The Ringer NFL Show - Warren Sharp’s Super Bowl Recap

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

Warren Sharp is joined by both of his cohosts from the season, Chris Vernon and Joe House, to break down the Super Bowl in its entirety. We discuss Andy Reid’s clock management, the questionable penalties, the difference in coaching strategies, and Kansas City’s dropped passes, before recapping how our bets fared on Sunday and more. Host: Chris Vernon, Joe House, and Warren Sharp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today's episode of The Ringer NFL show, Warren Sharp, Joe House and I wrap up Super Bowl 55, how Tampa Bay upset the Chiefs. And most importantly, recap our bets. Stick around. Welcome to The Ringer NFL show. I'm Chris Vernon. And joining me as he does every Wednesday is Warren Sharp. Hey, Warren. What is up, guys? And you have been doing a show every Friday with Joe House. We end the season with a three-man weave. after we now have this post Super Bowl show.

What's up, House? Yay, yay! Let's get into it, boys. How about it? I mean, I won a little money. I might have lost some more money, but that's just storyline number seven or eight out of all the storylines that we have to get through

on that Super Bowl. It was a dud, but I kind of loved it. All right, let's talk about the way that actual game played out. It will get to all the extra stuff. Warren, when you think, Think about that game and the win by the Buccaneers over the Chiefs. What comes to mind first when you think about the way Super Bowl 55 played out? Coaching matters a lot.

And some teams, as stubborn as they may be, for much of the season, end up seeing the light. And that's exactly how I felt about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, about Byron Lefich, about Bruce Ariens, about Tom Brady, if he had more influence over this game plan or not, about Todd Bowles, although Todd Bowles, he made some critical changes, which, like, absolutely shocked what Andy Reid was trying to do. But the guy that had to change the most offensively, the guy who had to do more differently to win this game that I was not sure that they would be capable of doing was Byron Lefwich and that Buck's offense overall. And I was, extremely, extremely impressed.

I, we said on the show either with you or with House, if that first play of the game features Tom Brady sticking the ball into the belly of Leonard Furnett and pulling it back out the other side and throwing a play action pass, we got a game. And that is exactly what happened, the first play of the game. And we had a game at least from the Bucks perspective. Now, the Chiefs, that's a totally different story. All right, at what point in the game did you think the Chiefs aren't winning this game?

They were up 14 to 6. They had kicked their second field goal. I thought, okay, well, this isn't great. They obviously didn't score a touchdown on Patrick Mahomes is running for his life too often in this game. And I didn't necessarily love how he was running either. You know, like the runs up the field were great. We knew he was going to run around backwards. the pocket a fair amount, but he still did not look quite 100% to me on his toe.

Now, maybe I was reading too much into it, looking too much at exactly what he was doing, but I still could sense that he wasn't quite 100% with his toe. So that was another red flag. But what led me to say, okay, we're screwed here is, at least in terms of seeing the chiefs come back and win this game, was when they called that first time, timeout after Leonard Fournett runs into a pile and there's like 50 seconds left in the first half and the bucks are backed up and the chiefs had just scored three points and it's 14 to six. And then they get an eight yard gain and it's third and two from the 38 yard line of Tampa Bay.

And the bucks and the chiefs call another timeout. And I thought to myself during that whole sequence and I know some people say, well, you would have complained if they hadn't called the time out after that first and 10 run. actually, no, I would not have. Actually, no, I would not have. Because the way that that game was going, and with the Chiefs getting the ball to start the third quarter, I loved getting the double.

I love scoring the field goal and then potentially coming back with the revitalized game plan on the other side of that break, down only 14 to 6. And I do not want Tom Brady having the ball in his hands, trying to drive with a few seconds left in that second quarter. I wanted everything to go to the halftime just as it was. So Tony Romo is sitting there saying, well, the Bucks are calling, sorry, the chiefs are calling their timeouts so they can get another momentum swing before the half. I'm thinking, what are you talking about?

They just got to score. They don't need any other, anything else. Just go to halftime right now. They call two timeouts. Brady goes down. And instead of even kicking a field goal, they score a touchdown. And I was like, boom, we're done. And people, I got some of my buddies, they messaged me.

Some guy called me. what do we do half time, halftime, should we come back with the chiefs? I said, no. I'm not doing anything at half time. There's no, to me, there is no value doing anything with the chiefs in that second half. The deficit that they were in,

the way that they were already playing, now they have to just do nothing but drop back in the second half. It was a recipe for disaster in that second half. I wanted nothing to do with betting live or doing anything with the chiefs at that point in time. At that point in time, I was like,

okay, this is the bucks game. How about you? House, what'd you think? At what point did you think the bucks have got this? It was exactly that drive that Sharp is talking about. One of the favorite pastimes of the Mahomi era, of

this era with the chiefs led by Patrick Mahomes, is the Sunday text thread, the football text thread, and I'm not doing this to drop names or anything like that, but it, you know, Simmons is on it, cousin Sal is on it. We're watching the games. We're going back and forth.

And one of our favorite pastimes is the chief's getting down early in a game and looking at the money line move towards positive territory for the chiefs and saying, are we going to jump on the chief's money line now? Is it time yet? You know, it's a very fun thing to do because the chiefs always are opening up these games over the last couple years as big favorites. And the money line is always too expensive. But once they go down 10 points, 14 points, 17 points, oh, look at this.

the chief's money lies moving in a positive direction. We had, we took a look at it and not one person on the thread said, oh, you know, we should do anything about it. We just looked at it and kept on keeping on because nobody believed that the chiefs had to come back in them. Yeah, and I think that's a difference between a year ago, right? And it's a difference between, I guess, Tom Brady and Jimmy Garoppolo, but we recall, you know, they're down 10 in the fourth quarter and people were still

slamming the live line on the chiefs. Chiefs. And of course, the Chiefs scored 21 in the fourth quarter, but this one felt a lot different because I agree with you. It did not feel like that was in the cards, that they had a 21-point quarter. And we know they can score, it can be a wave. It can happen rather quickly. It just didn't feel like that was in the cards for them. And part of that was from the, you know, from the first quarter, you could tell, we talk so much about not just losing your left tackle, losing your all-pro caliber left tackle. And how that could have a profound effect. And it feels like that has been a massive storyline from this game, rightfully so, which is Mahomes was running for his life the entire game.

We talked about last week, Warren, which of these teams is really going to be able to pressure the other? we got the answer. We got the answer. Yeah, we did. And there was some ridiculous numbers here. Mahomes ran for 497 yards before letting go of his passes. That was most by any quarterback in any game this season. Mahomes was under pressure in two and a half seconds or less on 24 dropbacks. For Brady, it was only three. Right? Brady, it was only three. Total pressures. Tom Brady was under pressure just four times. that was the lowest of any game in his Super Bowl career. Mahomes was under pressure on 29 dropbacks.

That was the most for any quarterback in Super Bowl history. So, well, we try to take into context, well, what could have Mahomes done differently or those types of things? I mean, it was very difficult. The only thing that the chiefs potentially could have done differently, they made very few adjustments I felt to do anything differently was, you know, try to do something other than the five-man protection. I understand why you're doing the five-man protections because you get a lot of guys out in routes. And you can hopefully get rid of the ball quickly for your quarterback and throw the football. But when that's not working, when that's not having success in the first half, you know, maybe you do something a little bit different. And on 52 of Patrick, on, on Mahomes, 52 dropbacks, well, actually had 56, he was sack four times on his 52 pass attempts.

48 of those were five-man protections, right? They weren't using like extra guys in to help chip or block. They weren't keeping guys around. It was just five man protections. So, you know, there was there was a lot here. Obviously, I spent a ton of time writing up what I thought the team should do. And to me, it was this story was more about the fact that the bucks did so many of these things that I didn't think that they were going to do necessarily rather than the chief's failure. Because I think the reason the chiefs failed, they had an okay game plan, but their line couldn't do anything and they didn't make the right adjustments. And they just got completely overwhelmed. I mean, it's not like they couldn't move the ball down the field whatsoever. They still made it into the red zone three different times. But they scored zero points off of any of those trips. They turned a ball over multiple times. You know, it was, it was, but to me, this was more about what the Bucks did right than what.

the chiefs did wrong. And in the end, it really doesn't matter what plays you call if you can't block anybody. Well, and that's the thing I want to ask Sharpie about. What shocked me, uh, in terms of that defensive game plan for Tampa, Todd Blitzy Bowles barely blitzed. You, you talked about all of that pressure, all of, uh, the, the yards that my home spent scraming, like very little of it came by way of the blitz, right, Sharpie? A hundred percent. Um, you know, one of the things that, and this was really a benefit to what they were trying to do. I don't know if this was, I guess this was their game plan coming in. I think they blitzed a little bit at the beginning, but they blitzed on only 9.6% of dropbacks. That is the lowest rate for any Todd Bulls defense in the last five

seasons. And he didn't need to. He did not need to because they were able to get home without blitzing. And it wasn't get home as in sack the quarterback. I think there was only one. sack up until the late third quarter or the fourth quarter. They were just forcing Mahomes to run all over the place. And Mahomes was being... But in fairness, Warren, there would have been 70 sacks against a normal human being. A hundred percent. Mahomes was being a complete magician back there, just running around and getting rid of the ball on target many times. I mean, it was incredible thing to watch some of the most incredible incompletions you'll ever see. But what it allowed Todd to do then is to use a lot of this middle of the field open coverage that I wrote about that I wanted them to do that had success in the first game.

They played two deep safeties, which basically means you got two deep safeties. The middle of the field is open. There's not a guy standing right there as opposed to single high safety where he's standing in the middle of the field. They played two deep safeties on 59 of 68 plays. That's 87%. that is the highest rate by a Todd Bulls-led defense in the last five seasons. So they pressured at the lowest rate at the last five seasons, and they used two deep safeties at the highest rate in the last five seasons.

That's completely correlated, right? That's correlated. And it allowed the chiefs to be able to play a lot of coverages that were able to keep up on the short crossing routes and some of the short routes with tight coverage, while still preventing some of the deep plays. And that's really what was their key to success defensively. And you think that this was obviously in part of reaction

to getting absolutely shredded by Tyree Kill the first time they played. Is it the defense and what the defense did? Or is it just they didn't, you don't have time for anything to develop when you're talking about that many dropbacks within two and a half seconds. I mean, as fast as Tyree Kill is, he can't get all the way down the field.

the two and a half seconds. No, I mean, it's a combination. It always is, but that pressure is first and foremost. I mean, if you have great protection in the back end, you got man coverage underneath and you got your two deep guys, but Mahomes has like five seconds in the pocket to stand around and survey things and then take off if he wants to, then you're still going to be in trouble. But the way that they were able to get the pressure, which with such few men rushing the

quarterback was the real key to everything else that took place the rest of the snap. And it really was incredible to watch. I mean, Mahomes hasn't been pressured like this ever. And that's really what prevented this offense from doing anything. This was, I think this is the first game that Mahomes has started where they never scored an offensive touchdown. I mean, he's absolutely incredible the job that they did. And certainly some of it is a result of injuries to that offensive line. But, you know, much credit. it goes to Todd Bowles in this defensive game plan and the execution by the defense. Well, I guess that's a pertinent question because everybody's talked about the offensive

line being hurt. And I know he's lost both of his tackles. But Fisher was the huge one, because that was the one that he lost in the last game towards the end of the last game. We had never seen your left tackle. There's a reason these guys get paid a fortune. And he is a great one. If they have, you know, it's almost, you know, It sneaky takes away a little bit from the bucks when we always bring up, you know, but in fairness that he was running for his life the whole game, so it showed up so much. But if Eric Fisher's there, if he doesn't get hurt and tears Achilles, do you think this is a radically different game? Are we making too much of the fact that Eric Fisher and the offensive linemen were hurt?

I think it doesn't change what Tampa's offense, and we'll talk about that in a minute, was able to do against this Chief's defense, right? So they're still going to be quite productive. They didn't even need to do anything in the fourth quarter. They held a commanding lead. So, you know, they took the pedal off the gas a little bit at that point. But it's going to change some things for what the Chief's offense does. There were some things that the Chief's offense did that I was a little bit surprised, which first and foremost was very little pre-step motion and play action. I mean, this was a team, Andy Reid's team. used the highest number of plays that featured both pre-snap motion and play action of any team in the

NFL and the chiefs, and the bucks, if you remember, I mentioned this in the show, they had never faced in the playoffs a single snap that featured both pre-snap motion and play action. Opposing offenses were not doing that against them. And over the course of the entire game, the Kansas City Chiefs used just five dropbacks with play action. Five, that was their lowest rate of play action at any point in time over the last two seasons. So I think that that was a result of the pressure that was getting to them. And the realization that Todd Bowles and this defense did not care if the Chiefs were going to run the football. They just played the pass the entire way through.

And if Andy Reid changed things up and said, okay, we're just going to start running the football. You guys are this too deep safety look. And we can get six yards running the football. Let's just keep running it until you do something about it. I think that the game would have been different if they kept running the football and forced the buck's defense to do something. But Andy Reid, that's really not his style.

He wants to keep passing the ball. So quick answer is, yes, the game is different. if Eric Fisher is up, the end result is probably still the same, however. You agree with that house? I do. I want to pick up on the observation that Warren just made, though. The chiefs were active accomplices in their own demise here. There was a lot of self-defeat, a lot of self-sabotage going on with the chiefs,

including that crucial 55-second drive. 55 seconds left in the second quarter going into halftime. If they had gone into halftime down only 14 to 6, then maybe they could have worked into the game plan running the ball. The rush for Kansas City was eliminated as an option. And they still handed off with some success to Hilaire in the second half. But, you know, being down one score versus two touchdowns is an entirely different kind of tenor.

But I want to also talk about, you know, the incompletions. Warren mentioned it. I don't know if I'm allowed to make this joke in 2021, but there were a lot of balls in the face. I mean, we had so many balls in the face that led to unsatisfied kind of outcomes, unsatisfactory outcomes. I mean, and from unexpected sources, Tyreek Hill had one that bounced off. but Kelsey had one that hit him in the hands. That was a crucial third down in the first quarter. And I'm pretty sure Williams had one too, exactly.

But on top of that, too, the penalties were a mess. Well, and we need to talk about this because you guys are both brought up that drive at the end of the first half. Kansas City fans would tell you, F that. Like you get you can bitch about the time management and everything else. That was bullshit what happened to us. You know, it was all aided by two uncatchable balls. Now, the first one, look, I think it's tough. You got, I think you have to make the Evans call.

But the one that Brady threw like, you know, through the, through the goalpost. I mean, I mean, I hate that I know the Carl Sheffer's name. I hate that I know his name. I hate that I know how many penalties he calls on average. I hate that all the stories that came out yesterday and all into the week show this data of when he's the head referee, you know, there's a, he leads the league and penalties. There was a record in the Super Bowl, this second quarter, 90 yards and penalties the most in one quarter in Super Bowl history. It was the most penalties called in a Super Bowl game since Super Bowl 9.

like that's a bad look. It's bad for the league. It's bad for all of us. You have this rare moment of having the whole world convene to watch your product. And, you know, a ton of those penalties were discretionary calls. I didn't like the, the sportsman like, you know, with, was that Chris Jones? Yep. I didn't like, they didn't have to call the off sides on the, the field goal, successful field goal,

that converted into a first down. They called a tickey tack defensive holding on Honey Badger's interception of Brady. That was a game changer. All of those have an element of discretion, and I just felt they were just too quick to pull the trigger. And you guys probably noticed this as you're watching the game. I think every football fan did.

If you pay attention so many times, and I think back to the Jared Gough thing, where Tony Romo was going on and on about how, like, they're happy with going on with Wofford and, you know, that you could just tell that he had talked to McVeigh, and McVey had crapped on Jared Gough, and now that is being relayed on a national broadcast. At the beginning of the game,

Romo started talking about how much they clutch and grab and hold, the defensive backs for the Kansas City Chiefs. And it struck me that if those guys all delivered that message, to Romo in the meetings broadcast meetings before the game, you know very well they were out there talking to those officials before the game and saying, watch for this, watch for this,

watch for this, watch for this. And that can have a profound effect. I just, the reason Romo told us at the beginning of the game to watch for this. And so it was like, what, did Tom Brady and Bruce Ariens and everybody under the sun go and tell these officials, like these guys hold all the time? Because it wasn't, you know, I guess,

I've read an article saying that the chiefs were rather undisciplined throughout the year and you didn't notice because their offense was so good. But that was a thing obviously that was brought up even prior to. Did you notice that Warren? Well, yeah. I mean, we talked about it on the Friday show. One of the key things I mentioned was they hold all the time. And, you know, I, as you know, I work with some teams. And what you implied that perhaps Tampa did with talking to the officials ahead of time and mentioning how they do that, that was a suggestion for me to another team out there, that they have their coaches talk to the officials before the game because every defense holds, but the chief's defense is grabby as hell, and they do that a ton. And the key to me with this game, I'm a little bit split on this,

right? I'm a little bit split because I am not one of the types of people. that says, well, it's the Super Bowl. So just swallow all your flags and your whistles. Let's just see the guys play. I am one of those people. I know you are. I could sense that because of how you were discussing, like, the product on the field and how it's taken in by everybody.

But I feel like the rules should be the rules. And I don't care if it's week four or it's the Super Bowl. If there's a penalty, it should be called. But we still have to make sure that we're calling the penalties correctly. If we're enforcing them correctly, it's not an issue to me. I don't care if the teams are committing offenses all the time, you're going to try to call whatever you can. But if the teams are playing a clean game, then fine, don't call the things. And I felt like if you're going to allow a team in particular who's, remember the Seahawks, they used to do this all the time, right?

Like, if we hold on every, if our DBs hold on every single play, they're not going to throw the flag every time. So we're just going to hold them. This was when the Legion of Boom was doing what it was doing. Like, that was one of their mantras. and they had a lot of success in doing that. But I did feel two things happened in this game that I didn't like. Number one, some of the flags I didn't agree with, right? I didn't think that they were correct.

And number two, they clearly were told at halftime, slow your roll with these flags, and then they did so. And to me, that's like, okay, then that shows they were probably being a little bit too aggressive to start the game. But I don't like a game where it's, reft one way in the first half and a different way in the second half. And you know where that plays a factor in this one, especially with all the past penalties, the past interference, the defensive penalties on past plays, is what did Tampa do? And we're going to talk about this when we switch

over to that side of the ball. Tampa comes out and throws the ball more than we expected. They actually had a higher pass rate on first downs in the first half than they had this entire playoffs. They came out and tricked us a little bit and had some success throwing the football on those plays. And what ends up happening is they're throwing the ball at a higher rate at that point in time. They're getting a lot of penalties that are called on the defense on those past plays. They're able to build a lead. Then when Kansas City comes back to try to throw the ball a ton in the second half, now the refs have swallowed their whistles a little bit.

Now the refs aren't calling as many plays when balls are being thrown in the air. And so you have something that's less equitable because now one team was getting called too much in first half and now that's not being applied to the second half when the other team is playing catch-up. So I'm not saying that resulted in the in the game going the way that it did. This game is still, in my opinion, won by Tampa Bay, regardless of whether the refs call a few more penalties in the second half or if they call a few less in the first half. That, that said, I just did not like the way this game was officiated in general. Yeah. So House said the, you know, he thought the refs were bad. You thought they were bad and

inconsistent. Yeah, I thought that they were bad and inconsistent, particularly into the second half. But I am not like House in that. I want very few penalties called in the Super Bowl. I still want the game to be officiated and play because you have to consider, yes, for us at home, it might be nice if we never see an official on the TV screen and we never see a game stoppage for that reason. But the reality is, like, this is why I didn't want there to be weather.

I don't want outside influences messing up the way that this game is supposed to go. I want the two teams and the two coaches to go head to head, mono e mono, and may the best game plan and execution and performances emerge victorious. And when you have weather that interferes with that, that causes problems. And when you have refs that are not calling penalties that should be penalties, that's a problem. And when you have refs that call penalties that are not correct, that is also a problem. So, you know, you could pick your poison there, but I prefer to see a game to be officiated the way that it should be by the letter of the law and the best team emerge victorious. I feel like in the biggest games, they've been freaked out.

I don't know if you agree with this house, but they've been freaked out since the New Orleans Rams game a couple years ago. That that was such a big deal. And it felt like it decided who went to the Super Bowl that now they're freaked out to not call it. I don't know if I agree with that. That Green Bay Tampa game ended with a pass interference where the guy was holding on to the Tampa receiver's white t-shirt, had it stretched out four feet. And that was the end of the game after letting the both teams basically play hijack. I mean, they were all, that was a very physical game by both secondaries. But that's what I'm saying.

They make that call now. They always err on the side of making the call now. But they weren't making it at all up until that point in that game. It's the inconsistency that's the problem. And it's what I'm saying, at these big moments, because there was the big moment that it wasn't called in the Saints Rams game, right? So now they're so freaked out that somebody's going to say, because all those others, they can go by the wayside. What people remember is the ones that matter most. and if they don't call it when somebody feels like it matters most,

then now they're on the hook a lot worse than if they do call it. Well, 15 penalties is too many. Although I will say sometimes the best bets are the ones we don't make. I did not touch that prop. It was 10.5, I think, was the number of penalties for the game. And fortunately, I always like the under for penalties in the Super Bowl. I'm glad I didn't touch that one. You talked about your 55 page.

preview Warren. All right, you know you are going to be harder on yourself than anybody ever could be. So as you dissected what you wrote for 55 pages and what you thought about leading up to this Super Bowl, how would you evaluate your 55 page preview? The one thing that I suggested that I did not suggest for Tampa, I went through and analyzed all the key aspects of the game. what I think would make the most difference, the highest leverage things that each team could do in the game and whether or not they would do it. The one thing that I didn't touch because it didn't occur to me that they would even try to do this is for Tampa to lower their average depth of target to get the ball out from Tom Brady's hands quicker. And that's one thing I didn't address in there. But Tom Brady had only 5.7 average depth of target, meaning on average his pass flew 5.7.5.7.5.7.

yards beyond the line of scrimmage. During the regular season, it was nine yards. It was over nine yards. So they got the ball out much shorter and quicker. And what I felt like they were doing is more of the stuff that Tom Brady loved to do up in New England that he had a lot of success with. We saw some deeper shots in New England, but that was rare and on occasion. It was more of this controlled passing attack. So what are some of the things that Tampa Bay actually did here offensively? And that I was suggesting they do, well, pass the ball a little bit more on first down, and they did. They had the highest first down pass rate in the first half of any point in time in the postseason. And in addition, they were able to lean on the runs because they were actually successful.

So that when they did run the football, this was the thing. We wanted them to avoid third downs. And they're able to do that by having a higher pass rate on first down with success and also gaining 6.3 yards. per carry on first down runs in quarters one through three. That's what they gained in the Super Bowl during the regular season. That was only 4.2. So they had success. It called more passes, but their runs still had success. I suggested they use a lot more play action. And they did. They went play action on 67% of their first down passes. That was the highest rate of any on the season. Prior to this game, their average was only 38%.

When they passed the ball on first down with play action, Brady was 7 of 8, 12 yards per attempt, plus 0.67 EPA, two touchdowns on first downs with play action. And a 156 rating when he passed the ball on first down without play action, only 4.3 yards per attempt and a minus 0.23 EPA.

They used it a lot more often. They're splits on all downs with play action versus without were massively different. The play action massively helped them. So I was super happy that they did that. We were advising them, you know, you got to stay out of these third downs because we don't think you're going to have as much success as you did against Green Bay. Casey is one of the best defenses in the NFL on these third and long situations.

Stay out of third down. What ended up happening when he did get put into third down? Seven third down dropbacks, which is extremely low, by the way, but he was. in third down seven times, was sacked once, averaged 2.4 yards per attempt, minus 0.54 EPA per attempt, and converted first downs on only two of those seven plays. So we were right in the fact that Kansas City is brilliant on third downs, third and long situations against the pass. Brady's got to stay out of those situations. And they did. They stayed out of them a lot. When they were in them, they were very bad. We talked about the fact that they need to take advantage

of the tight ends and the running backs because the Bucks are the Chiefs rather are really good defending perimeter wide receivers and they did that. We saw Gronk catch the first two touchdowns of the game from an in-line position. He was lined up in line. We were talking about how that gives the chiefs a lot of problems. They're much better defending slot tight ends, align the tight end in line. They did that. We talked about them being aggressive on early downs in the red zone. They scored three red zone touchdowns. Two of the touchdowns were on first down and one of the touchdowns was on second down. They did not fare very well on third downs, but they were aggressive with their play calls on early downs. So so many things that they did were exactly what I thought they needed to do, which were

very different than what they were doing for most of the season. And I didn't know that they would have that in them. I was extremely happy that they did. So they made the changes. We already talked about what the cheats, what the bucks did defensively and Todd Bowles about the middle of field open versus close that I had in the report. Um, so overall, you know, I was watching the game and I was smiling a lot because they were doing so many of the things that I thought that they needed to do. And, and I felt really good about the process of, of what I came up within the report, and what I thought that they should do and was just shocked that they actually were doing so much of it. And let's be fair, the chiefs were incapable of.

doing anything that anybody would advise them to do. I mean, sometimes it's simple. Sometimes we don't have to dissect it that much. They couldn't block anybody. If you can't block anybody in football, you're dead. Even if you got Patrick Holmes, that's the lesson here. This guy, any other mortal man would have been sacked 700 times. It reminds me of those old stories you hear from the 70s where people like, people talk

about Archie Manning and how great he was. And yet he like lost over and over again. he never like they and they say like you know he's playing for these saints teams a guy was like running for his life but for whatever reason everybody watched archie manning's whole career and thought he's one of the best ever and like this hall of fame caliber quarterback and then you look at records and you look at stats you're like wait what and it's reminiscent of like you got to see it to believe it we all walked away thinking no less of Patrick Mahomes which is pretty impossible when you get your ass kicked in the Super Bowl.

Right House? Well, this is the thing. And this is part of what made the run-up to this game in particular so delicious, so rich. I mean, it really was the conversation Sharpie and I had on the Friday before the Super Bowl, you know, a week ago was, you know, going through his report and talking about the potential game scripts and the strategies that the teams might have. And we really could not, at least I couldn't. I didn't come away feeling like I know for sure Tampa will lean this way.

And as a result, because I have the confidence that Tampa is going to seize on some of these concepts, I have a stronger conviction about Tampa in this game. On the other side, it was Kansas City game script-wise. If the middle of the field is open and Warren kind of went through this, does that lead to short passes over the middle of Kelsey? Is Kelsey going to catch 25 balls? for 200 yards over the middle, that open zone area in the field. And is that a way to minimize the pass rush that the Tampa's going to bring to bear?

And if I'd had even 5% of a lean towards Super Lenny, because Super Lenny hit all his overs, he hit over on the longest carry, he hit over, thank God for all of us, on a number of receptions, he hit over on rushing yards, He hit his touchdown. I mean, Super Letty was super. And if we had, you know, a sense that Tampa was going to be so aggressive, so ambitious in terms of their approach to the game, then, you know, I might have bit down hard.

Now, lots of folks believed in Tampa and believed in Brady. And I think it was some blind faith. And also, you know, we're old, you and I, Verno, old souls at least. You're much younger than me, but I know you're an old soul. the old adage that defense wins championships and that whoever wins the battle of the trenches is going to win the Super Bowl that was absolutely the story of this game.

Tampa control the line of scrimmage. Regarding the Keep It Simple line of thinking, my wife was looking over my shoulder of bed as I had my phone out and I was going through one of the sports book things and it said win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, win, went, I mean, it was just, I mean, it was flush. And she was like, what in the world? And she said, oh, she's like, so what, what was the key? And I was like, you bet on Tom Brady. Like, this has

happened a bunch. Like you did like, and she was like, oh, that sounds kind of smart. And I was like, I mean, there's seven of them now. Right. And I said, this is like been the year where I, I keep saying, if I bet on him and he loses, I can sleep at night. If I bet against him and I lose, I cannot sleep. And it's the same way with Alabama, who just kicked everybody's ass and won the national title. If I lose betting on them, so be it. But when I have lost betting against them,

I sit up the whole night go, what is wrong? Like, what wrong with me? No, this is the problem I had with the, with Kansas City and why I ended up pretty even across the card, betting wise, is because what you just described, that mindset, I use that for Mahomes. I know. How can I possibly justify looking myself in the mirror? I said this on the Friday show.

Patrick Mahomes has the ball on Kansas City's within one score, and there's three minutes left in the game. How can I sleep at night? This is what this means. This means, unlike me, the last half of the season, you must not have been betting on Kansas City because I was and got drilled and I was and I was also betting on Brady and he covered everywhere. I mean, they were kicking the shit out of everybody. That's right. Those last weeks, right? That was just an auto bet. It was betting on Tampa Bay the last half of the season. They just

ran out on everybody. And so I guess it was those fields. And the other thing was this. All I needed to push me over the edge was reading Sharp had said last Wednesday. And when we, we, recorded. Now, the numbers got moved a little bit, but he said at that point, 86% of the bets that he was looking at were on Kansas City, which he thought was unbelievable. And there was the number that came out said that in the last decade, Tom Brady was 8 and 0 if he was the underdog and the public was fading him. He is now 9 and 0. So just remember that, everybody remember that going forward. If you ever see Tom Brady. Brady on the opposite side of what everybody's betting, just take him.

Well, we go, hopefully we're lucky enough to be in this position again, right? Have one more crack at it. I hope so. Warren, let's talk about the bets. I mean, look, he already mentioned it is an amazing day on Sunday for me because I'm there with, I went to my parents' house. I don't get to see, you know, my parents live down the street from me now after they've retired.

They moved near me. But during all this COVID stuff, they're older. So I don't, we don't, well, we don't see each other all that much. It's got to be like a special occasion. And so I went down there for the Super Bowl and it happened to be my parents, 52nd wedding anniversary. So it was a cool day in that sense, too. But my dad and I are sitting there.

My dad's like, you know, he sees me writing down on my sheet on my bets. And he's like, so what do you got? And I told him. I said, look, I said, dad, the thing we're rooting for the most, is Leonard Fournet over three and a half catches and see, I mean he's in his 70s and he was like, what?

And I was like Leonard Fournet over three and a half catches and I said, and Dad, I have an irresponsible amount on this. So when Leonard Ford, the game, like when Leonard Fournett got his fourth catch, that was my Super Bowl.

You won a Super Bowl. I mean, you're going to Disneyland. I'm talking. See, look, It's legal in Tennessee now. I've got four apps. Four.

All of them were slam. The number is one, 800 gambler. I know. That's G-A-N-B-L-E-R. You have no idea the cursing that Warren would have gotten today. Because I, he said that was his favorite prom. I had four different sports books, all with four net over three and a half perceptions. slam. So Warren, we both thank you for that right off the bat. It was my biggest bet of the Super Bowl by a wide margin. How did the bets play out on the sharp forecast side of things?

Well, they were good. It was a winning Super Bowl and that one, it's always tricky, right? Because people do end up betting you're responsible amounts of money on the Super Bowl. And so when you're going around and you are, and I, do like each year not in this in this host city this year but you're talking on every show here's my favorite bet like everybody wants to know what's your favorite bet so like i'm mentioning you know half a dozen times or more this is my favorite bet so it needs to win last year it was uh kyle eusechek's first reception over five and a half yard this sounds like this completely arbitrary bet but but that one that one hits his first catch he i think it was like a 12 yard touchdown he caught he he caught it short of five and a half yards and then ran for a touchdown. And so that prop hit. And so everybody who like people are, you know, clap it for me and all happy because they, they bet on it

and it won. And so that was the same thing here. If Leonard Fernette doesn't hit this prop, I feel bad the whole day because I know everybody is betting on what my favorite, favorite prop is. For me, what, what was great about this Super Bowl was, I guess, two primary things. the first thing was we talk about how difficult this is as bettors to put more on the bets you're the most confident in and less on the bets that you're least confident in. And that way, even if you're just flipping coins, you're going to wind up making money. Now, we did better than just flipping coins. But when you're talking about all the non-long shot bets where I'm throwing out plus 1,400 on this guy to score the first touchdown or that type of thing, and you're just looking at the regular bets, We were nine and five on just a regular props, non-long shot type stuff.

But the biggest ones that we were on was there were three that were actually four that I had at least three quarters of a unit on, which is like units to my, to my customers. Lennar Fernette over three and a half receptions was one of them. But the biggest one that I was on was came back on Sunday morning. This has a funny backstory, but total Tampa Bay touchdowns over two and a half. So this is a little bit different than taking their team total over. Here, you don't have to worry about will they make their extra points, will they go for two, any of that stuff, just will they score at least three touchdowns?

And this number was minus 175. That was the juice on this bet. That equates to a 64% probability. So you have to have it hit more than 64% of time. And I'm looking through the numbers and this was like Saturday night. because the Super Bowl for us, like, I'm done with the report. We're going through props, but it is just getting started. It is insanity leading up to the kickoff.

Like, I wanted to record a video and posted about how the day was, like before the game started. I wanted to take a Q&A and answer some questions from people and that sort of thing. I had no time to do any of that. It was so busy getting ready for this game and the bets that we were trying to get in at the end. And so this prop, it hit 84% of the time on the season. 84% of the time they scored over three touchdowns,

or at least three touchdowns on the season. And 10 out of their last 10 games, they scored three plus touchdowns. So I felt super strong about this prop. So the spot that I found, and there were derivatives of this prop at other spots. Like you could, some places didn't just have total touchdowns by Tampa

over two and a half. They had other ways that you could kind of attack the same angle. So that's what we did at the other books. But in this particular one, so, you know, I work with some pro gamblers up. They were some in Vegas and somewhere in New Jersey and placing bets in person at the spots and on the apps and that sort of thing. And so Sunday morning, I call up one of the guys, hey, we got this one. This is extremely strong.

Well, where is it? Well, it's at this spot. They dropped everything. Dropped everything. I mean, you know how busy it is. But the key guy that I work with dropped everything, drove out to this book to open up an account and get a couple of other guys to open up an account. And then Max bet it as much as like this singular prop as much as possible.

And it was obviously they scored three touchdowns in the first half. What they let him put down? I want to say it was two dimes per. So I mean in the grand scheme of things, I asked myself afterwards, was it worth me? getting him to go do that and waste like 45 minutes of total time when we could be betting tons of other things on the apps. But at the end of the day, this felt like such a sure thing to me that I was glad that he did. Obviously, it made us money at the end of the day. Also, the other two that I had, or the other three that I had more than my standard bet size on was Rob Grimkowski's

longest catch over 15 and a half yards. That hit Patrick Mahomes over 40 and a half pass attempts. that hit and Patrick Wombs over 18 and a half rushing yards that hit so we went five and oh on the bigger things so the the biggest stuff that we had hit the prop I gave out to everybody hit and we came back and hedged I have a funny story about the hedging but you know we we talked about this from before had a long shot ticket well it wasn't that long shot plus 400 earlier this year on the chiefs to win the Super Bowl at plus 400 and ended up coming back on the bucks plus three and a half. We laid a little bit extra to ensure that we got the three and a half.

And then Tom Brady to win MVP and Tampa to win by a certain score margin. And a couple of those other ones were like real good plus money odds on them. And so we ended up doing well on the hedging that we had on Super Bowl Sunday, plus all the big props that hit. But one of the funniest things was I had mentioned this. I don't know if I'd mention this to you, Verno, or if it was just a house. but like the apps in Virginia, they just legalized in Virginia. So some of the spots give you like free amounts of money, like $3,000.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So you got the bonus, right? So I put before the conference championships, before the games were even played, at the last second, I threw in there that I picked an exact result for the Super Bowl. I said, Tampa Bay would beat Kansas City in the Super Bowl. And that was plus 750. And so I put the full dime on that bet. And I had planned to come back and hedge off of that a little bit because they got to the Super Bowl.

Both those teams got there. And now I could get Kansas City on the money line and try to hedge off a little bit. And I completely forgot to do it. It just blew my mind. I didn't do it. And that ended up, it's not a very professional thing to say because I could have lost money. That would have been free money. But I ended up screwing up and it ended up helping me because I let it ride.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on now. 75 grand? 7500, sorry. Did I say grand? 7,500. Oh, I thought you said you had a thousand. I did at plus 750.

Oh, plus 750. Okay, gotcha, got you. I got you. So you are. At any rate, that ended up working out for me too. I was like, hold on. I mean, still look, 7,500 is still worth, you still got a hedge that, even if you got Warren Sharp money.

He just forgot. That's all he wanted to. You just pulled in too many. I mean, everything wasn't complete gravy, right? There were some, we lost on a lot of the smaller stuff. Second half to have more points than the first half. That lost. We lost on the plus 100 at the under 10 and a half penalties. The big one that I lost on, well, it was still small comparatively from a size perspective, but the one that I thought that I had done a well, a good job of handicapping, but did not hit was Tampa Bay to have at least, it was plus 125. Tampa Bay third down,

conversions over five and a half. And I thought that they would be in third downs a fair amount and then that they would be able to convert those. They ended up being in 12 third downs, but they only converted four of them. And one of the things that was happening was a number of times they got a nice gain on second down and they got just enough to go beyond the first down marker. So that kind of screwed me. But then also there were so many penalties on these on these third downs or second downs that gave them automatic first downs, especially in the first half that was eating into our ability to hit that. But overall, it was, I mean, that's the exact way that you would want to end the season. And I would have been a lot more upset if I didn't have all the stuff on Tampa Bay, both the stuff

from earlier that I forgot until the game actually started as well as the stuff we added to Tampa on game day, plus hitting all those, all those big props. It was a very strong day from from a financial perspective. And I'll tell you what, like we talk about being disciplined with our betting, but I was a little bit nervous heading into the game myself because, I mean, we had, we had somewhat of an irresponsible amount of money on props,

like across the board. We had a shitload of props that we have been betting for this game. And it was so much so that even though we crushed it on the season, like the futures were great, we had a winning regular season. We would have given everything back had we just lost everything in the Super Bowl. If we had gotten our butts kicked in the Super Bowl, we would have given everything back. And that sounds stupid when you're like betting on this because you're thinking like, well, look, you put in work for months and months and months and you've made money and then you would give all of it back in the Super Bowl.

But that's not the way that we look at it. What we look at is each individual bet, do it. we have an edge in this particular bet? And when you're betting these things for living, you should be betting things that you have edges on. And it's irresponsible if you don't. So normally we don't have situations week 13 of the season to bet this many props, that they're lining all these crazy props and conversions and and penalties and longest catches for all sorts of different players and stuff like that. Normally they don't have that, but they had it here.

And so we tried to take advantage of that as much as possible. And so fortunately, we had a winning day in the Super Bowl, but we could have lost it all if we had lost everything. Well, and Warren, this is the difference between you and House and I, which is we feel like we have an edge, but we don't, but we still bet irresponsible. Well, I wanted to ask Sharpie out of that whole menu of delicious prop item, which one left the sourest taste, which one did not come through.

Was that the third down conversion one that left you feeling the most heartbroken? Because I have one. I know which one for me left me the saddest. Yeah, I think so because most of the stuff that I was losing was long shot stuff. So you can't really count that because you're extreme underdogs to win that. And we bet less on that. I guess there would probably be three, maybe, three, if I put it. The one that you mentioned, the second half to have more points because the second,

the fourth quarter had zero points. It's usually like the highest scoring quarter and it had zero points from either team. The third quarter had more points scored than the first quarter, which it's supposed to. And so with Kansas City down by that margin, you would think that like the scores back and forth in the fourth quarter might get you there. that one didn't and then um yeah it was it was i said the third down conversion is that one and then probably will tampa convert a fourth down i bet both of the teams individually that they would convert a fourth down obviously kansas city did Tampa did not and they had that fourth and goal there

at the end zone uh that they just couldn't squeeze into into the goal line so those i think those three i mean sour taste i'm mad anytime i lose a bet so yeah i guess sour taste what's the one you were mad about how else the punts God damn, the number was six and a half. I had the under. They ended at seven punts. And I knew I was fooked when Kansas City got to the middle of the field on their first drive of the game.

And rather than, it was short yardage rather than go for it, they punted. And the thing that made it extra diabolical, I saw a prop out there, a plus money prop for Will Tamp. Punt one that results in a touchback. It was like plus 130 plus one, some good number. And it would have been a nice hedge against the stupid punt prop, right? The total number of punts for the whole game was set at six and a half.

There were seven total punts. But I could have hedged off of that a little bit with Will Townsend kick one into the end zone for a touchback. The son of a bitch did it right off the first punt. He kicked it into the end zone. And they ended up at seven puns for the whole goddamn game. It's so funny that you mentioned him because I laughed so hard. I saw her buddy Nick Wright post, you know, obviously it was an absolute bloodbath for him who bet with his heart on the chiefs on everything. But if you went through when he posted all of his bets, which ended up like 0 for 11, one of one of them was Townsend's shortest punt over 38 and a half.

and like that first one first he drops it and then they have to redo it and then he kicks the shit off the side of his foot straight out of bounds. I was like, oh my God. Now that is, look, I mean, you could take some of the other losses. But when the punter even screws you, when the punter's like kicking it into the stands, now we got a problem on our hands. Let me ask you guys about live bets. I will tell you, I only bet, I believe, you know, I did some of the like next touchdown stuff for like pennies. But the only two things that I bet big during the course of the game were still getting Tampa.

They were not a big favorite even at 21 to 6. So I slammed that again. And then right before the second half, it flashed their team total. I think I had to lay 150 or 155, something like that. But their team total was 30 and a half. I'm like, they just got to score 10 in the second half. And so I absolutely slammed that. And my God, they scored 31.

I know, I know. That was the game script. I mean, once they got up, they just ran the ball. I know, but those are the only two things live. Do you ever place live bets, Warren? Or is that only for us degenerates? No, on occasion, I will. Sometimes we'll look at the second half line.

That's not live, obviously. But on occasion, I will. not place anything live here at all. So we sometimes will do that and look generally the two times that I'm looking to live bet things are when the scoreboard's not reflecting how the game's actually going and I can see advantages by fading that. Or number two, the best time to live bet for me is like literally within the first 10 minutes of a game. If there was a score that allows me now to get a better number on an underdog, let's say, that I could have gotten before the game, like, let's pretend I wanted this team plus three and a half and I wasn't, we weren't able to get it.

The line opened it at one and was bet to two and never got to quite three or three and a half. And then the team that's favored goes down and scores a touchdown. And now all of a sudden you can get the underdog at a much better number through the three than boom. That's like those are the situations I'm looking for where I already. knew which team I wanted to bet on before the game, but I didn't get the right number. And so you hold firm, you don't bet it if you're not getting the right value, but then you can get that immediately. But in this Super Bowl, nothing for me. Yeah. It is the best feeling ever when

you feel really confident. And then the opposing team goes down and scores early. Like I still remember to this day, Ted Ginn running it back against Florida, like the opening kickoff, remember that Ohio State? Ohio State. They never scored again. Like Florida, you know what I mean? But like the live odds were crazy, right? If you could jump on Florida at that point. And that's happened many, many times over the years. And I think that's exactly what you were talking about,

I was with the whole, you know, Chiefs 180. Like under any other circumstance, you just slammed that. I mean, you think about how much, you remember, what was the big one last year? Oh, not the Super Bowl. It was, oh, the Texans game. The Texans game.

That's right. Down 24 nothing. Yeah. In the second quarter. And you got to catch point. Yes. If you bet that thing. And they ended up winning by like five touchdowns or some crap.

Do you bet anything live? I know you said you held off on KC. I left alone because I had my protective position on this game was a parlay of the Tampa money line with the under. And I did it in a sufficient amount to. protect myself against most of my Kansas City stuff because my my lean for the game was Kansas City. I didn't think that the offensive line thing was going to be as big a deal as it turned out to be. But I had enough on that Tampa Hedge. And looking at it at halftime,

it was like, I'm in good position with this money line that parlayed with the under. So I'm just going to sit tight. And that's what I did. All right. So anyway, look, I owe all the thanks to Warren and Tom Brady. I really Warren and Tom. Brady. Two goats. Yeah, I'm glad that I actually get to talk about not getting drilled. As a cowboy fan, you may have known that this season, they didn't cover until like week eight or something like that.

As a Washington fan, I'm not sorry. I love to see it. I love to see all of it. It was delightful. Yeah, I loved you guys signing up Taylor Heineke. look with that. Third straight quarterback. What's better than that? Let me tell you how

punch drunk I was on the Super Bowl. So bad that once the accounts were flush, I saw a guy last night, this guy who's a, he's a sharp guy who gives out pick, but he posted something about the Australian Open tennis. I don't watch tennis.

I don't even know anybody in tennis. But Fabio Fijini, he said that's who he was betting on. I was like, you know what? I'm hot. Let it roll. Did you bet on, did you get down on Fijini? No, I said, when the hell does this dude play?

Yeah. They're playing in the middle of the night. So I went to bed, woke up, big winner. Fabio, he's hot. I may start a tennis. I may start a tennis podcast. Fabio Fagio Fagini. Well, look, I think we've talked.

enough about the Super Bowl and we're off to tennis. Warren, what are you looking for? The off-season has officially started. What comes next? Well, first of all, we do these things via Zoom, and I've had another corporate call yesterday,

and in both cases, people are saying, hey, you look like you got some sleep. You look like you're a little bit rested. You're looking like you're feeling good. I said that to him. I don't notice that. So I must look pretty crappy most of the time if that's the case. But no, I did, I did get catch up on a little bit of rest

over the last couple of days. And I start digging in. Usually I'm preparing to go to the combine to meet with coaches. And last year, there was eight different teams that I was sitting down with talking to some of their OCs. And this year, obviously, that's not going to happen. So going to be lining up some virtual meetings and virtual kind of discussions with. with a variety of different guys. And I start turning my eye towards the 2021 season. I don't start writing the book right now. But, I mean, that book, the 2020 football preview,

that was the foundation, which allowed us to get out the jump quickly on a number of these future bets, which really, for the most part, swept the board. I mean, we crushed the futures market and hit the best one was hitting that Kevin Stefansky. coach of the year, which I don't know if you notice, but he won, he was awarded coach of the year on Saturday night at the award show. That was a huge win, especially when you're somebody like me who doesn't bet a shitload of futures. Like I don't sit here and bet all these long shots all over

the place. Like you'll see some guys after the fact in the post, oh, well, here's my tickets on this team to win the Super Bowl after they won, but this, the guy bet like eight other, nine other teams also. So for me, that was literally the only long shot odds that I had more than like plus 600 or plus 750 to win like the most games of the season or something was on this coach a year, which was it between some, we got some down at 33 to 1 and some at 25 to 1. Wow. I thought it was fascinating. You know, Warren, I was looking at, you're talking about going to this offseason. And the first thing, we'll have this draft coming up. And I was listening to, you know, McShea and Kuyper and all those guys talking about,

whoever wins a Super Bowl, that can have a profound effect on the way teams think about team building. And they were going through and like almost everybody on that offensive front seven for Tampa is like a first round pick. And then there's like a, you know, a second round pick sprinkled in. But like that's what they use on there. And then you saw what a team without an offensive one. line look like, even if they have Pat Mahomes and all the weapons of the world. And you do wonder, did it change the way you think about these teams, team building, and maybe what we will see in this upcoming draft, which is loaded with all kinds of skill guys

and all the best players at college football that we talked about this year for the most part of these quarterbacks and receivers and everything else, but that people are going to watch that Super Bowl and go, well, shit. you know even NFL teams think that way we better we better just go ahead and uh invest in what doesn't always necessarily get the press clippings i don't think so and here's why if you look at the final four teams that got far enough you if you look at just the team that won i think the obvious answer is they had tom brady right like that's the big reason for tampa bay seeing all the success and changing their culture and all the guys working harder and everything else they

had Tom Brady. So that's the easy answer there. But yes, I mean, a big part of it was what they ended up doing on the defensive side of the ball. But if you look at the four teams that got the furthest, right, you're also talking about three of the best offenses in the NFL for the majority of the season, Kansas City, Buffalo Bills, and Green Bay Packers. All these teams had, you know, great passing attacks, efficient offenses, high scoring. Like, so I don't think that what we saw just because Tampa won the Super Bowl in this manner is actually going to change some years it has, right? Some years I definitely saw back when the Seahawks were winning and and Russell Wilson wasn't doing much as a game manager. Oh, there were some guys who wrote articles about how we need to turn

back to the run and Marshawn Lynch and all this type of stuff. That was years ago. Now, I don't think it's really going to have that big of an impact personally. I think we are still intelligently building in the right directions for most of these teams focusing on past first attacks. You yet, definitely want to protect your quarterback. I think one of the things that you could look at is what happens when you don't get protection, which is what Mahomes wasn't able to get and the importance of depth along the line.

But, I mean, it's really hard. Injuries happen to teams in different ways in different times. And if you're Kansas City and you have this massive cluster of injuries plus an opt-out to start the season, what really are you going to do? It's hard to blame the GM that they didn't have even more guys. Like, how are you going to build for all these injuries happening along the offensive line?

So naturally, protection is important. We heard Russell Wilson just yesterday talking about how he wanted better protection for himself out in Seattle. So I think past protection is still going to be a big factor. But, no, I don't really think that this Super Bowl is going to change a whole lot from a team building perspective, although you're absolutely right. Some years it has. I want to ask the next two big gambling opportunities on the NFL horizon will be the draft, which I probably, well, I already know. It's not even a probable.

I gambled more on the most recent, the 2020 NFL draft than any draft I've ever gambled on in my entire life, mainly because it was the only thing going on on the sports calendar at the time, right? But I really enjoyed it. Like how many guys from this conference and how many from this position? And will this guy go before that guy? I loved it. And it was a really exciting way to enjoy the draft. The NFL's done a great job in terms of how it presents the draft. They did an awesome job with their virtual draft in 2020. So that I'm looking forward to.

And also win totals. You know, wind totals will come out around about the same time shortly after the draft, I think, is when the first cut of win totals come out. Sharpie, do you, when you look at those two items on your own account or own agenda, are those gambling moments for you or do you just sit tight and let things sort themselves out a little bit? I have found that there are opportunities from a win total perspective when the numbers first come out, but I also like to be right more than I like to be early. And so there are times when I wait a little bit longer for the win totals just so that I can

confirm everything that I need to confirm with my research. But with an offseason like this, there is a chance that, you know, like I said, normally I'm wasting a bunch of time going to the combine, then I'm getting back on track. Here I might be able to get started with some of my thought processes a little bit quicker earlier. And that would allow me to have more down in terms of what my opinions are of these teams to take advantage of the initial numbers from a win total perspective. Now the draft, there are some guys out there who focus a lot on the draft, specialize a lot in the draft in terms of understanding it. And that's where to me, like I focus on the teams.

They focus on the draft. We exchange information and I learn from what they think is going to happen. And I'm betting on their knowledge more so than I'm sitting here spending weeks analyzing what I think these teams are going to do. the best advantages, I think, to take, the best opportunities to take advantage of the draft. There are two. Number one, it's the leaked info, the stuff that comes out really quickly late, just bet it as quickly as you can at your books, like those types of things.

Because more often than not, when the lines start shifting, you know, strong favorite, this thing is moving from, you know, even money to all the way to a strong favorite. Like, those are going to be great opportunities. Even if you don't get the exact right number initially, you're probably. going to end up winning more than you're losing, even though you're paying a premium, because some of these things like the only times to do that are when it's like almost a sure thing. And then they'll eventually take it off the board. And the other thing is follow or focus on the guys that are specializing in this. And for me, like the way that we do things at the

betting groups and whatnot is figure out what your lanes are. You know, my lane is this and another guy's the basketball guy. And so everybody's got their different things. One guy's the injury guy. And so you allow those guys to specialize on it. And if you try to be a jack of all trades and figure out everything and handicap all these sports and also the NFL draft, the guys that are spending all their time handicapping the draft, they're missing out on opportunities to be handicapping for the regular season to take advantage of when those win totals come out. So I just lean on their information for that. I'm going to give people one tip. You'll love this story, too, House. So the biggest hit that I have ever had, maybe the biggest hit I've ever had, no lie, was Baker Mayfield going number one.

Okay. And so I'm going to tip people off to this and how this is the 30 for 30 on that story. I got my pen and paper. I'm taking notes, Verno. Okay. So just follow me here. Okay. So Baker Mayfield going number one.

because the odds were, I mean, you can only imagine that morning were huge. People had him at the end of the first round, right? I saw a tweet, okay? No lie, about Daniel Jeremiah's mock draft. And I clicked on it. And Daniel Jeremiah is one of those guys that, like, he updates his mock as the day goes on. And I love Daniel Jeremiah, okay? but the NFL is not going to let them report a story and like ruin stuff, right?

They're not going to let them ruin like what is going to be the draft and the excitement of the draft. But he updated his mock with Baker Mayfield number one. And I ran straight to no lie to the apps. And I was like, oh my God. And I called every one of my friends. And I'm like, yo, this dude knows something. Like, why in the hell would you? So all I would tell you is.

is pay attention to that dude's mock because throughout the day, he updates that stuff. And I can't tell you if he's going to be right about everything. But if you see something weird like that, a guy that, because he's got a lot of connections, and it's not like they're going to put it along the bottom line. Cleveland is going to take Baker Mayfield because the NFL like stamps on these guys do not ruin this. Right. So nobody reports anything, but if you pay attention to these mock drafts and you see these weird updates that you've never seen before, that's when you can, that's when the bookmakers are not on that as quickly as they would normally be anything else. It's what Sharpie just said.

He said, you've got to know your lane. And he has, they have trusted consigliaries on the NFL draft that they rely on. We didn't ask him to name names. I'm going to ask them after we hang up. I will say this though Warren we do I do have to ask you about this regards to the draft because I had you on my local show I recall last year before the draft and you were like look I don't do a lot of college stuff whatever but you had and I remember you went on with Kevin Clark and you would like crunch some numbers and the borough stuff was like crazy right like in terms of what he did in college if you lined that up against other guys it translated in a way. that was just almost unheard of. And the other guys that had done what he had done had all ended up becoming outstanding.

Now, of course, his season got totally derailed this year for injury. But he was awesome already before he got injured, right? Like, we all saw Joe Burrow, and he was immediately good. And so is the same stuff all applicable to Lawrence, like in terms of sure thing power? Well, I would have to dive into that. I haven't looked at him yet. My focus, again, has been on the NFL season. Now that that isn't here, I can look at taking a couple of shots on specific guys

and looking at some of my analysis of what I would think he would do in the NFL. But, yeah, I normally would pick and choose like a couple of guys to do that with just the, and if it's a story worth telling, then I'll tell it. If I find nothing interesting in my research, then I move on to a different guy or return back to focusing on the upcoming season. When do you start your book? Usually it's in March. Usually it's in March.

So I generally take a little bit of time off in February, and that's typically when I'm prepping for these meetings with the coaches and then attending the Combine. But again, I've already started thinking about the book this year, and typically the book ends up completing around late June. and I mean, that's been a pride and joy of mine. I know, but you talked about looking fresher, house. We got to pin him down on this.

We got to pin him down on this because this is the most maniacal guy, both of you, both of us know. Like, he lives it 24-7. What will you do today? Well, we just, I haven't eaten any food yet. It's almost 1230 right now. So I'll probably have something healthy. I end up starting to eat a little bit healthier once the season ends. I might think about doing some exercise.

I haven't been doing that for a long while. Okay. I don't know. We'll have to get on a regimen or something. He has no idea what it's like you took. It's like you took the drugs away. Maybe I'll eat. Maybe I'll work out.

We're talking to an NFL crack addict. He just described two basic human functions. He's going to eat and he's going to move. Well, welcome back to the human race, Sharpey. God damn. Two things he hasn't done in nine months. Yeah, I really don't know. I really don't know.

He doesn't know what to do. Does your wife just like, why are you pacing around? Actually, well, yeah, I was upstairs a little bit more in the kitchen than I have been, like, since last March, pretty much. When I start the book, I never, I never stop. And so then there's like about a. month, about a month when I'm like a little bit more involved. And then I go back to kind of just working my ass off again. But no, I will, I will, uh, I, we, we planned out a bunch of things, some new developments for the website that we're doing. And so we, we had some calls yesterday about

that. I've got some follow-ups for that. So I've got some like business related crap that and creativity related crap that requires a different hat to wear, you know, from a business and brand perspective. It's not really my cup of tea. I love the analysis side of things. But yeah, there's, there's a, I don't know what to tell you, man. I'm lost without football for the time of being. You got to go get paid. I know. But look, you got to get there's, there's, it doesn't sleep. Football doesn't stop. It's 24-7. I have one last question. Sheriff, you mentioned your wife. You were, permitted in the kitchen. She was in control of the Sunday Super Bowl menu for the first time in ages,

maybe the first time ever. What did she, what was the spread that she put out for the family? Well, what we ended up doing actually is because she didn't really care that much. And I was busy and focused on other things. We actually asked the kids what they really wanted. And you are from D.C.,

so you're probably familiar with this restaurant. but we ate it, we ordered from a place called Bonchon chicken. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you ever heard of that place. Korean. It's like a Korean chicken place that has some of the best wings. They got hot. They got sweet and sour.

I don't know what they're called, but we got a bunch of different wings and other things from that and picked up all the food. Actually, I picked it up on Saturday so that I wouldn't have to ruin any of the stuff on Sunday. And so then we just reheated everything from Saturday. And we had a spread of that. a variety of a couple of other things. I don't remember all of it right now, but it was,

it was, it was great. Yeah, those, those are double-fried Korean-style wings. They're slightly larger, so they're perfect for the reheat. The outside crunch is,

is spectacular. It's kind of an explosion when you bite into it. And they're aggressive with the flavoring. I mean, the bonchang, they'll go ahead and give you all kinds of degrees of spice and heat and whatever, and I'm sure the kids didn't want to go too hot with it, but very diverse flavors for the palate. It's wonderful, and I admire your kids' good instinct, Sharpe. Oh, this is how

eats. This is, this is House of Carbs that we just, that we just, that we just, that we just, that we just, that we just, that we just, that we just, what would you rate those wings, house? Oh, they're nine, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're a different thing, right? They're, they're not just, you don't say, oh, I'm going to have wings and how do these stack up against other wings? wings. They're their own special thing and they do a great version of them. And they're not so messy that his wife got a wing sauce all over her Leonard Fournet jersey. They actually have no sauce on them like that gets on your fingers that much at all. They're really

yeah. It's like flavorful fried chicken. Flavorful mini fried chicken. Yeah, it's pretty good. What did you end up going with? Did you get your shrimp? Who me? Oh, you know, of course I did. Yes, I had shrimp. I had three different style of wings. I had seven layer dip. I had mozzarella sticks. I had crab dip. I really, for whatever reason, I just this year, I had a craving.

I've been in the mid-Atlantic mindset. I want crab cakes all winter long. I've been eating the hell out of crab cake. So I got a beautiful blue crab dip. I had a ton of shrimp. I had so much shrimp that I was making. I made a delicious curry shrimp with brown rice with the leftovers. shrimp Monday night.

You guys made me feel terrible. Well, look, it's a celebration. There's no reason, even in these times, the pandemic. That can't stop life. We got to live life, Bruno. You know. No, we had, we had, I'm just kidding. We had wings from a spectacular place.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Costco. Hey, Costco wings are good. Costco wings are legit. They were great. How did you do, how'd you do them up? How'd you do mom? We slammed them. My mom got him. And I can told you, I went down to my parents' house. And so she, my mom has the three, I don't even, I've never even seen other people with it. So I think only moms have the three crock pots that all heat up at the same time. Right. I love it. And so one of them had barbecue in it. One of them had like, whatever, those beanie weanies. And one of them had like either, I can't remember taco meat or cheese dip or something. I don't know. I mean, it's just, everybody, you just graze all day. That's right.

You end up grazing. That's the beauty of the game. That's game day. Well, it was an unbelievable season. I love getting to do this with both you guys as we wrap this up. I am a little sad. I got to be honest. I mean, I'm sad.

I know. And especially after hearing Warren talking about, you know, doing basic, you know, human functions. You take care of yourself, Warren. We're worried about you. Yeah. Well, we need them. we have the draft coming up we have win totals to talk about he'll be doing his book i mean we'll be reconvened uh the three of us uh sooner than then then then then you know it and i can't wait

yeah and i i just want to say i i love i've loved uh this first year doing the show with you guys regularly i was i enjoyed going on before from time to time with with the guys on on on the show but now being here full time it was a lot of fun uh and and doing both the shows on Wednesdays and Fridays with both you guys. Great, great recap shows, great preview shows. I think we shared a lot of information. Loved all the feedback from the listeners. And certainly don't know what to do with myself right now,

but I'm absolutely happy that this season happened and looking forward to starting the next 2021. NFL season begins today. So let's roll. Made it through the entire way. Thank you to all of you that listened to the shows. throughout the year, and we will reconvene before you know it to be talking about the upcoming NFL season. That's going to do it for the Ringer NFL show.

Make sure you stay, subscribe to the feed and listen because there's going to be shows throughout the entire offseason. House Warren, I'll talk to you guys down the road.