Friday Four-Pack 10.25.24

Bill Belichick Revenge Tour rolls on. Red Sox doc is 🔥. A former WEEI host talks about his future. NFL Picks!

I’d love to tell you that Jared Carrabis and countless others on social media are overrating the 2004 Red Sox documentary, The Comeback, released earlier this week on Netflix. I didn’t buy the hype on Tony Romo in the broadcast booth and now the rest of the world has come around. I’ve heard Jurassic Park was a timeless classic - I wouldn’t know as I’ve never seen it. When something is AWESOME, my nature is to go the other way or avoid it altogether.

But in this case, the chorus of Red Sox fans praising the three-part, three-hour documentary have it right.

It’s excellent. As far as documentaries go, it ain’t The King of Kong : Fistful of Quarters. But it’s still very good.

Great nostalgia
Fleet Bank signs. The old Green Monster with the netting. Jerry Trupiano on the call for a lot of the big moments. Real Red Sox/Yankees hate. Well, sports hate, anyways. Nice little time machine to the early 2000s.

Deep story-telling
The signing of Curt Schilling. The Nomar Trade. The almost A-Rod move. They could have skimped over those and played more highlights, but that was all covered in detail.

All-Star interviews
As I wrote a few weeks ago, Schilling “has been cast aside by the team and fans because they don’t like his politics. Or that mean meme he had about journalists 🙄🙄🙄. Or because his video game business failed in Rhode Island. Or most recently, when he revealed publicly that Tim Wakefield was battling cancer, something Schilling said back in March “he’ll forever regret.”

That was a bad look from Schilling, but people make mistakes. He was one of the main reasons the team won in 2004 and because of shit off the field, he’s become a pariah locally and nationally. He should have been a lock for the Hall of Fame as the best postseason pitcher of his generation. I don’t believe the reasons he’s not in have anything to do with baseball, which is sad.”

It was great to see him in this and a reminder that the 2004 team doesn’t win anything without him.

Pedro, Ortiz, Theo, D-Lowe…all the stars were out. Kevin Millar, shoutout to former weekly guest of Mut and Merloni, was good. Credit to Grady Little for sitting down to eat shit for keeping Pedro in against the Yankees in 2003.

And I thought they were all pretty candid, especially Theo. Not a lot of “filler” interviews, for the most part.

Good video
Not just the TV highlights but also the home video stuff from the locker room, especially from the 2004 ALCS.

A few nitpicks
Like most people, I was disappointed Nomar didn’t agree to be part of the doc. I get the sense that Boston still loves Nomar. He got a standing ovation when he returned as a player in 2009. When he was an ESPN analyst in 2010, there was a pregame celebration of his time in Boston. I mean, he did sign a one-day contract to retire as a member of the Red Sox. He should have sat down for the documentary - just having that old WEEI sound and his interaction with the media was not enough. I wish he could have been talked into it.

Sox owner Tom Werner claiming when the first met Grady Little “he knew he’d eventually make a big mistake” was bullshit. Werner was one of the few guys who comes across as unlikeable in the doc.

A real ‘inside baseball’ nitpick - I wish they would have identified Dale and Neumy, rather than just ‘WEEI’ when they played those old clips of Nomar calling into their show - a wild moment looking back. Or had identified the announcers (Castig, Trupiano, Buck) during their calls. Kind of lazy.

Speaking of laziness, they made it seem like those fan “calls” to WEEI were authentic, the same way “The Dyntasy” tried to do with sports radio callers. I assume they were fake, right? They sounded 100% fake. And bad.

Did we really need the Fenway employee telling us about all the Red Sox failures before 2004? I think we’ve done that.

It’s well done. But if you’re like me, you’ll be reminded that baseball will never matter that much in Boston again, which is sad. And you’ll see an ownership group that was OBSESSED with winning during that time. Today, 20 years later, they’re clearly more concerned with budgets and bottom lines than division titles and World Series trophies.

Even with that reality, it’s well worth the three-hour investment if you’re a Red Sox fan.

Meanwhile, The Bill Belichick Revenge Tour rolls on. We’ve got media and sports betting notes. And we try to go 3-0 again on our NFL Picks.

All ahead in today’s Four-Pack.

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On the Bill Belichick Revenge Tour…

🎥 Underdog’s Coach with Bill Belichick via Boorish_Sports

I wondered which media member Bill Belichick would eventually confide in when he decided to respond to just how “classy” Robert Kraft and the Patriots were in his firing earlier this year.

Turns out he’s just going to do it himself.

After mostly avoiding talking about his former team the first seven weeks of the season, Belichick unloaded this week after their embarrassing loss to the Jags in London.

It started Monday with Pat McAfee when he defended the Pats players, ripped Jerod Mayo, and cited stats in his appearance there.

It continued Tuesday when he opposed Mayo’s approach on the Let’s Go Podcast with Tom Brady and Brady barnacle Jim Gray. And mentioned how the team had resigned all of “his” guys.

Belichick capped off the week with the above clip where he mentions “questions” about the Patriots’ coach and lets his media mouthpiece Mike Lombardi talk about riding a bike in the locker room, which I guess is the sign of a soft team.

It’s been great for sports talk radio in Boston and has even become a national talking point (I won’t be shocked when it’s a huge topic on the Sunday morning preshows). But two things can be true about Belichick’s approach to talking about his former team this week.

1. It’s totally warranted. We covered this all last week, but the team went out of their way to bury Bill on his exit, on and off the record. I would not be surprised to find out Belichick was especially pissed about new GM Eliot Wolf talking this spring about changing the culture and the team having “Less of a hard-ass vibe,” with Wolf and Mayo running things. Maybe Bill believes he’d be the Falcons head coach if not for Kraft ripping him to Atlanta owner Arthur Blank, as reported by ESPN. He’s kicking them while they’re down, just as they did to him.

2. It’s extremely petty. Bill chose violence rather than the high road. Fine. But ignoring the team after their big upset win Week 1 over the Bengals, only to pile on this week…that’s Petty 101. In the case of citing stats to show how much better his team was at stopping the run last season, Belichick conveniently left out that his team had Christian Barmore, Matthew Judon, Jabril Peppers, and Ja'Whaun Bentley.
   
   The guy who famously said “Stats are for losers,” is now using stats to bash his old team. And fudging the details of those stats to help make his point!

The team brought this on themselves. Yes, it was time to move on from Belichick. But that way it was handled…like the way they secretly celebrated his departure and ownership’s quiet celebration of getting their team back from the mean ole’ coach…yeah that led to this Revenge Tour. Big miss by Kraft, Wolf, and Co.

I don’t blame Bill for doing this. I’m entertained by it. But it doesn't make it any less petty.

Speaking of his old team…

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On the State of the Patriots…

$56 bucks. Yikes.

That’s the cheapest Friday morning “get-in price” I could find for Pats/Jets this weekend at Gillette Stadium.

There are 200-level seats for under $90. That’s pretty rare. And if you use Ticketmaster and zoom in on the seating you can see that not only are there plenty of resale tickets available, but there are also plenty of tickets direct from the team for face value.

The team - and the market for their tickets - is a disaster.

As it relates to Belichick, the guy they hired to succeed him looks overwhelmed by the job less than 10 months in.

For the record, I was never in the camp of hiring Mayo. From last November

I don’t think you’re getting Kyle Shanahan. But is Ben Johnson the next Kyle Shanahan? If not, who is? Find that guy. With the league’s constant push for offense, it seems imperative to get a coach on that side of the ball.

I wanted Johnson. Or Mike Vrabel. The Krafts wanted Mayo. They can’t be thrilled by what they’re watching.

Off the field, one week he’s Mr. Transparency and the next he’s not talking about Drake Maye’s MRI. On Sunday in London the team is soft but come Monday morning on WEEI, the team isn’t soft, they’re just playing soft. He doesn’t seem to know which way is up.

On the field, his defense stinks and is getting worse by the week: they sit 30th of 32 teams in the DVOA defensive rankings and show no signs of getting better. One media member asked him this week if he planned on ever doing any actual coaching on the sideline and it’s a good point - every shot of him he’s just staring out the field with his headset on.

The dysfunction is loud and clear in the receiver room, where one guy says he’s too good to have to ask for the ball so much (Kayshon Boutte) and another guy is begging to be traded (KJ Osborn). That’s forgetting the guy in concussion protocol who says he has the best hands in the league but drops everything (Ja’Lynn Polk).

The team is the clear +210 favorite on DraftKings to have the worst record in the NFL. They might go 1-16, that’s in play.

ALL THAT BEING SAID…unless there is some MAJOR off-the-field issue for Mayo, he will not be fired.

This is Robert Kraft’s hand-picked guy. His ego is too big to bail after just one season, even if that season results in just a handful of wins. All that bluster about changing the culture by elevating Mayo (and Wolf) just to move on after one season? No. Shot.

Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt is the most likely scapegoat but even that comes with issues. Do you really want to shuffle around OCs with a young quarterback who looks like one of the lone bright spots on the team? But after his great script last week, the Van Pelt game plan was terrible. Mix in a pass occasionally on first down, Alex.

A coordinator. Some from office people. Those are the changes you’ll get after the season. It’s frustrating, I get it. But no matter how low the ticket prices get, it seems likely the hand-picked head coach will get more than just a season at the helm.

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On your sports media and sports betting notebook…

🎥 Thanks to Boston Media Critic for the clip

➡️It’s been a while since one Boston radio show consistently attacked another. Kirk & Callahan v. Toucher and Rich was the most recent “radio war” I can remember on the sports side. And it was entertaining, with both shows getting involved.

This one is completely one-sided, with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Fred Toucher mocking his former co-host Rich Shertenlieb on almost a daily basis.

The current bit has expanded to include mid-day host Scott Zolak. Zo calls in to request Fred play a song, a clear shot at Shertenlieb’s show on WZLX adding four songs per hour to what was just a morning talk show when it launched in the spring.

“Pretty soon it will be seven songs,” Fred says in the clip. “That’s what the head honcho here says…That might not be a job in January and I’m not being a dick.”

I mean, he is being a dick, but he might be right.

I’m told - as I wrote here a few weeks ago - the show itself continues to be frustrated by the music. They’re hopeful that management will relent and let them return to being strictly a talk show. We’ll see if management relents or points to the comically low ratings as a reason to stick with the music.

I got a text from a radio professional out of the market telling me that on Monday morning, he/she tuned into Rich’s show, only to hear three songs in a row. I listened a lot this week and I’m hearing what I’ve heard since September: something like song, quick talk segment, commercial, song, longer talk segment, commercial, song, quick talk, commercial, top of the hour, song. Consecutive songs would be a big change and maybe that’s happening, but I didn’t hear it. And maybe Fred is right and more music is coming. We’ll see.

That being said, the format above doesn't work. Rich will talk about a subject, then ask for calls on it going into break, but then come back with music. Sometimes the crew gets back to the original topic, other times it’s off to the next. The show comes across as scattershot most of the time. That’s probably a combination of both the current format and Rich’s hosting style.

I don’t know if/when WZLX will change Rich’s show. But as long as Fred keeps getting 24-share weekly ratings reports, I know we’ll keep getting his mocking of Rich.

➡️ Mentioned last week former WEEI host Christian Fauria has a new podcast. His former co-host Andy Gresh is finally talking about his own future. Gresh is part of a long (too long) profile this morning on Barrett Media. Set aside a few hours if you plan on reading it.

Gresh comes off like a radio robot - like someone being careful because he wants to continue to work in radio. Nothing about why the show failed or what he could have done better. He does take one not-so-subtle shot at WEEI market manager Mike Thomas and program director Ken Laird. From the PR piece profile -

Earlier in the year, there were rumors that longtime 98.5 The Sports Hub morning host Rich Shertenlieb would join WEEI to host afternoon drive. Former WEEI host Kirk Minihane stated that he had heard Shertenlieb would work with Gresh, a prospective pairing he declared would be awful in a show they would seek to ruin. A few months later, Shertenlieb announced that he was joining classic rock station WZLX to host an eponymous morning drive show. Gresh is happy for his former colleague whom he considers a friend and keeps in touch. The rumor of working together, however, was entirely false.

“It would have been nice if someone just would have been like, ‘No, no, no, that’s not happening,’ but instead, it just kind of hung out there, so again, it is what it is,” Gresh said. “Some people will get upset because they think things are getting out, and some people will be upset because it’s like, ‘Wait a minute. We’re not doing this, so why are you letting that hang out there?’”

As someone who read in the Boston Herald he was getting fired myself, I get that frustration.

As far as what’s next for Gresh?

Gresh expects to start hosting part time again on SiriusXM and potentially in Providence as well. At the same time, Gresh is thinking beyond these platforms and intends to become more involved in sports betting to resolve what he refers to as “an identity crisis” in how to reach the average person.

Looking forward to an update soon on his promised YouTube page.

➡️ "Where are all the college basketball fans?”

That is one of the famous quotes from former WEEI nighttime host, Ted Sarandis. Ted was a Boston radio staple at night as well as before and after RedSox & Celtics games. I was a proud part of his Ted Nation and listened to hours and hours of his show, which ran from 1992 to 2005. He was a character and had a hell of a run.

Ted did some radio after WEEI, including a short stint at The Sports Hub.

Today he’s in Florida, where he’s running for a seat on the Port of Palm Beach Commission seat. Good for Ted.

You can check out his campaign platform at VoteTed.net. “Wow!”

➡️A piece of failed equipment led to less-than-ideal audio for portions of Week 8 of Sportsbook Live from Mohegan Sun. But there’s good sports betting content there, including World Series bets and NFL and College Football Plays for the weekend. If you’re betting this weekend, I hope you’ll watch. Our “Best Bets,” for whatever that’s worth, are in the final 20 minutes of the show.

➡️When it comes to real vs. fake reports and having some fun, some people get it. Others don't.

➡️Jockey Luan Machado made a mistake. He misjudged the finish line in a race at Keeneland last week and cost his mount a win. In the process, he costs bettors thousands of dollars. I wrote last week he deserved at least a 30-day suspension for his mistake. Unlike other sports, horse racing is a betting game: the sport is fueled by the people who bet on it. If starting tomorrow you could not bet on an NFL game or an NBA game, the seats would still be packed and people would still watch on TV. If you take the gambling out of racing and start charging people to just go in and watch the races, there is no sport in the United States, period. So I was floored when Friday afternoon, Machado was given just a three-day suspension and a fine for his flub. I was then flabbergasted when “a panel of racing experts voted Machado Jockey of the Week.” 🙄🙄🙄 What a middle finger to the people betting on the game. On an almost daily basis, the sport continues to belittle the people who bet their hard-earned money on it, and this is just the latest example.

➡️I wish I knew more about cryptocurrency so I could explain it better, but apparently (and allegedly) a sports betting influencer named Taylor Mathis lost her partnership deal with DraftKings because she was gifted a crypto coin, then sold it, only to then buy it back. I admit, I don’t quite get it. Just a few months ago she turned the art of walking and talking about sports betting into a big deal with DraftKings. Now she protected her posts and removed DraftKings from her bio. A reminder to be careful out there in the sports betting, social media, and crypto streets. Vegas Slots Online has the full story.

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On our Week 8 NFL Picks…Presented by Sharp Hunter

Week 7: 3-0 🔥💰✅🔥💰✅🔥💰✅

Did I do that correctly, ‘sports betting social media???’ I forget how many useless emojis I’m supposed to use when I pick a public winner.

Nice bounceback for the picks. Road favorites continue to dominate, going 16-2 the last three weeks before the Vikings lost Thursday night to the Rams.

Season Record: 12-9 (57.1%)

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The Side
Cowboys +4.5 at 49ers (ESPN Bet, -110)
The 49ers have a bunch of injury issues. As of Friday morning, WRs Deebo Samuel and Jauan Jennings appear questionable at best for Sunday night. Christian McCaffery seems unlikely to return here. With their bye week next week, it won’t surprise me if the Niners are conservative with their guys and point to November 10th as a big return date. It appears Brock Purdy will be quarterbacking an offense nowhere near 100%. Should note, if you care about such things, their kicker is still out and they’ve had kicking issues in his absence.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys should be extra-motivated coming off the beatdown at the hands of the Lions and then a bye week filled with drama. The Dallas defense should get reinforcements this week in the form of DT Jordan Phillips. Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy has done the most with his extra time recently. Per Action Network, McCarthy is the most profitable coach in the NFL with extended rest dating back to 2003, with an ATS record of 38-23-3 (62%). He’s a solid 13-5 ATS as the Dallas coach with extended rest.

The Total
Chargers v. Saints U41 (DK, -108)
As usual, I’m looking for slow teams and good defenses for these under plays. The Chargers are the second-slowest team (FTN’s sec/snap rating) in the entire NFL in neutral situations. Jim Harbaugh’s teams usually play slow and this one is no exception. They also boast the NFL’s #8 DVOA defense coming in. Star DE Joey Bosa practiced on Wednesday and would boost the Chargers’ D upfront.

The defense gets to attack rookie Spencer Rattler, who has five turnovers in his two starts.

Justin Herbert games have a massive UNDER trend. From Action Network, “Over the last two seasons, the under is 15-4 in Herbert’s 19 starts – the most profitable QB to the under in that span. Last three years, that is still 25-12 to the under. The under is 15-2 in Herbert’s last 17 starts since the first few weeks of the regular season last year.

The pace of this game looking slow, the Chargers’ defense and the state of the Saints’ offense are why I like the under. But I gotta admit, that’s a hard trend to ignore. I will note, this might tick up before Sunday and get us a better number.

The Prop
Jamar Chase O80.0 REC yards (DK ALT LINE +110)
I spent a lot of time looking for a prop I loved and this is the closest thing. The Bengals offense is rounding into form and catches the #26 DVOA pass defense in the NFL. On top of that, the Eagles rank #32 DVOA against opposing #1 WR.

Chase has gone over this number three times this season and came close (72 yards) a fourth time. The Bengals are throwing it as much or more than almost any team in the NFL and they’re likely to chuck it around here. Chase should benefit from a close game with lots of targets and pass attempts. A strong DFS play, too.

We have for sure said it all.

Check back Sunday morning for betting updates. Busy week next week with a Breeders’ Cup Podcast on Thursday, Four-Pack on Friday, and Breeders’ Cup Picks on Saturday. Make sure you’re subscribed!

And share this post because as you know sharing…is caring.

Good luck with all your bets. Thanks for reading.

Good weekend.