The Ringer NFL Show - Edelman Retires, Offseason Workouts, and Marc Ross on the NFL Draft

Episode Date: April 14, 2021

Kevin and Nora react to Julian Edelman’s announced retirement (01:00), as well as teams not participating in offseason workouts (06:00). Later they are joined by NFL Network analyst Marc Ross to discuss biases against Black quarterbacks, what to look for when scouting for elite receiver prospects, and much more (11:00). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guest: Marc Ross Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From in-depth analysis of basketball and football to life advice, Ryan Rusillo has got you covered on the Ryan Rusillo podcast. Join him as he talks to some of the best names in sports while providing sharp analysis and wit you won't find elsewhere. Check out the Ryan Rusillo podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ring Runn-Refel Show, part of the Ringar Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, drawn by Noel Prince of Adi, Noel. What's going on, buddy? Not much, Kevin. How are you? I'm just hanging. You're just hanging? It's two weeks of the draft. It's draft season. Yeah. We're getting in the mix. We're excited.

There's pro days. There's speculation. There's second pro days. Yeah, you got your first pro days. Then you got your second pro day. Justin Fields is the second pro day today. We talk about that with Mark Ross. Incredible interview with Marks, former Giants and Eagles executive, Marks at the NFL Network now.

He touched on a number of really interesting things, whether that's Justin Fields and why there's the perception that his stock is dropping. We talk about the Eagles being in disarray. We talk about a lot. It was really, really interesting. One of the best interviews we've done, quite frankly in a long time. I'm a Mark Ross fan now.

It's not necessarily that I wasn't a Mark Ross fan before, but I'm a diehard-d-hard fan now. You were just totally against the booking until an hour ago. I pitched a bit. No, I was very supportive of it, but he was really fantastic. No, he was amazing. We're both huge fans. All right.

So let's start with the Julian Edelman retirement. Nora, you wrote about this for the ringer this week. You've covered Julian Edelman. I don't want to do a Hall of Fame debate. I thought that was really weird. And I think that it's... Here's what we should be focusing on instead of doing a ridiculous Hall of Fame debate.

Julian Edelman, arguably, shouldn't have been able to work himself into having a viable NFL career. And now there is a Hall of Fame debate. It doesn't matter which side of it you're on. It doesn't matter how silly it is. It doesn't matter how seriously you take it. It doesn't matter if you think

that we don't count postseason performances. heavily enough when we're talking about the Hall of Fame, it doesn't matter if you think if if Heinz Ward can't get in, then it's ridiculous for Julian to. I don't care. It's irrelevant. The fact that we're having the discussion at all is remarkable.

And that's what the Cota on the career is to me much more than will he, won't he, should he, shouldn't he? You wrote about this, as I said. Your number one takeaway from Julian Adaman's career, aside from that, the way he played, the way he, chemistry had with Brady, obviously the big catches in big games. What are you going to remember

about his career? He's a just relentless person. Yeah. To the point where it can rub people the wrong way, right? Like, as we think about Julian Edelman and we think about, you know, an undersized college quarterback who turned himself into a great NFL receiver and one of Tom Brady's preferred targets and someone who was part of Super Bowl winning roster after Super Bowl winning roster. And the way that he did that was just he never stopped when people told him to stop. And that includes stuff like starting fights at training camp. Like I have begged Stefan Gilmore multiple times to tell me what Julian said to him on the field during his first training camp in Foxborough that caused them to start a brawl.

And training camp fights happen, but this one was ridiculous because, one, they happen less in New England. And Stefan Gilmore is one of the least flappable people I've ever interacted with in my entire life. He speaks at about a whisper and a building could be burning next to the guy and he would just be like focused on what he's doing. Julian got under his skin to the degree that they were just going at it. during camp. And I've just never forgotten and I've asked Steph a bunch of times like, what did he say to you? What happened? That that happened? And he always like cracks up and will look at me and just go, I can't tell you. I can't tell you. I can't tell you. And I always think, I think one day he's going to crack. But that is something that I am so, so desperate to know

the answer to. But that little detail as much as, you know, the catch in the Super Bowl against the Falcons and the way that he first won a rock. spot by learning to return punts, which is actually a really, really, really difficult skill to learn. That was sort of what I was thinking about first and foremost. And I was writing about his retirement is that he just did these things that people were like, no, you're not going to be able to learn how to do that. It's actually a really complicated skill. But he saw little cracks to make himself useful and essential and knew that he was never going to succeed because he was the biggest guy, the strongest guy, the most talented guy.

He just found those little cracks and worked his way through. And you know what? There are some sort of darker sides to that, right? Like, he really put his body through a lot. And ultimately, on Monday when he retired, it was just, it was a product of the guy kind of throwing up his hands and saying, look, I can't do it anymore. I'm trying to keep going and it's not working. So, yep.

The career he carved out for himself was incredible. I believe, by the way, the former college quarterback and his career six for six on passes, 158 rating in a regular season. Yeah, let me tell you, he reminded one Thomas Edward, Patrick Brady of that fairly frequently. He and Mohammed Sanoo are the two best quarterbacks in history of football. Two best quarterbacks on the Patriots. I enjoyed watching him play, as we talked about. When I worked at the Wall Street Journal, he came in one day, and he and I did a thing together.

And then afterwards, I'd never, there's only two people that I've seen the Wall Street Journal newsroom kind of bright character for. Most people, is people coming in all the time. And the line of people to get a Julian Edelman photo or autograph was longer than I've seen for anybody except Bono. That would be my guess. Whoa. Yeah, except Bono. And so Edelman, he was a folk hero in New England. And he, again, there were better skill guy.

I mean, you know, Rob Gruncowski was better. You know, there were Randy Moss was better. All those guys, I mean, they didn't play at the same time. But I'm just saying in the Patriots dynasty, there are players who were better. But I think that as far as carving out a career, as far as making big play, as far as winning a Super Bowl, as far as understanding the system and knowing how to make value of yourself to an element of a nice career. Nice career. All right.

Second nugget before we get to Mark Ross, the Broncos, Bucks, Lions, and Seahawks are release statements saying they are essentially skipping OTAs, which are voluntary. This was expected. I don't think anyone really expected a full go in-person off-season. There have been sort of rumblings that there might be some in-person work, and now we sense the trend that teams are just going to maybe go all virtual again for the early months of this offseason, nor is this a big deal? It's really not a big deal. The Bucks won the Super Bowl.

They had a new quarterback. Like, come on. We just did this and it worked out fine. If anything, teams should be better at this by now. I don't know that it'll be, I don't know that everybody's going to skip, right? depending on what the teams decide to do in terms of how they're going to structure it. Some guys have incentives and their contracts where their agents are probably going to tell them to show up. It might be team to team.

We'll see. The Players Association is advocating for this to not exist, for nobody to go, for this to not happen. There are conflicting incentive structures there. Ultimately, though, I'm just not doing it this year. Like, we spent so much time and energy and thought trying to figure out, how last offseason with all of the changes that went down during that period were going to impact teams. And you know what? Here's what happened. There were fewer injuries. And the Bucks won the Super Bowl. So I'm not saying that there aren't ways in which you can handle the lack of

practice time stupidly. But if a team is going to be smart about it, I think they will be okay. And if these players want to take their off seasons more for themselves, rest their bodies, is fine by me. If the full offseason is virtual, I think that affects some parties. I don't think it affects teams necessarily. As you said, the Tempe books introduced

a bunch of new characters into a season and by January they're the best team in football. But I do think it affects, especially at the bottom of the roster on Draped for Ages, guys who might be later around picks, guys who

would use April, May, June to get on the radar or guys who are looking for tryouts and that kind of thing. I think that's where it shows up. I actually just don't think we have enough of a sample size to realize

who this affects. But if I had to guess, it would be guys like that. I still think that teams can operate at mostly full efficiency with the offseason in the early months. I do think the training camp is important and having a full training camp is important.

Maybe you have a mandatory minicamp in June or something depending on on what the situation is in the country but I do I do think that it's kind of case by case for how this matters I do think it matters unfortunately to younger players I don't think it matters for the elite younger players like I don't think

Jamar Chase is going to be any worse because he you know there wasn't a rookie minicamp or whatever I don't think that Trevor Lawrence is going to be you know the deck's going to be stacked against him I don't believe that but I do but I do believe if you're trying to get on the radar

of NFL team it's different. And that's just a cold reality. It was the cold reality last year too. So it's a big deal for some, but I don't think NFL teams are going to freak out if everything is virtual for the first couple months of the off season. All right. Get to, get to Mark.

Let's do it. All right. Mark Ross, NFL network analyst, former executive of the Giants and Eagles and Bills, I believe. He will be a part of the draft coverage in two weeks on the NFL network. And it is officially silly season, Mark. Mark Ross. What is your read right now on how silly this stuff has gotten, the smoke screens? It's April 14th. We have two weeks to the draft. We talked about it before a minute ago. But when you look at kind of this silly season as compared to most, there's so little information going around because there was no combine limited limited tape, I guess you could say, from last season.

What's different about this silly season as compared to most, Mark? Yeah, well, I'm just looking forward to 375 more mock drafts before we get to the drug. That's what I want to see. I just anticipate those coming out every day. So, no, it's just the, I think, I don't know if it's any different. It just seems like that just because everything's so important that we're talking about it now, whereas before the scouts would be other places, they'd be hunkered down altogether, kind of more limited.

Now it's everything just seems to be out there. and every little pro day is taking so much more importance, especially with these quarterbacks, you know, the second pro days now that are going on with all these guys. And honestly, if you're getting to this point in any of these teams and you're needing these second pro days to figure out whether it's the guy, then it's not the guy and you're just really just making this sort of a show. And that's what all this seems to me.

I'm just laughing at it all. Like, this has all just been a show for these last couple weeks with these pro days with quarterbacks. What's the best smokescreen that you've ever set in the front office? Oh, geez. Well, we've always, I don't think there's one specifically, but we would always try to just bring in guys or, you know, to our, we want to interview or having that we didn't really have that much interest in.

It blows up in your face sometimes, too, though, now where you're trying to get information, you're legitimately trying to get information on guys. One year we wanted to take Leonard Floyd. And he had some, like, medical issues that we kind of had to dig in deeper on. And I had sent my one of my scouts down there a few times, thought it was clandestine, but all the information got out there. And I think we had some people in the building too kind of leaking information too. So that's when the bears kind of traded up over us to take Leonard Floyd.

And then actually, Conklin from Michigan State, the big tackle, Jack Conklin, we had a lot of interest in him, too. And then the Titans traded up over us to take him that, you. as well. So we kind of got bit that year. But most years, you just, you have guys you bring in, you like, you send coaches to workouts, the guys you like, some you don't like. But there's not really one specific guy. I think we kind of snake people on. On the flip side, are there any examples of you feeling like, ooh, you might have fallen for a smokescreen? Like, I always think about the dolphins convincing everyone that they were not actually interested in Tua. And then all of that turning out to be false. Is there one where, where you remember,

thinking, oh, I totally bought that and they got me. No, well, this, I always just don't believe anything that's going on until it happens. Silly season. That's really, that's what you really have to look at it as like, okay, whatever, unless you just know someone in that building. And even those guys, the best of my friends, like, there's only a certain point that they're going to tell you everything. So you just have to just wait until draft day comes and see how it unfolds, do all your

planning, do all your meetings, prepare best for what you're, going to do in all the scenarios that you want to see transpire, but really don't believe anything. And we would, even going up to the draft where our pro department would have the teams and their needs and they put, you know, their first need, second need, all that kind of stuff. And then you get to the draft and they pick their fifth need in the first round. So it's a lot of preparation, a lot of talk, but then the draft unfolds differently each year and no one can predict it. Being on the other side of it now on the media side of it, and seeing all this information,

you said you don't believe anything, but this gets us to pick three in this draft, which some people really believe it's going to be Mac Jones. Some people are totally agnostic to it. Some people think that that's all a smokescreen. If you were to handicap that, you go where with that, Mark? And I'm just, I'm not looking at this as far as Intel. I'm looking at this as far as an evaluator.

And at number three, if you just had the number three pick, you want to take one of the most talented players in the draft. Now, you trade up three picks, four picks, whatever they did. I've lost track now. To get that number three pick, you want to make sure you get a player that's going to be one of the most talented players in the entire NFL. So this whole deal about Mack Jones fitting a system, I just can't bother. There's absolutely no way that you have that number three and also give up all that number

three and say, we're going to take a guy who's the equivalent of Kirk Cousins. That just makes absolutely no sense to me as a talent evaluator. You take a person that has a chance to transcend a team to be one of the best players in the league. And that's Justin Fields, in my view, because, okay, he can be a system quarterback. People just, like, dismiss. Like, there was just, Justin Fields and Ohio State were just going out there, just throwing the ball around, trying to, you know, draw plays in the dirt and go. Ohio State had one of the most efficient offenses in the NCAA.

but oh, by the way, Justin Fields is also the best playmaker of all these quarterbacks, and that's what you need at the quarterback position. There has not been a system that has won a Super Bowl or consistently competed in playoffs. There has not been a system or limited quarterback that has done that either. And that's not what teams or head coaches are looking for. The latest example of that, the most glaring example, is what happened with the Rams, with Sean McBey, who many considered to be the best offensive mind in the game. Now, Shanahan's there for that as well.

And then with Jarrett Golf, we saw what he could do. But then once we got to the Super Bowl, we saw the limitations. And then we saw the limitations kind of got exposed in those years since. And now Jared Golf is gone. Why? Because he had limitations. So now if you're San Francisco and you're at number three and traded all those picks to get the three, you're going to say, we're going to do all this to get a guy with limitations.

I just can't understand that at all. And I don't think that'll happen. You mentioned Fields. I think there's been a little bit of an impression, and part of this correlates with Mack Jones's rise or perceived rise. What do you think has happened where some of the perspective on him has shifted to this idea that he's maybe falling a little bit? I just, I don't see that.

You know, it's, he's been picked apart, and this is that we want to get to the racial issues. the black quarterback issue where each year one of these black quarterbacks gets picked apart. And it's still, unfortunately, the biases that are in the decision makers' minds and scouts, mine, coaches mind, you have to look at who are the people making the decisions. And the normalcy, the biases, a lot of cognitive biases that go into play with this. I don't want to get too deep in the weeds with it. But all right, the stigma of a black quarterback, and then what is the full,

to be a black quarterback. Not smart, doesn't work, all these things that unfairly get put on them, whereas someone like Mag Jones gets anointed for the minimal traits to have. He's smart and he runs his system. Okay, therefore let's anoint him. Or someone, let's say a Trevor Lawrence, who has glaring, glaring flaws as a player, but are not talked about whatsoever just because he has been anointed as the second coming. So unfortunately, Justin Fields has just been the latest in line of black quarterbacks that have kind of their character or their steel has been, you know, diminished because of that. Black quarterbacks have to be twice as good, three times good, four times as good,

to get to the level of just being on an equal playing field. And we're still seeing the effects of that, unfortunately. If you were running a scouting department right now, Mark, what would you instruct your scouts to do as far as that goes, as far as just not having those biases that seems to be, not only throughout NFL teams, but throughout the media as well? How, I guess, should teams be looking at this

and kind of train their scouts coming up to get rid of those sort of biases, Mark? Well, I think the league office teams, there's people who get paid a lot of money to train people as far as the way. This is not just the NFL. This is workplace. This is America. This is what happens in America, day in and day out. So this is just not an epidemic with the NFL where black quarterbacks is really a societal issue that needs to be rectified.

But the NFL teams, I think, should, you know, they have psychologists that they have on staff to study the players. Well, they need those people to help train that staff as well and coaches. And they need to start taking that step. But I think the league office really needs to be at the forefront of doing that. which they have been with some of the hiring practices with head coaches and general managers specifically where the league office has kind of taken the forefront teams have had to catch up to that.

I think that needs training as far as biases needs to start going into that as well to help in the evaluation process, the hiring processes, not just of players but also of staff. You know, the first bullet point is that some of those implicit biases are prejudiced. and ignorant, but they also, teams aren't going to win as much if they're not seeing

these guys for who they are and for all of their talents. And, you know, if that, hopefully that doesn't actually happen to fields, right? Because from what it sounds like your evaluation is, he's just an incredibly talented player. You mentioned San Francisco. Are there any other fits that you particularly like for him? Well, Atlanta right there at four. That's just, in my view, he's from that area. You know, they've got Matt Ryan there who they can just ride out for a year and then get Fields ready and just then start playing him.

So I actually think that that would be an incredible situation for him just to revitalize that fan base down there being from there. Unlike, you know, people love Matt Ryan, but I think just how Michael Vick was back then in that community and that whole, if anything know about Atlanta and that whole deal,

like Justin Fields would be that perfect guy. So the slipping with him, he shouldn't even have had to go through that, but I don't think there's any way he gets out of that three, four range, despite all this, despite all the, well, is he falling and all that? I can't see him falling past four. How do you view these teams like, so Atlanta's one because Matt Ryan's obviously on the older end,

but they're committed to him for at least another year or two, or a Carolina, these teams that have at least someone written in at the starting quarterback spot, but also could have a shot at one of the top five guys in the draft. Is your philosophy take as many swings at quarterback as you possibly can, or how do you approach those decision points?

Yeah, you want to... It's the quarterback's the most important position in sports, by far, and you see what teams are doing to try to get one of these guys, but it also has to be the right guy. You just can't get a guy in there. And as we've seen every year, we're talking about these five or six guys.

Two of these guys might be good, and the rest will be, you know, won't make it or just be average. So we have to look at it like that as well where they're not all going to be good. But I think the ideal situation is the Atlanta situation where they've got a guy, you know, Carolina is saying they'll still look at people, but I just think they're out of the mix, whereas as far as the first round, they're going into the draft as sitting at eight, nine, whatever they were. They're probably thinking, we're looking like, wow, we're just going to miss out.

And I think that's why they made the trade for Sam Darno, which I think on the grand scheme of things as far as a quarterback movement over the summer, I had been saying why aren't teams, more teams, especially like a Washington or Chicago, getting in on this Sam Darnold thing, a 23-year-old who shows flashes, oh, no, let's go with the 40-year-old guy that's been playing for 20 years that we know can't do it instead of taking a chance on this 23-year-old guy with talent. But that's a whole other segment. Just an editor's note, Andy Dalton's not 40.

Yeah. Okay, sorry about that. How old they just plays like it. Fitzpatrick is he 40 yet? I mean, it's like getting there. Okay. So Atlanta still is the best one just as far as people don't realize like it's not just on the field where these quarterbacks or even any player has to play. It's all the all just finding a place to live, just figuring out where you're going to go shopping and your family, all that kind of stuff.

Just think about your first day and going to camp somewhere and you're like, oh, what am I doing? But then you go to that same camp the next year. you're like, oh, I'm just going here, I'm doing whatever I got to do. It's the same with NFL players where people just on the outside, and they do get paid to have to perform. But the comfort level of that second year or into the season is just not just on the field, but off the field. It's so much better for guys to adjust and be able to just step in and take over

when they don't have to worry about anything else except for let me just go play. Mark, you know, you were a scouting director with the Eagles, I think you were the youngest in the league at the time. And the last time there was a top heavy quarterback draft like this was 1999 when the Eagles took Donovan McNabb. And you had Couch McNabb, then at Kelly Smith. And then at 11 was Donovan, excuse me, Dante Culpepper. So when you're going one through three like that and you're playing out the different scenarios, you know, you can't trade back because you don't know if the quarterback you like is going to be there, all that stuff. With the teams you're going through it now, take us through what the challenge is when you know there's the possibility that could be one through.

three quarterbacks or you don't know. I assume you knew Tim Couch was coming off the board at one. But take us to kind of the game theory when it is a top heavy quarterback draft like this, Mark. Yeah. And Kay McNaugham from UCLA, he was in the first rounder as well. Chicago, too. At 12, yeah. Yeah.

So don't forget Kay. Five quarterbacks in the top 12. Wow. Okay. And one through three. Which might, and it might get surpassed this year. I think it'll get beat. what you do is you, all right, so you know this, there's this group of guys and you're just,

you have your whole contingent, you know, I started out with Donovan right from the start where, you know, being in two of days, just going to Syracuse, I was the area scout and then moving on. But once you start getting really into the process, you got your head coach, you got an offense coordinator, quarterback coach, the owner is involved, the GM, obviously, and you're just doing all the information as far as watching a film, but also we just kind of had a traveling caravan where having all those prospects come to Philly, but then also going to all their pro days just to get a feel for them and as people to fit. One of those guys we had in the Philly and he got there and he goes, wow, there's a lot of big buildings around here.

I won't say which one of those guys it was, but it was like, okay, he can't make it here in Philadelphia. So it's the fit as far as the talent on the field, but also who can handle whatever city you're in, whatever organization, the pressures of that. And just as far as us, Donovan was the perfect guy, Chicago guy, played in the Big East, was on the East Coast. He was just a natural fit as far as the on the field, off the field stuff. But you're just getting as much information as possible from as many people. There should be, but that being said, you should know by watching the film, like, this is the guy. There shouldn't be that we're watching all these guys. think they're all pretty good.

There should be once you're watching that film together, or whoever each individual is, like, that's the guy we want. And then you kind of just structure how you're attacking the offseason to making sure that what you're seeing on film and the off the field character of that person is going to represent your organization the way you want it to. What did you learn from sitting next to Andy Reid

and going through a quarterback evaluation? Andy just had a really, of anybody I've kind of been around a way to really just efficiently, effectively, in a concise way, break down a player. And he was like this addressing the team. He was like this in practice where it was, instead of using 30 words, he used six, but it was like, oh yeah, I got it. And he could really just, he just had an excellent way of transferring his message in a clear, concise way

that I don't think I've been around any, especially a head coach, but any other coaches or even personnel people were able to do that in a way that he could. And that kind of speaks my language.

I try to do that as well. But he, as I'm rambling, I'm saying that. But he just kind of had a concise way of being able to do that. Is there just an example of that, how that translates? It doesn't need to be a particular player, but. Well, let's just say,

he's watching it on QB and then be like, all right, watch, you know, his feet with the delivery right here. And it's just like, boom, okay, there it is. Like it's instead of saying, all right, the drop back to seven steps and then he winds up and then he does that is just let's let's hit these with the keywords and go from there. And as I mentioned before, it was the same in the locker room or after the game. You know, you win a game and like, all right, let's move. It was just the way he could deliver things.

That was amazing and still to this day. Mark, I want to talk about the Bengals here for a second because they have maybe the most interesting pick in the top 10 because they can go in a number of different directions except for quarterback. They're covered there. When you look at the debate and we've seen, you know, Bengals fans are engaged in a civil war at this point over whether or not you take a tackle or Jamar Chase or Devante Smith or whatever it is.

I assume right now it's Sewell versus Chase on the Bengals board, but you never know. If you're looking at this and you are deciding between an elite receiver and elite tackle to build around your quarterback, you start where? You go receiver. An elite, an elite receiver.

And I think Jamar Chase is that. And because elite receivers can bail out quarterbacks and we see that we took Odell that year. I mean, he was the offense. I mean, just throw it to Odell. We didn't have any blocking. We had to run. throw him a slant and let him go 60.

I mean, that was, and that's what elite players can do. I think Jamar Chase sort of has that ability. The good thing for Cincinnati is that it is a deep year for tackles for O-Lyman. It's pretty good. So I think the second go-round, they could even get a starting quality tackle, whereas you're not getting a chase. You're not getting a Jamar Chase. And I think with him, it's, I talked about the Alton Field,

the fit would burrow, those guys being together already, I think that synergy, that chemistry is perfect for them to take Chase where there's not going to be a learning curve. Those guys speak the same language from day one. They're going to be running with what they need to do, their timing and all. So I think Chase, the talent, number one, but also the chemistry of borough, he's perfect right there. With Odell in particular, I was going to ask about that because obviously he was a third receiver they came off the board. Obviously, Mike Evans had come off at seven. very good player. Sammy Watkins

worse than Beckham quite frankly at 4 to Buffalo. No other way to say that. When you're scouting receivers, especially now, because it is such a passing game, Andy Reid is talking about this. These guys are catching the ball and throwing the ball a million times more than they used to

20 years ago. When you're scouting elite wide receivers, what traits are you looking for? Number one is separation. And that comes in different form. Some guys are explosive in their movement. Some guys can change directions extremely fast. Some guys are big guys that can use their body to push off, but you have to get that separation at different levels from the DB. And number two, just to break it down quick, you got to catch. You got to catch the ball. And that's kind of forgotten with some got, there's natural catchers. There's kind of more manufactured catchers. There's guys that, can catch when it's clean, when that means no one's around them, but can't make plays when

bodies are around them. I've talked about the separation. You're not going to get that all the time. Who can make plays when it's dirty in there? And that's whether you're on the outside and there's a DB close to you or if you're inside and there's a lot of traffic going on when things are messy in there. So those are kind of the two most important elements I look for in receivers. and that doesn't have to be incumbent on their size, their speed, their build, where they came from. If you see those things in a receiver, it kind of transfer is really good from the college level into the NFL level. And, you know, I talked about Odell, but, you know, with the Giants, you know, we had Plaxico Burris,

who was 6'6, and he had his ability, Moni Tumor, completely different. Then we had, we go to on the Hakeem Nix, who was different in Victor Cruz. So we've had a really prolific mix of different types of receivers who all kind of were playmakers in their own right and with different styles. Just to stay on the elite pass catchers with guys like Devante Smith or Jalen Waddle, how much when you're talking about, you know, the top half of the first round do size, weight speed metrics factor in? and how much if a guy you really like doesn't meet those measurables, does that give you pause? So if you don't, so typically NFL players, you want them to fall into at least the normalcy of size, speed, and those sort of things. But if you fall outside of that, you have to be exceptional. So in the case of a Devante Smith, and I said this going to the end of the year, when his season was over, I said, all right, now people are going to,

to start tearing down Devante Smith because of the size and he's not going to run well and that Jalen Waddle will surpass him because he was considered to be a workout guy and just the natural explosive athlete. Similar to the same thing last year with Alabama receivers where Jerry Judy and Ruggs, where if you watched Alabama games, Jerry Judy was the guy, but then Ruggs postseason kind of took over because of the workout thing. So that's still always the dilemma for NFL teams where it's the production on field versus the workouts. And I'm a production guy, a film guy, but still the

important, even though there really hasn't been shown to be a correlation between a great workout and being a great player, absolutely none. But there's a correlation between these guys being really good players and still becoming good NFL players. All great NFL players are generally been great college players or high school players as well, but they weren't great workout guys, but it's still that important. So I think the teams that still rely on how players play versus how players work out are the ones that kind of produce and draft good players and don't rely on the workouts and the pro days to determine the value of players.

Is there a caveat with that that's just, you know, frame can influence a player's future durability, right? Or do you think that is also a little overblown? Well, it's, again, you have to look at if a person doesn't meet the requirements of deficiencies, all right, do you see that hindering them on the field? We'll get to the frame, but let's just take the case to Devante Smith because he's the perfect test case for the production workout. All right, he didn't run a 40. Is he slow? Well, when you watched him play at Alabama, did he look slow?

No, he looked like the fastest guy in the field every time he played, right? Yeah. So if he jumped out there and ran a four-sixth, then everybody was saying he's slow. even though your eyes are telling you one thing, the certainty of numbers. That's why the NFL community loves the workouts because the numbers are comforting. The numbers are certain. You can argue all day who's faster if you're watching a film. But if you say one guy runs 4'3, another runs 4 or 5, you can certainly say he's faster,

even though that might not be the case. So Devante Smith, okay, now you say he's 170. Does that mean he's weak? Well, when you watched him play at Alabama, did he look weak? Well, actually, no, he beat press pretty easily. He made tons of catches with people around him. We talked about catching the ball. He did that probably better than any receiver in the league, I mean, in the NCAA.

So that wasn't a hindering factor. Okay, now we get to the health and durability issue. He did have the injury at the end of the season, but was that because he was slightly framed? Was that injury because of that? Did he have an injury history before because he was slight frame? No. has there been a NFL player comparable with this size

to say is durability a factor? And there really hasn't been a case, you know, cases to determine that. So he really is just kind of a one-of-a-kind test, you know, case study of whether this will work. But that's only because he is a phenomenal player. If he was an average player, we wouldn't be talking about him.

He was good, but just because he's an exceptional player, he's in this conversation. I like to pick the brains of people who've obviously been in the war rooms and help inform decisions, some cases make decisions. And I'm curious, if you could have one pick back in your entire career and do it over

again or do a process differently or whatever it is, if you could take a mulligan on anything draft-wise in your career, where are you headed? Geez, taking Russell Wilson at some point we could. We actually had a scout his name was Ryan Jones

and he said this guy's the next Drew Brees and it was Russell Wilson was that guy and we're like all right Ryan sure but you know he and I like we all you know we had different varying degrees of liking Russell Wilson but

he's the perfect guy as well where we talked about Russell Wilson was always great at what he did no matter what he did he was great at baseball all right let's go NC State sure all right transfer they don't want me here because if he went Glennon. All right, let me go over here to Wisconsin team captain first week. Let's go win the Big Tango playing the Rose Bowl. The signs were there. They really were. We just, we just,

we just, we just completely missed them on Russell Wilson. You know, everybody did. So he did all these things, but he was only 5-11. So we're talking about Devante Smith with the weight. All right, now we got Russell Wilson with the height. There's nobody that's been this short. That's been a great NFL player. So let's just dismiss Russell Wilson. And yeah, definitely if we, if I had a chance all over again, would have tried to fight a little harder to get Russ in the second round there for the Giants. We got them and they had to take them in the first, could have got them in the second and it would have changed the course of a lot of things. Yeah, with the Giants in particular, I'm curious because you had Eli Manning and you had him for a long time and he was, he was entrenched in that

starting position. Does that make you, I don't know, does that make you look at quarterbacks far less with the same depth? Obviously, you're not looking quarterback first round, but you know, we're talking about, you know, a couple people have talked about, you know, oh, are there surprise teams with aging quarterbacks who are looking at guys, maybe in the late first, early second? When you're a scouting director and you've got a quarterback like that, who you know is on a big contract, he's not going anywhere. How are you viewing those quarterbacks? Do you looking for more mid-round pick types? Right. You're not looking at the top tier guys. You're looking at them.

You're scouts, you're scouting them just like anybody else, and you're getting information. But let's just say at the combine, we're not digging deep into all those guys. We're not going around, as I mentioned, we did with Donovan. We're not doing all that with the top tier guys. You're doing that more with, okay, who can be a backup that we can develop to be the successor or be able to just step in in games and play well. And we took shots on guys, you know, kind of each, you know, every a couple years there

to try to take a developmental guy. None of them kind of worked out, you know, Ryan Nassib, and Davis Webb. You know, we took guys. We took shots on them. And those were the type of players that we dug deep on as opposed to the top 15 or first round type of quarterback. So you definitely structure your your scouting season if you've got a guy differently than

if you don't have a quarterback. How would you fix if you're just looking at the Giants right now? Obviously, they have Daniel Jones. It's just an interesting roster and an interesting division. What do you see for them? And if you were the Giants right now, what would, what moves did you be making? Yeah, I mean, they need a pass rush. You know, that's been the foundation of all our teams.

And what we did there is with our Super Bowl runs was, was pass rush. And I think that they have to address that in the draft because they didn't really, you know, they re-signed Leonard Williams and they've got some young guys, but I don't think they really have any sort of game changer in there. So they've got, I think they'll look for that right there. I still think their O-Line needs help too, though. They got rid of Zaitler and other guys, and they've got a bunch of young guys

who are very, very inconsistent and hit or miss with some of the guys that got in there. So I think they're more confident in those young guys than what I see as far as an outsider evaluating them, but I think they believe in them. So pass rush and O-Line, and, you know, they did all they could to make sure that this is it for, you know,

signing Ghaladay and Kyle Rudolph because this is it for Daniel Jones. I mean, this is the make-or-break year for him. Really, make-a-break first few games, you'll see whether he's looking the same or if he's changed at all. Yeah. Last thing I want to touch on is the Eagles,

because there was a story out in the Athletic this week about, I guess you would call it the dysfunction of a team that three, four years ago, I thought was one of the smartest teams in football. I mean, they won a Super Bowl with the backup quarterback. They out-dued Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. I mean, it was amazing the heights they reached. And the athletic comes out with the story,

Shio Kepati is Zach Berman and Bo Wolf, really good piece about the dysfunction and, you know, the fact that the analytics department isn't getting along with other parts of the building and Jeffrey Lurie, micromanaging and all of that stuff. As someone who obviously has been an executive

with multiple teams, how do you navigate that and how, I guess, would you fix the Eagles, Mark? Fix them. So, fix the Eagles right now. I worked there for eight years.

Yeah. And it was, Jeffrey's always been involved. And Andy did a great job. When Andy was there, he kind of, before Andy got there was a lot of back and forth, a lot of kind of owner and Joe Banner was there.

And we had guys get fired and hired. It was a lot of chaos and instability. Andy got there kind of stabilized things. And I think they kind of let Andy do his, do the job. And then I think once Andy was gone, now you've seen a little bit more of a lot of chaos once again there in Philly with the back and forth. You know, and I think the Super Bowl win masked a lot of things. As you mentioned, they look like geniuses.

But when you look at it in hindsight, as you said, they had a backup quarterback who got hot. They had backup running. You know, everything was like backups there. And then afterwards, like, this is the way you build a team. Like, no, you don't. You don't build a team by getting lucky with the Garrett Blunts and Nick Foles and Torrey Smith. They just kind of threw a bunch of guys there together that at the time, like this is amazing, but that wasn't really the way to build a roster.

So I think they kind of, that masked a lot of the deficiencies that they had. So now they've all got to get on the same page. And I don't know if it's beyond that point. But as long as the owner and the GM, I think they're together. and now I think they've hired a head coach who will go with their vision and listen to what they say. He's a young coach who didn't have any other chances. So I think they have what they want there as far as the structure, whether the Eagles fans believe in that or not. That doesn't matter.

They believe in it and they think that's their structure. And that's all you really want in an organization is that just to know that someone is the guy. I've been in two different structures where with the Giants, the general manager kind of had the lead and everything filtered. up to him to make the decision making. When I was in Philly, as I mentioned, Andy Reed was a guy, the head coach, that was the structure. Everything filtered up into him. As long as everyone knows, that's the structure. As long as everyone knows, this is the plan, that's when it's easy to fall in line. But when you've got all these different varying factions and no one knows what's going on, who's making the decisions, who's on whose side, that's when you see a lot of dysfunction

and it's not good for the organization. I'm going to spend the rest of the day burning every podcast I've ever said the Eagles are how you build a football team. Because I said it a lot three years ago and we need to just destroy all evidence of that. Well, you know, they, they, they, the Carson Wentz situation, they were doing it. They thought they were doing it right, doing it that way. And at a time, it did look like, wow, this is the right way to do it.

And then it all kind of fell apart. Yeah, I mean, I think the way they manage the salary cap and some of that stuff and the one-year contracts for some of those guys, I think that there were some team-building lessons you could learn there. But it just didn't age well. And as you said, nobody was on the same page post-Super Bowl. And in some way, you wouldn't trade the Super Bowl, but certainly, as you said, it did create its own problems. Well, being a Philly native, and that's what Eagles fans are going to, we'll do anything. Let's just do anything to get a Super Bowl.

We'll do anything. You'll sell our souls. Well, they sold their souls. And then now two years later, they're mad as can be. They're mad at every like, wait a minute, yep, this is what y'all want. I wanted this Super Bowl and sell your soul to get it. You got it. Now deal with it. In 2007, and you guys won four years later, and I'm curious about just the ability to keep moving in the same direction after you've had success with the Giants, what were the keys there?

Because as we're talking about now, people start claiming credit for stuff or hey, we really need to go all in on this because it worked. When you're kind of just all, trying to row in the same direction and, you know, it's not like you guys repeated. It took you three and a half years. But what were the keys to kind of keeping that all together post success, Mark? Well, yeah, it was. It was a whole different cast of characters, really. I mean, we had the quarterback, and the old line was fairly intact.

We had some new pieces in there, but it's fairly intact. But we kind of just, again, we knew the formula. We got the quarterback. We needed a fresh group of playmakers. So that 07 team, it was plaques and Amani. And then, all right, those guys were older and they, you know, a Plex situation. And then Amani retired. All right, now, who's our next set of playmakers?

And that's what we got Hakeem Nix and Victor Cruz. All right. Now on the defensive side, what's our calling card? Getting after the passer. We got the first set of guys. It was Stray, O.C. A tuck was young. All right.

Who's our next group to come in? That's when we drafted JPP, Linval, Joseph, in the same draft. OC was still there. Tuck was older, the veteran. So we just kind of doubled down on what we felt was our identity. And that was, you know, Eli with playmakers and getting after the quarterback on defense with our front. And that's kind of how we approached it. Mark Ross, NFL Network.

Is it a busy two weeks for you coming up? It's fun. That's fun. Let's talk about it. I make decisions for all the teams. They don't listen and they're making mistakes. You know, no. No accountability on me.

Is it great not having to convince an owner and a GM of something? You just get to say it? Oh, man. It's, man, people don't understand. So I was the guy that take, I got to set the value on it. You know, people, there's a lot of information. It's not one person just sitting in a room making decisions for teams. And this is weeks and weeks of weeks of everybody talking, talking, talking, coaches,

scouts, the owner, the cat guy, the trainers, the developmental person, and your character, everybody in there talking about this for weeks and weeks at a time to come together to make these decisions. And, I mean, it's just nonstop stress and like, oh, boy, let's go. So, but it was fun and all that. But now this is definitely a lot more stress-free just to go up on TV and just tell everybody what to do. Love it. All right.

Well, check his workout at the NFL network. He's got some stuff up on NFL.com. His Twitter is, is it at Mark Ross? At Mark Ross with a C. at Mark Ross with the C Follow him. He's got great stuff. I would be one of our favorite people in media right now.

Mark, thanks for joining us. All right, thanks to Mark Ross for joining us, Nora, two weeks to the draft. I'm very excited. Listen to the Big Board show a lot. That's on this feed on Fridays with the Danys. We love the Big Board show. It's on two times a week.

Everybody's, everybody's listened to it. It's amazing. Danny Highfitts, Danny Kelly. The next one is on Friday. Little Birdie told me you might be golfing soon with Danny Highfitz. I'm trying to. Trying to get some Hyfitz time. You're going to get some draft nugs?

Highfitz is a busy man. You know, he can't really can't really schedule that time far in advance. But yes, the Big Board show, one of our favorite podcasts, we'll be back next week with another guest,

probably another executive. Be my guest, former executive. What a teaser. That'll be on Wednesday. It'll be on Wednesday. There's been the NFL show. on the Ringer Podcast Network.