The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Doug Pederson on how NFL teams evolve in season + the 4th down revolution with Mitchell Schwartz

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Former Eagles head coach, Doug Pederson sits down with Robert Mays to talk about how NFL teams evolve and self-scout in season. Pederson breaks down when the process begins, how the game plan is assessed and adjusted and what he learned most as a coach during Philadelphia’s Super Bowl run. Then, Mitchell Schwartz is back to discuss the 4th down revolution across the league, whether or not players feed into the “revenge game” narrative and how injuries impact the rhythm of the offensive line.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Fun show for you guys today. Mitchell Schwartz is going to be joining us a little bit later to do his weekly segment. It's great to have Mitch back on. Also, we have Doug Peterson, former Eagles coach, to dig into a topic that I've always found interesting, just kind of how teams evolve and find themselves over the course of the year.

Going back all the way to the off season, how you figure out how you want. want to be a new team in a new season, how you kind of pare down your game plan, how you tailor who you want to be and settle into that. It was actually really good timing because earlier today, Brandon Staley had a quote about what they're going to do during the biweek to self-scout. And I was already planning on doing this show. So it worked out very nicely, very excited to have that chat with Doug. Let's get to it. I'm thrilled now to welcome former Eagles coach, former Super Bowl winning coach. Doug Peterson, Doug, thank you very much for taking the time to do this. I sincerely appreciate it. Yeah, no, thanks for having me on. And, man, I look forward to, uh, to visiting with

you this afternoon. So we've talked about this a little bit, but the idea I wanted to dig into with you is something that I've talked to coaches about in the past, but I wanted to really kind of chew on it. And there was this notion of how a team kind of evolves over the course of a season, because it's an important process, figuring out what you do well, figuring out how to deploy your players, but it's also a difficult process. So I wanted to kind of go through the entire life span that a team follows starting in the spring all the way, in your case at times, to the Super Bowl. So I wanted to go back all the way to the start of an off season, because this is always a process that's really interested in me. And it's kind of that self-scout post-mortem that teams do.

So when you were in Philly, what was that process like for you? How was it structured when the season ended for you guys to kind of go through, all right, this is who we were, this is what we do well, this is what we didn't. Yeah, you know, you know, the, the biggest thing, and I guess it's one of the biggest things, especially when the season ends, is, you know, you sit down with the GM, with, you know, player personnel guys, your staff, you know, you evaluate your season, you evaluate your own team, but you also have to come up and honestly know exactly, you know, the pieces that that won't be a part of your team, you know, in that next year, free agency.

being one of them or having to let a player go or something of that nature. And so you start right there with just understanding, you know, where you are as a football team all the way back, you know, if you get to play in the Super Bowl, obviously, in February, but the majority of teams do this do this in January, right? And then they do that self-evaluation. And then, you know, you start putting a plan together for how are you going to acquire, you know, the players to fill those needs that you have and those voids that you have. And with free agency, with the draft or with your current, maybe your practice squad players or the futures signing players that you, you know, you sign towards the end of the regular season and things of that nature. So you're constantly, even before you take the first step on the

practice field with your players, you're just trying to acquire time. talent and as much talent, you know, as you can, uh, in the, in the, in the process. So those first steps, maybe let's say after those initial meetings about who's going hit free agency, who's not is the first thing that you guys worried about roster construction and the off season in regard to free agency or how, what was the order of operations? Did you think about that first or schematics first when you were kind of looking back at the previous season? You know, you're kind of doing both.

Okay. You're doing both. You're evaluating, um, and going back and doing your scheme evaluation. right, offense, defense, and special teams, and you're evaluating your season, but at the same time, you're preparing for, because the first thing up really every year is free agency, right? I mean, that's usually before the draft and all that. That's what you're planning for. So, you know, you're also looking at, you spend, let's say, the first, you know, let's say, call it the morning, right? Before lunch, you're doing your scheme evaluation. And then in the afternoon,

you're watching a ton of tape on free agents. And really, you're going back. too and even watching some of your young players, you know, on your roster that maybe didn't play the year before and saying, okay, maybe he's the next, maybe he's the next player that we need to get ready to, you know, before we go out into free agency and, and try to sign somebody. So that's, that's kind of the process there. You're kind of doing both scheme evaluation and a little bit of roster construction at the same time. When you were doing this scheme evaluation, how would you divvy it up? Was there a certain coach that took a specific situation.

Like how did you guys structure that study that you would do? The scheme evaluation can, and that can be a whole separate topic, it gets really can be lengthy, but kind of in a nutshell, basically the quality control guys, you know, on offense are going to, especially with the passing game. I let my run game coordinator, who was my offensive line coach, I let him put, put the runs together, right? all the, all the liked runs, the runs that, um, that we ran throughout the course of the year. And you just, you just marry them up by, you know, two by two formations, three by one formations,

whatever it might be. So you can look at it schematically, um, you know, uh, and that's kind of your process, right? You're just going to look at it, the whole, the whole scheme. And then when it comes to the passes, you do the same thing. Conceptually, you put the, you know, all the like concepts together. And maybe you, some teams maybe put them in families. Maybe they got different, you know, maybe they call them the bird family or they put all the states and won or capitals in and whatever, however their scheme is, they're going to organize it so that when they watch it, they're not just going all over the place and looking at different things. They're looking at the actual scheme of a play, right? And if you're running that play, you know, 15, 20 times a year,

that gives you a lot of information right there to say, okay, was it a good play number one for us? How can we make it better? Do we need to make it better? Or do we need to just kick it out and say, hey, let's not run that anymore. Let's do something else that we were successful with. So, you know, there's a method to the madness, obviously, when it comes to SchemaVal. And yet it takes some time to organize, well, computers make it easy now, but it does take some time to, you know, organize all that information.

And then we sit in there as a staff and, you know, the offensive staff is looking at it. The defense is looking at theirs. And, of course, the special teams guys are looking at their stuff. And, but then as you get through kind of the sort of the nuts and bolts of scheme of Al, then, you know, what I did is I'll divvy up. Each position coach will have a certain aspect of the game. So we'll look at all our four-minute, you know, offense.

We'll look at our two-minute offense. We'll look at the red zone. We'll look at backed up. We'll start now cutting it up into situations. And so there's going to be some redundancy with some of the plays, right? Because we've already watched them a little bit, you know, but now we're putting them together by series, by sequence. So, for instance, we're in the red zone.

And I want to look at everything from, you know, the 12-yard line to the 5, well, we're going to do that by series, by drives. I'm not going to just hunt and peck and try to find all these plays. We're going to do it in a chronological order based on the game. So each position coach will come up with a report, with a study in those certain areas. And then we'll study those. Then we'll see where we need to improve. Again, see what work, what didn't, what we can improve upon,

what we can kick out of our offense, what we can add. And I want them to look at other teams. I want to find and have them. I'm going to ask you about that. Yeah, have them research the top, you know, three red zone offenses, you know, in the last couple of seasons. And just kind of see if there's any trends there or what they're doing and short yard and goal line. And, you know, just study other teams and study, maybe even look into college too and look at some of the top college offenses and see what they're doing. And then they present those reports to us as a staff.

And again, we get to sit down and dialogue and, you know, it takes time. It takes, you know, several days to put those, put those things together for coaches to really study an opponent, right? Just like you would at a game plan for the week. They're studying other teams to see how we can become a better red zone offense, right? Two-minute offense, whatever it is, you know. So that's kind of the kind of the order of things when it comes to scheme evaluation. What would you say during your time in Philly was the most important thing one of those years that you learned during that post-mortem process? Kind of the thing that you took forward that helped shape the type of team you guys wanted to be during your time there.

You know, I would have to say, and for me personally, and I was the play caller too, right, in Philly. And so for me, I had to go back and evaluate myself, especially in critical situations, right? certain third down situations, certain fourth down situations, two point conversions, you know, even even those times when maybe you want to run a gadget or a trick play or something like that. But sitting down and evaluating myself and, you know, saying, okay, okay, I need to be a little more aggressive here. I need to back down here or I need to go in a different direction. Those are all the things that you take away from scheme evaluation as a play caller and say, okay, going into the next season. And for me, too, as the head coach, when you're laying out your offseason schedule, you know, for the players or when you're laying out your training camp schedule, those are the things that you want to work on, you know, in the off season.

Those are the things you want to work on during training camp so that your team is prepared, you know, for those situations. And then when we get in those situations next fall, I'll be prepared as a play caller. you know, to be a little more aggressive here, right? Or maybe I'm going to take a shot in a situation where maybe we're backed up coming off the one yard line. We want to take that shot and be a little more aggressive, you know, down the field, whatever it might be. But those are all things and those are things that I learned, you know, again, when you're a play caller, how can I get better and how can I, you know, help our football team win? Because it's so important to, you know, any more, I mean, listen, there's no, there's no perfect play. There's no

magic, you know, in football plays. It's just, it comes down to execution and your quarterback doing the right thing with the football. But that's where coaches come in and coaches can coach those plays, coach your quarterback to go to the right place, you know, based on what he's seeing, you know, defensively and all that kind of stuff. And so that's where I think for me, that's where where I got better was in the teaching aspect of it and also the play calling aspect of just learning from, you know, my mistakes from the year before. So you come out of that process in the late spring. Obviously, for agency and the draft happens, you kind of figure out how you want to fold those

players in. By, you know, May, you have an idea, semblance of what you want your offense, your team to look like for the upcoming season. How much does that plan on, let's say, May 15th? What percentage of that do you typically take into week one? And how might that change over the course of the summer? I'm just curious how much you can learn about your team from OTAs and training. And how much that's a thing.

Yeah. No, and that's that's a really good question because every year coaches sit down and you say, okay, we got to work on X, Y, Z in the off season because X, Y, Z is going to be kind of who we are in the fall. But the other thing you're trying to do, too, before you can get there, you're also trying to evaluate your roster, right? you're trying to evaluate your young players, your new free agents, your draft picks, you're trying to, you're trying to understand your team and kind of who, who do you think

you're going to be? Or what do you want to be, you know, coming out of the offseason? So when you end your OTAs in middle of June, you have a pretty good idea of what you want to be, you know, during the season. And then the other thing, too, is your roster is going to change just a little bit because you've got 90 guys, right, going into training camps. and then you're going to release almost half of them, you know, before, before the end of camp. So, you know, that's the other thing.

You just, that's why teams kind of stay a little bit vanilla, you know, during training camp. But I was big on whatever we worked on in the spring, I was going to carry that over to training camp and work on those exact same things because I knew or I wanted to have that same kind of identity, you know, in the fall. And, you know, listen, you get to the season too and injuries start to happen or, you know, the type of opponent you're playing that week, whatever it might be can kind of change and steer you in a different direction. But the one thing you want to be conscious of is never lose your identity, right? Never lose, you know, what you want to be or what you want to become. But that process starts in the offseason, you know, in those May and June OTAs. I remember talking to the Browns, some guys in the Brown staff this summer. We were talking about their run game and the way that it was structured.

And when they came in in their first year, they assumed it'd be a lot of wide zone in the same way that it was with Stefanski in Minnesota. And then they realized with their personnel and with Bill Callan, it's like, we can try to fold in some of this gap stuff. Like it really does fit us. Can you think of an example like that from your time in Philly where there was something that kind of was sprung on you, whether it was in camp or early in the season where it's like, maybe this works. because this wasn't part of our original plan, but we might have the guys to do this. You know, early in 20, I think it was 2017, a Super Bowl year when we were in, you know, again,

and this all came out of scheme evaluations. As we were kind of studying not only offenses, but we were studying defenses as well, teams defensively started sort of, you know, using five-man fronts and not their traditional 35. four defense, you know, where you get the three down guys and four linebackers or the traditional four three, but they were, they were incorporating more, you know, linebacker type five-man configurations, right? They're going to cover your center, your two guards, and then you may have

two stand-up sort of outside backers, much like a 34 configuration, but we started seeing more of those five-man fronts. So we had to come up schematically with, because those are things, you know, it's hard to pull a guard, right? When your guard's covered, it's hard. It's hard to it's hard for your center to block back when he's got a man on you and all kinds of schematic things. So one of the things we came up with was, you know, my run game coach, you know, he came up with pulling the tackles a little bit more, you know, and making calls where the tackles are either going to go up inside maybe a three technique or if it's a, or say, a five technique or if it's a three or a, you know, a two eye, maybe he's pulling around that, that guy, you know, and doing different things, lead block, and very much like the gap or trap schemes,

but allowing those running backs to kind of hit the thing downhill. And we had some success doing that. You know, one of the things, too, in 17, we were a big RPO team, you know, with Carson, Wants, and Nick Folles. We ran a ton of RPO's, and of course, we married that up with our, you know, our play action pass.

So it all looked very, very similar to a defense. But going into 18, I can remember going into 18, defense has had a chance now all offseason to study to study RPO, to study how to take it away. And so teams started taking away our RPO. So now we had to be creative and understand either by changing the route or by doing different things with the back, the blocking schemes up front. Those were all, those are just a couple of examples there where we had to change as an offense a little bit and get a little more creative to stay ahead of the curve just a little bit. what defenses were presenting. So that's from one season to another, which makes total sense.

Within a season, what would you say is the most significant way an offense can change or grow based on your experience? What are the things that you really need to learn about yourself? Let's say at this point, let's say six weeks into the year, what do you need to be paying attention to to kind of get a sense of, all right, this is where we are now, but to get where we want to go, we need to do X. You know, I think you look up in, you know, you're six weeks, seven weeks, eight weeks in, you're halfway into the season just about. And by now, by now you should have that identity as an offense or defense.

As a team, you should have that identity. Already at this point. Okay. You should have established that. And then you just have to continue to, you just got to continue to build on that. Like we did in 17, obviously you got to stay away from the injury bug and all that. and you're not, you're not, you know, like we did in 20 and 19, we had so many moving parts up front that it was, that was hard to really implement much, much new.

And honestly, you know, you're having a wrinkle or two each week that that might throw a defense off. But, man, I'm a big believer. Just do what got you there. Continue to improve on the things. If you're an inside zone team and we were an inside zone kind of an, RPO team. Get, you know, big, big guards. We had Jason Peters when he was healthy, Lane Johnson, you know, Isaac Siamalo,

Jason Kelsey, and Brandon Brooks. I mean, we had some, we had a really good offensive line. It's a lot of beef. It's a lot of beef. And then during the Super Bowl, we had a big V. Vaitai was playing left tackle for, you know, Jason Peters. But keeping true to that same identity and allowing those guys to just come off the ball, right? just roll off the football.

Just keep, you know, team, hey, teams know we run inside zone, but we're going to be better at it than them trying to stop us. So I think that's where teams right now, if they want to continue to have success, just keep hammering away at the things that got you there. And don't change, you know, and this is a philosophy of mind, don't change just to change. You know, make, if you're going to change something, it better be for a reason.

know, and because you just don't have enough time during the week to try to, you know, put in a whole new offense to get ready to get ready for Sunday. This may be a silly question, but how do you gauge what you're good at over the course of the year? Are you, obviously you watch the film, but is there, do you look at numbers? Do you have a way of kind of documenting, all right, this is what we were doing well in week one? Like when we ran so-and-so inside zone, we're averaging this yard to carry.

Like, what is the actual structure of kind of how you? you self-scout over the course of a season to figure out what you do well. Yeah, those things we pull out every Monday. You know, I had an assistant, you know, quality control coach that his job was just to pull out all those numbers for us, particularly in the run game. And to really give us a snapshot of, like you said, what we were good at. And, you know, if we were good at man schemes, hey, let's try to. to run as many man schemes as we can.

If it was zone schemes, let's run the zone scheme, whatever it was, but we'd always keep those numbers. And I think that's something that you have to, because that's also a way to still run the same plays, but just manipulate the package a little bit, you know, how you present the package, how you present the play, but still run the same play, I think is important to kind of keep defenses, you know, kind of off balance a little bit too. But yeah, those numbers each week are really important. And that too now, like you're getting into week six,

you've got a lot of data available to you to say, hey, we're really good. We're our inside zone, you know, we're gaining, you know, 5.1 yards inside zone and maybe our, you know, our gap or traps or whatever they might be are only hitting at two yards, you know, we need to run more inside zone. So, you know, those are all things that we take a look at, you know, each week. And as we, as we prepare. Plus, we, you know, analytics plays a big part into, you know, game planning the next week for our opponents. You know, what are they, what are, what are they given up on defense?

You know, what's their weaknesses? What are their Achilles heels, you know, on defense? And how can we kind of exploit that, you know, in our game planning as coaches, you know, during the week so that we can have the best, you know, hopefully the best advantage, you know, going into the game. When you're thinking about different ways to dress up certain concepts, whether you're getting to a run concept with a different formation, whether you're, let's say we have the tight end in this spot out of this past look and we swap it out with the receiver for this exact reason because we're trying to accomplish this. How do you come up with those ideas where you're just figuring out how to dress up and disguise certain things? Is there dedicated time for it? Does it happen naturally? I'm just really interested in how that process happens.

You know, some of it happens naturally, but you do have to sit down and think. And this is where, you know, some of the really good coaching minds can get creative, you know, with some of the formation, some of the motions. You're seeing a lot more of the shifting and moving of the tight ends, jet motion coming back across the ball, you know, and then just run an inside zone, you know, whatever it might be. And I think those are things that this is where I believe you have to start these things back in the offseason. If you're going to take a tight end and you're going to ask him to, you know, cut off a defensive end and not necessarily where he has to like physically manhandle the guy, but just cut him off and kind of get in his way. Well, I'm going to teach that to a receiver too where he can he can dive down inside and just get in his way.

I look at like what Sean McVe does with his receivers, you know, or Kyle Shanahan. and what he does with those receivers. He's putting those receivers in the same positions as tight ends to do the same. They're not necessarily, they're just getting in the guy's way, but they're doing it in the run game and they're doing it in the past game. And so it allows you to run the same plays or the same, you know, schemes, just using different bodies, you know, in those, in those situations. And that's the other thing, too.

We keep numbers on the run. and the passes and how successful we are there, but we also do the same thing by formation and where people are. Are we always a 12 personnel team or 11 personnel team? And can we mix it up this week? Can we change it? But we're always keeping those numbers too. So we always have all the information available when we're getting ready to game plan

the next week. And those are tweaks. I'm curious how kind of broader, bigger, new ideas get folded in. Because one of the most interesting things to me, period, about the NFL over the last like five, six years or so, is that everything is available to you. On a Monday, you can look at any play from any game instantly, and that just allows the traveling of ideas to happen so much faster.

You can steal something that just happened and put it in if you want to. So did you guys have a process in Philly for new ideas over the course of the season? What did that look like? So for us in Philly, you know, obviously when Frank Reich was the coordinator and and I was working closely with him and John D. Filippo was the, would be a quarterback coach. I had Press Taylor, quality control, a couple guys. You know, we were kind of the ones that they came up with new sort of pass ideas, right?

Some of the things. And quite honestly, they might be new to our team, but DiFilippo may have ran it when he was in Cleveland, right? Or Frank may have ran something when he was back in San Diego with Philip Rivers, back in the day. And then he's bringing a concept, which is a new concept to us, to our team,

but it's going to work that week. And then there's times where, hey, we just flat out see something on another game tape, or we saw something in college football, and it just springs an idea. Hey, let's try this. And, you know,

so, you know, you like to go into the week with maybe just a handful, say, you know, 15 new, new concepts, right? 15 new ideas. Yeah, you try to keep it. I wouldn't go more than that, you know. And that's also, you can throw in a couple of runs, you know, a couple of new run concepts that week.

I think it's, I think it's really important to continue to challenge your players too. And get them engaged. You get them to think and how do they process the information. Plus it allows them too to have a little fun with the offense, right? to stay engaged that way. So, yeah, if you have, you know, if you have anywhere from 12 to 15 new ideas that week, and you're reping them from Wednesday, you know,

through Saturday and then come game, come game day, you know, they're ready to go. And that's usually how, but you usually have about three or four staff members that are kind of doing that, right? They're kind of the brains behind everything. As your other coaches are studying different aspects of your offense, and getting in preparing, you know, preparing us that way too. Did you guys have any dedicated time for that?

Or was that just something that, you know, Frank would pop into your office? It would just happen over the rhythms of the day. He would just pop in, right? I'd go down to his or I'd pick up the phone and call him and, hey, hey, run down here. Let me, I'm going to show you this play I got, you know, or he'd do the same thing and say, hey, coach, run down here and I'm going to show you this play. Tell me what you think. So, yeah, I mean, you got to stay engaged that way.

And, you know, plus the other thing, you talk about challenging your players, but it also engages your staff, you know, to be creative, to think out of the box, out of the box thinkers. And don't just keep putting yourself in a box, you know, and that just allows you to grow as a coach. It allows you to grow as an offense. And, you know, I was big on that, allowing anybody who had an idea, not saying we didn't, it didn't have to necessarily go in that game plan that week. But if you have an idea, bring it to the table. And let's see if it can work. And you just don't, you know, you just got to be careful. You don't have too many new ideas, you know, each week.

So that I'm curious about the balance because it seems like it would be such a challenge to be game planning every single week and be engaged with whatever the rigors of that schedule is, but also try to take a more big picture perspective view. How do you try to balance those two things over the course of a season when you have a game to get ready for every single Sunday? you know, that's the thing is you just, you just got to stay in the moment. You can't, you can't really look down the road or, or past, you know, past really the week that you're in. And I think that's, that's so important for teams. And as coaches, that's, that's always been our, our, our, our, you know, the mantra, right? It's one game at a time, one play at a time, you know, let's go one and O this week type thing.

and trying to, you know, still, you know, keep the team focused on this week. But I will say that, you know, with the coaching staff, we might be looking, you know, two, three, four weeks down the road, possibly with maybe some game planning ideas and some things that are coming up. But in reality, we're still trying to keep it nice and tight in that game planning week for just the seven days that we're, you know, we're planning. Do you have a favorite nugget or idea that you can remember? Let's say borrow.

Let's use that term that you can remember borrowing from someone else. Well, I'll say this. I mean, the Philly special. Obviously, yeah, yeah. It's a well-known documented play. Many, many people have run it high school. I mean, it's, you know, we are definitely not the first ones to run that play. And I was flipping through a cut up that Press Taylor had made.

And I happened to catch this play, which renamed the Philly Special, the Chicago Bears ran the play in 2015 against the Minnesota Vikings, you know, inside. It was a, I can't remember if it was a two-point conversion or what, but it was inside the five-yard line.

I believe it was a two-point conversion. Yeah, I think it was a two-point conversion. Alshon Jeffrey was actually the receiver in the game for the Bears at the time. And I was like, oh, my goodness, this is the play. You know, so that was one moment. right there where I went through a whole reel of plays that Press had put together and found this one play. And obviously, again, like I said, many people have run to play before us.

We just happened to pull it out in the Super Bowl and execute it flawlessly in that game. I'm curious about how you pare down an offense as the season goes, because as you figure out what you do well, obviously you want to lean into that a little bit heavier. how do you lose stuff? At what point do you just kind of say, this isn't working, we need to trim the fat here and just move away from this

no matter how difficult that might seem. Yeah, and that's a hard thing for coaches to do is to put stuff on the back burner or to, you know, to can it for the rest of the season or maybe even a couple of weeks. That's a hard thing because coaches want to, we want to have as much in our arsenal each week

as we possibly can. But, you know, as your season progresses, is fatigue starts to set in, not only for the coaching staff, but also for your players, you know, injuries, whatever it might be on your team. So you actually begin to kind of cut back just to touch and practice. You know, maybe you cut back, take some time off of meetings, get the guys home at a decent hour so they can get rest, they can do whatever they want to do. Well, if you start doing that, then you start cutting practice, then you have to

you have to cut plays because you can't get all the plays run in the course of the week. So, you know, it's still early right now, you know, week six, week seven, and still early in the National Football League for teams to start doing that. I always tried to wait until it was like, you know, week 10, week 11 before you started to, you know, maybe scale back just a little bit. And at that point, too, you talk about putting stuff on the back burner. those plays or concepts kind of weed themselves out. And honestly, maybe it was just specific for that particular week.

And you'll never use it again. So, but you got to be careful that you don't overload the guys. But at the same time, you want to keep it fresh and creative where they can have some fun and execute your outfits. When there's some stuff that's not working, how do you problem solve in the midst of an NFL season? Because, again, it's probably hard to see the forest for the trees at times. So when there's something where it's just like, man, this isn't working, but we need it to work. We can't just scrap it. How do you go about kind of tinkering with those things over the course of a year?

So that's kind of where the buy week comes in, where as a staff, we get a chance to kind of watch the first 7, 8, 9 game, however many games up until you're by. And maybe you've scrapped a play prior to that, but yet you know it's a good play. So that week you spend time as a staff looking at it. You're kind of sort of self-evaluating, right? Your scheme evaluating the first nine or ten weeks of the regular season. And that's where you find those little tweaks that are going to help you in that second half of your football season. And same way with the passing game, it might be a, it could just be the depth of the route.

It's a 12-yard route, but we need to make it 10 so that the quarter. and receiver on the same on the same page. So, you know, those are those little fine-tuning things that you pick up on, you know, during your by week as a coaching staff. And that right there can really help you gain momentum, keep momentum, and or kind of flip the switch and put yourself on a little run towards the end of the year, at least at least heading towards, you know, heading towards the postseason. Can you remember like an aha moment during a bye week?

that you feel like was particularly important? I know I'm putting you on the spot here. Let me think. You know, because again, as I was mentioning with Schemevowal, you know, we also look at like, you know, our red zone stuff, for instance. One of the things, I'll tell you this, one of the things that stood out to me one year

was not enough down the field throats. You know, everything was kind of short to intermediate. And we got to the bye week and it was like, man, I'm just, I know they're in the game plan. I'm just not calling them. And those were, those were me, kind of those, maybe not the aha moment, but it was at least the light switch came on and says, you know what, I got to, I got to, this is where I need to be more aggressive with our team, with our players. I got to take more shots down the field and, and, you know, try to help our guys get chunk plays and things like that. And that was the time, I believe that was in 18 that, you know, were things kind of for me, that was kind of the eye opening experience was like, you know, during the biweek, studying that

and saying, man, it just doesn't feel right. I feel like we're kind of keeping ourselves in a little bit of a box and we can be, you know, pushing the ball, pushing the ball a bit more down the field. What do you think that happens as a play caller? Why do you think at times you kind of retreat from certain aspects of what you want to be? Is it just you don't feel like they're working? Is it you go to things that you feel like are a little bit more comfortable? This is more like an existential question. But as somebody who's done it as much as you have, I find that process really interesting. You know, you definitely have to trust your players, right? You got trust your quarterback and all of that.

And if you're going to continue to, you know, call a game a certain way or call a season a certain way or be aggressive at times, you know, you want your players to understand that. and you want to know that they're going to do the right things sometimes. And, you know, again, I think coaches sometimes feel there's an injury somewhere or you got a rookie playing. And it's really no excuse because, you know, you're coaching that player up. But, you know, those are situations where maybe you pull back just a little bit or maybe you're struggling as an offense and you, as a play caller, you tend to to you tend to go the other way.

You get a little more conservative in your calls. I mean, it's just a natural, it's a natural thing that happens. And, you know, for me, I just, I just tried to try to maintain that same aggressiveness each week because you're, you know, it's the hardest thing when you're struggling as an offense. And I don't, if it, in the run game, the passing game, whatever it might be, and you're struggling, you know, it's hard to find that magical. play. But as soon as you get into maybe a tempo offense, you get into your hurry up situations, it seems like things begin to flow a little bit. And now ideas are coming and calling plays. And you're out there rocking and roll. And now you're scoring points. And you're like, why didn't I do this sooner, you know, type thing. But those are, those are real things. Those are real things that

happen. And, and, you know, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just hard to kind of, kind of crawl out of those those situations, but you got to do it. You got to stay, you got to stay aggressive. You got to maintain the aggressive. You never want to see that you don't want your players to feel like you're pulling back. Yeah. You know, you're squeezing your grip on it a little bit. I don't ever want that to happen.

You know, I want the players to feel like, hey, we're going to keep going. We're going to keep pressing the ball down the field. And so, you know, they've got to feel that from the play caller from the, you know, decision maker. Before we get you out here, I want to talk about players a little bit because I think learning your players over the course of the season is also an important part of this entire process. Can you think of maybe a couple moments that you had when you were in Philly where you're like, this guy can do this? And maybe I didn't understand that on August 30th, but on November 15th, I do. A couple that ended up being really important for you guys.

Well, you know, we had we had Trey Burton. And he was, he was really our third tight end. And, and, you know, again, this is a guy that very athletic guy who's a tight end for us. But, you know, he's a baseball guy. He was a baseball player in college. And he kind of kind of did that a little bit at University of Florida. And he could throw the football. And this is kind of where, again, this is kind of where the Philly Special.

This is where the ideas come with players, right? You understand. Or you watch a guy. You watch a guy like, you know, Lane John. as athletic as he is, catch a pass, you know, just messing around on the field. And he just goes out there and snags a football. Well, you know, he's a former tight end. He played quarterback too.

So he knows how to, you know, play some of these positions. And those are moments like that throughout the year where when you start understanding your team and start seeing, I think, their personalities show up a little bit more in certain situations, I think that's where the creative juices for a coach can come in and, and say, hey, we need to do this with this player. We need to do X, Y, Z with this particular guy. You know, Nelson Aguilar, for instance, was a guy that, that, you know, could stretch the field on defense, you know, on defenses and with his speed.

And so we had to find creative ways. He can do that and still separate and put him in positions to be successful that way. you know and it's just those those types of things for for me that that was kind of the enjoyable thing as you as you learn your your roster right as you're talking about throughout the course of the year those are those sort of those fun moments with your teammates with your players you when you say when I say you want to have fun with your guys and let them have fun out on the field well you're putting them in situations to to be, you know, to be successful.

And Nelson was another one that could throw the ball, you know, and use him on a on a reverse pass or something like that. Those are the fun type of moments when you learn, learn about your guys, put them in those situations. They have fun with it. It's successful. You do it in a game. It comes off just like you practiced.

And it just helps you win. You mentioned Vytai earlier, and I think that injuries, especially on the offensive line, they're inevitable over the course of a season. I think that teams that eventually are successful can kind of withstand those and keep pressing forward. How do you figure out what a backup tackle can do and what he's capable of and how that helps you shape your offense over the course of a season? You know, Vytte was one of those guys when we got him. we used him as a as a swing tackle, which meant he could play left and right. He could go both sides.

He could swing to both sides. But that started in the offseason for us. That started back in OTAs where one day he would be the left tackle, and then the next day we'd put him over there on the right side. He'd play right tackle, you know, and he might be over there for a couple days and bring him back to left tackle. So that's where we were developing those young players, those backup guys, even your guards, you know, getting them to take snaps as a center, you know,

and vice versa, play center and go play guard. But all that starts in the offseason. And that's where you really get to kind of shape a guy. And then, of course, Big V came in and filled in for, you know, Jason Peters there at the end of 17 and played extremely well. And, you know, helped us win a Super Bowl that year. but was very versatile for us because he could play both right tackle and left tackle, but that all started back in the offseason. The last thing I'll ask you, just kind of, again, stepping back a little bit,

what do you think is the most important thing during your tenure as a head coach that you learned about this process, about how to kind of settle into yourself as a team as the season goes along? You know, I think the biggest thing is just, you know, and we've kind of touched on it a little bit, It's just understanding your guys, understanding your players, building relationships with your team, sort of having that kind of a father figure, you know, to the guys. I think that's so important to be able to show your players that you care about them, number one. And yeah, you're their coach and they're there to play football and help us win games.

But at the same time, understanding your team and your roster, just getting to know them. getting to know their families a little bit. I think that's the biggest thing that I learned in my five years was just those types of relationships because, man, when you're going to crawl in that foxhole with one of those guys, you know that they got your back and vice versa. And I think that's, that was just the way it was in 17 for us. I mean, everything was clicking and moving right along. But we had such a, you know, and every Super Bowl team would tell you that they had such a great bond

throughout the course of the year, you know, coaches, players, players, coaches, vice versa. And I think that's, to me, that was the biggest thing that I learned, just, you know, supporting those guys, helping them because they want to be coached. And they want to be coached hard. They want to improve every single day. They want to feel like they've been coached. And so that was always the, I think the biggest thing for me was just understanding them them understanding me, being transparent.

And look, I wasn't going to BS them. I was going to shoot them straight. Shoot them straight when they weren't playing well. Shoot them straight when they were playing well. You know, hey, I'm not perfect. I tell them when I'm not perfect. You know, hey, this one's on me. I didn't prepare you guys well enough this week.

And I think that type of relationship with your team can go a long way. And those guys can really respond, I think, to coaches like that. I remember being in that locker room that year. and you could feel that. You could just feel how much those guys liked each other. And there was a certain atmosphere in that room. I'm wondering, because it does take an ability to bottle that to win a Super Bowl. You do feel that in those places.

After you've done it, do you think it's harder to bottle it again? It is. It is hard because, again, it goes back to that process we were talking about. You know you're going to lose 20 to 25 players every year, right? And now you're bringing in a new crop of people. But that's where, you know, again, you just, and this is what I, again, one other thing that I learned having won a championship now is you have to hit the reset button, man. When that new league year starts over again in March, you better, you got to hit the reset button and get off your freaking high horse and go back to work just like it's day one. And you're the new head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles or wherever it is.

and you've got to go back to work. And this is why I can, I really appreciate, you know, like the Bill Belichick's of the world, guys that have been there, you know, Bill Walsh's of the world. I mean, guys that have been to multiple Super Bowls, won multiple Super Bowls, because they can hit the reset button. And not just them personally, but their team, their team can hit the reset button. And that's where having veteran players who understand that can really help you as a coach. And so to me, I think that's so important.

You got to hit that reset every year. Even if you had a bad year, like our 4-11 and one year, you know, in 2020. I know I didn't get a chance this year, but you talk about hitting the reset button. You got to hit that thing. You got to blow it up. And we're starting over. Round zero, let's go. And, you know, but that's what you got to do.

Belichick is so intentional about his messaging with that all the time. Like he is so intentional where if you ask him about it. a previous season, he almost won't even answer the question because he's just like, it's a new team that doesn't apply to what we're doing right now. Because what we did last year is not going to apply to this year. Yeah. And that's why you go through the off season, right? That's why you go through training camp to figure out who you're going to be again.

It's another identity. It's not the same. But I think so many players and coaches are kind of guilty of hanging on to that just a little bit too long and not being able to, you know, hit the reset button and move forward. It's a fragile, fragile thing, success in the NFL, which I think all of us learn at one point or another. Doug, thank you very, very much for taking the time to do this. I sincerely enjoyed it. I'm sure people will as well.

So thanks for the time, sincerely. Hey, thanks a lot. All right. It's time now to welcome our good friend, Mitch of Schwartz. Mitch, how are you, buddy? I'm doing well. How are you? Good.

It's good to have you back. Last week was obviously a strange week with some of the NFL news that happened. We had to pivot a little bit from our typical schedule. I am happy to be back on our normal schedule right now. It's great to have you back. We had a bunch of stuff I wanted to dig into with you today. We'll hit a few different things. But I wanted to start kind of on the same wavelength as the conversation we just had with Doug Peterson.

I think that how teams kind of evolve and change over the course of a given season has always been really interesting to me. So I didn't want to spend a ton of time on this. But I just wanted to ask you, is there something from your time in Kansas City, whether it was a certain play concept or a certain personnel group in. or just a slight tweak and adjustment that you guys made over the course of a season that you felt was particularly important. I feel like those tend to come with what the run game looks like because you go into a year and you think, okay, we're going to be an inside zone team from shotgun and then we're going to be a little bit of outside or mid zone from a shotgun. And we'll mix in a couple of power schemes and whatever. And then all of a sudden, you know, say the chiefs this year, you start playing, you realize Trey Smith is an ass kicker.

hey, we should probably pull him a little bit more, and you start to realize, hey, Tune and Orlando are pretty good on double teams on the other side, and maybe we should, you know, start running some power schemes to the left. Or, you know, last year we had Coletio Assembly, who was an incredible, probably the best puller in the NFL. Like, all of a sudden, we started pulling him more and running some, you know, more power schemes to the right. Or, you know, you go into a year and maybe you're trying some different schemes, you know, like the Rams, they have a lot of kind of fun and funky, you know, offensive line run plays and teams start stealing from them. They try to do a little, little bit of everything and then all of a sudden you realize like you know what we're just

really good at inside zone from shotgun our guys seem to like it we get good double teams let's just beat the crap out of people let's keep it simple so that's kind of the evolution of the run game throughout the year you know coaches go into it thinking okay we have an idea of what we want to do we like to sprinkle in some new concepts you know obviously you try to figure it out during training camp but you never quite know how it's going to play until you get into live action and so you know after four six weeks it kind of evolves and you realize like okay this is what we're good at. You finally have enough data to trust. You've got a large enough sample size that you can actually look at, you know, efficiency rates and success rates and what schemes are providing more.

You know, we'll have certain points throughout the year where, you know, our offensive line coach will say, all right, you know, we're halfway into the year. We've broken everything down. You know, we're awesome at this particular style. We're, you know, 62% efficient, which is really good. This one, like, maybe it's a mid zone from shotgun, you know, it's a staple of our offense. We need to run it. We're in shotgun a lot. We're only at 41%. You know, we need to pick that up. Maybe you start emphasizing that a little bit more. But that understanding of what your guys are good at, what your team's good at, and where you can coach them to get better, you know, that's what the good staffs are doing.

So has, have all the staffs that you've been with been that transparent about the efficiency numbers as they relate to those situations? But in Kansas City, they were. Yeah, and that's, I think that's really cool because, you know, you're able to kind of conceptualize good and bad. You know, I think it works both ways. and it's not, you know, a dig at you when you're doing bad. But, you know, if you're trying to run, you know, a certain run scheme and say it's important for third and fourth downs and you need it and, you know, the coaches come to you and say, hey, guys, this is what we want to lean on. You know, we're only 38% successful. You know, I know we're going to get to fourth downs later, but, you know, maybe our third and fourth down run, the one that we came in thinking you guys are going to be awesome with, it's not working.

So we don't have the trust to go forward on those situations. You know, we need to be better. And here's some empirical data that says we aren't successful enough. it's not just like, oh, we feel this way and, you know, this is what our scouting pulled up. It's like, no, these are the efficiency numbers. This is what we're doing well and this is what we're not. And, you know, I think that's what good coaches do. They give you clear and define goals.

They tell you how you're doing. They tell you if you're meeting expectations if you're not. And then again, as I said, if you're not, you know, they'll start coaching that specific thing. Or sometimes they just say, hey, we're not good at it. Let's just not beat our head against the wall. We'll pivot to some other stuff that we really like and that we're good at. All right. I want to revisit this a little bit later.

on maybe during the season because there's other stuff I want to ask you, but there's a bunch of different stuff I want to get to today. So speaking of empirical data and speaking of efficiency numbers, I want to talk about the Fort Down revolution in the NFL because we've talked about it and seen it kind of from a broader perspective and more coaches are going forward on fourth ground. We know that. And it's helping teams. It's objectively a good thing to go for it more on Fort Down. I'm wondering what it looks like from the players perspective. Do you guys have a feeling about that in the moment? Do you know that it's good to go for in Fort town? Is it a topic of conversation? Do you feel like in games you should always be going

for it? Did you always want to be? I just want to know what it looks like on the ground for a player as this shift kind of happens. Well, for me, I always pride of myself on knowing game situation, down in distance, the time. You know, as an offense alignment, you're one of the few staples in the huddle. And so, especially as an offensive tackle. And, you know, know, the center is worried about getting the huddle back, setting up the proper depth, you know, calling up huddle. You know, the guards are typically pretty exhausted because they're in there being all physical and throw their bodies around.

You know, it's a tackle. I just kind of get back to the huddle and I take a look at the sticks. You know, as the skill guys come in, as the quarterback comes in, you know, hey, it's third and seven, you know, kind of give that update. So I was always kind of locked into that stuff. So I would have a sense of when it was, you know, fourth and two. Maybe it's at, you know, the plus 45-yard line, you're past midfield. and hey, you know, we should probably go for it.

We're doing well, especially with the chiefs. You know, we've got Pat. We trust our offense. So I was in tune with that. I've also, you know, as you know, and maybe our listeners know by now, I like looking at the data. I look looking at the numbers. Like I've known about the Fourth Down Revolution forever,

and there's that chart in like the New York Post or Times or whatever it was, like eight years ago with all the, you know, color gradients and all that stuff. So I've always kind of been in tune with pro fourth down if you trust the number. numbers and you trust the data. There's very few times where I was like, oh, we should go for it and then we didn't go for it. You know, my, especially with Kansas City, my trust and coach Reed kind of overrode, you know, the trust of the data. But yeah, I'd always have those conversations, you know, in the moment with like, you know, hey, let's go back in the huddle and see if we can, you know, force a fourth down or like, hey, stay on the field. Because, you know, it's third and eight.

You throw a pass, you know, it's completed for five yards. It's now fourth and three. You've been so condition to just like start going off the field. Yeah. Look for the sideline and make sure that the field goal units coming out and get ready for that. But like, you know, I'm there being like, hey, you know, huddle up. We might go for it. So I was, you know, a little bit more of a driver of that and more cognizant of it.

You know, there's times when I would be the one like, hey, the quarter is about to end. Like, let's not call the play or like, you know, say there's 28 seconds, the quarterback comes in the huddle and be like, hey, quarter's running down. I don't know if you want to run the play or, you know, you want to wait it out. and then you give Pat the keys and let him do it. But I always like to know situations. I thought it was interesting. It kind of kept me more mentally in it.

And for the most part, like, I don't think guys think about it like I did or kind of realize what the situation is. You just, it's third down. If you don't convert, you kind of just start going off the field. If you do convert, you stay on. And then there are those like every now and again, the fourth and one, fourth and twos where you kind of stand out there seeing what's going to happen if a special team's unit is going to run on.

but now it's just different. Like I think guys are starting to get conditioned. Hey, it's fourth and five or shorter. Let's look to the sidelines. You know, we kind of expect to go for it. And I think that mindset and that change is, you know, definitely happening because, I mean, we see teams go for, you know, fourth and one, fourth and two at the minus 20, you know, fourth and 10 at the, you know, plus 30.

We've seen the whole spectrum. Both of those happen to be the same team, of course. But, you know, we're starting to see the spectrum of, you know, going forward in all those situations. and I think players are going to be more in tune with it and in sync with it. And maybe they'll start asking for more too, which should kind of perpetuate the cycle. Is there, are there moments in kind of specific circumstances where you're like, we're having trouble with this one guy or like we have a backup right guard in?

Because that's what some coaches point to where when they're going more off of feel and specific circumstances, like, I don't think we should do this. Like the chart doesn't have all of the conditions. in here that we're taking into account. Do we undervalue how important that stuff is in the moment and how that plays into some of this decision-making? Yeah, absolutely. And that's what the people who are, I wouldn't say anti-stats,

but not as into, hey, it's fourth down. The number say it's a plus 50% success rate. That means you have to go for it. You know, those are looking at every single one of those situations over time. They're not scaling for. Is it the Chief's offense against this defense or that defense? is it the Jets offense against the same defense or a different defense. They're just like base raw stats.

They don't take into account the play calls, the personnel, the team, the success. You know, maybe it's fourth and two late in the game. You've already burned your best, you know, third and two, fourth and one calls earlier. You don't really have a play that you trust anymore. Maybe that tips to scale, you know, kind of the go-for-to-every touchdown situation. Like you only have so many plays that are going to be successful. from the two-yard line trying to score a touchdown or trying to score a two-point conversion. So going for it every time, yeah, the math might say 53% and over every single try,

you slightly edge out and get more points. But you're the 27th ranked offense and you only have one or two possibilities to have a successful play. You definitely don't have six or seven of them. And even if you call them, you're probably not going to convert. So I think people do underestimate that. You know, you kind of have to, I know, we tend to not to try. us, you know, coaches and, you know, there's a lot of coaches that get a lot of ire these days

and a lot of front office people that do as well. And we kind of, you know, all think that we have more data and more numbers and why aren't they looking at the same stuff. We are and coming to the same conclusions. But most teams, if not all, are talking to these things throughout the week. You know, they have a set plan for when do we like to go for it. Is this the week to go for it? Obviously, we've seen against the chiefs, teams have decided, okay, we're going to go for more fourth downs. We're going to be aggressive. We want to keep the ball. We don't want to give it back to them. Those are decisions being made earlier in the week that try to take the decisions out of the

coach's hand. And the end of the day, you know, these coaches, they have gut feelings. They have, you know, how the game's unfolding, all these types of things. They're hired to be in that role. You know, if a guy says, oh, I'm trusting my gut, you know, everyone kind of kills him these days. But, like, his gut doesn't necessarily mean. It's just like he's closing his eyes and saying, ah, I don't want to do this.

It means he's been coaching for 30 years. He has a sense of the flow. He knows his personnel. He knows the other team's personnel. He knows what play he has, what play he doesn't have. Maybe you expected Baltimore to run cover zero every single fourth and one, and all of a sudden they're running this zone and they're not blitzing anybody. And maybe it's fourth and one, fourth and two.

And all your plays were designed to beat that cover zero look. And you don't really feel great about the one situation where you don't have the play to defeat a fourth and two zone look. Well, the numbers now are way below the 50% success rate. And all of a sudden that coach is probably correct. He's just not explaining it. and he's not making people happy in the way he's presenting why he didn't go for it. But that's his gut feeling.

His gut feeling says, I don't have the play for it. I don't have the personnel for it. I don't trust us to get it. It's, you know, lesser odds. It's not necessarily him being afraid. Do you feel like that shift that we talked about where you're not looking at the sideline as much, where you're expecting to go for it a little bit more often? If you know that going in, like if you've cultivated this culture of aggressiveness

in the way that a team like the Charger seems to be right, now or the way the browns are. Every single time there's a fourth down and it's close, we're going for it. Do you think that matters, kind of how that seeps into a collective mindset in an offensive huddle? So to that point, you know, Brandon Salele, it seems like every three days has like the greatest clip of coach has ever said. But the one about the run game that everybody loved a couple weeks ago, that's kind

of that mindset, that attitude that the run game brings to a team. It brings physicality. It gets guys moving forward, being confident, trust. themselves in a similar vein to what you're saying. Yeah, I think if you have this physical attacking mindset and it is also about the play calling and the situations to go for it, I think that does breed confidence. That does breed, you know, a certain mindset and physicality to a team. It also potentially, you know, I'm sure they're chirping into the quarterback's year, but if it's third and nine and Herbert knows, hey, we're probably going to go for

it here. Yep. Maybe all of a sudden he doesn't force that ball into a tight window 12 yards downfield. He dumps it off to Echler, who catches it three yards behind the line, but he still gets six yards. And now they've put themselves in a really good situation to go for it. So now you're also potentially taking out negative plays in the worst situations. Those third and longs are the worst situations. You're allowing quarterbacks to take the easier throws. I was going to make a bad joke about a quarterback or two who take that throw knowing they're going to pun anyway. But you know, you're putting a quarterback in a more, you know, successful situation where he can just get the ball to a guy, let a guy make a play,

and know that a four-yard gain in a third and seven is actually a good situation because we're going to go forward anyway. It materially changes the way that you can approach offensive football when you have four downs instead of three. Like at a certain point, at the most fundamental level, that's important. That matters. Yeah.

And so, you know, forever football was about, you know, say it's second and ten, well, you want to make a manageable third down because you want to convert. Well, now all of a sudden it's third and nine. Maybe you just want to make a manageable fourth down. Obviously, the risk is higher to go for it on fourth down and not convert than it would be in a third down when you know you can punt. But if second downs are now a position where, hey, we just want to get ourselves a really good chance to convert on third down, now of a sudden you have like an extra play to get yourself close on fourth down. And yeah, you have, you know, four plays to get 10 yards, not three plays to get 10 yards.

That's pretty good math. You know, two and a half is less yards than 3.3 repeating. So it definitely changes things. I'm curious to see where this goes. Obviously, everything kind of goes overboard, reaches a tipping point, you know, kind of scales back. It seems like we're years away from that. I think for the most part, there's only a couple teams that are really pushing the boundaries of it. And I would imagine that the numbers on them probably say that they should still go for it as much, if not more than they are anyway.

I do kind of ascribe to the what does the other team not want you to do theory? Like if the other team wants you to punt, you should probably go for it. I mean, that's kind of how I feel. Who's the other team's coach? Because the same guy that we're saying, we don't trust his decision to go for it or not, if it's the other team's coach and he's saying, well, I want him to do this. Maybe he's wrong too. It's a good point.

You've got to think one layer past it. Yeah, exactly. You should just say, what would, you know, ex-coach do? I feel like it was Belichick forever, but he's losing a little bit of that luster. So, you know, I don't know who the, who's the automatic coach you would say, would this person do it yes or no that's what we want to follow it's what's daily or harball right now probably yeah and i think stepansky too in those moments like they're i think those are the three that probably consistently are doing it the most often just anecdotally i think if you look at the numbers

like the colts have done i mean i definitely put mike mccarthy top for it as well oh yes they're also going for it a lot it's so funny because their aggressiveness overall has been impressive and good for them it has it has benefited them over the course of the season and then there certain moments where he just short circuits. It's like, just do one more step here, Mike. So the wonder is what of that is Kellyn Moore and what of that is McCarthy just like overriding it and saying no? Or is it the other way?

Is it that McCarthy wants to go for it, which I don't think is the case. Let's be honest. And Kellan Moore is like, no, we don't have a play for that. But you wonder like, because Moore is in charge of the offense and, you know, analytics McCarthy is in charge of, you know, kind of the top down view. You kind of wonder if Kellyn's in his ear saying, hey, we should go for it, we should go for it. or if they're on the same page, you know, I kind of would love to know the interworkings of that. It's always, and you've done this, right?

Like, you've had to worry about that, not worry about it, but you've been in a place where it's been a constant object of fascination. Where are the lines drawn for responsibilities? Because there have been multiple offensive coordinators for teams you, you, was Peterson there when you were there? No. No. Right after. So it was right after. But Nagy, obviously, it was an offense coordinator that left.

It's been a topic of conversation with the enemy about, well, what does he do and what does Andy do? those kind of opaque situations with those play calling have coaches or offensive-minded head coaches, it's always going to be an object of fascination because if you don't, if you're not there every day, you just don't know. Right. Yeah, it's an interesting conversation. You know, there's a lot of teams that we'd love to know the inner dynamics of the working environment. I feel like for the most part, the good teams, we kind of know it from the exterior, which is

a reason they're successful because there's a clear delineation of this guy controls this. he's good at it. You know, he delegates these things. They're good at that. You know, the, I guess there's probably 18 to 24 of them that we don't necessarily trust these days. We're not quite sure how that's meted at and, you know, exactly how it's working. And maybe that's part of the problem.

Like, you know, if you can't tell the power structure from the exterior, you know, maybe you can't tell from the interior either. Yeah. As in the bears not knowing who the plate caller is, like every other week, it's a really good situation. Everything's going awesome. Well, I mean, I know you talk about the bears a lot. lot, but it seems like there's a very clear winner in that battle.

Yeah, absolutely there is. All right. When we were kind of conceptualizing this before this season, one of the things I wanted to do with you is to take familiar tropes that we talk about, whether it's in the media or the football internet, and ask you if this is just total bullshit or if it actually is a real thing. And this week, I wanted to ask you about the concept of revenge games. Jared Goff is playing against the Rams this week.

Like every single week, it seems like there's one or two. Are revenge games real for NFL players, or are they the creation of the media machine? They are real at times. Currently, anyone who plays against a former team, we just say it's a revenge game. You know, I made the joke last week that it was the Ricky Seals Jones revenge game against the Chiefs because he was on the team last. Like, it's obviously not the revenge game. Maybe he feels slighted or he didn't play enough. But like, I don't think he's necessarily going into that being like, I got to get mine.

against them. Tom Brady, going back to New England, yeah, I can see it. You know, it seems like Kareem Hunt gets pretty fired up every time he plays the Chiefs. You know, I can see that. For me, that gets back to like kind of the preparation mindset aspect of it. Like, I don't think you should treat any game any differently. Like, what does that say about the other, I guess, 16 games now? If, like, the 17th game, the game against your old team, you're like trying harder and competing more, that just means the other 16 games you weren't giving it your best effort. I think that sucks. So to me, no, when I played Cleveland, it wasn't like, oh, I got to show them.

It was just another game, and it was going to be weird being in the opposite locker room and being in that field. But it wasn't like, oh, I had to show them and Sashi's there and he's the one that let me go. I personally don't buy into that. But for guys, it definitely works. I mean, you know, we see everybody from, you know, Michael Jordan to, you know, down to guys who get cut. like you use things as slights to motivate yourself, whether it's real or not. You know, some guys just need to motivate themselves in a way and feeling like you got wronged. You know, all the people who didn't, you know, become successful NFL players, it's their high school coach and they're still motivated by that.

And if they ever had a chance to go up against him in a, you know, competitive beer league, that would probably be a revenge game too, right? So it definitely is a thing. It depends. It's guy to guy how much, you know, that affects your preparation. obviously on the social media side. I think the revenge game thing has gone a little bit far, but it is kind of fun too. So sometimes it works itself out.

Are other guys aware of how guys in the locker room are treating that week? I won't ask you to put anyone on blast, but are there guys that you played with where you could sense that week was different for them, either with the way they were talking about or the way that they were carrying themselves? Yeah, you tend to know. I mean, for the most part, revenge games, I mean, they should. should be logical. Like, it should be something that, like, you're frustrated about. I mean, not to get too far down the cream thing, but, like, that one just makes no sense to me, like, why he

feels wrong by the chiefs in that situation and, like, why he seems to, you know, really want to get them in those situations. But, like, yeah, maybe a guy was playing there. He didn't get the contract he wanted, you know, he was forced to walk. Maybe he got cut by the team. You know, maybe something else happened. He got injured and he didn't live up to draft hype or anything. Like, all those makes sense. Do you kind of have a sense of where guys came from? You know, from who they're going against. You know, you can see, you can tell if guys are, you know, kind of putting a little more effort into a week in the preparation side of things,

if it means more to them. So you can definitely tell, you know, you don't really watch media stuff. You get asked about guys saying things in the media if they say something they probably shouldn't. So, you know, you can tell then if a guy's may be fired up. I mean, right now, you know, the Von Miller quote is going around that, you know, I don't know who I'm going to face, but I'm going to kill them. and it's just like, it's so sensationalized.

It's just like, what do you want him to say? Yeah, I don't know who I'm going to play. And, you know, he's going to lock me down. You know, I might as well not even try. Like, it's just, it's such as, like, you can only do wrong. It seems like when you go out and you, like, put out confidence media-wise. But anyway, getting back to the point, I think you can tell when it means more to a guy. You also kind of have that sense that it means more to him as well.

You know, not a revenge game at all, but, you know, Coach Reed in the Super Bowl two years ago, you know, we all wanted to win that for him. we knew how important that was for him to get that for his legacy. And so, you know, you kind of want to, like, pick up that guy and do it for them. And in those certain situations, you know, I'm sure Tampa Bay really wanted to perform well for Tom going to New England and pick him up, like, they understood that situation. And, you know, guys like to, you know, play well for their teammates and when it means more. That legacy stuff with Andy in the Super Bowl, is that spoken?

Is that something that you guys mention it in any way to one another? Or is it just kind of quietly understood? It was a little bit spoken. I mean, you get asked about it so much. You're there. You know, you were there. You got in trouble that week for being a media member. Fuck you.

So, yeah, we got asked about it all week and, you know, tell us stories about coach and, you know, how much it would mean for coach to win it and stuff. So it wasn't necessarily like we were having players-only meeting saying, like, hey, we got to win this one for coach. It'll mean so much. But I think we understood the importance of it. And, you know, you could tell right.

after we won. Everyone was trying to find him on the side and trying to make a beeline for him, trying to celebrate with him and say congratulations. So we definitely understood that, you know, it was important for him. And, you know, you finally got admitted into the room, so you got to ask your questions too. All right. We have to talk. We have to tell the story very quickly. Okay. So at the Super Bowl in Miami, during Chiefs Media availability, which was at a hotel in a ballroom, I was in the room. I was very thirsty. It was Miami. They had been a long week. All I wanted was a bottle of water. the previous year at the Super Bowl, at the Rams availability, if you went out into the hallway,

there was a room with food and drink. It was like, if you wanted a bottle of water, it was available to you in that area. In the hotel, I leave the ballroom, and I am just swarmed by like two security guards being like, why are you out here? I stumbled into your guys's food room, like you were you guys had lunch. And in their minds, I had hatched. this diabolical scheme that would sneak me into the chief's lunchroom. Like, that was my end game here.

And there's the ultimate goal was for me to eat breakfast with Harrison Butker or whatever. And like, we weren't really even in there at the time, right? No, no one was in there. No one was in there. And so they threatened to take away my credential for the week. That would have almost been a better ending to the story, to be fair. But I'm glad I was able to see you. And you talked to the, and like the security guard was like, thought I actually did it.

And you were like giving me shit about it for the next two days, which is really enjoyable. So for people who don't know that story, I was, the chiefs thought that I was some sort of trespasser into their hotel. You should have dressed a little better. You're wearing a suspect tan colored sports code. And, you know, you look like you maybe had some things hidden in there. Oh, God. All right. Let's get to a couple kind of offensive lines.

centric things that I've wanted to ask you about. We're in week six, and you mentioned Von Miller and the chiefs tacker in the Brown's tackles and he doesn't know who he's playing against. Attrition has come to the NFL. We're at that point in the season where guys are going down. You have to move people around, especially along the offensive line. It's important to kind of understand how that all works.

So over the course of a season, when you guys would have to swap in players, obviously you didn't miss a snap for years and years and years. So you were not moving, but other guys were. how does that process work of getting acclimated to someone next to you that you're not used to playing next to? Yeah, it's a little bit difficult, mostly with like double teams because, you know, guys have very specific ways they, you know, kind of take on that half of the block. So from the offensive tackle perspective, you know, it's typically on, you know, a power or like GAV scheme on the front side or you and the guard are going to, you know, double team and defensive tackle. or it's on the back side of a run for the right tackle to the left side, you know, kind of how that guard is going to fit the defensive tackle,

what he's going to present to you to take over, you know, if he's going to give you a hand when it's, you know, a wider play or whether he's panicked and needs to run to the linebacker and just leaves you in the dust. So those things take a little bit of time. The better offensive line coaches are kind of rotating guys around in spring, in training camp. Obviously not your starters, you know, I'm not going to play left guard.

you know, during, you know, training camp practice 11 or whatever to, you know, just get some reps there. But the guys who are going to play if someone gets hurt, which is, you know, guys 6 through 10, those guys are getting reps at different spots. You know, guys get hurt during camp. There's a lot of time for individual drills. And so individual drills are a great time where it doesn't have to be, hey, first O line, you guys do first and then backups next. You know, hey, it doesn't matter who's up. We're going to just work double teams. You could be on the front side of the double team.

you could be on the backside of it, but just work double teams with other guys, and you're also coaching the same technique. So ideally, guys are kind of fitting the same way, their bodies, you know, in sync together. But there is that bit of an acclamation period with, okay, you know, maybe this guy, you know, again, going back to me as a right tackle, a different right guard, maybe his base, his feet are a little bit wider than I'm used to with the starter. And all of a sudden, my normal footwork, I'm stepping on his right foot because his right foot is wider than my other guy. Well, now we've got to come up with a solution. For the most part,

if he's kind of like doing the posting on the defensive tackle and he's doing the physical work and I'm coming in to clean up, you know, he kind of gets the right away to do what he needs to do as long as he doesn't like screw me and whiff on the guy or make my job harder. So I find a way to make it work around his initial footwork. You know, in a similar vein, you know, if he's doing something and, you know, I've got a really good fit and he's not fit right, you know, then he's got to adjust to me and make sure, you know, you're leaving enough room for me to come take over. You know, some guys on those double teams, they almost just get two, like, nose to nose with the defensive tackle.

And if you completely cover them up, like, what's the second guy supposed to hit? Yeah. You know, there's not any room for it. So there's that really sense of space, sense of, you know, what can I give the guy to hit. So that's the hardest thing for sure with a new guy. There's other elements. What about communication? Well, communication, I mean, I was communicating.

if a guy came in, I would be telling him what to do. And it was actually kind of nice and kind of cool. Like, you know, I could kind of give the guy coaching points like, hey, we got to be. And on this one, like, you know, be a little tighter or, you know, B, stab him and go. You know, I could kind of help that guy out because, you know, typically that guy's going to be a little bit less experience,

maybe a little bit more nervous, not quite have those like fine-tuned details down. Then I could help that guy out. The past pro side of it, you know, depends what system you're in. but like understanding exactly what depth and what level, you know, again, the guard is on to help out the offense of tackle in that situation. You know, if it's interior guys, making sure the centers and guards are like double teaming on past plays on the same levels. You know, that's how guys get split. One guy's too deep. One guy's too shallow.

So there is that element of it. I mean, for the most part, you kind of, you know, Wednesday is typically the harder day of practice. You're in pads. That's where you get that work. Thursday is also a long practice. you're not in pads, you're just in helmets. By Friday, you understand the fit, you know it. You might not feel comfortable.

You might still need to work on it. But like, at least you're going into the game knowing like, okay, this is what my guard's going to do. I know what he's going to present. I've got to kind of, you know, figure out from there. And, you know, everything's a little different in live game situation. So there's a bit of an adjustment, you know, first, second quarter. But that's a cool thing where also if you have a good offensive line coach, he'll just say,

all right, what happened on a double team? You know, say a guy splits you. What happened on the double team? and you try not to hang your guy out but you know you can say it's a tackle like oh i didn't get over there far enough maybe the guard says oh i was a little bit too wide and you know i let him split but he'll just tell you all right figure it out you know it happens on the field you go back to the huddle you talk to each other you see lyman talking to each other all the time you know they're talking about that stuff they're trying to figure it out hey i saw this i tried to give you that

what do i need to do next time so it's this really cool like chemistry that you build and again this is what guys miss when they no longer play. It's this on-field stuff. It's the competitive nature. You're doing stuff. Even in a typical football team, the five starters just have a much higher camaraderie level than the other guys. It kind of sucks. But you have this shared game experience that other guys don't have.

And you've got these stories and you've got these inside jokes. And so you really do form that bond and you get to know each other really well. And so being able to talk through things, especially technique stuff with a new guy on the fly in the game. And it's a lot of fun and really cool. And ideally, you're getting back to the original point, your offensive line coach is, you know, rotated guys throughout the year and made sure that you at least had some experience playing next to the guy.

So when he gets in there, it's not completely foreign. I just want to yell nerd at you like Homer Simpson, just like the tone in your voice right now. You're enjoying this way too much. All right. One more thing I wanted to ask you about that you and I have kicked around for the last couple weeks here. Running back's shipping has been a topic of conversation in kind of the football

sphere this season for a couple of different reasons. I think one is that teams are using more empty like a lot of teams are. I think the chipping has been more prevalent and important in a lot of those sets. And we also heard Rishon Slater a couple weeks ago when they were playing against the Browns talk about how he did not want the running backs of chip anymore. He just wanted to take Miles Garrett himself. They were doing more harm than good. So where are you at on just the concept of chipping in general, where it's a positive,

where it's a negative and kind of giving some people context to better understand it as a whole. Chipping is a very good thing on the hole. Let's get that out of the way. Tackles love chip help. They love the right kind of chip help. So the right kind of chip help is when you line up a tight end or a receiver or a running back even, essentially kind of right next to you, off the ball. He's ideally outside of the defensive end so we can hit the defense event kind of towards you, funnel him towards you. and he's able to basically hit the guy, stop his feet before he get started.

We've all seen the kill shots of, you know, Travis Kelsey, you know, laying out a guy or, you know, that doesn't need to happen. It's great when it does. It doesn't need to happen. But the reason those are great chips, aside from the fact that you're, you know, not letting Miles Garrett sprint off the ball,

is they're predictable. They're lined up there. There's almost nothing that can take them away from doing it. It's called, it's going to happen. Ideally, again, the guy gets funneled towards you. he's not as quick off the ball, he's not as strong. You have a chance maybe to be more aggressive, walk up on him, get your hands on him. So that's a great chip.

The other thing that's awesome is kind of the tighter formations, whether it's a bunch formation, whether it's two receivers that are just kind of tight to the defensive end. Maybe now he's uncomfortable. He doesn't have the space he likes. Now he's worried about getting chipped in a more neutral situation. Maybe he thinks he's getting crack blocked. There's a pitch to the outside. Just making that guy uncomfortable in general is a good thing.

You guys were great at that. Yeah. Andy was incredible with that. So one of the subtle ways that he helped you guys out consistently all the time. Oh, it was awesome. And that Super Bowl run, we kind of transitioned towards that in the second half of the year and, you know, into the playoffs and, you know, PFF had all the numbers on how I had an amazing, you know, a Super Bowl or like playoff run.

And I was getting so much help on like formations, running backs crossing and chipping my guy and all the stuff. So I'll take the love, but I also understand that I had a lot of help with that. But yeah, that's stuff that the better play callers. do. So the bad chips. Bad chips are when a running back is coming from his normal position by the quarterback, and you don't necessarily know when it's happening, the timing of it, or even if it's happening. So a typical running back chip, they'll call it, but if he's not lined up next to you, like we talked about, he still has a responsibility to block. For the most part, you know, it's the chips an add-on to a six-man protection, so the five-offense alignment and the running back is

a six man. He's still got a blocking assignment. So you might be thinking, oh, I heard chip. I know it's from the running back. Like, I got a chip. I'm going to, you know, not set quite as deep. He's going to knock him back inside. And all of a sudden, you just have no running back. He's not there. You set for like a five-yard pocket expecting chip help and the guy blows by you at seven yards and creams your quarterback. And you're asking yourself, what the hell just happened? Well, the running back had a responsibility to block, you know, this guy blitzing, like Tyron Matthew, blitzing from the slot or blitzing from the slot, that takes precedent over helping you block your defensive end. He has to block that guy one-on-one.

So all of a sudden, your chip help is gone. So that's the worst-case scenario, where you expect it to happen and it just doesn't happen. The thing that Slater was running into, and this is also a tough situation, is the unpredictability of it. So the reason those good chips were good is because the guy's right there, he's a line there, you know what's going to happen, it's predictable. When it's not predictable, when you don't know exactly when the running back's going to hit him, when you're already engaged and it just feels like a normal one-on-one and then all of a sudden,

you know, Miles Garrett gets propelled two yards inside and now he's got a lane and Herbert. That's when it gets really difficult. And frustrating, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But it's like you don't really want to go to the coach and say, hey, don't give me help. So it's one of those like you'd like to say it and you get frustrated, but it's also like you're getting help so like you don't want to poke the bear. but rushers react differently to chips.

You know, they don't want to be hit by a running back running full speed. So in that case, again, the running back's five, six yards off the ball. The defensive end, you know, is running towards you as you're back pedaling to take your pass set. He, say you're the left tackle, say you're Slater. You know, there's a guy on his outside to his left. The running back's coming outside of him as well. As the rushers coming at him, he's seeing the running back literally running at him. So, like, he sees that.

You don't. So you don't know the timing of it. He's not just going to, like, put blinders on and not see or feel the guy. So what he's likely to do is either bull rush you or spin inside or some sort of inside move. Typically, spin and bull rush are the two most common. So you're not really prepared for those rushes per se because it feels like a normal one-on-one. And then all of a sudden, like, the timing, the algorithm, the feel gets messed up because this running back comes out of nowhere. And the defensive end sees it and he reacts and, you know, he makes a move to it.

and now you're left with, you know, a guy who beats you inside and everyone's saying that you suck and oh, and he got chip help and he still got beat. And it's like, you know, maybe it wasn't perfect chip help and maybe that threw me off and, you know, that didn't help quite as much. So that's bad chip help. So typically offensive tackles don't like chip help coming from the backfield that's on a bit of a countdown, a timer, it could happen, you don't know when it's going to happen, it might not happen.

The good chip help is either schemed in by formation or, you know, but. literally the guy's right there he hits his outside shoulder he funnels them to you it's predictable it happens right at the snap and the guy basically has no chance my takeaway from this is that offensive line playing offensive line just kind of sucks and you should have done it yeah i mean okay so the way the way i always describe it you could have done anything else though so that that's the problem yeah i know i actually tried to be a quarterback in ninth grade that's how they recruited me out there because i was the big kid that had a strong arm i think i had the brain for it but just not the I'd be the much worse version of current Big Ben.

But no, so the way I describe offensive line play, if I give up one sack a game and I go 16 sacks over the year, well, that's not going to happen because I'm going to be benched by week six and I might be cut by week eight if they keep playing me. If, you know, Bon Miller gets one sack a game and he has 16 or gets 17 sacks now, he probably leads the league and he's in the pro bowl and he's an all pro and he's the best rusher in the NFL. So he gets one sack of game.

He's the best. the NFL. I give up one sack a game. I get cut. I lose my job. I suck. So that's the fine line. That's, you know, how difficult our job is and, you know, how much that one thing can define you. For your neurotic personality, it's absolutely perfect. You found your true calling in this life. All right, buddy, I really appreciate you being back to do this. Always have a good time doing it. We'll be back doing the exact same thing next week. Guys, that's all we got. Thank you so much to Doug Peterson for taking the time. I really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you to make. as always, and thank you guys for listening.

If you haven't, please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast. I would really appreciate it. Please subscribe to The Athletic, theathletic.com slash football show. Tons of great stuff every single week. If you don't have a subscription, I don't know how you follow the NFL properly. I truly do not. We will be back tomorrow with Lindsay Jones and our Patriots writer, Matt Fairburn, to do a dive

on what New England has done so far this year. Until then, appreciate you guys listening. We'll talk to you soon. This was the Athletic Football Show.