The Ryen Russillo Podcast - NFL Week 6 Recap With Mike Sando. Plus, NFL Awards and a CFB Check-in.

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Russillo gives out his NFL Week 6 awards before talking with The Athletic’s Mike Sando about the state of the NFC North after the Steelers beat the Browns. They discuss high expectations for the Baltimore Ravens, the Titans, Packers vs. Buccaneers, the 5-1 Chicago Bears, the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes, and more. Then Ryen catches up on college football in a solo segment before answering a listener-submitted Life Advice question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's episode of the ryan versillo podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm getting great car and home insurance from state farm at a surprisingly great rate that's like drafting a player that becomes an all-pro the real deal state farm agents provide personalized service so you can customize your insurance to fit your needs. Like a GM putting together their very own roster, you need a team that supports you, and State Farm's got a great one. In addition to agents, the award-winning mobile app

helps manage coverage, pay bills, file claims, and more. With a great price and even greater service, State Farm goes from strength to strength. Choose insurance that always brings its A-game. When you want the real deal, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Here's the plan for today's podcast. Another Monday football deal. We got Mike Sando on. We're going to try to figure out who's good in the AFC, including sort of the tiers of teams, not just named Kansas City or Baltimore, but Tennessee, Pittsburgh's big win. Now, what do you do with Cleveland?

I have a lot of stuff that I want to get to. The aftermath of Tom Brady and Tampa's win against Green Bay and Rogers, that was an absolute blowout in that one. And then something else that I've been thinking about more and more as I watch Trevor Lawrence on Saturdays, which I'll get to a little bit later with a college football kind of update. We haven't titled that one yet, although we should check in with Kyle. what do you think kyle should we call it verbal well i think there's already another podcast called that uh trying to think that little segment we could call it early early enrollment oh jesus no no i i don't have anything better spring ball how are you in general how are you because i worry

about you on mondays a little bit what because i'm coming off the sunday nights yeah i mean are you're a big are you a drink on nfl sunday guy i haven't been drank on sundays for two years i mean because it's just whoa well that's right you gotta work i gotta work like you know we waited for the baseball game so we're starting at 9 p.m. last night. And I just I don't want to. Bill told me, looked me in the eyes when I see he's like, don't fuck this up. And I'm like, that's like a way not to not to fuck it up is to not drink before a late podcast recording. And so, yeah, you can't do Sundays aren't that fun.

You know, Pat's lost work late Sundays. Look at our look at our little Kyle all grown up, all grown up. OK, so we've got Sando on that, the college football thing that we have not titled because I've decided to kind of infrequently do it because the season's been infrequent. So I think I'm okay with that one. Okay, then we'll do a life advice one. I actually think it's kind of fun at the end, but we start with our NFL awards. Okay, this is the Julie Letterman Award for Worst Score of the Night. Judge Ed Ringside, Eugenia Williams, scores about 115 to 113 in favor of Evander Holyfield.

We have had some atrocious boxing scores for anyone that's ever watched. I don't know how many of you watched Lopez beat Lomachenko on Saturday night. It was actually great after a ton of college football to check that out. And Lopez won the fight. All right. This is a big win for him to unify his class. Lomachenko's, you know, his resume is incredible. Everybody knows what a study is, but he came into this kind of just mailing it in the first five or six rounds. I would say five of the first six rounds. I thought he lost five of the first six. I thought Loma won the second round. And then he came on strong late, but he just had too much ground to make up. And then Lopez won the 12th round.

All right. So Lopez won the fight. The right guy won the fight. But the cards were all over the place. Like the boxers on the call had this thing even. Maybe one round favoring Lopez, but Julie Letterman scored this 119-109. She gave Lomachenko one round. Now you can say, hey, well, the right person won.

I don't know what you're watching. I can never understand boxing judges, and I know what the CompuBox numbers were, and people were trying to show that. That's not how boxing works. You don't just look at the CompuBox and go, okay, well, that's cool. You go round by round, and there's not a person on this earth that would think even Lopez's father

wouldn't sit there and say that Lomachenko only won one round. So, what does that mean when it comes to the NFL, Ry? Get to the point. The Eagles, I'm sorry. Here we go again. Um, the Eagles make it look like their 3028 comeback was a close game against the Ravens. And it wasn't the Ravens dominated this game throughout. This will be one of those scores where if the Eagles start putting together some wins, which I don't know when that's going to happen, but it's going to be one of those scores where if the Eagles start putting together some wins, which I don't know when that's going to happen, but it's going to be one of those scores where people will look back on it later on and go, oh, you know, they played them close,

two-point conversion. You know, you never know what's going to happen. No, I know what's going to happen. They're just awful right now. Okay, so let's look at the Eagles. They're 1-4-1. They blew the Washington game. That's when you're like, wait, Wentz is bad again.

The second half ratings of Wentz that we've been over here where they're just atrocious over too long of a stretch. I do feel like street free agents, hey, this guy's on the street. We need to come up with a better term for that because I feel like it's insensitive to the homeless situation in the country. And there could be some people being like, how come the Eagles have so many receivers that were homeless at one point? They were tied with Cincinnati.

They tied that game. The one win is against the 49ers, where it was the Nick Mullins-CJ Bethard group deal. And then they lose to the Steelers. They lose to the Ravens. This Ravens game was not close. It was not 30-28. It was not 11 rounds to one for Lopez.

And if you look at the Eagles' stats here, we know on offense, they're kind of the fourth worst offense going into the week. Those numbers will bump a little bit. They're in the bottom third defensively. And yeah, I know no Lane Johnson. I know that we're in this whole deal with the receivers again, but that Eagle score is totally wrong. The slap award goes to your Chicago Bears. The Bears now lead the NFC North division. They are five and one. And the reason I call it this is remember that TV show that came out five years ago on this was on NBC was called the slap. Here's a little reminder.

Listen to me. When adults talk to you, you listen to what they're saying. Yeah. Why are you swinging the bat at Rocco like that? The whole show centered around a guy slapping somebody else's kid. Okay. Not making fun of it, but this was,

this is personal for me. Cause I remember talking to a television agent years ago when I was first dabbling in the idea of doing this and the, the agents like, man, he goes, this show, the slap is like on fire.

I'm like, what is it? It'd be like, well, it was a book. And then it was a show in Australia. It did huge numbers. Everybody's bidding on it. Everybody's trying to figure it out. And I was like, what's it about? Like, it's about a slap. I was like, okay. And this guy was super TV agent-y. So I'm going, what is it though? He'd be like, oh, it's incredible. This guy slaps a kid and like

everybody freaks out and they tell the storyline from a million different angles like yeah but is it good be like uh yeah it's about a slap dickhead and i was like yeah but that sounds like what's season two gonna be like it's gonna be about the slap are you not listening it got canceled after the first season despite an amazing cast and that's who the bears are because the bears are wins lions, giants, Falcons, the comeback there lost to the Colts. That Buccaneers win stands out because if it wasn't for that, when, if they were four and one, the Windsor Panthers Falcons who fire their coach giants, lions, you'd be like, I don't know. I don't know what to do. Is it good? But that Buccaneers win was a really good win.

And I know the Buccaneers were in control early. I know the Buccaneers had a million penalties where the whole storyline is like Brady goes from the least penalized team throughout his career to a team that beats itself consistently. I mean, look, even Foles is 23rd in QBR. But when you win, we just figure that out. We start using all these other superlatives. Like, man, he just really commands the room. They are 27th in points. They're the fifth worst team in yards per game on offense.

The DVOA numbers coming in the week, they were 25th. Just a lot of bad offensive stats. They can't run the football. They can't throw it. And their defense is top five, top six, top seven in that range. Is that enough in today's game? I don't know, but they're five and one. Nobody thought they were going to be any good.

I'm not saying they're going to get canceled like the slap, but I'm still just not sure. Okay. And finally, my last award will probably be my favorite word. I give out all season long. That's the Ken Bone award. Remember Ken bone, 2016 town hall. Great first impressions. That award goes to NFL quarterbacks.

Here's Ken. Nearly 67 million people tuned into the debate. And the surprise star was the man in the red sweater. What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs? The internet has determined a clear winner. Mr. Ken bone, a man in a determined a clear winner. Mr. Ken Bone. A man in a red sweater stole the spotlight. Ken Bone, you're so charming.

The legend of Ken Bone. Bone heads. We all love Ken Bone. I'm looking for him on Twitter because I want to follow him. T-shirts are now being sold with the caption, Welcome to the Bone Zone. God, we are so stupid. Sometimes.

Okay, so everybody loved Ken Bone a lot like we loved quarterbacks when they made their first impressions. Drew Locke, hey, Denver's got a guy. I don't know who he is after that New England game. Yes, very, very early. Probably not fair. But it's happened so many times in the last 10 years. Sam Darnold, wow, Jets have a guy.

Nope. Blake Bortles, we could do that. Look, Baker Mayfield's had like two different comebacks, and now he's on the wrong side of one. Daniel Jones, when he's picked out of Duke, Giants fans, after a couple weeks were like, wait, we want apologies from everybody. Apologize, America. Mitch Trubisky won some games, but did his coaching staff even trust him? He's on the bench. RG3 is going to change football, except he's not. Brock Osweiler had two teams trying to throw huge money at him, and he was moved into transaction, like one bank sending another bank, bad credit card debt. It happened even to Kaepernick, who was a throwaway from winning the Superbowl, putting up crazy numbers. Ron Jaworski said he had a chance to be the greatest quarterback ever. And then he wasn't. And Tim Tebow, same deal early on. Like how come this guy keeps winning? Like probably because the defense and luck. So we've had so many quarterbacks

make these great first impressions and they didn't really come through on it. Ken Bone was a great example of that because he, after he just grabbed America's heart, and we all bought red sweaters. Not all of us, but they sold out. We learned a little bit more about the Bone Zone when he said, let's do a Ask Me Anything on Reddit. People were asking him questions, but they were also researching all of his history. We got old Ken's porn preferences. We found out he has less guilt after the vasectomy. He also explained why some of the insurance issues that he had was just a way to make sure he had insurance to deliver pizzas.

And it wasn't that big deal. And after all of this stuff happened, and there was some other stuff as well that was far more serious, people were left asking, wait, Ken Bone shouldn't be my hero? And the same applies to some of these quarterbacks. You know what else applies? The roommate theory. The roommate theory applies because it's a very simple question.

Of all the people you've ever lived with in your life, the ones you got to know better, did you like them more or less by the end of the lease? And the Bill took on the Chiefs, COVID, without his number one quarterback in Cam Newton, it felt like, I don't know, that Tom could even catch him. Bill had to take on the Chiefs with two quarterbacks that will have a lot of interest

around the league before the trade deadline. But it looked as if maybe Tom's six rings weren't even real. That's how far the separation was, even though we're only really ranking two things. But my how the turns

tabled. Brady beats Aaron Rogers, probably more of the defense than anything else, but just pours it on the Packers after being down 10-0, taking out one of the top teams in the NFL with the same week that Belichick

handed in the worst Pats regular season performance since they cut Laura Malloy and got smoked by Buffalo. That Denver team's not even that good. And they ran all over him. Red zone defense was good. Cam Newton wasn't very good. Takes too many bad sacks. We already knew this going into

the season. But I worry about Belichick's... Look, he'll get into the Hall of Fame. First ballot. Can't rule it out. Okay, you guys know how much I enjoy Mike Sando, the athletic, the quarterback tiers, so I figure we check in with him mid-season,

almost mid-season. Also want to remind you that with Randy Mueller, former front office executive, he has the Football GM podcast that Mike does with Randy. That's also part of the athletic as well. The pick six is a must read for NFL fans.

I love it. So Mike, let's get into, let's start Steelers just because we're looking at this defense that was incredible last year, but we didn't realize because of Roethlisberger being out.

Roethlisberger, I would say, is good, not great so far this year, but they put it on a Cleveland team that was hoping that they were in that tier. So what do you think this outcome says about those two teams in the same division? Yeah, I mean, this affirms really, we would have thought that they should have handled Baker Mayfield and Cleveland, who is doing their best with what they've got. And they have talent, but they're trying to protect their quarterback. Whereas I think when you got Ben Roethlisberger, you know,

you feel like if you have to, you can go out there and really play from the pocket and, and win games that are hard to win. So, you know, if you look at their quarterback play last year for Pittsburgh, just mathematically, it was about six win quarterback play. Okay. Just going through, I put that in my column today, how we figured that out. It's really pretty easy to do using QBR, which doesn't always perfectly tell us who the great quarterbacks are,

but it's really good on a team level, like for whether you're going to win the game. And Roethlisberger right now, just with a really average team, just what he's done this year would be more like 9-10 wins. So add the good defense on top of it, I think you've got a real race in the fc north but they're playing tennessee and baltimore in the next two weeks so we could be wondering what happened to them too it's that type of league yeah i love their front that was one of the things that i thought when you look at the personnel groupings the beginning of the year and then you go all right cameron hayward defensive tackle some of the plays he makes from the inside are incredible um to it you know it just feels like to it and Bud Dupree who we all

liked a lot in college have been unlocked a little bit more with the depth around him because now it's like okay you also have to worry about TJ Watt and I know Bush goes out with what's uh apparently the ACL injury so we'll see how they adjust to that but they actually have that kind of depth and I think it is one of those fronts that can control a game. And it was a nightmare. And once Baker starts hearing the footsteps, even if they're not there, he turns into a different quarter. I know he had the rib injuries, but I've seen it now for two years.

Once he starts feeling pressure, he starts making up pressure around him that isn't there, and it completely impacts how he plays. Yeah, in fact, I was a little worried for him and them, even against Indy the week before they ended up winning the game, but just going into it, I thought, you know, here you got, you know, you know, a defensive front that, that isn't as good as Pittsburgh, but, but could do that too. So I feel like that's going to be a limiting factor for him and them until it's not, but it's probably going to be to some degree the whole way through. So what does this mean with Baker? Because you

point out in the column that just from a pocket passing standpoint, you have to create and mold the offense around him because of his limitations. And yes, I guess there's probably some Baker people out there who are like, look, the guy was holding his ribs the whole game. Okay, fine. But when he's healthy, the same problems are there. Yeah, absolutely, and that's a lot of teams in a league. I mean, that's Kirk Cousins' career, right? And when it's going well and great, you can put up numbers, and people go, wow, his numbers are better than Rodgers through eight games, but they're not doing the same types of things.

So, you know, you're smart if you're Kevin Stefanski, and you're building around that, but I think you're also going to be smart by making sure that we don't like they have a fifth year option decision and you know in the after the season are you going to be all in on baker mayfield for you know that type of money i mean i think you got to be looking for somebody who you don't have to limit your offense think of it this way like every quarterback either limits or expands what you can and want to do you And to what degree that is determines whether we should be looking for something else.

So you don't want to give up on Baker Mayfield after six games in the Kevin Stavinsky era. We're not saying that, but we want to see improvement in that area before just saying this is what we want. Okay, let's look at Baltimore. That score against the Eagles I felt felt like, is a little misleading. So I don't know what to do with it. Because I just, I like watching games and go, hey, man, that team was totally control.

And I just think human nature kicks in when you're up big. In the NFL, it's a hard sport to play. And you just don't play as hard. And then the other team starts moving the football. And if it wasn't that the Eagles are a mess, maybe I'd take it more seriously. But I have an analogy for Baltimore where I feel like they're that big time college football program that we expect to win 10, 11, maybe even 12 games, but they've lost a couple of big bowl games.

So everybody just kind of sits around and goes, all right, yeah, I know they're good, but I don't really care until we get to the end of the season. And that's unfair to Baltimore because it's one blown or it's one blowout in the playoffs last year. Lamar's rookie year that loss against the Chargers, I mean, I really don't think it was a close game. I thought Lamar was pretty bad in that game, and they made it a close score late in the end.

But we have gone from being amazed by Lamar and Baltimore to just expecting it and without anything other than just, okay, well, none of this matters, even if they put up another regular season. I think the Kansas City loss has something to do with that, too. So it feels like this big-time college football program that doesn't get enough respect because they've lost some big bowl games. They're one game better than they were last year at this time.

It doesn't feel like it, does it? I don't think they lost. Not at all. But I don't think it feels quite the same on offense. It feels to me like last year, if they played this game against Philly, they would have finished it off in one by 30 you know uh you know but you're measured against something totally different and almost unfair you know and i think that happens to a lot of players all of a sudden you're like

okay is this guy even going to make it in the league and then he gets established and you're like okay well he's not my homes you know it's like that's what sort of what happens in the evaluation here so we go from wow isn't lamar jackson just a joy to watch i mean and now we're like yeah but you know he didn't win a playoff game two years in a row he can't beat my home so i mean this is impossible standard it's like you like your kid is finally... Your kid can dunk a basketball and you're like, yeah, but Dominic Wilkins was way better at dunking a basketball.

It's just like... That seems more unfair. Yeah, what are you going to do? I do believe that. I feel that with them. I want to see it in the playoffs too. I think we know. When you go that fast down the tracks and then you come off suddenly two years in a row, I think we want to see them fast down the tracks and then you come off suddenly two years in a row you know i think we want to see them stay on the tracks because when i look at like

there are some numbers that are falling off a little bit that maybe are hidden but i i do think it's just our our tendency to fall on stuff fall in love with stuff that's new and it's not new um and it's it's not like I don't know if it's dismissive or any of those things, but even one of the notes from, I think it was an offensive coach, or I don't know if it was a defensive coach and you pick six that was like, yeah, people kind of figure them out. And you're like, well, if they figured them out, don't they have a worse record? You know, if you're telling me how to stop Lamar is just get up early. I'd love to know which NFL teams are like, Hey, let's not score for like the first two quarters and then just crank it up in the third. So like if the, if the goal is

we have to score a million points early, so then they're okay, well, good luck. Go ahead and do that against that defense. Yeah. I think the implication is, Hey, you know, when you have a scheme that we don't see all the time, um, then when we see it more, we have a better chance against it. And certainly in a playoff game, that's what happens. You get studied more, right? And you get a better, you get everybody's best plan. And even that's a small sample size. It's two seasons, you know, but the results are what they are.

And we've seen when, you know, when Kansas City's gotten a little bit of a beat on them, even though Kansas City is not an amazing team defensively, you know, they, it looks pretty good for them in the game. And you're right. Part of it is you've got to be able to score. I think that clearly we just have to say that Baltimore is one of the very best teams in the league, and we're measuring them against the other very best teams in the league.

They should continue to be respected as one of the best teams in the league. You know, but you want to be compared to that level. You want to be compared against the absolute best. And you're the whole focus shifts to what do we have to do to beat Kansas city? Right. Is it a successful season if they go 12 and four and are one and done? And just, that just keeps happening. Is that what it's about? Last year it was okay because Lamar took this next step. There's plenty of teams that would be jealous of going 12-4, but they're going to be completely dismissed if they get blown out in a playoff game again. Yeah, that's probably not fair. It's probably not fair, but at a certain point, that's what they're measured against. And maybe it's after this year.

Maybe it's more fair after this year if they lose to a team a team that shouldn't be beating them right quote unquote that wasn't even as better than the regular season yeah it feels it'll feel a little houston rockets ish yeah um so you know what what which part of it's fair well if you're supposed to win 50 games and get to the playoffs every single year then you know isn't isn't that what we're doing right now baltimore as it stands right now, I mean, this is what's crazy about the AFC, and this is what I want to ask you. Baltimore would be the fifth seed in the playoffs. As it stands today, they would play Buffalo.

But again, none of this matters right now. It's all going to change because I want to ask about the two seed, and that'd be the Tennessee Titans. They're 5-0. I guess you could, if you wanted to be nitpicking, you could say they blew the lead, but they came back and won the game against Houston, which was just a weird game in general for a bunch of different reasons. But do you put them, like your quarterback tiers, do you put Tennessee in your first tier of AFC teams? I think I kind of do. I do have some concerns, and yet they sort of are what they are, right?

I mean, they keep winning games, and they were good last year. The difference between them with Tannehill and Mariota before, I broke it out in one of my pick sixes a couple weeks ago. It's unbelievable. It's like almost undeniable at this point, right? I mean, what's happened? They're a completely different teams so i'm willing to upgrade what i think of tanahill upgrade sort of what i think of their team i think vrabel has increasingly impressed me as somebody

who less than a decade of coaching i mean and and he's making some kind of bold plays of game management in the games. He just seems really dialed in. He seems to communicate well. I've just been uttered in this whole thing, you know, where they were potentially going to get in trouble with the COVID stuff, which maybe they're not now. He just seems to like be to get it.

And so I think you have to put them in that, and we'll see how they do against Pittsburgh. But I think they've earned a spot in that group. Let's talk about the marquee matchup, Green Bay-Tampa. Green Bay goes up 10-0. You're like, oh, man, what's going to happen? And then that Tampa Bay defense just unleashed. I know Bakhtiari left the game, but, I mean, still better teams adjust.

The way they had protected Rodgers to this point had been incredible, and then that was just an unleashed amount of pressure, which I don't know. I mean, look, it's, it's not what we've seen from green Bay or Rogers all season long. I think that was a real kind of wake up call for what Tampa is capable of. They've had some horrific games though, offensively in, in the last couple of years. I mean, last year against San Francisco, they just looked like they couldn't even get a playoff. And it felt like that at times as the game went on yesterday. And you realize how, you know, I think that sort of thing used to happen a little more where you had tough games. And this year, because there's no

crowds on the road, they went to Minnesota. That was easy. They went to New Orleans. That was easy. Rodgers has drawn them off sides. And now you finally sort of walked into a hornet's nest, right? And I think they have, even though they have obviously a great quarterback, they are running that kind of play-action-y offense, right? And they didn't look real comfortable when the game suddenly changed and got off script. Even though I think Rodgers can do great in that, maybe he would do better in that if he was lining up with some guys who could win some matchups, as opposed to trying to thread it in there really quickly and get it out with some maybe ill-advised throws to the perimeter. Only his third career pick six, but yeah, it looked completely different. I still think they win the division, even though they're

not in first place, by the way. Chicago's ahead of them. I still think they win the division, but it was a wake-up call, and it was a reminder that they can look bad against teams that can rush to pass, or it happened in San Francisco, and it happened yesterday. What do you make of Tampa, then, on the extreme sides of this? Well, I sort of have, like, I remember being struck in the offseason. I think at one point I was asked to do a power ranking or something. I ended up having them really high. It sort of got my attention.

I'm like, okay, should they be winning that division? And I kind of think that they should win that division. And then the first month of the season has kind of affirmed that for me, that like, okay, the Saints, maybe they get it together and everything, but it doesn't look as great as it's always looked. So why not then? Don't you think Brady gets a little better as he goes along? I think he can still throw the ball really well.

Gronkowski was a little bit of a revelation yesterday and made a couple of nice plays. Don't know how he can hold up, but he looked better than he has. Defensively, they were decent last year. I think you had to look at the right type of statistical rankings to know it because they were put in so many bad spots by their offense. I loved the game for them. I think it had to be a confidence boost, and I feel good about their prospects to win that

division. Yeah, if you look at Tampa, they'd be the three seed in the NFC right now, followed by your two and three, four seed Dallas Cowboys. So even though Green Bay has a better record, four and one. Okay, so that leads us to the Bears because they are behind Seattle, who's the only undefeated team left in the NFC. I know I can look at the Bears' defense. I can look at their offense. I mean, all the stuff we would normally look at. What's more likely? Bears 12-4, 11-5, home playoff game, or some kind of correction based on schedule and the lack of ability to

really get the ball down the field? Yeah, I think there's going to be a correction, but I was looking at it yesterday. You can find losses on their schedule, but you can't find a six and 10 record. You know what I mean? They're going to, they're going to, I think they're going to be really interesting and like, they're going to, they're going to have eight, nine, 10 wins. And then at the end of the year, they're going to be able, if they wanted, to tell themselves, hey, we're pretty close and that it's better than it is. Whereas I think most of us, when we look at them, watch them, see the games,

look at the statistical indicators, you wouldn't think that a team that's outscored their opponents by 12 points in six games, is that right? 128 to 116? I think it is, yeah. 12 points would have a 5-1 record. I looked it up a couple weeks ago points would, would have a five and one record. I mean, I'll,

I looked it up a couple of weeks ago. Like they had outscored their opponents by whatever, you know, four or five points. It's a very short list of teams that have a record that good. So it has to correct unless they play better or play easier teams. I think we sort of know what they are. They can say what they are, but you know, I mean, it doesn't lie when you watch them. They're, they're not your typical five-in-one team. You wouldn't watch them and say, God, that looks like Seattle or these other teams that are five, and I wouldn't have a good record.

Although Seattle, I don't know if they're the best. Yeah, I know. When I said that, I started looking at the standings like, wait, maybe not Seattle. No, not Tennessee. They have flaws too. No, I don't really mean what we have. And you're right.

Everyone has some flaws. Maybe that's a good reminder. They do play pretty good defense. That's always the case. I've always felt like, especially when I was doing radio, and we would have guys come in and be like, man, every team's flawed. I go, we glorified those going way back to at least me being a kid,

those Niners teams and those Giants teams, and then Denver later on and San Francisco again in Dallas and we acted like they were all 16 and 0 all the time and you're like they're just not yeah that was one of the things that always jumped out at me when you started doing it every single week and guys would come in on Monday and be like man it's wide open and you go that's the league that's that's the whole sport I mean how many, how many games do we watch where you go? Philly is an example. Houston is, I feel like every Sunday you go, wait a minute, how the hell do they have a ball with a chance to tie this? Absolutely. Yeah. And you remember,

you were talking about those, you know, those great old teams, uh, you know, shoot, they benched Joe Montana at certain points. You know, you know what I mean? I mean, all these teams went through, uh, situations where it didn't look as good. And I think that's the hard part about covering on a sport like this on a week-to-week basis. It's like, sometimes you just want to go, you know, I'm not going to write this week. You know, let's just let this play out a little bit. Or, you know, hey, look, we shouldn't even, let's not go there, but we have to go there. I mean, we're talking about it. We're trying to strike that balance, you know? And it's there, but we have to go there. I mean, we're talking about it. We're trying to strike that balance.

And it's like you almost have to think of like, okay, how far can I go in something I'm writing? What's the most interesting headline we can have and still be true to what's actually happening, right? You want to be interesting, but sometimes you're reading too much into stuff. But sometimes you're reading too much into stuff. I wonder, too, if the marketing of having touchdowns be seven, if it were just one, would teams abandon the run if they were down 2-0 as opposed to 14-0? I know that sounds incredibly stupid, but look at Cleveland. Cleveland had to abandon the pass down 20-plus

because they had to actually keep it away from Baker. And you go, so they're going to try to run this at the Steelers to get back in the game because they're so afraid of their quarterback right now? Yeah. There's so many games. It happens in college, I think even more, where the higher-ranked teams all hype. They come running out of the tunnel.

They're up 14-0 like that. And then it's actually bad because they go, Oh, these guys stink. I had a great conversation with Jerry Glanville of all people this last off season. And he would like go down swinging. Like he didn't care. It was sort of old school. They would, they would lose a game 60 to seven or something. You know what I mean? Because when he got behind, he's like, I don't care. Let's just throw more, you know,

it's almost like a Phillip rivers mentality, right? I think for some coaches, a lot of them, because they could be fired is, okay, I'd rather lose by 14 than risk losing by 28. It's like a loss is a loss, but it's really not because you start losing by 28 a few times. Then they start talking to the owner about it, and pretty soon you're out of a job as opposed to selling this narrative that, hey, we're not that bad. We really weren't that far away. Okay, we've got more with Mike Sando coming up,

including the number one pick in the draft conversation, which I actually think is going to be kind of fun. But first, I've got to tell you about the same game parlays on FanDuel Sportsbook, and it's the most fun I've ever had betting. We did one last week in that Chargers game, hit all three. Pretty simple. That's what you're supposed to do, by the way.

You just brag whenever you win. On fire this week. A lot of winners. A lot of winners. I love when guys have won three or four after being below 500 and 75%. We're at a 75% clip if you ignore all the losses. They're pretty simple.

All you have to do is combine multiple bets from one game into a single parlay. This way, the payouts are even bigger when you win. What's cool, too, is FanDuel will refund the first same-game parlay you lose on any NFL game each week up to $10. That means you can bet a different parlay risk-free every NFL week all season long. Did you hear what I said? You can bet a $10 parlay every week, and if you lose, it's free. You get your money back.

All right? That means you have a chance to win more than that $10 because it's a parlay. So the same game parlay we have for Chiefs Bills. There's a Kyle special on this one. The Kelsey TD. What are the Kelsey drops at?

Oh, that's not fair. Patrick Mahomes under you went under 305 yards. It's a lot of yards for the Bills. I don't know. I don't know if that Bill's defense is what about his last couple games wasn't chucking for like 350. That's why I think he's due, but I like this. This is

the this is the Kyle same gamer here. So Kelsey TD Mahomes under 305 and a half yards and the Chiefs money line. Okay. So like the picks, go ahead and bet them. And with your first NFL same game parlay of the week, you get 10 bucks back if you don't win. Now there's one catch FanDuel is the only sportsbook app that has the same game parlay. So if you don't already have a FanDuel account, just use the promo code Ryan, R-Y-E-N when

you sign up so that I know that you're doing it the right way. And so that FanDuel knows that I sent you. That's FanDuel Sportsbook promo code R-Y-E-N. I know a lot of you guys are like, eh, whatever. It actually means a ton to the podcast if you did it. So thank you. Because that way they know everybody's listening. Must be 21 or older and present in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, or Iowa.

Refund issued as a non-withdrawable site credit that expires in seven days. Max refund $10. Terms apply. Gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER. In West Virginia, visit www.1800gambler.net. In Indiana, call 1-800-9-WITH-IT. In Colorado, call 1-800-522-4700.

In Iowa, call 1-800-BETS-OFF more with mike sando when you start looking at point differential here i mean the jets are off the charts wow at minus 110 um and then when you look at all the top teams i mean the bears are behind everybody else in point differential for the most part except for the bills who are actually negative um because i mean look sometimes i mean people can push back on point differential whatever i mean they get smashed by the titans you know it happens bad night but the one that i think is is always a little surprising that yeah miami's plus 47 at three and three and the bears are plus 12 at five and one so yeah i've actually yeah i've actually got this little cool little graph on my

screen here as we talk, showing who's furthest out of alignment with what their expected record would be in Miami's because of that point differential, which a lot of it is the last two games against the Jets who are the worst team in the league and against the 49ers who were very injured, and even though they won last night, didn't look amazing.

So a lot of that comes there, but you mentioned Miami, and we mentioned the Jets as these sort of extremes. A year ago, people thought Miami was completely tanking, and they had the historic point differential, and they got it going. I see no potential for the Jets to do that. I don't know what they're going to do. I don't even know what I would do if I were them and sit there

and take the number one pick. You talk to enough people then. I mean, how does an Adam Gase exist? How does that happen? Where they just hear that he worked with Peyton Manning well, and then it's just multiple opportunities when all of it looks terrible. Like there's no fake evidence. It's one relationship.

I don't know. I mean, did Peyton Manning just vouch for him and then that tricked the second owner? Yeah, well, so when he was in Miami, they probably had a better record than they should have for their point differential, right? They would win these games, and you wondered how they did it. But at the end of the day, at the end of his tenure, what was the thing you could sell?

You could sell – look at this. We played X on a number of our games with our backup quarterback. We didn't even have our guy. We started to get him going. Tannehill started going. We started running the ball, had a couple 200-yard games by our guy. We were coming together, and then he blows his ACL, and then we're bouncing around. We had Cut division. Hey, maybe somebody there liked how their team played once against them. I don't know. And then, hey, who would be good for our quarterback? Well, you know what? Who's got the same agent? Is it our quarterback and our head coach?

Those types of things start coming into play, and there's conversations. Yeah, you wouldn't have thought off of Miami that he would be a hot candidate to get a job, but it just takes one team, and they were that team. And now here you are where, I don't know, I don't think they have a roster that anybody could win with at this point. I mean, if they had Andy Reid, what, do they average three more points a game? I mean, what are you doing? You know, I think they're almost hopeless right now. Who on their team is good and moves the needle?

I mean, when you're talking about Becton, a lineman who you just drafted. He's excellent. Yeah, and look, I was trying to give you a name. This is the part where I think the Joe Douglas side of it is not fair yet. Let's get to three drafts, but he's brought down by all of it.

And we were covering this last week with breer where i go this is such a mess and there's so many jokes about the jets that like douglas is getting shrapneled throughout the entire thing when we don't know that yet yeah absolutely but they've been hired off schedule with their head coach and gm the whole time i mean look how they got in this mess didn't they basically so they had gaze thenase, then they basically, well, they kind of hired Greg Williams apart from Gase, if I remember. I mean, it wasn't like that was Gase's guy. Well, they're totally disconnected, apparently.

Williams can make roster decisions on the defensive side. So you brought in a rogue coach who speaks out of turn and has his own thing going to work with Gase, whose strength is not communicating and laying out the vision for the program publicly. It doesn't appear to be. And you put it in the worst possible market and then you have them, then you let McKagan, who's on his way out, pick the players. So they're going to go with Le'Veon Bell and CJ Mosley. Okay.

One of them sat out a year voluntarily in the league and the editor opted out. You pick which one was which. Those are their two big highest paid guys. That's their investment, not made by Gase or made by Drew Douglas. Now let's go win. By the way, we won't resign Robbie Anderson either because he's a one-trick pony. He has a good year now in Carolina. Our quarterback will be hurt. We could spend the whole time breaking down how Adam Gates should be using more motion to be a creative play caller.

And that's not even – Titanic's going down and we're saying, well, how come I didn't have a life preserver? Well, you've got a huge gash in the hull. So want to talk about the life preservers? Or do you want to talk about how the whole ship is flawed from ownership on down, right? Yeah, the motion thing is actually funny because I brought it up with Dilfer

and then you're like, okay, you guys are worried about motion right now? Yeah. Because they don't do any of it. Yeah. I look at all that stuff and it's like, you know, who had the most static offense in league history with no motion it was peyton manning when he did it and they set the records on offense it was like you know what's so ingenious about it he gets to read the defense

before the snap he knows exactly what they're in isn't that amazing now people are like hey we got next gen stats they're only doing 36 percent motion and no one even knows what it means you know uh i think they should be more creative they probably should be using motion more but i think that's a distraction from fundamental flaws in the setup uh at every level that are the reason why they're there where they're at and not we shouldn't be distracted by those other things which matter a lot when we're talking about degrees of difference, right? Just little degrees. The issues here are fundamental.

I want to ask you about a bigger picture bad team thing and even a nugget on Le'Veon Bell with the Chiefs. But before we do it, because off of that, the gaze part of this, the thing that I'll never know, because look, it's not like i cover the league and maybe you'll hear stuff i still do hear stuff but the interview process and how impressionable ownership can be with a guy that maybe doesn't have anything to bank on but in that hour two hours the second meeting blows the guys away and then on the other side of it some of the names that we hear all the time like i'll use use Eric Bien-Aimé as an example. Everybody's waiting for him to get his shot. Everybody's like, how come Eric Bien-Aimé, how come it isn't happening? I don't know what his

interviewing history is, but I'd heard like his personality, if it's with an owner that doesn't know football, they may not understand that Bien-Aimé understands all these things, but he's not selling himself in the way that somebody else is. But then again, I've had guys say, Hey, did you hear about so-and-so? He's in that interview. Yeah, totally bombed. And then he ended up getting the job anyway. So it's hard to know what's going on in that room. Cause we're not there and it's only word of mouth. Yeah. And just think of the owners of football teams. They don't know about football, you know, in most industries, if you're a, if you own a pizza company, maybe you started out making the pizzas, right? I mean, maybe you know everything about the supply

chain, you know everything about the market, if you're really good, right? If you're an executive in radio, you have been a program director maybe, or you understand what does and doesn't work, right? If you bought a football team what do you know you just have money i mean most of the owners might know less about football than you and i know right and both of us right now if we had to be on the headset making game decisions would totally fail well yeah i'm not arguing i mean we wouldn't know how to do it, right? I mean, you wouldn't know. You wouldn't be three plays ahead. It's complicated stuff. So the owner sort of then is vulnerable to whoever is telling them

what's really going on and what's important. But remember, we don't know how to hire, we meaning me, you, teams, don't know how to hire head coaches or quarterbacks. They're the two most important things. And no one knows if Eric Van Damme is going to be good or bad at the job, right? We don't know. I mean, people are watching yesterday and going, so-and-so should get a head coaching job because they had a great game today coordinating.

And I'm like, okay, is that, how do we know, right? I mean, Mike Tomlin was coming off a 6-10 season as a coordinator. He's been a great head coach. He's perfect for them. He, he communicates the message. He knows how they want to play. He has a tenor,

a tone to him. That's what you want, right? How do we even evaluate who's a good coach? Who's going to be a good head coach? How do you evaluate that? There's only 32 of those jobs. And we're looking at whether somebody has a nice blitz package on third

down. Yeah. It becomes whether Adam Gase uses motion. Yeah. 32 of those jobs and we're looking at whether somebody has a nice blitz package on third down yeah we're looking at whether adam gaze uses motion yeah that has nothing to do with whether he's a good coach head coach right so how do you then as an owner i mean i think it'd be a scary thing to do right i mean you're like how do we know if matt naggy's going to be the next great guy or bad guy which by the way matt Nagy's got the best record of that class, even better than Brable. Is he a great head coach? The perception is he's not.

He's got a good record. It's hard in football to know exactly why the games are won and lost all the time. That's hard to figure out. We can argue it. We can argue why the game was won or lost. So how do you know then exactly what the formula is and name good coaches who don't have good quarterbacks right doesn't happen yeah i mean look at bill o'brien was probably the best in recent memory with bad quarterbacks and getting

wins he had a top five defense if you defended bill o'brien in the last 20 plus months you were thought to be an absolute moron. And I'm not. He just, he turned into like a real, he was on the most hated social media list there for a while. Right. But he went into a team that had a really good defense. So you can win with Osweiler and Ryan Fitzpatrick when the other team scoring 17 points. Then over time, they got bad on defense.

And now you have a good quarterback and it's all he can do to even keep you in the game, right? And they gave up 600-plus yards, I believe, yesterday after. Brian's not even there. It doesn't even matter. So those things determine whether you can win with a bad quarterback if you can stop the other team from scoring. And so I think that gets into some interesting things of like, hey, how do you build a team, right? Because everyone wants that great quarterback,

but there's not enough of them. Okay, Le'Veon Bell, and then speaking of quarterbacks, Trevor Lawrence's question, which I think I'm going to go ahead and let you take this if you want to use it for an article. I'm so proud of this topic. Bell with the Chiefs. I think the first thing you think of is his pass-catching ability. I've actually never been a huge

fan of his approach to running the football. I know that the numbers have been there, but I think for some offenses, it doesn't really work. I almost think it's kind of a selfish way to run the football. And then when he went up against New England, it was the most predictable thing ever that they were going to go, oh, really? You're just going to dance around there the whole time? We're just going to bottle you up and whatever.

And I don't know. I don't know if he's washed. He's clearly had a few things happen where you go, is this guy really that dedicated? But you would think at least instead of just cashing the Jets checks, he would be more motivated than to get back to some level of glory here. So it makes sense for the Chiefs trying it. I'm just not sure, like a lot of things. Yeah, I agree with you that I feel like it's a good signing for them.

And at this stage of his career, he's probably not going to be getting better, right? He's not going to probably recapture what he had before as a focal point in offense with a really good line and he's hungry. He hasn't been paid yet, right? I mean, I think there has been some writing on the wall there, but the Jets situation is so untenable, so terrible that I think a lot of guys have a hard time, you know, staying fully engaged when it's almost pointless when you go out there. So I would expect there to be some kind of a boost. You look at LaShawn McCoy last year, they signed him, he's obviously older. He ended up being, you know, 10 or 12 touches a game. And then I think he had some fumbles and they deactivated him and he just sort of went away quietly. So I'd say that's maybe our baseline floor, right? And you're expecting

to be a little bit better than that, but probably not just consistently better to where, hey, we're bringing this guy back next year, right? Don't you feel like it's an end of season sort of rental and see if he helps you in the playoffs and move on? Yeah, and when I say selfish, I'm probably more annoyed that he called himself the Steph Curry of football.

Because he said that like little kids are going to want to play like him and he changed the game with his approach to kind of just waiting and then hitting. Look, it did work for a while, so I almost want to check myself a little bit on that characterization. Maybe selfish would have been when his entire offensive line called him out for sitting out the season, which has happened like zero times.

He was an excellent, just an excellent player. He was a multifaceted player. I'm going to be nicer about that. But, I mean, if you talk to evaluators now who were kind of considering whether to sign him, they don't think he's the same. And that's not just people trashing Le'Veon Bell. Those are honest conversations about, hey, it just doesn't look the same.

So how much of a boost do you get? He's 28. It's like he's 34. So they may get a boost from him. And it may be fun to play with Patrick Mahomes. He's a young 28, though, too. I mean, the benefit of him taking time off and missing time with the Jets is it's not like he's been getting ground down here. Yeah, I want to see it.

I like it. And you get some competition there. They drafted a guy early, you know, and let's just see. Okay, last thought here. There are 10 teams with one win or less. That's Philly, Cincy, Chargers, Giants, Washington houston jacksonville atlanta minnesota and the jets so trevor lawrence i believe and watching him you know throughout his entire career clemson especially one of the things i mentioned uh that i'll get to actually i haven't done it yet but

his college football numbers where they were processing um how quick he was in the rpo and it was like 0.5 seconds which i still think is a little ridiculous because obviously in an RPO, he already knows at snap that he's throwing that at 0.5. Still sounds really good. It sounds really good. But see, I'm going like, OK, well, wait, it's not like he sat and scanned and then got it out in 0.5. Like the ball was already out of his hand as he was catching the snap. But I think he's the best thing I've seen since Andrew Luck. I'm sure

there's probably people that you talk to i actually feel free to throw in some of the early evaluation and people think he's better than luck he's the best since elway and all that kind of stuff but there are some teams here that have invested in quarterback whether it's the eagles like say hi look i don't think the eagles are going to end up with the number one overall pick but if you just threw all of those teams into the mix yeah it's it, I don't know, Deshaun and Houston because it's been pretty good so far. But there are teams that have just drafted quarterbacks that just paid some people where I still think it'd be a mistake for any of those to say, well, you know, we've got our guy in here and we spent a high pick. Like, what if Cincinnati ended up with the number one overall pick?

So I think there's some real weird conversations that could happen. I'm with you on this, too. you know so i think there's some real weird conversations that could happen i'm with you on this too we're like i mean i think you don't want to be stupid and not take uh just because you have a you know uh something that could be good you don't turn away great right it is a unique position in other sports like in basketball you can have two guys exactly you're gonna have two really good forwards and figure out a way to do it right right? And in football, you've got one ball. And in some cases, like Deshaun Watson, you've got a lot of money in this guy. I think for Houston, if they were to have the number one pick, I think you could justify, hey, you know what?

We'd be really upside down on this deal with Deshaun Watson. We think we can win it all with Deshaun Watson. So you know what? Let's find a trade suitor in the NFC and let's just hold an auction and let's just see. We need picks because we've committed to this guy. Our old coach GM got rid of all of our picks. How many ones and twos and threes or whatever can we get? And is there a team that would be willing to do it? And maybe that would make sense for them and replenish around Watson. Burrow is the other one that would be willing to do it. And maybe that would make sense for them and replenish around Watson. Burroughs is the other one that would be really interesting because they just

took a number all. See, Cincinnati is not a wheeler dealer team. They're not a big trade team. They're sort of a three wood down the middle and. Let's work for him. So why change? Yeah,

exactly. And then lay up, you know, three wood in the middle, then lay up, uh, and sort of walk off with your bogey. And if you're par, you're really happy.

That might be the most perfect description of the Cincinnati Bengals ever. Yeah, playing bogey golf, you know, it's kind of fun. But not really that overly active. So, you know, you could see them. I don't think they would do it. But really, all of those other teams teams, obviously Jets, Giants, Jacksonville, Atlanta would be interesting.

I mean, Minnesota, though, they're kind of on the hook for, look, they would still take them. And by the way, when we're talking about these bad teams, Houston's not going to end up with the number one pick. No, they're going to win some games, but Atlanta should. To me, Atlanta should not be just chasing a quarterback at all costs and drafting any quarterback.

But if they had, because their offense hasn't been the problem. But if they had a chance for generational quarterback, then of course. Then of course you do it and you find your way out of the Matt Ryan deal and you build around a cheap quarterback who you think is going to be appreciably better, right? I mean, you know, Hartman would do that. Over appreciably better, right? Yeah, right. And over a decade younger. Yeah, yeah. Gardner Minshew? Yeah, I guess you could probably turn the page.

But yeah, some of these teams. I think your point is good. The extreme bad case is you don't just keep going with mortals, right? And then other teams are drafting guys who are dramatically better because we have our guy. And it's a little bit harder when you're, when you still think your guy could be really good, but I'd err on the side on picking good quarterbacks, right? Isn't that a good rule? So, yeah. All right. That's Mike Sando. Again, the athletic read the pick six every week at Sando NFL. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. That was good. Let's do a little college football.

Probably going to have a guest on here soon as we go to three a week. Just a reminder, Monday, Wednesday, Friday likely, in case there's some other kind of weird thing that pops up. Working on all sorts of stuff, guess why. So Clemson, until Bama beat Georgia, which I was not surprised by. We'll get to that a little bit later. But Clemson beat Georgia Tech 73-7 this weekend. It's the largest scoring margin in an ACC game in that conference's history. Georgia Tech, we thought maybe was okay because they beat Florida State week one until we realized that Florida State was terrible until actually now Florida State is not terrible. And we'll get to them a little bit later. But Georgia Tech lost to UCF and you're like, oh, okay, well, UCF's good.

Not really, they're two and two. Cuse is one and four, although they did beat Louisville and now I kind of think Louisville might have some good players watching them hang with Notre Dame in a close one. So a bunch of these other things we'll get to. But Clemson had 17 players with a reception. I'll spare you the Oprah joke

because everybody's already done it. I think that joke's a little played. But anyone voting for Clemson, arguing for Clemson, I'm not going to argue against it. I'm not going to argue against Clemson. I don't think anybody should. And thank God for Notre Dame for Clemson because they will play them later on in the season at Notre Dame,

where Notre Dame is now the number three team in the country, which feels a little weird too, because Notre Dame's opponents, despite their undefeated record, have a combined one loss of five and 16. So Clemson, I would have thought about them differently in regards to everyone else. I almost was going to make a joke where Clemson should be voted one and then no one else should be voted two. But with Alabama beating Georgia, it's OK to have Alabama two. I just, you know, based on the body of work to this point. Yes, Alabama has the win against Texas A&M. That was one side.

And A&M looks like they're going to be a pretty good team this year. Last year was about schedule. They're certainly talented enough. And the quarterback's been better on for A&M. We've talked about a lot here. But all told, the Trevor Lawrence part of it is just stupid. Also, when you look at Georgia Tech, Jeff Sims is a freshman quarterback,

and Georgia Tech still runs the football far more than they pass. 214 rushing attempts, 139 pass attempts. Trying to do read options and getting to the edge and all that outside stuff. You saw Miami couldn't do it against Clemson, and Georgia Tech, it was horrifying. They hit one deep pass that they weren't expecting, trying to run it, all this RPO stuff that everybody's doing. Not everybody, but any of the edge stuff and reads

and stuff we all know now, even the most basic football observer, trying to do that against these Clemson linebackers is a complete waste of time. I mean, they've got that one kid that was the number one recruit at linebacker. He's a freshman. He looks like he's 30 now. I can only imagine when he was in high school, he was just sitting there talking about mortgage rates and a divorce while he was hooked up to a nicotine patch being like, I got to quit these things. And you're like, you're in fucking high school, man. So that's how he looks. That how he plays and that whole group back

there is really really impressive and then you throw in the trevor lawrence part as i mentioned with sando the 0.5 second release on the rpo thing well he knew he was making that throw but it also means that you're just helpless i mean he's so dialed in already and so there's clemson and despite the resumes on the on the plank like when Bama gives up a million points to Ole Miss, I'm okay with Clemson being voted one. We'll get to Bama a little bit more here later on. Notre Dame, I don't know who else you're supposed to put. You would just not drop Georgia because they lost a road game by 20 at Bama.

There's no shame in that. I do think we penalize teams for losing to teams they're supposed to lose to far too much in the rankings. We all, whether it's coaches, the AP still in love with that little zero that's, that's next to the, uh, the loss column. But I, you know, some of these teams that are undefeated who haven't played anybody, would you pick them against Georgia? I don't know. And again, since it Bennett, there's limitations there at him as quarterback. David Pollock tweeted out he's 5'10 in heels. That's a UGA guy doing that. And that's just Pollock keeping it one hundo all the time.

So Louisville, by the way, they've got a bunch of dudes on that team where throughout that game, I'm like, you guys are kind of like the U without the wins. You guys want to carry yourself a certain way. And I'm not talking about the U now without the wins. Like you guys want to carry yourself a certain way. And I'm not talking about the U now without the wins. I'm talking about when they actually used to win and not be back every four weeks for like a decade and then not be back Florida state real quick. They are different with Jordan Travis.

The box score is not beautiful against UNC, although he did run it for over a hundred yards and upsetting the number five tar heels at home. But a really cool story off the Notre Dame loss is when they stuffed Notre Dame at the end of that loss up at South Bend. Mike Norvell, head coach of Florida State, said, like, that showed me that this group still has some fight in them. And with Travis now at quarterback, they have fight in them

in a way that they didn't have when they opened the season, the Jacksonville State game that was a total mess. And I even noticed it against Notre Dame where I'm like, look, Florida State's actually hanging around. And by the way, Florida State didn't have their number one receiver who's a stud. He is Stanford Steve approved. Also another Stanford Steve approved player is number 24 for Notre Dame, Tremble, who untucked Jersey. You're not quite sure if he's a tight end, an offensive lineman, a fullback, a running back, or just a bouncer. But he's just out there beating the shit out of everyone. And I wouldn't have noticed it unless Stanford Steve pointed it out

to me. I think that's, he said it's his favorite player in college football in 20 years. I don't, that seems to be aggressive. He may not have said that, but yes, Florida state doesn't matter. Big ski, but big win against UNC. And it wasn't a fluke. I mean, UNC got back into that. They had a chance late, but that was not a fluky win. Fluky win for me is the all-timers in Alabama was minus five in turnovers at home against Chad Kelly and Ole Miss. That was a fluky win for Ole Miss. Here's another one. I can't tell if Gus Malzahn at Auburn is the Kirk Ferentz of the SEC or if that's Mark Stoops. What I mean by the Kirk Ferentz of the SEC or if that's Mark Stoops. And what I mean by the Kirk Ferentz of the SEC is everybody's kind of over you

and then you like a free agent that hits a bunch of home runs in baseball right before he becomes a free agent, gets a big contract. Gus Malzahn, everybody will want him out. And then he beats Bama often enough and then gets a contract extension. When I was like, wait a minute, didn't you guys all want him fired like a month ago? Mark Stoops is a little different level. Obviously, Kentucky not held the same standard, but he has gotten if you go digging through his contract extension, you're like, wait, what? And it was just because there was a glimmer of hope in Kentucky football like there rarely is.

And so he keeps getting paid. And by the way, we're going to give it to Malzahn because Kentucky just beat Tennessee in the first time since like 1804 while they were ranked. I mean, some of these numbers are always still funny that we've been playing this game a really long time. I'd be like,

this team hasn't done this since 1937. You're like, how does that happen? So I'm going to call Gus the Kirk Ferentz of the SEC right now because Auburn went from 15th to unranked. They're now 30th outside of the top 25. You count all the teams in front of them on the other receiving votes. They lost.

By the way, Auburn and Tennessee are both out, and they deserve to be out. I'm not going to go over all the Bo Nix stuff again, but he's just not good enough. His receivers are yelling at him. And when I look at all the Auburn skill guys, I feel like so many years in a row, I'm like, that guy's awesome. That guy's unbelievable. This running back's sick. Like, who the hell is this guy? Like, oh, you know, it's Williams and

Stove and Casper. And, you know, I'm not even getting to the running backs because they're, I don't know. I always feel like they're loaded with skill guys. And you can tell on third down when Bo Nix doesn't see the field, that's their problem. And, you know, I'm not going to just sit here and go, oh, they should have lost to Arkansas because that's assuming a lot on the other side for all the Arkansas stuff that was going to have to do on the weird fumble, no spike ball play that really felt like a fumble.

But they're unranked. And Tennessee is unranked after they lost. So here's a little tidbit for you. The SEC has four teams in the top 25. The Big Ten has five teams. So basically the Big Ten figured out how to keep up with the SEC by just not playing. But again, they're going to go ahead and play. I wonder how this impacts the committee.

Will it be weird that there's more ranked teams in the Big Ten because they haven't beaten anybody at this point? I mean, Ohio State, if you go through their schedule, they have five wins waking up. They got Penn State. They got Michigan. As far as ranked teams, Penn State should be the only tough game, and then we'll see what happens with the championship game. All the championship games are kind of in that December 12th to 19th window. I could sit here and make up a bunch of things to worry about, but chances are once the season ends, I mean,

Ohio State's final game is December 12th. Bama's last game, I think, will be against Arkansas, so who knows Arkansas if they'll be ranked because they're just a completely different team now this year. That's 12-5. Will it mean that much seven days later and having the championship games all within a few days of each other? No. So the not playing, playing, who's ranked, is it an advantage to not play and have more

ranked teams later in this imaginary season that started at different times? Will any of that stuff matter? It probably gets worked out in some way. I would have almost, it basically feels like Clemson and then three other teams at this point. season that started different times. Will any of that stuff matter? It probably gets worked out in some way. I would have almost, it basically feels like Clemson and then three other teams at this point. Okay. Speaking of Bama, and maybe you go ahead and put Bama in there.

Big 12 people always like to, anytime the SEC has something bad happen, all the other geographical footprint areas want to point it out about the defense to be like, oh, I thought that was the number one defense in the country for Georgia. Yes, it was. And they got smoked. Mac Jones, by the way, love his feet in the pocket. Yes. Mobile pocket talk going with it.

But Bama with those receivers, Saban now is 22 and 0 against his assistant. Saban in the last 20 years is there with peakek LeBron and literally Peek LeBron's like 17 years. Peek Tiger and LeBron James, the best bets in sports in the last 20 years of the sports we pay attention to. And as much as we can look at the defense and think, okay, wait a minute, what happened to Georgia? I thought

they had a really good defense. Georgia, you know, finished last year number two defensively overall. But they lost 37-10 to LSU in the SEC title game. So some of these games do get weird. It feels like it's happening a little bit more at the start of the season, some of these offensive-defensive things.

And they're just weeks. They're just weeks where you're going to get smoked on defense. And that's all you can do with it. All right. So, and Saban, by the way, too, has this unbelievable number that I may tweet out a little bit later. Matt Brown of The Athletic had it, where his record, I think there's five coaches in history, five or six college football coaches in the history of the sport that have an over 500 record in games where it's top 10

versus top 10. And Saban winning like more than two thirds of them. Whenever the Saban thing is done in Alabama, no one is ever, ever surpassing what he has done in the national championship conversation every single year, except for one, maybe since 2007 or the start of the 2008 season. That was talking college ball. We call that our spring semester. Let's do life advice. Okay, before we do life advice, here we go.

Miller Lite, not that long ago, going out with friends could get a little too complicated. You used to worry about where you'd go, what you'd look like, and who you'd invite. These days, it actually feels more like it should. You can just be yourself with your friends. Maybe that's the way it always should be. And as the original Lightbeer, Miller Lite has always believed in this. That's what Miller Time is all about.

I remember Miller Lite night, I don't know, I don't know, we didn't keep track of it at all, went to a Yankees game. I feel like Yankees fans love Miller Lite, and we got rained out, Sox-Yankees game. I feel like Yankees fans love middle light and we got rained out socks, Yanks, and my buddy went to, uh, give the tickets to another friend that was living in the city. We weren't living in the city. We couldn't use the tickets. We had to go back to Burlington,

Vermont to bartend. And when we gave the tickets to my friend, he was like, I wonder what I can get for these. And my other friend was like, this is your buddy. And we immediately hand him free Yankee socks tickets. And the first thing he thinks of is what can I get for these? I was like, yeah, that's just kind of the way he's wired. It could have been the Miller lights. Who knows? All right. So whether you're toasting in person or you're cheersing from afar, Miller light has always been about bringing you and your friends together for Miller time. And we all know that because of today, it's recommended you keep your social circles small, um,

how you're connecting with friends. I don't know if it's all over zoom because the zoom stock is through the roof, but you know, outside, it seems like everybody's on the same page with the outside stuff. So, you know,

just keep it outside. Although good luck, Chicago Miller light fans outside soon Miller light, great taste. That's why you should just get it delivered with only 96 calories and 3.2 carbs. Although, good luck Chicago Miller Lite fans outside soon. Miller Lite, great taste. That's why you should just get it delivered. With only 96 calories and 3.2 carbs, however you and your friends are enjoying Miller time, you can have the original light beer delivered by going to MillerLite.com forward slash RR and find the delivery options near you.

Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari, 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork.

I have every toy you could possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So, now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. It's lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. And we got one here. He wants to be anonymous. That's great.

Okay. He says gender, male, age 21, hometown, Jersey, weight, six,

three. Wait a minute. That's height. Normally height, six, three, weight, six,

three, two, 10. Big dude goes to the gym twice a week eats sort of healthy binge drinks four nights a week you do the math so well 2021 you can definitely drink four nights a week and still be in shape all right he is a senior accounting major at a good acc school gpa mediocre at best that means it's even worse. Work experience, two years as a bus boy, four years as a waiter. So you turn that bus boy experience into a weight shift. Good for you.

Low key, killing it money-wise in a mom and pop Italian place. Shout out service industry. Also an intramural sports ref. Okay. That's the problem. Kyle's like this guy's this guy's a legend so his own tv show okay uh here's the question i'll get right into it you've looked at the measurables you aren't impressed well i don't know you're tall thick it's okay um the prospective employees feel the same way however with that being said i know i'm much smarter than my gpa shows due to advanced metrics 10 years of standardized tests. SATs 1480. No big deal.

An IQ test. All show me is 90th percentile plus smart guy. I don't know if he's saying to me. Is he shit talking me here? I'd love to see where this goes. Let's see if he does it again. Okay. Say what you want about these tests.

But there is at least somewhat direct correlation between those scores and intelligence. Sorry for the statistic sidebar. I'll move on. I really developed as a person in high school. I was somewhat shy and anxious in social settings. Now I'm confident. Yeah, you are. And I feel able to always be myself. Enough of the sappy stuff. Being myself is doing a Brad and Chad shtick in an attempt to get with women in similar to my grades, have a mediocre at best level of success in that department.

In short, what I lack in grades, I make up for with personality and soft skills. Like you, I feel like I have a very good sense of people's character, their feelings on me, and best of all, just how full of shit they are. In short, I have a very strong nose for bullshit. The key to this is understanding that almost everyone is full of shit to a certain extent, even ourselves, which we've talked about. I like to say I'm 40% full of it 15% of the time. All right, Sex Panther. Okay. Right in that happy zone where I'm a dirt bag,

but know the things about me that are well enough to identify them. The jobs I can actually get out of college or of the sales variety and very commissions based knowing myself and talking to people in the industry. I'm the perfect guy for this industry. I humbly, this is going to be a joke. I humbly of course, believe that I would succeed in this job.

Here's the curveball. Thank fucking God, man. I get to the point too quickly. That's my flaw. Now, here's where the curveball comes. There will always be this itching me to attack college basketball, coaching grind from the ground up.

I have a couple of connections in the industry and could wait tables to make ends meet while I make $400 a month as a Division III assistant coach in Pennsylvania. This is obviously a huge commitment and I have a couple of connections in the industry and could wait tables to make ends meet while I make $400 a month as a division three assistant coach in Pennsylvania. This is obviously a huge commitment. And I want the advice of someone who's perspective of bet on yourself and double down. Not sure if I'm ready for the maturity of the adult world. Let me know your thoughts. Love the show. Think you'd advance. Okay. A lot to deal with here. Let's, let's deal with some of the, I'm going to get to the advice part of this first, go do the college basketball

thing. Okay. You're 21, whatever you think you're going to do. Like this is the mistake young people make is that you'll go, Oh, I'd love to pursue my dreams, but you know, I want the stability of the money and I want this other thing. And you know, it'd probably be a better career, whatever you think you're settling on. You're probably going to change that four or five times anyway. So why not take the shot now? And if you already have connections, you're ahead of like 95% of the people that even want to do this. You're also fucking crazy, which means you're perfectly suited for college basketball coaching because those guys are nuts. All right. They make, they make football coaches look normal. So you already have that part of it down. You're psychopath who apparently is smart. You're definitely full of shit because I think you're lying to yourself through half of this email, which works perfect in that industry too. And yeah, I kind of think I know who you are and it's a lot of personality and it's in between completely arrogant, but then you think you're being humble by pointing at yourself, but you're

actually still kind of being arrogant about it the whole time. And that's okay. I'm not even mad at any of this stuff because I'd rather you be super confident saying, hey, I can do this. And I have connections in a field where you're going to be doubted your entire career. There's going to be numerous times you're going to want to quit and you're going to go, this isn't worth it and all these different things. So if you have the connection and it's this itch and you're 21, this is a no brainer. You absolutely go ahead and pursue this because you have those connections. If you had no connections, I'd say still brainer. You absolutely go ahead and pursue this because you have those connections. If you had no connections, I'd say still pursue it. You're young enough. I'm always going to tell

all of you guys to pursue the thing that you think will make you happy. Because here's the great thing. What if you don't like it? And then you go back to the thing you thought was settling and then you realize, hey, you know, this isn't so bad. I mean, it's not being average. It's not accepting defeat. It's having the experience to know the things you always wanted. I mean, how many times just in life have you thought about something you've wanted so badly and then you got it and you were like, ah, actually this isn't that great. And so that's the other part of pursuing the thing that you want, because if you never pursue it and then you do other stuff and you're 30 and you're 40 and you're like, oh, I wish I'd really taken that chance. And it doesn't mean that you had taken that chance and you would

have been incredibly successful, but you would have taken the chance and either failed and accepted it, or you would have taken the chance to learn that you didn't really like it. And it ends up setting you up for bigger happiness, doing the thing you thought was kind of settling. But there's another part of this that I want all the young people to listen to. You guys are out of your fucking minds on the money part of this stuff. All of these jobs that are really hard to get that everyone wants and the math doesn't work for the number of people that want to work in television, want to work in movies, want to be writers, want to be on TV, want to work in sports,

sports talk, radio, podcasting, writing, coaching, basketball front office, baseball front. You're not going to make any money in the beginning. You're just not. And we can make this huge argument about what it means about society. Here's the answer. They would get people to get these jobs for free. Okay. My first job was $12,000. It sucked. I got lied to. I was told I would make 30. I thought, okay, I can still pay my bills at 30 at 12. I'm going to go bankrupt. And. And if I had time to fill out the paperwork, well, I didn't have enough debt to actually go bankrupt. But you get the point. I was broke. I was screwed. I was lied to. I'm not saying that that's great. But all of these emails that come in and be like, well, the money won't be great. If you care about money right out of college, don't do these jobs. Because nobody says, hey, you know what? I want to pay an entry-level sportscaster 100 grand

just because it's the right thing to do. That'd be bad business. It would be bad business. And so I see this all over the place with what entry-level jobs are supposed to be at. And look, it'd be great if the entry-level jobs were 60, 70, 100 grand. Why would anybody pay you that when they know that they don't have to? So, so many of you keep asking that over and over again. And I'm just like, Hey, I met somebody who was like, yeah, I dropped out of business school. I'm having a hard time finding a steady podcast income. I'm like, well, you probably should have

dropped out of business school. Like if you're going to do that and pursue this tougher thing where the money isn't great early on, you don't get to complain about it too. You pick this one, suck it up. And if you stayed in the other one, you would have made more money. And I don't know, some of this stuff, it's like, I don't know. It sucks that this industry, the entry-level money isn't great, but that's because the people that own these stations and at ESPN, I mean, my first few ESPN deals sucked. I was fucking hourly. I was filling out timesheets. You want to know why? Because I was never going to say no. I was never going to say no to it because it was ESPN. And you think like, oh my God,

I'm at ESPN. I've been in the business years and years and years. Um, now maybe, I don't know. I was only a business, I guess, five or six years, but they were like, we can get any other guy to fill in for a hundred bucks. We can get it for, I would have done it for 20 bucks an hour and they know it. So if you were somebody pursuing these things and you go, yeah, but the money isn't very good early on, then you already kind of have ruled yourself out of this. Haven't you? All right.

Hit us up. Life advice are at gmail.com and please subscribe rate and review to the review to the Ryan Russillo Podcast, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. And we will talk to you on Wednesday. Thank you.