The Kevin Sheehan Show - Schedule React

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Kevin opened up with his reaction to the NFL Schedule overall and to Washington's schedule specifically. NFL "Schedule-Maker" Max St. John (NFL Manager, Schedule Planning Analytics) joined Kevin with answers to all of the NFL Schedule questions including what the Commanders' requested back in February. Eddie C jumped on with his Preakness preview and picks.   For all your football betting needs: DCRELOAD at MyBookie for a 50% Deposit Match   Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank. Head to www.Chime.com/SHEEHAN. It only takes a few minutes to sign up.   Get 20% off your first order at www.FastGrowingTrees.com with code [Sheehan].   Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to www.quince.com/SHEEHAN for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You don't want it. You don't need it, but you're going to get it anyway. The Kevin Sheehan Show. Here's Kevin. Two guests with me on the show today. Max St. John will join me in the next segment. Max works with Mike North and the small group in the league office that puts together the NFL schedule. His title is NFL Manager, Scheduling, Planning, Analytics.

I've already recorded the interview with Max. He was excellent. So he will join me, and you'll hear that in the next segment. Following Max, Eddie C is back to preview the second leg of the Triple Crown, the preteness, which will be run tomorrow in Laurel. The show's presenting sponsor is Window Nation, 86690 Nation, windownation.com if you need new windows. heavy on the schedule on today's show at Philadelphia and at Dallas to open up 2026 for our team.

First time the skins have had back-to-back division games to open up a season since 2019. That 2019 season did not go well early on. It's the first time they've played two road games to start the season since 2012. Of course, that was the RG3 season. He took the league by storm with the game to open up the season in the Superdome against New Orleans and then had a great performance in week two on the road, but in a loss against the Rams back when they were in St. Louis. Early point spreads on the first two games. Are you ready for those?

The Eagles are five and a half point favorites in week one. Washington, and the Cowboys are four and a half point favorites over Washington in week two. Now, ask me if I care. I don't. All right, so let me take 10 to 15 minutes or so to share some thoughts on not just Washington's schedule, but also on the NFL schedule overall. And that's where I'll start with kind of the overall NFL schedule. And I'll ask Max about some of these things, because I'll start. with my number one.

And it's a gripe about the NFL schedule that finally got unveiled last night at 8 p.m. But we pretty much knew the entirety of it hours prior. Because the NFL schedule leakers, they get it right.

They had a lot of it right. And I mentioned some of those that were reliable, and I don't think they got anything wrong. We gave you everything we had when we recorded the show yesterday. and everything we gave you, which was about 10 or 11 games deep, it was all accurate. So let me get to some thoughts on the overall schedule, and then I'll get to Washington's schedule specifically.

But on the NFL schedule as a whole, there are a few things that I sort of took notice of. Number one is actually a gripe, and it was one of the first things that I looked for when the schedule started to get filled in by all the leakers and then when it was out officially at 8 o'clock last night. I hate that the NFL is going head to head with college football's triple header of first round playoff games on Saturday, December 19th. Now, they're not head to head with the very first game that kicks off at noon, but they are head to head with the other two games. The NFL will play Philadelphia and Seattle at the link at 5 p.m. on Saturday, December 19th. And then the late game is Chicago at Buffalo with an 820 start.

The college games go noon 3.30 and then I think 745 or something like that. They did it last year. They didn't need to do it. They're doing it this year. They didn't need to do it. They did it two years ago. They had to do it. And I understand that. Two years ago was the first of the doubleheader Netflix Christmas Day games, and because Christmas Day in 2024 was on a Wednesday, they couldn't have teams play Sunday and then Wednesday. So the four teams that played on Christmas Day that year played in different matchups on the Saturday prior to that Wednesday Christmas.

I understood that. That made sense. It was the only way they could do it, but Christmas was on Thursday last year. and it's on Friday this year, so they didn't have to go head-to-head with two of the three college football first-round playoff games. I just think college football should have that day to itself for their three of their four

playoff games. The college football first round has one game on Friday night, three on that Saturday. And I think college football should be left alone on those two days. But the NFL's not doing it. So we'll find out from Max in the next segment why the NFL isn't steering clear of that day. But, you know, college football is the feeder system to the NFL. And I think on some level it benefits the NFL to have these college games and the star players, the future NFL players, get the most exposure that they can get before entering the NFL. You know, last year there were, you know, the NFL dominated in the ratings head to head with the college games that they overlapped.

Now, the two college games they overlapped were blowouts. The first game, the noon game, was the Texas A&M Miami game, which was the best game of that Saturday. And that game didn't have to compete with the NFL. But I don't know, I'm disappointed with the decision. Clearly the NFL has decided that these standalone games, especially on or around holidays are just too valuable to pass up and to hell with college football's playoff games. And guess what? The NFL will take away, you know, big time from the college football audience in those games, and they will win the ratings. There's no doubt about it.

So that was thought number one. Thought number two is, you know, last year's schedule came out, And Washington and Philadelphia, who had played in the NFC title game the year before, didn't play until week 16. They played two games in the final three weeks of the season. And I said to Mike North last year, there's great risk in doing that because there's a chance the games could be meaningless by the time you get to them. And he said that's true. But they like division games at the end of the year. And he did say to me last year, the doubt. Philly games within the NFC East are much more valuable than the Washington Philadelphia

games. Hopefully that will change one day, but it's not the way it is now. But my point as it relates to this year's schedule is that Seattle and the Rams played in the NFC championship game last January, and their first game head-to-head is week 16. They are playing twice in the final three weeks of this season. I'll ask Max about why that is, because again, you put those two, you know, premier matchups, Seattle versus the Rams twice, and you put them at the end of the schedule, there's some risk that those games won't be meaningful. The Washington Philadelphia Games, it turns out Washington was injured and they were bad,

and neither one of those two games was a meaningful game. So that was thought two on the NFL schedule. Thought three was this. Did you see the Rams schedule? The Rams play three straight primetime games to open up the season, including the Australia game on Thursday night, September 10th against the 49ers. Then they're back for a Monday night game against the Giants. Then they're at Denver in week three on Sunday night football.

And then after a one o'clock game at Philadelphia, pretty high. profile game. They are back home in prime time against Buffalo on Monday night football. Four of their first five games in prime time. And then, by the way, they've got another three scheduled later on in the season. They play the Thanksgiving Eve game against Green Bay. They play a Thursday night against the Chiefs, and they play a Friday night Christmas night game against Seattle. So seven total prime time stand-alone games for the Rams. The Bears and the Bills

will both play on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. I would assume the teams get input as far as that's concerned, but we'll ask Max about that in the next segment. How about this? There are five teams that will not play a standalone nationally televised primetime game. The Raiders, Jets, Dolphins, Cardinals, and Titans have no primetime games, which means they have no short week games. They'll benefit from not playing one game in which they'll play Sunday and then play Thursday night.

When the Thursday night package started many years ago, I think it was a rule that all teams had to have at least, least one short week game on their schedule, whether it was a Thursday night game or a Thanksgiving day game they had to. But the Raiders, Jets, dolphins, Cardinals and Titans will play every single game on a Sunday until week 18 when it's TBD in terms of the week 18 schedule. If either one of those two of those five teams becomes a really good team, they could get flexed into prime time. But as it stands now, five teams. That's a lot with no stand-alone primetime games, which again, from a scheduling perspective for them, benefits them. They don't have any short week games.

Another thought, like this was something that we've talked about already, but overall, the most holiday football we've ever seen on a schedule. Thanksgiving Eve, Green Bay at the Rams, Thanksgiving triple header per usual. Bears at Lions, Eagles at Cowboys, and the Thanksgiving night game, Kansas City at Buffalo. The Black Friday game, Denver at Pittsburgh. Five standalone games Thanksgiving weekend before you get to Sunday slate. That's unbelievable. Then we've got a Christmas Eve game, Houston at Philadelphia, a Christmas Day first-time triple header, Green Bay at Chicago, Buffalo at Denver and the Rams at Seattle. And then we've got a New Year's Eve game as well with Baltimore at Cincinnati.

They're not playing on New Year's Day. That's a Friday. They're going to leave that to the college football quarterfinal games. In fact, the college football quarterfinal games are going to be on a Wednesday night, December 30th so that they don't compete with the NFL that's playing on New Year's Eve. and then they'll play the other three quarterfinal games on New Year's Day. Obviously, this is the most international games we've ever seen, nine of them with six Sunday morning games,

the first one being Washington and Indianapolis in week four. That equals the most Sunday morning 9.30 a.m. games, Eastern we've ever had. The NFL will be played on every day of the week this year except Tuesday. No Tuesday games. The NFL this year will be broadcast on four over-the-air networks, Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC, and several streaming and digital platforms, including Amazon Prime, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount Plus, and ESPN Plus. I saw something that said that if you want to watch every NFL game in 2026, it would be an average of 1,650.

The season starts on a Wednesday night in early September, and it ends on Valentine's Day, the latest ending to a season ever, Super Bowl 61, February 14th at SoFi in Los Angeles. All right, let's get to our schedule and some of my thoughts on the skin schedule now that we see it in its entirety. And let me just preface what I'm going to say with something that I say every year on this specific day, the day after the schedule is unveiled. And that is playing the schedule game is a dangerous game. You know, going through the schedule and saying, this is the easy stretch or this is the really difficult stretch, or these are the games that, you know, should be wins or these are the games that should be losses.

You just can't do it. You look back at the end of a year and you go. through the wins and losses and you compare it to what you thought back in May, June, July, and August, and at least a half dozen, if not half of the games that you thought were going to go one way, don't. And that's because the league changes so much year to year. Each year is its own entity, and teams that you think are going to be horrible or sometimes really good and teams that you think are going to be really good or sometimes horrible. And look, on a week-to-week basis, it's not about who you're playing. It's about when you're playing them. Did you catch them at the right time

or the wrong time? That matters so much. Every year, you know, there are so many examples of games that looked easy in May, but turned out to be the opposite and vice versa. Timing, injuries, and just trying to figure out who's going to be worse than expected and who's going to be better than expected is impossible to know before the games actually begin. Or it's very difficult to know before the games actually begin. All right, with that said, here are some thoughts about Washington's schedule. Number one is this. I actually like the start. I had a bunch of you reach out to me to say, oh, brutal start, two division games on the road at Philly at Dallas. at Philly in week one, the division favorite, the Eagles, week one is always a very difficult week.

It's a head fake week. I call it that every year. It's fools gold. You know, last year the Patriots went 14 and 3, and the Raiders went 3 and 14. You know what happened in week one? The Raiders went to Foxborough and beat the Patriots. Week one is never a tell on the rest of the season or usually isn't. So I like a big test in terms of Philly being the division favorite in week one on the road. I went back and checked this. Philly's won five straight openers, but the games have been close. And Philly hasn't played well defensively early in the year like they've played defense. late in the year under Vic Fangio in particular. They have been under Fangio a slower starting

defensive team, a fast finishing defensive team, no doubt about it. But catching Philly in week one and playing Philly on the road in week one, I actually kind of like it, you know, and getting two road division games out of the way early when teams are still trying to figure it out. You know, bring on Dallas in week two. after playing at Philly in week one. So I don't mind that start at all. Secondly, standalone nationally televised games. My mock got it right.

I mean, I thought that, you know, they would be more attractive to schedule makers, in part because of Jaden Daniels, in part because if you really looked at the team last year, it was mostly injuries. It wasn't, you know, performance with their best players, and they should have their best players back. So they got five stand-alone nationally televised games.

We talked about some of those games yesterday on the show, but Indianapolis is the first one as the London Week 4 game. They play the 49ers on Monday night football, week six out in Santa Clara. They play the Eagles on Sunday night football at home on November 1st. They play the Giants on Thursday night football. November 12th, and they play the Bengals on Monday night football on November 23rd at home. That's five standalone games, but it doesn't end there. They've got three games at the end of the year.

Now, everybody has the Week 18 TBD, but Washington, in week 16 and in week 17, are among four games each weekend where they could be flexed into a standalone Saturday spot. They play Minnesota in week 16. That game is going to be played either December 26th on a Saturday in a standalone spot or on Sunday. And then in week 17, they're at Jacksonville, and that game is also a potential Saturday flex. So they could potentially end up with seven or eight nationally televised standalone games. And that doesn't count, you know, the other flex opportunities during the course of the year. I'll also add their first.

two games are 425 Fox double header, you know, highlighted games to open up the season. So they were viewed by the schedule makers as attractive, even though they were 5 and 12 last year. So number three is this. How about five of the six division games this year played by week 10. They will have both games against the Eagles, both games against the Giants, and one of the games against the Cowboys completed by November 12th. That is much different than recent schedules. Last year, if you recall, they finished with four straight division games. And in 2024, two of the final three games were division games. So their last division game before the season finale, and everybody plays a division game in week 18.

is the giant game on Thursday night, November 12th. And then they have a stretch of, first of all, four AFC games and then other NFC games. They play Cincinnati, then at Arizona, at Tennessee, Houston at home, Atlanta at home, at Minnesota, at Jacksonville. So four of their five AFC games are in the back half of the schedule. and during a stretch of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 games in which they're not playing a division game. And then they, of course, finish with Dallas. So that kind of stood out. Things that I mentioned on yesterday's show, two West Coast teams coming east for 1 o'clock kicks.

Look, the data suggests that certainly from a betting perspective, if you bet the East Coast team, you're going to win more often than not against the West. Coast team coming east and playing early in terms of outright wins by the East Coast team. There's a slight advantage there. The bottom line is the West Coast team coming east playing early at 1 o'clock or 10 a.m. Pacific time doesn't play as well as they would play in the 425 window or in prime time. So the two best teams, at least on paper, on their schedule, are Seattle and the Rams, and they have them both at home. We knew that.

And now we know they're going to play both of them on Sunday at 1 o'clock. It's something I actually should have talked about before the schedule came out in terms of why, you know, waiting for the actual dates and times of these games is important. that Seattle and that Sanford and that Rams game at home, both of those games are important in terms of the start time. And having them Sunday at 1 p.m. is an advantage. And then lastly is the Warren Sharp net rest day study. Now, he has not come out as of the recording of this podcast

with his complete study, with the net rest days for every team in the league. But I did it for our team. And for those of you who don't know what net rest is, Warren Sharp, you know, kind of decided years ago that this was a real thing that teams were impacted negatively if they had negative net rest days versus the teams that had positive net rest days. Net rest days are essentially, you know, like if you're playing a team on a Sunday and that team played on Monday night and your last game was the previous Sunday, Well, that's a plus one. You get one more day to prepare for that game against the team that played on Monday night. You know, if you're coming off a Thursday night game and your next game is against a team that played on Sunday, that's a plus three-day advantage. So that's how sort of net rest days are calculated.

And over the course of 17 games, is it positive net rest days, negative net rest days? I can tell you that Washington last year was one of the five worst net rest situations, had one of the five worst net rest situations. The Raiders were minus 19 days net rest. The Saints were minus 14. Washington was minus 13, Buffalo was minus seven, and Cleveland was minus seven. The five best net rest day situations were the lions at plus 13, the dolphins at plus 11, the Rams at plus 10, San Francisco at plus 9, and Seattle at plus 8. Last year's top five net rest situations in terms of positive, those teams went 54 and 31 during the regular season. The five teams that had the worst net rest situations, Washington included, went 31 and 54.

So the five worst, 31 and 54, the five best, 54 and 31. This is a real thing with a lot of teams. Now, you're going to hear Max mention that a lot of teams don't really view this as important. So you'll hear his answer because I asked him about this. But for Washington this year, they are plus nine. Last year they were minus 13. This year they've got a plus nine net rest advantage. That'll likely be in the top five of NFL teams this year.

Their biggest gain comes from they're off a buy week following a Monday night game against the 49ers. They come home on November 1st to face the Eagles. and the Eagles head into that game off a Monday night game against the Cowboys. So when Washington hosts Philadelphia on November 1st on Sunday night football, Washington will have had 13 days rest. The Eagles will be coming in on a short week off a Monday night game against the Cowboys. We'll have six days rest. That's a plus seven day advantage.

That is an advantage for Washington. A lot of teams believe that. They have a plus three-day advantage against Cincinnati because they're coming off Thursday night football against the Giants. And then they don't play until the next Monday night. The Bengals are coming off a Sunday game. And then their only disadvantage week is a minus one-day disadvantage because after they play the Bengals on Monday night football, they go to Arizona. So they're on a short week. Arizona played on Sunday.

So it's a minus one day. Every other game on their schedule is neutral. There's no advantage one way or the other. But the plus seven for Philly, the plus three for the Bengals, and the minus one at Arizona leaves them at plus nine. A much better situation than they had last year. If you believe in that, you'll hear Max's answer to it because he suggests that not every team views this as important.

All right. Let's get to Max. With more scheduled talk, we'll do that after these words from a few of our sponsors. I'll be honest. At first, I was skeptical about ordering plants online, like, is this thing actually going to show up alive? But that's what surprised me most about fast-growing trees. They don't just ship plants. They've built a whole system to protect them until they arrive at your door.

Every plant is hand-picked and carefully inspected. and the packaging is designed specifically to keep it secure in transit so it doesn't get damaged. And when mine arrived, it honestly looked amazing. The soil was still damp. The leaves looked healthy. It definitely didn't feel like it just came out of a box. Plus, every order is backed by their alive and thrive guarantee. So if anything does happen during delivery, they'll make it right.

Fast-growing trees is America's largest online nursery, with thousands of trees and plants for every space and climate, and they make it easy to get plants that actually work for your yard, and they're delivered right to your door. Right now, they've got great deals on spring planting essentials, and my listeners, get an additional 20% off your first order with code Sheehan at checkout. That's 20% off at fastgrowingtrees.com with code Sheehan. Terms and conditions may apply. Hey guys, it's great to have Chime back on the show as an advertiser this week. They've been periodically advertising for a few years, giving me an opportunity to tell you that Chime is changing the way people bank. And my younger self would have definitely benefited from using Chime.

Chime is changing the way people bank by offering the most rewarding fee-free banking. Why pay fees on withdrawing your own money? money from an ATM. Well, with Chime, they have thousands of fee-free ATMs. This is built for you, not the 1%. Chime members can benefit from up to $1,150 in annual rewards, fee-free. Direct deposit unlocks the most rewarding way to bank at Chime, and you can get 5% cash back on a Chime card in a category of choice, like gas or groceries. With the card, you get saved. You savings that grow faster with a 3.75% APY. That's nine times higher than the national average.

Plus, you get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and 24-7 travel concierge included with your Chime card. Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. Head to chime.com slash sheen. That is chime.com slash sheen. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank. Banking services, a secured Chime Visa credit card and my pay line of credit provided provided by the Bank or Stryde Bank N.A.

My pay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Option. Option may have fees or charges. See chime.com slash fees info. Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.000% APY applies. No mean balance required. Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. This segment of the show is brought to you by Wind Donation if you've been thinking. about new windows. All I ask is give Windon Nation a chance to come out and give

you a free in-home estimate. If you've been thinking about new windows because your windows are older, or you just want your home to look nicer, call them at 86690 Nation or go to WindowNation.com to schedule a fast-free in-home estimate with no pressure applied, no obligation

required. All they'll do is in an hour or less at your convenience. Come out, walk around your home, you'll actually find out which windows in your home need to be replaced, and then they'll leave you with a quote, and then they'll leave you alone to make your own decision. Now, if you decide to move forward with Window Nation between now and the end of May, you'll qualify for their buy-four get-four free sale. Every four windows purchased, the next four are free. That means you're paying half price. Add to that, if you choose to finance the purchase, no money down, no monthly payments, and no interest

for two full years. 86690 Nation or windonation.com to schedule that free-in-home estimate. All right, let's continue with schedule talk. But this time, let's do it with an expert because Max St. John was part of the group that put together the NFL schedule out of the league office. Max's title is NFL manager scheduling, planning, analytics. He works closely with Mike North and the team that put it all together over the last several months. And we got a chance to see it in its full glory yesterday. And of course, last night

when it was officially unveiled. And actually, that's where I want to start with you, Max, because I think I asked Mike about this last year. But is it frustrating for you guys to work as hard as you work, putting this thing together and have, you know, a dedicated unveiling event, 8 o'clock last night with the NFL's league partners, ESPN, and the NFL network running the unveiling of the schedule. But I know you know this. We know the schedule by the time it comes out because there are so many leaks of the schedule in the days in advance and certainly on the day of. I mean, as a Washington fan, I pretty much knew the entire schedule two to three hours before the official announcement of the schedule. What do you guys

make of that? Is it something that bothers you? First of all, thanks for having me. Great to be on. We are obviously not a big fan of the leak, but truth is we need to get this information out to everyone before the official release date. So kind of going back a few days, we got final approval on our schedule at noon on Tuesday. From there, it's kind of starting to paperwork, getting the press releases, the team schedules ready. The teams found out starting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon. So at that point, they had their full schedule. They could get everything ready for ticketing, for the social media unveiling, all that good stuff.

Thursday, we reveal it to our network partners. So there is a good, you know, 24, 36 hours where the schedules are out. And as that kind of gets passed along, unfortunately, you know, some people are able to pick it up and see some schedules. something we definitely try and limit, but it's just kind of a factor of how things work in terms of just getting the teams of the networks the games ahead of the full release. I guess we probably limit it as much as we can.

Yeah, I guess on some level, like any conversation about this is good conversation. It's just that it's like Christmas morning in the opening of gifts. It's anticlimactic now when it comes out. There used to be a level of excitement for the buildup for 8 o'clock in the unveiling that we just don't get to experience anymore,

but it sounds like you guys aren't thrilled by that either. All right, so let's start. Go ahead. Did you have something to add to that? I was just going to say, well, maybe we don't have the excitement around if teams kind of know all of their games by that point or the windows, there's still the excitement around the big social media unveiling at 730.

That's kind of really turned into its own big thing in recent years. So that's at least something else we can point to. Yeah, no, and some of them were really creative for sure. All right. Give me what the big challenges were for you guys as you took on this task of 272 games over several months. I would say the first one is the number of international games we're playing. We're playing nine international games, and we have certain structures that we try and have around those games in terms of rest. And coming home after the international games, commanders being one of them,

our general practice is if you're playing an international game the week before, we'll either try and get you home or have a game in the same time zone or one time zone away. We don't want you taking a super far west coast trip before you have to go to fly to London. Next week being your international game, and then we have a pretty big commitment. If your stadium's available, we'll either get you a home game that following week or we'll get you your buy. No guarantee that you'll get your buy. That was previously something we've guaranteed that we've been able to get away from. But we'll make sure you're at least, if you're coming and playing game and your stadiums available,

we'll get you to a home game after. obviously a lot of further travel this year. We're playing in Australia for the first time, had to make sure the Rams and the 49ers got back to a home game after that. Playing in Brazil, this kind of goes to what I was just talking about. The Cowboys are playing week three in Brazil. Their stadiums blocked in week four. We can't get them home.

We don't do week four by. So we had to give them, unfortunately, a road game in week four, but that was something that's out of our hand. That's probably the biggest complexity going into the season as our international games grow, continue to have kind of things we need to work around within the schedule. Do the teams have any input? Do they get a chance to say we'd really prefer the buy week, even though it's not guaranteed anymore after the international trip? Or, you know, certainly there are stadium conflicts, I would imagine, that have to be worked around. But do the teams

have any input and do they have, you know, one thing that they can ask for that they're granted? They absolutely have input. So mid-February every year, we send out our team forums and teams get back to us. Our stadium is unavailable for these dates and these windows. And separately, they have a handful of things. We'd be really excited to play on Christmas this year. We don't want to do this. We really want our buy after our international games.

So every team has the opportunity to do that. Again, we get a lot of similar requests. Everybody wants to mid-season buy. Nobody wants to play in Florida in September. nobody wants to play in Buffalo in December. So we're unfortunately not able to grant these requests to everyone. But if there's something we've repeatedly done to a team, a great example of this is last year,

Kribe reached out to us. They said, hey, we've started our season week one on the road for seven consecutive years. Why do you keep doing this to us, case you get us home in week one? And that's something where it's like, you know what? That's maybe not something we focus on. This is a concern to you. We've done it to you for seven straight years.

Like, that's probably something that we should consider. So every team has an opportunity to reach out to us and reach out to league office about what's important to them. Again, a lot of the requests kind of overlap that we can't grant them to everybody, but we certainly listen to all of our teams. What were Washington's requests back in February? They didn't have too many. One that we unfortunately weren't able to give them is they actually wanted to pair their West Coast trip. You guys are playing at San Francisco and at Arizona this season. So that was something like, hey, if it fell into place, we'd love to kind of pair.

our trip, play in San Francisco, Arizona, and then stay out west for the week and play that next game. That's something, again, if we did it for every team that requested it, I unfortunately don't think we'd get a schedule done, but I think it's still a okay place for Washington. They play a Monday night game in San Francisco a little extra time to get out there, and the bai, not intentionally, but the buy fell right after that game. So right after their long trip, they can come back to a buy as well. Do you consider net rest days, like a team that had a disadvantage?

in net rest days a year ago? Maybe you look at giving more of an advantage to the following year or not? We certainly look at it. We at the league office, we have a great research group. I'll give Mike Lopez and Tom Bliss a shout out because they've written a whole paper on this by advantage and rest disparity and have kind of come to the conclusion that it's not really impactful for our teams. We feel pretty comfortable.

I think a great example to point out is the 40, hours of a couple years ago, they had a negative 20-something rest disparity. They went to the Super Bowl that year. That's not something something we'll have, certainly some teams complain about, but as a league office, we feel comfortable releasing a schedule with teams with a, you know, higher net

rest disparity than some others because we don't think it's a big, big disadvantage for anyone. Truthfully, the, um, uh, don't think it's super impactful. All right, there were a couple of interesting, you know, options for Seattle in the kickoff

game on Wednesday night, September 9th, why New England in a rematch of the Super Bowl? To start with, it's, I don't think a Super Bowl rematch is more interesting. It's as interesting as it can be to really start the season. You'd push it a little later into the season.

Storylines from that next season kind of started to take over. We really wanted to start there. There's actually some kind of cool parallels because the last time before this year we played a Super Bowl in San Francisco, it was Denver and Carolina. Super Bowl rematch next year for the opening Thursday night.

game. So we're kind of having some cool parallels there as well. And of course, we wanted to spotlight these two teams. Seattle obviously had a great year. We went all the way to the Super Bowl. They have countless primetime games throughout our schedule. We felt pretty good about having that big game week one, two of our best teams from last year wanting to spotlight them. You know, I remember maybe a couple of years ago when I had Mike on the show. He essentially said there's this kind of a discussion about that first game. Everybody's going to watch regardless of who's in it. And so why not save the better matchup for another time on the schedule? But it really looks like you guys have gotten away from that, because last year was Cowboys

Eagles, the year before that was Raven's Chiefs. I guess the Lions weren't necessarily supposed to be good in 23 going into that opener at Arrowhead. But why kind of back to really kind of heavyweight matchups. I would say, I would kind of point this to Thanksgiving of last year. Traditionary that is exactly what we had done in our big windows. We know there's kind of a base audience there. We can play maybe not our biggest game in the biggest windows. And we really took a swing last year playing Dallas, Kansas City, and Detroit Green Bay on Thanksgiving.

And those were our two highest-reed regular season games ever. So really kind of expanding that thinking across all of these temple events. But Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving put one. One of our biggest games, maybe our biggest rivalry at the moment, the sort of Brady Manning of our arrow between Patrick Palms and Josh Allen, putting that on Thanksgiving night. We're really taking swings there, having some huge games on Christmas. One that I keep pointing to is not only having Green Bay Chicago to start today,

a playoff rematch between Buffalo and Denver and middle, but also having Seattle Rams as a nightcap as well, the two teams that were competing with the 49ers for the NFC West last year. They played some awesome games last year. they played in the NFC championship, really spotlighting that in one of our biggest windows is an opportunity we wanted to bounce on. I figured that the Rams coming back from Australia probably wouldn't get a buy week, and then that meant Monday night was a possibility at home in week two.

But just how about the fact that they've got four prime time games in their first five weeks, with, by the way, the non-prime game being at Philadelphia. Philadelphia. In Philadelphia? Yeah. So, I mean, is a team happy about playing four standalone primetime games in the first five weeks? Is that something that they embrace, or do you try to avoid it and just couldn't? I think it depends on the team, and the Rams are one that really, really embrace it.

They love having their team in a national spotlight, and they were, frankly, pretty thrilled with their schedule to have all these national windows. part of the reason for that as well is, especially that week two game, there's always complications in shared stadiums. So there are some stadium blocks around week three and four and five in so five that we knew both teams needed to get home in week two. And so that meant we really needed to find a national window for one of those. And that's kind of where Rams giants and fell falling. But they're definitely a team that's been pretty thrilled. They have seven prime time games as well as some other CBS and Fox doubleheaders. They're pretty thrilled with their schedule.

Speaking of primetime games, I kind of guess this too, and I'm wondering if my reason for guessing it is correct. But tell me why a five-and-12 Washington team not only has five standalone nationally televised games, four of them in prime time, but also could potentially get flexed to stand-alone games on Saturdays late in the season. I think Tampa and Washington are the only two that that could happen to. both weeks 16 and 17. So why the spotlight, you know, on a 5 and 12 team like Washington? I think a couple things. One, I know it was a little bit of a down year last year, definitely some injuries impacting the team, unfortunately, but the team isn't that far removed from a run to the

NFC championship game. And frankly, a lot of the teams on their schedule, we felt like these were big games that warranted primetime windows, not even starting with primetime, but starting with Philadelphia and Dallas in the first two weeks. weeks, those are Fox 425 doubleheaders in our biggest viewed window on Sundays. Like, they are in plenty of big, big games throughout. And one that I can point to, if you remember from that 2024 season, there is an Atlanta at Washington game that was sitting in the week 17 TV.

That actually got moved to Sunday night football, went to overtime, played an awesome game that was Washington clinching their first playoff first in a few years. So we definitely didn't shy away from them. We definitely think their schedule on the team war. a handful of primetime games. Tell me about just what goes into those late-week Saturday Flex games and how you come up with the group of games that the league will eventually choose from to move. Part of it is an appearance count.

So we have certain obligations to our network partners, whether they be an NFC team on Fox or an ASC team on CBS. We need a certain minimum number of appearances on those networks. These teams also get filled in to Sunday night and Monday. night and Thursday night football and the international games on NFL network and all these variety windows, but we'll always have a handful of teams that have a couple appearances to spare, and we think that's a great opportunity to give the scheduling team that flexibility. I mean, if we're up to Mike and I, we'd love to put the entire back half of the schedule as TBD

and every, you know, a few weeks in advance. We get to decide, oh, this is turned into a big game. Let's put it on this window, this window, so that's really not practical, but this is kind of what we have right now. we're able to identify four or five games. This year it's only four in the week, 16 and 17 TVD pool. Decide 12 days in advance like we did with Washington, Atlanta a couple years ago. Hey, this game has played its way into a national window,

whether it be one of the existing windows that we've set aside for Saturday, or they get flexed to Monday, Sunday, or Thursday night football. We really like having that flexibility, especially late in the season. Those games aren't played until December and January, and we're sitting here on May 15th trying to guess who's going to be playoff relevant. So just having that flexibility is really, really impactful for the schedule. By the way, I noticed that the pool of games is smaller this year. Is that because both of those weeks are double-header games on Saturday, or are they triple-headers?

They're double-headers on Saturday. There are two games in week 16 and two and 17. Last year we had two-game week 17 Saturday, but we had five games in the pool. This year we ultimately ended up with four. There's no rhyme or reason to it, really. but we really, I would say emphasis not on the quantity of games in there, but the quality of games in there. And we feel like we have some pretty strong games throughout those pools. All right, let's take a quick break, and we've got more, though, with Max St. John.

Max is part of the league's schedule-making group. He's been great, and we'll continue with him after these words from a few of our sponsors. This time of the year always makes me rethink what's in my closet. I'm trying to keep fewer things, but better ones. pieces that are well made and easy to wear all the time. That's why I keep coming back to quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense.

Quince makes high-quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen, and they're insanely soft, flow-knit active wear fabric. The quince linen pants have become a go-to. They're breathable, comfortable, and look more polished than I expected. The best part is their prices are 50 to 60% less than similar brands.

How? Well, Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Everything is designed to last and make getting dressed easy. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash sheen for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. go to Q-U-I-N-C-E-D-com slash Sheean for free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com slash Sheen. If you haven't done it, you don't mind sparing a few seconds to do it. Rate and review this podcast. It's huge for this podcast to get as many ratings and reviews as possible. It's really easy to do. Just click the Star account on Apple, Spotify, anywhere else you're listening to this. Five stars is preferable if you think the show deserves it. You can also write a quick one to two sentence review on Apple.

That's a big help. Following this podcast, just hit the plus button or the follow button helps us out a lot as well. We continue with Max St. John. Max is with the league office. Max is a big part of putting the NFL schedule together as the schedule planning analytics NFL manager. I thought Max there was a requirement for everybody to have at least one short week turnaround game. And yet there are five teams, the Raiders, Jets, Cardinals, Titans, and Dolphins who will play every single game until the end of the season and Flex could

play into it on Sundays without one short week turnaround game. When did that change? And how did you go about sort of just determining who would benefit from that. I know they're not in prime time. They're not in standalone games, but their schedules a lot more consistent than anybody else's. Yeah, so initially when that Thursday night football package was created, every team ended up on the schedule. There was a limit. You could play one short week. So when we only had those 16 windows, depending on how you count Thanksgiving and whatnot, we had to, we couldn't, we had to basically have every team fill out one of those games. After that season, got the flexibility allowing teams to play multiple short weeks so long as they were spaced out.

There weren't multiple of them on the road, things like that. So that's after that season, we're able to get the flexibility where you can have a team appear twice on the Amazon schedule. So there's a handful of teams, Baltimore, Denver, Green Bay, Houston, New England, Pittsburgh that are going to appear twice on the schedule. We have that ability now as a scheduling team to put some of those teams I rattled off between Denver, Green Bay, Houston, New England, and Pittsburgh. Five of those were playoff teams last year.

that's kind of our mantra around here is biggest and best games and biggest and best windows. So really trying to spotlight those teams we think are going to be competing for playoff spots in their divisions and whatnot. I really want to make sure we get those teams into national windows. All right. Let me give you my two gripes about this schedule in general. Number one is this. I mean, I love the NFL and I love college football. I understand why two years ago you had to play the Saturday games up against the first round,

triple header college football playoff games because Christmas was on a Wednesday and you needed those four teams to have ample time to turn around and play two Netflix games on Christmas Day. But last year and this year, you could have passed on going head to head

with the triple header on December 19th. Last year was December 20th with college football. Why has the league chosen to play games up against those college football playoff games? truth is that is a weekend a Saturday we played I think it's something like

38 of the past 41 years we've been on this weekend forever the third Saturday in December when we play games and do you remember we started you nailed it correctly we needed those teams to go from Sunday to Saturday to Wednesday to land on that Wednesday Christmas the first year we had some success with that in the 24th season we wanted to repeat it in 25 we actually work with college football, hey, how can we better stagger our games? So what ended up happening, if you remember commanders being in one of those games? We had college football play a game on Friday at 8 o'clock, and then another game Saturday at noon. Their next game started 3.30 on Saturday. The NFL,

we typically on these double-headers, we'll do like a 430 and 8. We split it a little bit back. We started at 5 and 820. That gave college football a little more breathing room in the earlier part of the day. We've played on this weekend so many times historically. Knowing college football, football is going to be on there. We definitely made a conscious effort with them to try and space that out. I just remember that first year being this is a one-off because of the Christmas situation falling on Wednesday, and I thought, you're right, the NFL's own that Saturday for as long as I've been a football fan. And last year, the NFL outrated and kicked college football's ass, in part because the two college games that were going on simultaneously were

were blowouts and the best game was the first game, which was the Miami, Texas A&M game. As a football fan, though, I'd rather not, I mean, look, I don't have a choice. I have two screens going anyway, but I'd rather not have to be focused on both of them. The other thing, and it's not necessarily a gripe,

it's just a curiosity. Last year, Washington and Philadelphia, after playing in the NFC title game the year before, didn't play until the NFC title game, of the season where they played twice in three weeks. This year, the rematch of the NFC title game, Seattle and the Rams, you did the same thing where they're going to play twice over the final three weeks of the season. I remember saying to Mike last year, Max, the problem with that

is there's risk that one or maybe even both games could end up being meaningless by the time you get there. With Philly and Washington, they were meaningless because Washington was bad. Why that strategy with high-profile NFC title game rematches with division teams waiting until the end to play the games? Truth is, we really, really love having division games late. You know, if you start the season, there are so

many storylines that we can really hit on. There's kind of an inflection point in the middle of the year where it becomes less about the storylines from the off season, more into the current season and playoff races and whatnot. We love having those divisional games late. So, We definitely try and backload the schedule a little bit with division games, especially with Week 18 being all division games. We like having division games at the end of the year.

That's something where fans really start caring at that point about the playoff races and the NFC and AFC, and they're all their divisions. We want to make sure we have games with playoff implications late in the season. So it wasn't necessarily forced that we put those in 16 and 18, but I do think I know it's a little bit of a risk, like you said. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but maybe it's similar stakes to that Thursday night football game. they played in Week 16 last year, which ultimately got the Seahawks, the one seed,

the Rams had to go there on the NFC championship on the way to Seahawks winning the Super Bowl. So definitely like having division games late. All right. Two more, and I appreciate the time. The first is just Thanksgiving Eve. Obviously, it's a revenue opportunity, another revenue opportunity. And I understand with the, you know, the ESPN NFL network merger and some of the games coming off the NFL network, etc. there were these games that were stand-alone opportunities for for streamers.

So I'm just curious as to what went into the thinking with respect to a night that typically has been a big family night, a big party night, the night before Thanksgiving. I don't know that you can play a game on any night or any day that it won't be watched. I think we're all addicted to it. But give me just some of the thoughts that went into playing on Thanksgiving Eve. One is like you said kind of tying it to a lot of that family time and we spend a lot of Thursdays football fans watching those big games throughout the day and also some changes in Nielsen measurement better capturing out-of-home audience and just kind of having a lot of interest around these sort of tent pole games that we felt this would be a good window. It's frankly a little bit of an experiment. It's usually college basketball and other things on that day that we felt that as being the NFL we'd be able to certainly draw. draw audience to that new window.

And, of course, being the first time we're playing in that window, we wanted to put a strong game there. That's why you see Green Bay in the Rams. So pretty, we think, unique opportunity. But as, like I mentioned at the start, really trying to put some better games into the Thanksgiving windows, similar thinking there. This is one of the big tent polls of the NFL season. What if we put a big game on Wednesday night leading into our usual Thanksgiving triple house? When you said Nielsen out of home, you're talking about more measurement of what, mass gathering?

watching? Absolutely, yeah. All right, last one. Chicago and Buffalo, both on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. Is that something that teams have to approve? That is not. We typically best practice will try not to have a team host on both days. So Dallas is an example from last year. They hosted on Thanksgiving, but they came and played at Washington. So a lot of these teams really love playing in these holiday windows, knowing how many fans being these big tent pole holiday events for the NFL, how many people are walking. They love being in these big windows. So not necessarily something they explicitly approve, but a lot of teams will reach out

to us and are pretty thrilled to play in these holiday windows, and we'll definitely make a conscious effort not to schedule a two home games for a team. We don't necessarily think that's fair for fans as well. So that's something we'll definitely take into consideration. Detroit's another example. They played on Thanksgiving last year. Of course, they played at Minnesota on Christmas as well. Congrats. I know it's not easy. I know it's a lot of work, but it's always fun to see what it looks like when we get there, and I appreciate the time.

Thanks for having me. It's great to talk about the schedule, especially with someone who understands it as well as you do. Max St. John, everybody, part of the team, a small team that puts together the NFL schedule every year out of the league office. All right, up next, we'll finish up with our guy, Eddie C. He'll preview the preekness right after these words from a few of our sponsors. NBA playoffs, NHL playoffs, and the preteness this weekend. If you want to bet on any of it and you don't have a place to do it, do it at My Bookie. Even if you've got a place to do it, you should open up an account at My Bookie

because right now they're offering all of my listeners a 50% cash bonus when you make a deposit. either as a new customer or as a returning customer. But you have to use my promo code, DC Reload, DCRELOAD. That will enable you to access a 50% cash bonus into your account. That means if you deposit, say, $400, they'll add another $200 into your account. Your account balance will read $600. You'll have all of that to wager with. Why not? Take the free money.

This is for those of you who are betting already. I'm not encouraging first-time betters to go sign up at MyBooky to bet the preteness tomorrow. If you're not into betting, this isn't for you. If you're into betting, even if you've got another spot, why not take the free money? MyBooky.com, mybooky.orgy.org. Either one works. My promo code, DC Reload. All right, joining me right now, as he does before every Triple Crown event, our guy Eddie C.

And Eddie, I'm going to read this from Z. Z writes, give me more Eddie C if he's going to give me back of the pack golden tempo to make a late run. That's what you gave everybody on the pre-Kentucky Derby podcast. You said you really liked Golden Tempo from the back of the pack to make a big run. Now, you didn't predict Golden Tempo to win the race, but you did predict Golden Tempo to be a threat to win the race. Unfortunately, Golden Tempo is not going to be running at the second leg of the Triple Crown tomorrow's Preakness. How did you end up doing with your overall picks on the Derby from this show? and just in general on how you did on race day.

Well, Kevin, as always, thanks for having me on. Yeah, you know, it was nice to get some congratulatory notes from some of the K-town boys and your Columbia crew there. But, yeah, I did, you know, I did pick Chief Wallaby on top, and unfortunately, Chief Wallaby at the top of the stretch got, he got squeezed by two horses and then got cut off and still came running hard to finish fourth. I think with the clean trip, he could have come second or maybe even one.

But, yeah, I thought Golden Tempo had a big shot. He was the best closure in the field. He was, you know, great, very happy for Sheree DeVoe, first female trainer to ever win the Derby. But I ended up having the exact because I did a couple of saber bets. I did back Golden Tempo to win in place. My bigger bet was on Chief Wallaby. You know, in a race like that, which I normally don't do,

I spread a little bit more than normal. Normally I just take one stance and I play that. But yeah, I want a little bit. I'm sure some of your guys won more than I did. But, you know, I'm glad that I did pick Golden Tempo using them. And that some of your guys and listeners did as well. The mysterious Eddie C joining us on today's show. Eddie C's certainly known and has quite the handicapping reputation.

in places like, as he described K-Town, that would be Kensington, Maryland, Montgomery County, Maryland, Saratoga, Miami, a lot of locales along the East Coast. Now, tell me real quickly. What'd you say? I'm actually staring at the Golden Gate Bridge right now.

I'm here for my daughter's law school graduation from Cal Berkeley. Congratulations to Eddie C's daughter and to Eddie C's daughter, and to Eddie C. That's awesome to hear. Thank you. Thank you. Much appreciative. Thank you. Much appreciative. Tell me real quickly before we get to the preakness about Sherry DeVoe and how significant this was for the first woman trainer to win the Kentucky Derby. I know it's the second female trainer, I believe, to win a triple crown race. But how has this been received in that industry?

Yeah, well, a couple years ago, Jenna Antunuchy won the Belmont. So that she was the first female trainer to win a triple crown race. But, you know, Sherry DeVos got a real interesting story. I mean, she literally was going to leave the horse business altogether. She was a big equestrian lady. And she ended up having a talk with her husband. is David and Gordo, who's a big bloodstock agent and actually picked out this horse. So they're kind of a team together.

But, you know, Sherry got her start with a good friend of mine who has since passed away, named Chuck Simon. She started for Chuck Simon was a big trainer in New York, specifically Saratoga, and then down to Gulfstream Park in Florida. And then she went and worked as an assistant for Chad Brown, who's one of the best trainers in the world. And then she went out on her own about five years ago, and she's developed into a top five, for sure, top ten trainer in the country.

And, yeah, just huge kudos. Congratulations to her. She's been doing the whole tour of Good Morning America, ESPN, CNN, USA Today. She's been all over the place, and very happy for her. she's a very accomplished and successful trainer in her own right. All right. So she won't be present tomorrow with her Kentucky Derby winning horse, and that'll be the fifth time since 2019.

The Derby winner has not shown up at the Preakness. Tell me about sort of horse racing's reaction to this, because look, as a very, very casual fan of this, the biggest, you know, thing to sort of grab onto is a potential triple crown horse. And that gets eliminated before the second leg because the first leg winner isn't running in the second leg. What are they going to do about that? You know, it's interesting because it's, you know, there's like a few different ways to look at it. You can look at it as tradition.

You know, the Derby, then two weeks to the Preakness and three weeks to the Belmont. It's been that way, it hasn't been that way since the very beginning, but it's been that way for the last 50-plus years. And it's supposed to be hard. But, you know, in today's modern era, there's so much money in the breeding shed. You know, so when you get a Kentucky Derby winner, for the most part, they're protecting him for breeding rights and that you're talking millions and millions of dollars there. There's some talk of next year, them spreading the three races out to be three weeks in between all three.

And then there's other talk of doing, okay, why don't we just go first Saturday, May, first Saturday, June, and first Saturday in July? I think it's going to change. I don't know which way to go. If you go the first Saturday of all three months, you're going to have a month. you're going to have Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July weekend. I don't know if you call it interrupted or if you're going to go, man, this is a great way to showcase the holidays with big horse racing. I think you'll lose some of the casual fans, but maybe people decide to go spend their Fourth July Memorial Day weekend at Pimlico and at Belmont. You know, and the other big story about this week is they're running at Laurel.

for the first time ever. And that changes the dynamic of the race because Laurel and Pimlico's tracks are totally different. So let's get to that. First of all, for those that don't know, Pimlico is undergoing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of renovations, and the Preetness is going to be run at Laurel. I'm pretty familiar with Laurel, not in recent years,

but when I was a youngster at the University of Maryland, there may have been a day trip or several during the course of the summer to Laurel. So tell me about the venue and tell me about the track difference between Pimlico and Laurel. Well, the biggest difference is really that Laurel has a long home stretch. But based on the distance of a mile in 316th, which is a long, very unique distance, Laurel, like many tracks, has two finish lines. And they're going to be finishing at the first finish line because they have, if they went to the second finish line, they'd have to start the race too close to the first turn. So they decided, well, we're just going

to have to go to the first finish line. So that changes the dynamic. It's just that pinnico, I think, has always been perhaps a little bit more speed favoring where Laurel dictates maybe off the pace and some closers into the equation. All right. Let's get to how you size up this race. Tell me how you think this race unfolds with the 14 horses that I think are scheduled as of this moment to participate and then give me your picks. There's a lot of speed in this race, Kevin. Here's what I think is going to have. You're going to have the horse out of the one hole, Taj Mahal. The horse is

you know, he's the horse for the course. He's a local course. Local horse. He's three for three at Laurel. Undefeed, only undefeated horse in the race. He loves the speed. He loves to be out front, but he may have to take back because you've got

the 10 horse Napoleon Solo. That's definitely going to the front. The three horse cruper, I believe it's definitely going going to the front. You got the six horse chip honcha that's going to be running up front. And then you got the 11 Corona de Oro and the 14 pretty boy Mia. There's a lot of speed in the race. And then you got some horses that should be, you know, just laying off the, pressing the pace, laying off it a little bit, stalkers, as you may say.

and that's where I'm kind of looking for my winner, and then you're also got three or four deep closures that are going to be coming, and it's interesting two of the deep closures, ran in the derby. One of them I was pulled a huge upset, which is Oselli, that actually did grab the lead briefly in the homestrike of the derby and then got caught.

But, you know, Oselly and incredible, or the two horses that ran in the derby. They're both closers. And if you want to look at it, simply, some people are going to look at it this way from the class perspective. It should be between those two horses. If it were that simple, then people wouldn't lose. People would all win.

And we know that's not the case. So if you want me to jump into it and go ahead and give you my plays, I'll do it right now if you'd like. Let's get them. All right, I'm going to take this horse. The nine horse, iron honor to win. I like this horse. He's well-meant horse.

He's trained by Chad Brown. He gets a big new jockey on him in Flavian Pratt, who you could argue is the best jockey in the country. And Pratt and Chad Brown are a great combination. They've been hitting at 26% over the past year when they, when they're, when Chad puts Flavian Pratt on them. This horse won its first two races. Looked fantastic.

One of them was the Gotham, the Great Three at Aqueduct. And then in the Wood Memorial, his last race, just, just got a terrible trip, got bumped a couple of times at the beginning, was parked four wide. So I think with the new jockey and he's training great, I'm playing him on top. And, you know, you should be able to get five, six to one on them, maybe four to one.

So I like him. And then I'm going to use, as I said, the two horses, the two horses that ran in the derby, the number two, O'Seli. The interesting thing about that, the interesting thing about that horse is he's a maiden. He's never won. But, you know, but he has come second once and fourth and third four times. So you know he's going to come running, and eventually he's going to break his mating. Could he do it this race?

100% he could. I'm just choosing to play him underneath until he proves to me that he can win a race. And then you got incredible, incredible to really good horse. He's a 12. He's a good closer. He's really well-bred. You've got Riley Mott, the trainer. And you've got this jockey that's ridden him every single time, Torres.

And he's an accomplished jockey. He's just never won the big one. but he's due. It's a really good horse. And then the price horse I'm going to use is the five horse called Talking. This horse is one well. He's run five times. He's got a first, the second, and the third.

Again, another really good horse. He's got Danny Gargan as his trainer who won the Belmont at Saratoga last year. And he's got I ride Ortiz, who's, came second in the Derby, and people consider him to be the best jockey out there, and that's another big jockey change, first time on him for him. And the last thing, I'll give you a big long shot, which is the local horse, Taj Mahal. This horse, he's done nothing wrong. Three for three, all at Laurel, they're running at Laurel.

Is Taj Mahal a long shot? I'm seeing five to one. Yeah, but I think he's going to drift up. I think he's going to, I mean, not big long shot, but I think he's going to drift up to eight to one, maybe even nine to one. Okay, because you've got talking right now at 20 to one. That's a legitimate long shot right now, the five horse, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I like that horse quite a bit, actually. I just, you know, because of the jockey change to IRAB. But, you know, you got to pick one on top, and I'm going to go ahead and stick with. my horse iron honor, the nine horse to win.

And then I'm going to use the combination of the one, well, the two, five, and twelve, underneath them, and I'll use Taj Mahal in combinations if he drifts up. If he stays at five to one or gets that less than that, I'm not using them because there's too much speed in this race. And I think speed's going to burn each other out. All right. Iron Honor the nine horse to win

and that horse is going to go off somewhere between what 4 and 5 to 1 likely somewhere around there 9 to 2 Yeah that's my guess Somewhere around there yeah How can people Follow you these days The Mysterious Eddie C

on X or anywhere else? Well the best way right now is to go to our website is past the wire.com. We put up a lot of articles, we do videos. We also have our own YouTube channel, which is called Pass the Wire TV, and there you'll see a lot of picks that we put out,

a lot of videos at interviews that we do. So that's the best way to do it. I am going to be creating my, before Saratoga, I will be back up on X. and the notebook picks will be back for the Saratoga meet, so that'll be up and running, and I'll be up there for the Belmont when we talk again in three weeks. And that is past2wire.com, correct? Past the wire.

Past thewire.com. Got it. Past thewire. com, everybody, for eddieC. Thanks. good luck and congrats again and we'll talk to you before the Belmont. Always a pleasure, Kevin. Thanks for having me. Eddie C. Everybody. Thanks to him. Thanks to Max St. John.

Enjoyed it today. Back on Monday.