The Ringer NFL Show - "How Do You Build A Contender in Today’s NFL?”

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Kevin is joined by former Atlanta Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff to discuss his life outside of the NFL, how contenders are built in the NFL and maneuvering around salary cap, CBA’s and star players as a NFL GM.  Host: Kevin Clark  Guests: Thomas Dimitroff  Associate Producer: Stefan Anderson Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening, everybody? It's me, Jason Gough. And it's a long-time Chicago Media dude. I'm on 10 to introduce you to the full go. A new podcast at The Ringer and Spotify dedicate to all things Chicago sports. We'll be coming to you on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights with all the reactions to the locals.

Plus, I'll be chatting with my friends and people who matter in town. If you want to ask a question or fire off one of those absurd barbershop takes, I'll react to your calls on a listener voicemail line too. So whether you're in Lakeview, the Wildhundred's K-town, the Burbs, or a transplant, make sure you follow the full go on Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. It is the Ring NFL show, part of the Ringer podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined you day by former Falcons General Manager and all-round great guy,

Thomas Dimitrov for an awesome conversation about team building, how to build a Super Bowl contender in 2021 and beyond. Let's get to it. All right, Thomas Dimitroff, one of the most interesting guys in football, I think. NFC champion general manager, long-time Atlanta Falcons team builder. Now he rides bikes. He called me last night on a night bike ride. What's going on, buddy?

I was on a night bike ride. Thanks for having me, first of all. And I was riding around in Atlanta, and my mind's really aware of what's going on, but I've been trying to keep my fitness going. And if the day goes by and I don't get my fitness in, I'm not feeling complete. So most people would dissuade me from going out in the dark around here, but it was good, good fresh air. So we're doing a deep dive on team Boeing today,

and not only how the best teams right now in the NFL were built, but also kind of what that means in 2021, what that means in 2022 and going forward. And what I like about Thomas, not only did he build some of the best teams of the last decade, but he also has done a lot of study over the past year or so with some of the best GMs in football. There's no name for it.

We'll call it the untitled Thomas-Mittroff project, but he's been meeting with essentially a full day with some of the best GMs in football. Do you want to talk about that, Thomas, and kind of what you've learned, big picture so far? Sure. I'll start by saying, when I got fired, I was thinking, okay, what am I going to do for the next little while? I didn't want to just sit on my hands. I probably would have liked to have gone to Burgundy and drink some great French wines, but travel wasn't good. So I thought, you know, I interviewed for the Detroit Lion job and didn't get it. And I said, screw this.

I bought myself a sprinter van, had it all modified. It looks like an urban assault vehicle. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to go back. to my roots. I'm going to contact a lot of my contemporaries in this business. And instead of sitting on my hands, I'm going to go out and do some professional development. I got confirmation from 16 around the league that they would do it with me. And at that point, I realized, like, wait a minute, why are we not, you know, capturing this? Why don't we film this instead of letting this get, you know, lost in the ether? So we agreed to it. We got some funding on it. and I traveled around in my van literally to every place,

but 6,500 miles on the van. And I had great meetings starting down in Tampa with Jason Light all the way across the southern coast, all the way up to the northwest to John Snyder and across to, you know, cross the Midwest and, of course, the East Coast. And got a chance to sit down with all these guys. And these guys were amazing.

Again, most of these guys are friends, if not, you know, good friends, if not the Quintz's at the very least, had an opportunity to reconnect with a lot of these guys. And think about this for a second, Kevin. You get so competitive in this league that you get to a point where you used to be in those scouting rooms all over the country, you'd be going out for dinners and drinks. Then you become competitors like crazy. And you're on the phone for a half a minute. So this was a sort of a, just a, it just replenished the friendships. And it was heartwarming in many ways. these guys were giving me between four and seven hours.

I mean, that's unheard of. So we had some great, great time without talking about too much specifics. What I will say to you very quickly is everyone was so different, as you can imagine, all with the same goals. But what makes this project really interesting is there's so many different nuances to everyone, and they all want the same thing. I want to start because the biggest game this week is Ramsbucks. And I want to start with the guy you mentioned, Jason Light, who, Listen, it was not perfect for a while there in Tampa Bay,

and now he's built one of the best rosters in football. He brought every single person back. He has the greatest quarterback of all times as his quarterback, and they seem to have not missed a beat. It's an interesting, I think that the Rams and the Bucks are both interesting from the team-building or second. But I want to start with the Bucks. When you were building the Falcons last year,

and you kind of looked over in the division and saw what Tampa Bay was building, you thought what about the Bucks? Well, here's what I know. Jason Light is a very adept of value. or at the core that's what he is. There's no question about that. He can go toe to toe with anyone. He has a really good understanding.

He has a head coach who has a really good understanding of what they want and how important that is. So I think people look at him and think, wow, they won the Super Bowl last year with some amazing talent that they brought in, older talent as well, that possibly Jason and the franchise, wasn't being visionary this year. And I would say on the contrary, when you win a Super Bowl and you can look across your

roster and think that you can get back 22 starters, that is a massively positive thing, Kevin. It's not just like for the sake of it, we need to cut people to keep everything fresh. In no way do I believe there was complacency or laziness in the approach this year. They were looking at it. And we were taught by Bill Belichick. Both Jason and I were in that. In the Patriot paradigm, it was about literally you know your organization better than anyone.

So there's going to be a lot of people out there throwing their darts and having opinions. What they did was put to keep together and put together a really good team. And like he said the other day to me, Thomas, I have, we have done so much work on building other parts of this organization, pillar types, pillar type players that are young and we can grow with. We are just making sure that we're maximizing the opportunity to use the talent that we're, have who gel together so well. And I'm, I really admire, those weren't easy decisions to make, as you know, to not only bring in Tom, but Gronk, but also other people within the organization. They, they went against the grain. And as you alluded to earlier on, I mean, Jason, you know,

Jason's like I have and like many GMs have, he has felt the hot seat a lot, Keb. I mean, you know that. And he stepped up, took a big ass swing for the fence, and I loved it. I've I say to him now, and I know he doesn't like it, because of his humbleness, he is still the best general manager in the football today because they won the Super Bowl. And I believe that. Everyone who wins the Super Bowl should have their reign as this top GM in the league. And he right now is still holding that. They're undefeated.

They're swashbuckling. They're undefeated right now. Wow. I'm curious because, Thomas, after the Super Bowl, everybody says, well, the Bucs showed the blueprint to beat Mahomes, which I think is ridiculous. It's the same thing as, oh, the Giants showed the blueprint to beat Tom Brady. It's get pressure with four guys and drop everybody back. Well, yeah, everybody's trying to do that.

Everyone's trying to have a fast athletic defense like the Bucs. But I'm curious, when you look at the way that defense was built, what do you think the keys were to the Bucks to actually have the nasty pass rush, the athleticism back there? I mean, you and I have talked about athleticism, the linebacker for a long time. And obviously, you've gotten some great ones. but I'm curious when you look at that defense and how it was built and kind of how

it would be a model for the league if anybody could replicate it but what stands out, Tom's? Well, look, I mean, yeah, you cannot have a linebacker group that can't run with those special backs out there and he's in a division with Kamara. I mean, if you can't run and you can't match, this is a matchup league,

I will continue to say it time and again, that is what it is. And they did a great job with that, knowing that they can run. And then they get some badass pass rush on it. I mean, they can get upfield and then, you know, they're putting together their corners. Again, very impressive way that they're keeping it in consideration.

They know what's out there in their division, which is very, very important. Again, with New Orleans and with whether they have a record or not, with the athleticism on the Falcons group, I mean, that's important. They have to run. They have to match. And then you get experience on top of it, which I respect a great deal. Okay, so the team they're playing this week, the Rams, have maybe the most intriguing team-building philosophy in football right now, because they're just not going to pick in the first round ever again.

The last time that they had a first-round pick was 2016. It was, I believe, the day I started at the Ringer. I'm now washed. That's how long it's been. And it's ridiculous. So, 2022 and 2023 picks are already spoken for with the Matthew Stafford trade. they're always up against it with the cap. I understand why they do it.

And I've talked to the Rams about this, but they are probably the most aggressive team. Everyone talks about this era of All In and all that stuff. And I think it's a bit of a misnomer. I remember talking to Brett Beach about this. And he said, basically, if you want to win, you have to be all in every year. If you have a quarterback like Mahomes,

yes, they're going to be all in every year. But the Rams live it. And I'm curious, as a GM, is somebody who studied it, what you think of the Rams aggression and just how they've approached this. because I just don't think I've ever seen anything like this. I have not seen anything like it as well.

And as you know, Les and I are really close. Les was my right-hand guy here in those early years in Atlanta. Again, a great deal of respect for him. He is a football guy through and through, which I love. And he's paired with one of the best coaches out there who has that understanding as well. It's why they work together so well along with Kevin Demoff. I mean, it's a really good trifecta there who each understand their roles. and they each discuss at an intelligent level, you know, how they want to build this team.

Okay. First thing I think is very important to know is when people throw out the idea that Les Need and the Los Angeles Rams aren't interested in the draft and they have no, you know, they're always interested just throwing money into free agency. Again, after having a conversation with less on my travels, but, you know, we communicate regularly. And I've asked them those things. I've said, look, there are certain moves that I don't necessarily agree with or not strongly disagree with, but I need some answers just to edify me.

And his point to me was Thomas, you have to understand, we are not in this to disrespect the draft. You know my belief in the draft. Our feeling is let's utilize the, let's utilize picks, let's utilize the mid-round picks. Let's utilize compensatory picks to build the nucleus of our mid-group. And then, yes, we are trading away the first rounds, which is tough for people to comprehend. But what we are doing, this I found really interesting, we are looking into what is usually a projection. And you have to understand this, Kevin, as general managers and team builders, we all like to think we're good at projecting.

but deep down in the core, it's one of the most nebulous things about team building. My God, we're projecting. What if our projection is not right at the offensive line position, at the quarterback position, why don't we eliminate some of the precariousness of team building and go out and get people that other teams have already brought into the league who have proven themselves so they're getting proven talent, not only on the field, but there are off the field elements. And I ask less about that. You're also bringing in people who have, you know,

personalities and characteristics that may not always jive with certain teams. And his point to me, again, and I agree with this, they know what they're getting. They're a very studied and detailed, thought-out group. So they're not just picking a player up that may be a little bit of a wayward soul somewhere else and think that they're just getting, you know, someone who's going to be completely along the line and everything is going to be even keel.

They know what they're dealing with and they know what they're expecting. And that's one of the things that was very positive. His point to me also has been over times and talking as I understand studying it, really is taking advantage of what some of these teams out there are doing, whether it's Cleveland or other teams who are claiming a rebuild when they're jumping in and they're allowing players that are pillar players for these big time teams to get out of their organizations. and Les is saying, we're jumping on it.

You know, these teams are gaining a lot of credibility within their towns and their cities, etc., about, you know, claiming the rebuild. So they're going to move on from some of these high-paid players. Less is right there to snap them up. And I think, again, I think it's a really unique way to approach it and really take away from this. They are very interested in the draft.

They may not be focused as much on the one. They're moving back to acquire more and trying to get as many picks as they can to create the rest of their roster and then get the known commodities, so to speak. It's interesting you talked about the kind of the jumping on it because that's something Demoff

has said to me as well, which is that everybody in the NFL, most teams the NFL want to slow play it and they want to say we're building judiciously step by step, all that stuff, and there's an actual advantage to saying, okay, we're going right now. Like our window is right now. And we're going to make the moves based on that. I think it's

interesting philosophy. Last game, I want to talk about before we get into a bigger deep dive, more broad deep dive, Packers Niners. So Packers seem to write the ship on Monday. This game now takes on an extra layer of intrig, but it didn't have after the Saints game. And I want to start with San Francisco. You obviously have been around Kyle Shanahan a lot.

I think there's a lot of questions about Jimmy Garapolo right now and how long he's going to be a starter, how ready Trey Lance is. A couple of questions, and I want to start with this. You had Matt Ryan 2008, and I actually talked to Matt at a little bit of least to go on the Newsday. And I said, what was the. key to having a hot start as a rookie. And he said, a good running game. And Michael Turner and not having having to actually make any plays. But when you're watching Kyle Shanahan handle the rookie

quarterbacks and all of the, everybody's talking about Kyle Shanahan and quarterback to the past six months because it started with the Mac Jones stuff, all that stuff. But watching this Niners team, your big takeaways, what, Thomas? So when you look at the Niners right now, at least in my impression, or my impression is that you have, let's start by saying you have two, really intelligent, thought-out, insightful football men in a head coach and Kyle Shanahan and the general manager. And then the complicated thing is you have two really intelligent, insightful football men at the helm, meaning there's a lot going on there with a lot of intelligence and a lot of discussion. I would love, first of all, to be, have been a fly on the wall for both of these

acquisitions, both Jimmy Garoppolo, as well as the Tray Lance, because I guarantee it wasn't just all just kind of smooth. I've been in those meetings before. I mean, there's a lot going on in those discussions. There's a lot of opinions. And that's what makes a good group really good, is that they're able to discuss, they're able to debate appropriately,

and come to a decision. They obviously have a decision to make there. And I think it's multi-layered, as you can imagine, because first of all, you have the idea of Jimmy Garoppolo and good football player, good athlete, has a presence, of course, certain levels and unfortunately there's an element of inconsistency there and inconsistency for a team that is such as the the Niners that's complicated right because they have a lot of tools in place to

be a stellar organization and they are but they need consistency from their quarterback and then you flip it over and you have tray lance who you know we all know he's got he's got potential coming out of his ears and, you know, the sky's the limit athletically and movement and versatility, which I think is a great thing for him that he has versatility. And that's what, you know, we've heard from Kyle that we're going to use him because of his versatility right now while he evolves. Well, the evolving process could take a long time with him, as you know, because he's been, he has almost an unnerving amount of experience. And I'm talking about, we know, having not played a whole bunch and he's not playing again,

to hand that over to someone right now to a team that can be the top, one of the top in this league, that's a precarious spot for that organization to be in. So it has to be really well thought out. It comes down to wins, even though there's inconsistency and Jimmy, can they still win while they're giving their guy, Trey Lance, the era parent, more experience.

But that little bit of experience, you know, sprinkled in one or two plays, is not giving them the experience necessarily to take over and run with it. And then, oh, by the way, think about it. I'm sitting there thinking about being a GM in this situation, talking to my head coach saying, all right, we need to prove to the world that Jim McGroplo is a good quarterback who is worth really good value on the market if it comes down to a trade.

So there are elements of that that could be justification or rationalizing, et cetera, et cetera. but there are a lot of layers in this decision. Wow. That's fascinating. But the Packers, I have a couple questions about them, but the first is about Rogers, and not necessarily how you would handle that, but I do think,

I'm curious to know how that would have gone down if you were the Falcons quarterback. But I'm more from a team-building aspect. Aaron Rogers makes a ton of money. I want to broaden this a little bit because you guys obviously have Matt Ryan, And I think one of the most impactful conversations that we've ever had is when I think a couple months after you'd signed him to a $30 million deal, you said it's going to be a bargain fairly soon. You know, just wait a couple months and you're going to see some of these contracts.

And Matt Ryan, a $30 million is going to feel like a steal. And two years ago, certainly, it felt like that. When you're team building with an elite quarterback, but also an expensive quarterback, where do you start and what things do we not talk about enough building around a guy like that? on on you know the packer situation let's start by saying okay we know that rogers is still one of the top quarterbacks in this league and and ostensibly holds the key to that keys to that organization i would say first of all on that whole situation this is an unbelievably interesting study and it's a case study for all of us those who are current gms and those who are former's those are looking back to get in, that they are able to study something that no one,

anyone wishes they were in the situation that Brian Gutikins and Matt LaFleur are in. And we are living through them vicariously because we never want to be in that position. With your top guy, let's call it the way it is. I mean, whether Aaron would phrase it this way or not, it's a strong leveraging power play. and when you're the two team builders involved in that, and it's this uncertain whether his future there or not, and how the players are responding to it, again, no one in this league wants to be in it.

It's created massive factions, I think, within the league. You have management and coaches looking at it with a very critical eye saying, the last thing we want is Pandora's box to be opened up this way, where you're going to have more and more of these players with their hands on the so-called, rains. Then you have the agent and the player side and the players are 100% looking at this thinking, man, if we could gain this step of leverage in the future, this is a big, big deal for the league

and it's a big deal for agents. Again, you know agents are sitting there ringing their hands on this and they are thinking, this doesn't come every day, but the fact that it is coming around right now and has caused such an interest level. It is unbelievably. I've never seen it before this way. And, you know, yes, you have guys like Matt Ryan, at least my own experience in Julio Jones, who had a lot of power within an organization. I believe communicating with the guy, i.e. Aaron Rogers. And I told you this before, communicating with Matt Ryan is very, is essential and important. Just like Bill Belichick was always good about communicating with Tom Brady. That said, they do not run the organization respectfully. They can give insight and input. In the end,

I'm a personal, I'm a big believer in, you have to know where the line is that way. And that's a very important thing in the future and how this all plays out. What, it's interesting, everyone's talked about how maybe the Rogers thing is kind of the limits of player empowerment in the NFL as compared to the NBA. You mentioned where the line is. What is the line in the NFL right now? between kind of empowering superstars, like you said, like a Julio Jones, like Aaron Rogers, making sure he feels heard, and giving him the kind of power we've seen in the NBA.

Where is that line right now, Thomas? I mean, for me, the line is good, strong communication and not just like sort of listening, but literally sitting down and talking and listening and getting takes on organization, on, you know, on not necessarily give that quarterback or that receiver that has the power that they may have, you know, video to watch and have them evaluate. In no way do I believe that should be the case.

I do believe their opinions about the club that they're at the helm, you know, as quarterbacks and such or one of the in-charge pillar players, I do value their opinions about it. I'm not looking for them to rat out the other players. in any way. What I am looking for is intelligent insight about the organization and what they see. Whether we as general managers or head coaches make the decisions that are in line with Aaron Rogers or Matt Ryan or Tom Brady is beside the point. We've listened to them. We've contemplated. We've ruminated with everyone in the building who is involved with that. And then we'll make a group and a proper organizational decision with their input being talked.

about. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So let's start big picture here. What is something that we don't talk about enough when we're talking about building a great team? What is the one thing you think the media misses or players miss or fans miss when we're talking about building a final four Super Bowl caliber team? Okay. I've thought about this a lot and I think it gets lost. It is imperative to understand how important the relationship between coaching and management, team building, a general manager and personnel department is. We've talked about the imperative communication there. Yes, that's very important. It's very important to make sure common wavelengths are traveled when you're building the team. The last thing you want to do is bring in

players acquisition as a general manager and his personnel department to a head coach and a coaching staff and just drop them on their doorstep. I think this comes back to communication. This comes back to knowing inside out the evaluation abilities, and I'll lead into this, of the entire organization. I'm talking about coaching staff and personnel staff. As a general manager was always vital for me to know the strengths and the weaknesses of my staff.

It's imperative that the head coach knows the strengths and weaknesses of his staff, and both of us understand both sides, meaning in my situation, Dan Quinn would communicate with me, which coaches were truly involved in the team building side, who had the eye,

who were adept evaluators, and which we knew weren't as adept at evaluative. They're evaluating, they might have been very good coaches, Kevin, and might be very good developers, but their evaluation prowess may be more midline. And I would, that communicating with a head coach is very important. I would say the same thing.

A head coach communicating to me, hey, scout ABC and X, Y, and Z or A, B and C are really good. X, Y, and Z, I'm not buying their evaluations. Well, it's important for me to take that into consideration. This comes back to the importance of an entire group being evaluated, and understood when your team building from an evaluation acquisition standpoint. And too often people are thinking, ah, it doesn't matter. Just give the coaches their players. If coaches are against certain players that are given to them into their rooms,

you know as well as Ido, it's human nature. If they don't like the player for myriad reasons, the success probability for that player goes drastically down. And as a GM, The last thing I want to do, because I'm being judged on team building acquisitions, is our assistant coaches not buying in to the players. And this is a quandary, as you can imagine, you don't want your assistant coaches to be making the decisions. This is about the head coach and the general manager making the decisions,

but you've got to make sure that there's proper communication. It's a really big, big discussion. And it's amazing, just from a media perspective, not even from a GM perspective, from a media perspective, when a coach or an assistant doesn't like a player of the GM drafted, everybody knows about it really quickly, really quickly. I'm talking Sunday night of the draft. They're texting people and saying, I don't know about this because they want to distance themselves.

And it happens all the time. And so it's important. It's important part of it that nobody talks about. And I'm glad you brought it up. Okay. So let's talk about how your philosophy changed and how the league changed over the past, let's say 15 years. And some of those changes occurred at different times than others.

I want to start first with the salary cap because right now is probably the most interesting salary cap era a couple of years because we had really just sort of unprecedented growth. About $10 million years added to the cap for over a decade. And then it slowed. And then now it's about to explode in a way that is even unprecedented, even compared to the last decade. When it comes to player spending and how you viewed for age of, or viewed taking risks or viewed, resigning your superstars, whatever it is. How did your philosophy on the cap change

as you navigated your career, Thomas? Well, that's a really good question. What you have to understand about the Atlanta Falcons is from day one when I stepped in there in 2008 all the way through to, you know, through my 13 years with Arthur. Arthur is such a competitor and Arthur is so generous. Arthur Blank, I'm talking about, of course,

that he would always say to me, utilize our resources. If you look back on my entire time there, this was a strong organizational decision for us to be one of the top spenders. Because, again, you have a competitive owner who wants to give back to the fan base and do all he can to provide us with opportunities. So rarely were we there around the end of free agency time where we weren't trying to utilize and never did I sit there with $20, $40 million cap space. that just wasn't our approach. It never was our approach there. And you can see that through the moves that we have made over the years.

I would say cap management was something that we were really, really aware of. We knew that we were going to be spending at times, you know, cash over cap. And that happens in this league, of course. And then you make it up. There are teams out there that are very aggressive and other teams that are much more reserve about it. That never changed for us, even all the way up until probably this year, where there was a $30 million cut on the cap because of everything that went down. I wasn't a part of that, of course.

I heard a lot of people complaining that we were in Cap Hell, and I said, we're not in Cap Hill. We were never in Cap Hill. We knew that we were ready to make a lot of decisions on players, a number of decisions that weren't going to break the organization, which is a whole other topic. As far as changing that, I would say just from a cap standpoint, and this will bleed into some of the other elements,

when we talk about, you know, putting your money out there. Let's call the way it is. Shorter contracts later on, you know, we've come to a spot where we're spending, you know, we're not having longer contracts. The agents don't want it. The player doesn't want it. He wants another kick at the can. You know, the guarantees that have gone on since the Kirk Cousins deal,

which, as I was talking to a guy recently, we were a cap expert recently. That was heresy, right? that much guarantee we have so much more of an open mind that way so I will be amazed at how things change going into the future fortunately I did not have to jump up and down on our approach I stayed very consistent because the mandate within our organization was consistent interesting interesting um the CBA everybody talks about and you obviously um there were two CBA changes over the course of your tenure in Atlanta um but the tells 11 one was the biggest one And that changed so many things.

Practice time, offseason activities, the rookie wage scale. When we're talking about that, what do we need to talk about more? Look, a big, big deal in that for me, and it was a massive frustration for myself and our head coach and our coaching staff. You know, we're the on-field rules. Let's start with that. I mean, that was a bear. And I'm not, I mean, they worked really hard on that. and there were a lot of positives, you know, to the 11 CBA.

But when it came to that and when it came to the players that were involved in making those rules who were on the back end of their career, and I would have players come to me who were in the middle of their career, i.e. guys like Matt Ryan, who were so keen on developing their talents. Think about that. These players that were in the midline of their career who were looking to get two and three more contracts, they were all about getting better. They wanted more reps. This wasn't just, the quarterback. These, these were really affected it, I felt, was on the interior, you know, the O and D line. I mean, we, you talk about projection, as I was talking a little bit earlier. To project offensive linemen to come in from a college situation and then put them on the

field and have the limitations in contact, that was a bear for us. That was very uncertain from the beginning of your evaluation to bring them in to not developing or developing slowly, to not evolving as you want. I sit back and I think sometimes, I even think about, you know, opportunities that we did. And one of my, I put my hands up, that my worst draft was 2012.

In 2012 was coming after the Julio deal, of course. But in the early part of the second round, we draft Peter Kahn's. A wonderful guy, wonderful soul, but it was a mistake. We brought them in thinking and projecting. And in the end, the way that the rules were set up,

we never truly were able to develop our offensive alignment. It's why you see more and more mistakes on O-line development because of those rules during that time. That is a big, big deal. Now, I like how things have changed. Some of the rules are changing, of course, but that lack of in the trench contact that was limited, again, it did not stop at O-Line,

but it is, I'm focused on O-Line because it is something that was really complicated for a lot of teams. The scouting process in general sped up so much because now you could, I mean, technology changed every single facet of football, but now you could watch. I remember I think it was Dave Caldwell said this to me first, but you can watch 16 games in the time it used to take to watch two games of a college guy, and there was so much communication, the Internet, all that stuff.

What do we need to know about the modern scouting process dumps? So think about this. scouting process way back when my dad was scouting and they were literally cutting down projectors brother they would take the projectors and they had they had to modify them so they could fit over the top because they had to travel with their projectors to have film on the projector and watch underneath you know underneath stairwells at university of Alabama or Penn State it has changed where in those early years when I was scouting of again I was just on the other side of film we were watching VHS and we were watching beta

and we were, you know, we had to be in the rooms together. You know, if someone had the remote and that person was slow and methodical, you'd be pulling your hair out. You're like, man, I got to get, I have to get 30 players done here at Alabama. That has changed now. Your effectiveness and efficiency in a scouting mode is so evolved. You are able to watch many of these players prior to even getting into the school on your school visit. So then you may look at the most recent game or two games, and you already have a really good idea of what you're looking at.

So you can spend more time on your research, which, oh, by the way, remember, we evaluate our scouts not only on their ability to evaluate, of course, equally as important, which sounds really odd, equally important is their ability to research and gather the right information from the right people in their context. if you don't have that, you're a staff that is lacking. To just go off of evaluation, when you guys look at it or Ben's looking at it, I know we're talking about his ability to evaluate, that's one part of it. Shut up, Ben, Solek. Ben, my God, man, you were talking the other day and I was amazed. I thought he had 30 years of coaching experience. It was really cool listening.

My point on it is, you know, there are so many other nuances and layers to scouting today that you're able to focus on a little bit more, because you're ahead of the game and not trying to spend eight hours in a film room somewhere and then try to grab all your information before you're off to a five-hour drive. Thomas Dimitrov, listening to the Ringar, NFL show

and shouting out Ben Solac to me is one of my highlights of the month here. Just a couple more for you. The way that athletes have changed and offenses have changed, and I know that those are two separate things, but they're extremely related. I think that everybody knows at this point

you can't have a really slow middle linebacker who just hits hard probably and most a lot of teams have moved away from a fullback but that stuff is pretty much set in stone for a lot of offenses. Obviously if you're Kyle Shanahan, that's a little bit different. If you're the Raven, that's a little bit different. But I'm curious, the way that the offenses have changed and you lived at Thomas because, obviously, we're looking at quarterbacks, but the spread and the way that was accepted over,

the 2010 decade was really fascinating to me. And I'm curious specifically what you learned about that. Because I remember 2013, 2014, there were GMs who were telling me, oh, my God, we dropped this wide receiver. He doesn't know the Routary. And he can't even learn it. He just doesn't know. Or a quarterback had never identified the mic before and he can't learn it.

I remember some of the Baylor guys were like that. Bryce Petty, I think, was a pretty good example of someone who openly said he just didn't know how to look at it. anything with the defense. I'm curious how that played out for you and what you learned about offense through that decade, Thomas. Well, this does come back to what we're talking about, making sure that there's really, really good communication between myself, the head coach, and the coordinators and exactly what system we're going to be running. And during that time, we were very aware of having to make sure that we had the right athletes, of course, that fit

a system. Remember that. System-specific scouting is very, very important in my mind. because again, you can make some massive mistakes by bringing players in that are ostensibly the best on the board at that time, but they don't fit your system. And if you're not clear as an organization about the system that you're going to run and you invest a lot of compensation again or a lot of acquisitions in the draft to get certain players and you change your system a year or two from now, you can put your organization back a great deal. So, back to offenses and back to athletes, back to the idea of athletes, you have to really be keen on the type of athlete that you're bringing into your organization.

Look, I can talk about offense forever and I don't mean to jump over to defense. When Dan Quinn came in to the Atlanta Falcons, he came from a group, as you know with Pete Carroll, who was all about explosiveness, quit twitch, fast. And we were that in 16 when we got to the Super Bowl. But think about Mike Smith's defense. we had a whole bunch of, you know, more three, four. We were going big that last year, and that was a tough transition. Think about that.

Scheme-wise, we had guys like Rashid Hagamann, and we had big dudes on both sides of the lines, and we had to change that. So being mindful of that in the future, or I would say to any up-and-coming executive, make sure that you are very clear. And if you have questions, press your head coach and coordinators so that everyone knows, including the owner,

so that you're not out on a limb by making the wrong acquisitions for a team that's going to move on from that team, those players in a couple years. And by the way, on the athletes, what we should talk about very quickly, there never was the focus on athletic performance earlier on, definitely in my earlier years of scouting,

but even in 2008 when I took the job with Atlanta, things changed. It was a massive, there was a massive movement in athletic performance, these players realized how much money was into their contracts. I felt that the guys had a lot more of a pension to party. I'm not saying they don't party now, but they weren't as concerned about their bodies

where now these guys are so in tune because they're saying, I'll party when my time is right. I don't want to pull my hamstrings or my glutes because I'm dehydrated out all night. I want to make sure that I'm in tune and make my money and secure my contracts. and that whole performance thing

had a big bearing on how we were approaching our players and utilizing them and keeping them healthy. Well, I'd never thought about that, but there's a lot of things you just brought up in the last 40 minutes I'd never thought about. Thomas Dimitrov, thank you so much for joining us. I can't thank you enough for the insight.

Talk soon. I appreciate you having me. All right, thank you to Thomas for stopping by. Awesome conversation. Next up on the feed, Nora Preciati, Maui Rubin, talking about quarterback and play collar pairings in the NFC West. Friday, Ben Solac, who got a shout-out from Thomas Dimitrov. Kalyn Jones and Stephen, Stephen, previewing the week's reaction. I'll be back on Sunday with Nora, Ben and Stephen, reacting to all of Sunday's games.

This show will be back next Wednesday and every Wednesday for the entire NFL season. Slow News Day features Alex Smith. That episode is already out. There's another episode coming out on Thursday, if I'm not mistaken, with the beloved media figure. Both of those guys, it was a real thrill, especially the second guy, who's a real hero of I'm not going to say it until it's out, but I enjoyed it. Thank you to associate producer, Stefan Anderson, for production on this episode, an additional production supervision by Arjuna Ramble. This has been the Renfell Show on the Ringer Podcast Network.