The "Invincible" Rams, NFL Pressure Guys, and L.A.’s Crazy NBA Month With Tom Pelissero and Sam Koppelman

I put up a new rewatchemals on Monday. We re-did speed. Me, Sean Finnesy, Chris Ryan, an epic epic episode.

“I think I laughed so hard at one point that we had to go to break.”

So that happened. Anyway, what a fun movie. One of the great action movies of all time when we broke all the down, including a ton of nippics, speed, a movie that I love.

And I've seen a million times, also very fun in nippics.

So we talked about everything. Coming up on this podcast, Tom Palacero, who we announced yesterday. He's joined the ringer. He's going to be Netflix side by reporter as well. He's going to come on to talk about a bunch of football stuff, including what's

it like to be an info insider. What's going on at the Rams? Who has the most pressure on them this year? What's going on in Minnesota with JJ McCarthy Calamare? We covered all that great to have them board.

And we're going to talk about his new gig with us. And then after that, see me compliment, who I've known since he was maybe even younger than a teenager. He is going to come on to talk about the lakers, the Quippers, the sons. How money has shifted into the NBA and screwed it up in all of these different ways.

Yesterday was one of the craziest LA basketball days.

“I think ever we had the Quippers battling with the NBA through an ESPN article.”

You had the bus family and that's it. And then they're going to start suing each other. The current lakers Dodgers owner might be going to jail. He's going to explain all of it to us. So this is quite a podcast football and finance.

And so on next, we're going to take a break and then project. This episode is brought to you by NBA 2K27. We just had one of the craziest off seasons we've had in the NBA, which is perfect for 2K. Because every 2K season can be one of the craziest off seasons. The whole league shifted in real life.

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Okay, new Netflix sideline reporter for other NFL games. One of the hosts of the Rear NFL show. He's going to be on my podcast every Thursday. There's going to be some writing stuff that we'll talk about when we get there at Tom Pelsero. Great to have you aboard. What a pleasure.

It is great to be here. A bit of an unusual text month for me. After 23 years of being in training camps and covering the league. I had a little bit of extra time on my hands.

You know, you were one of the first people to reach out for reach out to me once I became available.

And I'm just totally thrilled and pumped up to be a part of this thing. The story was even better than that. We saw you the same day when you found out that you were no longer needed at the SPN. And you were randomly in LA. Me and Mallory met you that day because we had heard so many good things about you.

But in your head, I really admired how even killed you were with it. Because I remember when I was in a semi similar situation.

“Everybody in your life is reaching out. Are you okay?”

What's going on in your heads just doing 360s? But you were like, yeah, it'll be fine. I'll find something. I remember you said to me, too. You're like, I can't believe how well you're taking this.

And I think that that was probably a product of, you know, I find out when I'm standing in the sky club about to board a flight to LA. Right. And I'm like, what do I do? And I'm like, oh, I checked a bag.

Well, I guess I should just get on the plane and get the bag. And yeah, I lived my own funeral for like four hours. And it was probably good to like every call I sent to voice me. Like, I'm not a plane. I'm not available.

Right. But at the time I landed, dropped myself at the hotel. Popped over to a, to your studio there and got the tour. I mean, it was, it was, it was cool that it all came together. There were a lot of things we had to work through on this entire deal.

like I could not possibly have asked for a better spot to be here.

Yeah, and we had never even dated back to Grandland.

We'd never had really been on the information side as much, because we were always built like we react in the information. And I was thought if we ever had somebody who was in that world, it would also have to be somebody who could kind of do the stuff that we do and the, and the back and forth.

And you were always a hybrid of those two worlds. When did you, when did you move more toward like holy shit? I'm getting all this information. I'm getting scoops left and right. Like this might be part of my life here.

I think it took place over time.

“Like there's, there's no way that's what, you know,”

young people who like reach out to me and my, my DMs went out or always asking like, how do you build sources about that? I don't like, I don't know, do it for 23 years. And you just kind of amass that.

You know, you start out cold calling people and hoping that you get some calls back. And, you know, it's just kind of evolved. I think when I went back to Minnesota in like 2010, and we were launching an ESPN radio affiliate there.

And I was covering the Vikings in social radio. So six days a week. Like I had a pretty good run of getting stuff there, which put me on the radar view as say today. And then, you know, TANFL network.

And then, obviously, the, the brief Disney stop there over the past, the past several months. It was funny though, like during the downtime, because like, you know, not to get into the whole thing. Like, legally, I couldn't do anything.

Like, I couldn't tweet, couldn't really just, I couldn't do anything that loosely resembled my job. And so, like, I'm fine and stuff to do, man. Like, you know, people are calling me within the league. And I'm talking, but like, I'm not doing it the same way.

Right? And it's like, what am I going to do? Work to get a scoop and then I can't put it out. So, you know, by last week, and at this point everything was in motion,

but there were still some things we had to get through. And like, I went to Spider-Man 3D in the theater. Like, my 12 year old daughter, and lived like, five minutes into the movie and shit's blowing up. And like, I get the text letter, the tweeter, like, you know,

Kyler Murray's been named starting quarterback in the Viking. So, I'm like, no, no, they're good. Don't about that, you know, whatever world I would love to think about.

“The one break and that, but I'm like, what am I going to do?”

I'm going to sit back. I'm going to eat some more popcorn. I'm going to enjoy this movie. And like, I'll be back soon enough. And so, we're just now kind of getting into this thing.

And, you know, the best part of Bill about the news coming out yesterday

will be sides of the fact that, you know, it's always awesome to see

and, you know, the feedback and all the messages you get and stuff. But it's that I'm finally not getting the so sorry for you. How are you doing for you calls? Now it's like the, oh, so you're good. All right, fantastic.

Now we get back to doing what we're doing. Oh, that's great. What was the, what's the biggest scoop you ever had? Did you ever have one that was like, it was almost steam coming off it.

You couldn't believe like, is this true? Like, did you have your version of like Lucas about to get traded to the lakers? Did there's a bunch of those over time that, you know, stick out just in terms like trades to come from like, well, you know,

a lot of the best scoops. The ones that are most fun honestly are the ones like you're not working on your holding for a month because that's unbelievably stressful. Yeah. It's like, you know, like, you know,

like, you know, hey, do you have something about Darren Waller being trained to the giants? It's like, what? No. Then you make two calls.

Like, oh, this happened. Okay. Cool. Right. I see that like the number one example of that was,

John Gordon was designing because that took place during Monday night football. And I had heard, you know, rumblings. I knew that there was, I knew that it was at a much higher fever pitch over the previous like 48 to 72 hours in terms of, you know, how the league was feeling about it.

You know, where the raiders were at the fact that there were multiple if you remember multiple stages of these email leaks and it was getting worse. But still, I don't think it was on anybody's radar that he was actually going to step down. And so I got, you know, one call saying, hey, you know,

I heard Gruden stepping down just like wait because there's, you know, he's got to talk to everybody just just hanging on and let you know. And then I got a test from somebody who was there going, yeah, Gruden just told all of us he's quitting. He's resigning.

And I was just like, oh, my gosh, I'm calling the first person back being like,

I got to go. I got to go. Meanwhile, you know, again, Monday night football is on the whole world's training on this game.

“And I think it was right at half time right after half time.”

And I hit blast on that tweet and it was just like, it was this explosion because that that was at that time bill. Like, now it wasn't about football. It was about like social issues and, you know, everything around the game and in society.

And, you know, it was a really bizarre situation. But that was one like, there's very few times I'm saying, like, finger over the button kind of shaking. That was one that I'm like, I'm going to have to go. I got to go and finally went and that it went into the universe.

And then, you know, had to get myself suited up and go on TV. All night, because I mean, that was one of the the crazier things. I think that that's happened in recent NFL history. What is the NFL version of the look at trade? I guess probably nothing.

I mean, the fact that it states so quiet until you get, you know, tweet out of nowhere that it's it's happening. I mean, that that made it, you know,

I mean, Miles Garrett, I think probably fits in that category. You'd have rumblings and stuff talked about. Yeah, I'd say it wasn't. I guess there's no version of it because Miles Garrett was like, This is the shop, but I wasn't shocked because it was like Wilson.

Maybe. I mean, Russell Wilson was a pretty surprising trade. Like there'd been a little mumbling here and there about stuff. That was one that was murder for me. Because like I knew with the combine,

it was happy. It all that the sea got some brokers were doing for weeks. It was just horse trading on how many picks.

And if you remember, it was multiple first round picks.

And it was players. And then it was all right. The players haven't been told. I'm like, I know the players. And so then you're calling it.

They will be like, find out if he's been called yet. You know, that was a, the cool thing. Like in terms of how long I've covered the NFL is. We've gone bill from like the NFL. There were no trades.

There were no trades at all. Like there was no like the trade deadline was a none of it. And I'm not talking like, you know, 50 years ago. I'm talking like 10 to 15 years ago. Like you'd be, yeah, the trade deadline's coming up in late October.

But like nothing's going to happen. You might get one here there. Now, both, you know, there's several waves of it. There's the wave of, you know, February and March. Sometimes even in January, if you think about the Alex Smith trade.

You get 10, 12, 15 trades that play out from the end of the regular season.

Right. All the way through, you know, the start of the league year when they could become official. You get another wave around the draft. Now, maybe you start to see a wave more in these post June one things.

“Because that's why the agent around trade happened when it did.”

That's a factor. It's not the main factor, but it was a factor in why the mile skier. Tray got done when it did. And then you've got this whole other wave that over these next 10 days will see. Because somebody thinks happened this summer that I think a lot of those those big ticket items. You're off the table.

We'll get some trades. There's no doubt about it. Over the next. Whatever it is here. 12 days.

Well, especially if there's a tank in teams because we don't usually have tanking in the NFL. But we might this year. And there's a couple of suspects already. We, you know, we we already have a pretty good idea. Like I was looking at the the win overunders.

Before I came on here. And it's like that. I'd say on that one Vegas is probably it a, you know, probably pretty much right. I mean, you can see the teams now call it tanking because, you know, there's no like NFL equivalent of Mark Madson, Jack and up 12,

three. Like there's just there's no way to do it. You can't like put a defensive line in a quarterback. But you can't organizationally put yourself in the position where it's a parent. Like, you're not playing for right now.

The dolphins are the perfect example of that. And I've had dolphins fans ask me, you know, just here and there. People I run into of all of them. I'm just like just like buckle up. Try to enjoy the ride.

But like 20 28 is what you're looking at here. Yes. Yeah. When I'm the got Malik Willis because he's a great young man who's like, he's got some ability and he's got to be developed.

It would probably slow it now. Follow the offense there. There's a lot of similarities with what he was doing. Green Bay when he had some success. But like, you know, they've got to bond HN is a good player.

But like you trade jail in water to get a first round pick. You, you don't bring back some of your other guys in a particular way. Make sure to have a trick. Yes. Although Bradley chubs another one that you you move on from and they didn't like go out and spend a bunch of money in free agency.

They are very much a team that is looking at this is like, All right, we're going to build this the Green Bay way. We got Jeff Hathley, a junior at Sullivan at their two very intelligent guys. And they know like there's no quick fix. Especially in division where you got Buffalo and New England where like,

“Are we really catching these teams in the near-term?”

No, like it's to take a couple of years. Maybe it's the guy. If he's not, you're not over leverage.

I think he's guaranteed like $50 million over two years.

They're going to be in the running. I would think again. And this is taking nothing away from anybody involved. But realistically they're going to be in the running for the number one pick. Well, you look at their wide receiver room and it's like,

Oh, I see these are up to jail in Tolberate. Listen. It's a starter. I like jailing, but like, I mean, yeah, they've got, they've got some significant issues, which also by the way complicates the evaluation of the week will.

Like, the week comes. He's like, all right, at least they've had Jalen Waddle. It's like a week later. It's like, what we're trying to jail in Waddle. Yeah, you're going to be throwing to, you know, the other guys.

So you think Miami, Arizona, Arizona is another obvious one. Lot of pulsating flags with them. Cleveland has a lot of talent except the quarterback situations in F-minus minus minus minus. I don't know what you're doing this year is you're trying to figure out. Can either of these guys do it.

I know this. Like, I mean, the coaching staff came away encouraged from the spring. They felt like they got two guys they can at least function with and try to be competitive with and to Sean Watson and Shidorah Sanders. But like, if you're asking me like, what's my guess of who's the quarterback for the

Browns week one and 2027? I'd say neither. I'd say it's somebody who's probably in college right now. You know, I don't see them bring him back Baker Mayfield. I'm going to be somebody else who's available via trade.

“But I think the Browns with two first drum picks.”

They got the Rams pick now from the Miles Caratrade. And then the Jets, you know, as much as this year. Like, you don't bring in Demario Davis and David on Yamada and make a fits Patrick.

Or there's going to be even more wholesale changes than there were a year ago. But remember, they close out the season, Aaron Glenn takes a few weeks. There's a lot of conversation. He basically fires his whole staff. He fires his offensive and defensive coordinators.

He makes a bunch of other changes here. They know they've got to take a step forward. You go and get Gino Smith too. You just hope in that you can function. Aaron Glenn's going to call the plays on the defense.

You know, they're not going to the playoffs this year. I mean, that would shock me. Anything can happen. It's the NFL. Like, they got to get to six seven wins show their headed the right direction.

Not with all that ammo, even if they are six seven win team. You got to extra first round picks where you can bundle those together. And so that's the big picture story. Yeah, we'll talk about all the contenders and the teams we think are going to be in the Super Bowl. But like to me, one of the fascinating things here is.

And yes, this gets said from time to time. But the people I've talked to within the league, the scouts and the evaluators I respect.

They all say, if things trend positively, there's always a couple of these college guys.

But last year, they fall off and the guy we're talking about being a first rounder, like, doesn't get drafted. They're a day three pick. The Garrett and usmires of the world. But like, if this, this group holds up the way that these guys think. Between archmaning.

Dante more is going to be in that category. Julian Sayon has fans. CJ Carr has fans. What if La Nore's sellers revive himself? But I can then say in Miami, like, there's all these guys.

And you've got like these clear and obvious teams that are all going to be drafted. Probably somewhere in the top 12 picks. And a couple of extra picks. Those are the teams that I'm looking at that when we're talking about, you know, the tank for arch stuff or whatever the. But that doesn't rhyme, but don't come up with some rhyme for it.

Right, such that with that, those will be the stage for arch. Start. Start. I don't know. Start to keep you up right.

You need the opposite. You need to lay flat to get arch. I got to think about that one. We're going to do pressure rankings. But I want to talk about Minnesota first, just because you're there.

And you have a good Vikings feel and that is somehow not one of the two most tortured franchises in the league.

“Even though I think they would argue that they are.”

I live here. I think we'll hear are sufficiently. They think they're number one. Yeah, with without, you know, my dad grew up a Vikings fan of the upper peninsula. So he's like 65 seasons into this thing.

Yeah, all my friends, everybody else, they would all tell you that this is. It's not an easy road. It's tough because the bills with all the Super Bowl losses. And then this whole Josh Allen ride, who's down. I think 30 years old, 29 years old somewhere in there.

The, the, the lows of their losses almost feel like the worst Minnesota has been steadily just getting kicked in the balls decade after decade forever. But at the Lions, like nothing has happened for them forever until this decade.

And they always get left out of the torture combo.

Then you have the Browns or nothing good has happened with them since 1964. I don't know what the rankings are. But Minnesota thinks they're first. It depends, like if you're definition of the tortured fan base is the one that keeps getting close and can't get over the home. The red socks.

This was red socks pretty fast before forever. Every year you think it's the year and then you get kicked in the teeth. Right. And you also, you know, you rally against the Yankees and everybody can't believe that this is what's happening. Like, you know, the Vikings and the bills, they're very similar trajectory both of lost four super bowls.

“If you look at it, I think that the in terms of winning percentage since in the Super Bowl era, the Vikings are like number six.”

And every team above them below them has water more liberal parties. It's crazy. They have none. And they're, because they're there all the time, you know, the bills in recent years. Yeah, they've, they've been there too, but they went through a stretch from what was it like?

1799 that 2017 without going to the playoffs, so they had a long drought.

Vikings have never had that long but drought.

They never, you know, under this ownership group, the will spend a ton of money. They always want to be good. They always want to go forward every year. They never go all the way to the bottom, you know, but then, you know, you're constantly getting close. And then you're in a bit of a high wire act from a, you know, a cap perspective in what not to be able to keep it healthy and figure it out.

But, you know, they've never had a quarterback. They haven't found their Josh Allen probably going back to, you know, Dante Colpeper had a pretty good running like 0304 before he blew out his knees since then. It's just been a, you know, two years of far, and you had, you know, Teddy had his moment. You know, far, far was good that first year.

And then, yeah, absolutely got destroyed in that Saints game. And probably was concussed 17 times with course of three. I mean, that was one of the bad games, right? Yeah, he threw one of the worst interceptions ever. So, for us, his body, and then they beg him to come back in 2010 and 2010.

I was, I was on the Vikings beat at that point. And that was one of the biggest disaster seasons. Yeah.

“I think that's ever existed in NFL history.”

It's not just, yeah, far the most durable quarterback ever got knocked out of like his last three or four games.

He goes down like a chalk outline like the police would get like this. And he's just out, still does his press conference, which the rules changed after that of a lecture allowed to do it. If it's the year, the metronome roof collapsed. The teams ended up play a home game in Detroit. They played the Eagles on a Tuesday night in Philadelphia because of a snowstorm.

Right. The never came. Percy Harvey left the field in an ambulance that year. I mean, it was, it was an unbelievable calamity.

“But that's, that's what the Vikings fans go through.”

Every time you have a really good season, it's somehow followed by the season from hell. That's their own unique torture and this entire thing. Conspiracy Bill had a lot of thoughts on that Tuesday night game.

I always felt like that was the NFL.

Kind of knowing that this, it wasn't going to be that bad on the Monday. But pushing it to Tuesday just because they were interested to see what the ratings and everything else was going to be. I will always believe that. I like to grow by let's say, we switched from on the advice of somebody on the beat who was an idiot. Suggestive like we got to get out of the city.

The city's going to be shut down. To move from like the Vikings hotel, which is the rich Carlton downtown to like some really sketchy hotel out by the airport. So on the drive there on Sunday afternoon, we're looking at this. Most of me, you know, the storm of the century. And I'm telling you, there was about this much like kind of mudied.

I don't even know who's snow, who's just crap on the side. There was nothing. It barely snowed the mayor nutter. I think was his name and called everything better. So the city's shutting down.

There's no snow at all. And the Vikings play the thing. That was a Joe web game. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you want to talk about just like the weirdness that I yearned for.

“I mean Tuesday game in Philly was I didn't even make the top 10 of that.”

See, give us the mood and Minnesota on the JJ McCarthy era. I mean, I, you know, I've gotten to know JJ a little bit. You're around for five minutes and you get it. You get why this guy's been a winner and why people like him. Like the locker room really liked him.

He, it's not like, you know, he was this guy. And he was at, you know, a joke from day one walking in. But, you know, he, he's in that category of people who, especially the quarterback position. They have so much going on for their first couple of years.

That it's just impossible to know what they could be. And now you're going into year three. We don't even know if he's going to be the number two quarterback. If Carson went, oh, it's going to be on the team. Right.

If, you know, well, I mean, you could potentially trade them. But if you're talking about a, you know, a third string quarterback, like I wouldn't, if I'm him, I don't want to get traded to me. If I'm a young quarterback, I don't want in late August to get traded to a team that might be right in a completely different system with players.

I don't know zero reps, zero time on task to build the rhythm and timing and tempering and even NFL passing offense. Then God forbid to start or get heard. Like, let's see, JJ, you get thrown out there. Like, that's the way to end career or at least, you know, to go on a path of a, you know,

some of the, you know, the Baker may fields in the same darn old. You needed several different spots because one was done with them. And then he got stability or, you know, whatever the closest thing to stability for Baker was a different OC every year. But you get in the right spot.

And all of a sudden, your career becomes, you know, kind of looking like what it might be in it. And that could be Jake. I was thinking it would be the chargers and Harba potentially being like, well, take them third ground pick. He's our backup.

We'll try to rehab and rehabilitate him and then maybe we can foot them. Other other than the debris. Jim Harba, press conference is basically a love letter to Justin. I think it's true. How many different ways is that?

How much he loves this guy? We bring him in though. It was the backup. Like, sure. I could see that.

“But like, what's the idea of up for a backup at the deadline?”

Like, if you get a real pick, I don't think that there's an upside two. Hey, let's just dump this guy for a seventh round or something. I mean, there's people to like him in Minnesota. But you know, I remember what I was like at that age. You know, like, I couldn't.

I didn't mind life together. You know, like JJ is first year. And he, you know, suffers that. And this century has the surgery. We all saw him on the sideline.

You know, he loses a ton of weight. And it's a hard year. He's never.

He's never really had that type of adversity.

He played. And he won almost every game he was in all the going all the way back to, you know, school. So, you know, he has that year off. And then last year, like, you know, you saw signs of it.

I was in a Timberwood game. He had been just in Jefferson or sitting front row. Justin was really encouraging to him. They spent a ton of time together. You saw flashes of it.

And then, you know, he comes out second half of that week. One game against the bears. And you're like, oh, okay. He's making a place with his legs. He didn't throw the ball out in that game.

You're like, okay. I see it like they really like the athletic quarterback. He can move. And then, oh, he suffered a high ankle spreading that game. He's now out or whatever was the following week.

He's out for six weeks. And all of a sudden he's not there. By the way, after the week one game, his fiance also has a kid. So now you're a 22 year old guy, whatever he has 23,

who's probably not getting a lot of stuff. You're really selling him out.

This is an incredible job by you.

It's a, it's a, I mean, I'm starting to buy JJ stock for this is your life. I'm just saying.

Like all the different things you're dealing with life wise. Then you come back and then he gets a concussion. And then he's got a finger thing or whatever was risk. I can't remember the exact nature of the injury. Something I'm just throwing hands.

So the guy's never healthy.

You know, guys like that or Anthony Richardson. Tray Lance. JJ played a lot more football and was much more productive than those guys in college. But he didn't throw the ball a whole lot more. I just know this bill.

I was at the Detroit game. You know, the nine meme, you know, the thing where he's making the funny face never post the JJ stuff all over and over again. Like that's from the locker room in Detroit where I was at that game. He was lights out again.

And he didn't have to throw the ball with thunder like red zone timing. He made a couple of tough throws. You know, had a touchdown pass like I was like watch it going. Oh, I get it. So you have seen flashes.

If you watch enough of the Vikings, there's flashes there.

“But I think at this point, everyone's just, you know, kind of like, all right.”

We've seen it. We've also had a lot of success through the years. Whether it's, you know, farve or case kingdom or cutting him with the veteran who's got ability. And he comes in in the right time.

Maybe that's Kyla Murray. He's being coached up differently. They split the reps all through the, you know, through the spring. They tried to make it as 50, 50 as they could. But, you know, I was also here back in the spring.

Like you can tell already who's the baller. Like Kyla's got that. Let's see with a revamp to running game and a really good receiver arsenal and an offensive line that Christian Derisau has finally healthy. Like, let's see what that ends up looking like in 2026. It's the most polarizing NFC team from a prediction standpoint.

I've seen people really like them. I've seen other people think they're clearly fourth place. I'm still deciding on it. I could see both cases. But it seems like though you could potentially see them when 11, 12 games of Kyla's good.

You could also see them be kind of a train wreck and this could be the final year for KOC. Like that kind of snare. They're betting a lot on Kyla Murray. I got that Arizona was paying. And they were like, we're good.

We're, please, please take care. I get it. But Arizona's like, we're good. And now you're betting on this career resurgence. I don't personally see it.

I've never been a huge fan.

I just think he's like a 500 quarterback will put up stats. But I think any good defense. He can't throw over the middle. I don't trust his decision making. I just don't see it.

But some people like them.

“I think the Kyla probably, you know, if you hold to one NFL record,”

it's most millions of dollars paid by a team who hates you. It's like a cardinal from the day they did that contract and the homework clause. And it's not like that was a secret. Like everybody knew and everybody knew about Kyla coming out of college. Like he's not a leader, right?

He doesn't hang with the guys. Like he's kind of to himself. He plays video games and all this stuff. You know, they did have some success early with Cliff. I mean, they went to the playoffs one year.

But then, you know, Kyla, everybody there said like he did grow up over time. The last staff, the Jonathan Ganon staff really did like him. It just, you know, he gets hurt again last year. He's had a bunch of injuries. Like it just didn't work out.

Within coming to Minnesota now, they like it for a couple of reasons. One, they don't think they need him to be a leader. Like Kyla was going into his fifth year. Like they've kind of got a locker room that can handle a lot. And you got Justin Jefferson, guys like that Aaron Jones is on the team.

You know, defensively you do have some veterans that you can lean on. Like Kyla can just come in and be, you know, a functional quarterback. He is being coached differently. They revamped the running game. What's that'll be, you know, from a fantasy football perspective,

particularly build will be really interesting because it's going to be Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason kind of splitting it. And then the rookie demand play. Right. Who they really like. There were a lot of questions about him coming out.

Like he is explosive his shit. It's like how that plays out. That could all take some heat off him. They, they brought in Frank Smith, who is I am his offensive coordinator. Keith Carter's real line coach.

Them with KO or kind of putting together the run game. They may not have to be stuck in that throw the ball 45 times a game thing. And by the way, even when at times they were stuck with that last year, they still, they might have the worst quarterback situation in the lead last year. You have JJ coming out in the line of three times.

You have Carson Wentz who played pretty well out of the gate. And then banks up his shoulder.

And then by the time late in that second half of that Rams game,

it's, you know, every time he's thrown, it's like, remember rookie of the year is the old pressure. It's like broke. And so it's like, ah, every throw is like, this is the end is arm is going to fall off. And then you're rolling Max Brochmer out there, who is, that was supposed to be a richer ear.

You know, like, he's a project that you're going to have there. They want to game on Christmas. You know, with with Brochmer throwing like 50 yards. See, like, they're, they're so that what they went nine and eight. If I keep to a nine and eight, they've just been placed by a half game.

That's where like, they can get functional quarterback play KO set it from the moment of the season ended. Like, we need more talent in the room. We need better competition in the room.

“And that's why I did bring back Carson Wentz. It wasn't because they were thinking he was giving the number two over JJ.”

It's because they're like, we played, we played three or more quarterbacks two out of Kevin's four years.

They won 13 and 14 games those other two years.

“I think, I'm not going to, you know, give you a gambling advice on the over under here.”

But like, an eight and a half win total, like, I don't know. History would suggest them was all the quarterbacks, like a nuclear bomb drops on that room. The Vikings are going to find a way to scrap and be in the playoff on. The Cleveland fans and the Vegas fans can't believe you said they had the worst quarterback room in the league last year. They need oxygen. They need water.

They cleavates like, what else do we have to do to have the worst quarterback situation?

But you're right. It was so bleak in that second half of the season for the Vikings.

They were at least on that level. I mean, we had some some of the worst quarterbacks situations. We've had since I was like growing up last year. Now we have Atlanta this year as the worst one, I think. I mean, Atlanta's got, you know, everybody's waiting for the competition.

But it's like Michael Pentex is on his third torn ACL. Yes, so we're going to be able to play. It's August 18. I mean, I can't name off the top of my head. Another quarterback who was in a cold, cold competition and didn't practice in 11. You know, we was in a minute in late August. He hasn't even been out.

And two of just shouldn't be in the NFL anymore. I mean, he's just, I don't understand how first of all, how he's a starter. And second, why he even wants to play. He looks terrified to get hit even you watch the preseason. And he's doing like it's it's over.

So I don't know who the third stringer is. But it would probably go to see him.

“This is part of why I think Mike made Daniel.”

You know, as much as he, you know, became a meme at times, especially, you know, just because like of who he is. Like his personality, the way he dresses and all that stuff. Like anybody have more of a tough, a tough role over the last couple of years than a guy who every game plan had to start with the quarterback can't get hit. Not sat right quarterback can't get hit.

We can't let him get hit. I know he does, you know, the jujitsu and he's learned all these different things. But like that's a, that's an uphill climb. But, you know, for Atlanta, it was, it was a, you know, a role of our, we're going with, or get him to the minimum.

Miami still plan, yeah, two or like whatever it is,

$50 million or something this season.

You know, we're bringing him in. It's another lefty. We're building out the protections a certain way. We need to evaluate both these guys. But there are another team that realistically, if I'm guessing who's the quarterback in

2027, I'd say neither of those guys. You can say that for teams that teams right now. Okay, we haven't even started the season, the teams that I would say they're starting quarterback in 2027, probably not even on the 2026 roster. I would say Atlanta.

I would say Cleveland. Jets. I would say the jets. And I would say maybe Arizona, although Carson back is really fascinating to me. Not just because of, you know, what we saw on the Hall of Fame game.

Yeah. But, you know, going back to the free draft process like this dude was the question was not talking to all the scouts and coaches and I write this lengthy quarterback thing, which will be now part of the ringer. Yeah. One of the draft next year.

But like getting the real opinions from people within the league, like Carson back. He helped himself in the process because all the report from the scouts for about what had happened at Georgia and like the social media and I don't love football and hanging on the calendar twin and like just, you know, driving the Lamborghini by in a house in the wrong part of my amy and gets robbed, like immediately upon moving there, like all this other stuff.

But if you talk to people about my amy, like the guy was dialed, like whether it was, you know, real or he was just playing the part. Like he did take the cue. He did learn from. And they succeeded with them.

And he got two teams to the college football play off. You know, he's a big strong guy. He looks the part. The old par sells rules where it's like, you know, a certain number of starts and you got to be a college graduate.

“And you got to be a senior and you have to win a, you know, win a certain percentage of your games.”

Clean a certain percentage of your passes. Like he's the only guy who checked all those boxes. Like, all the really interesting to see because if I'm Arizona, I definitely want to see Carson back at some point. You're not going to the playoffs for Jacob. We were set.

You may play with them for a good chunk of the season. But like, I would guess we see Carson Beck starts and games because you're going to want to go in with all the information you can on. Okay, before we draft another guy.

Hi, we find one in the third round.

And we can pay this guy the minimum for the next two years and use a really high first drop pick next year on somebody else or turn that into multiple first run picks. Money out some forth. The GM's done that before. You need to trade with Houston, you know, in the will.

I understand junior trades. So that's the best case scenario for all these teams is take your shots day two and day three in the draft. Find a quarterback that you like Cleveland's doing the same thing right now. Which should do. And they were doing it.

I guess still are with Dylan Gabriel, too. It's like, you know, take a flyer on them and, you know, realistically. 2027 is the year that we're going to, we're going to use that pick. 25 to one on Fandel for Ricky the year. Carson Beck.

Another team that will not have the same quarterback fixtures. The Pittsburgh Steelers. We want to mention that as well. Right. That's a, although they've got, they've got two guys though.

It's another one, too, right? They thin that same bucket. They have an hour.

Yeah. Yeah.

You'd draft an hour this year and you'd have to will Howard last year.

But it won't be Rogers next year. Right. But like in terms of it, even being on the roster, they've at least got two guys. They think they develop mental. Will Howard, Mike McCarthy was on the lead last year.

But like, Will Howard was really quarterback. He loved in the draft process. So those two young guys and Aaron from what I've heard is kind of taking him under his wing. Which you can read that multiple ways. But like he's been very supportive and he's got a good relationship with the young guys.

You know, maybe, maybe, again, maybe you find it. The Steelers aren't, I mean, the Steelers aren't going to have a top five pick based on record. I would certainly tell you that. Like, they're going to be a competent team. They're going to be a way better offense than they've been in years. Like, they've had a bottom, I think they've ranked 24th or worse in offense eight years in a row.

Right. Like, that's mediocrity.

“Like, that's how you don't, you know, every year you're nine and eight.”

You go on the first round, everybody jokes about it's like,

It's like, it's not because the defense fell off the cliff. It's because your offense has been terrible under several different coordinators. You know, let's see. Like, I'm sure. Not sure.

It's going to be better this year. I, I think the vote that I would say they will be a top 10 offense this year. That would be. Right. That prediction.

Mike McCarthy. I want to say 13 of his 18s ahead coach is at a top 10 offense. He was immediately at a number one offense in Dallas on a team that I don't think anybody was sitting there going. This is the most talented offense in the league. Jack played his best football under him. Aaron's played his best football under him.

Now, Aaron's not quite the same. Like, the legs aren't there anymore. It's all those plays like the spectacular Aaron Rodgers stuff where it's getting outside the pocket and throw in off balance. One foot, you know, back penalty across his body through 50 yards down the field. Like, I've seen him try to do that.

Yeah, he can't do that anymore.

“But if you can play like, you know, probably the the close example, if you want to buy the upside on it is,”

you know, when Peyton Manning was at the end of his career in Denver, and they want to super bowl with him throwing passes like it was out of a t-shirt. The motor on Peyton the air, one of my favorites slowly came down. Yeah, but it was because he was so mentally fast. They want to super bowl with Peyton playing like that.

I'm not going to sit here and predict that the Steelers, you know, win the Super Bowl, but like they've got a talented defense. They've added on offense, training for Michael Pittman. They brought in, you know, one of Mike's favorite running backs and Rico doubtal. Like, I think that they seem like they won the job.

Yeah, they're going to be a better offense would be my prediction and whatever they're being projected. Problem is doesn't seem like Aaron Rodgers wants to get hurt anymore. And I still feel like that's part of the quarterback. I want to get rid of the ball as fast as possible. Please don't hit me.

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All right, pressure rankings. I only want to do individuals.

“But we have to mention the rams at the top who I think now have the most pressure in the league.”

Because they're prohibitive favorites. They're five to one who win the Super Bowl on Fandel. Nobody else is better than 10 to one. Um, they're over under as 11 and a half. I saw a segment last week on, uh, ESPN, your brief employer that was talking about.

Uh-huh. Could this be the greatest defense of all time? We've lost our minds with the Seren Donald thing. He's 35 years old. He hasn't played in three years.

I'm sure he's going to be awesome. But he's only going to play 35 plays a game when he comes back. They're really top heavy. They have a quarterback that all but in the summer last year, we were terrified he was going to get hurt.

And it was like his back is he going to make it. And he made it. Now we're not worried about him anymore. It's 38. I think there's 10 guys ever who have had really awesome seasons at age 38 or later.

Not to mention the Puka Nicole stuff, which continues to not seem like it's stabilized. Um, I just have a lot of questions. And there's a lot of pressure now that people think they're the favorites. So what are you seeing as you watch from the fire? Well, you have to sort of like what the Rams have been since they got to LA.

We're always going to be a story.

We're always going to be the team that people are talking about. And they've done that in different ways. Yeah, we want to just go, it's always bleep, you know, bleep those pics. Like they're cyclical. They push it.

“Every team is cyclical from a spending standpoint, right?”

Because you have every doll you spend hits the cap eventually. It's a real cap. There's ways you can manipulate. But like it does come home eventually here. And so the Rams went through that phase of like drafted a bunch of guys.

The Todd, girlies and Jared Goffs. They pay those guys. Then that gave way to all right. Now we're going for it. We're going to trade for Jalen Ramsey.

You know, we're going to trade for Brandon Cooks. They get to a Super Bowl. They don't quite get there. Okay. Now we're going to reboot it a couple of years later.

Now we're trading for Stafford. We're going for it there. But then they got to a certain point after they won the Super Bowl in the 21 season. Where all the cap stuff, all the older players. They had to, all right, we need to start this thing over.

So we're trading away with Jalen Ramsey. They had the most rookies on their team. I think it was in 2023. Yeah. Of any team in the NFL and you saw the growing pains.

It's the one season they've had that just didn't live up to. You know, what Sean McVey has built. Yeah. But we have 30 plus rookies on your team. Now you're paying some of those guys.

Now you're getting to this point. They've obviously were really good. You're toward the end with Matthew Stafford. Now we're back. We're cycling the other way.

It's a really reboot. Right. And they just triple boot. Going, they keep going with this. But like, it's not like they're just on the gas all the time.

That's hard and sustained because at some point, like your, your draft picks are your young cheap workforce. They allow you to balance out the money you're spending on these really high price players.

“At some point, you have to have a recalibration with it.”

But the way that they've done it this offseason bill for all the web stuff that they have done. And I know that, you know, Sean McVey, less need in coming. They've often all the guys like they love the fact that they're constantly that team that everybody is talking about. But I don't know that they've ever had one that approaches.

What happened this offseason like, let's just take a second here to enjoy the past six months.

Yeah. Okay for the ramps. They make the commitment. Matthew Stafford announced it starts at NFL honors. Matthew Stafford is accepted speech with his daughters on the stage.

He says, like, I'm going to be back next year. And I'm in the theater and like the whole ram section. They all jump up and like go and wild clapping because they didn't know he had actually told them. Wow. Come and back.

So the rain NFL PL NFL MVP gets the trophy and goes like, hey, I'm coming back for another year. It's like they're they're over the move, right? So then over the next several months, they're working on a contract with Stafford. They're not quite getting there. They draft his eventual successor.

Ty Simpson in the first round at number 13 overall no less, which was something to be in the motion for months. Going all the way back to when Alabama's in the in the Rose Bowl and less need has ties parents over to the facility. Essentially talk them into your son should come out. Mom asks why and it goes because I'm going to draft him at number 13. So that all comes to roots.

I'm just talking, this is strictly the quarterbacks without getting everything else. Then they eventually get the Stafford deal done. So now you have on a team that's going for it. Your number one pick is a guy who all goes well. We don't see for a year.

Maybe two. And by the way, there are a couple good guys at 13 that would have helped this year's team specifically. So you're trying to balance this because in the Rams minds they're going, we're in the Super Bowl this year. To have them at number 32 pick in a draft next year where all these guys are going to go above us. We're not going to get one then.

We're not going to get one as long as Stafford is here. So let's take one now. Well, we can catch the rest of the league off guard.

And I don't know who else if anyone takes Ty in the first round.

But in the Rams minds, they're going. We've got a guy who fits perfectly into the system who is trained in that style of offense more to understand or snaps than anybody in the NFL. Let's just get him now and figure it out. Yes, then they eventually get the deal done with Stafford. It's painted as this, you know, extension.

If you look at it on paper, all it does is it buys them more time because of when it's contract would avoid it. It's still unclear what's going to happen with with Matthew Stafford in 2027. He'll have a decision to make Rams love a decision to make. But all that. And physically we don't know what's going to happen to him.

And physically he might be right on the cusp. He's played through so much and he's been beat up throughout the course of his career.

“Like, do we see Ty Sims, do we see Stephson Bennett at some point?”

Like, we don't know how the season is going to play out. Why do receiver mean loud? Because all that stuff's happening. Why do receiver? They work on at one point a trade of Devontay Adams to the point that they tell Devontay Adams We're probably going to trade you or we might trade you because they're working on a trade for AJ Brown.

They eventually back away from the AJ Brown trade. There's medical stuff. He's had a long running knee thing that everybody knows about going back to Tennessee, which is why they trade him way. But the hell you're just dropping that on me?

They're trying to trade for AJ Brown. They're trying to trade for AJ Brown. So they tell Devontay Adams, we may move on from you.

Now Devontay, okay, you're back.

“By the way, Puka is in rehab dealing with some serious personal stuff that he's got to work through.”

He hasn't been extended yet. So that also is an undercurrent of all this. Defensively, you completely overhaul your secondary. You bring in the two corners from the cheese to trade the other one for Trippnik Duffy and give him a record contract.

You sign Jill and Watson to play on the other side. And then oh yeah, you trade for Biles Garrett.

You trade your first second and third round picks.

Plus Jared Versus, like 24 years old, one of the core guys. Yeah, the value was really good for the Browns. I get what the Rams did it. I thought the Browns extracted really good value out of that situation. So you basically change everything about how you're playing up front.

And we haven't even talked about the Aaron Donald saga, which is a guy who hasn't played in several years. I know everybody keeps saying, I keep seeing like headlines and people saying, he's not coming back unless he's Aaron Donald. He's not going to be Aaron Donald.

Aaron Donald. He might be something approaching Aaron Donald, and it's going to be on a limited snap type of a basis. I mean, if you go back through modern NFL history, and I had my former employees research team look this up at one point,

the only player in the, basically the only player in the post World War II era, who's in the Hall of Fame, who sat out multiple seasons and came back and played with Dia. And Dia on the came back is like a part-time player in Baltimore for a couple years because Ray Lewis got him to come back.

He still, you know, still made plays. He's he's Dia on Sanders playing. He was in it. He had a ton.

“What did that comparison be how the patch he was digs last year?”

Where digs was impactful, but he was only playing 40% of the snaps, 45% of the snaps. I mean, it was Donald at the same thing. Like they're going to use him strategically, but he's not going to be out there all the time.

That part of it's definitely true. Like I think that what you will see, if Aaron Donald decides he wants to play, which I don't think that's coming in the next few days. You know, listen, this is a little bit.

It's kind of me if you know him. They got joy practice with the Saints. I think on Thursday, Aaron Donald. It showed up for a joy practice with the Saints. So to be sometime there after if he's going to come back.

But the idea of the vision would be third downs,

two minute late in games, past rush situations where we're going to roll out Aaron Donald. Whatever he is now, plus Miles Garrett, plus Byron Young, plus Kobe Turner,

and basically the like figure out who you're going to double. Just go ahead and try us here. That would be the idea of it with Aaron Donald, but it would add even more of that. Like it's obviously it would be like the equivalent of LeBron

at this point where LeBron coming of Philly if he played 22 minutes again. It's exactly that same thought, which what are you getting out of LeBron? Well, he can facilitate.

He can make the other people around him better, even if he himself is not what he was, but also it's like LeBron chose Philly. Oh, shit. Like we're going to be in the mix to win this thing right now.

It takes everybody every day come in, you would hope, and I know that's kind of how the ranger thing about this, like everybody's going to be like, man, he decided to come back from retirement,

because he thinks this team is shot to win it. That means every day I got to show up with the same, the same intensity and vision that he's got. And you have, if you think you're going to make the playoffs,

“which I think they're going to make the playoffs,”

and barring like a bunch of crazy shit happening, you can kind of steer it toward, hey, what if we get, if we can get the one seed, we only have to play three playoff games,

we steer Donald toward, can you give us like, two awesome weeks in a row, by week then Super Bowl, can you play like 70% of the plays just for those three weeks?

Um, if we're rating, which things make me the most dubious. Puka's number one. I want to talk about him in a second.

Stafford just holding up at age 38. How much Donald will be able to actually play? Um, all the pressure and hype, which the moment anything goes wrong.

Oh my god, the Rams are one and two, and it just becomes. And by the way, the talking point watching week one,

the first game in Australia, I'll be on the sideline. Right. The whole country is going to watch it. Everybody overreacts to week one.

They're playing a tough 49ers team. And they're in a second home across the world. I had a call with the Melbourne folks yesterday, like the local, the visitor bureau or whatever they are.

People, the presentation force. And they were, I asked him like, is there a team that people root for there? And they said,

well, no, the people in Melbourne don't really have a team. But the 49ers are reviving earlier. They're going to be in the community.

So we think the crowd will be for the 49ers. So the guys are going to be in, at least slightly, you know, environment where they're,

their challenge. And yeah, it's going to be a weird game. You know, these guys McVan,

Kyle, no, each other so well, like there's no surprises, or he marshes the former Rams coordinators.

Now in San Francisco, like there's tons of familiarity. But that, that game,

like weird stuff always happens in week one.

If they come back from that, on a lung flight back, and they're all in one, and they're the team that everybody says going to win the Super Bowl. And now it's 10 days of hearing like that they,

you know,

That does have some weight on people,

even if it's just one to 17 games. Puka, who was the best receiver in the league last year in my opinion. And even though I think JSN, he had all the accolades,

but Puka just gave me a game was just ridiculous, the blocking. He just catches in traffic was just dominant. I don't know what to expect from him. And it was like,

"No, no, he's getting his life back together." And then this story comes out that he ran through a glass door, Michael Rubin's house. And July 4th,

and it's like, "Are we sure he's doing great? What about all the legal troubles?"

“And is there something really going on with this guy?”

So what have you heard on that? Well, I would start by saying, you know, from all the accounts from everyone I've talked to,

since he got back in the building, which he was back, you know, OTAs and the spring, like he's been,

he's been good around the facility, which is like he's in a good spot. And you also can summarize, based on the timing of everything. Like,

he probably didn't have his life together last season. What he was the most dominant receiver, or one of the most dominant receivers in the NFL. So you'd like to think, if whatever he's dealing with,

he can be in a better spot with that now, maybe the guy can be even better here.

His contract was never going to get done

early in the off season. I think this one was always going to take. And a little bit, but certainly he's going to have a spotlight on him for a variety of different reasons.

He's still somehow appearing on podcasts and seeing crazy stuff. Like, yeah, I walked through a plate glass window and cut up my face.

Like, I don't know. I guess, I've never gone to a white party, maybe everyone worried white.

Listen. That's this, if that was me. But it's one of my friends, or one year friends, it would be a red flag.

I mean, what happened? I walked through a plate glass window. Like how drunk were you? What happened?

I mean, that is some speed. You know, it's not,

“not Charles Barkley throwing you through a plate glass window.”

Like he just walked and broke it.

I know you're a strong dude, but that's, yeah, that's a lot. Like listening.

Yeah, there's, it'll be something worth monitoring. There's no doubt about it. But like,

in terms of on the field and football, like everything sounds like it's gone well. So far, it's just one of the many things that we keep in tabs on here through the scene.

Well, in the last 30 years, only one team has been a giant favorite heading into the season,

and actually won the Super Bowl. And that was the 2018 Patriots, who beat the Rams. So there you go. Pressure rankings really quick.

Individuals. These are my rankings. I don't think they're the correct rankings. I did not send them to you. The number one person with the most pressure on him this year,

in my opinion, is going to be CJ Strav, because I think the Texans are really, really, really, really good. And could absolutely make the Super Bowl,

and maybe should have been the Super Bowl last year, except he let them down in England and was awful. Run games better, offensive line is supposedly a little better. Receiver room is better.

The defense is the same and probably better, but they brought everybody back. It's all lined up for him. Just give us a C+. And we're going to win 13 games.

Can you be a C? Are you giving my name? C+ Strav? C+ Strav. That sounds great.

I'll start it right now. Just a C+. We'll go 12 and 5.

“I think he has the most pressure on him.”

It's just crazy to think about the arc for CJ Strav. As the number two pick, the entire world decided about three games into that rookie year that he was clearly should have been the number one pick. He played well enough.

He's gone to the playoffs every year. When's a playoff game every year? But then his head bumps. Like last year. Last year was a roller coaster, man.

I did a gate. They were bad. They were going three. The offense is really struggling. They were changing schemes because they'd fire Bobby slow at that. Nick Kaylee coming in. It's a different style of offense that he was running.

But then over the in the middle of the season, like they did get better. Defensively, Matt Burke taking over the play. Colleen was huge for the defense. And then offensively, like he saw them kind of figure some things out.

Even though, yeah, the running back situation with mix and out and you got a late career Nick Chub. So those things weren't really. They had the worst running backs on the league. Yeah. So trained for David Montgomery makes a lot of sense.

Like Montgomery still got, you know, with lack of wear and tear over the last couple of years. Like he's got some juice left in his legs. I think that that was a smart move in pairing him with the young back. Like makes a ton of sense. Take Dallas CJ Strauss favorite receiver.

And he's back. Play last year. He's back now. Because he had a horrific injury in 2024. You know, he's been back out there. No, he hasn't practiced last few days.

But seems like he'll be ready to roll. Like that's another another addition here. There have been contract talks between CJ Strauss and his agent and the Texan. So there's at least a chance. But it's really hard to get a quarterback contract done right now.

Because every agent is looking at this and going next year. The quarterback class of 2023 will all be extension eligible. So that is, you know, Drake May and Jane Daniels and Caleb Williams and Bo Nix.

That could be another one.

“Lamar Jackson is going to be due for a new contract that the Ravens have been working on for like two years now.”

So there's a number where that deal could get done. But if not, I know this CJ Strauss is totally comfortable going on playing it out. So is their pressure. Yeah, and the way that things ended last year with like the weird Chuck and oblox style. Yips were like he couldn't take a snap.

Like he couldn't handle the football. That was just weird. It ought to character. You'd like to think that it's not going to look like that. But no doubt if he doesn't have a contract.

Any quarterback for theory or rookie deal. There's a level of pressure, especially on a really good team. So you have the contract. You have the history from last season where he probably single hand. They cost them a play out front.

There's another thing. And it doesn't happen that often in the NFL. But when you have a team that's kind of ready to potentially make a soup bone. You have a unit that's the other side of the ball that's fucking awesome. And it's like the defense if we can just get good enough offense.

This defense can carry us and you're letting them down. That's where football becomes like unlike any other sport.

“Where it's like the two units working together.”

But if this unit's letting down this unit. And it just compounds itself and you could fill it in that playoff game. And it to me, it's like a fork in the road for him. Like he could be he could salvage. Whatever get it get a big contract out of this.

Make when a couple playoff games or I can see him not being the quarterback next year. Like it's like a clear fork in the road. I know how it's going to play out. Yeah. And then listen anytime you're making those commitments.

We've seen teams. We talked about some of the teams that have made these big commitments to quarterbacks. And you very quickly. Like Simon's second guest. You know, it's like first guest.

And it's like right.

Your recent Kyler when you just don't like him at all as a person to a he gave him 46 million a year.

Yeah. But the concussion history. I mean, I remember when that deal got done. And like I understand like, you know, if you're Chris Greer and that staff like you drafted him like me Daniel like part of his pitch to get the job was like I can win with to every other coach. And you got to hear where to two of Mike.

But Daniel walked in and said I can win with him. When you do that and he tires up the somebody you're like, I don't pay him. And we want to send a message by paying him. But I had other GMs.

“So that contract going done being like, why in the world didn't they just let that play out?”

And then franchise tag of like. Yeah, doing like what why would you pay him now with the history? Now obviously played out that way. So I think that the combination of the fact that, you know, listen, Bill in like 2013 or 14 certainly in 13.

I think still in 14 the highest paid quarterback in the NFL was Aaron Rogers at 22 million a year. 22 million. He was the highest paid quarterback for like two years then. Are you counting off the table, Brady money to from TB to. And I'm just saying, okay, money that we know money enough, okay.

That market is now tripled. Right. By the time that we get a Lamar deal, whatever Caleb and Jayden and Drake and Bo. I will see who else is in. It's going to be a, you know, the the $60 million quarterback.

Forget that. It's going to be the 70 million quarterback. And depending on how you look at seven. The way that like the way the like Josh Allen's deal got redone.

That was basically a two year $200 million extension.

Like the numbers are astronomical. The agents had no reason to say like, well, we'll just take a $45 million. You're dealing. Daniel Jones coming off a torn a killie signed a two year $100 million contract. Yeah.

That's just where we are. So if you're committing that much cash and cap dollars to a player. I don't blame the people who are like, let's get all the information we can first. It's why it's why Bryce Young won't have an extension right now. You know, they, they had some very preliminary talks for my understanding.

But it was kind of everybody was under the understanding like you're not going to pay what the market is. We're not going to take it. So let's just play it out. You guys get more information. So do we and let's see where the market is.

Next year, does it just creates, you know, ripple effects in this. And maybe we see some of these quarterbacks when the past didn't get out there. And now they do and maybe quarterbacks toward the tail end of the rookie contracts. Begin getting traded. There's a lot of different macro things that could happen.

Because you got guys like, I mean, see a strong on paper three years, three playoff. Like you take that for a young quarterback. But it's like, all right, peel back the layers of why happened. They taken those additional steps. Right.

Like at the end of the last season. He's going to take it into his own hands. Are in a contract any done before this season. And he's going to be a really interesting, you know, guy available. If in fact, they are able to get something done.

He has built an excuses for last year with the line, though no running game at all. The wide receiver injuries like you could go down the line. But he also wasn't very good. Number two on my pressure rankings is Josh out. We have the whole season to talk about him.

We don't need to do that here. But I don't need to lay that one out. Three, four, five. I have Herbert Lamar and Burrow. Tenatively in that order.

So if, if I offered you Justin Herbert Jackson and Burrow. Who do you think? Who would you put with the most pressure of those three guys?

He's 10 to one. It's got the fourth best odds. We're hearing all this. Oh, Mike, we can all out. Harba's blowing smoke left and right about him.

He's got the offensive line back. They're a little slippery.

But we've never seen him play well on a playoff game ever.

I would say at least pressure on Lamar.

“Because I think the whole need to over three.”

I'll go back with you. At least pressure on Lamar. I think we all have to be aware of the challenge that he is taking on here. Declan Doyle, who's the new O.C., he's 30 years old. He's basically the same age as Lamar.

He trained under Sean Payton and Ben Johnson. Two of the most detail oriented, brilliant offensive minds that we've seen in the NFL. And from what they didn't Chicago, which there's going to be a lot of corollaries to what they're doing in Baltimore with Lamar. Like, if you go back to Caleb in the first two months or two months,

it was bumpy because you're trying to take this dude who can be Superman every play and just going, no, we need Clark Kent like 90% of the time. Yeah. Execute and be in rhythm and let your feet, you know, do the work. Connect your feet in your eyes.

Have the ball come out on time. We'll worry about getting receivers to hit the landmark. So the ball comes out on time. There where they're supposed to be. You got to do your part.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if we have some points. Early on for Lamar.

“I think if I'm not mistaken, I think Baltimore plays Tennessee in week one.”

You know, Robert Solow will have some things cooked up to try to, you know, make things complicated for him. But Lamar, I think that the fact that you've got a first time head coach, first time offensive coordinator. Yes, it's Lamar.

Two time NFL MVP.

There's always pressure on that team and Blamar himself.

But I think there needs to be from our perspective more of a grace peer. And with Lamar, just because there's so much new. Can I give you the first five for Lamar? Yeah, please. It's at Indy.

Indy, sorry. Where Lou on a rumo is another one who historically, you're going back there. There've been, you know, some ups and downs with Lou is in Cincinnati. But he's played a lot of times home for saints at Cowboys in Brazil.

Home Titans. There's your Sala. There there was. At Falken's at Browns. It's the first six.

No.

It's for Falken's is Sunday night football.

So the Falken's Browns will be the easier stretch of that.

“Because I think both those teams will not be good.”

storyline out of the gate to me. It's going to be the Ravens are probably going to win on the majority of those games. They look like that. That would be the story line out of the gate to me.

It's going to be the Ravens are probably going to win on the majority of those games. So that's what they look like. That would be the story line out of the gate to me. It's going to be the Ravens are probably going to win on the

majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the

majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the

majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the

majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the

majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the

majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the majority of those games because they're going to win on the better. It's like we got to play our better game. There's pressure on Joe only because he hasn't been able to stay on the field. Those things aren't always necessarily his fault. You know, the one last year holds them all for a long time in the pocket and he suffers a severe turf to injury like that. You got to be able to get the football up. So yeah, I think there's some level of him, but it's also it's everybody else. Joe's a big backer is act talent. They've gone to the Super Bowl together. Jackson year eight, like there's pressure on the entire operation here, which is why they did unbengles thing.

And we're aggressive going out and trading a high draft pick for a veteran player. And then we're just in Herbert, I think that there's less pressure. And I've said this before on Justin Herbert, then there is Jim Harbaugh, but another situation. We're suit of Harbaugh over Harbaugh over Herbert for pressure. Absolutely. And I would say because Justin was still a young, he's still a young quarterback. He also has new offensive coordinator, of course, with Mike McDonald and everybody's got high hopes about what that is going to look like here.

But think about this Jim Harbaugh coming off a national championship at Michigan. And of course, there were a lot of other things that happened before during and after that that we won't get into here.

In San Francisco, his first two years were NFC championship Super Bowl. His third year was another NFC championship. It was instantaneous success. When the chargers brought him from Michigan, the Falcons also interviewed him in that cycle. They ultimately hired Rahim Morris. He wanted to go to LA, that's where, you know, from September, like I was hearing that he was telling people in the building, like I'm going to be the chargers said coach next year, like he had eyes on that job all along, Justin Herbert was a big part of it.

But if you told me Jim Harbaugh is one of the highest pin coaches in the NFL was going to have he's already had two to have three seasons without a playoff win.

You'd say that that is a failure for him coming in. So the pressure is on everybody there to be able to take that next step with Herbert, he's had to overcome a lot. I mean, CJ Stroud did have a lot of issues on the offensive line. That's my Herbert. Joe Halt in Rishon Slayer didn't get out of camp last year. Yeah, it was a constant revolving door and they made changes at the OC position. They made changes at the offensive line coach. So now he got putch bury there. It was a very veteran guy along Mike McDaniel.

You know, let's see what the whole thing, you know, ends up looking like here. Herbets out a lot of injuries. He plays through as much as anybody. I mean, that high ankle sprint.

“I think, come on, if that was last year or two years ago, but like you have that thing taped. Like, you know, it was like 1980s football.”

He had the full stack. Like his foot was three times the size. Like, yeah, he plays through stuff, but he's got to be able to, you know, and organizationally, they've got to be able to win. So I'd say Herbert just because we've seen them. Yeah, he hasn't gotten to a Super Bowl. Joe wasn't want to Super Bowl. Herbert doesn't want to play off game. He was there and had a massive lead on the Jaguars once. That's the closest that they came. But, you know, everybody there involved. Again, I still put more pressure on Jim Harba. The Justin Herbert, but everybody there has pressure on him in LA just because these are two guys making big time money in a big time city where you're competing for attention with the team that owns the stadium.

And this is the year where now you've got to be able to take a step forward. You start wondering, all right, how many coaches go into your four without a playoff win. And you're not talking about really needing to make major changes. It would just would raise a lot of questions as much face as they have in those guys. What exactly what the path forward is. Yeah, Herbert, you could do the strap thing where their excuses for what happened last year because of the injuries to the tackles. But there's doesn't seem a lot of excuses this year.

All right, so I have the Rams CJ Strahd, Josh Allen, Harba Herbert together. Job Earl Lamar as the next two. I'm just going to give you because we got to go soon. I'm going to give you seven names and tell me if any of them have more pressure on them than Job Earl Lamar Jackson. Jalen Hurtz, Mike Frable, Dak Prescott, Miles Garrett, Calamary, Jaden Daniels and Jordan Love. All right, let's go one by one. Well, just what you jumped out.

I'll give you, I mean, Jalen Hurtz is the one that jumps out immediately. You can offense that on paper isn't really geared to his skillset.

He's not a manion's coming in as another young offense coordinator is never called plays at any level, and he's going to be running, you know, he played under.

The floor in in Green Bay, he played under Sean McVay or didn't play a whole lot. He was the back of quarterback under those guys. Like, that's never been Jalen Hurtz game. It's a precision style drop back under center offense. Jalen Hurtz has a lot of pressure, just because if they're committed to this style of play, and it doesn't click immediately, you're going to be talking about, okay, where potentially would Jalen Hurtz be the quarterback in 2027. We're not there yet. They want to see it.

“But when you don't have the evidence that he can succeed and play a really high level in that system, I think inevitably there's a ton of pressure that goes into that.”

Especially because he's getting to a point in his contract, too, or if everything was going swimmingly in Philadelphia, we would be talking about Jalen Hurtz being up for a new contract as well. It's an interesting topic with the Eagles fans, and I know, unfortunately, for me, I know a bunch of them. They still rub the Patriot's Super Bowl in my face. Respect hurts, because he won them the Super Bowl, right?

Big, sturdy guy. They're, like, clearly like they failed in debt attempt because they did have success on them. But none of them are sure if he's that good.

And he talked to the, they were always like, they just seem wishy.

Watch the dad in the Super Bowl. He was. He wasn't. He wasn't.

“We're in a nonstop. We'll play in the Tush Push.”

But he also, he threw the ball. If he go back to that Super Bowl, the deep shot, the Devante Smith, that was basically the dagger. You know, he was executed at a high level. It's just, you know, listen, Jalen's another guy who is just he's more to himself. He's, you know, he's extremely hard worker, he's unbelievably driven. But he said, you know, the guy who's going to be the, you know, the centerpiece of the locker.

And everybody knew, you know, coming out Alabama and Oklahoma.

That wasn't really him. But that's not necessarily a character flaw. I mean, what is Super Bowl with them? I think we sometimes overlook this. And he became available. He became available.

There would be a, you know, a huge price for him. But the, the pressure comes from the Eagles. Again, on paper, have made a move to like, hey, we're going to run this under style of offense. Yeah. That isn't naturally a fit for you.

You know, it would be like if if the Patriots would Tom Brady were there hired Sean Manion. I mean, I mean, it would have been like in his 20s. But like you hire some guys to run the floor offense.

“And Tom would have been like, we're doing what now?”

We're running one offense. And we've had a ton of success. We want a Super Bowl like why are we choosing that? Do something that's completely different from what I do. That to me creates pressure.

And make some of the other ones.

Dak, you know, that's been a highly productive quarterback.

He's at that point where, you know, the Cowboys have to be thinking about the future. But he's still in his prime. They've got a ton of firepower. I don't think that there's necessarily pressure that goes beyond just really. I totally disagree.

I feel like there's I feel like there's a lot of stuff. Watch out for Dallas and the NFC. They can make the Super Bowl. This is the best team he's had. Do that a lot.

I know he's overvalued here 11. Like, yeah, I don't think he's made a conference championship game yet. And no. By the way, they're America's team. Everybody talks about them the most.

Even better than the most even better than the game in three decades. Here's got the most valuable franchise. Everything for business. When is it going to happen? I mean, you could argue isn't it?

The person's trade worked out for them, especially because they turned some of the picks in a Williams. And like, I think that's. You look at that. Whoistically, it actually like was smart. How they played it.

“That, but the weird thing about what Dallas did last year was like, they're the first team that I can remember that basically decided to start building their defense in August and continue through November.”

Like, we see what you will about Matt Eberfluse. Like, he found out a week before two before the season. We're trading your best player like the process. Like, up until that point, it was not totally clear that this was actually going to happen. So you trade Micah.

And now it's like, well, we have no pastructures. Then like, well, we got Kenny Clark. It's like, okay, that's great. Because we need to know it. We need a defensive tackle.

But like, Kenny's more of a nose. He's not a. Yeah. Well, we don't have a three tech and then gets in November. They're like, hey, we got to three tech.

When it was like, okay, cool, we could have used him the past two months. They traded for the linebacker Logan Wilson. Like, hey, middle linebacker.

Like the most important positions in that scheme are.

They're doing it on the side and this is a middle linebacker. Yeah. You're just making it up in the middle of it. But the best thing they did, you know, if they were going to fire Fluse, like, going to get in Christian Parker, just getting a young, hungry dude, like another one who, if they're good. We're going to talk about Christian Parker's ahead coaching candidate this year.

I'm really fascinated to see. He comes from a Vic Fangeo school. He's unbelievably bright young guy. He's going to have a plan. They're finally there's steady in terms of their personnel.

Um, and obviously, you know, they drafted defense. So Malachi Lawrence and the first round with that's going to be an interesting one. He gets that's a project. Um, you know, they had two first round picks.

“He's both among defense, like that's that's what you want to see.”

Um, but how quickly does it all come together? That to me, I think they're going to be good on offense. It's obviously there's a whole lot of doubt on the injuries. But I think defensively is worth it. Well, sounded.

I got deck in there. All right. Jordan love pressure because he, I had known to know him a couple of weeks ago. The, the new nerd king at quarterback, the nerds are. They moved their attention away from Justin Herbert.

Now are there over on Jordan love touting the virtues of Jordan love and how much better he is than people realize. And so he's got the pressure of the nerds. He's the one for the top ten top seven like every statistical. Yeah. EPA name anything.

He's really good at it. Yeah. I don't know. Like if the packers ever gone like three straight weeks, so these put in the Jordan love era, we're like, they have the same group of receivers. Like everyone is Christian Watson's.

Well, they won't be this season either. All right. Well, I mean, Tucker craft. The fact that he's come back that that's the number one thing that happened to them last year. Look at them playing before the Tucker craft injury and after everybody was losing their minds.

The week after that, like they lost the Carolina that a close game against Carolina. They played didn't play great the following week and was like, what's going on? It's like they lost a guy like Tucker craft is young Travis Kelsey, right? He can be that good. It seems like he's on track to play early in the season.

I don't know how much but Jordan love is. I'll tell you this. Like the coaches there love a metal floor. Loves them. You know, the leader, the guy, the player.

They just got to get some, you know, some better consistency. So you just think it was banged up most the last year too. That was a really big deal for them. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I don't think that there's as much pressure other than again, you're the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers. And you might be in the toughest division in the entire league.

Yeah, I think. Oh, my 99% dealt with my research. It's clear that that's the best division. I think I think. I think NFC North topped the bottom is probably the best. Because they could even who you'd even argue.

I don't know, but there you can't find it. It's not in the court.

Before we go. Give me every year there's a team that comes out of nowhere and makes the playoffs and everybody's shocked. And we're getting better at the Vegas odds with this. Like the Patriots were a huge shock last year. But actually not to people who were studying the schedule and the coaching change other.

“Is there anybody in that bottom 10 that you feel like could make a leap that we're not seeing?”

I'm talking like I'm talking like the Cleveland's like those kind of teams. The Giants Arizona is there a shitty team that's not going to be shitty. Well, the thing is, how many shitty teams are there? Like going into the year, we talked about the four. I think that after that, like there's not a lot of teams.

You think are just going to be bad. I mean, you can say everyone in the NFC South might be shitty. You can say Arizona for five straight. You can say that Giants and Washington are both going to be shitty. Jets Miami.

Do you mention John Harbon, your professionalist? Yeah, it's year one. I think you got a great spirit for your one. John Harbon went to the ABC championship game.

It is first year in Baltimore.

Like I was coming with more fanfare. One of the highest paid coaches. Like there's instant expectations. I mean, people were going to feel different ways about Jackson Darts and came scattered. Are you going to trigger a pick them to win 11 to 12 games?

Did you see that? I got it. I got it. I don't know. I mean, that's like a puk in the koamoma.

I'm just a trigger. It takes off the jacket and has a scatter boot here as you underneath. And it's a super ball pick. I'm not going to put too much. All right.

That was shocking to do. That's right. I have my some of the board that I have a whiteboard. A bunch of different stuff. One of them is the ranking of the hot seat going into the year.

Which is like ranked on who's most likely to get fired one through 32. So like looking at the teams.

“Oh, but the top of like who's going to as balls at that top?”

I would say this. Like Tampa. I mean, the fact that we were talking about it for a week after the season last year. There wasn't a good answer. And he cleaned out most of his two thirds of his coaching staff.

Like yeah, there's pressure on top of this pressure on a lot of different coaches. Going into, you know, this year. Again, they just they haven't had stability offensive coordinator. You know, that's that's just happened over and over. I mean, I think the one team.

And I might be listening. I might be dead wrong on this. But like I could see Washington being good. I think Washington wasn't there over under for wind. It's like something I've ever seen.

Yeah. I think it's around seven. I think everybody's looking at that team. And listen, Jane Danes. I know he was in your pressure rankings.

He probably wouldn't have been there up until the whole. Yeah. It's about seven. People think seven seven wins is seven wins. There's between six and seven up and seven.

Listen, they could be bad again. But like the Washington fell into, frankly, a familiar trap coming off at the 2024 season. We're like, I mean, Jane Danes was was lights out that season. They go to the all the way to the end. I mean, everybody's, you know, gas in them up.

And what did they do? They doubled down on well, let's bring in a bunch of veterans and trying to put it over the top.

“So that's why you sign Von Miller toward the end of his career.”

You bring back, you know, the Zach Kurtz's of the world, you know, forgetting some others. But they had a bunch of like, they had one of the oldest rosters. They had like 15 guys and rates 30 and older. And like, I remember going through there in camp last year for a practice and just be like, you know, feel slow. Debo was another one that they've been like, this team just doesn't have a lot of juice.

And at the time I chocked it up to Terry McCleuron was holding in and yeah, some other guys weren't out there. But like, you just got that sense. And I've seen it many times in the past where like, that doesn't work. So what they did this year and they go in the draft a couple of, you know, why receivers who they think they're going to be able to help them in the near term here.

They bring in digs like things is an older player, but nobody really practices harder than digs. You showed last year in what 51% of the snapshot, whatever. He's still as a thousand yard receiver. And these are guy who you can play a lot in slot. You know, he can kind of offset some of the things that people try to do to you.

To the core and McCleuron came in and he's battling injuries because he held out. Or held in and he's another, you know, older play like they do still have some of those older players on the team. And they lost Larry tonsling and that's the biggest deal. People aren't. Everyone's like, trade for left tackle.

It's like, from who? What left tackle? They're absolutely available in August. Like, that's my biggest concern with them. Like, Jane was was he didn't have the guys last year.

Like, all the injuries around him and the holdout and the claw and like they never had a

Edge awesome, Eccler and other later stage player who got hurt. They never had their actual guys out there. Now you give them digs to go along with McCleuron to go along with all these young receivers. Like if you look at their depth chart, like their entire three deep and all three receiver spots is names you know. They got like the army browned back there and like a bunch of players.

You're like, I could see all these guys competing. They've gotten younger. They've gotten faster. They invested into the defense. They moved on from a lot of those older players.

And they moved on, you know, in terms of their offensive coordinator. Again, but this is nerve themed at the season. Like David Blow, another one 30 years old. I feel like it was yesterday. We were watching him fill in certain for the lions on Thanksgiving with a,

So the entire game his play sheet was flopping like this is like four years ago. And now he's an offensive coordinator. Like we'll see exactly what that ends up looking like. Like the trip wanted to come back there and be the offensive coordinator. Like they were really interested.

I'm in David Blow. If they can find some rhythm. I don't know that Jane Daniels was real fired up about the idea of playing a different style of offense. If Jane's healthy, the pieces around him are healthy.

“I think that they've got a real opportunity here in a division that I just don't know.”

I just don't know that there's a single dominant team going into the season.

The Eagles are always there.

The Cowboys, everyone's expecting a lot from the giants we'll see. I can see them making noise if Jane is javing again in a year where if he plays like he did as a rookie. There's your 60 to 70 million dollar quarterback right there. They went five and 12 last year. They lost tons already.

They play the ABC South and the NFC West. So that's basically two easy games and potentially five or six really hard ones. They start out at Eagles at Dallas home Seahawks. And if they can somehow get through that one and two or two and one. I mean, it would be they'll be heavy underdog.

That's great. Yeah. That would have one of those. But if they start out on three, then not great. All right, Tom.

You're going to be on the ring on our fellow show. I don't know when it starts, but it started pretty soon and you're going to be on there. You're going to be on here on Thursdays. We're going to do a little info segment because I'm going to change around my Thursday show a little bit. But we're going to have a fun thing for that.

And then some writing stuff is coming too. But you're back. We're part of the universe. Great to have you. I'm glad we were able to shoot all the stuff.

Say I had everybody in Minnesota. Apologize, then that didn't have them in the top two torture rankings. I got to rethink that. You know what, there is I'm not going to rank anyone. There's like a four and nobody can be ranked against each other.

I apologize. Everybody thinks they're grieved. Eagle stands think they're agree. Everybody has a grudge. All right.

Good to see you. Thank you, my friend. Thanks.

Well, this is a first for BS podcast history.

Sammy Copeland is here. His father is Brian Copeland. This is the first ever father son podcast thing on my pod. And honestly, people are going to compare to LeBron and Brian and James. We can't wait.

It's it's two separate worlds. I'm not going to do that. We need to be going for Rick Brunson, Jalen Brunson. That sounds great. Yeah.

If I fail, we're looking at Brani and LeBron. This is a success on the Jalen. He's the Rick. All right. So you're into the whole financial world.

Do the publisher of Hunter Brook. And you've been following all of these. All these billionaire shenanigans. And we have a ton of them right now. Monday.

“I think that's why it sports day allegedly at mid August.”

And then Lakers and Clippers both blew up in all these different ways. And I tweeted that I thought the Lakers situation was a thousand times more interesting than Cooper situation. Because it has all these other ramifications outside of basketball. I was probably doing a little hyperbally with a thousand times.

But I need you to explain this Mark Walter situation to my audience. Because it's starting to seem like he's an actual crook. He's starting to seem like he might actually go to jail. He's already shed himself of the Lakers. He's selling his Chelsea stake reported.

They right now, which was like 12 and a percent. And my guess is the Dodgers are going to be next. So what is this? Is this like, are we moving toward like a Bernie made off? I've been boasting type of situation.

What is this? I wouldn't quite say we're at made off. And I do have to say I've worked with Pablo. But on a couple of those stories having to do with the clippers. And what's most interesting about that story and the story is it's kind of the same story.

It's about a billionaires who believe that certain rules don't apply to them. And hate to have to operate within a system where they're suddenly constricted. And so when you look at Walter, what basically happened here is, as you know, in 2012, he buys the Dodgers. And at the time, people are kind of confused. They're like, how's this guy who runs Guggenheim, which is a successful operation.

But he's not known as some giant Titan of Industry.

“How is he buying the Dodgers for this and out of money?”

And then there was like 2.25 billion something like that.

And then the other bidders were upset. They didn't understand. They had questions about where he got the money and all that stuff. Yeah, I was looking at this last night. It seems like Mark Cuban was involved.

It seems like the next bid was almost a billion dollars shy of Walter's bid. So people were confused. They were like, where is he getting this money? And at the time, people started looking into the question, was he using insurance money?

Money people had been putting away for their insurance because he owns a couple of insurance companies. And so the question was, was he using that money to buy the team,

which just to explain it in basic terms. The way this works is, if you will life insurance policy, you're putting money away. So that one day, when you die, your loved ones have something, or you get paid an annuity when you're old.

So our dads get an insurance policy,

basically when they die, we get money and they took care of us a little bit.

Exactly. Like if my dad hadn't started lifting like a crazy person, he died from the obesity. If your dad was a continuing to sell shows, if he had to actually file stuff anyway.

Exactly. And so people do that and they take out these life insurance policies. And in the meantime, being insurers pretty good, because you get to invest that money in what you want to invest it in. And the way it works is usually they're going to go invest that money in safe bonds

or in a diversified index of stocks. So that your money is safe overall. And they're collecting a big, and that's no secret. That's why it's a business. But just like when you're sports betting and the betting platform's collecting a big,

that's sort of just like the way it works. Well, Walter figured out and what a bunch of people have started doing is well, what if you're just starting investing that in like better assets, assets that are riskier, but you might be able to juice the returns. And one big asset class, Walters obsessed with, is sports.

And it's not just the Dodgers and then the Lakers. He has invested in Formula One. We found in one of our investigations that he was invested in American rodeo, a bullfighting team.

He clearly thinks that sports is this incredible asset class.

And it's actually in theory, okay, to use insurance money to invest in assets like sports teams, if you disclose to people what you're doing. The problem here with Mark Walter is that you're supposed to specifically disclose something called a related party transaction, which sounds boring. But basically what this means is you can't pay yourself.

Like if he took his insurance money and he used it to buy himself a restaurant he wanted to run, that was going to go out of business otherwise. That wouldn't be allowed.

“And so you have to disclose, all right, yes, I invested in the sports team,”

which I also own, but I think it's a good investment for excellence in reasons. And what Walter did, according to all of these reports, the reason that FBI agents boarded his private jet and stole his phone and stole his computer, which doesn't happen every day for billionaires like this. That's a serious, serious thing.

If he wasn't disclosing that he was investing in related parties, and one of the insurers he owns had said 3% of its investments were going to related parties. They then corrected their filing to say it was 40. And so that raises the question, once he's been doing with these billions and billions of dollars, Americans have been putting away for their insurance policies,

and it seems like he's been using that money to buy sports teams left and right. So people like our parents and grandparents are buying insurance, and assuming that it's going to be invested in the safest possible stuff. Correct. And he's not the only one who did this because it's like a trillion dollar industry now,

but he was like, well, what if I take that money? I'm going to steer it toward some higher risk stuff, and they trust me because I'm successful.

But then the problem is he was investing in his own shit.

“And reporting it as, oh, it's only, what did he say?”

It was like 3 billion? Yeah, it's only 3 billion of that. But it turned out, I've heard reports 16, 20, you're saying 40. Like, this is the question of, the big question is did he just failed the disclose this? Or is this fraud?

And the other big question is, where is all of the month? We know some of it went to these sports teams, but the kind of person who wouldn't disclose that, it raises questions about his firm, Dougan Hype. It just gives you some color on Mark Walther, because it's kind of fun.

Like, you know, it's called Gougan Hype. You probably think it's like the Gougan Hype family, like the Gougan Hype museum. Yeah. But for men, black. Okay, so here's like how Mark Walther made this fund called Gougan Hype.

There was a guy named Meyer Gougan Hype. He died in 1905. His son was a guy named Solomon Gougan Hype. And that person had a daughter named Barbara Gougan Hype. Their son was a guy named Peter Lawson, Johnston, senior who's son was Peter Lawson,

and the second Walter had that guy as a co-founder of his company, so he could legally use the name Gougan Hype. Wow. And then they got rid of that guy. But it has this air of legitimacy.

It has this patina of institutionalism.

“And that's what Walther's been doing his whole life.”

Is he's a genius at accruing assets, figuring out how to invest in them,

And you kind of have to give him credit. It's pretty amazing. I mean, this guy owns some of the premier assets in the entire world.

And the other key point of all this.

The other way he does it is that insurance money is super valuable, because historically it was invested in safe stuff, which means from a regulation standpoint. Unlike some other stuff that was regulated after 2008, you're allowed to leverage it. So like you put away,

your dad puts away some money in a life insurance policy. And that's a dollar. And Walter can go invest like $50. $20. $15 for every dollar that was put away.

Yeah. And so you're ends up being this leverage in the system that compounds. And so you've billions in insurance money. You can buy tens of billions of dollars worth of assets.

“And that's how this kind of random guy who everyone was surprised about the”

fathers in 2012 ends up owning a piece of Chelsea and the Dodgers and the Lakers and all these other premier signature assets of America. Well, I went back. I looked back at my notes from last summer because I almost did a thing after after he bought the Lakers.

Because I couldn't figure out where he got all the money. Because it was a lot of money. What took you off to it being weird? I mean, I followed that you. I went back and looked at all my notes.

And I sketched out this whole thing. And I chickened out and I didn't do it. I didn't do it. He went to was like, I'll move a dollar. He got like a huge investment from them.

Yeah, I'll be diving. And people started. There were some whispers about like. Basically the Saudi money has bought the Lakers here. And they're trying to pretend that that's not what happened.

But it actually is what happened. And then you go back and you read. He got all this money. But then he also invested in them. And it just seemed like this circle of money going around.

And it's like, you give me the money and then I'll give it back.

“And we've invested because the MBA has this rule.”

You can only invest. You can only take 20% from private equity. And that's it. That's the cap. So if you buy by a team for 10 million, 10 billion.

I can only get 2 billion in private equity. So it seemed like he had found some end around. And I went. I did it. And I was going to go whole thing about it.

And I just. I was too nervous about it. Some expertise. And ironically. I was.

You went. You went. I've been like, uh, you and cousin's all could have been like woodward and burns. - I've been back. - No, but you know what I said?

Our friend Pablo. And I was, 'cause Pablo's like, you gotta come on the pot. And I was like, I wanna do Mark Walter.

And we texted about it and we had never done it.

But it never added up to me. I never understood how the money circled back

“to the people he was getting the investment from.”

And the league, just so desperate to make as much money as possible on every franchise, they kind of like, we don't wanna know, which has been part of the problem, the Cooper's situation too. But the league's always like, don't tell us,

like, we don't, nothing to see here. This was crazy. They'd much rather stay in the dark. Pablo and I are working on a story having to do with Mark Walter.

I'm not gonna get into the specifics, but I'll just say high level. It's pretty interesting that after he bought the Dodgers in 2012, a couple years later, Magic Johnson ended up being the owner of a life insurance company

that he bought from Guggenheim, Walter's firm. Huh. I had no evidence that anything went wrong there yet. But it's the exact same structure we're talking about here. And insurance companies are mostly owned

by these like great institutions. And in this case, they're owned by Mark Walter. And then there's one random insurance company, owned by Magic Johnson of all people. It's strange.

I think the big problem here, you mentioned the private equity sort of Max. Yeah. Just become too expensive like it used to be that the rich guy in your town could buy your sports team.

And they worked 'cause they were a fan of the team. And they'd go to every game and they want their kids to run the team. But now these teams are worth like $10 billion. And so there's not that many people

who actually can come up with that kind of money. And Pablo and I, and Hunter Brook, we investigated Matt Ishpia's our first big store. I wanna talk about him in a second. Yeah.

And that's another example of all right, someone had to pay billions and billions of dollars. And the NBA had to put that team up for sale in a pretty distressed situation. And it ends up being Ishpia,

who on paper has billions of dollars. And on paper seems like exactly the person you'd want owning a sports team. He was a walk on it, Michigan State. Yeah.

Really cares about basketball. He literally has Isaiah Thomas on the board of his company. Like this is a true basketball guy.

But the problem is, the people buying these teams now,

they can't really afford the teams on their own. And so that ends up leaving the NBA in pretty tricky situations. Yeah, when like one third of the league was basically for sale, then the 2000s

before they had the lack out. The guy who bought Memphis, Michael Perra. But with I hate this, this company that was doing well,

the company was not doing well. Robert Perra, Robert Perra, I'm sorry. I could use it with Michael Sarah, Robert Perra. Very different guys, totally different guys. I don't think Robert Perra would have been very good

in Nick and Nora's infinite playlists. No, or this is the end. But people were worried at the time, oh my god, he's not going to be able to cover the thing.

But at that time, it was 220 million, whatever,

he paid for the Grizzlies. Now we're talking about Ishpia paid over $4 billion for the sons. And if it doesn't work out for them, now you have, like if he and he just disclosed,

they would have reported like $450 million in losses for the second quarter of his company. Yeah, you have just happened.

“You have to give Ishpia credit as a sports team owner.”

This guy, in my view, basically bankrupted his company, which was the biggest mortgage lender in the country in order to pay an order to buy the sons, right? Which, and to continue running the sons. And this guy was paying Bradley Bill $50 million a year.

He was owning a mortgage company as rates were going up and they stopped making money. And what happened with Ishpia is truly, he was taking $600 million a year out of the company and this dividend, the company couldn't afford.

And then, to buy the team, he took out what's called a margin loan against his shinners and the team, against his shinners in UWM. And so what that meant was he basically gave the bank billions of dollars worth of his UWM state.

And so when the shares fell in value, the banks able to tighten the screws and say, all right, you've got to sell shares. You've got to put up more money. And he was willing to take essentially every dollar he could

out of that company in order to keep running the sons. And that's kind of what happens. Like he came in to run the sons. He said he was going to sell super cheap concessions. He said he was going to make it more affordable

to watch the games on TV.

“He was trying to be, I think, like a consummate really good owner,”

probably trusted, I say, I Thomas too much, which led to all kinds of problems in my own childhood as a mixed fan. I could do that. The Eddie Curry trade is reason enough not to put

Isaiah Thomas on the board of your public company. But ultimately, what happened is two weeks ago, he had to get rescue financing for his company. They had no more money left. They had to dilute all their shareholders.

And the stock went from whatever it was down to a dollar or something. Well, you understand this stuff better than I do. But from how I read it and understood it, he had made a big bet with a big chunk of his company that interests rates were going to go down by a certain time.

And that, so he leveraged it in a way. Like it'll be fine when the interests rates go down. Only they never did. And it was funny to reading about it. It was very similar to Kevin Durant trade.

Where he's like, Kevin Durant, we got to get him. We're putting all this stuff in. And this is going to be, and it was like this massive swing. He's like, I'm a big swing taker. And it didn't work out.

And it didn't seem like this swing worked out either. No, and it's funny. You can actually look at how his company was doing. And sort of when he was making his big bets in his company. And when he was making big bets on the team.

And you'll notice that the sun's went from a tax pan team to a not tax pan team after then traded Durant away. That was the same period of time when he really needed money at the company. And they bought out Bradley Beale and stretched it out.

So it could get him under the luxury tax threshold. And now they're not a big spender like they were. Exactly, my big question reporting on HBO

“the last bunch of months was, which is he going to pick?”

Is company or the team? Because there were all kinds of ways he could have short up the company's balance sheet.

He could have just stopped paying the $600 million

in your dividend. And they would have probably been fine. But he wanted to sign some players. And he wanted to fund this team. And he's competitive.

And all these guys are competitive and they're competing against all the other rich guys. Totally. I guess I'm curious. Do you think the NBA seeing this now where there's some owners

who it seems like couldn't really have four teams with their own money, like Walter and like Ishpia. And then the owners who are really rich, like Balmer, but come almost impossible to punish or to contain. Right.

NBA's not going to punish Balmer, the richest owner in American sports. So do you think at this point, they actually end up just saying, all right, whatever, private equity money's fine, Middle Eastern money's fine, we don't really care who--

I think that there's so desperate and focused on driving the value of these franchises. Like Vegas, one of the reasons-- I got a lot of intel about why I grew and Kushner and Boat the Lakers.

The biggest thing, unquestionably, is over 9 billion, though.

Like for the fees, right? And I grew and Kushner were trying to get it. They didn't have the highest bid. They didn't really feel like a Vegas team that we probably need to build a new arena

and who the hell knows of Vegas's worth that much. And at some point, Kushner got the idea that he'd been reading about the Walter stuff. And I thought, Adam, silver, kind of nudged it there. But I don't think that's what happened.

I think I think he went to Walter directly and was like, yo, so anyway, the point is, these things are going so high.

And when you have somebody like Ishpia,

who buys the sons and basically buys the team himself,

he still has outs with the team. Like he could still sell 35% of the sons to somebody and be like, and if in four years, if I sell, you get, you get first dibs on buying the whole team, which is what Mark Walter would bust family.

There's this guy.

“I think Lucas Walton bought a piece of the bulls.”

And now if the bull sell over the next few years, he's the first one that can buy in. So Ishpia still has ways to make money. And I think the way, that's the way these rich guys look at these teams, where it's like,

once I have the asset, I can skin it any different way I want. But I just got to go all and then get it and then I'll figure it out. But the problem, as you said, these things are too expensive, though. So, and it's actually funny.

Like one thing Ishpia did, along these lines, is he wanted to buy out his other co-owners. He actually didn't want to have a bunch of minority owners. And so he bought out a couple of his co-owners with shares in his company, right before his tax.

So they ended up owning it. And then there were other co-owners of the team who then end up assuming Ishpia, because he was trying to basically aggressively force them out. And I agree that given that the assets just keep going up

in value, it's actually a lot of room to navigate for the people who own them. And so, yeah, I mean, we saw Dan Gilbert, it seems like it's gonna sell a piece of the calves. It seems like Ishpia could sell a piece of the sons.

And then you do get a couple billion of liquidity. But it's also interesting to think,

“what happens if the direction of these team values ever flips?”

But I have no reason to think that they will, as you said, in one of your recent episodes,

it's never been a state to buy a sports team.

They're all valued higher than they've ever been. But there's been moments when the teams have gone down in value. And people have had to sell. And that's gonna end really badly for the people who have to take on leverage,

who have to use insurance money, who had to buy these teams when they couldn't really afford them. And I think what's really interesting about Kushner buying this team is he's doing it through this entity thrive eternal.

Which is other fun. - The idea is, okay, he's this big investor in AI, open AI, and SpaceX. And he's like on the one hand, everything's gonna be computer, you know,

it's all gonna be AI. But then in that world, what are people gonna do? What's gonna matter? And like sports is one of the only things that people think is gonna persist through an AI future.

And so you can imagine that all these AI guys with a crazy wealth being created from the SpaceX IPO,

“but then also it's gonna be open AI and anthropic.”

There's gonna be a bunch of new money that's looking to buy the kinds of assets that never go away. And so it might process that this particular bubble if it's a bubble or this particular asset class

does keep going up. At which point, you know, maybe every team ends up being owned by Abu Dhab. - Well, the fair is you go back and you look at the early 2000s.

The last time this happened, when we had the internet boom, what happened? We had a crash after the boom and then it kind of re-adjusted and went. We haven't had the crash with any of this stuff yet.

So that's one thing. And then you look at, when we talk about the amount of money, these guys can be like, like Josh Christianer's rich. He's still not writing a $12 billion check for the lakers.

And what happened yesterday with the bus family, the basically re-enacting season four of succession and all of the siblings that Jeannie had basically shanked over the years and kept control and kept her governor seat for five years.

And they finally got their revenge and her. But they got, they wanted to get dragged in the deal, which is what happened with the Celtics too. It's like, oh, that's the price. I'd like to sell mine as well.

The Celtics paid over seven or the chism of those guys paid over seven billion, 'cause these guys got dragged in. The laker people got dragged. The bus is wanting to get dragged in. So now, Christianer's got a rate.

Basically, he's got to find 12 billion somehow.

Even if he's putting in two and a half, three, whatever. Aggres put in 500. They still have to scramble now to find eight billion more in people to invest.

So where do you go? Probably the Middle East, right? - You know what's funny though? This comes at the same moment when these live tour golfers are not being paid.

- Yeah, they're going back, right? - But the Saudis are canceling live. It's a weird moment for all of this with Iran War and huge tourism decline in the Middle East and the Middle East tightening its coffers.

It's a funny moment to have to come up with. - And not wanting a sports wash anymore. Like, like a couple years ago, they were throwing money at all the American sports and the Premier League wherever

because they were trying to change the narrative. - Sports washing is a luxury. Like, that's something you do when you've got a ton of money in, you want to have the World Cup in Qatar and you want to have live golf

and you want to pay Phil Mikkelson enough money that he's going to leave the PGA tour. But suddenly, if money gets tightened in the Middle East, you're not exactly dying to buy assets that you could buy, again, in future years

But there is a lot of money sloshing around the system

“and I think what Walter shows is that there's pockets”

of money, people don't even realize are entering these sports leagues because surely this is not the only example of insurance money being used to fund sports teams. A lot of owners across a lot of leagues

are tied to all these industries, private credit and private equity and insurance and they're very, very sophisticated. I figured out how to take out loans against their assets. So even if in some of these cases,

it's not insurance money directly being invested. It's some person taking out money against their insurance company.

And so ultimately, there's a lot of risk in the system.

And I think what Mark Walter will show is the first couple of cracks. And once those first couple of cracks are revealed, I think there's going to be a bunch of others across all these leagues. - Well, and you can see with the NBA,

like the Blazers they went for four, right? And that was the highest bid. But then a couple years before that, the timber wolves were one and a half. Utah was like 1.6.

So we've seen just the smaller market teams are all probably worth five. The Celtics, they ended up paying over seven when you include the people that got dragged in. They're probably worth allegedly nine now.

They probably all feel like they made money 'cause this Lakers sets this new figure. - Were you a little insulted by the Delta between the Lakers price and the Celtics price? - It hurt.

(laughing) - It was a wake-up call for us. Now, but I think the Lakers of the next are the two premier teams you'd want to buy in the NBA.

“I think even the Celtic fans would have met that.”

- The most like mind-bending, nauseating part of all of this is that suddenly, Jim Dolan looks like a genius, exactly who you'd want to have on your sports team. - Unbelievable. - My entire life, resenting Jim Dolan,

thinking through ways, I could convince people to go buy the next from him. Wanted to stick out Gracie Manchin and get Mike Bloomberg to do it. When I was a kid, I wanted to just knock on the door,

be like, "Please save New York." Everyone will love you if you buy the team. And suddenly, everyone's going to the sphere. It stops through the roof. The next one, the championship.

He really let guys run the team independently. And he's not one of these owners who's using borrowed money. It's a family asset, which historically,

it's always been a bit of an eye roll.

Like, yeah, I mean, this guy inherited the mix, what a joke. But actually, there's some continuity that makes that stronger, a stronger foundation than these teams that are being bought with new Monday or fake money or borrowed money

or insurance money or whatever else.

“- As a mixed fan, I feel pretty good today.”

This might be the top for the next. I might be chasing the whole fan. But I go with Jim Dolan as the owner of the next. - I've known you since you were a little kid. And you were just tortured next fan

who was just in basketball hell. And now you're married. You have a next championship that you can hang your head on and your dad's one of the premier power lifters in America over age 60.

So you have lack going on right now. - Totally. It's a big moment. - This is it. This is the peak.

Dolan is a great point. He's probably in the best situation. The kids' whole empire added all together is worth at least 15 billion dollars.

He would never sell because he loves it.

He loves the juice. - Maybe this is what we do. Maybe you agree to juice the Spotify algorithm that he'd fan, get some lessons. (laughs)

And if his band gets some lessons, maybe he'll feel fulfilled enough to wholesale the team to someone else. - I'll talk to them about that. - Dolan's a big winner from this whole thing.

And the next are huge winners from this whole thing. Bus family losers. The bus family are good. They're going to be soon each other for the next five years.

- I was going to say, I'm not sure that they actually sell. I think that was a pretty weird cool attempt yesterday. But we all know which bus actually runs the show. I don't think the siblings can get out.

- I know, but explain this to me. It's a controlling trust. And she quote unquote runs it, but they can all vote on what to do. And if they basically have a two thirds majority,

they have to do what the majority is, right? And I guess her vote, the way I understand it is if it was a tie, she would have the deciding vote. But it's not an deciding vote. It sounds like it was five to one.

And they all want to sell, because a couple of the kids want to use the money to buy an NBA European. So the problem for Walter is if this gets tied up in court, and it keeps going, it could do a the sale. And it sounds like he needs money, like--

- It needs the cash stock. - So you're right now. - What's your guess? What happens to Balmer? What happens to Walter?

What happens to Ishbia? - Well, I was going to ask you, I think Ishbia will be fine, because he'll sell a chunk of the team if he has to. Will the words Mark Walter today,

played guilty dot dot dot?

Will the words Mark Walter played guilty? I think it's really possible. I also think the Trump administration has not put away very many billionaires. And so I'm sure they work something out.

But I don't think there's a single safe asset in the entire Mark Walter's cinematic universe. Like I think it's potentially all for sale. And I do think that the Dodgers being sold, a piece of the sun is being sold.

I think all of this is on the table.

“But that's why this is such a bigger story than just the Lakers.”

Like if he has to sell the Dodgers, who spent so much money over the last seven years, that they're going to singlehandly create the baseball lockout next year, they also won two titles. And I think one of the many differences

between the Quipper situation and the Mark Walter situation, he had all the extra money to buy the last two world series titles. The Dodgers are back to back champions, partly because of all the fucking money in this guy's spent. The Quippers have had no success at all.

They won basically two playoff series and seven years with Kawai Leonard. They did all the stuff, whatever they did or didn't do who knows. But none of it paid off. Yes, they built the OK, Oklahoma City Thunder.

Like it was an disaster in every way. It was the opposite from Dodgers. Yeah, totally. Say what you will about Walter.

He never traded a pick that became SGA.

Right. He was a great owner of the Dodgers and he was a decent owner of the Lakers. He pulled off one of the great trades of all time under his ownership.

“Who said, I don't think he, does he get credit for that?”

It doesn't end up pinched. Yeah, it was a right idea. Yeah, it was right after they dated him. He could sort of get credit. He was a good owner.

And look, it's pretty easy to be a good owner. If you're spending other people's money. Right. OK, so Clippers, this is a harder one because this is now being investigated for a year.

Pablo started everything. It's going and going and going and going. And it doesn't seem like there's a smoking gun. And what we learned yesterday, he's been had this report. They basically said, we didn't find any real hardcore.

The NBA hasn't found any hardcore evidence or the investigator. And now they have to figure out this weird, how are we going to penalize you? And the Clippers, like we didn't do anything. And it feels like the Clippers in the NBA are going to go to war out there if it's versus the NFL style, feels like the outcome here.

I think maybe. But if I were bomb or I don't think I'd actually want to be in arbitration, I don't think there's going to be a friendly or judge for this particular matter than Adam Silver. And that story yesterday, I think, was a huge mistake.

Clearly, the sources who leaked that were the Clippers. I mean, there was a statement that the Clippers released when the story came out. Unlike a beautiful, template background where they had a PR ready to go. And the NBA, I don't know if you've ever reached out to the NBA for comment, they're usually pretty tough to get to comment.

And they almost never say anything publicly.

And after the story came out, the NBA released a statement saying the story had numerous inaccuracies. I think what that was was a leak from Bomber's camp. Like when Samuel Alito leaked the dog's decision repealing Rovey Wade. Or he was like, I want it on the record right now that you guys don't have any findings

that could put me away. And to me, it's actually not a close call. It's pretty obvious that Kowai had sponsorship deals with companies like Debtronics, the jumbo-tron maker. And he never did anything for them.

You can't see it. When we worked on that story, we called Debtronics. We're like, you show me one clip of Kowai, even just saying, like, I love Debtronics, hell of a jumbo board that Halo board for the Clippers. I mean, I didn't know what Debtronics was.

And I go to clip our games. I didn't even doubt that was the name of the company. And you certainly hadn't heard Kowai advertising it. Because by the way, there's not a lot of consumers. We're like, we're looking to buy jumbo-tron and it'll be persuaded by Kowai.

Like on its face, it's ridiculous that nothing happened here. But I think, and this goes to the overall point of all of this. The NBA doesn't have much latitude to punch Steve Bomber. Because these owners don't work for Adam Silver. Adam Silver works for these owners.

And there's fewer and fewer owners who can actually pay for these teams these days. And the assets are getting more and more expensive. And I think having a blue chip guy like Steve Bomber, who built one of the great American businesses, is the kind of thing the NBA is not going to get rid of. So my guess on the Clippers is that Bomber walks away with some kind of punishment.

And they just make Uncle Dennis before guy.

I think they're going to say, Kowai may be never even got this money.

“That's what I think they're going to try to argue.”

That Dennis was negotiating side deals. And yeah, it's interesting. I've been cops are convention. But how much of that money was getting back to Kowai? I think that's where the NBA could land.

And where they can slap the Clippers on the wrist. They can punish Kowai. But they can blame some guy who, like, you know, in every mob movie ever. Right, all on the sword. So here's what hasn't happened with the Clippers.

Everything started because there was a whistleblower at Guggenheim.

“Who was like, hey, in the Wall Street Journal wrote about this yesterday.”

But basically, moved Dala.

There was a whistleblower with the funds with that. And once that happened in Guggenheim, even they had a spokesman in that Wall Street Journal piece saying, yes, the firm received the whistleblower report in spring 2025. With the Clippers, there's been no whistleblower on the Clippers side. At least not yet. There's been all the people Pablo has found who were, you know, had

surface ties. But it wasn't like somebody direct knowledge of all this Kowai stuff. Blue the whistle to the NBA or any of it. And I think that's the Clippers are adamant. They didn't do anything. And it's good. They've really dug in.

They, they are adamant. Nothing happened. And yeah, I mean, I don't know what to believe in. Anyway, in this case, you have the whistleblowers from those companies who have basically come forward. And then like, yeah, I worked at aspiration. And I had to deal with the billings here.

And I was like, why are we paying Kowai Leonard? And everyone told me it was capster convention. So you have put on the other side. But I've been impressed, bombers close ranks. He's gotten those Clippers people right in line.

Yes, impressive. But I do think he might have flown a little too close to the sun by leaking that story.

“If that's what happened. Because Adam Silver definitely didn't sound happy.”

That actually, if you look at the NBA state, right? And I think that, you know, it's a live ball. And ultimately, this isn't some court of law, with some specific standards that need to be followed. But guy who decides the sentence is Adam Silver.

And if I were bomber, I'd be pretty careful about upsetting him. Well, I have three, the three actual things that still make me go hum with the Kowai thing. This is now, we are now year into this.

He never actually did the work for aspiration but got paid.

I've never, I've just never heard an adequate explanation for that. I don't understand why the electronics won too. Yeah, why are you paying somebody to not do anything? Like that even like one Instagram tweet, nothing. That's weird. Uncle Dennis by multiple accounts,

just asking everybody for under the table shit in the summer of 2019. And multiple teams going on the record saying, oh, yeah, that guy I was fucking asking for ownership stakes, that was weird. And then the third one was the clippers trading Kowai to Toronto. If you're like, put this way, conspiracy bill definitely like put a hat on and study that one.

Because it was like, all right, Toronto is the one team with a real, real, real reason to be agreed, right? They just won the title. They could have potentially brought, he didn't want to play for the Lakers as it comes out. They could have brought this guy back. They were really good in 2020. They probably would have represented the East and played the Lakers in the finals.

And all that got pulled away. And they have the biggest reason to be pissed. And instead they trade him there. And now it's like, all right, I guess we have Kowai now. It's fine. Those are the three things that caught my eye.

I've definitely never seen a sponsorship deal in history.

And in this case, there's at least two where you pay someone to be your sponsor. And they don't have to do anything in return. I would love one of those deals, by the way. If anyone wants to make-- I asked for it every year from Spotify.

“Yeah, just can people give our podcast money and I don't have to do anything for it?”

Yeah, I mean, it's deeply, deeply suspicious. But I think the good news is the Walter case is actually going to have real evidence. They've got the phones. They've got the computers. To me, it's completely unclear whether the Baltimore situation has had any sort of like subpoena power equivalent in the investigation.

Like, to the extent they might not have found a smoking gun inside the clippers, my guess is that when Wachtell had a law firm investigating this asked for information from the clippers, the clippers were like, no. And the information we've gotten as part of our reporting. And we included this in one of the recent stories with Pablo,

his emails with dactronics and the clippers, where dactronics is like, hey, guys, uh, we spoke to Uncle Dennis and I love that they refer him as Uncle Dennis. Look, everybody, even because then Saudi would get a fake seeming partnership. The first of his Uncle Dennis, like, hey, can we get quite a like signing autograph? Can we get him to do something? And those emails have all come out to us,

and all the sourcings come out to us from essentially other parties. The clippers have been tight, man. It's been impressive to see. Yeah, because the difference when this happened Joe Smith in the early 2000s, when Minnesota got nailed for doing the wink wink deal with them, is they actually had a contract for the wink wink deal for like two years from now, Joe will

get this and here it is. And I forget if the whistleblower was on the agency side or the timbre off side, I think it was on the agency side, the agent, the situation blew up and the guy

illegal thing you can do is promise somebody a contract two years from now and stern flipped out and was like, fuck this, we're not doing this. And basically ruin the KGR and Minnesota, I mean KG's there for another seven years and they got decimated with the clippers, you could argue, why are you ruining the clippers in the 2020s? And I wonder if that factor is in it all with the punishment or it's like, well, these guys are already screwed.

Yeah, they got nothing. They built a potential dynasty in OKC. Like, now I'm going to do take five more lottery picks away for them. I don't know how it plays out, but I really do feel like it's going to end up with everybody's swimming each other.

“I think this is going to be the outcome. Agreed that this is not going to be some simple outcome.”

Yeah, the clippers learn to the string or bell lesson from the T-wals. Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? Is the famous wire? And I think that Bomber took fewer notes than some of his predecessors on what he was working out with KWI. And so I think Bomber lives to find another day. Walter, I feel like it's good about. When you're like studying and reporting on all these

super rich people, like one of the things with Bomber and the clippers that I was always suspicious of

it never added up was this was was so blatant if he did this, right? If the clippers did this, it was so blatantly stupid and transparent and easily to get caught. Like what's, how is that worth it? Like the clippers were in an okay situation in 2019? How is it worth risking your professional reputation being Joe Smith 2.0? Like why? Like Bomber is supposedly a road of we, you know, one of the smarter billionaires, like why would he risk this? And look, Pablo's then much more

of the reporting on this story. So yeah, I'm sure my personal perspective on this. Yeah, my view is

“with Bomber keeps saying is, I got conned and scammed by this company aspiration. And I think that”

is absolutely true. Because if it was true, we're a real successful company. None of this would have ever been revealed. It was actually a pretty sophisticated plan. The plan was they're going to sponsor our jerseys and we're going to pay, they're going to pay KWI and we're going to pay them and it's all going to work out. And they'd plan to go public as a company. They planned to spec with Oak Tree actually, which is the same firm that just bailed out Ishpia. Right. And they were

to go public. And if that had happened, if they'd managed to go public, if the company hadn't been a fraud, Bomber would have been hands clean, he'd have been totally fine. Because they would have gone public and no one would have ever had to find out. And it would have seemed like a reasonable

investment for Bomber to have made. The problem is after aspiration starts going down.

That's when Bomber starts looking desperate. That's where the cover up is worse than the proverb, where in this case, they start going down and Bomber realizes because it's smart. These guys go down and there's a bankruptcy. It's going to become clear that they were paying KWI with money they didn't have and it would look really strange. That's your theory. You're not you don't know that for sure, but that's your theory. What we know is after that period of time,

what it became clear the business was failing. Bomber invested again and then Dennis Wong invested again. His minority on earth seemed like a failing entity. The exact amounts of money that would cover the payments to KWI and that to me seemed like, and this is my opinion, okay, once you realize that this company's going down, you realize that the big scheme is not going

“to actually work out. And so you get desperate and you start getting stupid. That's what ends”

up happening when the wall start closing in, had real style every time. But on this one, I think the Bomber was at least trying to do something sophisticated. And when you look at the dronics example, which is this other payment, you look at their SEC filings, there's no obvious payment. Here's our, you know, payment to KWI for marketing that we could see. It was done in a

very sophisticated buttoned-up way. And the problem is that he bet on the wrong guys to be partners

in a scheme with when aspiration went under. Who up? Yeah, I guess the counter would be aspiration was just spending money like crazy. Sure. With no remorers with what they were doing, Bomber belatedly found out, oh shit, these guys might go down. They paid KWI 28 million. Oh my God, people are going to think I did this. We got to help the company. I guess that would be the defense. I don't know what the fuck happened. But I do know this. And now I'm not a clipper fan.

I've talked about it. I've had the clipper tickets. I go to 8 to 10 games a year. I always hope that they do well. So I can go to playoff games. I don't really care. I'm a Celtic fan. Disfranchize of all the teams this could have happened to, where you like nothing good ever happens to the clippers ever. Even when they have good things,

happened. Like over and over again, this is how it goes. They have KWI and Paul George together

KWI get started in 2021 when they have the best chance to win the title. Like this is just how it goes for them. And they're like, even with this anger thing. Like I was clippers fan. He could have totally bought the clippers. It's a great point. It was friends with Chris Paul. And by all accounts, Igers the exact kind of guy you'd want owning your team. And instead they end up with Palmer who definitely, you know, was willing to spend profitably on this team. He's not like a

“cheap owner. But it's created this total mess for them. And I think in my view, it'll be clear”

when you look at Josh Kushner, who's like a killer. Like, yeah, by all accounts, like he's, you know, obviously related to Jared and who knows what's going on in that whole orbit. But he's like a serious guy who's going to run the team seriously. With Iger who's a serious guy who's going to run the team seriously, you're going to have that right next door to this complete cluster of buck. And I think the salt in the wound is going to hurt even more. Yeah, Kushner's really well

respected for being as smart as did. And he's pretty amazing that he's laid low amid the Jared stuff with everything else. And has built this reputation as just like this great investor. I mean, who knows? I haven't done an investigation into Kushner anything happened. But I do think if you were looking for a sports team owner, there's way worse people than Jared Kushner, sorry, Josh Kushner. Jared would be top. Yeah, Jared. Josh Kushner and Iger. That's a serious serious ownership group.

“And, you know, I think the Lakers are going to be in decent hands. Well, here's the thing”

which is out for the Lakers. Josh isn't going to run the day to day at all. Iger's doing all

of it. And Iger 75 could probably put six, seven, really good years in here. And this is always

going to do. And this guy just ran a giant company. It's a completely different job. Like I was joking with Matt Bellany. Now, you know, somebody sent court side as mad that the chicken fingers aren't warm enough. Iger's like the Major D of this Lakers restaurant, right? He's taking all the calls from everybody. He's going to send people. Iger's going to be good at dealing with like the drama of Luka, like he helped with actors and actresses. Like Bob Iger's dealt with entertainment people.

Luka's going to be easy. Hold on. Luka on GLPs within two weeks. Well, as long as that's not freedom of speech on a late night TV show. All right. It's a huge problem. For sure. Sammy, this was great. I know it delighted your dad to know and we didn't even tell him we were doing this.

“This is so fun. Do you think this was in the Brownie, LeBron category?”

You were so far ahead of Brownie's best game on the Lakers. This is like, this was almost like, you know, I'm like, Bruns, you know, it's like Bruns in first year of going over a little little nervous, but there's there's some sparks you think you think you think this could be something. You hit like five or six threes. I thought I was impressed with your two way play. When's your next podcast with that episode with Pablo coming? We'll see. We've got to answer these Walter questions,

but, you know, hopefully in the next month. And, uh, yeah, I'll shamelessly plug subscribe to Hunter

Brook. We do incredible financial journalism. No one does that anymore. You can follow us on all

social media and we will continue to report on all of these sports team owners, which I think is one of the great subplots of sports right now. Becoming more interesting. Great easy characters. We're trying to find money wherever they can under every couch cushion and they're doing their best. But, you know, they're end up being some problem. So thank you so much for having me because it's been awesome. Great to see you, Samuel. See you in Boston. Sounds good. See you soon. All right. That's it for

the podcast. Thanks to Tom and Sammy. Thanks to Gahau and Eduardo as well. I think I'm coming back on Thursday with another podcast this week. So stay tuned for that. Don't forget about rewatchables. The re speed. It's up. Go check it out. I'll see you later in the week. [Music] Must be 21 plus in President's likes. States for Kansas and affiliation with Kansas star Casino

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