Games with Names - Super Bowl XXXVIII with Ernie Adams | Panthers vs. Patriots

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Ernie Adams is in studio! Ernie joins the three-timers club with his incredible return to The Nuthouse. From The DUNKIN' Nuthouse in Boston, Ernie is with us to dive deep into a classic: Super Bowl XXXVII between the New England Patriots and Carolina Panthers.Support the show: http://www.gameswithnames.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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child in a car. A message from Nitsa and the Ad Council. The first game of the 2008 season, Tom heard his knee. So we all knew coming in after the game. I think everybody can. Brady heard his knee. He's out for the season. And as Mike, I'm standing in the locker. There's Mike Frable come. Okay, boys, we're going to have a little different brand of football. And that's the, you know, Mike, hey, run the ball and play defense. That is so deep in his soul, that's not going to change. Welcome to Games with Names presented by Duncan. I'm Julian Edelman. They're Jack and Kyler, and we are on a mission to find the greatest game of all time. On today's episode, we are covering Super Bowl 38, Panthers versus Patriots

with six-time Super Bowl champion, legendary football research director of the New England Patriots and best friend of the show, Ernie Adams. We are talking the most underrated Super Bowls of all time. You never know when that play is going to be. That's when you've got to give 100% every play. His thoughts on the 2025 Patriots? Third year, you've got to be a player. When the championship's on the line, you're ready to go.

And what he did to piss off Tom Brady weekly. Oh, he got so upset with that. And we talk about what it's really like watching film in the NFL in this week's chill zone presented by Coors Light. You got to stick around to the very end. Games with Names is a production of IHeart Radio. February 1st, 2004, Reliant Stadium, Houston, Texas. A minute eight left. Tie game.

Tom Brady leads the Patriots on a potential game-winning journey. And once again, it all comes down to Adam Vinatari's right foot. This is Super Bowl 38. We're going to get into Ernie in just a minute, but first we need to hit the Duncan pregame, where we fuel up on Duncan to make. sure we are ready for this interview. Let me get a little of my dunking. I got a little, I got a little just, I just got a regular black coffee. Yeah, regular. Kai guys got his ice coffee. I got my refresher here. I like my ice regular. I'm already drinking too many ice coffers. Oh, boy. I think

I'm more refresher than man at this point. Boy, is it good. These are incredible. Those things hate you too. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. They hit you. Are they good? Oh, very good. I'm going to try one a little bit. Dare I say, refreshing. What do we, So we got to fuel up. We got to fuel up. We're just getting our beves in us. Talking here. We've got to make sure we hit with Ernie.

Got to go over our last minute details. I'm curious as to what you guys think he's going to be wearing. Are we talking madrasis? We talk in stripes. Talking Searsucker. What are we thinking here? Here's what I'm going to start with. It's summer.

I don't mean to cut anybody off here. Yeah. But I'm a student of Ernie. So first, let's open our weather app here. We've got to do our research. It's the next day. We're here in Massachusetts. 79.

79. What's the humidity? level a lot. Feels like his 76. Humidity, 60%. See, but it's a windy 60%. It's a little, it's not windy, but it's got a little gust out there. I mean, we have a whole pool situation at the nut house here. Oh, yeah, we do. All the umbrellas were in the pool. Oh, yeah, we do. He's got these giant balls. They're over the yard. It's bedlam down there. Honestly, what's that thing called the sauce puck? Sauce toss. I'm going to kick your ass on that later. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I've never seen that. I saw it out there. Broken neck and all. It's the real puck has no sauce toss. It was awesome.

It's fun. I never, I never really slap shoted something or you don't even slap shot. You just flicking. I want to see pasta come in and freaking do those games. All right, enough of this puck talk. What's Ernie going to be wearing? Collared shirt. Tucked in. Probably a belt. What do we got on the pants? I'm thinking sears. Short. You think he's going shorts? Nah, no. I think some with a pleat. Cackie always. Cackie always. I mean, this isn't anything to be said. I don't know is he going have some top siders on the feet is he going to have a boat shoe something with a boat shoe classy he'll do some kind of low for boat shoe i could see that action all right well let's uh something with a collar i'm putting it on that one let's find out don't that was the dunkin notes pregame

pregame baby have a great interview boys ernie welcome to nut house duncan house boston dedum version we are going to go over super bowl 38 panthers versus the patriots In one sentence, Ernie, why'd you pick this game? It was a crazy game, a lot of fun, very unlike any of the other games we played. But, you know, when you kick it off at the start of the game, you don't know what's going to happen. I mean, we go, it's the first half. It's like old time. It's going to be like a three-nothing game and it explodes at the end of the half.

And kind of the same thing happened at the end of the second half. Now, Ernie, you've been on the show. the greatest game of all time you know julia i look at when you've won a super bowl it's like children they're all special um no i mean my i mean still my favorite was super bowl 36 because it was the first one it was when nobody else thought we could win um you know as i think i mentioned you before that's when we were truly just the little engine that could i mean john madden's out before Oh, the Patriots out, but they have to play the Rams. And we know how that turned out.

We know exactly how that turned out. We'll jump into these games in a second. But what have you been up to since the last time we've had you on? Oh, enjoying retirement. Just got through a three-day session with Phillips Academy Football Camp, getting ready to start a season. So we're good. What do you do at these Phillips Academy football camps?

So actually, they had a little fewer coaches than they thought. So I was coaching linebackers. Are you coaching? Yeah. I mean, I was some great kids. I was trying to teach playing a 34 defense. You know, put in the same terminology we used with the 34th, the Patriots. You got these kids too gaping?

We got them too gaping. They know the Royal League calls, you know. Yeah. We call Fox Zero, bring both outside linebackers. I mean, hey, there's only one way to play the defense correctly. Man, can you imagine being a 14-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old having Ernie Adams come and teach a defense? That's crazy. Now, have you been watching football at all?

Yeah, I mean, it's the seasons, it's like it's hard for me to watch. pre-season games when there's nobody on the field that I know. Yeah. And I understand they're very important because there are a lot of, you know, young players want to get in the league and this is their chance. It's just sometimes at 10 o'clock at night, it's, but if I know, you know, it's the good players are in the game, it's, yeah, definitely like to watch.

But everybody is so conscious of injury, it's just nobody's playing in preseason. And, of course, we're two weeks away, two weeks from today, first game of the season, none of these guys have played 60 minutes. They haven't really played at game speed against, you know, the real opponents. So it's, you know, what Steve Young said something a few years ago, you know, he said, September is the new preseason. Get over it. And he's right.

What, you know, when you were playing that third preseason game, the starters would play the first half and the first series of. of the second half. Yeah. And nobody's really done that. So the games count, but we got a month of preseason football coming. Yeah. You know, it's been really interesting.

A lot of that talk over the last four years has been huge with the younger guys and like how these new coaches, these younger coaches aren't playing their guys in the preseason. Well, it did a complete like 180 flip. A lot of these guys played their starters, first, second, third series. like if you look at, and Andy Reid's a bad example because he's an old school coach, but you look at Zach Taylor, the Bengals played their starters. And, you know, because the Bengals, and I think because the Bengals have, they have struggled

so much in September, you know, like maybe we should try something different. But, I mean, at some point, you do have, you do actually have to get out and play some football at game speed. I understand that, you know, nobody, like, I remember the Patriots had a season about in 1990 they lost three starters in five minutes in a preseason game and it really messed their season up and nobody wants to take that chance but you know it's you do actually have to get out and play well i was i was recently at chargers camp and i was talking to gym and you know i go man sorry coach about slater you know they just paid this tackle be their left tackle highest paid

tackle in the history of the game tears his patelor attendant and i looked at it by the way great Northwestern player. Great northwestern player. Shut out wildcats. That's right. But I looked at it and I go, well, the optimism behind it, which was very similar to how it used to be was training camp was so hard and you would play guys in pre-season that if you got through training camp and pre-season, you were probably better off along getting through

that whole season because it calcified you, got you ready for football. Now guys aren't playing that much, but the fact that you lost a guy early. in the season, you can prepare for three weeks instead of having like a four-game winning streak and then you lose your starting tackle and you haven't adjusted your roster at all. So it's almost if it's going to happen, it's better to happen in the preseason and in camp so you have some time to prepare for it. What do you think on that? You know, I would, if you give me, if you said, well, you can lose a guy, a good player in preseason or lose them in week four. I say lose them in week four because you had them for three

regular season games because you know they're too important the games are too important yeah hey at the end you know who gets who gets in the playoffs they look at ws and ls yeah and it's these you know even though i say okay the september is pre-season football these games count every bit as much as the games you play you know the first weekend in january when it's you know when you're in the playoffs lose you go home yeah but this game at the beginning you know is is a huge factor in that yeah yeah So it's, and I, I mean, it's a hard decision. I mean, it's, I mean, you're going to have players get hurt. You just hate to have it happen, you know, in a game that doesn't count.

You know, it just sucks. I mean, for the player, which we negotiated for this with the union, we only get eight padded practices for training camp now. Right. That's crazy. I've been in TV for four years. Every beginning quarter of the season, and all analysts are talking about,

oh, the offense align just doesn't have it together right now. And it's because there's no more padded practices where those guys can practice and communicate and hit people together. I mean, you know, it's like Bill and I used to say, you know, this practice stuff, it actually works. I mean, listen, I mean, football coaches, you know, they're not just sadistic people.

I see how they could punish, you know, punish people, actually trying to get players on the teams ready to play, real, you know, real competitive football. And it's okay. So you go eight padded practices in camp. You can have one padded practice a week in the regular season up until, now I think if the 14, week 14. And then you get like in the last five weeks you get three padded practice or something

like that. And I'm just thinking, okay, my first year in the league, 1975, we had the rookies. And now, there was no ramp up, you know, days in shorts. We went, with the rookies, we went six straight days of doubles in pads, okay? We gave them the seventh day off. Then the vets came in. We did the same thing. Six straight days in pads, gave them a day.

Went about four days of doubles. The next week, go play the first preseason game. Come back after that and have another three. We, you know, so, I mean, we were, we had more padded practices by the, you know, first or second preseason game, isn't you get it on here now. And, okay, I will grant you, that may have been, that may have been too much, but, you know, you're trying to get a, get a team ready. I mean, you talk about training camp in 1979, which, Ray Perkins took over as the head coach

of the Giants, and Bill and I started on his staff. and race said what i want to do that first practice i want to go we'll do our stretching and we'll go right to oklahoma drill and our offensive line coach and coach i think it'd be a good idea if we just took one period let him hit a sled warm their shoulders up before we do that oklahoma drill yeah so i mean i'd say uh yeah there you have it what's your favorite era of football because you've been in all three and what's changing even more you probably but i mean they're all you know the the game of football it's constant evolution um so i mean i frankly i you know i mean i enjoy them all yeah and you know it's the same things

like i say the guys who are really good players in the 70s they'd be really good players today uh it's it's the same game explain that they have all the athletic ability competitiveness bend their knees change the direction, do everything that you want a football player to do, you know, they were doing that. You know, I mean, you say, what's the biggest change? It's, you know, guys are bigger and stronger because every high school team in America, now, what does their football team do? They lift.

They lift weights. So, and I apologize if I told you this story, one of our prior visits, but from 1963 to 1968, when it was the Boston Patriots, before they moved to Foxborough, not the New England Patriots, where did they have their training camp? Boston, Harvard, Boston College, BU. They had a Phillips Academy. Philly's all. And over Massachusetts.

Way off. Way off. And the coach there, who I played for, Steve Soroto, is, you know, football coach, great track coach. And he took the head coach to the Patriots, Mike Kaliak, and said, Mike, send me your players down in our weight room. I can help them. And Mike Kahlavak said, why would I want to do that? Okay, now this is a head coach in the NFL. I mean, and now you have every high school player in America is lifting weights. Yeah. That is, as much as anything else, an enormous change in the

game. Now, is that where your sports fandom came from? Oh, it was certainly, you know, I mean, that was growing up. What did Ernie Adams in 1963? What was, what was? That was 10 years. old, that's a little... Well, I know, but where did you learn, like, who did you like when you were 10 years old? Where did this football obsession come from? Actually, I was probably in 1963, a little bit more of a baseball guy. Baseball guy?

Red So, Red So, the Mickey Mantle was my favorite player. So a Yankees guy? A Yankees guy. A Yankees guy from Boston. Yeah, Mickey Manel, so the Yankees. But then, you know, I took the... And the football for me started a grade school, Dexter School, great athletic director.

And it was, football was mandatory. There was no, I mean, every, every, every, it was all boys' school, everybody, you know, September, October, in November, when sports period came, burning pads went out and played football. That was it. Not as, no, I don't like football. That was, that was a no-go. And everybody played football.

And that's kind of where it started. Who was your football team as a kid? Kind of accommodate, you know, we only had, those are the days. very limited what you got. So I got the Giants every week on TV. So I watched them. Of course, I had the Patriots. I mean, the Patriots used to play their home games, Friday nights and Fenway Park.

And just to show you how things have changed, you could always get tickets to the Patriots game. Now, you want to go get tickets to the Harvard-Dartmouth game? That was a tough ticket. Yeah. Okay. And that is certainly changed over, you know, 60 years. Did you ever go to those games? Sure.

You went to a Fenway Boston Patriots game? Absolutely. I remember there was a Watch and play the Oakland Raiders 43 to 43. I mean, it was

43 to the tide? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was no sudden death in the regular season. The score was 43 to 43. What year? That would have been, I want to say 64.

That's a game I, you know, I imagine. Four years and that was the fourth year of the league. Ernie's of the team. 60. 60 was the first. So it would have been in the fifth year, but you had, you know, Babe Porelli, Gino Capoletti. I mean, it was.

Yeah. October 16th, 1964. Ernie was on the money. 43, 43. That's right. 43, 43. Wow. An 05 and 1 Raiders team for 1 and 1 Patriots team after the tie.

The old head. That was coach. Al Davis was the coach. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, so that was really one of, I mean, you talk about a turnaround. he took over, I would say the year before Al took over the Raiders, I think they were 1 and 13, in 62, 1 in 13, he comes in, you know,

he gets him the 10 or 11 wins the first year. That was a, you know, that was. I remember whenever we would play the Raiders, Bill would always give a huge historical digest of the Raiders organization. The Raiders. Al Davis, how he's the only commissioner, owner, coach in the history of the game. We'd go in all the in-depth of this guy sued the league, this guy, this, you know. And, you know, there was, of course, he brought him in as the coach, and he ended up being the owner.

And there's a lot, there was a, man, maneuvering there, shall we say. What are your, like, impressions of Al Davis, he ever meet him? I, well, actually, I mean, I made them, you know, I mean, I, you know, I met him as shaking hands in the, I knew a game. But Al Davis in 1978, my first, he tried to get me fired at the New England Patriot. Why? Well, why? Well, because I was, one of my jobs at the Patriots instead of, I was in charge of film.

Yeah. So it was organized, you know, because there was no, now every game that's, that's taped, it's digital, and as soon as a game's played, like, two, everyone gets. It's on the dub center. Two hours after it's played, every coach in the NFL has that game on his computer. This was back when it was 16 millimeter film, can of film. You had a specialized film box,

and you had to get it to the air freight company, get it to wherever it was going and pick it up. So you, and if you want, you had to send out your last three games. That was mandatory. So if I wanted a fourth game, you know, I had a few friends around the league. had maneuver, you know, if you'd send me, you know, if you'd send me this or make me a copy of

this game, I'll help you. So, Al, the Denver had, Denver Broncos played the San Diego Chargers. I'll say this was 1978. The game was on grass, which is where the Raiders played, and Al really wanted that film for his coaches to study. Well, the guy at Denver, you know, he was somebody I helped. So there's no way I was going to send, you know, send that game, you know, give that game to the Raiders. So I just said, you know, no. So about a week later, Chuck Fairbanks calls me, and he says, Al Davis was really pissed at that.

He called Billy Sullivan and told us, you should, you got to fire that guy. So Chuck says, hey, look, in the future, anybody was Phelb, would you please let me know? Oh, Al Davis. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, the people, I had some real good friends who have worked for him. If you're a football guy, you know, they really, you know, they loved working there. Yeah.

He's a football guy. He's a football guy. And he, I mean, he coached the game. He knows everything about football. May not have evolved with the times. But then they had, you know, that stretch from, you know, in 70s into the early 80s. I mean, they were, you always say there's maybe four or five teams that are legitimate. championship

contenders. I mean, they were one of them. Yeah, I work with Howie Long, and it's so fun just to get a little of the inside knowledge of just the Raider mentality and the Raider way. It's, you know, there's so many different ways

to the top. It was completely different than how we did it, but it was. But, but you know what? Okay, say all that. So, I mean, the reason I love John Madden was, you know, 1978, worst part of my football life, Darrell Stingley got his neck broken,

preseason games out in Oakland, and he could, you know, he could not, they put him in the hospital, they couldn't move him. So he was a Patriots player in the hospital in Oakland, and John Madden went to see him in the hospital every day. So, you know, so all the radar mentality, I mean, you know, yeah, there's a lot of good people there. Oh, yeah. No. John Madden, he's one of the most important figures of this game. Just he, he loved teaching the game of football. And, I mean, he single-handedly probably made it an international sport just through his video game that he made, which he was very particular in

making that video game. Well, because, right, because again, you know, he's like out there. He's a football guy. Football guy. Hey, there's a right way. I mean, yes, it's entertainment, but it's football. and we, you know, we on the other game and do it the right way. Yeah. Now, there's this term that goes around right now that if you're a guy that loves football and that, you know, you know ball. It's like these kids say, you know ball. That guy knows ball.

This guy doesn't know ball. What determines if a person knows ball to Ernie Adams? If he can talk intelligently about what's going on in the field. I mean, if you look at it, okay, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, this is, is, what happened. Like I can tell, hey, this guy actually knows what he's talking about. Give me an example of that. You know, you see a, you see Julian Edelman running an option route. Okay, you know, understand this is an option route. The pattern is designed. You know, so we get good

distribution of receivers. Joan's going to make his break of coverage throwing the ball. Just the, you know, something like that. Okay. You actually kind of know what's going on out on the field. Yeah. You may not have to know every minute detail of, you know Julian's his stem on the route or something like that but but you'd have although if you're really no body you do know those details yeah but uh um you basically can look at a game and have you know a pretty real good understanding of what's what's going on do you think everyone uh you probably don't even watch tv do you you mean just in general like on commentating and stuff who do you think out of all the commentators know ball the best

You know, like, I really like Greg Olson. Greg Olson. Yeah. I mean, when he, you know, I mean, he, I mean, he explains things that says, yeah, that's right. You know, I mean, Tony, when Tony Romo doesn't get off on his tangents, you know, he, you know, he, you know, he. Hold on, Jim. I don't know, Jim. You know, I mean, he's, he's really good because, you know, like when you're watching the game on TV, you can't.

and see all 11. I mean, you know, particularly on defense. So, you know, you do to a degree rely on the commentator as opposed to somebody who's just, no, that's, that's, that's wrong. That's not what's going on here. Yeah. But, you know, the thing that's great about TV is with all the cameras, you get some great camera work and showing things that you don't see watching coaches film. One thousand percent. Which is, you know, higher. I mean, I love, You know, that shots you would, you know, we used to get as coaches, you know, it's high on the sideline, high in the end zone, you can see it. But when the TV is right, ground level zoomed in, I mean, you can really, you know, you can see that the receiver really looked the ball into his hands. Did you, so did you watch all copies of cut up?

So you would watch TV copy, you know, the all 22 sideline high, box line high. Yeah, the thing about when you're coaching is there's still. only 24 hours in the day. Okay. I mean, that's good. Yeah. Now, in the off season, that's where you can really watch that is in the off season. You know, time's not a factor.

Yes. You know, then you want to see, you know, I want to watch the TV copy of this game. And you may see a couple of clips where you can really, you see something that you wouldn't see off a coach's film. And you can really use that to, you know, improve your knowledge. prove what you're going to tell you. Well, Ray Lewis used to watch them all the time. This guy used to call out our goddamn hook routes.

He'd be like, hook, we'd be calling out our signals. And a lot of the times it was only a guy like him that would really take advantage of that, but you're going so fast. They can know what you're doing and they can't process it. Right, but you know what, that's right. There's only a few. It's like, you know, the speed at which Tom was playing the game.

I mean, it's, you know, Tom and Ray Lewis, I mean, you know, they really... We're playing chess. Right. And they can, you know, they know where all the, you know, it's not I have to look at you. You know, I see this guy over here, so I know what that guy over there is supposed to be doing. And I don't have to think about it. But, you know, it's one of my favorite coaches in history of football, Tom Landry used to say,

by the time you really know how to play this game, you're too old. You're too old. It's true. It's true. And the only one who really defined that was Tom. Right. Well, he, I mean, but, you know, he's such an outlier. Uh, okay, you got Tom, I mean, Warren Spahn won 20 games at age 43.

I mean, Ted Williams said, 1958 was one of his best seasons. There are almost freaky great players. LeBron James is in that category now. Right, right. So there's, but you're talking about a really small number. We'll be right back after this quick break. And that's what I think a lot of these people don't understand that. Tom's a freaking outlier.

Like when we got all these other guys that are, you know, playing quarterback at the position that they're playing and they're getting past their 38s. Like, that's usually the number. That's, that's it. And, you know, we're getting guys that are getting paid off Achilles hundreds of millions of dollars at, you know, 38, 30. I'm like, yo, you guys are taking, they're not on the TB12 method, okay? Yeah. There's only one guy that plays into his 40s like that.

And that's Tom fucking Brady. Right. Yeah. And that's because he was able to process so fast. And by the time the game got to that age, He wasn't getting hit like he used to. Right. So he could sit there and he knew where he was, you know what I mean?

So we're playing the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, and they get Michael Bennett. Oh, yeah. And, you know, forget blocking him. We were having a hard time. We couldn't, we would have a hard time catching him with a net. Yeah. Okay. And he's two feet.

And Tom was here, okay, we're having a problem blocking this guy. He's gone on top of him, fast. I mean, I just got to get it out faster. Yeah. I mean, you know, he could speed. You know, he could speed it up as much, you know, to whatever speed he wanted. And that's why he's great. Now, we were talking about camera angles of watching the game at home.

How are you watching the game at home now? I sit down and I got my nice big TV chair. I have a commercial grade TV and I sit there and I watch it. Now, if it's a team I'm interested in, you know, I will tape the game. And, you know, I said, well, yeah, I miss, I miss, you know, watching All-22. But I know Bill Walsh got to the point. He preferred, you know, coaching off of TV tape because you could, you know, the stuff you could see that you can't necessarily see from up top of the stadium.

It's like the difference between when I go, when I go to a game, I always say, I want to sit on the highest seat in the stadium on the 50-yard line. okay which is basically we're going to get the coaches film now but you can also go sit in row three you got binoculars when you're there uh i've you know i'll i'll i take them you take them all right just making sure you just take you know don't use them on but also it's fun just to go sit in row three because that's a totally different it's like it's speed yeah you're watching a different game in row three than you are from the top of the stadium yeah it's uh so there's all the different it's like uh you know having watching a game from the end zone yeah i mean we you know that's

a totally different look you know than watching it from the uh the sideline from the sideline and without a doubt but like are you are you on youtube tv now where you get the package and are you splitting up like all the games and having five games at a time like i said you know what if i really if i want to spend 18 hours a day doing that i wouldn't have retired. Okay, I mean, it's like... So we're picking one game a week. You know, I'll tell, I mean, like, I will look, I say, who are the teams that are

interesting to me? Who are the teams that are interesting this year? Oh, boy. Like, for me, most interesting a lot of ways is Denver. Denver. Okay. Can Bo Nix and Sean Payton crank it up again? Right, because I spent, I thought they had, I mean, I think Sean's a great offensive

a coach, I'll say when he was at the Saints, I mean, I, in the off-season, I watch every game they played. So it's always, I mean, every game. So it's, and, you know, he goes into Denver and it's not a great situation. They, they have

really made improvement. So to me, that's, yeah, what are they going to do now? So that's a really, my little quirky way of thinking about the, well, Peyton's got a little crossover with you guys.

guys, because he was a Parcell guy, right? He was Parcells. He got, you know, he used to be because he got suspended for a year. So he, he was the one along with us who had some feelings about the league. We had several times, we had the joint practices with them. Yeah, I remember. Now, those were, those were incredibly productive. Can you explain to the listener why a joint practice is incredibly productive?

Okay. Because there's been a lot of talk because now, I mean, we're seeing fights every freaking weekend with these dumb idiots right now. So here's the key to doing that. And you know what? As I mentioned to you, I just spent a few days out of the football camp for Phillips Academy. There were four schools there. But what you do, and we had a joint practice yesterday morning with another school.

Just shorts and T-shirts. We went seven-on-seven. But you get both teams together, and you tell them, look, any BS, you're being thrown out of practice. And, like, if we were practicing with the Patriots, Sean Payton can throw out a Patriots player if he's being a jerk, and Bill can throw out a Saints player if he's being a jerk. We're just not going to put up with that, period, end of story. And that, you probably remember.

We were always pretty productive. We were totally, but part of it was, look, you just both, you get both teams together to hear from both coaches. If there's, you know, we're here to practice, you know, we're not fighting. And if there's any problem, you are out. And, you know, it's, listen, if you really want to fight, we will buy you a pair of boxing gloves. We will set up a ring and go to it.

Yeah. And, you know, and we never, now, the big thing is, what we found was you can have two really productive practices. Try and a third is pushing it. Pushing it. So, our first time we did, we were at the Cleveland, so this is like 92 or 93. We went up to Platteville, Wisconsin, with the Bears, and they got a real problem player,

and the third practice was, we needed to kind of just stop it before. It was going to get out of control. But you just, hey, the whole thing is, the biggest thing, you got to make sure, everybody, get all the players, just to explain what the ground rules are going to be, and you will get thrown out of practice if there's a problem.

Yeah. So just, that's it, period. And it's useful, why? it's useful because you're going you know you go training camp you're going as the same guys every day the same office the same defense if the defensive players are actually smart they can listen to the quarterbacks cadence they can learn things if you're if a receiver's is right you can listen to the least before it was coming you're technique you can listen to the defensive backs going linda linda linda okay i know it's a zone coming down to my left it's it's like playing the

Pittsburgh Steelers, a great defense, you know, over 20 years, like Tom would say, hey, look, I hear him going, buster, buster, buster. It's the same cover two check they've had for 20 years, okay? Like, I'm not stupid. I know it's going to be covered two. You know, there's stuff like I'm sitting, I'm going to say, like two years, two thousand, twenty three season, I'm watching the game at home on TV. and it's a Thursday night game,

the Patriots playing the Steelers. And, you know, they always get an offensive line and Mike's down. So you can hear, that's how you hear, you know, the quarterback's up. But I'm listening to these guys, wait a minute. They're doing their line calls, column blocking.

Orange, orange, yellow, yellow. I know what these. I'm just sitting there, I'm just sitting in my liberal. Hmm, I know what this place is going to be. I mean, you know, it's. And so joint practices, you get to use your terminology. Well, it's like the, COVID year.

You could actually hear during a game. It was gnarly. You could hear the other coaches from the other side. It was like a scrimmage in high school. You can hear the personnel groups. Everyone, we can look and see. They're looking and watching us. It was fucking right there.

Senior night at Ken State. It was senior night at Ken State. Yeah, it was like they had, there used to be a few stadiums like Minnesota, like the old Minnesota stadium, where the two side, two benches are on the same side. So they had, and the, from the 45 to the 45 is kind of the DMZ. Yeah. You know, you're saying, you know, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, the Patriots are playing the, uh, the Vikings, one of my best friends, Charlie Summer, he goes a little bit, he turns out, it's there right next to Bud Grant, the Vikings said, go, John. Hey, how you doing? I mean. Back to the joint practice, you get to try. you're going against another team it's unlike a game

the film does not get distributed around the league you have a very clear understanding with the other team nothing you know none of this practice film will leave the two buildings you're going against your best players can go against their best players at practice tempo but you get that first step

you're seeing it's huge for the what people don't realize it's huge for the evaluation process totally I mean how are these guys going to react like this is like a baby game I don't I don't like there's a lot of critics out there about these joint practices

if they're used right I mean if it if you go out there for 20 minutes and you got you know it's like you know 50 on 50 brawl you know you shouldn't come but I really think it's the two head

coaches set the ground rules at the start and the big thing is if we're going joint practice is you can throw out one of my players and I can throw out one of yours. And there's not going to be, and we'll back, you know, and if you throw out one of my players, you know, that's it. I'm, you know, I'm going to back you up on that.

And so everybody, you know, I mean, it's, okay, it's kind of like teaching third grade, okay? You set out the rules, everybody knows here, and they're going to push, try, can I get away, just get away with that? You know, you have very clear standards. It is. bunch of dumb jocks

just wanted to go kill each other all right guys can't do that right no it's you know what and they will probe and see you know see what they can you always got it you can see where they go I got kicked out of like the first practice of a Gilmore remember yeah

and that you know hey pulled out his dread I got one I said welcome New Eagle buddy I'm probably pretty sure the coaches liked it though look it's football you got to have a little edge. I mean, it's like you talk about head coaches. So George Young was our general manager at New York

and he was, you know, kind of a football philosophy. He said, look, you don't necessarily want your head football coach to be a well-adjusted human being. I mean, you know, listen, it's, this is not like what we're doing. It's not normal. Yeah. Okay. So, so, I mean, but you have to be true to the game and, you know, but they're trying to normalize football. That's what it is. Well, what they're trying to do is make it like basketball. Yeah. Okay. I mean, you can just go out, you shoot around and play, and okay.

Yeah, there's some contact under the boards, but it's, it's football is different. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know. I'm so interested to hear your take on the new kickoff rule. I've been watching it more and more. And these guys are all trying to do the pooch kicks in the land zone now. Have you seen that? Yeah, I get the, and now I'm saying like, you know, they're,

given, like, this kid, the Patriots, after the second round Henderson, I don't know, this kid's got phenomenal acceleration. Phenomenal. Yeah, I mean, boom. So, house it. Host it. I mean, every time he,

and they come back, get him on an offense, they're on a toss crack. He's going to go, boom. Yeah. He is through, you know. I think that could be the steel of draft. I said that earlier.

Right. I mean, he, smart kid, good kid. They say he's a professional. Yeah, I mean, and he's got some real dynamic skill. but this is so I haven't watched a lot of it I haven't studied enough but you know you're all I mean you get one little crease in there and you're gone and it's more like a punt yeah but it's been really cool

just to see what these kickers are going to do you're going to really have to you're going to really have to study like we used to the kickers approach to the ball right is he doing the del greco where he widens and then he skinnies it up and then he brings it to the one way or is he tight right. Is he tight right or is he Del Greco? And you'll love this, but working with my high school Phillips Academy team, we went against a kicker last year who used the Del Greco. And I said, hey, watch the Del Greco. And then I had to sit down, explain to him who Al Del Grecoe. Can you explain Del Greco? What is a Del Greco approach? Okay. So if I'm going to, if I'm a right-footed kicker, okay, and a soccer-style kicker, and I want to mortar it or pooch it over to the right, okay, to get my

angle of approach proper of the ball, I'm going to go straight ahead at the start, then take the angle over, and then kick it. Because if I just take the normal soccer style approach on angle, it's really hard to make that kick. Yeah. Tight right. Right. So, so, so, so, so, okay, you got to watch for this. You watch, you know, first, watch, watch, study the ball on the T. Where, you know, where the laces on the T and all that. Watch the kicker. Watch his approach. And he'll, you know, he will, he will tell you a lot. I remember studying that, you know, with Scotty O'Brien all the time. Yep.

It's just, hey, look, but I don't care if it's a professional high school. You're a right foot soccer-style kicker and you want to mortar it to the right. There's only really one way you can do it. Yeah. You know, I'm really excited for that play because it is a dynamic play.

And ever since they moved it to the 35 now, you know, it becomes a factor. It's going to become, this is going to become a play. Oh, listen. I mean, last year it didn't happen. I mean, this year, you know, you know, I don't really want the team, getting on the 35 so you know now they're you know i mean that's damn near one first down with some

of these goddamn kickers in a field goal he kicked a 70 yarder in a preseason game that that is huge that hey listen it's it's well if you uh you you were there you see remember steve hitting the 71 yard in practice at the air force academy yeah i mean that was like wow grand it's up at 7500 feet but that's why we went you know we did how long was 67 yards the end of the first half the raiders Mexico City. Same elevator. I thought that was at 92. Was it a little more?

Was that, who was the elevation of Mexico City? I was just 75. Just over a month. So that, then that's why, you know, that's why we were, you know, we thought, that was a good week of practice

because we were exactly that. Get that wind type and all, you know. And then, of course, we got the Air Force guys out there with the Falcon come dive bomb. And so you stand up there. You see the damn bird coming down 200 miles an hour. Oh, it's scary. Ernie running from a lot of things on the practice field coming down, man.

Ernie loves running from those things. Well, I didn't run from the Foucher because there's the guy there. He, hey, this guy, he's standing there with his arm all. I know that bird's coming right there. That, you know, that Air National Guard playing buzz in the stadium. I did not know what he was doing. Head on the swivel. Now, what do you think about the new virtual first down?

you know it's it's probably I mean like how many games have you decided by a measurement that far well let's face it if the measurements that far maybe it was maybe it wasn't you know you just you trust the uh you trust the officials to do I mean it's like the all-timer for spots was the snowball and the officials told us before the game look coach it's snowing we're going to do the best we can yeah and then you know John Gruden challenged the spot in the snow i mean seriously it's all it's all white are you over six inches i don't feel the snow i mean okay did he win no i mean you would have had you would have had it off by two yards that you know to get uh so yes so i listen i mean i those contracts come

to your house they get the laser you know that's going to be spot on accurate so it's you know I think it's better. Yeah. I think it's better. Now. But you still have the official has to spot it. And when you talk about an official spotting, particularly, particularly, and it's like challenging first downs, it's one thing if it's on a major yard line. Like if you have to get to the 20 yard line for a first down, then it's a lot easier.

You can see he made the line and he did. But if you have to get to the 32 and the bus somewhere between the 31. and the half and the 32. It's really hard. Those are, you know, I mean, the official, if he's, if his spot is off by that much, it'll be a first down or not a first down. And he's looking at from an angle, he's doing the best he can. I mean, that's, it's like, it's like umpires call balls and strikes.

Not anymore. Well, robots coming from. Rob, you know, robot may come, but, but right now. We haven't had you on since, since Braves became head coach. It's right. And here we have the game we're going to talk about Super Bowl 38. Coach Mike Rable, strip sack, and caught a touchdown pass. Strip sack and caught a touchdown pass. Okay. No, I mean, that's a good chance it'll be a long time for somebody else plays in the Super Bowl has a strip sack and catches a touchdown pass. Long time. Now, what are your thoughts on how

coach will be as a coach? You know, what I remember, of course, about Mike was when we went when there's the defensive show team out there for the offense Mike played weak safety and that was his position if anybody else had gone out there said I'm playing week safety Mike would have said get the F out of

so he loved the running commentary on football you could tell that Mike was totally in the football and I will say some players you can tell if he wants the coach he'll be a good coach the question is does he want to work the hours because it's not you know if you're a player you're getting the beating and all but at least at the end of the day

you know Tuesday Wednesday Thursday at 5 o'clock you can go home you know for coaches you're going be there at 11 o'clock getting ready for the next day some guys just say look I love football I really don't want to be here at 11 o'clock every night other like Ryan Wendell I knew Wendy'd be a good coach he's at Buffalo so I went over to him we played he's at eleana well he started at Buffalo and I went out of Wendy how you like in this coaching He says, I love it. So if you actually, I know he knows the football, if he likes, you know, actually doing it, he'll be a, you know, be a really good coach.

Other guys, I don't, you know, I mean, if you're coaching, you get up in the morning, your wife's asleep. You come back, you come back in the night, she's asleep, you know. I mean, it's the old Vince Lombardi thing with his wife, Marie, and coaching. On Monday through Wednesday, we don't talk. On Thursday, we say hello. But Friday, he's actually civil. I mean, during the season, that's, and that part of it for coaches has not changed at all.

It's like somebody asked, well, what do coaches do? Hey, the best book ever written on the subject was Vince Lombardi's book, Run the Daylight. It's minute-to-minute account of him going through a big game, you know, in 1962. Now, okay, so he used 16mm film, they used tape film. But getting a team ready to play, it's the same thing. It has not, you know, it is not, you know, maybe a couple of plays are different, but the process for a coach hasn't changed. It hasn't.

So is Rayby putting the hours in? Knowing him, I'm sure he is. You know, I'm excited for them because you usually do take the personality of your head coach. Right. And it takes, you know, you take it and it's not something you do in one off season. in one training camp. I mean, you got to go through some, you know. And he's done that, though, in Tennessee.

I mean, he has a resume. This guy. No, no, no, he did a good. No question. I mean, he had, but I mean, as far as, okay, he did it at Tennessee, but to come, okay, you come in the patient, new bunch of guys, you know, you start all over. Yeah. There's no, you know, anything you did at Tennessee, that's ancient history, just like

anything that the Patriots did when Mike was a player. That's like, that's ancient, ancient history. Yeah, it is. Who's the smartest football mind you ever think you coached? Ever coached? I have to be Tom. Tom. I mean, because he, first of all, in 20 years, I mean, there's nothing like having.

I mean, you're the, you're the starting quarterback in the same offense for 20 years. I mean, it became, and the offense really, it evolved around him. Yeah. So he, you know, and he always, like he would go up for Friday practice when I do the cards of the defense. He, you can't show me a coverage. I have to say, okay, big, I will say. So that was, we used to have a little bit of a challenge in there. And that's, so that's why we used to get the, you know, when the coach was an offense or defense assistant at UOP or something and he showed one blitz in 1984. I wanted to make sure to talk. so that's your way of getting at tom i'll show you this coverage yeah and you know it's it's like

hey what killed him every time was dropping eight in the red area oh he got so upset with that because the windows are small and they just shrunk the even smaller the pee the pee drop in the red area he would get so mad which is why he needed to see it which is why we were yeah do you ever remember a specific time you stumped them and he got really mad? Oh, there's P drops in the rat. Oh my God, those were fun. The Ernie cards. Everyone knew Friday Ernie cards.

But it was because Friday is supposed to be. Mentor. Your hard physical work days are Wednesday and Thursday. And what I really wanted to do and totally encouraged by Bill was we want to ramp up the mental preparation on Friday. So you don't just go out there on Friday. on curls against cover three. And I'm a whoopty-do.

You hit a curl or cover three. You know, so we're going to, you know, we're going to make, first of all, make it challenging, make it interesting. I mean, had everybody's attention. You know, it's so easy to go out there. They know, hey, we're not, we're not totally full speed, you know, never in pads. You know, so you don't want anybody on cruise control. And that's the thing I really got from Bill Walsh was don't ever let players go on cruise

control at practice. Yeah. That's, you know, even if it's not full-speed contact, they got to be thinking every step of the way. Yeah, they do. And every player I've brought up, every player that's been on games with names, the Ernie cards come up, at least Patriots, you know, the Ernie cards come up, and they all have a strong opinion about it.

It's not very good, but we'll move on. Hey, you know what? It was, I mean, that's one of those things. if Bill and I liked it, it was good. Period. End of story. Exactly. Now, have you ever met John Stryker? I have not had the pleasure meeting him.

Have you heard of them? Oh, yeah. What have you heard? Well, I know, hey, Coach Mike Vrable in the newspapers, and unlike me, he has a sense of humor. Oh, Bray. We're coming after you, Ray. You just don't know the sense of humor.

Maybe it's too high above. High brow, baby. Hey, hey, but you know what? That's, hey, that's what I love Mike Rable. I mean, particularly defensive players, got to have a little edge. Mike's got a little edge. And, you know, that's what we, I love Mike for it. Coach Strite, I mean, Pat McAfee, I heard Shregor talking about that this is his Ernie Adams.

I mean, there's only one, Ernie, bro. Come on now. You can't be dropping EA in there. We love you, Straggs, but that's, whoo, bold. Now, what do you think a good year is for Drake May? Okay, so I think the basic standard is... Year two. Year two.

First year, you got to show some potential, which he did. Second year, you got to show some significant improvement. Obviously, we all love them to be, you know, championship-level quarterback, but you've really got to show some real significant improvement. third year you got to be a player i mean a guy who can go out and you know when the championship's on the line you know you're you're ready to go um so he's clearly is shown potential i mean he's got you know we got to see some real progress here now what's progress like you know all the little things like i would say just watching him he has a little bit of a tendency step up in the pocket

tuck it and run and so step up keep his eyes down field throw the complete the pass for 15 yards I would much rather have the quarterback complete a pass for 15 yards than try to run for 15 yards. If you want to run for 15 yards, give it a Henderson or Stevenson. But the quarterback's there to throw the ball. So, you know, keep your eyes down field. Try to complete the pass. If there's nothing there, you know, then then you got to run. But it's just all the, you know, processing things, you know, faster.

No one, you know, when, you know, when, like you run the, 64 special. Yeah. Why shall it cross X on the income? you've got to be able to see, hey, in two steps, my ex is going to come open. Covers two. Can I hang with him for the extra half second or not? Which is that was something like Tom was always a master of. He always knew where his outlet was.

Always knew where his outlet was. So we could hang, hang, hang, last second, go to the outlet. You know, no, he had a real good sense of the timing of the play. You know, he's got to have a clock in his head. The processing. The processing. and you know it's really fast there's bad guys coming trying to hit you so i mean it's it's like where i've told a couple of young quarterbacks i don't know if you've ever watched on uh if i can

mention the network ESPN they do formula one you know with the camera right over the driver's shoulder that's really good for a quarterback to watch because that's how fast you got to play i mean those drivers you know there's no think about it no you just you just got to do it and that's that's how you got to play quarterback. Yeah. Try watching the Formula One and check that, you know, check that out for the... Well, we watched NASCAR last night to determine our fantasy draft and... Okay.

I'm a Formula One guy, you know, not NASCAR, but... Why? Because they actually have to make right turns. But all they got to do is win the pole, Ernie, no one ever passes each other. You know what? But it's still just the... There is actually, you know, I see there's some real... And I understand it's having the right tires and all that, but it just, you know,

The courses are so much more interesting. You see the new movie with Brad Pitt, F1? I have not. You're going to hate it. I think you should take Christine to see it. Okay. Get a popcorn on me. Like I don't watch it every week, but every time I do, that's what I'm thinking.

Hey, this is the way for a quarterback, you got to be playing, you got to be processing information as fast as that driver's processing it. Yeah? You really do. Because second drop, you're looking at the safeties on that special. that safety drops in the cover too, then you know how you've got to get backside of the high low. Right.

I mean, and that's the shallow to that in-cut. Right. So if that linebacker goes with that shallow, you better bang that in-cutting. And you have, the hole's going to be small. You can't have any hesitation. I mean, you don't get a second look. No, see it and throw it. Yeah.

And that's a big, that's what really differentiates, you know, quarterbacks. So Drake May has to be able to process. faster that would be a successful year the faster he can process the better he's going to play and if you know that yeah that would be that would get him going towards a successful year i mean everything else that comes with it but you think josh would be good for him yeah i mean i think josh is look they can a good coach can help a player um and that's what i think to to me i think coach players look at a coach and it's can this guy help me play better or not If the answer is yes, the player will listen to the coach.

If the answer is no, forget it. Now, I know you haven't been watching this team as deep as Ernie does, but what would you think the identity of this team would be knowing that Coach Rable is the head coach? Well, so my coach Vrable, what I remember, apart from all the great plays, was the first game of the 2008 season. Okay, you remember that? Remember what happened? Tom heard his knee. So we all knew coming in after the game.

I think everybody came. Brady heard his knee. He's out for the season. And as Mike, I'm standing in the locker. There's Mike Frable come. Okay, boys, we're going to have a little different brand of football. And that's, you know, Mike, hey, run the ball and play defensive. That is so deep.

I mean, I just know, Mike, that is so deep in his soul, that's not going to change. Yes, he understands you got to throw the ball. But he's a defensive guy, it's the running game, it's defense, that's the heart of it. That's why he loved having, you know, Henry is his back at Tennessee. You can just pound it, pound it, pound it. Yeah, that's his. And Deion Lewis, too, for a year, remember? He's still dealing from us.

They still, yeah. But, I mean, to me, what's their identity going to be? That's going to be. You control the game. It's more of a controlling style of the game. Right. Well, but the thing you get into the NFL, I mean, you run the ball to control the tempo, you throw the ball to ring the cash register.

Yep. So you get, you know, I mean, sooner or later, you've got to be able to do, you've got to be, if you're a running team, great, you've got to be able to throw it enough, particularly when you need to, you know, to be effective. I mean, that's, I mean, that's really, like Lamar Jackson's. NFL MVP and all that, but, you know, when it's third and 15 of the fourth quarter of a championship game, is he, you know, how good is he really going back and making the throw to pick it up? He's going to hit some of them.

He might hit enough of them to win a championship. I'm not sure. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, take the extreme case, you know, you're down 283 with 2.12 to go in the third quarter of the Super Bowl. Everybody in the world knows you've got to throw the ball. I mean, you know, and that was always my standard for quarterback in the NFL. What you really want is someone who can win the game, throw in the football. Because he's the only guy in the field who can do that.

And that's, I mean, I know people thought, hey, running quarterback's a great. Tired to be a running quarterback much past age 28. Yeah. I mean, it really, yeah. For 18 games. For 17 games. Right, right. I mean, so, you know, you got to be, hey, everything's,

on the line. It's third and 17, we've got to pick it up. I got to throw it. It's going to be a small window. I got to make a good decision, make the throw. You know, I execute the play. All right. But lastly, before we get into this game, we got to jump into it. Have you been watching the

ACC at all? Little headlines here and there. You got any projects from over there or anything? No, no. I'm an interested fan. I will be watching watching next weekend when they play TCU. I'm not sure what I'm going to say we talked to coach at all just briefly briefly I think they're working hard he's not sure really you know what it was going I mean after half a century

in the NFL it's different going to college I'm sure I'm sure it's going to be I'm sure he's going to be very interested to see the game too yeah I think you know he's got they're organized they got the kids working hard um the college college football is nuts. I mean, this is the Wild West with the emphasis on wild. You got to recruit your players twice here. Hey, and it's like NFL free agency with no contracts. I come for you and check it out for a month in the spring.

I don't like it. I'm going somewhere out. It's crazy. Wait, wait, about Billy O. Have you ever talked to Billy O? Billio, I've actually, I went over and watched a couple spring practices this year. Yeah. You know, they've got, uh, uh, uh, um,

I'm the big, good, solid team. Can they take over the, you know, win the ACC? You know, that's what he's building for. I mean, they're organized practices. They're, you know, they're getting a lot done. But, but again, it's so, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, who do you, who do you root for when Boston College plays North Carolina? They're not on the schedule this year. Oh, oh, you could have just said Bill.

I, I, I, yeah. My thing, when I'm watching a game, I root for my friends. Like, if I watch the Chiefs, I vote for the Chiefs because I love Brendan Daley. Okay, so he's very good. If I got two of my friends coaching, I just let's have a good game. Let's have a good game. Let's have great execution, no funnels, no turnovers. Take care of the football.

Don't be offside. You know, don't do stupid things. You know, I mean, our mantra, I had a little sidel. in my office. It was my mantra for about 15 years. Stamp out bad football. Stamp it out. I'm on a mission.

Bad football kills you. What's bad football? Being off sides are fourth and four, and you're the punt return team. That is really bad. What else is bad football? You know, it's all the don'ts to the kick. You know, being off the guy's second.

Don't block somebody in the back. Rough the kicker because you jumped up in the air left, you know, left your feet. one of my real pet peeves, which Julie, I know in your rookie year, I think we had a conversation about this, signal for a fair catching, don't catch the ball. Yeah, you hate that because you can't hit them. Well, no, Julie, the reason there's a returner you don't signal for a fair catch and then not catch it. As soon as you signal for a fair catch, the cover guys can run around behind you and play the ball.

If they don't know if you're catching it, they have to respect you. So if you're not going to catch it, fake the catch and let it hit the ground. Once you signal a fair catch, you're making easy for the coverage guys to play the ball. And that's, you know, it's just all those little details that when they happen in a big game, become big deals. That was my first year. I didn't fair catch after that. We'll be right back after this quick break. Let's go back to February 1st, 2004, where this game took place.

and go over some of the pop culture, Erndog. Have you ever seen you got served? No. Dance movie? No. It's pretty good. Oh, yeah, by Outcast? No.

No. You saw a miracle. The hockey movie? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we've seen that. Herbrooks, Herbrooks. You ever talk with Herbugs? No.

You know any hockey guys? You know, I grew up with a lot of people who, you know, played hockey. Did you? No. I was not. Yeah. I headed my grade school hockey team. There were like seven kids

that went on by college hockey and I could barely skate. So that was kind of a mismatch. Okay. So no hockey, no hockey. Super Bowl champions this year were the New England Patriots. MVP was Peyton Manning

and Steve McNair. What do you, were given co-MvPs? What do you think about that? That's most valuable player implies one. Okay. Thank you. I mean,

who do you pick that year? Ah. I know you know them both. And you know both of these guys. Yeah, for sure. I mean, we had Steve McNair, we had a phenomenal game in October, and then we played them in really the coldest game

I've ever been part of, the division playoff. And that they were tough. That was a tough team to play against. You know, Peyton Manning was Peyton Manning. I mean, he was great. He brought him back from a big comeback in the regular season. We stopped him on the last play of the game. As they said before, we were in goal line defense.

They were spread out. They tried to run the ball. Willie massacred Adrian James three yards in the backfield. That's why, I'll say it again. That's why when the Seahawks are spread out, if they'd handed the ball off to the last, Lynch, we'd have hit him three, we'd had somebody hit him three yards. Three yards.

People don't understand that. Yeah. They think that. I mean, look, if you want to run the ball, the Marshawn Lynch, get, you know, get people in there where you can cover up your edges and run it. Yeah. LSU national champion with Sabin. Nick Saban.

Now, you think Coach Saban's going to return to the pros? No. I think Nick, you know, Nick loves college football. When we got to Cleveland, our first four years, Nick was. a defensive coordinator. And when Nick came, he told Bill what he really wanted to do was be a head coach in a major college. So

Bill was totally fine with that. Like after our fourth year, Nick left and went to Michigan State. We knew that that's, you know, that that's what Nick wanted. I think he was much more comfortable. He'd hit, won the

national championship at LSU. Two years at the Dolphins. things probably would have been a little bit different if he'd gotten Drew Brees as a free agent, but he didn't. But I think he was just more comfortable being in a college environment.

What was his strength as a coach? Very, look, all human beings are different. Similar in a lot of ways to Bill, detail-oriented, know the game backwards and forwards, very demanding of the players. You know, wasn't going to take, you know, any kind of, anything sloppy, you know, just, just wasn't going to fly with him. What's the difference between him, Bill, then? As coaches, they're very similar.

I mean, you know, they're different, you know, personality-wise. Different personality-wise. I mean, like Nick always had, Kentucky Derby, he always had the, you know, a big poker poker game at his house. Yeah. You know, very. Who's at that poker game? Most of the, most of the staff. are you in there yeah

what game we talk in here we talk in texas hold them seven card stud more probably like seven card stud and I had one person I'm not going to mention at the table because he's still he's still in the league he didn't think I ever bluffed I bluffed him out of a

big he should see the look on his face who well I will I will let oh I go but uh are you a good poker player i you know i you would think that you would be probably pretty great numbers i have i haven't played i've played poker in my life i'm not a but i don't

have i haven't played poker in forever yeah what was ernie doing in 2004 early that well i'll tell you what i was trying to get you boy get get get get ready to win three playoff games now how were you different than the the 2001 ernie you know we had we were we were a little better known. I mean, this team, I mean, we had a real butt kick in defense. I mean, this was, I mean, I'd go watch our teams in 03 and 04. You know, if I ever see that, I see a few plays. I say, damn, we were really good on defense. Yeah. I mean, this was a dominating, a dominating bunch. Let's jump into the Carolina Panthers and then we'll get up in, and we'll start talking Patriots. Jump into the game. Jack, break down these Carolina Panthers.

get on these panthers. Two years removed from going one in 15, the last George C for year. John Fox comes in and turns this bunch around. It goes seven and nine. This season, 11 and five. Make the playoffs. It's their second year under John Fox. Jake Deloom was at the helm. Solid backfield of thunder and lightning action. Deshawn Foster, Stephen Davis. You got good receivers out there. Machine Muhammad, Steve Smith, Ricky Proll. Can't go in a Super Bowl without Ricky Pearl. But Muhammad and Smith, they were better than pretty good. Pretty darn good, maybe. Amen. Don't sleep on Moose and Smitty. Pretty darn good. And then on the other side, you go over to the defense, Hall of Famer Julius Peppers. You got Dan Morgan, you got Mike Minter.

I mean, you got Ricky Manning out here coming off the game of his life. You got Chris Jenkins, a defensive tackle, who's a big time player. Chris Jenkins. When he came out in the draft, I can't tell you how much time we spent talking about him. So he was some of those guys, you know, we spent hours and hours and hours talking about. So some players, he's just, okay, after going through that, I've paid particular attention to them. Yeah. Now, why did you spend a lot of time talking about him? You know, because he was, he had played at Maryland and was really talented.

Is he really the, you know, really the guy we want? Because he was obviously going to be a, I mean, I think he might. He ended up going in the second round. I mean, just some players are easy to evaluate. He is going to, he's our, you know, he's going to be a perfect guy for us if we can get him. Who's one guy that you missed on, that you had thousands of hours of conversations on that you wish you had that turned out to be a great player? The one that got away, Erne. The one that got away.

Well, I know. I mean, in a way, it might have been in your art where Cleveland, you know, Warren Sapp. Warren Sapp. Wow. Warren Sap was a goddamn good football player. But, you know, Warren Sap was a damn good football player, but it was also a case of playing at Tampa and being able to play the wide three techniques tackle. So he was playing in a spot that was geared for him.

Yeah. Okay. So that, and that can make a real, you know, as you know, I mean, some players, they get into, they're playing They plan on anything for a coach and a system that doesn't necessarily fit them just right, and they can't really shine the way that they might someplace else. So I just, okay, Joe Montana, truly a great player, truly a great player. Play for Bill Walsh, had a system that was really geared for him. Yeah.

So how, you know, what would, how would Joe Montana have been the same guy, had he gone to, you know, the 1979 Seattle Seahawks. Yeah. Maybe, you know, I mean, he, I mean, look, he was, he won big game, big comebacks at Notre Dame. He may very well have been, but, but, you know, getting the right guy clearly in the right spot, you know, the coach who knows how to utilize him, you know, can really make a difference.

That is. But you guys, you know, you did pick up a pretty good D tackle from Miami, Vince Wilfork. No question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were right. The year after, and, of course, you know, that 2001 draft all the time we, because we knew we were going to want the defensive lineman.

Seymour. We took Seymour. In fact, that was down at the Combine. We were, I must say, the precipitating factor in getting them to change the rule at the combine because you can have a player in your room for an interview. You got him for 15 minutes. The horn goes, and you got to let them go. Well, back, this was back a little bit before the day.

we had the seven top defensive linemen we had them all in our room at the same time we had the doors locked we had like seven coaches we go around each interviewer interview a guy the players stayed there and they're pounding it on the door let them out let them out

so after that they went to the 15 minute rule you can only have a player one player in your room for 15 minutes and you had to do you remember the question you asked richard seymour you know a lot of the 15 minute interview a lot of that was before the 15 in an interview.

Well, but it's still... It was still 15-ish. 15-ish. You know, tell me about, you know, some of the questions we asked to everybody. Tell me about your athletic career. I mean, we wanted to know,

were you all state in three sports in high school? Like a lot of guys were. But you guys knew that. Well, but I want to hear it from, you know, hear it from him, how did it go for you? What was you thinking about?

You know, why did you go to Georgia? Who else recruited you? You know, what was your thought prices. You know, and some guys, it's, hey, coach, everybody in America recruited me. Other guys is, yeah, I went to that school. They were the only school that offered me a scholarship. Yeah. I mean, it's, you get a lot from that. What do you get from that? Just, this is, this is, this is, that combine is just kind of an introduction. Yeah. And there's no way you can think, I can go talk to somebody before. It's 15 minutes, half an hour,

and know everything about it. Yeah. I may have a sense, hey, this guy's an interesting guy. seems like a great guy you might unfortunately every now and hey that guy is a jerk we don't want anything to do it i mean some people you just turn you off let somebody else deal with them in our other show we spend a lot of time asking questions about certain dudes that determine what kind of dudes they are there's a lot of similarities between the draft process is there a singular question that you think is the best identifier on what type of dude someone would be like asking him in the situation what kind of guy the guy would be in a locker room yeah uh you you You know, we try to, you know, a bunch of different ways.

Tell me about the toughest situation you've ever had to overcome your life. I mean, one thing... Dog. Determine if he's a dog or not? Well, one thing that's really changed is now, at least it was, you know, I haven't been to a combine in five years, was... But the agents would have the players really ready for these questions. So you can kind of tell when you're getting canned answers.

I mean, when we started it, sometimes the players were, weren't ready for it that's what you want and the guy's not real you know he's just what really what you want is to get a guy or he's answered you know he's giving you honest coach i just love ball i just you know coach i'll do anything you say coach okay really uh okay it's it's just ask me one question like i'm a draft pick that's elite at detackle and i'll answer it just ask me one let's play okay uh and you're a really good player really good player probably like the top pick that's in the area you guys could get them but you may have to trade up one pick them okay um tell me why we should pick you coach um 6 5 4 345 i have the best 20 in the combine

i had 11 sacks from the three technique that's why you should pick me okay uh have you ever missed the play during a game because you were tired now coach I'm 3.45. I tell you right now, on third down, or in a goal line situation, or in fourth down, or in the red area, I've never been tired. Has there been a first down when they're garbage time? We're playing Miami of Ohio, where I looked at the coach where I said, hey. Okay, well, son, we got the tape right here.

Here's you on third and four. It looks like you're not quite hustling. Tell me about this part. Tell me about this. Well, coach, that week my girlfriend broke up with me. Hey, you're not the first football player ever had a girlfriend break up with you. What's going to happen to you if you got someone who's in the NFL who's been, you know, thought she had a hook's in you for your money and she breaks up with you.

How are you going to react to that? Yeah, it's tough in there. It's tough in there with the coaches. What do you think are going to draft them? Would you draft me, coach? I have to see your tape first. I mean, hey, you know, really, but the number one, you know, I know, one of my favorite people who we talked about at great length was Bucco Kilroy, and he just said, you know, he, he's the

football philosopher, he said, in the national football league, you should not deal in personalities, but nobody needs an asshole on their team. So to me, that's always the big, is this, that's, hey, number one, let's get down there. Is this guy an asshole, or what's the same? story with him i get it but there is good assholes you know what the rarest part of the human species is an asshole who's worth it

this is really rare very rare you're pointing right at julian when you're a shooting star let's get back into the scowry report of the panthers guys wait ernie i thought of you the day i saw buck out kill war getting inducted to the eagles all of fame the egos hall of fame well and because

he was for all his you know the football philosopher of the scout. He was a great player when he was there. He was a prototype defensive lineman, you know, tough guy from Philly. I mean, they played without face mask. He was, hey, steer that guy over to me. I'll take care of him. Yeah. Bucko. That's a real player right there. I love that. Now, Coach, when you, you remember scouting this team. What were, like, the three things that you thought? They were, like, all Dan Henning coach teams, a tough run in the ball. Was that Magizoo?

Coach Magizu? Well, it was Damby and the, you know, the offensive player. See, I grew up with Magiz's son. Okay. Or not grew up, we went to college together. I remember watching these teams, but. You know, they were, you know, I mean, they got two backs. They ran the Wham.

They run, you know, it's a physical downhill running team. You know, those receivers were really good. So you got an explosive passing game. Defense really turned around, getting peppers and Jenkins up. front. I mean, that was a, you know, team speed, hard, physical, really, I mean, it was the I love playing against him because I said that's, in a lot of ways, the kind of team we were trying to be. Yeah. So it's too, you know, similar, not identical, but similar teams. And what do you think of John Fox as a head coach? You know, he was, he was great there.

Like, so, he took over, he took over a team that was one of the first. and they were a bad one of 15. No. Okay, it wasn't like, yeah, we had six games, so were close. I mean, that was a bad team. And because he's, John is, you know, he's very upbeat, positive, you know, get guys going, get them playing with enthusiasm. And, listen, this was, you know, I mean, after, after, I mean, really, after two years,

I mean, that's as good a turnaround is you can. Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember Dan Morgan on this team? Yes, I do. I mean, he was, you know, really good, you know, one of the great players and all those Miami teams, Miami Hurricanes, you know, a little easier. I mean, he's playing middle lineback to be on a really good defensive line.

Very productive, you know, made a lot of players. He's very athletic, could run. Yeah. He's their GM now. Yep. What do you think about players joining the front office? Listen, that's great because they have the player's perspective. Okay, so that part of it is terrific.

When they get to be a GM, you know, they've, A, got to be able to put, you know, you can't just show up, hey, I played, I know, I could be the GM. I mean, all these guys, you're talking about signing, are you really going to go study the tape, not relying on what somebody else tells you they saw on the tape? you got to see the tape for yourself so you actually know what you're talking about but as long as somebody's working you know put in the work be smart try try to learn every day great yeah um what made julius peppers phenomenal athlete look i mean you're talking about you know football player you know basketball i mean that's what you know great you know great athlete so you think he's like a basketball player that played football no he's a great athlete who could play both basketball and football. I mean, he's a football player when he's on the football field. He's a basketball

player. He's a basketball player. But there are so many, obviously, he was the first pick in the draft, not many Julius Peppers, but, you know, so many of the players we talked with who are, you know, we told me about your high school career. I was all state in three sports. I mean, I really like, I think it's terrible what's going on with so many young kids, 14 years old specializing in one sport. I am totally against that. I mean, hey, just be an athlete. Go on and play all the different games.

What does a multi-sport athlete tell you as a talent evaluation? Number one, you know, this guy, he's competitive, he's good at what he does. Athletic skill, he can do a lot of different things. I mean, if you're, you know, think you're going to be 14 years old, just specialize and one thing, and all your hours of specialization are going to get you a college scholarship. Well, actually, the kid who's a real good athlete and shows up, and after three plays, the college coach knows, hey, that's the guy I want. Now, the little different, you get to be 18 years, you know, 18 years old, you're a high school

baseball player, you're kind of like, okay, you may be going the first round of the baseball draft. You know, when you get up, you know, later teen years, there is. is some special you know specialization is going to kick in but for the young kid i'm i i absolutely hate you know 13 year old is you know just do they do nothing 365 days a year but play one sport i know because they hey see by the time they're 16 they may be so sick of it burned out i don't ever want to do this again i was like one of the last three sport athletes like in my community and then then they started changing into this specialized right yeah and a lot of it's because

parents and all you know there's a lot money now coat or there's there's a lot of money but i'll say it again the guys who you know hey look you can go out you see 100 kids and you see him running around playing games you can you pick out hey that's the guy right there i don't care what the game is that's my guy right there and that's you know inevitably not now also understanding the kids develop in high school you may be 14 years old you might be 5-7 and you you may be graduated from my school, you're six, four. I mean, though, so kids develop at different speeds. Yeah.

But don't try, don't try to stuff them in the, you know, a little box, you know, when they're, when they're too young. I'm on the, up of my soapbox on that, but I really feel strongly about that. I get it, I get it. So Julius Peppers, he's a great athlete. You know, we call him a freak, and that's a freak of an athlete. We're right. You know, freak, hey, there aren't very many of them, but when you see one, you know.

yeah that's exactly how you define a freak on dudes on dudes steve smith senior told us that he almost became a patriot do you remember that i i know we were really you know i'm not sure exactly what he but i mean we were really interested in him yeah um would like you know we thought he was terrific uh we would love to have had him and you know i mean sometimes things just like later in his career when julius peppers was a free agent And I can't tell you what year this was. You know, Bill was right.

Hey, we should really think about signing this guy. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, we didn't. Yeah. No, without a doubt. Let's jump into the Patriots, Jack. Let's go. Let's get into these 14 and 2 Patriots. 14 and 2.

4th year under Bill Belichick, Charlie White's leading the offense. Romeo Cornell leading the defense. Coming off a 9 and 7 year with they missed the playoffs. The season before won the Super Bowl, of course, beat the greatest show on turf. Released lawyer Malloy five days prior to. of the season. That was a big early storyline. Drop week one to Buffalo, coincidentally. Sign Rodney in the offseason. 31 and nothing. By the way, I just let me know the last game of the regular season. We beat Buffalo 31-0. Just saying. Full circle. Full circle.

The game, so we lost to them and ended up with us down on the goal line. The last game ended up with them down the goal. Larry Yuzzo made the big play to preserve the shutout. There we go. All is-o. How did the locker room take that? Some guys were a little shocked, but, you know, it was, I mean, it's the unfortunate, in a lot of ways, unfortunately, you know, some of the, some business decisions that get. Brought in Rodney Harrison. Brought in Rodney, who, I mean, I was a huge advocate for signing Rodney. He came in, and I remember my friend who's out the charges, say, how's Rodney doing for you? And I was honest to them.

I said, he's the best safety in football. So, yeah, he's doing pretty well for him. And speaking of Rodney, we got a shout out this defense, gave up a league low 14.9 points per game. Hey, this was a butt kick in defense. Why? Well, just look, we're a 34 front. I got Mike Frable and William McGuinness on the edge. We got Ted Washington, Richard Seymour, and Bobby Hamilton on the front.

You got, you know, inside backers. You got Ted Johnson, Roman Fife, Teddy Bruske. You know, you got Thai law out of the corner. Rodney Harrison and strong safety. I mean, this is a look at, ooh, this bunch means business. Oh, yeah. Physical, dominating. And we had real complementary skills.

For instance, if you were in, if we're in a 34, Eugene Wilson was basically a corner type player who we put it with safety. So if you were in a, like these guys did a lot, regular people. She had two backs and a tight end. Rodney Harrison was on your tight end, and Eugene Wilson's back at weak safety. If they came in with 11 personnel, three wide receivers, well, Gino went up and covered the slot receiver man, the man, and Rodney dropped back to week's safety.

So we could handle, you know, we had a lot of flexibility. And then we had what we loved was Ty and we played cover two. Rodney would go out corner and tie would be at safety. Now you talk about corner force in the run. Well, it's one thing if it's a corner, it's another thing if it's Rodney Harrison out there. So, I mean, it was just a physical dominating group. Now, what was the difference between these generation pets and the generation paths that I played?

We were probably, okay, the biggest one was offensively, we were good, but we did, we put the rocket fuel in our offense when we got Randy Moss and West Walker. That 2007, we were like, we were a good offensive team. we became in 2007 we went on for about 12 years realistically the best offensive football okay we weren't quite there on on offense at that stage it's also this is tom playing his third season as a starting quarterback versus his 15th year as a starting quarterback i mean that really makes a lot of difference it makes a lot of difference uh so defensively our oh three and o four

teams were the best defenses we had i mean these were the guys they're just going to go out They're going to kick everybody's ass, shut them down. And they were a dominant group. Yeah. I just don't understand how you guys didn't make the playoffs the year before and then you guys. So there were a lot, you know, number one, we didn't really. You can talk to a team about what it takes to repeat as Super Bowl champs. It doesn't mean you're going to necessarily get it done.

You know, the team that wins the Super Bowl, Their season is a month longer and everybody's also. They're off season. You know, it's just, it's almost like you don't have an off season. But if you're not, you just, before you know, hey, it's ready to go for training camp. Are you really as sharp as you were last year? Are you healthy? Are you healthy?

Right, right, right, right. It's, it's, your recovery time is shorter. You know, so, I mean, the difference between winning and losing is so small. you know, we were, you know, just didn't quite have our edge. Yeah. So it's tough. Yeah. And it's probably, you guys were, you know, still younger on the offensive side of the ball.

Right. Yeah. No, this was a, I mean. They didn't know how to handle success, maybe? They're definitely part of it. And, you know, we, we, we, as a franchise and a team, I mean, we evolved as we went. I mean, the teams, you know, even as coaches, I mean, we had a much better sense, you know, after, you know, what we needed to do after we won a championship, as far as getting a team ready for the next year. You know, that's why it was so impressive last year with the Chiefs. I mean, to get to the Super Bowl after going back to back, like, I thought that was Patrick Mahomes' like most impressive year. Everyone says he had a down year. He had no receivers.

the line was band taped together and he was still winning football games right i mean you know you you watch at super bowl and those defensive ends are meeting at the quarterback it that wasn't even close well i mean they they got crushed yeah i mean that was not you know they they were not competitive with four guys yeah and then you just put everyone in the back it's tough okay but you know but that's so so the chiefs have lost they've lost two super bowls in the last five years and the common factories, and both of them, their offensive line was just beat, you know, was hurt, beat up, and, you know, which people don't understand. That's understandable going into your third Super Bowl in a year, or third in a row Super Bowl. Like Ernie just said,

I mean, you have shorter off seasons. It's harder to keep the guys motivated. You know, that's a lot to get to a third Super Bowl. I think that was insane. I mean, that's one thing. I remember listening, you know, when the Chiefs, listening to the TV people, I think the Chiefs won their first two people, and they're talking, well, they can go win three or four. And, you know, yeah, it is so incredibly hard to win one. Yeah. It's unbelievably hard.

I mean, you've got to go out and beat the best teams. And a lot of it is just like when you sustain success for a long time, like our best teams on my generation there, even win. Like, we got unhealthy at the, like, the wrong times. Well, like, we were... Like, in 15, we started out hot. Over the course of our team, really, I went into every game think we're going to win. Yeah. I mean, I was never thought, yeah, I never went to games and we're in trouble, except for the AFC championship game in 2015. I couldn't run. I walked in off that field. We were so... I said,

oh, Lord. We are... In the M.8 soldier. We were really banged up at tackle. We had, you know... Yeah, I mean, it was like the walking wounded. And we got to go out, you know, we got to go out and play in Denver. I mean, it's just, I really thought we're probably in trouble here.

That's when we had to put the double Denver in because Von Miller was in the backfield before we even... What the fuck? Holy shit. I didn't get off the line of the scrimmage. I see Von Miller on Tom. Yeah, I mean, now... So, yeah, I mean, though, hey, football, it's a nasty game and stuff like that does happen. It does happen.

Jackie, let's jump into the game, lead up. Let's get into the lead-up of this game. The Panthers responded from a late three-game skid, win their last three, win the NFC, South. Notably, go into Philly, pick off Donovan McNabb three times Ricky Manning alone. That was a Ricky Manning three interception game. Rookie. Over in the AFC, Patriots, of course, were on their win streak, won the AFC East. When the AFC, number one seed, go,

Peyton Manning comes into Foxborough, we got the tie law game. I fought the law and the law won. Three interceptions, pick off Peyton Manning four times, win that one 24, 14, just one of the all-time tie-law defensive performances. Was that an all-time performance by the defense in a championship game?

Yes. Against the Colts? Yeah, it was, but truly, it's the way we played defense all year. Yeah. I mean, this was... You know, we were really good on defense. What made Ty Law so good that game?

You know, I mean, Ty is a wonderful personality for a defensive back of loud. I love him. Okay, some people think he's, you know, a little brash, which he is. But you've got to have that to play corner. Well, I'm Ty Lowe. What the fuck he's the guy? I'm a shot of class. Get out here.

You know, and this is what, you know, I mean, You need that. Defense is not those quiet, studious types. That just doesn't work. No. You know, you need your corner. If you have an all-time corner, they need to say their name in the third person.

That's like Dion used to do it. I mean, all the greats use their name in third person. Revis. Now, before this game, what was the thing to the team? What do we have to do to win? We just had to stop the run game, not turn the ball over. Stop the run, yeah. Scoring the red area and convert third downs?

Stop the run, contain their wide receivers. Which is tough because they ran so well, and then you get a great matchup one-on-ones on the outside. 85-year-old touchdown. This is, like I said, people always say, well, nobody wants to play this team in the plebs. Nobody wants to play that team in the playoffs. I mean, this is crazy.

If you actually want to win the playoffs, You're going to have to beat the best teams. So bring them on and let's go. If we're afraid of playing the best teams, we're not going to get there anyway. There's no secret number you can call up, would you send me a bad team for the Super Bowl? It doesn't happen. So that was the storylines going into this game, that this was a red-hot freaking Panthers team. That was not beatable.

Well, you know, I mean, hey, they were red-hot, we were red-hot. You get to that game, for the most part, everybody's beatable. It's 60 minutes to play for a championship, you know, who's, you know, who's better in that 60 minutes? It's like, you know, it's like Bill Wood's, I know you heard this as a player, but I say, fellas, I don't need it in the middle of February. I need your best right now. It's everything, you know, it'll be, I need everything you got right now. Right now. And that was, you know, if you remember, I'm going to jump ahead a couple, about a decade.

when we went over, getting ready to go play the Falcons in the Super Bowl. We had the last, we had the meeting, and then we walked right out of the meeting, I'm on the bus and go play the game. And Bill said, I want every person in this room to know, I picked you to be on this team to win games like this. You know, I know you're going to show up, you're going to give me everything you got,

and it's, hey, look, we're going to play the best football we can. If the other team, it is better if we lose. I mean, you know, that's, you know, we understand that completely, but we're going to show up and give it our best, you know, when it counts. Yeah. And hopefully it's good enough. That's all you can do. That's, that's it, right.

How about this lineup for the coin toss? You had Y-A-Tittle, Earl Campbell, Dom Maynard, Gene Upshaw, Mike Singletary, Ollie Mattson. You know, I actually, so I just watched, I watched the full, I think it's the first time I actually watched the full TV broadcast and I saw these so I saw you know I mean I remember

being 10 years old watching YA Tiltill for five touchdown passes every week for the New York Giants Yeah Yeah was that your favorite football player Yeah he was so I mean he yeah he was one of them But he was any funny YA Tittles

You know he he came out So that was in the early 60s And then about 1979, my first year, coached into John, Wyatt Hill comes out to, he comes out to practice. Yeah. And we're watching him, you know, he was so smooth, I mean, 50-7 years old, he was so smooth, look, throwing the ball. He's still throwing at 57?

Yeah, now, not driving in 18, yeah, had comebacks. But you could just see the throwing motion. Ooh, that guy was good. It's like, you know, we played down in Jacksonville, the last game in 2000. And Kenny Anderson was their quarterback coach who might have the his quarterback mechanics were as good as anybody's and he's out there warming up with the receiver just watching him. I told that corpse, hey, watch that guy. Now that guy can throw that.

Heck yeah. We'll be right back after this quick break. Give us this game breakdown, Jackie. So the first quarter we alluded to this a little bit earlier, defense shined, led the way. 21 offensive plays for Carolina minus seven yards total scoreless first quarter Adam Venetary notably

misses a 31-yard field goal on the Patriots first offensive drive We get to the second quarter misses another one, 38-yarders block Then we fast forward a little bit The Vrabel Strip sack leads to a touchdown And that's kind of when the floodgates start opening

24 points scored in the last three minutes of the half He got Brady to Branch Jake finds Steve on a 30 49 yarder, and then Brady to Givens, then Carolina finishes the half for the field goal. So it's 14-10 after a scoreless first taking us into the half. Now, what do you think it was about the scoreless first? Just the Super Bowl noise and getting used to each other. Yeah, so, I mean, you know, listen, we got down there, you know, I mean, we missed a field goal.

I mean, it was kind of like, you know, you got bottled up, and then just, you know, it exploded kind of like each team's putting their things to see what teams are going to do to their thing and then you make the adjustments off the adjustments i mean you know feeling it out but you shouldn't be but you're kind of are yeah because you have two god you have two weeks to prepare for this thing right people don't realize that yeah and you know listen you got you have your brilliant game plan they got their brilliant game plan and we put them together and you don't know how it's you you don't know how you know how it's going to work and sometimes you get in these games i know one of the my my fun things they did was i always did when we go in the playoffs did a little video and they call it one play can make a season

and it's one play in there like one little one guy getting his hand up for an extra six inches to block the field goal it's it's somebody doing the little detail that we can really turn things around and it's like you've heard this a hundred times from bill fellas it'd be easy if i could tell you before a play this is the play that's going to decide the game well i know if i said that you would absolutely give me 100% on that play but it doesn't work that way you never know when that play's going to be that's when you got to give 100% every play now what was the play in this game um you know i mean it might listen i the ones it's uh it's it's rabe's getting the strip sack it's like a great job executing a reed game when he's coming with that little

detail what's a read game a read game is when you the outside linebackers coming off the edge with the defensive end and you may they may make the line may fan out to you or they may not if they fan out to you then frabs comes underneath and and it comes wide open which is what happened here but it's just doing that you know the right start at the right time and boom there's a there's a big play now and then there's a couple like there's a couple other plays in there just before we went down we went down the touchdown there

where we went ahead just to see Tom in the pocket and he never got enough credit for being able just to slide away from a guy and make the throw I mean he there's like classic shots of him just moving you know just a little

just a little just enough just enough you know just enough so I can make a good throw I mean it's again it's you know in these big games I mean, it's people doing the right things at the right time. And, you know, so if you don't execute the read game right, you don't, there's no do-overs. Yeah.

I mean, it's right. It's now or never. Let's look at the, the, let's run it back. Three, fire to the 10, incomplete. Oh, the block is holding. It's a block. After the block, here it is. he had from behind lost the football it's on the ground he had another okay i he had another

reed stun in there you know awesome the game what were you guys like that was just you know that you know just beating them off the edge beat him off but just yeah but that's what you know i mean mike was just a consistent great-edge player for us so we go in a halftime what what's the halftime mantra you know it's you know those super bowl half times are so long it's just really everybody you know to take we don't don't get all hyped up here you know take your time we could just go play our game there was no you know really regardless of the game i mean i would say our half times are fairly calm and organized no i mean there was no bedlam in the locker room Was there anything that you remember, like Charlie Weiss saying that they had to do the offense to get this thing to break out to, you know, scorn?

You know, it's always, you know, hey, just, you know, we're doing, I mean, at this stage, the game, we've been playing football for six months. You know, we've got to, you know, we've got to just go out and execute it. Yeah. Now, what did the Panthers do to change on offense to get some points? Well, see, the problem, what we got it, particularly at the end there, I was talking about our defense with the safety. they're both hurting out of the game. We're playing, oh, so they got Stevens Fifth and Musa Muhammad.

We got, you know, Meyer and Aiken's there is a special teams guy playing safety. We're kind of, oh, we got a little problem here. Yeah. So, I mean, and of course, we end up with the game. They scored to tie it up and kick it out of bounds. So we get the ball in the 40s. Now, is that the play?

That was huge. Is that the play, you know, If Coach Belichick was in front of that kicker and he said, this is the play that could decide to the game. Do you think he would have kicked it out of bounds? Probably. Well, I don't know. I don't know for sure what he was trying to do,

but I know it was a bad kick. And by a good kicker, but there's no do-overs. We get the ball in the 40, and we got Finan and Terry over there, so we go get making a few. And, you know, we got a first and, we got to overcome a first-and-20.

Troy got called for offensive pass interference. So, first we overcome it. Tom makes a couple big, you know, big throw to Dion, and, you know, Venetary, we missed too early, but when it counted, he put it right through the middle. Now, did you guys, you guys had full confidence in Adam at that point? Totally. Totally.

Yeah. Now, listen, you know, it's, hey, he missed, you know, he's our guy. We want to get him in position, you know, to win the game. It's, it's like, you know, that last drive of Super Bowl, 36 against the ramps. We got to get Adam a chance to win it for us in regulation. Of course, I had, it was pretty good

I had upon, you know, we had the TV monitor to look at for replays and I happen to see on the TV replay like that of a 307 out of 47 kicking inside. Yeah, it'd be a good idea. Give him a chance. Just to reinforce this. You know, yeah.

Now, can you walk us through the game-winning drive, beat for beat? like, what's the mindset of the coaching staff when you see balls in the 40? All right. All right. How do we approach this? Okay.

We know we need 20, you know, we need 25 yards. We need 25 yards to have a, you know, a realistic chance to kick a field goal because, you know, you're not going to try a 62 yard or that if you don't think you're making, give them the ball where they complete one pass and they go for the game. the way of field go. So we've got to be smart, but, you know.

Last shot mentality. And let's, you know, we, this is what we do. We have confidence in ourselves, let's, let's go play. Now, what's the difference between Brady and his first Super Bowl game winning drive and then this Brady in the game winning drive? He'd done it before. So, I mean, it was like, hey, you know, we've been there, done that. You know, kind of, that's where.

Were you guys confidence through the. roof on this like you guys we're going in the game after that no I mean I think I think we all hey we got a really good team we know what we're doing let's go I mean it's not we never we didn't try to

we tried to tone it down you know trash talking we're not going to win games talking yeah that's never and that was something that was totally consistent throughout the whole our whole time with the Patriots

just go out and play walk us through that final drive okay so we get the uh we we we start with the 40 and now i remember we had we we we we catch the ball and we make a completion troy brown catches the first and 20 we get the we did a couple of times in this game got the quarterback moving you know hit to hit the big pass down there to dion um you know we're positioned to kick it yeah and then then it's like that yeah i mean that's and it's like hey it's hey it's hey we got we've been practicing this for six months we got to do it right now tomorrow's not going to do any good had to overcome something to a first and 20 that's not easy to freaking overcome no totally that's right and this is where um you know even though

we weren't we weren't the same we weren't the offense here that we were four years later but when we had you know we had a first and 20 you know we went and picked it up the other thing we did in this game was uh you know we just took it ran it right at them pretty effectively so i mean it was we we controlled the tempo of the game i mean we get down there you know we miss uh you know we missed two field goals i mean those were those were huge but i mean we were we were controlling the tempo of the game um you know but they had i mean they had a big you know big time explosive players so who are you next to when adam was lining up to kick yeah boy that's the game winner you know usually

because I always had in the coaching box because I had to look at the monitor to tell Bill if we were going to challenge a play or not. So I always sat wherever the monitor was in the booth and sometimes it's up in a corner, sometimes it's in the middle. So I don't remember exactly who was sitting where. And sometimes if the monitor was up high

like attached to the ceiling and I stood up I always put myself wherever I could see the monitor best so I don't honestly remember usually my man Scott Pioly was right there

old Pioly our main man now how long does it take for you to get down after the kick? You know the total chaos at the Super Bowl

starts like so in this one I think we just actually the elevator was right outside our door, so we were down pretty quick. We played Super Bowl 46, we lost to the Giants. They weren't bringing the elevator up to the top level.

So not only do we lose the damn Super Bowl, had to walk down the stairs with the fans from the top of the stadium to the bottom. Walk a shame? Pardon? That's the walk of shame. That's the walker shame. Oh, you got.

And then, you know, It's the whole, you know, it's just chaos. Did anyone know you, Ernie? Anyone shout you out? No, they didn't know me. Hell, the security, you know, like we won, I think we beat the CX. You know, you come down and they got the podium up there, is all roped off. I mean, they weren't going to let me in, you know, under the rope line.

I said, buddy, I'm a coach, you know. I mean, it's. Mayhem. Mayhem. And that's what, you know, Bill was really. really, he said, I remember the meetings before the games. He said, look, if it's a tight game, you know, 30 seconds to go, all these goddamn, excuse my English photographers are going to want to get on the field.

They're going to be crowding and pushing. They're ready to go. And that's when, you know, we had people assigned, you know, the strength coaches. Your job is to keep those people out of our bench. because they're you know it's it's you know it's mayhem mayhem man like can we talk about lastly before we move on and we grade the game why why is mike rable such a great red area target oh well number one this was a goal line pass yeah so it wasn't like we didn't spread out and we run some fancy route i mean you know it's like 136 i mean you're across it's still a crosser

a crosser traffic traffic but you know they got you know it's they got to play goal line defense. They got to fight through picks. I mean, it wasn't, you know, he made it, you know, made a really nice catch when we scored. I mean, but you know what those goal line passes is, it's everybody packed in. You know, you get people going one way or the other. He came wide open. And, you know, game on the, you know, big play, he caught the ball. Yeah. Caught the ball. That was at his play. That was, and, you know, but that's, you know, I mean, Mike, like, pre-game, he's out there running around catching balls. You know, so that he, I mean, you talk about who just like to, as a player, a guy who just

like to play ball, Mike Vrable liked to play ball as a, you know, and that's why he was, you know, he's so good. Where did the idea to actually use them on offense come from? Because, you know, in the NFL, you can only, your roster on game that is limited. I mean, you don't have, it's not like college where you can dress six tight ends. So we got Vrable playing tight ends. We got Richard Seymour playing fullback. I mean, you just get into, uh, you, you, you, you, you, you, you.

You want your big guys in the game on the goal line. If a defensive lineman can play fullback for you, that's huge. Because you may not, sooner or later, you have to get, it's like people playing, you know, offensive linemen at tight end. It's, you know, you run out of people. Roster size is so much smaller that it's such a, it can determine how you carry your roster for that game if Mike can cover two spots.

Oh, listen. But even throwing to the guy and he's a defensive end throwing to him in the Super Bowl. But you know what? You can't, if he's in the game and they call 136 all cross, he's the X, he's open, you're going to throw him the ball.

I mean, it's not like, oh, he's a, you know, you don't have time to process. He's in the game. He's, they throw him the ball. You can't be worried about. It becomes a problem when you get the quarterback. I got this route over here. I don't think that guy's going to catch it

even though he's open. I'll go someplace else. That's when the whole thing can start to break down. I mean, it's, you know, it can be a, you get a few guys hurt. I mean, it can, you know, there's problems that, as you know, that, as you know, they can come up on stuff like that. A lot. A lot.

The aftermath of this, the franchise wins their second Super Bowl. Tom Brady wins, MVP, his second of his five. Carolina had a Super Bowl slump that very next year going seven to nine. New England would go in Reed. Pete and then draft Vince Will Fork, Ben Watson, and that next year's draft, which turned out to be two really good football players for the organization. New England would go back to back. Carolina would return to the NFC title failing to Chicago. And then New England would take their win streak from week eight of 2004 to 21 straight games, including the playoffs, which would

be a record. I told we went in the Pittsburgh and got our butts kicked. Tile all broke his foot. Yeah. But, you know, that's a... And we got to wrap up with the final score here, 3229 Patriots beat the Panthers just to put a bow on that thing. Wow. Next time we got to go into the halftime show, there was some wild stuff going on there. Listen, the other thing you got to go in, there's some, no, I've never seen this.

There's some mind-boggling, Bud Light commercials. Bud. Like this... Why? Like, there's some stuff on there. I didn't know. it's legal to do a commercial back back then we got to have an Ernie

commercial episode where we just sit and watch Super Bowl commercials I love that how do you hear about the commercials when you're at the game I didn't this week I was watching this week yeah the video guys they gave me a DVD of the TV and I always told them I want the whole thing I want the commercials I want a record of everything

so I've never seen I just watch it oh my god jeez did you watch the have you seen commercials these days uh yeah

because I watch the game on TV I don't have a you know but I'm gonna tell you this I said move did you watch

the halftime show yeah you did what you think oh man okay now I understand now I understand I'm in the same wardrobe now

fuck talk about some new yeah but it wasn't done and then you get a streaker to open the second half you know that was now now actually

okay We got the on the NFL or there's the NFL DVD which I also has has the streaker on it. No way. Oh yeah. They cut away on the other one,

the other bracket. No, but this is like because when we had the ring ceremony, they showed some highlights, they had that on. I never saw it. Okay, so what happens?

This guy, the famous streaker. He gets out there. and he's got a ball and he's going out to the kicker and he's whoosh and all of a sudden he's standing out there with his sneakers and his jackstrap and everybody's kind of you know nobody knows what to do there he is and matt shatham's getting pissed off he's getting pissed off and finally he just comes and he's got a drill the guy and this guy's true he's got an awful player coming around to Adam I mean it was and of course we were at the ring ceremony and they're showing this and every come on matt go get it come on matt and we'll probably

went wild man let's name the game and then score the game and then score the game is this the greatest game of all time let's score its decimals encouraged ernie we came up with these names the forgotten super bowl the underrated super bowl the automatic atom game the janet jackson game or is there another name that you have? Yeah, of those, I'm definitely going with underrated. The underrated Super Bowl or anything else that comes in mind? What do you like to call it? Yeah, that's a good...

All right, let's score the game. Is this the greatest game of all time? Let's score it. Desk moles encouraged, Ernie. Super Bowl 39, Carolina versus New England, the stakes of this Super Bowl matchup. Yeah, I give a nine. I'm going to go with the nine as well.

I went with a nine seven seven that a nine point three holy moly look at these guys for all the marbles star power of this game ernie jana jackson did show some cleavage yeah listen if you want star power

for that stuff I'm telling you give it to some of the guys in the bud life commercial uh this is guys just old I go with an eight here I mean this is a this is kind of a slug-fast football game there's no style points in this yeah i'll go i'll go with the star power eight the gameplay of the game oh on jack has an eight point six

uh the gameplay how it went slow first half yeah this was kind of this was a little bit of unique super bowl just because it's you know there's boom both halves you know i just yeah so i i go with a nine on that nice guys get a little defense it has defense a lot and then he's often Hey, this is all, you know, some hard nose running. People playing two backs, running the wham. You get a game-winning field goal. Two-missed. Two-missed.

Yeah, no, those, okay, which were absolutely. Would you've gone for it to make it in that situation? They were down, what, 4.1.16. They needed a two-point conversion to make it down three. Down three. And I probably would because, you know, I say, hey, you get in how, I don't know how many. possession is going to be left but you put the field goal if you make it the field goals in play yeah you know you can you know it's really different if you get the ball for that last time we're down

four we got to go get a touchdown we're down three we can kick a 50-yard field going to go to overtime but then they get down five yeah well listen it's hey you pay your money and you take your chances you pay your money you take your chances i mean hey we went for the two-point play we hit you know it was you know and they 16 we hit two of them uh 2016 right? Didn't we hit too? Yeah, I think we just hit to one this game. I'm saying in 2016. Oh, 2016, my God.

We had to. We had no choice. I mean, there's clear cut, no choice. But in this game, one of our favorites was we got the alert call. So if they're a light box, we could direct snap it. This was the direct snap to Kevin. The fake. Yeah, yeah.

Right. And the, you know, if they're, if they're in. They're light, you got to go. Got to win. Yep. I'm going to go gameplay. I thought it was. a great game. It's sneaky,

really good game. I'm going to go with like an 8-7. I had a 9-2. I had an 8.9. The name of the game, the underrated Super Bowl. You got to score the name of the game earned. I think, actually,

I think that's a, I'm going for like a 9-5. 9-5. Nice. That really describes this game. It does. The unrated, underrated Super Bowl. Bowl. I'm going to go with the 8.6.

Okay. I had a 7.0. 7.1. From the low side there. Where does it stack up in our games for the underrated Super Bowl? And of course, let me just say, because I'm going to go to the name, the underrated ring. That's a rated ring.

Tasteful. And it's the only one Ernie was saying that he wears because. It always ends up if I've got to go. This is. This is the best ring to wear. Why? Because it's big. It's got world champions, and it's not, you know, it doesn't take up my whole finger.

So it's not too big. It's big enough. It's big enough, yes. It has a way of catching people's attention. I've heard that a couple of times. It's big enough. So we had an 8.6. It's now tied for our 14th game overall with the 2008 Easter Conference semifinals.

Put it on the Celtics. Oh, I'm sorry. Uh, tied with the Celtics versus the cows, we just did with Paul Pierce. It's just behind the 2011 AFC championship game, Ravens versus Patriots, and just above the Statue of Liberty game, Fiesta Bowl, 2007. Remember that game? Yeah, not a great. Okay, the statute, yes, I, yeah, I, I, I, I, and the Eastern Conference game was LeBron when he went for 45 against Paul Pierce in the game seven. Okay, yeah.

This should be a little low. Feels a little low. This isn't a rescoring episode, but I already think this is too well. It shouldn't be behind that, that, uh, FAC championship game. which one the Ravens Patriots it should not be below that

no no it should be it should probably be in a top 12 it should Raiders Redskins ASL that was the comeback four nations

that's too high that's a little too high that's recent C bias I think Super 18 is a little too high too women's World Cup I mean that changed game for a long time girls you know as a girl dad

um that I mean that's that kicked off the damn near everything 16 world series cubs indians i mean cubby's that game is that's high yeah is that high yeah i mean they haven't win a world series isn't ever game seven yeah this is just ahead of the um the titans rams reach game too i'm bringing this game to our rescuing special yeah let's do that earn dog did we miss anything from this game no i think we got the i think it was good yeah yeah this is uh i mean this this this was just an all this this was an old fashioned football game Old-fashioned football game.

With a championship on the line. With the championship on the line that people forget. Doesn't get much better than that. Right, which is, you know, I mean, part of the reason, you know, Christine was really pushing to do that game for this team because, you know, I mean, this is the core guys. We won three championships in four years.

Yeah. And they feel a tendency to get overlooked. I mean, you could also get the overlooked Super Bowl, which is kind of the same idea is an overlooked Super Bowl. Should we change the name real quick? That might, well, that's a good. The, put it in as the overlooked Super Bowl. I like it.

I like it. Addendum. Addendum. Everyone. So are we coaching, are we coaching at Phillips Academy all year? Yeah. Everyone go, do they have Friday night lights? No, we actually, we plan Saturday afternoons.

Saturday after noon light. It's his prep school athletics. It's, because we only plan Saturdays, but, you know, like basketball. how the other sports it's Wednesday afternoon Saturday afternoon you come up to campus there'll be 10 games going on they got to do they got a good snack shack I'll tell you what they have uh for parents put on a pretty good spread for for friends of and I mean football the places had the constitution 10 years before the actual constitution right the school right the school constitution is and then you know

listen this the other thing was 1778 When that school was founded, the Revolutionary War, it was no, there was a lot of questions how that was going to turn out. We were losing. I think we lost New York and Philly. Well, we, but we had won in Saratoga, which was huge. Got Saratoga. But it was still, I mean, you know, but, you know, the founder said,

we're going to be a new country and we need some educated people, you know, ready to run, you know, ready to run it. And Phillips Andover Academy. You know, I was just on campus in the new athletic building up there, and I was looking at the Athletic Hall of Fame, and I saw Coach Belichick's name up there, saw some presidents. What am we getting your name up there? No, and I said no, because the number one thing you've got to do is had a really good athletic career, which I didn't, so I'm a, I mean, like, I may be the volunteer of the year.

But, you know, I have strong feelings about, you know, the, you should be in the Athletic Hall of fame just for being you're part of you're a huge part of athletics right but but part of it is you know that's got to be the people and there's no coaches in there yeah but people who coached here for 40 years but i just felt like it was uh so you were they asked you to be in the hall of fame and you turn it down basically okay it's fair i like that that's integrity that's integrity that's integrity that is an integrity i would not look because there are some people okay there are some people who aren't in there who were great athletes yeah i should not i'd be embarrassed to win before a couple of them so who aren't in there so that's an integrity man right there yeah lastly any book recommendations

just finished reading uh the second rick atkinson wrote a he's doing a trilogy on the american revolution just finished his second one came out earlier this spring i believe the title is fate of the day is terrific do you ever watch their history channel uh not that you know a lot of those a lot of history on there lately so you read your information for ancient aliens i watch it uh-huh i mean from you know you you're the point you only got 24 hours a day you know what for 15 pages would take me two hours i might as well watch a documentary a misinformed tic-tok okay i'm about By the way, it's Phillips Academy, and it's not Phillips, Andover.

It's Phillips Academy. Because Samuel Phillips founded the school in Andover, his uncle, Jonathan Phillips, founded a school in Exeter, New Hampshire in 1781, which is Phillips Exeter Academy. And it's, you know, I'm a worth thing with names, but there are sister school, arch rival, pain in the ass, baby, brother, but we got to get the name right. Got to get the name right. Phillips Academy in Andover. Yes.

Or is it Phillips Academy, Andover? It's Phillips Academy. It's in Andover, Massachusetts. And, you know, so. It's the OG, they call it. This is the OG of the original. This is the original. The OG.

Right. Ernie, thank you for coming on. Julian, it's been a pleasure. Till next time. Till next time. We'll be right back after this quick break. Man, that's awesome. Polo, he called it.

He looked like he was going. stopped by on his way to training camp. I felt like I've seen that look. The new balance threw me. I didn't predict new balance. Well, it's a boss of his company. I just didn't predict a sneaker, I should say. Great hat game, too, by Ernie this week. Relevant hat game. Very good. Apropos. What hat was it?

From the Super Bowl. It was the, it was probably the Super Bowl hat. Ernie has his little. It was awesome. He's got his little thoughts and how he dresses. It's all intentional. It is. I went to give Ernie a little nucks before the show about broke my finger on that Super Bowl ring. You noticed it was upside out.

I did not. For who? It was like, if you look it like this, it's upside down. Well, it was for him. But for him, it's probably... Ernie lives for himself, not anybody else. I think he lives for Christine. He lives for Christine.

There we go. There we go. You know, it was a very unforgettable Super Bowl. It is. When you have six of them, you know, one of them's got to be the overlooked one. That was awesome. This is like, I mean, this was like, okay, now we're on dynasty path. We barely even talked about a nipplegate, by the way.

Barely even talked about it. I didn't want to get too far into. to it, but he did bring it up with the malfunction wardrobe malfunction. No, that was the perfect amount of nipple talk. Was it? Yeah, because he mentioned it, he acknowledged it, and then we moved on. He was more fascinated with the goddamn commercials. Yeah.

The beer commercials. Yes. Yeah. That's got to be a wild feeling being in that many Super Bowls, never seeing the commercials. Then like 20 years later, you're watching. And that's when commercials were pretty damn good. They were really good, bro. He just shows up, was a...

Blah! You guys heard this? Yeah, he's this commercial. Those were the funniest commercials. It's time for the chill zone brought to you by Coors Light. Get Coors Light delivered straight to your door. Visit Coorslight.com slash GWN and celebrate responsibly. Those mountains, they're awful blue.

Little 68% humidity out here is perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Feels like 76, but it feels like 10 degrees in my throat. That's right. This is how we like it. Jack, what are we doing for this? All right, this is a little edition of a peek behind the curtain. A peek behind the curtain. Where Jules impart some wisdom onto us about what really goes on different facets of the NFL and life as a player.

Today, we're going to be pulling back the curtain on how NFL players watch film and their preparation process each and every week, day in and day out, and what it's like watching film as a player. All right, well, that's like a loaded question that can go a million different ways. And I'm probably pretty sure that it's different for each player on how they watch film. As a football player, like at the end of your career, the most current time you were in the league, how did you watch football? iPad, how did it get deciphered to you? Are people assigning certain things? So, you know, players, you watch a lot of film in the meetings with the coaches.

I mean, we'll have a 45 play cut up Wednesday morning with Coach Belich. check that's breaking down probably 15 plays on offense 15 plays on defense 15 plays in the special teams just an overview of what he thinks the teams are and everyone's on the in the team's watching everyone's in the auditorium watching so you're watching reps on that and he'll have what he's talking about all right you guys look at their defense this they play a lot of cover two shell watch those safeties and then you break up into offense and that's just for the team you are playing that week that week okay so this is just a regular work week. We'll watch that film. Then we break up into offense defense like we all know

because we've talked about this goddamn schedule on this podcast a million times. And, you know, then the offensive coach, very similar to like all the other meetings, has his 20 to 40 play, 15 to 30 play cut up of what he sees and the keys to victory. So you're watching more reps. sometimes they overlap from the head coach and you're seeing and they're giving you kind of the important keys of what we should be seen for this defense and then once you break up into your skill group or your position group your coach your individual coach will have his set of 15 to 20 plays individually on how you watch you know their team now you know Chad O'Shea, my coach, receivers coach, he would show a bunch of, you know, we'd watch like

10 to 15 plays of how we're going to have to go in and block guys for the force or how their dbs are in the run game. And then he'd have individual like 30 play cutups of each corner that you're going to defend with like highlighted examples of what their strengths were, highlighted examples of what their weaknesses or what they struggled with. So like say, you know, you have a corner. He's really big guy. He would show his offhand jam how this guy did it three or four times. You would look at his stance on when he would do it, how he would do it so you could kind of feel it. So you're looking individually at that specific guy with the receiver coach. And then for me individually after that, you know, and those days would always change according to

what day it is. That would be early down day. And then you do the same thing on Thursday for third down day and then the same thing for Friday with red area and then overview two minute and all the others and then there would be cut-ups coach O'Shea would say all right you know we have you know I want you guys to take a look if say we were struggling uh or we weren't at the standard of third down that week coach would say or coach O'Shea would be like all right we got to cut up of all their third and three third and six is third and nine's third and longs uh Why don't you guys take a look at that? And that's what you could watch at home.

You know, so you go on your iPad. Everything by the time I got out of the league was digital. So you had everything broken down in every kind of like situation you can think. If you just want to see the DBs, you can click in. All right, I don't want to see 40. I want to see 27. I want to see all his passes defended versus third down. You could look at that.

It got to that. I want to see all his plays on first. down. I want to see all his cut-ups of any time the ball was thrown at him. I want to see all the cut-ups of, you know, every time this guy tackled. Like, you could get into all that. For me, individually, I leaned on a lot of, you know, Coach O'Shea, he'd always have great cut-ups for us. That's how you determine if you had a good coach. That's what you always saw from a good coach. They would always give you great cut-ups of things that, you know, helped you with your game. So a lot of times you would sit there and I'd just rewatch the stuff that Chad would put in our mind.

And then I like to watch like a whole game. So I would like to watch the whole game of the guy, the last three games. I'd watch his last three games just to see him throughout the game. Do you're just focusing on like who your matchup is going to be for the most part? Depending like out of work, yes. You're doing the one-on-one. I'm doing more one-on-one looking specific. I want to see if I can see any tendencies.

from the defensive back, the guy I'll be going against, maybe a linebacker on certain situations and certain situations, you know, I would see, I would sit and watch them on all those. Like, let's say your specific matchup against a cornerback X, would you ever break out of the three prior games? Would you ever watch any film on them from earlier seasons or earlier in the... So that's what all the cutups would be. Okay. So the coaches would cut that up and show like their strengths and weaknesses. And you could see that, but you wouldn't know what part of the game it was. I mean, they'd have the cut up where they always hit the down and distance first. But sometimes I like to watch the flow of how this guy was flowing throughout the whole game

from first down to second down to third down. Does he get tired? Does he get lazy at the end of the game? When can I really strike them? You know, does he do certain things at certain points of the game? Is he going to be a run factor in all of the game? Or does this guy quit as the game gets on because he doesn't want to hit no more. Does he like, you know, certain times of the year, a guy could be a completely different player from week one to week nine, 13, you know, like a guy that struggled in the beginning could be, you know, so if you're looking at all his struggle shit, what he struggles with, he tightens that up until like, and then he's playing like a completely different player,

which guys do. They get better. They improve. Cream season. You know, cream season. You get to watch it. I like to watch like the most recent because that's kind of like. like how he is physically right now.

And then also injury stuff, you know, like if he's on the injury report, he's got an ankle. I want to see how he moves from last week with the ankle. I want to see, you know what I mean? There's a lot of different ways of doing it. And then when you watch a lot with like,

say I watched a lot with Tom, a lot of those times it would be examples of not necessarily our film. It would be of their defense with other receivers running around against their and other concept route concepts against their defense okay so tom would be like hey you see this uh when they were playing this team you see how this receiver against this defense bows this way and then he bet you know like that's the kind of like one-on-one talk in film talk you

would get with the quarterback or it'd be more like route running you'd watch with with tom you'd watch a lot of one-on-ones of our tape against practice on just like reiterating how tom liked how you ran the route. It didn't matter if you caught it or not, you know, because it's one-on-one, but just route technique, that was a lot of time

where we would go in it with the quarterback to watch the one-on-ones to try to create the chemistry between the quarterback and the receiver. How did those sessions come about? Is that like a part of your schedule

or is that like free time? Like, Tom, let's go, let's watch. So it would, sometimes we would do that early and like we would schedule that part of those individual meetings when we break up into, you know, all our own positions, Tom would sometimes come over in the quarterbacks, all the quarterbacks.

We would watch all that film together, you know, our one-on-one film together. You know, and then a lot of the times, you know, sometimes Tom, he would like to watch, he'd watch film after, you know, the practice and say, hey, you know, guys, why don't we just, if we were, you know, if there was some uncertainty on certain play,

or a certain game or a certain scheme or a certain concept, it was a way for him to nail it down. Did you, this might be like a more of a movie trope, but did you ever get any aha moments or really big takeaways that you were able to use in a game like, oh, I was able to crack this one thing, and I know that on this play of this situation, he's going to do this and take advantage of it,

or is that more of like kind of like a Hollywood movie type thing? No, I mean, I remember all week, and you know we'll be talking to Vince Wilfork soon in that butt fumble game that specific i had a touchdown on a on a post and it was this uh it was a blitz it was some sort of blitz i forgot like the actual terminology i'm going off of just straight memory right now where we knew that that corner was going to be flat-footed on that play with that that's that's that's specific situation. In that specific situation, they were going to run this certain blitz where it was going to be great for the post and they would have to communicate and we

hit that. Like, it happens a lot. And who is that, who catches that kind of stuff or is it anyone? See, that's what the coaches do. Have you ever caught anything like that on one to one matchup? Oh, if I know he's doing X, Y, and Z, I get this piece of information. I mean, that's half, that's just all what you're doing. That's always what you're doing. Like the coaches will, like a lot of those times when, say, Josh McDaniels on the offense, in the offensive meeting with the whole offense, like when he has his cutups, he could have a play that he took from college or someone around the league against this specific defense, this specific team, you know, and show another team executing something that we're going to install specifically to take advantage of that specific

defense. We were a game plan team. So we had much. Most of those, like every week we had a cut up like that were, hey, these are plays we're going to bring in, or these are plays from the past against this specific, this may be a new wrinkle that we want to bring that we've got from the college level, you know, the Who-Man and the Raven and Baltimore formation thing. Like, we saw that from college. A lot of copycat game plan type shit. We're talking a lot about film here, but can you speak to the importance of the cowboy clicker in NFL facilities? the cowboy clicker

which is what you see Shanahan holding right now I mean that's everything if you don't have a good cowboy clicker or like the button smashed or the button sticky I mean it could it could fuck up your day

you ever like you ever just get like frustrated and just break a cowboy clicker like an Xbox controller yeah I mean we'd have to have Teddy on and the film in IT people

A real unsung heroes lady Jared and Teddy bro. They, they've replaced a million clickers for me. I feel like you're the friend in high school. You go over his house and all of his Xbox and colors are just mangled, but you just got cowboy collars just in piece, or cowboy clickers in pieces.

And no, I didn't, no, I just dropped it. I didn't break and throw it. The real, like, the real, say, like lithium thing where it was like a rare thing was when you had the cowboy clicker on the iPad. Whoa. Because the technology,

They got that technology late in, like, my career. When you got the cowboy, because the cow, like, it's good to you. It's not, it's just not as efficient when you have to go here, here. You got to touch all the shit. And you're going here, literally, you're just right here. And you want to, you rewind and fast forward, you fast forward rewind so much. It has to be so dialed because you're, maybe you're just trying to see the step that the guy's taking. And you want to see it a thousand times.

That DB, when, like, when you're watching DB, you'll sit. and you'll see that first play you'll press play and he'll step and you rewind step you know like you want to see it that brings me that next question and that's what the cowboy is there a moment that sticks out to you that's like the world record for rewinds and startovers like in a team meeting yeah coach i mean anytime there was like bad football as ernie said the quiet rewind back and forth yeah the quiet rewind and like just straight straight like you just feel like you're your lunch someone just spit and pooped in your lunch in front of everyone

the one time where you think like the coach may not have seen that play oh it's on there and then he slows and rewinds it a million times and it could be something stupid like Ernie said on you know false start I've seen a false start like maybe 10 15 times in a row like first and 15 like and that's like there's four or five restarts in just what I said the silent when he

when the coach says nothing and it's just going back and forth let the rewind do the talking the rewind does the talking that's awesome I got one more before we wrap this up I got a go get a go kid guy how was it like when you first came into the league you're talking DVDs what's the yeah so you and and you got to give a shout out to you know all the film people and like IT people, Jerry, Jared and Teddy, and we had Famos. They were like our guys. And early in the days, they do all the cutting up back in, you know, I mean, they'll, they'll do all like the, it used to be like, I don't know if, a lot of the times it's like an offensive assistant where he has to go in and like, he'll have to do all the typing for like, all right,

what like because if you watch a play on your iPad you'll see you'll have it like lined out the coverage the front the situation you'll see the time you'll see the protection you'll see the personnel group for offense personnel group you'll see you'll see everything categorized on a spreadsheet on that thing so you'll see all that that all has to be put in by someone so a lot times that's like the offensive assistance and then the offense assistance will work with the IT guys Jared and Teddy and like they'll do all like the designing of the cutups all right well then we'll gather all the you know what I mean it's like a big fucking deal how do you even do that without the iPad like you get a sheet if a d against a DVD or is it baked in when you're

watching the DVD there's like a graphic that says what you used to do like what I would do to Teddy and and and Jared I would go up to them and I'd be like yo give me Devon best I want all of his targets. I want to see, and, you know, because I used to like to see, or give me Amandola when he was with the Rams. I want to see every target this guy has. I always liked watching how other guys got open and how other guys were getting production to see if you could steal something from them.

You know, Eddie Royal. Shout out, what you think? Remember? He used to, he had a few good years, like at the slot position. I used, you know, so like I'd always, I'd say, hey, man, can you give me all that? or, hey, Teddy, Jared, can you give me all the, all the Camardi? All the Camardi plays where he's not in the one spot. So when he comes inside, you know, they would, you know,

and then because of the organization that they all have, they would go in and design the whole clip and they'd give you, they'd print it out and burn it off on a DVD and they give you a DVD. Like say you asked for that at lunchtime on a Tuesday, like you're having that by the end of the day. Oh, easy. Those guys were, they worked their, they work their dicks off. Like, those people, all the people in the organization have their specialty. The, you know, the catering people, the dietitian with Ted, the film, the people that clean, the, you know, the after hours people that clean, the weight staff, the training staff, the upper division marketing staff. Like,

everyone it's crazy how many people go into running a football team it's a team effort i'm sure there's so much more to cover on this subject but with time why don't people comment in the uh leave a comment uh for any follow-up questions we might have to come back to this because it's such a rich part of football uh so leave a comment about this and learning how to watch film is is a huge thing like some guys just watch film to watch film but they don't know what they're watching you know when you're a young football player if you can sneak in and and watch you know, an older vet and that's how I learned.

I would just go, you know, pop my head in and see what Tom was looking at or what Wes was looking at or what Randy was looking at or Kevin was looking. You know, that's how you learn how to watch film because if you're watching the film, you're just watching to watch, you don't know what the hell you're watching.

I watch film every Sunday. I don't know shit. Yeah. Hey, you're a bald, no, come on, man. Don't sell yourself short. It's like, sick catch. Nice. It's so crazy.

me like i remember i hear you let you watch these documentaries and you watch like bret farb didn't even know what a nickel was until like his fifth sixth year a nickel be in the third corner or or like i remember him talking about him learning how to watch film with a certain coach you know there's you got to learn how to watch film because you can you can go in without a purpose and just become so overwhelmed facts that was awesome and that was the chill zone thanks to our favorite beer Coors Light. Get Coors Light delivered straight to your door. Visit Coorslight.com slash GwN. Celebrate responsibly. Well, what a game. Thanks again to Ernie, the overlooked Super Bowl. Which it really is. Yes. You know, no one, I mean, the first one's the first.

The back to back's a back to back. And then our three, we didn't go back to back, but they all had their own little storyline in general. This is an overlooked Super Bowl, which was a really good Super Bowl. A really fun storyline, too, between like an underdog new team with the Panthers. I mean, they were one in 15, and he said a bad one in 15, two years before this, and then they're in the Super Bowl. That's a beauty of NFL. Thanks again to Duncan. This house has been awesome. The studio was amazing. We have donuts up the yin-yang, coffee everywhere. I am so sugar and caffeinated up that I just want to just shoot. so many podcasts.

I just want to coach the lions. Yeah, baby. I'm jacked and pumped. All right, let's wrap this thing up. All right, guys. Subscribe on Apple, podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcast, comment a game you want us to do,

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