Fantasy Football Daily - A Discussion on the Scouting Process with Lance Zierlein | On the Clock! NFL Draft Podcast
Episode Date: March 24, 2023In a massive edition of On the Clock!, Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) is thrilled to have Lance Zierlein (@LanceZierlein) of @NFL on the show for an in-depth discussion about the NFL Draft scouting ...process. Lance then throws a bone to fantasy players with a late-round TE sleeper for dynasty enthusiasts. Don't miss this. BRETT WHITEFIELD'S 2023 NFL DRAFT PROSPECT GUIDE IS FREE TO READ WITH A NO-CHARGE LOGIN AT FANTASY POINTS. Interested in playing Best Ball in 2023? There's no better place than Underdog Fantasy. Use our code FANTASYPTS to sign up for a new account at Underdog, and not only will you get a 100% deposit match up to $100... but you'll get a Fantasy Points Standard subscription for only $5! https://www.fantasypoints.com/underdog --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome in to another episode of On the Clock.
I am your host, Brett Whitefield.
And today we are joined by a juggernaut
in the business.
Mr. Lance Zeerline from NFL.com.
How are you, Lance?
I'm doing good. How are you?
I'm doing great.
I'm very.
excited that we were able to get this on the books. I've been kind of pestering you for a
couple weeks here trying to get a day locked in. So I'm very thankful. We got something done here.
Yeah. I just stay pretty busy. So this is the time of year where this is the time of year
where it slows down after the combine, but I'm still trying to track down, you know, I'm still
trying to track down my last 120 or so odd players that have to write up. So, and then I have
articles that start popping up like I got to finish an article tonight about position depth
for every position you know what are the in order what are the the deepest yeah the deepest position
grouping so yeah it's just uh with the regular schedule of things that I put off for the last five
months family stuff and then trying to get this yeah it's hard to get me nailed down but but I'm here
now ready to roll heck yeah man so I'd love to pick your brain about your process how many guys
you end up writing up?
It'll be anywhere between 480 and 500.
That is insane.
Yeah, that's a lot.
I'm doing the prospect guide here at FantasyPoint.com,
and my goal is like 150 to 200.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm going to write up basically almost two times the amount of players who are drafted.
So there's a lot of, you know, and it's amazing.
I'll write that many players, and I still see guys on the free agent list,
on the undrafted free agent list who I don't know.
I just think, how are there so many,
there are guys who will make a team who I don't know who are undrafted free agents.
So, you know, I don't have time to write up any more players
than I already write up as it is.
But, you know, you try to do your best job you can to find, you know,
you write every combine player up and I write every senior bowl player up.
Usually senior bowl players are combine players,
and this year they had some who didn't make the combine and probably should have.
And, you know, I have to get through NFLPA and East West games and find the best players there and then find the not so best players because we're filling out 500.
And then I check in with the pro day testing and I go look for certain types of testers.
And when I find those testers, I need to go take a look at what their production was.
And if it's good enough, then I'm going to take.
And it doesn't have to be great.
It just has to be an explosive athlete.
Then I'm going to go write them up as well.
Because those are guys like, I found Austin Echler was on the last 20 guys I wrote up the year he came out.
And that's because maybe last 25 guys because he had this great testing, pro day testing.
And I tried to find tape.
And it was like impossible.
I mean, I didn't have any on my system.
I couldn't find, I found one game on YouTube that I, the school, you know, like broadcast with students that broadcast.
the game and I watched that and I already knew he was an explosive tester and I just wanted to
verify it on tape and so I wrote him up off of this one game that I had and his athletic testing
but we all know that you know in the world of football he's become a major major player I remember
reaching out to a team asking if they had heard about him or seen him and they said no but I saw
his testing and the guy said do you find any tape and I said yeah I found you know I found a game
but it wasn't really on tape.
And I said he's worth looking at for sure.
And the team was not the Chargers, by the way.
It was an NFC team that the guy I spoke with in the front office.
But yeah, to me, this is kind of one of the fun parts now
is hunting down players who are going to be the next diamonds in the rough
that come out of nowhere.
Yeah, that would be fascinating.
Maybe one day I'll get to the point where I'm doing that many guys.
but for me, I'm just, you know, I get to like, you know,
first four or five rounds usually worth the guys and, you know,
yeah, if you don't have to, you know, if there's not a reason for you to,
I don't recommend it if you have a family.
Yes.
Yeah, and I do.
I have married with four kids, so that, that's.
Yeah, well, I'm married with five kids, but three in the house.
And trust me, when I first started this, I had five kids in the house,
then it down to four and now it's three in the house.
And it's, uh, you better have a, you better have a good wife who's,
willing to put up with the kids, I can tell you that much.
Well, cool.
Let's get into a little bit more about your process.
So when you start watching a guy, how much tape do you usually watch?
Do you have a way you do things?
Are there things you're looking for right away?
I know you probably look heavily at the traits and the repeatability of those traits.
But what exactly are you looking for when you dive into the tape?
Well, so every player I have things I'm looking at.
Pick a position.
I'll give you an example of what I'll pick a position, pick a player,
and I'll give me an example of what I do.
Offensive tackle, Parris Johnson.
Okay, so Parish Johnson.
The first thing I'll do is I'll pull up Parris Johnson.
I go to the school bio.
I'll read, I want to go look at how many starts he's had.
I want to go look for games that he missed with injury.
Is injury an issue in multiple years?
I will go look at what he did in high school.
What were some of the things in the bio about his high school?
I want to look for if a guy was a team captain at any point.
Then I will go to, I'll type in Paris Johnson recruiting ESPN,
and I'll go look and see if they have testing from, you know,
one of the high school camps.
Did he have vertical spark rating 40 times?
Anything that I can find on that.
Then I'll type in, I might type in Paris Johnson and the head coach,
and I'll see if, and then I'll hit news,
and I'll see if the head coach had something to say about Paris Johnson.
Then I'll look for as many Paris Johnson.
I mean, because this is a better player.
So on the better players, you know, the first two-round guys,
this is pretty much what I do is I'll go start looking for articles on that player
to see if there's position coaches or anyone talks about the player,
anything I need to know that maybe tells me something about their character,
work ethic, things like that.
I may go check Paris's social media feeds to get an idea of who he is,
how important football is to him.
It may be subjective, but I still want to kind of know the guy.
Because what we're all trying to do, what NFL team's doing, what I'm trying to do is get a personality profile on the player too.
Because that's part of the projection is how harder is a player going to work, how much does he want it when he has more money, more time, and more access on his hands?
Because, you know, that can fow a lot of people.
Here's a lot of us out there that might not be able to handle that.
and we're 21 years old, 22 years old,
and all the spoils of potential startem are out there.
And so you want to get as much of an idea about the player personality-wise
and character-wise as you can as well.
And so once I'm comfortable with having an idea of that profile,
I start to get into, for an offensive lineman,
I'm going to just get into the tape.
There's less to look at in terms of statistics and data points.
So what I'll go do for Paris Johnson is I'll get a,
get to, I'll go find, like I use pro football focus ultimate, which has my film tied directly
to the cutups.
So it makes it easier.
It's really just a shortcut.
I don't really care about the grades, but what I'll do is they list all the run blocking
and pass blocking.
So usually I start out run blocking, and I'll want to go look at the best matchups I can
find on him.
So, you know, if I know who the, let's just say they played Florida State.
They didn't, but I'll go check for Jared verse.
I may go to last year, if he played David Ajabo or Aiden Hutchinson, I want to go see how he did against those guys if he was a tackle.
If he was a guard, I want to see how he did against Mazzie Smith last year.
I want to see how he did obviously this year against Michigan.
I want to see how he did against anybody that has pro-caliber talent or players at all this year and last year I'm going to go look at.
Now, obviously, I just kind of like what they did last year to this year to give me an idea.
of if the tape was better last year, because sometimes that happens for prospects, or how much
growth they had from year one to year, you know, from last year to this year, because prospects,
you know, get better as well, and I want to know if that happened. So I'll look at all the run blocking
stuff. I'm typically going to look at hands. I want to see, are you have strong hands or your hands
quick? You have good hand placement and run blocking. I want to see how you get out of your stance.
Are you good at getting to your lateral blocks? Because if you can get to lateral blocks and
cutoffs, that means you can be an outside zone guy.
How do you, what is your technique like on your double teams?
Are you hip to hip?
How smooth are you transitioning from your first block up to the linebacker and
combination blocks?
That's something I'm going to look for.
How much strength, drive strength, or is your pad level?
And this is a big one.
Where's your pad level?
Can you bend?
And if you can, are you bending?
What is your pad level like?
Because if it's coachable, if you can tell a guy can bend but he's not bending, then
that can be worked on.
If he fundamentally is too tight in his hips and knees and ankles,
then that's a problem because he'll never be able to generate great drive power,
no matter how big he is or how much upper body strength he has.
It's a leverage game.
I saw in your profile, you're a BJJ guy.
My dad was an NFL offensive line coach and in college for years.
And one of the things he loved more than anything was watching old UFCs
where Hoyce Gracie was able to beat Dan C.
sever and able to beat these much bigger guys when there was no, in the early, you know,
UFC, two, three, four, five, when there was no weight classes.
He loved the, as an offensive line coach, he loved hands, he loved leverage, he loved balance,
core strength.
That was something that he really appreciated and still to this day does, even though you
don't obviously see as much grappling now in that sport.
But so I want to see your core strength, right?
I want to see if Paris and Paris, that's an issue Paris needs to get better at, how strong
his core. A lot of times you can find that from pass rushing. If he goes head to head against
the player, can he get him move? Can he kick him in a certain direction? What's the leg drive like?
I'm taking you through all this because these are all things I'm looking at. And that's just run
blocking. Once you get to pass protection, I want to see what you're, you know, I want to see if
you're a forward leaner or do you, uh, oh, that's the other thing for run, you know, if you make
contact into a guy, do you bring your hips up under your hands, which is, you know, better
leverage and you're more likely to stay sustained. So I always say there's three phases to
a run block. And so I'm going to look for the initial phase, which is getting into the block
and it's fitting up with your hand placement. You're, you know, you're positioning all that,
how quick you are to your snap. The second phase is the sustain, playing with power and
sustain through the, you know, through the block. And then the last phase is the finish. So I want to
check all three phases and there's different things I look for. Then once I go to pass protection,
I need to see what your past set posture looks like. I mean, if it's not great, it's still
coachable. So I'm not going to kill you, but I'm going to mention that that's right now.
You know, unfortunately it says weakness. I'd rather not say weakness. I'd rather it would say
areas of improvement or concerns. Maybe concern would be a better word. The strengths and
weakness are synonymous, I guess, with scouting reports. So I'll look at the
past sets. I look, it's very important for me to see the past set quickness. What does your
foot quickness look like? It has to be good enough. Like Darnell Wright is good enough. He understands
how to use angles out of Tennessee. So he's not the fastest feet, but he's fairly light on his
feet for being a bigger player. So I need to see how nimble you are. The second thing I'm going to
want to see is redirect inside. So if a guy makes an inside move on you, I want to see a player
like Paris Johnson be able to plant that outside foot and get back in the other direction. How
quickly can he do it? You'd be amazed at how many players just have this. It's like there's a
freeze. They hit neutral before they can open up. A lot of times they have to swing their hips
open as opposed to just make it a fluid mirroring motion going from outside, back inside quickly.
And so I want to check and see if Paris Johnson can do that. I want to see how quick he's punching.
Is he just trying to grab a guy? Where are the hands? Is he shooting his punch out there? Or
is he maximizing his length.
There's plenty of guys with 35-inch arms over the years
who are slow to throw their punch and time their punch.
And so their length is irrelevant.
If anything, players are into them, you know, closer into their frame,
and now they've got to try to press them out.
And if they don't have great, you know, like we see with long-arm tackles,
it's harder to bench press more because those arms,
you know, it's hard to get your bench-press stuff.
Well, it's also hard to have, you know, like 285 pounds,
defensive end who's moving forward into you, press that player, you know, have the core strength
to anchor and press the player off.
So lastly, I want to see your anchor when a guy tries to bulrush you or go speed to power,
do you bounce back into the pocket?
Can you, if you do bounce, can you, you know, roll your hips up under you and really,
with technique, sink a quick anchor?
If you keep getting rolled back into the pocket, that's a big problem.
because a lot of times that's not correctable and you're going to bust out of the league.
That's a huge issue.
If you're not strong enough, you can't play pro football.
You've got to have a certain level of strength.
And then, you know, you really want to see if a player can recover, right?
You want to see, you know, what the edges look like, the outside arm or the inside arm.
Can you redirect the player who gets to your edge and kind of push them around the pocket enough, just enough?
and do you have recovery, athletic recovery, or arm-length recovery?
When a guy's got you beat, can you make a recovery through opening your hips and pushing a guy away from your quarterback?
I mean, I can save a quarterback from a sack and save a quarterback from an injury.
You know, you never know.
So, you know, I know that's a long answer, but I'm just giving you an example of what goes into one single player.
And it just so happens that all of that's in my head.
So when I'm watching plays, oh, here's one.
It's like a bingo card, right?
And as I'm watching plays, I start to check off different things of the bingo card.
So it's not like I'm going down this long checklist.
The checklist is already innately in my head, and I've got it up on my wall, too, for every position in my office.
And so those checklists that are in my head now, they're bingo cards that I fill out while I'm watching tape of the good players.
And so that will take approximately, you know, like Paris Johnson tape, for example, will take about an hour.
You know, watching, I'm going to watch him probably.
a grand total of four games,
but I'm watching other,
any pressures he allows,
I want to go see him.
Any sacks he allows,
I want to see it.
For some guys,
I'll actually go deeper.
And like for Paris,
you know,
I'll go search any type of,
you know,
man blocking scheme,
outside zone, inside zone.
I'll look if I need to,
if I think I need to,
if I'm not sure how a guy is doing,
I can go to specific run play.
and just really filtered through those round plays as well.
And of course, I look at penalties.
I mean, that's a big one too.
And if you're getting penalties, what are the penalties?
And is it correctable?
So those are all things that I'll look at for a first round tackle like Paris Johnson.
All amazing stuff.
You mentioned, you know, you like to go back to 2021 tape, see if there was a progression made.
What do you do with guys whose best tape was not their most recent year or even several years ago?
You mean like Derek Stingley from the tech?
Texans.
Yes, Stingley's a good one.
Even Will Levis this year, I felt like his 21
tape was so much better than this year.
It's tough.
I mean, you know, you go see, you want to find out why
why wasn't as good this year.
And Jordan Love was another one who had much better tape
the year before he came out.
And with Jordan Levish, I mean, with Jordan Love,
you said, okay, well, he lost, you know,
I think it was a tight end, a running back,
two receivers, an offensive coordinator.
Like, he had major changes.
And so that accounted for some of it, but some of it was just not good.
Like it was just bad football.
And I think the same thing can be said for Will Levis.
Like, you know, ever since, in my estimation, ever since their offensive line coach
passed away, unfortunately, I don't think the line has been as good.
Man, that guy had that offensive line playing salty football.
It was just a really well-respected coach as well.
And the line hasn't been as good.
But Will Levis also hasn't really felt the pressure.
So, like, for a quarterback like Will Levis, I'm going to go look at all the sacks.
And I want to see how many were on Levis, how many were on the offensive line or the tight end or the running back.
Or, you know, and I'll go look at this year.
And I'll go look at last year.
Levis took a long time because I'm trying to figure out that puzzle, just like you asked me.
And then I go back and look at 21.
Like, I'm looking at all 21.
And then I got to call teams and ask.
and so I had a quote from one team that told me basically,
look, he had three injuries.
He had to play through.
Two of them were really tough injuries.
That's a tough son of a bitch.
You can't just kill him for what he didn't do because he played injured.
And that's fine.
So, you know, when they say that, I got to go find out when the injuries occurred,
and then I've got to put games like Tennessee in perspective.
It was terrible.
He was terrible against Tennessee.
So do I just ride it off?
Okay, so for me, it's like being a teacher where I'm going to take, I'm going to give you a break,
and I'm going to drop your lowest grade.
And so your lowest grade for me is like Tennessee.
You get about a 15.
And then I'll go back and I'll try to, for a quarterback, I'll look at what I liked about 21.
I look at what I liked about 22.
And I look at what my issues were with 21 and maybe a little less with 22 if I thought injuries played a part.
But some of the same concerns kept popping up.
just unusual difficulties with easy throws where the fundamental accuracy was off.
He had arm talent throws that were fantastic, but there were issues with not having a good sense of where the pressure was,
not having great pocket presence was a concern.
These are things that for me bother me.
Just fundamental everyday accuracy is something I need to see.
And fundamental poison the pocket is something I need to see.
if you don't have those things, it's really, really hard to make it in the NFL.
And so I gave him a little bit lower grade than probably most people will have
at a low 6-3, which would be, you know, a garden variety second round pick.
Not even, but now I know he's going in the first, and I know he has an upside.
But every player has a ceiling and a floor.
So with Will Levis, you know, what we do is we kind of throw out the 22 a little bit
and we take the best of his 21 and we determine are we willing to if the midpoint if your
ceiling is up here and your your floor is down here and we start at the midpoint do you are you
stuck at the midpoint or are you leaning higher on the ceiling or more towards the floor for me
I just lean more towards the floor on on will levis but you know that's not to say I do have a
6-3 gray, which is the chance to be a plus starter. And I do recognize a lot of the things that
people like about him. But to your question, with Derek Stingley, I mean, Derek Stingley had this
incredible 2019 tape. But then 20 and 21 was just, it was not good. It was not good on tape.
It wasn't terrible, but it didn't look like he had the same energy. It didn't look like he had
the same competitive nature. That's a problem. But you just can't quit thinking. But he has
physical traits, high weight, length, speed, explosiveness.
Then you add, he did have great 19 tape.
He had great ball skills.
And so, you know, you have two straight years of injuries, 20 and 21.
And so now you have to factor in, okay, was he just shutting it down in 21 because he
was waiting for the NFL draft?
But then he ended up having a foot issue too.
So they kept him from running.
And so, even though I knew he was fast.
So it was tough with Stingley because you're relying on 19 tape, man.
That was a while back.
And when you watched him this year, he was okay.
But the guy who had a really good tape in 2020 was Sauce Gardner.
And it's a no-brainer.
Sauce was much better than Derek Stingley.
So, you know, for me, I had Sauce had a higher grade than Derek Stingley.
I had a boom-bust 6.5 on Derek's.
I had a 6-5 on Derek Stenley, like a 6-7.
on sauce gardener which is very good starter and that's the problem with trying to rely on a year
when you're a year removed you know when when the year that just got done is not the
the best tape one of the problems you have is man you're you're relying on something that hasn't
happened for a little while and it's it's tough it's tough so I guess to answer your question
Brett you just have to figure out why why is it not you know try to get see if you can get an
answer why was it not as good this year was it the pieces around them was it injury was it coaching
and you have to be open-minded and you can't just try to come up with rationing you know confirmation
bias where well i really like this guy so i'm going to go find a reason why it wasn't his fault if you do
that you're going to you're going to fail you know you have to be prepared to be open-minded
excellent stuff lans that was tremendous um before we get out of here i have two more questions for
you i'm killing you with these long answers no this is this is this is
great. This is great. We'll hit these really quick. When we were doing the kind of pre-co-lab,
pre-show co-lab, you mentioned that you just stumbled upon this guy, tight-end Griffin A-Bair from
LaTec. My fantasy listeners are going to want to hear about this guy because the dynasty freaks
that love finding the tight end they can draft in the last run of their draft and just pray he turns
out to be good. So tell me about Griffin A-Ber. I'm excited to hear about this. Yeah, you know,
I don't know if Griffin A Bear, I'll tell you what I wrote up.
So he, Griffin A Bear, one of the things I do for like the last 100 players I ride up is I just scour a pro day results.
And I go find the great testers because a lot of times even if they're, you know, even if their production is not great, if you're a great tester, teams will take a chance on you late or you'll be a priority free agent for sure because certain athletic qualities transfer into the air.
give you the best chance to translate into the NFL.
And so a lot of teams will look for these types of players.
With Griffin A Bear, he ran a 45340.
He's like 6-3-239 pounds, I believe.
He ran a 453-40.
His vertical jump was almost 40 inches.
He had very fast.
He had a sub.
I want to say it's low 7, maybe even in the 6-9s for his three-cone drill.
And he was just,
So when I saw the workouts and I saw the production was enough for me to take a look at him,
I watched him.
And it's very similar to Garrett Prince from last year, from UAB, where I said he ran fast, jump tie, changed direction quickly.
It is pro day.
Athletic open field pass catcher with fairly reliable hands.
Finds accelerator quickly for dangerous run-after catch talent.
Has the athletic ability to become a better separator out of breaks?
My final bottom line, I gave him a 5-8-3, which I like a six-round grave.
I said, bottom line, undersized tight end whose lack of toughness is a blocker,
combined with his speed, fluidity, and space, basically make him a big slot.
A bear had an excellent pro-day that should put him on the map as a priority-free agent,
but evaluators could grow to appreciate his mismatch potential and run-after catch talent,
the more tape they consume.
I said he needs to play with better effort as a blocker moving forward,
but his athleticism, explosiveness, and speed
could make him a pet project for a team looking to develop a diamond in the rough.
So he's the type of guy, for example, that, you know, if he were to hit,
you see the athletic traits, he's going to be a mismatch for safety.
So let's just say that a team, and his quarterback play wasn't very good at Lotte Tech when I'm watching.
A lot of throws weren't there for him.
You have a player that says fast he can work through the seam, he can work,
some of the deep routes that like Kyle Shanahan's offense requires,
just for example,
where you'll see tight ends running posts and corners.
And he can work all three levels of the field.
But what really impressed me with this guy was his speed,
his ability to get to top speed quickly after a catch,
I'm like, you know, I know he's a lottery scratch-off ticket,
but if you start throwing crossers to him and he's got a linebacker on him
and can't keep up with him, these starts turning into big play.
So he's the type of athlete that I'm interested in in today's NFL.
Even if you don't block, that's okay because if you're playing in the slot and you're a mismatched
slot, I remember finding Robert Tonio when he was a wide receiver and he obviously had the
size to potentially turn into a slot tied in.
Now, I thought Tonya would have a much bigger year this last year and I know he's had some
injury issues.
But guys like Garrett Prince from UAB last year who had a ton of big play touchdowns,
this kid, Griffin A Bear, these players who are mismatched players who don't, who kind of
land a misfit toys, they don't necessarily fit a tight end, but they do fit as a big athlete.
I'm all about them because those are the guys that I think creative play callers start
figuring out ways to potentially utilize them down the stretch.
and I mean, use them in due time,
and they're the ones who do become those diamonds in the rough potentially.
So that's why I'm looking for explosive testers,
because they could be the next, you know, Antonio Gates,
where they come out of nowhere.
Especially at tight end.
We've done here at Fantasy Points with our guy, Scott Barrett,
we've done a ton of correlation research with athletic testing and positions,
and athleticism is probably correlates best to success at the tight end position.
And this is what you guys like Gates or Jimmy Graham kind of
come out of nowhere where they end up taking over the position and just phenomenal, phenomenal,
phenomenal players.
Absolutely.
Awesome.
Cool, Lance, this was great.
Before we go, I was scouring your Twitter before we jumped on and I saw that you had a
tweet asking people what the best meal you've ever had at a restaurant was.
Yeah.
You got one?
I want to hear yours.
What is yours?
Well, so I've been, you know, it's funny.
The reason I ask this question is because I've been to, you know, three Michelin Star
restaurants at Dominique Cran and San Francisco, French lunch.
Laundry, Grace in Chicago when they were open.
And I was thinking, man, I remember the nights.
Like I remember the great.
It's not the dishes I remember.
It's the atmosphere and in the evening that I had.
And I started feeling bad about that.
Like, you know, I can think of dishes I've had, but not typically at the great restaurants that I've been to.
I just kind of lump it into a lot of times they're tastings.
And I just lump it in.
what I love is like the Oshaval
hamburger in Chicago.
Just a phenomenal hamburger.
That's not a tasting. That's just a great burger.
You know, I remember these
Korean wings I got in Portland
one time, these sticky
wings that were just fantastic.
You know, just
down-home food like that
is what is more memorable
a lot of times.
But when I'm having the dishes
at a really nice
upscale restaurant, I'll have it
think it's phenomenal, but when it's, you know, multiple courses, tastings of 7, 8, 9, 10,
you know, by the end of the night, I forget, I'll remember which ones my favorite one was,
but I don't, that's why I wanted to know if other people recalled the dish that they had,
and I was blown away at how many really awesome dishes people had had.
Yeah, that, so sometimes we get carried away with the experience, right, at those restaurants.
It's just, yeah, best meal I ever had was at a, I don't even remember the name of the cafe.
It was in South Africa.
Yeah.
Piece of fish.
Don't even know what kind of fish it was.
It was incredibly.
Never forget it.
If I ever go back, I will be stopping there.
Yeah.
And you never, and that's my whole point is that sometimes it's just, it's so good that you just, you know,
I have to really think about it, but it's the times that you had, you know, where you've had,
if I really dug in and think, there was a restaurant and.
I had these, I had these, this pasta in New York.
My wife and I were going to, we're actually going to see Hamilton back in 2016.
And we didn't have reservations anywhere, but, you know, New York City.
You just stopped in any restaurant.
We stopped into this Italian restaurant.
I found it on Yelp.
Turns out it was a one Michelin Star restaurant.
And I just had the most incredible, not dumplings, but not tortellini, but what is,
ravioli. I had the most incredible ravioli there and I was like, I was blown away by it. So that was
one that comes to mind where I wasn't expecting anything at dinner. I knew it. You know, I don't
typically go to a lot of different Italian and I just thought, man, this ended up being phenomenal.
The wife and I couldn't stop talking about it. So, yeah, but it was also a great night getting to
see Hamilton and things like that. But I do always find the memories, you know, the food memories are
really cool. I'm a guy who spends a lot of time by myself looking in rooms for hours and hours
on end and my mind will wander sometime. And so when I get to find a football player who I,
like Montrell Washington last year from Sanford, I get all excited. You know, after all this
malaise of days upon days of the same thing, you get excited watching tape sometime. It's the same thing.
Sometimes you have a dish and it's just like it transports you into just memories that you maybe
had at some other place.
Heck yeah.
All right, Lance, that is going to do it for us.
Thank you so much for joining the pod.
Listeners, you can find him at Lance's your line.
He's on NFL.com.
He does incredible work.
Be sure to check him out now and all through the entire NFL draft.
Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast.
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