Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jalen Nailor health update via ESPN, Thielen takes pay cut (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Matthew Coller talks about the news from ESPN's Jeremy Fowler that the Vikings are optimistic about Jalen Nailor and the re-working of Adam Thielen's contract. Plus Maggie Robinson talks with NFL rules analyst Walt Anderson. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel.

Jay says Felton is a skinny rookie needs more weight and experience. Yeah, that's why right now you feel pretty good about having Naylor ahead of him because if Felton had to be in there, that would be pretty tough for him to take on a bigger role. And I would guess it would have to be a lot of Josh Oliver. Chris says Thielen will be a big, will be big in Felton's development, great player to help with the route running tree. Yep, I agree with that. Red said Lucky had his chance to overtake Naylor and he dropped it. He did, but I don't think that Lucky Jackson was ever going to be the guy that they went to instead of Adam Thielen

or even instead of Jalen Naylor. It was, this guy is the in case of emergency. Like, that was the situation for Lucky Jackson. And then they kind of got into a bit of an emergency and it was they were going to acquire somebody. It was going to be Kendrick Bourne. It was going to be somebody off waivers, Valdez, Scantling, whoever. They weren't going to go with Lucky Jackson. He is the break glass in case of emergency guy to be bumped up because he's good enough to be out there in practice and running the right routes and probably not good enough to play on a week-to-week basis in the NFL.

It's a hard place to be. And as you heard my interview from him, Lucky Jackson, really bright dude, crazy story of working his way here, and you'd love to see a guy like that succeed. It's just when the expectations are what they are, you have to make moves like this to get feeling. You have to hope that Naylor takes another step. You can't kind of, hey, we're going to go with this guy who's completely unproven. Kit says, do you think Felton could have it click like Jefferson did a few weeks into the

season, allowing him to pass Naylor like JJ past B.C. Johnson? No, I don't think so. I don't think there's really much to compare there. Justin Jefferson is, well, he missed a, that was the COVID camp where he missed a good portion of it because he had COVID and it was 2020. So they only had two weeks or something of training camp to get ready. That was the only reason that happened. It's sort of become one of those lore things where that always gets left out.

Like, oh, can you believe Zimmer started B.C. Johnson? Well, there was a reason they did that. It was because Jefferson was still getting ramped up from heaven. missed part of a shortened training camp already and needed a couple of weeks before he was, I mean, I'm sure he would tell you now that he was ready to go week one, but I think that's why they did that. With Felton, I think he needs an entire year. I think the better comp for him is KJ. Osborne, where the first year, we just didn't really

see him. I guess, you know, I guess that's a bust pick or whatever. And then the next year you go, whoa, okay, wow, all right, this guy can play. I agree with got to put on weight, got to learn route running details. I think he could be in the game right now if they needed him to be, but not for a full breadth of snaps. It would be more of like 10 snaps for Felton. We might see that.

They seem to really like him with the football in his hands, and I think he's going to be the kick returner. So he's going to get a chance to show you what he can do. Exposé, do you think that this is a place where future negotiations will allow the Vikings to get people for cheap, whether it's new deals or people here. or free agents. I don't really think that they got players for cheap this offseason, and this was about as good as you're ever going to have for this offseason.

I think they paid market price for Allen and Hargrave, paid market price for Aaron Jones, maybe a little above. Market price are a bit above for Byron Murphy Jr. You know, bringing Harrison Smith back. Like, I think that they have paid the prices. And then their extensions, they give out the extension to Andrew Van Gingham.

at a pretty good dollar figure. I don't think that the NFL really works too often like you get free agents on the cheap. It's more, I mean, Thielen and having him take a pay cut is a pretty unique situation because he wanted to come back to Minnesota so badly, and they worked that in. So instead of Carolina taking on some of his cap, the Vikings take on his cap hit and his cash, they just pay him a little bit less. he wanted to be here it works it all works out for everybody they can carry over some cap for next year but as far as you got to pay what you got to pay and they're going to have to redo

jonathan granard's deal that's a lock that they're going to have to redo jonathan granard's deal so there's things into the future there will be some things to work with with the cap that are not going to be the easiest um but i don't think that we're going to see any any team be so wonderful to play for that guys are going to go, oh, no, like, pay me a lot less. They might take a little bit less than another team. But, you know, maybe if they, maybe if they're in the Super Bowl, I don't know. But I would be surprised by that. Let's see.

Jay thinks that Turner, Dallas Turner will not have a breakout year because there's too many good edge rushers on the field. That is another question that I can't wait to see answered because we asked them all off season and then like now we're finally here. Isn't that the best part of getting football to arrive? It's like all these things we wondered about. How is this going to look? And then we finally get to find out what Dallas Turner's role is. I think he's going to be on the field a lot. I think he's going to be on the field for 600 snaps would be my guess right now. And if there's injuries, it's going to be more than that. Now, what does he do as far as sacks? What does he do as far as

pressures or, you know, anything else like that? We're going to have to find out. But I think he had a really good camp and he was in a good place and I was being asked, you know, one day about, you know, comments about how he wasn't having a good camp. And I was like, I guess I'm going to have to change my contacts because I think he's had a really, really strong camp overall. He's not going to play as much as Van Ginkle and Grenard, but Brian Flores is getting into the lab to get Dallas Turner on the field quite a bit. And, you know, that's the other thing is I mentioned this before. And I banned any draft talk until the end of the season, then we could talk about who they're going to draft next year and what they've done in their past history and stuff.

But if they have an elite defense and Dallas Turner plays a role and he doesn't get 10 sacks and he doesn't have crazy PFF grades or whatever, I don't care. Like the final results are what are most important. They don't hand out rings for who had the highest percentage of draft picks hit. They handed out for who wins the games. So I'm already sort of preparing myself for like, well, Dallas Turner only played 32 snaps and didn't, you know, get, he only had two pressures and we got to talk about that again. Like, I, I'm just curious to see what his role's going to be and how he takes another step if he does this year.

Because if he does, that is a major swing player for, for this team. And I'm, and I'm not going to debate over, well, they gave up this much for this much and this. but I don't, I don't care. Like, we are at the point now where it's results on the football field versus other football teams. Like, that's all we're talking about here. And nothing else. Uh, I want to remind you, got another sponsor for the show, a friend of mine,

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support for this here show uh something coming up a little bit later having a good chat here about jelan naylor uh the optimism and his potential role and how you see him fitting with feeling right away off the the bat remember fan duel question the day is with optimism about just jephylin naylor what do you think the percentage of to targets that Jefferson will get against Chicago if they have their full bevy of receivers as of right now. Like they don't have Addison clearly, but Naylor, Thielen, Hawkinson, Jones, Mason can catch the ball, little Oliver.

How much of that should go to Justin Jefferson? That is the Fandul question of the day. Let's see. Chris says Turner does not have to have huge numbers this year to have a breakout. year has to prove his value and where he was chosen in the draft. See, I don't, I don't think that the draft matters at all at this point. He's on the team and they're trying to win. So forget about that.

That's not what you have to prove. You have to prove you can help this team compete for a Super Bowl. We got to move out of the mindset of fake championships. Fake champ, this team has been fake championships for a long time. Let's be honest. It's been fake championships. It's been, hopefully, this team shows they've got something. for the future. Hopefully they lose the last game so they can draft higher. Hopefully they show

that KOC can actually kind of coach so they don't have to fire him in the first year and get somebody else or he's not Matt Patricia or something. There's been just a lot of fake Ws. This is just this year is real ones. It's all about real ones. It's not about well, you know, they, uh, KOC proved he can coach because of Darnold or something. It's like it doesn't they won, they got a good draft pick that they gave up something for like. None of that matters. If Dallas Turner has three sacks and plays 400 snaps and they have a number one defense, I don't care what they gave up for him.

It just doesn't matter. That's what you're looking for. And I know, I know. People don't like that take because they love to decide who won, what draft pick and everything else. That's just the fact of the matter to me is the overall team results are all that matters in this. And if he does take another step and it's not this mind-blowing step that, you know, quote, justifies the draft pick. If it's four and a half sacks and an interception,

a key pass breakup, and 35 pressures or something like that, and helps them get over the top to be a top five defense and win some games, that's really good. There you, and that's, and that's the only way I'll, I'll look at it. Chris says, let's see.

Great point about the defensive. line well it might seem okay it wasn't really on board oh i wasn't really on board with trading phillips because we might need him come january well that's kind of the point that some of those numbers were making earlier today i was looking at and it was a an analytics account i can't remember what it was just on twitter uh about like run stop percentage and where this is sort of like some next gen data of where the runner was stopped by that defensive tackle and It wasn't too thrilling when it came to Harrison Phillips, and that matches up with his PFF grade with the run defense, which I know is not a perfect metric because it's a system

and it's not just one guy and he has different roles and all that sort of stuff. But the reality is that earlier in his career, he had better numbers and they liked how Jalen Ehler and Levi Drake Rodriguez were performing behind him. I understand what you're getting at with Phillips. But I also think there's a little bit of like his. first year he played really well. And the last two years have started out well. And then I don't think that they've ended as strongly for him. And look, it was Jerry Tillery and Jonathan Bullard next to him. Now it's Hargrave and it's Allen and it's, you know, a couple of guys that they like

coming up. I don't think that that's a loss that you can't survive. And if it was, then KOC and Brian Flores would not have given it the thumbs up to move on from him. What they must have seen in training camp is just him getting beat out. And if you listen, into the language when Quasi talks about it, he really talks around the fact that he got beat out in camp. He talks around about like, well, you know, the snap counts and maybe it's better that he's in New York and things like that just sounds like beat out to me, which is fine. That happens to veteran players. And if someone's expensive and they carry some value, then you move on. But I think that that's what happened is that he just got beat out in training camp.

Jack says, or Jack's Park, Hargrave and Alan being able to create pressure up the middle will help put our defense, oh, we'll help our defensive backs big time. It's been a while since we've had interior push, 100%. And that's another bet they're making is that you're going to get the best version of the corners and safeties that you have because of the pressure up front. And that is something. It's been a very, very long time since they've had. Uh, Yergan says Jalen Johnson might not be available week one. Folks, I know a lot of you out there either own your own business or you are in a management position where you have to hire people and it can be such a headache. You have to sort through all sorts of resumes of people who aren't qualified and you end up overlooking some of the best candidates.

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We don't know. Well, that's exactly right. Is that last year, last year did not give you enough evidence to say, oh, Douse Turner's going to be amazing. But it certainly didn't give you enough evidence to say he's going to be terrible. I mean, he was on the field in huge games for them down the stretch for 25, 35 snaps. He created some pressures. He got an interception.

He got a couple of impressive sacks. I mean, at 21 years old, still learning the league, one of the youngest players in the NFL last year and behind those two guys, it was the Indianapolis game that he came in for an injury with Van Ginkle and played really well. So I think we've seen the flashes from him to know that there's something there. We just have to find out what it is exactly is there. Chris says if JJ and Dallas pan out, nobody will care what we gave up for Dallas. I mean, I think if J.J. McCarthy pans out that this team will be extremely good, and we won't have to do that. I mean, look, it's a long off season. I don't blame anybody for doing that. And this is the show that gets into the front office's seat, but sometimes I just reach a point with that where I'm like, okay, all right, this is, this is too much.

This is too much trying to tear apart every single, like, detail on one guy's. you know, how much they traded for him and everything else when we're missing the forest through the trees. I think that's kind of the point, like the bigger picture. If they had drafted one guy to be the whole defense and they needed him to be a complete game changer and that was the only person, well, first of all, if that was the case, he would have been on the field. Let's be real. If they had drafted him and they didn't have Van Ginkle or Gernard, he would have been on the field for 700 snaps last year and it wouldn't be a surprise if he had gotten seven or eight sacks because of how quick he is.

And we saw that in just a handful of pass rush snaps for last year. And then maybe we'd be talking about it differently because there's so much emphasis on the snaps there. I think he's got a chance to be a game changer with this defense because they can just be more dynamic and more confusing and deeper. And maybe from time to time just, you know, get, uh, get Andrew Van Ginkle a breath. like we're going to see.

So, I mean, I'm fascinated by how they're going to use Dallas Turner. I just don't want to talk about the whole what they gave up for him. And, you know, Mr. Merr says, that's boring. I agree. I mean, that's just been beaten to death. Like, we've got to play some football games. But the actual role and the schematics of it with Dallas Turner. Now, that's worth talking about because there's so many options there.

There's working him in on the edge to get him a lot of, you know, a lot of reps. If Andrew Van Ginkle needs some rest and doesn't have to play. every single snap or Jonathan and Grenard, but there's also looks that they were giving in training camp with Van Ginkle and Turner on the same side and one of them dropped and one of them rushed and then the opposite and then they both rushed and like there's there's options there. And if Turner can handle this role and he can make a difference off the edge with his quickness, his improved strength for this offseason, I think he probably put on 15, 20 pounds. I mean, that's, that is really scary for opposing offenses.

it also helps them handle, you know, only really having two corners to have the extra outside linebacker on the field. How often can they do it, though? That's another question. Blunt says does West Phillips call plays or KOC pulling the strings? It is KOC and it will always be KOC as long as he's here and it always should be KOC. That's one of the strangest criticisms I hear of the Vikings is when People say KOC isn't good at calling plays. That to me is just complete madness. He has some tendencies that we have critiqued in the past. One of them being like not leaning on the run when you're ahead and even when you're

running successfully, we've been over that. The trick plays, the screen passes, like stuff like that. But the bigger picture on getting some of the best Kirk Cousins play that he ever had, how about late game play calling when you win, what, 90% of your one-score games. How many game-winning drives from Kirk, from Sam Darnold, Jefferson's production, Addison's production, Hawkinson's production, the offense,

taking a guy in Sam Darnold who had done nothing in his career to a top 10 quarterback last year. Gosh, the offensive line that was just taped together and surviving that and having big games, like that's not, there's a lot of play calling that goes into all that success. It just, I ran across the stat and it really blew my mind that when Kirk or Darnold has started, they're 31 and 11 in the regular season.

And like he should be calling plays forever. And it's actually a major benefit of having an offensive coach is that you can have him call plays with J.J. McCarthy. And it's not like if you have a good season, then your O.C. is going to leave. And then your quarterback has to learn a new system. andrew says why has van ginkle been so quiet in training camp he was banged up in camp but the thing about the way that vikings handle stuff is if you're a veteran player if you're 30 years old and you're banged up at all you're just not practicing just don't just don't

they need you for 17 games it's too important you'll if you got to work yourself back up to 100% during the games you'd rather have that and have a lot of games than someone get you know, someone get hurt in camp and not be able to start the season. But we will keep an eye on that when the injury report comes out. Like, he's back to 100% at this point. I'm just going to go with crawl. Sorry if I'm saying it wrong. Who identifies the, with the UDFAs and who does the draft picks?

Why can we hammer undrafted kids and fail on top talent? Well, I think that the undrafted free agent, I asked Flores this. last year, I think, about the undrafted free agents, he said that the biggest thing is they try to identify one thing that a guy does well that fits with what they do well. So we play this type of defense at the corner position, for example, and this is what we're looking for. So I think that, you know, floor is like size at the cornerback position. We've seen a few guys they brought in McLeathers, one of them, Vaughn is another one, where they like size there. And this is what they're looking for.

with this type of scheme, and here's the things you're going to have to do, and maybe it's zone coverage that these guys are good at. Like, McLeatherin's a great example. I don't think McLeodern is a lockdown corner as a UDFA, but he could play the football. So if you get him in zones and he's good at identifying plays and playing the football, you might have something there where another team that plays a lot of man might not. That's just a small detail.

I think that's part of it. But, you know, when you only draft like four players, per year because they have moved a lot of their draft picks that also hurts your possibility of hitting on a ton of picks that's another thing as well uh two dog dad is the micah parsons and jonathan granard duels are going to be epic going forward that's what i'm saying you go position by position the nfc north it's ridiculous it is absolutely ridiculous how much talent is in this conference this division just absolutely ridiculous uh jace is what will be Turner's role. If I had to guess, I would say, I'm going to say 600 snaps and the role is going

to be different all the time, that Van Ginkle will move back to a regular linebacker position at times, that he will fill in for Grenard sometimes. You think about what they did with somebody like Patrick Jones. Patrick Jones had a very dynamic role for them. Didn't drop back in coverage as much as you could see Dallas Turner doing. But even then, like last year, he dropped back in coverage a fair amount, and he's not going to get sack numbers, but if he's good at dropping back in coverage, it causes havoc for the quarterback. And those are little things that you might not see in a stat sheet, but he can do it, which just adds a whole new thing to what the quarterback has to factor for. Kit says, what's the best case scenario for Naylor? 40 catches 650 yards,

six touchdowns. That might be a little bit high for Naylor for even a best case scenario, know, 650 yards feels a little high. 40 catches is not crazy. Maybe something like 30 catches for 450 yards would be a good scenario. Six touchdowns is also kind of high to repeat what he did last year. But yeah, maybe you're right. That just feels like a lot of yards per catch to get to 650. Maybe you're right.

It's absolute best case scenario. Yeah. Earlier this year, I was looking back. I was trying to remember because I did 50 bold predictions. and I want to look at them at some point this week just to get a refresher this offseason, you know, the kind of, hey, we're just thinking about football, but it's the middle of summer content. And I did have Jalen Naylor catching 44 passes for 567 yards or 76 yards as a bold

prediction. Not sure that that's actually going to get there with Adam Thielen here. Reminder. Fandul question of the day. Just want to make sure you guys answer that. percentage of targets you want to see to Jefferson week one. Is it all of them? Or would you like to see it spread out quite a bit with the beginning of the season?

Stephanie still used to getting to hearing you say, Thielen in the lineup. I know it's been a while. It has definitely been a while since I have talked about Adam. But you know, it's funny though, because when this happens, it only happens every once in a while that somebody comes back after they leave. You know, Tom Johnson came back and how did he describe it? I think he described it as like going away for the summer and then coming back for the next year of school and seeing all your friends.

It didn't feel much different at an Adam Thielen press conference than it did before. And, you know, he knows everybody in this media because when you're here for that long, like you get to know everybody on a first name basis and Thielen has been on the show. There's been, you know, many feature articles. There's been many weekly press conference. conferences. So it kind of was like, oh, back, you know, back to school, like an old friend, you know, coming back. That's, that's how it felt. Susan says Jefferson will get 27% of the targets. That is extremely specific, Susan. But I think that one third would be pretty good.

If they throw, if they throw 30 passes against Chicago and 10 of them go to Justin Jefferson, seven or eight catches and then you distribute the rest two or three to each guy. You're in good shape there. I think that's what they should be doing. Let's see. Crawl. Most team's goals are to eliminate Jefferson. So I think the catches will be low.

Phelan and Hawkinson are going to feast Jefferson. 10% of the ball is thrown his way. So you think that they're going to play it like they did last year where they just have everybody running at Justin Jefferson. That's very possible. I think it's going to be more than that. I just, I don't think that you can let Chicago do that again. Like, you have to get them going right away.

So I would go more than that. I would, I would go more than just 10% of the targets. I would want him to get, because remember my old rule, if you're an old G listener to the podcast, you remember, and I'll bring it back this year, that if Jefferson doesn't have 10 targets, someone goes to prison. that's that's the rule is that someone gets arrested on the coaching staff if just a Jefferson doesn't get at least 10 targets because throwing to Jefferson is just such a

great play such an efficient play no matter what even when he's doubled Chris says as far as Micah Parsons goes he's a top five rusher however the NFC North has great offensive tackles and he won't be playing his home games in the comfort of Jerry's world yeah I mean, top five rushers, those guys, Bosa, Garrett, guys like that. And you have to remember with Parsons is that they do have good tackles. They'll rush him from just about anywhere. He's going to get his numbers.

He's going to get his plays. He's going to make plays. He's going to be a good player for them. It's just, I think we all still know that regardless of how much money they gave him, how good he is and all that stuff, that if Jordan Love isn't great, that team will not get a whole lot farther because they had a good defense last year. They had a top six defense last year, and they still end up getting eliminated in the playoffs because their offense just wasn't that great.

Chris says the criticism of KOC's play calling is purely because we are sometimes ineffective on short yardage because of the weakness of the O line in the past KOC knew it was weak, so he went away from the run. Yeah, I don't want, I don't like, no play caller is ever flawless. and so if you are in a if you're watching the game on Sunday so just so I'm not misconstruiting how I'm phrasing it like if you're watching the game on Sunday and it's third and one and they throw a 14 yard incomplete pass you are well within your rights to be like kev what are we doing here and there were a bunch of times last year where I did that or it was why why aren't

you just running a delay handoff and punting the ball away there or why aren't you just winding clock or what like why can't you because they run game was working in the first half of the season it was gaining about five yards of carry for erin jones early why can't you you know score in the red zone why can't you convert there's there is no one's ever going to be perfect when it comes to that it's just bigger picture though i mean you watch some other games and some of the play calling and some of the offensive design from bad and you go, oh, yeah, Sam Darnold had a good last year with Kevin O'Connell. I think there should be a lot of confidence in the way that he can call plays for J.J. McCarthy.

But it still is a question of whether he will lean into the run if they get the opportunity to do that. Thank you, bloody soup. That sounds horrifying, but I appreciate the super chat. Thank you very much for that. Oh, I also, I wanted to mention, if I didn't already, that coming up shortly on the show, Maggie Robinson, special contributor, formerly intern, but we changed her title, has a one-on-one conversation with Walt Anderson, and she asks him if the NFL is rigged. I'm not joking, she did. Walt Anderson is, he was the VP of officiating, and now, what is his role? I wrote it down.

Rules analyst, Walt Anderson, like longtime NFL referee. So it's a really good conversation, and you'll want to hear his answer when she asks him if the NFL is rigged. So that's coming up shortly tonight on the show. But great questions and comments. So I'll keep answering your questions in a bit. If you guys promise to answer the fan dual question today. Let's see. Jay says this is the best O-line we've had in a decade on paper.

I'm an OSU fan of Jackson as a swing player. He will destroy rushers this year. I think that he is going to, by the time they get to play someone like Pittsburgh, he's going to have to be ready to face great rushers. He is going to luck out a little bit because he doesn't have to face them early in the season. Where I think he's going to make the impact is in the screen game and in the run game. That's where I think he's going to make his biggest impact. For the past protection, survive in advance.

A lot of Dalton Reisner theory there where it's like Dalton Reisner was never amazing, but the guy just found ways to survive. I have a down. Just hang on for dear life against Jeffrey Simmons, give your quarterback some space to throw and you'll be fine. But in the run in the screen game, that's where I think that he could be a serious impact player. And where he's got to learn is all the complicated rushes. That is hard for young players. But could be a difference maker right away. Two dog dads is, do you think that we'll take Pace Jr. off the field on third downs and swap in Turner, who's more of a past rusher, but can drop into coverage? Yes, 100%.

100% I think that's very, very possible. I think Pace is an early down guy, first and second down, and then they'll try to get Dallas Turner or even second down and long. Dallas Turner could be on the field. There's a lot of mixing and matching because you can move Andrew Van Ginkle to Ivan Pace's spot and still haven't rushed from that spot, as Ivan Pace did successfully all the time. This team is really good at rushing up the middle. There's so many options.

So many different options. that's a great question from maggie yeah uh yeah no uh mr mayor not not an intern means that um maggie is going to keep contributing last week it was a mess with there was all the breaking news and emergency podcast and they traded for micha parsons and all that stuff happened and it was like maggie and i kept scheduling our time to get together to record her segment and then there just was a something got in the way every single time we were literally just about to dial it up and record our segment and then Michael Parsons gets traded and it was like so what do we do now and like I got to go live but she'll be back on Tuesday and then she's got this this great interview

and Walt Anderson just gives you great insight into the real life of a referee and he does directly address the issue of the games being rigged so but it's it's really good I'll bring it to you shortly but you guys are continuing to roll with the chat here Crawl says, I want to see Scott running this coming Monday to run the clock up by 20. Yeah, well, if he's active, I think that Ty Chandler will probably be active and it won't be Xavier Scott running the clock down at the end of the game. That is something, you know, you would like to see, though. This is an area where I think COC has to learn and it's his fourth year's ad coach.

There's no more, hey, he's new at this. he's still figuring it out or anything like that. They have kept teams in the game and they did it a lot in 2022. They, heck, even like, if you think about in a different world, like they let Denver and Cincinnati come back in games in 2023. Now it's better for them. Bo Nix might be your quarterback, so maybe it's not better. I don't know.

But they could have made the playoffs in 2023 with Dobbs and Mullins if they just held on to a lead and they, you know, blew a lead was a chance. Chicago. They also blew, they blew, I think, three leads at the end of that season. And there was some mismanagement in there. And then last year, they blew some leads, but they found a way to get one more pass from Sam Darnold, one more drive from Sam Darnold. You can't do that this year. You can't just blow leads left and right, because if you do that, Baltimore is not going to let you have it back. The Chargers aren't going to let you have it back. So that is, that is something. That's what I mean about when we talk about anybody, when it's Dallas Turner or when it's KOC or whatever,

it's like, how can we, like, can we get specific about what we're talking about here? As far as overall play calling, absolutely fantastic results over the first three years. But this detail, like that, that is an important detail of you've got all these one score games that you've won in part because you've let a lot of teams hang around. Can't do that. Can't just ask your defense to do that. can't make mistakes being too risky can't fail on third down and one every time you get third and one you know so there's there's things to be improved there uh bloody soup says vikis

need to figure out the screen game i don't know if is our o line or bad play calls this has to get better i tend to think o line i think o line is so big for screens and last year i remember i mean with ed ingram in there there were three or four screens that should have gone to the house that didn't because he couldn't find his guy in space i think july Jackson could be really good there. I don't know about fries. I guess we'll see. But Jackson, I have some confidence in.

Deplorable Neanderthal says, do you think that coaches look at our safeties that double as quarterbacks filling out the cornerback? Oh, yeah, I see what you mean corners, right? You mean cornerbacks? Like, do they look at the safeties as sort of also corners? Is that what you mean? A little bit because someone like Josh, Mattelis can play both.

Mattelis can be a corner or a safety. And I'm curious, if Harrison Smith can't play, what they do with Josh Mattelis, that's going to be something we talk about all week. If Harrison Smith can't come back this week, is it Josh Mattelis still playing his role and someone like Jay Ward getting in there? Or is it going to be Mattelis and then Jeff Okuda's on the field in more of a nickel package and Mattelis plays the deep safety? Yeah, I don't know.

We're going to find out. We're going to find out. Jim, what position did number nine play in hockey? I don't know. They see flashes of color in that game, added fearless pocket presence and savvy manipulation. Yeah, I mean, he's got a little bit of a hockey mentality. I don't know what position he played in hockey. JP says, I disagree with forcing targets to Jefferson.

Yes, he needs to get targets. The Randy ratio didn't work. that was before your time. Oh, I know about the Randy ratio. Trust me. I know it. Mike Tyson is Randy ratio. Well, sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. But I don't mean that they need to, hey, Jefferson hasn't gotten a catch, but we're winning by 17 while it's force him the football. I mean, your offense is at its best when it throws to Justin Jefferson.

Quarterbacks are at their best when they throw to Jefferson. All the numbers are there. There's a reason for it. His contested catches are pretty unreal for his career. It's one of the best route runners, got some of the best hands. He's unstoppable. He's been unstoppable for this long. So if you're going away from him,

it doesn't need to be a JJ ratio, but if you're going away from him for too long, like that's not good for the health of your offense. That's where it all needs to start. Crawl says, we need to be ready. My beloved JJ is going to make mistakes. There will be a few interceptions through the first few weeks, and it's okay.

sort of, I mean, like, yes, that first part. Like, yeah, be ready. There's going to be some rookie moments. The first three weeks, though, this is what's so tough about J.J. McCarthy in the situation he's being put in, which is not, I mean, look, he's a first round pick from Michigan, okay? So this isn't some kid who just showed up here from Montana State. What are they? The Cougars?

Are they the bobcats? whatever Montana State. He didn't show up from Montana State and then just be like, oh, start again at Soldier Field. Like, he's been prepared for this. There was all this discussion about Arch Manning and where he went to high school and like maybe he had an easy high school competition. I saw a highlight, which it looked like my high school that had, you know, 12 football players on it. And that wasn't J.J. McCarthy playing for IMG. And he was playing against Ohio State and he was playing in the national championship like this yeah there's going to be rookie moments but also the standard is extremely high and you need to win you need to win right away because the schedule

gets harder and harder so i do think that you should have uh a high standard for mccarthy right away uh david said generally not a good idea to throw to receivers that aren't open unless their name is just in jefferson i agree unless their name is justin jefferson just the numbers are there Jefferson doesn't have great separation numbers for his career. It doesn't matter. It's the best receiver in the league. If you have the best receiver in the league, you just throw it to him. If Nick Mullins can do it, then McCarthy could do it.

I'm not saying every single time. But for him, it's just different rules. James, anything on Harrison Smith will he start game one against the Bears? I don't know. It's week to week and we're just going to have to find out when we get to the injury report. I don't mean to sound like KOC, but it's true. We are just going to have to kind of wait until we get to the injury report to find out where he stands for this week. Because if he's practicing on Wednesday, then there's a pretty good chance.

If he's not, then probably not. And then we're going to have to find out how they deal with that. Oak Dogg says JJ will have a tough first start on the road in Chicago. We'll be fun to see what happens. Yeah, it's not the easiest. it's not the easiest soldier field at least it's not a great team but it's that place is intimidating it definitely is uh dean says archmanning looked rough though i mean he was playing against a great defense for his first game sometimes i i just get a little bit like frustrated by how there's so

much overreaction to everything i didn't think it was a good game and he wasn't getting rid of the football, but it's at Ohio State for his first game ever. And, you know, they came close. If he gets a couple of catches there, I didn't, I didn't think that it was so bad that I would say, oh my gosh, he can't make it. Like, it's a long way away from him playing in the NFL. It's a long season. Like, we'll have to see how it plays out. I mean, who did, uh, like, I was, it was funny, because three of the guys who are projected to be potential first rounders, Manning, the guy from LSU, the guy from Clemson, they all had like the worst matchups to start a season. They don't get even preseason and just go out and play against Ohio State on the road.

Good luck. And then there's other people who are playing FCS teams to start their seasons. I mean, Drew, look, I don't know college football that well at this moment. It's just been laser focused. But is it Aller, the guy for Penn State, they're playing like Long Island Tech or something. Like what? That's just college football is weird like that. let's see yeah addison can definitely the addison and jefferson are the best in the league at contested

catches are two of the best uh brian says jj is accustomed to everything in the nfl but playing a real game that's right that is how it feels uh let's see oak dog says uh some people were reporting manning had tears in his eyes after the loss is that really true uh i i don't i don't i don't don't know. I mean, does that make a difference? I'm sure that it would, it would be an emotional thing to lose your first game like that on the last play. That's a little different than what Caleb Williams did, by the way. Like, like crying in football, it happens all the time. I mean, it happens all the time. I don't know how many times I've been in the locker room and, you know, it's very clear that some guys have been emotional. It's a crazy emotional game. I mean,

you're out there for what four hours in college football and the atmosphere is crazy and the pressure's crazy and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, what I didn't like about Caleb Williams wasn't the fact that he cried. It was that he kind of like separated himself from his teammates and they were losing in a game against Washington. He just went to the bench and sat alone. And the game wasn't even really over yet. There was still some chance. And it was like, what are you doing? That's not where you need to be, but I mean, if there's no crying in baseball, but there sure isn't football all the time. It's a very emotional game. So anyway, well, great conversation, everybody, but I did tease Maggie Robinson, formerly intern, now special contributor Maggie Robinson, asking a high

level. And I was surprised. I think I mean, I think I was mostly kidding when I said this. I was like, you should ask him if the NFL is rigged. And she decided to do that anyway with Walt Anderson, who is the NFL officiating rules analyst and was the senior VP of officiating for, I think, four years, longtime NFL referee. So this is a really fun conversation between Maggie and Walt Anderson. and Walt takes you behind the scenes on kind of everything. Like, new, he actually brings up the face mask last year and the rule changes. So if you're interested in that, the life of a referee, like Maggie got a lot out of this interview. So I'm going to bring you that next.

That will be the end of the stream. And then tomorrow night, Arifah Hassan is supposedly going to be on the show tomorrow night. We're supposed to talk tomorrow. and then we go from there, folks, and then it's got a big lineup coming up. It's going to be great, great first week. Wednesday, we'll have press conference sound on the show, and we'll hear from McCarthy, I think, and KOC and every, I mean, it's time. It is freaking time, and I can't wait for this week.

So here is special contributor, Maggie Robinson, with Rules Analyst, former referee, former VP of refereeing Walt Anderson. Enjoy, my friends. Walt Anderson, welcome to Purple Insider. I'm so excited to have you here. For those of you who don't know, I'm Maggie Robinson. I'm Matthew Collar's intern for the summer, and I previously worked at the NFL on the broadcasting team doing production and operations.

And one of my roles was sitting in the AMGC next to this man, Walt Anderson, most Sundays, assisting with rules analysts and liaising between the broadcasting department and the officiating department. So, well, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Maggie. Good to see you again. It's great to be here. I'd love to just jump right in. You spent 24 seasons as an NFL referee. 17 of those is head ref, and now you've shifted over to front office, previously senior vice president of officiating, and now NFL officiating and rules analyst. But I want to put you back in your on-field role. You spend so much time on the field. You refereed 17 playoff games, two Super Bowls.

what was it like officiating in those big moments? Like what was going through your head during a game? Well, it was certainly always, you know, an honor to have that opportunity to do so. And you spend so many years preparing to get to that point, really just like players and coaches, you want to be prepared so that you can really just go out and execute your job rather than kind of being consumed by the environment, so to speak, from that standpoint. You know, so it was certainly a lot of fun. It was a big thrill. Witnessing the NFL game from the field is an experience that unless you're playing or officiating, nobody else has. And, you know, so it's really a unique opportunity. The TV does not do justice to the speed of the game when you're out there

witnessing it in real time. So it was, you know, I had a great run. I had a great time with it. I'm thankful for that opportunity and football has always been a part of my life since I can remember my dad was a football coach and I'm still involved in the game so football is still here. I love that. And you mentioned the preparation that was key to keeping you grounded on the field. What does that preparation look like? I think the viewing public doesn't fully understand the amount of work it takes for you guys to get ready for a game. Can you walk me through your process of say you have a game on a Sunday at 1 p.m. Back it up. What does that look like in the days before. Are you watching film? How do you prepare for a game? We do watch a lot of video.

And certainly video, really just like for players and coaches, is your next best tool other than actual experience from that standpoint. But, you know, since football in our business, we have one game a week. You know, it's not like baseball where you're playing every day of the week from that standpoint. So you spend a lot of time with video. And so you really, from the time you get finished with a game on Sunday, really, when you get to the airport, most of us are flying back home, but most of us begin watching the video of the game on the airplane back home. Wow. You know, with technology the way it is, we have the whole game available to us, usually within

about 30 minutes after the game is over. So we begin watching that process, and it's usually the broadcast feed that we watch first. And then other angles, coaching angles, you know, other Hawkeye type angles with us using in Hawkeye now, come in either later that evening or early the next day. And so we end up finishing with that. So you'll end up with the time on the flight, plus normally about anywhere from four to six hours the next day, completely going through all the video of that particular game. So you want to really go through that.

And then you'll end up the office, which I was a part of also for many years, is evaluating and grading the game as well. so they'll end up providing feedback to you and you'll have some interaction then with your crew you have crew meetings either on Monday or Tuesday to review that game with your crew and we do that now virtually from that standpoint you know before we had all this video technology we had to do a lot of those types of calls just with conference calls and it it wasn't near as effective as whenever you can just share video and so you really want to try to put last week's game to bed or to rest usually by Wednesday, and then immediately whenever you do finish up with last week's games, you begin getting into the video study for your next week's opponents. So we spend a lot of time watching video, you know, as an example, if next week I've got Minnesota and Green Bay, then I'm going to be spending time watching the last several weeks of games for both Minnesota and Green Bay to really just begin to get prepared for certain

tendencies that you have to begin to expect from both of those teams. types of formations they run, you know, the types of hurry up schemes that they run, the kicking game, all those kinds of things you try to get as familiar with both of the teams, matchups. You know, if you know you're going to have a really big or a dynamic type matchup between two players, you want to be aware of that. You know, you may end up as an example, you know, with an all pro receiver and an all pro cornerback. You know, that's probably going to be an intense match up. So the officials that have to work the passing game, they want to spend a lot of time just watching, and particularly if maybe there's some previous footage of those two players

and that matchup. So, you know, we can really go deep back into the archives with stuff to just kind of begin getting familiar, you know, with what teams are going to do. Now, the league office is also generating during the week training videos for all the game officials. I remember you sending me those. Yes. I think you sent me the ones that out of the clubs as well. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So we said. We send videos to the clubs, we send videos to the officials, and the officials watch the ones that we send to the clubs as well. So they want to know what messaging has being sent to coaches and players, because they often get questions about that. I would often get questioned by the head coach, even a couple of hours before the game.

You know, hey, explain further the video that came out this week when it was talking about as an example, maybe an emphasis on alignment of players or maybe an emphasis of blindside blocks or something like that. So you have to watch all of those and be prepared. And then all of us have to get to the game site, usually by around noon the day before your game. So most of us are traveling on Saturday. And so then when you get there, you check into the hotel. And then as a crew, we have a meeting for anywhere from four to five hours the day before the game to again, just answering questions that are lingering from last week's game. The referee will have spent a lot of time just going over the matchup for tomorrow's game.

and he'll end up making various points to the crew from that standpoint. We have that meeting and then typically we'll go out to dinner the night before the game together as a crew and then you wake up on Sunday and usually have breakfast as a crew and then we usually head to the game site usually about three hours before the game. I mean, this is a full-time process. I think something that a lot of, again, I keep saying the viewing public because that's who I'm generally talking to, but I don't think they understand the amount of work that goes in and it's really easy to sometimes discredit a referee and say, like, how did he miss that?

Is he blind? You know, like the usual Twitter responses. You mentioned at the beginning, the speed of play is so fast. I know you started off like in Little League all the way back at the beginning, but how do you get used to the speed of NFL play and how sometimes you can see certain things, but TV cameras and all the different angles that we have are catching everything? How does that work for you when you see one thing or maybe you miss something, but a TV camera catches a replay and then it's broadcast to the world. Yeah, good question. And full disclosure, I've often asked myself, Maggie, how did you miss that? So I have been down that path before. But really, and this really applies in a lot of other businesses and professions and so

forth. You actually, over the years, learn techniques to help process visual imagery. And, you know, the game, we often say that you kind of learn to see the game in slow motion, but the game is in one speed, and that's real speed. But the brain is, is a wonderful organ. It's, it has the ability to process visual imagery, recall that in your mind and then confirm to you, yes, this is what I saw in detail to determine, do I have a foul or do or not, you know, did the ball break the plane or not? Did the receiver toe tap at the sideline? Did he make that catcher? not. And so when things happen really, really fast, the trick is just to learn and over the years train yourself to process things in a manner that you can recall them accurately. And this goes,

I remember my very first training camp back in 96, 1996, 1996 that is, okay, for your audience there. Because it was at Arizona. And it was up in Flagstaff, Arizona. At that time, the Oakland Raiders had come into camp. And I remember as a rookie, and I had worked, you know, up to that point, 20 years of a high school and some college football. And so, you know, you think you've acquired the skills. You got selected to work in the National Football League. And so you think you've required the skills that, hey, you're ready for this and so forth. And I remember my very first camp and watching the players execute and the speed of the game. I remember coming away realizing that I thought I was prepared, but the speed of the game, and that was just training camp.

That wasn't even an actual game. I knew then that I was going to have to even prepare more so than what I had, you know, prepare that. So I even really got much more into the weeds, especially with visual processing. And I remember during those years, I was fortunate enough having a medical background to have some resources of people. who were in that business, you know, physicians who were in neurology and neuroophthalmology that I could lean on to say, hey, are there some tricks that you can help me with visual processing? And the fact is, there are. I mean, there are things that professions do, fighter pilots, you know, police work, military, that you can train yourself to see things

in detail and then process those visually, recall them, your mind so you can confirm that, yes, that is actually what I saw, not what I think I saw. So there's some tricks to the trade, so to speak. I got to ask, what are they? Can you list a few of these tricks or techniques that you learned? Well, a lot of it is learning through repetition. And again, having video to where you can can see certain things and have them on film and be able to slow them down and really get the detail so that in real time you can make notes of things and then real quick you write down what what are those details that I thought I saw and then you go back to the video and then you test it

and if you see certain things that I didn't pick up on that then what you really do is you back the video up in motion to maybe half speed or quarter speed whatever detail or whatever speed you need to to see that action and then you study the other trick and this is what we often teach officials the game is a game of motion and very often people are looking for that magic snapshot but you can't process it that way yeah everything is happening too fast so what you actually learn to do is you see certain motions developing or evolving like as an example maggie offensive holding is our most common foul that we call okay because it occurs a lot because there's a lot of blocking and a lot of grabbing that goes on in the game it doesn't just

spontaneously boom there's holding from that standpoint you end up having to have a player who reaches you know he ends up grabbing and then that grab has to have a certain effect on the defender and that defender is then moving in a certain way so all those elements of motion are what you really learn to see. And so it's kind of like a bell curve. You end up seeing that motion evolving and it either gets to that point where it reaches the threshold of a foul or it dissipates and you move on to other motion. I know that's the end of the weeds on things, whatever, but you ask the question.

I'm curious. I remember also you've been doing this for so many years and when we were sitting in AMGC, you would know calls right off the bat. And I'm talking for the people who don't know, AMGC is the art, Nally game day control, which is the officiating hub in the NFL in New York City where all the replay assist is occurring. You're sitting up there. All of our officiating crew off field crew is up there. And there's screens with every game. And then there's monitors with, I don't know, how many cameras are on each. It varies. The one o'clock, the one o'clock windows usually have

anywhere from 10 to 11. And by the time we got into Sunday night, Maggie, I mean, we were up to into the 30s. Yeah. Yeah. So we have cameras monitoring every single game, watching every angle of everything. But you were always sitting next to me identifying off the bat. Oh, that's this call.

That's this call immediately. Before maybe even we're seeing it live on TV, you were there. You're roughing on the field and you're making these split-second decisions and say maybe you make a mistake. At any given time, half the stadium doesn't like you. And you have millions of people watching the game. This is such a pressure. environment. So how are you coaching up people and how did you personally

handle that stress of, oh, I know I just messed up? What do I do? How do I move on? I have another 90 minutes to get through. Yeah, again, I mean, and they actually have professional people that can kind of help you with this if you need it. But you really have to just compartmentalize the play. Just exactly like players, you know, do is you try to execute the play. You try to have a process. And everybody really in today's world, works on that process is you train through repetition to do certain things to have certain visual transitions, keys, whatever that might be. And you try to execute those on every play. And you hope you do it right on every play. But whether you do it right or whether you do it wrong,

once the play's over, there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. And so there will be opportunities and time to learn from those opportunities, but it's not right now. You have to then get prepared immediately for the next play and get back into that process. And so part of our training is developing the discipline to get immediately back into that next phase. Through the years, I narrow everything down to three things, pre-snap routine, keys, and focus. That's the thing on every play you're trying to do.

You have certain things on every play. You prepare mentally very different for a third in one play than you do for a third and eight play. because the game situation is different. And players do the same thing. So just like Hall of Fame quarterbacks, when you throw a pick six, you can't dwell on that pick six.

Because if you do, you're going to throw another pick six. You know, you just have to let it go. And it's not easy, but that's what you have to do. And then you move on to the next play. And then when it's all said and done, as I mentioned,

when you get back on that airplane, you start studying, okay, I need to start then evaluating the game from my benefit, what I do right, what I do wrong, and the things I did wrong, how can I correct them? Yeah, you know I have to ask this, and I'm asking this on behalf of the people on Twitter and on Instagram. People think the game is rigged. They think officials are being paid off, and you'll see all this online. You know what I'm talking about. You've seen the comments. What do you have to say to that? I mean, it's just, first of all, I never have. I don't

do social media. So, and I know even my family will often kid me about that because I always tell them I don't tweet and I have no friends, you know, so, you know, you just don't get into that, you know, it's just a job. And that may sound like you're removed from the game, but that's really just our role from that standpoint. So, you know, you're human, you're going to make mistakes, but a lot of time, as we've talked about, a lot of time is spent just trying to minimize those mistakes as much as is humanly possible. So the conspiracy stuff, I mean, you hear about it, it's like, oh, whatever. And then, you know, I just don't, we don't spend any time dwelling on it.

Yeah, that makes sense. Once again, this is a healthy mindset of just like, you know, it's false. So not even going to engage, not worth your time or energy. I mean, this is not a tennis match where you got one player. Yeah. The game has got so many people around it. It's so complex and whatever. To rig the game, I mean, people are just not thinking of the hypothetical possibilities

or what it would it take to do. I mean, it's just, you know, it's just, it's not practical from that small point. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it keeps everybody's attention, those kinds of things. It does. People love to throw that around. I'd like to think of you, again, in this on-field role, you got the your piece in. say you're the on-field official, can you walk me through the review process, like step by

step? Who are you hearing in your ear? When do you know to go to the tablet? How are you making decisions? Why does it take so long? How does this process work? Well, some of that, the audience might be interesting, you know, instant replay has evolved through the years. And for most of my career, I was the final decision maker as the referee on the field, because we would go over to the hood is what it was called the little hood that had the NFL shield, you know, and from that standpoint, now they have tablets, but also the decisions now are made, you know, in New York at a central location. But most years that we've had replay, the decision was made on the field.

So again, you have to realize out on the football field, the seven officials have specific areas of responsibility. And as the head referee, I was mostly watching the blocking in the pocket. and action in and around the quarterback. My job was, quote, to protect the quarterback, not to stand in front of him and take the hit, but if somebody did hit him illegally, you know, I had to throw the flag on the defender.

So you're watching the game from that perspective. You know, you'd often hear the roar of the crowd because there was a long pass, and it was either intercept or caught, so the crowd wore, but you got, you have no clue back here with the quarterback what just happened. You just heard something, whatever.

Then all of a sudden, here comes a challenge flag, you know from say a coach and you go you go over to the coach and he says but well he they didn't catch that ball I'm challenging that so now you go over to the monitor and you haven't seen anything of that play and so when you go over to the monitor you put the headset on and that's the very first thing you end up asking is the people on the other end your replay official at that time we were talking with New York as well is okay what are we looking at and so they kind of described to you hey we're going to look at the catch in the back of the end zone we got to look to see if he got both feet down. So then you begin looking at that. And again, it's all about

angles because you can look at one angle and you can even put them side by side from that standpoint to be able to look at them. But you're just looking through the detail to be sure all the aspects. And if it is a catch, that the catch process, he gets possession two feet down and then, you know, holds it long enough or if he goes to the ground, holds it when he hits the ground. So you're just looking at all the rule aspects of a particular play to be sure it satisfies what the rule is. And then you always start, what was the ruling on the field?

So if they ruled it as a catch that he got two feet in, that evidence has got to be clear and obvious that he didn't get two feet in. And so that's what you're looking for. And a lot of them, at times, in some games, the majority of them,

it's like, it's just not enough there. We can't change the ruling on the field. Or if it is, then you say, okay, no, I'm going to reverse that. So as a head referee, you right away start thinking about how am I going to announce this? Because you know that in about 15 seconds, you're going to be on national TV, you know, describing to people, you know, what it is that you're about to see. That was my next question.

Are you formulating, is there a specific way that you're supposed to announce things? Or is it just as efficient and as concise as possible? Let me get this out. It's evolved into the latter, Maggie. Okay. When we started replay years ago, it's a matter of fact. I do remember this play because it was in Pittsburgh and it was a play in the end zone relative to a catch, no catch for a touchdown.

And this was really in the early years of replay. And it became known as, you know, Walt's replay teas because, you know, I somewhat, I don't know that I intentionally did it, but it was like you're trying to describe the whole thing, which was really at that time what we thought we wanted to do. But as it turned out, audience doesn't need that much information. And so I ended up saying after review, the receiver gained possession of the ball and then all of the Pittsburgh fans, yay, however, he did not control of the ball when he hit the ground. So the fast is incomplete.

It's not a touchdown. Boo, you know, so, you know, I sort of somewhat set them up, I guess, not intentionally, but in hindsight it's like, no. And so we've evolved into after review, it's incomplete. you just kind of get to the facts from that standpoint because, yeah, it was, you know, you go from highs in the stadium to lows and booze in the stadium. You've talked about officiating replay assists is kind of transformed over the years, and now we're stepping into a new change in the 2025 season.

Can you explain that and what that's going to look like and how it's different? Yeah, this will be the fifth year of replay assist. And the way that evolved a number of years ago is technology being what it is, with camera angles and high frame rates and the detail that the audience over the years got used to seeing, if certain things would happen on the field and a mistake would be made, not intentionally, but just a mistake would be made. And the whole world is looking at, just like you said a while ago, how could you miss that? Yeah.

It's like, you know, his foot's on the line, whatever. And the whole world would know that. Isn't there a easy way that we could get that information to the officials and tell them, no, it's not a catch? And just make it and move on. You know, don't spend two minutes on a review when we could spend 10 seconds. And just with technology, officials have those earpieces. We're talking to them all the time, all the time. And so that's how it evolved.

And we started with the very simple things, the things with lines and the ground. Did the ball hit the ground before it got the receiver? Hey, guys, it's incomplete. And just make the announcement. But eventually we got to, even with certain fouls that are called, most files have a lot of subjective components to them. Okay. And you have to leave those on the field.

But certain fouls have very objective elements to them that we could end up telling the official, no, you know, like intentional grounds. You know, if you're out of the pocket and the ball gets to the line of scrimmage, either it lands beyond the line of scrimmage or it doesn't. You know, it's black and white, you know, from that standpoint. And so you could tell the referee, hey, the ball got the line of scrimmage, that's not a foul. Let's pick that flag up from that standpoint.

So what we added, what we added this year, and every year over the last four, the competition committee has said, hey, we feel comfortable about adding these items. and let's get good then at administering those and then we'll look at if there are other items. So last year you'll recall, like if a roughen the passer, if the referee called a hit to the head, but we had video evidence that he hit him in the shoulder, chest or the shoulder, then we could tell the referee picked that out. Yeah. The play where you call a late hit out of bounds, but in fact the defender hit the quarterback

at the sideline before he stepped out of bounds, the Green Bay play. I was going to say, I remember that well, yeah. Remember that? Okay, so that we added last year. That went very, very well. We picked up last in the 24th season some originally called fouls that were just not fouls because subjective criteria just were not met. So this year we're adding other hits to the head of other defenseless players,

receivers downfield a quarterback who's sliding you know so if the receiver goes down field goes up has the ball boom there's this big collision and the back judge feels oh he got him in the head so he throws his flag but we can see hit him in the shoulder then we can tell the back judge we're going to pick that flag up quarterback slides happens a lot you know and and he can't ever get hit in the head if he slides and gives himself up. So the defender goes over the quarterback really, really fast. Here comes a flag, you know, for a hit to the head. But we can see that head might have hit the ground when he went to the ground, but the defender didn't hit him. So we can pick that up from that standpoint. A horse collar. You have to grab the collar or the nameplate.

So if you grab the number and pull the guy down, we can tell the officials, we can pick that flag up. And is this made possible by the fact that you have more slow motion cameras that are able to capture all these different angles in BC? Absolutely. Yeah, it's not only the speed of the cameras, but the fact that there are more cameras. We've added this year, every stadium now has 12 permanently mounted what we call boundary cameras. Yes, I'm well, yes. Each go line, each in line, and each sideline from both sides of the field and from each end of the field. So that's 12 extra cameras from those angles that will always be there that will be able to use. And so it's both the numbers of cameras, because that gives you more angles.

And then so many of the cameras now have really high frame rates. Sure. And so when you get those high frame rates, you know, rather than 60 frames a second, which at the speed of the game, a lot of things just look blurry. You just can't tell. But when you get a 240 frames a second camera, I mean, every click, you know, of that motion is very, very clear and very, very detailed. So I have to ask you then, if you have someone on the field who's making one of those, quote, subjective calls, but you're seeing something different on all of these camera angles, but it's not one of those plays that you're allowed to assist on, how are you handling a situation like that? you often acknowledge that we miss that one because the rules just do not allow you to try to fix

everything one of the things that the audience often ask us and whatever well why can't you review everything my response is well why can't you sit for 10 hours and what's the team you know and it's because it would just drag the game out the reality is you want the game played by humans coached by human and you want it officiated by humans. Now, technology has allowed us to use that technology to enhance that experience and correct certain things, but we're just not to the point where we want to stop and review everything. One of the areas we added this face mask is another one that if the officials call a face mask on the field, but I end up grabbing the collar and pulling it. Very often,

and I turned the head, turned the body, and it looks like a foul, but it's not because didn't grab the face mask from that standpoint. We had two very high profile games last year. One involved Minnesota. I was going to ask you about it, but you brought it up. Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about it. Yeah.

One involved in the Minnesota, L.A. game where it was a clear and obvious foul for a face mask that the official from his angle just did not see from that standpoint. And to a file should have been called. When we looked, as soon as the season was over, we began reviewing with the competition committee. Okay, what areas for next year might the committee want to consider adding? So we immediately got into the face mask. And so then the big question is, do you let replay add penalties or do you only let replay pick penalties up that have previously been thrown by the official? And when you start looking into it, it's really easy to take the Minnesota L.A. play and everybody, 100% of people will agree, hey, that's a foul.

Sure would have been nice to be able to fix that. Okay. So that's one of 50 plus thousand plays in a season. The other reality is we then start taking a look at all those other plays and we show those, I could show them to you, showed them to the committee. okay is there anything else about this play we need to stop the game in review well no nothing else happened i can see you know it's a so this okay well what about this angle from camera 32 and i can see we're over on the sideline after that wide receiver in the cornerback we're engaging he reaches up and grabs his face mask a does he grab it and pull it which would make it a foul does he grab it and release it which it would not be a foul and that's not something nobody else have seen that. Yeah. So do you stop every play of every game and review everything? Because

who then decides and fix and choose, well, let's fix the Minnesota play, but now we don't need to fix, you know, the Buffalo play or the Dallas play or whatever. Who makes those decisions from that standpoint? And so after all of the discussions, all of the stakeholders, all the decision makers is, hey, let's fix the ones that are incorrect that if the official calls in and it's not right, we'll pick it up. But we're not going to go down that path of having replay, create penalties because what would it do to the game? It wouldn't make the game more consistent. It would make it more inconsistent. Yeah. Is this either going to drag it out or you're going to review some things, not review others, and that will only enhance.

That's the conspiracy theory, Maggie. You don't not make it go away. Is another way that you're trying to cut down on decision-making time, this Hawkeye technology with line-to-gain, that's a question I have because obviously you want the game refereed by real people doing the thing. But now here we are with this goal-line technology, and now we're going to the video board every line-to-gain moment when we're checking it.

What are you seeing this do from an officiating standpoint? it'll reduce the amount of time it takes us to do a measurement because the officials will still spot the ball there's not some chip in the football that's saying hey put it put it at the 48 and a half that doesn't exist you know there's no laser being used for that the officials will spot the ball the cameras will take an instant picture and software will triangulate the position of that ball within a quarter of an inch, which is more accurate than the humans on the sideline are putting those stakes down. But the average time for us to bring chains out and then get chains back and get them reset

and so forth was well over a minute. Most of the time it was around a minute and a half. Last week when we had that virtual measurement in a Hall of Fame game, which time is live, that took 17 seconds. Wow, I didn't know that. No. So, you know, there's still some things to work out from a technology standpoint with, you know, behind the scenes software processing and then sending it to the cameras. Be sure all those links work, you know, to the truck and so forth. So, you know, we're going to be practicing here during the preseason with it to try to get it down. But we tested it all last season. Yep. In real time, you know, and our average time was right at a little less than 30 seconds.

So that's almost a minute of the game that's really wasted time. You know, it might create some drama from that standpoint. But there are smart people around with graphics, as you well know, they'll end up creating some graphic that'll end up making the visual drama, just replace the actual physical drama of watching an umpire grab a pole, stretch it, whatever I've got, but that's what we were used to for decades. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people said, well, it's going to take out the drama.

And yeah, it might, but my guess is, as long as I've been around this game, something else will replace that drama to create other drama. Yeah. I'm confident that's going to end up happening. That makes sense. How does the selection process work for refs? How are you picking new people? How are you bringing them up?

It's like with players, you know, we're scouting officials. We're spending time with them and we'll end up selecting them. We have what you might call a draft, but just nobody watches it. I'd love to hear more. What do you mean? What does it look like? Well, it's, it's, you know, we have a scouting department, you know, that has people that go out and watch, not just in person, but on video, the officials that are working in the college area that we are evaluating. Do they have what it takes to be an NFL official, you know, and to make that grade? And so this year, I think six, I think it's six, six new ones that we hired, you know, this year out of the college ranks.

Yeah. So, you know, it wasn't that we just, you know, on April the, you know, 15th or whatever day it was, we said, hey, let's get six officials. Let's just take those six. A lot of years have been spent watching those six officials work and separating their performance from others in elevating them, if you will, on their draft board. Just like the teams do from the standpoint, okay, if we get the number one pick, this is who we're taking. And then in round two, based on who's available, here's our selections for that. You know, it's the same thing. If we need six officials, either of six we need to take.

If this year we only need one, what would that one, who would that one person be? If we need, as I had a couple of years, if we need 12, who are those 12 going to be? You know, so it's very, very similar, you know, to what clubs do with the draft process. And but when it comes time for us to notify them, we just simply call them on the phone and tell them, you know, we would, you know, invite them to the end of the NFL. But we don't send a camera crew out there. We should. This is untapped potential. We need to be doing the NFL draft on ESPN, but it's the referee edition.

Yeah. I think you're beyond Maggie what people are interested in. So, you know, again, no, we'll just let the officials be anonymous like they want to be, which we do. We want anonymity is a good trait for officiating. So we're content with staying in the background. I respect that. Okay. I know we're almost at time here, but I have to ask you, what was it like walking off the field for your final game?

It was in 2019, NFC divisional game, Vikings at the 49ers. What was going through your head? Did you know that was your last game? I did. Okay. I knew that was my last, was going to be my last game. Not a lot of other people knew that. You know, I had had some talks with the league about, you know,

what they wanted me to do sort of in my next role from that standpoint. But knowing that you needed to just keep certain things, you know, you need to focus on the job, you know, and nobody else needed to know, you know, that there were other things going down the road. And again, fortunately for me, I had been doing it so long and was so used to it being just a job. You know, you go out there for that day and you end up doing that. And so I approached it the very same way because the one thing I did know is that if I don't stay true to that process, if I don't approach it that same way, I don't want to be remembered in a negative way my last game.

You have much more of a likelihood of making a mistake. and normally it's the negative things from an officiating standpoint that they remember. Nobody remembers all our good calls. They only want to focus on the bad calls from that standpoint. So, you know, in hindsight, it was like, nope, just go out and do your job.

And there will be plenty of time in the future to then sit and relax and reflect, if you want to do so, reflect upon that last game from that standpoint. Well, Anderson, and thank you so much for your time. This was phenomenal, and hopefully the audience got a few of their questions answered, but this was great, and thank you for speaking with me.

You bet, Maggie, and they'll let you know as they had more questions, and at some point maybe we can do it again. Absolutely. Thank you. You're welcome.