Eagles

Mike Florio Says We’re “Deliberately Distorting” His Conversation with Dan Patrick on the Jordan Davis Touchdown and Sports Betting

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Sep 25th, 2025 · 9:34 AM EDT

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We did a Wednesday story, titled Jordan Davis Touchdown Leads this Week’s Episode of “What the Hell is Mike Florio Talking About?”. The genesis is a Florio appearance on Dan Patrick’s show, in which he said the following about the Thicc Six:

“Jordan Davis, here’s the reality, this is the direct result of the NFL going from hating and shunning anything to do with gambling, to jumping right in bed and loading the pockets. They’re the guy where, you know the old game show when you go into the booth and money is flying everywhere, they’re grabbing as many dollars as they can while they’re there, but yeah, we’re all aware now of the point spread. We’re all aware of the ramification. And how many millions of dollars changed hands because Jordan Davis decided to do, not the smart thing. The smart thing – the game’s over, just fall down, you got the win. In theory somebody comes up from behind and does the Don Beebe / Leon Lett thing, the ball comes out the Rams take it the other way. The smart thing to do is to go down. He runs it in for a touchdown, the Eagles cover. Uh oh! It was perfectly legitimate. But when you open Pandora’s Box, this is the kind of stuff that flies out. And people are aware of this. It’s just part of the stuff the NFL needs to be concerned about, and sometimes I wonder, Dan, are they as concerned as they should be.”

Florio then came out to criticize the response, saying that “media people” are “deliberately distorting” the conversation:

The message was as clear as can be? Well let’s look at the second half of the video clip and see if it adds anything at all to the context:

(follow up question, what changed about the NFL’s stance on gambling)

“Well, they were holding the rope as tightly as they could against gambling. When different states were trying to change the federal law from 1992, that basically said no states other than the states that currently have it, Nevada, can have sports wagering. That became different levels and types of legal challenges until New Jersey finally won. But back in the days when the NFL was fighting it, that’s when the commissioner would actually say, paraphrasing, ‘if legalized gambling is widespread, normal incidents of the game will be suspected to have been influenced by other things.’ Whether it’s a bad call, or a guy not going down when basic football expectations would be you’ve won the game, go down. But the normal instances of the game become fodder for ‘the fix is in.’ Once they recognized, I believe, how much money could be made – and the thing that never gets talked about is the fact that owners are separately allowed to own up to 5% of a company that owns a sportsbook, and they won’t tell you who owns what, but they’re allowed to be the house, too. They don’t just have the sponsorships with all of the sportsbooks… that’s where the money is. It’s always follow the money. And I’m a Capitalist, I’m not saying it’s wrong, but that’s what happened. They realized,’ you know what, we hated this, we fought against it, if it’s going to be inevitable, let’s turn it into a revenue stream. And they’ve turned it into a massive revenue stream.”

Yeah, okay, but what does this have to do with the Jordan Davis play? Is Florio’s stance that people are going to say “the fix is in” because a 330-pound lineman runs back a blocked punt for a touchdown, covering the -3.5 point spread in the process?

Let’s be real about this –

How many Eagles fans and Rams fans, in your mind, were thinking about the spread when Davis was hauling ass down the field to end the game? Probably close to zero. I’m willing to bet that 99.999% of Birds were going bonkers, either jumping up off the couch or high-fiving their buddies or similar. And 99.9999% of Rams fans slumped into their recliner, defeated. Similarly, there’s a less than zero chance that Davis or anybody on either team was thinking about the spread. Nor was Davis thinking about going down and making “the right play.” You have a big man block a field goal and he’s got so much adrenaline pumping that he just wants to take the uber-rare opportunity to get into the end zone. He’s thinking about one thing and one thing only, and anybody who has played a sport at any level knows how the heat of the moment leads to tunnel vision.

Plus, as we mentioned on Wednesday, the discussions about making the smart play exist with or without legal sports betting. You could argue about Davis falling on the ball or running it back in 1995 the same as you could talk about it in 2025, so that point is moot.

Now, if you go national, and you have a neutral fan with money on the game, maybe they’re grumbling about the bad beat. Maybe there’s some kook on Facebook who says the NFL is scripted. But who gives a fuck about them anyway? Nobody cares what those people say. Pandora’s Box may have been opened, but what came out of it isn’t any more annoying than your idiot high school friend in the group text saying “I want the Falcons to win because I have Kyle Pitts on my fantasy team.” That is infinitely more irksome than some people griping about a backdoor cover on Twitter. And even if you took gambling away, and put all the conspiratorial blathering back into Pandora’s Box, people would still complain about their team’s play calling or drafting or whatever, so does any of this really matter that much?

Again, like most things with Mike Florio, he takes a nothing burger and tries to make a big deal out of it, same as the five people crying “conspiracy!” after Jordan Davis hit the goal line on Sunday.

EDIT – just wanna sneak this in here: