Overview of The Bill Simmons Podcast
Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal spend most of the episode reacting to a chaotic NFL Sunday, starting with the Bears’ ugly-but-won Sunday night game over the Buccaneers and then widening out to the league’s shifting playoff picture, cross-off candidates, and the total disaster that is the NFC South. They also dig into the Patriots’ lopsided loss to Green Bay, the Jets’ latest Aaron Glenn disaster, and a few NBA notes, including Steph Curry’s resurgence and the early MVP race.
NFL Takeaways
Bears vs. Buccaneers: ugly win, ugly quarterback play
- Chicago’s win over Tampa Bay was driven by the defense and a parade of turnovers.
- Caleb Williams had a rough night after an early hot start, and the offense never really found rhythm.
- They questioned some of Ben Johnson’s late-game decision-making and whether the Bears are already leaning on their defense more than their offense.
The NFC South is still a mess
- The Bucks/Bucs win made Tampa look like the most stable team in the division, but even that comes with major caveats.
- Sal and Bill kept circling back to how bad the entire division is:
- Carolina and New Orleans are stuck in the mud.
- Atlanta is wildly inconsistent.
- Tampa is the best of a bad group, but not exactly convincing.
- The joke of the night: the NFC South is so weak that almost any team can hang around in the race.
Patriots get exposed by Green Bay
- This was the big Patriots gut-punch of the episode.
- Jordan Love absolutely carved up New England, and Bill argued the game was more about how dominant Love was than anything else.
- Major concerns for the Pats:
- Drake May had a rough game.
- Christian Gonzalez got cooked.
- Mike Vrabel was criticized for a poor coaching performance.
- Ramondre Stevenson’s ball security came up again.
- The loss felt worse than a normal loss because it happened at home, with Tom Brady in attendance, and because it lowered confidence in the Pats’ ceiling.
Aaron Glenn and the Jets are a disaster
- The Jets’ loss to Kansas City became a running example of bad coaching and bad decision-making.
- Bill and Sal mocked the entire end-of-half sequence: penalties, clock mismanagement, failed field goals, and Aaron Glenn looking completely overmatched.
- They called attention to Glenn’s historically awful record and suggested he may be one of the worst NFL coaches they’ve seen.
- The takeaway: the Jets are so poorly run that even obvious moments keep turning into self-inflicted losses.
AFC and NFC playoff picture
- They spent a lot of time mapping out the standings and who is actually alive.
- Bill and Sal mostly treated the AFC playoff field as nearly settled, with the Bills, Chiefs, Bengals, Jaguars, Broncos, Steelers, Pats, and maybe Texans in the mix.
- On the NFC side, the North is a juggernaut:
- Chicago, Detroit, Green Bay, and Minnesota are all relevant.
- The NFC North is so strong that it’s dragging the whole conference upward.
- The NFC South, by contrast, is the league’s biggest punchline.
Cross-offs and the Raiders debate
- They revisited the recurring “cross-off” game and eventually landed on the Raiders as the next team to remove after a fan vote.
- Washington got a reprieve, while Vegas earned the cross-off designation.
- The conversation also touched on how some bad teams still look better than the NFC South teams, but the division’s softness makes all of them hard to fully dismiss.
NBA Notes
Steph Curry’s revival
- Bill was genuinely fired up about Steph Curry’s recent level of play.
- He described Steph as looking like 2022 playoff Steph again: still elite, still creating in crunch time, and doing it in limited minutes.
- The bigger point: Curry is carrying a huge offensive load, and Golden State may need to make a move if they want to maximize this run.
MVP race: Luka, Wemby, SGA
- They also spent time on the early NBA MVP conversation.
- The main names discussed:
- Luka Doncic
- Victor Wembanyama
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
- Bill leaned toward SGA still being very much alive in the race, but Luka and Wemby were clearly the two biggest forces in the conversation.
Guess the Lines Highlights
- Bill and Sal ran through a full slate of upcoming NFL games, including:
- Giants-Commanders
- Patriots-Lions in Madrid
- Chiefs-Falcons
- Bills-Jets
- 49ers-Cowboys
- Texans-Browns
- Saints-Panthers
- Seahawks-Raiders
- Packers-Vikings
- Bengals-Steelers
- Ravens-Chargers
- Several of the lines were close, but the most notable theme was how many games felt hard to price because of injuries, quarterback uncertainty, or how bad some teams have become.
- Bill and Sal also kept circling back to the NFC South and the Jets as the two most chaotic situations on the board.
Parent Corner and Off-Field Bits
Lost watch / flag football chaos
- Bill told a story about his son Harrison’s flag football championship and the scramble to retrieve a lost bag with his watch inside.
- The story turned into a classic parent dilemma:
- immediate panic,
- a rushed drive back to the field,
- and a final realization that the watch probably wasn’t worth the stress.
- The punchline was the usual family argument over what counts as “important” versus “not important” in the moment.
Hanging with Rembert’s baby
- Bill also described spending time with Rembert’s newborn and being reminded how exhausting and cyclical baby life is.
- The contrast was funny: one night it was family yelling over whether someone fell asleep during Blood Diamond; the next day it was peaceful baby-time.
- The point was that parenting never really stops being a series of absurd arguments and small crises.
Big Picture
- The NFL is becoming more defined by a few strong divisions and a handful of dysfunctional teams.
- The Patriots loss raised real doubts about their ceiling.
- The Jets remain a coaching and execution mess.
- The NFC South continues to be the league’s joke division.
- Steph Curry’s latest stretch was the biggest non-NFL bright spot, with Bill openly fascinated by how sustainable this run might be.