Overview of Pardon My Take — October 14 Episode
This episode covered a wide range of sports and pop culture, with the main threads being playoff baseball, the Bills’ overtime win over the Rams on Monday Night Football, college football with Brandon Walker, and a long, funny sit-down with Bill Burr about his new movie, the internet, and getting older. The crew also hit their usual recurring segments like Hot Seat / Cool Throne and Guys on Chicks, with plenty of side tangents about coaching blunders, stadiums, and sports weirdness.
Playoff Baseball Takes
Guardians, Rays, and the Trop
- The crew started with the Guardians vs. Rays series, noting how Cleveland shocked everyone by stealing Game 1 and then splitting the first two games to head back home tied 1-1.
- They spent a lot of time dunking on Tropicana Field:
- empty seats in a playoff game,
- bad aura,
- weird fly-ball catwalk/ring issues,
- and the general belief that the Rays need a better home environment.
- The main baseball takeaway: the Rays are very good, but the ballpark and fan situation continue to be a punchline.
Brewers-Dodgers
- The Brewers got major praise for being one of the best-run, most detail-oriented teams in baseball.
- The guys repeatedly emphasized:
- the Brewers’ consistency over multiple seasons,
- their situational hitting,
- and how much they look like a team built for October.
- The Dodgers were described as having more firepower on paper, but the Brewers are playing with a real edge and urgency.
- Shohei Ohtani came up as a concern because of his slump and the possibility that the Dodgers may need to reconsider his role if the struggles continue.
Monday Night Football: Bills vs. Rams
A thriller that actually lived up to the hype
- The Bills’ overtime win over the Rams was the kind of primetime game everyone wants:
- back-and-forth,
- superstar quarterback play,
- and high leverage mistakes deciding the outcome.
- Josh Allen was praised for taking over with both his arm and legs.
- Matthew Stafford and Puka Nacua were also huge reasons the Rams were in it.
Rams special teams remains the problem
- The biggest criticism of the Rams was, once again, special teams:
- missed kick issues,
- bad protection,
- shaky coverage,
- and a philosophy that seems to ignore that phase of the game until it costs them.
- Sean McVay got heat for being too conservative late, especially after the offense had been moving well.
Bills identity stays the same
- The Bills were described as the same core team they’ve been for years:
- Josh Allen has to play like Superman,
- the defense is good enough but not dominant,
- and the margin for error is tiny.
- Still, the win reinforced that Buffalo is very much a contender.
Broncos/Commanders, Coaching Blame, and Clock Management
- The show revisited the Commanders’ end-of-game collapse, where blame was split between:
- Jaden Daniels,
- the offensive coordinator / play-caller,
- and Dan Quinn for overall game management.
- The group debated whether the screw-up was mainly on the QB, the OC, or Quinn taking the fall for everyone else.
- Bottom line: it was a mess, and Quinn is probably absorbing more blame than he personally deserves.
Hot Seat / Cool Throne
Hot Seat
- The Bay Area got roasted because of the ongoing Kristaps Porzingis mystery / absence and the general weirdness around players disappearing or staying out of sight.
- Shohei Ohtani was also a hot-seat topic because of his prolonged slump and speculation about what’s going on with him and the Dodgers.
- The Tennessee Titans got a brutal but funny breakdown of how badly things have gone since the A.J. Brown trade:
- awful record,
- coaching churn,
- bad attendance,
- and a franchise identity crisis.
Cool Throne
- The haters “won” on LIV Golf.
- The episode treated LIV as basically dead in its current form.
- Big Dom gave the Eagles a public vote of confidence and the crew loved that energy.
- Penny Hardaway got praised for putting his own money into Memphis basketball to help retain players.
College Football With Brandon Walker
Brandon Walker joined for a long college football segment that centered on both serious analysis and typical PMT chaos.
Teams and storylines discussed
- Oregon: Brandon admitted he was wrong about them.
- Georgia: still looked like a national title-level team.
- UCLA: the schedule was helping them look better than they may actually be.
- Indiana: still good, but not quite last year’s version.
- Texas: Arch Manning talk stayed front and center, with the consensus being that he still looks inconsistent and may not be in the right situation to develop cleanly.
- Oklahoma / Texas / SEC: they talked about the weirdly chaotic nature of rankings and conference strength.
- Lane Kiffin got slammed for punting in a situation where he should have been aggressive against Kentucky.
- A&M / Mike Elko got discussed in the context of fanbase pressure and message-board warfare.
- Mississippi State and Kamario Taylor came up, with Brandon hyping the program’s commitment to keeping him around.
Bigger-picture college football thoughts
- Schedule strength matters more than people think.
- The Big 12 feels wide open and messy.
- The transfer/NIL/schedule landscape makes it easier for teams to rise or fall quickly.
- JMU moving to the American could make that league much stronger in the long term.
Bill Burr Interview
Bill Burr’s interview was one of the standout segments of the episode.
Movie talk: The Social Reckoning
- Burr talked about his role in the new Aaron Sorkin film, The Social Reckoning.
- He described Sorkin’s dialogue as sharp and efficient, with no wasted words.
- He also joked about how movie sets are never as insane as people imagine; they’re mostly just long workdays with talented people trying not to waste time.
Internet / AI / media skepticism
- Burr had a strong rant about how the internet distorts reality:
- outrage culture,
- fear-based narratives,
- and people being more extreme online than in real life.
- He also questioned the hype around AI, suggesting it may be partly a business/industry scare tactic rather than a real apocalypse scenario.
Personal growth and therapy
- Burr talked openly about:
- therapy,
- breathwork,
- and a breakthrough he had around anger and buried emotions.
- He said confronting old pain made him feel lighter and improved his stand-up and general outlook.
Sports and culture tangents
- He gave opinions on:
- the WNBA being more compelling than people admit,
- fighting in hockey,
- the NFL’s obsession with money and stadiums,
- and why baseball’s replay/challenge system can be both annoying and useful.
- He also joked about old-school analog life vs. the modern surveillance-car / tech world.
Guys on Chicks
A few of the main advice topics
- Crush on a bartender: the advice was basically to be careful, read the room, and maybe use a low-pressure approach.
- Ex added to close friends story: consensus was that this is probably attention-seeking and should mostly be ignored.
- Close friends / story etiquette: lots of discussion about how social media is essentially a status game.
- Can you remove yourself from someone’s close friends? Yes, but it becomes weird.
- Hurricanes chirp tweet: Max reacted strongly to a Carolina Hurricanes post, and the crew piled on Carolina.
- Overtime rules: a listener suggested NFL overtime should copy college rules; the crew mostly liked college OT better, but didn’t fully agree on the best fix.
Notable Bits and Recurring Jokes
- Meevis vs. Blake Grupe: the kicker swap was discussed in a silly “Pumbaa/Timon” way, with the crew lamenting the loss of Meevis.
- Hunter Dickinson sent in a social-media-related joke through Instagram.
- Jerry Jones story about a fan pressing her face against his car window in Green Bay was one of the funniest non-sequitur stories of the episode.
- Mike Tomlin’s Minecraft city came up in a Bill Burr tangent and was treated as one of the funniest random revelations in sports media.
Big Picture
This was a classic Pardon My Take episode:
- sports-heavy,
- reactionary,
- full of side jokes,
- and anchored by a strong guest interview.
The main takeaways were:
- the Bills are still the Bills, but Josh Allen is elite enough to carry them,
- the Brewers look like a real October machine,
- college football remains wildly chaotic,
- and Bill Burr is still one of the best long-form guests in the game.