Join me, Danny Kelly, along with Danny Hifitz and Craig Horlbeck every week on the Ringer fantasy football show as we prepare for the 2024 fantasy football season. We'll cover all the biggest news and.

Topics across the league, as well as.

Whatever weird topics our listeners email us about. That's the Ringer fantasy football show on Spotify. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network and we are sponsored by FanDuel Sportsbook, where I am going to put up a boost for the gold medal game, which, fortunately for us, is going to include the United States of America. Holy mackerel. What a barn burner. Initially, it was just going to be me and Joe House talking about the USA Serbia game and then talking to Anthony Debundo about NFL futures. But the game was so good that we had to bring in Rob Mahoney. Holy mackerel, what a day for America, what a day for international basketball and all time. We're going to break all of it down next. First, our friends from Pearl Jip. All right, taping this 02:00 p.m. pacific time on a Thursday. Initially, I thought this was gonna be me and my buddy house. We're just gonna talk about the USA blowout win over Serbia and then bring in the Bundo to talk football. And then all of a sudden it became a game. We had to bring in Mahoney. He's here as well.

I don't know where to start, but it really felt like they were going to lose this game at one point. And the Team USA has these every four years. It happened in zero eight against Spain. It happened in twelve against Spain. It happened in 16, I think, in the semifinals. But you always know there's one of these coming. I thought it was going to be France in France Saturday with the crowd and all that stuff, but Jokic and Bogdanovich had other ideas. Mahoney, where do you want to start? Do you want to go Embiid's maybe greatest moment.

Yeah.

In his basketball career. Do you want to go the Steph Curry moment that we talked about literally two days ago, like, whoa, we know it's in there, but will we see it? Or do you want to talk LeBron big boy game? Just putting on the biceps and the chest and just ripping through Serbia. You pick what topic.

I think we might be able to merge the latter two. Right. The. The lions of Team USA have fully arrived. We got the Steph game we've been waiting for, as you said. Jesus Christ. Did Team USA need it? Honestly, for as much as we've been talking about, you know, the zero eight team or the 92 team, all these, like, cross olympic comparisons for Team USA, a lot of this game felt a lot like zero four, where USA was getting destroyed trying to guard, pick and roll, completely flummoxed by a zone, and settling for a lot of shots. Like, just awful, awful execution in ways that feel very familiar for underperforming american teams past.

And some weird coaching, too. It's just a lot of lineups and a lot of subs, and it was like he never stuck with five guys for more than, like, it felt like 90 seconds.

Yeah, but the one through line was Steph was on fire and was the only reason they even had a chance to come back in this game at all.

House, what's your big takeaway from that? Are you feeling patriotic? Were you thinking about your France 15 to one bet at any point and thinking about rooting for Yokage? Were you waiting for somebody to step up on Team USA? And then it happened. What? What? Walk me through your second half.

Well, in the first place, I'm exhausted. I need not just one cigarette, but two, because I'm all fucked out from that one. They put me through the wringer. I will say, from a narrative standpoint, how beautiful that you get Steph and LeBron and KD, right? KD came out, looked like a clunker, but started making the biggest of big buckets in the second half. And this team, we all knew you guys talked about it, was susceptible to somebody coming in and raining threes on them. And the challenge is that communication out on the perimeter. They just switched terribly for three quarters of the game. Now the boys from Serbia were lighting the basket on fire. They finished under 40% from three because they didn't make any in the fourth quarter. And they didn't make any in the fourth quarter, because when it's winning time and you're on the biggest stage, everybody, you know, gets a little bit, the tiniest bit, because a couple of those looks were wide open for the Serbians. Right.

I'm so glad you brought that up. They were. Cause I was taking notes as the game was going along. It was 76 to 61, I think, and there was a four point play by Guderich, remember? And. And it just looked bleak. But at the end of the third quarter, they were 15 for 29 from three. They ended 15 for 39 over ten from three. I love olympic basketball so much for the moments, because the hierarchy. And we'll talk about Tatum later. We've got the DMP, but the hierarchy and who the three or four guys are. I talked about this before the tournament, and it just felt like they were giving LeBron the car keys, so he was clearly one. And you knew Curry was going to be out there because of the trust with Curry. And then the question was, who was the third guy? And Embiid looked out of shape in the, uh, in the little. The exhibition games, and it just didn't seem like he was gonna be reliable, and I thought it was gonna be. Davis was gonna be the third guy, but, man, embiid had, I think, my favorite stretch of basketball he's ever played.

And if you're gonna make the case for Philadelphia to be a 2025 title team, it's like, does this guy have this in him? And I honestly wasn't sure. I think this was the happiest I've ever been after an Embiid game. Homie. I know he's done it in regular season spots, he's done it in earlier in the playoff series type of spots, but I feel like he needed what happened today more than anyone else on the team.

It also seemed like the most emotional and emotive he's ever been. Right. He was into this game. He wanted those moments so badly. I've never seen him react the way he reacted when he walled up Jokic in the post and forced to travel, force, forced a turnover, monster play. And the fact that so much of the offense was running through him down the stretch is a mystifying thing, given the way that these olympics have started for him, given the way he's played in so many of these games. But you're right that when these moments come, the ball kind of finds its place. And it found it. It found itself in the hands of LeBron. More often than not. He was dictating a lot of the action, and with him beat in the middle of the floor, attacking, finding little pockets, getting to his full up jumper, all the stuff that won him the MVP and makes him such a dominant NBA player, but that we haven't seen for the last two and a half weeks. And so for all of that to finally come together for him, and it wasn't a perfect game, he was certainly as guilty as anyone as far as why USA was in the hole to begin with.

Like, what he wasn't doing defensively, terms of stepping up to the level was a problem. Him giving up defensive rebounds down the stretch, or what were offensive rebounds for Serbia? Huge issue. But he also came up with every huge fucking bucket when they needed it. And that's. That's all you can really ask of a guy like that.

Yeah, I wrote down 78, 67, eight minutes left. Jokic got a layup. Jokic is doing all the tricks at this point and he wasn't shooting that great, but he's doing his little inbounds trick where it's like the ball's bouncing for three, 4 seconds. He's throwing it to the ref to buy two, three more seconds. And it was just, he felt like the cagest guy on the floor and it felt like USA was moving toward a little hero ball where it was like, okay, do I have to do it? And I, I was thinking they were going to lose and LeBron was just going to go into all decide this either way and miss some threes. And there, and that was it. There's a six point play with seven minutes left where KD hits the three. Jokic either pushes ad in the KD or ad pulls himself with Jokic. Hard to say what happened. And also amazing that KD didn't, like, have a season ending injury because he had a guy falling into his knees as a shooting. Makes the three. Fourth foul on Yokic and then the USA gets the ball back and Booker hits the three.

And we went from 78 to 67 to 78 to 73, and now it's like, oh, okay, here we go. This is, this is what we're doing. But the bead part you're talking about scored seven straight, had a huge block and got it to 84 82, leading to the LeBron lefty layup house. What did, what did you see? Because I agree with Rob, there was some deficiencies there with the defensive rebounding. They were definitely attacking him and Steph in the first half. But on the other hand, it was the most engaged two way. I want to be the dominant guy, Embiid, and I'm sure Jokic was a piece of it. He's playing with LeBron and dudes like that, but, man, I kind of needed to see that from him. Where'd you stand?

I'm over the top glass half full on everything I saw out of Embiid, you know, when, when he did the up and under the up fake Joker bit and then he went right to the hole, he got the flush, he landed, he rolled over, and I, you know, I put on the Twitter machine that, that, to me, was like the most impressive bucket of his entire basketball career because, I mean, yes, hyperbole, yes, prisoner of the moment, but name me another game that Joel Embiid played in with higher stakes. The stakes were at the highest two.

Game sevens against Toronto in 2018.

Yes.

And then the Celtics game seven against in Boston when. When they just got smacked. And then the Atlanta game when Ben Simmons murdered them. Those were the three biggest games he's ever played.

And. And he's going up against the joker, his MVP foil. I mean, I wish this game was 80 minutes. I enjoyed it. I wish we had 420 minutes quarters. That's how much I was enjoying it. But he was up to the task. He deserved to be on the floor for that last seven minutes. He was a full on badass. There was no question about it. And. And kudos to Kerr for falling on his ass and finding out a desperation. The right lineup at the end of the game, for Christ's sakes.

Well, so we talked, Mahoney and I talked about what the best lineups that we had seen were. And this curry, it was basically curry, Drew, Booker, Lebron and Ad. And then the last two minutes, they took Drew out, put KD in for him, and that turned out to be the lineups. I don't know if we mentioned that lineup, Mahoney, when we talked about lineups we liked the most. Cause I think Kurt really wanted the defense, but a couple issues happened. Edwards, who I think we all love the moment, seemed a little big for him today. And he missed wide open shots and he was turning the ball over. And I think what they thought they were going to get from him in this game, it just wasn't there. And I think by the second half, they realized that, which I think is.

A good thing, that he realized it. Right. I was a little worried coming into the Olympics with Ant. Is he going to try to take a moment that isn't his? Is he going to try to rise to the occasion? Because we know the confidence is there, we know the game is generally there. He just didn't quite have it in this one. And this is exactly the sort of weird, atypical defensive look that gave him trouble in the playoffs to, you know, slightly different NBA zone in that situation. But you could see him passing it up to Katie, trying to get the ball out of his hands, find his spot on the wing and let these other guys go to work.

Yeah, and then. And then the KD piece of it. Cause he didn't really get going either, but that the game was so disjointed in the first half, but. 93.91 under 40 seconds left. Joker has a quick two. USA needs a bucket. And it. And it's so funny how this happens in the Olympics. And I remember this happened in 2008 when they're all looking at each other. Then Kobe's like, I got this, guys. It's kind of who's going to step up? And Katie had the ball at the top 28ft away and somebody's going to send him pick and he's waving to the dude off. He's like, I'm fucking Kevin Durant. I'm one of the best 16 players of all time, of the best scoring forward ever. And guess what? I'm going to score on this dude right now and puts up a 20 footer. So it's funny, he wasn't the three stars of the game, but in a lot of ways it was one of the great KD moments. Like he has those two threes against Cleveland and 17 and 18. He's had obviously a million great moments over his career. He's the foot on his line shot against, against Brooklyn that could have won them the series and misses by six inches.

But I'm always going to remember that one house that was a I will put on the big boy pants for us right now jumper. And it wasn't an easy one. It was a 20 footer with a hand in his face.

Well, you again, if you're a narrative lover, it makes sense because he just jumped over Lisa Leslie for the all time Olympic scorer for the United States team. So, like, if you're just wanting to put a bow on the KD Olympic legacy, that shot made a whole lot of sense. And I really just reveled in seeing LeBron and Curry and KD second half. Cause and it took, it took a while for him to get cooking. I was nervous. I'm glad I didn't fire off anything to you guys about, God damn it, get Katie out of there. Because I certainly feeling that way. I was feeling it, but I resisted the urge. By God, he came through because he is our Olympic hero.

Well, the other thing, Mahoney. So I'm watching the game. My wife does the classic, comes home with three minutes left, which has just been a staple of our 26 years together. Comes home, has a story to tell me and I'm kind of like, hey, hold on, I got to do a podcast after. But I've learned over the years how to manage that one. And she's like, oh, I didn't really. And so she sits down knowing nothing. First question was, why is this so close? And she hasn't watched 1 minute of Olympic basketball, but she watches the rest of the game and she's going, wow, this is so cool that all these guys are out there together. And it was like, I was like, that's going to be the best part of my podcast, because we forget we've been immersed in Olympic basketball for weeks. But ultimately, it's like, hey, you know what's fucking cool? Katie and Curry and LeBron and Embiid and, you know, some of the best guys in the league all out there at the exact same time. Joker, for Christ's sake, going against Joker, and a bunch of Serbians who were, like, out of their mind, could not have been more excited to be there.

And every big, every big play down the stretch that Team USA made, it's not just one of those stars making it, but another one enabling it. It's curry curling around in a beat screen for a go ahead three. When LeBron hit that lefty layup to go ahead, it was because Katie brought the ball up, and you could see in his eyes he wanted that left wing pull up three so bad, and the timing just was a little bit off, and he bailed and kicked it to LeBron and set up that play. There's a precursor for all those where one of these stars is helping the other one, which means, guess what? You're playing like an actual basketball team.

Yeah. Well, then the curry piece.

So, good lord.

On the one hand, you could say he kept him in there. On the other hand, he was part of the defensive disaster that was happening in the first half, but he was hitting shots, and the swagger came back, which we have just not seen. And I made a joke near the end of the Tuesday podcast about lori marketing decided to reject the Golden State trade, and Mahoney was like, oh, too soon. Like, he reacted like it was like some cultural response. He really did. It was like, I had punched you. But that was. That was the old school curry. And what was really cool, he was flying around. I mean, this was like old school 14, 1516 era curry, where it was when he's going so fast, it feels like he's kind of levitating above. So you had that piece. I I. What did he have? Eight threes, 36 points.

Nine threes. But here's the important thing to your point. The point you just made eight rebounds. The dude was flying around. He was around the basket. That was the key. It was huge.

And with that said, we've praised Curry and embiid. I think LeBron was the mvp of this game.

Oh, you like the triple double?

I like the triple double. And there was a couple big boy moments here where he was just like, I've been doing this for 20 years. I know how these games go. I'm going to the basket. I'm going as hard as I possibly can. I'm one of the greatest athletes of all time. I'll probably be able to pull up a layup. I might be able to get fouled, but I'm just going to trust this two decade process I've had of good things happen when I just attack. There was no hesitation at all. There was like, serene, supreme, serene confidence. And, you know, I've been in the camp of like, I don't know if he's one of the top ten players in the world anymore. I don't. I don't think from. We're talking from an NBA standpoint, he's hurt, you know, 20 games of the season. His team hasn't succeeded, though. And then there's the other side was like, no, he's definitely still one of the five best guys. Like, what are you saying? You're crazy. This was an absolute resume statement of like, throw out the playoff results the last two years. This is still one of the guys.

What'd you see, Mahoney?

Well, as far as big boy moments go, the biggest of boy moments is LeBron basically saying down the stretch, I'm guarding Nikola Jokic like he was the one in the post, battling him, fighting him off spots. And they were doing a lot of that so they could switch more pick and roll action and use them beat.

As a rover and all that.

Totally. And that's the reason that works is because LeBron is up for that challenge. It's just, I hear your point about where he is in the NBA hierarchy. I think it's totally fair to think of him as someone kind of on the borderline of that top ten range in terms of what he can produce, right? In terms of the actual offense that he himself generates.

But in a moment, and he's been two third team all NBA's in a row. Like, there's just anecdotal evidence. Like, hey, it's maybe not there anymore.

Age, injury, the way he needs to pace himself in the regular season a little bit, what he is on defense in some regular season games, those are all valid parts of his resume at this point. But in terms of control in these moments and who you want dictating terms, he's still that guy. He's, he's still, if not the number one option, you know, Jokic certainly is as good at that as anybody. He has to be up there with everybody like he is so incredible at. At understanding the stakes of every possession in close games and understanding exactly where the ball needs to go. And not every star can do that. Even. Even the most transcendent athletes can't always find that exact happy medium that he seems to.

Yeah, it's the Gladwell 10,000 hours house. When he was going against Jokic and there had been some bad blood with. I don't know what Bogdanovich was so mad about. Cause the announcers were like, he's yelling at Carmelo again. And they was like, could you guys give us, like, some context? What's happening? Because Bogdanovich is the maddest guy in the entire Olympics. Even more mad than the guy who hit his dick on the pole vote and ended up knocking the pole vote thing off.

It might work okay for him.

Yeah, long term, that guy's doing great job. But when LeBron was battling with Jokic, I was like, man, it would be really fun here if this got even a little more heated, you know, because Jokic has won three MVP's in four years. He's been beat LeBron two years in a row. And I was like, is this. How far is this going to escalate? Poor Jokic is going against Scott. LeBron guarding him. He's also embiid. Oh, and then we're going to throw Davis and we're going to throw. Bam. At you. It's like, I, like, talk about the all time gauntlet. He missed some threes. His threes just haven't been here in the Olympics. It's been that, and teams are giving them to him. But I, you know, it was fun to watch him, watch him battle. What'd you see from LeBron has.

Well, I mean, we did say at the outset of the tournament that there's a reason he was leading the odds to win MVP of this tournament. I like that investment that we made there.

Now, that's. That's. That's almost a lock. He'd have to be. He'd have to go, what, over 15 in the gold medal game to not get that.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the circumstances would be, but the most impressive thing is the age. Like, you know, you said 10,000 hours, the homies at 200,000 hours. I mean, he's the greatest lifetime performer the game of basketball has ever seen. He is unparalleled. And still, the two things to me that jumped off were the combination of basketball iq and poise, both of which translated into, like, we're not losing. We're not going to lose. I'm not going to permit us to lose. And I will say that I, sitting and watching at no point felt like we were going to lose.

Um, now I felt eight minutes left. I genuinely thought they were going to lose. I felt like it was falling apart.

Well, I was in the live biting markets, looking lustily at a lot of the plus odds for the US.

What were the odds were they plus when they were down eleven, they were down.

Plus 230. Yeah, you could get. You could get plus 230. I'm too slow. I have fat fingers. So I only got plus 02:05 at one point in there. But, yeah, the thing is, ultimately, Serbia, all credit to them. They're like one guy short, which is not a knock. They were there for 37 of the 40 minutes. And then the US did what it did with the depth of talent and took care of it right at the end.

Yeah, I was gonna get mad at the Serbia coach. Cause they ran out of timeouts because I wanted them to call timeout and they didn't have any timeouts. But I also, I thought when they called, all the timeouts were the right spots for the timeouts. You just don't necessarily get enough of them. One point on LeBron, I was thinking, you know, you go back to where he was in zero eight and zero nine and 2010 and 2011, which feels like a fucking lifetime ago. Like, we. We hadn't even started. We started Grantland during the 2011 finals, right? Which was like the lowest moment of his career. And some of the raps with him at the time were, you know, when it. When it comes to nut crunch time, you can really see him feeling it. He's not strong enough. He loses command of what to do in big moments. And not only is all that stuff gone, but now. Now it's flipped in the complete opposite way, where he's hit that same point that Kobe definitely hit an zero eight in the olympics. Jordan, obviously was always there in the nineties. Kd, you can feel it, at least offensively.

But these certain guys where you're just like, we're probably going to lose, unless. And it's like you start looking around and it's like, who do you completely trust? Who do we feel good here? And I just can't believe LeBron still has that in him at age 40. It's now into that. Brady mid 2010 sdHe. Kind of like, how is this still happening? This doesn't make like Brady. Not to compare it to Brady coming back from 28 to three against Atlanta, but there was a moment there was like, how is he still doing this? And then he wins the Super bowl with Tampa. You're like, how the fuck is this still happening? This shouldn't happen for basketball players. No, what LeBron's doing. Like, he. You shouldn't be able to go coast to coast with the same kind of speed you had 1415 years ago. But that his athletic ability at age 40 was one of the reasons they won the game. It wasn't just the smarts like, he big boy, these guys.

And, you know, he doesn't have the top of the square vertical that he used to have. He doesn't have necessarily the end to end breakneck speed, but body control, coordination, all the stuff that leads you to go from a dead sprint into a soft ass finger roll. He has all those things still. He has all of that at his command. It's incredible to watch him at this point. I love watching him with this team, and I'm glad we got this moment with real stakes. I'm glad you may have been confident. I was googling, how do I get serbian citizenship? I'm ready to flip. I thought this thing was done. And so to watch, even with being as confident in LeBron's abilities as I am, I didn't know that he and these guys had quite this in them to come back from that kind of deficit when they just hadn't played well all game and they found it exactly when they needed to.

House. I was 90% rooting for USA having a heart attack, 3% thinking about our France bet, just because on the 20 year anniversary of us winning Argentina, ten to one, I just, you know, couldn't help but think about that. And then my love for Jokic, who's my favorite non celtic other than Curry. It was weird. Jokic won the curry head to head battle for non Celtics. I love the most for your heart. I just love Jokic. And he made a couple play when he's just being double triple team, they're just beating the shit out of him, and he's doing like, yokage stuff and getting shots off. I was like, man, if this guy pulls this off, this would be just incredible, him beating this team with Bogdanovich, Micich, who's like Charlotte's 13th man, and then a bunch of guys I've never heard of, and they're going to beat what I think is the most talented Olympic team we've had in 32 years. Anyway, let's take a break. There's more topics to discuss here. All right, so we talked about lineups in previous podcasts here and how when you have a game like this, the lineups, they shorten, the rotation shorten, you have fourth quarters where maybe six guys play and I, some guys end up being losers.

And the box scores I've seen, they don't have all the official minutes yet, but Bam didn't play nearly as much. Derek White didn't play nearly as much. Ant lost a bunch of minutes. Katie seemed like he lost some minutes. And then the big one was Tatum didn't play. And we talked on Tuesday about why Tatum probably wouldn't play in this game, especially if it was close, because his shot has betrayed him. I find it hard to believe he's going to play in 2028. Now I'm just going to throw that out there.

Wow.

Yeah.

You think he will not elect to.

Show I have no inside information at all?

Okay.

I'm just saying that when you're making hard choices like this, I think there's going to be ramifications down the line would be my best.

I feel like you're daring the aggregators, now you're just dangling the pain.

I just said I have no inside information whatsoever.

That's not going to stop anybody.

I think it's now an embarrassing, embarrassing tournament for Tatum. I don't see him playing again.

It's not, it's not embarrassing.

He was top five all NBA three years in a row. He just won the title. He's literally not playing in these games.

Let me ask you this question. If he was on the floor in place of Lebron or Kevin Durant, do you think that they would have pulled off this game?

I don't. Not the way he's shooting.

Well, the problem is now it's too late. Like you needed him to have been worked into these rotations and for him to understand what his role and contribution was going to be seven games ago right in the friendlies, like getting big minutes and getting big guys.

I said on Tuesday I didn't think he was going to play in this game.

I just wonder.

There's going to be bad blood with some of this stuff. I'll be really, they're going to come.

Out with the biggest olive branch possible because this is it. This is it for Curry, this is it for Durant, and this is it for LeBron. So it is going to be a team that very well could be led by Jason Tatum because of the group that's, that's on the team right now. He's, he's the, the, to me, the sort of natural leader um, coming out, I mean, it's.

So that would be the argument. Maybe you sprinkle a couple minutes in, but, um, the thing is, Kerr's not going to worry about 2028, right? You lose any of these games and it's on your permanent record. And I was getting a bunch of texts just in the first half, like, what the fuck are these rotations? What's he doing?

So it was a Steve Kerr game, is what you're saying?

Well, it was, it was. I mean, he definitely looked like he was grasping for straws in a lot of ways, but I'll be interested to see how it plays out. It's pretty significant that the biggest game that this country has played in three years and a DMP for Tatum, but I also don't know whose minutes he would have taken a. I can't think of a single player he should have played in front of.

One thing about the gold medal game, if it had been Germany in front of them, Tatum would be a great Franz Wagner antidote. As it stands. I can't believe I'm saying this. Is he the Gershon yabu saile answer? Whoa.

I love it.

The fact you need an answer to the questions. What a time to be alive. But I. But honestly, like, as far as, you know, burly forwards who are going to be able to combat his size, like, Lebron is a great answer there. Durant, too. But Tatum could be another guy that they throw out, whether it's Yabu Saleh, whether it's lesor. Like, they're going to need forward physicality from somewhere. It can't all be guards and bakes. Like, that range of players going to have to be really important for a team. USA.

Yeah. The rebound in today, they had 33 rebounds total, and LeBron and Curry had 20 of the 33. I'm not sure how that that's. They diagram that before the game. That's where, like, the fact that Tatum isn't shooting well, I think really has hurt this team because fundamentally, he is like one of the missing pieces that they need because he's such a good defender and he's got size and he can rebound and theoretically, he should be able to spread the floor. You saw over and over again in both halves, they were leaving somebody open and hoping they weren't going to make threes. And it was Edwards for a little while. They were never leaving. They're never trying to leave KD Open, but they were leaving Bam. Open. They let Booker go ahead, knock yourself out. And Booker, by the way, I think is a big winner of this tournament. As we talked about before, he was out there for them in some pretty big moments. So he ended up playing 24 minutes. Bam. Only played ten. Davis only played ten. So Davis was the one who probably lost the most minutes out of what we would have thought, because Embiid ended up 27 minutes, and he was eight for eleven from the field.

So you. So you guys are less pessimistic than me about the Tatum 2028 thing? Cause I do think that's gonna be a possible storyline.

It's a complete rewrite. We're gonna have a brand new team. It's gonna be, you know, some young guys maybe we haven't even considered at this point. It's gonna be. Look, nothing like that. The team that's on the floor at.

The moment, they just need a little classic american propaganda. How it was Tatum in a timeout, given an impassioned speech that rallied these guys, that really turned everything around. Like, you just need a little bit of background narrative.

Well, at one point in the fourth quarter, he was the only guy who still had his warm up on. I was like, just take the warm up off. So you fit in with the team photos better. Yeah. So you think, like, four years from now, LeBron's gone, Curry's gone, Durant's gone, and there's this new wave of cup. But by that time, like, Cooper flag might be ready. All this, dude.

Yeah, right.

We're thinking, now you're talking for Serbia. That's probably Jokic's best chance ever. Cause he's going to be four years. God only knows where Jokic is four years from now. Is he still playing basketball? We have no idea. That's probably their best chance to win. Let's talk about France and how it ties into the United States. Game.

Incredible.

France beats Germany in what turned it out to be an absolute rock fight. Wembley goes four for 17 and actually wins. And in the most important news, I'm back out on the Franz Wagner extension. I'm out. It's been another flip flop.

It's been two days.

Three Franz Wagner extension flip flops this summer seems too high now. I don't know if I like it.

Fraudulent. Franz. I mean, there's a lot of names we can. We can pull together here. That. That dude I sent around to our group, what, does he think he's in Cleveland? Does he think it's game seven in Cleveland again?

Like, you know, that was research.

Show off. Show up. This is the moment. This is the stage. You just got $250 million. Homie. Show everybody what you're all about. And they let them, these french bangers suck the life out of them.

Is it me? I mean, we do have a new big three, right? Yabasoli.

Lesor.

Lesor.

Yeah.

And gotta be Courtier. The new big three, just banging bodies. I was looking at all their basketball reference, whatever. Whatever stats they had in it. And Courtney doesn't hit threes, which I guess that's why he's not an NBA player. Lasor doesn't hit threes either. And it's just the type of guy we were texting during the game. Like who. What NBA player is he? Is he.

I thought he was Trez Harrell. I thought he was.

Yeah, like Montrezero with. With more of like a low post, like drop step type game. So I guess there are guys that have. But it's just funny to watch them in this format and they just become superhuman. Here's where I'll start with the France game. Now, it ties in the US, though. The home court advantage was out of control. And if they think. If the US thinks there was pressure and tension in the game today, just wait because we're going to. We're going up a level. We're doing the spinal tap. We're going from ten to eleven. It's going up, and we got big bodies and all kinds of things going on. But what you would you see in that France game, Rob?

Well, one thing we talked about on Tuesday was Nick Batum again pressuring full court, picking up guards, hounding guys. I don't know what the equivalent for that's going to be against Team USA because so much of it does run through LeBron. That's not really a guy you can press full court so easily as, as a smaller guard. But I just continue to be impressed with Batum in particular. Honestly, all the veteran guys for France kind of finding their roles within this new order. You know, Evan Vorny, even Rudy Gobert.

Finding his role of waving a towel.

Coming in five minute.

Rudy coming into rebound off of free throws. Look, he's a patriot. He's a true patriot.

That's right.

House, is Rudy eligible for the Ewing theory? Because he did play a couple minutes, but they're in France taking off the moment they decided to remove him from the rotation. And the fact that he's number one in championship, I think makes him ewing theory eligible. So I'm going to say he counts.

It's a one of one career, a guy who has to be off the floor at the highest leverage moments he just cannot be on the floor.

I will like seven defensive players of the year and got traded for five first round picks and a whole bunch of other shit can't be on the floor.

That french game plan, in terms of just making it uncomfortable for Germany, because coming in, the handicap for me was Germany has the second best, second most sophisticated half court offense of any team in the tournament. And a lot of that is the comfort level of them playing together. They move well. There's a chemistry there. I had them behind the United States in terms of half court offense because we can score from all five spots, but France just wouldn't let it happen. I mean, you know, Germany got out to the lead that they got out to by running their half court offense. And Franz showed up in the first quarter, you know, not, not the one that, that's the end of the game, but the one at the beginning of the game he showed up for. And, you know, they, they out rebounded Germany after getting out rebounded a week ago. They protected the ball a little bit better than they handled the pressure that.

Mahoney were calling for in the last five. They actually handled it.

And for, and forced turnovers. Like, Germany is not a high turnover team. They run very efficiently, and yet they were stymied and they looked frustrated and they look like they couldn't get to their spots in terms of that execution that we've, we've grown used to from them over these last couple of years.

German Steve Nash turned back into Dennis Schroeder. That was, that was the sub pot. I was surprised to see that. Listen, the Olympics, it's where I wrote down. Fournier turns into a big game player.

Yep.

Yabucelli turns into Charles Barkley, Courtney turns into Andre Gudala, Lasort turns into Farida on steroids, and Schrader becomes Steve Nash. Like, this is just for whatever reason. What happens with this Feeba style? Weird guys change identities and turn into these different types of basketball players, which was so much fun about the US. Like just LeBron, Curry, KD and beat all playing like the hits, basically.

But what has, what has Jason Tatum turned into?

I have no comment. Okay, so Germany was in the first game. They beat the hell out of France. When they played them earlier in the Olympics, they were twelve for 26 from three in this game. They missed 19 of their 1st 26 and it was just a brick fest. I think what's crazy about this France win. Wemby goes four for 17. France was six for 27 from three at one point. It's not like, that was like, it was the opposite of, oh, this is how you upset somebody. You shoot the lights out in the Olympics and your best player plays. Awesome. It wasn't like that at all, but their defense was awesome. House, you made a lot of Wemby jokes to me during the game. Where do we land ultimately with his performance in that game?

It's fine. I think this is like the appropriate seasoning of Wemby. He is. He's a child, right? These are men. These are men playing banger basketball. Like, the difference offensively for France was that yaba sale and Lasour combined for eleven of 16. And all of those are paint points, right? That's. It was man's basketball. It was a bit, and it was nice to see a couple times Wemby assert himself when he's, he's like, hey, I'm right by the basket. I could dunk. I'm going to try and dunk. I would love to see a lot more of that. But he just doesn't have the ass for it yet. I mean, he's just a youth, and he'll get those, those baby deer legs. We'll get some meat on them here.

You know, hope so.

God will give him that gift, and then we'll, we'll start to see that back to the basket element for him. Way too many threes out of him. He did make a huge one to stifle, you know, the Germany pushback, but it's fine. It's the seasoning of, he's a kid. I'm totally satisfied with it.

Mahoney, this is the start of something for him. And honestly, if we're going to talk about France's defense, a lot of it is predicated on having him behind them. And Gobert could have done some facsimile of that. But Wendy is that much more dynamic, that much ranger, that much more able to play up to the level, you know, around screens and around various actions. And so the fact that you can be so physical and muck the game up the way that France has a lot of that is because Wemby is there to cover for so much.

Well, and then they also gave 25 Rudy Gobert minutes to other guys in the team. And I. I don't even 100% blame him because you.

What is there to blame him? What has he done?

Well, because you just don't need him if you have Wemby. That's what there's no reason to have both guys. And Wemby's the future of the team, and Wemby is the guy everyone in France wants to see out there. And Wemby could have gone two for 35 and they weren't going to take him out of the fourth quarter. But he did enough good stuff defensively and with his hands and just being active and threatening. And you could see the guys, basically what we saw in the NBA season, guys dribbling toward the basket, seeing him and doing like a double take.

My complaint is just that Wemby isn't old enough, mature enough, sophisticated enough with his basketball iq to be a perimeter defender and let go bear, be the rim protector, to be the basket stopper. And that's not a knock on Wemby. I just wish he was like two years ahead in his development so that we could see that version of the french defense.

That's the thing.

It's not unreasonable to ask that of him. Like, he's going to be able to do some of that stuff at some point. That's what's so scary about his future.

So they got it to six, they blew three straight possessions. They had, I think, 16 turnovers. But then Franz hits a three to cut it to 239 seconds left. They get a stop. Franz gets the rebound and just can't keep it in. The minimum goes out of bounds. We were robbed of this awesome last 10 seconds of Germany with the ball down, too, which I'm sure Schroeder would have tried to create something, but I do feel like neutral site. Germany wins that game and I think the home court, just to reinvigorate Evan Fournier, of all people, as this huge big game. You can count on him. Guy making shots like that should tell you all I need to know. I genuinely like Yaba Celli, though.

He's been awesome.

I wonder, the other guy, the Fareed Montrez Harold thing, we've seen that it can maybe work on the right team, but ultimately you're going to be able to patch stuff together. But it's not the kind of guy who could be in a seven man rotation on a NBA team that could win the title. The stuff Yabe selle does, I don't know. Like, could. Could he be. What is it? What is he in the NBA, Rob? Is he like a three point shooting three who can bang and who can switch on D? But also, maybe you could play small ball four with him. I just feel like he's actually an NBA rotation guy.

I think he's like, maybe not quite as good, but the model would be like a PJ Washington type player, like a combo three, four, can guard like a wide range of players, but he's a little more physical inside. I think that's the difference is where Washington is a little more spot up. Yeah, busted can do that, but he, like, he can bang in there. And that's what makes him valuable. And honestly, what makes the store valuable, too, is these guys who don't just create space, but know how to use it and capitalize on the fact that the lane is suddenly open. And if you just put a body into somebody, you can draw fouls or you can get layups.

Mahoney, what'd you see from Kulabali today that excited you?

That's so rude.

Come on.

Oh, I forgot he was on the wizard's house. My bad. I didn't mean to do that to you.

Is that necessary?

I'm sorry about that.

Koolabali's. I'm Team Koolabali. For the record, he's gonna be a very important part of the french national team's future.

Okay, let's not the wizards, let's talk.

Let's talk about USA. France. So, like, yaba selli, Lesor, these dudes that seem so great when they're going against Daniel Tice, now they're going to be going against Embiid and LeBron and Pam Adebayo and Anthony Davis. And there's just way more size and length, and you're not going to see Lasour backing down people and doing five second drop steps. There's a case for France to hang around that doesn't involve home court. Advantageous. I just don't know what it is. House, what is it?

I'm not going to be able to make it. Their guards stink. They're so bad. And Germany should have been in position to exploit that. But shooter had a bad game, so they couldn't take advantage of it. The US, they can continue to get these banger buckets out of Yabu Saleh and Lasorda, and I just don't think it's enough. They just don't have the firepower they can't do. The blueprint is what we just watched. It's the Joker controlling the ball, you know, making the right play at the right time, and then just rain threes, reign threes, rain threes. French. French doesn't have that reign. The French just don't have it.

Well, you know who agrees with you? House Fanduel. Because USA is -15 and a half for the gold medal game, which is only a point less than they were favored against Serbia. Is there a case rob, I think.

The case is probably similar to what we saw in the way that it will have to be a very, very ugly game that that is France's model. Like, I. The shooting will come and go for them sometimes. Like, Courtney is a great example of that. Can shoot the lights out one game, absolutely wreck it the next. If guys like him are hot, if Evan Fournier is hitting enough of his, like, weird bailout threes at the end of clock on possessions that go nowhere, if you get enough of those things working for you and you're able to muck up the game, then, yeah, we've seen you can throw Team USA off its axis a little bit. You can get those guys overthinking or over deferring or whatever that ends up looking like in that moment. But having the Americans go through a test like this against Serbia helps iron out some of that stuff. Like, the Americans will be in better shape to combat an ugly game now, having been through one than they would have been otherwise. And so that's. That's a. Like, a really important trial for a team that honestly just hadn't really been tested yet.

So that's an interesting point, because B's. I don't think that what we just watched was necessarily an ugly game. It was high execution by Serbia from the three point line that really tilted the core.

Yeah, that game was good.

France, ugly on the other side. I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah, right. So my question is, you know, the Francis ability to muck things up, to make it ugly comes from the physicality, their ability to play full court press, and to. It slows the game down because it takes all of the time to get started in the offense. I expect them to try and repeat that. How does the US exploit it is my question to the godfather.

Serbia was. Serbia was doing that to the US in this game, and they were exposing that us was doing some weird shit with, like, bam. Bringing the ball up, Davis bringing the ball up, Durant, anytime. Anyone other than a real guard wasn't bringing up. Serbia was just on those dudes making them work. Even Edwards, they were attacking. So I assume France is probably going to borrow that one as well. I. I can't believe I'm saying this, guys. Kyle, don't turn the tick tock camera. I think France has to start go bear in this game.

Wow.

This is the zag I never expected. I got to say, I think.

I happen to watch Embiid score 70 points on Wemby, and it was an absolute evisceration. Now, it was also, unfortunately for Embiid the highlight of his season, destroying a lottery team. Now he has the new highlight of the season, what he did against Serbia. But I thought he had a lot of confidence and he is too much size for Wemby. And if they just start Wemby without starting go bear two, I just think the US is going to attack Wemby and try to put fouls on him. So if I'm, if I'm France and we know Embiid is going to play like the first five, six minutes of the game, I'm probably playing go bear for those first five, six minutes and then bringing in Lasord and Yabaselli together and trying to have them bang against Bam and ad. Is that crazy, Rob?

It's not crazy. I agree with you that Gobert is better suited to guarding Embiid than Wemby is. The problem is we also just went through a playoff cycle where the discussion for two weeks against the Nuggets was, oh, Gobert guarding on ball in the post against someone like Nikola Jokic doesn't work that great. It's, it's better having him behind, you know, roving. And so maybe that's the answer. Whether it's Wemby or Gobert on the ball, the combination of the two is what you want in terms of stifling a sort of low post presence. I just, I don't know. I hear you and I think that's the best, maybe the best option that they have available. I think getting more length on the floor, generally speaking, for protecting the rim, will be very helpful for them. I just don't think it's going to matter very much. I think they give up too much in terms of, you know, you put those guys on the floor, Joel's just going to take shots from the elbow anyway. Like what? What will that do for you having go bear things like that?

Maybe you put Lasor on them and you do the thing that we saw some NBA teams where they use the 6566 sturdy guy. Sure. And get like right basically in his chest. And maybe you do that way. I've already flip flopped. Maybe Gobert doesn't play at all. You talk me out of it, Rob useless or in Yavaselli and just get right into Embiid's grill and do it that way.

I like Gobert out there. I think let him go. Huge start. Wemby, go bear, Yabasele Lesor and I don't know. But here's the thing that we're, we must countenance that whistle is going to be what do they say? Whatever. It's going to be very maison a la cuisine. Cuisine, home cooking whistle. So if they want to come out and be physical, I do believe that that could be an element that we need to factor into how we assess this thing.

Are you saying this is going to be the first game that LeBron didn't get calls in since like 2008? Is that your prediction?

I didn't think that he got, you know, he got appropriate calls in what we just watched.

I actually thought the refs were pretty fair in today's. Me too. Me too. I didn't love the. I didn't love Jokic's fourth foul. Yeah, I actually would have challenged that if I was Serbia.

They're not great, the refs in FIBA, basketball generally, but they are kind of evenly not great, if that makes sense.

Right?

Excepting apparently France and the home cooking.

Yeah, I think it could be a.

Little baguette on that one.

That Japanese with a four pointer against Japan, which is the single play that has us in this very situation.

Unbelievable.

It's literally the reason why France is in the gold medal game. Yes, I do think that they're susceptible to home court pressure, that's all.

So, House, what do we do? We have France at plus 1500, but a really hard hedge situation with us as a twelve to one favorite on Fanduel.

It's expensive. I don't hedge. A little.

Tough one. I don't even know this problem with hedging. Hedging never works.

Sucks.

I thought, before we go, I thought of something as we were talking about the Gobert thing. Just an amazing win for Embiid from where he was three weeks ago. And he even, he looks thinner and in more shape. Like, he clearly just fucked up. He came in, he wasn't in shape. Maybe whatever happened with his knee during the playoffs, he couldn't work out the right way. But he looks like he's in better shape. But we've gone from this is where I was at the start of the tournament. Like, I wish Embiid wasn't on the team. I wish it was just bam and ad as the centers. I wish they would give Tatum those minutes. I would. I just think that's a better version of this team. And Embiid is just this weird piece that doesn't fit in with everything to now thinking they really need them. And France is going to have to figure out how to match up with them. So when you think, like, that's how far we've gone with them beat in three weeks, I'm going to say, if you're going big winners for Team USA, it's him. It's Lebron. Curry is now back in the winter column.

KD is even only nine points today, but somehow gets the biggest basket of the entire game. And probably Booker and I think, and Drew Holiday, who had some good glue guy stuff that he drew holidays, I forgot to mention his defense for one stretch in the fourth quarter was like out of control. It looked like he was going against like, the Mavs in the finals, like he was at that level.

But especially Derek White, the glue guy. Mortal sin of fouling a three point shooter and one and only. You get the hook at that point.

We might not see him for the rest of the Olympics.

This is what's so dope about single elimination, though, is Joel has one game like this in a moment like that, and it erases kind of everything that came before. Like, who cares how you performed against South Sudan in the group play. Like, it just doesn't matter if you, if you play like this when it matters.

And not only that, it might translate into the most impactful storyline for this upcoming basketball season. Because if he, what he is learning, what he's getting out of these experiences with this group of guys, and we've heard these stories, you know, every four years, you hear guys come from the Olympics and say, wow, that was something.

I didn't change the course of my career.

It changed the course of my career. And he really did look, he was the most nimble when he went down after that dunk, after he beat the joker, I was like, oh, my God, he's dead. Because really, he fell down three times in the series against the knicks and it looked like he was hurt all over again. We weren't going to see him for another six months. But he looked, he was, he was very, very good on his feet. And miraculously, it looked like he lost ten pounds in one week.

And it was the James Harden ten pound weight loss just out of nowhere, just from exercising.

But in Paris, the first man to ever go to Paris and lose ten.

Pounds was going amazing. I've had this podcast since zero seven, and every four years we come out of the Olympics and we talk about these guys and how important this experience. And Brisilla always makes fun of me for it. But I really do think if you read the stories of the people the season after, like, even Carmelo had the best year of his career in zero nine. The best. After he was on this team, LeBron went to a whole other level in zero nine. Now that probably would have happened anyway, but he's credited being with Kobe. They did that in the redeem team documentary. There's that story about the guys were coming back from the club and Kobe was going the other way because he was going to work out at five in the morning. That's the kind of shit like if you're Embiid, you joined a team. It was the process. They're intentionally trying to lose games for years. They don't care if you play or not. They're just trying to collect assets. They're not doing any sort of team building at all. And they've made excuses for him the entire time he was there.

But the talent's always been there. He won an MVP. And if I'm a Sixers fan, I'm watching this going, this is the greatest pot. This is way better than the Paul George signing. Like, whatever. We could just sign and bring in a new guy every year. It's never going to matter unless Embiid gets it. And I don't. I honestly don't know if he got it until maybe these last couple of weeks. I loved what I saw today from him. Is that fair, Rob, or am I being too hard?

Too hard in terms of what to say?

This is the most impactful, maybe two week stretch for him as a player of his career.

That might be making a little more of it than it ends up being. But I do think these moments are important to players like NB. That's why him being as reactive jumps out to me. Like, this is clearly a game and a moment that was crucial for him that he felt the weight of and the fact that he felt it and succeeded, frankly, is not something he's done in the NBA very often. Like, he has had a great regular season performance. He's had great seasons. He's had great singular moments in playoff series, but their first round series or their lower stakes series, this was a game that the USA absolutely had to win and they put the ball in his hands. And that vote of confidence means a lot and him delivering means a lot. Whether, you know, whatever ends up happening for him in the Sixers next season, like, I do think those are formative and instructive experiences for, for stars in.

His position and house. Part of the, part of the case for him maybe not totally getting it was how he showed up for the Olympics. I'm just going to throw that out there.

I mean, little column a, little column.

B, we all have eyes.

It's fair. It's, it's a fair criticism. Um, but look, man, it. To me, it changes the ceiling of that Sixers team. It always comes down to the same thing with them. Can he be healthy in April? Can Paul George be healthy in April? I wish we could fast forward to April and both guys were healthy then it would really be a super fun Eastern Conference playoff situation. But I'll just knock on wood and root for it because the Eastern Conference is so much better if both those guys are playing and Joel's at this. This level. He's got. We just saw it. We know he's got it in him. You know, he dropped a 50 piece on the Knicks so that they didn't get swept out of that series. And here we have this Olympics game, and he does look capable of getting in shape. So fingers crossed.

That's where the Paul George part of it, I think, is nice, too, of the idea that inching his team a little closer to not Team USA talent, obviously, but putting another star where he doesn't have to have the 50 and in some games can just be the closer and be in a position that in his career with the Sixers, just never had the chance to do.

Last question before we go. So seeing what we saw from LeBron today, if you're the Lakers, does that make you change your mind at all about putting those picks on the table and trying to get a real third star?

I would already put, not that they.

Would have felt that way before, but so you say no either way?

No, I would have already put the picks on the table. Like I'm of the opinion if LeBron James, one of the greatest players to ever live, who's still this good, is on your team, you should be going forward hard all the time. That's. That's how I think that should be navigated.

But that's not Jeremy Grant. It's somebody a notch above. So the move for them is if he can keep at this level, you wait until December and you see who's unhappy, and you, and you go all in and you're not going to do it now because there's no guy.

Now who's it going to be, though?

It's not who the unhappy guy is, but there might be another unhappy guy coming, ideally the NBA.

Giannis, he's going to be unhappy. Get ready. Get ready. I know you don't think so, but get ready.

I hope it's not Jason Tatum. Rob, we're going to send you off. House is going to stay. We're going to talk NFL futures right after this. Thanks for joining us, Mahoney.

Hey, thanks, guys.

USA. USA. All right, we're starting a new segment here on the B's podcast. It's called five Favorites. House didn't know about this. Did I tell you about this, House?

You did not. But I'm thrilled to be here, especially with our boy Debundo and B's. I want you to help me. Let's get a nickname for Debundo.

Debundo is such a good name in his own right name. Anthony Debundo. Say, if you listen to the Ringer gambling show, he joined us this summer. He is. To call him a jack of all trades would be an understatement. Soccer, baseball, football is really his main thing, but it's really all the sports. I still love the fact that Debundo, that you follow all baseball. Nobody watches all baseball anymore. House and I just watch our own teams. I have no idea what's going on with any other team. You're following all this stuff. You're also young, which I think you have way more energy than us. What's your favorite out of all the sports? Because when I first saw you, you were crushing it on football. You were putting up like one pick a week on, I think, Mondays or Tuesdays and you were like 70, 75%. And I'm like, who is this dude? How is he doing this? So is football your favorite or is it another one?

You know, by virtue of the popularity of football, it's always going to be number one just based on how this country consumes sports. But I do love kind of the zag energy of being a huge soccer fan. And surudy can attest to this, too. We've been doing a soccer show there all summer on the gambling feed. And it's fun to embrace that side of it because there's so much pageantry and european beauty to the game. But in terms of like number one, every Sunday from one to eleven, I'm on the couch watching games. Like the NFL blocks off most of my fall. And yes, it's the perk of being really young and really single and having a lot of free time that I'm a able to follow all these sports.

For now, House is asleep on the couch at various parts from one to eleven, but it's still joining you during that, that football bench. Hey, so we brought you on for five favorites I asked you to pick. Right now we're four weeks away. It's taping this on a Thursday afternoon. We are four weeks away from day one NFL season. Thursday night. I can't wait. House. I missed it so much. I mean, I told you this. This was the year that I think I decided I like football more than basketball. I can't believe I've gotten here.

We had this conversation. You know, we. We could have done a podcast about it, how we're looking back across the span of our lives and the sports that were important to us. And basketball has been the thing that has cemented our relationship over these many decades. But here we are. It's football, baby. I love it so much. I'm so ready for it.

Yeah. I'm not like, on September 15, I'm not going to be like, oh, my God, five more weeks until the NBA. I'll be excited. Football. I'm like, my wife is already looking at me side eyed. She's like, I know you have. I know I have you for four more weeks. And then I'm just probably going to hate your guts on Thursdays and Sundays and Mondays. And now we're going to have Wednesday games and Black Friday games. They're just games all the time. Debundo, we asked you your five favorite NFL futures right now, four weeks away. We're going to go in descending order from five to one to try to build the drama, really, for house. And then house is going to try to pretend he's listening while he's also kind of writing these down on some stealth notebooks.

So it's not stealth. It's right here. I'm ready.

There you go. Your five favorites. Number five. Let's hear it.

Yeah.

Let's go.

With the Tennessee Titans under six and a half wins -122 at FanDuel. Most people don't realize that Will Levis had a lower success rate than Kenny Pickett did last year. And I think it's kind of flown under the radar because he had some really impressive highlight plays. And if you just watch the red zone channel, you probably saw a ton of like, crazy throws and him taking on linebackers, but the offense basically relied on him throwing the ball down the field, hitting a couple big plays a game to kind of stay in it, and then Brable would coach up the defense and they would be really successful there. I don't really get the sense that the Vrabel departure was necessarily an on the field football decision and just like a strategic difference vision with the general manager in the front office there. And the most alarming thing about Levis, and I think if Joe House watched Sam Howell all last year, he would know this. His SAC rates were alarming in college and in the pros and only the Giants had a worse sack rate than Tennessee last year. They really haven't improved the offensive line a ton.

It's still going to be one of the bottom five or six offensive lines.

They used the top seven pick on a left tackle and it's still not that good of an offensive line. Right.

Exactly. Pff. Ranked the one to 32. They had them in the bottom five. And I just wonder, you know, they bring in an offensive coach we didn't really know a ton about Brian Callahan. He's never really called plays. So I think there's a lot of questions about how much better the offense is. And I think there's questions could the defense get worse? They were one of the best defenses in the red zone last year. That tends to be kind of noisy year to year. So a lot of questions about Tennessee. I do think all three teams in the division are better than they were last year and I don't really see Tennessee taking that step forward again. That's the sack number is the one I can't get past with Will Abbas.

Well, I know I could just see the delight in house's eyes. What's your immediate. I have two reactions, but what's your immediate reaction?

I mean, I've literally bet this every which way. I have Levis under yards, Levis under touchdowns, Pollard under yards, Pollard under touchdowns. Titans disaster area. This, this defense, especially the bundo's last point at that past defense was supposed to be like a past funnel kind of situation. It was a pass fire hose. It was a disaster. And any franchise that thinks that it can make progress without Mike Brable as part of it, the decision making gives you significant pause. So I'm on this under. I played it every which way. I'm thrilled to have this welcome aboard ad. Welcome aboard.

Yeah, that was a good first one. So I have three reactions. One, if you're going who is the worst team in the AFC? Cause we know we're going to have two or three terrible teams. Tennessee is in the conversation. New England is in the conversation. And for me, Vegas over Denver for the third spot. Not sure how you guys feel on that, but, like, at gunpoint, I just, I really don't like Vegas. They seemed super top heavy to me. I'm not sold on Pierce at all. I don't love their schedule. Like, I just. So those would be the three. So that's one. Two, if Levis didn't have that comeback against the Dolphins on Monday night that killed all of our parlays, wouldn't we be way more suspicious of the Leves thing because he had this really fun fourth quarter that all of us watched. We were like, oh, Levis. But for the most part that, like, as Dubundo said, it was flashes, flashes in the pan. And a lot of times the pan had, like, that sticky shit in the bottom of it that you have to, like, use. What's that thing that the hard thing you have to scrape off?

That's two. And then third. This is the most glaring one to be the new coach theory, which we love. And there's a lot of good candidates this year for who's going to be the new coach bump team. Right? And I'm sure, I think we have more candidates this year than we've had before. Could be houses team. Could be the chargers going from Staley to Harbaugh. It could be Raheem Morrison, Atlanta. Raheem Morris, second chance. Tennessee is the opposite to me. I love Rabel. I felt like they overachieved with variable every year, and I don't know why they would be better without variables. So if you had to rank those three Levis, overexposure to a couple of good moments, the fact that somebody in the AFC has to be bad, or the new coach theory in reverse, what was the number one thing driving that one for you?

I think the new coach thing in reverse. I've had a Ravels cost me a lot of money because as a numbers person, they never really made sense, and they just always. He's kind of got the tomlin esque nature to him where you're not quite sure how it works. You're like, he's too conservative. But then all of a sudden, every game is 1616 with three minutes to go, and they find a way to. To grind a couple out, and you just don't know what you're going to get. You know, change isn't always good. And I think that Tennessee, when you look at how bad their defense fell off last year in the second half, and then you combine that with losing bravel, I don't really see the case for them being any better and kind of clawed their way to six wins last year.

Yeah, House. If. If the jets had just fired Salah and hired variable in Mayenne, they just said, fuck it, we have a chance to win the Super bowl. Would you have a Jets Super bowl ticket right now?

100%? Because I'll confess, right now, I do have some exposure to the jets.

Of course you do. I mean, you bet on. You bet on fucking France. Of course you did.

I mean, I think they're pretty good on both sides of the ball. But if they had bravel, good God, that, I mean, the ticket would have been pricey. You probably wouldn't have done better than it would have been nine to one or eight to one because all the crazy New Yorkers would have snapped it up.

The bundle. What's the juice on that Titans line.

-122 and that's a great price.

Yeah, that feels.

Let's go.

So they would have to go.

It was actually, it was the first bet I made this season when I started doing work.

So they would have to go seven and ten to beat that.

Yep.

I don't, I don't see that. Not only that, I don't really see a scenario for it at all.

That division. We did some of our division previews already. I mean, that, that division is kind of quietly loaded. Like, it wouldn't shock me if we got 310 game winners. Now, I'm not predicting that, but it wouldn't floor me because I think Indianapolis.

Is right there and I'd be floored by. I gotta say, I'd be floored by Jacksonville. I don't know. I don't.

Jacksonville's the post type. Everybody's in on Jacksonville.

After being out on them, I don't see the Jacksonville thing. Good luck betting on Trevor Lawrence. All right, what's your number four.

We're going to go with another under. We're going to go to your favorite division. House's favorite division. The NFC South. Tampa Bay Bucks under seven and a half wins, plus 122. So Baker Mayfield has this resurgence season out of nowhere. And going into last season, the narrative was, all right, Tom Brady retires, the Bucks roster is falling apart. They're going to have a kind of a tank rebuild season. And then out of nowhere they're hosting a playoff game and they win a playoff game and come within one drive of going to the NFC championship because Baker just goes and has this incredible season, gets Dave Canales ahead, coaching job. All of these things go right for Tampa.

430. Dave, let's send practice at 430. We got to spend time with our family.

Love that work life balance. Love that. But, and I'm actually interested in Carolina. Maybe Bryce Young might be a bridge too far.

Calm down, Dubundo.

If you want to get a little.

Crazy, this is your first appearance in the pod. Calm down. Take a breath.

So Nick Giffen, my old colleague at the Action Network, he has a metric called luck rankings, which essentially looks at play to play. How good are you? And then compares it to the final record. And last season, number one luck ranking team was Pittsburgh, which should surprise nobody. Number two was Philly. They were number one until their collapse. And number three was Tampa Bay. They ran really good in terms of red zone defense. They were one of the luckiest teams in the NFL. And you can just see how this doesn't quite work, trying to run it back. And maybe when we look back on last season, we'll say, hey, maybe Tampa would have been better off if they hadn't had so much success, because now I think they're perfectly a purgatory.

It's like the Giants a year ago, right? It's like that nine, seven and one in a playoff, and all of a sudden you get fooled into thinking you might be good.

That's actually a perfect comp for what this is. Everybody thinks Baker Mayfield is better than he really is. It's similar to what Daniel Jones, and it's different because I think Jones is a little bit younger than Mayfield and we haven't seen as much from him. But again, they lose Carlton Davis from their secondary. They hire Liam Cohen from the McVeigh tree to be the offensive coordinator. Big loss in terms of play calling duties and how that will work. Don't know how Baker responds in another year in this system. So I'm going with the Bucks under. I think it's a pretty bad division, and I think, unfortunately, you can't bet against all three teams. It's kind of hard to do that because they're all correlated against each other. But I think Tampa is the most overvalued of those top three NFC south contenders.

House, what are your feelings on the bundo? Philadelphia guy, Syracuse guy? Just pretty predetermined to just be kind of glass half empty. Starting off the pod with two unders, not surprised. I gotta say, I'm not surprised.

No, he comes by it honestly. He's an analytics dude. He does maths. He likes the math. So unders always have a positive expected value plus ev. Isn't that how they say it out there? Ad. Come on, bundo.

The nerds. The nerds.

Yeah.

Sheil Capati is trying to make Tony Bunz happen. I don't. I don't think it's going to stick. We've been doing some philly special podcasts.

That's not.

I don't.

I don't hate that. All right, so here's, here's my counter on this tampa pic, which I do like. It looks too easy. That's one NFC south like, is it just a hornet's nest do you just stay away? Is that, is the entire division just to stay away? I don't feel you can kind of look at every team and go ah. Or you go ugh. And I don't feel good about any of the four. And I think anybody who's looking at that division and going, I know exactly what's going to happen is fucking kidding themselves. That would be my counter. So like, is there, you don't have to tip it off now, but are there other teams you like or do you feel like that's just all four of those teams are either unders or stay aways?

Well, that's why I think Carolina, if they can get anything out of Bryce Young, if, if he plays anywhere close to his draft pedigree and isn't a total bust, they're going to be in the mix potentially just because of how bad everyone is. I mean, essentially the Falcons and the Saints have flipped where last year Saints win total was nine and a half. Everybody was like, oh, the Saints aren't really that good, but they're definitely better than everybody else and their schedule is really easy. Look at how many, look at how many games they're favored in, but they actually aren't a good football team. And now they flipped with the Falcons. And so I would argue that, you know, maybe if you had to pick one of those three, I would, I would go with New Orleans. Their offense was quietly good at the end of the season last year and the luck rankings that I mentioned earlier, they were dead last. So all of a sudden you're like, wait, maybe the Saints are have something, but the Saints are in a similar position to Tampa where they're in purgatory. They keep running it back and I don't really want to put my money behind Derek Carr to overachieve the market because that seems like a disaster that could implode at any moment.

So I think that's why this division is fun. There's a stat I'm going to mention later about teams going worst to first. Happens almost every year. I'm not trying to, again, I'm trying to cool my jets here, but Carolina is super interesting to me.

House, if I gave you two tickets and one of them was the Saints to win the NFC south and the other one was a special off the menu fanduel parlay bet of Dennis Allen will not be the Saints coach in week ten and Derek Carr will not be their starting quarterback in week ten, which ticket would you take from me?

I don't, I don't understand, like that, that's the all time no brainer. That's, there's no challenge there. I fucking hate the Saints. They are a forever never bet under any circumstances. Dennis Allen, we've had this so many times right in our face and I'm not doing it ever again. I hate this Tampa play by the bundo because what it requires is you have to make a commitment to Atlanta and everybody's on Atlanta and Atlanta is the sexy story and I hate that. So, you know, the way that I ended up playing this dumb division was the Atlanta to win the south, the NFC south at like -120 because it's the only price that I could stay.

Away from wins completely.

Yeah, it's no way, I mean, messing with that.

There's a Raheem Morris case for them. Just that, you know, maybe there's a level of coaching competency that they just didn't have last year. I hate taking a team that's just got nothing from a top eight pick like Pennix isn't going to play. This asset that you put, you could put a starting left tackle in there. You could put a elite corner pass rusher, you could put a Dunsay in there.

They have a pass rush.

Even the guy that Seahawks took 16, that guy would have been awesome for them. And they just, they just whiff on the pick for at least this season. So that makes me nervous. I like, I like the instinct to go under with Tampa, though, because they really do remind me of the Giants last year.

I think modern medicine is great now, but Kirk Cousins tour his Achilles in October. I mean, it is a quick turnaround. It used to be a year. Now it's like ten months. Aaron Rodgers said it was three months old and he's really old and it's a new, new coordinator, new coach, new scheme coming off a major injury and it just a lot of risk.

There's plenty to be skeptical of. I really don't want to prolong the agony and make us talk about Carolina any further, but I do want to ask Ad, how can you have any confidence in that defense? Because the, it's one thing for them to lose Burns, but to Frankie Luvu is a whole nother ball your team now. That's right. That's the reason that we have good vibes up here in the DMV. That defense, I think, took a huge, like they're putting a lot of pressure on JC Horn who can't stay on the football field. That's right. I exactly. So talk me into the defense. I mean, I'm listening. It's August. Let's try and make some money now.

I'm not listening. I might go to the bathroom.

Yeah.

It was one of the worst run defenses in the NFL and they haven't really improved against the pass here. So, like, I'm not saying that you're going to be a great team, but again, this is more a factor of the circumstance and the fact that I do like Everow, the defensive coordinator, he was getting a lot of head coaching buzz even though he was on one of the worst teams, coaching one of the worst teams, which I think says a lot about him. If, if teams were able to see through the fact that they were an absolute disaster, especially against the run, they were like a league average past defense, though, last year. So, you know, it's not the end of the world, I think, but in this division where the ceiling is so low, if Bryce Young, maybe, you know, Canales can work some magic into him, I don't think he'll ever be able to achieve the athletic limitations. Like the ceiling that we think is possible for Bryce Young, I think is pretty out the window. After what we saw athletically last year and how bad he was, it's very unlikely he goes from terrible to great, but I think it could go from terrible to average.

And I'm not sure that average is not the best quarterback in this division come December.

Well, so if you're making the case, it's a little like when, if you're making the glass half full case for Houston a year ago, you're like, well, weird division. What if this happened and this happened and this happened? And what if the coach is awesome and what if Stroud is way better than you think and you list like seven things and then for Houston, all of them hit for Carolina, the coaching situation was, I think, probably the worst in the league last year. House, this guy Frank Reich, my guy Frank Reich, an immortal quote from last August, bring your gambling show. And House called Frank Reich the best coach in the NFC Southe, which we've made fun of him for a year. But then you think like, the worst skill position guys in either conference and going down the line, it was not a good offensive line, it was the worst part. And then Stroud's doing well. Every single thing was bad for Bryce Young. So I see the case, but the case to me is more this division so bad somebody's got to win. And this is, raheem's been making this point on ringer gambling.

Like why not at eleven to one? Like why not on the other hand, I would probably book that bet. We're going to take a quick break and then go to the top three. All right, coming back, we have three left, five favorites. Anthony Debundo, NFL futures. What is number three?

All right, let's take a more positive spin now. We're going to go a team I like this year. Seattle Seahawks. It's a twofer plus 175 to make the playoffs. Seven to one to win the division. You're starting to see some cracks in San Francisco, the IuK stuff happening. McCaffrey just picked up a calf injury. It's easy to forget that San Francisco every year was, can they stay healthy? They had all these injury issues. Well, guess what? The whole team just about stayed healthy last year, and it was probably, you know, a 95th percentile San Francisco outcome outside of a couple of games in the middle of the season where they had that blip and Purdy looked a little lost. I think he was concussed. Now they're one of the oldest teams in the NFL. Last year they pretty much run it back offensively, potentially without IuK, who some who watch film and know more ball than I do say was their most valuable offensive player outside of McCaffrey. So I think there's some real threat for them to take a step back, especially with the Super bowl hangover and getting so close and not quite, you know, getting to the apex like they did last year.

And Jim Harbaugh is getting all of the credit and all of the clout because of his track record. But I actually think the team that has the chance to make a real step forward is Mike McDonald and the Seahawks. And he basically had the entire Baltimore defense last year put in. Career years elevates talent across the board. Nobody was saying, wow, look at how talented Baltimore is defensively until last year when everybody was looking across the board like, whoa, they got this production from Davion Clowney and Roquan Smith's a great player, but Patrick Queen, like, we're not sure about him.

Secondary stuff, too, that people weren't expecting exactly.

Made it work with pretty inconsistent corner play because of injuries. Like, they schemed their way into the best defense in the NFL. And what I like about McDonald is that he doesn't come across as his background is in finance and management. It's not like your traditional football guy, so to speak, and he's very young and I think he's going to get buy in from this locker room who just felt like Pete Carroll had kind of run its course. The defense was antiquated they bottomed out so badly last year defensively, to the point where they were at 1.30 or 31st in defensive metrics. And if you just fix the defense to make it league average, and they've made some, some improvements there, especially against the run where they were really bad last year. I think that combined with the fact that they still have a ton of weapons on offense could get them to be the kind of sleeper post type team because two years ago they were projected to be one of the worst teams. Gino has this renaissance here out of nowhere. Everybody buys the Seahawks. They kind of take a step back now.

They're the post hype and the point where people are kind of overlooking them. A lot of people are taking LA. I think LA has got a lot of cracks. I think Seattle is the team that's going to make a run at this division.

So over is still seven and a half or did that go up?

Seven and a half is juice.

Yeah, with juice divisions in the plus 750 range. I'm with you. I mean, I think you undersold the McCaffrey injury because I was listening to our fantasy football pod yesterday and they were like, trying to figure out where to rank McCaffrey in the running back rankings. It's the classic. What do you do? How much does he go for? It's clear he's going to be compromised. The first month house. Ironically, the first month was what I had pegged for the easy part of the Niners schedule. Their home jets at Minnesota, at the Rams home Pats, home Arizona. And I was like, that. That's got to be probably four and one. But now, no McCaffrey. And the schedule gets harder as the year goes along. Trent Williams, I don't know if he is even back at from the holdout. So we don't know what kind of shape he's going to be in. Debo. I'm never going to bet on him playing 17. Purdy's playing for a new contract. Iuke. The situation's kind of nuts. Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked. What do you think of the Seattle pickups?

So I love when I'm in the spot of being in violent agreement with dabs because when I, when we first met each other, I confessed to him that I would read his column voraciously, you know, every week as it came out on the action network. And, you know, it influenced my thinking. I tried to give credit where credit was due. Well, now I can just tell them, bro, I'm stealing your stuff because I love it.

But I already, like Drake just stealing verses from rappers on the Internet and claiming he hadn't heard of them.

No, I gave shout outs. I mean, I tried my best. Everybody knows how old I am. But here's the thing with Seattle. I think that they won nine games and still underperformed. I think the talent really, on both sides of the ball is, is the compelling thing to me. And I don't really, you know, the, the price is right for the division play. I don't think that we have to really, like, talk down San Francisco. We can just kind of talk up what?

Why is Seattle two wins worse when, I mean, they lucked out with Byron Murphy falling to 16. It was amazing what they needed. Amazing JSN's in year two. And I think the, let's be honest, like, Pete Carroll and Bill Belichick were in their seventies and there was signs of real slippage and strategic weird shit going on. And now you bring these new voices, new coaches. I thought McDonald was great last year. To me, he's the odds on favorite for the new coach theory. I agree.

There's a lot more talent in the room than what the Chargers have with laden and then harmful.

Agree.

Totally agree. And basically it's like, can they take the Rams spot? Unless you think there's three playoff teams from this division, which, by the way, isn't inconceivable.

They grabbed that offensive coordinator from, from Washington, a dude that, you know, loves to throw the ball down the field. And one of Gino Smith's strengths happens to be throwing the ball down the field 20 yards or longer. He's in the top ten of the league at that. Like, yeah, let's start using these weapons that, that the Seahawks possess.

Yeah. And I, they were a top five offense, early downs. So if you just go first and second down, they were one of the best. They were right up there with San Francisco, with Green Bay, with Dallas as some of the best offenses in the league. And it was third downs and their offensive line that really cost them offensively. The key for them are the tackles. Great rookie year, took a step back last year, had injuries. The O line is definitely their weakness. They're a bottom five or six unit by most metrics, but if the tackles go back to what they were as rookies, then it's more of an average team. And you can get away with that.

I have multiple texts to Seahawks fan Danny Kelly of the ringer is that I started my prep three, four weeks ago, and this was one of the overs that just, I thought was pulsating it's like, why is this seven and a half? Why would they be two wins worse? I could understand eight and a half, but seven half? I haven't made all my official picks yet. I'm waiting for the extravaganza with Sal. The Seattle is one of the ones I circle and I think the question for me is, could this division produce three playoff teams or not? Because I think Green Bay and Detroit both make it one AFC south team. So then the other question would be, does one of these teams take Dallas's spot? And I think from a talent standpoint, if you compare Dallas to Seattle and the Rams, I don't think Dallas has more talent than either of those teams. They might be in the vicinity, but I wouldn't say they're more talented. So we'll see. I like that Seattle pick. All right. To let. I can't believe I really like the first three. I can't even what you have in store for the final two, I can't wait.

We're going to stay positive for the last two Cincinnati Bengals to win the AFC north plus 165.

Okay.

Kind of going along with the Mike McDonald discussion is that Mike McDonald left Baltimore and I have concerns about whether Baltimore. We're buying really high on them right at this point. Last year, the Ravens were three to one to win their division. The questions were, Lamar, can he stay healthy? Can he stay healthy?

No.

The answer prior to last year was no. Now he has the MVP season, and now everybody wants to drink the Lamare, you know, Kool aid and get excited about how good Lamar Jackson is, and rightfully so when he plays. They're a very good team, but I think Lamar isn't.

He, didn't he lose weight? Skinnier Lamar, exactly.

And his immune system is very weird. He's sick more than any professional athlete I've ever seen. Interesting. But offensively, second year under Monken, I think teams will be able to adjust to them a little bit offensively and what they were doing and the skill positions aren't really still that great. So outside of zay flowers, I mean, we have the oft injured Mark Andrews and then some real questions along the offensive line and the skill positions. So I think there's some real questions. And, look, if their plan is to just run, you know, Derek Henry into the line 30 times a game, I'm willing to take my chance that that will not be great at this point in his career. And I keep counting out Derek Henry and he keeps proving me wrong. So maybe I'll look like an idiot in a month or two. But the biggest thing for me here, the Bengals have a last play schedule and it plays a huge role in the differences in the matchups because the Ravens and Bengals will play 14 games that are exactly the same, including the two against each other. The difference is that Baltimore will play Buffalo, Houston and Tampa.

Cincinnati gets to play New England, Tennessee and Carolina. That's like a two win gap in terms of win probability, win wins across the season. I'm not sure that the Bengals are any worse than the Ravens as currently constructed. Cincinnati improved their defense, which was a problem last year in the secondary. You know, just this time last year, everybody was saying Luannarumo is like the best defensive coordinator in the league and now people have forgotten about him. I'm back in on Cincinnati. Hopefully Burroughs stays healthy, hope they win the north.

Yeah, it's interesting. I didn't even realize this as it was happening, but last year the NFC had the nine road games because they moved to the 17 game schedule and this year it's the AFC. So when you look at those nine road games, some of them, some of the nine road games slate, you're like, ooh, that looks brutal. They have the opposite. I mean, they obviously have Kansas City, but they're on the road against Carolina, against the Giants in week eleven. They're at the Chargers, which is basically a home game because the Chargers don't have fans. They're at Dallas in week 14, which normally is terrifying. But I don't know if Dallas is going to be good this year at Tennessee and then at Pittsburgh in the last week, but it's not as intimidating. I guess the question for me with the Bengals first is the burrow piece house. What do your little birdies say about Burrow? Where they were talking about this is a wrist injury that no professional athlete has gotten before, like some of the crazy wrist. No, no, it's going to be fine. But there's been a lot of conjecture and talk and rumors about it and it just scares me.

What do you think of?

Yeah, and some of that thought sharing was occurring, like at the ground, on the grounds at Bengal's camp. And folks I think are highly attuned to watching Joe Burrow get comfortable in the role that it seems like the Bengals want to put him in, which is under center to protect him a bit more. But yes, this wrist injury, by some indication, is a one of one. I'm not touching the Bengals at all because of how I think this is.

A stay away from me, too. Yeah, I kind of want to see it?

Exactly. That's my view.

Cause the thing is, they're definitely worse a running back, definitely worse at defensive back, and they lost dj reader, who I thought was important for them. Right. So if you're going to tell me burrow is awesome this year, like, I, he's one of my favorite football players. Like, I'm not betting against him. We've, we, we've lost money to him. We've won a lot of money on him. And they went nine and eight last year, and he was basically messed up most of the year to bundle. What do you think about this? Is it, is it okay if I wait until after week two at Kansas City, they play the Pats. Week one, they're going to win that. If they lose that Pats game, then all the money you would have put on the Bengals anyway. You're like, oh, my God, this is the worst bet I've ever made. And at Kansas City, get a feel for what that looks like. They're probably going to lose and then kind of wait in after week two. Have you ever done the wait and see with the future or.

No, I think it depends on what the schedule looks like. The scary thing here is, like, Kansas City is the kind of team that can be got early in the season. And so if you do wait and they win that game, all of a sudden you're cooked, right? So, and you look at their schedule now, the Bengals have been slow starters just about every year with Burrow, but New England at Kansas City, Washington home at Carolina, that's the first four weeks, you're not going to get a much friendlier start. Then they play New York in week six. So after Baltimore at home in week five, like, it's a pretty friendly first half. And, you know, it just gets at the point. Like, if you go compare that to what Baltimore has to run through in terms of rest disadvantages, too. With Baltimore at the end of the season, their schedule gets really tough where they're playing. Either they have the Wednesday Christmas game after the Saturday war with Pittsburgh.

That's unbelievable that they did that. It jumps out like it's. I just can't believe that they think that way with the football schedule. Like that's a good idea to do that.

They're taking Christmas, they're stealing it from the NBA.

Crazy. The other case that I don't think can be understated is DeShawna, a full year in Cleveland, a team that had good vibes last year down this stretch with a feel good Joe Flacco and DeShawn, it's already, like, just. Just feels not awesome. And what if they just stink? And then Pittsburgh with this weird Wilson field stain that they feel like they haven't totally navigated yet. So it does feel like this division is a little weaker than it did. I'm a little higher on Baltimore's weapons than you because the. The other tight end on the Ravens, I think everybody's been going nuts about, and I do kind of, kind of like the Derrick Henry. Like, maybe they can get one awesome year out of them. Where do you stand on the Derek Henry awesome for one year house in Baltimore?

No, I'm not sold. Yeah, I'm lukewarm. I think their offensive line doesn't, you know, instill a ton of confidence. But this division is impossible to handicap because my instinct is to do what did there, which is to fade Baltimore and this schedule thing is compelling. Like, the Bengals absolutely, by far have the easiest run of it in the division. But the problem is you have to talk yourself into Cleveland, and you just laid out the case for why that might be a bit challenge with Nick.

Chubb coming back off a catastrophic knee injury and Deshaun Watson with a frown on his face. No, thank you. All right, it's time. So I've agreed on three. I to me, since he's a stay away. But I could also see myself on, like, September 3 when I just want to. I've, by the way, I didn't, I didn't tell you guys, I haven't talked about this on the pod. I intentionally have not bet on a single NFL future yet because I look back on my future bets last year, and there was just carnage from June and July before I really had a handle on that, where I just jumped. I was like, the Giants. Why is that so low and just betting overs and stupid shit. I had the Giants pats overs. I had. It was just embarrassing. And I salvaged a lot of it in late August, early September. So this year, I put an artificial deadline of August 25. I'm just not allowed to bet NFL futures until August 25, and that's what I'm gonna do. Okay, here we go. Number one, Anthony DeBundo, his favorite NFL future of the 2024 season. Let's hear it.

Uh oh.

All right.

So I bought this props.

He brought props.

I bought this in week eight or nine of last year and just decided to become a huge Jordan Love fan. Liked him in college, kind of forgot about him for a few years, remembered that he was on the packers going into last season. And I was sitting there watching a couple of games and his receivers were letting him down and they were just a little bit off and they were so close to winning some games. And I'm like, this team feels like they're going to turn the corner. And in the second half of the season, he was one of the three best quarterbacks in the NFL by the efficiency and the comparison metrics and the accuracy metrics, EPA and CPOE, that we.

Won house and I have money in the playoffs. We love Jordan.

Love.

We love anyone that wins us money.

Exactly. And down the stretch, they were a really big cash cow. They had some big wins. The Thanksgiving day win in Detroit, they had the upset of the Chiefs. And then you saw the holes in the second half, too, which were and one of the most impressively bad defensive stretches you will ever see in three consecutive weeks. They got diced up by Tommy DeVito.

Baker Mayfield, it was so horrible.

And Bryce Young, who had the best game of his career against Green Bay. And this Joe Barry defense, well, Joe Barry's gone. Thank goodness. They bring in Jeff Halfley, who had been a coordinator in the college level and had been a defensive backs coach, somebody I thought was really going to turn around Boston College, but harder to do that than just one coach. It's a structural issue in Boston College and playing in the ACC, whatever. But Halfley leaves BC a head coaching job in college to take an NFL defensive coordinator job, and I think it's a great hire. I think Halfley is a good defensive mind and you combine that with how young this offense is, and we know that Lefleur is an excellent offensive coach at using different formations and different schemes to maximize the talent. There's no obvious number one guy, but they have so many guys who could become that that I think this offense is really exciting. The offensive line does have some shuffling to take care of, but in terms of offensive line, offensive coordinator and then just improving by getting rid of Joe Barry, the only thing that scares me is the kicking game.

Anders Carlson appears to be the favorite to win the job and he was horrible last year. But Green Bay two to one to win the NFC north last year, one of the most heartbreaking losses of my life was Lions to win the NFC twelve to one. It was my first bet last year in like May and I was already cashing the ticket. I was counting the money and they blew it. This year I'm kind of down on Detroit and I'm in on the cheese heads to win the division.

It was the moment these unders came out, it was the under that jumped out and I didn't understand why it wasn't ten or ten and a half. Super Bowl 19 to one is interesting for them, too. The number one seed in the NFC, which I think on Fanduel was plus 750. Best record in either conference is 17 to 112 plus wins for them as plus 245. You laid out a lot of the case. I mean it rejuvenated. Josh Jacobs would also, would also be a fun piece of this. But I really like their receivers and it's one of those things where I don't even, I'm not even positive who the best fantasy receiver out of those four guys are. But the totality of it, love getting paid. The fans are just all in on this team and then the juxtaposition position of that with Rogers and the jets and whatever's going to happen with that, it just, there's a feel good feeling of that. And then house, the other thing you want to say like it's Detroit's year. This is it. This is the year they step up. They're getting a lot of Super bowl buzz and a lot of hype.

They had a really awesome year last year. Like you go back and it's, they were twelve and five. They beat the Rams, they beat Tampa and they lost by three points in the conference title game. Like that was an awesome year. It's hard to do that two years in a row and you have your breakout awesome year. And I'm struggling with them a little bit because I do think top four, talented roster, no question, top five, top six somewhere in there. But a lot of things went right for them last year. And I just, I wonder when you have all the expectations now and the hype and the Lions fan base, like, oh my God, we're going to make the Super bowl this year. Look at what's happened to the Niners. Dallas is worse. Like Phillies. There's a Sirianni Hertz didn't get along all last year story in the NFC. Like this is our time. We have this and we've just seen with football that a lot of times the football zags when everything is zigging. Where do you stand on them, house?

I like them, but don't love them. I like them at like ten wins, maybe eleven because they, they were in, in the zone for eleven wins last season. I want to sit tight for a little bit and I understand that you're going to lose out on some of the good pricing here on the packers. Yeah, the Green Bay packers. Yeah, exactly. I want to sit tight and I want to see that defense a little bit because I feel like after watching, I lost a lot of money when Baker Mayfield went out there and beat their ass. I mean, I still, I hold that against them and we, we had some money line exposure to them beating San Francisco and that mother effort. Carlson, who should have been sent back to Europe as soon as that game was over. Still being in the mix hurts my feelings. So I just have some bitter flavor in my mouth around them. But they for sure are live. I like that NFC north bet. I do still have a lot of respect for Detroit and I think that Detroit is in as good a position as any to do the hard thing, which is, you know, hold up their end of the bargain in a repeat kind of season.

But I like Green Bay very much. They're in the playoffs. They're a ten or eleven win team. I don't mean to suggest anything different. I just am not all the way there with the full buoyance for this one.

Couple tough road games for them and then a couple ones I really like. Like they're at the Rams week five. That'll be, I would say, 40,000 packers fans at that game. They're at the Jaguars. I don't think the Jaguars can be that good. They're at Minnesota, which will probably be a mess. They're at Tennessee. It's funny. At Philly Friday night, week 1 September 6. That might be the most interesting week. One game and I haven't, I've avoided all the lines. But that's the one where I have a lot of questions I want answered about both of those teams. And especially as you read, I know you're an Eagles fan, Debundo, but as you read some of the stuff that's trickled out since the season ended and now that, that were in training camp and then the big now, now they tell us piece about Syrian and Hertz. Um, I just have real questions about them. I want, I just want to see it like what? Is this going to get worse or better? Like. Cause you could argue Sirianni is a first coach fired candidate if it doesn't go well for them right away. Right.

Or you could argue they're going to be back on track and be awesome. So green bay going in there and if Green Bay just whips the ball around and just kicks their ass, that will feel like the overreaction for week one, right?

Packers, they're for real.

Oh my God. Super bowl. We do this every year with week one and that was the one I circled on the flip side, philly laying it to them people, the Eagles. They're back. Packers young team. We'll see. Eagles back. So I feel like that's the overreaction game. Are you nervous about that game as an Eagles fan?

So it's tricky, my relationship with the Eagles. I live outside of Philadelphia and grew up a Colts fan, so I'm kind of, like, indifferent about the Eagles. I follow.

You're not an Eagles fan?

No, most people.

So you're Philly?

Except the eagle, which is like, sacrilegious. Yeah. Some have called me a hater just by my nature of being a. Wow.

That'S really glass half empty. I just assumed. So you're.

But I'm excited for it. I mean, I think it could go so many different ways. Hertz and Sirianni do not seem like the type of personalities that immediately mesh. And based on the reporting in that McManus Tim McManus story, like, it doesn't sound like they're on the best of starts. They're going to show for the cameras, but at the first sign of trouble, this could still turn really ugly. But the talent, like, if you just line up talent on talent, this is still one of the three best teams in the NFC by far.

So I like packers nine and a half, and I think as long as that single digits with the over under, I still feel like that's a really good bet.

The thing about Green Bay, if you look at their road schedule, it's actually pretty friendly. So they're going to play the Eagles in Brazil so they don't have to go to Philly, which is a huge swing.

Right.

That Friday night early game, they'll get extra rest coming home for their home opener against Indy. And then if you look at some of their road games, they get Jacksonville right after Jacksonville plays two in London, then they go to Chicago, but it's off their bye week. So some of their tougher road games, they go to Seattle, but it's after extra rest. They'll have ten days to get ready for that game. So a lot of their big road games are either not road games at all or they're in a rest advantage where another team is at a disadvantage or they're getting extra rest to get ready for them. So I think that's an underrated part of the Green Bay schedule. But again, they're basically a coin flip in week one, and that will have a huge leverage in terms of the NFC.

How's that look at disappointment on my face was having done five weeks of prep and not realizing that Philly Green Bay was in Brazil.

Oh, I thought you knew.

Even the great slip up. Yeah, for some reason I had it marked down as at Philly. But this is what happens. We're trying to do 900 things just quickly before we go. You said you're a Colts fan, so over eight and a half for them. Division plus 300, 1011 plus wins plus 285. They were nine and eight last year. They added a pass rusher. Richardson is back. Just what's your lean?

They might be the worst secondary in the NFL, but Richardson is so exciting. I don't know how you could take an under on them. So I think they're like a 910 win team. So I would lean to the over, but again, Richardson could go down again. And I don't expect Joe Flacco to be able to recreate last year's magic. That happens. But yeah, certainly the offense is exciting. The offensive line is the top five unit again, which has not been true for a long time. So the fact that they're kind of back is huge for for their outlook this season. But yeah, the secondary, they played a lot of bad QB's last year, got away with it. The corners, it's real ugly. So I think there's some concerns defensively about Indy.

I agree. They're a stay away from me house. Stay away for you or no, no.

I bet they're over.

That's unfair.

You've bet every team.

Stichen was so impressive last year. I mean, making Gardner Minshew look like a viable quarterback and that team being one play away from making the playoffs like that, that's in the first season. That's that. It was so impressive and we get a fully healthy Jonathan Taylor for a full season behind that offensive line. I think Indy's live.

All right, that was five favorites and segment that was we tested out was supposed to be 25 minutes and we went for 50. Anthony DeBundo, great to see you. Joe House thanks as always. I appreciate it. All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Kyle Creighton, thanks to Steve Ceruti, thanks to Joe House and Rob Mahoney and Anthony DeBundo as well. I will see you on Saturday after the gold medal. Must be 21 plus 18 plus DC and present in select states FanDuel offering online sports wagering Kansas under agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC Gamble problem, call 1800 GaMbler or visit fanduel.com rG in Colorado, DC, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont, call 100 next step or text next step to 53342. In Arizona, 8887-8977 or visit ccpg.org Chattinconneticut 809 with it. In Indiana, 805 224700, or visit ks gamblinghelp.com. in Kansas, 8770 stop in Louisiana, md gamblinghelp.org. in Maryland, 800 gambler.net in West Virginia, 805 224700. In Wyoming, Hope is here, visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800 327 50 50 for 24/7 supported Massachusetts, or call 18778 HOPE, NY or text Hope NY. In New York.