Chris Harris, His New Novel, and Thoughts on the 2026 NFL Season

**Matt Waldman** (0:00)
All right, welcome, everybody. This is a special edition here. Usually, I get a chance to be on with Chris Harris on his show, which is just an awesome show. And he's always been so generous with his time and having me on. And it's been fun to be able to, every once in a while, we get a chance to catch up with Chris here. And Chris has a book that we're gonna be talking about that has come out, that's been published. And I've been reading it for about the past four or five weeks. Things slowed down a little bit for me because Chris understands, we know what goes on in August.
But I've been really enjoying it. We're gonna talk about that. And then we're gonna talk about the season coming up for 2026 But welcome Chris, it's always a pleasure, man.

**Chris Harris** (0:43)
It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. And it's, you know, we are simpatico. That's all I know about you and me is that we've been friends for a long time and we get along. And I mean, frankly, you're the best in the business at what you do. And the fact that I get to leech off of your knowledge, both in my own drafting life, my own personal fantasy life, and then also on my show is my honor, believe me.

**Matt Waldman** (1:09)
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, it's a mutual admiration society because I, the most fervent fans that that say, yeah, I heard about you from it's from your show. I mean, the yacht possums are just like, they love you. They absolutely love you. And they, and so like they're, when they write me, they're so excited and they're like, and usually what I hear is, you know, you know, you have your own podcast. We have our own podcast and stuff like that, but I laugh. But what it shows me is how much they love your show because they're always like, when are you coming back on Chris?
Like, you know, they're like, you know, like, yeah, whatever. But when are you coming back on Chris's show? It's like, I laugh how that goes. But, you know, it's been fun to learn about that you're, you know, that you're also a novelist and that you've published, what is it, four or five books now at this point.

**Chris Harris** (2:07)
This is five.

**Matt Waldman** (2:07)
This is five.

**Chris Harris** (2:08)
Yeah.

**Matt Waldman** (2:10)
So what we're looking at here is Pound Foolish. And so, you know, this is, yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's kind of a noir, it's a mystery. You have, it's done set with football. So it's, it's fun in the sense that you, you start reading about football with this, but it's done like in the beginning with the series of vignettes where you're kind of seeing the landscape of where the, the plot unfolds and it's, and it's a lot of fun to at first you read it that way and it gives you this sense from like the top down or from really every different places. But you see, you know, there's the commissioner, there's the, you know, there's, there's kind of like your, your retired player who, everybody only asks them about what you would expect, you know, and you kind of see that point of view. But then you see points of view of people who are on the kind of the periphery of football. And it just gives you a landscape of what this environment is about and the writing is, is so good. It's one of those things where, yeah, absolutely. I mean, you, one of my favorite parts of it, and I'm gonna let you talk cause I'm running my mouth with it, but it's one of my favorite parts was you're trying to basically, they're trying to solve a series of murders of women. And it's a, they think as a serial killer, possibly lurking on a team in Detroit and they call in the, the, the brass for the team and the security for the team calls in a former player who was a popular kind of underdog kind of, kind of player of the type of fan favorite that you, you know, like a Julian Edelman type, you know, but maybe not quite as good as Julian Edelman. I don't know, you know, but that was kind of the impression I got, you know, maybe not, but like that. And he's, and he's called to basically kind of observe what's going on and investigate some, but it's really kind of observant. He knows he's, he's smart enough to know that there's more going on here about why they called him and all of that. So it's fun. But there's a scene where there's some scenes where like somebody talks about being a murderer and you think it's actually one thing and it turns out to be completely different and kind of, and heartbreaking and touching, you know, in just a vignette. And it kind of reminds me of like, oh, what's his name?