Power Hour 4! Ranking All 32 Teams with Bill Simmons

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
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**Mina Kimes** (0:34)
Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny. Power Hour. This is Power Hour 4
Last week, I did the rankings, actually. I gave my thoughts. And this week, as promised, I am joined by friend of the show, second appearance, it's been a long time, Bill Simmons.

**Bill Simmons** (0:52)
What was the first appearance? Was that during the COVID era? Because I don't remember anything in 2020 or 2021

**Mina Kimes** (0:57)
I think it was during the COVID era. I don't even remember what we talked about. Zero memory, but I remember you did come on once. And it's been a while, so I'm hoping for the Simmons bump.

**Bill Simmons** (1:06)
The Simmons bump. It is a famous bump at ESPN. Yeah, I don't remember, I was thinking about doing a couple of NBA redraftables, and I apparently did like 14 of them in 2020 and have no recollection of any of them. So I'm going to listen to them like it's new content.

**Mina Kimes** (1:20)
By the way, if you are listening to this, this means our rewatchables episode of Hitch has come out. So go check that out on the rewatchables. That was a lot of fun.

**Bill Simmons** (1:28)
You know, inadvertently, you've, you've kind of cornered the rom-com corner for us.

**Mina Kimes** (1:33)
I think you're gonna say the pickup artist corner because that's my now.

**Bill Simmons** (1:38)
Maybe that's your corner. Yeah, I got to get you on for like an action movie or a thriller or something to mix it up. So you don't get pigeonholed in the rewatchables.

**Mina Kimes** (1:45)
I think Chris Ryan, Sean and I did The Rock without you.

**Bill Simmons** (1:50)
No, I was on that one.

**Mina Kimes** (1:52)
Okay. Okay. So I've done one. Yeah. But I am always I love action movies. I love sci-fi. I know.
All right. Well, go check that out. You guys know how this one works. I give Bill two choices for every slot. He picks a team that just simply he thinks is going to be the best, not the best record. So you don't get a divisional bump from being the NFC South or whatever. You're punishing the Pats for playing a harder schedule. Purely who you think is going to be the best.
Soup to nuts. I'm going to start by giving the same choice I've given everyone because I just can't find a reason not to give this choice. I think it would be disingenuous of me to start with anyone but the Rams and the Seahawks. Do you agree with that?

**Bill Simmons** (2:31)
I do. We should mention, you tried to get me to do this before I had done any NFL prep. And you were like, it's fine. It's fine. It's like, how is this going to be fine? This is you have a real podcast that runs on an ESPN channel, and I'm not just going to come on and talk out of my butt for an hour. Like let me do a week of prep.

**Mina Kimes** (2:49)
Why don't you walk people through your prep? Because you have a very you have like a specific process you do every year.

**Bill Simmons** (2:54)
I do. I have a whole it's it's really kind of psychotic, but it's like a seven week process. I went to Hawaii with my wife and like for three hours that I was going through, I like to type in the schedule, actually type it in because it makes me think about the games and the matchups as I do it.
And then I do this weird player ranking system, which is my fourth year. And it's been pretty good with trying to figure out the best teams I go through. I do buy a position. The Jeremy Fowler thing is really helpful with the top 10

**Mina Kimes** (3:24)
Yeah.

**Bill Simmons** (3:25)
Where he does the top 10 freaks position because I have it anyway. And then I like to see what other people think.

**Mina Kimes** (3:30)
Those are good rankings. I mean, like everybody always craps on them. And then you see the NFL 100 and you're like, maybe actually the executives and coaches do a good job ranking these players because they're usually right.