The Ringer NFL Show

Listing prop bets for 30 minutes is not the greatest way to preview a weekend of football. Analysis can be a bit surface level/vibes based especially the Nora segments on Wednesdays. The YouTube film breakdowns were the best thing they had going so hopefully someone picks that back up. Otherwise hosts are enjoyable enough.

I *really* have not liked the standalone Nora pods from this season. They are ridiculously over-produced and over-scripted. Music is hugely distracting. The sexuality of Josh Allen? Really? Nora should either be on the pod full-time like past years or make a clean break and just do pop stuff full time for The Ringer if that’s what she wants to do. I get that The Ringer’s brand is the nexus of culture and sports, and that’s fine, Bill’s made a huge profit on it, but this feed usually focuses more on the sports side. Regular pod is fine. Which I guess means I’m in the minority of recent reviews? Hah. I’m nice, so, still five stars.

It’s obvious that everyone puts effort into this show, but limit your dosing because it dampens the joy of the game. Kapadia and Princiotti seem to genuinely love the variability and narratives of an NFL season, but it’s unclear why the Wet Blanket Brothers (Ruiz and Lee) bother watching games. If a season-long outcome fails to match their priors, they struggle to to adjust and are surprisingly dogmatic when drawing inference from film and football statistics (which are notoriously poor in their predictive value). As a gambler, proceed with caution. As a fan, you’ll probably find more joy in a winning season by listening elsewhere.

Steven Ruiz is impressively bad at this. I’d rather not let the “one” bring down the “many”, but that’s just how bad he is to even make that a possibility.