A Hawks Power Play, Plus a Round 1 Playoff Mega-Preview With Joe House and Billy Gil
142 min
•Jan 10, 20263 months agoSummary
Bill Simmons, Joe House, and Billy Gil analyze the Trae Young trade to Washington, discuss playoff betting strategies through their annual Playoff Manifesto, and make picks across all six Wild Card round games, emphasizing contrarian angles and historical patterns in playoff betting.
Insights
- The Trae Young trade represents a low-cost asset acquisition for Washington's rebuild, prioritizing draft positioning over immediate impact, with the franchise's primary goal being to tank for lottery odds
- Playoff success often defies regular season metrics; teams with poor DVOA ratings have historically won playoff games when they embody 'nobody believes in us' narratives and play at home
- Quarterback health, offensive line quality, and home field advantage are more predictive of playoff outcomes than raw statistical rankings, particularly in single-elimination games
- Contrarian betting in playoffs requires identifying the most obvious public pick and considering the opposite, as consensus picks often represent poor value
- Coaching stability and quarterback-coach alignment matter significantly in playoffs; teams with proven playoff experience and internal cohesion outperform those with new or unstable leadership
Trends
Tanking as explicit franchise strategy: Washington's acquisition of Trae Young signals acceptance of losing to secure draft capital, normalizing transparent rebuildsElectromagnetic field health concerns in sports: Emerging theory about Levi's Stadium's proximity to electrical substations potentially explaining elevated injury ratesQuarterback narrative rehabilitation: Trevor Lawrence and Justin Herbert represent young QBs escaping negative narratives through playoff performance rather than regular season statsCoaching carousel volatility: Multiple first-time head coaches entering playoffs simultaneously creates unpredictability; established coaches like Tomlin gain relative advantageHome field advantage quantification: Cold weather, crowd noise, and travel fatigue create measurable playoff advantages that exceed regular season performance differentialsOffensive line travel penalty: Bad offensive lines struggle more on the road in cold weather, creating predictable playoff matchup advantages for home teams with strong defensesPlayoff voodoo as measurable phenomenon: Historical data shows certain franchises (Pittsburgh, Jacksonville) consistently exceed expected performance in single-elimination gamesWeather as playoff variable: Dome/warm weather teams playing outdoors in cold conditions show consistent performance degradation, creating betting opportunitiesPublic betting patterns in playoffs: Majority of casual bettors gravitate toward obvious favorites and recent hot teams, creating value in contrarian positionsInjury accumulation threshold: Teams that have lost multiple key players often pass a 'point of no return' where remaining roster cannot compete despite statistical projections
Topics
NBA Trade Analysis: Trae Young to Washington WizardsPlayoff Betting Manifesto and Historical PatternsWild Card Round NFL Predictions and AnalysisQuarterback Performance in Cold Weather PlayoffsHome Field Advantage QuantificationOffensive Line Travel PerformanceCoaching Stability in Playoff ScenariosContrarian Betting StrategyDVOA and EPA Statistical AnalysisWeather Impact on Playoff PerformanceInjury Accumulation and Roster DegradationNobody Believes in Us Team NarrativePlayoff Voodoo and Historical PrecedentPublic Betting Consensus IdentificationQuarterback-Coach Alignment Assessment
Companies
Atlanta Hawks
NBA team that traded Trae Young to Washington; discussed as potential trade hub for Anthony Davis acquisition
Washington Wizards
Acquired Trae Young in trade; pursuing explicit tanking strategy to secure lottery draft picks
New England Patriots
NFL playoff team analyzed as potential Super Bowl contender with Drake May as MVP-caliber quarterback
Jacksonville Jaguars
NFL playoff team identified as 'nobody believes in us' contender with strong home field advantage
Buffalo Bills
NFL playoff team analyzed for playoff performance; discussed as potential Super Bowl threat
Green Bay Packers
NFL playoff team favored in matchup against Chicago Bears; discussed coaching and rest advantages
Chicago Bears
NFL playoff team analyzed for defensive vulnerabilities and luck-based regular season success
Los Angeles Rams
NFL playoff team heavily favored against Carolina Panthers; Matthew Stafford MVP narrative discussed
Carolina Panthers
NFL playoff team identified as biggest home underdog in playoff history; Bryce Young contract implications
Philadelphia Eagles
NFL playoff team analyzed as defending champions with strong home field advantage against 49ers
San Francisco 49ers
NFL playoff team with injury concerns; electromagnetic field health theory discussed regarding Levi's Stadium
Pittsburgh Steelers
NFL playoff team with historical voodoo advantage; Mike Tomlin coaching tenure analyzed
Houston Texans
NFL playoff team with Monday night disadvantage; CJ Stroud outdoor performance concerns discussed
Denver Broncos
NFL team analyzed for playoff performance concerns despite one-seed status
Los Angeles Chargers
NFL playoff team analyzed for defensive limitations and Justin Herbert playoff history
Seattle Seahawks
NFL team discussed as potential Super Bowl contender with Sam Darnold quarterback
Kansas City Chiefs
NFL team referenced as playoff benchmark; Patrick Mahomes health status discussed
Baltimore Ravens
NFL team discussed in context of potential coaching changes and Mike Tomlin speculation
Miami Dolphins
NFL team discussed regarding Mike McDaniel firing and coaching carousel implications
The Ringer
Podcast network hosting Bill Simmons show; mentioned for upcoming Netflix transition and live events
People
Bill Simmons
Podcast host analyzing NBA trades and NFL playoff betting strategies; transitioning show to Netflix
Joe House
Washington Wizards fan discussing Trae Young trade implications and playoff betting manifesto
Billy Gil
Sports analyst providing detailed playoff game analysis and betting angles across all six matchups
Trae Young
NBA player traded to Washington Wizards; discussed for injury history and three-point shooting decline
Drake May
New England Patriots quarterback discussed as potential MVP winner; analyzed for playoff performance
Josh Allen
Buffalo Bills quarterback analyzed for playoff performance and health status concerns
Trevor Lawrence
Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback discussed as 'nobody believes in us' narrative player in playoffs
Aaron Rodgers
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback analyzed for cold weather playoff performance and age concerns
Matthew Stafford
Los Angeles Rams quarterback discussed for MVP narrative and playoff performance in bad weather
Bryce Young
Carolina Panthers quarterback analyzed for contract implications if playoff upset occurs
Jalen Hurts
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback discussed for playoff performance and team chemistry concerns
Brock Purdy
San Francisco 49ers quarterback referenced for previous NFC Championship injury against Eagles
CJ Stroud
Houston Texans quarterback analyzed for outdoor performance concerns in Monday night playoff game
Justin Herbert
Los Angeles Chargers quarterback discussed for playoff history and fumbling concerns
Mike Tomlin
Pittsburgh Steelers head coach analyzed for voodoo advantage and potential coaching change speculation
Matt LaFleur
Green Bay Packers head coach discussed for rivalry with Ben Johnson and playoff preparation strategy
Ben Johnson
Chicago Bears offensive coordinator analyzed for rivalry with LaFleur and team motivation
Kyle Shanahan
San Francisco 49ers head coach discussed for playoff history and coaching stability concerns
Nick Sirianni
Philadelphia Eagles head coach analyzed for playoff experience and game management strategy
Sean McDermott
Buffalo Bills head coach discussed for playoff coaching concerns and team management
Quotes
"The most important thing for the Washington basketball franchise in 2026 is to suck. And this trade absolutely positively helps them suck."
Joe House•Early in episode
"I don't really know Ben Johnson."
Matt LaFleur•Discussed during Packers-Bears analysis
"Never pick an underdog unless you genuinely believe that it has a chance to win."
Bill Simmons•Playoff Manifesto Rule #6
"This is the biggest point spread in the history of the NFL as a home dog."
Bill Simmons•Rams-Panthers analysis
"I genuinely think Drake May is like special as a quarterback. I really feel like he's great."
Bill Simmons•Patriots analysis
Full Transcript
The Bill Simmons podcast is brought to you by Fandole Sportsbook. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network where I put up a new rewatchables on Monday. We did a big mailbag of questions that I got all through 2025. We kicked off 2026. We came up with some new categories and we use some of those new categories for the rewatchables that's coming on Monday night. For maybe Tuesday night. I think it's coming Tuesday night actually this week. We did what lies beneath. So stay tuned for that one. It was me and Chris Ryan and the person who loves Harrison Ford the most in this life Malay ribbon. So stay tuned for that. Speaking of podcasts, quick reminder, tickets go on sale tomorrow for the Bill Simmons podcast, which will be live in Los Angeles on February 11th at the will term. It's going to be fun. I love the will turn. I want a couple of things that are great theater and get more information on tickets for this at the ranger.com slash events. Hopefully we'll see you there. And then this is the last podcast. We're going to be putting up fully on YouTube because on Sunday night we're going live on Netflix. The video for this podcast will still also be available on Spotify. You can get this podcast however you're getting in when you listen to it. And you can watch it live on Netflix. It will be right after the past chargers game. I hope I'm coherent. But we're looking forward to that. It should be really fun. Me and cousin south. So I will see you then on Sunday night. Good luck to the past coming up Joe House. We talked about the trade on trade and some basketball stuff at the top. And then Billy Gill joined us and we went through all six playoff games. Tried to turn our season around came up with a bunch of picks. That's all next. We take break. Pearl Jam and then Joe House and some basketball. The Bill Simmons podcast is presented by Fando. Fando's got it all. Same game, parlays, quick bets for jumping in live. They have your way. Go check out your way. You can build the bet that fits your play your way. Plus don't miss out on the NFL playoffs. One of my favorite times of the year. All month long. Download the Fando app or head to fandall.com slash BS to get started. Get ready for the playoffs. Let's go. Must be 20 plus president select states 18 plus DC Kentucky Wyoming. Game promical win and 100 game or visit rg-help.com. Call 888-789-777 or visit ccpg.org. Slash chat in Connecticut. Get to 15 Pacific time Joe House. We're in Tuck football in a second. House's team made a big basketball trade. You got trade young. We've joked about it for years. We wondered if it was the perfect wizard. You were appalled for the last week or so as the rumors started. You make a trade where there's no picking it. I'm not sure which team should be more insulted that they didn't get a pick in this trade. Trayong for Kispert and McCollum to expire in contracts. The trade happened a while ago. There's been a hundred podcasts about it. But none of those podcasts have an actual Washington Bullets fan on it. So Trayong, you get in the jersey. What's happening? Yeah, I love that you win bullets. That's appropriate, right? We're because we're OGs and we're old school and I'm coming from it from an OG old school kind of perspective. I will tell you that I have come all the way around. I knew it. I knew it. Well, I'm going to give this 18 hours. Let's push this back in the oven. Great. If you think about this from the perspective of trying to enhance your asset pool, it was a good trade for Washington. It was a good day for Washington. And we want you to start you out. Pid zero other teams. I mean, the market was robust. I will have my Kings were like, we're out. I have my quibbles. But here's the thing. We started yesterday with one player in the top 100 and now we have two. That's a good starting point, right? So. So 18 hours after the trade, that's where he landed. Well, I'm not trying to tuck yourself into it. The top 100. The here's the thing. The most important thing for the Washington basketball franchise in 2026 is to suck. And this trade absolutely positively helps them suck because Trayong has an injury that has kept him out of quite a bit of his own team. So the Atlanta Hawks games this season. And I think that trend will continue. It also is a very low cost for Washington way of looking at a distressed asset. I love that you're like on autopilot with the explanation. You're dying inside. I will tell you dying inside. I've had a chance. I went on local radio. I went over to sports junkies. Look, I'm ready to. Desperate. I love our guys. Our guys love those guys. I know. I went on Toronto radio today. I went all over the place. The fuck is happening with house. This Netflix thing is really, really turning around. Fairway rolling. It's going to be a Netflix next week. Yeah. How about that? That's exciting. But I thought you gave up nothing and why not? And plus he's going to probably either opt in or take a much cheaper deal for next year. Where it's either you opt in for 45 or he'll do 90 for three. Yeah. A nice extension. Right. I'll reward him for biting his time for the balance of this season. And then let's see if Washington can finally get lucky in a draft that's absolutely loaded. They protect themselves by not winning enough games to fall out of the bottom four. They must finish in the bottom four of the league to make sure that they have a pick that won't drop below eight because of it gets tonight. I know. I'm going to take it. Right. I don't know. I'm not that's possible. I can't have that. Wow. You've 10 wins already. Well, I mean, I'm not kidding, buddy. I was at the Wizards magic game. Now, I don't know what the F is going on with the magic. They are what's going to go on. Their coach is going to be unread fence soon. Look in for new places to live. This was going to happen. Are they quietly tanking? What am I un-miss understanding with the magic? Like they put their third stringers in and those third stringers made a very spirited come back against Washington. So much so that I almost fired off one of my favorite, you know, angles, betting angles of the season, which is, hey, the Wizards are up by 17 going into the fourth quarter of the line. You get a little bit down live bed on the magic and the magic came all the way back. They were down by four points. Yeah. None of their starters saw the floor for the rest of the game. All those third stringers were on. It was it was Jason Richardson and Jet Howard all the way to the bitter end. But what was you, Tim? You were texting us, you were texting us during that second half and I almost say my jimamos who was trying to get fired because he just kept all his dudes out. They have a palo problem too. We can talk about that another time. So Trayong who made the Eastern finals once worth mentioning is only 27, which is a nice time to trade for somebody and you gave up nothing other than expiring. Yeah. In worst case scenario, he just leaves this summer and it's just just two ships passes in the night. Right? In case scenario, he's, you know, maybe he comes in on a cheaper deal. Maybe he needed a changes scenery. The thing that's always bug me about him other than the fact that it doesn't put defense in his teammates. Don't really seem to like playing with them. He can't make three's anymore. And this has been a long time like it. He peaked with three's in 2022 at 38%. And since then he's been 33.5 37 34 and this year he was 30.5. And buying with the fact that he's not getting a little on like he did. And it's a little like the job or anything. We're in your head. It's the young guy from five years ago and I'm not sure it's the same guy. So that's the part. I trust you. You're one of the basketball people I trust. You're going to have to watch him all the time now and you'll know what's actually going on. I don't know anybody who's been watching the Hawks all the time. Well, I don't think that we're going to get a real indication of what his role with this team is going to be until next season. Like yeah, I really, really, really hope that he plays tomorrow night. That is say Friday night against Norland's Pelicans because I'm going to that game. And I hope that that's his like debut. But I bet like the overrunner we should ask fans who will do this of games played by trea young over the rest of this season. I would set it at like 19 and a half, right? He's not going to touch the floor. I'll take that now. Yeah, I think under 12. Yeah, yeah, I think they'll make an arrangement. He'll get some surgery that is always needed. The only thing is that the poor Washington franchise, it's been reported, is embarrassed by their attendance figures this season because I guess the open and notorious tanking job, not putting butts and seats is not producing much in the way of gate money. But so that would say, oh, let's get some tray buzz right now. Get some butts and seats. But it doesn't, it's counterintuitive to our goal, which is bottom four. That's it. That's the only thing that matters. Well, I'm sure there's going to be a rush to the ticket gates for a guy who doesn't play defense and is shooting 31% from three. But taking a bit of reinestick. Clear out every star. Watch out traffic jam. Here it comes. Go for a reinestick. He's a superstar. So I'm fine. I don't mind to change the scenery trade when you give up nothing for a guy who at one point was a meaningful NBA player. And he's only 27. That's not like he's 32. I feel like you or the Kings were the two teams that were probably going to be swimming in this pool. The most interesting thing about this for big picture is what this did for Atlanta from a trade flexibility standpoint. That's where my head went immediately. That's where a lot of the reports have come since. Is this step one, the gateway drug to the AD trade or my theory? You go down the road pretending you're going for the AD trade, but you're really kind of pressuring Milwaukee a little bit to be like look. We're going to do this AD thing. If you speak now or for everyholder piece with the honest, by the way, the bucks lost last night for the clippers, which I thought was a bad sign because they've been playing okay. The AD thing won't cost much because they got McCollum's expiring. They got Porzingus's expiring. AD's making 54 million. They throw and I don't think it's a New Orleans pick, but maybe something else. I don't know if Reese is chasing that. I wouldn't give up on Reese's say at age 20. I still kind of like him. Then Dallas, if you do that and you're just getting expirings in a pick, now I'm tanking. Now I'm trading Gafford for Kaminga. Now I'm trading in PJ Wash. Now I'm trying to become a bottom five or six team and I'm just punting on the season until I can't read it take the year off. The other thing with Atlanta, if you get Davis, which I think we can argue about whether that's even a good idea, they're at least in a better spot than they used to be. If you're Dallas, could you then take McCollum in that deal and flip him for Fred Van Vee in a pick? And if you're Houston, you're getting zero from Fred Van Vee, you can turn him in a McCollum for three months and maybe even resign Van Vee after the season. I don't know. It just felt like there were some dominoes in play with this house. Well, I will say this and I'm interested in your take on this. I don't mean to immediately take every single piece of content that we touch and flip it into what does Fandals say, except I'm very interested in what Fandals has to say. I beat you four, four hours ago to this. Go ahead. Regular season wins for the Atlanta Hawks right now. 40 and a half is right there at plus 104. Over plus money for the Hawks over. See, that's not where I looked. I looked at Hawks 27 and one for the East. I thought caught my attention. I'm looking at three months A.D. Three months A.D. actually giving a shit with the rest of the team that they have. We've watched these. Who do you like in the East? Do you like anybody? I don't. I like the Nicks. I do like the Nicks. I think the Nicks are kind of the bad old test. Right. But I don't know if that's the team that they'll have. Well, I loved your conversation with Goldsbury. I mean, there's a deal to be made, but it's just, do they want to mess with the chemistry? Right. Are they? Do they want to move ahead of their circle? They're tough, man. That's a tough team. I've been so impressed with the choice this year. So Anthony Davis, assuming that this is piece number two in this trade. And I think, by the way, if you've been listening or watching or listening and watching to Richard Maxx, Richard was spreading some breadcrumbs here, just throwing that out there. That's a promote another ranger pod, but I just promoted another ranger pod. Davis, I think the big fear with him is he's got a big contract player option thing. I'm looking it up. So if you trade for him in the issue would be, there's too many miles. There's too much wear and tear. Well, Goldsbury and I talked about it the other day. The car facts for him was even worse. The report was an honest, somebody lied about the extra 50,000 miles on there. He's got 54,000, 58 million player option for 62 million in the 27 28 season. And by the way, if you're trading for him, our guy Rich, the ringer's Rich Paul probably pushing for an extension at that point too. Our guy Rich, how about that? So you just have to factor all that in the fear of Atlanta. You got Jaylen Johnson at a nice cheap, cheap deal. He's one of the best star contracts in the league. I think he's like 30 million a year. You got expirings all over the place. You could probably afford the big one from what you've seen of Davis with this be your bet. I'm not sure it would be for me. I feel the same way. I mean, you have an opportunity that you really can't waste if you're at Atlanta here, right? Like you've done the thing. And this is, this is my quibble. Nobody else in the entire NBA was in the position that Washington was in terms of taking on salary. You said at the outside of this, nobody else was competing for for trade young services. Washington couldn't get any pick out of this. Now, the pushback would be, I think, from the front office as I've thought this through, why do we want an Atlanta pick? If we look at how Atlanta might fare over the balance of this season and the next couple of seasons. Yeah. Let's see what they do in terms of this trade market. They might be good. So do you really want a pick that's going to be in the high teens or low 20s from Atlanta? Why don't we see how tray young performs over the next 18 to 24 months? And that's where your draft capital might come in if he's able to rehabilitate himself. So I'm over here making excuses for the franchise. I just give me a swap in like 2085, just something. Can you some sort of swap or somewhere? Yeah. That would be a thing. Like you got all those swaps in the Bradley Beal trade. Amazing. Although I don't know. It's going to be great except Phoenix is pretty good now. It's got a damn it calling Gillespie. Can you just slow down a little bit? Yeah. So if I'm Atlanta, I go down the road with AD. I feel like I try to see if I can get him for cheap. And as I'm getting close to maybe being in the vicinity of Atlanta and the plan on a deal, I push hard with Milwaukee. Yeah. I like to say, look, man, we have all the expirings you need. We have the New Orleans pick. We have all of our other picks. We have Reese's Shay. Like let's have a real talk here. What are you doing with your team? Two first real picks. That would be amazing. We can get out of jail free card. Plus we have the pick that is like either the best of the Pelicans pick or the Bucks pick. You're the Bucks. You can tank. Now you can tank with no conscience because you might get that pick. So that's what I would do if I had that. This is a very good deal. I want to I want your reaction to this parlay Atlanta Hawks over 40 and a half games Dallas Mavericks under 30 and a half games. Is that too few for Dallas on that parlay pays out plus to 89. I only fear with Dallas is what Goldsbury said on the pod we did on Tuesday that they have a kitchen right now that let's just say Dave Chang would be throwing punches. There's like five people in the kitchen. Well, that's a helpful thing. No, it's a it's a group paralysis thing. But that's what you just have. That doesn't trace any of the people in there. I know, but it's what they should do is if you're going to trade Davis, then you just keep going and it's a fire sale. And PJ Washington's on a good contract. He would be really helpful for a team right? It would fetch something attractive. Gafford for Camingo is my favorite fake trade. Oh, wow. Amazing. Yeah. But because you want Dallas to tank, I have a confession house. I didn't tell you this. Let me hear it. As you know, I've mentioned a couple times over the years. I have Cooper season tickets. I share with the one and only Mike to the great to set over the weekend. Usually we go to the Warriors games together because Steph Curry is Steph Curry and Yoke Edge are my two. I'm going up there there. Mumbi is now entered that group. Yoke Edge, Curry, Wembee. I'm there if they're in town. Unimpeachable. He asked, he's like, I can't go Monday. You want the tickets? I said, no. Let's sell them. We sold them. Wow. Wasn't available for my, my, uh, by, uh, Steph comes twice the two times year Steph comes. I rainchecked it. Made up an excuse. I'm under the weather Steph. I can't make it tonight. I just didn't want to watch him on a shit Warriors team with fucking dream on getting kicked out of every other game or Steve Kerg and he met at the refs or these fucking guys that come in and Butler taking 10 shots. I couldn't do it. It was going to make me mad. I wanted to enjoy my Monday night. Didn't go. Amazing. Unbelievable. Is that Steph Curry who's by the way, having an incredible year? Yeah. Couldn't do it. I sat home and watched that game, um, then was, you know, unimpressed as always. Yeah. By the way, no regrets. Was like, I was sitting there at 10 o'clock on. Damn, I should have gone. Right. Um, but I thought that was a sad moment for the Curry. I'm sorry. Curry's been saying over and over again. He's like, we're not, we're so far away. We have no chance. Like, well, I don't know what his agenda is. It's telling the truth. The real story is we're not a must see team anymore, which is totally different to Steph Curry in your team is, you know, you got to pour a little out. What's with anchor steam mail that isn't that up there in the, in the Bay area? Isn't that the beer anchor steam? Anchor steam. Good beer. One other thing happened yesterday. Jalen Brown had his, and I've been very praiseworthy of Jalen Brown this year. He had his first. I'm doing great this year and I'm on ESPN. Everyone watch me for a couple hours. No, I was thought you were going to talk about his first. He went out with his natural hairline. No. I. I'm underrated story here. I, we don't talk about it on the BS. What about the, the tray yarn hairglower on? I don't, don't, don't do it. Don't do it. I'm, I was thinking about monitoring trays the growth of his hair because that's part, that's, that's part of the refresh here. He arrives in Washington. We don't know what his hair looks like. And he starts growing some, like a giant head of hair would be amazing. I feel like I should start a Twitter, get a Twitter handle to monitor trays hair growth. White shaved his head for us, Derek White. Yeah. Looks great. It was like a game changer for him. And LeBron seemed like he shaved his head the other day and I thought he looked really good too. LeBron's just handsome. He, he was, what's happening with his beard and this, he's doing a great job. The best he's looked in a while. I remember when Carl Malone shaved his head near the end was a huge move for him. Right? He had like Dennis Hayesburg kind of look. It did help him. Yes. So Jaylin had a, there was no Bob movement. Murray was unbelievable. Like just destroyed the salts. He was great. He's got to be in the All Star team. But it just worried me a little about Jaylin. You know, drinking his own. Drinking his own. Yeah. This team was like a very unselfish, you know, last night didn't look that way. So we'll see how it goes. All right. We're going to take a congrats on Treyon. Thank you. We're going to take a break. We're going to bring in the Duke, Billy Gill. Our picks counselor to help us turn it around in the NFL playoff. Here we go. The Bill Simmons podcast brought to you by Fando football fans. We waited all season for this. It is time to switch to playoff mode on Fando America's number one sports book. Right now, all Fando customers can get in on the action with a wild card reward for NFL wild card round. Just pick your card. You can win up to 100% profit boost. We made all of our picks on the on the Thursday BS pod. Also have a special thing. I think they put up on Fando. You can bet on Will Jacksonville or New England when the AFC title plus 250. If you think those are your teams and Denver is not going to do it or anyone else. Head to fando.com slash BS for a chance to double your winnings for the NFL wild card round play your game with Fando and official sports band partner of the NFL playoffs. Let's be 20 plus presidents like states are 18 plus in president DC Kentucky, Wyoming. Optin required rewards are non madrabile restrictions apply, including bonus and token expiration leg requirements and max weager amount. See terms at sportsbook.fando.com. Game problem come win Andrew Gambler visit rg-help.com call 1 888 78777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat in Connecticut. This episode is brought to you by searchlight pictures. Have you ever hit rock bottom and found yourself telling jokes on stage? I have not had this happen, but that is the new film directed by Bradley Cooper. It's called is this thing on? I'm not wearing legends will are not lord dern. Andre day Bradley Cooper. I got trying to get his life back by throwing up so into the new york comedy scene. I saw this as a child of divorce. I'm in on all childhood divorce movies enjoyed the stand up stuff I thought will are net was really good. Bradley Cooper. I've been with him since star was born as a director. Is this thing on? We're saying it's not playing only in theaters. Get tickets today. All right. Joe has to still here. The Duke Billy Gill is here. You can hear him on the ringer in a fell with sheel a couple days a week. Fair entertaining as well as college football tailgate, which is just I looked in the golden globes nominations not nominated this year. It felt like a snub. I feel like we started too late in the year. You know, like there's a cutoff or whatever. So next year we should be fine. Yeah, you're right. Maybe we didn't get in front of the voting committee in time. So 2025. I had a terrible everything year. I had my over under house. I was 13 and 19. That's where I ended up. Even though I had Denver and New England, Seattle, Chicago, like I had all the main ones. And then everyone in the middle just killed me. I think I went O and A. O and A in the South Visions. All like the fringe ones like Buffalo, not getting there over. I just was a bad year. And then for the picks, ringer 107 40 and 50. My worst year in a while, but the good news is 20 2026, small sample size 2025. I'm going to bet on the history with me. I doubled down. I did three days of work. We brought in the Duke. I'm feeling good about ringer 107. Billy, how you feeling about the playoffs? I feel like for you guys, this is the turnaround point in the season, right? You're 40 and 50. You're still in it in terms of ringer 107. And last time I was on with you guys, I think you went three and two or four and one. Yeah. The playoffs, I don't know how I'm excited that we're here. It was a good regular season. It was an exciting season. The playoffs were missing kind of like the classic people in the playoffs were missing. I think I don't know who the team that you root for is that there's always one of those. I mean, you would root for the Patriots because the Drake May and all that. But there's also not really like the team you hate. Maybe the Eagles or that team just because they're defending champions. But it's kind of wide open in terms of like teams and storylines and who you're rooting for rooting against headed into the first week. You know, that's a really good point. We don't have the everybody in America can align one way or the other teams. I think most people house, would you agree? I don't have the ask house because he's from DC. But I think people are kind of done with Philly and their contempt for being entertaining. Even their own fans seem like they kind of can't stand them. But other than that, I don't really have any. I'm sort of hatred for any of these teams. I don't think. Is there any it's not like people like I fucking hate the Rams. That Sean McVeigh, Stafford, like he going down the line. It's a pretty likable group of teams. It feels like this could be like the season that we get to random teams in the Super Bowl. Yeah. Which I don't know how I feel about like it's kind of like a basketball like you hated the Warriors towards the end because they were there every year. But also you wanted to kind of see them in the finals with the NFL. That's the saying like I want to see an established good team in the Super Bowl. Two random teams I feel like I'm going to watch either way. But two random teams will be like, eh, is this the Super Bowl? Well, that's, you know, I was looking at some of the exact as trying to find some value in terms of the Super Bowl matchup and the outcome. And I landed on Seattle beating Jacksonville at fucking a house. That was the matchup I had. Well, you can still do it. No, that was crazy. I think it's me. No, it's the little Jacksonville is I think is the most likely Super Bowl in my head. Well, I just looking at the last like 15 years once every five years, we get one of these matchups that Billy's describing. So the last one was Cincinnati against the Rams. Now the Rams had been to the Super Bowl with Jared Goff against the Patriots, the Patriots, the Patriots, straying on the life out of them. Well, we had a really exciting Matthew Stafford, Joe Burrow Super Bowl that really came out of left field. I kind of feel like that's the situation that we're in that this season. I couldn't agree more. I've been comparing it for the last few weeks to the 2008 season, which was the year that Brady blew out as ACL eight minutes into the season and then just kind of all hell broke loose and we ended up with Carson Palmer and Arizona in the Super Bowl against a pretty strange Pittsburgh team. And that was just kind of the Super Bowl and it turned out to be a really good game, but I don't I don't feel like anybody was watching it going. These are two peak football teams. It was just kind of where we landed. I think Cincinnati and the Rams is a good one. I don't even know the Rams are good that year, but the Bengals making it is the kind of thing that I think some play this year. We all agree on that that this is going to just be a weird playoffs. I think so. I feel like looking back to the 2020 Super Bowl between the 49ers and the Chiefs, like obviously that was the start of the Chiefs dynasty and the run that they went on, right? Yeah. But at the time did it feel like that to you? Like if you could forget about everything that happened after the fact that oh, the Kansas City Chiefs made it to the Super Bowl, like Andy reads, I guess back, let's see if he does it. That seemed like a random one at the time. Then you're like Raheem Mostert running loose. I think it like 200 something yards a week before to get into the Super Bowl. It seemed like those were two random teams that ended up being kind of like powerhouses of the years went on. Well, what was the year? It was variable. When they made it to the, it was Tennessee Cincinnati, right? Wasn't that one of the years when the year Cincinnati made it? I guess they BKC. They B Tennessee. You're right. They B Tennessee, but it was, I think we got killed in that gamehouse. Right? We sure did. I don't, I don't forget. I still feel like the bruises from that one. Yeah, there's still a talk outline. One of those Tennessee years when it just felt like Tennessee had a chance to make the Super Bowl. We have that sometimes. I'm ready for that this year. If I had to pick, so Fandall did a bet for me that people can do that Jacksonville or New England will make the Super Bowl. I think the Pats house disagrees. I think the Pats and Jacksonville win this week and we go to round two and that's kind of the kind of decide because I do not believe in Denver. I don't know. Billy, how do you feel about Denver? I saw that at Fandall right now, you get plus 800 for the Broncos and the Seahawks to both make it both number one seed. Two one seeds. Yeah, which seems like two one seeds. You should do that. But I don't know if anyone actually believes in Denver. I know that they, you know, they had a great season to the one seed, obviously, but there's just something about them. Bone makes this. He actually that good. Sean paid in. I mean, I don't trust them. I really don't. I feel like this could be a division round exit for them, depending on the matchup. I don't trust me there. With Denver is Jacksonville went in there and kicked their ass. Like if we didn't have in our sort of recent memory, seeing Trevor Lawrence go into Denver and it mattered in a meaningful like December football and they just whooped them. I mean, it was, you know, it was one of those games that Denver's defense just couldn't keep up. That's the problem. After with that in our recent memory banks, you can't, you know, say, oh, well, I'm, I'm, this is all Denver. This is an all Denver path here. Yeah. House makes, I thought the same thing about there's certain games you can't get out of your kind of the taste out of your mouth. We had Denver that game, of course, in Ring of 107 and Jacksonville kicked their ass for three hours. And it was impressive. And I actually don't think they've gotten enough credit for how good they've been the last couple months. They've talked about this every week. I think it's been a big rallying cry for them, which is another thing we're going to go on the playoff manifesto in a second. They're a pretty complete team. And the catch is Trevor Lawrence turns into a pumpkin in the playoffs and you're like, I knew it. I knew that was going to happen. But it just might not happen. We're going to go through the playoff gambling manifesto, which I've been working on every year since I had my old website pre-ISPN. And I sent this to you guys. I'm going to read it, read through it quickly. It's been pretty reliable over the years. We've added a couple things over the years. There's some stuff that doesn't qualify for this year like we'll wear the looked a little too good, the previous round team. That's rule number one. We won't know about that until around two. Don't bet against God puppies and gambling thers from Pakistan. That's really Tim Tibo, Kurt Warner related. When religion comes in in a strong way, just put the flashers on. Number three has been incredibly reliable this entire century, but where the nobody believes in us team. But then we also had to add the don't talk, don't try too hard to talk yourself into nobody believes in us team either. So I want to stop here. I think the Duke probably has the best feel for this. I like calling you the Duke. You've known him and think you really like it. The nobody believes in us. Jacksonville has tried to embrace it. San Francisco, Carolina's out. I mean, Carolina's a plus ten and a half underdog at home and round without any count. Is San Francisco feel nobody believes in us to you at all? I was trying to figure that out. The three teams that I wrote down coming into this week into nobody believes in us. Jaguars, you mentioned the Panthers that you kicked out. I'm wondering if the Bears are one of those teams that's in nobody believes in us team. Is the fact that they're an underdog at home seems surprising to me? Can I offer one more? Because part of the nobody believes in us as you have to play out the entire upset in your head, followed by the post game interview after. And I found myself moving to Monday night, Houston Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh, not only covering the plus three, but winning outright. And then Rodgers talking after and doing the dismissive Rodgers thing ago and look, nobody is believed in us all year. That hasn't changed and doing that. I'd be like, oh, this is how the Steelers feel. But I don't, it's almost like baked into the Steelers. So how does it even count with them? No, it's part of their identity. Nobody believes in them, including their own fan base. I mean, they were literally chanting fire, Tomlin, less than a month ago. In Acro sure is not the name of the stadium. Fire, Tomlin. Yeah, that was a slap in the face. And yet here we are. So right, it's part of the DNA. It's part of their voodoo. I don't think that they qualify. So Jacksonville is the team because I think the case for that on top of that, they've been playing the card for eight weeks is they are not favored at home as the three seed against the team. They have a better record than they've been out playing for the last three months. And Buffalo's favored because of Josh Allen really only. That's not only there's no other reason. So I think that's the answer, Billy. I think it's Jacksonville. Okay. Okay. Rule number four, be careful of the everybody believes in us team. And the nobody believes in our QB, but us, mother fuckers team. There's a certain level of nobody believes in us where they get very, very possessive and protective of their own quarterback. You saw this happen with the Rams or Jared Goff a little bit, but there's certain, I don't think that qualifies. But the everybody believes in us team. Who is that Billy? Who has too many people on the bandwraps? He's right. He's right. It's the ramp. Duke is on it. It's the ramp. Yeah. Anybody else is there an AFC? Not really. I don't think anyone believes in any AFC team. People are high on the Seahawks too. I mean, they're the one seed. So it's he said behind the Seahawks, but we haven't seen Sam Darnold unravel yet, which he did at the end of last year. Yeah. It hasn't happened this year. So it makes you wonder, is it going to happen at some point? I mean, he has to buy a week. So it can't happen this week. But it seems like it's the Rams right now. I think that's fair. There are five seed. They blew their chance to win the division. They've looked a little gamey in a couple of these outdoor games. We'll come back to them later. Rule number five, but where of any team that could use a notable off field distraction or tragedy is a galvanizing force. Not in play yet. Rule number six is a really important one. Never pick an underdog unless you genuinely believe that it has a chance to win. So it doesn't always hit. There's been times underdogs cover, but don't win. But for the most part, it's the playoffs. You're just better off thinking in your head. Can they actually win? And this is a key one for Niners Eagles. Don't take the Niners plus four and a half and be like, I think it's going to be close. It could be a three point leg. Do you think the Niners are going to win or not? And if you don't think they're going to win, don't take them with the four and a half. The next two are weather related and they're also very important. And this one, especially I added this year, but where of all dome or warm weather teams playing outdoors and cold weather or cold weather teams playing outdoors and human weather, which is really Florida and Carolina. So we have that in play this weekend. We have a Florida home game and we have a Carolina home game. And it seems like Jacksonville is going to be high 60s. Give this Buffalo team that's cold all the time, getting a little game eater in the afternoon. I'm just monitoring that when you like that one at all house, because we've seen the paths go to Miami when it's 80. I know Bill enjoys when this happens. And they just run out of gas two hours into the game. Well, I'm not going to blame the weather, but we just watched the bills go down to Miami. Now it was right after the chiefs game. So they were running on empty, but they got a boat race. I mean, that was, that wasn't, that was 30 to nothing, wasn't it? Right. And then we had a lot of games in Carolina too. It's another, there's a bunch of like interesting reasons to zag against the ramps. Number nine, discount first five, six weeks in the season. I think everybody knows how to do that. What you did in September, it doesn't matter. Rule number 10, oh, I'm sorry, rule number eight was the boy of any aging, cubie and cold weather unless it's Tom Brady. So this kind of fits Rogers, but I am a, is Rogers an outlier for this rule because of how many games he's played in cold weather? What's your ruling, Billy? I had Rogers as my guy for this one too. I looked up the weather there. It's supposed to be 32 degrees. It feels like 24, not snow, 22% chance of precipitation, 50 mile per hour wins, but he spent his whole career in green Bay in those games. So it's not like an Eskimo. Like games that used to this yet. 32 in Pittsburgh is balmy compared to Lambo. Yeah, I don't think I think that bounces off and pussy grew up in Northern California or weather is weird. So I almost feel like I should add Rogers to this. Rule number 10 is crucial. When in doubt, gravitate toward the one pick that would screw over the most gamblers and experts and definitely be the opposite side of the single worst gamble you know. What is the most obvious game this week? The Rams and the Panthers. Rams Moneyline, Rams minus 10. Rams Moneyline. So the most obvious pick I think this week is people doing Moneyline teases with the Rams as the first leg. Right? Either 10 point T's throwing the minus 650 and the rest of their bets. I think that's the most obvious thing to do this week and it makes me nervous. Just out of the gate along with a lot of other things about that game. Is there another one that you think is too obvious? Eagles against the banged up Niners. Does that line move the point? It's the second highest line. It's a really weird set of lines. You have anything, Billy? No, I had the same one I had for that one, the Panthers. I feel like everyone's staying away from the Panthers and we saw them beat the Rams a couple of weeks ago, but it was like everything had to go right for the Panthers in that game and everything kind of went wrong for the Rams in that game and they still only won by a field going still almost tied the game with a field go at the end, but then staff were kind of fumbled the ball with two minutes left. Yeah, I went back and I looked through that game. There was a pick six from Stafford. The Panthers had two long pass touchdowns on fourth down and then Bryce Young was great. Bryce Young was three touchdowns, no picks. It was arguably the best game he's ever played and as you said, the Rams had the ball at the end and they kind of fucked it up, but I'm not sure the Panthers could do that well ever again. They were missing guys on their side. I don't think they had JC Horn for that game. I think they're healthier than they were, but you know, I do, I think that can score 31 points against the Rams again. I don't think that game fell apart quickly though and the Rams are still in it the entire way. So there was there was they were going back and forth. Ramscore, Pantherscore, Rams drive down the field, interception in the end zone. Then Panthers punt it. Rams throw a pick six and then they're still in the entire game, even with all of that going right there in it. And then it took rain at the end of the game. And by the way, Puka didn't have a good game. Like he had his miraculous catches here and there, but he didn't have a touchdown. He had less than a hundred yards in that game. They would need to replicate that exact formula to win again against the Rams. I don't see it happening. Yeah, that none of us do. So, so we only have to pick five ringer one of seven games. That could be the one we punt. It's one of these games we just kicked to the side. It's that's not leading contender. No number 11 is don't ever talk yourself in a terrible QB ever for any reason. This this this rule really came into effect the one year. Who is the guy in Dallas in the early 2000s who had to start Quincy Carter, something he had named like that. He was really off. It was in the line never adjusted for how bad he was and it was and it was just it stuck with me ever since. But bad QBs in general, you just don't want them in the playoffs. My name is had a couple over the years where we've had some playoff games. Not to bring up terrible memories. But Skylotops it almost beat the bills. Skylotops it worked out their best. Yeah. Rule number 12 doesn't count yet. But where have any team that celebrated the weekends previous weekends play a factor like the one the Super Bowl. Rule number 13 is a recent ad. Don't dismiss the nerd evidence if the nerd evidence is absolutely overwhelming. So this is where we move into the DBOA EPA land. And honestly, it's stuff like Buffalo having the 31st ranked run defense in the P.A. It's significant when you think of the Jaguars have had some games where they have run on people's asses like they did to the chargers. Just when the when you see Chicago's another one that has some some pretty convincing nerd stuff going against them. Yeah, you take the turnovers away from their defense and it's one of the two worst defense is in the NFL. Yeah, they're 25th in DBOA anyway. EPA they were 17th against the past and 24th against the run. Would they have 22 their plus 22 with turnovers this year? Can't ignore any of that stuff. Rule number 14 is another this one I added this year. Our old friend Mike Lombardi who stopped podcasting become the UNC general manager. He had a law that I always thought was great about bad offensive lines don't travel. And the rule is bad offensive line you can get away with it at home. But if you're on the road, the crowds loud your offensive line sucks to begin with just be careful. And there's a couple lines like that this week including the chargers fortunately for me. But I actually texted Lombardi and asked him if the Texans qualifying he said yes. Shake the offensive line for them too. Rule number 15 look at the coaches. Just take a long look. We don't have any do we have a stinker coach this year Billy. We have a playoff coach that you're just like I don't trust that dude at all. I mean, we don't have a norfturner this year. No we have we have some rookie coaches right that we have to kind of see is Liam Cohen going to do well like. Yeah, as has McDonald's going to do in the playoff. So you have unproven coaches I would say but no like outright stinkers that kind of snuck their way in there with a good team. I don't think. How's any coach you just dislike many people are still skeptical about seriani. His record is outstanding both in the regular season and in the playoffs. But there's still that lingering sort of fear skepticism that this this this Eagles team resembles the one from a handful of years ago that where you know, but the one the couple years ago completely fell off the rails and everybody saw the first round where it were they were favorites going into Tampa and Tampa beat their butts knocked them out of the playoffs. This is a different version altogether because that this Eagles team defensively is I mean, you know, a million miles superior to that one, but Shanahan seriani. I don't know. Did you have on Billy? No, can I ask a question about this rule? So there's a lot of hypothetical in this rule also that involves traveling in a passport and I was wondering the specifics of that. Should I read that? Yeah. So the the whole rule is rule number 15. Take a long look at the head coaches. Consider their playoff history. Compare them in your heads to some of the all time January stink bombers like Marty Shot and a hammer Jim Moore, her med words, nor Turner or the Clapper, Jason Garrett. Then pretend you're flying abroad with one of these coaches and they're holding your wallet and passport the entire time. How would you feel? I don't there's no coach in here that would make me nervous like that. By the way, I just as an aside, made made the Clapper, please come back. I saw his interview for multiple jobs. I've never been more excited for non-Boston news ever. How so I know you were delighted? Unbelievable. When cousin Sal broke it out, we did our Humpty headlines on the Wednesday, Ringer gambling show and he said it with a straight face, Jason Garrett is interviewing for the Tennessee job. I thought it was a comedy bit. Right. You were waiting for him to finish the punch. What has anybody been watching on television that would instill confidence in gender confidence? He was a horrendous coach in Dallas undermined great teams at every turn and then has been extraordinarily mediocre. The guy that said that he has what is it? The ham bone that the mad game of frozen ham bone for the free. Get the fuck out of here. This guy, are you fucking kidding me? Please dear God. If there's a God, the football gods have been so good to us. Please in 2026, give that man a head coaching job. We, Billy, we didn't have enough comedy on the coaching sidelines this year. Everyone's hiring these young whipper snappers who actually know what they're doing. Mike McDaniel did his best. Yeah. He really tried to be hilarious every week. Calhan is pretty good. Yeah. God bless DJ Mikey Mack. We're going to miss him. He's not spending his tracks anymore for the dolphins. But yeah, I thought we were late this year, right? Yeah. This, honestly, it was like, is this the best coaching cycle hires ever? None of them have a lot. Like, they all worked out and this, this coming year, I mean, I guess you now have John out there, right? John Harvall is going to get a job right away. McDaniel, everyone's kind of thinking about, where is he going to be in OC? I don't know if Joe House wants him up there and watching that. I know. I think they signed up already. Yeah. That's his job. That's his best, you know, highest use. Let him be in OC for Dan Quinn. I saw that bands Joseph is getting some run now. And I remember him being terrible and I went back and looked at his two teams and he lasted two years with Denver in the second year. Case Keenum was his quarterback. So I'm like, you know what? Who knows? Like, I think if we've learned anything, it's if you have a shit quarterback or a mediocre quarterback or whoever, like you just have no chance, right? Those other times where it's like, Gantone appears, there's more stuff going on than your quarterback wasn't good or Hugh Jackson. But with Vince Joseph, he's a very well respected DC. So maybe there were, there's some other coordinators are throwing out. I don't think we can. Brian Flores. Brian Flores, people seem to keep trying him out and it never really takes. But Harvall, that was, had to be one of the reasons he must be happy that which job would you take out of those two giants or Falcons? Because to me, I would take the Falcons 100 times out of 100. Which take the Ravens. I feel like the Ravens might be the best job that's out there right now. Well, not for Harvall. No, not for Harvall. No, not for Harvall. Yeah, no, if you're Harvall, I honestly was wondering if this is a thing where, you know, they didn't announce Mike McDaniel's firing right away. Steven Ross always wanted Jim Harvall. I was wondering if this is a situation because there was the rumor out there where it's like seven teams have already contacted John Harvall, but there's only six openings that would apply to him. So someone is out there talking to John and then all of a sudden after that was out there, McDaniel's fired a day later. I wonder if there's like some insider trading going on there with Steven Ross where he's already decided, you know what, I couldn't get the Harvall. I wanted I'll set it for the other Harvall instead. So how so you could be New York Giants, Jackson Dart, neighbors coming back, top five pick, good defense, fourth place schedule, famous franchise, that's pick one. Atlanta loaded on talent. We're probably a 13 win team that win eight and nine. They don't have the first round pick, easier schedule and you could go right in and make an impact or Miami, you could just live in Miami. What would you do? What Harvall would do and Iowa would do are two radically different things because I would say to Steven Ross, I just want $20 million a year over the next five years. If you give me $100 million, I'll come coach this team. The problem is who's on it. Yeah, don't care. Who's the quarterback of Miami next year? When yours? Is he going to be the starting quarterback of Miami dolphins? He looked good for about an hour against the Pats and then he just threw it right to us. Yeah. And that is that. Oh, right. The Duke, you're a dolphins fan. Yeah. Who do you want? They mean the two of they have to get rid of two of right? Like it's obvious that they're going to move on from two at this point in time, but it seems like that's going to be a thing just because of like financial reasons I'll wait till after the June 1st deadline because then they can kind of move the money around. But they don't have a high enough traffic to get a quarterback in the draft. You have to kind of hope that they trade for a quarterback. There's not a there's not a quarterback out there. You're going to hope that Justin Fields is released and then you try with him for a year and that he's bad enough. Hardly is not doing that. Somebody might do that. John Harboh is not doing that. Well, I mean, the dolphins thing is going to be Fire McDaniel. He then goes becomes an OC for a team. Like I see a scenario where he can then go if he doesn't go to Washington, he can have a reunion in San Francisco, depending on how the playoffs go there. Or he can then maybe go up to Baltimore where he has Lamar, Jackson and Derek Henry and then he becomes the OC there. And then all of a sudden he's an offensive genius again. You fired this offensive genius that you had because he didn't have the quarterback that he needed. He did the best anyone could probably do with two array. But the thing that the dolphins would do is fire the offensive genius without a replacement plan, hoping that you get John Harboh who then goes to the giants to coach Jackson, dark. And then you have to figure out how many times have somebody backed out in the dolphins at the last minute? That's happened at least four times. I mean, you had Brady basically too. That was the other one. The secret Brady deal was one of the great 2020 stories. I'm so like that that Brady situation is so wild. And we're like all the tampering and cheating that goes on in the NFL and like you read the reports of how kind of Brian Flores, he ended up suing the dolphins. And that was the whole thing and suing the league, right? But then the reports are like he kind of lost the team. Ryan Fitzpatrick came out like I think earlier this week and he was talking about how he changed like for when he started towards the end, he became kind of like a dictator and trying to embrace like the Bella check Patriots way without actually having any of the success to do so, right? But this is just one of those things where he decided that that was the moment with Tom Brady that he was not going to step foot on a yacht to cheat and bring Tom Brady to the dolphins. And I don't understand why that is the point of integrity that you need to kind of like take a stand on. It's crazy to me. So he was kind of cheating the whole time and then didn't complete the cheat. Yeah, just if you're going to cheat, go all cheat. Like there's no honor in half-hats cheating that then gets you fired. Hey, you paid for the only fans model to come over. No, I did. Sorry, I had to close the home. I think the funniest outcome would be Harbaugh actually come into the dolphins and bringing Stu Puntley with them. And he got in Sunday style like for Chino. I'm going on a new expansion team and I'm bringing Willie Beeman as my first signing. And the credits be amazing. A nice reunion for Stu Puntley who was there last year when Tua was out. Tank the dolphin season. He can live in the same air B&B. Crazy that age eight of the 32. That seems like a pretty high number for NFL coaching of people. Some of them are as bright. We said on Sunday that we said going to Sunday that Pittsburgh Baltimore was a loser who leaves town match. I just really felt like whoever lost second was done. Quickly four more rules, but where have any team that reminds you of 2007 Giants? Maybe the chargers? I don't think their defense is good enough as the problem, but it's that kind of blueprints 17, 14 type games. But I don't think we have that team this year. Make sure the team of the home field advantage actually has a home field advantage. It's really crucial for the Eagles. The Eagles at home, their fans can just get really bummed out and kind of surly if it's a certain type of game where I almost wonder. You mean the zero pass completion in the second half? Yeah, we watch it. You know, it's, yeah, it's, there's a vibe that can unfold in those games. And I got to be honest, I'm a little worried about the Sunday night pass game. Hmm. Why? Just cold night, late. Just I don't know your mass haul brothers will have been drinking all day. Like that's what I'm lining after. It might be burnt. It might be, might be peaking around three in the afternoon. I don't know. I just those day games always worry me. 18, look at the quarterbacks again. In rule number 19, don't try to be hero. Just try to win money. So there's some good, good ones to apply to the six games. We'll take a break. We're going to come back and we're going to hit all the, does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void. But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them. In fact, you can even target buyers by job title industry company roles in your tea skills, company revenue. And did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads, spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit for the next one. Go to LinkedIn.com slash lead to claim your offer terms and conditions apply. Games. All right. We talked about it in the manifesto Rams minus 10 and a half panthers. Give us your, your wacky angle for this game first, Billy. I have two angles for this one. If you'd like to or I could just give you one, no, you can double up. Okay. We got all the time in the world. All right. So, what's the angle? Is this Bryce Young's Powerball game slash playoffs? Is this the game where they were out on him two years ago? They they drafted him. Didn't work out. Last year they benched him. It took a car accident for Andy Dalton to then get removed. You bring Bryce back. He then plays this season. He does well. It seems like he's not what they thought he was going to be as number one pick, but he's now gotten them to the playoffs. It's hard to find a franchise quarterback in the playoffs. If he somehow pulls off a miraculous win, does he do enough with the panthers who are notorious for mismanaging everything in their organization? They still don't need to do this. They still have a fifth year option that they could give from 26.5 million and he still is a year on his rookie deal. But if he does it and they can tag him after that. Yeah. But if he does it, is this something that gets the emotions to a place where they give him the Daniel Jones four years, 160 million dollars here? So we're calling it out the Daniel Jones. It's a power ball. It's one game and you win life changing money because you know, you just have the one game. You also have like Joe Flacco. You can go back to 2012 when he had the playoffs run where he was done with his rookie deal. He wins the Super Bowl. He gets the long term deal. And at the time, there's like 120 million, but it was like one of the highest average annuals. I mean, it really should be called the Flacco. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the Jones when it's Bryce Young, you sign them to the deal and then it completely falls apart. Like, we're not looking for something like this is a statement game. He's arrived. Now he's here. This is a, he has one game. They make a bad deal, give him all this life changing money and then it's like, oh no. Now our hands are tied. Now we need to figure out how to get out from under this contract because we're just kind of stuck in the middle for the rest of time. Can I add an addendum to this? Okay. Chicago, Philly and Carolina, awesome. How win, which the first two, first two teams are home. This is an unrealistic. We would get the Bryce Young trade referendum Super Bowl in round two. Chicago versus Carolina. Hmm. If you remember, controversial trade once upon a time. And now if Bryce Young gets killed in Chicago, doesn't that solve your issue? He wins the playoff game but then gets killed by the team that they made this crazy trade for Bryce Young and then he does get the contract. If he beats the Rams and Chicago, now we're in a trade young 2018 situation where now you're a French-esque guy. Hmm. Until you're not. What's your other angle? My other angle. Does Matthew Stafford know the MVP races over or is he going to try to be doing too much? So there's the whole map you think goes through the playoffs? I think that he thinks that there's too much going on here. I was going and I was looking on like message boards of Ram fans seeing what they're talking about, seeing if they're excited. And it's just conspiracy theories over why Matthew Stafford is the MVP of the league. They are so upset that Drake May could win the MVP that they're just looking into different things. It's an obsession that they have. So here are some of the things that they've come up with. They are trying to make the argument that a one yard touchdown pass, which you have said and others have said, he would have just kind of pat his stats and then he'd go in there and he'd lead the league and touchdowns. The argument by Rams fans who was being made was that the one yard touchdown pass is actually the hardest of the touchdown pass is to come by because all you have is 11 yards of field to work with. At any other point in time, you have a wide open field. So it would be easier to get any other touchdown than in a crowded 11 yards. Do you buy into that theory? No. Especially not when I have Devonte Adams who like his last remaining like super elite skill is to catch these short telephone booth passes. All right. Do you want to hear another theory that they have going on? I'd love to hear all the theories. By the way, the Rams fans were the ones who were planning the parties in New Orleans in 2001. See now I'm going to root against the ramps. I don't like this Rams red thing at all. I think you wanted to root against the Rams just like. Yeah. I think that that was the good for it. Yeah. All right. So here's another theory that they have out there. They believe that Drake may intentionally patissus stats and pass a rating by taking sacks that because that doesn't count against you in pass a rating to prevent Matthew Stafford from winning a quarterback triple crown of touchdowns yards and quarterback rating. And their argument was that Drake may was sack 24 more times in Matthew Stafford, but only had 50 more sack yards. So therefore, these were all like close sacks where he could have easily just thrown the ball away, but was opting not to do so so that he would have a higher pass. That's amazing. So as somebody who watched every snap this season, first of all, he's running for his life 12% of the time because there are offensive line, especially when they have left tackle, but he was really good at almost getting out of the sack and then getting chased down. So there's a lot of ones where he should have been sacked further back in the line of the scrimmage, but was able to kind of fight for survival for five years. So that doesn't add up to what we watched the season. Listen, don't shoot the messenger. So that's all leading to with those theories out there is Matthew Stafford going to think that he's still trying to prove to people that he's the MVP. And if you remember, we talked about it earlier last game against the Panthers. He had two interceptions. One of them was in the end and then another quick one that's trying to get a foul too. Then he had the fumble at the end of the game that ruined the game. I started looking at Fandall dual, but he's Stafford plus one 30 for an interception might be some. If he's trying to force things, the weather's also not supposed to be great there. I looked into because of the manifesto, I started looking into the weather in Carolina. Accu weather says that a bank of America stadium 70s degree real feels 66% cloudy chance thunderstorms. It's going to rain probably second half of that game. Like it did the last time when he had that fumble. Is it Rico Doudal time? Could you be doing the Marshawn Lynch beast mode versus the 2010 Saints? Amazing. Sad in play. You know what I want to parlay? I want to parlay that pick that Billy is describing. I'll see if Fandall lets me do it. No, they don't let you parlay the picks. Oh, that's right. You can't parlay interceptions with anything. No, because I wanted to do the Bryce Young. I actually looked at the Bryce Young pick parlayed with the Matthew Stafford pick. I thought that how fun was that? A perfect everybody throws a pick in this game game and you can't do it. Really? Because I was going to do it with Karen Williams over 64 and a half rushing yards. Because I think that McVeigh is going to try and protect Matthew Stafford from himself. And I think if the Rams get up by really, you know, any 10 points, then we're going to see a ton of Blake Corm and Karen Williams touches in the second half. They're just going to try and run the game out. I had another MVP wrinkle off Billy's MVP wrinkle. It isn't played for Drake, man, Matthew Stafford, the winning the MVP, but having a terrible round run playoff game and losing. And then they announced the MVP after a K into Dirk Nuitzky. You remember what happened with our guy, Dirk? We love Dirk Nuitzky. Nothing was more awkward than the Lee Warriors knocking Dirk out and then Dirk. Like here's your MVP. Thanks. Also, David Tepper, what's he going to be capable of in the luxury box? I think he's an ankle. Is it an ankle? The much more lined over the years, David Tepper. It would have crazy fresh. I don't want to make it into an AR. He has too much money. I can't afford a defamation lawsuit. So if the Rams win, they go to Seattle for round two in the screen bear, San Francisco win. If you look at the nerd stuff, it's a massacre. The Rams had the 9th highest DBO ever. Carolina was 25th offense, DBOA in 22nd defense. EPA was just as bad. There's one thing that I thought was pretty interesting beyond what we mentioned. I looked at, I really dove into, I spent a lot of time in the picks this week guys. I really like, after the 40 and 50, it was like a wake up call in a lot of ways. Aaron Schatz had a really interesting, worst DBOA to make the playoffs from 1978 to 2005. And what happened with some of those teams on the list? So the worst team ever to make the playoffs since 1978, DBOA was the 8th and 8th, 2004 Rams. What happened around one? They won. They beat Seattle, who was four point favorites. The second worst team ever was the 2010 Seahawks, who were 10.00 dogs against the Saints, they won. The next team was the strike season team, we're not counting them. 2016 Houston was the next full season team. Four point underdogs in Oakland, they won by 14. And the fourth team was the 1998 Cardinals. Seven point underdogs against Dallas, they win. And then the fifth team was the Tim Teebo, Denver Broncos, who won it over time against Pittsburgh. A seven and a half point underdogs. So there's other people on the list. The point is, there is evidence that this kind of DVOA America would happen. The problem is this would be pretty unusual from a point spread standpoint. This would be the biggest home dog that's ever covered a playoff game, basically. House I saw this that you might be interested in if you believe that Kairan Williams is going to kind of run all over them and it's a rainy day. So Fandall has a game special. Kairan Williams and Rico Dattel, each having 50 plus Rutching Yards in each half plus 40,000. In each half. So both guys go over 100. I mean, plus 40,000, that's, let's, I can't even, so it's $10. It would be $400,000. $100. Yeah. $100. Yeah, I don't know. I can't think of that. Matt, 100,000, is that what it is? Yeah, I guess. Yes. Now, if you're worried about your three, your 10 point teaser with the Rams, the last 20 times we had a straight up nine and a half, or nine and a half pointed up favorite, 19 and one straight up against that. The only time the team didn't win was the 2019 Ravens who lost to Mike variables, Tennessee Titans, 20 to 12, that's 10 point favorites. It's the only time since the Seahawks Saints game and they weren't even home dogs. So 15 years. It's a long time. Yeah. I talked about a lot of, there's a lot of me enough, Festa for this one, including nobody believes in us, the underdog. Don't pick them unless you believe they can win the cold, what the warm weather team playing or cold weather team. Now, dome team playing in humid weather or cold weather, either one, aging QB in weird weather. Is this the pick that screws over the most gamblers? Do you really want to put money on Bryce Young? The nerd evidence and then the quarterbacks. House, where are you sitting in this game? I'm going to take 20 bucks. I'm going to bet it on the Carolina Panthers money line and I'm going to kiss that 20 bucks goodbye and that's it. That's the only bet I'm making on this stupid football game. You mentioned it, the DVOA unprecedented, the point they have the same differential as the New York Giants. But this team is eight and no against the spread, the Carolina Panthers after a loss. And all of their wins this season have come after a loss. Well, they've been in pretty good home team for the most pretty good home team. Yeah. This is the biggest point spread in the history of the NFL as a home dog. I just don't have any appetite for messing with it. Like, what do you get out of this? They could go exactly the way a lot of us imagine, which is the Rams get in. They roll. But man, we watched the Rams these last three weeks. Have you really been blown away by anything you've seen out of the game? I haven't. I think you could throw on them too. You can't really. The players got co-ed her back and team back. I don't, I really don't think the Packers, the Panthers are bad. The weather was really weird in that Tampa game. Weird stuff happened in general in that game. I felt like they should have been moving the ball better in that game. The referees. They got blown over by every call. Couple props I was looking at. Puka plus 370 to have the most receiving yards in round one. Bryce was minus 118 for a pick. And there's if you just think the Rams are going to roll, you could do Puka 100 yards plus Adams TD, Rams 29 plus points and Rams money is plus 427 house. Sure. You don't have to deal with the spread. What do you like, Billy? What's your pick? I feel like the Panthers might get a backdoor cover here, but I don't see them winning the game. They just, there was a chance, there was a time where Bryce Young like 11 of his 14 wins or something like that all came on game winning drive. So it was like, he's a clutch guy, but his team has to have him be in a position to be clutch. And I just don't see it happening because I don't think that this is going to be like the last time where everything breaks their way. He had those fourth down conversions that you said, he had the long touchdowns when he needed to have them. It's a team that you've been able to throw on. I'd say the, I think since week 13, they're towards the bottom of the league in defense on passes where earlier in the season weeks, one through 12 there, it's towards the top of the league. So you can throw on them, but I don't think that they're going to win the turn of a battle plus three again like they did last time. So it's just, it's a nice story, but the Rams, I think, are just too much for the Panthers. I think this is the one I'm probably punting on for ringer 107, but for posterity in the eternal quest to go undefeated against the spread and the playoffs, we kind of have to make a pickhouse. Well, here's the thing and Billy just described it to us. The Rams are up the back doors and play 31 14. The Rams are up to, they beat the crap out of Caroline all day long. They let Caroline score one touchdown in the first half. And one touchdown was six minutes left in the fourth quarter. It's 31 14. Caroline, it gets the ball and you and I both know exactly what happens when the line is 10 and a half points. The line, it feels like you're getting a flash sale on extra points for the Panthers. 10 and a half at home is insane. I mean, literally we'd be making history with this as a home as, yeah, it's a, I'm probably slightly in for Panthers plus 10 and a half, but I think it's at a ringer one of seven, but just for posterity. This was nine and a half, it's weird. If it was nine and a half, I'd probably like, fine, I'll take the Rams, but 10 and a half, like you could be down 17 with two minutes left and cover, you know, and we know the Panthers can throw the ball in their behind. We've watched and do it. So I don't mind the Panthers. I didn't think they were terrible. I felt worse about other playoffs teams. All right. So the big boys Packers bears Saturday night. Narratives include the green Bay owns the Bears just perennially. Bears trying to shed that. There's some nobody believes in us with the Bears. There's some Michael Parsons viewing theory going on with the Packers. There's some major luck shit going on with the Bears being the luckiest team to lead. The Bear, the Packers had multiple games when like they didn't punt but lost, which usually doesn't happen. What's your biggest angle for this one, Billy? I've two for this one also. Okay. All right. First storyline to watch. Matt LaFlore versus Ben Johnson. Have that ran down as well. Maybe rivalry because at the moment, at the moment, it's a very one-sided rivalry in favor of Ben Johnson who seems to be trying to make this a rivalry at Matt LaFlore who is not paying attention to him whatsoever in terms of like this is a rivalry. So it starts with Ben Johnson, introductory press conference. They ask him one of the reasons you came here, whatever. And he throws out there. I like beating Matt LaFlore twice a year. So then Matt LaFlore goes on a podcast. He goes on busking with the boys and they ask him like, hey, would you make of those comments that Ben Johnson said? And he said, I don't really know Ben Johnson. So there's no beef whatsoever. So he kind of like insane. It's a diffusing. Yeah. And also at the same time escalating like, I don't know who this person is, but I'm going to take the higher ground here and pretend that I am not aware of Ben Johnson. So he's basically like, he's basically like, I don't want to punch down. Yeah, exactly. It's always insulting. Exactly. Exactly. So I was like, a very, very backhanded like, I'm not getting into this. I'm Matt LaFlore. So that's kind of last we hear of it until they play each other where they have two very quick like frosty exchanges after each game was very brief. There was nothing very welcoming there. There was nothing that you felt like, okay, these are guys that like respect each other or have respect for each other, right? And then that seemingly end of it, unless you want to read between the lines and you want to read into comments that weren't directed directly at Matt LaFlore, which has been Johnson. So Ben Johnson in the post game press conference after week 18, he was asked like, why did you have your starters out there? Because you look at teams like the Eagles who rested their starters. You look at the Packers who rested the starters. Now, the Packers had reason for resting their starters. They were pretty much locked in at seven. And also the Packers last year had injuries in week 18 against the Bears. So they said, you know what, we're not going to mess around with this again. We're just going to rest. Exactly. Exactly. Mike is out. Jordan gets now an extra week of rest headed into the playoffs. So like it benefits them to rest their players. However, Ben Johnson is, you know, one of the young and up and coming rough football guys from the world of Dan Campbell. And when they ask him like, why did you play your starters here? He said, we play football. Is that a backhanded, is that a backhanded message over towards Matt LaFlore saying, you know what, you're, you're not taking every advantage. You're playing football. You're not respecting the game. You're not playing the full 18, 18 weeks of the season. You're backing out. That's not us. We play football come hell or high water. Yeah. That feels like a fuck you house. I mean, on the one hand, I love it. It also will be hilarious. If LaFlore, you know, if Green Bay wins and, and, and the media, well, he wouldn't do it because that, that would be evidence of beefing down. But we, you know, he, if he slipped in there, we played football today. That would really just be that would take the next level. Really smart for him to play it the way he played it because he got the extra week to just prepare for the bears, right? Although the Eagles almost screwed that up by that whole bear, that whole thing, he could have been preparing for the bears for a week and then also they're putting the Eagles anyway. I didn't mind it though, especially when you have a QB coming off in concussion. They've had some offensive lion injuries. Like, let's be ready for this one. What's the other angle you had, Billy? Well, and on that one real quick, another thing that you can watch for in the post game press conference, we talked about it with Shield, this week on the Ringer NFL show. So this game, because they split it now, they're, they're facing off in the playoffs. And his set up situation where either coach in the post game press conference can say, I like beating the other team twice a year. So they can bring it back and now there's three games. So it's not undefeated, but either Ben Johnson or Matt LaFlore can come out and send a message to the other one saying, I like beating Ben Johnson twice a year. I like beating Matt LaFlore twice a year. So that's still in play if you want to watch after the game. We hold on one thing on that. The dots catches the onside kick. That means the packers beat the Bears twice this season. Yeah. And then we move into the land of it's so hard to beat a team three times in one year. Hmm. Did Dobbs intentionally miss the onside because they knew they'd be playing each other again? I don't know. Wow. Who knows? Who did they tell him? It's much easier to go this route. It's also a little easier. It is easier though for them now. It makes more sense that they would win the play after. You also then like show them like you give them this false sense of confidence. Look, we beat them during the regular season. Maybe then you go to overtime so you see them kind of whip out some tricks that maybe they weren't planning on showing you. Yeah. So now you may have an advantage and maybe giving them that game if you look back. Who knows? It they stumbled into an advantage was not their intention, but I think it's better that they lost. Okay. What's your next angle? All right. Here's another angle. There's a battle presently going on. I don't know if you know this or foam heads. So obviously everybody knows about the cheese heads that the packers wear. I don't know if you cut on to this, but after the game winning touchdown, DJ Moore wore a cheese greater head and he was celebrating the game with a cheese greater head. And the bears, the bears have since been wearing cheese greater heads now. We've done some research into this situation. Here's the deal. Okay. Those cheese greater heads were made by a company called foam party hats and foam party hats initially was making cheese heads until the packers sent them a cease and desist and told them you need to stop making cheese heads in 2024. Orish. So to respond to the cease and desist, they said, we are now going to make cheese greater heads. And now that is why they've made these heads and they didn't really catch on at first, but now since that game winning touchdown, DJ Moore wearing it, now these hats are becoming a thing that you'll see out there. And it's all because of a cease and desist that the packers sent to a company that was at one time supporting them. And this is all leading to the packers winning. And somebody in the packers taking the cheese greater head and doing this. Mm hmm. I think that's what you just laid out is great for the packers house. I couldn't agree more. I love that's that's like just chalkboard shit. Exactly. You're actually making cheese greater hats. Fuck you. Right. Who are you? You're the bears. What are you doing? There's another thing here, Billy, that you didn't mention. Okay. Bears kind of felt like a little cheap shotty and that love hit. That knocked love and the that can cost them and the multiple packers have mentioned it. Yeah. That they didn't like the hit. So you got that one too. There's some chalkboard material all over the place here. So you think maybe there's a maybe there's a little late. Oh, we didn't hear the whistle on Caleb Williams possibly here. Very possible. From the nerds that's the most appalling thing, packers finished 19th defensively in DBOA and EPA 21 past 19 runs. So their defense has been great, but they've also been begged up. The bears have been just bad on defense as we discussed. Chicago's three wins. They beat Green Bay and OT on the onside kick game. They beat Pittsburgh by three and they beat Philly by nine. Those were their best three wins. And as many people have mentioned, they easily could have been seven and ten this year if you just switched the luck a little bit. There's only three manifesto games here are rules here. The discount first five to six weeks of the season, which is when the packers look pretty unsopable. Don't dismiss the nerd evidence. So the bears thing. It's an issue. The head coach is rule number 15. We talked about is there a coach that you're worried about? Why don't we have like a clapper this year? There's some Nat La Flore stuff that's out there. There's some Nat La Flore detractors. There's some packer fans who were like, not sure about this guy. There's been some up and down stuff with him. There's some people are like, look at his record. He's been successful over a year. He's made it work with every QB. And there's been some other people who are like, what is he won? What about this game? What about that game? So it's just warrants mentioning there's a blueprint here of packers dominate the game. Just get there to fucking lucky plays. However those happen. La Flore screws up something. That's what worries me because fellas, I love the green bit of packers in this game. And this is the first lock for me. Packers minus one and a half in Chicago. I just think they're better and I think they're going to be able to throw all over the bears. And I think you can. We saw San Francisco move the ball. Would they score five straight touchdowns in that bearers game? I just think they're going to be able to move the ball up and down the field on them. And I watch both of the games they played. I thought the packers. I just think they're better. And if the bears win this game, it will be a fucking voodoo game. So that's where I stand. Where do you stand house? I don't like the strategy that they used last week of playing everybody and trying to win that Lions game and putting them miles on themselves and losing anyway. They lost. That's the worst part of the worst part is they lost. That defense was on the field for 70 plays over 70 plays. Like their by week was week five. Like it's time to read like this time of the season. So there is already a strategy advantage that I think the green Bay has. And you know, I think this factors into the little floor. Johnson assessment. Like one guy has been here before. Now he did. He learned the hard way, right? He played his guys in week 18 last season and they came in. They still gave Philadelphia everything. Philly wanted in Philadelphia in round one, even with the injuries that they suffered. But you know, I think very quietly. They're coming in here very prepared, not intimidated one bit. Ready to kind of establish their version, their game script here at the very outset of this. The counter will be the bear's ability to establish the run. The run has been their bread and butter. Yeah. Can they run the ball down the Packers through? That's right. Jacob's always talk about Jacob's when he's healthy. And it seems like they got Jacob's pretty healthy for January and I think they can run the ball in the bears. I just think they could be able to move the ball in the bears. And I'm always going to take that. I actually like the Packers and a tease just as much to plus four and a half. But for the purpose of this, we'll go minus one out. So what do you have in this game? I think I have the Packers winning this one also. I feel like you mentioned the fact that the bears had their buy in week five. The Packers also had their buy in week five. And I think that you were talking about the coaching and the floor. The floor may have shown us kind of the advantage in coaching a longer period of time by saying, you know what, we haven't had red. And it was not even in this game. It was last week. We haven't had red since week five. We're already locked in. Let's get our guys healthy because there's nothing we can really do here but hurt ourselves. So let's go into this as healthy as possible as rest of this possible where, you know, the bears are going into it and they're just kind of wanting Ben Johnson wanted to prove himself in the league. He plays everyone when he already had the two seed didn't realize, I guess, that the Eagles had, you know, for essentially the two seed. He could have looked up at any point in time and realized what was going on and that they were safe with the two seed anyways and rested his guys. But that's not what happened. So they're lucky that they didn't get anybody heard and they're going in at full strength. But I feel like the fact that the Packers got that extra week of rest. They gave themselves a buy headed into the playoffs is going to be beneficial because I mean, both games that they played, they've played this what the third time in like six weeks that they played each other, they know each other. Both games were very close. So I think that health might be what the advantage is in this situation and that's where the Packers kind of have the advantage, the upper hand. One of my favorite theories in play two here, House. The Bears, whoom's last like really important bears playoff game. It was the crowd going. It's a it's a Saturday night. It's the most important bear for a lot of people. People bringing their kids who were 13 who've never been to a huge Bears game. People flying in Ishtaggo. And sometimes if you can punch those teams in the mouth, early that crowd gets like super shell shocked. On the flip side, if it goes well for the bears right away, it becomes like the most festive fucking crazy atmosphere. So I whatever the I almost felt like the first quarter you're going to know whoever you picked, you're thinking I'm like, Oh, man, I can't. It's going to be one of those. You'll know in the first half hour with this game, I think. The weird thing about those two games is that both like they ended up being great games, but both first halfs kind of sucked. So there's think once week 14 is seven three and a half time, week 16 is six nothing at half time. Like they were both not good games at the beginning and turned into great ones in the second half. The bears did that a few times this year where they just limp along offensively for two plus hours. I do the burden pieces. I think a fun wrinkle for this because he really was good in that week 17 game against the Niners and kind of in Collins words, just making it seem like he knew this was coming for weeks, but it was really like his breakout game. But if they can get a dunesay back and have actually some weapons, but I like the Packers. Well, this next one is my favorite of the six on the board, Bill's Jags. I've tipped this off a couple times this week. I love the Jaguars in this game. I can't believe they're not favorite. Like I literally can't believe it. Weighted DBOA, their third. They have some really nice wins, including beat Houston by seven beat the Chargers by 29, one in Denver by 14, killed Carolina, beat San Francisco by five. Buffalo's big wins are the Pats where they came back from 21 down and one by four. And then they killed Pittsburgh. And that was it. They had as easy of a schedule as, as the Patriots did mildly warm weather, which I think we have to mention. We don't know if Josh Allen's completely healthy. We don't know if we trust the bills kicker at all. Bill's defense last two months gave up 30 to Billy's Miami Dolphins, 32 to Tampa, 34 to Cincinnati, 31 to the Pats. And most important, the Jags of one eight straight. And they beat Denver and they, they really whooped Denver and the, and the Chargers did 31st downs in that Chargers game. I don't get it. What am I missing Billy? All right. So here is my storyline for this game. Just Trevor Lawrence pull the classic Royal Rumble move where he's just been forgotten essentially sneak back into the conversation and win a playoff game because everybody's painting this game as, look, there's now a clear path. There's no roadblocks for Josh Allen. My homes is out. Lamar Jackson is out. There's no Joe burrow. There's only one stadium that Josh Allen hasn't played in his career. It's Levi's stadium is this his, is super bowl of destiny for Josh Allen this season. And we've completely forgotten about Trevor Lawrence. Trevor Lawrence comes into the league and he's viewed as, this is a generational quarterback. This is the best quarterback we've seen since Andrew Luck was the best quarterback. We've seen, you know, since paid manning. And then he goes and he has the first season where he has like a bad season, but that's urban Meyer. So there's an asterisk for Trevor Lawrence on his first season. Big fat asterisk. Second season, nine and eight wins five straight games, goes to the playoff. They're losing that game the entire time. The Chargers game. An absolute collapse by the Chargers. So he wins that game. Next season Trevor Lawrence, like, hey, this is the year. The Trevor Lawrence, he arrived last season. He took a scene. The playoffs gets that playoff. When this is the season that he takes that next step, eight and eight season, five straight losses to end the year. They missed the playoffs. Then he gets injured last year. This season starts out five and four. So you're kind of like, you know what? This, this may not actually happen for Trevor Lawrence. Oh, we, we were on this podcast. I was out done. Okay. Cause when you blow two in a row, this is the years. I'm out. That it seemed like he, okay. So him and Josh Allen were kind of opposite, right? Where Josh Allen came in. He's a number seven pick. His team is booing and the fans are booing the draft pick. He has a complete disaster for a season in terms of turnovers. Then Brian Dable fixes him and then all of a sudden, he makes his way up to like top one tier one or tier two of quarterbacks. And then he's in the discussion. Then it becomes a question of like, well, when is he going to finally win the big one? When is he going to get over that hump when he beats the chiefs? And then he wins the MVP. So we kind of like give him a pass. So it's like, okay, well, Josh Allen's there. Now he has a clear field. So now the pressure on Josh Allen. Trevor Lawrence is that, is that rest that goes in? He leaves five minutes into the Royal Rumble. He's laying outside by the announcer's booth. He's forgotten. He's hiding under the ring. No one remembers the Trevor Lawrence. He's hiding under the ring. I like. Yeah. He's pulling a forward. He's getting knocked out. I don't even remember. Yeah. He's still there. He's, he's, it's a Jericho. You forget that he's even still in the match until there's like three people left. All of a sudden he slides right back into the conversation. That's where Trevor Lawrence is because you were saying like you were out on him earlier this year on the NFL show as she'll we were talking about. Did these quarterbacks have it? Like are these quarterbacks? Like these are just not good quarterbacks. And the number one conversation that we had is are these good quarterbacks was Trevor Lawrence. And since we had that conversation. I remember I listened to that in New York City in November. And I felt like that was the same Trevor Lawrence conversation for two years. Does he have it? What's going on here? Then he went on an eight game win streak and he shut us up very quickly. A fire under him. Yeah. But everyone again has forgotten Trevor Lawrence in the conversation of next round of quarterbacks. And now there's a new batch of young quarterbacks were there. And Trevor Lawrence is existing in this nice world where there doesn't seem to be any pressure on him whatsoever. And I wonder if now this is when he thrives. You know who hasn't forgotten about him? His teammates. Did you see the diamond grow video? He's a girl that they gave him. Like it's weird because I always was like he seems like a kind of a strange teammate. But his teammates are all in. I've watched him. I've studied him in the post game win videos when they the coach turns it over to the QB. It really does seem like he's emerged. House. He's 10 10 touchdowns three zero interceptions as last three home games. They've won eight straight. He killed Denver in Denver. That was when I gave up. I was like, this guy's good. Denver's a good team. He went in there and he ramped it up their butthole. House. What are your Trevor Lawrence's thoughts? Well, you you hit on one of the key aspects to this Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars have been very good at home this year. This is a good home team. They have a good crowd. Good crowd. They have three wins over playoff teams as well as good wins over the chiefs early in the season. And I would say a good win over the Colts who they kind of own. So glad you mentioned that. Yeah, they beat they beat Casey and Indiana Indianapolis when those teams are actually good. And they don't get counted in the playoff lands, but they were playoff lands at the time. So they've had seven really good wins. And and you know, by contra distinction, this is the splits between Buffalo at home and Buffalo on the road are stark. Yeah. And so I just feel like, you know, I can see that Jacksonville crowd. I can see, you know, the the symbiosis between Lee and Cohen and Trevor Lawrence, you know, they finally are at a spot where they're speaking the same love language. They understand, you know, how to tickle each other. And it's been very successful. The thing we'll see is their ability to establish the run and especially establish the run outside. That's been Buffalo's bugaboo all season long, but I just love. I mean, do you think the bills are that good? I don't get it. It's basically Josh and Josh some duct tape and some thumbtacks and some James Cook. I mean, James Cook, the run game, the run game. But I'm saying we've seen over and over again, they've come behind, they've fallen behind and then Josh brings them back, which is what happened in the second pass game. Yeah, James Cook's really good. Can Trevor Lawrence. Jacksonville can take James Cook out so it will come down to a Josh thing again. Well, I think that they have what they have like one of the league's best like rushing defenses. So it's best rushing against the best rushing defense. It's a classic. Something's got to give game here, you know. Yeah. What what do you think the Trevor Lawrence can lose a week where he's gifted grills by his teammates and then randomly shows up at a fan bar and is squatted by fans who put him over their shoulder. I would say no. I think this is the house that I rolled. I've just seen this too many times now. This is why I think round two is going to be Jacksonville, New England to make the super ball. I just think they have the look. They've hit every checkpoint. They're home. They're somehow underdogs. There's no there's no world where this should be bills by one and a half. Like if you gave me, I think this line should be like Jacksonville by two and a half. From Manifesto, nobody believes in us. They got that. They got the cold weather team playing in human weather. They have the nerd evidence and they have the home field of vantage and Buffalo. The only thing you would point to them is like Trevor Lawrence is going to turn to a pumpkin. He's been waiting to do this to you for nine weeks. Don't trust him. But I kind of trust him after the Denver game. I thought he answered all the questions. I have a prop for you. ETN 60 plus rushing yards. Tutan 20 plus rushing yards. Lawrence 20 plus rushing yards. Jack's plus one and a half plus 458 halves. Just back in the old Jags running the ball a little bit. Because I think I'd be able to run the ball. So I get it. I want to get it on that. So send it to me. And also the sat. If you think Buffalo is going to win this game, the South Special is in play. Jags win in the first half. Buffalo win in the game. Big Josh. I don't come back. That's plus 650 Billy. I love the Jags plus one and a half. I love the Jags in any tease. How's the night I promise you will be teasing the Jaguars and the Packers this weekend. I already know it. I know we're going to text about it. Billy, who do you have? I have the Jaguars winning. I also I feel like there's they have the momentum. Yeah. Lawrence has no one paying attention to him. I feel like they're going to establish the run with ETN. I mean, his over 15 and a half rushing attempts is plus 110. If you want to take in the bills have a good, uh, they have a good past defense. So they're probably going to want to establish running against the bills. I feel like, you know, maybe weather comes into play. Maybe it gets a little wet here. But I think that the Jaguars kind of pull this one out. And we didn't mention the other coach that is a little gamey for these playoff. Sean McDermott. He seems to sneak by every year and every year is like stuff that I never feel great about. I thought I was out on this bill's team as a playoff threat when they had the Brandon Cooks variable and that was that the Eagles game when Brandon Cooks made the big play. And it was like, Brandon Cooks is on the bills. I had no idea. We've reached that point of the receivers for these guys. It's like, can't call them. It's a healthy scratch. I just don't think I think the Jags can get explosive plays. I think they can run the ball. And I think their defense is good. They're going to be fired up and nobody believes in them. We're going to take one more break. We'll do the other three games. Eagles minus four and a half 49ers is our next game. This is a Saturday afternoon. Er, it's probably going to be cold. The nerd stats do not like San Francisco's defense. I don't like San Francisco's defense. They lost their two best players. They patched up together. Now they've lost all their linebackers. They got run up and down the field by the bears. And then that Seahawks game in week 17 fell like that could have been a more of a blowout than it was. San Donald and other ideas. San Francisco's last 10 games. They've averaged 27.5 points a game, even with the stinker against Seattle. Philly's last nine games is 19 points a game. Philly's laying four and a half on this. The only case I can think of for Philly here is that it's hard for them to score points and it's easier for San Francisco to score points. And if you just do the points, these games, this will be in the 20s and it'll be close and take the points. Billy, I don't want to take the points. But what's your angle? I have three storylines to watch in this one. First story line to watch is the fix in. So if you start looking at this game, do you want the Eagles to go on a deep run here? Do you want a potential situation where you have an established team in the Superbowl? Where we talked about there aren't really name brands. If you're buying into the fact that the fix may be in in any games in this playoffs, it might be this one where the head of fish fell assigned to this game is Alan. So Alan. It has been an official in the NFL since 2016. He wears number 76. That's not important. But he grew up in Williamsport, PA allegedly grew up in Eagles fan. And in games that he's officiated, the Eagles have an eight in one record where the 49ers have a three and six record. Oh, wow. There'd be home cooking with this officiating crew. I like it. This is good. Good start. Strengthens our Eagles case. What do you got next? All right. What's the expiration date on a revenge game? Because a lot that's being talked about in this game is going back to the NFC championship game a couple of years ago, which ended up being a disastrous game. Where Brock Purtie goes out, Josh Johnson goes out. Yeah, that's. And also like, was it the Eagles fault that their guys got hurt? It's, I mean, the 49ers fans seems to be holding this against the Eagles for all of these years. But can you have a revenge game if the first game is an NFC championship game? And the second one is a wild card weekend round. Like I feel like this is not fitting of the title of revenge game. But both fan bases are trying to make this a thing. It seems that's dumb. Yeah. I don't agree with it. The, the Eagle defense, like look at the personnel. It's basically 100% different. Well, and it's also 100%. Does anybody hurt on Philly's defense anymore? Isn't, aren't they healthy and they're healthy and ready to roll? Yes. Yeah, this is what's the third angle, Billy? All right. Here's a storyline that you should watch that has come out a report that came out this week that you might want to look into. It doesn't affect this game because it's in Philadelphia. However, there has been a study into this electrical substation outside of Levi's stadium. We read this. Okay. So keep it on that situation because that is something that could play out in the Super Bowl because it's in Levi's stadium. And it could be an explanation for why it is that the 49ers have been getting so hurt. You have a guy who's the founder of something called Sunlight is Life, which is described as a platform for transforming your relationship with light for maximum impact on health. And he went out there with something called a Gauss leader and he started taking readings at the practice field. Yeah. Where he said the reading is 8.5 milligouses when the average is somewhere. And I think like the point three to five range, then he went and he went to like the weight room and the milligouses were somewhere in the 10 to 25 range. And then they were telling the leaves. They started again, testing with them. Well, I start wondering why they figured out the situation. There's a lot of milligouses going on apparently near Levi's stadium. Apparently because of the fact that there's this substation right next to the stadium, there's an increased exposure to chronic ELF and that ends up affecting card lages and can lead to ruptures. So the explanation for why it is that the 49ers have been so hurt over the years and why people get hurt at Levi's stadium. Some people have said it's probably the turf. It's probably the playing surface. But no, it might be this substation that's right across the street from Levi's stadium. Well, you undersold they have what was it? They had like way more tendon injuries than everybody else the last 10 years. Like a much like a kind of aberration type of number. It's tendons ligaments, all of and Achilles, all of those injuries. It's way higher than the average. Not just with them, but with visiting teams coming and getting hurt. It's something that should be considered maybe not for this game because it's a road game. But someone needs to look into this situation. Don't worry. I had it down as as one of the manifesto rules that apply to this game. Rule number five, but where of any team that could use a notable off field distraction or tragedy is a galvanizing force. Could it be the Niners like a like a normal ray or so quid situation, the work pearlitarian rising up to protest the ELM bands them together? I don't know. We found it. We thought it didn't exist, but we found the round. Right. They'd be like they refused to play in round two if they don't fix the electromagnetic force. That's in danger in their tennis. I thought that was the weirdest story of the year. The years only eight days old. The other one was the Ashley Tidstale mom group toxic mom group story. Yeah. If you followed that one, then there's people in the mom group came flying back at her. I don't know. How did you even follow this one? I don't know this one. Ashley Tidstale wrote an essay about her toxic mom group that shut her out and excluded her and how mean everybody was. And then the mom group started lobbing shots back. And this is my wife's Super Bowl. I have the NFL playoffs. My wife had this Hillary Duff's husband was then like sub tweeting her basically like taking pictures like the picture that she put in her essay. And then they started breaking in like seemingly non celebrity moms in this mom group and putting out pictures of their whole family like, look at this person. This is who this is. You should hate that. It's very weird. It's very weird. And here's the thing about Ashley Tidstale that I think she's going to learn. And I am not, my wife is not part of any celebrity mom groups, but something that she'll learn normal mom groups, normal dad groups, exactly the same and exactly as toxic as celebrity mom and dad groups is when you're going to fight. Don't exclude us. Nothing has any, the celebrity has nothing to do with it. They are toxic people in all of these parent groups. You're not going to escape it. Yeah. It's the mom spend more time talking about the other moms in the group than their own kids. No, I can't believe that she had that party and didn't invite blank. And then that's just like three days of text and arguments. And yeah, it is, it's never really been captured in the TV show. I've never seen it captured correctly, like in an HBO, the whole mom group concept. You think that's the angle? I don't think it's enough. That's probably what has been captured. But I mean, I guess the closest was big little lies got into it a little bit with the, the Nicole Kidman show with. Got into some of it, but not in the way. Maybe actually, maybe this will be a TV show. They actually did. I mean, it's the premise of like every housewives though. Like no scripted show. I get reality. Yeah, every housewives, the Mormon wives on Hulu, like all of those really capture the essence of this story. Well, the problem with the mom groups, the dad groups were just, we're just, we're just meaner. We'll cut people out the mom groups. Once people in, they kind of, they're in for life. Yeah. And once you get added to the text chain, you can't get out of that. Well, it's because there's always an ally. There's always a, yeah, they always have the one. Yeah, because that's what we saw this in college. We use these groups of giant 16 person girl groups. And then there are all these little ravories and things going on in the middle of it. You also have like the private allies that won't speak out publicly. And then you're like, what are you doing? Like you're on my side. What's happening here? Why don't you stand up for me here? That's us. Yeah. House never stands up for anybody. Um, there you. Manifest house. Any, any angles for you before I go to the manifesto for this? No, we cover Eagles. That's all right. I mean, go ahead. You're going to make the pick. Well, nobody believes in us is in play for the Niners. We mentioned the galvanizing force. Never pick an underdog unless you genuinely believe it as a chance to win. This is a big one. Rule number 14, the law of lumbarity, bad off and sublides don't travel. Doesn't look like Trent Williams in this game for the Niners. And if I knew he was playing, I would be more excited about Rams. Plus four and a half. I also don't love how McCaffrey looked the last couple of weeks with the back stuff. Ricky Peersaw might not play. We talked about all the defensive. I just don't think I just feel like sometimes a football, you can pass the point and no return with injuries. And I feel like we're there with the Niners and I wish they were healthier because I would love to go against this Eagles team coaching stuff. We talked about home field advantage. We talked about. Um, there's a parlay possibility for ringer one of seven house. With Eagles money and either under 51 and a half are over 37 half. Do you have a strong feel on over under in this? Cause we know Eagles methodical. Nick Seriani does the thing. He tries to limit the amount of minutes in the game. Cause he feels like he has a better team. But does the under 51 and a half intrigue you at all? Well, I already bet the under it opened at 46 is down to 44 and a half. I bet it again. I think this is a classic Philadelphia Eagles strangle a team. And we just watched this football team. This football game. It was the Seattle sea hawks in San Francisco winning 13 to three. As soon as this Eagles team gets to 10 points or 13 points or 16 points, the game is going to the four corners. Do you like that Billy Eagles money line with under 51 and a half? And then we don't have to worry about the hooker. You're just like Eagles plus four minus four and a half. I think I'd take a minus four and a half looking at the second part of rule number 15. Would you trust either of these coaches with your past four? Went abroad. Like Shana. Shana has kind of a seriani. I feel like would very easily lose my passport and all my possessions. Like he that's what we big dumb is for. You have to give it to big. Yeah. Sure. Well, he would have big dumb. So he went on losing. Yeah. Yeah. Managed passport. That's why he has big dumb. That's super bowl saved him because he was on the hot sea forever. And that almost seemed like if there's a coach that gets fired up to winning a super bowl with probably Nick seriani. Yeah. Just because like he seems like that type of guy. But Shana has also sneaky in a situation when you're like, are we going to get over this hump? Like there's been the injuries. There's been that substation across the street that's been sabotaging you. Obviously in your players health. But when are you going to take this to the next level? Like what's going on here? Yeah. Well, the comeback stat with him is the weirdest one. The note, note come backs from more than seven in the fourth quarter since 2017. That's got to be the weirdest set in the week. All right. So will either for a ringer one or seven, will they do Eagles minus four and a half? We'll make a game time decision on that next game. This is where house and I are friendships going to be tested Patriots minus three and a half chargers. The nerd stats favor the paths. Chargers nerd stats surprisingly disappointing, including their offense, which 26 past EPA. The paths were first. Chargers defense nine versus the past against EPA and third against the run. So that's a big strength with them. Both teams have three wins against these and teams. Chargers lost to Jacksonville by 19, Houston by four and Indianapolis when they were good by 14. The past last 14 games, Billy. What do you think they're averaging points per game? Less 14 games. 22 30 points seven. Wow. Easy schedule. They haven't scored less than 24 since week three. They've 28 games or 10 games over 28 points. And before Billy gets to his big angle on this game, I just want to say two things about the quarterbacks. Do you have quarterbacks in your angle? I have a quarterback adjacent angles. Do your angle and then I'll do my thing. All right. Well, the first angle, we can do this angle really quickly. This is the third angle, but we'll get to quickly to get it out of the way. What happened to Justin Herbert? This is kind of along the same lines of Trevor Lawrence. Justin Herbert was promised to be this guy. He's this great quarterback. It's just a situation that's not working. Oh, and two in the playoffs. He has that collapse against Trevor Lawrence. One of the worst losses. He's that he has a good record, obviously, this season 11 and six. By the way, really bad last year in the playoff game. He don't sweep that one under the rug either. He's not been good in the playoffs. He hasn't lived up to the hype, but he also kind of is living in the world of Trevor Lawrence. And it's like, oh, we just forgot about him because he didn't pan out to be exactly what we thought he'd be. Maybe he'll still get there. He's still in the playoffs. But nerds didn't forget about the nerds to love them. Well, the, the, the, the nerds have loved the chargers for the longest time because the nerds love Brandon Staley also. Like the nerds, how is their poster child was Brandon Staley? And the nerds took like a big hit. And I think it hurt their heart when Brandon Staley got fired so quickly. So they can't, they, they have, they're almost forced to love Herbert because they don't want to give up. It's like the process, right? Like they don't want to admit the process was wrong. So they're just going to keep moving the kind of the goalposts and like, no, no, we still believe in Justin Herbert. It's just circumstances. It's not just nervous. So that's one thing to look at. Here's another storyline. Is there any chance in the world that Patriot Hall of Famer, Tom Brady, wants the Patriots to win this game? Zero. No, he does like Josh McDaniels. That's the only thing he likes. He's Josh McDaniels, but he has really been put in a bad spot with this Drake May because Drake May very well may win the MVP this season. And if he wins the MVP this season, that little feud in Tom Brady has lost. They found their franchise quarterback. They win an MVP. Now if he doesn't win the MVP, but they win a playoff game, like we know Drake may is the future for the Patriots. Yeah. I don't think that Tom Brady even wants them to win this game. A guy that's in their Hall of Famer has a statue, I believe is actively rooting for the chargers to beat the Patriots just out of jealousy and spite for Drake May, which is insane because he has nothing to be jealous of with Drake May. The good news is he's not announcing this game. Yeah. I forgot to mention this as part of the Rams Panthers thing. Greg Olson is announcing the game. Boy, I might put 40 bucks on the Panthers, money line. I mean, it's just shitty to do the Rams fans. You're watching your team play a playoff game. Somebody is a nest in the game who loves the other team and can't hide it basically. I think he might even live there. Good. Olson with the Panthers, the Reff and the EOS. Yeah, that's also doing the Panthers game. I just wanted to mark that down. All right. What was your third thing, Billy? My third one, and this is like very inside that relates just to this show in his company. I'm wondering how the outcome of this game is going to affect your debut on Netflix because you're coming straight out of this game. You're not the only one wondering about this. If this is a situation, it's like the weather's going to be a little bit sloppy. 26 degrees partly cloudy, 25% chance of precipitation. You're coming right out of this game. Like literally right out like we're high. We're here. You're going to have. Hello. You're going to have no time to like decompress whatsoever. Like your actual like full emotions will be on display. How are you going to handle if the Patriots have like a late game situation where they blow this game? I did mention to somebody two days ago that if it was a Tyler book kind of ending and we were like going live four minutes later, I don't. That might be the first time I try cocaine house. Oh, I I encourage that. Please write. No, Netflix. Let's do that. No, I don't. I it's going to it's definitely a psychology experiment. I'm hoping the Patriots make it a little bit easier for us. Do you think you're going to be able to like enjoy the game knowing that that you're going to go live right after like what point do you like? I need to kind of get into podcast mode, sit down, turn the equipment on and get ready to go. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game where my team was favored to win the game. It was a playoff game. I don't know how you enjoy that. The enjoyable ones are when you're like the 2001 Pats when we were like 10.00 dogs in Pittsburgh. And it was like, you're just playing. I love the house money playoff games. This one where they're favored. I feel like the AFC is open. I feel like they're better than most people think they are including house. So that there's a lot of stake in the big angle for me on top of your angles. I genuinely think Drake Bay is like special as a quarterback. I really feel like he's great. Like he's like my homes in 2018 right after a while. You're like, this guy's fucking great. Well, you know, you know, then he won a playoff. You know, you just say Daniels last year who won two road playoff games. Jaden Daniels, who's I heard this year, but last year. I could say that at some point we watch Jaden Dan and he's like, this guy's great. And we've had this happen with quarterbacks. Every once in a while on the playoffs where and I just think he has it. I think his teammates think he has it. So for me, it's like, I think they're going to be able to move the ball. They got their left tackle back. I think they're going to be able to run the ball a little more than people realize because of Ramadre and Henderson coming on. And I think the chargers have a lot of trouble, especially if Hampton's not 100% healthy. They don't score a lot of points. The chargers, what do they have? It's basically like 19 points a game. Their last 10 or something. They just, they play 17, 14, 20 to 16 type of games, right? Herbert and the playoffs, I like. He's also fumbled a lot lately. He only had two fumbles in the first 12 games. He's fumbled about five times since he heard his not throwing hand. So if it's not ideal conditions, he could be turning this ball over. We have playoff, Manifesto Rue, the law of Lombardi, bad offensive lines don't travel. Who has a worse offensive line than the chargers? We have the warm weather team coming to play in the cold weather at night. We have the never pick an underdog unless you generally believe they can win, which house thinks they can win and then the home field advantage. But I just think the paths are better than people think. I don't think people realize that they didn't have milk, whims and will Campbell for four or five weeks there. And people got too fixated on the schedule. They can move the ball at number one offense by EPOA, EPA and they have a quarterback who's excellent. House make the case against them. Yeah, I'm not going to be a prick about it. I just think that three and a half is too many points. Like I wouldn't mess with this if it was two and a half or two or whatever. Like the Patriots as a home field, you know, having a home field advantage is as a 14 and three two seed, but like I'd leave it alone. But three and a half is too many. And there's a handful of reasons why. First of all, this Chargers team is tough. They want tough games. They have three wins over playoff teams. They swept the chiefs and we watched that money night game against the Philadelphia Eagles, still stuck in my crawl. Now, Hertz aided and abetted the demise of the Eagles in that game. But Herbert was pressured 70% of the time and took seven sacks and they won that Epping football game because their defense shut down the Eagles. Now, I'm not suggesting that, you know, the Eagles offense and New England's offense are equivalent. They certainly are not. And I don't have really have much quibble with Drake May winning MVP this year. I think there's a good case for Saferd, but if Drake May wins, I'm certainly not going to be upset. The problem I have is what you've hit on a couple of times, which is what do we know about this Patriots team against tough competition? Right. They placed one good quarterback who's Josh Allen. They split with him. Justin Herbert is going to be the second best quarterback that they face all season long. Fourteen wins for the Patriots. Eleven of those wins have come against teams with rookie quarterbacks, backup quarterbacks, or back quarterbacks that got benched. Eleven of fourteen. So that, that, you know, goes to a lot of what we were talking about with the, um, can I zag on that point? You can. I think that's why people are off the Patriots a little bit because I think people are fixated on the schedule. Well, I think it's just what happened. But I think they're actually a good team is my point. We're going to find out. They're thirteen and one in their last fourteen. We're going to find out the Buffalo game. They're up twenty one. They really could have won their last fourteen. Because I'm part I'm confused by the quarterbacks. Great. They can run the ball and throw the ball and they're home. The three and a half is a fair line. I honestly think they should be fair by four, but what do I know? I'll update you though for him. Do you think that's going to impact him at all or you think he's just got it? You know, I went back and I looked to my homes. My homes had the zero touchdown, zero picks, and his first playoff game, which they won, and then had the thirty seven, thirty one game against the Pats. I haven't seen no defense. I have like if you blitz them, he knows what to do. If you play back in zone, he kind of knows what to do. The only issue with this team is sometimes they start out slow. And there's a scenario where they start out slow. Chargers get a like the Makonky thirty five year touchdown or whatever. They're playing behind. Can I debunk the Chargers defense for a second? Because the stats are really good for them and I think people think they're really good. So I'm just going to lay out some stuff here. They put Vegas twice and they put KC twice. And I don't think does anyone think KC had a good offense even with my homes? They were fine. Like mediocre, not explosive. They couldn't run the ball. But they were 500 team. They had two games where the best wide out of the other team blew out as ACL in the first half of the game. Neighbors and Tyree Kill. So there's another two. They played broken cars and went to Minnesota. They played Tennessee. They played week 18 Denver when nobody cared. Dallas Pickens had one thirty on them. AJ that Philly game and Philly was in a coma. AJ still in up with a hundred. Sutton had six for one eighteen in the first game. Jacksonville smoked them. Indianapolis smoked them with deep balls and running everything earlier in the season. Washington beat them twenty seven ten. You remember that one house? I did. It's a big place. Houston beat them a couple weeks ago. Got two bombs in the first quarter and that made the difference. And the only one that you could really make the case their defense was awesome was when they shut down Pittsburgh. But I don't know if their defense is as good as people seem to think it is. Well, the thing they're doing on Sunday night. That's right. The thing they're good at is limiting explosives. There's a bunch of indicators that say that they don't allow deep passes. I think they're looking at that. But they've allowed a bunch of them though. Houston had two two weeks ago. That's fine. But across the entire body of the season, they're one of the very best at limiting twenty yard or deeper passes. And that's your wake guy and the unwashed and got a 50 yard around them. Oh, they're they're get a ball. Don't let their, you know, don't get a twist. I think they get them. Do you think the weather's going to allow explosive plays? Like it feels like I'm affecting the pets. Yeah, he's going to try and throw deep no no matter what. He doesn't care about the weather. I mean, I'll give you can I walk you through the worst case scenario for this game for the pets. Remand Ray Fumble. Some sort of dumb special teams thing. Drake has the first half interception that makes it. We're going to go, oh God, he's so young. Well, some big charges explosive play. You know, the hot head coaching candidate is Jesse Minter, the defense of coordinator for the for the for the chargers, right? Like every he's in, I mean, I heard his name come out in connection with with Baltimore. This is a referendum, right? This, this defect when they've had Darwin James and Cleo Mac this season, it's been a pretty good defense. Pats are pretty healthy. I'll throw this in too, guys. Everyone's taking the chargers. This has been like one of the popular. I think the most popular of the six for underdog picks is the Ben the Chargers. And I just think people are looking at the past schedule. So I like the spot, the pastor and ministering half. There's a prop. I like to hunter Henry 30 plus receiving yards on Fando with the pets. Pat's just to win. That's minus 102. I think hunter Henry will be heard from in this game. Hampton's hurt. Eduardo, who's a chargers fan who I'll probably not be talking to after Sunday night, who works on our podcast with us, reminding me that Hampton got hurt near the end of that last game. Might not be 100%. Gatsons fine. Last thing I'll give you. I'm doing a lot against tight ends. God, bad name Mike Vrable. Five times five playoff games for him played Lamar twice. Tom Brady, Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes in those five games. 19.8 points a game in those five games for the opponents. There's some losses in there. I'm just saying Mike Vrable is a good coach and I don't think he gets mentioned in this. Harbaugh. Harbaugh, good coach. How many Super Balls did Harbaugh win? The same as Mike Vrable. How many Super Balls has Vrable been to? Other than the player. I'm taking Pat's minus three and a half. How's can fuck off? We'll go into that next week. By the way, the spread that you're wrong. Percentage of bets is 64% for no England. The money is 65% in New England. The public is not on New England. That's not what the people in Boston, they think everybody's picking the chargers. I talked to my dad two hours ago. My dad said everyone's picking the chargers. That might have been an erroneous report for my 78-year-old retired father. Mass holes. Everybody's against us. Jesus. Everyone's against us. Texans, dealers. This dropped to... What it was? It minused two and a half. Went to three and a half. Now it's a three. Didn't it start a two and a half though house? It did. It definitely started a two and a half. Yes. This is another one. I love Billy. Do you love the game? Yeah, I do. Because initially I had the same instincts everyone else had of Houston. And then you start staring into it. You take a chunk of the voodoo juice that Pittsburgh has. It's just improbable. This is great. It'll be the chase game for everybody who lost money in Saturday, Sunday, put money on Houston minus three. Let's... I've just seen this too many times. Take 10 seconds. What's in voodoo juice? I mean, Iron City is the beer up there. I'm city beer. I'm brought a tiny bit of that. But what's the liquor they drink up there? That's horrible back. That's Craig. Well, let's make a voodoo juice. I'll drink it. I'll drink it from the Mante juice. Yeah, well, that's... There's Mike Tomlin's sweat. Run over of the grease from the Permanente sandwich. Yeah, there's some Permanente grease. Billy, what do you have for the angle? So I have two storylines for this one. The first one. Texans are not a Monday team. If you look at the Texans in the playoffs, the Texans are a Saturday team. They should be playing on Saturday. That's the shaky scheme. This is the first game that they have played in Wildcard Round that is not on a Saturday. There's six and two on Saturdays. When they advance and then they go and they play on Sundays, they've lost both Sunday games that they played in. They're also open to on Monday night football this season. So they're not a Monday team. Craig mentioned it earlier this week. The Steelers haven't lost a home game on Monday night football since 1991. Texans are coming in hot, but it feels like we talked about the fixed being in another game with the officials. It feels like this game was put on Monday night simply to give the Steelers a fighting chance. Like give them the day they played on Monday night football last week. Get Rogers healthy. We can't have them play on short rest six days only after Sunday night football. We'll give them the Monday night game and then things will hopefully take care of themselves. We'll get the Tomlin narrative. We'll get the Rogers narrative. Maybe this is a year he does one last run. It feels like maybe the fix was in with the scheduling on this one. Plus, the Steelers now get DK Meckhaft back where it's DK Meckhaft. You saw how important he was. That came in Cleveland. They should have wrapped up the division. They ended up not winning because of the fact there was no receivers out there. They end up kind of hanging on because of Miss Field the last week where DK would have been important to them. So DK coming back is huge, but Texans not not a Monday night football team. On top of that, there's some pretty disturbing CJ Stratt outdoor stats that I didn't love. There is some really, really alarming Houston rushing stats. And I had Woody Marks on my fantasy team. The problem with Woody Marks is he looks good for an hour and then all of a sudden he's not in the game anymore and then he's got the red flag next to him. He had a record like 12 straight games or something that he left early, I think during the season. Right, I don't trust him. Yeah, everything worked. On a Monday night, then I'm down in Nick Chubb. Houston's offense 30th EPA run. Defense first against the pass love against the run and that's the best reason to take them. Other Pittsburgh's ridiculous. You look at the Houston wins. Their best wins were Jacksonville Buffalo Chargers Niners. They came back from 19 in that Jacksonville game with Davis Mills. That was weird. They beat Mac Jones in San Francisco. No, both some Warner was right after they got hurt. They beat Buffalo and that Thursday night game that I still don't know what happened and Josh was driving at the end and they ended up losing. The Chargers game was just ridiculous where they got the two early passes, gassed and fumbled at the goal line. That was a dopey game. They lost to Jacksonville, the Ram Seattle in Denver. The big things for me is a possible house that Pittsburgh is just the good bad team. And they've roped us into this moment. And every win they've had was explicable. They wouldn't even be in the playoffs of Tyler loop can just kick kick a field goal straight. And then they go into this and Houston's defense just runs over them and we're like, God, how stupid are we? We thought Pittsburgh was gonna win that game. I'm willing to live with that outcome. This is like all the stuff. This is the worst football field, not just in professional football, but definitely in college, maybe in America. We have to go to some high school fields to find a football field as bad as this. Watch the guys when they run. It's it's saying getting kicked up every single time. Right. That anybody takes a meaningful step. And on top of that, part of the voodoo, we just watched it. It's impossible to kick the football in this field. Kymmy Fairbarn, he wants to miss extra points anyway. He wants to miss extra points when he's in his own dome stadium. Well, let him get out here with, you know, they're supposed to be the potential for precipitation. I knew I could get it out 10 times. I'll try that as impressive as yeah, potential for precipitation. And just the usual, the usual, what weird wins and stuff. I mean, even the Steelers own guy missed an extra point last week. That's how crazy it is. I was trying to think like the score of this game will definitely sound like a war that happened. It'll be like 1918, 17, 13, 18, 16. Like it's, you just know it's going to be weird and it won't be in the 20s. Can I ask a weird question? Because this is something else that I was wanting to watch, a story to watch. Yeah. Do we know the Mike Tomlin watch to win this game? Oh, because there's been conversation about, you know, maybe he's on his way out. He's the longest 10 year coach 19 season. Yeah, there was some TV stuff with him that they thought maybe he was going into the wacky world of TV. There's no he listen, he's great for short sound bites, but there's no way long for Mike Tomlin on TV is going to work out like a pregame show. But he's kind of, it seems like they're both, it's a loveless marriage at this point where both sides are like, this isn't going to last forever. I don't want to be the one that calls the quits. They're not going to fire him. They want him to just move on. But how does he do it? You know, there's a talk out there. Well, maybe he, you know, sees an opening like Atlanta. He goes down there. It's an easy division that he can win. But now that Harbaugh's gone in what was a loser leaves town. That's maybe that's a game where both people leave town after that game last week, right? Where Harbaugh's out. And now Tomlin says, you know what? I don't have a franchise quarterback here. We have Aaron Rogers. He kind of hinted at this was his last season, but you never know with Aaron. Now he makes a playoff. He says, you know what? I got one more ride in me. So I really want to have a 20th season here. And my quarterback is 49 year old Aaron Rogers who's not going to get it done. I'm not going to again. Or do I look over there? Where, you know, John Harbaugh, he John Harbaugh left. There's an opening over there. You have a franchise quarterback. You have a right now. You have a situation where you have Mike McDaniel who can you bring in as an offensive coordinator to kind of play with that voice. This is amazing. Now Mike talking W.W. Beboos. He heads over to Baltimore after ending their season. And he has this roster that's so much better than what he's dealing with now. But you can't do that if you win a playoff game. So does he actually want to win this game and just prolong a season that's going to end in disappointment anyways? That's amazing. Mike, I'm blowing this playoff game and then immediately joining the Ravens. I don't even, that's like Hogan joining the NWO. I can't even, it's on par with that. I mean, counter. Why couldn't they win this playoff game? Go get blown out in the next one. And then he can do this. Do it. Go right to Baltimore. Here's the thing. If they win this playoff game, they go to Denver. Oh, they can, they can definitely win. Anyone can go and win a Denver. We've seen it over and over again. It's hard to, it's hard to leave if you go on a run. You win one, maybe you get hot. You have a sense of emphasis. What do you win? Look, he's a man of integrity. He's not a man that I believe. Well, toss the game. He's a man who on countless occasions has told us he does not blink. Yeah. But I think they lose. I don't think that he will think it's the worst thing in the world, deep on the inside of him. He won't say it publicly, but on the inside, not the worst thing for Mike Tomlin. So wow. Manifesto rules, nobody believes in us. Stay where I they qualify. Never pick an underdog, think unless you think they can win. Yes. Um, dome or warm weather teams playing outdoors in cold weather, catching aging quarterbacks in cold weather. We've already decided rogis is immune. When in doubt, gravitate toward the one pick that would screw over the most gamblers and experts and definitely go against the single worst gamble you know, I feel like a lot of people are going to be on Houston as the chase bet minus three on Monday night. Then last but at least the law of Lombardi, that offensive of lionstone travel Houston, you qualify for this one. And on top of this, the CJ Stroud stuff. I love, I love this. The worst pick. I wish it was three and a half. I don't mind getting the three. I feel like they could lose and still cover because we're going to have the war of 1816 or the war of 1715 or whatever we get. House, what do you think about mecca 15 and one most receiving yards, round one? Why not? Why not? Most receiving yards. Why not? Nobody has more than them. Yeah, I understand. Throw a dart. Go ahead. What what's to keep it? What do you think of the under in this game? By the way, the the old Anthony de Bundo Houston under. It's a 38 and a half. I mean, it's literally right there, isn't it? Feels like a teaser for me on a Monday, bringing this dealers up to plus seven and a half, bringing that under up even more. I don't think this game gets to 40 points. I don't see it. I can't get past how emotional the dealers were after they beat Baltimore. Like those guys, this is the absolute peak of recency bias out of me, but cam Hayward, Rogers, they were like, they were, they were, they were pouring it out for each other out there. And it's a manifesto world though. The team that was too excited. I don't think they were too excited. They clinched their playoffs spot. After on the precipice of missing, they clinched it. Are we going to see a bunch of vets too? Are we going to see the Hayward brother nonsense again this week? Yes. I hated that last week. We are going to see it worse. I actually think that these guys are related is probably my least favorite media storyline that they feel obligated to hammer home. Like we get it, TJ, Watten, JJ Water, brothers. Anyone else on the team could have been pushing the brother. Any anyone else on that team could have been pushing him. Then bring in Cam to do that was just to make that a storyline. Yeah. I tried to avoid it, but now you've brought it up. And now we've we've fallen prey. We did it to their tricks. All right, today's ringer 107 brought to you by Fandall. It is round one of the playoffs. We have five ringer 107 picks. We just spent over seven hours talking about them. First one, Packers minus 1.5 points in Chicago. We laid out all the reasons we think the Packers can move the ball within the Bears. Their luck is about to run out. Next one, favorite bet on the board. Jaguars plus one and a half at home against Buffalo. We are all aligned. We can't believe that the Jags are favorite in this game that nobody believes in us. We laid that all case out. Next one, Monday night, our third and final favorite game, Steelers plus three, the voodoo Steelers going against a Houston team that has a lot of tiny playoff manifesto things going against it. Steelers plus three. We're also open and door for the Steelers to lose by two or one, which is very possible, anything's in play in this game. Eagles minus 4.5 is our next one. We talked long and hard about this. Feels like the Niners have just passed the point and overturned injuries. And then last but not least, House beg me not to do this. Billy urged me to get weird. Pat's money line, par laid with the over of 36.5 points. That's our fifth pick. And then for Pasta Arty, just for the quest to go into feed it, Panthers plus 10 and a half and Pat's plus minus 3 and a half, just to have those on the record. House, your favorite of those picks? Jackson though. Billy, your favorite of those picks? I think the Panthers, which is an unofficial pick, is my favorite of the picks. But of the official picks, I'd say Steelers. I think the Steelers have. Should we throw the Panthers in there and throw the pads? No, no, no. That's not a get too crazy. Greg Olson wearing a jersey in the boot. Oh, yeah, I forgot about Greg Olson. Panthers unofficial. And those are the Ringer 107 picks for round one. Do you, what do you call the playoffs, Billy? Are you a round one guy? You a wild card round guy? Where have you landed? There was a, like, are we still in the air of super wild card weekend? Because there was wild card weekend and then there was next weekend. Is no, next weekend's already the division around. Oh, division next week since, yeah. Yeah. So there was like, at one point, we were referring to it as super wild card weekend. But I think now it's back to just wild card weekend. Yeah. How about round one and round two? That sounds pretty good. Yeah. And then if you take the title game, I'll have a title game. No, you need a name. It's a name. It helps me. Wild card helps me remember. Oh, yes, there are shitty teams playing this weekend. Now, now I remember why. This is like the weekend I could still go run errands and it's not really going to impact things. Because those Saturday games aren't going to matter all that much. Like, I don't have to give up my entire weekend for wild card. I'll catch up with what happened. How's the Billy do enough to come back next week? Oh, he's, it's between him and Shreger. I mean, let him let him let him. Shreger, man, you know what? I didn't see him today. He wasn't available. I know that was an amazing performance. All those storylines were magnificent. Today's ringer won a seven brought to you by Fando, odd subject to change before we go. Billy, you worried about BAM out of bio at all? Let's go now with him. I don't know. Wasn't he look like a franchise guy anymore? He's always kind of had that situation, right? We're like, they wouldn't want to trade him to get anyone because they're like, this is our guy. This is our franchise guy. But he can't carry the team far enough. And then the heat started out and they were looking great. And I can't figure out the heat or BAM or their love obsession with keeping BAM and not improving this because like, to make the heat better, you can't win with hero and BAM. Just them, right? No. And normal. I'll find hero. You should try to be moving hero and trying to upgrade. Keep normal and pop. I don't know. What would you do? I'm just going to tip my cap to the pod, father. We've been on here for two hours and 20 minutes. And we're about to go and you say, I'm a Billy. I just want to buy you a BAM. I'm a BAM. Yeah. I was just curious. We're fucking 40 games. You know what? Barely 40 games. Go ahead. What's going on is house to something. I am hungry. That's how I'm hungry. When we go drive from Vegas to LA, how is it? We just do my meat on the plate right here. NFL playoffs. I was talking about the Miami. When we were driving that Vegas and Boston would just be calling out fast food. Like jack in the box. Armies. How about BAM out of bio? Well, now we have NFL picks and we have thoughts about bio. That no one was ready to go. Are you doing college football tailgate? Yeah. College football. We're having a Friday edition of college football tailgate to recap the the semifinals games. So enjoy. Join us. Yeah. Friday night. And then house fairway rolling starts on Netflix as part of our batch of sports pods going to Netflix. Yeah, we have our next week. You show next week. Netflix is will be on Netflix in two weeks, I think. Okay. Great. All right. House. Thank you. Appreciate you as always. Thank you. Good to see you guys. Billy. All right. Thanks to house and Billy. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well. Mailbag last week. What lies beneath coming Tuesday this week and tickets available starting on Friday for the live BS podcast show at the will term in Los Angeles on February 11th. Have a great weekend. Enjoy all the sports. Go Pats. Go Celtics. Two big Celtic games this week too. I hope this is a great Boston sports weekend for my sanity. I will see you on Saturday. I'm going to see them on the way. So I don't say I don't have. I feel it. Well, yeah. Must be 21 plus and president select states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star casino or 18 plus and president DC Kentucky or well, and game problem called 100 game or visit rg-help.com call 888-797777 or visit ccpg.org slash chat and comment. Or MD gambling help.org and Maryland hope is here visit gambling help line m a.org. We're call 800 3 2 750 for 24 seven sport Massachusetts or call 877 8 hope and why or text hope and why in New York.