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Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit theringer .com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. I just use this. Here's something every football fan should know. You can get everything you need for game day delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything because you can't get the dream flex for your fantasy team delivered with Uber Eats. But Tech Specs? Yeah. Great pass protection? Can't get it. Great pizza selection? Oh yeah. While they can't help on the field, you can get pretty much everything else you need to watch the game delivered with Uber Eats. So this season get anything, almost, almost anything for game day by ordering on the Uber Eats app. Uber Eats, official on demand delivery partner of the NFL. Order now. I'll call and select markets and 21 plus to order. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm on a bunch of pop culture podcasts this week. Did a rewatchables on Monday night. We did Black Hat. Also was on the Big Picture. We did a big Denzel Washington movie draft. I got way too competitive. And then on Wednesday night, Amanda Dobbins and I on the Prestige TV Podcast, we broke down the first two episodes of season three of The Morning Show. The most ridiculous show on television, not just this year, but every year it's on. It just wins the title automatically. If they had a ridiculous show category at the Emmys, they wouldn't even have any of their nominees. I mean, maybe winning time would get nominated. I don't know. But Morning Show just clears it out. What a batshit, crazy, ridiculous show. Wow. It's really like they created a podcast thing so we could just break down the morning show. That's really, I think, the real reason behind podcasting in general. Coming up on this podcast, Million Dollar Picks and a little Vikes Eagles at the top. And then editor at large at the Ringer, Brian Curtis, who was also a giant Cowboys fan, comes on and talk about the Cowboys. Could this be the year? Keep saying that, but could this be the year? And we talked some NFL stuff. We talked some sports media stuff. We talked about documentaries and just all the stuff that happens when Brian Curtis comes on. Oh, we talked about Joe Buck and Troy Aikman as well, who have hit a really interesting milestone as a combo. So that happened. And then Kevin Hench, my buddy, the Red Sox fired their GM today, and we couldn't resist spending 20 minutes recapping. One of the four -year oddest, strangest four -year runs the Red Sox have ever had. And we're still in the middle of it. And I still don't understand why Mookie Betts isn't on the team but also like, man, since the 2018 World Series, the Red Sox have just been a hot dumpster fire. And I say that knowing that they almost made the World Series two years ago, but when you look at everything that happened, wow. So Hench comes on and talk about that. It is all next. First, our friends from Pearl Jam. ["Pearl Jam Theme Song"] All right, I'm taping this part of the podcast. It is 11 .31 East Coast time. East Coast Bill is here. East Coast Bill is in Boston. I was visiting my daughter and doing some other stuff. And Thursday Night Football came on and I thought it would be a great idea to do the top segment after Eagles Vikings. East Coast Bill fell asleep at halftime. It was a new record for me. I guess I'm old. I have another birthday coming up this week. This is why I live on the West Coast because I talk about sports for a living. And East Coast Bill gets a little sleepy when the game is kind of boring and plodding along. So East Coast Bill missed some time, had to catch up, had to do a little rewind. Fortunately, there's so many commercials. I was able to still watch anything, but the Eagles beat the Vikings. They're now 2 -0 on the season. And I would say it's an uninspiring 2 -0. They probably shouldn't have covered against the Pats. They could have lost. This game they win, they don't cover. I guess on the good side, the DeAndre Swift, they traded like a 15th round pick in 2038 for them. And this little way they put together their offense where they load up on wide receivers, they hit the jackpot with hurts, and then they just say, you know what we're going to do? Just grab running backs because there's 98 of them every year. We're just going to grab two and pay nothing for them. So offensively, they look great. Defensively, you saw it last week with the Pats. The Pats were able to throw it on them. Mack almost had 300 yards in the last three quarters of that game. This game, Kirk Cousins, over and over again, heroically going for the cover, finally gets it. The Vikings cover, they don't win. Home team's now 5 -12 against the spread this season. Underdogs are 10 -7 against the spread. But for the most part, not allowed to report, the Eagles just state. They messed around in the first quarter and then said, screw it, and ran the ball down Minnesota's throat. I was thinking, Eagles, Cowboys, if you were going to make a combined over or under for wins for them, and I gave you 26, would you go over or under 26 wins combined for the two teams? They're 3 -0 right now. I would probably go over, especially when you look at the NFC and you think Philly, Dallas, San Francisco, lock those three down. I like Green Bay, Detroit, maybe New Orleans, Atlanta, and maybe that's the seven for the playoffs. And then you have Tampa Bay and the Rams. Who knows what was real and what wasn't real. Tampa Bay beat Minnesota by three in week one. We're like, oh, Tampa Bay, that's interesting. But now Minnesota's 0 -2, maybe that doesn't even matter. Rams, who knows? I mean, they just have so few good players that the moment two of them get hurt, it feels like their free fall will happen. So the NFC is already kind of uninteresting, I guess is my bigger point. Unless the Giants can rally, and who knows after the 40 -0 debacle last week, they're playing Arizona this week, so they looked out of that. But for the most part, it seems like three good teams, maybe the Packers, maybe the Lions, maybe the Saints, and then we're going to have a really bad seven seed. So if you're Minnesota, and you're looking at 31 of 270 teams started 0 -2 and made the playoffs since 1990. 31 out of 270. I can't do math, but that's not good. If you're Minnesota, at what point do you consider trading Cousins? Cousins was all over the place on the internet this week as a possible Rogers replacement. He makes 35 million this year, that's it. The Jets, I think, could do some chicanery if they wanted to. They have this thing where the Packers, it's a conditional, I think second, that turns into a first, but the Packers would have to waive the right for the condition. Clearly, Rogers is going to play 70 % of the plays, but still, they'd have to figure out some way. But if you're the Jets, could you somehow trade for Cousins and save your season? We're going to find out a lot about the Jets this week against Dallas. They get annihilated and they're one -on -one for the season, but annihilates Dallas them and they have to look at their offense and go, all right, we have a really good team. What are we going to do? Is it Jacoby Brissett or do we swing big and try to get Cousins for a year? Cousins has over 700 yards and six TDs in the first two weeks. He's been a fantasy god. I don't know how that plays out. I wish it was like basketball where I could just put stuff in the trade machine and see if it's going to work. For some reason, we made football trades more complicated than basically anything on the earth. I have no idea how the Jets would trade for Cousins, how it'd work, what the mechanics of it would be. What's he worth? Is he worth a first rounder for one year? Is he worth a third rounder? You just never know. Again, DeAndre Swift went for a 15th rounder in 2038. Cousins, I have my eye on because if you're Minnesota, you're not good. You were completely lucky last year to go 13 and four, whatever it was. Now that's evened out and maybe you start looking around and going, all right, let's pack in this year. I don't know what would have to happen, what number they would have to get to. Would they have to be one and four, one and five, one and six? But Cousins to the Jets, it's a fun talk radio topic, at least. We're not doing talk radio here. We're doing sleepy sports podcasting, but Cousins to the Jets has always felt right. It's always felt kind of perfect. He always just felt like a Jet waited to happen at some point in his career. The Jets fans listening to this right now are like, how can he keep doing this to us? We just had the Rogers thing. We had Zach Wilson. Now you're gonna throw Cousins at us. But again, Cousins, a little bit of a turnaround. He was in that Netflix show. He's kind of the big winner of quarterbacks with Mariota being the big loser. But I feel like the tide's turning on Cousins. Even Primetime Kirk today, always a disaster, gets the cover. Who knows? Put him in New York. We'll see. Philly's got, they're just basically have to figure out what their team is. They've already had a bunch of injuries and they even had a little AJ Brown, Jalen Hurts. Who knows what happened on the sidelines there, but didn't look awesome. But they have two months here to figure out their team. They're a big stretch. Week nine, Sunday, Dallas, that's home in Philly. Bi -week, week 11 at Kansas City on a Monday night. Week 12, Buffalo home. Week 13, San Francisco home. And week 14 at Dallas. So again, Dallas at KC, Buffalo, San Francisco at Dallas. And that's gonna be the five game stretch that determines are we a one seed? Are we a two seed? What is our season gonna look like? And they just have to get there. They have to stay healthy and they have to get to that point. So not a lot of lessons from Philly, Minnesota. Do I regret staying up? Although I guess I didn't stay up because I got this little nap in at halftime.