This Isn’t the Dress Rehearsal

A new year forces a hard look at change, from the Jets’ broken identity and quarterback plan to the Giants’ chance to compound a rookie-deal advantage, and a college playoff that crowned new power while reshaping draft boards. We weigh Week 18 rest vs momentum, lay a 5-game card, and tie it back to taking a fearless first step.

• Jets’ defensive collapse and Glenn’s shrinking leash
• Real quarterback plan vs lottery tickets
• Giants’ Jackson Dart and rookie-deal roadmap
• Draft flexibility and trading down value
• Ravens–Steelers stakes and coaching futures
• Rest or play starters debate in Week 18
• Five betting picks with motivation angles
• Indiana routs Alabama and Mendoza’s draft stock
• Oregon’s defense recalibrates expectations
• Miami resilience and Ole Miss spite-fueled surge
• Knicks stumble, Wemby scare, Jokic bone bruise
• Astros add pitching while NY stalls
• New Year theme: fear as a signal to act

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Transcript

Cold Open And New Year Theme

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Sitten on muy interesant, well, well, well, happy new year, everyone. New year, same voice, fresh slated stuff to go over. Welcome back to Rice on the Mikes. I am your host, Ian Rice. And if you're listening to this, congrats! You uh you've officially survived the holiday gauntlet. The tree's long dead, the decorations are back up in the attic, and hopefully you took the lights off the lawn. Meanwhile, everybody else is pretending that new year, new me isn't just code for uh I'll try this for a couple weeks and then I'll go back to ordering DoorDash. But that phrase is supposed to mean something, right? It's it's a promise to yourself that that you're willing to change a little, to get uncomfortable, to push forward instead of just hitting the snooze button over and over again. And sports are right there with us on that. We're gonna go over that this week. New Year's Day in this world is a symbolic opportunity. It's a reset button, if you will. But it's also a lie detector at the same time. So we'll start local with the stop me if you've heard this before, Jets and Giants therapy session. What this jet season was supposed to be and what it actually turned into, and why, honestly, the entire building should be obsessed with trying to find a way to get Fernando Mendoza in the green and white. And then we'll shoot over to the Giants, where Jackson Dark looks like the truth, and Wandell Robinson is quietly blossoming into something with nothing around it. And also why the fan base needs to realize how powerful it is to have your quarterback box checked off before you start playing draft lottery games. Once I said my piece about the locals, we'll zoom out. We got a Lamar vs. Rogers and a Raven Steeler. Winner gets a division, loser goes to Cancun game. All while Mike Tomlin and John Harvel are coaching with their futures being debated in real time. Then we'll follow it up with a couple stories from in the league. The Diggs brothers are in the news for all the wrong reasons. Micah Parsons is playing his favorite role of Twitter spokesperson. Troy Aikman is making some noise in the front office. And then the old age old January question. Do you rest your guys or do you ride momentum into the playoffs? Rolling the dice with Rice Card is on deck two. Got a final regular season slate for you guys. We'll recap last week's five-game card. We'll update the overall record, and we'll try to close out the year in the green. We're doing alright right now. After that, then we jump right into the college football playoff chaos. Indiana steamrolling Bama, Oregon pitching a shutout, Miami and Old Miss raising their hand, crashing the party, and what all this means for some of these players draft stock. Got some NBA too, Knicks get messy, Wemby has a knee scare, Joker goes down with a knee, he's out for a couple weeks after he gets stepped on. We'll touch on what that means for the West, and then I'll maybe, maybe throw in a little MLB too. The Astros quietly adding to the rotation. Meanwhile, the Mets and Yankees are just sitting around staring at the group chat, looking for the right gift to send. So then, yeah, then we'll land the play with the real heart of the episode. New year, new you. What that actually means and why the scariest decisions usually end up being the right ones. Remember, this isn't the dress rehearsal, this is the play. We got a whole bunch to get into today. So turn the volume up to 11. Put your slack on Do Not Disturb. Get settled in, and let's get after it.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Tranquility days here. The angle has landed.

Week 18 Setup And Fantasy Gripes

Jets Meltdown And Glenn’s Future

Quarterback Plan And Mendoza Obsession

Giants Find Dart And Draft Math

Division-Clinchers And Ravens–Steelers Stakes

Rest Or Roll: Week 18 Philosophy

Edge Rushers, Trades, And League Rumors

Betting Card: Five Picks And Rationale

College Playoff Shockers And Draft Impacts

MLB Arms And Knicks, Wemby, Jokic Updates

Personal Reset: From Teams To You

Words of Wisdom And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Alright, here we are. Let's talk some football. Can you believe it? Week 18 already. It feels like just yesterday I was doing the draft special episode and fantasy football do's and don'ts. Congrats if you won your league, by the way. Or my condolences if you ran into B. John Robinson or Derrick Henry in the finals. Or God forbid both of them. Jesus Christ, that would be a mess. But uh we start today where it always hits the hardest at home. The Jets and Giants. And if you're a Jets fan, like I am, well this was supposed to be the year that you at least felt like a functioning franchise again, you know? A new coach, new energy, the culture change. All the same buzzwords we've been fed for the last 15 years. And instead, instead, instead, you're sitting at 3 and 13. You just lost 42 to 10 at home, and you've now become the fifth team in NFL history to lose four straight games by 23 plus points. That's not a bad stretch. That's not oh, we ran into some things. That's a crime scene. That's a CSI Vegas put the sunglasses on, hit the doors soundtrack, crime scene. New England walked into MetLife like it was a neutral sight. Drake may goes 19 for 21, five touchdowns. He threw more touchdowns than incomplete passes. And he was perfect on the first six drives. So the Pats finished 8-0 on the road. They clinched the AFC East on your field. And Jet fans are leaving early from the last home game of the year yet again. That's where we're at right now. And congratulations, yeah. Brees Brah, Brees Hall breaks a nice 59-yard touchdown, gets himself over a thousand rushing yards, helps himself, you know, for contract for next year. It's great for him. And it's great for the fantasy crowd. But it's also the most too little, too late highlight of the season. I mean, it felt more like, well, at least someone did something, someone had a year than anything else. It changes how you feel about this team. This is where it comes back to Aaron Glenn. And look, I know fans have been calling for his head since the 0-7 start, right? I am not on the crowd of fire him. And by the way, he's not getting fired after one season. He's got four years left on his deal. I really don't think he should be fired. But for sure the leash just got a whole lot tighter. You came in as a respected coordinator from Detroit, a defensive coordinator, and somehow you ended up with a unit that they're not just bad, they're historically bad. More than likely, you're gonna go an entire season without a single interception. In today's NFL, that's insane. Also, for the fact that you're a corner with the Jets in your playing career. That's insane. So that's not just talent that, oh, we're hurt or whatever. That's like structure, that's teaching, that's communication, it's all of it. This offseason can't be, oh, we'll get healthier, run it back, and the whoever we draft is gonna come in and save us. There needs to be a huge overhaul. Glenn absolutely has to nail this staff along with Muji. He needs a real heavyweight voice on the defensive side. He needs to fix how they're teaching coverage. He needs to be honest about which vets are stealing snaps from guys who might actually deserve some more playing time. And then, yeah, going back to the quarterback question, every rumor has the Jets monitoring Malik Willis in Green Bay. He's gonna get more film out there this week with Jordan Love, so we'll see, you know, if it makes him any look any more attractive. I I don't hate it as a lottery ticket. But we just did this with Justin Fields. And I'm not really comparing Justin Fields to Malik Willis, but Malik Willis doesn't have nearly the tape that Justin Fields has on him. He's a trades guy, he's cheap price, fine. That's a scratch off, man. That's not the plan. The plan has to be for Fernando Mendoza. I'm sorry, period. End of story. The kid just tore up Alabama in the Rose Bowl. He's the Heisman winner. He's in a no-name program like Indiana. It's the whole thing. He plays under a hard coach insignetti who, like Glenn, is supposedly a tough SOB, right? We're gonna dive deeper on him and the college playoffs and all that. But for now, from a Jets lens, if you're not spending every waking second trying to figure out how to turn, yeah, we like Fernando, we want to get him to, we drafted Fernando, and he's gonna change our franchise, then what are we doing? What did we get all these picks for? You don't get a lot of clean shots at a franchise quarterback, and you don't have to give up half your roster. For the Jets new year, new you, it it's it can't be a cute caption going forward. It has to be new staff around Glenn, new defensive identity, and a grown-up quarterback plan. If this is the version of the Jets that show up again in 2026, it's not just assistants getting fired and we have to move some things around. Everybody's gone. One year on a five-year deal, you don't do that. Two years and it looks like this again, can't I can't have it. I can't have it. Ay, ay, ay. Anyway, across the hall. Giant fans, I need you to hear me clearly when I say this. Okay? You are in the opposite spot that I am, right? You already did the hard part. You found the quarterback. You moved up to go get him. You sent assets away to move up to go get him. Jackson Dart walked into this mess of a season. People were clamoring for him to play. Should he play? Should he not? Russell Wilson clearly shows that Father Time has hit him over the back of the head. This roster has duct tape all over it. No Malik neighbors, no scatterbo. Andrew Thomas was out a bunch of games, and he still looks like he belongs. He still shows you he can play in this league. Against the Raiders in that tank bowl, he throws for over 200, runs for 48, two touchdowns, never even flinched, took a couple big hits, too. He's 20 years old. He moves, he's aggressive on the money downs. And for the first time in a while, this offense actually has an identity with him out there. Not just run, run, and we take a knee on third down. Like, not to mention, you know, Wandell Robinson quietly is becoming the perfect example of why you don't panic at 3-13. He had 11 catches for 113 yards in that Raiders game. He hit the thousand mark on the air. He's flirting with 100 receptions. He's five foot eight. He doesn't even have, again, he doesn't have Malik neighbors on the opposite side of him drawing coverage. He's showing you that he's a legit piece. That's part of your core for the next five years kind of stuff. Now here's the fork in the road. You play Dallas this week. If you lose, you're sitting with the number two pick in the draft and a giant neon sign that says flexibility or open for business. You can either take the best non-quarterback on the board or, you know, whatever you want, or you can trade back. You can slide to six or seven, clean up on picks because someone will move up, probably the Jets. And you need help all over the secondary. You need more along the offensive line. You can never have enough offensive line. Evan Neal has been a disaster. And the beauty of having Dart on that rookie deal is you can literally copy and paste the Russell Wilson Seahawks model. Or the early Joe Burrow Bengals. Those teams went to the Super Bowl because their quarterback wasn't eating 30% of their cap. They could pay offensive linemen. They could pay some weapons. They could keep their defense together. We already saw it happen on the back end. As soon as those guys got paid, what's the first thing that happened to those teams? Protection and depth. So if you're a Giants fan, look, losing to Dallas, never beating Dak, and this, that, and the other, and another miserable season under the belt. It's not the worst thing in the world. It's not an embarrassing, we're losers, we're tanking, we don't kind of belong here moment. And I think most of the fan base wants them to lose. It's honestly, it's getting the number two overall pick is how you accelerate this rebuild around a kid that you already believe in, that you better believe in. I would shake them on the Jets right now, by the way. Now the problem is if you win. If you win, you slide down to probably around number seven, which you would trade back to anyway, and you could grab somebody at seven, but having those extra picks because you trade back is what you want. So, look, you might at two, you if you stay at two, which you won't, but if you stay at two, you might miss out on a true blue chip guy. But at seven, there's a you're in perfect range for impact players. Drafting is the lottery with just like a little more homework, with a little educated guests. Every single year there are can't miss guys that miss. Every year. And then every year there's players that are picked 10th or 15th or Jackson Dart or 25th who end up running the league or looking like they belong. The key is you don't get greedy. Don't buy into the quarterback thing. Is this worth it? Are we even close? Do we sell out? You got your guy. You got the hard part. Use that capital to make his life easier. Not harder. And inside all that, that giant Raiders game that was really like the center of the tank war. I mean, probably nobody else watched it around the country, but everybody in New York was watching it. The Raiders dropped 2-14. And Giants are still only 3-13. So suddenly you got this weird week 18 math problem where if Vegas goes out and beats the Chiefs, who are on, I think Peanut Boy is playing quarterback, and the Giants lose, there's a chance that you can still end up with the first overall pick. The problem with that is this Cowboys defense is so god-awful. I really think Jackson Dart is going to ball out against them. Every culture win versus draft position argument needs to be filtered through the lens of do I have my guy or do I not have my guy? And the Giants already won the culture battle with Dart. Now it's about using the draft as a cheat code while he's still cheap. Fucking both of these teams are disasters. Anyway, let's zoom out. We'll do a little around the league here. And there's some good games this week for division battles. Two of them are taking place on Saturday. But the biggest one is uh the Raven Steelers game. It's simple stakes, it's real easy. Winner takes the AFC North and the loser goes home. You're either hosting a wild card game or you're booking a trip to the beach. No in-between. And don't think for one second that the players don't know it either. It's late in the season, doesn't matter. Everybody's playing hurt. Lamar Jackson said he's 100% playing. He's got the back contusion, a hamstring, a knee, an ankle, a toe. I mean, he's basically the entire Madden injury menu this year. But been practicing full, says his back feels good. He's got the flak jacket ready to go to absorb some hits. And he was getting a little getting a little feisty at the podium in between practices, too. There was a couple rumors floating around that uh, you know, he quits on his team, he picks his spots, and literally he said, I never quit on my team. I don't know where any of that noise came from. And on top of that, he's been having to answer some questions about falling asleep in meetings and shit, having a strained relationship with John Harbaugh. Lamar had best line. He's like, Do you do you really think John Harbaugh, do you think Harbaugh would let me fall asleep in meetings? I literally sit in the front row. And then speaking of Harbaugh, there's some serious reporting out there that whether that relationship is frayed enough that a trade could actually be on the table this season. I'm a big proponent of where there's smoke, there's fire, right? Not everything has to be true, but you know, you didn't just you didn't just hear that by accident, right? And look, if the if the price for Lamar, it's at least two firsts, plus a monster extension, too. That's the only way you're even gonna entertain that he's gonna move out of Baltimore. And uh on the other side of the sideline there, you got Aaron Rodgers and Mike Tomlin, and their world is on public trial, too, right? Rodgers could realistically be looking at team number three in four years if they lose and it blows up in Pittsburgh. And this is not some 10-year marriage either. This is, are we actually making a run together, or was this just a weird rebound year after the Jets so you can go do what you want? Tomlin's resume is what it is. 19 straight non-losing seasons, hit 200 wins. He's only the third coach that franchise has had since the 60s. But you've had fire Tomlin chance for the last, I don't know, three, four, five years. You've had booze over Renegade, and now you've got a fan base that's tired of being stable without being scary, right? Losing this game at home after blowing a chance to close it last week would just dial that noise up so high. And then you drop in TJ Watt into that mix. The guy just had surgery from a partially collapsed lung. He had a dry kneeling session or something. I don't know what they were trying to do, but they poked his lung. He spent nights in the hospital, and he's like, Yeah, no, I feel really good. I feel I'm playing. No pitch count, no nothing. Look, I I've gone through lung surgery twice in my life, actually. I've had a collapsed lung. The idea of jogging upstairs a few weeks later sounds absolutely insane to me. Never mind playing edge rusher in a winner-go-home iron bowl bruiser game. That tells you the kind of psycho competitor that he is. Every breath hurts, man. Every hit to the chest, but no, he wants to be out there for this one. He needs to be out there for this one. That's the stuff that matters in locker rooms. That's how you get the guys to rally behind you. And matchup-wise, it's pretty simple. Baltimore's pass events has well, it's been a disaster in terms of giving up big downfield plays, worse than the league in 20 plus yard air completions. And then on top of that, he just got cooked deep by Green Bay. And Pittsburgh's run defense has quietly kind of turned the corner. They've turned into a brick wall in the last month or so without Watt. So now you add him in back to the defense that's already kind of found itself again in a stadium that's gonna be crazy with Lamar trying to prove that he's fine. Oh, and by the way, DK Metcalf suspended after that whole mess with the fan. So do the big plays work? Who knows? This is gonna be old school, Tony Saragusa, Troy Palomalu, Ravens, Steelers, Iron Bowl football. This is gonna be a good game. This is gonna be someone's season ends in bruises and ice baths. Kind of football. I'm looking forward to it. I'm glad they flex it to Sunday night. So that's the big game this week. Let's spin it over to what do you do in week 18 when your spot is already locked up? Right? So this is the conversation that happens this time every year. The Rams have basically decided that they're not doing the whole rest everybody thing. Sean McVay straight up said, even if the Niners win on Saturday and lock us into the sixth seed, Stafford and the healthy starters are playing in Arizona. That's it. This is the opposite of last year where they clinched and they parked everybody. And you can see why, because they came out not flat to the Eagles, but not the best they could have been. So they're starting to get healthy at the right time, which is great. Kyron Williams' ankle looks good enough for him to go, I guess, and Tyler Higby is on his way back. But you got a locker room full of young guys that's just now figuring out how to win again or learning how to win, learning what it feels like. And McVeigh clearly values that rhythm and that tone going into January more than he's scared of an injury. There's also a massive difference between the five seed drawing the NFC South winner and the six seed having to deal with Philly or the Bears defense on the road. In Green Bay, it's the it's the complete opposite approach, though. Jordan Love has cleared concussion protocol, and he says he feels good. He's been practicing fully. Matt LaFleur says, cool, that's great. You are the uh emergency glass break only. You hold that clipboard real tight. They're locked into the seven seed. They know that they're headed to the road on either Chicago or Philly, depending on where they finish. And they have just decided that the best thing they can do for themselves is to get love to the wildcard round as fresh and as clear-headed as possible. For them, it's not about the momentum, it's about the availability. Now, Buffalo, well, Buffalo is kind of uh in-between, right? They're kind of locked in where they are in the AFC, but Josh Allen's got that long, active start streak going. He's trying to chase guys like Phillip Rivers, Eli Manning, you know, whatever. Sean McDermott basically admitted that he's just gonna start him just to keep the streak alive, and that's that. So nobody really believes that he's gonna be playing the four quarters. They've managed his reps all week. Trubitsky's gotten a ton of work with the ones. Speaking of Trubitsky, speaking of Chicago, uh, I don't know. Look, they want to send the old stadium out, too. This is probably the last game in Buffalo in that stadium. So they want to get the win, they want to send it out on a high note. Great for the Jets, by the way. I need the Jets to lose this week. Would love that. So they keep Allen Streak intact, they keep his ego intact, and you make sure that he doesn't get crushed by Jermaine Johnson right before a road wild card game. So that's the tightrope in week 18. I mean, do you rest too many guys and you come out flat when it matters? Do you play everybody and you lose a star in a game that didn't even matter anyway, didn't move you up or down in the seating? One bad decision, and you're you're the main character on the NFL Twitter until April. So is what it is there. I'm not really sure where I fall on the uh sitting players because I've seen Peyton Manning sit plenty of times and lose, but you know, you want your guys out. You want a healthy roster. Quick note on Phillip Rivers, too, by the way, uh, with him chasing Philip Rivers. The comeback tour is officially over. And it was fun to watch, it was cool. Uh I just hope, you know, whatever juice was left in that arm, I hope he squeezed it this year. And because now he's got to go back on the shelf for another five years for the Hall of Fame clock. But who cares, right? That's kind of the point. Every retired athlete, secretly or not so secretly, wants one thing. They want a second chance, they want one more huddle, they want one more pregame speech, one more hanging with the boys in the locker room, one more day where they get to wake up and say, Yeah, I'm in the league, I'm in the show. And he got that. That's every Rocky movie, every replacement script in real life. You had Shane Falco in real life. His body clearly told him this is it. Fine. But you know what? You'd rather go out empty than spend the rest of your life wandering on the couch, like, you know, maybe could I have done it one more time? Was there anything left in the tank? So just a quick note good on Phillip Rivers, happy for him. Um good thing he didn't break a hip because when he was playing in Seattle on that pass rush, I really thought they were gonna come off the edge and just clobber him. So good on him, happy for him. Speaking of pass rushing and second chances, actually, that's what they call in this business a great segue. Edge guys, edge rushers, are basically running half of the storylines in this league right now, right? So we already talked about TJ Watt, but on the other side of the spectrum, you got Max Crosby down in Vegas. And he's furious that the Raiders shut him down with a knee issue. They were quietly trying to like sideline guys and keep him, Brock Bowers, Jeremy Chin. They put him on the IR to just secure draft position. Hopefully they didn't luck into a win, right? And he comes right out and he says, I play football. That's what I do. There's no shutting it down. I'm hurt, I don't care, I want to play. I don't tank, I hit people. That's literally what his line was. That's the guy that you want on your team. That's the guy you don't want to piss off. And they did that, they pissed him off. Around the league, execs love that kind of player. And now, because he's mad, if there's any chance that he would want out, now's the time to strike. It's the same language that you were hearing around Micah Parsons. If he's clear, I'll give up a haul. But only if my doctor tells me that that knee is completely fine. The comp that people keep coming back to is exactly that Micah trade. Two first rounders and a Kenny Clark kind of player. That's the price range for a guy like Max Crosby. That's what it's gonna be. That and a locked into a big extension. And just to tie it all back together, do you know what team would kind of fit perfectly with that? What about a team that's uh not 100% sure on their guy that doesn't really want to pay him or wants to get out from the contract? What if the Ravens traded Lamar for Max Crosby and then they swapped first so that they can go draft Mendoza? Yeah, how about that? Look, it's a pipe dream. It would never happen. It would blow the league up, it would be insane, it would go crazy, right? But I mean, it kind of could make sense, right? I mean, you get out from under Lamar if you don't want to deal with him, you get a nice young rookie quarterback that you might like, and a stud pass rusher to fix your defense and a tough AFC North, and then the Raiders get Lamar in Vegas with Brock Bowers, with you know, a receiver that they would draft probably. Doesn't not make sense, you know? Anyway, pipe dreams in Cleveland, speaking of pass rushers, Miles Garrett, he's on the other end of this story, right? He's literally this close. You can't see my fingers, but I'm putting like two little fingers close together here. He's literally this close to the single season sack record, and he's only got one game left. We were talking about this five weeks ago that he was gonna probably go way above it. He needs a full sack to put his name alone at the top. So they stink, but you know that every dude in that Browns locker room is thinking, listen, if we're not playing for much, at least we can try and get 95 that record. So it's a cool little subplot in a week where half the league is either playoff mode or pack your locker up mode, right? And last but not least, you got Micah Parsons himself now in Green Bay, lighting Jerry Jones up on social media while his old team misses the playoffs with the 30th ranked defense with no pass rush. Dallas trades him for two firsts and Kenny Clark, like I said, only to spend a year watching him rack up 12 sacks before an ACL tear. Then, then what is what does Almighty Jerry do? Well, he uh he cuts Trayvon Diggs. And it was over a Christmas Day flight and honestly a year of tension. And what happens? The Packers use their waiver claim, scoop him up immediately, and reunite the both of them on a playoff team. Michael literally went on Twitter, he said, Y'all want me to feel bad? Y'all want me to feel bad? Jerry dragged my name in the media for months. I love laughing at this. And then he went on to defend Diggs too, basically saying, Why do you guys always have to be publicly trashing guys on their way out? Just wish him well and move on, and it is what it is. You can feel how much he wanted out of that building and how happy he is to be somewhere else that just quietly claims this guy and lets them play ball and lets them do what they need to do. Tack on uh Troy Aikman, too, consulting for the Dolphins for their GM search. Another Cowboys legend helping someone else figure out their front office. It really does feel like Dallas is just watching the rest of the league move on while they're stuck in the same movie over and over and over. And that movie is Jerry World 101, what I say goes. Anyway, that's the uh that's the NFL table setter for the week. We're gonna have plenty more to talk about moving forward, but for now, it's just locals trying to figure out who they are or what they want to do, which they don't know. Got some uh got some heavyweights punching for divisions. You got some old quarterbacks chasing that one last shot, even if probably wasn't advised. And you got edge rushers either chasing records or fighting their old teams. And uh, and honestly, a whole lot of uh new year, new me energy that's that's either gonna end in like confetti or firings. So we're gonna hit the rolling the dice with rice card in its own segment in a little bit. I got three games around the league, and of course the locals, the Bills and Jets, Cowboys, Giants game. But then after that, we're gonna swing over to the college side and uh we're gonna walk you through the whole college football playoff chaos. Okay. Fernando Mendoza, Oregon's defense, Miami's run, Ole Miss upset, minus Lane Kiffin, and what all that means for the draft and for teams like the Jets and Giants going forward. Keep it right here. We got gambling and then we got college. Alright, that time of the show, rolling the dice with rice. Listen, we just yelled about the Jets and the Giants for a while, and I've been doing it for pretty much 17, 18 weeks now. So let's get to the important part here. Let's see if we can uh make a couple bucks off of this chaos and this misery before the regular season taps out. Last week saw a little bounce back. We went three and two on the card. You know, you'll take it all day. Bengals minus seven, got there easy. Patriots and Giants both covered for the locals. Seahawks, Panthers over. It never really woke up. It was close, but it just, you know, game script, right? And then Rams, minus six and a half. We brought it down and they lost outright to Atlanta on Monday night. That was a joke. So long of the short, we're sitting at 39 and 37 on the season. Tiny bit of breathing room, over 500 heading into the final regular season card. New year, fresh slate. One more chance to uh clean this thing up before we reset for the playoffs, right? So a couple reminders before we jump in. Week 18 is always, always disgusting. There's contract incentives all over the place. You got you got backups starting, you got guys trying not to get hurt, you got coaches pretending they still have full control of the team. So if you're betting this week, please double check the inactives. Don't go nuking your account because you forgot a team already locked up their seven seed and they've pulled everybody at halftime. So that said, let's get into it. Game one, Saints and Falcons, and the pick is going to be Saints plus three and a half. The line's at three right now. We're gonna buy the hook. This is that classic Falcon spot, right? National window, upset last week, the public riding high, a division game at home, everybody in the pregame show talking about, hey, you know, they gave the Rams a run for their money last week, yada yada yada. And what do they do every single time? They give you just enough hope, and then they face plant into the turf in front of the whole country. It's like a tradition at this point. Meanwhile, the Saints have actually they've been playing decent football down the stretch. The defense has shown up, and that locker room clearly believes in the rookie quarterback. You can feel it when a team rallies around a young guy. They're not just playing to prove for themselves, they're playing to prove that he is the guy. So, you know what? Gimme the hungry dog with the points in a division game. Not the team that, you know, loves to play with its food and then forgets to eat the meal. I'll happily buy the hook here, Saints plus three and a half. And look, if the Falcons win, fine. I just I don't trust them to blow anybody out in a spot like this anymore. Game two, Chiefs at Raiders. And the pick is going to be Raiders plus five and a half. This line is pure logo tax. It's the uh it's the old Mahomes, and the Chiefs are laying less than a touchdown. Yeah, smash it. Except they don't have Mahomes. They barely have a functioning offense right now, to be honest with you. They're out of it, they're banged up, they're they're trying to just reset and figure out what the hell happened this year. And on the other side, yeah, the Raiders are bad, like bad, bad, like first overall pick bad, but it's a home game, and it's against a team that they hate. Okay, this is old school Jets Patriots rivalry. This is where you get a little bit of the uh, I'm trying to be on an NFL roster next year energy from some guys. You get a lot of guys just playing for some tape in these games. They're not sitting on a seed, they're not protecting anything, they're not even playing spoiler. They're just going full tilt, full hatred. I want to beat you because I can't stand you. So if you're gonna give me the Raiders plus five and a half at home against a brand name favorite with no quarterback, yeah, I'll live with that. This feels like one of those, I don't know, 2017, 2320, ugly what happened games where at worst case scenario, you're live all the way through the fourth quarter until one of their defenses lets something up, you know? But gimme Raiders plus five and a half. Okay, game three, we're gonna go Lions at Bears, and the pick is gonna be Bears minus three, but the vibes could not be more opposite in this one. The Lions just feel straight up cooked. They're out, the defense is a disaster, and the whole thing is just that, like, yeah, we missed our window this year, and everybody's exhausted smell to it, you know? The Bears, on the other end, this is their Super Bowl. They're trying to prove that they're not little brother in the division anymore. That they've got something to play for in terms of culture and message, and you know, you guys don't run this division by yourselves, not anymore. We're we're here to make noise. And it's also a very simple handicap. One team has pride and has a plan, and the other team feels like they just want to get on a plane and go home. So I'm gonna slide with the team that still cares. Give me Bears minus three. Look, if they're serious about this, we're not a joke anymore, and we want to make some noise in the playoffs rebrand. These are the games that you win by a touchdown at the minimum, right? Okay, game four, these are the locals, and we got Jets at Bills, and the pick is gonna be Bills minus seven and a half. Maybe by it down to seven, six and a half, but no, seven and a half is totally fine. This one kind of hurts, not gonna lie, but if we're trying to make some money, we've got to be honest about what we're seeing here, right? Buffalo has some injuries, and yeah, Josh Allen's probably gonna start to keep the streak alive and then get the hat and the headset on pretty soon. But that franchise still has standards, right? And this is the last regular season game in the Curtin Stadium. They're gearing up for the playoffs, and somehow there's still seeding to play for between the five, six, seven spots. So they're not just gonna completely like punt this, and it is what it is. Meanwhile, the Jets, the Jets, man, they just look broken, right? There's no confidence, there's no juice, there's no belief, and they know that wholesale changes are coming. The staff, the roster, shit, maybe the whole identity. It's just felt like a group that's riding out the clock and checking the direct deposit app on Monday. That's it's been like that this whole month. So even if Allen only gives you a quarter or hell, even a series, I trust Buffalo's structure infinitely more than I trust whatever the Jets are putting on the field right now. So give me the bills, minus seven and a half. If somehow the Jets randomly show up and show life and keep it close, I'll happily eat it. Fine. But everything about this body language says get me to the offseason, get me out of here. And last but not least, game five, Giants, or excuse me, Cowboys at Giants. And we're gonna roll Giants plus three and a half. This is where it gets a little messy because the Giants have already shown us who they are. And they're the team that loves winning just enough to screw up their draft order. We nailed it last week when we took them, and they nailed it last year when they won the game against the Titans last week. Dak might play here, too. He's talking about, you know, I don't, you know, I want to play, you know, I want to keep my streak going, blah, blah, blah. I do think Dallas probably wins the game. I'm kind of hoping the Giants do, but I'm I think Dallas wins the game. The Cowboys defense has just been flat out bad this whole year. I mean, they lit up 450 yards of Russell Wilson earlier in the year, week one, and now they're bringing in, they're coming into Met Life against Jackson Dart, who's eager and hungry and wants to put that pelt on his wall of beating the Cowboys and beating Dak. The Giants have their quarterback, right? That's the hardest part in this sport. Dart's 20 years old. Wandell Robinson is again flirting with 100 catches, and the kid wants to show the fans what he's made of. This game is basically do you want to go into the offseason with momentum and a clear offensive identity, or do you want to just turtle up and maybe move a couple spots up on the draft board? Even if they lose and hang on to that number two pick or slide to seven, there are still a lot of real players on that team. The draft lottery is a lottery. It's a lottery with an educated guest, it's not a vending machine, right? You don't get To choose what you want. So I'm not exactly convinced that the Giants are going to roll over and die either just because the calculator says it's better to do so. This locker room has fought, believe it or not. So I'll take the hook. I'm going to buy it up. I'll take the home dog. Give me the Giants plus three and a half and bet on Dart lighting up a bad defense one more time just to end the season. So to recap, Saints plus three and a half. Raiders plus five and a half. Bears minus three. Bills minus seven and a half. Giants plus three and a half. Couple home dogs this week, man. We take those. And, you know, we're sitting at 39 and 37 on the year. Not bad. We're going to try and finish the regular season with a little mini heater before we flip the page to the playoff card and probably some college football action with Indiana and Oregon and whatnot. As always, don't be an idiot. Bet within your limits. Don't chase. And listen, if you hate one of these, that's fine. I don't care. Fade me. DM me the ticket. We'll ride the sweat together. Take a breath. Grab a refill. After the music break, we're going to talk about the college kids. Indiana Smack in Bama. Oregon Blank in Texas Tech. Miami's miracle run. Ole Miss Trauma. And what it all means for the draft board and for our beloved teams. College football next. And honestly, for a new year, new slate kind of theme, the college football playoff might be the best example we've got right now. Alabama gets smoked, Ohio State gets bounced, Texas Tech gets blanked. Georgia goes home. And the final four is Indiana, Oregon, Miami, and Ole Miss. If you had that bracket in August, you're a liar. I'm sorry, you are. So let's start with the one that everybody actually was locked in for, the Indiana-Alabama game in the Rose Bowl. This was supposed to be the, okay, cute story, but welcome to grown-up football moment for Indiana. And instead, they turned it right around and just walked into Pasadena and beat the brakes off Alabama 38-3. That's not a fluke. That's a big time program win. Fernando Mendoza, our guy, the Heisman winner, the one I've been screaming the Jets need to move heaven and earth for, was basically flawless. I mean, he started a little sluggish. He took a couple sacks early, and then it just clicked. He goes 14 for 16, under 200 yards, three touchdowns, no picks. And the Hoosiers rack up 400 yards on offense. Balance, too. 170 on the ground, 190 through the air. That's NFL level stuff. That's run the whole playbook, stay ahead of the sticks, never panic, kind of stuff. The crazy part is it wasn't just Mendoza. Indiana's whole identity is fast, physical, relentless, kick the shit out of you. And you saw all three, all four. They held Alabama to 11 first downs. 200 total yards. Bama's only points were a field goal after Mendoza was already in full control. This is Bama we're talking about. Indiana beat him by 35, the worst bowl loss ever. Alabama hasn't gotten slapped like that since the late 90s. And you could just feel the saving DNA flipping back on them. Indiana literally said, We're gonna break your will. I must break you, right? That's the stuff that Bama used to do to everybody else. They would intimidate you before the match even started. It was like Mike Tyson during a heavyweight bout. They just turned that around and handed it right back to Bama. And on top of that, there was a whole bye week curse narrative going on. No one that has had the bye week as the one seed in the college football playoff has won their first game. 0 for 6. Georgia, Oregon, Ohio State, all of them. What does Indiana do? What does Kurt Signetti do? What does Francisco Mendoza do? They walk in, top seed, long layoff, and they become the first team ever to win the college football playoff game coming off a bye. Don't even care. They don't just survive. They detonate Alabama. Five scores. That's a statement and a wake-up call for everybody else in this tournament. By the way, too, Bama's quarterback situation was rough. Ty Simpson, who might have come out, might have not come out, whatever. He played okay early, but he took a huge shot to the ribs, scrambling, and then he cracked a rib. And he tried to gut it out, but he fumbled. He had to tap out. You bring in Austin Mack, manages a field goal, but that Indiana defense ate. They had them boxed up all day. No run game, no explosive plays, no hope, no nothing. So if you're an NFL team watching that, especially the Jets, you're circling Mendoza's name in red ink. 20-year-old quarterback just shredded Alabama on the biggest stage in a new playoff format after a 26-day layoff. Didn't even look rattled, didn't look rusty, nothing. That's the guy you mortgage a couple nice things for. Now, to flip to the other quarterback blowout, Oregon, Texas Tech. Oregon 23, Texas Tech zero. Pitched a shutout in the orange bowl. Texas Tech came in as the new money bully, too. They got that, you know, big oil money, second in the country in scoring, top five in yards. They hadn't really been pushed around all year. All that noise, Oregon defense basically said, yeah, that's cute. Here's the reality 23-0 shutout, Oregon's first shutout of a ranked team since 1917. They hold tech to 215 total yards, nine first downs, two picks, two fumbles. You can't win a game like that. That wasn't just winning on defense. That was suffocating on defense. Freshman corner, the kid who had to pick six against Indiana in the regular season, he got three takeaways by himself in this game. Two picks, a fumble recovery, a freshman cornerback doing that in a college football playoff. Well, his draft stock just shot up. And then you got their edge guys and their linebackers teeing off, too. They stripped Brendan Morton early in the third. Big man rumbling it down inside the 10. And a play later, they're in the end zone. It's 13-0. You blink and they're like, oh God, this game got out of hand quick. Every time they even sniffed the drive, Oregon either took the ball away from him or stuffed it, stuffed him on fourth down. And, you know, keep in mind the context here. Oregon beat James Madison but gave up 509 yards last week. Everybody spent a week asking if their defense was soft, if they were going to be able to keep up with Texas Tech. And offensively, it wasn't exactly fireworks. Dante Moore threw for 230 plus, no touchdowns, which is surprising. But they got enough out of the run game to keep the clock moving. This was the defenses dragging us up to Atlanta kind of night. And that matters for the semis because now you're going to get Mendoza versus Moore with two legit top shelf defenses behind them. So this is going to be a true test to see if the kids have it. Then on to the Miami game. And Miami just refuses to die, man. They just refused to go away. 10 seed. They didn't even make the ACC title game. They had to sneak in as an at-large bid. And a week before the rankings, they were 10-1 just to make the playoff, sitting around 151 to win the national title. Those were the odds. Nobody believed in them. But now here we are, Miami going into the Cotton Bowl against a defending champ, Ohio State, as a 9.5 point dog, and they just big brothered them at the line of scrimmage the whole game. They get up 14-0, and the whole thing as a wait, is is the you, is the you back kind of feel? You know, you're waiting for Greg Olson to start rapping. Offensively, Miami's quarterback Beck doesn't exactly put up a box score that melts the TV. I mean, 138 yards passing and a touchdown, but he's nails on third down. He uses his legs when nothing's open. And most importantly, he doesn't turn the ball over. That's how you win games. Running back Fletcher goes for 90 in a score. The all-American wideout eats again. And they do exactly what we talked about with the Jets not doing. Lean on the trenches, let the skill guys play downhill. On the betting side, too, Ohio State going out early absolutely nuked so many futures. Multiple books, more money was on Ohio State to win the title than any other team. So when Miami beats them, that's the kind of result that has Sportsbooks quietly going, thank you, thank you very much. And now they followed up with the storyline piece. Quote, Miami overcomes long odds to reach Final Four. And now they're a two and a half point favorite over Old Miss in the Fiesta Bowl. Just think about that sentence right there. Miami, who was 150-1 a month ago, who might not even have made the playoff over Notre Dame, is now favored to go play for a national championship. And speaking of Ole Miss, that Sugar Bowl was uh the only one that actually felt like a playoff game and not like a coronation or a funeral. You got Ole Miss Georgia, all SEC. All the drama is unbelievable. Wayne Kiffin bails for LSU right before the playoff. Half the offensive staff has one foot in Oxford and the other foot in Baton Rouge. The players feel slapped in the face. Pete Golding steps in as the interim, and everybody's kind of just assuming, okay, that was fun. The season, you know, it's over here, right? Nope. Ole Miss and Georgia play an absolute bonkers game, back and forth. And the Rebels pull it out 39-34 and a field goal with six seconds left. And then a safety in the final lateral attempt. Chamblis, the old Miss quarterback, is playing full backyard football, 362 yards passing, two touchdowns, keeping plays alive, scrambling away from sacks, throwing off platform. There were a couple snaps where it looked like he was uh dead in the backfield, and he just, I don't know, figured it out, did his Eli Manning impression, just threw it down for a 30-yard chunk. That's the kind of game that the NFL scouts go, oh, okay, we might have to start paying attention a little bit. We may have to contact this guy. The running back goes for 98 yards and two scores. They got receivers catching literally everything. And they end up out gaining Georgia 473 to 343. That is a box score that melts your TV. That's not some fluky upset either. That's moving the ball at will on an SEC monster. Georgia has been a dynasty lately. Not anymore. They're out. And then there's the kicker, Commonero, who basically had his own little arc. He misses some of those kicks in the walkthrough the day before, then in game 55, 56, and a 47 game winner. Almost from the exact same spot that he missed. That's the storybook arc that we love. But on the other side, Kirby Smart, Kirby Smart clearly knew he was in for a fight. And he started coaching like it. Fake punt on fourth and six from his own 30, hit it. Later, though, fourth and two inside his own 35, still early in the fourth. They try to like hurry up to the line, they mess up the operation, they snap it anyway. And Stockton gets buried. Two plays later, Ole Miss is in the end zone. You go up 10. Look, you live by the analytics, you die by the miscommunication, right? That's kind of how it goes. Meanwhile, all this is happening while Leen Kiffin is tweeting pictures from the LSU late night meetings and trying to get on game day. Ole Miss players are flat out saying that they felt disrespected. They felt like he was stealing their shine. So now they turned into an accidental team of destiny. Interim head coach, chaotic staff, star quarterback playing out of his mind. And they go into the Fiesta Bowl to play Miami. So here we are. Final four looks like this. Peach Bowl, number one Indiana versus number five Oregon. Rematch from October when they took out Indiana early. Number one quarterback versus maybe number two quarterback in the NFL draft. And then in the Fiesta Bowl, you got number 10 Miami versus number six Ole Miss. The Chaos semifinal. Transfer quarterback versus, yeah, we don't need Kiff in anyway energy. So, so to loop it all back to the Jets before we move on here. If you're sitting in that front office right now, you watched Indiana, Alabama, you cannot unsee Fernando Mendoza. You've got a defense that somehow went an entire season without the pick. You've got a fan base that just lived through yet another, this was supposed to be the year face plant. And you're staring at this 20-year-old kid in Crimson and Cream, casually dismantling Alabama SEC defense like it's a Mac game. If we're talking new year new slate, that's what it looks like in the NFL. You identify the grown man in college and you do everything within reason to go get him. That's the North Star. So, yeah, Indiana is for real. And Oregon's defense is also for real. Miami is the team that just refuses to die, and Old Miss is powered by pure spite and belief. And somewhere in all that chaos is the quarterback who finally might drag the Jets out of hell and get them back to the playoffs. But let's take a breath. Let's grab some water. We come back, we'll pivot over to the NBA, a little MOB. Wemby scares us all, but then turns out to be okay. Uh Jokic goes down for a month, and the Knicks just got held under 100 for the first time this year. More coming. Keep it right here. So uh quick pit stop on the diamond before we start talking hoops. Baseball first, because honestly, there's not a ton going on. But what is actually happening kind of matters. The Astros went out and grabbed the uh the Japanese ace in my that got posted. Three-year deal,$54 million guaranteed. He had a dominant fee in MVP, ERA under two, strikeouts way up, and his walks way down. He's got big league stuff, he's got real stuff. If you're the Yankees, that's that's one of your rivals quietly kind of beefing up the rotation while you're still kind of in will see mode. And if you're the Mets, it's uh it's a starting arm that you were probably looking at that is now off the market. So Houston's out here future-proof in their staff, and both New York teams kind of just hoping things break right. Again, nothing crazy, nothing crazy to unpack yet, but it's another reminder that the arms race is happening still, even in a slow newsweek. So just wanted to mention that quickly. All right, hoops. Uh we'll start local with the Knicks, right? Because they just got hit with a little bit of a reality check after a pretty fun stretch that they were on here. You had that wild rematch with the Spurs, the NBA Cup final redo. Wemby goes out, drops a show. He drops 31 and 13 in 24 minutes, hits his 300th career three already, faster than any seven-footer ever. And then the entire arena freezes when he goes down with that non-contact left knee thing. Like that was his always that was always a big worry about him. He's so big and so skinny, you're worried about his knees. But just saw hyper extension, he grabs the knee, limps off, and uh, and every Knicks fan was quietly like, oh, okay, maybe uh maybe we can get back in this thing here. And they did, they made it a fight. The you know Brunson goes for 29, hits that petty end of regulation three after stripping the ball while the Spurs are celebrating, really ruined the spread for everybody else. Uh you had a couple other guys at 20, uh, but they came up short. 134, 132. This team has heart, but it needs a full roster kind of loss, right? So the good news on Wemby, the MRI comes back clean, no ligament damage, just hyperextension and soreness. Uh you know, look, they play in the West, so I don't know. I'm not rooting for injury ever. You know, and he's an alien. You want to see him play. So he's day-to-day right now, and it looks like the kind of injury that can just ruin a season, but it didn't. Instead, he's just gonna miss a little bit of time and keep moving. So that's a huge bullet. But then you roll right into the Hawks Knicks at the garden, and that was ugly. It was just ugly offensively. The Knicks got smoked, man. Atlanta wins 111-98, and they do something that nobody's done all year. They held the Knicks under 100. No Trey Young. Hawks still walk in and control it because Jalen Johnson decides to go for a triple-double. 18 points, 11 assists, 10 boards. Walker drops 23. Okongu adds another 23. I mean, the Knicks' shooting line tells the whole story, really. They just they could have beat him if they hit their shots, but they just couldn't. They go 36 for 97 on the night and 9 for 42 from 3. That's 21%. You're not beating anybody like that. I don't care who's coaching. I don't care if God was coaching. I mean, Brunson gets you 24, OG gives you 19 and 10, Bridges gives you 18, but no big cat, no Mitchell Robinson for rebounds, no Josh Hart. Big picture in the Mike Brown era. This isn't a really a uh sound the alarms week, but it's it's definitely uh, you know, your legs are cooked and your roster's not completely whole right now, week. You're short some guys right now, and that transitions into bench playing heavy minutes, and their legs are tired. And that's when the shots start not falling. The encouraging part is I mean, the structure is still there. They play hard, they rebound, they defend in stretches sometimes. And once they get full front court back, I mean, you can actually stagger these guys properly. Then we can judge the ceiling. And it looks like a high ceiling. Right now, it's just about not letting one cold night or one couple cold nights spiral into a whole narrative of we need to make moves, the roster's no good, da da da da. This team is good. It's just, you know, you go into uh a slump sometimes, you know? It is what it is. So then zooming out around the league, real quick, this is uh this is quietly turned into the protect your big man kind of week. We talked about Wem and Yama and the scare against the Knicks, hyperextended knee, blah blah blah blah. But then you got Nicola Jokic. And he hyperextends that knee after a teammate steps on his foot at the buzzer on the half, goes down grabbing it, limps off, and literally the whole arena goes quiet. Everyone in Denver is doing the same. Oh no, holding his knee and down. So the Nuggets come back the next day after the MRI, hyperextension, bone bruise, and he's gonna be re-evaluated in about four weeks. So, yeah, he probably misses about 16 games or so, and that's that's brutal for seating at a loaded Western conference, but it's not an ACL. It's not an MCL, it's not surgery. For a guy putting up basically 30, 12, and 11 on absurd efficiency, that's as good as an outcome as you can reasonably hope for once you see him on the floor grabbing his knee and rolling around. You know, Jokic isn't really a player that gets hurt, he's actually very durable most of his career. So to see him like that, it uh wasn't great. You even had Kevin Durant chiming in too. He basically said, Look, man, I've been There. You know, someone falls into your knee twice, and then suddenly people start throwing injury prone around. These are free plays, man. Stuff happens. Same deal with Joker. You can do everything right, you can be in a perfect position, your body is great, you're in good shape. But you know, if another 200-pound plus human being lands on your leg wrong, it's gonna it's gonna bark. So, you know, between Wemby scared, Jokic hitting pause on MVP level season, big cat sick, Mitchell Robinson always getting uh load managed, so to speak, the Knicks are grinding through injuries. The whole league is grinding through injuries. And then the Antros just quietly adding another arm while the New York teams sit on their hands. This whole NBA MLB corner kind of fits the bigger theme of where we're at right now. Early in the year, everybody's just trying to survive the weird stuff and set themselves up for when they're actually whole again. So on that note, we'll put a bow on the sports for this week. I'm gonna catch my breath, I'm gonna crack another beer. I would expect you to do the same. And on the other side, we'll we'll zoom out a little bit. We'll talk about the new year, the new slate, how it all ties back to us all actually trying to get better at our own lives. Not just yelling about the box course. Show's wrapping up, keep it right here. Yeah, I uh I think that's where we wrap this up. I think this is uh good a spot as any. Thanks for rocking with me today. Seriously. We uh we covered a lot. Jets and Giants pain therapy, got Lamar and Rogers playing for their football lives, Indiana turning Bama into a meme, Oregon hitting the kill switch on Texas Tech. Wemby scares, joke ex D, whole lot of tickets getting punched or ripped up along the way, too. And all that kind of loops back to where we uh where we started this episode. New year, new slate. Not the corny new year, new me Instagram caption, but that uh that quiet promise you make to yourself that uh, yeah, you know I am actually gonna change some stuff. And you see it with these teams. The Jets have to decide if they're really gonna reset and build something around a real quarterback instead of some duct tape. The Giants have to be honest that they already did the hard part and they found the guy. And now it's about stacking smart decisions around him. Indiana was the biggest punchline in the Big Ten for decades, and now they're steamrolling Alabama in the Rose Bowl. That didn't happen by accident. Somebody in the building decided, you know what, we're not gonna be the same old Indiana anymore. That's the that's the football version of the same thing that we're all trying to do in January. You might be sitting there feeling, I don't know, stuck in a job you hate, or in a routine that makes every day just feel the same. But usually, usually the moment you feel the most fear that, oh man, can I can I actually do this kind of feeling? Yeah, that's exactly when you're on the right path. That's exactly when you should leap. I always come back to this line. This isn't the dress rehearsal, this is the play. It's one night only, so go make the best of it. There's no practice run where you get to come back at 80 and say, okay, now I'm really ready to live it up. This is it. This day, this week, this year, whatever it is that you've been thinking about doing. Shit, starting a podcast, switching jobs, going back to school, getting healthy, fixing a relationship, or walking away from a bad one. Take one real step towards it. Not a resolution that you forget about in two weeks. One action. It gets easier every day. The hard part is doing it every day, right? So while you're doing that, I'll keep holding up the sports side of the mirror every week. The stories, the screw-ups, the little moments of greatness, and we'll figure it out together. Couple quick housekeeping things before I uh before I get out of here. If you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend. Please drop a rating, throw up a review, all that good stuff, follow. You know, it really does help a lot more than you think. It boosts the show, it gets it up towards the uh front page. And make sure you follow the show on the socials. Hop in the DMs, let me know what you liked, let me know what you hated, what you want more of. You know, Jets Ping, Giants Optimism, College Playoff Talk, Gambling Angles, whatever. I read all that stuff. I use it. This is our show, you know? And as always, spread good energy this week. Tell somebody you love them, check in on a friend that you haven't talked to in a little while. New year new sleigh, right? You're not stuck where you were in 2025 unless you decide to stay there. I appreciate you listening. I am Ian Rice. This has been episode 46 of Rice on the Mics. We'll do it again next week.