Luka’s MVP Run, Curry’s Revival, NBA Roster Regrets, and a Bears Super Bowl Run With Kirk Goldsberry and Tom Pelissero

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Anyways, me and Kyle Brandt, super fun podcast, one of my favorite football movies, and a lot of fun. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. A lot to nitpick, so really had everything. Next week, we're doing Air Force One, me and Sean and CR, so you have plenty of time to watch that. It's on Netflix right now. Go check it out. Go check out theringer.com, great website. Go check out all of our awesome podcasts, and I'm going to have another podcast on Thursday. We're not going live after the Ravens game, so I'll have something good for you on Thursday. Coming up on this one, Kurt Goldsberry came on. I want to talk about his piece that he wrote today about young legs in the NBA and what it means. Then I unleashed my nine to 10 biggest takes of this season after two weeks. So far, these are takes so far subject to change. We did that. Then Tom Palacero usually comes on Thursdays. We had him come on today because I want to talk about the Bears and the trade deadline coming up. That's the pot. I'm going to take a break. Pearl Jam and then Kurt Goldsberry. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is presented by State Farm. Every football player brings something different to the field. Maybe they have a cannon arm, speed, power. Maybe they have their own podcast. That being said, no two players are exactly alike, and the same is true off the field. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Somehow I was able to watch at least bits and pieces of all of them because I had the football game going too. It was really great how the timing broke down. There were some classics. As always, the Pelicans are the league pass MVP. I am going to give my 10 biggest takes of the season so far, but I'm going to hand the floor over to you for the first one, which is your ringer piece today about the league getting younger because it's noticeable when you watch it. It feels like there's less old guys just out there in general. And you did a deep dive on this. So take the floor. Yeah. Thank you, Bill. Always good to see you. This piece actually came out of some work you and I were working on when Giannis was demanding a trade or whatever it was going on in Milwaukee last year. And we were both like, well, what is this trade value? And going like that is a 31 year old superstar. But long story short, the NBA has become a young man's game more than ever. The sport, as we know, is faster. It's more physical. It's harder on legs. So I'm going to hand the floor over to you for the first one, which is your ringer piece today. I am going to hand the floor over to you for the first one, which is your ringer piece today. It's more physical. It's harder on legs. It's harder on legs. I think one of the biggest trends of the modern NBA is that it's a young man's game. It's no country for old men. And we're watching these games, like you said, 15 games last night, we've never seen a bigger share of dudes under 25 and a smaller share of dudes in their thirties. Yeah, I really started thinking about this when we were talking about it with Giannis and the odometer of players and what that means. And you can see it like Kawhi hasn't made a playoff run this entire decade, right? And the one time the Quippers made it, he got hurt. Durant hasn't made a playoff run since he was on the 2018 Warriors and the foot on the line in round two against the Nets Bucks series. LeBron hasn't really been on a team that you really thought could have won a title the last five years and then this year. Harden made the final four last year. But for the most part, it really has gravitated toward guys in their 20s. I've been thinking about it a lot with Jokic, who we're going to come up with later, that when you hit these guys, when they're right at the tail end of their, uh, of their apex, basically, can you do this for eight months? So there there's, it's basically, you're doing it from mid-October all the way through mid-June. Who's going to have the advantage in that case, younger legs, right? Whereas like, I think you mentioned the 98 season pace of play is way slower. Uh, somebody like Jordan played, I think 82 games, his last three bull season, plus all the playoff stuff, but you could do it because he was gaming the system with the pace and how many, you know, how they, how they allocated, how hard they were going. I think the field goal attempts were super low that year. Um, but big picture, is this just what the league is now? Yeah. Like, like, is this a trend or is this where we're going? And I, and I think for me, as I look at it, I just feel like the way basketball is played, which we've discussed on this pod and many others for a while with how just hard it is to play a game-to-game now. I do wonder if this is what it looks like. So you get a guy like Yaxel on a rookie contract that just turned 24, and that's like having a rookie QB. That's like having Caleb on the rookie QB scale now. Or Cooper Flagg, who can play right away at age 20. You know, he's not even 20 yet and could be the linchpin of a team. What's he going to look like when he's 34 at carrying the minutes that he's been carrying. We already saw Tatum break down and Hal Burton. So do you feel like the league, the teams are properly thinking about this in the context of how do we build a sustainable contender with what they're seeing from the data? I think some of them are. And I think if you look at the two inarguable best constructed rosters in the league right now, one that's had its own injury devastation in Oklahoma City and San Antonio, it's all young guys. And again, like the Thunder are all young guys. They own all their draft capital. The Spurs too, like the smart teams are realizing like this draft capital is the most valuable thing. Spending high money on somebody in their 30s is a really risky deal. And I think 30 is the new 35 would be sort of the tagline of this piece. And I think it's really heartbreaking in a way because when we're looking at a player like J-Dub and Ant and Halliburton, You know, we're not just saying, oh, my God, they're missing time when they're 24 or 25. Like, everybody gets hurt. But the Carfax report of this dude when he's 32 years old is going to be just bullet point after bullet point after bullet point. Will he be able to stay healthy in 2031? That's what I'm really pessimistic about. And just watching your team's game last night in Houston, the Celtics played the Rockets. Who sat out? Clint Capella sat out. Steven Adams sat out. Paul George said, these are the issues. So if you're spending money on players and most of the guys in their 30s can't play the 82, can't play the 82. you're going to naturally be like, you know what? I want Luca Garza. I want Kata. I don't need these guys in their, in their thirties. Cause they just can't hang. Yeah. And the smarter teams have realized that they need to go 15 deep to accommodate some of this stuff. But this is, it's such a weird conversation. Cause on the one hand, I completely agree with this. On the other hand, we're seeing some guys play longer and being at a higher level than we've ever seen before. Right. Jordan was I think 35 in the 98 finals. Yeah. Now you have LeBron at going to be 42 in December. Who's playing center. Who's bouncing around. Who in some ways seems like he has as much bounce as he's ever had. I know he's a completely different player now, but Paul George at 36 has looked awesome for the Celtics. Right. And James Harden and the calves, you know, he, he, he's been, he's been solid. He's not going to make an all NBA team, but he's been solid. He's been really good for what he is at his age. Same for Durant. So we're seeing guys, but you have an extend their primes. But I think what's changed is I just don't think you can count on it for more than 55 to 65 games. So you got to figure out how can you fill in the spots when they can't play, but then also, are they going to be healthy for the playoffs would be the two things. Oh, you're exactly right. And the point I'll make is like when you're LeBron James or Stephen Curry or Kevin Durant, you have a long way to fall before you're unplayable. You have a long way to go. From the top of the world, uh, to unplayable. This is more of a story about Otto Porter jr. Who started, you know, three games in the 2024 finals at 29 for the warriors, uh, or is it 2022 finals? Yeah. And they went, he's out of the league two years later. And he's quoted as saying my body can't put up with this anymore. He's 31. This is about Malcolm Brogdon. This is about Victor Oladipo, um, or Spencer, Dinwiddie, that class of player bill that the, the guys who maybe are owed 10, $15 million a year, but start to break down a little bit. So the Illuminati class, I think is going to be fine. Um, because they're so talented. Like I said, they have a long way to fall. So this is more of a story about Otto Porter jr. And that class of dude who is 32 and maybe a 10 point a game scorer. And you don't want to get into that 10 years of service category of paying him in the second apron. You'd rather go with a 21 year old or 23 year old who's more durable, has a higher upside. Well, I agree that it's partly a story about Otto Porter jr. But to me, it's also a story about somebody like Cooper flag, a hundred percent. What kind of mileage can you put on somebody like that? When you watch how hard he plays game to game, is that realistic that he could play 15, 16, 17 years like that. So as you were talking, I was thinking about the different areas. I remember doing this in my book, which my book was 17. Years ago at this point, but these different areas, these factors that kind of fucked up different generations, right. And sixties and seventies, basically, if you got hurt, you were screwed. Like you tore your ACL, if you tore your Achilles, if you, you know, ripped your patella tendon, whatever, you just had no, that was it. You were never the same. Then we get to the eighties and that's when the drugs come in. Right. And the drugs wipe out basically from, I would say 1977. Through 86, probably wipe out 40 to 45% of the guys who could have been awesome in some way that were compromised. Either they battled with it and survived it, or they got taken out. Then you get to the nineties and I called that the too much too soon era where you had these guys come into the league, getting huge contracts right away. And it kind of messed them up. You know, it got guys that I think would have been great, especially if you had the rookie scale, but these Kenny Anderson types, they come in, they're immediately paid like they're a success and see this happening in baseball now too, is some of the, some of the contracts, the young guys are great and they haven't done anything. But anyway, I felt like that ruined, you know, that generation to some degree, um, later Larry Johnson, uh, Chris Weber's probably the best example of all of them, but there were a lot of them back then two thousands and, uh, and, and the 2010s. I don't know. What do you think was the big factor for messing that generation up other than the seven year contracts? I think that that was when we lost Roy Hibbert. That was when we lost like a certain class of player, like the post player, um, because the skills completely changed between 2010 and 2020. Yeah. But you still, you still saw all-stars just falling out of the league. Like Roy Hibbert's always my go-to example. Yeah. Yeah. So style of play changed. And then, uh, trying to think what, what other factors would have been maybe the fact that, Well, we didn't have the college infrastructure in the same way guys were coming in at 18, 19, 20. Um, but now this feels like the new, the new thing that, uh, the new wild card for this generation is just how hard basketball is to play. I've been saying it for years and early on people were like, that's bullshit. It was hard to play in the eighties, nineties too. It's like, go look at the YouTube, just spend, spend 10 minutes watching playoff games from the eighties. They're more physical for guys banging into each other, but it's not the same. Running. It's not the same flying out. It's not even like fast breaks where guys just ran a straight line and it was a three on two. You get a layup. Now they dart out to the sides, the Euro step stuff. I mentioned the sneaker technology last week, and I got a lot of emails about that. And from people who feel like the lower tops just, and, and also the, the arc on the shoes, which are lower, cause it allows the guys to have more control that puts more of a burden on the Achilles and the lower part of your body. Cause when we were growing up, the guys from the seventies and eighties, they would have knee injuries, right? They're wearing like higher, higher top shoes. Now it seems like a lot of the stuff is below the knees, right? It's calf it's it's hamstring and it's Achilles and ankle stuff. And I really think the shoes are a small piece of it, but I also feel like style play too. So then you throw in the pace of play and some of, this stuff makes sense to me, right? Yeah. And I think the other big thing, as I looked at this, so congratulations to the golden state Valkyries who just won the WNBA championship. Uh, but they played 57 games bill, their team combined to play 2,280 minutes. Um, the Spurs played 5,000 minutes of basketball last year. The Knicks played 4,900 minutes of basketball. If you look at the Michigan Wolverines, they played 1,600 minutes of basketball and they won the championship. But the, the UCLA women's basketball team, they put 1,500 minutes, right? It, you, you talk about the style and that's exactly right. And I want to come back to Cooper flag in a second. The style has completely changed. So the 98 finals, there were 79 possessions on each, each side of that. That was a slow game. We would never see that game again. Um, and there were 23 pointers taken, uh, the game four of the 2,026 finals, the epic comeback by the Knicks, 90, some possessions, 75, the game four of the 2,026 finals, the epic comeback by the Knicks, 90, some possessions, 75, Knicks, 90-some possessions, 75 threes, up and down. And that's a big part of this story is, yes, we're still playing 82 games in all these minutes, but per minute, the exertion is crazy. Robert Parrish wasn't doing Eurosteps at seven foot tall. Like that wasn't a thing, but Victor Wembenyama is. It's crazy to look at the choreography of the players. And that's what one of the doctors told me when I was looking at this with you last year, is the longer your levers are, the more likely you are to strain some of these muscles. The physics is just worse. You have longer levers, longer feet, longer legs. But one of the other reasons I think the young people are thriving, yes, their bodies are more durable, but credit where credit's due, Cooper Flagg, Cam Boozer, Victor Wembenyama, these are guys, big players who are coming into this league at very young ages, ready to effing go, man. Dribble, pass, and shoot. This is supposed to be Cooper Flagg's rookie year, and I heard you talking about him, and everybody, Zach's talking about him. Holy shit. Like, is this the best 19-year-old player we've ever seen? So it's pretty easy to move on from old guys when you have a cohort of Cam Boozers coming in who are, oh my God, like Memphis' best player, second best player is a 19-year-old rookie. So I think that's part of the story, too, of this sort of gentrification of this younger generation coming in. Mm-hmm. More compatible with the pace and the space and the style, plus their bodies are a lot more durable. Well, the guys from the 80s, they're at least three years in college, right, when they're coming in. Jordan was three. Carl Malone was, I think, three. All those dudes, right? So you're playing whatever the college schedule is of 30, 32 games. Maybe you're playing 1,000 minutes. They don't have the same kind of AAU stuff that the guys from the Cooper, the flag generation and generation before had. That's true. I talked to Doc about that recently, and they have changed some of those rules. There was a stretch with AAU where you played like 10 games in a weekend. Yeah. And I think they've tried to cut down at least some of that stuff, but I still feel like these guys are just playing more basketball. And you go, Cooper Flag plays one year at Duke. So does Khan. So do a lot of guys that come into the league. And now you're immediately at 24, 2,500 minutes per team. That's the only potential in the NBA. Now, if you're on a playoff team that might go to 3,000 minutes and you're 20 years old, 21 years old. It just seems like a lot. Hey, I wrote down because I read your piece. a great website today. Pace of play better for young people. For sure. Technically pace of play breaks down older players, right? Yeah. So you have two things that he, this specific thing that's happening really good. If you're under 27 and under, not as great if you're 29 and over, right. But on the flip side, that pace of play as those younger guys, as Cooper flags in year 10, or Jason Tatum's in year 10, and you have all these miles and all these possessions back and forth, how are those guys going to age? And I think that's going to be the big X factor. You have all this technology that can help these guys age. All of these things we know about dieting and sleep and, you know, people wearing the whoop and a million things. And LeBron would be the ultimate thing to point to the North star of like, Oh, look at, well, look at LeBron. He's still going. Yeah. But then you have all these other factors against it, just wear and tear. And I wonder, we saw this in NFL. It took us forever to realize like, Oh, NFL running backs are done when they're 30. Right. It took this took us forever to realize that like really for, for decades, we were like, wow, that guy's done. And now it's just like a foregone conclusion. You have Saquon Barkley or whoever, if he's still playing it, that's why Derek Henry is such an outlier. But if you have a running back that you committed a second contract to, and he's still playing in his 30s, it's like a miracle. I wonder, could that start happening with basketball? And there's a cost there too, because if you look at the 98 finals and again, eight of the 10 guys, when Jordan hits that shot, most of them are hall of famers. They're all 33, 34, 35, whether you're talking about Kerr or Rodman or Pippen or Stockton or Malone or Hornacek or Jordan himself, that familiar face thing, Bill is a huge part of the NBA's sort of media revenue that these guys, they're stars by the time they're 32, 33, 34. They're shortening their lifespans. We're diminishing the cue scores of the most important players in the league. And I think that's bad for the product. Ultimately, we're just playing too many games. And I know we've gone down this road a hundred times, but SGA played 2,800 minutes, won the MVP, missed 14 games, by the way, last year. Asia Wilson wins her fifth MVP. I think congrats to Asia. She played 1,500 minutes. There's no other league in the world that's playing 2,000, 3,000 minutes per play. There's no other league in the world that's playing 48-minute freaking games. When Tyrese Halliburton tore his Achilles, it was his 97th or 98th game of the year. Kelton Johnson and Julian Champagny played a hundred and some games last year. That's insane. And the other sport I'd point to, and football is right on, is Major League Baseball. And they had a similar velocity revolution. In their case, it was pitching the baseball. Ours is pace on the floor. And dudes just started breaking. It's not. It's not rocket science. Like, if you change. So Tommy John's surgery for pitchers and starting pitchers not being able to throw 200 innings anymore, not being able to throw 120 pitch games, having to come out in the fifth, sixth inning, that was the wear and tear of the sport coming back to haunt the pitching. And I don't think we're going to have shoulder injuries, but I think we're going to have a rash of ankles, calves, hamstrings, knees. And in the first 14 days of this season, my student Michael Reese here at the University of Texas has been working on a lot of things. He's been working on this injury data with the ringer for a minute. We had 60 injuries. That's the biggest in our 15-year database. Only narrowly passing last year, which was 58. So we're starting to see it. We're starting to see all these injuries rack up. And man, I look at all the other leagues in the world and I studied them. They play once or twice a week. You wouldn't play football. You wouldn't have an NFL schedule as 43 games. That would be ridiculous. Everybody knows that. I'm sure they would try. Could else probably examine it? I mean, hockey added two games, which I thought was hilarious. That's another sport where they might end up playing 25 to 28, four rounds of the playoffs too. Listen, I don't know how many times I've talked about this on the pod. Right. About the schedule and about how this to me is like just inexcusable and semi-reprehensible that whoever is in charge of the league, which I think is Adam Silver these days, that he doesn't care. And I, the question for me is you, you're going to make all this money. The Foley's are going to get Vegas. That's going to be 9.5 billion for the expansion team. And they're going to commit all this stuff. So the owners all get 300 plus million a year. All the franchise values have gone way up. They're going to get a second thing from Seattle, which is going to be seven and a half, something like that. And if Seattle doesn't have the money, they'll go to Mexico city. So all these owners are getting, I don't know, 16 billion, an expansion fees that they don't have to share with the players that just split that and have 30 into 16 billion. That's going to be 500 plus million a year. And yet everyone's like, well, we can't lose games. We lose, we lose too much money. We lose revenue. At some point, you have to look at this holistically and be like, all right, well, you're adding these five home games for everybody, but you're ruining your players. And, and you're making your sport worse and you're hurting careers and you're shortening careers. And this should be a 70 game season. And if you talk to literally everybody who plays basketball, all of them would say the season needs to be shorter. And if you don't do it at this point, I just think it's negligent. I really do. I think it's, I think it's like actual negligence and greed. And those are the two words. Well, and I would say Adam deserves a little of the spotlight, but sort of the players to be fair to Adam and the owners, the players aren't exactly, so the NBA ultimately as the business school professor here is a media company that leases out bodies and the bodies are breaking. And if you're running this business and the Anthony Edwards is out, Tyrese Halliburton is out. J Dub is out. Chet is out. John Moran is out. The season's two weeks old. We've lost six guys already. Your media products is being sort of in shitification to use the parlance of today has, has set in in part because of this stubborn reliance on 82 games. Anybody with any kind of link to a team or sports science would say, this is too many. This is negligence. As you say, to try to get away with this, the data are screaming, um, 40 minute games. Look, and I'm against the 40 minute games. I think we need less games. I heard Zach and Mahoney talking about this the other day too. I'm against it because I think that First of all, I think we have deep enough rosters to play 48 minutes. I think the rhythm of the game would be weird. I also feel like for the fans, it kind of sucks. Like the games are pretty short anyway, the halftime's 12 minutes. Like, so I have to go all the way to the game. I have to park. The game's going to be over in two hours. The tickets are crazy expensive. I it's to me, it's not a length of the game. It's the amount of games. I'll meet you there. Yeah. I think that's fine. Like, I think somebody has played eight games already. I think, I think either at Atlanta or New Orleans, somebody, I think a couple of teams have played eight games already in this season just started. So why are we cranking out four and five nights already? And again, like, when did your team fall apart last night in Houston? One game, but we all watched it. Oh, fourth quarter. The, the, the rockets have more bounce there. They're making their threes. The, the, the Celtics three stopped falling. The Celtics are on a back to back. They've traveled somewhere from different parts of the country. Paul George can't even suit up. Like, what are we doing? No other league is playing back to backs like this. This is insane. Well, hockey, hockey, the guys are just disposable. But the thing is when we go to 32 teams, we can so easily just have a 69 game schedule and it all works out where you play everybody in your conference, I think three times and then everybody in the other conference twice. And it's just, I think the number is 69 at 69 or 70, but yeah, I like that. But everybody it's funny. Like we have, we have the election today, right? Everybody's got, you're voting for like whatever your party, different candidates you like. And then there's all these props. If we had props as an election for the NBA, and this was one of the props and fans got to vote, like, would you rather have 82 games or 70? This is prop 30, 31. Yeah. Who's voting for 82, right? Like all the people you love who in your life who love basketball, who would be like, no, I love the 82. I love seeing guys get hurt. I love seeing, I love seeing teams rest their best players on bat on the second night of back-to-backs. It's great. I love when my kid shows up in a Curry Jersey in San Antonio, right? He's not playing. Yeah. He's not playing. Yeah. I think when we switched to 32 teams, that's the moment, Adam Silver, I prefer a balanced schedule. The EPL has a perfectly, everybody plays everybody home and away. That means we can have a regular season champion that actually means something. We can use the 32 teams to have a huge NBA cup halfway through the year, have a big break, single Nice bracket, March Madness for the NBA. But yeah, ultimately you're asking the stakeholders and the media, the ownership groups and the players association to be like, yeah, we're going, we're going to reduce our inventory by 25% and you know it. I think it would drive the ratings up. So the 69 was everybody plays each other twice. That's 62 games. And then if you have four, eight team divisions, then they all play each other. That's seven more and that's 69. I said conference boards, divisions. but that's 69 game schedule and that's what it should be i agree i mean i'll do either one of those i think i think you're saying what you're saying is the ratings will go up the media products will get better and ultimately this is a media company that needs to optimize itself uh in the next 10 years or else uh or else we're going to see a league that has a 32 year old anthony edwards that can't participate in many games will 32 anthony edwards still be able to make an all-star team with what's going to happen to his body over the next eight years that's another question i doc was talking about this about with this g league and the two-way contracts and all the stuff they've added and how teams it's just easier and better and smarter with the second amp and all these other things to just have younger guys at the end of the bench and you make that otter porter example or malcolm brogdon people like that you don't you don't want those guys at the end of your bench anymore because it's cheaper to have these other guys who might actually be able to do it and they're going to be able to do it and they're going to be able to get thrown in but what you lose is from a team chemistry standpoint is the vets and some of the some of the smarter teams have realized that you still need those guys like the celtics they have mike conley on the team mike conley will probably never play a playoff minute he's like having an extra assistant coach but guess what everybody on the team loves mike conley you can see it during the games people are talking to him during timeouts he's between him and paul george they have vets and um i don't think a lot of teams can afford to do this because they got to play russian roulette with the young guys basically so yeah um we'll see i listen with the amount of injuries we've had this is threatening to me it was 50 years ago 49 years ago fighting became the dominant storyline in the league um and it was a big sports illustrated feature about it like this league is turning into hockey these guys are big violent forward centers who you know aren't on skates they're not on the field they're not on the field they're not on the field they're not on the field they're not on the field and could just throw haymakers every team has an enforcer is basketball getting too physical and then a month later was the kermit washington punch right and then that became over the next couple years oh shit we gotta like start changing how we think about this i wonder if this this will be the year for the nba with the injuries because the pace we're on what happens when we get to late december and you know we have 40 players you want to watch in the league and 15 of them are hurt it's not good and i hope we're not there because the nba playoffs are fucking magnificent and i don't want to sound like i'm complaining about the nba i love the nba so much i just see a glaring opportunity for improvement and the regular season if you look at where this league makes its revenue bill it is april may and june and we have to protect that but what we're doing from october to april just doesn't seem to be optimal and i think that's what the data are really showing right now you made the key point with the baseball game and i think that's what the data is showing there was a moment there with baseball pitchers where the sport was getting harder and harder for pitchers the velocity was going up and it wasn't sustainable but we were treating the pitchers the way we treated them in 1970s and 1980s right and all these guys got hurt and then they were like mate wait maybe we should now all of a sudden everybody's getting tommy jen people are getting preemptive preemptive tommy john surgery and now everybody is so careful about how they handle the ball and how they handle the ball and how they handle the ball and how they handle the ball and how they handle pitching but that took 20 years for us to do and the nba is in the early stage of that we're going to take a break come back and i have nine more big things from the season the bill simmons podcast brought to you by fanduel the nba actually just got even better on fanduel i'm not surprised i love fanduel this wednesday with early win a fast start could be all you need to win big pick an eligible nba game pick a team bet the money line if your team jumps out to a seven point lead at any point you will win instantly that's right you don't have to wait till the final buzzer to cash in i would look at miami against the clippers a game that i'm going to um i would look at miami in that one and i would look at washington's playing atlanta as long as anthony davis is healthy i think washington's a little bit underrated so those would be my two check out early win on eligible nba games in the fanduel app just another reason why this is your most rewarding season ever on fanduel 21 plus select states are 18 plus dc or wyoming restrictions apply see terms at sportsbook.com fanduel.com game problem call 1-800-GAMBLER call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat connecticut this episode is brought to you by uber eats it's football season uber eats delivering deals on game day delivered to me on sunday actually this week get 10 free boneless wings from wingstop on qualifying orders game on flavor on wingstop is here so if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk order wingstop on uber eats and get 10 bonus wings free it's the perfect way to keep everyone fit tonight so you can focus on the game no matter who scores big tonight you'll score a great deal order now and get 10 bonus wings free from wingstop only on uber eats offer valid from november 2nd to november 16th order minimum before taxes and fees is required see retailer storefront for details taxes fees and terms apply product availability varies by region exclusions may apply see app board details all right kirk i did not send these takes to you 10 takeaways from the first two weeks the first one was everything we just laid out in the first segment second one luka donchic is officially making his mvp run and i have a really hot luka donchic shake uh coming up in a second but he's 38 8 and 8 already 39.4 percent usage which will be like top five or six all time if that keeps up he's made 5.9 made threes per game he's taking 10.1 free throw attempts so this is like a daryl mori coming out of the daryl mori warehouse robot uh 50 43 89 percentages and this we're finally getting a look at luka relatively in shape seems like pretty good so far a team built around him that is just giving him the ball all the time and we're finally getting our answer for what would this look like for an entire season um on fando before the year i mentioned he was going to be in the 36th he was 34 points a game i think was like his over under 36 was almost three to one and then once you get into 38 39 that was like 20 to one yeah um if he stays healthy i feel like his stats are probably going to look like this i think he will be in the 36 to 38 with eight nate range um do you have you seen anything that makes you think this isn't sustainable uh just his previous injuries not to go down that road again i think if he's healthy this is what it is this it reminds me you brought up um daryl mori it reminds me of the rockets with james harden when james was in a prime at the end of last decade uh and we could see numbers like that and we can see offensive efficiency so when you zoom out to the team level bill you see the number one offense in the nba the most efficient shooting outfit in the nba uh and that that really to me evokes that hardenism that heliocentric high usage that i think luka has a lot from james harden i'm not the only one who says that um and then you see the 21st ranked defense that said you know this bench is so bad for the los angeles lakers i think there's going to be moments where jj reddick wants to take luca donchic out of the game and he's not going to be able to we saw it the other night with the toronto raptors game yeah where the lakers blew a giant lead and and jj had to put these dudes back in so no i think this is a 35 point per game scorer last He was on pace to break the record for three-point attempts per game in this league. And if he's able to hit them at 37%, 38%, 39%, it all adds up to 35-plus points per game, Bill. Harden, you mentioned, he had the three seasons over 30 a game. The 19th season, he peaked at 36 a game, seven rebounds, seven assists, basically. 24.5 field goal attempts he made. How many threes? He made 4.8 threes, took 13, and got 11 free throw attempts. So that would be the model. And I think the pace is a little faster now. I share your concerns and dismay about the Lakers bench. And some of the stuff they did was just weird. I don't know how you prioritize Colin Sexton over Anthony Simons, who was just a better player, who you probably could have had for the same money. And Simons was really good on Boston. I think he's been good for Phoenix. Sorry, Philly. There's been some stuff that Polinka's done that made me wonder, does he have league pass? I also thought their DeAndre Ayton trade was terrible. I'm not a huge DeAndre Ayton fan, but they gave him away for a couple future picks and Jaden Hardy, who's unplayable. And it's like, backup center, teams are dying to find backup centers right now. It's like, look at Phoenix. Phoenix has the worst centers on the planet with Mark Williams out. Look at Philly. They don't really have a backup center. And they just kind of gave Ayton away. He's making like 8.5. They were like, here, take them. Give us these second round picks five years from now. What are you going to do with those? All right, here's my Luka take. Because it's been fascinating and compelling to watch. And I say this, this will get aggregated and it'll be like Celtic fan trying to shit on Luka. So I'm going to put that coming out of the gate. I'm just going to, I'm going to put that in. This is, I think the guy's brilliant. I think he's one of the best offensive players I've ever seen in my life. And it's not a new talent. I'm going to put that in. believe how he behaves for two and a half hours at these games. And I don't know one person who enjoys it. Like to me, it's like when you see those commercials of like Gordon Ramsay, like these, these reality chefs who are just screaming at everybody in the kitchen, you're like, man, it would suck to work for that guy. That's Luca now in every game. And he's just, he's, he's just unhappy constantly with everybody. And if somebody talks shit to him and they're their team, now he's got to focus his rage on this. It was like Ari Emanuel just wrote this book about how rage is good for you and rage, whatever his memoir was about the benefits of rage. I think Luca read it and ratcheted everything up a notch. I had a couple of people who were at that Laker game last night and they were like, what's wrong with Luca? Why did, why is he like this every game? Cause the guy's brilliant. I texted Dave Chang. I said, he's like a young, young Dave Chang in the, in, in his twenties, in some kitchen, just barking at everybody and making Slovenian goulash for, for, uh, customers. And it's great. It's fucking the best goulash you've ever eaten. But is it fun to watch this? No, it's not fun. And Zach Lowe and you and I, and everybody else has gone off on this for a while. It feels like it couldn't get any worse. And then he ramps it up. And one of the great moments earlier this season, and I know we're probably going to talk about him later is the axle goes to the, one of his first interviews of his career in the NBA is the best. And he just gives the, it's like, how do you make an October postgame press conference entertaining? Yeah. But he was like, I just, I never understood. I've never seen somebody talk to so much shit. I've never seen somebody complain so much. Um, and I think that was another data point to suggest like, man, this is out of hand. This is crazy. Uh, he's too good for it. He doesn't need to do it, but he is, it is Gordon Ramsey and Ed saying, Michigan, here comes Luca. And he's like yelling at him. Like you can't cook the French fries like this, bro. Listen, I'm not unearthing a new take. We've been complaining about Luca's behavior forever. I'm just saying there's a guy averaging 38 a game right now who might score 50 any night. Right. And I have multiple TVs going and I don't want to put them on the big TV. Cause I don't enjoy the process of watching him get those stats. And look, if he's on your team and the Dallas fans loved him. I asked, I asked Jason Gallagher if, uh, you know, who we used to work with, um, for a long time at the, at Grantland and the ringer, I asked him if, if Luca was getting worse and he, he feels like it's around the same. He does feel like the one change, like they've gained the system, Dallas Luca versus Luca. And he concentrates, this is Gallagher's take. He has a lot of his anger on dead balls when nothing, when everything stopped. And that's when that's like, Hey Luca, you can still do all your bitching, but just confine it to when like there's stoppages in the action. And you do notice it, by the way, it is way worse in person because on TV, they're not catching half of it. So I, I don't know. I, I, I noticed it in the finals games and you would kind of hope he would start doing it. Cause it felt like it would throw him out of this. But now I just feel like this is a runaway train. It's never coming back. This is just, yeah, I think that's what it is. I think Windhorst had the legendary take that got him in trouble with, with Dallas and some Lucas camp when he, when he talked about the, when it gets the Celtics in the finals, the biggest moment of the series. Yeah. And he's laying on the ground and I look, you would think that would, that would be the moment you'd, you'd learn from it. Um, and you're right when you are at a game with Luca playing, you see it cause it is oftentimes on the wrong side of the freaking court. And my thing with the LA Lakers and a Luca Donchage team is, will you be able to play defense? The early returns are, this is a bottom 10 defense, which is, I think what we would all predict. Um, but it's sure as hell isn't helped by a player. That's not playing defense and complaining to Tony brothers about some foul call that he thought he should have received two, two possessions earlier. Yeah. A lot of people have made that point that sometimes he'll be complaining and just won't get back. So when he got to the Lakers and he was obviously chagrined from the trade and was a little bit of a shell of himself. And I went to a couple of games during that stretch and he wasn't doing it as much. I think it, you know, he was licking his wounds. Um, I guess what is the upside of complaining all the time? Does it work or not work? Cause we've had guys complain over the years. I think he's on the top, top, top shelf all the time. My favorite player ever, Larry bird used to do it every once in a while, not as much as this, but I wonder like at some point, if you're a ref, you're like, ah, shit, I got the Lakers tonight. Oh man. Oh, definitely. That's gotta be. Yeah. That's like when it would have been doc and the Clippers like 10 years ago. That was another one. And by the way, I thought that was really bad for them. And I've said that to doc, like doc Blake and Chris Paul, every call just, Oh my. And there was this mania, like there was a conspiracy against them at all times. I think what's different here is Luca is the best player I've ever seen who does it this much. And I really want to know if you're a Laker fan, if you're a Laker fan, you're a Laker fan, you're a Laker fan, you're a Laker fan. If we, if we gave you like a, like a truth serum or like a lie detector, be like, is this fun? Do you actually like this? I was making fun of some Laker fans and they were like, Oh, you, well you root for beta Tatum. Yeah. That's, Oh, that's better. Tatum. Just nice guy. Just, you know, just rolling over and playoff series. I'd rather have Luca being a dick. Um, I get it. You're going to defend your own guys, but it's not that fun to watch. And he's going to watch his first quarters of Luca because his first quarters, um, he just feels like he could have 30 in any first quarter. His first quarters are always his best quarter. And it always is like, Oh, is this game? He's going to score 80, you know, and there's going to be a first quarter as when he's healthy and playing like this, that, uh, I think he's going to have like 29, 30, 31 after the first quarter in the next month. And everyone just like, Oh, here we go. This is going to be his, his 83 point BAM out of biogame. All right. I said my piece on Luca. I know Gahal agrees Clipper fan Gahal who produces the pod next take. Okay. See, Hmm. I have a zag. Okay. I think they're going to be fine. They showed it last night. Didn't they? The more I watch them, the Jalen Williams thing sucks. And it's going to probably make the difference between if he doesn't come back in time that just by itself might be enough to be the reason they don't win the title. I can see that they have the second best odds. They are now four to one on FanDuel. San Antonio has the best odds for regular season wins a week and a half ago. You could have gotten them at 65 plus wins and it would have been minus money. Now FanDuel is basically saying, 55 wins is plus 100. I think they're going to get 55 wins. I'm going to make the case to you right now. Kurt Goldsberry ready? Yeah. They can patch together the chat minutes. Chat thing sounds like a disaster, right? He's gone 10 weeks. Hartenstein and, and Mara were 15 and 23 last night against Cleveland who has a big lineup. So that seems positive. 23 rebounds from your two centers. I think McCain and Sturtz who's good right away. Another great Sam Presti pick. I think they can handle those 25 Wallace minutes a game during the regular season until he comes back. So I've now handled two of the three injuries. I have guys that can move into those spots unless I have more injuries. They lost Lou Dort. Have you seen him on Atlanta? He might've peaked two years ago, right? I don't even know what position he is anymore. Jalen Williams hurts. They have the right to go and get Herb Jones or whoever to at least if they feel like they need more defense, but this is two of the three guys that are gone. They can replace the minutes. And I just, I'm not ready to be like, they can't win this year. I'm not ready. I think they're going to win 50 ish games. Assuming they're done with the injuries, which is a big assumption. Um, the thing I'm worried about is Chet's impact on defense. Um, a day Marta, like his defense, I'm not quite sure I trust like that. I mean, Chet has had his issues, obviously in the playoffs, but ultimately he's one of the better defenders in basketball. And one of the biggest reasons this team is profiled as one of the best defenses we've seen in the last few years. So I expect their stats profile. I think that day's over. I just think this is a no, this for okay. See, to be that like crazy, insane defense, like they were two years ago, they're a slightly different team. Like they're playing these three guard lineups. I think they are explosively or offensively more explosive to make up for some of the stuff they've lost on defense. And I just think this is a different version of what they have that goes back to the Sturtz pick getting McCain playing AJ Mitchell more like these they're really hard to, to defend. They always have three guards who can, who can get into the painter shoot. And I think that's their identity now. I think they got to find ball movement. I think they're dead last in assist percentage. I think they run the most ISOs. Yeah. But when you have SGA, like that's a good choice, dude. Like we have SGA. We'll run an ISO. We'll break down somebody. You'll get to the free throw line. I'll hit a MIDI or get to the, to, to the rim. I think they'll drop in terms of both offense, but bigger on defense. I still think there'll be a top half on both of those categories, I think there'll be a 51 team and God willing, they'll, they'll be healthy for the NBA playoffs and be the scariest three or four seed we've seen in a while. Maybe even a five seed. I have three teams that I think can win coming out of the West and they're one of them. And the other two are obvious Houston and San Antonio. So go get Herb Jones. He's being, he's being, by the way, uh, UCLA is, is blowing up Bob Chesney's contract and giving him a huge extension after eight games, which they should. I think new Orleans should do the same for Jamal Mosley after seven games, he's done everything we wanted and more. He's taken the goofiest roster in the league and done some of the dumbest shit I've ever seen in my life. I would double down on them, give them a longer deal. Like they almost blew a nine point lead with a minute and 10 left yesterday because Ty Jerome, who they couldn't guard because of the fucking guys he had on the court. That's why they couldn't guard Ty Jerome. Uh, I would extend Jamal. Mostly cause he's that bad and, and fits in with their weird team. That was a crazy game. I know we were texting during the Ty Jerome explosion last night. It was almost, I think he scored 17 of the last 19 in regulation then had eight more in overtime for those who didn't see it. It, it looked like Lynn sanity, but yeah, it wasn't like just him making 30 footers. These were like floaters and point guard kind of points you could make in a basketball game with the other team, knowing you're trying to score and he was scoring anyway. Is he one of your takes? Are we doing Memphis on one of your takes? Nah, I didn't have them on there because let me just, let me just, the take will be, if he does this all year, this is 2005 Steve Nash. To me, the comp is, is, uh, Brunson and, and I like the Nash comp, but I look at Brunson and I'm not saying he's Jalen Brunson, but you know, this is a guy who the advanced stuff has loved for the last few years. Ty Jerome, ever since he started putting it on the deck and going and getting his own buckets, like the estimated plus minus stuff, shout out to dunks and threes, a great website. He is the, he sticks out like a sore thumb. He's been a top 20 player last year. He's 11th this year. Uh, and we see it in Memphis. Memphis is the first team to really be like, Hey, you're our best player. Go get it. Um, and it's been phenomenal, but he reminds me of Jalen Brunson in the sense that he won a college championship as a point guard, a really smart player, college player, kind of didn't have an identity more so than Brunson. And his first few years in the NBA, uh, golden state, I think the Celtics dropped them. And now here we go. And in the ringer, 100 is this guy, if we did a ringer, 100 ranking right now, Bill, where would you put Ty Jerome? I'd have him one and I'd have the axle too. Those would be my one, two wouldn't be three. Oh, uh, I think he stopped 20, dude. I think he stopped 20. Call me crazy. We were doing this during the Cleveland season when he was awesome. Right. In a weird, pretty weird situation. Cause I think Mitchell is not the easiest dude to play with, but then in the playoffs, he shit the bed and I think he cost himself some money. Right. Wasn't that what happened? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And I think the shine was off the tie Jerome rose then last year. He was just hurt all year, but, uh, yeah, it's the reason I thought of Nash. It wasn't playing style as much as just like this guy goes to somewhere, right. People have already decided what his ceiling was. And then all of a sudden he ignites his team. I think Memphis is incredibly fun to watch. My next take is a quick one. The Sixers. First of all, incredibly fun to watch. Yeah. The bench is a little better than I expected with Simons and Wade and, and, uh, zombie KCP is actually half decent again, but the five guys together makes sense. And I'll just get through that as quickly as possible. I've watched, I've watched a lot of them. I was really worried before the year about, okay, these guys are at the wrong points in their career. This doesn't make sense. To me. My, my basketball dad brain was like, I just, I don't like where all of you are together at your careers throwing you together. But I think they like playing with each other. I think they know max is the best guy in the team. Now, even in beads accepted it. VJ's figured out how to get enough of what he needs out of the situation while also being the fifth best guy and Jalen Brown for the most part. I mean, he's, he's been up and down. I know the Philly fans are a little grumbly about him, but last night was a good example. Like he, he can still, he's been on a lot of good teams and can he, you can see him figuring out what he can bring to the table. And then LeBron has looked as good as you would expect. As good as you ever could have hoped for. So they've had, I think they've, they've won set their seven and one, I think six of those games were close in the last five minutes and they took care of business in each one of them. They've come back in a couple. So I, I think I'm increasing the ceiling on these guys, Kirk. I was cynical coming in. Uh, I couldn't wait to watch it. What I didn't expect was to see LeBron James as happy as I've ever seen him. The vibes are immaculate like last night's game. They're just, they have taken on Maxie's personality of all the personalities in that group. The one you'd want to take on is Tyrese Maxie. So they take care of the basketball. I was worried the defense would suck right now. They're the number three defense. How about that? In the NBA. That's not sustainable. I haven't looked at the NBA. I haven't looked up at the three point shooting luck, but I think they've shown enough to be like, they're going to be competent on defense, but they're getting stops at the end of these games. So that ties into the top three thing. The fact that they're actually getting the basketball back without giving up, you know, points. Um, yeah, they're, they're better than I thought they would be. And Zach had us do an exercise before the season. Hey, if it's not the next who's coming out of the east and it was a really good exercise. And I, I sort of hesitantly took the Sixers. It's the clear answer. Uh, but now I feel really good about that because man, they look like the most talented team in the east. Uh, and they look like they're coming together to become greater than the sum of the parts, which I did not necessarily expect given those personalities. And this might be the peak right now. I was talking about it because you could get hurt tomorrow. They have no sustainability beyond a bead. LeBron would LeBron seems like I, you could see the light bulb going off with him. Like, holy shit. I might actually have a chance to make the finals. And yeah, I'll play some center. Sure. Um, I I'm going to bring this, like, did MJ ever play center for a team that was a possible finals contender? So you can see, I agree with you. He seems super happy. He obviously has a great relationship with, uh, with, with maxi. I don't think the relationship with Luca was good. And I think we can safely say that I don't, I think LeBron last year seemed pretty miserable the whole season. Um, and knew he wasn't, it wasn't his team. Um, I don't think this time he goes on, he's like, he knew it was maxi's team. He's signed up for it anyway. Good start for them. Oh man. This really hurts. I'm just looking at my notes. I have little headlines for each one. Oh, geez. I almost don't want to do it. Can't wait. Getting emotional. I think we have to pour one out for apex Joker. Oh yeah. Yeah. I know. I hate to break the news to you this way. And I'm sorry, Zach Lowe isn't here to share this with us. Um, it's tough one. Look, his apex was six years. Most people's apex in basketball is two to three. Yeah. LeBron accepted. Although LeBron's real apex was Miami LeBron and then was able to come back. I'm not writing off Joker. I'm really concerned about him post injury last year. The way he looked for the, when he came back, how he looked in the playoffs and how he looks this year, because he can't shoot threes anymore. They're not going in when he came back from his injury last year, 31% from three playoffs, 19% this year, 22%. The really alarming. He's 22, 10 and nine. So he's almost averaging a triple doubled. I'm not saying he's not good anymore. I'm just saying apex Joker best offensive player, you know, potentially in the history of the league, the way he was doing it, that guy might be gone. It's 47% field goal, 4.3 per, uh, field free throw attempts a game. So he's not making threes. He's not getting the free throw line. And I think the way teams are playing him now are like, take it, shoot. We're giving you that. Yeah. Which has completely changed the dynamic of our offense because Murray's playing great. Murray last night was like, we're not losing this fucking game. They still end up losing it. Um, what have you seen from Joker? Same. I mean, he w he's down from 27.7 points per game to 22, uh, down from 12.9 boards to 9.7. Uh, and you know, the other, the, the other thing I'd say is, yeah, his standard is very high. He set a very high standard for himself. So he did it to himself. Any other center with these numbers would be like, Holy crap, this is an MVP. Um, but he set such a high standard. And then the other thing, I feel like I'm the vibes guy today is the, is the, is the shit talking with his own fan base and getting in fights. It's just, and then my, how old is he built? Do you have that in front of you? Is he 31? Uh, I look at it right now. He, I thought he was 31. Yeah. And so to go back to the past, like this league is increasingly thirties, the new 35, like it happens fast. Um, this team has always been limited by his defensive abilities. 32 in February. It's going to be tough they are 23rd in defense and if you're i'm sorry if you're bottom 10 defense you're not going that far in this league and if he is your biggest i mean your big is your most important defensive player if he's a step slower uh it's going to be bad on defense for this group 12th year in the nba he also was 2014 draft he didn't play that first year um a lot of professional league mileage before he got to the nba and then he's just played a shitload of minutes man like his he was basically from 2018 on he was 2400 minutes and up every single year and then playoffs you know 789 and 23 42 24 563 and 25 like that shit adds up after a while i'm not saying he can't still be one of the five six seven best players in the nba but i'm not saying he can't still be one of the five six seven best players in the league but apex joker i don't i think it might be gone and unless the three-point shooting comes back i just think that the teams are just guarding them differently they're playing way off them and you can see it that really made me sad next one impact rookies and impact second year guys feels like we have a preponderance of them which ties into your first take because last year we had flag and vj and harper and khan who were all like guys who could be on the floor in a finals game as one of your four or five best guys this year we have yaxal and aj and boozer we have three guys who i think right now could play in a conference finals and play 35 minutes and be and be fine and aj not a surprise he was the first pick in the draft but i don't know how much you've seen him this year but he's just ready to go this guy is like yeah they're they're two wings him and and george um it's to the point that i don't know if you can trade davis now i think you kind of have to test drive this and see if he can do it or not but i think he's a really good guy i think he's a really good guy anyway you have those seven guys murray boils coward and fears from last year's draft you have wilson peterson acuff morris johnson fleming's and mar from this year's draft and then from last year you also have trey johnson ace bailey queen hugo there's a lot of guys just a lot of first or second year guys that i i think you could see in the conference finals i probably left some out right carter bryant etc dylan harper did you mention dylan harper yeah i did i mentioned him earlier flag i think you could see in the conference finals i probably left some out right he is doing exactly what you we all wanted him to do uh from year one to year two but yeah that's that's my point is like we're pretty hard on youth basketball and american basketball culture but some of those names you mentioned are showing up ready to play in ways that rookies since you've been covering the league have not been like it's it's unusual to see i'll put it on cam boozer or or con canipple last year like you don't show up and lead the nba and made threes that's insane like that was never a thing yeah uh and you don't show up to the nba unless you're tim duncan and put 20 and 10 up like it's nothing like cam boozer looks like he's gonna do uh so i i couldn't agree more um this is a young man's game yaxal and boozer are the best i am really good right away ready to help a team guys that i've seen coming in the league since uh i think blake griffin was the last one and he sat out a year before he came in and then you go back like that it's just really unusual for somebody to come in and immediately seem like a finished product obviously cam boozer isn't a finished product but when you watch him it's like jesus christ right you know and flag came in last year and it was the only reason i don't include him in that combo is because they're playing him out of position it was really rocky for the first six weeks and i think all this stuff kid did for him actually really helped him this year because he really had to learn how to run an offense how to get by people so but it didn't look like that the first six weeks yaxal is like they're i i i'm speechless with yaxal i can't believe how good he is and he's coming to mind the next take i have but um these guys are winning players that could be in the you know the third best guy in a round two playoff team i just was not expecting that yeah big win for the draft model community that the people who use stats to to to find the best prospects in in both cases yax has been on the radar since uab when michigan got him yeah all the nerds were like oh god this guy's great most people never heard of him they win a national title again he gets kind of overlooked in the draft um but also cam boozer when you look at the draft models that came out a lot of people at boozer should go number one yeah and look i think that they're both mentioned right away i think if we redrafted 2026 we might have some different answers all right ready bill i thought boozer should have been second i said that at the time yaxal because of his age and it was hard to say if it was smokescreen stuff with people worrying about like what his personality was then you look at his age it's like he turned 20 people are making it seem like he's 30 he turned he turned 24 in the end of september right yeah so he's 24 this entire season so he's still a great player and he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy he's a great guy i think they're if ty jerome stays healthy i think they are a possible six or seven seed in the west um the way how hard they play night tonight the way the way the guys compliment each other it's everything we thought and boozer's a big piece of it um that ties into the axle combo i wanted to have about this might have my favorite non-celtic i think probably ever other than jordan was steph curry yokage probably third yeah magic's in the top four too even though i was supposed to root against him all the time i'd given up on steph curry ever having another moment in the playoffs again the axle thing has has changed the game on this because in the nfl you get a rookie quarterback you get drake may you get caleb williams and the best thing you can have is a quarterback who's cheap and it allows you to spend money on the rest of your roster the warriors who needed a lot of help with this jimmy butler expiring who's not playing draymond at 27 million which you know we can talk about him in a second poor zingas the most bizarre contract anyone's given out this decade they desperately needed cheap labor that could play they have this guy who's you know could make the all-star team for all we know and now it completely changes how you think about this roster poor zingas at 20 draymond at 27 moody's at 12 they could package together any deal they want with picks and try to build around this curry's averaging 30 points a game on 28 minutes a game and looks has looked like a lot of money and they're not going to carry the last three games you can see the energy shifting as he realized what they had with with the axle first couple games he looked like batan death march like oh my god i can't the last couple games the joy is back and it's because the axle and it's because of niang and a couple of the other smaller signings they've had have panned out but um what would you do if you're golden state you know we got to see what this is i mean stephan i think has one of the highlights of the season too dropping luka donchic and one of the great moments where it's like oh maybe the warriors aren't aren't dead um but yeah actually he's averaging over 20 points a game bill with a true shooting percentage of 64 that's an all-star where i come from that's an all-star player so i don't care what the name is i don't care how many years he's been in the league show me players that are 20 points per game with 64 true shooting percentage i'll show you all stars uh and and i think he brings more to the table he's like a five tool player rebounds five passes the ball yeah and i think they didn't have that uh they have just won i believe five games in a row if i'm not mistaken i don't think they won five games in a row at any point last year so i i think it's fair to say they're on a different wavelength um well it goes back to the the first segment you had about yeah not having young legs over the course of the season sinks you eventually this is the guy they need they can rest curry and actually have a chance to win the game yeah when jimmy comes back yeah i think there's a move to be made there with all the money you laid out jimmy coming back um but more than anything dude if you just tell me yaks and curry are going to be healthy they could beat any team in the league um we just need them to stay healthy but they'll be one of the more interesting teams to watch as we approach the trade deadline it is shocking i don't think anybody anybody i knew thought they were going to be this good i thought after the first three games i thought they were going to win 20 games yeah they can shoot the out of it they can shoot the out of shocking with the Steph Curry team so if i'm the owner of the quippers i can't talk to my basketball staff or the nets or the even the hawks i'm bringing my front office in at this point and being like what are we what do we miss yeah how about dallas you had the coach of morris johnson who i still really like and i understand the pick and he's the same age as flag he's four years four years or maybe they felt like flag and and yaxel didn't make sense together because they basically play the same position any owner from pick five to pick 10 you're bringing in the staff and be like how do how do we miss this i think that's really true all-star team and on top of it i mentioned this house the other day because we got a mailbag question about would you rather have shangoon mosley yeah or uh or yaxel and it's like all right contracts aside different combo but would you rather be play Mosley 50? I'm sorry. I said, mostly Mobley. Would you rather pay Evan Mobley 50 million a year or Yaxel six? Well, that's the other thing about the age thing. There's a benefit here is that I get age 24, 25, 26, and 27 on cost control. Like those are, it's the biggest advantage you can have. You're getting the best years of his NBA career for six, six and a half, 7 million a year. So this is a huge advantage for them. And, and it, it gives them life. Anthony Davis. That's the guy I'm watching. So, okay. Um, by the way that I have no inside info, please don't aggregate that. It's not like the Bob Chesney extension that's happening. Um, Anthony Davis, the wizards are four and three. I like how they look. He was great last night. And I was saying the house on Thursday, trade him right now. Because the moment he gets hurt, the moment's gone. But if you're the whiz and you're like, man, the Bantz, it looks good. Davis is playing great. The East is worse than people thought. Like, I don't want to trade Anthony Davis, but if I'm the warriors and I could pack package, uh, some contracts together with some picks and try to get Anthony Davis, Yaxel Curry, Jimmy Butler coming back, all their role guys, OKC is compromised. Who knows with Wendy's seven foot six, like, fuck it. We just won the WNBA. Title. I don't know. Uh, this episode is brought to you by Uber eats. It's football season. Uber eats is delivering deals every game day this week. Get 10 free boneless wings from wing stop on qualifying orders. Game on flavor on wing stop is here. So if your fantasy league is coming over for some in-person smack talk, order wing stop on Uber eats and get 10 bonus wings free. It's the perfect way to keep everyone fed tonight. So you can focus on the game. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score a great deal. Order now and get 10 boneless wings free from wing stop only on Uber eats offer valid from September 14th to September 27th. And from November 2nd to November 16th order minimum before taxes and fees is required. See retailers storefront for details, taxes, fees, and terms apply product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply. See app for details. All right, quick break. This episode is brought to you by fire TV. You ever sit down ready to watch the game only to search and scroll. Endlessly. If so you need fire TV. It shows you are live games from your favorite teams all in one place, right on the home screen. No more searching. Just sit down and turn on fire TV. Separate subscriptions may be required feature and content availability may vary. I have another take on Yaxel coming up later. We'll rip through these ones quick. Just, just to mention Houston's a top three NBA team right now, but they also have Brooklyn's pick and Phoenix's pick, which would be two of the five picks I would want in this NBA draft. So if you're interested in watching the draft, Damn. Hey, Phoenix's pick. Have you watched Phoenix? Their defense has yet to make its season debut on my league pass. I think they're in deep trouble. Deep trouble. Deep trouble. So I don't even know if you're Houston. I like their team. I don't even know what you would do. Like you probably just keep the picks and did the two timelines thing, but I don't know. Houston looks fucking good, dude. I saw them. They played the Spurs here in Austin, uh, the game two, the game that many will remember for, for Amin Thompson's block on Victor Wemba. I remember it for Alper and Shangoon deciding he was just going to bully ball Victor Wemba. And these aren't there. This is not Kevin Durant. They still have Fred van fleet. They still have Steven Adams. This is a deep team when healthy Tari Easton is making his shots. All of a sudden they look like a different animal. Um, but yeah, they're offensive numbers right now. That's the real question with Houston. If they're going to be effective on offense, I have no question. About the rebounding and the defense right now, I think they're number one in the league or two on offense. I guess the Lakers are number one behind a lot of great three-point shooting. I did not anticipate that. I'm not sure that's real. Um, but if I'm a rockets fan, I am thrilled. You have to be, I mean, last year you were playing four on five, basically with the point guard position, right? And it was this year. Now you have actual, I think van bleats look really good. Like I've been really pleased. And I think Marcus smart looks, you know, you made a doka thing. I think was a real piece. There was a big piece. I think it was a big piece. I think it was a big piece about it this week in the athletic, about the connection with those guys. I think that's been great for them too. And, uh, I'm a believer. I had them. I did the power pole a week ago. I had them first. I would still have them first. Now, anyway, they have the Brooklyn first and the Phoenix first, which that's great position. God only knows position other teams that there's, I was going through all the teams that have somebody else's pick. The sneaky one is San Antonio has Atlanta's pick. I don't like what I've seen. I'm not a fan of Atlanta at all that to, to me, that's like, yeah, that's a team. What's our record now? That's a team that looks like it made a lot more sense there in the summer than it makes when you watch them. And, uh, yeah, they're four and four right now, but I, man, I could see that team going down, not up. And that's, that's a team. I would want the first round pickoff is my point. Yeah. And the Spurs have had a few of the Hawks first round picks over the last two years. I'm still bullish on them. They got some stuff to figure out. I think. front court is, is weak. Um, but the Atlanta Hawks, they get, they're playing like the old warriors. They lead the league in like assist percentage and highest assist per game. Uh, they force a lot of turnovers, but the real questions are in the front court. And can they shoot the ball? I think they almost got beaten by six Indiana Pacer bench players. Yes. I know you texted that. I didn't even know the name. It was a sports movie that nobody knew was being filmed. It was like a major league. They'd put a bunch of scrubs out there and they weren't supposed to win. Huff, Huff, Quentin Jackson, Braden Smith played 42 minutes of that at 19 and 10 Walker, Slauson and Brown. Those were the six Pacers and the Hawks almost lost. It actually I was, that was one of the many games I was watching last night, but, uh, yeah, that's a pick I would want. Okay. Next one. We're almost done. There's now a Kade versus Maxie versus SGA versus ant versus Brunson conversation for which guard would you want right now for the rest of the season? Then I think it's pretty fun. I feel like Kate is doing the most with less of that group. When you look at the Pistons all summer long in that, that, that content desert that we were navigating, it was all Jalen Durland and Jalen during the vibes are nasty and this isn't going to be, and here they are, they're six and one. And then they're going to be, they're going to be, they're going to be, they're going to be on pace to win 60 games and get the number one seat or whatever. They're just one of the best teams. Yeah. But when you look at the supporting cast of those other guards, you mentioned, what are we talking about with Kate? He has nothing. He has no disrespect to it, but he does not have LeBron James and Jalen Brown and Joel and bead like Max. He does. He doesn't have Ananobi and, and heart and towns like Brunson has. Uh, and he is just such an old school leader and a point guard that, that man, I would love to see him if he had, a real supporting cast around him. And by the way, they're endurance hurt himself. I had a friend who went to the Charlotte Detroit game last night who texted me during the third quarter and was just like, God, Kate Cunningham's incredible. Like he's just, there's just no way we're beating this guy tonight. He's at that point. Maxie's 29 a game. Again, Kate's 24, five and seven SGA is 28 a game. Ant was at 33 Brunson is coming off winning the title. And it's still the best crunch time guy you'd want in any situation. Curry's averaging 30 a game. And Murray, I think has been awesome. This year is 27, six and six guys, not in the combo as much anymore for me or Mitchell and Booker. Um, yeah, for different reasons. Um, I think Mitchell, there's still a, how much fun is this guy to play with peace to him? And then Booker just feels like, like we were talking about apex Joker before. It just feels like he's headed at a slightly different point of his career. I would say at all these guys, if you, even if you're talking about MVP right now, I think Cade's doing the most for Cade matters the most to whatever's happening with this team. Whereas all of these other guys have somebody who could step in for them for a couple of games. SGA would be the guy that it's lined up now for the SGA. The, the three MVPs in a row is kind of sitting there now because there was no way anyone was voting for him. But now it's like, if he could drag OKC to 60 games with all these injuries, we'd be like, holy shit. So anyway, that just that we have this many great guards again is a awesome. Okay. Last one. I have a, wow. This is an absolute disaster for everyone involved so far rankings for you. Feel free to throw in anything. I have six. Okay. I'll go to the back of my notes with the bottom of the list. I'll go to the back of my notes with the bottom of my notes. I'll go to the back of my notes. Okay. Utah, trading all that stuff for Jaron Jackson, then trading Kessler for, to get the stuff they got back or the gate they gave out and then taking Peterson over boozer. I don't want to say they could have Kessler and boozer instead of JJ and J triple J and Peterson, but I'm going to say it because that was Dora B for this whole situation. They could have just kept Kessler, never traded for Jaron Jackson, who I didn't like that trade. But it happened because I don't think he can stay in the court and I don't like his contract. They couldn't pay Kessler 12 million a year less and just take it. and Boozer who wanted to be there because his dad was a famous Utah Jazz person and instead they went this other direction. I'm a Jazz fan. I'm freaking out about this stuff. I wish I had a different take, but yeah, Cam Boozer next to Walker Kessler. It seems like a really sustainable frontcourt for a while. How about kind of a nightmare to play against? Yeah, right. If they had those two in marketing, that's like, holy shit, now what do I do with those three? Yeah, that feels like they could have had that and yeah, I don't think the Peterson over Boozer pick is going to age well. Roast me if I'm wrong in a year, folks. Well, listen, that's why I call this the absolute disaster for everyone involved so far rankings. This could change in a week. Thank you, yeah. Right now, I'm trying to capture the moment. Number two, the Zubats-Wogler trade. Just a catastrophe for everyone so far. Might change. Zubats lasted two games and got hurt. He was hurt last year. There's questions about how durable is that guy going to be for what they gave up for him. And they could add the fifth pick. And there's this alternate universe where they just don't make that trade or make it top five protected. And then they take Yaxel fifth, which would have been, we would have thought that was crazy at the time. But imagine him on that team. And then Wogler. Yeah. It's not good. Turnovers? A lot of turnovers in LA. Don't look at his percentages. They're pretty rough. The fit with Darius Garland, I have some questions. I might go tomorrow night. I might want to see it in person. Just so far, I'm alarmed. They're letting you back in, huh? Yeah. You know what? There's a lot of good people that work for the Clippers. And almost all of them had nothing to do with what happened. So I'm trying to move forward and move on. But the Wogler thing. So if you're them seeing what you've seen, I don't think they were going to take Yaxel fifth. I think people would have thought that was crazy. Who should they have taken? Maybe the answer is still Wogler. I don't know. You watch these other guys. Acuff would have made no sense with Darius Garland. Mikkel Brown, I have not been impressed by. They weren't going to take Flemings. Morris Johnson's not exactly lighting up in Dallas. So I don't know. They got kind of stuck with wow, that trade worked out unbelievably well. But I don't know. Who do we take? Yeah, there's definitely a cliff after those first four guys. And they were in the fifth spot, unfortunately. But dude, yeah, that was a crazy moment at the lottery last year where they were playing Russian roulette. The Pacers were and they lost. But it looks like they didn't get it. It looks like the Clippers aren't exactly making them pay. I would have taken Burries and said it at the time. Next one. The honest trade. Maybe not as much of a disaster. For Milwaukee. But if I'm a heat fan, I'm panicking now. They got their absolute asses kicked last night by the Lakers. I didn't expect the defense to be this bad. I mean, what are they? Are they bottom bottom four defense now? I think it's worse. They were 26 yesterday before that Laker game. Yeah, they're very bad. And I thought with Bam out of bio and Giannis like two really good players. Good front court defenders, rebounders, versatile defenders that you would at least count on the defense and the offense with the questions around spacing was going to be the red flag, right? That's what I thought. And Eric Spolstra and Davion Mitchell is a great defender. So yeah, I'm a little head scratchy. I haven't looked at the three-point shooting luck, but I have watched a few of their games. It doesn't look good. Per 100, their 27th defensive rating, 119.8. Per a hundred possessions, only teams were Sacramento, Chicago and Phoenix. That's rough. The clay thing did not work out. And there's a reason two teams are ready to move on from him. The Yovitch extension seems like a, like a mini catastrophe. And I still feel like they have moves, but this does not look good so far. And, and I don't understand why they're this bad at defense. So that's three, the Desmond Bain trade. And I like Desmond Bain, but Orlando just doesn't have a lot of talent. You like, I was surprised when the Celtics played them the other day, like, uh, I don't know. It just feels like Orlando is going to lose these games. And I don't really know. I know Palo's out. I get it. But, um, you make a trade like that when you feel like you could potentially make the finals. This team has no chance of making the finals. The good news for them is they have their first round pick this year. But, um, that's a, to me, I, there was a bunch of teams that 43 to 45 win range. And we knew one of them was going to drop hard like a stone. I think that's the team such a weird team. Uh, I remember I was looking up this crazy Wemby stat. He's the best paint score in the league so far this year, but he's the worst statistical jump shooters or so I thought I was looking at all the guys who'd taken at least 50 jumpers. Uh, and there were 60 of them in Wemby ranked 59th. Uh, the only person worse than him was Franz Wagner. Uh, and you know, Wemby has an excuse. He's seven, five, he's the best defense player in the world, but yeah, Orlando still can't shoot. And whatever Desmond Bain deserves or, or, or they thought they were going to change that with him. They still can't shoot. Fifth one is a dusty Mago with Morris Johnson over Yaxal. If I'm a, if I'm the Dallas owner, I'm like, didn't you coach this guy? He's going to make the All-Star team. Yeah. Um, man, I do. Yeah. Yeah. I like dusty may. I wasn't sure that was going to work. Uh, and everybody I'm talking to in Dallas is thrilled. I feel like they have an identity. I feel like Cooper is thriving, but yeah. Imagine if they had Yax, uh, because the Kyrie Kyrie's at a different point of his career. It's starting to look like where he's still good, but you, you know, is he going to play 58 to 60 games? Uh, I, he looks okay. He doesn't look like Kyrie from eight years ago. Um, can I put you on the spot? Yeah. Is Cooper flagged the best teenager you've ever seen in the NBA? Yes. Okay. You still think he's going to take the qualifying offer and end up in Boston? I pray for it every night. It's him or LeBron. And I just think he's a better two-way player than LeBron was out of all the young guys I've seen come in. Those are the two choices, but I went back, I think 2005, I remember voting. I think I did an MVP column that year. I think I had, I did a whole thing about LeBron, how good he was for his age that year. Um, but I think Cooper flags a year younger. So you'd actually have to compare him to rookie LeBron. Yeah, this should be his rookie year. Remember he reclassified. I think he skipped 11th grade. So if you compare him to rookie LeBron, it's no contest. Yeah. Rookie LeBron, great rookie, but couldn't shoot. It was literally the most inefficient jump shooter of the year. And he's a great rookie. He's a that year in 2003-2004 season. And was skinny, like he didn't have the same physicality that five guys had. Still pretty good, but yeah. My last one for the, an absolute disaster for everyone involved so far rankings. Phoenix giving Booker a giant extension and then building a team around Jalen Green and Miles Bridges. Wow. That Miles Bridges trade looks horrible. That team has no identity. It's the complete opposite of last year's team. Last year's team was like this scrappy overachiever team with Booker. This year's the opposite. Jalen Green was Golden State's best asset last night other than Curry. And I don't know what they do and they have no first round picks, including the one that's going this year to Houston. But man, the worst defense in the NBA playing a Western Conference schedule with the diminished Devin Booker doesn't seem like it's going very far. Yeah, because at some point in these NBA games, it's a gunfight with your best player against the other team's best player. Booker used to be great in those. Now when you watch these games, it feels like he's going to lose the gunfight 20 out of 30 games. It just doesn't feel like he has the same bag as whoever he's going against. Anyway, that's all I have. Phoenix. Yeah, that's a good one. I don't think Phoenix. And Chicago is the other one that I thought you might mention. Chicago has looked pretty bad. And some people thought they'd be good, but they're the worst net rating in the league so far this year. Yeah. Yeah. They've, unfortunately for them, they played the Celtics twice and got absolutely waxed in both games. And it felt like it spun them backwards and sent them to not a great place. All right. I think we covered everything I wanted to cover. Great story today. Go check out Kirk's story on theringer.com. And I'm sure I'll, I'm sure I'll say, how are you feeling about the Spurs? One to 10, by the way, before we go. I'm a nine. I think that OKC game. Yeah, I think that OKC game was always destined to be a loss. OKC just had the chip on this sort of too good. They were fully healthy at that time. The Houston game, the second game, I sort of caught me off guard, but they've won five straight. I believe, Bill. Yeah. I will go on the record right now in October, November, I guess it is now and say that the three guard lineup is not my favorite. When you look at their bench right now, I agree. It's Tobias Harris, Harrison Barnes, Julian Champagny, Carter Bryant. What do they have in common? They're all forwards. Yeah. I call the three guard lineup. The one forward lineup, because I think that helps you understand like what they're giving up when they have the stack of good play rotation level forward. So we'll see. They'll get it right. Dylan Harper. Everybody loves watching him. That has. hasn't been a letdown. Um, but I'm not worried. I do have one last thing to say though. Yeah. I want to wish my, my father, Lee, a happy 80th birthday up there in Cornish. Oh, nice. Happy birthday, dad. Awesome. Thank you. The big eight. Oh, all right. Happy birthday to him, Kirk. Thanks for coming on with me. Always a pleasure to see you. I'm going to take a break, come back with Tom Pellisero right after this. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. And whether it's a flea flicker or a tush push, you need a plan that fits your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and for your budget. Now that's a solid game plan. This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. so every ai action is permission aware giving you accuracy 24 7 and the ability to not just Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. get work done but get it done right it's a new work day normally he comes on thursdays bringing him on on tuesday today tom palaceros here you can read the sweep his excellent newsletter check him out on ringer nfl show where he was last night where he talked about the bears but i didn't get to talk about the bears now, eight to one, um, to, to win the super bowl. You came on with me after Pat's bears. And I said to you, that team was really good. Like I actually thought the pets played well and they beat us. And I would, Caleb made plays. I was really impressed. Then they make the Simmons trade, which is a miracle last night. As you're watching like, can a trade work out better than this for one game? Is this now the team that let's start the, let's start the pick six with is the bear. Are the bears now the clear favorite in the NFC? I watched that game and thought this is a team that can win the super bowl, but I'm not even convinced at this point, you can say they're definitely the best team in their own division. The NFC North is unbelievable. Their, their record against non NFC North teams is like 22 and two or something this season. It is absolutely bananas what they're able to do. And then you watch that game. Like Jeff Simmons on the second, I think it was the second drive of the game and like beats Gray Zabel with one move and just throws Sam Darnold down. And the first thing that went through my head was, oh my God, I don't know that I've sat and watched a whole Jeff Simmons game in like four years because the Titans were always playing at noon on Sunday in some irrelevant game. Like you forget like what a huge piece of it he was last time the Titans were good. They got what they wanted in the two first round picks and more. And if he plays like that, he's absolutely going to be worth it. Yeah, congrats on having the 30th pick in the draft for the Susquehanna. I get why Tennessee did it, but now you watch the Bears and you think, all right, what are the weaknesses? Because they're going to get Montague back. Now they're going to have two running backs. They have wide receivers everywhere. They've gotten Loveland going. Their quarterback's playing about as well as you could have ever in your wildest dreams hoped to play. They can do a four-man pass rush now, which they couldn't even do in the Patriots game. They had to do all this stuff where they moved everybody up. You had to kind of discount Flores. Now they can also just have the four-man pass rush with more D-backs. Right. And they're going to have a home field advantage. There's just a lot to like. And yet somehow they don't even have the best record in the NFC right now. But I would pick them. I think they've looked the best the whole year. To me, they have the look would be my take. If Caleb plays like that, where a lot of the stuff he was doing last night was just within the structure of the offense And him and Ben, if you saw the locker room video and they're dapping up, like they're on the same page in terms of like how to play offense. And it's not like Ben's had to resort to, you know, 15 different gimmick plays. There's a couple of things he'll do in the game and you're like, holy shit, what was that? But a lot of it is just like they're playing super sound football. You can see everything working together. The mix in personnel packages. It drives me nuts as a fantasy football player like Luther Burden is off the field half the time in the middle of the game. You're like, he's the best player they have in the red zone. How is he not out there? But, like, Ben's got all these different things. I think the Bears are really, really good. And that division, I mean, you know, staring down the barrel of some of these matchups late in the season, Packers-Bears on Christmas among them. I mean, these are just going to be massive games. You'll be there. It's a Netflix game, right? Yeah. They are the only complete NFL team that I can say I've watched as we're eight weeks into this season. Like, a team that can run the ball, stop the run, throw the ball, stop the pass. the four basics of football. They can do all of them at a really high level and they can get like third and nines, you know, third and 11s, third and 13s. They get explosive plays. I don't know what they're missing at this point. They got Tampa next week. That's a Sunday night game. And then a bye week, New Orleans at Detroit. Gets a little harder than Jacksonville home at Miami at Buffalo, home Green Bay, home Detroit at Minnesota, which is what you mentioned earlier, the gauntlet down the stretch so yeah schedule's not great but i i would take them in every single game great job um by them putting that team together all right that's our first one what do you have next for the let's let's move toward all right we'll do the other half of that game the seahawks four and four just a year after year what's going on i i think that a lot of it traces and you could see it in that game, that they just don't totally have an identity on offense. They got one thing they do really well, which is throw the ball to Jackson Smith and Jigba, even though they weren't able to get on the balls effectively in the second half of that game. Blue Shaheed last night, that has an impact. I thought the running backs physically looked good. Price and Charbonnet, they only ran the ball like a dozen times in the game. That has to be the strength of it. It just looks like something's off. And when Sam Darnold gets into the mode he was for a lot of that game last night where anytime there's pressure, he starts to feel it even when there's not and he's jumping around in the pocket and he just looks like he's frazzled. Like that's when we've seen the bad Sam Darnold. Like that's what it looks like. So how did they win the Super Bowl with them last year? They ran the shit out of the ball down the stretch. Like they figured it out. I saw that there's time for them to do it. It just doesn't look like anything is comfortable on that side. Ben Johnson's one of the only guys who can go toe-to-toe call and plays against Mike McDonald and that defense. I was really impressed with some of the answers that Ben came up with. Just like the tunnel screens, like you said, on third and long that turn into big-time games. They'll be fine defensively. On offense, you've got a first-time coordinator in Brian Fleury who's moving parts of running back, moving parts of quarterback. Now you're pretty close to hole other than Shaheed, and you just added an all-pro guard with Quentin Nelson coming in. They've got to figure some things out on that side of the football, and it can't be Sam Darnold is dropping back 35-plus times a game. That's just not a formula to win. I'm not worried yet. I'm not either. Other than just the record relative to, I mean, they would be in, you know, by far last place in the, you know, in the NFC North. Like they'd be like the eighth team in the NFC right now. Like you gotta, you gotta make up some ground and you gotta start doing it fast. Washington game was stupid, right? That was one of the dumber losses of the year. San Francisco game, they just gave the game to San Francisco in the first half Denver game was really stupid and then yesterday they got beat you know I just I don't think they're a 4-14 they got Arizona at Vegas the next two weeks and um you know they also couldn't run the ball because they had third and fourth string running backs trying to run the ball and now they have their guys back did you did you buy into the conspiracy theory that McDonald was tipping a Taylor trade last week accidentally or no no I mean they took it remember with Charbonnet the week before they activated him and then had him inactive for the game because he was at the end of his window with price. It was more, they wanted to give them up to Monday to make a decision. Okay. The guys had like three days of practice. Do we put them out there? They came to the conclusion. Yeah, we're going to put them out there, but that's, that's all it was. They were not working on. They're not a Jonathan Taylor team. They're not working now. Is it possible they still make a trade? John Schneider makes as many trades as anybody in the NFL, but no, there was nothing, nothing going on on that front. Can't say prices knocked my socks off. That would be one of my fears for them. But Charbonnet, I thought looked okay. And now at least like on paper, you have your faster, you can catch the ball, the backfield or run the ball. And then you have Charbonnet with the pounding it around the goal line. So maybe there'll be fun. Lamar, since the last time I saw you, which was only five days ago, when the Ravens seem to have hope for their season. One snap. Yeah. That game was over at 10 or 9 AM. There felt like their season was over and they're playing on Thursday night in a game that I will not be going live on Netflix after, um, I'm going to pass on that invitation. No, no, no, no. Joey and I are not going to be, uh, be doing dialogue after that game. Uh, what happens now is that have we seen, I know you've, you've already covered the summer grand NFL show, but this is my podcast. So I'm going to ask you the same question. Is that it for Lamar? Is that, that's it for him and the Ravens? Do you, if you had to put odds on him being in another uniform next year, what would you put the odds at? Well, let's start with the fact that Lamar hasn't been healthy for two straight seasons. Like he was never really Lamar after the hamstring last October. And now this year he barely plays like that's not a guy who teams are going to be lining up to trade two first round picks or more up to do it when he was available? last time when he was at peak Lamar. Now he's whatever, three or four years older. He's got one year left on his contract. You're going to have to do a new deal. If you're giving that up, I would say the odds are low at the moment of Lamar being on another team, but there's no question they're at, you know, kind of a pivot point here. They've also, by the way, they've restructured that deal. There's a cap charge looming. If they don't extend them, they would all end up accelerating, whether that's in 2027 with the trade or in 2028, if he walks, he's got a no tag clause. So he can kind of call his shot after 27. It's not like Eric DeCosta let it get into this spot. He's wanted to do a deal with Lamar for two years. Lamar hasn't wanted to. And in the end, this could be, you know, to his detriment. I've seen people saying stuff like, well, Lamar's he's got a contract year next year. Quarterbacks never planned a contract year. So this is a holdout or a trade. I'm like, Lamar has literally done it himself multiple times in his fourth year. He had run an MVP and he played for like $3 million. He doesn't have an agent. He doesn't have a contract. He doesn't have a traditional representation. He just kind of beats to the, you know, marches to the beat of his own drum. And so I don't know exactly how it plays out and we'll see what the thumb and exactly what the prognosis ends up being. You know, it still hasn't been ruled out that he could come back this season. Some guys have played with this or come back earlier than we thought. I got an email from Todd in Salt Lake city who want to know if Lamar was the NFL's Kawhi Leonard frequently injured. No one is really certain when he's coming back. Weird representation situation. Teammates seem mildly annoyed with him, but nobody calls him out. And then really good when he plays, could we get another aspiration scandal with Lamar and the Ravens was the question. I don't have any evidence that Steve Bishotti has been finding a no-show job on the side for Lamar. I'm not sure they can find him if he's not at the facility, frankly. But that's, that's so similar to what was happening with Kawhi and the Clippers. Like I don't know. Have you heard from him? And that was the way it was. And it's weird to have a quarterback of a football team that it seems like there's this much uncertainty around him week to week. Right. Go all the way back to the pre-draft process. I mean, people couldn't get ahold of him to like come in for visits and stuff. Like everything about his career has been unusual, but like he he's just, he's such a dynamic football player. He's overcome it just because of the ability and the fact that he does elevate everybody around him. This is always a concern. Are a big part of their game. Like it's a depreciating asset. I'm not, I'm not saying Lamar is done. We've seen other than, you know, obviously like week one this year, you can go back to that tape and look what they did. But by and large, we haven't seen real Lamar over the past couple of years, which at this age, like you're getting into kind of, you know, the Russell Wilson territory to Russ wasn't hurt all the time. He did miss a little time at the end in Seattle, but it's like, then when he got traded and you're kind of like, why was he available? And in the Ravens pivot to we'll trade Lamar. I think that everybody beyond what they already know from the unavailability here is going to have to go away. He's been trying to extend them for two years. And now you're willing to eat this huge cap charge to trade him. Like what's, what's the catch. I just, I just don't know that there'd be a huge market for him, even though if he wants to be playing football, which I have no reason to think he doesn't, I anticipate he'll be playing somewhere in 2027, probably Baltimore. The jets do have three first round picks that are all right. I mean, you know, it's been, it's been fine and he's played more than Lamar, but at more numbers than Lamar, I'd be super nervous to trade for Lamar. I mean, this last injury, I feel like could happen to anyone in the league. So you can't really hang that on him. And I always wonder why it doesn't happen more often, but you know, he hit his, his hand on somebody's hand, his thumb broke with, would that have happened to Baker had it happened 25 other quarterbacks. I think it mentioned earlier with the Seahawks. So is he the most likely guy to get traded who you also wouldn't be surprised if they were stupid enough not to trade him? I don't think it would be stupid not to trade him because you can still trade them in February and March. I, from what I know right now, and I reported in the sweep on Saturday, like they've already been offered a 2027 second round pick and another pick and immediately said no. And that was the end of the conversation. It was, it was the end of the conversation. It was the end of the conversation. I don't know that it has to be that, but it has to be pretty close to that. Otherwise, like why would, if you're Carly Ursae Gordon and you're hiring a new GM and you may be hiring a new head coach, like why would you empty the cupboard and trade guys for less than you think you could get in a more stable market where people, you know, you have new budgets in February and March teams are reprojecting. Like I'm not saying he won't be traded, but if you're asking me right now where I think Jonathan Taylor is most likely to be traded, I think he's going to be traded. I think he's going to be traded. I think November 11th, the day after the deadline, I'd stay, stay still with the Colts just because, you know, for all the stuff out there about, you know, it's picking up and, you know, everybody feeling like, oh, are they going to deactivate? I'm like, no, there was nothing going on. Like it's, you get the offer, you say no. And if somebody comes back with one, that's good enough, you eventually say yes. Like these things aren't super complicated. Um, second round pick sounds like a pretty good offer. Like people don't give up first round picks for running backs. When was time that happened? No, but it's not 1990. Like if I'm the Colts, I'm like, we're good. They offered us a second. I'll take it. Yeah. But you have to look at the precedent on these types of deals. McCaffrey, again, it was four picks. Like if you're getting offered a second and then a fifth in a future year, like, I don't know that that, that moves the needle. So I think it has to be multiple high picks in 2027. If it's not gonna be a first rounder, maybe it's a two and a three and then a future. Do you think Taylor's as good as McCaffrey though? Like when McCaffrey got traded, whoa, they traded Christian McCaffrey. Holy shit. McCaffrey had also had a long stretch where you remember like he was always hurt and he had had that one year where he finally was healthy and they, they kind of sold high on him. Like you can go back in time and say, should they have held on to him? But it's like where the Panthers were like, he wasn't going to be the difference. And they were like, he's probably just going to, you know, go get hurt again. But it's a little bit like the giants letting Saquon go in free agency to the Eagles. It's like, how well can he and the possibly do? Oh, he ran for 2000 yards and they won the Superbowl. Well, that's a bad outcome here, but what's Saquon done since been banged up for, for two years. Like running backs are weird in that regard. Like, I just don't know that there's anything other than an injury, obviously, which is the one risk. I don't know if there's anything that happens between now and March where you get less for Jonathan Taylor. I think it's a lot like the Jalen Waddle thing last year with Miami, where they had a first round pick and more on the table for them with their interim GM. And they were like, we want a first round pick this year, not, next year. So we're just going to wait. And what did they do? They got a first round pick this year when they traded him to Denver. What would the, what would the chiefs do if the Colts called them and said, really enjoyed what we saw from Jonah Coleman on Sunday. You can have Taylor for a second and Jonah Coleman will do it right now. You mean Denver for Jonah Coleman or Emmett Johnson for chiefs? No, I meant Jonah Coleman, Jonah Coleman from Denver. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of many different structures that you could pull off. I know there was like the rumors on Jadarian price going for Jonathan Taylor, but I just don't know that you want to, again, lock into a running back. I mean, the new GM might be like, I didn't even like that guy coming out. Why do I have him and not Jonathan Taylor as a chip on my roster? Like that's, and also by the way, this is one thing that I don't think it's talked about enough. Like these teams still have to play the games. Like, why don't you see teams trade like seven or nine guys, like completely, you know, just like NBA strip it down. It's like, because they gotta, they gotta play nine more games this season. And if you start trading too many players, like you're putting practice squad guys, you're signing guys off the street to go play. Like you're literally putting other guys in danger, much less making it, you know, impossible to win a football game here. So there is a fine line. The Colts are not, that's why I've, I've said like the Colts are not in a fire sale. They traded Buckner and Nelson because their contract to your older guys who weren't going to be back. So you got more than the comp value. You move on, you get, you get cash and cap space. These other guys like Taylor, he's under contract. Like you don't have to do anything. And you know, whatever leaks come out and however hard other people outside the building are pushing you, like you ultimately can just go it's under contract. We're sitting here. What do they do if he asked for a trade? I don't think that it's substantively changes anything because they're willing and open to listen now. It's like, it's like Josh Downs when he requested a trade last week, it was like, okay, we're already willing to trade you. Play better Josh Downs. Start there. Go out, play well, and that'll help us get value. And then we'll trade. You like the, the trade, the public trade request to me only makes sense when the team is going, we will not listen. We will not listen to you because every agent is calling every team. Every agent who has relationships is already talking to every team. It's like they gave them permission. It's like, we didn't need it. You can just go. Everyone tampers. Just call everybody that they're already doing it. Some of those things get overblown. It's like, it's the social thing and it gets all the rumors going, which honestly then feeds the players. Cause everyone around them is Texas. Oh, you're about to be traded. Jonathan Taylor's wife's out there. He's like, I'm not going to trade you. I'm not going to trade you. They're willing to trade them, but like they'd have to be offered a lot. Like that's, that's it. The only call that matters is the one that's going into the Ed Dodd's office, right? And they don't have enough on, I would trade them because I don't have a first round pick. And because I'm putting them next to one of the worst quarterback situations in the league and there's injury potential and all kinds of things that I would just do it. Um, speaking of bad quarterback situations, I feel like this is part of the pick six every week, but but the Vikings, what do they do now? Sal and I talked about this on Sunday, it felt like, it felt this sunday felt like the moment where you just go this that this doesn't work with kyler murray he can't get the ball to their receivers he really can only throw the ball to tight ends um he's gonna get jefferson or addison like badly hurt with one of these passes that is sailing and you kind of have to figure this out asap you're six and one so what do they do what i noticed with kyler is he looks more comfortable in terms of like he knows where the ball is supposed to go but he's not getting it there on any of these like perimeter routes sharp breaking routes i mean how many times did he throw the ball five feet over just jefferson's head in that game he made a couple great throws the seam ball to hawkinson the post to jordan addison over two defenders like those are big time throws but you can kind of put some air under it and get it out there which has always been something kyler's been good at it's a little bit like russell wilson too where it's like yeah you can throw those moon balls but when you put them into a precision offense where okay it's hit the top of your drop and throw it there's a video going around where it's kyler it's a run play to the right like a zone run but then they always put these backside slants so kyler sees it he's got the right coverage he turns to throw it to jefferson on the slant which is wide open it's going to go for a touchdown well he's got two guys with hands in his face kyler can't see so he's like off schedule and he's like it the timing of the plays off he throws the ball to the dirt and jefferson's going like what are we doing here yeah that's that's become an issue i don't think that it's not salvageable with kyler murray but there are things when you're playing with a shorter quarterback um that does create some challenges i would say this i expect that they will that they are evaluating all potential options and seeing if there's something out come on you know what the move is there's six and one you know what you know what they're gonna do come on trade for kirk come on it's sitting right there daniel jones no kirk cousins it's sitting right there what are we waiting for just everybody just needs to step in and be like come on we all know this is going to be the trade just fucking do it let's go mendoza takes over the raiders kirk goes back let's just do this if the raiders had lost to the jets i think there would have been a real chance that the raiders would have been willing to move kirk he he lit it up in that game kirk cousins has been a top 10 quarterback in the nfl this season by every metric and he's you know he's doing the kirk o'chains thing again guys are rallying around him like all that to me says mark davis isn't going to go yeah let's let's just throw the ball in the net and he's going to be the one that's going to the rookie in there like this was the way that they they set it up i do think that there's there's still an opening it would make sense whether it's the vikings whether it's another team you know baltimore's got to figure out what they're doing at the quarterback vikings loved him he's one of the most popular viking players that have ever passed through there and he was playing the best football of his life in what was it 2022 before he tore the achilles with kevin o'connell as his coach they also have carson wentz who they've seen function at a high level in the offense i agree i'm not as excited about that one well here's what it comes down to all right what what are you willing to pay for kirk cousins are you giving up a second round pick are you sending a first round pick for kirk i don't know why the raiders would do it for less i would do a third round pick guaranteed and if i make round two of the playoffs moves to a second and that's what i would do i think i think team success yeah if we win the super bowl now it's a first like that i think team success has to be tied to it in some way but if i'm the raiders the only problem with the raiders right now they're they play at san francisco this weekend seattle home at denver at cleveland so if you're like okay it's mendoza time and you do it and his first three games are yeah his first three games are seattle at denver at cleveland that's a nightmare so you'd have to you'd have to factor that part in is that how you want to start this guy's career with those three games yeah the readiness is a huge part of it and i know fernando does like he does extra meetings he'd like basically like shadows kirk's reps on the field during practice like he's not getting he hasn't taken the first team reps hardly at all yeah this year like actually thrown to the receivers and by the way outside of brock bowers who is a obviously a massive problem solver for the offense like i don't know that their receiver group is really good like kirk is elevating everybody because he's so smart in the offense yeah in other words for a young guy like mendoza he's got one safety blanket in bowers but like you know it's trey tucker and it's jack besch coming back off an injury they're not running the football effectively like that doesn't feel like a situation that's great to throw the rookie into i don't think you can rule it out because somebody might go it's just worth it we're gonna take the shot i mean if philly hadn't lost washington last week i would have been like if they beat the giants why would they not go trade for kirk plug them into the offense like just get it going get healthy but there's another piece of this though it's beyond like the competitive and contending and all that stuff like you have jefferson who you've covered his whole career not exactly a demonstrative sideline guy no and what the way he was behaving during that game was like oh like this they got to fix this now and he's played with kirk cousin so yeah he's gone through a couple of years of this and you know just all the different quarterbacks and things now monday night against the bills like kyler's got that hamstring if i'm guessing here uh you know eight six days out i'd say carson wentz is starting that game just because kyler at less than a hundred percent with a hamstring is not a guy i want on the field so i wouldn't be surprised if we see wentz this week we might but here's the problem with wentz wentz does well in that game you talk yourself into wentz for the rest of the season what's carson what's gonna do get hurt because he always gets hurt right so he gives you two games now i'm back with kyler murray but the trade deadline's passed and i've thrown away this season and that's the whole thing and there's nobody on the street i mean i don't really know that jimmy garoppolo is in shape or intends to continue playing tom brady's back russell russell wilson i mean it's it's a pretty short list oh my veteran quarterbacks out there right no i'm listen i'm with you like i said i'm going to i anticipate that they are exploring all the options it's just like how big of an upgrade outside of kirk who i do think is an upgrade like daniel jones is the one that's come up a lot too and i'm like you know jones for 56 yards against the vikings a couple weeks ago like it's like his career's over it's a and he's coming off an achilles like that's a real thing you give him 50 million dollars this year i mean the colts the colts have a have a you know something to figure out with that too because he's got an injury uh guarantee for there's one other guy well there's one other guy though what's the point of having davis mills it was like casario's first ever draft pick and he has never wanted to let him go cj has answered all my questions this year and they're obviously going to give him an extension you're going to pay him a ton of money but then also have one of the most expensive backup qbs in the league and if if minnesota comes to me and you know is ready to give a third that turns into a second for a guy that's going to be a big deal for him who if he's playing that means my season's over anyway and my season might be over because i'm two and five i don't know i would think about it and i think he's i i'd rather have davis mills than kirk cousins as well as cousins playing i'd like davis mills davis mills has some fans in the league too in terms of when he's gotten his opportunities how he operates that offense it also feels i mean again nick has had trade offers for him basically his entire career is he going to move him now at this point i just i don't know that he would do that i mean listen there's other guys out there i mean if you talk about who could the ravens trade for it tyson bajan's the obvious one because he was with declan doyle in chicago last year they were never going to be able to get him in for the thursday night game because the short week and he's in seattle but if you're trying to get somebody who's at least sony can function in that offense you go get him jacoby resets now third string in arizona which if there were ever a blinking red light we will unload this contract for nothing please call us that's probably it so there are some quarterbacks out there but for like the style of play that minnesota has i'm with you kirk is the obvious one i just don't know that they're going down that road last one the cowboys i don't even know where you want to go with this but let's make them the last one of the six there is just this fragility to the entire organization and you feel it within the games i think that it stems from jerry being so public you know at all times exactly how he feels because he's on the radio twice a week and he talks after the game and he'll do other interviews and so video him walking down the runway sadly at the end of losses yeah it feels like he's omnipresent and then the gaggle of 50 reporters around him and then two days later at the crack of dawn he's on local radio saying the exact opposite thing i mean today he was on the radio i saw and was talking about how you know he was asked like why why don't you want to spend on coaches and he went on this whole diatribe about um you know there's no correlation whatsoever that you can do with a guy who's on the radio and he's on the radio and he's on the radio and he's on the radio and he's on the radio and he's on the radio and he's on the radio and he's on the radio and you can find over the last 30 years of uh of paying for coaches or having a bigger coaching staffs and winning which i would say wow i think that we've seen if you compete for the the hottest coaching candidate by and large there is a correlation i mean ben johnson was the coveted coaching candidate two years ago he's turned that team around mike vrabel was a highly coveted coaching candidate turned that team around clint kubiak was the young guy who is highly coveted and at least has the right to be a coach and he's a coveted coach and he's a coveted coach and he's a the raiders back to you know kind of a steady competence at this point you know jerry like i think brian schottenheimer is a good lifetime football coach like he's a good dude and he's a good coach but to say that there's no correlation even going back to how that job was available in the first place jerry had cut staff with mike mccarthy for years there was one there was one off season where he had mike mccarthy get rid of like four or five guys on staff and it was because we're spending too much on coaches so then all of a sudden you shrink that down, you lose some of the core guys that are on the staff. Then in 2020, 2024, you know, that was a, it was a rough year. That was the year Dak got hurt. I think it was the hamstring. And then, you know, so they, they finished like six, seven wins, whatever it was. But at the end of the year, Jerry and Mike meet for like three or four days. And at the end of it, like reviewing the team and like, basically like how we're going together in the off season, Mike doesn't have a contract, but it gets to, all right, we're going to, you know, we're going to start working on the contract. Okay, great. Then like a day or two go by and there's nothing. And finally, Jerry calls Mike and goes, ah, I'm just not gonna be able to pay you what you deserve. So we're moving on. Well, at this point, like the, the cycle is already underway. Jerry interviews like three people and promotes Brian Schottenheimer for, you know, probably half of what Mike McCarthy was making, you know, and again, this is not a shot at shotty, but like Mike's six and two in Pittsburgh right now with a team that nobody gave a chance. Like he's a good football coach that costs money. So all of which is to say, like, I don't think that it's, you know, directly on where you hired Schottenheimer, you hired Christian Parker, but it's like, it's everything on. Now you can see there's a collection of really talented parts in the building. Why don't they coalesce? Why are you in big moments? And you've got guys like, you know, Rashawn Gary or DeMarvion overshown who are making like the critical mistakes. The defense was pretty good. The first three quarters and all of a sudden Gardner Minshew goes in there and they fall apart and they completely defeat themselves. It just, you know, the, and they had the ball in overtime, right? And they can't move it. And Pickens is, you know, seems like he's, you know, not, but you, and I could have predicted the Pickens thing, right? They didn't take care of them. They tagged them. Right. And that's, you know, that, that seemed like the wrong guy to do that. I guess my question with Jerry Jones. So he lavishly builds this stadium, right. Which was really ahead of the game. He put together the money to buy the team once upon a time. Like he's this maverick, like hard charging dude. And then, but also seems like frugal at times. And if, and with the eight, I don't even know how old he is now at this point is he he's in his eighties, 82, 83, somewhere in there. Yeah. So I don't know how many years he has left, but, um, or how many years he has to be the competent owner of 84, 84. So you're, you're really in the tail end here. And if you're worried about money, sell off like 10% of the team to some VC or some rich dude. And that team's probably worth, I don't know, 14 billion, 15 billion with the way the prices are going sell off a piece of it and cash that money and be like, I've, you know, I don't understand how you're cutting costs. If you're him, the contradiction with Jerry though, is you're right there. There are places he spends money, not just the stadium, but if you've ever walked into the facility, it's like chandeliers and marble floors. It's like totally over the top. He'll land his helicopter on the practice field during practice. Like it's, it's all, it's all the show. And he's a really in businessman who's made a ton of money. Like that documentary on the Cowboys, the episode about Jerry. Is, is extremely entertaining. It's just that when it comes to coaching, he has never believed that coaches matter. You can go all the way back to the rift with Jerry Jones, three decades or with Jimmy Johnson, the only time, right. When he was like, Oh shit, maybe I got this coaching thing wrong. I'm going to spend on Parcells, but he never won with them. And even then, you know, you come back and then look at through the years and you know, the long period of time with Jason Garrett, who was, you know, kind of like you have good seasons and you'd have a bunch of average seasons. And, you know, Wade Phillips was there for a while. Um, you know, McCarthy, that was Dave Campo. That's right. I mean, you got all kinds of, you know, different coaches who have been through there, but like, why is that where you draw the line? He's got the quote. If you remember, and I think it was, was it the CD lamb deal? It was one of their big contracts that they got done after, you know, way too long, right. It might've been back after, you know, franchise tech and everything. He said like, there's nothing, uh, in my life that I wanted that I haven't overpaid for. I'm always willing to wait longer, even if it means, overpaying. So he overpays for players where there is a salary cap and he doesn't pay market value for coaches where there is no salary cap. If he devoted, I'm not saying money fixes every problem, but Bill, like if you go back 10 to 15 years, Bill Belichick was by far the highest paid coach in the NFL. He was the only guy who was making like clear eight figures about three quarters of the coaches in the NFL now make 10 million plus. Yeah. That's just where it is. Why? Because teams have realized like, all right, there's only a limited number of guys. It's like quarterbacks in the draft. A couple go in the first, nobody else goes to the fourth. If you want that guy in that year, you're going to have to pay because that's just the competition level. First time ed coaches now are getting 12, $13 million a year, which again is more than Belichick was making college. That's the price for, if you want one of the best guys, you're an eight figures a year now. Right. And Jerry has basically adopted the stance of like, I'm just not going to compete. You know, even Mike McCarthy, um, you know, we had a couple of interviews, the jets were also still trying to get him in, but Jerry just kind of sold them on, you know, Dallas. And then, you know, he, he paid them probably at the, you know, the lower end of what Mike McCarthy, you know, would have been making from another team. And then, you know, Mike fire his staff, you're hiring people, you know, to be coordinators because they just got fired by somebody else. You don't have to pay him much money. It's just, it's that part of it. And again, I don't put that on it's Schottenheimer and it's, it's Christian Parker, but it goes to this overall fragile state of everything, which is you're willing to pay and you're willing to collect the players and bring them all in. And then things just have this habit of coming unglued. And I think that there's really something to that. It's the overall environment where everything seems so emotional surrounding the Cowboys that it's hard just to block all that stuff out in critical moments within the season or within a game and time. And again, teams that are going to beat like the box at home, like the Cardinals at home, they're finding ways to give away these games. And now in a wide open NFC East, you're like, I don't know, even if they managed to win this division, how dangerous they actually are. And it's a 12 month spotlight. You're on ESPN in any other place, every NFL podcast all the time, because there's just more interest in the Cowboys than any other team basically. And then everybody gets their hopes up in July and August. I picked them. I picked them to win the NFC. I thought they'd win 10 plus games. I thought they were going to be good. And then obviously that's not happening. Look, but talented enough. It's just, you're in a hole now, you know, you're three and five and you're about to play the Colts team. You should, you should beat handily. They're walking in the door, ready to quit. You know, you lose this game and you're three and six to me, that's a, we need to sell. We break it off and go and trade parts. I just don't know, even in that division, like what you're playing for at this point, you know, we'll see how it goes against you. Hey, this is almost three and a half decades now of him owning an NFL team unsuccessfully. So at some point everything can change around it, but at some point you got to look at the guy. Um, there you go. All right. That was pick six, Tom Pelsero. Check them out on the sweep this weekend releases on Saturday morning. Great newsletter plus on the, uh, ringer NFL show. Good to see you. Kirk cousins to the Vikings. Make it happen. Make some calls. See where we're at in the sweep. All right. Good to see you. Thanks Bill. All right. That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kirk and Tom. Thanks to how and Eduardo and Chris and Jack and everybody at Spotify as well. New rewatchables is up. Go check it out. All the right moves. Um, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day. Please vote. Um, and I hope everybody stays safe and happy this week and I'll see you on Thursday. I don't have Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas star casino or 18 plus and president DC or Wyoming opt-in required bonus issued as non-withdrawable profit boost tokens restrictions apply, including any token expiration, max wager amount, see terms at sportsbook.fm. Game problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Call 888-797-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY in New York for Louisiana call 877-770-7867. 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