PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Life as a Draft Junkie with Fran Duffy, Derek Bodner, Charlie O’Connor

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

How does projecting the future of 18-23 year olds compare for NFL, NBA and NHL Draft analysts? Fran Duffy, Derek Bodner and Charlie O’Connor discuss some of the lessons they’ve learned over their years of studying prospects, some of their most memorable hits and misses, the importance of character and more. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everybody and welcome back. H.LY streamathon. We're here for the draft hour. Bowulf, very pleased to be joined. From left, well, I guess from right to left, but to my left. Derek Bodner, Charlie O'Connor, Fran Duffy, we are one week away from the start of the NBA draft, nine days away from the start of the NHL draft, and what, like 311 days away from the NFL draft, but you've been doing guys next up.

$310. Something like that. Yeah. Love that. So we got these wonderful draft minds together, and we want to sort of, you know, have you guys play off of each other and talk about some of the differences in the drafts that you cover, how you think about projecting, you know, 19, 20, sometimes 25-year-olds into their future professions, all that good stuff.

But in order to make it worth our while, we need you guys to hold up your end of the bargain. So, you know, we're doing this to raise money for Big Brother's. big sisters, you can make those donations. And, you know, if you make a donation, maybe you can get a question in that we can address as well, and make sure that you're evangelizing. We want to raise those subscription numbers, so do all that good stuff. Okay. I want to start with, like, your guys' draft origin stories. So, so DB, let's start with you. At what age did you fall into the draft rabbit hole? How does this all begin for you? We don't need to go with age because then people can reverse engineer how old I am now. Okay. We'll just say it's been a little while.

15 years old, Sam Bowie's coming in, you're going him over Jordan. Yeah, sure. No, I started off at Draft Express. You know, my previous career, I was a system and network engineer. So basically the way you subscribe that, I used to keep websites online. And I was a big fan of Draft Express, and they kept going down on Draft Night, and I reached out. And I'm like, hey, I can help you out with this is what I do professionally.

And eventually, Jonathan Gavoni, who's now at ESPN, gave me access to Synergy Sports, which is basically all video of every game everywhere, and their internal note-taking app. and I started reading how they scouted, and how they took notes, and how they prepared. And I started just inputting on games that I watched, and I guess the notes that I was taking was good enough eventually asked me to start writing about it too.

So that was sort of how I got started, not only covering the draft, but really sports in general. And were you as a kid always hooked on the draft as a big thing? Yeah, I would say so. It's always been, I think, both the most difficult part of sports and also the most important part of building a team. So it was always, yeah, and just watching college basketball was always huge, too,

So it was an intersection of all of that. Okay. Charlie, how about you? What was the genesis of your love for the draft? Yeah, I wouldn't consider myself anywhere near as an expert as Derek and Fran from a hockey perspective. But for me, it's been more, at least from the hockey standpoint. But about the same level of expert as me is the... I mean, but from a hockey perspective, I think I took up the draft, mostly because I wanted to be as good of a hockey writer as I could be.

And most hockey writers in the local and even the national world didn't really focus much on the draft beyond, like, let me do a few features on some guys that the team I cover might pick. So for me, it was more of a, oh, there's a way for me to differentiate myself from other writers by becoming as much of an expert as I possibly can be on. hockey prospects before they're even drafted. And also, it forced me to think more like a scout. I do not consider myself a scout. I am not on that level of expertise. But when you're watching tape and when you're doing research, not only does it force you to think more about

what characteristics you personally think translate best, it also forces you to, you know, kind of take the long view on players and think to yourself, okay, like, I'm. I like this guy when he was 18. Now I see what he is when he's 25, and I know more about him because I remember him from the start of his career. But also, I'm now recognizing what I missed in his game, both from a good standpoint and a bad standpoint, seven years before. Yeah, I do want to get into the lessons that you guys have all learned

over the course of time and things that you were wrong about or maybe you have come to way more or less over the years. But quickly, friend, I sort of know your origin story, but let's give it to the listeners. Yeah, I mean, really, it goes back. to I was 12 years old when the Donovan McNabb, Ricky Williams debate raged through Philadelphia, and that was honestly what introduced me into like the draft and the dialogue around it. And yeah, just kind of took off from there.

I started that was what got me first invested in it. And then as the Eagles obviously improved, started watching more and more and the rest of history from there. All right. So who among you will raise your hand to make the case that your draft? is the biggest crapshoot of the three. I guess we probably all feel that way. That's what I'm curious about. I actually think that the NFL is probably the easiest of the three.

Because of the, to me, like with international and with, to me, like the levels that you guys correct me from wrong, just my feeling of it from afar, is that when you have all these different leagues that you're pulling from, like talent deltas and just like levels of play and rule. To me, like, that's got to make the projection harder, right? I don't know. I don't know how it plays out in the NBA and NHL, but I do know that, like, generally speaking, the NFL draft is pretty efficient. Like, you know, the curves of where the best players come from. It is heavily weighted towards the top of the draft.

I imagine it's close to that with the other drafts, but, you know, you don't often, you know, like, you know, Janus going 11th overall or whatever it was. 15th is actually worse than remember. I think I might make the case that hockey is the biggest crapshoe for a couple reasons. number one, the youth of the players. Every single player, there are some redraft guys, guys that were passed over once or twice that come back in at age 20, age 19, age 20. But for the most part, the vast majority of players taken are either 17 or 18 years old.

Speaking my language. So we're talking very young guys. And then in comparison to basketball and football, hockey, college hockey, junior hockey, European hockey, it doesn't have the same. scope. It doesn't have the same with college football obviously, you know, there are massive college football fan bases. They're on

national television. It's easy to watch them. Obviously, in Europe it's a little bit different, but college basketball is huge too. Whereas in hockey, you know, Canadian juniors is big in Canada. No one in the U.S. really cares about it. No one in the U.S. really cares about college hockey beyond the diehard hockey diehard. So

I would say that it's requires more more explicit research rather than you kind of just falling into, well, obviously I want to watch the national championships. I'm going to get to watch every single prospect in Alabama and Georgia that are going to go in the top two rounds. Well, and functionally, because the NHL, because they're being drafted so young, and they also have their own minor league system, like you're drafting these guys before they'd even entered that, whereas college basketball, college football function as that minor league system, so you're drafting them once they've already gone through that process and aged up a little bit.

I would say it's substantially harder, and this is one of the reasons why I certainly would not consider myself an expert on the level of these two guys, is it's substantially harder to be a non-professional scout and truly feel like you're an expert on all these kids in hockey versus basketball and football where it's much easier to access significant amounts of tape from those sports, whereas, I mean, when I say I watch tape on guys in hockey, I'm watching, you know, one, two, three games that they played over the course of their draft year, because that's all that's available. Okay. Yeah, I want to talk process. So when you are, we like to say doing a guy, Derek. Okay. When you're scouting a problem, when you're doing a guy, how many, what goes into watching,

how many games do you have to watch before feeling comfortable in your evaluation? Tell us all about that. Yeah, I mean, certainly it is, and to Charlie's point, like, I do think basketball, I don't I don't know if it's tougher than hockey, because frankly, I don't know Jack about hockey. But it's certainly, like, you look at Yolk, 41st pick, Yonis, 15th pick, Shea, 11. Those are the last three MVPs outside of Joel and B. I do think there's a pretty direct curve. Like, top of the draft is easier.

Sure. But it is, like, you miss big time on some of these guys. In terms of process, like, back in the day when I was, you know, what I would say professional scout for Draft Express, any, like, first round pick I would watch at least 50% of their games. Okay. Probably closer to 75, especially if I thought they're going to be a lottery-type We do have a lot of tools at our exposure.

Like Charlie was talking about, like, he might only get, like, three games of tape. We have a program called Synergy back then. We have it now where, like, it's legitimate that I can pull up any ACB game and watch any Real Madrid game throughout the course of the year. And you can also filter, like, you can just show me all their catch and shoots. Yep, you can filter based on anything. You can also, like, it's, you know, a 48-minute game. You can watch them, like, 50 minutes because they strip everything out.

So you can be really efficient in it, and that certainly helps. But, yeah, I would say at least half back when I was doing it. semi-professionally. Okay, how about you, Frank? And how jealous are you of Synergy Sports? What's that? It's fantastic. Yeah, I mean, that sounds awesome, for sure.

For me, like, I'll usually start a study on a player the year before, and that could then lead, like, there are guys who I've watched for three years. But I think that I usually start in the summer, I'll watch the guys I'm doing now. I've done, like, I'll do, like, three or four games, you know, in one sitting, and then, you know, maybe a couple cut-ups after that. So, like, all the guys' pressures against Power 5 opponents or, you know, all of the throws on third down

for a quarterback, things like that. But, yeah, at the end of the day, I'd like to, it changes by position, but in an ideal world, six to eight full games, and then a handful of cut-ups after that. Okay, so all of that in mind, balancing your eyes, your own evaluation with what you might hear.

Let's talk about, like, who do you talk to, what is your sourcing network like? How deep does that go? And what matters on what you hear about that? So who are you talking to, Derek? So, like, in terms of, like, what you value from what you hear, like a lot of the off-court stuff you tend to value from what you hear because you just don't have direct access to it.

And I do think we can then, I know this is probably one of your other questions, but we can then read into it. You can get bad information that you read too much into and really get yourself down a bad rabbit hole. In terms of who you talk to, you know, great thing about... You don't have to name names. I'm not asking you to, you know, unmask your scouts. but you know, Merrill Dory, if he's among them.

You know, I think it's a lot of these events that you would go to, like, Hoop Summit. They're teaming with executives and scouts, so it's easy to sort of like make connections there. You know, I think you probably, you like talk to a good amount. I would say in terms of people you trust, it might be like 20, 30-ish. And I think I tend to lean, the more deeper I get into it. I lean less on, like, the high-level executives because they're normally full of, you know what. Yeah, they've got another angle that they're- Sure, everything is transactional there.

Yep. And you start a little more on deeper down the list of scouts and things of that sort. But it's also like you try to get closer to people who knew them in high school, especially for these topics. Like I said, it is tough to gauge a lot of the off-court stuff because everyone either has an agenda or is giving you bad information and you get very little that you get to watch on the court. So that's where you try to talk to people who, you know, played with them or played against them, things of that sort. How about you, Charlie? Yeah, I would say for me, I have pretty strong relationships with a lot of the public. the public analyst. Okay. So, you know, people that I used to be colleagues with the, at the athletic, people throughout the public sphere. And I talk a lot to them, number one, because they're good people, and they have their ears to the ground.

They're the ones that are going to junior hockey games, to college hockey games, even sometimes going over to Europe for international tournaments. So I get their feedback on kind of what they're hearing about these guys. I'll talk with people in the game sometimes. not so much scouts, but generally like, you know, people who are around junior hockey because they can give me, you know, details on, you know, oh, watch this guy, because even though he's, you know, he only scored 40 points of 60 games, it's because he was down the lineup and he's going to have a big breakout year next year. So you get those kinds of updates

from people like that also. You get feedback on character, you know, where, because one thing about hockey, and I don't know how this extrapolates to basketball or football, but it's a very, it's a very small world and gossip travels around really fast. And you don't necessarily hear the details, but you hear like, oh, you know, I heard something not great about that kid, so just keep that in mind. And those are the kinds of things that you're only going to hear if you're talking with people who are kind of in those gossip circles. But when there's only, you know, a couple thousand people in the hockey world that are active, it's not that hard to find. For you, friend, go ahead. I was going to say that's a great point because a lot of times,

When you're talking to a scout, you don't need to know, like, hey, Vijay Edgecombe struggles with his left hand. It's a lot of context-specific stuff and team-specific environment-specific stuff that I think they can be like, hey, maybe you should look into this a little bit more. Yeah, is that what it is for you, friend? Do you care more about the people you're talking to finding out about character and off-field stuff than what their evaluations might be? Yeah, the way I've looked at it, and it changes depending on the person I'm talking to, right? So, like, the people I'm closest with, I feel best in terms of, like, asking those prying questions.

I feel like I have to kind of like you have to get to that space with a with a source right so you know definitely try and collect as much as possible I I keep receipts in terms of like how much you scout your sources no I I scout my sources yeah I definitely you try and uh stay on top of that and whether that's you know whether you're talking scouts coaches agents other media personalities like the whole deal so uh you know just trying and it doesn't mean that they might not even be doing it on purpose right in terms of leading astray but the information yeah Some of them are, but some of the people, hey, like, they might be, they might have just been giving bad intel on their, on their end as well, right?

So, you know, always trying to make sure I sift through that. Well, it's also, I mean, it's hard because even if something is making the rounds in the rumor mill, you know, it might not have been that big of a deal. It might be not even rising to the level of something worse that somebody else did that people don't know about, right? Yep. It's all incomplete information. So as you are, you know, one thing that, that I feel like I have believed.

more late in life is that like the the off-field stuff more like the commitment and the desire stuff really does matter in terms of getting these guys to their ceiling right when I was younger I would have been much more tantalized by like a guy with big tools and like he'll get it out of him when you are trying to figure that out like how committed is this guy to getting to his ceiling what do you guys use as from what you're watching on film like approximations for for what that might be yeah Yeah, it's definitely case by case because there are definitely, because I have thought to myself, especially it's this time of year, like during the depths of the off season where I start asking myself those questions and kind of self-scouting my own process.

And there are players where like, you know, we talked so much about like Shamar Stewart, this past rush from Texas A&M who, you know, didn't produce and like, you know, there was like not bad character stuff out there, but it wasn't like all like, oh, like this guy's going to be great, he's going to be awesome. So you try and sift through it. And there are profiles like Stewart's in the past where I'm like, okay, I see. see it. Like, I'm okay. I'm okay betting on this profile. But then there were others, like, I wasn't in on Stewart, right? And so trying to like weed through, like, all right, have,

has there something that's changed with me that has made me now go on this side of the ledger? Whereas three years ago, like, I was all in on Jason Oway out of Penn State, even though he didn't, he had one sack in his final year, right? So it's tough, though. And sometimes it is like an intangible thing that when you're watching, like, there's just something about watching this guy's tape from, like, yeah, like, the athletic traits are there, the effort is there on film. and even though I haven't heard like glowing things off field, like there's enough where it makes me believe that he's going to hit his upside.

And maybe I just, I was just missing from the eval with other guys. Is that a big thing for your evaluations, Charlie? Effort? I would say it varies. One thing about hockey and it's just very much ingrained in the culture of the game is that if you are not, it's not that everybody has to be high effort.

Obviously some guys are going to be the guys who are just getting in every battle and they're working so hard all the time and they get praised for it. But there is an element of if you don't play, if you play a soft game, if you play a game where you're avoiding contact at all times, if you're always cheating for offense, you're going to naturally earn the ire of your teammates at every stop because it's so ingrained in the game of, you know,

hardworking and lunch pail attitude. So you do keep an eye out for guys like that who maybe do play the type of game, that might make it tougher for them to ingrain themselves in a national hockey league locker room. And it may be even, it may work for them. Like they may be able to drag up a lot of points, but they may always be, you know, viewed with skepticism by their teammates, and that may mess with team chemistry in the future. So that's absolutely something you look for too. It's, but as Fran said, it really just varies.

It varies from thing to thing. Like, for example, skating is a big thing, obviously, in hockey. it's on ice, but, you know, some guys, when they're about to be drafted, it's like, well, they need to improve the skating tool. And one thing that I've tended to, like, one way that I've tended to evaluate, like, are they likely to improve their skating or are they likely to stay a poor skater is what's their background? You know, if they're from a background where, you know, they are not necessarily from a very wealthy family, if they are not necessarily someone who has played hockey since the age of six, I'm more likely to think that, you know, their skating issues are more driven by the

fact that they haven't had the ability to work with skating coaches. They haven't had the ability to get all the ice time that kids who came from privileged backgrounds do. Whereas if you're like, for example, Flyers took a guy named Matthew Strome in the fourth round, probably like about, God, six or seven years ago at this point. It's a while. And super skill, his skating was bad. And the idea was, well, if you could just improve his skating, he could be real good. Well, he was from a family where they had two NHLers that were his older brothers. And he never improved. If you can't skate by now, what have you been doing? Yeah.

Like, I'm sure his family probably had him working with so many skating coaches, and it never took. Whereas, like, compare that to say a Wayne Simmons where, you know, he didn't come from a super privileged background. And his skating got dramatically better post-draft because he didn't have the ability to have the ice time and be able to work with the kind of coaches that richer, more privileged guys could have in their teen years. It's interesting. And that is a big difference between hockey and the other two sports here where, like, the barrier to entry. Yes. Economically is a big factor in their projection.

What about for you, Derek? I guess on the off-court stuff, on the effort stuff, but I'm also curious, like, from what he was talking about with skating, are there basketball truisms of this is a thing that we do believe can improve and this is a thing that probably can't? Yeah, I mean, it sucks. On one hand, I think the off-court stuff is the most important thing. And it's one of the things when we look at,

like, Donovan Mitchell went from averaging like seven and three at Louisville to being an all-N-Based. player trying to predict that is almost impossibly tough. Michael Bridges, not to, you know, Kistavon's rear end, but like he went from averaging like six and three at Villanova to being a, you know, all-NBA caliber player with a huge contract. And the off-court stuff and the work habits is the number one driver of that. But I also feel like we react to really bad information a lot.

And like, oh, he slumped his shoulders. Let me define his career based off of that. Right. And, you know, it is, you know, in terms of encore, that is where, to France's point, like, you keep a scorecard of your sources and whichever one's overreact, or correct in that, you make sure you note that. But in terms of on-court, like I feel like communication in MAA is really big,

and if somebody is really studying the scouting report and is really prepared, they didn't communicate well. And if somebody is just kind of standing there in their own world, I worry about that a little bit. But it's also, you know, I don't want to overreact. Like, I think almost, it's not that I don't want to pay attention to it because I do think it's super important,

but I'm really nervous about overreacting to it. The on-court stuff, I think is real tough. In terms of skills, you know, I think ball handling is, is tough to improve upon substantially. To Charlie's point, like, it doesn't cost a lot of money to pick up basketball at a young age. If you can't dribble when you get to the NBA, I'm a little worried about that. You know, and like body control, some athletic traits like that are tough to improve upon.

We just had Sam Vesena on. He's mentioned, like, you know, high hips. You can't change your physical profiles or stuff like that. But, you know, for the most part, we've seen drastic improvements in almost every skill set in the NBA. So a lot of it's possible. It's just are you going to be paying attention to the right things? Are you going to listen to your coaches? And are you going to put it in the work?

How about you, how about you, how about your friend? It doesn't matter position-wise? What are things that you do think can improve? What are things that can't? Yeah, I mean, definitely changes by position. As Charlie was talking about, the differences between guys that come from, you know, highly experienced, like, privileged backgrounds and entrances in the sport, my head immediately went to Josh Allen, because Josh Allen, when he was coming out,

when he was young, all these good quarterbacks now go to all these quarterback trainers and he never did any of that stuff all the way up through high school. And so that was a good example where, you know, you know, know, if you would ask me pre-Josh Allen, oh, like, accuracy is not going to improve. And Josh Allen was not an accurate passer at Wyoming. But, yeah, like, he started working with trainers. And then it was like, oh, he was able to correct a lot of the issues that he had. And so, like Derek just said, I feel like there are examples of guys developing in a lot of key areas.

To me, like the raw physical tools and body type stuff is the stuff you can't teach, right? So a guy's not going to get too much faster. He's not going to get, you know, too much bigger. You're not going to change the overall structure of a guy's body. Can he get more powerful in time? Can he get stronger? Yeah, there are guys that, plenty of guys that get stronger upon entering the NFL. But it's about trying to figure out, like, is this guy going?

That's where the off-field stuff comes in because the upside can be sky high. But if you're not going to put the work in to get there, then that upside's useless. All right. Let's take a little break here to hear from some sponsors. Keep it going. Make sure that you are donating to Big Brothers, Big Sisters. We're going to keep this bad boy going. Much more to come on the other side.

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let's get that hair line back in the game. And summers here, which means the kids are out and about hanging with friends, maybe even picking up a summer job. It's a perfect time to set them up with something that teaches real-world money skills and gives them a little bit of freedom, the Greenlight debit card and money app. If you're a True Mark Financial member, you can get a free Greenlight account for your kids or teens. It's a simple way for them to manage their own money, whether it's from a job, allowance, or birthday cash. The got their own debit card can set saving goals, track spending, and learn how to budget,

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Give me one who was, you were, you nailed this maybe a little bit outside of consensus and somebody who maybe you were wrong about. Oh, good question. A guy I nailed. Damn, this is tough. Well, one guy who I'll say that I definitely messed up on was in the 2017 draft, I really liked Cody Glass,

who was taken sixth overall. This is the year when the Flyers took Nolan Patrick. Okay. I like Cody Glass a lot. I like the skill. I like the production. and what ultimately happened with him is he got taking sixth overall. Like, I don't get me wrong.

It's not like I wanted the flyers to take Cody Glass second overall. But the way that draft ultimately played out, it was Nico Heeshire went one, Nolan Patrick went two. Then you had Miro Haskin and went three, Cole McCarr, Cal McCar went four, and Elias Pedersen went five, and Cody Glass went six. And I was like, oh, man, they let Cody Glass slip to six, and Cody Glass ended up being a total bust. And I think the big thing I learned...

Yeah, what was the lesson? The learn from that was how important pace is in terms of style for a pro prospect, especially at the junior level. So one thing you have to realize about junior hockey in particular, and for those who don't know, the way Canadian junior hockey works is you have three major leagues. You have the WHL, the Western Hockey League, which is in the west of Canada. You have the OHL, Ontario Hockey League, which is mostly based in Ontario. and then you have the Q, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League,

which is mostly based in Quebec in the maritime provinces. It's generally speaking, a high-skilled game. Guys put up ridiculous numbers. You know, you're talking about guys who are putting up 100 points in 60 games. So crazy numbers, you know, unless you're Con and McDavid in the NHL. But the game is played much slower. Okay. And skill guys just have more time to make plays.

Cody Glass is one of those guys who racked up points because he had a lot of time. and could survey his options, could look around, and then once he got to the NHL level, and defensemen are just, you know, converging into you at all times, people are backchecking furiously. You have to make decisions faster. He wasn't as effective, and he's not an offense guy.

He's an NHL player, but he's not an offense guy. So that was something that I learned that lesson there. God, if we're talking about a pick I nailed, though, I guess one. You remember the ones where you screwed up a lot of them. Don't you do that as well, for a friend? Absolutely, yes, no question. One that I guess I would.

In part because you're constantly reminded of it. But anyway, go ahead. I guess one that I would point to would be Matt Barzell in the 2015 NHL draft. He slipped into the teens, and he was a guy who I, he was my preference for the flyers at number seven. He slipped all the way into the teens, the Islanders got. No, granted, he didn't become a superstar, but he became a really, really good player, a 1C, first line type guy. And he, I would have taken him in the top 10. I think in a redraft, he probably goes top 10.

I would have taken him over Ivan Proveroff, who I also liked, but not as much as Barzell. And in retrospect, the Flyers would be much better off taking Matt Barzell. The Pace thing you're talking about is interesting because I do feel like there are times when you're watching somebody and you just see that they see everything a little bit before it happens, right? They're sort of plugged into the matrix of the game of the spacing of the game and the movements. And that's like a fun thing when you see somebody who sees it that way. For you, Fran, who's like your big miss? There's a lot.

Somebody learned a lesson from it. The big one would be Patrick Mahomes, who I had severe doubts about when he was coming out of Texas Tech. I mean, I think to me, the big thing when you watched him. You were right. He lost the Super Bowl.

Right. I mean, absolutely. Who could have all that coming? To me, when I'm looking at Mahomes coming out of Texas Tech, it was like the wild stallion that needs to be broken, right? It was like this guy just the way he runs around

and just does pirouettes in the backfield and holds onto the ball for 18 seconds and then makes a pinpoint, big-time throw, you know, 40 yards across the field. on the money and it's like man this to be structure structure structure yes like there's no way that he could survive playing this way and for the most part like that i think that that is turned out to be uh like partly true right where like he he went to a perfect scenario where he goes to

andy reid andy reigned him in um and look he has become i mean he is if you watched him last year he is the polar opposite of that player at texas tech now part of that might be why that was a relatively boring offense uh last year but i think it's the end of the day, that was probably my biggest miss, was looking at my home and saying, like, I just don't know if that's going to cut it. I know I was not alone in that area, but I had severe doubts about that for sure. And who's the who will you hang your hat on? The one that I always think of is Trudevius White. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, I was, I was very big into Tradavius White. I looked it up really quickly. He was the 27th pick coming out of LSU. He's a guy I would

have felt comfortable with, you know, inside the top 12, you know, to me like, you know, projected as one of the best corners in football. The question was the athletic upside. but you know that's what everyone looks at that position as a stopwatch position like it's all about height weight speed he was a player that to me was like the hallmark of toughness instincts ball skills like that plays at corner and that played really well for him up until the injury set in that brings up another question which i will i will get yours in a second derrick but we have talked about like you feel very good about corner specifically right about my my projections on corner right do you do Derek and charley do you guys feel differently, like you can evaluate certain types of players or certain positions of players

better than others, maybe? That's a good question. I feel like guards, because in order to be a good collegiate guard, like, you have to have pretty advanced skills. So I think that's a little bit easier of a projection to make, especially, you know, I think the limitations of short guards are pretty obvious at this point. Big men, I think, because just by virtue of being big, they can take longer to develop. And you can make an impact, even if you do not have the requisite skill set to do so in the NBA.

I would guess that's probably how I would answer that, but I don't feel confident in any of my predictions, quite frankly. Yeah, I would say I feel the most confident in my ability to evaluate centers. Okay. Mostly because, I mean, the thing that I value more than any other trade is hockey IQ. And if you're going to stick down the middle, you need to think the game at a high level, and you also need to play the game with a series attention to detail.

You need to just have that innate way, of finding spaces to make yourself an outlet for your defenseman. Like, I don't know how to evaluate goalies. I trust the goalie people. Defenseman, it's a lot about tools, and it's a lot about, you know, there are ways that you think the game as a defenseman that sometimes I can pick up. I don't necessarily pick up as regularly. And Wings is mostly just about skill.

Whereas I feel like with Center, like the things that I value in players, that tends to, the guys I like tend to also be good down the middle because it just lines up. The skill sets that I appreciate tend to be the skill sets that make you be good at seven. All right, I like that. All right, Derek,

give me your, who's the one who got away? So I think whenever my mind comes to this, it's not like the people that I thought would be good who turned out to stink because I feel like that happens a lot. It's always,

it's always the stars who end up coming back to bite you. And it's not like the, you know, yokech, like 41st pick, who cares, a lot of people miss that. Sure, right. I think Jalen Brown's the one that comes in mind.

Okay. Because that was that 2016 draft was a disaster, and it was really bad, and he ended up turning into an all-NBA, you know, max salary, 60 million a year kind of champion with, and I think I didn't even have him. Yeah, so his basketball reference page is your homepage here. Sure. Well, I want to make sure.

But I didn't even have him ranked in the top 10. Really? Like, I had a lot of concerns. Like, he couldn't dribble with his offhand. He shot 29% from three. He averaged like three and a half turnovers per game. He was just really bad. And he was one of the ones where I think I really learned that you have to lean into context

and, you know, research the context. and buy into them as people. Because he was an exceptionally hard worker, he was in a really bad spot, their spacing was terrible, and it just wasn't an environment where he was going to look at his best, and he had so many physical tools

that if he had that kind of outlier development, where all of a sudden he went from a 29% college three-point shooter to a 40% NBA three-point shooter. It's crazy. And he bought into a team environment, he could be incredible with that kind of physical skill set. So he was definitely one where it's like, all right, really dive deep into the context,

try to figure out why they're struggling. It's one thing to say that they are struggling. It's another thing to figure out why and that's one where I think you really had to have good sources and I just didn't lean in hard enough on that and how about one where you can patch yourself on the back I would say and to his point like I I remember those way less um you know Shay shegillers Alexander current MVP about to win a title probably um you know there was a lot of debate with the six said 10th pick at that time and I spent a lot of time debating like no they should take him I think I had him like six on my big

board he ended up going 11th I believe it was right after the sixers and And nobody wanted them because it's like, oh, well, he's another guard. If they're shooting concerns, didn't take a lot of threes, all of that stuff. You don't need that kind of overlap. And it was just reinforced, like, no, like, if there's someone I believe in, I don't care about positional overlap, I don't care about any of that. If you think someone can drastically out-shoot their drafts out. And look, I don't think anybody predicted he would be an MVP caliber player.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been traded. He wouldn't have gone 11th. But I certainly believe that he was good value at that spot, and he had the chance to really develop into an amazing all-NBA caliber player. So I would say he's probably a hit. and certainly one where I just, you learn to trust your gut and not worry about team needs or anything. Well, it's probably fair to say that in an NBA draft conversation, need and fit seems to rise to the top a little bit more than the other two. I would have mean, hockey must be, you know, completely in the long field.

You can't factor that in at all. I mean, I would say it comes into play a bit in terms of like building up organizational depth. And then also if you're at the very top, like the flyers right now, they're probably going to lean center with the sixth overall pitch. because you're drafting high enough where it's not going to take that long for the guy to show up. But once you're in rounds two and rounds three and even beyond that, I mean, you're probably just going to take whoever's best on your board because who knows what your team's going to look like in five years when he's right. And even then, even if they're coming, you have three lines, right?

So there's always going to be a path to playing time. Football, you know, there are so many spots. You're not going to draft a quarterback in the top ten if you have a great quarterback, but, you know, you need to think big picture. Do you think that can be overvalued in the NBA? Um, you know, I do think, and for the most part, like, I think people drafting at the top, they don't really care about fit because if you had stuff that you were concerned about fitting around, you wouldn't be drafting third overall.

And I think when you get deeper into the draft, you don't really care about fit, because it's so tough to get a guy who sticks, quite frankly, after the top 20 picks, that you're just trying to find somebody that you believe in. I think where it probably fits a lot is like the 5 through 15 range. Yeah. Because you have, clearly have some talent, although now with the flattened lottery odds, it's not so much of a guarantee. But you have some talent.

You have to compliment them some way. If you draft someone like the Sixers right now, if they draft Jeremiah Fears, who's like a six-three-ish guard, frail, he has to be significantly better than either Maxie or Kane to really justify because he can't really play with either one. So I think there's, you know, edge cases where you worry about fit, but also the NBA has just gone so positionless.

Like, I don't think anybody really cares if you have... It used to be back in day like, all right, you're a point guard. You got to pass. You're a shooting guard, you got to shoot. I don't care about passing. That's not really the way it is. You're kind of outside of center and point guard, you then just have three kind of wing players.

So I think it's a lot easier to not care about fit too much. But there are situations like fears because defensively he can't fit or maybe like a big man when you already have a set. But even with fears, I don't have an opinion on him as a player, but if you think that he is the best player available and you're just talking about getting the best asset, whether you trade him eventually or you trade Maxie or McCain at some point, isn't that what it should be about?

A little bit. Like if you, it I think comes down to the confidence level. If you have confidence that he is going to exceed your current players, if he is going to be an all-star or an all-ambi-caldered player, you take him and you deal with it later. There's like a bar that he has to clear that's maybe a little higher because he doesn't fit. You mentioned something before, Derek,

when you're just talking about, you know, you don't feel confident in any of your projections. This is, you know, Fran, this is like, you know, you are putting your opinions out there on all of these players. How do you overcome, like, self-doubt on, if you are away from consensus on somebody? You feel strongly about it, but there also has to be like, man, how good do I feel about this?

How willing I might have put this out there and to be this far away from consensus? Honestly, it's like the cases from early of doing it where it's like, I felt strongly about this and maybe I couched it. And then what I thought was the case, like turned out to be the case. And I'm like, man, like, well, I wish I was more convicted there. Yeah. You know, to me, like, that feeling is worse than the opposite. Yeah.

So it's kind of just. And, you know, I was reading Derek, your piece. on one of your pieces on Ace Bailey that you just posted recently. And you talked about like the hit rate just at number three. Yeah. It's like nine. I went back and I looked at the last 24 drafts and I compared the third pick with like the next five picks.

So like people who'd be realistically in that range and use an all one metric. And the third, the people drafting third got the right player like nine out of 24 times. Like that's a third pick in the draft. That's the third pick in the draft, right? And to me like every year. And that's not even that bad. No. That's why when I say like like how confident are you in your value?

I'm not because even like the best of the best, the professionals who devote their entire lives of this, they can't be confident. And every spring when we get to, you know, on the NFL calendar, it's the, all right, let's redraft last year's draft. And if you looked at, you know, if you're ranking receivers right now, you're ranking Brian Thomas Jr., who was a middle of the first round pick, ahead of Marvin Harrison, Jr., who was the number three pick and everybody's favorite, or number four pick and everybody's favorite wide receiver from a year ago. And six months later, we're like, oh, yeah, he's definitely better, right? And so people get up in arms, I say people as in like fans, readers, viewers, like get up in arms about people that are off the wall in terms of, you know, in their minds away from consensus in terms of ranking. But then we are so willing to just, all right, now we're going to pivot six months later. There's no reason for that. You have to understand that, you know, we're going to be wrong.

Sometimes you're going to be right. Yeah. And I think for my perspective, I mean, I really have to couch my opinions because I know that I'm not evaluating as large of a sample. as the scouts are. Like, I just, I just don't have access to the kinds of, you know, even just talking about viewing. Like, I can't watch, you know, half a guy's games or, you know, six to eight games, you know, in a 12-game season or however much, I remember how many games they play in college football

these days in a season. But I have to, I have to more look at my draft boards, not as like, this is it and this is the end-all-be-all. More like these, this is my ranking of the guys that I've obviously watched, but also the guys that have the traits that I value. Like, I did an article last week on, like, my 10 favorite players in the draft, and I made it clear that, like, they're not, these aren't the 10 best players in the draft. Some of these guys I have, like, a second round grade two,

but they're the guys that have the traits that I personally value the most, and these are the guys that, if the Flyers were to take, I'd be very excited to cover him and to follow him closely for the next, you know, four, five, six, however many years it takes for them to become full-time NHL players or bust. But, like, I just kind of keep an idea of, like, this is what I, like in a player. These are the traits I value. And naturally, these are the guys that are going to be higher on my board than they might be on another person's board. Doesn't necessarily mean my board is right. Doesn't mean my ranking is right. It's just that these are the types of players

that I value and therefore I'm going to rank them higher. You look like you're going to say something. Go ahead. Well, no, I'd like to avoid this conversation because it's painful. No, but two, just going back to it just briefly, like, if you're confident, I feel like that's when you're confident in your e-val, that's when curiosity stops. and that's when you're going to end up missing something. So I think it's like, it's almost silly to be confident in some of these things. But in terms of like something with conviction,

I remember back in 2014, the Oka Ford draft. And Porzengis, I had ranked third in like December, which was like six months before, seven months before the draft. And I remember talking to both Gavoni and Schmitz, who's now a scouting director for the Blazers, and they both had them in like the eighth to 12 range. And I trusted the evaluation way more than my own, in part because they have like Gavoni specifically,

who's now the head. guy at ESPN has incredible contacts in Europe. Yeah. And so I just, I waited his little too more and I dropped him down to fifth. And Porzingis never got back up the third after that, even though I had him that third before pretty much anyone else. And it really wasn't about anything I was seeing on the court or anything I heard from, you know, the people that I talked to.

It's just like, I'm clearly missing something. Right. And because of that, I had Okafore third and Porzingis fourth, and I've regretted that ever since. And I remember I had written write-ups for Philly Mag at the time. And I had somebody. email me and he's like, Derek, I read your write-up if you clearly liked this guy more. On both Porzegas

and Okifor, why in the heck do you have him raked third? And it hurt my soul. And it has hurt my soul to this day. But that means that he was reading. Well, true, but I would also like to be right every now and then. And I had conviction. I know I had conviction. I just wasn't, like, nobody else had him ahead and I just... Well, you say the thing about

conviction is where confidence is where curiosity stops. I don't know that I necessarily agree with that in this context because you are just, you are putting out there what is your opinion. Right. Now, I'm not saying you should stop doing the work and stop being curious, but it is, you know,

to the Brian Thomas thing or whatever. Right. It is a reflection, like, people are reading you, you know, they can find a consensus draft board. They want to know what your opinions are. Yep. Like, it's a, it's a timestamp. It's, you're not being held to, you shouldn't be held to be correct on every single thing.

Do you not know how the internet works? Well, I mean, just don't go with those places. Right. Turn your mentions off. Yeah, I mean, but that's to me why, you know, people get so up in arms. about that stuff, whether it's ranking quarterbacks in the NFL right now or if it's pre-draft rankings.

You know, at the end of the day, it's one person's opinion, and you're going to be right and you're going to be wrong. All right, we've got to take another break. Back with more on this very fun conversation about the draft. Tell you about our friends at Ace. If you've got an outlet, you said you'd fix last summer,

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Use code P.HLY at checkout for 15% off your purchase. Charlie, how much do you think? like the context of where a guy gets drafted in hockey matters to his overall success story? That's a really good question. I would say that it matters and it doesn't. The way it matters the most, I would say, is if you're a first round pick, you have to be really bad to not at least get a shot in the NHL. You have to not get a contract, to not get at least a look,

because, generally speaking, so many people in the organization, whether it's the general manager, whether it's scouts, whether it's the entire front office, they're invested in your success. So they're invested, even if you're underwhelming in, you know, if you're post-draft years when you're in juniors, if you're underwhelming the AHL, they're going to look for reasons to give you a chance. Whereas guys who were taking in the fifth round, a lot of times, like if the fifth round guy's out playing the second round guy, they're going to look for reasons why you should stay below him on the depth chart because they don't want to be proven wrong in terms of their initial evaluation. That said, in the end, I do believe that, like, once you get to the pro level, once you get to the NHL level, like, the coaches don't care. The coaches, like, if the coaches have a fifth round pick and a first round pick on their roster, and the fifth round pick is just better, the coach doesn't care who was taken first.

He's just trying to win games. So eventually it does get worked out the way it should, but I will say that a fifth round pick, even if he proves to be really good, much better than where he was taken, it's harder for him to move up the latter as opposed to a first round pick who's going to be given every opportunity to succeed. And is it generally the case in the NHL that like the best players are self-evidently good very early?

Or does, is within the once they make it to the NHL are there still levels to their improvement like many years over? I'm thinking about it in basketball, right? Where like Jalen Brunson takes him like six years of being in the NBA to become a really, really good player, right? You know, Shea and Halliburton,

however long it takes them to ascend to superstar status. Whereas in the NFL, I feel like the best players within the first two years are already known as the best players in the league. It's rarer, I feel like, for that superstar leap to happen. What is it like in the NHL? I would say it's not as quick, but generally speaking, you can tell who's got. Like, the superstars, they're generally superstars right off the bat. They're generally superstars right off the bat.

The stars who are maybe the next tier down, you can tell right off the bat that they're going to be good. then it just comes down to like how much better are they going to get. It's very rare, though, and it does happen. It's very rare where a guy comes into the NHL looks like a bust or looks like he's not going to be anything. And then five, six years later, he develops into a stud. Like one example of that is Tage Thompson, who, you know, big, you know, he had the profile of a guy that was going to take longer. He's six foot six. He was raw.

He was a late first round pick who was drafted on sheer tools. He ends up getting traded from St. Louis to Buffalo because they basically just gave up. on the guy. St. Louis have mostly developed him as a winger. Buffalo's like, after one year they're thinking, well, try you down the middle, and then suddenly becomes a 40 goal score as a first-line center. But that's a rarity. Those happen once

in a while. Generally, speaking, though, at the very least, you can see by years one and two that they're going to be good. What do you attribute that to in the NBA, Derek? I mean, I think situation matters, but I do think it's a little bit overblown. Like, in the NBA players, for the most part,

set the culture. You know, I think, like, you know, Celtics coach in 2008 might want to take credit for it and put it on his resume, but it comes down to Ray Al and it comes down to Kevin Garnett. We won't mention who that Celtics Coates is because I don't need to say his name anymore. But I think for the most part, like, to what Charlie said, top draft picks

are going to get a chance. Like, you don't draft someone in top 10 and bury him on the bench. What do you make the most of that opportunity? You know, do you have the kind of work ethic? You can be drafted at a great organization if you're not willing to work at it. Not much they can do for you. You can be drafted a terrible organization if you work your

tail end off you can improve. You know, I do think we tend to, I don't say make too much out of the organization, but I think players sit the culture more than people realize. I think that's well said. Do you think I characterize that right about the NFL, Fran? Yeah, I think that usually the guys that are going to be, especially

the cream of the crop, usually at least get the flashes early. You know, they usually don't come out and look completely lost. Now, there are exceptions to everything, but usually you start to get a sense pretty early on. If we get to the end of year three and we have seen like the real flashes of a blue chip player, then he's probably never going to get there.

We have talked about this, Fran, the changing nature of the NCAA and NIL. Charlie, I know that not all the best players come from college hockey, but has that changed the draft process at all? Well, it has, it's beginning to. It's going to change it a lot because the big adjustment that is happening, it's literally happening starting this year is the way it used to be in the past is if you were going to Canadian Juniors and you were a Canadian Juniors player, you basically were stuck

in Canadian juniors. And if you went to college, you were going the college job. What is happening now in the wake of NIL and the wake of a court case that made this allowed, players that start in Canadian juniors now are allowed to go to college. So what you're seeing

is you're seeing guys like, for example, Cole Reschney, who's one of my favorite prospects in this draft, he currently plays in the WHL. He's a Canadian Junior's player. He committed to college for next season. So that is going to change the way, not necessarily the way that prospects are evaluated, but the way that some teams want their guys in college. The problem with the guy going to college, like Regney, when he goes to college, he won't be able to, he won't be able to participate

in training camp while he's in college because then, you know, you're not allowed to sign a contract until you're done college. Some teams like to avoid drafting college guys because they're afraid that that college guy is going to decide, I don't want to join that team. team and then they'll lose them for nothing, like the Flyers wrist with Cutter Goti. So it's so in the infancy stage because we don't know how this is going to impact decisions because it's in the process of happening. But it's a major change that like juniors guys can jump to college after they get drafted, but before they're truly ingrained in an organization.

It's going to open up a whole new can of worms on how teams want their guys to develop post-draft. In basketball, I mean, the best players are coming out after one year, so maybe it doesn't matter quite as much, but how do you think it changes the process? No, I think it matters. I mean, look at this year's draft. You've got, you know, Bailey and Harper went to Rutgers. Ruckers is not a place that would typically attract that kind of a high-level prospect, and because of it,

the rest of their team was pretty much a disaster. So you're sitting there, you know, we talked about it with Jalen Brown a little bit, where the, you know, the environment that they're in can really amplify their weaknesses. And you're left wondering, well, what would Ace Bailey look like at to? And you don't really get that opportunity in large part because of

NIL. And to sure, I was a point, I don't know if we really know how it's going to impact everything long term. But I think there's definitely a chance it makes your evaluation just a little murkier, for sure. I like it for college football and for the NFL. You know, for the draft, it has limited the pool a little bit. You know, we've seen the number of underclassmen go from, you know, 125 down to its cut in half this year.

It was down in the 60s. So, you know, there's a little bit less talent coming into the league every year. But I think at the end of the day, you're getting more polished products. I think you're getting to see guys in different systems. It's interesting following the teams that are leaning into this a little bit more. Like, you know, the Rams, they draft like, they've been drafting transfer, transfer players at like a 60% clip, you know, 70% clip the last two or three years. Whereas other teams still aren't, they're like, oh, like we're living in 2002.

We're not drafting guys that transfer. That's a red flag. So I think it is interesting kind of following that. But at the end of that, like, I like it. And this is also like just in terms of like all the super conferences and things. I also just love where college is going in that direction from a selfish, like, player evaluation standpoint. I love that it's a random Saturday in September,

and it's Washington versus Ohio State. Like, we would not have gotten that until bowl season five years ago. Because you read his Ace Bailey stuff? Yeah. You drafted an Ace Bailey at three overall? I mean, I'm going on the Sixers show in an hour. I also haven't published a weaknesses article yet, so maybe hold your opinion until...

I don't know if I need to see it. Does the Ace Bailey's Scouting report remind you of a football prospect. Oh, I hadn't thought about this. This is a good question. Cool. I have to think about it a little bit more. That's a good one.

Length skill raw. Yeah, length skill raw. Some questions. Got to be an edge guy. Yeah. Maybe it's, maybe it's, what's his name?

Who everybody points to as the edge rusher who succeeded without sacks. Oh, Danelle Hunter. Danil Hunter. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. That's not bad. He was a third round pick, though.

Yeah. This guy's going to, you know, probably top, top six. That's true. Well, maybe three overall. Trayvon Walker, maybe. Yeah. That's a good question. I hadn't thought about that.

Do you guys have any questions for your compatriots here? Is there any shop that you guys want to talk? Well, I'm intrigued about the transfer element of NIL. So, you know, you don't think that jumping from program to program that doesn't complicate your analysis of a guy and his skill set and how he fits in different environments? It can, but it's also good to be able to see them in like different environments too sometimes where, you know, there's players where it's like, oh, this quarterback is in this system that's like a super user-friendly pass game to go and see him do something different.

That can be beneficial. You know, and now there are, because there are times where I'm watching, I'm like, man, like, I just wish I could see him do something different. So being able to get to see that can be a good thing. And there are scouts who say they like it because, you know, part of the problem with all of these sports is we're talking about, you know, teenage or young adult men. How are they going to handle, like, changing situations, being given a little bit of money, all of that stuff? Well, from an NFL Scouts perspective, you get to see a little bit of that, a little taste of that,

like how do they handle changing programs and having a little bit more power? Are they still committed to the game? They get to see, you know, a sense of that, at least, when they're scouting these guys. I also like, too, like if a guy was at, you know, let's say he was at Michigan and he was at Stanford, you know, it's like, all right, well, now maybe I know someone at Michigan, but I don't know somebody at Stanford. So now, like, self, again, selfishly, it's like, oh, I have a whole set of sources that I could pull from to be able to get, you know, the background info too. Do you think, because, I mean, the guy I'm thinking of here is Quinyon, who could have jumped

to a bigger program and didn't. Do you envision down the road that teams will be impressed by that, be impressed by the loyalty, or will they, at some point, decide that maybe that that's not a great thing. Some already are. I mentioned like there are some teams where they're not taking transfer guys. And when you go back and you listen to the GM and listen to the coach, talk about the pick afterwards, that is often brought up, oh, this guy could have jumped and he didn't.

And so like even now, like as I'm building out the draft guide for next year, there are players where I'm, you know, going through interviews and going through quotes. And it's like, all right, let me search, you know, Charlie O'Connor transfer portal. And it's, you can hear this guy talk about, oh, yeah, I had offers from so-and-so. I could have taken $4 million to go here, but I wanted to this coaching staff showed belief in me. There are teams that were going to eat that up. Derek, the way that you were sort of hinting at, you know, you don't love being reminded of past mistakes or things like that, or, you know, the Twitter Roddy or whatever acting like they're experts on something.

Sure. When you are watching the NFL draft, do you sort of slip into that yourself? Do you find yourself being like acting like an expert even though you haven't done the work? No, I think in part because I have a running log of all of my thoughts with basketball. I know if I spend this much time on basketball and I don't know what I'm talking about, why would I believe that I know what I'm talking about with the NFL draft? You can see the on-ramp, right? Like, I do like an hour's worth of research for the NBA draft and I feel like I know all I think.

And I have strong opinions. No, I mean, look, I get it. Like, we all want to express our opinions. I do think being in this industry reminds me, like, I probably don't know the NFL draft as well as I think I do. How about you, Fran? No. The more I've been, the longer I've been covering the NFL draft, the less likely I've been to, like, jump in, whole, you know, both feet and feel really confident about my NBA takes.

But are you guys all just generally intrigued by the, like, the baseball draft? You know, will you do, like, the cursory research and just feel like, you kind of, like, just like the process of guessing how these guys are going to turn out? Baseball, no, but the NFL draft, absolutely. Baseball, it's too long of a delayed gratification. I can't, yeah. I just joined a Dynasty Baseball League last year, and so when we did, like, the rookie draft for the first time. I just traded Chase Burns the other day.

Well, I'm going through it. I don't know anybody in the majors, right? If you said that you put the Braves roster in front of me, I'd be able to pick out like three names. But just going through and I'll just read the profiles on players and just say, like, all right, like, this is a stock I'm willing to buy. That part of it's fun. And there's an extreme confirmation bias for me,

in particular with the NFL draft recently and the Eagles, where when the Eagles were regularly countering public opinion, they were regularly making bad picks. And now since they have started just like taking the guy everybody wants, they end up taking really good players. Is that a thing in hockey, like the consensus boards? Are there teams that actually feel like they do better or worse than that, or is it all just sort of come out in the Washington?

That's a really good question. I would say that there absolutely are teams that they tend to pick in a way that online fans in particular really like. Like Carolina being the main one because their whole focus is we're going to take skill guys with lots of strong statistical production in their junior leagues or wherever they play. And our view is that, like, yeah, a lot of these guys are going to bust because they're not going to translate, but we're going to get a few big swings. Whereas other teams, you know, go more on tools and not necessarily on high production. and the online community is like, oh, they're so dumb, but they're going to find guys that the online community totally missed on. So it's an exact science, as Derek said. It is interesting. I feel like there's two ways to really get yourself in trouble with the draft,

and the one is hurting, and the other one is being contrarian. And they're both equally dangerous, and they're both, I think, something we all fall into. I have talked to people in the NBA who are, like, look, we don't get it right as high as you would expect compared to, like, the public stuff. And we sink so many resources into it. It's almost like, you know, I want to say it's following consensus, but it's like they don't believe that they can get it that much more right than everyone else. Well, there's some humility that is required, right? We didn't even get into like the analytics part of it and what numbers might matter. Maybe we'll save that for the next streamathon.

So thank you guys so much. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was fun. Coming up in the two o'clock hour, we've got the P.H.L.Y. Eagle Show, Kyle Neubeck and Devon Givens going to join me. We'll see if we talk nearly as much castration as we did on yesterday's show. There's no shot of that. Thanks to everybody for watching and listening to this episode. We'll be back in a little bit.