Josh Allen. I know he can get away from that pressure, but when you put Josh Allen in the scramble mode, mistakes happen. And this was another team that really relied on turnovers last year.

They had the 2019 Patriots thing going on where they played a bunch of bad quarterbacks and they led the NFL in average starting field position. I don't know if that's going to happen again. And I think that made things easier for an offense that was kind of inconsistent. We forget about that because of how the season ended. But Josh Allen averaged 6.8 yards per attempt last year.

That was worse than Carson Wentz. I mean, that matters. Yeah. Well, you talk about the quarterbacks they're going against. Just in the first seven weeks, Stafford, Tannehill, the most polarizing quarterback of 2022, Tua, Lamar, Pittsburgh, which you're going to say is Trubisky, but I just feel like that's going to be Jimmy G by the time we get to week five. I really thought Jimmy G was going to be in this state. Yeah, that's my take. I think they waived Jimmy G because it makes sense from a cap standpoint. And the team that makes sense is

Pittsburgh because I kind of like that Pittsburgh team. And if I'm them, if I could get you, I'm doing it. Kansas City, week six for them, then Rogers after the bye week in week eight. So it's a little bit different than the bad quarterback souffle they had last year. The other thing with Buffalo,

I was surprised that, so last year they were only at 483. I would have thought that they were one of the 500-plus teams. So I don't know. To me, they're a cross-off, too. I'm looking at the KC-Chargers combo, Solek. I think it's one of those two. That division's going to be super fun.

I think we're going to have... What was that game we had that one year with the chiefs Rams where it was like 50. What was that? Like 50, 51 to 48, 51, 48, whatever.

I do feel like that division is capable of one of those, but I have those two targeted. Um, right now we said before that was Casey 10 to one chargers, 10 to one. To me, those are the two favorites. What do you think of that take?

Yeah. See, I, I like the bills. Like if you think of that take? Yeah, see, I like the Bills. If you made me just pick one team against the field, I'm probably taking the Bills and they're favored for this. At price, where it's like 6.5-1 for the Bills and 10-1 for the Chiefs Chargers, I'd rather just take the longer odds because this is such a kind of arbitrary throw-a-dart bet.

I don't have enough confidence in that. The thing with the Bills is putting Allen in scramble mode, I don't have enough confidence in that the thing with the Bills is like I don't like putting Allen in scramble mode I don't care like if he turns it over great like the Bills are just gonna get the ball back and then they're gonna throw it down the field more you know I'm saying like yards per attempt like you know and then

they still outscored the Colts last year like it doesn't matter like it's they're just going to be aggressive they're gonna put points on the board Allen is gonna be a flamethrower yeah they're gonna have six point games against the Jags but this isn't like you know you're disqualified if you score single Allen is going to be a flamethrower. Yeah, they're going to have six-point games against the Jags, but this isn't like, you know, you're disqualified if you score single digits. Like, I just want that flamethrower aspect to it. And that's why the other two teams

that to me make sense are Mahomes and Herbert. Because if there are other guys in the league who can do what Allen does in terms of just deciding to take over a game and put up 35 points, it's Mahomes. And it's Herbert who has the capability to do it. Herbert still

I think has yet to be like fully unlocked into like I am the flamethrower god. I am the man mode. Whereas Mahomes actually has that to him and has proven over time. So if I'm picking between Chiefs Chargers at even price, I'm probably taking the Chiefs just because I have a little bit more faith in Mahomes

just deciding over the course of the season to just take over games, whereas Herbert is still trying to be this perfect pocket quarterback, and Lombardi is still trying to run this perfect West Coast offense. I don't think they fully matured into that. We're a 35-point team sort of philosophy. If I'm picking between the two, I like the Chargers.

Excuse me, I like the Chiefs. But yeah, when we're looking at prices here, I'm not nearly confident off the bills to go like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me 650 over 10 to 1. I'd rather take one of the two lower dogs. So you like Herbert, the 40th best player in the league, according to whatever that weird NFL record was.

Listen, listen. Number 40, Justin Herbert. Number 10 on anyone else's list, except for that one? I cannot even begin to describe to you the way the NFL Top 100 list makes me feel in my heart. It just breaks me to my soul, man.

It's so bad. I saw it. I was watching the preseason game and they were running it on the ticker on the bottom. I hadn't seen it because I think all those lists are always terrible. And they're running and I'm like, oh, oh, whoa. It was just like every time they ran the next 10, I was always startled by, I mean, I love Mac, but putting Mac in the top 100 at this point

is kind of insane. And then Herbert at 40. That also seems insane to me. Danny, Chargers or Chiefs? What do you got? Oh man, this is tough. Just best points. I'm not asking you best team, just most points this season. I'm going Chargers because Chiefs? What do you got? Oh, man. This is tough. Just best points. I'm not asking you best team.

Just most points this season. I'm going Chargers because of the whole package. So, last year, they were second in points per drive. Fifth in points per game. Like, one of the fastest teams. Top six fastest situation neutral offense.

Seventh in plays. So, they're high volume plays. They play fast. They have Justin Herbert at quarterback. They have good players, Mike Williams, Keenan Allen, Austin Echoler.

They upgraded the offensive line this offseason. Like you said, they're playing in that gauntlet of a division where there's going to be potentially a lot of back and forth shootout type games. Couple of game-beating

first five games, right? Cleveland with no Deshaun. Houston week four. Jacksonville week three. And I think to me the edge really is what the Chiefs have on offense in terms of

like their skill players right now. Like Kelsey, I definitely still believe in and obviously Mahomes is Mahomes. But I just, you know, what are we going to,

like is MVS, Juju, the running back situation there isn't as great. Are they going to try and be like more of a run heavy team now because they don't have Tyreek? Like those to me are just just the slightest, slightest edge

goes to Chargers for me for that. What do you got, Ruiz? Yeah, I would go with the Chargers. And one big factor I would add is the stadium, playing indoors. I think that matters when you're talking about Kansas City and Buffalo as the main challengers. And I went to Chargers camp, and people there were just raving about Herbert.

They said he was even better than last year. And I don't know how you get much better than he was last year. And then I saw the scrimmage happen and I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. He's, he's better. He's better. Did you just do the Kevin Clark? I just went to training camp move. AKA the KC. The first thing that came to my mind. I was like, oh no. Why didn't you mix in? And I talked to one of the coordinators there and he told me dot dot dot. I talked to Brandon Staley and he told me

they were going to score 40 a game. The coach came right up to me. He listens to the F1 show. He loves the F1 show. It's incredible. I have Casey. Miami is back. I have Casey over.

I have Casey over the Chargers and here's why. And this ties into a general theme for me in this offseason. I'm all in on the Chiefs because they have the best offensive line in the league now.

We rightly brought up some of their... You disagree. The Eagle fan in me just jumped at that one. No sir, they do not. Go Birds. But the Chiefs are up there. Fine. I have the Chief that one. No sir, they do not. Go birds. Fine. I have the Chiefs one. Mahomes and time makes me a lot

less worried about, hmm, I wonder is Sky Moore going to be able to... All the little questions. Who is scarier in the league in the last 10 years than Mahomes with like 5 seconds? He's always going to find somebody. And you give him five seconds, he'll create eight.

And I just think he's due for one of those, oh, everybody was blowing Joe Burrow in the offseason. And oh, Justin Herbert's the guy. And oh, we've had all this Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady. And then he had such an embarrassing playoff game that that has to be part of this too, that he spends the whole offseason thinking about, you know, I can't believe we're going to be up, what, 18 points heading into halftime

and we completely F that up. And now all of a sudden in the fourth quarter, blah, blah, blah. I just, I feel like this is going to be like his Clint Eastwood unforgiving walking into the bar year and the fact that they can actually block for him this year. I think that matters

more than any other supply you Ruiz. It seems like you agree. Yeah, I think it's going to be easier for them to get explosive plays to it's kind now that Tyreek's gone like defenses aren't going to be selling out and we've already seen in preseason. They're kind of going back to that old Andy offense,

like two running backs, multiple tight ends. And when you play those formations, the defense has no choice but to put a safety in the box. And if they're getting one high again, I don't care if it's not Tyreek Hill. Like Sky Moore is going to eat. Hardman's going to eat. Kelsey's still good.

Marquez. Yeah, I mean... Probably some random guy. We don't even know who the guy is. Jody Watson. Yeah. Danny. Mahomes. Mahomes. Yeah, I agree. There's like this weird thing this offseason where Mahomes is kind of underrated.

If you're like, oh yeah, Mahomes is the best quarterback in the NFL, some people will debate that, but he's the most talented quarterback in the NFL, and he has the best offensive mind. Well, I remember Solak and I talked about that after the Tyreek trade, about basically shifting the spending. Right? Yeah.

Instead of having all their spending on the QB and the receiver, and then you just keep your fingers crossed that your line can block, they kind of went the other way, and now they have an offensive line. Kelsey, who probably has one or two elite years left, depending on how you feel about tight end histories, and Mahomes.

I like this strategy more. I think it's a lot easier. There's so many receivers now. The freaking Rams. Who's that undrafted guy? These guys fall out of the woodwork. It's like, all right, I guess this guy. Or the Dallas punt returner. It just seems like over and over again, you can get at least a little lucky

with that position. And I get it. To spend $25 million a year on Tyreek, how are you going to be able to address all this other stuff? Casey, I think that's probably the safest bet for me. Also, their schedule, it's fine.

The AFC West is going to be tough, obviously, but I'm not too intimidated by that. I love that they get Arizona early. That, I think, would be my pick. So that's all my picks. Let's go around. I like Tennessee at 10 to 1. Kansas City at 10 to 1.

And Minnesota, 22 to 1, like a sprinkling, I think would be my two. What do you have, Solak? Who are you taking? Yeah, I like Chiefs at 10-1. And then I would probably also still take the Bills at plus 650, which I know is chalk. But also in a bet like this, there's no such thing as chalk. I just think the Bills are going to be very good.

I mean, if you do that, you put 100 on each, you're basically putting 200 on plus 650 or 10-1. So I get it. If you do that, you put 100 on each, you're basically putting 200 on plus 650 or 10-1. So I get it. What do you got, Danny? I'm going to stick with the Chargers, just barely 10-1, and then I want to throw out even though I still kind of crush my dreams on this with the repeat thing, but the Cowboys

at 13-1. I still think they're just going to run a lot of plays, and Dak is still good, and they have a lot of talent with CeeDee, Pollard, Zeke. I know that everyone's down on Zeke, but he's still good. I don't know. And then the defense. Ruiz? I'll go with the Bucs at plus 950 and I'm going to

throw out a team that we haven't mentioned. I'm going to say the Packers. I think that defense is going to be really good and they might be the turnover team this year that gets that variance. And then Aaron Rodgers. I'd say Aaron Rodgers. Packers, 16-1. One thing that is fun is if you check teams that

have won this recently, very often the quarterback of this high-scoring team wins MVP in three of the last five years. That was Packers in 2020, Ravens in 2019, and Chiefs in 2018. That quarterback, Rodgers Lamar Mahomes, won MVP. So for example, if plus 2,200 for the Vikings

just isn't spicy enough for you, Kirk Cousins, baby. Plus 4,000. 4,000 to 1,000. Those are max odds. Mack and Kirk are the same odds. But that's the thing. If you go and you... If you are like,

I want to bet Patrick Mahomes for MVP, it's plus 900. You can also just bet Chiefs to be the highest scoring team at plus 1,000. It's not the exact same bet, but it's pretty highly correlated. There's some weird odds in here. Cleveland was 21-1. I was trying to think of any scenario where Cleveland

with Jacoby Brissett for 11 games would be the highest scoring team in the league and literally couldn't come up with any. Arizona was 21-1, which I thought was weird. The Eagles at 17, right next to the Ravens, was also weird. Because it's like, sure, the offenses are similar. The quarterback's a little different. And I don't know if we'd be placing these guys in the same tier just yet.

I've got to say, as I was doing all my fantasy homework, I was mildly shocked by Jalen Hurts' season last year. In a good way. There were some numbers. In my head, I was just, I guess, maybe leaving the Tampa Bay playoff game residue of he was just so overmatched. And it was just so clear that you're not really going that far if Jalen Hurts is your quarterback,

at least last year's incarnation of him. But then you look at the actual stats and it was classic. It was like how the Wentz stats versus what we actually saw with Wentz were like two different animals. I don't trust quarterback stats the same way I used to. You were just Kirk 25 minutes ago. Well, the Kirk-Dak thing was my only point. I don't know if I trust either of those guys. Dak had one of the all-time meltdowns at the end of a game in a crunch time situation that we've seen in the last 10 years. Everybody just shrugs it off. Dak, smiling, great guy. Third and eight game on the line, you have to choose Dak or Kirk. Who do you want to have the

ball? Probably Dak. I don't trust Kirk. That's all I need. I don't trust Kirk at all. That's the thing. Kirk has completed 75% of his passes. He's averaging 10 yards

an attempt. He's got two touchdowns, no interceptions. He scrambled for a first down and yet you're down by three. It's third and eight on the 50 and Kirk is behind center and you feel horrible.

You just feel downright terrible about the situation you've gotten yourself in. That's the reality of Kirk Cousins. Yeah. Well, the real problem with Kirk Cousins is anyone who gambles

has had just some emotionally scarring experiences with that man. That too. Yeah. I mean, just some really, really bad ones. All right.

We can hear Danny and we can hear Stephen Ruiz and we can hear Ben Solak all in the Ringer NFL show. And then on top of that, Danny Kelly and the can hear Steven Ruiz, and we can hear Ben Solak all in the Ringer NFL show. And then on top of that, Danny Kelly and the excellent fantasy football show, which you guys, what are you, like four days a week right now? Yeah, we're going four now.

Just ramping up. Running out of goofy themes that Hypefits text to you guys. We're doing like the rewatch. What if we do wide receivers as vodkas? He's the Andy Reid of bits. He's always got a new one.

I like it. I appreciate it and love it. All right. Good to see you guys. Thank you. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey.

Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research.

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You won't hear them coming. See? Safe riding sets an example. Yeah, an example for me. Because safety is learned. It's learned. Okay, give it up. Give what up? Really?

Really, really. Ugh. This message is brought to you by Metrolinks. All right, Matthew Barry is here. We're taping this on a Tuesday afternoon. This summer, he moved from ESPN after how many years? 16 to NBC? 15.

15 years. 15 and a half, something like that, yeah. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. So you're basically doing the same stuff at NBC. You've just switched houses, but the rooms look the same. Slightly. I'm doing a lot of the same stuff, obviously.

I'll get on the plugs in. I'm doing a daily podcast slash video show that's on Peacock on the new NFL on NBC YouTube channel and wherever you get your podcasts called Fantasy Football Happy Hour. So I'm doing that Monday through Friday. So that's similar. I'm writing for the website. So Love Hate comes out this Thursday. My 100 Facts is up. My rankings will be up.

I'll do the weekly column for NBCSportsEdge.com and Rotoworld.com. We're bringing back Rotoworld. So the column is the same. We'll be doing a Sunday morning show, 11 to 1, before kickoff, Peacock, YouTube channel, other platforms. We'll be doing a Sunday morning show 11 to 1 before kickoff. Peacock

YouTube channel, other platforms we're figuring that all out. That'll be going on. All that is the same. Figuring that all out. It's in two weeks. I know. We're figuring out. I can tell you it will definitely be on Peacock. It will definitely be on the NFL

on NBC YouTube channel. I don't know if it will be on additional NBC platforms. I can tell you it'll definitely be on the NFL on NBC YouTube channel. I don't know if it will be on additional NBC platforms, but I can tell you it'll definitely be on those two. Playboy channel? They own the Playboy channel or no? It can't be on there? They own a lot of channels. I mean, they got Bravo.

They got CNBC. Bravo. Maybe it should be on Bravo. I'm just saying. Maybe a little CNBC action, USA. I don't know. So they have a lot of channels between NBC, Universal. So we'll see if it's on any more platforms, but those two definitely will be.

So all that stuff is the same. The part that's new, Bill, that's exciting for me is I'm on Football Night in America. So I joined the cast of the pregame show for Sunday Night Football. So for the first time in my career, I am part of a company's NFL coverage. That wasn't what I did for ESPN. At ESPN, NFL and fantasy coverage were sort of separate. They were not sort of, they were. They were siloed. And so at NBC, I'm part of NBC's NFL coverage. Siloed was an understatement. Although when you joined in the mid-2000s, fantasy was looked at like, I don't know, like it was snuff porn or something. I was doing it in my column. We had

like a couple rankings people, but for the most part, they didn't. And then that gradually evolved and changed over the next, probably like by the early 2010s, I felt like it was pretty entrenched. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the reasons ESPN brought me there was, I mean, you know, our mutual friends, John Walsh and John Kozner brought me into ESPN with the idea of like,

hey, we know this is an area we need to do more in. And so, you know, help us out here, you know help us out here you know help be you know i was literally told we want you to be the face of fantasy not just for our fans meaning espn's viewers but internally here at espn and so i spent the first two years of my career there and you were very helpful bill you made a lot of calls and being on your show uh early on was influential as well but you know that was a part of it. It's like, I literally spent two years going to every sports center producer, every NFL Live, every Baseball Tonight,

every radio producer, like, here's what fantasy is. Here's why it's important to our fans. Here's the business case for it. Here's the way it might work with your content. What are you guys trying to accomplish with your audience? Here's how I think fantasy can meld into what you guys are trying to accomplish. And I mean, that was probably the first two, two and a half years.

I mean, you were in some of those conversations. You remember that? Yeah. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that's changed since the mid two thousands, we just never successfully figured out fantasy basketball and especially in the player empowerment era. It's just like, unless you're doing daily fantasy to be in a fantasy basketball league, I just feel like is a complete waste of time. I guess you could be in like, whatever,

we have to reinvent that. Fantasy hockey never took off. I think golf for daily fantasy has been good. There's been some fun like season leagues, but really football became even more powerful. Baseball lost a little luster, unless you're in like keeper leagues or American League only or National League only. But it feels like football has kind of sucked the strength out of all the other sports for fantasy. Well, the fantasy games kind of go along the same way that the popularity of the sports are.

I mean, the NFL is the most popular sport in America. It's the most popular fantasy game. I would argue the NBA is the second most popular professional sport. That's the second most popular fantasy game. I would argue the NBA is the second most popular professional sport. That's the second most popular fantasy game. And so on. And then baseball and then hockey and so on down the line. You're right. I mean, DFS, daily fantasy and sports betting have really helped golf. It's really actually helped basketball, baseball. The problem with basketball challenge is probably a better way to phrase it but the challenge with basketball and baseball is the season so long is that to do a season long you know 82 games of basketball 162 of baseball takes work especially because

with late scratches and like you're constantly having to make a lineup change and so it's for the hardcore the hardcore whereas fantasy football because it's basically once a week, you got the Thursday night games, you get the Monday night games, but generally speaking, you're setting your lineup once you're making waiver picks up, pick them once it becomes much more accessible to a much more casual audience. You know, your, your people in the office are hardcore. There aren't hardcore nerds like you and I, like, you know, like, but that's that's where you know somebody like oh yeah I'll join a fantasy league like so it just becomes much more

accessible well when my idiot son can be in a league when he's like 11 right and successfully draft a team and follow it that tells you how accessible it is now my son's like I think year four now he's like really into it plus he's playing football too so it's a whole other whole other level of just like he actually gets it now and he's

the strategy piece of it i mean we'll we'll talk about how uh my my theories on this 2022 season in a second just quickly on the espn thing um hang on one second i'm just curious when you say your son understands the strategy piece of it, does he understand the strategy piece of it from a normal point of view or from your hoard up all the quarterbacks point of view? No, not my twisted point of view. He understands he's at least in level two, which is like, oh, that position is deep. Maybe I don't need that right away. Ooh, this position's a little weaker. So things like that. Basically understanding that if i don't need that right away oh this position's a little weaker so things like that like basically understanding that if i don't get travis kelsey or kyle pitts as my tight end

i could probably wait and just wait till late and get cole commit you know so stuff like that that i was proud of him i was like oh you've reached level two uh absolutely pretty soon he'll be in level nine which is i'm drafting seven quarterbacks and I'm screwing everybody else in the league. Right. On the ESPN thing, were people surprised? What was the general reaction? Did people just think you were going to die in Bristol when you were like 82?

Yeah, I think people were really shocked. I talked with a few friends of mine and I think they were surprised that it didn't leak. It happened sort of suddenly. Are you talking about public in general or just internally at ESPN? Well, either. I would say probably both. I was talking with ESPN and we were talking about an extension. We talked about it.

I don't think they expected me to leave. I don't want to speak for them. Um, but ultimately, and listen, it was, you know, listen, I, I loved my time at ESPN. It was a very hard decision, but, um, you know, as I taught, as, as it became known that I might be available, uh, talking to a bunch of different people, I got a bunch of very interesting offers and really exciting. And then, you nbc just came over the top with this an unbelievable offer um so i think that uh and certainly you know it's weird because these things sort of tend to leak out you know like andrew marchand does a really good job of breaking news and stuff like that and all the other people that cover sports media also do you know so I was amazed that it didn't actually leak out

because my exit had been planned for about two weeks at ESPN. And by the way, they were very gracious. Like, you know, very nice release. They gave me a last show, you know. So couldn't ask for a better, you know, sort of goodbye. But yeah, but I think people were really, really surprised. And, and honestly, I was overwhelmed by the response online. Cause you never know, like you put it out there, Hey, this is my last week at ESPN. Um, and you never know what the reaction is going to be. And it was, you know, it was amazing. I said to my wife, like, Hey,

it's, it's really cool to be trending on Twitter and not be dead. Right. Or not going to jail or committing some terrible thing. Yeah. Did you have like a Mr. Holland's Opus type moment where you went in the gym on the last day and it was all the fantasy people over the years that you backed, that let you down, that were there one more time to play your one last fantasy team?

No. Who's the quarterback? I was killing you that one year. Somebody came to Bristol and you just fell in love. I mean, it happened a couple of times. The worst thing for you is when you met people that you had to draft. I don't know. You're kind of a sap.

You can get sucked in. I get, I do get sucked in. I'm easy to get sucked in sometimes, but sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. I don't remember which I thought you were talking about Michael Vick, but I never met Michael Vick. I mean, that's my, that's my most famous bad call is, uh, is Vick. Um, I don't know. I mean, could it have been Kirk cousins? Could have been RG three probably was RG three, but I was right about RG three is rookie year don't know. I mean, could it have been Kirk cousins could have been RG three,

probably was RG three, probably right about RG three is rookie year. You know, like I, people always, you know, when I'm, I'm a Homer for Washington.

Uh, yeah. You'd like running a Fred Taylor back. I talked to Fred Taylor. His hamstrings are fine this year. I felt that myself. They're great. The problem is, is that you had, I had to learn that basically the players,

to never trust the players because they have no idea. And like every player, when you interview them, they're like, oh, here's our projections. What do you think? And everyone's like, oh, over, over. I'm going over. That's way too low for me. That's way too low for me.

But I remember one time we interviewed DJ Moore on my podcast, my ESPN podcast, and we gave him his numbers. We read him his projections and like, hey, what do you think? He's just like, you know, it was like something like 900 yards

and like six touchdowns or something. It was like his first or second season of the year in the league. And he was just like, what I think about wasn't DJ Moore,

it was Steve Smith. It was Steve Smith when he went to Carolina. That's what it goes with. So Steve Smith when he went to Carolina or like we read him his numbers and he's just like, what I think about wasn't DJ Moore, it was Steve Smith. It was Steve Smith when he went to Carolina. That's what it goes with. So Steve Smith, when he went to Carolina, we're like, we read him his numbers and he's just like, I don't know, man, you guys got to understand I'm older now. I don't know if I can hit

those numbers. Like he sandbags himself and we're like, oh, okay. And then he goes out and crushes in Carolina and blows past every single number we had for him. So players have no idea about, you know, their own usage and whether there'll be any good or not. So you do have to learn to sort of, uh, ignore the players. I did not have a, um, no, honestly, uh, in terms of Mr. Opus or anything like that. Um,

I know you're joking. Uh, couldn't have been lovelier. Like I, you know, uh, my TV shows and my podcast, they all threw me a goodbye party. I'd like two different goodbye parties with the staffs of two different shows. And, you know, it was great, you know, to the to the extent leaving a place after 15 years can be great. It couldn't have gone better. I was, you know, would would love to give you some dirt. But honestly, like they were great. You know, honestly. I have, here's my hot take for the 2022 fantasy football season.

Most boring fantasy football preparation season ever. I've been playing since 1990. Yeah. There's way too many good quarterbacks now. There's way too much information. Year after year, we have mastered the whole ranking sleepers, that whole system, the information coming from the training camps, the ability,

there's no sports. So everybody's watching preseason games. There's no, there's no, even like George Pickens type sleep. George Pickens was the number one trend on Twitter the first week in a preseason. And now it just feels like a crapshoot again.

And it's like in an auction, everyone's going to have the same list. If you're in a draft that's like, oh, I got the fifth pick and you're just staring at Austin Eckler, we're all looking at the same things. How can we put some lingerie on the 2022 fantasy football season

and have a couple of shots and try to get frisky with this? Cause I'm just like, I'm not, I told Kyle before you came on, like, I'm not even going to do that much homework this year. I feel like everyone has the same homework.

The challenge of you're right on this part is that there is so much information and fantasy football is covered like six ways till Sunday. So it is hard to write, you know, like, uh, if you've been paying any sorts of attention at all, you know,

George Pickens or Isaiah Pacheco, or, you know, who's the running back in Kansas city or Isaiah likely, who's the rookie tight end in Baltimore, any Josh Palmer, uh, any of these,

uh, young guys that are about the Houston rookie, the run at the rookie running back in Houston? Damien Pierce, right. Who's going to be really good. He's got the job locked up. Yeah. So I'm with you there.

I think the challenge becomes, like, you just never know. Like, think about where we were a year ago and no one expected that Cordero Patterson on his eighth team in his NFL career at year 30 would break out as a fantasy football running back superstar,

which he was, he was a top 10 fantasy running back for much of the season. And so there's always going to like, at this time last year, we knew Cooper cup was good. He's being drafted as a top 20 wide receiver. Everyone, you know, I've always made all my jokes about my little Cooper cup, but like even me, who's as massive a cooper cup fan as there is no one was like oh by the way cooper cup's gonna have the greatest fantasy football wide receiver for fantasy football season by wide receiver since randy moss like no one like the the reports at a training camp last year was that matthew stafford and robert woods had this unbelievable connection no one knew about the cooper cup stafford breakfast until a couple of weeks in. And so, like, I think there's, you know, there's some stuff, but like, for every trendy George Pickens type, just think about, you know, as I say, Pacheco, the Chiefs running back has been talked about. People are always quick to remember. Remember Darwin Thompson? Three years ago,

Darwin Thompson was going to be the Chiefs running back that was just a superstar. That didn't happen. There's two things. There's the running backs, like the Pacheco, and then there's last year, the Marquez Calloway. He's ready to be

the number one guy. The receivers that and I had him in two leagues. the receivers that there's no evidence at all that this year is I'm just ignoring the training camp stuff. Like the undrafted Rams receiver that everybody's losing their minds about, which maybe five years ago I could have gotten sucked in and maybe ended up leaving the bar with them. Not doing it this year. I'll buy him a drink. I'll talk to him, but I'm not leaving the bar with him. No, 100%. Definitely not. drink. I'll talk to him, but I'm not leaving the bar with him. No, a hundred percent. Definitely not. Um, uh, let someone else make that mistake.

The, the, to me, the answer is, it's interesting when you, you started off by saying this is the most boring year ever. And I do think there's something to that, which is, uh, I think people get sucked in by the buzz and everyone wants that. They go, they go to their draft, you know, they're sitting around the buddy and like, so you isaiah pacheco right or somebody like that like a you know a butt white or damien pierce right you draft one of those guys you know uh and i'm just gonna go oh good oh yeah i like him oh i wanted him i somebody's following me right there's all that but you draft like ezekiel elliott like everyone yawning. No one gives a shit. Like everyone's just like, whatever, Zeke.

He's boring. We talked about this on my podcast yesterday. But the fact is, is that because he's boring, Ezekiel Elliott's actually going to be a value this year. Like no one's going to make an ooh over Allen Robinson. To your point about Rams wide receivers, Allen Robinson's going to be a value this year.

No one's going to go, ooh, over Robert Woods. Because they're like, I always heard Tennessee, that's a snoozy team, like whatever. Robert Woods is going to be a value this year. He's going to be the number one guy. It's a massive target share available in Tennessee. Brandon Cooks is another one like this. Nobody wants to take Brandon Cooks.

He gets 1,000 yards every year. Every year. And if you look at his numbers last year with Davis Mills, he's actually a top 15 fantasy wide receiver. And you're right. He'll go 28th in a draft among wide receivers. I always think this is sad when it happens to people, even though it shouldn't be sad.

Sad is the wrong word. But like Reggie Wayne, where all of a sudden it's just like, all right, it's not fun to have Reggie Wayne in there. Brian Westbrook could happen too. These guys that were these staples. I think it's happening to Keenan Allen now. Keenan Allen, it's like, all right, it's not fun to have Reggie Wayne in there. Brian Westbrook could happen too. These guys that were these staples. I think it's happening to Keenan Allen now. Keenan Allen, it's like, ah, yeah, I know what I'm getting with Keenan Allen. We've all had him at this point.

When you become a we've all had him guy, sometimes that's where the value is. And I agree with you on Zeke. Zeke, it's like you think he's on his way out of the league. And meanwhile, he was hurt last year. 100% hurt. I talked to a bunch of coaches from the Dallas organization at the Combine,

and every one of them, I had several conversations with them, again, in bars, and they're like, yeah, I don't think people realize how hurt Zeke was. Zeke partially tore his, I want to say his PCL in week four. First four weeks of the season, he was a top six fantasy running back.

Like he was still really good. And then because he just, he's so tough, like he gutted it through. And now everyone's like, Oh, he's fat. He's all these slow Tony Pollard's like, you know, exciting and new and burst these big, the reason Tony Pollard can make those big plays is because Ezekiel Elliott is grinding up the middle of the gut for three and a half yards a couple of times. And then they get Tony Pollard mismatched against the defense. Given their wide receiver situation, and I really love Jalen Tolbert, by the way, and just speaking sort of like rookie sleepers. But given their wide receiver situation, they're going to use Pollard more in the passing game. Zeke's still going to get at least 16 touches a game

by one of the better offensive lines in football. He's still going to get all the red zone work. 11 touchdowns. Right. He's going to have double touchdowns. He's going as like running back. I think on Yahoo, he's going as like running back 15, 16. He's going like running back 18, 20 on ESPN.

Like he's going way too late. I'm at 13. I believe like again, he's he's snoozy. He's boring. But even if he's not more of even if he loses some efficiency, just the volume that he's going to get this year on that offense. Anyway, I James

Connor's another one like that. Oh, yeah. It's like he's been around a while. Not that excited about him. And everyone, and so, you know, so many people are like, oh, James Conner

is going to be regression to the mean. There's no way he scores 18 touchdowns again. Except for the fact that he absolutely could. Like, people are, people like it, it was so fluky.

And I'm like, actually, look at Cliff Kingsbury. Since Cliff Kingsbury, last two years, under Cliff Kingsbury, the Arizona Cardinals, top four in the NFL in goal-to-go rushing attempts, in red zone rushing attempts. This is a, as a love. And one of the reasons I have it as love is like, look, two years ago, freaking Kenyon Drake was actually tied for the NFL lead in goal to go carry.

It's like, who's giving Kenyon Drake that many goal to go carries. It was Cliff Kingsbury. That's how he wants to operate his offense. And so now you've got a guy like James Conner, who since he came to the NFL has been one of the league leaders in terms of touchdown conversions. So he's got one of the highest percentage of conversion of touchdowns

on goal-to-go carries since he came into the NFL. Now he's going to an offense that's going to be really good in scoring position office often. And James Conner's really good around the goal line. Of course, I didn't expect 18 touchdowns, but I expected a lot of touchdowns right and here's here's the stat for you i just i just looked it up so last year in four of the six games that edmunds missed chase edmunds missed it's obviously now in miami he finishes the top

10 running back four of those six games uh he had 15 rushing touchdowns Tied for the second most 18 total touchdowns Again, he has been one of the best guys In terms of goal-to-go situations In the NFL since he came into the league And so yeah, James Conner Health is an issue, I get it But just draft Darrell Williams He's going to be the bell cow running back

For one of the best offenses in football. And he's being treated like, you know, whatever. He's being treated as a mid-tier RV, too, honestly. And people are scared, to your point. There's going to be regression. He gets hurt all the time. I don't know. Like, he's got no competition for touches.

Like, I ain't worried about Darrell Williams or, you know, Benjamin or, you know, anything like that. We're going to take a break. When we come back, as usual, I'm going to throw a bomb. Okay. And you're going to have to scatter for cover. I have a theory about how to save this boring 2022 fantasy football season. What does possible sound like for your business?

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why this fantasy football preparation season felt a little bit off. And here's what the problem is. Too many good quarterbacks. In the old days, whether you're in a 10-team league or a 12-team league or a 14-team league, there would be the six to eight guys you'd want and then the four to five guys you'd talk yourself into. Either I have no backup or I'm taking this guy, but holy shit. Like if he starts out slow, I'm going to be completely panicking. Now I'm going to have to trade one of my best guys for a quarterback. There's just a shitload of quarterbacks now.

You go through like even Jalen Hurts. I was like, yeah, Jalen Hurts. Who wants him in fantasy? Well, he 28 touchdowns, right? He ran for eight. He threw for almost 4,000 yards. And he's somebody, nobody would think he's like a tier one quarterback. It's just fucking loaded.

Like just looking at the ringer ranking. I mean, I have Jalen Hurts as a top four fantasy quarterback. And I, he was my, I named him yesterday as my fantasy football ride or die for the year. So I think Jalen Hurts has a monster. So there you go. You agree. But I did. But listen though, let me go So there you go. You agree. But listen, though.

Let me go through quarterbacks quick. All right. These are guys I would be totally happy if they were my starting quarterback on my fantasy team. Josh Allen. Yep. Lamar Jackson. These are ringer rankings.

I agree with all of them. Herbert. Mahomes. Kyler Murray, I'd be a little bit nervous. But look, whatever. Jalen Hurts. Yep. Wilson.

Brady. Dak. Joe Burrow, Aaron Rodgers. Kirk Cousins. I'm not shedding tears if Kirk Cousins is my starting fantasy quarterback. I think he's going to put up huge stats. Derek Carr. And then we move into the Trey Lance. Keep your fingers crossed. That's 15 guys.

But we also, we didn't mention Trevor Lawrence, Winston. Two has got a ton of receivers. I wouldn't want him on my team. Here's my point. If you're in a 10-team league, this is something I've been adamantly opposed to. I'm willing to now consider it. The two QB starters every week thing. I think it changes

the league. I think it makes some of the high-end quarterbacks more valuable. And now it adds this drama to my draft or my auction. And as you know, real fantasy people are in auctions and all the losers are in the drafts and little booger eaters like my 14-year-old son. But you have the two QBs. There is now real drama in this draft. I do not want to end up with Daniel Jones or Baker Mayfield or Tua as my second quarterback. Everyone is on pins and needles the whole time. Those quarterbacks are coming and it mirrors real life because quarterbacks in real life are the most important players in the football team. And in fantasy football, they're not. So you are a thousand percent right on this.

Thank you. So totally agree. But what you're describing, just so you know, I don't think it's a bomb, but it may be a bomb for your league. But I completely agree with you there. So what you're describing is a super flex league.

Forget two quarterback leagues. I think a super flex league. And so a super flex league, you get rid of defense, you get rid of kickers, you play four flexes. You play a quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers or three wide receivers, whatever you want, a tight end, and then four flexes. And one of your four flexes can be a second quarterback.

So what it does is it allows you to your point, right? Now you're deciding between, or do I want this really good wide receiver, this number three or four wide receiver or Baker Mayfield, right? If you get stuck there or if you're, so super flex. And honestly, I argued for two years,

maybe we'll do it now that I'm gone. I argued for two years at ESPN, make super flex the default fantasy game. Oh,. I argued for two years at ESPN, make Superflex the default fantasy game. Oh, interesting. When you sign up for ESPN, honestly, or any platform, there's a default game. If you don't change any of your settings, there's a default game. And at ESPN, the current default game is whatever. Quarterback, two wide receivers, 10-team league.

That's quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, tight end flex kicker and a defense, whatever, six, seven benches, uh, seven bench. And so I was just like, I had the exact same thing. It's boring. It fantasy football is broken. You're a hundred percent right. Which is if you did a real NFL draft, if you, if you did, if every NFL team had to throw their players back and you did an actual NFL draft, Josh Allen, Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson, those are the guys that that's the first round. And yet, in a smart fantasy league, Mahomes goes in the fourth or fifth round. Right. He's like the 50th guy drafted. Right. Exactly.

When you're sitting there trying to decide between Patrick Mahomes or Chase Edmonds. What are we doing here? It does not reflect fantasy football. There's one other piece. There's one other piece of this. In the running back, receiver, and tight end positions, we're scraping the bottom of the barrel

on the roster. We're taking the 70th receiver in the league is on somebody's fantasy team. And you're grabbing guys on free agency and they could be the fourth, fifth receiver on a mediocre offense and they're in a fantasy league. And yet 10 of the starting quarterbacks out of the 32 are not even on anyone's team.

And that, again, is the most important position in the league. So what are we doing? Bill, to your point, sorry to interrupt you, but I was going to say, to your point, last year, Kirk Cousins, who was making over $30 million from the Vikings, was on waiver wires for much of the season until people figured out,

oh yeah, Kirk Cousins is actually pretty good. Well, then on the foot, and the other piece of this is, if you increase the penalties, so interceptions are minus two, pick sixes are minus six. Now we have volatility where it's like, fuck, I got to start Daniel Jones this week. He's my second Q. And then he's like throwing a pick six in the first quarter.

I'm like, oh my God, Daniel Jones is good. Now you get to feel what it, in real life, it would be like to root for Daniel Jones. Yes. Now fantasy is morphing into real life. A hundred percent. No, I think super flex is the way to go.

Super flex. Super flex. People have been clamoring this for, for a while. So I don't think it's the bomb you think it is, but I will say I'm fully supportive of that idea. I do think, I don't think kickers and defense, much as I like them, like

to me, superplex is by far the most fun way to play. Can I just do two starting QBs? Oh, there's a ton of two QB leagues. You can definitely do that. You can absolutely do that. Like with Davis Mills start in it, he probably would, right? With some of the bye weeks.

Now you're really scraping it. In a two QB league. Every quarterback has value. In a two quarterback league. I'm in a, I'm in a, I'm in a deep dynasty league. It's a super flex league.

At 30, 12 teams, 33 man roster. So it goes super deep. Danny Kelly. Ringer fan. It's football show. Danny Kelly.

I've heard of him. Yeah, of course. So Danny Kelly's in the league with me. And he would tell you too. Danny Kelly, bring your fantasy football show. I've heard of him. Yeah, of course. Danny Kelly's in the league with me, and he would tell you, too. We had waivers this morning, the first waiver since the NFL draft. Jacoby Brissett was out there. There was a bidding war over Jacoby Brissett. Oh, my God. He's going to start 11 games, and he has value in a league that

deep where you start two quarterbacks. But that's the exciting part of it. That's the fun part of a two-quarterback league or a superflex league. I prefer superflex to two-cuby league because I think, to your point, it gets really mix and matchy.

Do you want this really crappy second quarterback on a bye week, or do you want you picked up a running back, Devontae Freeman, who's going to be the starter that week for Baltimore, that kind of thing. Guaranteed like eight points versus like the volatility of a shitty quarterback. Correct. Yeah.

Right. If Freeman gets in the end zone now that's like 16, 17. I'm going to convince my, the first league I'm in from since like 1990 where we still, the playoff league. Is this the league of dorks or is this the East Coast league? This is the East Coast league that has the playoffs. Right.

I think I can convince them to super flex it. Because we had the two starting quarterbacks for a while. We were like one of the last leagues to give that up. Have you guys done a draft? We have not. And you guys are redrafted every year, right? We do. That one is not an auction.

Right. And it's just like the draft order league, which is great because some people could just put on an auto draft. Right. Yes. So yes, Bill's East Coast League. Take it from me. Try the 2QB League or honestly, even better, try a Superflex League. I want you, Bill, to do a Superflex League because I think once you do a Superflex League, you'll never go back.

I can't wait. All right. Here's my next topic for you. The Ringer fantasy rankings changed today and made Christian McCaffrey the number one pick overall. He has played 10 games in two years. I don't trust him at all.

And if I had the first pick, I would not take him. Are you pro or con McCaffrey as the number one pick? I have no issue with it. I currently have him at two. I think Jonathan Taylor has both safety and upside. Honestly, I know Frank Reich is saying like,

ah, we're going to scale him back a little bit. I don't think they're going to scale him back that much. I think the Colts are going to be a really good team this year. Really good offensive line. Taylor's a better pass catcher than I think. I think you'll see Hines more as a wide receiver or lining up as a wide receiver than really taking some of the passing down work from Taylor. So I have McCaffrey too. I have no issue with McCaffrey at one, but I do, when my love-hate comes out, my love-hate comes out on Thursday and McCaffrey's going to be on it. So NBC had to deal with Yahoo. So that's been weird for me, honestly.

Yeah. Like after 15 years of saying ESPN, like now I'm all in on Yahoo, right? But I am a company man. So but I don't get this. So Yahoo drafters currently have Christian McCaffrey at five. And that makes no sense to me because I feel like, Bill, you should either be like you or you should be like the ringer, which is you're either all in on McCaffrey or you're out. Because the argument for McCaffrey is, look, no one gives a shit about second.

It's, you know, it's Talladega Knights. It's Ricky Bobby. Right. If you ain't first or last. Right. So you've got 10 teams, 12 teams, whatever it is, we're all playing for a title and everyone else doesn't matter. So in that case, if Christian McCaffrey is healthy, he played five full games last year, had over 24 fantasy points in four of them. He averaged 23.6 fantasy points per game, over 112 scrimmage yards,

23 touches. He was awesome when he was healthy. If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle. Sure, sure. A hundred percent. Ask and answer. Can't even get that joke off anymore.

He is, right. He's Christian McCaffrey. That's his actual legal name. Christian McCaffrey, if he stays healthy. But my point is that if he does stay healthy, he's potentially a league winner. Like he is worth that number one overall. If you knew you were getting 17 games out of McCaffrey, he's the number one pick and it's not close. The question becomes,

if you're willing to roll the dice on the help, then he's the number one pick. If you're like you, Bill, where you're like, I'm out. He's burned me too many times. I don't trust it. Then in that case, you're not drafting him fifth. You shouldn't be drafting him at all. He should be 20th for you. In an auction,

I'm not even bidding. His name comes up, I'm immediately making jokes and trying to undermine him. In a real draft... Hang on. Why would you do that, though? Why would you do that if I'm you? Because then people will think I'm doing it because I actually really want him.

And I'm trying to neg it and then come back in and reverse neg it. Yeah. I was going to say, like, I think if you talked him up, I mean, I was in the,

in the league, probably listens to this podcast to get your, your thoughts on it. But I like, but they know I live false herrings. True. Red herrings. I know,

I know, you know, um, our mutual friend, Louis said I had to save him at least one player. I couldn't, there was at least one player that I had to keep to myself. Yeah.

To, uh, to give him as a hint that I couldn't give you. If you're talking round by round draft, once we got near the tail end of the first round, I would start talking myself into it. But if it's an auction, no way. I personally think it's Taylor one, Jefferson Cup

in some order I feel the best about. And honestly, I might go Chase after that. I have those three wide receivers because you could argue Cup, how are you going to top last year? You can't have the greatest year of your life twice in a row. And Chase and Burrow healthy,

their offensive line's better. But if I have one of those four, I'm happy. The fifth spot is where I get nervous because I don't want to take Austin Eckler fifth or have him be like my highest paid guy. I know. I just don't trust him from a health standpoint.

He's like not a giant guy. Right. But I mean, well, he stayed mostly healthy last year. He missed the one week because of COVID, I think. He may have had a hammy one week too. But I do believe in Eckler. I have Eckler III. He was my fantasy writer last year. People had

him as a late second rounder. Like, oh, he's not going to get touchdowns. 18 touchdowns later. Yes, he is. He's going to get touchdowns because they're going to use him like Alvin Kamara. Joe Lamari is coming over and they're going to use him like that. And they'll use him like that again. Again, he's going to be the lead running back on one of the best offenses in football.

That's the thing about any one of these players is you can sort of nitpick at the elite level. Derrick Henry got hurt in the middle of last year, but prior to that, he hadn't. And up until the time he got hurt, he was literally winning people weeks every single week. Like he was winning people their leagues. I'm worried about their receivers though. They do not have a single receiver who scares me anymore.

And I don't understand why teams aren't just going to stack the box in an all-time way. Yeah, I like Robert Woods more than you do. He's coming off a major injury, though. It is. I always feel like that's a two-year thing. Yeah, I mean, Henry was... Here's the thing on that offense, though.

Last year, when A.J. Brown was out and Derrick Henry was out, they were still able to run the ball effectively the deontay foreman who you know a month six years prior had been sitting on his couch at home kind of like that you know yeah i do too so i i'm a believer but alvin cook has never played you know every game in a season in his nfl career nor do they want him i mean they basically said they don't want him to have too many touches. Right. So they all are there, but you could nitpick on any of them. The anti-wide receiver argument, and I'm with you. I think Jefferson has a monster year.

I have confidence in my number one wide receiver. Chase is obviously phenomenal. The argument there is just the wide receiver position is so deep that you have a better chance of finding finding this year remember last year jefferson was a first round pick was a top 10 wide receiver but uh cooper cup was you know going it just inside the top 20 people were drafting robert woods ahead of cooper cup including me i'll raise my hand and cop to that um and uh also uh when it came toar Chase, people were freaked out about the drops. Again, to your point about ignoring preseason buzz, remember everyone was out on Jamar Chase

because he hasn't played in a year, he's had a couple of bad drops, and hey, it's Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd. I haven't been in my keeper league for like seven bucks because of that. Well, of course, right? I mean, so, you know, watch Traylon Burks, who, you know, is playing with a fourth team, a fourth string team, and everyone's freaked out about Traylon Burks. Watch him be the rookie of the year as a receiver. That's one of my takes this year. I actually, I'm out on the rookie receivers. And I think because the rookie receivers were so surprisingly awesome the last couple of years, now people think this is a regular thing. And i could see like none of those guys getting to a thousand yards um yeah i mean i think that people forget for every justin

jefferson or jamar chase there's a lot more jaylen ragers and uh and you know davante smith was a disappointment fantasy wise last year jaylen wilde came on towards the end of last year but you know uh he was frustrating for a while. Nikhil Harry, it turned out he didn't have a great rookie year. Yeah. It was a shock to see him being a bad rookie wide receiver. Right. We finally had one this year. We had our guy.

We had the guy who I think could have had the most fantasy points of any rookie receiver and he fucking got hurt. Yes. No. It's unbelievable. I mean, he is 170 pounds. I guess maybe I shouldn't have been completely shocked. But yeah, he was awesome in the preseason. Yeah, he was having a great camp.

I know they were really excited about him. So, right. But there's just a lot more guys like that. And remember how excited people were about Nicole Hardman, his rookie year. Did nothing. Well, that's like this Romeo Dobbs on the Packers this year. Just be careful with the rookies

because I do think it was an anomaly to some degree the last couple of years. Oh, there's 100%. Much more often than not that rookie wide receivers don't produce. And yet people are just dazzled by Jefferson and Chase. I will say I'm sort of in on Dobbs.

I do believe in him just because Rodgers rarely talks up rookies and the fact that he's been talking him up. And also, who else do they have? Other than Al-Azhar. And Al-Azhar, by the way, is a value this year as well. People are like, again,

the buzzy guy is Romeo Dobbs. No one gives a shit about Al-Azhar. Al-Azhar is going to be the leading wide receiver on this team. And so he, to me, is, Lazard's a real value there. But, you know, I mean, like you think about who else they have in Green Bay, like the ghost of Sammy Watkins, Randall Cobb, like Christian Watson hasn't been healthy. Like it's going to be Romeo Dobbs. By the way, I'll tell you what, it's also going to be Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon. I think they're going to have a more balanced team than Green Bay.

I think both those guys, in the seven games in which, under Matt LaFleur, in the seven games in which Matt LaFleur has been a head coach and Devontae Adams has missed, Aaron Jones averages 25.7 fantasy points per game, which would have been number one running back in fantasy last year. I actually think A.J. Dillon and Aaron Jones are both undervalued this year. Jones is going in the second on Yahoo. A.J. Dillon's going in the sixth. I think they should be much closer together in ADP.

But I weirdly think, I just think that's more about Dillon's going way too late and Jones is going slightly too late. But I'd much rather have Aaron Jones than Nick Chubb, for example. On this very same podcast, we did a segment about who's going to score the most points, what team is going to score the most points in the NFL this season.

Okay. And I was saying, I love the Chiefs this year. It's going to be a recurring theme on this podcast for the next three weeks because it's Mahomes on an offensive line and they trade Tyreek and people are like,

ah, the weapons, where are they? And my thing is, the biggest weapon in the league is Mahomes on an offensive line and they trade Tyreek and people are like, ah, the weapons, where are they? And my thing is, the biggest weapon in the league is Mahomes with time. So, looking at the Chiefs receivers and supporting cast stuff,

if Mahomes has time, I feel like that could be an inefficiency for auctions or drafts. Like, just pick your three Chiefs receivers that you like, grab all of them. Grab all of them.

Take all of them or spend a little and maybe hit with one, maybe hit with two. But he's going to throw for 5,000 yards this year and he's going to get all the same stats he always gets.

He hasn't had time really since 2018 where we actually know he's going to be able to cook this year. And I just like him in general. So anyway, what do you think of that? Mahomes is going to be awesome. I don't know that I agree with because I think it's going to be able to cook this year. And I just like him in general. So anyway, what do you think of that? Mahomes is going to be awesome. I don't know that I agree with,

because I think it's going to be Kelsey. It's hard to say that losing a player the caliber of Tyreek Hill is good for Mahomes. I don't, it isn't, right? Obviously that's a loss. Having said that, to your point, sometimes a quarterback, because you've got this highly paid sort of superstar diva wide receiver,

you feel like you sometimes need to force the ball to him and get into him remember last year they were frustrated because so many teams were playing too high deep on them and like yeah we couldn't get deep and it was just a bunch of dink and dunk stuff and so this year now they have a much more varied wide receiver core and so kelsey will get his but adding juju adding mvs Sky Moore, they have Hardman still there. Having all those guys, I think, sort of opens it up from a home. So your point with time, look around. To me, the guy that I love there is Juju Smith-Schultz. Me too.

Everyone forgets how good this guy was his first couple of years in the NFL. He played with a corpse. He had a corpse as a quarterback. Exactly. Like people, the Pittsburgh turned him into like this, you know, this slot receiver, this, you know,

like Ryan Switzer, they, they turned him into this like small possession receiver. And it's not because Judas suddenly forgot to play football. Right. It's because Ben Roethlisberger was just toast. He had a noodle for an arm at that point. And,

and so honestly, my take on Pittsburgh is that for everyone bagging on Trubisky, like that's an upgrade. I think Pittsburgh has a better quarterback this year, whether it's Pickett or Trubisky than they did last year or the last two years. And so Juju, who's I think still only 25 years old, people forget how young he was when he came into the league. Now he's going to play the slot, but he can line up at all three positions. He can run all the routes. And now he's with Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. So I think

Juju has a monster year here. Well, you know what's interesting about him last year? The ringer has him 78th overall. So he had 75 catches for 717 yards last year, which is terrible, right?

That's like nine yards. He had 115 targets. And you just think like, I watched those Pittsburgh games. Ben literally couldn't throw the ball downfield. No. So now you have Mahomes with time and that extra two seconds

when guys are running around because he just created two more seconds for everybody. I'm with you. I don't know how Juju just became a stiff that you have to tie the quarterback to that. A thousand percent. He's had 36 career games with seven or more targets. He averages 18.1 fantasy points per game.

Tyreek and Byron Pringle, those two leave 219 targets. And by the way, and DeMarcus Robinson's now in Baltimore. So you had that, but like almost a 35% target share is now up for grabs. I'm not saying all that goes to Juju. Obviously, again,

Hardman's going to get his. MBS will get some. Sky more. Kelsey maybe gets an increase. Don't you worry about Kelsey a tiny bit just because of the history of that position with tight ends. They usually have like the 6, seven, eight great years, but we're old enough to remember fantasy

when Ben Coates was an absolute beast for five years, and then it just died. We've seen that over and over again. We saw it with Shannon Sharp. We saw it with Gonzalez. At some point, it just ends. You're not going to be getting your 120 targets anymore. Jimmy Graham. Jimmy Graham.

Jimmy Graham. Yeah, Gates was another great one. Gates was a guy that sort of limped out there the last couple of years. I'm not worried about Kelsey just because, A, I think he's sort of a different guy. And I think they'll be smart about how they limit his snaps. Kelsey's not blocking. He's not going to be a block tight end. They're going to be smart about how they use him.

I think he's going to be one of the leaders among tight ends and targets this year. I don't know that I would love to have him in a dynasty league, but I think he has at least one more elite year in him. I do. I have a question for you.

I don't, I don't like pits. Definitely. Isn't a tight end. Oh yeah. Do you think pits is a pitch should be a receiver? There's nothing tight end about him. I played him as a wide receiver.

He was a wide receiver, but we'll put time. It's good for fantasies. What's your question for me? Oh, I have pits at three. I think pits is going to have a monster year. Just a monster year. Here's your question for me? Oh, I have pits at three. I think pits is going to have a monster year. Just a monster year.

My question for you is, two years ago on this podcast, you and I got in, we've done this podcast together, I don't know, 15 years, 14 years. I don't know how long you and I have done the preseason. I think since whenever my first year

with the podcast was 07. So probably. And that was my first year of ESPN. So yeah. Yeah. Probably at least that or 08. One of those two. Yes.

So I think you and I, two years ago, and we've got the biggest argument we've gotten into on this one where I had to, where I had to fight for Tom Brady against you in his first year in Tampa Bay, you were out on Brady fantasy wise. I was playing the math.

He's 43 years old I know But the problem is You can't bet against Brady You can never bet against him It doesn't matter I think he went for like Two dollars in my draft that year

It's amazing It's amazing Good red herring by you Where are you on Brady this year With the offensive line issues And do you think So it's a two part question Where are you on Brady

With the offensive line issues? No AB, Godman coming back from injury. Who knows what you get out of Julio? And do you think Gronk is coming back? I have an opinion on both those things, but I'm curious for you, what you think.

Most concerning Brady fantasy season, probably since the 2019, the last Pat season when they didn't really have any weapons. 45 years old. I didn't like the 10-day disappearance of training camp. The offensive line stuff makes me nervous. And at some point,

he's just going to suck one of these years. It's the law of, what is he going to, so if he's 61 years old, do we still think he's going to throw for 4,500 yards? What is the age where it just becomes completely unrealistic? I feel like we're probably close. I don't,

I think his off season was just super bizarre. Maybe it made me really, really uneasy. The retirement, the unretirement, all the different things. Then he disappears. And I,

then he's tied to Miami and Las Vegas over the last couple of years. It just seems like he's all over the map. I will tell you this, he will not be on any of my fantasy teams this year. I'm still in on Brady this year. I'm buying the dip on Brady this year. He takes a few more snaps from

Shotgun this year. That's a concern. He still has a very quick release. There's nothing from his play last year that makes you think he's declined at all. I don't think Tom Brady suddenly, you know, all of a sudden forgets to play football. Like you'll see a gradual decline like with Ben and Brady ain't Ben. Right. But even with Ben, like you saw it year over year, you're like,

okay, a little bit worse, a little bit worse. Like, I don't think Tom Brady goes from, you know, top five quarterback in the NFL to suddenly like quarterback 18. You know, I think that it's still gonna be a volume play. He didn't come out of retirement and whatever's going on to suddenly quarterback 18. I think that it's still going to be a volume play. He didn't come out of retirement or whatever's going on to suddenly start handing off. Well, there's got to be some injury stuff too. You even think

somebody like LeBron, who's missed 20 plus games the last three years. When you get older, you become just any little thing can become a thing. It is. He feels like to me, the, the exception that breaks the rule.

Like I do think though, Gronk comes back. I do think really people. Yeah. I mean, again, I have no insight sources on this. You're probably closer to the situation than I am.

I just sort of think that, that, uh, when you think about the offensive line issues and the fact that, you know, who knows, you know, we'll see what, what they get and the fact that, you know, who knows, you know, we'll see what,

what they get out of Julio. But the fact that gets lost on wrong is how good a blocker he is. Yeah. People want to appreciate that. I mean, because he's into the Gronk spike and you know, all the craziness of his personality, he's actually like an unbelievable walker.

I appreciate it. And so, I don't know. I just sort of feel like Tom's like, listen, buddy, get off the cruise, stop at the Gronkast, get your ass down here. We're running it back one more time.

My favorite tight end. I have some tight ends. Boy, we're getting deep now. I had Friar Muth for the last couple... Like him a lot this year. Last like eight weeks last year. And you think like, that's another one where he didn't

have a QB, but I just think that guy's a beast. He's my favorite. And Njoku was kind of quietly really good as not just a passer, but a blocker last year. They gave him a contract. They rewarded him. The percent thing is scary. They don't have a lot of

weapons. They don't have a lot of weapons in Cleveland either. One of my favorites is Cole Komet. He's a great stat for you on Cole Komet. You mentioned him. Your son's targeting him. He had 91 targets last year. In an offense that was total shit,

and Justin Fields was trying to figure everything out, and Matt Nagy, and the whole thing was a mess. And yet, even in an offense like that that was a total mess. He still had 91 targets. He was top nine among tight ends and targets and zero touchdowns. Like, you know, we're talking about how Kyle Pitts,

how insane that was that he got as many targets since he did. And we know the touchdown regression is coming for him. Same thing with Cole Komet. I'm not saying he's Kyle Pitts, but I'm saying, I think the same thing, like they had, you same thing. Jimmy Graham and Jesper and all the

other backup tight ends, I think, scored six touchdowns on 35 targets. If I have that stat right. For some reason, on 91 targets, Komet couldn't get into the end zone. All those other guys are gone, basically. It's going to be the Darnell Mooney and Cole Komet show on an offense

that I think will be certainly better than it was last year. You just made the case for the Bears to have the worst record in the league. All right, you have to go. You have a hard out. But you said you have Jalen Hurts as your fourth QB. So you have Josh Allen as your number one QB or Mahomes? Yeah. I have Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Justin Herbert, Hurts at four.

Interesting. Where's Lamar on that? Like five, six, seven? I think I have Lamar at six, Brady at five, and I might flip-flop them here in the next week or so. I want to see sort of

what happens over the next week. Is Tua on any of your teams this year? No. Me neither. Out on Tua. If I get out of that top 12 in that range, I want Trevor Lawrence or I want Trey Lance.

Those are my two QB2s. And we also talked about Kirk Cousins. I think Kirk Cousins, over 4,000 yards and over 30 touchdown passes each of the last two years. He's one of only six quarterbacks to throw at least 30 touchdown passes each of the last two years. And he did that under Mike Zimmer where they had a bottom 14 passing rate. Now he's getting Kevin O'Connell.

That team is going to throw, throw, throw. So, yeah, you know, I think it's going to be huge. I'm pro-Cousins as well. All right, congrats on the move. Look forward to seeing you on Football Night America. Yeah, thanks, man. I'm really excited about NBC. They've been great to me.

Can I get a couple of plugs in here? I have to do some plugs. You already did your plugs. You did them at the top. What? You're redoing the plugs? No, not the NBC plugs. I was going to get my other, my entrepreneurial plugs.

Oh, do your entrepreneurial. Go ahead. Do your plugs. Yeah, I wanted to go to NBC. It's because NBC is real supportive of all my entrepreneurial stuff. Fantasy Life app, totally free. An amazing, amazing alert. Must have. Fantasy Life newsletter. Fantasy free. An amazing, amazing alert. Must have. Fantasy Life newsletter. FantasyLife.com presented by KFC. They're our presenting sponsor.

Appreciate all of them. This is all free stuff. Check it out. Amazing tools. The newsletter comes out every single day. Go sign up for FantasyLife.com. If you hate it, just unsubscribe. But it's chock full of every single thing you need to know. So it comes from me and a team of guys that I have are absolutely great. So check all that stuff out. And of course, rotopass.com, best value on the internet. People wonder why you have so many gigs. They don't realize you have 19 kids. I have 19 kids. I have 19 colleges to pay for. Each kid is worth one extra gig. So you just got to keep going and going. I like being entrepreneurial. I know you do going. I like, I like being entrepreneurial.

I know you do too. I mean, I know that I felt like that was one of the reasons why you left ESPN is you wanted to start your own thing and obviously, you know, worked out amazingly well for the ringer, obviously. So did okay.

Yeah. I mean, you know, love that. I thought you would do the Kelly Taylor ESPN NBC fighting for you and you say, I choose me, but you didn't, you chose fighting for you and you say, I choose me. But you didn't. You chose NBC.

I should have. I really should have. All right. Matthew Berry, good to see you. I'll see you during the season. All right. Sounds good, my friend. Thanks.

All right. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Danny and Ben and Steven. Thanks to Matthew Berry. Thanks to Cockrape for producing. Thanks to Steve Cerruti and Dylan Berkey as well. I will be back on this feed on Thursday.

More football. We'll see you then. On the wayside, never on the side I don't have feelings within On the wayside, on the wayside, never on the side I don't have feelings within