The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - How data driven thinking plays a role in the NFL Draft with Sean Clement & Jourdan Rodrigue

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Robert Mays and NFL analytics consultant Sean Clement discuss how teams are incorporating data driven thinking into their draft processes. They talk about the use of GPS data, player evaluation vs. positional value, The Loser’s Curse and much more. Then, The Athletic’s Jourdan Rodrigue joins the show to talk about the Rams’ analytical approach to the draft and how the ‘F them picks’ mindset has sparked a change across the NFL. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. Today's Friday, April 15th. I'm Robert Mays. Really fun show for you guys today. A little bit later on the podcast, Jordan Roderick, who covers the Rams for us, is going to join the show to just hear about the Ramsification

of the NFL during the draft process. Jordan wrote a piece a couple weeks ago about how the FM picks philosophy has become a little bit more pervasive throughout the league, the reasons behind that. And then we're going to talk about the Rams ecosystem as it relates to the draft. Whether or not the model that they're following is replicable, what we can learn from it. Is it a standalone thing?

We've had this conversation with Jordan in the past. We had it before the Rams won the Super Bowl. So I thought it was a good time to revisit that chat and examine some of the elements that make the Rams the Rams. Before we do that, though, we've talked about the draft from a traditional scouting angle, a decent amount. When Nate and I discuss quarterbacks or receivers, whatever position we're talking about, this is a, what are the traits?

What do we see on the tape? And we haven't talked about the draft from a more analytical angle. Modern football thinking, the way that maybe some of these teams are thinking about the analytics associated with the draft, the numbers associated with the draft, the data that's associated with the draft. And I wanted to kind of take a step back and look at it from that perspective. look at the way that data-driven thinking plays into the draft process. And to do that, I wanted to chat with someone who has been a consultant on the analytics side

in the NFL for multiple years, most recently with the Baltimore Ravens for a couple seasons. Sean, thank you very, very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate the time. Thanks for having me. It's good to be on, and I'm excited to talk some nerd stuff with about football here. I like, you know, when I think about the way we talk about the stuff and the way that we cover it. I always like hitting it from as many different angles as possible. And we just haven't leaned into this angle. And I think it's really important. So the first time I mentioned this,

wanting to do this with you, was before the combine. Because the first thing that came to mind when I was thinking about how analytics, and we can use that word or not. I mean, data-driven thinking, I guess, is how I'm thinking about this and talking about it, was as it relates to testing and athletic testing numbers. Because when you look at the combine, so much of the combine is fairly static. We've on the 40 for how many years. The three cone drill started in 1997 is what Dan Bruegler said to me today. That's 25 years of three cone testing. So I'm curious inside buildings when teams are having these conversations about athletic testing as an input for this process. How has the way that teams use those numbers or the way that they look at them changed over the last decade? Because it feels like so

many aspects of how we collect that data has remained static for a really long time. Yeah. So, you know, to the final point you made that it's stayed static for a long time, I think there's a perception that it stayed the same. But really, there's been a number of improvements throughout the combine process that have increased the data availability and quality for teams going forward. You know, I know an example that a lot of people are probably, familiar with is the 10-yard split. So the 10-yard split didn't exist until fairly recently.

You know, we had it come out about 12 years ago in 2009, I think, was the first year the 10-yard split was available. And that came about because we had a much more precise way of measuring the 40-yard dash. And so for those of you who, you know, aren't familiar with what the 10-yard split is really measuring, that's, you know, that's your burst coming off the line. So for a position like wide receiver, it's extraordinarily important because if you have a wide receiver who's not in press coverage coming off a line, coming out, you know, coming out of their blocks like a, like a track star, you want to know how fast they're coming off that line of scrimmage. And that can be massively important. And in fact, as we've gotten more data, we've found that it's more important than

their 40 yards speed. Is there other other positions where that's particularly important, where you feel like that's gained some prominence in the way that people talk about certain positions. Yeah. So I, you know, I think when you start looking at what matters for positions versus what people draft for, that's where we're starting to see, you know, a lot of movement. And PFF had a great article on this, not too terribly long ago that was done by Kevin Cole. And it looked at, you know, what traits do we measure at the combine that correlate with draft positions? So we can see what teams are focusing on. And then using their metrics, wins above replacement, what correlates to actual winds above replacement success?

So, for example, quarterbacks, you see a lot of quarterbacks are drafted on height and weight and hand size and all these different things. But when you look at what actually correlates to their three-year war total, it's much more three-cone actually has an impact. A shuttle has an impact. and broad jump has an impact. And some of that, you know, some of that is, is a movement in the league towards more mobile quarterbacks. Sure. Obviously, you know, obviously like Lamar Jackson didn't test at the combine, right?

He was very adamant that he wasn't going to test. But we've had other mobile, highly mobile quarterbacks that have started to test. And this kind of rise of the running quarterback has had a big impact in the league. In terms of meaningful changes outside of just laser time, 40s in the 10-yard split. Have there been changes to the athletic testing that have been driven by advances in data? I mean, are there things that teams are looking for, the new drills, just different tweaks that have been brought about by a modernization of the process?

Yeah, I think a great example of that is the run-the-hoop drill that defensive ends are going through now. You know, when we typically think about drills for agility, you think three-cone. But when you think about what the three cone is and what it's measuring versus what we expect an edge rusher to actually do, they're not really the same movements. I expect a wide receiver to have a great three cone because I want them to break off of coverage. But for an edge rusher, I'm really expecting them to bend, you know, both at the ankles and at the hips and really get down low underneath and then around an offensive lineman. And the run the hoop drill is much more similar to that actual movement within the play of a game. game. And so we, you know, it's not only more accurate measurements for having lasers for,

you know, timing the 40 or, or using GPS measurements in college or what have you. It's also designing the drills to better mimic the actual play of the game. So the GPS data, you mentioned that and that's the next thing I wanted to touch on. You know, we've heard over the last couple years, it trickled out in a variety of ways. Remember Daniel Jeremiah mentioning it, I think maybe on his podcast talking about how in a number of years, the 40 might be inconsequential because GPS data is what teams are going to go off of. There are a couple anecdotal stories. Jordan, it's funny that we're talking to her later, has written about it. Cooper Cup is a famous one. His GPS tracking data from the senior bowl is what kind of gave the Rams a little

bit more confidence about the way he moved relative to players at his position. And then Jordan Fuller is another guy that his GPS data from Ohio State in college didn't necessarily align with his time speed and made the Rams pretty enthusiastic about what he could be as an NFL player. So I'm just wondering how widespread would you say the use of GPS data at the college level is for NFL teams at this very moment? Right now, not very widespread at all. And part of it is a data availability issue. You know, you have with like within the Power 5 conferences, even if we want to just focus on the Power 5 conferences. Not every team within those Power 5 conferences has GPS data on their own players,

let alone the other players. And so then you have some other vendors that are looking at, you know, computer vision products basically where they feed the video through a model and then they try and estimate, you know, the position on the field. And that technology has been very successful in sports like soccer, where the players are farther away from each other. And hockey, I mean, the company that's been really driven it North America was a hockey company first, right? Isn't a Canadian company? Yeah. So a lot of these

same companies, you know, apply this technology of multiple sports, especially multiple similar sports. Hockey and soccer are similar in a lot of ways in some of those analytic techniques. But so, yeah, it gets into a little bit of a data availability issue. If I don't, if I don't have reliable data for all the players on the field, you know, do I know that I'm actually measuring something accurately. There's for some teams it's a cost issue and then for some other teams it's you know do they do they even have the in-house personnel to analyze the data if they go through and and purchase it. So there's I would say it's not nearly as widespread as as you might think. That's really interesting. You bringing up just the kind of the gaps between analytics departments in the NFL and what you can actually pull off.

would you say that if a team right now is willing to spend, if they're willing to say we're going to have the most robust analytics staff in the NFL, it's going to be 20 people deep, we're going to be able to pour through as many reams of data as you can throw at us. Is that an advantage yet based on the reliability of the data? Is workforce and workload if you can manage it? Is that the biggest hurdle to get over? Or is the reliability of the data is still enough of a concern

that having that big of a staff wouldn't give you a decided advantage in a lot of areas. So I think that the possibility for an advantage is there. And I think also people would be shocked at how little monetary investment that would actually take to get a 20 person analytics cell for, you know, when we start talking about player contracts and things like that, I've jumped with some of my friends that, you know, for the size of some of these player contracts, you could have the biggest analyst. department in the entire NFL with money to spare. But, you know, part of the problem is that there are just some things in football that matter so much more than everything else. So, you know, let's say that you are an NFL team and, you know, just for the, for the sake of not making any enemies in the league, I won't name a specific team. But let's say you're a team that is bottom third of the league in terms of performance and you don't have a franchise quarterback.

it doesn't matter how much analytics you have until you have a franchise quarterback because having a franchise quarterback is the biggest impact that you can have. It's like the Bengals trying to talk themselves, not talk themselves into, I'm not trying to be mean here, but the Bengals over the last 12 months have begun to spin their lack of resources and the size of their staff into a positive thing now that they have Joe Burrow and they're going to Super Bowls. Listen, maybe it does have subtle advantages to have a strict. streamlined thought process and your coaches are involved in your scouting, whatever. I'm sure that there are a little tiny benefits of it.

But now it's just a positive thing where for 20 years we construed it as a negative thing. Well, like I said, I'm not going to make it. I won't make any enemies in the league here. But no, I do think you bring up a good point in that, you know, the Bengals when they got Joe Burrow were distinctly a different team. You know, if you took, if you took their roster pre-Joe Burrow and you literally made that one change at quarterback. They're a vastly different team. And that's that's kind of a great illustration of the point that, you know, I'm trying to make is that, you know, that's question

number one in the NFL. Do you have a franchise quarterback? And until you answer question number one, I'm not sure that you're, you know, you're not going to take a bad quarterback and make the AFC playoffs or the Super Bowl or anything like that unless you get extraordinarily lucky. or you build an entire rest of the team, you know, around that, let's say, averaged a bad quarterback and can build up so much surplus value and so much excess performance everywhere else that you can make the playoffs. So, you know, I think kind of the quintessential example of that is the, what was it, the 2017 Jaguars where they just had an exceptional team top to bottom and had a very good defense that year. and drug their quarterback to the playoffs. But A, that's extremely hard to do. And it lasts for one year.

Right. It's not repeatable. You know, as soon as you guys start getting injured and soon as there's, you know, any cracks in that, you know, an avow. Your two cap hits kick in. Yep, you're done. It's funny, though, because, you know, you look at it. And I think the Eagles are a perfect example here, right?

The Eagles have, if we're talking about robust analytics departments, I mean, this is a team that operates in a way that very few teams in the NFL probably do. I'm sure you can count them on one hand the amount of teams that perform the way that the Eagles perform on a day-to-day basis and the way that they're from office structured. They're trying to put them, they're using some of these stall process and just like the idea of history, data, what we have as information to give themselves the best chance possible to get that quarterback. And I do think that we see that, right? even if there is an element of luck involved, some of the teams that truly believe that over time these processes are going to play out a certain way are doing everything they can to allow those processes to play out to their advantage and to their benefit, right?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you think of a lot of these decisions, so the draft itself is, you know, it's really, there's a lot of skill involved, but there's a lot of luck involved. You know, nobody beats the market long term. But if every, if you think of every draft pick as some sort of coin flip or a roll of the dice, right? And if an analytics department takes that coin and makes it a 50 from a 50-50 coin to a 55-45-45 coin, you know, what would you pay for that?

Like, it's still, it's still a coin flip and you're still going to have busts. But over the long term, you know, you can make some money there. And part of it is better player evaluation. Part of it is getting a better grasp on positional value. And honestly, part of it is just having a feedback mechanism within your team that comes back and says, hey, what you're about to do is a bad idea. And I think that people underestimate how powerful that can be. Because if you don't walk yourself into bad trades, don't walk yourself into bad contracts,

it gives you much more flexibility down the line to really improve your team. So I was looking yesterday, I was building out some of the stuff we're using for our draft show. and I was looking at the details of the Saints Eagles trade. And I forgot that as part of that trade, there's a 2024 second round pick. And it's amazing when you make that deal. What sort of person you have to be as a general manager, as a decision maker, to want that 2024 second round pick and to see value in it. Two years down the road, it's like, this is going to help us.

Obviously, not every front office can operate that way. Not everyone has the job security to think, I can trade for picks in 2024. That's a benefit to me. But there's so many teams that, 2024, who gives a shit? That's a different world from now. I don't need that. But when you have teams, and this has been true by research that's been done for a decade, as it relates to the NFL draft and the economics of it,

excess value exists later on if you're willing to take it. But that requires a level of patience and commitment to a certain. plan that very few teams are willing to follow when it gets down to it. I think you bring up a great point. A lot of teams, a lot of people and media even discount and underestimate the value of those picks. You know, a second round pick, even if even if that pick that you get from the Saints ends up as, you know, end of the second round.

They make a deep playoff run. They win the Super Bowl, whatever. It is still a top 70 pick, right? And that's where you, you know, that's where you really make. making your value within within the draft anyways. So there's there's this huge discounting where people start talking about, you know, one year out. They're like, oh, whatever. That's, you know, that's next year me problem. I don't care about that. And then two years from now, like, are you kidding me? Like, you can get a, you can get a second round pick and people are like, oh, well,

that's equivalent to a fourth or a fifth. And I'm like, well, I don't know. If I have job security, a second is a second. That's absolutely right. And it's so tempting to think that way. And the idea that the generally accepted trade exchange, like the currency exchange for picks is around per year. And that's just generally accepted in the market is wild. Like that's unbelievable how inefficient that is if you're willing to be patient. But that, again, it just speaks to the way that this entire world operates and that there is, there are so few places where there isn't this like undying drive toward efficiency. you know the the pick market in general is kind of a really weird problem um because when you start

i want to get into this is the next thing i wanted to bring up was draft trades and we've skipped ahead and as i've gotten too excited about it rain me in if if you need to but uh you know the the pick market itself is is really funny because we you know we talk about uh oh this team should trade down but you know trade downs are are rare partially because a lot of teams don't want to get fleeced. You know, I think the, uh, who was a gentleman said last year that, you know, I don't want to be the the guy who, uh, I don't remember exactly what he said, but he didn't want to be a sucker was, was the, was the point. You know, he didn't want to get fleeced in a trade for a trade up. And I think that that, that, uh, loss aversion is pretty prevalent where you have a lot of teams

that, that know that there are teams that have, you know, these draft charts that they're holding really close to their vest. And so, you know, there, you talk about trades in terms of the publicly available charts like the Jimmy Johnson chart or whatever. But really you're kind of behind the scenes doing your own math. You're like, okay, what trade can I make for what they have that looks even on the Jimmy Johnson chart? But we're really like taking these guys to the cleaners here. And there's a lot of that almost kind of spy craft going on to it. I love it. It's it's very idiosyncratic. It's amazing that there is a generally accepted chart that has driven draft trades for decades in the NFL, like truly decades. And everyone knows that it's

kind of fake. Right. It's wildly wrong. It's like if we all just decided that the blue book value of cars and like any sort of objective measure for the worth of something wasn't real, but we were still going to use it as a metric anyway because publicly it made us, it made it seem like we were making a good deal. Yeah. And not only that, like we also, I think everyone knows that really there's two, there's two trade charts. There's the I have a quarterback trade chart and there's I don't have a quarterback trade chart. And if you don't have a quarterback, then, you know, you're, well, you know, open for debate on this year, right? Because there's been a lot of public talk about the quarterback class this year. But, you know, if let's say the Jaguars last year,

We're in a position to draft Trevor Lawrence, but they already had someone who is a franchise QB. They had traded for somebody or drafted somebody the year previous. You're sitting on the number one pick and you have a franchise quarterback. And there are and, you know, there is a highly touted franchise quarterback waiting there to be picked at number one. You can absolutely take another team to the cleaners. Like you just get darn near their whole draft class out of them. Because our understanding about value completely shifts, right? It's just two completely different conversations.

Right. Because the number one pick in reality isn't valuable if you're not drafting a quarterback. It's just not. Right. Yeah. You can lose value on the number one pick if you're not drafting a quarterback. So then, you know, you get into the draft this year and the Jags have someone who is their franchise quarterback. And you're looking at the number one pick.

And it's like, oh, well, we'd love to trade out. But now there's not a market for it. And so it's like, well, I guess we'll take a guy. And not to say that the players they're considering their number one aren't good. of course they're good. They're going to go number one in the draft. The point is that, you know, when you can, when you can extract more value out of that, you know, if they were able to trade for, you know, let's say a first round pick this year,

a first round pick next year, plus the second round pick this year. Like, obviously that's more valuable, right? Because now you're getting one to eight or whatever it might be. Right. And then when you start talking about the cap. Inplications, it's, it's a, it's another layer on top of that because as you, you know, go down in the, in the first round, you go, You don't have to pay your picks as much.

And then you start getting a second round and the whole fifth year option thing. So there's there's a lot of different aspects that go into this. I want to talk about the value like economically, financially and how that plays into certain decisions in a second. But just the idea of draft trades and how we think and talk about them, you know, the current consensus on them and their value. I was listening to Thomas Dimitrov's new podcast that he's doing with GMs around the league. And he was talking to Eric Dacosta about the way that the Ravens operate. And Dacosta mentioned the loser's curse, which is a very important. very famous paper that was written, I think, in 2011, published a little bit later than that

by Richard Thaler and Cade Massey about what we're talking about right now, how the consensus is that there is not a lot of value in, there's no value in trading up. Like, teams overvalue picks and they overrate their confidence and their ability to identify their right players. And that has driven the way that, I think, analytically forward people have talked about draft trades since that paper came out. I mean, that is a decade of thinking. So I'm wondering, in the 11 years since that was written, how much has changed?

Is that still the prevailing thought process when we're talking about this? Because I watch teams like the Saints, and I watch what they've done over the last like five years. And in the back of my mind, I'm wondering, do they have some proprietary information that is just outpacing everyone else? Am I missing something here? Or for the most part, are the findings from that paper still? dictating decision-making within NFL buildings. So I think that the findings from that paper are still extremely relevant, that the losers' curse is real.

With a team like the Saints, you know, the big confounder you're going to have there is how much, how much did Sean Payton and his coaching staff change, you know, change your internal calculus. You know, if you have someone who is an exceptional developer of players,

maybe you can take more risks and go after specific guys with specific traits. But I think for the most part, you kind of hit on a really important piece about not overvaluing your own evaluations of players. You know, when you start thinking of all of these picks as risky propositions, you know, let's say that you and I are running a front office and, you know, judging by your hat, I'm going to go ahead and guess you want to run the Chicago front office. I really don't want to run the Chicago front office. Okay. Well, in our hypothetical front office, you know, let's say. I'll take it. I'll take it.

In this case, I'll take it. So let's say we're coming up on, you know, we're coming up on the draft. And we just need a line. We need linebackers really bad. Like, you know, our defense is, it just really needs a linebacker. The, if I'm your analytics guy and we're coming into the draft and you, and we're looking at, you know, who's being taken ahead of us and there's a run on linebackers, but your guy is still on the board. And let's say, you know, we're picking kind of middle of the second round.

And I'm begging you not to trade up for this guy. Because what the message I'm trying to get across is it's probably like you're probably more likely wrong than right about this individual player, first of all. And then second of all, if each one of these draft picks is a throw at the dartboard, having more darts in your hand makes more sense. So I don't want you to trade up from the middle of the second round or the top of the second round and let's say lose our third round pick. Instead, what I would say is, hey, let's just see where our pick lands, you know, assess our strategy from there. And if we want to take multiple linebackers, let's take one in the second and one in the third or maybe one in the second and one in the fifth and hedge our bets a little bit.

you know, if we need, if we need something of a certain position, take multiple shots at that position, even if one of them is much farther down in the draft. And that's just a better way to mitigate risk rather than trade up, burn a lot of your assets and get one throw. So, I mean, this is a relevant example from last year even. And it's a little bit different just because I think offensive tackle is specifically a position where the second round has been a wasteland forever. There's just not been a good hit rate on second round offensive tackles. but the Bears trade up for Tevin Jenkins. They lose a pick later in the draft. And you have tackles that went after Tevin Jenkins in the second round that ultimately were more productive players in their rookie seasons than Tevin Jenkins was.

I mean, Sam Cosmy is the best example. He went 12 picks after Tevin Jenkins did and would not have required the Bears to trade up in that moment. So this happens all the time, even though I think tackles kind of a specific example where you can talk yourself into it a little bit more. But this is just, it speaks to the problem, not the problem, but just the reality of humans making these decisions. It hurts and is painful to lose out on things you believe in and that you want. It's a very human response to not want to feel that pain. So you do what you have to do to avoid it.

And when we get down to it, that's all it is. It's a blend of overconfidence and about talking yourself into a certain reality and not, being able to part with that reality when it comes down to it. And it's just such a fascinating little bit of psychology, but that fascinating bit of psychology drives inefficiency in a multi-billion dollar a year business every single year. It absolutely does. There's a lot of things at play here. One of which, you know, like you're talking about is, is basically loss of virgin. I don't want to feel like I lost out on my guy. Like, I've been scouting this guy all year. I don't want to lose out on my guy. And I know he's the right guy. And,

oh, if only we could get this player. But the other piece of that is that when you think about players, you have to think about them with a band of uncertainty. Because, you know, if you're looking at this player who's coming out of college, you don't know what they will be in the NFL. You have an idea and you have a projection. And, you know, even if we're not making a mathematical model for this, scouts are doing the same thing.

When you assign a college scouting grade to the player, what you're really doing is you're giving a pro projection. But what we need to think about when we start doing these pro projections is what is the worst case scenario and what's the best case scenario for this player. And we always talk a lot about sealing and then people kind of drift their estimation of a player towards that ceiling. And it's like, okay, well, you know, I want to select this wide receiver. And his ceiling is, you know, that he could be the next Calvin Johnson. And then people start talking about him as if he's the next Calvin Johnson. And how I would, how I would respond to that is it's just as likely that this guy is

out of the league in the year or something right. Yeah. Yeah, it's just there you have, you have a substantial risk that you don't even get the average result that you think are going to get out of this player. And, and that we need to acknowledge that within our process, uh, so that we can, you know, make the right decisions on positional value, make the right decisions on, you know, what does best player available? mean and not be over our confident in our evaluations.

And I want to give a quick. You mentioned PFF earlier. Timo Risk did a, he wrote a piece two years ago about essentially updating the loser's curse. So I don't want to talk about updating the loser's curse and not mention that there was research and work that's been done on this recently. And the conclusion is essentially, the loser's curse is still real. The thinking that drove us a decade ago is still real.

What has shifted slightly, and I don't know if this is because of the change in the rookie wage scale and some of the other things. But the ultimate surplus value, I think that Thaler and Massey found in 2011 was at the high second round. And I believe now the ultimate surplus value comes in the middle of the first round. So right around pick 14, I think is what PFF found, was actually the spike in surplus value when you think about the way that contracts work. And when the fifth year option, the old version of it was in play, there was a value at

around pick 11 and 12 because fifth year options were driven by where you were selected. Now, they're completely driven by performance. So that even little bubble no longer exists. So that's why when I look at what the Saints have done and with the picks they traded into this year, beyond who they think might be available because they don't know. They don't know who's going to be there this year. So I'm wondering, is there a slight drift toward that middle of the first round that teams have found that these picks are really valuable? we should try to do what we can to pick in this range, even if we don't know who's going to be available there.

I'm literally just trying to find rationalizations for why the Saints might have done this. I mean, should have had somebody from the Saints front office that answer that question. I'm sure they would be very willing to talk about it. Yeah. Right. Yeah, right before the draft, they would be sure to us. They're a famously transparent organization. Absolutely. No, so if you're the Saints, right, and if you're following this updated loser's curse and you want to extract the most amount

a value, you know, not only would you want to move to this middle to late portion of the first round to extract some extra value, but you'd also want to be really careful about what positions you're taking at that at that position. So if, if, what pick did they get? Pick 16. I get 16 and 18. 16 and 18. Something like 16 and 19. So let's say we're sitting at pick 16 and you and are running a team and, you know, there's a, there's the second best center in the draft that we estimate, the third best safety and the fourth best edge. And we have a team need at all of those positions.

But your guy is the third best safety. Like this is the guy you've scouted. You know, we're talking in hypotheticals here. But like I would probably be, you know, adamant like, hey, are you sure? Sure, you don't want the edge rusher because there's a lot of surplus value. Like the market for edge rushers is very high. And elite tier edge rusher gets $25 million a year. If this guy is elite, you know, we are getting a huge amount of value out of him.

And even if he's average, you know, an average edge rusher is an $8 million a year player, $8 to $10 million. Whereas, you know, an average safety costs half that. So if we hit on this edge rusher and even if he's only an average, edge rusher, that safety has to be a whole tier level of player higher to have equivalent value. And so that's that's something really important to keep in mind when you're trying to build out these teams, right? And then for for center, you basically have to have an elite tier center to match a average or slightly above average edge rusher. And so that should go into your calculus

as well. You know, if you're if you're sitting there at pick 16 and even if the best center in the draft is available. I'm probably telling you, don't take him. So I'm wondering, and that is a way to dictate and think about positional value as it relates to the draft. And that's driven by finances. Our understanding positional value in that way is driven by the way the league values positions based on the money that they hand out. And I think there is something to be said about that, right? I mean, if you find, you can create surplus value through getting players at positions that are going to be paid a lot of money later on. I'm wondering, how close are we? And I know PFF war or something like this.

Outside of that, within buildings, are we close or inching toward or does this already exist where there is some sort of metric that can help us to find positional value that goes beyond the financial aspect of it?

I don't know that I can answer your question without getting in trouble. Those are good questions. From the public sphere uh public sphere uh i think pff war and and a financial look are probably the two best ways to go about it but you can you can construct some other ways of looking at it too if you can the hard part is mapping every position to the same space um so whether that's points space or dollars space or whatever that is and for some for some positions i think that's fairly straightforward like i think you

you can pretty confidently say, hey, this quarterback is worth this many expected points. This quarterback can receive a receiver combo or whatever. It gets pretty tricky when you start talking about, let's say, interior offensive linemen or positions where there's a second order effect for performance. For example, interior defensive line, if you have an exceptional interior defensive lineman, they improve your defense even if they don't get to the quarterback because they allow you to drop more players back into coverage and rush fewer players. So now you have more flexibility in your defense. But that doesn't necessarily show up in something like expected points per play or

things like that. Your Sebastian Joseph days aren't going to come through in a lot of numbers individually for player performance. Right. And even when Aaron Donald was younger and was playing more inside, he plays a lot more outside these days. But when he was playing inside, he was providing incredible value because he was making the edge rushers for the Rams look like superstars because he's eating a double team every snap. And that's immensely valuable, even if he's not the guy getting sacks. And I mean, he's still got a lot of sex because he's, I mean, Aaron Donald's a monster. You don't need an analytics guy to tell you that.

I'm wondering beyond positional value, positional volatility is really interesting to me. Because in a vacuum, I can completely understand. And we've had the coverage versus rush conversation for years now. I can totally understand why the best corner in modern football is more valuable than the best edge rusher. The market doesn't bear that out. I mean, the corner market has stayed relatively flat where the edge rusher market continues to kind of ascend. I want to say the top edge rusher in the league is making $27 million a year, $28 million. It's T.J.O.N.S. He's still a 20.

I mean, the J.C. Jackson contract came in lower than we all expected to. for whatever reason, that number is stayed flatter. So the finances don't necessarily bear that out. But I can get the argument that having Jalen Ramsey is more valuable than having any single edge rusher in the league. The problem is, if you look at the consistency of performance from those positions, let's say over the last decade, you find far fewer corners that are consistently great year after year than you find consistently great edge rushers year after year. So in the draft, even if the value on a high level of a certain position is understood as more valuable than something else, how does volatility fit into those discussions? If you're looking at a first round corner and a first round edge rusher that you have similar grades on, what does that conversation end up looking like? I think that's a great question.

And there's been a fair amount of debate on this topic, both publicly and even within organizations, you know, what's more valuable pass rush? or coverage, my take on it is that I'm not sure that the best corner in the league is worth more than the best edge. And the reason I say that, you know, put it up a neon sign for a hot take there, but the reason I say that is that edge rusher and defensive line in general, I only need one player to succeed. But in coverage, I only need one player to fail and I'm cooked. And so if I have, you know, Jalen Ramsey or Marlon Humphrey or like any of these exceptional cover guys, but I've got nobody. The list is really small for the guys that can like truly flip the math for you and be a, I think it's harder to find a corner that you can construct your defense around than it is to find a front four player that you can construct your defense around. Right.

Because we're talking about single point of success systems versus single point of failure systems. And that, I think, is the really, really big distinction. You know, and a great example of this is kind of unfortunately what happened to the Ravens this last year, right? Where once you start accruing injuries in the secondary, it's very difficult to make up that performance gap because now you only need one guy. I don't even want to say blown coverage because, you know, a lot of the times it's not even blown coverage. If you're just a fraction of a second slower or, you know, if anything goes wrong, a quarterback is, you know, hitting the open receiver, especially, you know, in their case, playing the Bengals. Jamar Chase only needs the smallest amount of separation and you're just not having a good day. Versus if you have the league's best pass rusher, then you can at least get pressure on the opposing quarterback.

and it will make the rest of your edge rushers look better. Now, having said that, I still think that holistically, having a great coverage unit is better than having a great pass rush unit. And that's just because of where we're at with the game, the prominence of passing, that's where the points are scored, so that's where you want to prevent the points.

Obviously, you want to have great both, but it's an interesting team design discussion, especially when you start talking about like where are we at with edge rushers how many pieces do we need in our secondary to make it whole and and where do you take those shots i think based on the structure of your defense if you play the way the rams have played over the last few years in certain situations where essentially he's playing man coverage on the other side and you're allowed to flip all of your resources to his the opposite side you are using one player to help lift the level of a weak link system and it right you're you're doing it at the same time. So it's, I mean, obviously, it's an incredibly complicated conversation that we could spend hours and hours and hours on. Oh, yeah. We can spend an entire episode just on the Rams defense between, like, well, between that and then

the fact that they do have Aaron Donald. So they don't, so they don't have to worry about, you know, if we have an elite pass rush. So they have an elite pass rush. And I think them building it that way, they will absolutely tell you it was not an accident. And I think that they've built it that way on purpose. I think other teams have looked at that as well. You know, when you talk about Miles Garrett is the example that we've used with elite pass rushers. The Browns absolutely think this way that if we have Miles Garrett, we don't need to overspend on the other pieces we're going to have along the defensive line.

That contract they gave out to Chedevian Clowny last year, that is going to be, I would assume, just a spot on their depth chart. It's like here's our $8 million secondary pass rusher they're going to have every single year and we will cycle those guys in and out. the Rams have done the exact same thing around Aaron Donald. And I do think that thinking is happening at some pretty smart front offices. Before we get out of here, is there anything else you feel like people should know about this conversation? Just something that is a little bit opaque to the general public or general fans about how DADIC plays into the draft process. Yeah. So, you know, we could spend hours talking about all of the, all of the different nuances in the public analytics debate versus what happens in.

teams. One of the things that I think is important to remember when you start talking about draft pick selections and kind of take it back to athletic testing where we started this whole conversation is that as we get more and better data, you know, teams are really updating how they think about different positions. At the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference this year, Sarah Malpaw, who is a former co-worker of mine at the Ravens, she's still at the Ravens, gave a panel and was talking about do running backs matter. And I know that the subject has been beaten to death. But she gave what I thought was a great answer talking about when a running back gets past the point of attack.

You know, when they get past the first or second guy trying to tackle them. And then can they create separation at that point? And there's her answer was was really informative because, you know, it reinforces some of the other, some of the other, some of the, the articles that had been coming out recently that talk about when you look at performance for an average running back or the average performance of running back, given the quality of blocking, that those averages don't really move a lot. But the extreme goods and the extreme bads matter. And those extreme goods are most predicted by a running back's 10-yard split. And if I had to give you a guess as to who had the best 10-yard split for,

a premier running back coming out of their draft, who would you guess that it is? Jonathan Taylor or Nick Chubb would be my assumption. Bingo, Jonathan Taylor crushed it at the 10-yard split in his draft class. And so I think that the Colts are also a great analytic organization. You know, they have some smart folks there. And so that's when we get into these debates about positional value and what do you draft for within the draft, you know, I think you can look at, Sarah's comments at the Sloan and Atlanta conference and you can look at how the cults have

drafted and really went after a running back that excelled at the one athletic test that we know correlates to creating separation after you get past the blocks and know that these conversations within teams are much more nuanced than we find in the public sphere

and that the data quality is always improving and because the data quality is always improving, you know, people are updating constantly what we think is important within these models. So there's, you know, when we start talking about like past rush is better than coverage or vice versa or do running backs matter and all these different things, these are moving targets as the league changes and as the league adapts and they're not monolithic.

And I think that that's something that gets lost in the public debate and also makes the job interesting and fun because you have to update what you're doing constantly. And that's why we're having this conversation. I really appreciate the time, Sean. It was really great to chat with you. Thank you very much. Thanks for the time. All right.

I am thrilled now to welcome a friend of the athletic football show, our Rams writer at the Athletic, Jordan Roderick. Jordan, thank you very much for coming back to the show. I appreciate it. It's my pleasure. And I want to say, you know something weird's going on when, you know, the Rams are back in the news. It's always got to be connected to something weird or we're going to get into team build talks

and all that stuff because I know that's the stuff we love to dissect here. Well, it's funny because there is no writer that does this for a living that has more story ideas that either say, fuck I'm jealous of that or I was, I was, I really wanted to do that. And when you wrote your piece a couple weeks ago coming out of the owner's meetings about the way that the fuck them picks mindset has kind of permeated through the league and we've seen it become an adopted just, I guess, level of aggressiveness with some teams, right? the number you threw out in your piece that I think is so, so interesting,

75% of teams in the league have a first round pick this year, which is the lowest on record. You know, you look at all the teams that have multiple first round picks, and there have been some aggressive decisions that have happened over the past couple months at a level which we rarely see. So I wanted to talk about that. I want to talk about not only how the Rams built that team in the way their drop process works compared to other teams around the league, but also why and how that sort of mind has become a little bit more popular.

So when you were doing that piece, what jumped out to you about some of the conversations that you had as it related to other teams adopting this mindset with their high-level picks and trading them away? Yeah, it became very clear, very, very early on in the reporting process of this. Something that I had suspected, which was that this is not necessarily a blueprint.

It's very, very hard to spy thriller movie totally copy someone's fingerprint. and then open the door, right? And that's kind of what this is. There's so many variables that go into balancing and maintaining each individual ecosystem across the league and certainly the way that the Rams have built theirs. But I also think that there was a sense of possibility when a team demonstrates how hard you can push against your ecosystem, how hard you can stretch it and how thin you can stretch

it to its very, very limits. And how hard you could push against conventional wisdom, right? Yeah, against conventional wisdom, conventional wisdom. conventional decision making, how hard you can push against sort of that parity that the league forces each team back down into, how hard you can push against fear-based decision-making, how hard you can push against everything, as long as you fully understand what the variables are that you need to either maximize or minimize either way. And I know we'll get into that. But it was really interesting, Robert, because the other thing that stood out was, first of all, the

understanding that, yes, these moves are happening at a higher rate and a higher frequency. And also at a higher capital than they ever have on record in NFL history. But at the same time, there's like this sense of possibility and almost like happy aggression. You know, I was talking to GMs across the league at league meetings in part for reporting this story and also the assistant or excuse me, also the coaches that were attached to them and partnered with them. And you should have seen like the way that some of these coaches eyes would light up

talking about these decisions, if they had made these aggressive decisions, particularly and specifically for some players that they considered to be at that elite status, which we've broken down a lot in the past about it's only a certain type of player that maybe you make this move for in terms of that smart risk. But the way that people's eyes are lighting up, there's like this sense of maybe pushing against what had previously been thought as possible. And while I don't think the Rams are necessarily set a blueprint for that, I do think that they are ahead of a wave of trend that's happening right now. And then other various market efficiencies and inefficiencies will manifest out of that. But I do think that they demonstrated what could be

achieved and what's possible if you do take those big swings, but you also have a full understanding of your ecosystem behind that big swing and what the ripple effect is going to be. And it excited people. The people who are making these moves, and you can kind of see it. You roll down the first round. And you can see that the gap between teams who are trying this and teams who aren't. And it doesn't mean one's right or one's wrong. The Rams were right to try it last year, but we don't know yet if any of these other teams will be right or wrong. Or what the eventual ripple effect of the Rams doing this is, right? I mean, it's so new that we have no idea what a five-year outlook is if you start building this way.

But it was, it was like really energizing for people. Nathaniel Hackett was telling me, like, I want to be around someone who shocks me. You know, his voice. A man that certainly doesn't need any more energy. Yeah. I know you've talked to him a lot, Robert, so you know exactly the facial expression, I'm sure that I'm describing is like, he literally lit up when I was telling him what George Payton and I were talking about in terms of taking this big swing and making this aggressive move. And he's like, I want, I want this. This energizes me.

I want to be around someone who shocks me. I was like, that's cool. Didn't make it in the story, but that was a cool quote. And George Payton said this to you. He said, you need to understand you need to identify. unique circumstances. You know, over time, yes, it is better to accumulate picks. We just talked to Sean Clement about this and just the idea of how trading down and the

loser's curse and that mindset is still efficient when you think about the NFL draft. But for certain players in unique circumstances, that thinking can change. And this is also, it's a very different thing when you're trading for established veterans and when you're trading up in the draft. Those are two different things, and especially for quarterbacks. And with the Rams, I think it's really important. I said this to some of the other day. The Saints are what people think the Rams are

in terms of the decisions that they make. The Rams aren't this crazy aggressive team all the time. They balance certain pinpointed attacks of aggression with sound decision-making elsewhere. The big moves that the Rams have made with their first-round picks aren't trading away future first-round picks to move up the draft. They're Jared Gaw and, they're Jared Gawks. Brandon Cooks, Jalen Ramsey, and Matthew Stafford.

Okay? The Jared Goff thing, we can debate how valuable that is and how it worked out. They went to a Super Bowl with Jared Goff. Yeah, and also Robert, too. I don't think they make that ultimately work out with Matthew Stafford in the end, with Detroit if they didn't also have Jared Goff to send them. Yeah. There are a lot of different considerations there.

The Jared Goff thing, though, you're moved up for a quarterback. I think that's totally reasonable. Brandon Cooks, we could argue about how well that worked out, when you include the contract extension eating all the dead money that they did. When you have an owner that's willing to eat all the dead money, it certainly helps in that way. Jalen Ramsey is they traded two first round picks for a 25-year-old cornerback, the best cornerback in the league and what he allows them to do and the years they were going to be getting when giving him that contract extension. That is, in my opinion, still a unique opportunity to add a player like that.

Of all of the veteran for pick trades that we have seen in the last five to seven years, I think it's the one that's the most easily justifiable. Jamal Adams, Laramie Tonzel is probably in that conversation, but I still think Ramsey is in his own tier. And then they made another one for a quarterback. Those are the moves that they've made. So I still think it's a very specific band of trades you're willing to make with those assets. It's not willy-nilly being like, oh, that's a pretty good veteran player.

let's do this. Even for a guy like Devante Adams, who Dave Ziegler and your story talked about how this isn't a guy who's been good for two years. This is somebody who's been at the top of his position for years and years and years and years. Well, guess what? If you play in the league for years and years and years, you're a 29-year-old receiver when this trade gets made.

So how this all works out is, I think, dependent so much on the specificity of the situation. Yeah, and part of that calculus, Robert, I'm glad you brought that up because part of that calculus is like understanding and not just understanding, but having methods of quantifying how said player will outvalue the production and the output and all of the intangibles and everything will out value not just what that first round pick would give you in the same years as you would have that player on your roster in exchange, but also what that player will do for the years that they are on sort of maybe that rookie deal. So you're not just betting that calculus is not just about this player in this particular

tier of players in our, you know, if you're a team talking like in our own evaluation, is not just in this upper echelon, but also the calculus and our methodology weighs out to where it's not just that he's valuable for us right now. It's that we're betting he will, his value and his output will outweigh and be greater than the value that a first round pick in place of would be for us. And I think that's really important to understand as well because it's every action, it's, you know, we talk all the time you and I get really in the weeds on this stuff where, you know, football is just biology and physics and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And I think that this is exactly

what they're balancing and that understanding. I mean, the Rams books were essentially nearly wide open last year because everybody they were in the in the news everyone was studying kind of what they did their Super Bowl team that's that's scrutiny increases and so the some of these teams that have made this move sure I do believe they studied but you know what they did and how they did it but I think they more so studied that agility that you're talking about you know understanding what the counterbalances have to be that's not necessarily aggression the move the headline of the move is aggression but the real story is agility and understanding of what you are and what you are not. And balance. I think balance is a key word there. And I want to talk about

that and how their process specifically with the Rams is interconnected. One part does not work without the other part. If you look at the numbers of it, you were kind enough to present them in a story that you wrote about the Rams at the end of last season. Since 2016, I want to say the year is they've had the 12th most picks in the NFL without any first round picks. Okay. They've had the third most comp picks. And if you look at it, and we can debate this. And I, I'm, it's always funny to me when this happens. I probably agree with you, which is funny. I mean, sure, I'll, I'll debate for the sake of it, but honestly, we probably agree on whatever

you're about to say. So the Rams, when teams are successful, we try to bottle whatever that model is and that methodology is and replicate it overtime. And the Rams will tell you, and they've told you on multiple occasions, that their model is driven in part by an ability to hit on mid to late round picks because they're looking for specific traits and not complete players. And that has allowed them to find a lot of players in the middle to late rounds. And they have.

There are plenty of anecdotal examples. And we can talk about some of them. I would argue that beyond that, and we can talk about what some of that methodology is, my thing is, I'm guessing, their ability to find players in the middle to late rounds has a lot more to do with the amount of dice rolls they have in the middle to late rounds than some secret sauce that they have found where they're better at identity. identifying contributors for their team specifically in rounds four through seven. That is what I'm going to guess, even if maybe they have some tiny advantage,

I would still say that the volume of it drives this more than any sort of scouting efficiency or scouting benefits. Well, actually, I will maybe disagree with you just a little bit. I'm ready. Not a lot because I think that's one part of it. I think that's a big part of it is you have to increase less need calls them the dart throws. Like you have to increase those. And, and they do. Like, I think he gets like Twitchy and antsy if he doesn't have more than, you know, seven picks in a draft. And that's where it's

again this year, by the way, they have an extra fourth from a compick and three extra six than as compics. Yeah. It's just this year. You look down their row and it's like compensatory parentheses, compensatory parentheses. And, and they're expecting four compensatory picks next year, which again is, is affecting the way that they're navigating through this portion of free agency. But, you know, that that is a part of it. Like if I really, you know, the funny sort of wink of the meme, the FM picks meme is like, okay, you know, sure, they're trading away all their first rounders. And the joke I always see on Twitter is like, well, you know, what draft picks are they going

to have? Like, oh, you're doing a Rams mock draft with what picks? And I'm like, guys, they picked like they picked a shitload of times every single year. That's what I say. Like the Rams are, the Saints are actually the Rams and like the Dolphins this year. That joke actually applies to the Dolphins. They're not picking until like 148. That joke does not apply to the Rams in a given year.

Yeah, and they cluster them too. That's why they like the comps because they are neatly bundled in certain phases where they're more easily packaged into trades and that valuation is a little bit better for them because they're packaged together like that already. But anyway, so I think like I think part of that is true. Like absolutely, that's part of their intentionality with this process. But also I think they know that you're never going to solve the draft. It's just too, it's too much of an unknown.

There are too many variables that are unknown. But I think what they've done instead is flood the small advantages that they do believe they have, that they have believed to have worked for them, particularly in certain rounds. They've found a lot of value in fourth and fifth round picks in particular over the last couple of years. And third round picks were huge for them, you know, even prior to that. and then they sort of narrow, yeah, and then they've sort of narrowed their focus into those fourth and fifth round picks that they've found, again, by some of the internal calculus that they do, those players have vastly outplayed the quote-unquote value of the guaranteed money on their contract and the money on their contracts in general. And then they've turned them into compensatory picks as well.

And so I think that when you aren't trying to catch all the fish, but you're trying to catch a specific fish and you know which bait you need, that's kind of the way that they're viewing some of this. They're taking away some of that noise. And a while back, I wrote a profile sort of of less needs sort of bias removal process that he's tried to introduce into the Rams' own decision making process. you know, things like scouts are, you know, when there are evaluations being made, scouts are completely separated until it's time at the very end to come together so that they're not being swayed or motivated by each other's opinions. They're forming their own full opinion. Lesnade doesn't weigh in on draft picks really until the very end of the process because

he doesn't want sort of that, oh, my boss likes this. So maybe I like this too, even subconsciously kind of to trickle in. just little things like this that I think it maximizes that freeness and decision making when you're when you're scouting. But also the way that they've sort of married some of their data and dissemination process, some of the programming that they've built internally. Can you talk about that? I mean, the system that you laid out is called jars. And I'm wondering what that means. I don't know what it stands for.

Nobody will tell me. That's really funny. So I'm wondering what that consists of. And as you wrote about, this isn't some super novel thing. A lot of teams do have a version of this. But they believe in what they're doing and what it does for them. Just describe that a little bit more. I wanted to stand for just analytics and random shit, but I don't know.

They called their analytics department the nerds nest. So I wouldn't necessarily put it past them to have like a crude name for this very hyper modern way of doing things. Yeah. And it's interesting. You know, they explore, they kind of, I think a lot of it is for, removing some of the foam at the top of the latte, right? Like I think it's a lot of it's cutting away what they don't need and trying to maximize the lanes that they do need.

So, you know, there's, I think maybe a little too much at the time was made. I wrote a piece last year about how they basically are not looking at the 40 and they're, they're not going to a lot of the all-star events or anything like that. But it's it's not like they're being told not to. they can. If that's an important part of their evaluation, then that can be a part of their evaluation process. But they're looking at other, they're kind of removing the fluff of what's around some of the things that they don't believe are necessary to their own decision-making process. And I think they're trying to streamline in that way. And it's small details like avoiding

group think or, you know, not catering to that sort of splash bias of what the 40-time is and what's made of that. And instead, focusing on trait-specific. athletic qualities, scheme-specific athletic qualities. They have seven different tools that measure football acumen, emotional intelligence, and sort of how they study who a prospect is going to become, not just who he is. As a person? As a person. And that's really, really important because when you get to like the fourth, fifth,

round six picks, they're looking for now what they call because he set a standard for them. They're looking for sort of that Jordan Fuller. they're looking for players who can compete immediately, even if they don't have all of the sort of flashy athletic traits or testing numbers because of what they're able to do and what less need calls their superpowers fit perfectly into only what they're being asked to do, not being, you know, an end-all be-all answer to a defense or an offense. And so I think when you when you talk about yes, having a huge number of picks helps. It always will help if you're using them smartly. I mean, you can't just be throwing them around, but like it does help if you're using them

efficiently and smartly, but it's not just that. But there's also not just one answer. The, the real answer to this process is, or they believe, is finding what little leverage points and little answers, tiny answers to small questions that you have through the course of the entire process and just hammering those. Because at some point, you know, not every pick is going to work out, even within that process, but at some point enough will work out to where you have a body of data where you know whether to keep this going or to pivot a little bit. It's a series of small answers to small questions and small but agile pivots, I think, through the entire process, that is really, really, really important to what they do. I think a lot of teams that really buy

into the uncertainty of the draft will tell you that if you're trying to flip the math a tiny bit in your favor personal makeup is one way that you can try to leverage that if you can find guys that this matters to them the process will matter to them as they move forward that is a tiny bit of inefficiency we are not getting necessarily swayed by the physical traits as much i'm curious and when we talk about this i believe that they could be finding some edges but those edges take you with a fourth or fifth round pick from a 28% hit rate to a 32% hit rate and if you get get enough of it that ultimately will build you up in an advantage. But these are tiny, tiny edges. I'm wondering with the jars thing, you wrote about this and I'm fascinated by it, they stopped

writing longhand reports on players because they thought they were overwriting them and a lot of it was unnecessary. So does that mean the inputs now are mostly numerical or are they just based on like fewer words? Yeah, it's key words and specific, a specific language that has internally been created over the course of, you know, six, seven years. And then sort of, again, it's a constantly evolving process. So it's constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed and streamlined in a lot of different ways by the scouts, the executives and the analysts. But it also, there's, there are, you know, kind of like a color pattern that comes with it as well in terms of matching certain prospects in certain quadrants. So it's very quick. I really want to put together like an

Ocean's 11 type heist where we break into the building and find all this. I'm like, okay, if I can just tell you how many times I've asked to see this, it's, it's nice of you to say the things that you said at the top of the podcast about writing cool stories. And I love, I love getting to write cool shit. But also the amount of questions, the amount of questions I've asked and I've not got an answer to. But it's, but it's, listen, it's all about volume drafting the same way the Rams do. And that's the thing. I'm sitting there. And yeah, I'm like, I'll just throw more darts. It's fine. But it's, it's so fascinating.

And it's so, you know, a lot of this, it's only scratching the surface, right? And this is a team that's so much more of this. Insanely open about it. And there still is so much that you can't get to. That's the other thing. That was really funny at league meetings. That was the first time, you know,

you see a lot of people at the combine and coaches and, and teams and all this stuff. But that was another thing that was kind of funny at the campbine. People coming up to me and being like, why were they telling you this stuff? Yes. And, but I was like, because I'm pretty sure because they think, it's really cool and it's unique and I'm only I'm only seeing two percent of what it actually

fully is it's such a reminder of how much an organization's feel is often dictated by the head coach yeah and like the head and it's just like that is if you have like an old timey like head coach that doesn't think any of this stuff matters and like being conversational about it and like I think the other people in the organization are too but so much of it is driven by like one or two people that set the tone for how this information travels well and I would say even probably a little bit more in this regard less need than Sean McVey because Sean McVey is very protective of but I think that's the thing he's very protective of schematic advantages and leverages to a to a very very high degree whereas I think I think there's also a belief that

again this is fingerprints versus blueprints right like it's very hard to specifically replicate things and there there is you know 80 you know 89 to 97 percent of things. that they're not sharing that are still happening. But getting back to your original point, like it all is kind of going back to finding those small percentages. And again, they know that to win a Super Bowl, which is their goal every single year, not just to compete,

but to win a Super Bowl. And that's why they kind of, you know, get the headlines like, are they mortgaging their future every year when they are, they don't believe that they are because they've created this interdependent ecosystem. But at the same time, like, that 4% that you get from three Cs, three off seasons of maybe finding one guy in the fourth round, one guy in the fifth round and one guy in the six round in alternating years, like maybe those three guys give you the four percentage points

then you need to win the Super Bowl at the very, very end. And you kind of saw the way that their build worked together and you saw the way that those percentage points mattered. You saw that with, you know, Greg Gaines and Trayvon Howard combining for that, you know, late play in the playoffs. You see that when these small things are happening, these small details happen in these very close games where every team is extremely good. And, you know, the final eight teams, it might as well have been a toss up at any given point. Yeah. The four seat in the NFC. Yeah.

And honestly, like they, it could have gone any, I think any of them will admit this to you. Like when, when they were playing their best football, they looked unbeatable and they felt unbeatable, but they weren't often playing their best football quarter to quarter for four quarters throughout the, even throughout the playoffs. So they needed all of those percentage points. Any team needs all of those percentage points. And if you can find them, if you can find half a percentage point in, in, in, in, in a draft in just using tweaking one small leverage, like I said, finding a small answer to a small

question, that half a percentage point builds and builds and builds and builds and ultimately might make a difference. And it also might not, but you'd much rather know that it could than perhaps it couldn't. Not having that small thing that makes a small difference. That can also send you home essentially. So I think that's the way that they sort of look at it, is they're not, yes, the headlines are big swings and all of this, but they're more so looking very, very granularly and agilely and in a place of balance at the very, very small details and the small advantages they can maximize. And those doing that in a way that does, like you said, manifest balance, it does then allow them to take the big swing. So again, it's all interdependent,

that phrase we love mutualism. And I also think that. Like you said, their goal is to win the Super Bowl. And I think that's important to remember when we're having these conversations. That's not everyone's goal, especially every single year. And the Rams have reached a place where their roster is championship worthy, especially with Matthew Stafford, they know this. And they can make moves to try to win championships. And that's not the case for every single team.

Every single team doesn't have a quality of the team to do that. And they don't have the organizational interest in doing that. And not leveraging your future, but, making moves that are overly aggressive. It is hard to construe the Von Miller trade in any other way other than we're trying to win a Super Bowl. You trade a second and a third round pick for a guy that you might not bring back. You're trying to win a Super Bowl and they won one.

And that is going to limit what you can do over the next couple of years in terms of draft capital. That's okay. It's okay to work in what we would deem inefficient ways if you're trying to win Super Bowls. That's fun. The fact that that's becoming more prevalent throughout the league and teams are willing to you know what, we're going to do something. Like, we're going to go get this.

I'm totally okay with that when it's for veteran players, when you're trying to put yourself over the top. Even if the cupboard is inevitably going to be a little bit more bare than it would be. And they've tried to restock it with as many comp picks as you can find in the couch cushions. But ultimately, it's going to be harder to stay good when you operate this way. And I think that's okay if you're trying to and ultimately winning Super Bowls in the interim. Yeah. And as we talked about kind of offline before the podcast started, I mean, when a market floods, like the way that this is starting to flood, it does create more of an efficiency in the space in which they're used to trying to leverage and maximize inefficiencies.

And in doing that, now they're going to have to pivot in some either smaller, large way again. Now, I don't think this changes their build or their ecosystem, but they have to. go find now separate inefficiencies if a certain market is flooded and they've made their bread and butter leveraging and taking advantage of inefficient markets and operating in that way, then you can only assume that they will try to be agile. And I don't want to say pivot, because that implies a large shift. And I don't think it's going to be a large shift. But finding those leverages elsewhere. And I think that's what you're going to start to see from these guys moving forward because you're going to see a lot of teams try. And like you, I'm excited by it because

I'm excited by any interesting team build model. And I think there are so many of them. I think the bills are built fascinatingly. I think the Bengals were built fascinatingly last year. That was such a fun Super Bowl because you had two teams who were maybe perceived outliers against the norm of the NFL or convention in the NFL. And here they are at the highest level and they're competing against each other and one of them's going to win. And I think that, you know, Those are the types of things that you love to see. And when I talk to these guys about, you know, how they do it, it comes back down so simply to this thing that you would think would be easy to know. But it is not in practice, again, because people don't make decisions to win Super Bowls, knowing what you are and probably more importantly, knowing what you are not.

And I think that second part is what you are. trips people up. Honestly, I do. Yeah. And it's, it's funny how you talk to Howie Roseman for that piece too. And obviously how he's on the other side of this and the way that they've accumulated draft picks over the last couple years. And that's why this is fun. I love that he like, like, I love that he like made his, like he was literally foreshadowing this at league meetings. And I love how he's like, yeah, you know, I think it's okay to think differently. And, you know, you have to find the, the, uh, the inefficiencies where everyone else is getting more efficient. And I'm paraphrasing. But and then all of a sudden, he goes and does the thing. Yeah.

Then he goes and does the thing, like a week later. I was like, hey, this is good timing. Howie thanks, man. And that's why if a drive toward total efficiency can make a sport boring, you know, if you think about what's happening with baseball and the way that analytics has changed the aesthetics of baseball, football on the field, more aggressiveness is ultimately going to make them sport more entertaining, which is great. But in these decisions, if every team traded down all the time, it's boring as shit.

And it's also impossible. You need a trade partner by definition to allow this stuff to work. And the fact that there are always going to be teams, they're going to stockpile those first round picks and take them whenever you've got them. And now there are teams wanting to say, fuck it, we're going for it. Like those two things existing in the same way. Again, coming back to balance, that's what makes this great. There's always going to be a team on the either side of that equation.

And it's going to drive these conversations and all these different debates that we can have about the right way to do it while giving us stuff to talk about, constantly. I'm getting too excited. Well, dude, I mean, I'm in the same way. It's just fun. Like, it's, that's the thing. And that's, it's the same thing that these, some of these coaches who, again, are paired with these gems. In a lot of cases, it's, it's, um, even people in their first year, like Dave Ziegler making

these moves in his first year as an actual gym after being, like, doing things behind the scenes for so long. Especially where he came from. Where he was. Especially where he came from. But here's the, but here's the, but here's the, the thing that's so fascinating to me. The Bill Belichick, Tom Brady Patriot, the dynastic Patriots, they, in part, one of the things that you hear about them that made them so good was that

every year they pivoted in these small ways. The teams, the rosters were totally different. And they pivoted in these small ways with these very agile ways where they knew what they weren't. And then in the draft, they would say, I don't give a fuck what you think about this guy. I'm going to take him because he fits specifically what I do. So it's also traded up a decent amount, way more than people think. They just made a lot of trades. They were just a dynamic team. And I'm not thinking of picks or trades itself.

I'm thinking of specifically how they made their ecosystem work. They didn't think in ways that was like, oh, everyone has a grade on this prospect. So I also have this grade on this prospect or so, you know, he's going to fall here or he's going to fall there. They just went after the people that they thought would be good fits in their ecosystem and kept it really simple. And again, answered small answers to small questions. So in a way, I almost think Dave Ziegler is like perfect to run this. And I think George Payton is too in some of the ways that he outlined, you know, his understanding of the ripple effect this would cause. But a first, you know, a first year GM who is making these big swings, these two first year GMs making these big swings. And I really think that Ziegler does have that understanding of, you know, again, like I said, being agile in in small ways that continue to sustain an ecosystem that can have. forward to take big swings because you've created that interdependence. And I think that part of it's so fascinating to me because they, it's not like they were doing

it the same way the Rams did it. And I'm certainly not implying that the Rams are anywhere near where that incredible run was by New England for so many years. But at the same time, you know, people tried to pull from them and take what they were doing as well, but seemed to maybe always kind of be a step behind. But it was almost like, what if it's not really about following what they're doing or trying to build the way they're doing. But the larger ethos of the understanding of, no, we have to be agile and answering small questions about our system because that's what sustains the balance so that

we can now afford to be aggressive and then actually take the leap and go do it, not just think about it or utilize it in theory. And I think that's an ethos that's attractive to young head coaches. I think it's an ethos. I've heard this, you know, for the last two years in Los Angeles. it's absolutely an ethos. You've got players sitting in the GM's office just wanting to learn about this team build. It's an attractive destination, not just because it's Los Angeles and Hollywood and Aaron Donald and Matthew Stafford and Jalen Ramsey. And now, you know, how can they keep doing this?

Someone has to stop them, you know? But like, it's attractive because their players are energized by the way that these moves happen. I guarantee you, and George Payton told this to me, you go into. to his locker room and ask these players about how, you know, what they feel after seeing their team make a move like that. And he straight up told me, he's like, we needed some juice and now we have it. Like it not just in terms of the player they brought in, but the act of making that move. And he's so, he's so proud of his players. He is so like you could see it, like the emotion coming

out of like how much he wanted to do this, not just to get his quarterback, but to also like show his players that he's going to try to be aggressive for them. And I think that's really, really special. And that's, I think, when you live in a high stakes environment and you are very, very clear and forthcoming that you're going to be aggressive because you're going to do whatever it takes, not just to exist, but to push yourself to break through, to be in that very small sliver of teams who are contending every single year, your players are going to buy into that. And people are going to want to come play for your team. Yeah. It's undeniably fun. And I'm glad we, in some ways that we have reached this place because it reached this place because it makes my day

is way more interesting. Jordan, it's always so great to chat with you. I really appreciate your time. We always have a blast, Robert. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Guys, thank you very, very much for listening. Thank you to Sean. Really enjoyed that conversation. Thank you to Jordan. Really appreciate you guys checking in with us. I tweeted about this today. I talked about it on yesterday's show. Las Vegas live, the athletic football show rounds one and two and three on Thursday and Friday night. It's going to be me, Dane, and Nate live throughout the draft. You can come hang out with us.

We're going to react to all the picks in real time. Lean on Dane and Nate for their analysis because I don't know anything. We're going to have a little drop-ins from Lindsay, from Deontay, hoping that Sheel is going to be able to do it. Some of our local writers, as some of these picks happen, cannot wait. So please come check that out. It's going to be on YouTube. It's going to be on Twitter, all the places that you would watch our Sunday night shows,

for example. All the stuff places we have live video. So really, really excited about that. I'm sure you'll hear me talk about it 10,000 times. between now and then. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast platform with choice.

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all the draft codes that we got rolling until we meet up in Vegas. So you guys enjoy your weekend. We'll talk to you later. This was The Athletic Football Show.