The Ringer NFL Show - Philip Rivers Retires, Brady Beat Brees, and Mahomes Injured

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Sharp and Verno open the show with their reactions to Philip Rivers’s retirement. Later, they look back at some of the divisional-round games to forecast what may come in the conference championship matchups. Hosts: Warren Sharp and Chris Vernon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's Ringer NFL show, we discuss Philip Rivers retirement. We look back at some of the divisional round games to try to help forecast what we're going to see in the conference championship games. Coming up next. Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm Chris Vernon and join him as he does. Every Wednesday is Warren Sharp. Warren. What's up, Chris?

We only have two more game days for the NFL season. We got to soak these in, my friends. Soak these in. Are you getting a little sad? I've been too busy to get sad, but I'm sort of starting to get a little bit sad thinking about it. But yeah, it's getting down to the wire here. It's a fast and furious time, even though there's only a couple of games, one of which I'm a little bit more involved in.

So it just becomes, it's just a shitload of work. But it's a ton of fun. Understood. All right. So before we get into all the games that took place over the weekend, we need to comment on the huge news that came out this morning. which was Philip Rivers called it a career. After he spent the year with the Indianapolis Colts,

after he had spent 16 years in San Diego with the Chargers, 39 years old, never played in a Super Bowl, but that's pretty much the only thing there that's missing on the resume. Fifth in NFL history and passing yards, eight-time pro bowler, fifth in league history with 421 touchdown pass. I mean, he had, if you go look, anybody can pull up his reference page. It is a pretty unbelievable career statistically that he put up. He ends up in the top five in passing yards, passing touchdowns, past completions,

and he started every game and ended up playing this last season in Indianapolis. And I guess he's going to go end up being a high school coach in Alabama. but good for Philip Rivers. You know, I guess when somebody brings up Philip Rivers to you, what comes to mind? What do you think about when you think about Philip Rivers?

The first thing is competitor. I mean, true competitor. This guy was fiery. This guy hated his opponent, but I think had like a really healthy respect for them. You wouldn't catch him swearing or anything. He had this funny mannerism. I guess it's like a Southern thing.

I don't really know what it is, but just the old dad, the dadness of him. You know, just a guy who never got over the hump. Never seemed like he had everything there put together, buttoned up from a team perspective to be able to get to the Super Bowl and win the whole thing. But he was part of a lot of really good teams, especially with the Chargers. And the final thing is this dude always says, seem to have a knack for whether it's his own fault for things earlier in the game or if it's another team getting back in the game because of his defense having the ball in his hands late

in the fourth quarter in a one score game driving down the field to try to win like it always seemed to happen that this guy was in one score games late yeah when two things one when you talk about being a competitor look there there are moments in people's careers that end up living on forever Still, to this day, people bring up Emmett Smith with a busted shoulder, you know, running against the New York Giants. And the same goes with Rivers playing in an AFC playoff game on a torn ACL. I mean, you can't want to be out there more than that. It was obviously incredibly dangerous to do that. But it just speaks to what kind of competitor and a gamer the guy was.

I had an interesting deal. I posted about this this morning. So I was a Rivers fan when he was at NC State. And then when he decided to go to the NFL draft, he signed with Jimmy Sexton's athletic resource management, which is now folded into CAA all these years later. But Jimmy Sexton is a Memphis guy. And so through those connections and the guy that signed him, Jim Denton,

I was buddies with Denton. I ended up getting to know Philip. He gets drafted in San Diego and I'm doing a, now think about this, a local radio show in Memphis and throughout the summers, Philip Rivers would come on to be like a golf analyst or whatever we needed him to do. He would just be on the air. And he was always, you know, at that time, he would be driving back down to south to go to Alabama. He visited his family down there quite a bit.

So through these incredibly odd circumstances, I got to. to know the guy very early in his career. And I am here to tell you that all of that stuff that you see, and obviously, look, there's no hiding when you're miced up. But like all of that stuff you see when he is miced up, I think it then solidifies what I'm about to tell you, which is that guy, there is not a phony bone in his body. He does not care what you think.

He does not care, right? He loves God. He loves his family. And he loves playing football. And it's really as simple as that. But, you know, so many times you can see it. You could think it's an act or you think I'm here to tell you. There's nothing phony about Philip Rivers.

That's not an act. That's who that guy is. And, you know, you haven't seen him in a million commercials over the years. And he's one of these odd guys that is like just a football player. Right? Like, you know about his wife, Tiffany. in, you know he's got nine kids and you know about his exploits on the field. And that's kind of where it ends, right?

Like he was never like a huge celebrity like many of his peers, but unbelievable career, man. And he's a really good guy. Now, what this leads us to, Warren, is that's now to at least playoff teams. You've got to imagine that Breeze is an. announcement is not too far down the road, especially after what we saw on Sunday, that that will be at least two playoff teams that are going to have to replace their quarterbacks. But let's just start with the one we are for sure about, which is Indianapolis. You know, they brought in Philip Rivers. They had this horrible deal with Andrew Luck going out and retiring and had the Jacoby Brissette year, the fill-in year.

And then they went and signed a veteran quarterback. So they had Philip Rivers for a year. What do you think this means for Frank Reich? And as you are putting together your whole book for next year, you know, you start thinking about this stuff. Is this Colts go and try to find somebody in the draft? Is this Colts go and this is a ready-made team? So go try to find somebody that we can plug in and play just like we did with Rivers. I think that's a really tough question, Chris, because I'm not entirely sure. what Chris Ballard is thinking about long-term,

how quickly he's thinking about the big picture versus just getting back to the playoffs. And this team is ready-built. This team has a good defense. It's not as great as some people thought it was to start the season. This team has a very good O line. They've got a lot of pieces. They've got some wide receivers there.

I mean, this is plug and play for a quarterback, but they tried that route with Philip Rivers. It didn't work. And they still haven't answered their question, which is finding a quarterback. And, you know, look, Chris Ballard, I saw him answer the questions about how important it is to focus on finding the next quarterback, the franchise quarterback for this team in the draft. So it's absolutely something that they look at every single year in the draft and try to say to themselves, do we have the right draft capital? Do we have the right draft pick in the first round to make a move to do something

to grab that next quarterback? I know it's something on his mind. I absolutely think they're going to look in the draft first. But if it doesn't fall into place for them, like where they think that they're going to be, I would expect their foresight thinking about the draft out of one side of their side of their brain. If they don't think they're going to be there, they're going to get aggressive in free agency, I'm sure. Yeah, and they plugged for these last couple of years after the luck news and he retired. But, I mean, what quarterback luck.

Honestly, no pun intended for both of those. teams because you get 16 years of Philip Rivers and then you move to Justin Herbert and you've got your next franchise quarterback. They went from Peyton Manning forever straight into Andrew Luck. And now for the first time in a long time, you don't know who the Colts quarterback is going to be because. And the tough part is where they draft, because they made the playoffs, they don't have good draft capital this year, right? Like they have a low first round pick from making the playoffs and doing what they did. And look at all the teams that are in search of quarterbacks.

I mean, this is a whole other pod that we can do in the offseason. But clearly, the Jaguars need one. You would think, like, the Lions and the Patriots and the Falcons are teams that maybe don't need one this season. Well, the Patriots definitely do. But like the Falcons and Lions are going to need one very soon. You got the Washington football team, the Chicago Bears probably, the Pittsburgh Steelers thinking about one. The New Orleans Saints. and even like a team like Tampa Bay.

You know, Tom Brady is probably not your long-term multi-year answer. And if you had the chance, you would grab one. So, and then you've got starting quarterbacks that like, you know, the Jets might be interested, the Panthers, the Broncos, the 49ers, the Rams even. There are just so many teams that could be potentially interested in drafting quarterbacks that I think there's probably not going to be a whole lot there for them this draft, to be honest with you. there's probably not going to be many options for them. Yeah, and so you wonder how they plug it in for next year, you know, what they do for a starting quarterback?

Do they find another Rivers-esque situation that is a stop gap until they can go and maybe have some draft capital? Or you never know. Some of these teams really trade up in the draft to be able to get there, right? They package their first and second and third round picks in order to be able to move up so they can get who they want. but they've got now quite the decision to make. And Philip Rivers, good luck to him,

who is evidently going to go be a high school coach from here. All right, let's get to the games. Tampa versus New Orleans, when that game ended on Sunday night, your overwhelming thought about what had just taken place was what? It was the turnovers. You know, we talk about how turnovers win and lose games, and in this case, it definitely did.

I mean, you can't go minus four in turnover margin. and win a game. You gave them 21 points off of these turnovers. And so when you do something like that, the Saints had the good fortune of having turnover luck go in their favor in the first game of the year, week one of the season against these bucks and they won that game. That's not going to happen. And I remember doing the show with House at the end of the week.

We talked about the 17 times that a team swept the regular season meetings in division, which the Saints did, won both games. And how they typically win the second meeting by more points when they do win, which they did. And then that last game in the playoffs, they've gone 13 and 4. They tend to win the vast, vast majority of these games. And the ones that they end up losing are the ones, and we rattled off. I rattled off three of the games that they ended up losing. One of the games they gave up a fourth quarter comeback.

And two of the games, they were either minus four in turnover, and allowed a defensive touchdown, or they gave away four turnovers and had like two massive amounts of penalties go against them. And in this case, it was basically a combination of those things. The Saints were minus four in turnover margin and had a lead in the third quarter that they gave away in the fourth quarter. And obviously the bucks came from behind and we're able to win that game by one score. The thing that was most interesting to me about this game, If you try to eliminate the turnovers, which you can't do because it's a big part of the game, but just talk about what the foundation of the buck's strategy was so that we can take some lessons

moving forward to the next round in the conference championships against the Packers. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their first five drives of the game had just one drive of five that gained 10 yards or more. one. They were stuck once again on a run-first strategy where they took the ball out of Tom Brady's hands on first down and ran the ball a lot. Now, it ended up not costing them. Obviously, they won the game. They also ultimately had relatively decent production on the ground. But the issue to me is still this overwhelming sense that not the bucks are a bad team, not the bucks are a bad offense, certainly not. But the Bucks could be even better if they optimize some of their

strategy and their play calling. There's just far too many first downs for this team. It's either a predictable run or a pass that's 12 to 15 to 20 yards down the field. As opposed to this high efficiency short passing offense that Tom Brady thrived with during his time up in up in New England. So that was the biggest take for me is that we, there was a lot of people talking towards prior to this game about how the bucks had changed their stripes and the bucks have gotten back to this passing style of offense.

And we discussed on here, we pumped the brakes. We said, look, they weren't doing that against Washington. That's not what they did against Washington. Yes, they did that the last three weeks of the season. They passed the ball tons, 68% of their first downs in the first half of the game. But they went back to the run against Washington. What are they going to do here? They went back to the run again, even more so in this game.

And so I don't predict anything will change. I think they go into Green Bay, who has a worse run defense, and they run the ball early and often on first downs. They come out, establish the ground game, and they're going to have a little bit of success doing it because the Packers run defense is much worse than the Saints run defense. I was thinking about your philosophy on all of this during that game because I was taking note of how much they were running the ball.

But I will say that at one point, Troy Aitman, defended it, mentioned it in the sense that he said, you know, he was talking about what the Saints were doing and how they were lining up on defense and that you have got to be able to take advantage of this and you've got to be able to run the ball when they line up like this because they are trying to take the ball out of Tom Brady's hands. They're trying to make them run the ball and the bucks have got to do that with success. What do you make of that? Well, they did it with success. I think that's going to be, actually, you hit on a very important theme for this entire

conference championship game weekend, and that is defenses that are going to invite the run. Defenses that are going to play lighter boxes and sit back, try to take away the deep passes, and try to force the quarterback to hand the ball off to the running back. And I just got to say, like from helping strategize for some of these games, but also having watched a lot of these games and just the overall thought process here is you got four teams that are left and all four have received outstanding quarterback play so far this season. If you're a defensive coach and you can just make that other team run the football because of the way that you're playing defense, then you've won. I mean, you may not win the game

every single time, but you have succeeded because taking the ball out of the quarterback's and putting it in Leonard Fernett's belly is exactly what I would want to have happen if I'm coaching that other team's defense. And if you're the offense here, you've got to realize, I might get a little bit of success doing this and I should stay balanced. Maybe I'm going to run a little bit more than I normally would. But what is my bread and butter? How am I definitely going to win this game? What's the easiest path to victory here? And it's probably not asking Leonard Furnett to gain six yards per carry on first down runs at the beginning of the game. I actually was a little bit concerned. When I was looking at this game to start, I saw that

Ronald Jones was banged up and I saw that Ronald Jones may not play. And I saw that Ronald Jones, if he did play, he would play sparingly. And so I thought, oh, man, I'm in good shape here because I think that the Saints are just going to run the ball with Leonard Frenet on first down. And I don't think those runs are going to be very productive at all. What ends up happening is Ronald Jones end up playing a ton. And sure enough, Leonard Fernett averages just 3.3 yards per carry on these first down runs. Meanwhile, they almost split the carries evenly and Ronald Jones is averaging 5.3. So if Ronald Jones is in the mix, then he's definitely going to be more beneficial than Leonard for net on these first down runs. And you feel better if you're backing the bucks that you've got a little

bit of help here because Ronald Jones is by far the better runner of the football than is Leonard Fournette right now. But just in general, I think it's a great point that you raise. I think it's going to be an interesting conundrum that most of these teams are going to face. You saw that game in Buffalo where it was rainy and misty and windy when the chiefs played the bills in week six. Actually, both these teams played one another in week six. Both games were in week six earlier this season. But that game, the Chiefs ended up running the ball a ton. They had Clyde Edwards a layer. They were getting a lot of success on the ground running the football. And the weather dictated that it was going to be difficult to pass the ball. And so the game was pretty tight,

even though the bills were at a massive disadvantage from a yardage perspective, the scoreboard limited. The play-calling philosophy of the Chiefs limited the upside in how many points they were going be able to score here and kept the bills in this game more. So you still have to trust your quarterback, figure out ways to beat the types of coverages that are inviting a lot of run plays. I think on the flip side, everybody was trying to be super nice, knowing that it was the Breeze swan song, and that there was going to be his last game in the Superdome. And he had meant such an immense amount to that franchise. But there was no, there's nobody that could be watching that game. that did not realize that they got a percentage of their playbook that they can't even run

and that Breeze at this point is a total shell of himself. And it was almost like kind of sad, honestly, to watch because like what happened to Michael Thomas? The guy caught 600 passes, you know, just a year ago. And that may be a whole other deal, right? There might be a they've had a lot of problems with Thomas. this year he was out for a while and then they said he was injured and we know that he got in the fight with the defensive back on his team and so there's there's probably a whole other real story behind all of that but their number one receiver goes without a catch and breeze is

dinkin and duncan you know the whole way down the field do you think that this was how much credit should we be giving though to the buck's defense for what they did and how much should I lay at the feet of Drew Brees and that Saints offense? You should give a lot of credit, a lot of credit to the Bucks defense. They played really well. I mean, as bad as the Saints played,

this is a crazy thing about this game. As bad as the Saints played, you have Jared Cook running with the football in the second half of that game with a lead for the Saints, looking to go up and put the Bucs away. And Winfield strip fumbles the ball. The bucks recover it and they drive down and score a touchdown and boom, the game feels totally completely different.

But if Jared Cook actually holds onto that football, I mean, it's a very good chance the Saints, as shitty as they played, come out and win this game. Michael Thomas, he's going to need off-season surgery is the report that I was hearing yesterday, I believe. and he was not right in this game. He was quoted after the game as saying, and this is why it's difficult when we look at injuries and players that are actually playing, we think, okay, good. Michael Thomas, he's healthy enough.

He's playing this game, right? He's in the game. He's got practicing it. He's playing this game. The Saints are a lot better because he's there. The reality is Michael Thomas isn't close to 100%. He said that he was playing this game, whether you believe him or you don't.

He said that he was playing this game because it was going to be Drew Brie's last game. and he wanted to give it everything that he could, but what he had to give was very little because he was injured, and now he's getting off-season surgery. So there were definite problems with the Saints' offense, the limitations, as you indicated, with Drew Bree's arm,

his lack of ability to throw the football down the field. You know, they had to bring in James Winston just to get an accurate pass deeper down the field. Obviously, that's a trick play. I have no idea why the bucks weren't better prepared for that when you take Drew Breeze and you bring in James Winston, you got to think that they're using this guy's arm to throw the football down the field. And without Tassam Hill available, he's the only real weapon.

Other than Emmanuel Sanders throwing a pass, which he's capable of doing as well. So, yeah, I think it's a combination. I was very impressed overall by the Bucks defense. I was aware that the Saints, after the fact, were dealing with an injured Michael Thomas, and they couldn't get a lot out of him. and obviously Drew Brees didn't look competent in throwing the football down the field. All right, let's move on to Cleveland versus Kansas City.

And never in a million years did I think we would be coming on this show the week after the AFC semifinals and talking about Chad Henney. But Chad Henney had to come in this game. Cleveland, I feel bad for them, Warren, because you know that the Higgins play getting into the end zone is going to be replayed. That's one of those that is just going to be replayed in every Cleveland's fans' mind for the rest of their lives. He's going into the end zone.

He fumbles it through the end zone. It ends up being a touchback for Kansas City. And even after that game was over, I was left thinking that is a different football game if that play doesn't take place. Like I really feel like the rest of that game plays out much differently if he's able to get in the end zone there. But as Faye would have it, he did not get in the end zone. And Cleveland hung strong for that game. And they had a chance there at the end of the game. And Andy Reed, I am fascinated to hear what you think about this.

Is it gargantuan balls or is it psychotic behavior? to do what he did down the stretch of that game. Well, let's first talk Browns and then we'll hit that last decision because you're right. That was a very interesting decision that I really enjoyed watching. But the game is different, obviously, if Richard Higgins doesn't fumble that football. But at the end of the day, the Kansas Chiefs didn't punt the ball once in this game. I mean, their offense was not even with Henny coming into the game at the end. They did not punt the ball once.

Well, they did punt it when Henny threw it. to the end zone. That is true. That interception was one of the worst I've ever seen. I don't know what in the world he was doing there, but they would have scored three straight touchdowns to open this game, but for a bad holding call that they took down inside the red zone that pushed them out and they had to settle for a field goal on that drive. Otherwise, it's touchdown, touchdown, touchdown to open the game for the Kansas City Chiefs. But the reality is, I think this game comes down to, if I'm the Browns, and I'm thinking like, man, you know, we were close here, what went wrong. Obviously that one play, right, the Higgins fumble that should have been called

with the personal foul with the helmet-to-helmet contact was not. And then you have the whole debate about is this a fair rule. But without getting in terms of fumbling the ball into the end zone, what do you think? I hate it. I don't like it either. I don't like it either. So at least we're on the same page because I know we could, if you disagreed, then we could debate that thing for a while. But the main problem that I had with, so at least we're on the same page there. But the main that I had with the Browns was you're going into Kansas City and it's going to be difficult. You're going to have to get everything right in order to win this game. But they were very conservative in two key aspects of this game that I thought cost them.

The first one was their depth of target and how their passing game was clicking. In the entire game, even though they trailed almost the entire way through, Baker Mayfield throws the ball nine times on first down. Only one of those nine passes, Chris, traveled more than seven yards down the field. He averages just three air yards on these first down passes. That's number one. They're not aggressive on first downs. Number two, well, yeah, hold on real quick. You do get, you do get docked for all these little dinky throws. They throw to their running back. Those were driving me crazy, right? Exactly. What do those get is that an air pass of half a yard?

Some of those are negative yards. Obviously, if they're throwing the ball behind the line of scrimmage, and Baker throws six targets to his running backs, that's actually the next thing I was going to say. Those averaged one yard per play with a 17% success rate. So those were terribly inefficient as well. Now, I don't fault them for thinking that this could be a good strategy throwing to the running backs because over the course of the season,

the Chief's defense has really struggled defending running back passes. But once it's not working early on, you've got to make an adjustment. You can't continue doing that. In the first half overall, which is where games are won and lost, I mean, I know, hey, it could come down to the fourth quarter, but a lot of games could be won or could be lost in the first half. The Browns throw the ball 17 times. 11 of those are within five yards of the line of scrimmage with an average target depth of negative one yard behind the line of scrimmage. Okay, the passes average just 2.7 yards per attempt. The six times that Baker throws the ball over five yards down the field, he's averaging 15 yards per pass attempt with a 71% success rate.

So they're throwing the ball, but when they do throw the ball down the field, it's far too infrequently, but they're very efficient passes. And they never made that adjustment like, hey, we can do this a little bit more often. Let's try to attack this secondary. Maybe we've got some advantages there. Instead, what they thought what they could do is, let's run the ball. Boom, chief stuffed the run. The run's not having much success. Well, then let's throw the ball short to augment the run game and use a short pass as a run play. Well, the short passes were gaining just as many yards as your bad runs were. So that really wasn't helping your offense whatsoever. So that was one thing. And then the second thing that was too conservative in my mind beyond the

passing game in terms of where they were passing the ball, how they were passing the ball, not the rate at which they were passing, but how they were conducting their passing attack. The other thing was the clock management. When you are going into a place like Kansas City, you've got to end every drive in a touchdown, right? You've got to end every drive with points and ideally seven points. But you can try to go slower if you want, if you're lucky enough to have the lead, as long as you're still getting touchdowns. If you're intentionally calling inefficient plays to just keep the ball, then you lose the game before it even starts.

You've got to call your best stuff every opportunity you get. And if a drive goes by very quickly, it goes by quickly. If a drive takes a while, it takes a while. You've got to call your best stuff. And the Browns had two drives in this game where they were trailing. And they took between three minutes and 50 seconds and four minutes and 10 seconds. and these drives traveled 12 yards and 13 yards. You cannot have drives that are taking up, on average,

four minutes of game clock and traveling 12 to 13 yards when you're losing the game. I mean, you just, you can't eat up that much clock. Didn't they have another 18 play drive? They had an 18 play drive that chewed up eight minutes and 17 seconds, like the vast majority of the third quarter. They were trying to do that. The problem is when, like you said,

say when it gets stalled out and it doesn't work, now you've just eaten up a lot of clock without any points. Right. And I, you know, to start the game when you're going up against Patrick Mahomes, your strategy could be let's go a little bit slower here. But when you fall behind, your first two drives for the Browns are field goal and punt. The first two drives for the chiefs are touchdown and touchdown. You got to say, dude, we're behind on the scoreboard.

Let's just pedal to the middle. Let's just crank it here. We can't afford this type of stuff. But ironically, what ends up happening is, and I think we all saw it, once Chad Henney comes into the game, once Patrick Mahomes leaves the game with injury, I think the Browns, for whatever reason, thought, okay, now we can go slow. Let's make sure we're right, but we'll score here, and then we'll score on our next drive, and then we'll win this game. They thought like we can go slow. The reality is they should have flipped the switch the completely other way. When you have the vastly superior offense, which is what's they had at that point in time with Baker Mayfield and the guys that were on their roster, as opposed to Chad Henney leading the other team. That's when you have the big advantage. That's when you actually should be going quick.

When you're the superior team, vastly superior from an offensive perspective, you want as many plays to occur in the game as possible because you know over the course of enough plays, the variance gets lowered and you'll have a more likely chance of winning this game. When you're the vastly inferior team, you want fewer plays. You want more variance. craziness to occur so that you have a better opportunity to win the game with one drive or with one fluky play. And so when Chad Henny's over there, you don't want to go slow and make it so that Chad doesn't have to kill as much clock on his end. You want to go fast. And they ended up taking this

eight minute and 17 second drive. And then they finished with a three minute and 51 second drive, which takes 12 yards and they punt the football. And then they never get it back. So I felt like it was the lack of downfield passing and the lack of aggressiveness and the passing attack that cost the Browns tremendously, coupled with their clock management and those decisions that cost them tremendously in this game. And certainly looking back, all things happened the way that they did and you're lucky enough that you lose Patrick Mahomes. If you had done a couple of those little things differently and even forget the fumble through the end zone, you probably win that game if you're the Cleveland Browns. How much of it is, do you, how much of it is they just don't want to turn

Mayfield loose completely? Like when you're talking about throwing the ball to feel, right? Like, those are, those are much safer passes, as you chronicle. What they're throwing, you're not throwing into, you know, two guys on coverage. And when you're throwing the ball as short as he was, and you're talking about the distance at those travel, that it's raining him in, right? Like, it's not, they, they didn't, they didn't need and they didn't want Baker Mayfield to feel like, you go win us this game, you go make plays, right? It's don't make mistakes. We stick to the game plan. And he has done a very good job over the course of the last six games of the season of not throwing picks. Um, he hasn't. And I just wonder, and it might have been

their downfall, right? Like sometimes you need to just let your quarterback say, go make the place, go win the game, right? And it felt like maybe you're raining him in a little bit. I don't disagree at all. Here's my philosophy on this, though. You seen The Wire? Yes. On HBO, okay. You come at the king you best not miss. That's my philosophy when you're playing the Kansas City Chiefs, especially in Kansas City. If you are down on the scoreboard, you better open the whole damn thing up. You better just go. And the frustrating part for me is it's one thing if these downfield passes

weren't working, right? If the chief secondary was playing great and Baker didn't go five of six on passes that he throws more than five yards down the field in the first half, but he goes five of six and is averaging 15 yards per attempt with a very good success rate. So you've got to

expand upon that. You've got to build upon that. You've got to stay aggressive down the field. I think that they came in with a very conservative approach, which may have been the right strategy for them to say, like, look, we're not going to put this all on your shoulders to start the game Baker. We're going to try to play conservative. We're going to see what happens if we rely on the run and work the passing in as we need to. And like I like Kevin Sifansky as a coach. So I think that that probably was their strategy to start this game.

But as soon as you fall down on the scoreboard and you see how quickly the chiefs are working the ball, or not quickly, how easily the chiefs. are working the ball down the field on you. I mean, I think their first two drives they had, the first two drives for the chiefs, not only did they end with touchdowns, I think they had maybe one or two total third down attempts. I mean, they were just carving these guys up. And when you see that, you've got to instantly flip a switch and say, it's your show, Baker. Like, we're going to, we're going to go, we trust you. You got us here. You're good enough QB to get this done. You're having enough success. I don't feel like they made that move quickly enough. The Chiefs did end up with

Chad Henney in the game and Andy Reed gets absolutely trashed 24 hours a day for the last 72 hours if what he did down the stretch does not work out. You know, as the game is going on and I like everybody else in the free world had a teaser on the chiefs and of just sweating this to no end. And on second down, when they, when they're going to pass the ball and Henny ends up getting sacked, which is the best thing that could have possibly happened to them. And then they are going to pass the ball again instead of just running the clock down to the two-minute warning. And then they're going to pass it again with the whatever. it was like the third and 14 where he takes off on the run. I'm thinking of myself, oh my God,

like this is, he was, it was such a tightrope of one of the worst clock butcheringes that you can imagine, right? At worst, someone who's got the cheeses of this, I'm thinking, yo, just run it down, kick it and what they you got to stop them from going you know 85 90 yards down against you and by the way on fourth of one they threw it to Tyree Kill and and you're trusting Chad any of that spot anyway that whole last chief's drive where they sealed the win were you going insane over the decisions that Andy Reed and the chiefs are making or are you happy with the aggression. I was happy with the aggression. I think what he probably realized is that if he gives the ball back to the Browns, the Browns were having a little bit of success throwing the ball down

the field, and he was probably worried about losing this game. So he thought he stood better success if they just figured out a way to get the first down and win this game. Yeah, the third down play. But if it doesn't work out for you, Ward, you're giving them the ball with all kinds of time. That is true. That is true. But I feel like ultimately he entrusted his ability to call plays and Chad Henny's ability to execute. Now what? They took that bad sack on second down that sets them really far back. So now you're in third and forever.

That was a good sack. That was a good sack for me because it's the only thing that would keep the clock running. Right. Well, that's true. It kept the clock running. If you're the Browns at that point, you're like, man, we got this in the bag. This is going to be great. And I could not believe that they allowed Henney to scorn.

scramble for as many yards as he did. And end of the day, I mean, the the cornerback just needs to come up and shut that down. I don't know what he was waiting for, close to the first down marker there for as long as he waited there. Because Chad, any, I mean, what do you think he's going to do? You think

he's going to run you over and embarrass you if you try to come up and make the tackle five yards short of the first down marker. So, yeah, overall, I thought what Andy Reid did, obviously it was Big Cahoonais. but it was obviously the thing that wins them the game.

So I couldn't complain with his confidence in himself that he was going to be able to put this team in the right play. And with Chad Henny, he just felt like, dude, this is not a very difficult throw. I'm going to find the right throw because of my route combination that I'm going to use here that's not as difficult of a throw. What I loved more than anything is they get to the line and they just run the play. And this is the perfect time.

I always say, you know, you've got to look for every edge possible. And if you're on offense, there's edges all over the place. There's edges to be found throughout the game. And so many teams don't take advantage of those edges. But one edge that exists all the time is the ability when the defense thinks that you might call the time out or the defense thinks that you're going to let the clock tick down to the end of the quarter, that they tend to sort of relax a little bit. And the announcers and us viewing it home and probably some of the Browns,

We're thinking, they're not going to run this, are they? They're not going to snap this ball, are they? And then boom, all of a sudden, they snap the ball without even calling a timeout and look at what ends up happening. So I think that that was the perfect play, the perfect design. And Andy just had simple confidence that this is a super easy route. This guy just has to roll to the right. There's not going to be any defensive lineman in this path to bat down the ball. And it's a quick dump off to the fastest guy on the football field who just needs to make a simple

catch and a simple pitch and catch, and it worked out fine. Yeah, when you're talking about advantages, that is also beyond snapping the ball early. Another advantage is having a guy that's as fast as an Olympic sprinter on your team. That works pretty well, too. I mean, it's unguarded. Seriously. Like, there's nothing. It is.

And we're going to run into that a little bit this weekend. I'm sure we're going to talk about the bills in a second. But Marquis Brown had some openings against the bills in the game against the Ravens. And Marquise Brown, I definitely think we're going to see a little bit of Tyree Kill finding some separation against this bill's secondary. Okay, before we move on to that, the huge question and the one that everybody is talking about this week. And it seems like there is a general consensus, like, oh, my homes is playing. My homes is playing. But he did go out of that game, and he was wobbling when he went out of that game.

And because he was wobbling going out of that game, I think everybody forgot that he was limping around before he was wobbling, right? Like he was, he was clearly not his full self. His foot was ailing him in that game. You could see him favoring it throughout. And so it is interesting like what version, what percentage of Mahomes and the full Mahomes experience do we get this week? And it's so hard to gauge because even, like I said, even before, you pass all the concussion

protocols and you're able to play. They say he's having light practices. So the expectation is that Patrick Mahomes is going to be in the lineup. But it feels to me like everybody forgot that he was limping around out there before that, Warren? Yeah, he was. I mean, they're going to have the chance that they didn't have in this game, right? They're going to have the chance to shoot up that toe if they need to. And so that's going to be a big benefit, but you're 100% right. The limp is a factor. The toe is a factor. But I feel like, first of all, it actually works in the Chief's favor a little bit, that they were able to win the game without him continuing to ravage the toe in the second half. He wasn't playing in the second half, so his toe wasn't sustaining any more damage or

usage and now they're just going to be able to rest it. I think they're going to be able to NUMMIT, do whatever it takes to get him back out on the football field. I also don't believe that he was at legitimate risk of not playing this game. You know, the reports have surfaced that it was more like a UFC chokeout. And that's exactly what it looked like to me. I was, I watched the replay. I thought for a second, he's going to come back in this game because he didn't hit his head whatsoever. I mean, his head did not get injured at all, but he clearly sort of blacked out a little bit, and it absolutely was the way that his neck was being twisted and constrained some of the blood vessels or arteries. I mean, I'm a doctor, obviously, but he got rear naked choke. Rear naked choked for a second,

and he was back on his feet very quickly. When that happens in the UFC, and these guys end up tapping out, I mean, they're down on the mat for, you know, minutes as they regain their consciousness here. He was up in like 20 seconds, like walking around after he sort of regained his balance. So I don't think it was that serious, easy for me to say sitting at my house. But I expect him to be back. Well, to me, the big takeaway, at least, because I read earlier this week that he led the league in like runs for first downs. And we know that when everything is covered up because they're so scared of him passing the ball on third and eight, he is always in a credit. weapon to just take off and go ahead and get that first down. He does it routinely. And so the question

becomes how aggressive is he, that part of the game, which is keeping these drives going because he just gets these first downs regularly with his feet. If you got a bummed toe and he got choked out the week before, you know, do you feel differently about running for that third and eight than you did the prior week? Is that, is that aggressiveness still there for Mahomes, which is what makes him in part so devastating. I think it's an absolute important question and I think it is going to be a minor factor in this game. I'm looking at trying to handicap that myself. How much running is he going to do? There's two elements of running that Patrick Mahomes exhibits a ton in games. The first one is the obvious when he is running for first downs in high leverage situations. He typically is not

running much in the first half of games. But in high leverage situations, third down, red zone, two minute drill, or into the second half of games when the opportunity presents itself, he tends to run. And he does it, I don't want to say often, but a lot more in the playoffs, right? He has a lot more rushing yards in the postseason in these important games, especially when the games are tight. When he's up 30 points, he's not running the football much. But in tight games, games that he's losing, rallying for behind high leverage situation, he's been running. lot. So how does the toe impact him from that sense? The other element of his rushing the football is on these 10 to 12 yard dropbacks that he takes, these super deep dropbacks where he's scrambling

around in the pocket to throw. He's taking massively deep drops to avoid the pass rush. How often is he going to be able to do those types of things, which really provided dynamic spark for the deep passing game? He's buying enough time and he's got this arm cannon. He could still hit you if he's backpedaling, fit 12 yards behind the line of scrimmage so that he can get the time it takes for Tyree Kale to break free 40 yards down the field and it's nothing to Patrick Mahomes to still be able to hit those. Is he going to be able to backpedal that long that quickly and still throw the way that he needs to make those big splash plays in the passing game work as well? So those are the two elements from a sports bending perspective, Chris. I will tell you that

I thought the books made a massive mistake here. They initially opened this game at a pick-um at some spots. And then we saw some books post the Kansas City Chiefs's underdogs against the Buffalo Bills, thinking legitimately that this was going to be a hybrid-type line where we're not quite sure if Patrick... When Mahomes gets injured, let's back up a second. When Mahomes gets injured in this game, the first thought to me is, oh, great. number one, what's going to happen with the rest of this game? But I knew he was going to, I thought, based on what I saw, he's going to be fine for the championship game.

But I thought to myself, now we're not going to get a line posted on this game for a while, because we're not going to see until Wednesday does he actually get a practice in. And so now, you know, it's Sunday night. Normally these lines come out Sunday night. We're not going to get a line for a while. These sports books decide to come out with a line anyways. And what they do is they don't take, they intentionally post the wrong number.

They intentionally post a line that would never in the entire universe, in any scenario, this line would never happen. They post the game at a pickum or the bills favored by one and a half to two points. That line is impossible. If the game is Patrick, if Patrick Mahomes is playing, the chiefs are favored. If Patrick Holmes is not playing and Chad Eni is. playing. This line is like five, six, seven points for the bills as the favorite. The line is never Buffalo minus one and a half to two. But what they did is they said, well, let's price in

a percentage chance that Mahomes is playing a percentage chance that he's not and will arrive at this number. Totally dog shit idea for these guys to post that number. And so I immediately, when I saw it, I got on the phone and we got down as much as possible on the Kansas City Chiefs plus one and a half. So right now we've got tickets for the Kansas City Chiefs. plus one and a half in this game. It's ridiculous. Because the books were totally moronic, and I always believe that Patrick Mahomes is playing

in the freaking AFC championship game after what I saw, and we'll deal with it later, but this is just the dumbest line that you could post. If you don't know if he's going to play, you don't post a number. If you're going to post a number, take a stand.

You think he's in so you got this number, or you think he's out so you got that number. What they did with this hybrid line was stupid. Right now, this line is now three, and you've got a little bit of a battle. When the line got down to two and a half with the chiefs favored by only two and a half, a little bit of Kansas City money came in.

And as we see Patrick Mahomes get announced that he practiced a little bit today, you know, and he's going to practice more tomorrow. This line is going to move a little bit higher. But there were also people that were betting the Buffalo Bills in the spot grabbing the three, which I also thought was stupid, because I think that the line is going to,

going to increase beyond the three once Mahomes is getting in full practices at the end of this week. And you're going to see the chiefs probably favored by more than three points here. And so if you like Buffalo, you could get a better number than you can jump in the gun right now, in my opinion. You think it goes over four? No. I don't think it goes over four, but I definitely think that we would see better juice on taking the bills at three or probably just as likely. the game going to three and a half if Patrick Mahomes gets a full practice in on Friday with

no true limitations. All right, let's talk about the bills and your biggest takeaways for them against Baltimore. You know, that game is, it ends up being defined by this 101 yard pick six that Lamar

throws and it's another one of those moments where it's a different game, right? I think at that point it's what, 10 to 3. So if they score a touchdown there, it's 10 to 10. At worst, they kick a field goal. It's 10 to 6. Instead, it's 17 to 3. And then by the next series, Lamar goes out. And that was all she wrote for Baltimore. But what were your biggest takeaways on the bill side? Because that's the team that gets to move on. Yeah. So let's stick with that thought process for Buffalo.

look, you've played so far this postseason two defenses that rank inside the top 10. You play the Colts last week, then you play the Baltimore Ravens this week. You're a past first team. You're playing a Baltimore team that has a very good run defense that still has really good corners, but you're like, I'd rather pass because my run game's not as strong, and they've got a really good run defense. So your philosophy is, I want to pass the football here. but yet you've got massive win.

There's win throughout the course of this game. So for probably any team that was still alive in the playoffs at this point in time, it was the worst possible scenario for a team like the Buffalo Bills to play a very good defense that blitzes a ton that has a good set of cornerbacks and you want a pass ball a lot in this heavy wind condition atmosphere. So I think it worked dramatically against Buffalo's offense here. This was an ugly game. This was a gross game.

You know, at first it's like, oh, my God, these quarterbacks are sailing the ball over the place. But then you realize, damn, they can't, people can't even do snaps right because of the wind. And people can't, these reliable field goal kickers are missing kicks off the post because of the wind. So the wind was the biggest storyline in this game to me. And it's going to hurt a team like the Bills more than it would, a team like the Ravens. I was more impressed with the way that the Bill's defense made adjustments to shut down this run game. If you go back to the game that they played in 2019, they limited Lamar Jackson, and they limited Baltimore's run game.

And so I felt like they were going to be able to limit it a little bit this game. But then I saw that first drive for Baltimore. I was like, oh, crap, we got a game here. Baltimore is able to run the ball on these guys. But Leslie Frazier and the Buffalo Bill's defense, made adjustments and just completely shut down that rushing attack. Like I said, there were guys open in the secondary, in combination of the wind and Lamar's not playing very well.

There were missed opportunities that if there's less wind and his Patrick Mahomes back there, I think there's a lot more points that can be scored against this Buffalo Bill's secondary that will get scored this upcoming game. But overall, this game was like, survive in advance. Find a way the game is not right. The conditions aren't right. It's not a great matchup for you at all.

But doesn't you guys speak to how good the bills are? Probably. You know what I mean? Because they can win a game like that. Exactly. Exactly. No, I think you're probably right. They got a good effort from their defense,

a good enough effort from their defense, and they got just enough out of their offense. And you also have to account for the fact that Buffalo went into this game, thinking we're going up against the number one blitz rate team in the NFL. The Ravens blitz at the highest rate in the NFL. Let's figure out how we can have success against these guys when they're blitzing us in a ton. Where are we going to go? What types of plays are we going to call against all these blitzes? And the Ravens just never blitzed. They completely never blitzed hardly at all in this game. And that definitely threw a massive curve ball for the defense for the Buffalo

bills and for Brian Dayball. It's like, okay, well, they're not blitzing now. So now we've got had to trot out this different set of plays that we think are going to work against the types of coverages that they are playing because they're playing something that they usually don't play. And I think that caught them from a surprise a little bit too. And then they made some adjustments. And we saw like the first drive out of the locker room, they marched the ball 66 yards and score a touchdown. It's their best drive of the game. They follow that up with the 37-yard drive, which was their third best drive of the game.

So they figured out what they wanted to do against this Ravens defense. but a lot of things that the Ravens were doing early, definitely through a curveball for this offense, as did the wind. Yeah, they did enough. It was, that was the least entertaining of the games. Maybe second in least entertaining was Rams Packers. I never felt, you know, even early in this game,

I guess by, I never felt like the Rams were going to be able to win this game. I really didn't, Warren. you know, they were, when you see, they're getting Devante Adams free as they did. And there's this moment where Ramsey is freaking out in the end zone because it's almost like he got picked by his own guy as he is trying to race across the entire field to still guard Devante Adams.

And you're thinking, oh, my goodness gracious. Like that is, that, that, that moment was, I thought, pretty symbolic of what was taking place in this game. And it's going to take one hell of an effort to be able to go beat the Packers in Lambo. What did you make of Matt LaFleur's team and them coming out on top against the Rams? I actually thought the Rams did better than I expected them to, given the conditions that they were up against. I mean, this is a one-score game in the fourth quarter. They're down 18 to 25.

That's seven-point difference. Yep. You know, they were trading punches with the Packers early in this game. They scored the touchdown late, and they send the game into almost into half-time. I can't believe the Packers were able to get down the field in 29 seconds. But this is what the Packers do, though. And I think that's why I guess I had this confidence in them winning this game, even as it got late. It's like they always get up on you and then they dick around.

And then they hold on and then they score that one late one. You know, they tack on the one late one. Like how many games seriously? Like what are they like the best first half scoring team in the entire NFL? And then like this happens. It's every damn game. You'll look up and you'll be playing like the frigging lions. And you'll be watching.

You'll just turn it off Sunday ticket. They'll be up 28 to seven. and they're laying eight points and you feel great about it. And then, you know, Andrew Siciliano comes on your screen and he's like, and Detroit's got the ball back, 28, 24. And you're like, what the hell? Why am I going to lose this bet? Like they were up by a million.

And it just feels like that all the time with the Packers. They get up on you. And then the other team has a chance to crawl back into it. Yeah, no, no doubt about it. I mean, they were dominant. The thing that I agree with you, from the scoreboard perspective, I was surprised that the Rams were able to keep it as close as they were at a couple of different stages in this game, late first half,

and then obviously late second half, late third quarter, early fourth. But you never really felt like they were close to being the superior team. The Packers, I mean, they were five or six on third downs in converting third downs in the first half. And the thing that was the biggest matchup of this game is like Devonthe Adams versus Jalen Ramsey. what the Packers were able to do early with moving Jalen Ram, Devante Adams around a little bit and him getting some releases

against some coverages that the Rams were using and still having success in converting first time. They're like, okay, Aaron Rogers got this. Yes, it's a very good defense, but Aaron Rogers still has this under control. The thing that surprised me a little bit in this game was Jared Goff playing in the cold with his busted finger. And you know what he does on first downs when he passed the ball? He goes 10 of 12 for 9.6 yards per pass attempt, a 75% success rate, hits multiple explosive passes.

That's a quarterback playing without his number one favorite target in Cooper Cup, playing with a broken thumb on his drawing hand, wearing gloves, it's California kid, all everybody talked about is, how's he going to do in this cold weather? And he goes out on first down and has that level of efficiency. So I start to skip ahead and it gets back to all this stuff we were just, we're talking about with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the early part in the show is the fact that they've gone back to this run game on first downs and how they had started off the season with a very run-heavy attack. And then they moved to a very past heavy attack, week's 14,

sorry, week 15, 16, 17, and then the playoffs, they've gotten back to the run. And I'm thinking to myself, you have got this opportunity against the Packers' defense to have, if Jared Goff can get it done with those receivers with a broken thumb on his throwing hand. And Tom Brady absolutely can get it done here, throwing the football on first down. Do you want to rely on Leonard Furnett? Take the ball out of Brady's hands and rely on Leonard Ferdet to get these first down yards for you? Or would you rather rely on Tom Brady? And it's going to be a big factor because of two reasons, one of which you just mentioned,

which is the first is that the Green Bay Packers have the highest scoring offense in the NFL in the first half of games. Matt LeFleur has a great offense. They're aggressive. His play calling is great. He schemes up really well for opposed schemes. Even when they got their ass kicked down in Tampa, they put up 10 points in the first quarter of that game before things started to derail themselves. This is a team that's able to get out, especially at home, and put up points.

And the second part to this is equally as important piggybacks on the first point. And that is that Aaron Rogers, when he has a lead of any size at home in Lambo, is 70 wins and only one loss in his career. The one loss came when he and Mike McCarthy's relationship was so frayed and so splintered that they lose a game to the Arizona Cardinals that they let at halftime and McCarthy is fired the next day. So like that relationship was unraveling for a while. Their game planning, they're strategizing, their play calling was garbage at that point in time. That's the only time that Aaron Rogers ever has had a lead at halftime that he lost. Now, I don't doubt that Tom Brady, which this Bucs team is more of a second half team to begin with.

They rally late. They did it against the Saints. They've done it a lot this year. It takes a little while to get started. I have no doubt that they're equipped with a good enough quarterback to get back in this game. Like the Bucks don't, sorry, the Packers defense is not so stellar that the Bucks can't get back in this game if they're down. But the fact is you're going against a lot of history here. And it's not the most ideal situation.

You've got to figure out a way to trade blows early with Aaron Rogers. And if Jared Goff can go 10 to 12, 9.6 yards per attempt on first down passes, I think let's give Brady more chances to do this. Fascinating that you say that about Jared Golf because it was a day later that the story comes out that McVeigh and golf need marriage counseling. Like you liked what you saw out of golf and I don't know, Shaw McVey and him, they went sideways. Considering the situation, I thought he performed adequately. Now, I believe Jared Goff. I don't really like Jared Goff.

I wish they, we had a discussion. I think that's a Sloan Analytics panel where I was sitting on the panel for NFL. Mina Kimes was the moderator. And Kevin Demoff, who I think is the Rams president or vice president, something like that, was sitting right next to me. And we were talking about extending Jared Goff. And I was kind of like, eh, I don't know about that. And so it was a little bit of an awkward discussion.

point because he was one of the guys who's going to have to make that decision. But, you know, they gave them a ton of money and I don't really think that they're getting their money's worth out of him. All right. Last thing before we get out of here, because I know you and House are going to be doing big previews leading into this weekend. I just want to ask you, we saw Tampa Stomp Green Bay this year. We saw the Chiefs handle the bills this year. As you mentioned, we have a rematch of what were regular season matchups. Do those matchups matter in your mind's eye? Now, in fairness, we just saw a Saints team that obliterated the Bucks,

turn around and lose to the Bucks when it mattered most in a playoff game. But, you know, is it instructive at all for us to go back and check on what happened when the Bucks played the Packers and when the Bills played the Chiefs? is this just its own game and that is not of great significance? So looking back at like the last 20 years, when a team has met their opponent once earlier in the season and they meet again in the conference championships, the team that won the first game is 15 wins and 12 losses.

So we're talking right around 55, 56%. It's nothing overly dramatic. Yeah. However, in the last, let's say, since 2014, they are seven wins and two losses, the team that won the first game. So a little bit more slanted towards, you know, the team's going to be able to get that same reaction to the game. When you win by a large margin in that first game, if you win by like 20 plus points and

you're not playing a team that you are division rivals with, right? So this is literally just the second time that you've played them. you didn't play them two times during the regular season. And you won that first game by 20 plus points, which the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did. They are five wins and two losses over the last 20 years. And since 2014, they are three wins and zero losses winning the games by six points, 17 points, and 38 points. So it sort of favors the bucks a little bit here.

But most of these games, that same time, team that won the first game by a large margin was the home team in this game. Now, we don't have true home field advantage, although Lambo is a place where because of the environment, you get a little bit of home field advantage. But in those seven games, I mentioned where those teams went five and two, the team that won the game, the team that blew out the team, these were all home games. These were six of the seven games were home games. So you had like the vastly superior team, won by a large margin earlier the season, had the better record, had home field advantage, and then still was able to win this rematch game. That's not necessarily the case if the team is a road team.

When you're on the road and you won the first game, you were actually only three wins and six losses in the rematch game. So it's really not a strong enough factors, small enough sample size, no trends here to really say, oh yeah, this definitely. favors Tampa Bay because of what they did here in one game that was played much earlier this season in week six. The fact that they won at home by large margin. And the other thing is, Matt LaFleur has fared very poorly in games off of a buy. And we've seen that last year. We've seen it this year. That game earlier for them was off of a buy. So he struggled in those situations and they got blown out yet again down in Tampa Bay. They're not off of a buy here.

They're playing at home. They've got Aaron Rogers. is going to be a fascinating game. I can't wait to see the strategy and the philosophy of Tampa Bay's offense, how aggressive they get, what they choose to do on first down, how successful those run plays are that they inevitably will call too many of. And then how Aaron Rogers does in the first half, how many points he's able to score, are the Packers able to lead? Will they maintain and build upon their 70 wins and only one loss

when he's leading at home at halftime? What are the chances that both spreads are three on game day? I think the bucks are the side that's taking money. So I have no doubt that that line has a very good shot at getting down to three at some point on game day for sure. And I think there will be money that comes on the Chiefs. And I think everybody who wants to play the Chiefs is once Mahomes gets officially announced up is going to try to find a way to buy the hook or lay the three. And I think everybody wants the bills. It just all depends how heavy that bill's money is when the line comes.

gets to three and a half, which I think it will on game day, how heavy that money is on the bills that keeps buying the three and a half and taking the hook. Like, will they force the books to lower the number back down to three? Or will the amount of public that's, and where does the public come in on this game? That's the other thing about this game. They're going to bet on the chief. Well, the thing is, in this, in these playoffs, you don't really have any massive underdog team here, right? Like all of these teams have lost very few games this year. All of these teams have been rolling down the stretch. She's also haven't covered since like November. Exactly. They haven't covered, but they've been winning games for people. And I just, it's interesting. I don't

think we're going to have massively strong public favorites here. Like, I don't think we're going to get outlandish. Oh my God, 80% of the public is betting the chiefs here. I don't think we're going to get 80% of the public is betting the Packers. A lot of the public wants to bet Tom Brayette. and a lot of the public has been winning and covering the spreads by betting on the Buffalo bills, whereas they haven't been winning and covering the spreads when they're betting on the Kansas City Chiefs. So I think the public betting action is going to be really balanced here. And therefore, I don't know exactly what the books are going to, quote, unquote, need. It's going to come down to more so where the sharp money is and how much sharp money is coming

on these games. But I think we've got two great games. though there's certainly line to indicate as such, and it's going to be a great championship weekend. It is. I know you and House are going to be breaking down both of the games later this week. Make sure you stay tuned in to the Ringer NFL show throughout the week as we get you ready for the conference championships. Warren, I will talk to you next week.

Sounds good, Chris. Thanks, everybody. We'll talk to you then.