The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - The Playcallers Ep. 1: The kids are all right

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Welcome to The Playcallers - a five-part podcast series that explores the innovation, competition and sometimes even self-destruction inside the N.F.L.’s youngest coaching family.In Episode 1, host Jourdan Rodrigue details the origins of the Shanahan/McVay offensive system, which over time grew into the most popular in the sport. Unique circumstances push Kyle Shanahan to start to evolve this system as he joins up with other young coaches in Tampa Bay, Houston and Washington. A collision of forces, dysfunction and talent culminates in the offensive explosion (and then implosion) in Washington with rookie quarterback Robert Griffin the Third.Voices in the episode include Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, Mike McDaniel, Matt LaFleur, Raheem Morris and Robert Griffin the Third.Playcallers is presented by Miller Lite. To get Miller Lite delivered right to your door, visit millerlite.com/playcallers.Celebrate Responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, WI. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you stop anything in this league, there's something else open. Always. So how do you tie that shit together? How do you get the quarterback to it? The voice you're hearing belongs to San Francisco 49ers head coach, Kyle Shanahan. And he's rolling. I'm product of my environment. I had to change that shit pretty fast.

He's in a chair behind his desk. And it's not doing a great job of containing him because as he starts to talk about football and designing a scheme and calling plays and how. how, in his very strong opinion, all of that is supposed to blend with the players. He's practically rattling. Not everyone can do everything, but they better be able to do something. Whether it's receivers, the quarterbacks, and you keep hammering that stuff and you make people defend it when they defend it, where's the other hole in the defense and who has the best

trait to attack that hole? And how do you balance them out? Do you have a guy who can find that stuff? If he can't, how do you get him to go through stuff that he'll get to it? Well, then you only put in two plays, because it's number one's going to be, wide open when it's the right coverage, but when it's the wrong coverage, it'll be so covered that number two will be open. And that's what he's going to go to number two.

But don't just tell him to go to number two. Don't make him read the coverage. Make him go through a process of how to get him to there. Or you got a guy who can just see everything. Kyle, I always go to number three versus couple three. I always go to number one versus cover two. This is a throw here. It's like, all right, well, let's start talking to you differently.

But hey, yeah, that doesn't help that guy either, though. Could you just went to number three? Well, yeah, you said it's good versus quarter. Not everyone plays quarters right. That mic fucking went with your eyes. Now what number one was so, oh, oh, there's a situation for everything. Each mic's different. Each play's different.

That's why when people say, like, I learned someone's offense, are you coaching that somewhere? One entire wall of Shanahan's massive office is a dry erase board. It's covered in plays and handwritten notes to himself. And a couple of swipes as if he's gotten pissed and dragged his hand across certain ideas and frustration. Are you just, that's like, what are you? the waterboy guy who left the shell of books somewhere, and now we have all your secret plays. Like, do you know what I'm talking about? Like, that's not how it works.

Every play on Shanahan's dry erase board starts as one color. Then he draws over the top of it with a different color, which represents a different variant to the same play. Then another, then another, color after color. Each of the layers interconnect and create a vivid mess that somehow makes so much sense, it's almost three-dimensional. Welcome to the inside of Kyle Shanahan's brain. I mean, I hate to say this is my life because I know when I die, the first thing I'll think about are my loved ones. So that's obviously not my life. But shit after that, that's all I can think about.

This is the play callers. My biggest fear, if you talk to me as a 14-year-old, would be the life of an 80s rock star, which is to achieve success and then be a big. on that downward trend. We were so young and went through some really great moments, but went through some challenging moments. But like, we just wanted to get better at football because we wanted to help our players get better.

I'll tell you what, there's nothing more lonely than when you're not having success and you are the play caller. Because it's easy when things are going good, everybody has an idea. When you're not having success on offense and you're calling plays, you're like, hey, can somebody help me? It's like crickets on the headset. That's just the way it's not. a lonely feeling. It's a lonely world.

That's Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVeigh, and Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur. They and Kyle Shanahan are the faces of the NFL's youngest coaching family. They all spent their early years together, collaborating to build an offense that borrowed from the old and introduced the new. Each one of these guys sees the game like an AI screen. All of the these coaches have the same principle, but they all have their own stamp on it as well. They all became head coaches at unprecedented young ages and began to shape their own identities in the most high pressure environments in sports. Sean McVeigh got hired in Los Angeles.

People were like, really? Because he was so young, the tree wasn't established as kind of the NFL's go-to hiring bank at the time. Versions of their offensive system have now spread across a third of the NFL as their respective coaching staffs are pilfered annually. Having a piece of them is synonymous with scoring points. There's a lot of other owners who are just like, okay, like, I want to get the next Superman play caller. You know, I want to get someone who touch Sean McVeigh. I want to get someone who touched Kyle Shanahan because they've won.

That's another thing. They've won ball games. I mean, that's an important thing. We can't leave that part out. They have 19 playoff appearances between them, a couple of division and conference championships, and even a Super Bowl win. John McVeigh gets the Gatorade bat after five seasons. The Rams were built to win the Super Bowl, and they have sealed the deal.

Yet these four individual coaches are faded to forever be connected to each other, even as they are always ruthlessly competing and attempting to establish their own individuality. They're competing to be first-movers in an ever-changing league, and even competing against their own minds. an obsessive pursuit of perfect answers within an imperfect game. There's not a fucking minute of any day during the calendar year that that immense responsibility I ever wish to be somebody else's, you know? It's an all-encompassing thing that I feel pretty fucking fortunate to be a part of.

It's pretty fucking amazing. You have a microphone. Giving a shit about what I'm saying. I'm Jordan Rodriguez. I obsess over football for the... athletic. A few years ago, I saw something at a Sean McVeigh run practice that helped me understand how the game collides with itself and how the people, especially these people, within it, collide with each other. Football is action and reaction, biology and sociology and evolution,

a game, yet with the highest stakes and demanding of a deeply human toll. We're watching these guys and the teams they coach live it all right in front of us. with an openness that is kind of startling, if you know where to look. First and foremost, proper homage must be paid. Football is a series of cycles, really tree rings over the passage of time, and concepts are destined to repeat themselves every decade.

Coaches constantly borrow and steal from each other and shape familiar concepts with their own personalities, and, if they're good, to the strengths of their players. But sometimes, something new breaks through and kicks off a fresh set of tree rings. Denver's first play after the Miss field, the whole hellway going deep and he's got Rod Smith.

That Smith's gone. In the mid-90s, Mike Shanahan, already a prominent member of the Bill Walsh coaching tree, became the head coach of the Denver Broncos and blended his West Coast offense with famed offensive line coach Alex Gibbs' outside zone run game. Third down, Daryl Davis. Watch out.

Foot race. He could be gone. In simplest terms, that meant being able to manipulate the vertical parts of the field with notoriously meticulous passing concepts, a West Coast trademark, but also use their run game to make defenses move horizontally, uncomfortably, and create new creases, cutbacks, and spacing that would leverage running backs and offensive linemen to an advantage against a defense. A defense accounting for width naturally.

created more airspace for the quarterback to manipulate. As defensive players got better and better, particularly defensive linemen, into the 90s, the idea of just saying, we're going to go blow these guys off the ball is just not realistic. Someone's, you know, Warren's staff is over there. And it's like, yeah, let's just block him and drive him back eight yards. It's like, it ain't happen. That's Chris B. Brown, who literally wrote the books on playing smart football.

Like, one of them is actually called the art of smart football. But by a zone blocking scheme, particularly the outside zone, we can get with like a horizontal displacement. In the old old in days, the old West Coast offense formation was the old pro set, right? With the tight end, a split end, a flanker, and two running backs, a halfback and a fullback. In the 90s was where you really saw the big transition away from the two back offense to the one back offense in every level of football. And one of the reasons was the rise of zone blocking.

Denver had an all-time quarterback in John Elway. He could move in a way most quarterbacks couldn't at that time, and he could throw. In this offense, he was running bootlegs to add more layers of angst for a defense that already has to consider a run game that will stretch them wider than they want to be. And they did some epic shit. Mike, today your team, the Denver Broncos, kept another outstanding season with a dominating performance. Congratulations to the whole team on becoming the first.

AFC team in almost 20 years to win back-to-back Super Bowls. Along the way, Mike Shanahan was studied by his young son, Kyle, a wiry kid with an early obsession with football. Kyle saw the good and the bad of the sport early on. But even some of the pain of it only made him more obsessed. Then when you get to around fourth or fifth grade and you've already lived in like four different places, you start to realize like, oh, not only do I love this, but like, this is intense because I'm starting to realize if they do bad.

I might have to move and I don't want to move. I grew up with if people didn't succeed, like I was moving. And I remember every time I moved, those are always, I've always remembered my last day of school, sang by to friends, and I was never good at San Bye. Like, it was very tough. But I always loved going to new places. Kyle threw himself into football, whether hanging on to Mike Shanahan's every word, crossing paths in Denver with the Broncos' teenage ballboy named Mike McDaniel, by the way,

or preparing for the college game that first sent him to Duke, and then to Texas. That's why I was able to earn a scholarship, not because I was naturally that good. I was an okay high school player, but I knew how to work and the standard of how to work, and it was because I saw it as life and death. I saw it as,

no, that's what I do, even though I went to college to play football, which probably isn't the best thing to tell everybody, but it was for me. And that's what I saw in my mind. I was playing football. All I would do was work out because I wanted to be a receiver.

I remember when I transferred to Texas and we had finals during our bowl practices. We're all supposed to do. I missed the practice because we had a final. And I was the only one who was redshirting because I transferred there. I had been waiting for this scrimmage. And I had a final on that day. And I just showed up to the scrimmage.

And everyone was trying to make me leave saying, I'll fail the class. And I had to argue with everyone there. Like, I know I'll fail the class. And that's a decision I'm making right now. I'm not missing this practice. And even though I had like I had a C in there all turned into an F because I would not miss the practice. And it wasn't that I was trying to show the coaches how committed I was. It was just how one track my mind was.

Kyle and I met dating back to college when I was playing wide receiver at Duke University. Fred Goldsmith called me up one day and said, hey, Richmond, want you to host a freshman recruit. Probably heard of his dad, Mike Shanahan. That's Richmond Flowers, who runs the coaching agency collective sports advisors. He played college football with Kyle Shanahan and was a quality control coach on the eventual Washington staff under Mike Shanahan. that featured Kyle, Mike McDaniel, Sean McVeigh, Matt LaFleur, and Rahim Morris, among others. Full disclosure, Richmond now represents some of the coaches you'll hear from in this series. But since he's also a character in our story, we did not go through him to get interviews with those coaches.

Kyle and I headed off and he said, hey, do you want to come back, work out with me and train in Denver? And I was like, yeah, sure, I'd love to. You know, usually when someone invites you back to hang out for the summer or to go train and work out, it's for two weeks and then you go back home. Well, this was different. This was for two months. So this was like the entire offseason, can I go up to Denver and live at the Shanahan's? And it was a full two months. And so the first thing, you know, in my mind was like, how in the hell am I going to go out there for two months and just go train and work out?

I don't have a job. I'm not independently wealthy. So I'll never forget what I got there. I told Mike Shanahan, I was like, you know, I'm going to need to get a job. And Mike Shanahan basically reached into his pocket, pulled out $2,000 cash and said, don't worry about a job, just work your ass off and train with Kyle. And don't worry about anything else. And I thought I had won the lottery. I didn't know what to think about it, but I was like more money than I'd ever seen in my entire life.

Kyle recognized pretty quickly near the end of his time at Texas that he wasn't going to make it as a pro football player. I started getting into college and realizing, man, I might not be good enough to go. And then I felt, what am I going to do next? And once I've fully accepted, I wasn't good enough player, it was like three hours later that was like, I'm going to be such a good coach. Mike Shanahan wouldn't hire Kyle until he was sure he knew his stuff. In 2004, Kyle got a quality control assistant job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They had just won a Super Bowl. In Tampa, Kyle and now Rams defensive coordinator, Rahim Morris, became instant friends.

We were so nosy about his ability to teach us the Denver offense, which at the time, you know, we had all given Mike Shanahan all the credit for the keeper game, the keeper world, the alerts off of it, the takeoffs and things of that nature. And he was so enamored, not only with the offense that John Gruent was put together, he was also enamored with us on defense because of what we were doing in Tampa, too. Gruden's playbook, at that time in the early 2000s, was considered to be among the most expansive in football. And Kyle's job as a quality control coach was quite literally to log all of it. And remember, at that time, there was no information sharing like we get with the internet today.

So Kyle was literally adding to 20 years of knowledge of his dad's own offense with access to the NFL's biggest playbook. And he would come and I were sitting back up our defense. the backrooms, and he would be back there just soaking up knowledge whether we were installing, whether it was my meeting, where it was a rookie meeting, or whether it was a meeting that Mike Tom was running with an install meeting or whatever the case may be, just about defensive football, along with Monty Kiffman and Rob Marnelly and Joe Barry and all the guys that, wherever there'd be great communicators and just talk football, that he was in the back, kind of taking in all the information on defense.

Literally, we know he'd be able to use it against us later in life, calling it now. All head coaches and coordinators there, running one of the best defenses of all time, that was sound. they didn't make anything up. They knew all this stuff. So when I got to learn every play known a man from John and then get to sit in there and just watch them talk defense, that's when I really started to develop my own reason of how I want to tie plays together,

not because a place I learned because I was learning defense. And then you see how to distribute people. Eventually, a 22-year-old Sean McVeigh would take over that Tampa Bay Quality Control Assistant job in 2008. By that time, Kyle Shanahan was working for Gary Kubiak in Houston as Kubiak's offensive coordinator. Kubiak was actually Mike Shanahan's quarterback's coach and offensive coordinator for years in Denver. But during that 2008-2009 season, Kyle had 2.20-something offensive assistance by the name of

Mike McDaniel and Matt LaFleur. Cube, I guess, took the chance on me and I went in there and Kyle had just gotten promoted to the offensive coordinator job. I'm a month older than Kyle, roughly. And so in my mind, I'm like, this guy can't know that much about football. And I was blown away at how much he knew that I did not know. And so it was kind of a wake-up call for me personally in terms of, man, you better, you better get your shit together and you got a lot of work to do to catch up to him. It was certainly not lost on the majority of the more established staffers, how young some of the assistant coaches were.

We used to, matter of fact, they coined that room. There was five of us in that room. And I don't know if anybody's told you this yet, but they called it the Piss Boys. That's what we're known as. All of the young quality control assistants worked together in one big room. Among them were LaFleurre, McDaniel, and now Jets head coach Robert Sala. The Piss Boys. So in Houston, we're the quality controls.

I was in one corner across. for me, it was a massive staff room. Across from me was Mike McDaniel, and the corner far to my right was Matt Lafleur. To my immediate right was Richard Hightower, who's now the special teams coordinator for the Chicago Bears, and Perry Carter, who's still out there coaching. He was right there at the end of the kind of in the middle. His boys means you weren't allowed to say no. Clean out the air ducts for the tight-end coaches for his house. You go clean them out. The copier breaks, you got to fix it. There was no, well, I don't have time.

You just get pissed on it. And you take it, you smile, and, you know, at the end of the day, you go take your shower and you get ready to go pissed on and get pissed on again. And that's kind of the life of quality control. At that time, the Vizio and Excel computer programs were how some coaches started to modernize drawing and logging plays, protections, and tendencies. Mike McDaniel, a Yale graduate. Can you just say a sentence? And it'll pick you up, so sit normally. Weeping willows from the wilderness wisely wallow.

Okay, I got you. No, had that, did you? McDaniel taught himself how to use the programs when he got to Houston to create a database for the offense. I knew the whole offense, and I was very competent with Vizio and Excel, and I self-taught, and I didn't know any of it when I started. The older coaches were, like, too old to even give a shit about it that are just, like, get this stuff done.

So then I got in the world of creating documents, which is what people still see today. Some of the documents he created are still passed around by coaches within this tree and beyond. I had a coach that I coach with, actually. Now the Dolphins in 2014, reached out. I was like, yeah, I'm at this SEC school, and I'm reading it, I'm doing this protection. And it says, created by Mike McDaniel in 2006. Like, yep, that was me. In Houston through 2008 and 2009, quarterback Matt Schaub ascended toward career highs in passing yards.

Wide receiver Andre Johnson had back-to-back 1500-yard seasons. The offense started looking a little different than what Denver used to run, too. Kyle Shanahan was evolving. I already learned the bootlegs. I wanted to see all the run game. I knew how it was supposed to look. I wanted to hear Alex talk about it. I definitely saw a different than he talked about it.

Welcome back to the inside of his brain. But it was crazy to me. They didn't have one play action in their whole playbook. And I had learned play action from two plays that Paul Hackett taught me. And he had these plays that he had ran, that he was so good at coaching. And it was such effective play for us that I loved the play. But then I spent a play with a deep. defense and I learned how they run fit everything. I learned how they play the run. And I was obsessed

with learning the run because I grew up in a world of trying to be a receiver. So I just, and I wanted to learn the run. So you start to see how people fit, how defense coaches look at it. Then I go to Houston and the Broncos play but doesn't have play action. And so I put in the one play hockey taught me. And then I start watching defenses each week. Oh, there's going to be a hole there if we do this run. And then I get another one in. And then after four years there, now to me was the main thing that was different than the playbook before I came was now we had a whole a Routary, there was 50 play actions. Now, finally, the Bronco scheme, whenever you had run outside zone, they had bootlegs off

of it. Well, now they had bootlegs and play action. And so that's to me what was the biggest chance in Houston, and that's why we led the league in passing, I think. Kyle Shanahan, who happened to be the youngest OC in the NFL at that time at just 28, also started gaining a reputation for how hard he drove his assistance. So anytime you went to Kyle with a play or an idea, you'd be able to, better have all the answers and he's going to grill you on it and he's going to try to poke holes

in everything that you do so it's it's got to be it's got to be well thought out there was a natural i think competitiveness to to try to get a play that you think is a you know genius idea into the plan and not only to get it in the plan but get it called he had that ambitious he was driven like i was in it from a completely different way where he was trying to you know deep down i think establish his own identity in a huge shadow. And I was fucking no-name Johnson from wherever Johnson province. McDaniel especially didn't just want to keep up with the demands from his OC. He wanted to match Kyle step for step and even get to where Kyle was faster.

It was the first time that my work as a quality control would actually be judged by someone that had done the type of work. and that was pretty harsh at first by Kyle, really, as just a constructive criticism and how he did it the year previous or whatever. So that was a whole journey in itself, originally to kind of like went over the position coach that I was assisting, which was Kyle.

You know, it didn't take me long to kind of figure out that he had the acumen that I was kind of chasing. All I cared about was being a position coach younger than he was. There was a human toll to how he pushed himself and how he handled his work-life balance. McDaniel developed an issue with alcohol

and was eventually released by Kubiak. I don't know if it's entitlement or I don't know what it was, but the fact that I wasn't getting what I wanted professionally, which in my world was a long time and coaching world was just like fractions of moments in an embarrassing fashion.

when I look in hindsight. I was basically really going after it at work, but then I couldn't handle the emotional, not getting exactly what I wanted, exactly when I wanted it. So I was like going out and being young. I had to have a grown-up journey where it all kind of evaporated through my fingertips.

Kind of blew my world up, and I went to the UFL for two years in obscurity. coached there for 895 days. I wrote it down. So when I got back in the NFL, I was like, I'm never going to let this happen again. I basically said, I'm never going to forget the 895 days that kind of, or that feeling,

so that you're on a five-game losing streak or things that you perceive to be as bad, you can have proper perspective. In later years, McDaniel went to rehab and has said he has not drank since 2016. My biggest fear, if you talk to me as a 14-year-old, would be the life of an 80s rock star, which is to achieve success and then be on that downward trend. I remember just having a fuck ton of anxiety about like, how am I going to do, how am I going to

be successful? You know, like, how does this shit happen? I've never patterned, really never done anything under the guys. of, okay, well, that's how it was done. I was kind of like not really exposed to the success that I really wanted to have, so I didn't really have a roadmap.

The product of you see now is 39 years of just fucking random, and so I had to make my own mistakes, but learned really strong lessons that manifest themselves today. Is this thing on? We'll return to this episode of The Playcaller's, after a word from our sponsors.

Before you dive back into the PlayColars, callers, we wanted to let you know you can unlock this entire series ad-free with a subscription to the Athletic Audio Plus. Unlock that now for just 99 cents a month by clicking subscribe at the top of the Athletic Football Show's show page on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening and enjoy the rest of the episode. Okay, so let's establish something right now. Everyone has a different account about how the Washington days unfolded and then ultimately imploded after Mike Shanahan became the head coach. There are years of reporting dozens of articles about what went right, what went wrong, who was slighted, who was favored, and which powerful figure hated the other. In fact, an entire series could be created out of the scandal-ridden, dysfunctional years of the Washington franchise, specifically under Dan Snyder.

It is absolutely not my intent to minimize any of that, especially not the allegations of abuse that continue to be investigated. For the purpose of this series, though, we've got to focus on one small cluster of offices in Ashburn, Virginia, on the offensive side of the building. Mike Shanahan had obviously been watching Kyle and talking to him about all of his colleagues. While in Houston, Kyle had even taken to calling his dad frequently, asking why his offense had not had X or Y or Z concept built into it, and arguing always. So Mike Shanahan had this idea. I got a phone call from Mike Shanahan and said meet me at the senior bowl. Richmond Flowers, Kyle Shanahan's college friend, former teammate, and workout buddy, had checked in with Kyle's dad weekly, sometimes daily, about getting a job in the NFL.

You know, met Mike Shanahan in Mobile at the hotel, probably over a beer, and he said you're hired. Literally, three to four days later, I was in Ashburn, Virginia. You walked in the door and you realized pretty quickly that, you know, the other quality control coach was a guy named Sean McVeigh, and this guy could put together, take a part and put together the copying machine, and I probably could barely turn it on. Kyle Shanahan started immediately in 2010 as offensive coordinator, while Matt LaFleur became the quarterback's coach,

and Sean McVeigh was hired as an offensive assistant, then was quickly promoted to tight ends coach in 2011. Mike McDaniel also joined the staff as an offensive assistant in 2011, and all of them were just barely over 30, or way younger. Sean McVeigh was the youngest at just 24. I've always been a fan of coaching, right? And so, like, I knew who Kyle was. He was a young receiver coach in Houston.

He did an unbelievable job when he got a chance to be a coordinator. And he earned the merit to then be the O.C., you know, in Washington under his dad. But he had really earned it. And he was like the young coach that you're saying, this guy is wise beyond his years. And the game just makes sense to him. And then you get a chance to see the way that he moves and the way that he operates. It was awesome because it was like, this guy's a stud.

And like, I want to know what he knows. I want to see the game that way. They may have been the Piss Boys in Houston. Well, they were the fun bunch. We were the fun bunch in Ashburn. Some who were interviewed for this series have described a disconnect. in Washington between some of the older coaches and the fun bunch led by Kyle Shanahan, or a sense of arrogance from the group.

Others have described a divide between defensive and offensive coaches. It has been well documented that there were also constant power struggles between high-ranking people in the organization, and even between coaches and some players. It was constant turmoil. It was as dysfunctional as it gets from day one. So it was a divide in the media. It was a divide by the front office. There was division between offense and defense.

And then you looked over there, and it was, well, that's because there was literally a bunch of 20-somethings that could be considered they were just Kyle's buddies. And, you know, the funny thing is they weren't just Kyle's buddies. Matt LaFleur had earned a right to get his ass kicked for years. I can assure you, there wasn't a day that wasn't pressure fact. And I'm sure Matt got motherfucked more than anybody. I could almost guarantee it. But he was super detailed. The most detailed coach I've ever been around.

It really wasn't until I went to Washington, where I felt like I started to see the game a little bit differently. I started to see it how Kyle sees it. That's one thing that I think he's as good as anybody around in terms of finding holes and defenses. He trained all of us. He really did. He was the guy that was, he's got an unbelievably brilliant football mind. Kyle has incredibly high standards. The thing I always respected about Kyle that we try to do here is if you have an idea,

you know, and I think this is his job and this is what's great about what, this is why he's really good. You better have thought through all the different things. You know, like, you know, it's one thing to have a play. It's one thing to have the intent and the mechanics. But all right, what are the problems that could arise that the defense is presenting? And Kyle would think through all of those things. and some people might say he was tough. I would say he was detailed and demanding.

But that's how he was on himself too. Like he never, you know, like he would always have, you know, like a well-thought-out deal. And because of the capacity that he possessed about this game, he sees it special. He really does. But there's also, he's experienced a lot in a, you know, in a short amount of time. but he's immersed himself so much in this game. And I do think, like, he's got a great feel. The game comes naturally to him.

But I think in a lot of instances, like, people, you know, criticize millennials. Oh, they always want to know the why. Well, you should have a why. Rahim Morris, Sean McVeigh and Matt LaFleur all carpooled to games together in 2012. When Morris had joined the Washington staff as DB's coach, after he was let go from the head coaching job in Tampa Bay. to listen to those two argue over the game plan and to make calls and to do different things and to talk about formations

and to talk about what plays they liked and why they liked them and why it was important to them and I hope we get to this and I felt like we played the game before we got to the stadium on offense right with those guys and I felt like I was able to keep up with what we're going to do

and how it was going to look that day because of the intricate detail and the care that they had into going into the stadium. This was Kyle Shanahan's psychopath time where he goes into a closet in the stadium and he finds his closet. and he finds his closet and he go in there and he go through his process that he does where he stands in his head and he writes his plays down and he rewrites him again.

Seriously, Kyle Shanahan literally stands on his head before games. It's a mind-clearing practice he got from yoga. He still does this. And he was going through that stuff and we were still able to be in a locker room open spot and we'd argue and then I watched those guys get called in one at a time in order to answer questions, be able to communicate, talk about the game to show. the important details of what they were going to do that day. Having a why meant arguing your why. Like, for every detail, every single day, four years, with Kyle, with each other, with anybody who could or would square up.

They loved finding the people who could mentally keep pace with them just as much as they loved crushing those who couldn't. There was a sort of healthy, Just not afraid of anything arrogance that we all kind of had taken that we were not afraid to fail, I guess, and not afraid to open your mouth and say what you believed, even if it might not have been the right answer at the time. But you were not afraid of that argument, that healthy confrontation. You had McDaniel in one office and his quality control office. She had Sean McVehan's new tight-in office. She had Matt McFleur and his quarterback after next to Cal.

You had cow barking at Matt LaFleur yelling him by. something, him coming out of the hallway. They get some confirmation from Sean, whether it was right or whether it was wrong. Mike McDaniel saying, chill, dude, let's go in there, let's figure it out, that we all get together. And I'm sitting there and I'm able to listen to all this stuff. Cow's getting irritated to the point that he finally gives up and they find a way to get away from each other until they come back and come over to solution. And I think those things are always like kind of fun. But there was, I think we all, number one, respected one another and there was a trust there as well. So you didn't mind kind of really going for it and coming up with

some ideas that might get shot down, but you didn't take offense to it. At least I didn't. So, but I'm a glutton for punishment as some of those guys probably told you along the way. There's something that has happened to living things since the dawn of time. Cold, heat, pressure, stress, they're all applied to an environment. Organisms. either evolve in that stress, whatever it may be, or they die. What happens when you consider an offense, a system designed by human beings, run by human beings, and executed by human beings, to be alive, to be breathing, capable of evolving? What environment do you create for it? What stress do you apply? And I think it was three years I was having a dinner with Mike Chanahan and he said to me,

yeah you're right i am looking at all these coaches i know exactly what they're doing and i know every one of them are looking at me he's like but you know you never let you knew where you stood and and that's by design he he didn't need to take the pressure off of you you know he needed coaches that were intrinsically motivated to be driven because they needed to study the game because they wanted to do better because they wanted to evolve and i think that that's the difference maker is that that environment is so critical to environments that that lend credence to evolution and innovation is because most systems had a system. And once you learned it, it had answers. You know, you had outlets. This system was different. It was building all the time, building what's based on what a different opponent is presenting.

And so it forced you to understand more about the game. By design, Mike Shanahan never let you knew where you stood because you could never let you let up. Because if you were to allow, someone to let up, then what you have is what existed in lots of other buildings. And he knew that that wasn't the recipe for success. And that wasn't what Bill Walsh empowered him and challenged him to do, which is to constantly evolve and innovate. Chris Burster, the veteran offensive line coach, who Kyle Shanahan has kept with him to this day, would sometimes walk past their offices and hear them all fighting with each other inside.

He'd poke his head in the door and say, do you guys know how fucking lucky you are? and Furster also checked Flowers work because early on, Flowers openly admitted he wasn't cut from the same cloth as the others. I was exposed every single day and then you combine that with the pressure on me by the fact that Kyle and Mike Chenahan hired a friend that didn't have any football experience as a coach.

I had a target on my back. And when I screwed up, I was getting motherfucked big time, all the time. Fuster was also teaching McDaniel the run game, which later would become something McDaniel considered to be his expertise, and something that he believes made him valuable to Kyle Shanahan. One of the cooler things that I did in my career was I recognized that Matt and Sean just competing for Kyle's ear. How the fuck do I stand out? And I'm not going to get it. It's off-putting to me when people are in pissing matches for somebody's affection.

so I knew I wasn't going to participate in that. Then I was like, well, in the run portion when we're watching stuff as a staff, all he was doing was talking to Chris Furster. So I thought to myself, all right, well, that mark it's untapped. It's a skill position guy that was in the old line room. So I asked to be in the office of the line room, and was in the old line room for a year and a half. Then became the receiver coach.

But then sure shit, when we got fired from Washington, and Kyle only could bring one assistant, so he brought me. But it was all like a survival mechanism for me when I got rehired in the NFL and had some guys that were very capable, that were also my age, that was also ambitious. I had to find a different way to be to have value. The entire point, the driving force behind what became a highly competitive, complicated dynamic, was to get ideas onto Kyle Shanahan's call sheet for games. I was not sleeping so I could be more involved in playing to all-niner's,

like every other week, so I could be involved in the gameplay process. And then pitching plays to first year that if he co-signed, then I would get with Kyle and have Kyle named them so that the play would get in. Because if he named it, then he had ownership over it. And I just wanted to get the play in. So a little understanding of psychology never hurts. If you're going to present an idea and you're going to take pride in like a play idea getting put in the game plan and then if he's actually going to potentially call it, you know, and that's a cool thing. Like, you know, I can remember, you know, just, you know, if you have even just some sort of involvement, that's a powerful thing because, you know, you're feeling like everybody wants to feel like their role has some value and is contributing to ultimately our players playing better.

or the team having success. And when you see that stuff come to fruition, whether it's helping a player out or seeing stuff work the way that you hope it would, that's a pretty cool deal. They'd push each other constantly. We enjoyed being around each other, despite what they probably say.

And there was a lot of competitiveness there, too. I remember, shoot, Sean, every week, we'd work out together, and he'd be like, all right, name all the play passes in the game plan. and there might be 20 of them. And I'm like, Sean, I can't name them all, but I'm sure you can. And sure enough, he'd rattle them all off.

Stress, competition, heat, pressure. That started to turn into evolution. As a player, you go to a new city, new coaching staff, new teammates, and there's a lot of excitement around what we were going to be able to do as an offense. Add to the mix a player like Robert Griffin III, Washington's number two, two overall pick in 2012, who could do things most quarterbacks couldn't even dream of at that time. And something new was bound to form. Taking a quarterback like myself, who could, you know, beat you through the air or on the ground,

and a coaching staff that was innovative, smart, and willing to take risks. It felt like it was a match made in heaven. RG3 met the group of young coaches he would be most directly working with. Obviously, you got the brains of Kyle. You've got the boyish energy of Sean. Matt is a different guy, but he was stabilizing for me in that room at the quarterback position. And then Mike, just the comedian that he is, I think everybody's gotten a chance to see how funny Mike McDaniel is. Immediately, under Kyle Shanahan, they all dove in to creating an offense.

I spent the whole year studying the last three years of Tim Tebow, Bench Young, Cam Newton, any zone-reed quarterback that had been in the NFL. not college, because I was watching Robert in college. You saw that, but it was about, how's NFL going to play this? First thing they did when I first got in, the building was they started grilling me on protections and formations and alignment and everything. Because I think in a way, they wanted to show me, you know, just how much studying you have to do at the NFL level to be able to be a master of your craft. But it was also about picking my brain on the system that I ran in college.

Because they had every single snap from 2008 all the way to the first. through 2011 of when I was in college at Bailey University, and we literally watched almost every single snap in my college career, talking about the pistol formation, talking about the choice routes that the receivers were running, talking about how we saw the football field, how we break down defenses. Hey, let's look at what you did in college.

Let's see what you did well, what concepts you were most comfortable with. And then let's introduce you to what we do in the NFL. And when I watched the NFL, they played all. all eight-man fronts. They coached the D in a certain way. And the only way the NFL stopped it was when the back was offset so they could change their defense because they know the zone read would only be on that one way. So watching the NFL on that, then I'm just like, all right, I got to teach us all at a pistol. So no one can ever do that. And I can run our entire outside zone out of pistol too. And now we have a threat of a zone read every single play. And I did that not because someone came in and taught me zone read. or that we cliniced because we understood how the handoff worked and who we were reading, and then we studied defenses of tape and how they were going to play it. Okay, so this next point is important. The coaches did not clinic the offensive ideas they were brainstorming,

which means they didn't outsource to anybody in the college game who had previous experience with it, or bring in visiting coaches to practices like you often see today. They just ran it against their own defense. Combining the college system with the pro concepts and the pro-level blocking was a blast in practice, one, because London Fletcher couldn't call out all the plays, okay? The guy been in league so long, he hadn't seen a play he hadn't seen before. So now we're going to practice and he's calling out power down the middle and we're running zone read speed option counter the other way. That was fun.

Being coaches themselves, the young coaches in Washington all knew how much coaches love to guys. They hope they could keep their plans for the offense with RG3 a secret for as long as possible to put defenses on their heels. Now the defenses have no answer. And we get cover three in the entire year. And we rush for more yards than anyone in Washington's history, John Riggins, anybody, with the six-round running draft pick with Alford. And we're top five in passing. And it's because we have a threat of this run game where everyone has to get in their spots. and now we know what holes are open in the play action.

And people aren't doing a lot of coverage yet for Zone Read. So I'm able to call one pass play 80 single times, and we completed it at 65 times for 20 yards a catch. We had this concept called Drift. And if you watch any cutups of 2012 or 2013, the play was run like 300 times. Unbelievable. It's essentially a play action slant, and you can run it from the slot,

you can run it from out wide, you can run it from a cut split. We even had tight ends run it from a three-point position. in line. And all you're doing is you fake the ball to the running back, either to the side of the linebacker or to the blind side where you have to turn your back, which is the left side for the quarterback, and you throw a slant right behind it when the linebacker jumps the running concept. Now, anyone that talks to you about this offense and doesn't mention drift, they don't know this offense. Okay, this is, it's a staple.

The play was actually one with which RG3 was already pretty familiar. When he ran it in college at Baylor, it was just called something else. But I was also really good at it because I ran that play a thousand times in college. That's how I compartmentalize the offense. This is like this when I was in college. This is like this when I was in college. In those moments, I'm like, man, this makes me feel the most comfortable. It's not about the quarterback draws and his own reads.

We can do those in our sleep. But it's creating those passing concepts that give you rhythm and timing that you're familiar with. No one wants to go to a dance and dance to a new song they've never heard before. You want that, you know, you want that bop. That song that's going to really make you get up out your seat. And I felt like the coaches staff did that for me in my rookie year, giving me those plays and concepts that I was really familiar with. There's all our yards.

There's all explosives. And we had the most efficient offense in the league. Forget how I got to this. Oh, yeah. Did I just change and do everything new? No. We had got to an outside zone. We have a whole play action and bootlay thing off of it.

We have a whole dropback inventory of motions and stuff to get people open. It's like being a magician. I call it ballsmanship. If you asked Matt LaFleurre, he would call it show snap shrink set up, the four S's. And really it's just about being able to not only manipulate the defense, but also build rhythm through those drops. That was what they were the masters at, showing the defense a similar look, taking that look away, giving them something brand new. and we have a quarterback who is going to be elite with his speed. It was the easiest thing ever.

And it was because, not because of what we were doing, it's because we were good at what we were doing, but it's because we were ahead of the defenses. These coaches in that building truly believe that offense had the advantage, where it felt like for years that offenses were just reacting to whatever the defense gave them, this offense allowed us to constantly put the pressure on the defense, to not know what's coming.

It kept them guessing, you know, That one millisecond delay from a linebacker playing run or pass could be the difference between a touchdown pass across the middle of the field for a touchdown, a batted ball, or an interception. So they were masters of figuring that part of it out. I thought that the true master stroke of the offense was how they combined my college offense with the pro concepts to create an offense of its own. One day, during the preseason, Kyle Shanahan met with RG3 and asked him to install his own play, anything he could think of. This is rookie me. I'm like, all right, you want me to put in a play? All right.

So I put in one of my favorite college plays, right? Option routes all over the field. Kyle's like, okay, well, if he runs here and this guy runs here, what are you going to do? I said, that'll never happen because of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. he's like, okay, I don't understand the play, but whatever, go ahead, go run it. So I go into the meeting, I install the play, receivers are all happy. They're like, oh, man, yeah, we got one of those college plays, blah, blah, blah. We get to practice, run the play the very first time.

Everything goes wrong. Blocking is all over the place. Receivers are running, like, kind of the right route, but not really the right route. I completed the pass in rhythm on time to my, like, number three read on the play. then Kyle kind of looked at me and he said, what was that? RG3 reinstalled the play the next day. And again, the next week, as the team started game planning for their season opener. We go to practice, it runs perfectly.

Come back after practice or watching tape, Kyle says, why did you, why do you think I made you put that play in? I said, I don't know, coach. I just thought you felt like you needed a great play. And he said, no, I made you put that play in because I knew for a fact. that you were going to make that play work because you put that play in. Now, take that from my perspective. Every time I'm putting a play in,

that's the kind of conviction that I have when I'm putting that play in. And in that moment, I'm like, you know, that makes a lot of sense, Kyle, because I was definitely going to make sure that play worked because I put it in. I thought it was a great coaching lesson there by Cal to get buy in and to, you know,

obviously make me feel what he feels. every single time he puts a play. For all the excitement between Washington coaches and players, they still had to get the offense off the ground. And at first, it didn't go well. They were three and six heading into the byweek in 2012. And Mike Shanahan had started making some public comments about looking ahead to the next year.

I was coming on to speak after coach. I'm just like, oh my God. The season's over already. It's been nine games. Dang. You know, we got a long season to go, but he's already saying, listen, you know, the year's not going on what we want to. We're evaluated for next year. We're going to see who wants to play.

And then we came back and we won seven straight games to finish the season, win the division, and do everything that we did. Griffin's play during that time eventually earned him that season's offensive rookie of the year award. And he put up truly stunning and historic rookie statistics, both as a passer and on the ground. Washington won the NFC East that season behind his heroics. Everything was in front of him. You know, here I am as a player with my dream coaches. Mike Shanahan, former coach of Denver Broncos. I was a Bronco fan growing up.

To be coached by them and to have that moment happen and for us to win seven straight down the stretch and really play like an inspired football team, there's no other feeling like that. Hearing the fans chant your running back's name, Alfred Morris, after you beat the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night football to finish the season, win or go home, those types of moments, I'll never forget that. So much of what the entire group was doing, including their quarterback, was inventing at a full-on sprint.

Here's Mike McDaniel. That year, I contributed way more than Sean or Matt to the offense because that bit more I think it was right in my wheelhouse because we were inventing live speed to get into playoffs. And the biggest game we were playing in the 17th week and win and get into the playoffs against Dallas Cowboys. And in-game, they did a overload front that takes away tight-end side run game. And in-game, I came up with an audible to go to Zone Reed. against that overload, and we ended up running it several times and got them out of the overload. 18 Zorro Can 52 Gris. That was the Audible, an adjustment in-game that Mike McDaniel will remember forever.

It depends on the direction, but let's say it was right-handed. It was a 359 can. That's a standard front that takes away strong side combinations and outside zone. There's only a defensive lineman that's on the center to the weak side and then one defensive end. So it makes you very vulnerable away from the tight end. In the pistol, you can go that way, or you can read, zone read, the backside end, right-handed. That stands out from my football journey as being like one of the moments that I knew.

that I was different, that I could be something. It was tangible. It was something. I just known from older coaches that it doesn't really happen. But after that, everything fell apart. Really, for good. In the intoxicating whirlwind of football's most exciting ideas, there is all too often a human cost. The style of offense Washington ran wasn't just mentally demanding of their quarterback,

but physically demanding, of his entire body. Griffin heard the cheers and felt the emotional highs of that Dallas game, yes. He also played 100% of the snaps in it, just a few weeks after spraining his LCL against Baltimore. I think that's a big piece of the story there that just hasn't been told. I constantly felt for years now since that injury happened in 2012 that I let guys like London Fletcher down. Famed veteran linebacked.

London Fletcher was RG3's locker neighbor and became a mentor and close friend. The only reason I played through that injury was because I was trying not to let those guys down. I didn't want to let Chris Cuehler down. I didn't want to let London Fletcher down or Santana Moss down. I knew they were at the end of their careers. And this was an opportunity for them to win a ring on a team that was hot at the right time. That part of it has always been tough. I'm telling you, I just saw London Fletcher at the draft. And we talk. We don't talk about it, right? It's just, it's the feeling I get when I see him. I get that feeling that like, dang, man, I let the old vet down.

And, you know, you never want players to feel that way, but we're human. We all want to play. And that's kind of something that kind of sticks with me. At the time of his initial injury, in that Baltimore game, Griffin missed a play, went back in, and then ultimately left again. Washington, which had already been fined $20,000 that season by the league office, for not being transparent in disclosing a concussion Griffin suffered in week five, fell under scrutiny again.

Sidelined Dr. James Andrews was quoted by USA Today, saying that he had not cleared Griffin to return to the game against Baltimore, nor that he had even examined the quarterback, running contrary to Mike Shanahan's comments to reporters about the situation. The story broke on the day of Washington's wildcard game against Seattle. Griffin suffered another knee injury in the playoff loss and ultimately had to get surgery on both his LCL and ACL. Of course, the injury was a bummer, right?

Major letdown for the team, for the city, for myself. I felt like I let my family down, you know. I felt like I felt my teammates in that moment on something that was really out of my control. You're trying to get down and you get hit in a bad way. You know, sometimes things just happen and then to re-injure it

in the Seattle game, really just throwing the ball back across your body. It's just in that moment, it wasn't meant to be. And that's a hard pill to swallow at times. But I look back on it, I know I played through the injury

from my teammates. I knew we were rolling the second half of the season. And like I said, that injury took away that momentum. At the end of the day, what I do know is that I want everyone to know

that I played through that injury for my teammates. And if you ask any player out there, even if they don't know which way is up, right? They don't know which end is up. They're going to tell you, hey, I want to play, through no matter what's going on. And there are certain times when we need people to protect us from ourselves. And in that situation, it was 100% that type of deal.

I was going to play or want to play no matter what. I wish there was somebody there that could have protected me in that moment from myself. Griffin did return to action. Some argued too soon in the next year's season opener, but eventually was replaced by Kirk Cousins. Washington went 3 and 13 in 2013, and Mike Shanahan was fired.

I never coached with my dad, but I always thought he was the best. Me being in the league, I always think Billiuchick is. Never coached him. You never know for sure, but holy cow, and that's not just because of its stats, it's going against him. But my dad was amazing. Then I get with him in Washington, and it goes down right away,

and he doesn't have necessarily the backing and stuff. And I start to sit there, and I'm just like, but my dad's so good. And I just got with him. And oh, my God, he's better than anyone I've coached with it. I've been in this league for six years already. I haven't seen someone like this. And now I don't get what he can do. And then he goes through some tough years, and you realize, oh, maybe perception-wise

he's not as good. That killed me when I worked for him. like killed me. Like Washington, I'm sure it was real hard on him. But the only reason it was hard on me is because I hate, I had such pride in my dad's legacy and how proud of him I was. And I didn't, and now I'm trying to help him. And it seems like he's losing that.

And I went through a while where it made me hate football. It's an ache where I can appreciate 2012 and I can appreciate what we did as a unit. All those coaches, you know, played a unique way. in making that year's success on many different levels. Our team was closer that year than really anything you can possibly imagine. So I appreciate 2012. I know the fans appreciate 2012, probably more than the players do. But I tried it.

I gave it everything I had, but the injury took away the momentum that we had that year going into the playoffs. And I feel bad about it. Sean McVeigh was sticking around under the new staff. Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Mike McDaniel, and many others were not. Their collective Adam was starting to split. To say that all of those guys would end up where they're at today based off of what was going on in Washington, I don't think anyone could have predicted that.

And I say that with the utmost respect. You understand that in life, certain times people aren't ready, for success. They're not ready for that moment. But all of the experiences that we had in Washington, I feel like have set all of us up on the past that we are. And the competitiveness is truly something that I don't think can be expressed enough. Credit is a huge thing. Everyone wants the credit for what happened. Those guys were constantly pushing each other, whether it was scheme wise, whether it was players, putting guys in the right position to be successful. They were all competing every single day to figure out, all right, I get credit for getting

this guy here, doing this, doing that. And honestly, it drove, it drove their success. And sometimes it can drive your failures as well. And I think that's a little bit of what happened there in D.C. was you got to fail sometimes in order to succeed. And I think they failed in the right times and moments that helped them grow into who they have become today. Around the league over the next couple of years, a buzz would grow. On the next episode of the Play Caller, The Rams pursuit of Sean McVeigh. Marshall was happy to go to dinner with this 30-year-old, but he thought that was stupid and that we were stupid.

And the scar tissue of failing on football's biggest stage. Do you want to go with the risky thing, or do you want to go with the conservative thing? Man, I better watch out for my personality. Jordan Rodriguez is the creator, reporter, and host of the play callers. Kent Garrison is the supervising producer and sound designer, editorial assistance from Ken Bradley, Matt Havia, and Mike Smelts are the executive producers.