The Colbert-CBS Drama and NFL Leap Team Possibilities With Matt Belloni and Nate Tice | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Lowe's knows that taking on more projects should be rewarding.

That's why loyalty members get more every day with rewards for every home or business purchase, plus shop weekly member deals to get access to free standard shipping.

So what are you waiting for?

Join my Lowe's Rewards for free today.

Loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions.

Details at lowes .com slash terms. Subject to change.

This episode is brought to you by HubSpot.

You know what separates champions from lottery teams?

efficiency. And that's exactly what HubSpot delivers for your business.

It creates time. Breeze, their built -in AI, acts like your elite point guard, automatically handling marketing, sales, and service tasks while you focus on strategy.

Customers are getting hours back each week and cutting sales cycles in half.

That's like turning time -killing ISO plays into easy, fast breaks.

Visit HubSpot .com slash AI to transform your business game today.

The Bill Simmons Podcast is presented to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find a bunch of awesome shows and podcasts.

You can find a great website.

You can find the rewatchables.

We do that every Monday night.

We did Species this time around.

We're getting weird. We got weird in July because we had the 400th movie coming.

August is going to be action -packed.

I think I'm going to do one name movie month in August, but August is going to be, this is the last like one for us.

I wanted to get a little wacky.

You know, it's July.

There's no sports, something's going on.

Everybody's on vacation.

But we're about to kick into a pretty good year here.

Anyway, Species, a movie that would not be made in 2025.

Me, Van Lathan, Chris Ryan.

This is a very funny podcast. So you can check it out on Spotify.

You can check it out wherever you get your podcasts or on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel.

So I cut down to Sundays, at least for July, which is great.

I needed to refuel some batteries, work on some Spotify Ringer stuff.

And most importantly, I needed to start prepping for the football season.

I have all process.

It's weird. I'm the only one who really understands it.

I have to do everything.

I type everything in by hand.

I type in the schedules.

I type in everybody's odds.

gods uh i do these weird play rankings i'm like a psycho uh but it's this whole process so i'm i'm at the end of phase one of it so later in this podcast we're bringing in our friend nate tice and we're going to talk about um three levels of teams that could make a leap in 2025 because you can start thinking about the future is what's going to happen so that's coming up later big football podcast uh conversation with nate but leading off with matt bellany who uh hosts the of town for us.

But we, we got to talk about Stephen Colbert, CBS, Trump, Skydance, Paramount, uh, everything that's going on.

How does this affect Jon Stewart?

Is late night TV dead?

There are just so many storylines with this that, uh, it's the rare podcast where we're leading with Hollywood stuff.

So, uh, that's all coming up next.

I had a whole MBA thing I was going to to do but i think i'm going to save that for a later podcast uh so that's it that's what i got for you matt bellamy nate tice hollywood football all next let's take a break and then pro jam all right matt bellamy is here he hosts a great podcast called the town for the ringer he you could also read him on puck and we have friday news dumps in media um and there's been some great ones over the year when you get to july you can almost pull off the thursday news dump Matt Bellany.

And CBS did this. They shockingly, although I guess it wasn't as shocking as maybe it felt when it happened, shockingly got rid of Stephen Colbert's show in May.

It's going to be gone.

This could be the death of late night TV on CBS.

And as you've covered in Puck and you covered on your podcast on Friday, we are moving toward a different era of late night, which might not even be an era.

Were you surprised by this when you heard the news?

Yes. The short answer Answer is yes, because I didn't think they would pull the plug like that.

I thought there would be a protracted cuts and salary reduction and an attempt to save the show rather than simply cut bait.

But at the time, I didn't know.

And I think most people around town did not know how much money Late Show was losing each year because CBS had kept that pretty quiet.

it. And once I got into the numbers, it makes sense there that they would say, you know what, this is not salvageable.

This is not a matter of Colbert taking a 30 % pay cut, firing some people, getting rid of the band, all the things that we've seen in other areas of late night.

There was just a big chasm because the show costs more than $100 million a year to make.

Depending on who you believe, it's well over $40 million that it's losing or about $40 million, which is what my sourcing says.

Now there are some caveats to that and some ancillary revenue that's not counted there, but that's just not tenable.

And then you have the politics angle, which we can discuss, but no, once you get into the numbers, it's not surprising.

I have the politics angle saved for the second piece of this, the first part.

So you reported $40 million a year.

It's losing, um, which seemed high to me when, but I, I'm not going to say I don't believe it, but it seemed high.

I always wonder with studios, we see this all the time I'm with backend deals with movies and they can kind of rig numbers, however they want.

I know they're telling you 40 million.

Well, my sourcing is telling me.

Yeah, we're sourcing, you're hearing.

But it's not just coming from one source.

Let's just say that.

Yeah, but I'm saying - I run these numbers by many people in the ecosystem of a show.

But we've seen people go the other way with this, where if they want to brag about something, they could say, oh, it's making this.

generating this amount in revenue which is what they often will say not accounting for the cost and late show is a complicated thing because it's produced by cbs studios so essentially cbs the network pays cbs studios a license fee for the show so it adds another level of complexity we saw this with family years ago where family guy was technically losing money for fox but because Because Fox produced the show, it was making money because they sold the show all over the world in syndication and other rights where they were making a fortune on it, even if they weren't making money on Fox.

Now, that is not an option that is available to a show like Late Show with Stephen Colbert because it is an American topical comedy show.

It doesn't have much value after it airs on the Linear channel and on the YouTube channel.

It just kind of goes away so that you take away that revenue.

You take away the fact that it's a much smaller show on digital footprints.

It has about a third the YouTube subscribers as Jimmy Fallon does on the Tonight Show.

Half of what Kimmel has.

And then you look at the other value that Colbert has for CBS, where he doesn't do a lot of other things for CBS.

Yes, he produced the late night show after midnight, which got canceled after Taylor Tomlinson left. But he's not hosting the Macy's Day Parade like Fallon is.

He's not doing Millionaire for ABC like Kimmel is.

Those two guys have much more of an ingrained relationship with their network than Stephen Colbert does.

He just hosted a show.

Right. So he definitely the show lost money.

There's no question.

they could probably get creative about how much they're saying it.

You made the key point though.

It didn't have the same social media footprint as the two jimmies, especially because they can make a bunch of money on the YouTube side.

This goes backwards though because you have to really go to COVID where that's really when the ad money started to shift for all these shows, partly because of COVID, the writer strike.

But then you also have just habits are shifting you know when was the last time you bill simmons cozied up to a late night show at the 11 30 hour and just sat and watched it i'm always gonna watch it on streaming or or on i'll watch a youtube clip the only time i can remember doing this recently was with john stewart's first show back i will occasionally watch stewart if i'm like up and i will flip over but yeah colbert bear was getting 2 .5 million viewers on average on linear which shockingly in this day and age it was the leading show according to that metric on broadcast now if you talk right

the fox news guy greg gutfeld gets more but that's a whole other thing it's got it's out 11 and the audience is like you know literally hooked up to an iv because they're so old but the the the fact that the leading show got canceled i think is shocking to a lot of people but the stuff that you just just talked about the digital and the other things, that's where it comes into greater focus.

And you're like, Oh, okay.

I get it. Well, so here's, here's what I don't get.

So the model's changing.

They're still making all these late night shows in the same expensive way they're doing it 20, 25 years ago, right?

Where you have, I don't know how many people work on a late night show, but it's a ton.

Colbert said 200. Yeah.

I was going to say 175 to 200 people people working on a show that you're delivering four nights a week, usually taking summers off 40 weeks a year.

So it's, so in the old days, the motto for the late night show was, well, this is eating innings, like almost like a starter that can throw 250 innings of baseball.

It's like, Oh, every five days we get to try this out.

And it used to be a younger demo.

It used to be a place where younger people would go to CBS because usually Usually the primetime audience was older and the Letterman audience was younger at the beginning.

And it was really the only place that you would get to see, you know, big stars like Leo DiCaprio or, you know, George Clooney on these networks because they would come on the late night show.

And it was sort of a cachet thing.

Well, it was the number one stop if you were promoting anything.

thing. And then as we saw really in the last, I would say since the 2016 election, when podcasts became, you know, moved into the conversation for all that stuff, I just thought I, it was weird to me.

There wasn't any innovation with the model.

And I think there was an innovation because these shows made a shitload of money until recently, until those two events.

I think they kind of didn't want to change.

It was like, well, it's if it ain't broken, don't, don't fix it.

But when you you think about it, you have all these people that work for a show.

You have really talented hosts and you have this social media, all these side things you could be doing to just kind of do the show the same way you did it 10 years ago.

It doesn't make sense.

So the part that surprises me, Matt, is they didn't go to him and say, Hey, let's make a real effort to try to fix this.

The show loses money.

Late night is changing.

How can we do a completely different show?

Maybe you you only need 10 people that work for the show.

Maybe it's just you doing one long guest. We'll pay your salary.

We'll have a couple of producers and that'll just be the show four days a week.

Instead, they were like, we're out in May.

This is a wrap. This is done.

And we'll get to, you know, some conspiracy stuff with that.

But to not go to him and say, how can we fix this when he'd been there for, I don't know, a decade?

I was really surprised by that.

I think it's hard to do that to a show where there are employees that have worked there for 10, 20 years and a host that is used to making a certain amount.

$20 million a year is what I've been told.

And to say, we need to do something completely different.

These people that have been supporting you since you started on this network, 70 % of them are going to be gone.

and this salary that you've been making and you've been building up your entire career, you're gonna make half as much as you used to.

Yeah, but they did it by canceling the show.

They did it anyway.

They did. If you're doing it anyway, why isn't there a plan B for it?

Yeah, it's true. And I just think from my sourcing, the response I got to that was it's almost like a level of respect with a host and with a team where it's like, we can't just gut it.

like there is a there is a certain amount of cutting we can do to these shows that they are still recognizable you can still do the seth meyer show without a band so they said your band is gone you can still do these shows four nights a week without cutting so much of the bone that they're not they don't feel like nightly talk shows so they cut all these shows tonight shows four nights a week colbert four nights a week so there is but if you start going beyond that and my understanding is that the the uh value and the pride the the loss discrepancy there was so large that it would have been such

a fundamentally different show that it was just hard to have that conversation that is my understanding now we can get into the other reasons as well but uh i i do kind of understand how you either do it or don't the other thing is cbs owns that building the ed sullivan Theater.

And if you look at what they've been doing across the company, they sold Television City in LA.

They sold Black Rock in New York.

They are going to sell the Ed Sullivan Theater for a lot of money.

So what do you say to Colbert?

Oh, and by the way, you're going to move to a tiny studio uptown that is going to make your show look like it's John Oliver, where it doesn't feel like a nightly talk show.

Like it just, I don't know when you start to really look at it, you say, okay, what are we even doing here?

Right. And maybe this is just a format that now when we're, we're in this Tik TOK, Instagram, YouTube era, and we have a kajillion podcasts that maybe this is, maybe this is the natural end of the format.

I know everybody's been talking about it forever.

Kimmel's openly talked about how this is probably his last deal.

and then maybe do something else.

So maybe this is just, maybe this is how it ends.

Like when we were growing up, you watch Carson live at 1130, like, you know, and if you missed it, there was really no way to see what happened unless you started taping on a VCR or something.

And now it's like, if anything happens, but if anything happens on a late night show now, I'll be able to see the clip the next day.

So you've removed all of the necessity to watch it in the moment.

Yeah. And you talk about innovation and the lack of innovation in the format, I disagree a little bit, only in the sense that the stuntification of late night, I think, is an innovation.

And the acknowledgement that...

What does that mean?

It means the viral moment with Olivia Rodrigo, Rihanna and Seth Meyers day drinking.

But that's from 10 years ago.

It is. The mid -2010s was...

Even, like, you go back to Jimmy doing the I'm fucking Ben Affleck, I'm fucking Matt Damon. That was 2008.

Totally agree. but the cordon show for instance largely existed to produce those moments they knew nobody was watching at 12 30 they didn't even really try at 12 30 they put all their efforts into these franchise bits and segments that not only could live on digital but became other shows they were selling carpool karaoke the series to apple they were selling you know there's a uh all sorts of things that they sold.

They were partnering directly with advertisers to create segments that would live on the 1230 show, but mostly were there for YouTube.

So I think they were tweaking it.

It didn't change the fact that these hour long shows were, you know, monologue, bit, a celebrity, B celebrity, musical guests, good night, like that didn't change.

And maybe it it should have, but I don't know.

I just don't think anything could have really stemmed the tide of the viewer erosion that we've seen.

People just aren't watching stuff.

And I know Colbert had a big rating, but CBS, I mean, my dad loves CBS.

He was devastated when blue bloods got canceled.

Half of that audience is keeled over on the couch with their heads deer to the right.

And just whatever is on is what's getting a, getting a rating.

Like I don't, I don't even know what the answer would have been if I'm CBS and it's like, let's put something different in here.

Let's bring in Theo Vaughn.

Maybe we can get Theo.

Like, they're not doing that.

Theo Vaughn doesn't want that job.

No, no. Well, that was the interesting thing with Taylor Thomason because they renewed the show.

Yeah. And she said, I actually quit.

I don't want to do this anymore because I don't know yet.

I was saying this to somebody a few months ago, actually.

say, Nate Bregazzi, who is an awesome guy who sells out NBA arenas all over the place, right?

Any, anytime he wants, he could just go to another 10, 15, 18, 20 ,000 venue and do comedy for two hours.

And he makes a ton of money.

That's the kind of guy in 1989, we would have been like, oh, could he be the next 1230 host?

And the chances are he's doing that.

No, he would have taken that job 30 years ago.

Look at your guy, Shane Gillis, Shane Gillis would be absolutely absolutely groomed for a talk show of some sort or a big studio like is shane gillis too edgy to have a totally show we would at all or he would have done an r -rated comedy for a big studio and had his moment trying to be a movie star he's not even trying to be a movie star he's you know doing his own comedy tour he did his own show that he brought to sunday no he didn't bring it he did his own show and he sold it to netflix after he made it because he just did it on his his own.

Like he doesn't need these platforms because these guys have such big touring businesses on their own.

Well, I look at somebody like Kimmel, Kimmel got the ABC show, which I was lucky enough to get hired for and get to meet him and get his whole crew.

Um, you know, he's on the man show.

They have this spot at 12.

It's going to be 1205 ABC right after nightline.

And it's him versus Jon Stewart.

And it's like this coveted piece of TV real estate.

If you took 2002 Jimmy now and just put him in a time machine, he wouldn't want to host a late night show.

He would want to, you know, he would he would probably try to either have some sort of daily serious Stern show or he would want to have like his version of a big podcast that's four or five days a week.

I don't even think your brain would move toward a late night show.

Right. First of all, he would have already had a following on digital that he owned as his following true right yeah they would have owned the man show they would have been putting out the clips exactly yeah and and he would have had to look and say okay do i want to tie myself down to a late night abc show for disney or do i want to own my destiny and grow and yeah maybe i'll host the sbs maybe i'll do other things like shane gillis just did but i don't need that best thing that ever happened to shane gillis was he got fired off snl before he ever aired right you're right no you're a hundred

percent gone into the churn and become another one of those people where five years later we're all saying oh well they have careers afterward and nobody's saying that about him now he's a power right no you're right i think with uh with the when we talk about like the future late night which basically there is no future um you don't think there's any future see that's that is the question is like but to me it's like Like SNL is still getting huge ratings and a big piece of that is that it's live.

And I do wonder if, and ironically, Jimmy was the one that his shows called Jimmy Kimmel live because he did it live for a couple of weeks.

Well, it was a couple of months actually, but there are all these reasons why we couldn't do it that way anymore.

Yeah. You were there.

I was not there. I've heard some stories.

Yeah. You know, it wasn't a great model and it was very unreliable and a million things could go wrong every day.

But ironically, that might be the model that works now for late night where it's like, this is live.

You don't know what the fuck's going to happen.

The big wild card in all of this is what the streamers are going to do about this kind of comedy, because so far, the late night host model has largely not worked on streaming.

There was a Hasan Minhaj show.

There's been efforts to take these broadcast shows and put them.

Why are you saying largely?

It's never worked. There hasn't been one success.

s oliver and bill maher do okay on hbo maps and in fact and bill maher bill maher launched in 2004 and oliver launched right but those shows do well on the service whereas late night with stephen the late show with stephen colbert did not do well on paramount plus and kimmel's numbers i don't know what kimmel's numbers are on hulu but i'm betting they're not great because the clips are all free on YouTube.

For some reason, the Bill Maher and John Oliver shows, they are churn protectors at HBO Max.

Meaning, people are subscribed to those services for those shows and are their fans.

And if you cancel them, those people will be pissed and may leave. And they keep people coming back to an app that is not the first choice for a lot of people in streaming.

So they have a pretty big value to HBO Max.

Netflix where no one show is particularly important to Netflix because they have so much they have not been able to launch this kind of comedy and we just this last week got the numbers from Mulaney and Mulaney did not try to do a mainstream talk show everybody's live with John Mulaney it was I watched it many times I'm a fan it was not a mainstream show but I was surprised at how few people watched she got 1 .6 million for the first episode and it went precipitously downhill from there and it averaged 500 000 viewers by uh for the entire season not great i don't think he cared about having a giant

audience for that show i think he wanted i think they gave him a lot of money to do whatever the hell he wanted yes and he wanted to make a very meta show that people would love a small group of people would really really love and it might get nominated i guess it didn't get nominated for awards but it didn't that's but there was only only three category he got nominated i believe in some small category but it it was renewed they did they ordered two seasons so we'll see if they actually air the second one you mentioned gut field before if you look at the last 10 years of of talk shows whether

they're weekly or daily that have launched and i would like to include myself that lasted less than 20 episodes uh none of them worked not one of them i don't think any of them made it and and i think the number is actually actually way, way bigger than you think.

These shows are not, uh, are not hitting, but you had a moment.

Sam B did okay for a while.

It got canceled. It did.

Yeah. I guess she let that one maybe lasted two years.

But, um, but what's interesting is we've had a million successful podcasts, right?

And we've had podcasts that are weekly, like even Polar's podcast recently, but then we'll have the ones that are three, four or five times a week.

Polar is a perfect example.

Polar would have had a talk show.

20 years ago NBC 1230 absolutely Amy Poehler would have been a hot commodity and she would have gotten a show somewhere daytime or evening whatever she wanted Conan is a great like test case of the new normal here because he made it he had the 1230s show they moved into 1130 didn't work under those terms of the time that he was there they'd kill for those numbers now right then he went to TBS and And in cable, it kind of worked for a little while because there was still an audience there.

Then didn't make sense in cable, went to do his own podcast, and he's never been more popular.

He got demoted to podcast territory, quote unquote, and it made him even more popular to the point where Turner gave him a travelogue show, which got nominated for Emmys, and he hosted the freaking Oscars.

And he got a Kennedy Senator Award. martin mcbord you know like conan's never been cooler and he's arguably been like put into the wilderness it's crazy i mean that the only shows that are the outliers are saturday night live um mar and oliver like and then kimmel's model i i still think kimmel and fallon are really really really relevant on youtube i mean they have massive massive channels if something happens on on those shows, everyone's going to see it.

And they were able to crack the code on that.

But that doesn't explain why those shows have to be on at 1135 at night every night.

And that's where it gets dicey.

Is Olivia Rodrigo and, you know, name your big star, Tom Cruise.

Is Tom Cruise going on Fallon if it's just a digital show?

Yeah, probably not.

I don't know. Because Tom Cruise's people are sophisticated.

They know the currency of him going on.

Fallon is not the 1130 audience.

It's whatever he does and says travels the universe online.

But there is a kind of imprimatur of quality and prestige that the Tonight Show has with a certain audience.

And when you're scrolling through YouTube, it's not just Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon doing a stunt with a celebrity.

You can get that on Hot Ones.

You can get it on Chicken Shop Date.

You can get it on a million Marin and get on Bill Simmons.

But there's something about the tonight show that is a differentiator.

I don't know how long that branding matters, especially to young people, but it still does kind of matter that it's a TV show.

The tonight show will be the last one left. So you have the tonight show in your last man standing.

Yeah. And I don't even know if it'll be Fallon necessarily.

I just think that show never goes away.

Someone will get that show and it will outlive Fallon.

I think the tonight show and Saturday live will never, when we're alive, those shows will always exist. Those will be the two Kimmel show.

As soon as he's done doing it, that show will be done.

Yeah. Nobody's replacing that CBS has already punted it.

Yeah. But I think that tonight show is enough of an institution.

I don't know. Like, let's say you're running NBC.

Do you want to be the person that got rid of Saturday live in the tonight show?

You're not, nobody's doing that.

I agree with you. SNL is a different thing because they can significantly cut the budget of that show once Lauren is gone.

And it's still SNL.

It may not be as good.

They could also make more shows if they're in 20 a year.

I know. They sit out the summer when 900 things are happening.

I can't believe they do that.

It's partly because of the way the show is made.

It's so difficult to make it the way they make.

it's an opportunity for somebody to compete with them directly in a real way.

They could do a summer stunt SNL for four weeks in July and sell ads into it and capture all the news and people would watch, but Lauren doesn't want to do that.

No, maybe Paul McCartney's yacht for most of the summer.

Yeah. Maybe the next person would.

All right. So who do you think is is next.

Seth obviously has the target.

I don't know. I hate speculating on what shows are going to go.

No, no. It's not even.

Yeah, I do know. But it's not even that.

You could just see where it's heading.

I think what was interesting about this Colbert thing, beyond all the stuff we already talked about, is, you know, there's real conspiracy angles with this, with this Paramount being settled.

Colbert was killing Trump in the settlement this week.

Two days later, the whole thing happens and they they executed it pretty pretty fastidiously yes um so where do you fall on the conspiracy scale do you think this is 10 politics 90 politics i think the show lost money and i think they whatever this this is my take i don't have have full inside information.

This is just me reading the tea leaves and being a smart person.

I think I'm a smart person.

I think this merger is going through.

The new guy doesn't want to take over CBS Paramount.

And the first thing you do is get rid of Colbert.

But I also think the merger wasn't going through unless they start kowtowing to the president with stuff like this.

Oh, so you think it was a quid pro quo?

We will not approve your merger unless Unless you fire Stephen Colbert.

I don't think it was that.

I think it was a concern that this would be the type of, I mean, as we're recording this today, he just said how he wants Washington to become the Redskins again, or he's not going to approve the new RFK stadium.

I think this is a piece of a bigger chess move where it's not just this.

I'm genuinely worried about Stewart's show and the Daily Show and whether that's going to be next.

Do you think that there is some kind of macro agreement between Paramount, the new owners, David Ellison and crew, and the Trump administration to wipe the slate clean of media that Trump does not like?

Does Bill think that?

I don't know. Does conspiracy Bill think that?

100%. Listen, it's impossible to know.

Trump could announce tomorrow that this was all his plan, and I don't think I would believe him if he said it.

So we'll know if The Daily Show is canceled on Monday, we'll know exactly what's going on.

Daily Show, by the way, also not a profit center, but The Daily Show is on Comedy Central.

There has to be a certain amount of original programming on these cable networks to justify their carriage fees.

so there the economics are a little different there it's also a lot less expensive to produce a daily show than it is to do a show like late late show um but if they just cut bait on john stewart and the full daily show then we know that this is pressure well then then it's not even worth discussing i think the irony of this is the daily show and that john stewart move was not even just a home run for them it was a grand slam it completely reinvigorated the show It reinvigorated him.

Yes. It's been awesome content.

And they've been bragging about it.

That's the thing. They put out a press release last week about how Stewart's ratings are up.

You don't do that if you're planning to cancel the show.

Yeah, but that's the thing.

There's so much money at stake and so much real estate with whatever this merger is that if this is the casualty, it's like, oh, just get rid of those two shows.

like you know how these freaking super crazy rich people these two money losing shows that only cause us headaches I don't want to deal with this show I don't want this to be my problem when it comes in.

I thought it was interesting that you reported on this about how what's his name George Cheeks George Cheeks is the head of CBS they have three CEOs running Paramount but Cheeks is in charge of CBS and Chris McCarthy is the one in charge Comedy Center who is very instrumental in bringing Stewart back yes and we also don't know which one of these CEOs who has the most Jews do they have equal Jews no we do know that Chris McCarthy is expected to leave the company and George Cheeks is expected to stay so my theory that I have voiced on the town is that I think George Cheeks is signaling to the new ownership

with this cancellation that he can make the tough, unemotional decisions on money losing sacred cows like Stephen Colbert.

And if it happens to please the president at a time when Skydance could really use the president to be happy with them, then that's a added bonus.

So I would say I'm less conspiratorial than maybe conspiracy bill is.

But I do acknowledge the cloud of politics that is hovering over all of this.

I just think that CBS has been looking at this a long time.

They know that this is not getting better.

It's not like they take a little pay cut here, survive for a year or two, and then they come back when the ad market comes back.

The ad market is not coming back in linear television.

And if you're looking at this unemotionally, shows that are not making money should not be on the the air.

And we're going to see, I think, with the new Skydance regime at Paramount, a significant cut in the original programming on CBS and all the channels.

We're going to see primetime get gutted.

We're going to see morning and afternoon shows.

Did primetime already get gutted?

It's been gutted, but CBS has been one of the few that is hanging on to scripted programming programming during prime time.

If you look at CBS, they have less of the reality and news programming during prime time than NBC and ABC do.

And they've been justifying that because they say these, they, their audience is older.

They're still watching TV.

They still have these hits and they can sell those shows to streaming services later, either their own or another one, or they sell them over to syndication overseas or wherever.

I just think that that money is coming down, down.

So maybe CBS stops programming Friday nights.

Maybe they, in their new deal...

What's going to go on there?

By the way, they can do what ABC does and just run a three -hour Bachelor in Paradise episode, which is what they did on Tuesday night.

There's a three -hour Bachelor in Paradise.

Yeah. Or they have Kimmel, you know, do two hours of Celebrity Millionaire on ABC.

Well, that's a good show.

I support Celebrity Millionaire.

They do Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.

They have, you know, Elizabeth Banks do Impress Your Luck during prime time.

They have Steve Harvey doing a judge show.

There's a judge show starring Steve Harvey on ABC in primetime.

It's kind of amazing.

And they do that because it's cheap and the economics don't justify the amount of money they spend on scripted.

CBS is making a couple comedies this year.

They're making a comedy called DMV and the economics on that show, they're shooting it in Montreal.

They're paying people nothing.

It's like a fraction of what a half hour comedy used to cost on CBS.

They're just cutting, cutting, cutting and not doing originals on broadcast because these are like newspapers and magazines now.

They are dying businesses.

And the only way to make money on them is to suck them dry.

Just cut all the costs and take the revenue as long as you can.

yeah well we we said in the earlier part of the 2020s these networks were just going to become sports late night and morning programming news yeah and now now the late night piece is going away there's one part i don't understand with the colbert piece conspiracy bill doesn't understand it and bill doesn't understand either timing why say until may okay so i don't understand that part Why not just say after September sweeps or November sweeps, we're done.

We're going to December.

There's no more Colbert show.

Why go all the way through May?

Well, first of all, his deal goes all the way through May.

So they're paying him regardless.

And secondly, the way the producer deals on Colbert work is the producers on the show are signed from September through August. That's actually why this was coming up now.

People are like, why now?

You know, if they if they if this wasn't related to the merger, then just, you know, wait till the deal closes and then fire him.

Then the reason they had to do it now, according to sources, is they have these deals with producers that go from September through August. And they were going to have to go to these producers and say, honestly, your deal is only going to go through May next year, not August. So what is what is Joe Blow producer going to think when he hears that?

Oh, the show is being canceled.

Secondly, they had a negotiation coming up.

Your guy Babydoll, he would have started to make noises about a new deal right around now if they wanted to keep Colbert for a new deal.

And my understanding is that there were some questions like, oh, do we want to get into it with them?

Do we want to do this?

And it sort of forced the issue.

Now, Colbert is the one that wanted to announce it.

Now, CBS was not positioning this to be announced right now.

I think they knew what the optics would be on this.

But Colbert was like, if the show's ending, I need to let my people know right away.

First of all, they need to look for other jobs.

Many of these people have been here for a decade or two.

It's not easy to get another job in this world that you need to give them time.

And secondly, it's going to leak.

These things never hold.

So if it's going to leak, they told him Wednesday night.

He said, I'm telling my people on Thursday before the show, put out whatever press release you want, and then it'll air on the show Thursday night and done.

And he did. And I think the fact that he's got 10 months in the chair to do whatever he wants is going to be pretty interesting.

So I just want to say I, I deliberately did not talk to baby doll about any of this because I didn't want to be vacation.

Well, yeah, he might, he might not be home either, but I, I, I haven't talked to him about any of this.

We're taping this on a Sunday.

And I think it's really important.

I'm going to be taping this on a Sunday because, as far as I know, Jon Stewart has a show on Monday.

And that is going to be the most fascinating show that we've had since the Letterman extortion, whatever that episode was, which we didn't know was coming.

First of all, Jon Stewart is already rich. Yes.

And he's already done a million kajillion things.

And he could give two shits.

Yes. Right? Right. For him, it's about his reputation.

That's it. He doesn't - He's going to stand up for his dude and this is it.

This is in my opinion, one of the most important shows he's ever done.

There's no way he's not going to talk about it.

Well, the question is, does he quit on the air?

I think it's in play.

I think it's actually a must -watch show.

It comes on at 8 o 'clock here.

I'm definitely watching that live.

100%. So here's a good question.

if Stewart just dive bombs the entire company quits on the air drops some f -bombs names names the whole thing do they air it because he tapes I don't think he'll do that because he's got a whole staff working for him yeah and he's going to be but I also think he's gonna have to stand up and I think everybody would have his back about out, you know, how he's going to feel about this, but yeah, I, I, I don't, if they canceled the show, I don't, I think he'll be fine.

Um, I don't think it'll be fine for a lot of people that work for it.

I think he'll feel bad about that, but this is the whole point of the show is he's going to, he has to stand up to this.

This is, this is 25 years of him on comedy central, basically like, you know, I just don't, he doesn't, he's not sitting this one out.

Yeah. And does this issue you metastasize to a larger paramount question they're negotiating right now to bring back the south park guys and south park you know they've had this is a south park's dispute is over money they have been fighting with the new regime because the skydance people have to approve the new paramount deal and my understanding is that they are working towards a settlement but do those guys go nuclear on them i don't think they will because they like making the show and And literally, they're going to make billions of dollars in their next deal.

But others could feel differently.

But I disagree, though, because I think they're in the same spot as Jon Stewart.

Those guys have made a fucking crazy amount of money already.

And the whole point of that show is they stand up to shit like this.

That's true. They could still do it and not quit.

I'm saying, do they quit?

I don't think the South Park guys quit.

Or just do it for somebody else.

Well, they can't do South Park for anyone else.

no but they could just create a property yeah yeah they could do that they got a kendrick movie coming out next year they could do other things but they have shown over almost 30 years they really like doing south park and and i think that they will fuck around with the owners but i don't think they will quit well this is unprecedented territory it really is we have a we have a show get canceled and people's first reaction is did the president make this happen I know it's so crazy it is guess who owns the network that has the number one show in late night Fox, Rupert Murdoch who Trump sued on Friday

because Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal and they did the Jeffrey Epstein Donald Trump story and Murdoch has been an ally of sorts he gets into his spats with Trump every once in a while but Fox is owned by the Murdochs, and now they're in litigation with the president.

It's so crazy. I think this has a chance to be the weirdest Hollywood year ever.

Oh, really? Because we have five and a half months left, and I just feel like we're headed toward, like, this was the first Salvo.

I just feel like there's more coming.

Movies with, in some ways, the movie business is back.

Right? Maybe a little bit.

Sure. I'll give you that.

Like IMAX and you know, there's been some positive momentum.

And then on the other hand, like I don't know what's going to happen with the award season.

The TV season, like who the fuck knows are there even going to be a network show that anyone cares about anymore?

Certainly not CCLA.

That's not happening.

Will the Office spinoff work?

The paper? Right. And then also like...

Although that's going to Peacock.

But all these other non -Netflix streamers are now starting to really cut back on the content they're making.

And this is going to be the first time I think people are going to feel a real void.

Like just not, it's not going to be this t -shirt cannon shooting out shows every, now it's going to be, you have these, like I just watched the Netflix, the missing lady show on the yacht.

Which one? The missing lady of the week on Netflix?

Missing lady on the yacht, whatever that one was called.

I watched all three episodes.

Did you watch Poop Cruise?

That's just going to be TV now.

Of course I watched Poop Cruise.

Who are you talking to?

know it was number one on one of the charts one week yeah i mean the number one franchise on netflix right now it's called train wreck and it's an unscripted documentary franchise about things that happened in the 2000s and 2010s that made cable news headlines but gen z didn't know about and millennials kind of forgot about that's basically the franchise it's like wait what's this bubble boy and now my daughter's watching that going dad what's up with bubble boy right exactly The fall of Brett Favre.

What happened there?

Right. Well, and then you have like shows like Game of the Sun, Summer I Turned Pretty Season Three.

My daughter is like approaching it like it's a Super Bowl.

I know. Yeah. It's just TVs. I think what's really changed the most is that the monoculture of a TV show, I think is just, I don't even know like what my daughter's generation shows that they're going to share other than Stranger Things.

Wednesday. yeah, but it's less than 10 and Stranger Things, check me on the number but I believe when it ends at the end of this year, Stranger Things will have made and aired 60 something episodes over 10 years it just takes so long to make these shows now that there's no such thing as oh, it's September, we're back in school let's check out the new season of the Cosby Show there's 22 of these coming It's just not the same anymore.

I was on a text thread with some friends who were my age.

There was this thing that was online.

It was the entire Nielsen ratings of the 76, 77 TV season.

It was like a hundred shows.

And it was like one to a hundred.

It was like Laverne and Shirley Happy Days.

And we're on the thread and I was like, I don't understand how I watched 70 of these hundred shows as they were happening.

Like, I'm just going down the line.

Like, I definitely watched that.

I watched that when I was an only child.

I guess I had a little...

And you were clearly watching sports and movies too.

Yeah, but maybe I didn't watch all of them, but I felt like I did.

And anecdotally, I felt like I knew at least what was going on a little bit.

And now it's like, what are those shows like that now?

Well, if you look at the number, the top 100 shows from last year, like 90 of them are football games.

I know. Well, what was interesting about 76 -77, what number do you think Monday Night Football was in the ratings that year?

Oh, fascinating. fascinating clearly not top 20 because you would have mentioned it it was it was 20th it was 20th okay so it was still big still big but not like happy day is big that's true and still they didn't figure out that if they did that three nights a week people would also watch three nights a week of football well now it's in addition to sundays yeah well that's the only thing that in the end it's just gonna be sports that survives yeah i mean and that sports is now so expensive that these companies can't really afford much else.

CBS is a perfect example.

Like, they are looking at this renegotiation that the NFL can do after they change control because they have a right to renegotiate.

Oh, they're doing it too.

They're going to, of course, do it.

They're going to extract, extract, extract.

That's why I think it wouldn't be surprising to me if the NFL, like, got a night of television on CBS or an hour twice a week to do highlights during the season or some propaganda show about how great the NFL is in your community.

They'll get something out of CBS, and they'll be able to take some games away probably to sell them to Netflix.

Well, when ESPN sold off some of their college football playoff games, I couldn't believe that.

I mean, we're about to find out what happens with UFC, and I think Netflix is going to get the UFC number of pay -per -views.

Dana White said this past week that he's looking forward to being in business with a global platform.

Yeah. So what does that mean?

Well, so it's two deals.

It's the numbered pay -per -views and then it's kind of the rest of it.

And if it's going to Amazon or Netflix or whoever, it's going to be the numbered ones.

Yeah. I'm guessing it doesn't mean Apple, even though they technically are a global platform.

But I'm betting it's Amazon or Netflix.

It's got to be one of those.

Apple's back. Oh, you think so?

F1. They're rejuvenated.

Oh, yeah. They're going to make more movies now.

I liked it. But it doesn't bother you that that movie is probably not going to be profitable in theaters?

Yeah, but that goes back to our accounting thing that we talked about before.

I know. They'll probably say it was super profitable and the answer is probably in the middle.

They will say it has tremendous value on the service.

And great. We'll see if it pops up on the Nielsen chart.

I bet it will because it's got a lot of attention.

You know, they said that about Killers of the Flower Moon, which definitely lost money in theaters.

but they got a ton of Oscar nominations.

Tim Cook got to tweet about Leo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese and it was a sort of brand halo for Apple.

And if that's why they're in the entertainment business, then God bless them.

Because so far, at least, it's certainly not to make money.

Well, that is true.

I will say, and I've been critical about some of the Apple shows for the last couple of years, but I do feel like they, I have a better sense of what an Apple show is now, even than when we talked about it on your pod, You know, six months ago There is some sort of a blueprint now With, like, the one big star Huge stars Some sort of angle They are the star fucker network Somebody in the picture Yeah, it's the star fucker network It's like, if Tim Cook doesn't know who the person is They can't do a show Right Like, if they could put Jon Hamm With, like, kind of a torn suit on And, like, a fancy

house behind him They don't even need to know what the show's about Yes And they had hits this past year At least a couple Severance was a big hit for them Like it was on the charts, which the Apple shows never are except for Ted Lasso.

I can only tell you, I look at everything selfishly from a ringer perspective and what we can do.

Prestige TV podcasts and the watch. And can you just give us shows that we could talk about?

Apple was in the mix this year for us.

Like we had really from presumed innocent last year.

I thought that was good.

Your friends and neighbors, like they had some stuff that was like, all right, although you were not on board with the studio, you're not on board with their 23 Emmy nominations.

No, know well you didn't get one though I did not please don't bring that up by the way it's unfair that you said I was not on board I watched every episode of the episode I watched every episode I we did an episode of the first three episodes all right I watched all of them I actually thought the last couple episodes were really good I thought it was a really uneven show uh I really respected it i watched every minute of it and my problem with it ultimately was i didn't know how i was supposed to be rooting for which might have been the answer maybe nobody yeah like rogan character it's like

i i just didn't like the character and i was supposed to be rooting for him they lean heavily on the fact that seth himself is so likable that he can do some dumb and kind of despicable things yeah and you're still supposed to like him i happen to think Seth is great and I do like him even in a role like that but I hear your criticism yeah I just felt like they could have tilted him more did you get did you get a lot of uh recognition from that what happened please I mean I want to I want to know did your life change the no my life are you kidding other than people texting me no my life and although I

do get recognized like at a Dodgers game you went to a Dodgers game today were people just pointing at you like hey that's the guy from in the studio.

Are you kidding me?

Not at the Dodgers game at like Sundance or at like the polo lounge on a Friday afternoon.

Yes, everybody does.

But people know me from the town now too.

And for my newsletter.

So it doesn't know you because you work with Craig Horlbeck.

They're like, Hey, that's the guy who works with Craig.

I bring Craig to movie premieres.

Nobody wants to talk to me.

They don't want to talk to him.

He's a handsome guy.

He's much more personable to me.

And he knows a lot about fantasy football, which I do not.

Um, and he's got very deep knowledge from The Rewatchables.

He's the only 30 -year -old that can quote risky business.

I know. We're indoctrinating him in the 80s and 90s including Species this week.

Oh, he texted me about Species.

He's like, I can't believe this movie existed.

Yeah. That's his reaction a lot of the time.

Yeah. What were they thinking?

Matt Bellany, pleasure to see you as always.

We can read you in the puck on Puck News and we can listen to you on The Town, an awesome podcast produced by Craig Korbeck and TheRinger .com.

In the ringer .com. Good to see you.

All right, Nate Tice is here.

We're recording on a Sunday.

He's a second -time new dad.

He works for Yahoo.

You can listen to his podcast and read him there.

He's been on this pod a few times.

Hey, first of all, how much sleep are you getting?

Are you prepared for NFL when you don't sleep?

Yeah, no, I'm okay.

Actually, like the old background of coaching and scouting kind of helped me prep for this of like surviving on two to four hours and a lot of coffee.

But no, we're good.

We got a good rhythm.

My wife is a champ.

that's what I'm leaving it at she's been an absolute champ I've had a nice break they do they do 95 % of the work um so I got into NFL I have the same process every year and the last like 10 -11 days dove in did my process had a good time actually doing it some things jumped out to me and where I wanted to land to talk to you I'm not ready to have any full scale opinions yet but the jump level teams I want to start there because that's a good way to think about the season as a whole each conference.

Who's going to move up from one level to another.

I don't want I don't go negative.

We'll go positive because it's it's sunny out here in Southern California.

It's it's good times.

You know, not a lot of stress.

But there's three different types of teams that jump a level.

We have the playoff team to legit contender, the blah team to playoff team and the out of nowhere team, which is just they're just staples now.

Now we don't bat an eyelash when somebody like the Broncos or the Commanders or the Chargers, when they just jump five, six wins.

This is just what happens.

Which group is the hardest group for you to figure out out of those three groups?

I actually would say the playoff team to legit contender because I think that's the hardest tier to break into.

You know, kind of a legit Final Four team.

You know, it can make that any single year, can withstand some injuries, has a dude at quarterback or at least an offense that can roll that way has a run game has a defense and like not a lot of teams have can check all those boxes uh you know we saw what the eagles did um the chiefs are kind of their own thing they're the mid 90s houston rockets they're kind of just always they're always their own thing so but like every other team all the mortal teams like this is what you need to have and it's just really hard to check all those boxes of truly having a run game truly having an explosive passing

game and vice versa on defense being able to stop those things on on defense.

So that's the hardest one to break into because it's just, it's just hard. It's just really hard to build that legit team.

Yeah. You're talking this little crack between the two tiers.

So last year, the Lions were the team that made the jump and that was the team I went all in on last year, picked them to win the Superbowl.

That did not happen, but you know, they laid the groundwork the previous year.

They had a really good playoff loss.

If you can have a good playoff loss, good foundation, they kept their two coordinators and it just felt like everything was lined up and you could really see it.

I had a little more trouble coming up with the team this year, but I had four candidates and I'm going to take the next few weeks to figure it out.

But the four candidates I sent you, and I'll give you the conference odds on FanDuel for each of these, but the Rams were a plus 850.

Had a really nice, as we look back, a really nice loss to the Eagles, right?

Kind of had the Eagles, even at the tail end, they're in the 15th round just throwing haymakers with the Rocky.

Two Jalen Carter plays A ways away.

Two Jalen Carter plays away.

That's what it was.

But yeah, they were very close to getting them.

So there's one. Yep.

Tampa 13 to one with some wide receiver injuries last year and and just were just frisky the whole time.

And and they're bringing all 11 starters back on offense.

Worfs is going to be out for a couple of weeks.

But so that's team number two.

The Texans, I just have to put in at 12 to one and win the conference just because of how good the defense was in the playoffs specifically.

You'd think they had the year from hell in a bunch of different ways with some receiver injuries.

They did trade tons a lot.

I'm not crazy about their offensive line, but that's another one.

The fourth one is the one that surprised me that I included in here is the Broncos at 13 -1.

Made the playoffs. Felt like they overachieved just to make the playoffs.

Had all all the makings of, oh, we'll get to this year and they'll take the dip back.

There's some reasons why that might not happen.

The one team I don't have in here is Washington because I think they were officially a contender.

They made the title game.

You can't put them in there.

All right, so Rams, Bucks, Broncos, Texans.

Which one did you get the most excited about?

Rams. And it's just because they have, you know, why maybe you get excited about the Texans, the Rams kind of a version of this, where they have the great equalizer in a playoff game that's a pass rush and they have a dude at quarterback and they have you know alaric jacks and their left tackle uh is gonna be out with blood clots and i know you know about players on your team having blood clots and what they can do to a season so like but that's that's this one wrinkle and kind of like the theory of the rams this year but davante adams still has plenty left in the tank like he is still a difference

maker but the thing is i i think Pukanekua is not getting the credit of what he actually is.

I think some people think he's a beneficiary of the offense.

No kidding. Every top receiver is a beneficiary of the offense, but he's a legit top five receiver in this game.

He's an actual elite guy.

Now, Devontae Adams is a 2A in this offense.

Cooper Cup is no longer there.

Cooper Cup has really fallen off and really is not the difference maker.

He's become a very isolated type of player and how they have have to use them but they drafted Terrence Ferguson and that's a he's a tight end from Oregon really athletic they're going to use more tight ends this is where I'm envisioning this offense I think it's going to be just a better version of what we've seen the last couple years when this offense has been healthy I know that's an if it's a big if they have been supernova like not not just like oh a top offense like one of the better offenses we've seen in the last 20 years level of good and we saw it last year remember the Vikings game

I think it was a Thursday night night game when they find puka nakuha comes back they just go crazy that's this what this team could be so it's a fine line that's why the odds are what they are but man they have a pass rush the defense is more funky than outright good but the pass rush is good and so that's why i think they have a really you know they actually have a snowballs chance in hell to win this this not just division with that's really really tough division the nfc west but the conference as well so pass rush passing game or run game that's a really good team is it a tough division that's

It's one of the things I'm staring at with the research. I keep hearing how tough the NFC West is, and I'm staring at it going, eh.

It's really frisk. It's a lot of good units.

There's a lot of good defenses.

There's a lot of good run games.

It's a lot to prepare for.

I don't think any of them are elite, but it's a lot of good.

I think any four of those teams are playoff teams, because I'm going to get to another one in a little bit, but maybe that's why I'm angling this way.

Okay. I got you. Yeah.

Yeah. So Puca, I think he's for, for year, for the smart guy, NFL people.

He's the, he's like, just the stunning him on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the blocking all the kind of football player stuff he does.

He's whatever that weird team is.

It's like the all NBA for the NFL super nerd team.

He's just, he's in there.

He's like catnip. Adam's I'm really intrigued by with the just being in a good situation again.

I just I thought Rodgers was terrible last year.

I thought their offense was terrible.

The coaching was terrible.

Then you go back to Vegas where he was in that Netflix show famously just, you know, almost seeming like he didn't want to get killed.

He hasn't been in a good situation really since probably the second to last green bed situation.

And now he's a number two.

And if that if they hit with that tight end, everybody's already trying to pump him up as a fantasy asset.

But that was the team that jumped out to me too in the nfc um i do think there's a bucks case and i want to i want to study more about uh how long worse is going to be out but um i know that that's just a team that has an identity i know what they are they have one of the best four lines in the league offense um so we know they can block we know they're gonna be able to move the ball we know they're gonna be able to score i like the division they're in uh schedule is gonna be a little harder this year but that's i think it's probably one of of those two teams, right?

Is there any other team?

I guess no other team even really qualifies.

Yeah, I mean, this is kind of cheating, it feels like, because of the record last year, is if J .J.

McCarthy is just okay or better, the Vikings did a lot of nice things this offseason to kind of maybe shore up their volatility.

And just the offensive line and the defensive line, you know, getting Hargrave, getting Hargrave and Jonathan Allen, and they're just some real beef.

So it's just, they don't have to be as funky you know on the defense they actually have some guys that can just win as well and they have some other players that are really good and just the offense too I think this offensive line they would got Wayne got Mason from San Fran you know Aaron Jones is still there but now they have a one -two punch and uh because they have Justin Jefferson they get a lot of like unique looks Devante Adams got these looks too actually which is why I think this Rams parents would be awesome but they get so many soft boxes that they can just pound away at them get five

six yards a pop drop but it just like like it's nothing and so now they finally have built a line and they got jordan mason to be the hammer with aaron jones and now they got a guy that can just really pound away four or five six yards so the vikings i'm just keeping my eye on because i really it's just mccarthy has to just be okay 18th quarterback or better in this all in this team can you know there's an angle here there's a line here that they can really make it i i hate them from a future standpoint because there's no way to be right or wrong wait who Who the fuck knows with McCarthy?

He's coming off a major knee injury.

He's never started in an NFL game before.

And everything hinges on whether he's good or not.

And it could go any direction.

And anyone who says like, I know how this is going to play out.

Like there's no way to know.

It's 14 to one for a reason.

I will say that. So to win the NFC championship.

Yeah, it's 14 to one for a reason.

Well, and they won 14 games last year before everything fell apart in the span of eight days.

We went from thinking, could this team actually win the Super Bowl?

to Austin Sam Donalds on his way to Seattle yeah yeah so that team broke my brain and then we go to the the other side with the Broncos and the Texans I don't I personally don't think the Texans O -line no if you're in the bottom five or six with your O -line and there's really you can rank them any way you want but I don't see how I don't see a scenario where they're not in the bottom bottom crew and that part worries me The bigger thing, and I'm sure we'll be talking about this over the next six weeks, is what do we have with C .J.

Stroud? Because it feels like we overreacted year one.

I don't want to also overreact to year two, but he took a major step back last year for most of the year, and I don't know what I'm getting from him.

No, with Stroud, no, I get it.

He started actually developing a couple bad habits because of this whole line, but I still really trust him because the new OC, the new coordinator, is going to give him a little bit more say in the offense.

offense um the old offensive system the what slow like bobby sloic what came from is shanahan offense which doesn't really let the quarterbacks kind of drive the wheel you know they they really kind of you know puts a lot of bumpers on the offense they put a lot on the center and the offensive system to work stroud is very smart like and really cerebral so i'm curious how this is going to look but what you're saying is about the offensive line is why i'm worried too is just because it's different doesn't mean it's better um i know they had some like bad vibes but last Last year, the guys they

added, they got rid of Kenyon Green, but then they got Ed Ingram and Lincoln Tomlinson.

Kenyon Green allowed the third highest pressure rate among starting guards.

Ed Ingram was first, and Lincoln Tomlinson was fourth.

Yeah, it's different, but is it really going to be any better because that's what you added?

It's going to be a little bit better because of the vibes, but again, I don't think the run game is going to be trustworthy.

I do like Stroud a lot.

That division is so wonky, the AFC South.

And again, I think the defense is going to be really, really good because of the pass rush.

They have decent linebackers, and I think their DB room is really good.

They have Derek Stingley amongst other guys too.

Yeah, secondaries are going to be really good.

So, again, if healthy, but I think the offensive line is still going to be weakness, even if they have a lot of different names and faces out there.

Yeah, the case for them is the defense they threw in the playoff game and the pass rush.

and like there's a pass rush secondary.

All right, I can see something there.

And they, you know, they fixed the receiver room.

But then it's just got to think the conference they're in.

The NFC is so much easier to find value.

I think betting wise, as we're talking about that, because it's way more wide open.

The AFC is like you got, you know, you got the demons at the end.

You know, you got Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, shoot, even the middle tier teams, Justin Herbert, all these guys, Joe Burrow.

So it's like, that's the AFC is just so much tougher at the top.

They already have the contender guys.

You know, that's more of the middle ground.

That's interesting.

Well, the NFC it's like, Whoa, you, I think it can go any which way.

Yeah. I did my, uh, I did my first stab at my player rankings.

Cause it really helped me last year where I did do all that.

And the, the AFC South was just the worst of all the divisions from, from just the standpoint of talent.

And I was surprised.

I didn't think they would be coming in last, but, um, offensive lines, Houston, Cincinnati, the giants Seattle Jacksonville, and then maybe new England.

Now though, I think of will Campbell's good.

The new England's line might actually be okay.

So that he's kind of the swing, but that, those are probably the five worst plus new England.

If, if Campbell doesn't make it.

So the, the other team there in the AFC, the Broncos, I was prepared to write them off and they weren't going to have enough firepower, harder schedule this year.

AFC West is going to be really hard. I don't know, the Broncos might be good.

I find myself leaning toward them as maybe that's a playoff team that can actually make a leap up and be like, whoa, the Broncos.

They kind of subtly fix some of the issues they had with the weapons standpoint.

They have to hit on both their rookies, but they have a top four line.

Their defense is good.

They spent some money on the defense and they have one of the best five coaches in the league.

So I think the case for them would be the Chiefs fall backwards.

the Chargers fall back a little bit because their schedule is going to be harder and then Vegas is Vegas and maybe they can climb up.

There's no chance the Broncos can win that division, right?

For you. You just have the Chiefs penciled in forever.

I put it this way. I think the Broncos are alive to win it, but I do think the Chiefs are better this year in the weirdest way.

Like, so I do think it's still the Chiefs division for the Chiefs being better.

Let me hear it. I actually am high on the offensive line.

They added both guys.

So, yeah, I think there's going to be some up and downness.

But this is a quarterback used to that up and downness.

I also just think some of the defensive guys that they had, I think that's going to make more sense if they're healthy on the back end.

I keep saying if they're healthy, but this is true in the NFL.

This is how you have to look at these things.

But I do think that they still have the dude at quarterback.

And I think Rasheed Rice coming back.

And now, no, I mean, suspension pending.

but I do think that he is a lot better than people are giving him credit for and what's going to add to the explosiveness of the offense.

I think maybe Travis Kelsey kind of knows his role now too.

Kelsey was interesting last year because he's definitely dropped off as a receiver, but it was probably his best blocking year ever because he was kind of, yeah, he's never been into blocking.

He knows how he gets paid and why, you know, why he's very famous.

But last year he kind of knew his role.

Like it was kind of interesting.

It became like Robin Lopez almost. but he's just scrapping, setting screens, you know, getting the offensive boards.

But no, that it's, I have more faith in the chiefs this year than I did last year in the weirdest way.

And maybe it's just because I'm being lazy mentally, but I do think the Broncos are a better team.

I think this defense could be the best defense in the NFL.

And I think the Broncos added some juice with the skill players that I really liked.

Like I've really come around on Pat Bryant, their third round pick.

It was a little high, but I do like the pick.

and then RJ Harvey is going to add just a little bit juice in the running back room.

Their running backs were just bad last year.

The O -line is a top 5 -0 line.

That's how you win a playoff game.

I could see the Broncos being a playoff team easy, but I still think it's the Chiefs to lose.

Well, you know what's funny about what you said with the Chiefs?

By the way, the Chiefs are minus 110 on Fando for the division.

Chargers plus 280. The Broncos are plus 330, which I think is too high.

I think that should be a little closer, but the funny thing with the chiefs, I agreed with what you said.

I also feel like the case for them, at least from a talent standpoint is they should probably be better because it's weird. Last year was the year from hell for them in some ways.

Right. But then they were 11 and own one score games.

So it's like year from hell, but then also this crazy luck over and over again for the first three fourths of the season.

And you feel like even if the one score luck balances out, the health luck is going to flip it the other way.

um that division's gonna be a bitch though like he like vegas was a walkover last year and vegas is not going to be a walkover they're going to actually be hard to play yeah vegas can be so funky they're the ultimate knuckleball team like it just geno smith is a legit quarterback and then they have chip kelly who's going to just i i'm very excited for chip kelly back in the nfl and as an oc not as an nfl so he can just sit in his lab and do what he wants to do i think it's gonna going to be one of those and their defense is interesting too you know it's not they lack a little bit of firepower

along their lines but they still have dudes you know they max crosby's a dude christian wilkins if he's healthy as a dude um and of course they got genti they're running back so and brock bowers on offense so there's a i look at them as like a seven win team that's going to just be really annoying because of what they do on offensive defense uh definitely like a what do you what do you call it a league pass team there that's what that's what the writers are kind of for me they're a league pass team and they're also a do not throw them the team they're playing in a three -team tease right or some

sort of big parlay because yeah the raiders are plus nine and a half and somehow just beating somebody out right there stay away from me uh i think out of those four teams rams bucks broncos texans i think now it's july 20th it could change right we have we still have the training camps are going to start there's going to be all the stuff we learn from all the media pieces and all the coverage and the day to day stuff.

And like, there's so many variables like Ted McMillan might come in a Carolina and just be, people are just gonna be like, I'm blown away every day.

This guy does some, it's like, it could be one of those situations like, all right, now I have to revise this Carolina thing.

If this guy's going to be Mike Evans right away, I don't know if that's going to happen, but we have, or Hampton on the chargers, like the season, the preseason might start and everybody might be like, this guy's incredible.

Or the guy you mentioned in the Broncos, Harvey.

What if he's just awesome?

We went from, as you said, the bottom five running back crew in the NFL to all of a sudden they have this dude on pace for 1 ,400 yards.

We don't know yet, but these are just kind of the leans, I think.

I think those are fair.

This year, too, just this class, there's a lot of what players consider were more good than elite, a lot more green -chip guys than blue -chip guys.

guys right and that's the thing is when you get a lot of that there's a lot of variance though there's a lot of guys that could rise a lot higher like the team was right and taking this guy so that's where i think there's just a lot more surprises when you get that like okay this is you know it's kind of just an interesting class and especially the positions you know there's a lot of running backs that can make an impact caleb johnson with the steelers going to it was just the whole time it was he has to go to his own team he has to go to his own team he has and then he goes to the Steelers who only

run zone and it's like okay well this could work like even even whoever's playing a quarterback but it's like there's at least a path there too okay this guy actually in this offensive system because they have a they have an interesting offensive line too that they can sneak up on teams they can beat some of these bad teams that just can't stop the run and I know that sounds just so simplistic but that's what the that's what football is it's like if a team can run five yards a time at a time they're not gonna recall anything else they don't need their new quarterback to do anything do you feel

like there's any meat left on the bone nicks bone or did what we see last year is basically what it is everything's going to come down to what you can do on third down uh but this is kind of how i pictured him uh like a lot of he has some creativity to him he's a great athlete and he's got an absolute rocket of an arm it's sometimes he technically will be accurate because he throws underneath a lot And Sean Payton did a hell of a job To kind of figure out the offense with him But that's the thing He built it for his rookie quarterback Can he make the leap?

Usually we'll see A lot.

It all depends on third down I don't think there's a lot more Because he's older and this is just How we play in college too Cheetah doesn't change its spots kind of thing This is the type of player he'll be But it's good enough to start It's good enough to win a playoff game I think Because of just how they built this offense offense so i don't think there's as much meat as maybe the other guys of his class and i think that was kind of the expectation when they drafted them too we're taking a break and then uh we got to race through the rest of these because i really want to clear the floor for you

for timberwolf summer league combo but we're taking one break all right next category is the blah team to the playoff team i would describe blah you're like seven and ten you're eight and nine Nine, a couple things happened, nothing memorable.

Maybe you had a bad injury or in the Bengals' case, you just had crazy bad luck in close games.

In Miami's case, maybe your quarterback seemed like he should have to retire from football and then he didn't.

In Atlanta's case, maybe you spent a ton of money on a guy who turned out he was a corpse and then you had to bring in the next guy.

In the Niners' case, maybe every single thing that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong.

So our nominees, so last year was the 24 Vikings, who they were fine.

Nobody really had any high expectations for them.

Then boom, they're 14 and three.

The year before was the 23 Lions and the Browns made big jumps.

So our nominees this year from this weird range, the Bengals nine and eight last year, Colts eight and nine, Miami six and 11.

That's AFC. So let's do AFC first. Bengals, Colts, Miami.

Who intrigues you? bangles just because the offense uh but that's that of that group if that's not like i'm not like really excited uh i i'm not as i think this is what the bangles are they're in this range yeah like they are a nine win team maybe you can get to 10 but because just i there's so much just i mean they haven't signed their first round pick still uh they they're just the defense i still don't trust um i respect why would you the defense is terrible why would you trust it and and look at the division they're in in the conference they're in again it's just that it's it's hell in the afc

if you don't have at least a viable side at least a top half side on both sides you know offense and defense so it's based on how many points they can score uh you know and i do respect the offensive vision i've actually really have liked zach taylor's slash joe burrow I'm sure he has a lot of input, like the changes they make year to year.

Like I really do think everything the defenses throw at them, they always find new little wrinkles, even if it's a, you know, maybe not the most varied offense, like the closest comparison is the Colts and the thoughts with Peyton Manning, like where he, it was just like, they ran their seven plays.

You got to stop them.

And that's kind of the level they're at right now.

But it's a lot like those Colts teams. Some of the thoughts, what was their defense?

Like, you know, it was just based there, how good they are is based on how good their defense was.

But I don't, it's just that's such a tough division and conference that it's hard to say that they can be anything more it's where other teams have to drop around them if that makes sense I don't get the Bengals case it's July 20th I might change my mind but I just look at there there that they're the guy in fantasy who spends $170 on three guys and then tries to fill out the rest of the roster with the one dollar guys that's exactly what and after After the draft, he's like, I have Chase and Higgins and Burrow.

And you're like, cool, you have no running backs?

It's a lot like the Saints with Brees for a while.

And remember them in the 2010s?

He's thrown 5 ,000 yards, but they're winning six games.

It's a lot like that.

They're just a weirdly shaped team because they didn't hit on defense like they needed to.

Well, the combo of overpaying, well, they didn't overpay.

They properly paid their three guys, but they paid them premier.

Yeah, they paid Chase and Burrow, like top five guys.

They got a slight discount on Higgins, but he's still making a lot of money.

But they're also a cheap franchise.

And so, like the Chiefs today, before we started recording, they signed Carl Aftis for like a $90 million extension.

And I've made this joke over and over again, I'm going to keep making it.

I don't understand the NFL salary cap at all.

It doesn't seem like, this isn't like the second apron where your Timberwolves have to be like, can't afford Alexander Walker.

It would push us over the second apron.

There is no any apron in the NFL.

And he's like, yeah, Carl Aftis, we'll just keep pushing the money that way.

The Bengals don't do that at all.

Teams are starting to complain about that though.

This is not what the Eagles are doing.

They're like, okay, okay, okay.

You guys won your title.

Let's stop this. But I don't know.

We'll see how the player union can even fight that.

Yeah. But I look at the Bengals and I'm like, Like if you're going to spend big money on three guys, you can't also then be cheap.

The other teams in that group is just hard. Like the Dolphins are like, what are the Dolphins?

They have an awful DB room.

Awesome front seven.

I'll say that on defense.

But then on offense, it's like I can't trust the offensive line, even if I do like pieces.

They kind of just feel like they're in an identity shift. They keep talking about how tough and physical they're going to be.

But it's like, oh, no, you guys are winning with a lot of speed, though.

so like and then the colts it's i i i i know what daniel jones is uh even if i really like what the run game is going to be and i was i i still have a garden on anthony richards richardson island and and actually i and actually maybe like a picket fence on riley leonard island like so you own property on anthony richardson island i i do i do like a garden i just thought there there was a chance he could be like Culpepper.

Like, you know, you gotta remember what I saw, what I grew up with.

So I still have a garden.

I used to have a house, but I sold it.

Here's the difference though.

Culpepper was this big ass dude who was actually pretty durable, at least for the first part of his career.

Then it started - Well, then his knee exploded.

Well, then his knee exploded, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, he would take big hits and get up.

Richardson seems like he gets - He was also really accurate.

Oh, that helps too.

But Richardson seems like he takes big hits and stays down.

Yes, and that's what led to the turmoil last year where his teammates were openly complaining about him.

He couldn't do that.

That's where I kind of sold, but then he played some games where he kind of, like against the Jads, who kind of had the white flag.

But I would say that's a garden.

Now you're making me say it's just a flower, just one plant.

That's fair. One potted plant.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

I respect it. I think Miami has a chance to be absolutely terrible.

And it's one of the only future bets I've already made was to bet the adjusted unders on them.

I don't see it at all.

What is that? Well, I think it moved, but one of the bets I did when I was in Indiana was I think I did under seven wins for them or under six wins or whatever.

I think it's moved a little bit.

I also think McDaniel is in first coach fire territory.

It feels weird right now.

Yeah, it feels like, let's see how this goes.

I think their division, you know the paths are going to be better and the jets might actually be like a whiff frisky and then you have buffalo in there so i don't know um jets are gonna be a bad team beater that's that's why i call them like they're they because they have a run game and they have a defense that's gonna be good too so it's like and just a mentality so like they're gonna be like a bad like you better bring it like i can see them i can see what they're gonna be that classic team that wins three at the end of the season yeah and everyone's like oh oh aaron glenn's got him coming around

as they finish 6 -11?

You know, but he's won the last three, you know, but a lot of close games.

But the Jets run game, that whole line's pretty pretty badass.

And they got a little run game with Justin Fields and stuff.

So, yeah, watch the Jets run game this year.

I don't see them being a high points offense, but I see a lot of like 16 -13, 19 -12.

Greg Maddux starts.

10 -9. Two -hour games.

Yeah, yeah. A lot of fast ones.

I don't really like any of those choices either for the AFC.

see and by the way that's that's it's perfect to be like you know what i don't like bengals colts or miami um in the other division or the other conference falcons dallas and the niners falcons were eight nine dallas seven and ten nine or six eleven penix to me is a follow -up to that j .j mccarthy point i made earlier i just don't know like what if he's just not good we have no idea there were there were flashes right did you like what you saw yeah he's kind of like color to me jay cutler where it's the highs are high and he has a huge arm but sometimes it's the varsity blues scene where the cowboy's

getting knocked off the horse uh you know like that it's just once in a while you don't know where it's going yeah and that's the thing so i think he's volatile but i think the run game's gonna be good and i think that he he has enough highs that it's gonna like yeah there's gonna be some games where he comes alive but i think that defense is just gonna be bad i don't think they'll be able to stop the run so and they play in a division with the the Bucks, the Panthers and the saints who all like drafted first round linemen and invested in a run game.

So yeah, I, I'm not, I'm staying away from the Falcons, even if Penix is okay.

Niners everybody's on.

Yeah. It's a 10 and a half.

I think the 10 and a half is too high.

It's schedule related and it's like injury luck related and I get it, but I just think they lost a lot of dudes and you know, from a receiver standpoint, everyone's like, well, then IU could be back.

And it's like, Willie, when's he coming back?

He blew out his knee in October.

We're just throwing him back in, just running up and down the field for three hours.

I'm not buying that yet.

It's just a tough...

You don't think so, but it's a tough division.

They have the easiest schedule in the NFL.

I do think they're better because on defense.

I think that they went about this offseason like how they should have. Not only just getting Robert Salah back in the building, but they're they they became really bad against the run uh they leaned into the bit a little too much they really wanted to be like we're feisty we get up field on the front like ah ears pinned back but you know they went and signed Javon Hargrave who I complimented for the vikings but for the 49ers he just actually wasn't what they needed because he was just too risk reward and they already have that with Nick Bosa who's their dude uh but it's just kind of like okay

all right if we don't get them right away and get this TFL that's a 60 -yard gain and Fred Warner has to clean it up and i think now but i having said all that like so this the stats and i know epa this kind of can be a little volatile if you don't have a huge data set but this is a nice season long so since 2019 the 49ers against the run epa per rush 9th 2019 9th and 2020 first in 2021 second in 2022 2023 28th 2024 28th they and how they play defense is very very they play quarters so it's very like I wouldn't say soft but it's more like hey we rally to tackle like we have a really good linebacker

Fred Warner we have feisty safeties and I think what they did was okay first round pick Mikel Williams who is going to enter the league as maybe against the pass he's going to be more of a developmental guy but he's like awesome against the run and so I think they ate you know ate their vegetables a little bit this offseason so I kind of like I kind of like that on defense to really help them out because that that was more of a blemish than I think people realized last year.

And I think of course you have Kyle Shanahan, which, so if guys are healthy, like you said, with the receivers, like it's easy.

I think it's an easy nine wins, 11 wins.

Like the win total is that's a little, that's a little sketchy to me.

You know, I think this is a nine, 10, one team, but definitely approved team.

Williams 10 to one on a Fando for defensive rookie of the year.

Okay. That one jumped out at me.

Cause he only had Abdul Carter and Jamin Walker ahead of him.

Yeah, and Carter has, they have too many dudes on the Giants defense.

You know what I mean?

So his stats might not be crazy.

Like, you know, he might be good, but yeah.

Now, I'm high on Michael Williams. Even if, you know, he might not be a high sack guy this year, but man, this guy's, I think, going to be a two -way against the Ronnie in the past. Going to be a really good player down the road.

So, I got to look at the Niners more.

I want to find out more about IU because I don't, I think they're going to have a lot of trouble throwing the ball.

The McCaffrey stuff has already started.

He's in the best shape of his life.

And so we get to do that.

Yeah, the dude works out for 12 months a year.

Every year, it's like, oh, this is the year he's came in.

He's running the Germany again, the blood spin.

You know, he's getting all that.

I don't trust it. Is it cool if I don't trust it?

I just don't assume he's going to play for four straight months anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's what's tough.

I trust the run game, if that makes sense.

But CMC makes the whole offense like supernova.

So it's that, if you trust that, but I do think they're obviously going to be better just because they have to be.

They were so, faced so much bad luck last year.

Well, Dallas. Yeah, Dallas.

Yeah. Yeah, Falcons.

I just think we put to the side.

Who knows? Dallas. There's a pretty interesting case for Dallas, which would be fun for me because it really determines Cousin Sal's mood on Sunday nights.

But, you know, they're getting some guys back, some injuries.

They had a good draft. Dak's back.

uh coaching change there's some signs coaching change is always good if it's i know people weren't that fired up about the brian shot and everything but you know when teams people weren't fired up about dan quinn who the f knows uh is there a cowboys case at all for you we know they have the quarterback they're gonna be able to block they have uh they'll have a pass rush their d -line that whole area is among the best in the league maybe yeah no definitely maybe i i I think they are definitely going to be a winning team, you know, now that San Jose is going to be wide open.

I think not only the offensive line, they drafted another guy in the first round, Tyler Booker.

So they have some real beef.

But then they also, their offensive coordinator is Clayton Adams. And they signed him from the Cardinals.

He was the offensive line coach for the Cardinals.

And I really like this because this is kind of what the Lions kind of, I don't want to say what the Lions did outright, right but it's like having a full faith oc who's actually the line guy this is actually what the packers did maybe a bear so sean hymer's the play caller but the oc is technically like the run game coordinator so i think that was actually just if you just read between the lines this is a commitment to what they're going to do and this is where dac can really be dac is going to control the game before he's one of the best before the snap uh can kind of controlling everything so you

get the strong run game that hey you're going to play us like this because now they have george Pickens.

Pickens, I didn't like for everybody, but I like George Pickens for the Cowboys because he is a great stylistic fit.

Oh, yeah. I think he's a two.

I don't think he's a true number one guy, but guess who is a number one guy?

CeeDee Lamb. CeeDee is a slot.

He's what I call a power slot.

He's best from the slot or best as a Z, who is off the ball and can move around.

That's a flanker. George Pickens is a true X. He is on the ball.

He's running the straight line.

Straight line. Straight line.

Goes and stop routes.

Dak Prescott, for better or for worse, loves throwing stop routes, which is a 10 yards or 12 yards and turn around stop.

That's literally what it sounds like.

It's kind of an archaic route now because of how defenses play, but he likes them if you're accurate and you have a dude that can win.

Pickens is amazing at them.

So I actually think that was great.

And this frees up CeeDee Lamb to move all over the formation.

So he makes sense more to the Cowboys than I thought maybe to other teams. So, I really like that fit for a few reasons.

On defense, they have the dude, Micah Parsons.

I really liked a sneaky signing they had, Jack Sanborn, who's with the Bears.

And, you know, they got a face injury at linebacker, and that's maybe – they're still a little iffy against the run.

I think they'll be okay, but they're going to be great against the pass because of their pass rush.

But Sanborn, I think, will help shore it up until Overshawn comes back.

I thought that was a sneaky good signing for them, that he can end up being a decent linebacker starter.

starter, just an okay starter for him, but that's what they need.

Desperately need that right now.

Well, and they threw away their, they threw away their running back position again, which I don't totally understand.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't like that.

I do like the run. It's one of those.

I like, it's more of like how the Broncos were.

I really like the rumble, the blocking and the run game, but maybe the running backs are going to be frustrating.

Guess who's they have?

Javante Williams was with the Broncos last year.

Well, I don't love their, you know, When we do these FPI, whatever the hell the schedule thing, I don't totally love it because I think teams change so much from year to year.

I just look at their first eight weeks.

They start out, they're at Philly in the first game of the year.

That sucks. That's almost a guaranteed 0 -1.

They have Giants at home at Chicago week three.

What if Chicago is pretty good?

Home Packers week four, at Jets, at Panthers, and then they're at Broncos week eight.

So it's like you look at that and you go, can you be 4 -4 coming out of that?

Could you get to 5 -3?

Or is it probably looking like a 3 -5?

So it's going to be somewhere in there, and that's going to determine how they go.

Yeah. No, absolutely.

Oh, man, that is a tough slate.

Yeah, I don't like it.

It's one of those where you look at it and go, ah.

Yeah. I don't really like any of these games.

And even matchup -wise, it's not exactly ideal.

It's like those are teams that can stay.

Well, but you said Overshawn.

When does he come back?

I have no idea. He might be like second half of the season.

Yeah. All right, let's do...

We'll make this quick.

The out -of -nowhere teams, which have become more and more of a lock.

We had the Broncos, Chargers, and Washington.

This is one of the reasons I did so well last year is I nailed these last year, which makes me almost...

I'm almost coming to grips with I'm going to get killed this year because I did too well last year.

But I sent you all the playoff odds, all the teams. Give me, give me like three that jump out to you as like a possible out of nowhere leap.

Again, I lean towards the NFC and, uh, there was a nice stat I got from NFL research that this week it was, I think it was, we're at 35 straight years.

So since 1990, that four teams that didn't make the playoffs made the playoffs the next year at 35 straight years.

So I always thought I was trying to do three in each conference last year.

there are only four total that flipped.

Usually it's six. And you usually have to just try to figure out the six.

The math, yeah. That's why I just keep looking at the NFC because I just think it's so up and down based on the quarterbacks.

You've already talked about some of the young guys.

It's like the Packers could be a good team, but I look at the Cardinals as the first team that comes to mind for this exercise not only just because I like their offense, but I'm really, really, really intrigued by their defense.

They face the fifth -easiest schedule.

Again, we know how that can change and everything.

I think the offense, I know what it is.

I don't think it can maybe get to that top five, but I think this could be a top 12, top 10 unit with a good run game.

Explosive offense, the big thing for me is I don't know who can take the top off, so it might maybe feel a little tight.

They've got to expand Marvin Harrison Jr.'s role, but I trust the offense in the weirdest way.

Even if Kyle Murray can be up and down, he was better last year.

That was one of his most consistent season ever.

So if they can just even get that.

But the defense, this defense last year was the 10th best defense in the EPA over the second half of the season.

Coincided with a lot of guys coming back from injury.

They had the fourth most adjusting games lost according to what's now FTN Fantasy, which used to be Football Outsiders, Outsiders guys, but those guys.

But they were 10th in the second half of the season.

They had the sixth highest pressure rate in the second half of the season.

They got Barron Browning.

They added a whole bunch of new faces on defense, like real talent, Talent, draft, and free agency.

They get guys coming back from injury, like B .J.

Ojolari, who missed his second year, but he had a solid rookie year, signed Josh Swett, Dalvin Tomlinson, drafted Walter Nolan in the first round.

So they added real talent.

And they were, again, a top -10 defense without this talent last year.

So the Cardinals, I think, are going to be at the very least frisky and a team that, I think there was one plus 125 on the odds that you sent me.

Yeah, they've been one of the most bet teams during the offseason.

I know. Secrets out.

this was a lot more fun taking may right now in july well counter can i counter yeah absolutely who are the blue chippers on this team for you trey mcbride right there's one paris johnson junior left tackle okay uh buda baker safety i don't even say uh they have another safety jalen thompson who is like borderline um but they i agree i know where you're going with this It's a lot more green and yellow, more above average to good.

Yeah, that's what—when I did all my preliminary rankings, I had those— I had Johnson, Harrison, McBride, and Baker.

Harrison's barely. I mean, he certainly didn't earn it last year.

We're going more of the college pedigree, right?

Yeah. No, he's going to be—he's just like his dad.

It's crazy. He's literally a bigger piece.

I hope he's not just like his dad.

No, yeah. Sorry, I had to— Who?

No. I don't know. No, but I do think that they were trying to make him a true X like I talked about with Pickens.

He's not that. He's a route runner.

He's a guy that has to move around the formation.

And so I think they pigeonholed him in the first half of the season, and I think they're figuring out a little bit, but they need to do it.

It's one of those I have to see.

In theory, it's like, yeah, they can do it, but it's like I still have to see it.

There were games where you didn't even know he was playing.

He was one of those.

It was like Rosillo's Tobias Harris joke.

It was like, hey, there's Marvin Harrison.

I didn't realize he was out there the last two hours.

He had some empty games.

They faced... I talked about that cover two stuff.

He was getting the respect of that already.

But I was kind of disappointed in the Cardinals passing game to go like, okay, open them up.

You're getting these cover two looks.

All right, move them to the slot.

I don't know. So it's one of those I want to see this year.

But if they figure it out, they got a lot of good pieces, I do think.

They had that stretch. I think they won four straight.

We got all excited about them and they were overachieving.

and then they just fucking cratered oh i mean it was a cratering and they lost that carolina game yeah yeah caroline oh the carolina game is brutal yeah so i don't know i just i don't trust kyler murray at all i i do not have them marked down maybe i'll change my mind as i keep reading the newspaper stuff all right give me your second one uh second one or uh where am i that's there oh okay second one uh was the bears uh i finally popular case i'm going to dig in i know again i i do believe in ben johnson i i believe in coaches that don't blink i i i just i i think that that's gonna i think he is very

very detailed and i think he's working with a quarterback that is more detailed than people are giving credit for i think we've talked about this before but But I like the O -line additions.

Like, Joe Tooney's a top five guard. He is.

Joe Tooney played tackle at the end of the last year with the Chiefs.

It was bad. But the thing was, it was very unfair.

The thing with the Bears is for years, and I would say since Olin Crute's basically retired, so over a decade ago, they have had just a hole at center.

And it's really helped cripple their quarterbacks, their young quarterbacks.

I'm a big believer in having a solid center, at the very least. to take the load off a young quarterback they went and got they you know kind of overpaid it a little bit they got drew dalman but drew dalman at the very least is a top half center in this league a top 10 center in this league he has to be specific they have to use a lot of zone but they're now working with a play caller that runs a lot of zone and ben johnson and i think it works with the quarterback because they're gonna do more boot and more play action and more movement to their offense there's a lot more on this more than just

oh good play caller from good offense fence goes to offense with quarterback it's more than that there's a lot of stylistic fits that make sense here um caleb was a really good quick game and uh screen thrower because he's so creative and throw sidearm and throw all these funky throws ben johnson calls a lot of receiver screens like that that's one of those sneaky parts about this lion's offense i'm on russie brown was getting so many receiver screens khalif raymond even jameson williams all these guys now they get with dj more who's awesome on receiver screens roman dunzey's great on receiver

screens even the tight end And Colson Loveland's great on a little outside receiver screen.

So I'm digging it. I finally am actually kind of buying the hype.

I was not hyped last year.

I saw the holes in the O -line.

I'm like, this might not go great.

I know who the play caller is.

I know how this O -line is.

This might not go great.

This year, I'm actually buying it because of Dallman, of Tooney, even Ozzie Trapilo, who they drafted on day two.

There's just a lot that makes sense stylistically.

And I like the defense.

Having said that, they face a third -hardest schedule.

So that's a little bit of the part of this but I do believe in what I saw from the flashes of Caleb Williams even though I think a lot of people are low on him right now.

I think this is going to work.

The offensive line stuff's real.

I mean I was doing and shout out to Brandon Thorne because I like when he does his rankings but he did a good job.

There's a couple other things you know the ones that really watch it and study it you know what like you just got to trust them because I'm not going to be able to know know who the good right guard is on whatever but it really looks like they have a top nine or ten offensive line now and that was the reason last year fell apart among the you know it was the coaching and the offensive line they fixed the coaching they're gonna be able to block they have weapons they spent money defense should be okay you know is Caleb good I think is gonna be what we find out because I do feel like I just think Drake

May is the safe for Beth and Caleb as As long as he can avoid these big hits that he was taking last year.

It's a feature, not a bug with Drake.

Just go out of bounds.

Don't put your head down.

You're in the NFL. You're not in the ACC anymore.

Just go out of bounds.

It's fine. I see the case for the Bears, but I think it's a pretty popular one.

If you had to pick an AFC team, who would you pick?

For the out of nowhere.

Oh, AFC out of nowhere?

oh man I had I think I wrote one down just say the Pats come on yeah it was the Patriots wasn't it it was the Patriots yeah I think I think I texted you this but what's cool about Will Cambell is no matter I think his floor is just so high that no matter what he's a best five enabler which means no matter what the Patriots have their best five offensive linemen out there because he can play I think all five spots and there's something to that like that that is something that is really beneficial to an offense he's also a high iq guy uh because uh he was calling out blitzes last year as a left

tackle a true junior left tackle just stuff like that just little things you see on tape true leader type like not only that they got garrett bradbury who was iffy last year he gave up a lot of pressure last year with the vikings but i did like the third round pick i like jared wilson um from from the from georgia I thought he's more of a big athlete, different than what you usually see at center.

But he really took to it.

Like he's a guy I was really high on in this draft process.

So I actually, and I like that he doesn't necessarily have to start right away.

But I do think I really like the upside of what he can become.

And again, I talked about having a good center quarterback pairing.

I think that's paramount to a good offense.

So, yeah, of course, I just have to talk about the offensive line.

But that's because the success is going to come from.

Yeah, but think about it.

But last year, they had a zero out of 10 coaching staff and they had a zero out of 10 offensive line.

So if you're going just 20 points for those two units, they get a zero.

And now maybe Vrabel, maybe he can be like a seven or an eight out of 10 and maybe the offensive line can be a four.

And so that's got to be worth like four wins.

There's something to, like people always think you have to go from shit to like great.

There's something from just going to shit to not shit.

You know, from a zero to a four, a one to a five or a six, like that you can get a huge, I was just talking about the Bears.

Drew Dahlman just has to be above average, and it's like four tiers better center play than the Bears have had in years.

But same with the Patriots, but it's just their entire offensive line.

And Cole Strange is coming back.

Cole Strange has had moments and stretches where it looks like a good starter.

It's just been few and far between with the injuries and stuff.

So, yeah. Well, I'm already releasing the Pats.

You like the Cowboys.

Where are they at now?

7 1⁄2? 8 1⁄2? The Pats are in the plus -156 range to make the playoffs, which seems way too low.

So Cowboys are plus 186.

You also like when you talk about this exercise and I'm going to be talking about it a bunch on this podcast, but you almost like, it's like a nightclub.

Somebody's got to come out to bring a new person in.

Right. So to me that if the bears are going to get in there, Green Bay has to leave. Right.

Green Bay. That's, that's the spot, you know, for Arizona.

It's probably the Minnesota spot if they're going to grab one of them.

Right. Because I think we both think the Rams are going to stop being there.

We just pumped up the Rams, too.

Yeah, exactly. And it's like, all right.

And then we just pumped up the 49ers as well.

So, who is not making it?

I know. I'm more bullish on the Seahawks, too, more than most people are, too.

I will say. Oh, make the case.

Because I do feel like their over -under seems at least a win too low.

And I thought Sam Darnold versus Geno seems like sideways, right?

Yeah, I do, too. Year two of the coach. coach uh i thought they had a really good draft that was i thought they had one of the four or five best drafts right yep i agree and i think their defense is gonna be like legit legit uh mcdonald's defense usually takes a minute for to click uh and because just because it's so varied they run a lot they run a lot of a lot people say oh you gotta copy the mcdonald's scheme it's like well that means you're running everything uh but no they shored up once they got ernest jones last last year their linebacker play got better their defensive fronts can be really

good they got a lot of different body types too they got gap shooters pluggers leonard williams really came along who they traded for last year but they have they have a lot of talent up front um but also they have really talented dbs devon weatherspoon is all pro worthy in the slot and he's gonna get weaponized in this defense but i i agree with you i think darnold is a sidestep because i think the offense's floor is gonna be higher they put a lot on geno last year with a a play caller that seemed seem to be in over his head as it turned out now they get kubiak and i think that offense they're

gonna run a lot of zone a lot of boots donald's fine in that and he'll bring some highs to the offense because he's gonna go for it he's hell or high water he'll bring some lows too but i think that's kind of part of the offense you know what i mean we're gonna lean on the defense have a zone run game and have some volatility with our pass game but we'll live with it um i'm yeah i'm higher on them they they cut noah fan today which was interesting but i i still like aj barner a lot They're tight end and the guy they drafted, Elijah Arroyo.

But, no, I'm higher on them than most because I think that defense is going to be pretty, pretty good.

And I think the offense is going to be better than people anticipate.

They drafted, I keep going and going, sorry, but Gray Zabel at guard. I like Oluwala Watimi at center.

I like Charles Cross, the left tackle.

And, again, going from shit to not shit.

Not saying this is going to be a top five offensive line, but a zone boot offense helps the offensive line.

so they can be like 18th or 20th and I think that I I see a vision here like I think a higher vision than maybe others do too good too good drafts in a row which is always I like their draft last year I thought they got a couple good guys out of that so yeah there's Murphy I would I personally like the Seattle case more than the Arizona case but this is why we have all this time to think about it all right that's well we left just enough time we left just enough time for the the Minnesota Minnesota Timberwolves.

And the buzz already started in that they got to do well this year.

Anthony Edwards is going to start looking around.

God, why do we have to do this with the NBA?

I never understand it.

It's ridiculous. Can't we just have good things?

He likes Minnesota.

The team's good. They made the conference finals two years in a row.

What are we doing? Yeah.

Dean Moore covers the Wolves.

Does a great job. He laid it all out.

He's like, no one can make more money than Anthony Edwards if you stay as a Timberwolf.

Ever. ever because he was the number one pick and he's already made all pro or all nba teams and so you know it can hit a higher higher number he's not going anywhere the uh have we looked at the youth of this team like the the summer league squad was like that was a lot of fun to watch when you have some legit nba guys out there as opposed to like tyus jones is your best player you know it was you know tj shannon was way too good out there and you can see edwards was at every game and he was hyped up for all the guys and stuff and uh yeah uh he's not going anywhere well you know know what else

you have coming this year which i'm really excited about the the full bringing garnett back into the fold yes because that's been one of the big tragedies of that like he hated glenn taylor there were real reasons for it um all he wanted to do was be a big part of the minnesota timberwolves but he was going to wait until so now you're going to bring they'll retire his number this year i don't know the vibes are good and by the way you made the conference finals two years in a row right the team's doing well things are things are okay yeah and shooting the joe and baron j who i i admit i watched

five minutes of before the draft the highlights were good oh my goodness he's second youngest player in the draft which is always gonna get me going but he catches everything like i'm i'm pretty astounded by him like i i thought he moves like a star and i know i'm getting way ahead of myself five summer league games four and a half he's very fluid I saw it there's something there he has a good feel for space he's stronger he's not just this lanky athlete a little French connection with Gobert obviously Gobert might have tipped him off yeah I know it's a I was pleasantly surprised by his summer

league what do you get from Dillingham though like how does this Dillingham thing work because I mean I thought the offseason was a miracle that you got to keep Nas Reed Reed and Randall.

I didn't think that...

In February, that seemed impossible to me.

I didn't understand what was going to happen with the lack of a market and how all these guys are basically screwed. But just to keep...

It's similar, you're going to keep one of those three and you kept two and three.

You lost Alexander Walker, which is the easiest guy to replace.

But Dillingham now has to be good next year, or at least as a bench guy.

It was interesting.

And I talked to Rob Morgan about this, but he...

Or Daymore, I'm sorry.

He had a point that he brought up up then the summer league is they use dillingham in a different role each game okay you're the primary creator in this game you're off ball in this game and some of those how the defenses were playing but it was a really interesting i thought his best game was when he was off ball and as opposed to a primary creator and i thought that was you know slashing and then making the extra pass um i i thought it you know it's really nice too is he can shoot off the bounce and that's huge because of how he wants to play.

He's a great hoop thrower as well, which is something Ant is very weirdly iffy at, but that helps as well.

It just opens up that part of the offense.

He is not my cup of tea.

Usually my types of players, you know, dribble heavy, undersized.

That's not usually what I prefer, but the thing is they have a good size on the team to insulate that.

There's not three of these undersized guys.

Everybody else is jumbo on the Timberwolves at their position.

So I do like that fit with it.

I just think he's going to take some time and he needs, he needs to play.

He has to figure out what he can and can't get away with.

But this is a team that wants to make a run.

So it's, that's, that's the balance that I think Finch has to find.

I wonder if he's trade bait.

Hey, TJ Shannon being legit is making everything feel a lot better to me, at least. I think he's going to really be a really nice player in the NAW.

The Conley piece is the piece that unfortunately, you're in the same boat that the Celtics were in with Horford last year where he can look good in the regular season especially if he's only playing two games a week but once you get in that playoff grind and you're playing every other day and in his case you have to go through OKC the most frightening team of all time if you're a guard and he's going to be 38 next year.

It's just not you're just not beating OKC if he's playing big minutes.

And it's terrifying when he's out there.

You can feel it's NBA playoff basketball and it's really nice to have a team to watch again throughout it I it's so crazy and this is what the NFL is week -to -week we talk about matchups but it's so crazy in NBA when you just feel a guy getting picked on because it's so open in the NBA it's five on five so you know who's getting isolated who's getting picked who has that they're making switch onto the ball what's the NFL equivalent of that I'm running at a guy like if the guy can't hold up against the run and you just right like an undersized linebacker an undersized he's a good player like uh

you know like bryce huff or son reddick really good against the past but it's like okay well you're undersized we'll just run a tight end and a right tackle at you over and over again and we'll get six yards but that's kind of what it is uh or man -to -man coverage and a guy can't guy guy just can't keep up with the other dude that's that's what the is like the best coaches it's just like you watch yeah you talk about sean mcveigh and what what Kyle Shanahan do Sean Payton Andy Reed they do all the motion and stuff all they're doing is manipulating the defense to get into a certain look so this guy

is exposed or this defensive exposed and it's just you know same thing in the NBA that you see all the pics and switches and all that it's like oh they're just trying to get this guy isolated 25 feet out so it's it's fun to watch like I'm trying to get more into NBA tactics uh it's picking it up a little bit well everyone Everyone is so freaking hunt heavy that, uh, you know, it was interesting to watch that OKC Indiana series when, you know, there was just so much movement at all times.

It was, it was like this level above hunting.

It was pretty cool.

And then of course, Halburton blows out it's Achilles and game seven falls apart.

Um, all right. By the way, before we go, what's this thing?

You're the single thing you're most excited about this 2025 NFL season as you dive into the things, what's your number one thing?

oh man uh all the second year quarterbacks uh that's cheating but all of them because i think every story of them is going to be significant can commanders stay up top what is caleb williams i'm high on them what's drake may i'm super high on him uh can bow nicks improve can michael penix be anything what is jg mccarthy because i think all those teams can be sick can make noise like in some way should perform so i think that's my cheating answer but yeah the second year qbs there's a changing of the guard happening right now um we're you know we're feeling it with my homes and alan and and uh

and lamar and burrow and all these guys there's more coming we got some real talented dudes coming through and i'm excited to see them all take a leap well and then this draft next year um oh i did my yeah yeah jesus i did my qb rankings and i moved my homes out of the alpha spot for the first time this decade and i put josh allen in there okay i love Josh Allen.

One guy has to get the highest thing and I'm just like, I just think listen, whatever.

I'm not going to do a 40 minute Mahomes conversation.

I just think Josh Allen's the safest bet at a quarterback in the NFL right now and I think he has to be the alpha.

Right? I think there's a three -man tier with Lamar Allen and Mahomes.

I agree, but if you have to pick one...

I have Mahomes and two -minute man.

I'm just talking regular season.

season okay regular season yeah josh allen's a force of nature because it's just he has to be the regular season alpha at this point man yeah just because the bill's offense is better that's what it just looks like he's he's he's fake like my homes is fake but josh allen's actually fake like he's a creative player he's with cam notan cam newton times two to me because i think even just throwing wise he's doing even more but yeah no i i think alan is to me is the clear 2.

I still have Mahomes just because of the respect of what he does.

But I think Allen is a clear 2 to me.

That's why he's defending MVP. One of the great Allen stats was the 14 sacks for Buffalo last year.

We should just get factored into your QB stats somehow.

That was always a great Brady Manning stat.

I kind of have been really fighting this with Josh Allen and trying to support him here.

He's become one of the most cerebral quarterbacks in the NFL and he doesn't get any credit for it.

because he's just such a freak athletically um but he has become one of i talked about uh cj strow getting more control before the snap allen's gotten that the last two or three years and he is great at it it's just that he doesn't get painted that way burrow kind of gets the pain this way you know some other guys do allen doesn't get pain this way and he's one of the best at it he calls out blitzes he changes protections i i got reels of it on twitter but it's just he has become like like a complete guy outside of just the freakiness.

And I think that Mahomes too, all these top guys are very cerebral, but I think Allen kind of gets really underrated with that.

Like he's one of the smartest QBs and he gets full control.

And then he just is a 0 .0001 % athlete on top of it, which also helps.

Allen, then I had the next group, Allen, the alpha, the blues, Mahomes, Burrow, Jackson.

I put Daniels in there.

I think he has to be.

Yeah, I see one more.

So you would nudge him back.

He's top 12, I would say to me.

I got to see it a little bit more.

Well, this is why it's a work in progress.

I'm glad I asked you.

Yeah. No, and then I'm high on Jordan Love more than most people.

I think he played banged up last year.

He doesn't take sacks.

He can hit all that high throws.

I'm high on the Packers too.

And I never even talked about them because I really like Love and some of the other stuff they did.

So I'm super high on him.

I had some other guys pretty high.

that you i'd stroud at 10 because i i think he's gonna i think he's gonna have a decent year even with the other line stuff i just think they're gonna give more control and i like the receivers i like the couple guys they draft and everything are you pro anti or in the middle with pretty uh in the middle i've i've said i'm brock gnostic okay i've been i've been agnostic but i i like him more than i used to i they last year was really cool to watch watch him kind of like They gave him more to do.

They don't use play -action as much, and they let him just truly drop back and be a quarterback and go and progress.

And it's kind of cool to watch them kind of give him the reins to do it.

So I've become more, and he can create a little bit.

He's a really good thrower on the move.

I used to be kind of lukewarm on Purdy, but now I like him.

I like him and enjoy watching him because he's got some balls on him too.

25 to 1 for MVP. Your guy Jordan Love is 25 to 1 as well.

Okay. Yeah, but odds are it's going to be Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson.

Just put those bets in now.

All right, Nate Tice, go back to your newborn baby and your other child and your wife and Tim Wolf, Summer League highlights.

Thank you. Ante Edwards is staying.

Kevin Garnett's coming back.

Football's coming. Things are looking up.

Great to see you. Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

Always fun. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Nate Tice and Matt Bellany.

milanee uh don't forget new rewatchables is coming on monday species a movie that you can find on streaming services um we're gonna really ramp up in august i'm just warning you now i'm getting all my little one little dopey movies i wanted to do out of the way in july because it's time to do it but we have some really good ones coming up as we head to 400 movies on the rewatchables yeah Yeah.

We're getting close.

I'm going to be back again on Sunday, a week from now.

So we are sticking to the Sunday schedule and that's the plan.

And I'll see you in a week.

Enjoy the week. Must be 21 plus and presidents like states for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas Star Casino are 18 plus and present in D .C.

Gambling problem? Call 1 -800 -GAMBLE or visit rg -help .com.

Call 1 -888 -789 -7777 or visit ccpg .org slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp .org in Maryland.

Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema .org or call 800 -327 -5050 for 24 -7 support in Massachusetts or call Call 1 -877 -8 -HOPE -NY or text HOPE -NY in New York.

[The Future of Late-Night TV and 2025 NFL Season Outlook]-[The Colbert-CBS Drama and NFL Leap Team Possibilities With Matt Belloni and Nate Tice]

📋 Summary

The Decline of Late-Night Television

The Intersection of Politics and Media

2025 NFL Season: Teams Ready to Leap

Quarterback Evolution and League Trends

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript