The Ringer NFL Show - Secrets Revealed! What We’ve Learned Since the Draft Ended

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Sheil and The Ringer’s own Austin Gayle get together to analyze and discuss the most intriguing media stories surrounding key players, coaches, and teams around the league that came out of NFL draft weekend.(00:00) Secrets revealed! What we’ve learned since the draft ended(02:49) Sean McVay and Ty Simpson(16:22) Mike Vrabel(30:26) The tight end trend in the NFL(41:25) Mike McDaniel(48:30) Baltimore Ravens(55:30) San Francisco 49ers(01:04:05) The NFL’s new offensive playcallersVisit us in stores and online at https://Warbyparker.com/RINGERNFLThe Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available.Host: Sheil KapadiaGuest: Austin GayleProducer: Chris SuttonVideo Editor: Stefano SanchezProduction Supervision: Conor Nevins and Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I'm your host, Sheel Capadia. Today we are talking about secrets revealed what we have learned since the draft ended. So this happens every year. You have the draft Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then in the next two to three days, all this information trickles out where you say, oh, that's actually what was happening there. Or a big what-if.

So this team was deciding between these two players. We're going to get into the biggest storylines. that have emerged since the end of the draft. My guest today is my friend, the ringer's Austin Gale. Let's take a break. We come back, we talk to Austin. All right, welcome back to the Ringer NFL show. Shield Capati here with Austin Gale.

We are talking about secrets revealed what we have learned since the draft ended. Austin, before we get started on that, something has been gnawing at me all day. So you are West Coast based. I'm East Coast based. I was up early, you know, getting ready for the pod. and I was pinging you with a bunch of slack messages about, hey, this, and I worried after the fact is this, Austin is a high energy guy, always on. Does he have the alerts on?

Am I dinging him at like 4, 5 a.m. West Coast time. I haven't asked you off the air. I wanted to save it for the pot. Oh, I always have alerts on. You are dinging me, but that's completely fine. I'm up pretty early. I have no problems with it. I'm happy we were able to talk back and forth.

Usually when we're doing these, the order is kind of set and we already kind of know what we're talking about. We got like a grab bag of topics here today. I was happy to kind of dip my toes in. I'm also kind of pitching a way too early power rankings. I think this is a really interesting time to kind of really evaluate the offseason because these rosters are kind of set. Now, some teams are going to sign Juan Jennings or David and Joku.

There's some free agents out there that make some older free agents that can impact rosters. But really, the rosters are set now. And as you look at win totals and who's going to win the Super Bowl, you can kind of start to get a real feel of the depth chart and who's starting and all that. You can do all your summer prep now if you want to. By June, you can be pretty confident.

All right, here's why I think is going to make the Super Bowl and who's not. All right, but everybody heard it. I can message Austin at any time, any day. And he's a, but you listen, he loves ball. So he doesn't care as long as it's about ball. All right, Austin. We're not talking, first of all,

executive decision. We're not going to discuss a certain quarterback whether he's going to return to the Pittsburgh Steelers. I don't care. You don't care. When something actually happens, will discuss it. So let's get that out of the way. And now let's get to the secrets that have been revealed since the end of the draft. Ready for this? All right. Secret number one that has been revealed,

Austin. Sean McVeigh was actually on board with the Ty Simpson pick, the decision to draft Ty Simpson at number 13. So let me give you a little recap. I know you know what's happened, but for the audience, there's a report during the draft that less need is friends with Ty Simpson's dad, and he's the one who actually advised Ty Simpson, hey, enter the draft, you're going to be a first round pick. So we have that little piece of information. Then the Rams picking. Then Sean McVeigh has a press conference with Less Need,

and he just seems very grumpy and cantankerous and whatever other words you want to use, leading to speculation that, hey, was this a Less Need pick? And McVeigh's like bummed about this, and he can't even get excited. So you have that the night of the draft. Then McVeigh does some damage control, Austin. He's got like a series of interviews.

on day two and day three, cracking jokes, saying, I was on board with the pick. I had some other stuff going on. You guys have never been grumpy here. I was just, you know, I'm allowed to be a little grumpy every now and then. So you have that. But then maybe the biggest little nugget we got here. Ty Simpson tells ESPN radio that he had some, quote, secret meetings with McVeigh.

They talked for hours and hours about football. And this is noteworthy because the Rams never meet with prospects. They don't go do pre-draft visits. They don't go to the combine. But McVeigh met with him for hours and hours. So this leads to the conclusion, I think, that Sean McVeigh was on board with this pick. Is this a situation resolved, Austin?

Or do you still smell something funny about this whole selection? It's interesting. Is it a situation resolved? I hope so, because I feel like the little leaks coming out of this. Like, well, actually, they had this secret meeting for hours and hours. I mean, I don't understand why, like, the information is coming out this way. I think what happened was Stafford was kind of surprised, and this is what I just think happened,

and I'm hearing some reports here and there, who knows, rumors. I think Stafford was surprised, if not kind of outright upset by the picket 13th. I think he was upset. And I think when, you know, there's that whole image of Sean McVeigh, when Tyler Simpson is getting drafted,

he was looking down on his phone, it looks like he just got sent a bombshell, and he then goes into this post-round-1 presser, looking really upset. And kind of, with every answer, trying his best to show that, like, this is still Stafford's team and that he's not over the moon excited about the Tyler Simpson era in L.A. I think what happened was Stafford was upset.

McVeigh wanted to go into this press conference not looking like he was super excited about Tyler Simpson, but overshot it. Then when he saw everything going viral on Twitter and on the internet, he opens that day two press conference saying, do I look unhappy now? And then he kind of reaffirms that this is Stafford's team. He and Les Needs are in lockstep, their best friends, their pals, and they made the Simpson pick together. Then I've never seen this before. Sean McVeigh, one of the biggest, coaches in the NFL, top two, is doing a day three interview on Zoom with the broadcasters on ESPN, doing more damage control coming out and saying, oh, I overshot it. I wanted to kind of,

you know, I didn't want Stafford to be. It's so weird how they've had to, like, publicly show their interest in both Stafford and Simpson on this. And then now we have this secret interview. What ultimately happened is I think staff, or I think McVeigh and Les Need, the general manager, were excited by Ty Simpson. They've also said this. That 13th overall pick in their heads was a free pick. They got it when the Falcons traded up to go get Jalen Walker last year. So they felt like it was a free pick. And when any GM is like, I got a free pick, and then my best friend's

son is in this draft, and I kind of like this quarterback, and Sean McBain met him for a secret. They're going to be okay, quote-unquote, over-drafting him, I think at 13. I think if that was their actual pick and their only pick they had in the first round, I don't know if they make that same decision. I think it was the free pick. Add in that, let's see he just friends with his dad, and at the end of the day, they're like,

we're comfortable taking him in this spot because they feel really good about the roster. Now, everyone's saying, why didn't they go receiver three? I think they should have gone wide receiver three. I think some of that might be true. Maybe they go Mackay Lemon there, but they know, we know, that they want to run a ton of 12 and 13 personnel. They drafted another tight-in, Max Fair out of Ohio State in the second round. They got five tight-ins on the roster. They want Devante Adams and Pooka Nakuwa to be the primary receivers and rarely put in their wide receiver three anyway. So look at this roster. Could they have gone Ruben Bain

or Vega-Ewane or look somewhere else? I think so. But they thought about it as a free pick. McVeigh met him secretly for hours and they all felt comfortable. At the end of the day, I think they are lockstep on this. Now, I think in their minds, they hope Stafford plays another year or two at an MVP caliber level, and they're not looking at Simpson until year three or year four. But it is good process, in my opinion, to be taking quarterbacks when you don't need them. I think he was overdrafted for this spot. But at the end of the day, it kind of was a free pick for them.

So I don't know. It's gotten a lot of hate out of the draft, and maybe rightfully so. There is, I think, still a very good chance this works out because he landed in the best landing spot for him with Sean McBeck. No, I got to speak for the whole audience here, Austin. are we, Tyler Simpson? Are we going full? Oh, why am I calling it? I don't know why I was calling him Tyler Simpson.

Is that his actual name? I actually don't know. Why am I calling him Tyler Simpson? I have no idea. That was amazing. I didn't want to interrupt you because I'm like, wait a minute. I'm like, maybe he's just, you know, he's calling him by his full name or something. Why am I doing that?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if it's full, is his full name. I'm on board. If you wanted to be the official ringer NFL stance that we just go Tyler Simpson, we can do that. I think you read this situation properly. I think what veteran quarterback would be like sweet, you know, Yeah, go draft my successor when I'm trying to freaking win a Super Bowl.

And I played through all kinds of injuries. And I played at an MVP level. Yeah, go ahead. That's a great use of a resource. It's not like it's going to get to week nine. I'm going to wish we would have drafted a guard or a tackle or a tight end or a wide receiver or someone on defense. So I would get that Stafford would certainly be upset about that. And I think that led to them being like, we don't want to act too excited about this.

You know, like we don't want to make it come off. like we are excited about the Stafford era to end. And man, we love Ty Simpson. And when he comes in, we're not going to miss a beat. Like, they did not want to send that message. And I think they kind of went overboard. But I am buying the fact that McVeigh was on board with this pick. I mean, the only way I would say, the only thought in my head,

and this was we did the pod right after the draft, where I thought maybe McVeigh is not on board with this pick is if less need an ownership, we're of the understanding that when Stafford's gone, McVeigh's gone. And they said, listen, we love you. but you've told us before that, you know, you're going to take a break, whether it's a mid-career retirement, go do broadcasting for a year, whatever. You know, if they had that information from Sean McVeigh, and they were like, we know you're not going to love this, but we have to do what's best for the franchise, then I could see it. But it doesn't sound like that's the case. I mean, they've convinced me over the last couple days.

Jordan Roderick had some good reporting in the athletic where she said McVeigh has significant say over every first round pick. Like they don't take a first round pick that he's not vouching for. She said she had a recent conversation with him and believes he's very high on Ty Simpson. And so I think that McVeigh was on board with this. I just think it was an awkward situation, like you said, where Stafford was upset. They tried to figure it out. They tried to then do some damage control. And that's why we are where we are here.

I mean, the damage control was outright sloppy, right? And I think that it's weird how they handled this whole thing. They had secret meetings with the guy, right? Like he came out and he's like, I've never met Shaw with Bay. Actually, that's not true. they told me not to tell you guys that I met with Sean McVeigh. It's weird. That makes it weird.

And how about the arrogance, Austin? They said they didn't want other teams to know McVeigh like the guy because if McVe, then they might be right about it, honestly. It came out that the Cardinals were like, we weren't thinking about Simpson, maybe even in the second round. We wouldn't even take them in the second round.

Like, I don't know. I think some of that stuff is like them kind of not, not being humble enough there. A couple of things. One, this adds pressure to them winning a Super Bowl this year. People thought maybe they were the best team in the NFL. I think there was arguments for last year. I think there's arguments for that maybe being the case.

but now you make this Ty Simpson pick, you make the Max Claire pick in the second round, guys that are objectively depth players for your team. Ideally, Ty Simpson doesn't take a snap next year unless they're blowing teams out. You make those picks, you need to win a Super Bowl because there might be a time in the playoffs where, say, Jared Verst goes down

and you wish you had Ruben Bain filling in in that spot or a corner goes down or whatever. Like, there are going to be times in this season where they're going to be saying, man, what if at 13 we took this player or this player to help us get over the hump and win a Super Bowl this season? The other thing. Everyone's comparing this to two situations.

One, Jordan Love. when the Packers traded back into the first round a few years ago to get Jordan Love while they had Aaron Rogers on the roster. Difference is there was the back end of the first round. One, two, Jordan Love was just like raw, toolsy prospect that everyone loved for like what he could be, this arm talent, this ball of play. Simpson isn't that kind of player from a tools perspective.

Three, Aaron Rogers was coming off some bad football seasons, right? He was not playing well. And I think that, like, they were thinking about how much longer does Rogers have left. Stafford's coming off an MVP season. Now, the other people comparing this to when the Falcons took Michael Pennix, Difference there is their quarterback was Kurt Cousins, who was hurt, and they knew he was hurt, and they probably made a mistake signing him to the contract that they did, because when they trotted him out, he clearly could not move.

The situations are completely different. Stafford is coming off an MVP. This team probably is maybe one or two pieces away from being a firm, firm Super Bowl favorite, and they kind of just want to play this two-timeline approach. It's a clear risk. They're betting on themselves in a lot of ways. Will it pan out? It's hard to say, but the pressure now is not make the NFC championship.

You need to make the Super Bowl, if not win the Super Bowl, if you're going to be getting cute with these picks with a bunch of of depth guys. Yeah, it's you know, I was trying to like galaxy brain this and think if you're a Rams fan, maybe it might be good news because you're like, oh, McVeigh's planning on hanging around for a while. You know, like he's going to be around post-staffer

and he's going to try to grow Ty Simpson, but still, man, I'm still of the same mind I was the night of the draft where it's just like, I think they outsmarted themselves. I would much rather have someone. And I think you can justify it. Like you said, it is good business, it's analytically sound.

You have a 38-year-old quarterback. You're really like a quarterback. Draft the quarterback. I understand that's a smart thing to do. However, I just feel like they didn't need to do it in this situation. I've said before, I feel like Sean McVeigh could get another veteran. I think there are people who are going to want to play with him. I think a superpower with Stafford is that they can problem solve together.

They've had so many reps together. They've had so many reps individually. Where now you're bringing in a rookie who has 13 career starts, where I just don't know that it's going to be the same. And by the way, McVeigh might be the best coach in the NFL. He's certainly top five on any list, anyone with any knowledge would ever make. We don't have, like, hard evidence that he's a quarterback whisper, you know? He had Jared Gough at first, and he got really good football out of Jared Gough.

Now, Jared Gough has had some really good football in Detroit. And then he got Stafford, who's a supremely talented player. Now, he got the best out of Stafford. But this idea of him bringing in a young quarterback who you just have to develop and go through the ups and downs, that hasn't happened yet with Sean McVey. He might be great at it, but that still is a little bit of an unknown with him. No, I think so too.

And I think I am like for this idea, whether a quarterback whisper gets thrown around a lot. Now, can Sean McVeigh, similar to Kyle Shanahan, take really any quarterback and create kind of a high floor offense? I think so. I also think that I know I just compared, you know, I said Jordan Love was his toolsy prospect and Simpson isn't that. I don't want to say that like Simpson has no tools.

I do think that there's more armed talent than people give them credit for. there's more mobility than people give him credit for. And I always say this, if he didn't finish the season as he did, but instead, say he didn't play the first half of the season with the same injuries he had over the second half, but he finished the season how he started, there would have been way more conversations

about Simpson versus Mendoza if he went on a run in the college football playoff and the healthiest he was late in the year because recency bias affects everyone. And if that's how he closed the season, I do think these conversations would have been closer, maybe as close as what Orlovsky wanted them to be. Now, another part of this that makes it kind of hard, to grapple with is next year, I looked at Todd McShay here at the Ringer, his mock draft for

2027. He had seven quarterbacks going in the first round. I think there's like eight or nine guys. And that doesn't even include Brendan Sorsby, the Texas Tech quarterback who just got, you know, he might not ever play football again with the gambling allegations, all that stuff that's happening out. He said Sorsby would have been in his top 10. That's eight quarterbacks in the first round, and he didn't even include Drew Mestemaker, who a lot of people really like too. Like, there are a lot of quarterbacks in this upcoming class that to take Simpson at 13 when there's other, again, like you said, it might be getting too cute. And for this to work, it's kind of like shooting the Death Star, right?

It has to kind of work out perfectly to where Simpson develops under Stafford. You were able to win one more ring at least with Stafford, having gone all in with trading for Trent McDuffie, paying Jalen Watson all that money. It's shooting the Death Star. And if there's a team that can do it, I think it's the Rams. I think they're one of the best organizations in football. And that's why it's hard to shit on a pick with the Rams because they've done so well over the last few years.

But we'll see, man, because now all the pressure's on. All right. Let's take a break. We come back. We get to more secrets revealed since the end of the NFL draft. This episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. You know, I used to wear glasses, and it was so complicated and overwhelming,

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Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. Our show sent you. All right, back here on the Ringer NFL show. All right, Austin. Next, secret revealed is that Mike. Rable's counseling lasted two days max. I got to put Max there in parentheses. So to recap here, Brable and the team make this big deal. He's skipping day three of the draft. He's taking his family life seriously, going to counseling. It was unclear what kind of counseling. He was going to spend

time with his family. Day three of the draft, what a sacrifice. Okay. So that happens before the draft. Then there's reports that, well, he'll be away, but he's still kind of be in touch with the team while he's away. I mean, Peter Schrager is on ESPN's draft coverage, and he used the phrase constant communication to describe it. They're able to be in constant communication with the team, even though he's not with the team. Then everybody says, nope, actually not the case. No communication. Schroger walks it back. Other reporters walk it back. Elliot Wolf, their GM, says after the draft, did not communicate at all.

with Mike Vrable on Saturday. It was too important to respect his time away. So you have all that. Then there are these New York Post photos of him buying a sweatsuit in a Utah airport gift store, Austin, which what, imagine if I would have, imagine it like two months ago, I would have told you, hey, Austin. In late April, we're going to be doing a podcast where I'm going to utter the phrase, the New York Post had photos of Mike Rable buying a sweatsuit in a Utah airport gift store.

We would have been very confused about what happened. And now he was back with the team on Monday, Austin. What in the world is happening here with Mike Rable, how he's handling this situation, and how the Patriots are handling the situation, because this just seems incredibly clunky from my perspective. I mean, it's clunky for a lot of reasons, right? One of the parties, Deanna Rusini, is kind of the only statement we've got

is that complete denial of any, you know, bad faiths relationship with Mike Vrable. And then the other side is him being completely apologetic over his actions to the point where he's taking day three of the draft off and buying what looks like his wife a sorry gift in the form of a sweatsuit. I think it's clunky for obvious reasons. I find it a handful of this interesting. I think some of it being like, this is going to be a clear distraction for the Patriots.

It's already a distraction for Mike Vrable. And Bill has already hit this on his pod a ton. But they're going from last place schedule to first place. schedule. I think there are still question marks with the receiving core, the offensive line, the defense has to maintain pace, and then now it's like, frable with this thing hanging overhead. The thing, by the way, his family, his kids,

his wife, all those things. Something you didn't bring up, though, in terms of secrets reveal. I don't know if you've seen on Twitter, and Pablo Tori is getting into this as well, one of the best investigative reporters that we have, especially on the Patriot stuff, but is that someone identified that Deanna Rusini

on, I think it was December 19th, 2022, sent a user on Spotify, a playlist called Turning the Page with a lot of, from multiple reports, music that Mike Brable loves. She sent it to a user named Mike. Now, this blew up on Twitter. Everyone's like, oh my gosh. And what that date, what's specific about that date is it's coming off of a Tennessee Titans, when Mike Brable was the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, four game losing streak. Four game losing streak. The next day, Rusini sends a user named Mike, this playlist of a lot of songs that now people are saying Brable likes. What has happened since that has been viral is one,

Deanna Rossini has completely wiped her Spotify. Makes sense. The username Mike changed their username to Tycar. Tyler and Carter are the names of Mike Vrable's sons. Now, what is going on here? They cannot clean up their tracks to save their lives. This, to me, is like, it's such a hot gossipy story. It's involving an affair. It's involving an NFL coach.

It's evolving a reporter. But the hits just keep coming. This is the most I've heard page 6 mentioned in any offseason that I can honestly remember. The fact that this whole thing comes out that Raibald is going to be spending time away from the team. and they got photographers in Utah taking pictures of him buying gifts. They are staying press coverage on this stuff. I just think that this is going to continue to be followed

because it's such an interesting story. It doesn't feel like we have closure yet necessarily. I think Brable is trying to create closure. Racine is still in denial. The other piece of this is the NFL is not investigating. Greenberg on ESPN really pressured, not pressure, but kind of like hit Godell with questions like, why isn't the NFL investigating this?

And Goddell's word is, this is a personal matter. and if discipline is going to come, it has to come from the team. What I don't understand is how is this just a personal matter? Like, Vrable having what looks like a close relationship with Deanna Rusini, who is getting information from a ton of other coaches, right? She got a voicemail from Sean Peyton randomly

about how much he likes Bo Nix. She is getting information from the other teams all the time. And then she has this close relationship with Mike Vrable, whereas is Vrable getting some of that information, right? But isn't that just how insiderdom works, Austin? I mean, if they were to invest, I actually don't have an issue. with the league not investigating it. I mean, aren't there, isn't every insider talking to,

and I, this is different. I'm not saying, like, this is obviously crosses the line. You can't be doing this if you're a reporter. You can't have a romantic relationship theoretically with a source. I totally get that. But the, but the aspect you're talking about where I have information and I am close with coach X, GMX, whatever, and I'm giving them some kind of information, that's the whole way how NFL insider them works. Is, is she? then if she gets information from Sean Pate, she's just able to give that information to Mike Brable? It's all information trading.

That's how the whole thing works. You have to build trust, obviously. And if you burn those bridges. She finds out that, you know, there's some stuff about like Morgan Moses and her tweeting out that Morgan Moses is signing with the Patriots before he signed with the Patriots. She tweeted out and then deleted a tweet about how the Carolina

Panthers were going to sign Milton Williams and delete it and then the Patriots end up getting Milton Williams. if she is giving information to Vrable about how other players are signed and she is advantageously giving Vrable information that would help him make decisions on players or even cross whatever the tampering period is now I'm not saying he has to be disciplined

why aren't we not investigating it? Can we understand how much information which were Svini giving Brable and how I feel like and you're like that's how insiderdum works her close relationship with Vrable if she's picking up this other information from teams that could be ambentations and tights

and this is just with players, player signings? What if she's hearing about schematic insider stuff and all this? Like what's normally happening with every other journalist is their relationship with one coach is the same intensity with every other coach? This one feels like it was a little bit different. I don't know about that. I don't

think that's true. I think absolutely there are insiders who have favorites because what happens is let's say what you just said played out and then let's say whatever Sean Payton gets burned. He told her something and now she's telling it. Then you burn that bridge with Sean Payton. I see. Now he

You know, so I feel like... I don't know. The insiders have to do that delicate dance. Like, for instance, Howie Rostman had some information that he needed to trade ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers to get Mackay Lemon in this last draft. I don't think that was happenstance. I don't think like that's type of stuff. This is what happens, you know? You're talking to whether it's Adam Schiff or Ian Rappaport or whoever else.

And it's like, all right, I kind of understand the terms of engagement here. You know, now if you might tell him, hey, this is really between. us, this can't go anywhere else, and you don't either you, either you stand by that or you don't. That is, that information trading is the whole business as far as I'm concerned. Now, it is different. I'm not saying, I don't want to say it's exactly the same. It's not exactly the same. When you have a romantic, potentially romantic relationship with one of the parties involved,

of course, that's different. But I don't know. I mean, I guess they could, they could invest in. I would be shocked. I would be shocked if Mike Brayble did not have or gain, even a, I'll put it at small competitive advantage because of his relationship with Deanna Rossini. I'd be shocked if that's not true in terms of just the information he was able to get from other teams and how he was able to use it to his advantage in the tampering period,

signing players, even looking at other teams and what they're doing. To me, the depth and closeness of the relationship in terms of what we're gathering, what we're seeing to the point where Mike Brable is taking day three off to hang with his family and buy gifts for his wife, that's how deep this relationship was. To me, I think it's at least worth investigating what information was Brable getting from Rusini at all, right? And I think these teams played each other in the AMC championship. And there's a patent relationship, there's a Racine relationship to me.

I don't know. I think that it's kind of crazy. And I'm not even necessarily saying that he should be disciplined, XYZ. I'm more like, I think this is kind of interesting enough for the NFL at least to investigate, at least to understand like, okay, what information was being traded? Was there, is there a situation here where it felt like the Patriots were getting an unfair competitive advantage?

their head coach had a close relationship with one of the reporters that was talking to other teams. One of like, if you had to rank insiders before all of this in terms of NFL insiders, probably Rappaport who works for the league,

Shefter, who works for ESPN, who now kind of works for the league, and then Deanna Rusini, who worked for the athletic and which is owned by the New York Times. That's kind of where I would set them. Now, she has all this information and the Titans, I think,

if I had to guess which coach was getting the best of it, I'd guess Mike Brable. Yeah, I think, I think that's, you sort of talked, you sort of talked me into it. I do think it opens up a can of worms, I don't think the other insiders would be in favor of that being investigated if it leads to, you know, all right, let's see what other text messages are being traded and what favors are being done.

Investigate them all. Some of this feels like I don't really like how current NFL insider is doing. This isn't like that. I don't like, all right, if you're another team and you think they got to compare. But the league is like, they understand between agents, GMs, coaches, owners, other sources. Like it's, it's mostly transactional stuff that's being, you know, and it leads to popular. conversations and discourse and the popularity of the league. This isn't an issue for the NFL. I don't think.

Now, if another team, I think to your point, if another team, coach GM, whatever, were to say, hey, you need to investigate this because I feel like then maybe, but I don't think that's going to happen. But we'll see. Also, to your point about Vrable and how clunky this has been, it almost feels like he's tried to make the pivot,

obviously to admitting some wrongdoing and apologizing. But it's almost like he's dipping his toe in the water where it feels like if there was one grand press conference, once he decided to make that pivot where he said, and I don't know the details of what exactly happened, obviously, we're going by photos. But let's say I was unfaithful to my wife. I was unfair to my family. I made huge mistakes and I will work nonstop to have them forgive me because they're too important to me.

and I embarrassed myself, the family, the organization. I feel like if he had one sort of five-minute statement where he did that, then maybe he's not being, you know, paparazzied at the Utah Air Party. Now, maybe he still is. But I feel like it would cut, you know, the legs of this story now are just so huge and there's so much interest in him in it for a variety of reasons that to your point, I mean, you message when we were talking about you're like, how long is the Vrabel Diaries?

Are we just like on July 4th? Are there used to be photos of, oh, here he is trying to do this with his family. I don't really know where it ends here. As long as the numbers are hitting, right? Page 6 is looking at the numbers, right? They knew like, okay, if we send a photographer to where we know variable's going to be

and we get a picture of him doing anything, we're going to do numbers on the dot com. And I think that's going to continue to follow him. And I know I'm focusing a lot on the variable side and the NFL side. It's obviously like a very sad story. There's marriages involved. There's children involved. Absolutely. Yeah.

And like there's people like when before Deanna Rossini deleted her Twitter and all this like people were questioning like if Mike Brable was the son of her child. It's bad like it's bad. Like a lot of like gossipy rumory stuff. What I feel like not most interested in but like what is kind of surprising me about this is the football of it all. I think that I'm I think and I'm kind of confident that Mike Brable gained at least a slight competitive advantage because of the relationship we had with this insider. I feel that way kind of in my bones because at the end of the day, I think a lot, like you said, a lot of this stuff is being traded. But it's being traded for transactionally on like, what are you giving me? What are you giving this? This relationship doesn't feel like it was that way, right? This could have been this coach or this player or this whatever is telling me this. And they don't want you to know that. I'm telling you anyway.

That to me feels like what could have happened. And honestly, I'm kind of surprised that the NFL isn't investigating it because it does feel like, and this is a team that is often involved in this, kind of a cheating scandal in a different way, where if I think that there is a chance, at least, that the Patriots were gaining some kind of competitive advantage from this relationship. And the fact that we're just like, yeah, we're not investigating. Who knows? Personal matter, who cares?

Like, it kind of feels like a hands-off situation that would, like you said, why would the league do this? The league won't because they know it'll look really bad if they look into Ruceneer, even these other insiders and how this information is being traded at all. Yeah, it's gone from a media story to a gossipy story to now a football. It is a football story when he is, you know, wait, he's very belathe the facility. Is he taking time off? How's it?

And it's like you said, that's. not the most important thing, like kind of who cares, you know? But like there are, if you zoom out or if you tell this to somebody who's not in the football world, they'd be like, who cares? Like, he's got kids to. The daily mail, the daily mail is speculating that he could step down, right? Prediction markets have it at like a 25% chance that he's not the coach of the Patriots week one. And that I think is more like with this speculation that he'll really prioritize his family bigger

than day three of the NFL draft and say, you know what? Like this needs my full attention. I might need to take a year off, et cetera. And I don't think that would be a football decision as much as a, family decision. But still, it has now fully become, I think, a football story. And I think the story that no one wants to create is that, wait a second, where the Patriots kind of getting an unfair advantage from this, and everyone kind of shush it immediately because they don't even want to step into that water. All right. Let's balance that conversation out with the next secret reveal.

That is very footballing. Okay, if you're like, enough with the gossip. Enough with that conversation. Let's get to the hardcore exes and those. Austin's got one for us, which is the NFL is going all on tight end. So this was an observation you had. You were looking at the draft. You had some numbers. So give us your take your observation on what you saw from draft weekend,

how it relates to last season, and how it might relate to a trend here going forward. I was talking with our editors here, Lindsay Jones and Riley McAtee, who do great stuff for us on the NFL on the dot-com side. And we're kind of talking through this and Riley threw this headline out. The NFL, the draft showed us

that the NFL is copying Sean McVeigh again. And I think you really feel that specifically, and everyone's bringing this up, you brought it up on your show a thousand times, about this nerd set about how much the Rams are using 13 personnel. I want to take it to league-wide, how much the league, on average, was using multiple tight-end sets.

That's anything less. 12 personnel, that's 22, that's 13. Anytime there are at least two tight ends on the field. It was 33% last year. That's 3% higher than any year since 2006. That's when PFF began tracking it. Then you look at this draft. Eight tight ends were taken on day two,

tied for the highest since 1970. 21 tight ends were taken between rounds two and round seven. That's tied for the most, again, since 1970 with tight ends. And when you look at the tight ends that were taken, it was a lot of blocking tightens, right? The first pick for the Jacksonville Jaguars was this guy out of Texas A&M, Nate Berkutcher, who, no, he has like 38 career receptions.

He's like a pure blocking tight end. And when Gladstone, the James Gladstone, the GM of the Jaggs was asked about it, he's like, we know where the league is going. We see that we're adopting 12 and 13 personnel trying to put more tight ends on, trying to put blocking tight ends on the field. That's where we're going.

The last time, I mean, the Jets took another, other tight end. They took one in the first round after taking Mason Taylor in the second round last year. The Rams have already five tight ends on the roster. They took Max Claire in the second round. You felt that teams were really prioritizing tight end, not just one, but having multiple on their roster. I think that the last time we've had real personnel shift in the NFL was the last

time the NFL copied Chan McBay when like everyone said, you know what, we need to run 11 personnel like 90% of the time. We need three receivers on the football field all the time. We need to create explosives. We need to throw the ball downfield. And it really, it changed the league. We started drafting lighter and faster. D-tackles got smaller. Linebackers got smaller. You know, we were talking about linebackers saying,

we want you to play at like 215, 220. I remember talking to Drew Tranquil when he's coming out in the draft. He's like, they don't want me to play above 220. They want me to play light because they know this is a passing league and this was in like the homes, boom, and all that stuff. Now with this shift back,

we're feeling it in the draft with all these tight ends picked, specifically the teams that are taking them and this move to 1213 personnel. What I'm interested in your take is like, this has a handful of range of outcomes, right? We've seen like flashy things happen in the league before, Wildcat lasted like a year. The cheap motion was this cool thing until everyone was doing it.

The tush push. People think they can do it. They all want to adopt it. This is the first time, like I said, a personnel shift could be happening, right? Where you're going from everyone running a lot of multiple personnel to 11, and now this 11 personnel sinking to where we need to run 12, we need to run 13, we need a fullback, all this stuff. I want to know, is this going to work? Are teams beyond the Rams, and I think the Seahawks had a lot of success with this too,

are they going to be successful running? multiple tight ends out. Because my take is anytime this happens, like half the teams that copy do an okay job and then the other half, like, don't. And like, yes, it's a copycat league. It's more, and I think Steve Powell Zolo of Check the Mike said this on Twitter, like it's not a copycat league. It's an

innovator's an innovator. And Sean McVeigh has been one of the, if not the biggest innovator in the NFL over the last 10 years and he's innovating again. Everyone's copying him again. I just don't know if it's going to work, right? Is everyone grabbing all these blocking tight ends going to work? I think in the short term, maybe because defenses have like kind of

reshaped how they draft to get lighter and defend the past. But I don't know. I think it's kind of a fascinating shift that we're going to kind of experience this season and probably for the next two or three. See, one advantage of being an old head, Austin, is that you remember when you first heard about stuff like this. And it was 2013, and I'm covering Chip Kelly, and he's talking all about tight ends. You know, and he's saying, it's very simple. You know, if they're playing nickel, if they're in sub-packages and we're playing two tight ends, we're running the football. If they're in base and we're playing two tight ends, we're passing the football. And I thought, wow, that's pretty interesting.

You know, he simplified that very easily. Now, did it work? No, it didn't work. I'm old enough to remember Bill Belichick's big spending spree? John Hussmith and Hunter Henry, Austin, go Google. The next, Grunk and Aaron Hernandez, John Hussmith and Hunter Henry, Belichick's doing again. It did not work. And you look at some stuff here, you know, if you just look at,

some numbers. There's not real evidence that I saw. I did some quick, you know, true media research before the pot. It's not like teams were more successful with two tight end sets than 11 personnel on the whole last year. If you take all the teams, it's very similar, if anything, 11 personnel was a little bit better in terms of efficiency. 11 personnel was a little bit better in terms of explosive play rate. 11 personnel, even just running the football, 11 personnel was better. Because I think the big thing here is that you have to have tight ends that actually give you an edge against the defensive backs in the run game that you can take advantage of or you have to have tight ends that actually give you an edge against the linebackers in the past game that you can

take advantage of. And I don't think there are enough tight ends that do that. So these teams that say, oh, well, we, because if you notice it, the tight ends that were taken, there was a huge, like, variance in terms of this, this team had this tight end ranked here. this team had this tight end ranked here. Like he was very unpredictable, those tight ends that got taken. And so I think it's going to be one of the things you alluded to. That, yeah, Sean McVeigh, is he going to be able to do it?

Sure. Are some of the best offensive coordinators in the NFL that really know how to set this up, what they're looking for in their personnel, how defenses are trying to attack them? They're going to have a lot of success. I think there's going to be a lot of other teams that it's going to be a disaster. The imitators are going to look stupid because if you're not, you know, if you're not a great offensive coach and you just feel like you can do what Sean McVeigh did,

you're probably going to fail. So I actually think that this will swing back in the other direction. I don't know if it'll be. It might be this season. It might be where we're on here in October, November, saying there's been a big swing, now back to 11 personnel and three wide receivers. So I don't think this is here to stay.

I have a handful of ways I want to kind of push back, right? I think that one pushback when you bring up kind of the John Smith, Hunter Henry and like what they were trying to do before. that was like we want tight ends that can catch the football and we're going to run 12 personnel, we're trying to throw it. The way the league is drafting now and like what the Rams had last year, I think what the bills have with Jackson Hawes is like we need blocking tight ends.

We need guys that can get on the field and that like are big and actually plus blockers against while now what everyone has drafted is these like smaller linebackers that need to go out cover and prevent explosives. And I think when you look at the success rates and you're looking like, well, technically last year, 11 personnel people more successful, it's clear that these teams have not

prepared their rosters to be competitive in 12 and 13 personnel. And that's why so many tight ends were drafted. A lot of them way above consensus because the consensus sport doesn't do, I think, a really good job of ranking blocking tight ends, especially with such a hard personnel shift that multiple GMs now are talking about,

like, this is a change, this is happening. I think this is also happening in conjunction with, you know, a return to maybe more under center, right? And like last year, the Rams were under center, 60% of the time. It was the most in the NFL by a wide margin. League-wide, the under-center percentage has dropped massively, right?

Over the last few years, people wanted to get out of the gun. People wanted to throw down field, explosives, all that stuff. Do you know league-wide, what percentage in 2008? I'm going like 20-ish years ago, 18 years ago. League-wide, what was the average for teams going under center? 2008. Okay, 2000. What was it this last year?

Did you tell me what it was this last year? It was 35%, which is the highest it's been since 2017. Okay. I would say 73%. 73% is exactly right. Shill, you're a legend. You really are a legend. You go back to 2008, it was 73%.

You go back to the year 2000, it was 87%. People under the age of 30 have no idea what the league looks like in early 2000. It's like, yeah, everyone was under center. Everyone was running play action from this. And I think this multiple tight end stuff, this under center stuff, teams, like the Rams had the most successful running game in the league last year,

and they were running under center 60% of the time. I think there's a couple of components of this feel different to the cheat motion or the tush push or, you know, the wildcat. Like a real personnel shift with a real change going to under center. And like this being now, we are, we are zinging to the zag of defenses getting lighter in their front seven to where we're going to find ways to run the football more effectively with big, blocking tight ends, run 12, 11, 13 personnel, less receivers on the field. And we're also going to get under center and establish a running game that doesn't rely on shotgun runs,

where we've seen a lot of offenses crater. The bengals really struggled. The chiefs have struggled. I really think that this is actually here to stay, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is another like five to six year swing where you start to see teams being like, wait, we kind of want 250-pound linebackers again, right? We kind of want big beef in the front seven,

because now offenses are adding beef, and they're not coming out with Trent Shorefields and Xavier Worthings all the time. They're actually coming out with Nate Berkertures and these guys that come in and can kind of kick our ass running the football, and then all of a sudden get open on a drag. So I really am excited by this personnel shift, because honestly, the league was getting kind of boring running shotgun all the time

and running 11 personnel like 90% of the way. Like getting back to we're going to run a little 22, we're going to run 12, we're going to run 13, we're trying to run the football from under center. It just makes the league more multiple and just adds flavor and change to where I feel like defenses are getting this edge, being able to run seven men boxes and keep two safeties high. I think this shift is exactly what offense needs to figure out where things are going to go. And then defensively, everyone just will imitate Mike McDonald's and say, look, he found a way. He can stay in those.

Now, do you have hybrid defenders? Is there a big nickel? Is there a third safety? Those types of, yeah, those types of players on defense end up being pretty interesting as well. All right, we'll track it here. Listen, hipsters, we're here for you. You want to talk 12 personnel to me next year? We can do it for a little bit.

I will get cranky like Sean McVeigh at some point and get annoyed by it and be like everybody settled down. But for now, it's an interesting trend. One thing I ask is, can we not focus on 13 personnel and can we just talk about it as teams using multiple tight ends? because, like, 13 personnel is very specific to, like, what the Rams were able to do because they legit have five tight ends that they really like and they've invested capital in.

Not every team's going to be able to run 13 personnel. I think teams do, though, want to be able to run 12 and 22 and, like, have a fullback a lot more now than they did, let's say, two, three years ago. All right, that's a request to all the hipsters from Austin. Gail, let's see if you listen to it or not. All right, let's take a break. We come back. We got some more fun.

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Members only savings vary. I know secrets that have been revealed. All right, back on the ringer NFL show. All right, next secret that has been revealed since the end of the draft Austin. Mike McDaniel has a big voice in L.A. Okay, so the charges released this video. I don't know if you saw this or not, of him telling Joe Ortiz, the GM, and others in the draft room

that he will take his shirt off if they can find a way to get Mississippi State Wide Receiver, Brendan Thompson, in the fourth round. They did get Brennan Thompson in the fourth round. fourth round. I don't think video has circulated yet of whether Mike McDaniel took his shirt of. So you have that. Then they take Florida Center, Jake Slaughter, with the 63rd pick. And the athletics, Daniel Papa, wrote, Slaughter, quote, was a McDaniel target. Reason why that's interesting? He's going to play guard for the Los Angeles Chargers and he was a center exclusively in college. Other interesting

part of this, Austin, is that both of these prospects were taken over 20 spots higher than where the consensus boards had them. So everybody was excited when the Chargers hired Mike McDaniel. He said this is going to be the best offensive coordinator that Justin Herbert has ever had. And then we're saying Justin Herbert's the most talented quarterback Mike McDaniel has ever coached. But now, you know, in this organization that has a very strong-minded head coach in Jim Harbaugh, we're seeing that they're not just like, all right, McDaniel, here are the players go coached. They're like, we're kind of going all in.

who do you need, who do you want, we want you to build the best offense possible with the players who you feel like fit your offense. I'm a little surprised the degree to which this is the case. Are you? And how do you think this is going to go for the Chargers? I don't know if I'm necessarily surprised, right? I do think it's interesting league-wide

how much a GM wants alignment with their coaching staff. I think that I lean toward from the outside looking in that you kind of always want alignment, especially with their offensive play caller as big as Mike McDaniel is on what kinds of players they want, especially if these are players that the GM has scouted and his team has scouted that feel like they could come off the board in this range. I don't know how surprised I am.

I guess one of the takeaways from this, and this is something I think is going to build over the summer, is that the Mike McDaniel pairing with Justin Herbert and Harbaugh in Los Angeles is getting to the point where everyone likes it so much that I almost need to play double-tax advocate. Right? It is very much. of the, I think everyone, if you pulled every analyst, do they like this fit,

like everyone's going to say yes. I think even when it happened up like, this is a slam dunk, exactly where McDaniels should go, we got to stop with the excuses for Herbert. This is how we get there. I wanted to raise to you some devil's advocate arguments on how this Mike McDaniel, Jim Harbaugh, Justin Herbert combination doesn't work in Los Angeles. One, you mentioned the slaughter pick, right? Career Center at Florida, he's probably going to play guard. Let's say he gets to start at guard. The snaps he plays at guard in the NFL, will be the first snaps he's ever played at guard. He's got 32 and a half inch arms,

a little bit on the shorter side. He's a big dog, six foot four, but we'll see. His snaps at guard will be the first he's played. And at center, they brought in Tyler Beattish. He's like five years in a row, played over 900 snaps.

I think that's going to be a sound fit, especially an upgrade over Bradley Bozeman. Then at Wright Guard, they brought in Cole String, who was a former first round pick for the New England Patriots out of Chattanooga, a big reach versus consensus boards,

right when consensus boards were starting to get a little exciting. He has not lived up to his first round caliber. I wouldn't know if he's lived up to like day two caliber, but he's coming in. They've essentially replaced their entire interior, Bradley Bozeman's gone, Sion Johnson's gone, and Mackay Beckton's gone,

they're going three new guys. I think there's still a chance that Slaughter playing his first ever snaps at guard, I think Biotish will be fine, but then you have Cole Strange, who's not really panned out anywhere he's played. He played with Mike Meadale and Miami. We'll see how it goes.

This interior offensive line still could be, in my opinion, a weakness for the team. Then you see in the offseason, they brought in Charlie Kolar, paid him a monster deal, I think was three years, 24 million, big money for a blocking tight end, and they brought in Alec Ingle, the fullback who played about 300 snaps for Miami last year.

Does that hint that they want to run more 12, more 22 personnel, and take receivers off the football field? If that's the case, it's not what Mike Meadiel was doing last year. Everyone mentioned 13 personnel like I did, all this tight-in stuff was going up. Mike B. Daniel was at the bottom of the league in terms of how much he was under center and how much he was running multiple tight ends.

And some of that, I think, is a personnel issue with Miami and maybe something that's shifting in Los Angeles. So Mike McDaniel might be running a brand-new offense that will be opposite to what Tua was because he had to cater that offense to the timing and the anticipation and the accuracy, how he could win with Tua. So McDaniel's running a new offense

with a brand new interior, and I still think even adding Brennan Thompson, real concerns with speed, like top flight speed, downfield weaponry with the Chargers receiving corps. Throw an injury into the mix, which the Chargers always somehow find a way to do, and all of a sudden, can't you just see

how the train kind of falls off the tracks here and it's not what everyone expected? Obviously, you ask the consensus, Mike McDaniel Herbert, this is going to work. He's one of the biggest, you know, best offensive minds in the league. But I don't know. I think there is a too good to be true element to this.

And I think real concerns, like palpable concerns where you're looking at the interior offensive line and maybe some of the changes they're going to have to make to the offense, that'll still be, you know, I always say this every offseason, bet against teams that have a ton of newness, right? How much newness is happening? They have three new starters on the offensive line on the interior. You're hoping for injuries, again, not a tackle.

You have a brand new offensive play caller. You got a blocking tight end that needs to see snaps because you paid him a ton of money. You got a full back in that you weren't running last year. There's a lot of newness here, right? Could it be clunky out of the gate? and we're maybe, you know, making excuses for Justin Herbert again in January 2027. I think there's a boomer bust factor to this for sure.

I mean, like you said, it's easy to see how this works, talented quarterback, great, you know, what we think is a great play caller offensive coordinator, get the offensive tackles healthy, very good head coach, there's a chance this is the team in, you know, in 2026 where we say, all right, they finally did it. You can take your Justin Herbert jokes and shove him. He's playing in the Super Bowl here. That is within the realm of realistic outcomes.

But I think you nailed it with some of the ways in which this doesn't work out. And by the way, just the personalities, Mike McDaniel, Jim Harbaugh, let's see. It's fun for us. It's fun for content. If they're one and two, if they're one and three, if the offense isn't working in September or four or five weeks in, is Jim Harbaugh grabbing the keys a little bit or grabbing the steering wheel? saying, all right, this was an interesting idea that this isn't working for me. So that's possible as well.

And I'm with you on kind of the secondary, tertiary pass catchers there. It's still not the most talented pass catching group. Kenan Allen led the team in receptions. Right. And he's not on the team anymore. But yeah, beyond that, it's kind of like, all right, you got some players who could work out, but it's not guaranteed to work out. So you're right.

It is a big, big change there for the chargers, the indications from the draft. After that, they're, again, going all in here with Mike McDaniel and handing him the keys. But it is going to be, they're going to be must see, I think, for sure, early in the season. How is this experiment kind of working out for the Chargers? All right. Next secret revealed, Austin, the Baltimore Ravens were deciding between three different players with the 14th pick. I love these kinds of stories because then you can track them three years, five years down the road. and we can go, what if, what if, what if they went with this player instead?

So they've had a very eventful offseason. They fired John Harbaugh, hired Jesse Minter, backed out of the Max Crosby trade in very controversial fashion. And now Michael Silver of the Athletics spent draft day Thursday with Eric DeCosta, the Ravens GM. And he reported that at the four, at pick 14, the Ravens were deciding between your guy, Penn State Guard, Fenga, Yawane, not your guy. Oregon, tight end, Kenyon, Sadiq, and then Miami edge rusher,

Rubin Bain Jr. Those were the three players they were deciding between. And then this had me cackling, awesome, because DeCosta told Silver that they had a deal worked out with a team picking in the teens to move back,

but the trade fell through. And ready for this quote? We had something on the table, but inexplicably, they told us they changed their mind. Oh my gosh, Eric DeCoste. You don't say inexplicably the goal of this guy to use that word with the trade back there. But I think the most interesting thing here is those three options, Yawane, Bain and Sadiq,

do you think that three years, five years down the line will say the Ravens ended up with the right player with that pick? I think Sadiq in this spot would have been, and this is just my opinion on just what I think Sadiq is going to be. on his rookie contract, I just don't think that would have been a worthwhile investment. I think that Sadiq is one of the youngest players in this draft. I think he's one of the most talented maybe players in this draft on what he could be. But I just don't think right now with where the Ravens are,

that taking him over Vanga, Yuanay or Ruebain, would have been good process. I think Bain over Yuanay is something I'm willing to entertain, because honestly, like, everything I hear about the guy, I've watched all the tape, but then you, like, see how he took the hat off of the Buccaneers. Like, he is just to me, like, he feels like a Hall of Famer already, and he feels like a perfect Raven.

I think Bain is very hard for me to see where Bain isn't like Melvin Ingram or Brandon Graham. There's someone that plays in the league for 10 plus years and it's just like very good. I think he has this ceiling chance. Obviously, anytime you say he's a Hall of Famer, like the ceiling chance to be a Hall of Famer, so that's where I entertain it.

But to be honest, like, Bangu Youana kind of slid in this draft because of positional value and what that is. But there's an argument that he might be the best offensive linemen in this draft. And he fills what has been a clear, clear, clear need for the Baltimore Ravens on the interior, and even more so now that Tyler Linderbom's gone, right? Tyler Linderbom is now with the Las Vegas Raiders.

They don't even know who's going to play at Center. It's a handful of guys that are going to compete for Center. But at Guard, now you have Banga Yawane, and they brought in John Simpson, a former Baltimore Raven who's bounced around the league, who I think immediately is an upgrade over Daniel Falaalae that they had last year. And then Andrew Voorhees was going to start at Guard,

going into the draft, but now you have Yonet. Now, Center is still going to be a question mark, but I think they made upgrades at both guard spots with Simpson and now Yuanay. And I think that was one of the clear, weaknesses of the team last year. Center is still going to be a problem, but you're going to now protect him, right, with Yawane and Simpson.

I like the pick for the Ravens. It's kind of interesting to hear that they were considering those spots. I think Sadiq would have been bad. Bain I would have got on board with right away, but Yawane, I think, is a slam dunk at 14th. Sadiq would have been fun, but I'm with you. That's taken on some more risk than maybe you want to take with the 14th pick. Bain, if I just had a personal big board, which I didn't, I would have had Bain probably over Yawane.

It's a premium position, and I'm with you, especially, with the Ravens. You could just kind of picture him sliding in there and playing really well for them. So that's one to kind of keep an eye on. But I have no issue with them taking Yawane at that spot. There was also another Raven secret reveals here, Austin. And that's that Eric DeCosta gave the owner, Steve Bishotti, a pick. This was in that same article that sounds like they were all maybe a little buzzed, having a few cocktails at Bishadis Florida mansion, a little offseason gathering. On day three? No, this wasn't. No, this was not. This was not. This was a little. in his counseling. Yeah, no, this was earlier in the off season. Bichotti tells DeCosta, I should be allowed to make a fifth round pick.

And DeCosta says, all right, I'll give you pick 174. So Bichotty's watching the tape. He's looking at the board. And he says, give me Clemson running back, Adam Randall. Now, part of this is apparently he was friends with Dabo Sweeney. And this, you know, he's so excited. I don't know if you just called Dabo. What's new?

Yeah, this running back. What do you think? And so I just thought here, Austin, that this goes back to rule number one, to being a GM in the NFL. Solek and I used to always talk about this. Keep the job. If the owner wants a pick in the fifth round, give the owner a pick in the first fifth round. But that was interesting, that that became public. And they kind of explained the backstory there. I mean, wasn't there, like, in the Matt Rule era with the Panthers, like his wife made a pick? And that was like Chuba Hubbard or something. That sounds familiar.

Yeah, I don't remember the details. I really wanted Hubbard and maybe that influenced it. I think that among the things owners can say like, give me the wheel on, right? I think a fifth round pick is, I'll take that every day of the week. The owner comes in, he's like, I kind of want to make the 170 fourth pick. And you let me do that.

Absolutely. How many times have we heard owners step in and say, I want to make the first overall pick? I want to make this pick. I want to make every pick. What's the point of owning a team if you can't make a draft pick? Honestly. I also think this is a nice reminder, right,

for the owners of these teams, that this is in a lot of ways just like a fun game for them, right? The teams in the league, like you do not, I can't stress this enough, you do not need to win games to make money hand over fist as an NFL owner. When you look at the last five years,

how much the floor of how much they're making from these TV deals has risen, it's like 84% in just the last four years, how much more money every team is making their floor just from the TV rights deals. They can just do whatever they want. It just, at the end of the day, like win or lose,

obviously owners want to win Super Bowls. They want to do these things, but they know at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter where we're ending up. I'm making so much money anyway. I just want to have fun with it. I want to have a few cocktails. I want to make a fifth round pick. I want to call my buddy Davosweeney.

Like I said, I think on the scale of owner hijacks, this is like a one out of five, but I don't think it's that surprising. I wouldn't be surprised if there are owners that are making every pick for the team. Bashati sort of seems like he's having maybe the most fun of any owner, I will say. You know, where he's just like, this is sweet.

I got his football team. We're just kind of picking some players, like you said, calling my friends. Declining trades, doing something the league has never seen. He was in the, I think he said he was in the Bahamas, you know, and the Crosby trade fell through his golfing when he got the call there, which, come on, if you're golfing, you can't pick up the phone. You know, we've got to keep pace of playoff.

No, I don't know what place. And he might have been playing at a place where maybe it's a little more secluded than the ones I potentially will be playing at in the months ahead. All right, I have one more secret for you. And then I just want your leftover, Austin Gale's draft takes. If you've got anything, you got to get off your chest. But the last secret revealed here, Austin, you mentioned the consensus board earlier. This feels like the year of the consensus board.

You know, we talked about this before where it's a wisdom of crowds thing. You take a bunch of different people's opinions. You put them together in a spreadsheet. I think Arifah San was one of the first people to do this, I believe, many years ago. About 10 years ago. 10 years ago, there you go. Now you see it all over the place in draft coverage. And then you can compare your team's pick to the contentious board.

And it's not to say you shouldn't pick the players you like more than the consensus is to say, well, maybe you could have maneuvered a little bit and maybe you could have moved down a little bit if that was the player you were going to pick right there. So the secret revealed here, Austin, is that the 49ers do not care about your freaking consensus board. Okay. They took Ole Miss wide receiver Deshaun Stribling at 33. He was 71 on the consensus board, one of the biggest reaches of day two. you look at their draft, just overall, very low if you believe in the consensus board analysis.

And this isn't the first time that that's happened with the San Francisco 49ers. John Lynch was asked about it. And he said, that's where we had them on our draft board. And we had a lot of conviction. Austin. So what do you think has the consensus board analysis gone too far? Are you with John Lynch? Are you against John Lynch?

Where do you stand here? I don't think this would surprise you as a data guy, but I have a lot of takes on the consensus board. I want to hear all of them. I actually don't know any of your takes. I'm a huge fan of the consensus board, one. I think it's, you know, the fact that every offseason, you know, we go through this four-month process to the NFL draft, right?

Like, I think the NBA draft is like right after the season ends. Like the MLB draft doesn't matter because none of these guys play right away. The NFL draft, there's like four months where no one plays football. People like go out in shorts and throw the ball around and it changes things and run 40-yard dash. It's like four months. So what has happened in that four months, because the NFL is the NFL, and they try to make it a 12-month around-the-clock product,

is that a lot of people in the media make draft boards, right? Dame Bruegler of the Athletic is fantastic. He ranked 2,000 players in this draft class. Daniel Jeremiah, former scout, does it for the NFL, Bucky Brooks. There's a lot of guy, Mel Kiper who started it. Todd McShay here at the Ringer. A lot of guys, former scouts, not former scouts,

watch all the tape, talk to a ton of teams in league, and they create these boards. What Arefis-on has done, starting 10 years ago, is taking all those boards and put them into an aggregate to say like, hey, this is kind of the aggregate of how media and front-facing boards, how they feel about this draft. And what has borne out in the data

is right around like the first 100, first 150 picks, you actually see that the consensus board is close to, if not better than drafting players according to like NFL war than where teams are. I think where the consensus board falls off is like after 150 because media oftentimes doesn't have like the resources and the ability to scout that deep into the draft. The full picture of the full information.

They don't have injury stuff. They don't know how this player interviewed. They don't know the off-the-field stuff, like Ruben Bay, all that stuff. They don't have that. So, like, you have to kind of take it with a grain of salt. Why, I feel like the consent, I'm calling it the consensus Big Board War I,

there could be a future war, but maybe World War II, World War III. Why I think this happened this year. One, and this is something from Lance Zeerline, who he's talked to a pun to teams. He does stuff for the NFL. He's been writing onto the draft forever. He saw that teams did not have a lot of

first and second round grades on players in this class, right? The NIL is affecting this. A lot of good players. or return to school. We saw that with Dante Moore for Oregon, a lot of other players, non-quarterbacks doing the same thing. So teams did not have high grades on a lot of the players in this class.

So the variance on who they were going to take was going to vary with need, vary with this new thing with people wanting to draft tight ends. I think blocking tight ends, broke the consensus board almost by themselves. And then obviously you have this variance because this draft ultimately was not that good. I think in future years,

the consensus board could get better, but this year it kind of broke it. Where I feel like I stand on all of this, is that for the 49ers specifically, this is something they have done on trend, right? Warren Sharp had that tweet where, like, versus the consensus board in terms of reaches, they ranked inside the bottom three or four each of the last four years.

And when you look at specifically the skill players, they've taken on day two and day three, not a lot of those guys have panned out. People bring up Debo Samuel. Debo Samuel was a steal compared to the consensus board, right? Now, I don't think we should use consensus boards to evaluate, did they draft well or not? Is that player going to be good?

That's not how you use a consensus board. The consensus board, how it informs you, It was like, you probably took this player too high. And if you liked him, you probably could have waited. And when you compare it to, I'm going to shout out Carolina Panthers. One of my best friends was at my bachelor party is their assistant analytics, like the number two to their head of analytics, Eric Eager. They have one of the best boards, according to the consensus board,

or the best drafts according to the consensus board. Because they kind of sat there and took guys where they were supposed to go or kind of took guys when they were falling versus consensus, right? And I think you're going to end up doing that. If you do that 10 drafts in a row, you're going to have better process and ultimately bear out, I think, you know, better hit, a better hit rate than if you're going purely off your board. You kind of look at the teams where that, you know, that rank highly. It's kind of the teams you would say these teams generally do a pretty good job.

Last thing I'll say about it too, because I'm going on here. But like the 49ers, when he, Grant Cohn, excellent, excellent question, asked them like versus the consensus board, you're reaching a lot. And it kind of made Shannon and Lynch upset in that presser. They're like, we have consensus in the building. And like, that's exactly what the consensus board's supposed to tell you. What other people are thinking about this. draft class. So you don't just go in, like,

you're, and you just draft guys and you overdraft versus what you could have got them for. You look at James Gladstone. He had this quote that he put out voluntarily. He's like, we put a player in every spot where we're going to draft, and this is where we're going to take them. He literally honed in on players with all this information on how other teams are going to look at them and said,

we're going to overdraft kind of really get every spot. It's concerning that quote, Austin. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's bad process to only make decisions on the draft with people in your building, right? Because this is a game. You're playing against other people. You're playing against how other teams view this class. And the consensus board oftentimes, over the last 10 years,

informs you where these guys are going to go, right? And if you miss out on one player, because, oh, we thought he was going to go later, we were duped by the consensus board. Do not be, I always say this. You mentioned draft rules. Don't be overconfident in your own evaluation, right? And if, like, you are so overconfident

that this one player that everyone has already passed on, like, two times, is going to be your guy, you're ultimately going to end up in a bad spot more often than not, because no one really knows how these guys are going to pan out. That's the one thing we know about the draft is that really there's so many variables and how this guy's going to see the field, how he's going to develop, what his off-field habits are, all this stuff. No one really knows who's going to be hit and who's not.

So when you're making picks just with the consensus inside your building and not taking outside opinions, you're ultimately going to end up where the Jags are, I think, with how they've drafted, where with Niners are with how they've drafted on days two and three. And to your point, this is not a media versus the NFL thing. There are teams in the NFL. I don't want to just say smart teams because, you know, what is a smart team?

But yes, there are teams in the NFL with smart people saying, hey, there's a way to incorporate this into our model. You heard more GMs this year saying we ran simulations to figure out was this guy going to be available or not at our spot. Like you said, it is a game. There are projections. Hey, we won. We have these five players ranked in the same tier. Can we move back? What would it take for us to move back?

All those things. These are all the things you're trying to figure out. James Gladstone said, we did a thing where, you know, to your point, where we mocked the 10 players we were going to get or the 11 players were going to get at these spots and we ended up with 10 of them. Like that, I don't think that's a good thing. No. Yeah, that means that you were taking them ahead of the rest of the NFL.

And what players were you passing up? Could you have maneuvered more in those spots to get those players? So yeah, teams are attacking. it in a different way. Everything you said about the use of consensus boards, I of course agree with because we are, you know, we like a little data. We like a little analytically minded thinking. But again, this isn't us versus hey, this isn't how it works in the NFL. There are teams in the NFL incorporating these things into their modeling, into their process. All right, Austin, let's finish. Any draft leftovers, you are a person who just, the wheels never stop spinning.

you're thinking about what's happening in the NFL at all times. And so I figured I would open the floor if you have something to get off your chest, one or two things to get off your chest, whatever, open the floor to you. Because you know what? I think I've mostly said what I need to say about the draft so far. You know, I wanted to open this up. And this, I don't know how close this is to like a draft left over as much as this. Now that the rosters are set and I'm kind of able to kind of, for the first time,

really get a feel for who I think the starting 11 on both sides of the ball are going to be for these teams when we start in September. I'm reminded by the idea or the fact that we have 17 new offensive play callers in 2026. There are going to be 17 teams are going to have a play caller that is brand new. Five of them are going to be first year play callers. That's Declan Doyle for the Ravens. It's Davis Webb for the Broncos, which is hilarious because Sean Payton is giving Davis Webb the opportunity to call plays so he doesn't lose Davis Webb to another team.

It's still crazy. Where the league is kind of going. I have some thoughts. Davis Webb. Sean Mannion, who's coached in the league for like less than five years, never called plays, was a former backup like 10 years ago. David Blow for the commanders, who was another former quarterback, has never called plays before, has only been coaching for a little bit of time.

And then Brian Fleury, who's replacing Clint Kubiak, the Seattle Seahawks, he's never called plays before really young guy. Then you have a lot of, you know, the 17 or a lot of guys who've called plays before, but in new places. What I think could be happening with offensive play callers here soon, and I look at the Eagles draft where they brought in Mackay Lemon. And one of the first things that Danny Kelly said, I sit right next to him. He's like, Kyle Lemon, Jalen Hertz doesn't really throw over the middle of the field.

And I think this really helps them over the middle of the field. And then they got Eli Stowers. I'm like, oh, man, that's another guy. They're probably going to try and play in the slot. He's going to be over the middle of the field. It's another over the middle of the field thing. And then one of the things, I think we talked about this before, that I took away from that ESPN hit piece on Jalen Hertz is I think the Eagles are more committed long term to Sean Mannion

than they are Jalen Hertz. because I think what is now in vogue is you need to be early on an offensive play call. And that's why Sean Mannion is calling plays next year. That's why David Blow is calling plays next year. And for me, with these offensive play callers becoming, you're betting earlier and early on them and you're trying to fit to what they want and what they're doing,

I do think that we are in this spot now where offensive play caller might be as important as like quarterback at this point. We're like, you're developing a quarterback, right? you're developing a quarterback, trying to figure out who it's going to be, you almost need to develop an offensive play caller that you can figure out how to keep in-house, if not name him the head coach or figure out what it's going to be, or else you're not going to have longevity in this league, right?

Josh McDaniels is locked into an offensive play caller position with the New England Patriots as long as he wants to be because he's failed as a head coach twice, three times if you count, whatever happened with the Colts. Then you look at the other, the Buccaneers situation. Todd Bowles, let Dave Canales walk, right? He's now head coach of the Panthers. He's lifting, I think, the floor of that offense. Then Liam Cohen, he goes, he's now.

now, I think one of the top five offensive playcalls in the league, the only reason the Jaguars are relevant. Ben Johnson, he leaves Detroit, right? Detroit has a terrible offensive season last year. They couldn't run the ball successfully. Some people playing the offensive line, whatever. When you look at the first year, Dan Campbell took over as the head coach, his offensive

play caller was Anthony Lane. Jared Goff was terrible. The offense was trash. Then Ben Johnson gets promoted. It changes the entire trajectory of the team for the first time in like 100 plus years. Then he leaves, and now there's already hot seat. They're bringing in Drew Petzing. They had to fire an offensive play caller. Here we are. Having an offensive play caller that you're early on, that you're developing, that you can kind of stay committed

in the thing. I mean, we brought up Sean Payton. Sean Payton is giving up offensive play calling duties for the first time I think in his career because he wants to keep this Davis Webb guy who we feel like could be a future offensive play call in the NFL. I honestly think so much attention and resources are being given to these play callers and in some situations even more so than the quarterbacks because I think it's arguably as important as quarterback if not one of the most important positions you have on your team. Okay, but here's the issue in terms of longevity and whether this is sustainable. I don't disagree about their importance.

However, you just mentioned it. 17 new play callers in the NFL this season. If Sean Mannion leads the Eagles to a top five offense this season, probably a head coach. You fire Nick Siriani and you make him the head coach. I don't think we have almost that almost never happens. It would be insane to let Sean Mannion walk though. Okay, but that never happens.

That's not how you're going to, so let's say they have a good season. let's say they get to the NFC championship game. Now you're firing the coach who has gotten you to the NFC championship game three times. And the owners don't operate that way. So now he leaves and he's going to go somewhere else. Davis Webb, if he actually keeps this job, which I'll talk to me in November about whether Sean Payton's still. Over under seven and a half weeks before Peyton starts calling playing.

Yeah, I mean, we've discussed this before. Peyton's doing this to make himself look good. He'll take the play calling back. But let's say that doesn't happen. And Davis Webb does a great job under Sean Payton and the Broncos's offensive. takes this major leap, now he's gone the next year. So this is the issue when it's not your head coach, who is that guy? When it's the head coach who's that guy, McVe, Shanahan, LaFleur,

whoever else you want to point to, great spot to be in. They're calling plays. They're there for the long haul. You can bring in different personnel. You can hope you get lucky one year with defensive turnover, a great defensive coordinator. But when it's the young offensive coordinator who you hire, you do run into an issue where that guy's probably not going to be there for

long. Yeah, and I think that has to change. I honestly think that what the Bucks have done with Dave Canales and Liam Cohen has hurt their football team. It's hurt them. And I think that there are going to be other teams in similar situations where, I mean, I'm not saying the Lions should have fired Dan Campbell to keep Ben Johnson, but at a certain point, if you're a Lions fan and you had Truth Serum, would you say you rather have Ben Johnson or Dan Campbell? Wow, that's a great question. I wonder what they would say, what Alliance fan would say right now. I'd be shocked. I would bet Eight or nine out of nine out of ten Lions fans are saying I'd rather have Ben Johnson. Because it ultimately, I mean, the diners have drafted poorly over the last three or four years.

Everyone's on that. Why are the diners still like a perennial playoff team? Why have they been able to figure out even with a seventh round, the last pick in the NFL draft, to figure out quarterbacks? Because they have an offensive play caller that raises the floor in the ceiling of team. Sean McVeigh, with Los Angeles Rams. These are the most valuable people in the league. And that's part because what you pay them is not tracked on the salary cap.

Like, you can pay them whatever you want. you can give them whatever contract you want. John Brun got a 10-year contract to call plays as the head coach or the Raiders when he came back. These guys are more important to the success of your football team than arguably anybody else. Because the second you don't have one is the second this thing starts to slip

and when you need to start making flips and start making changes. I honestly feel that the Sean Mannion bet, the David Blow bet, have we seen this before? Have you seen a first-year offensive play caller come in and only have two or three years of coaching experience? I can't remember it. Can you? No, I mean,

This is why the league is changing. You're like, well, the leagues don't operate this way. The leagues have never done this before. Sean Mani and David Blower are calling plays for teams next year. Declan O'Doyle is a first year office play caller. Davis Webb is taking play call duties from Sean Payton. The league is changing because they know if we don't have this guy locked in,

our team can't take the top off. Our team can't go the distance. It's the only reason, not the only reason, but a driving reason why the Seattle Seahawks offense was able to get the Super Bowl the way they did and unlock Sam Donald's because Clint Kubiak was this kind of next thing. And now all of a sudden,

and obviously he's gone, and they're going to have to try and do the same thing. I think there's going to be a lot of pressure on Brian Flurry and Drew Petzing and these guys to come in and immediately do it because they'll be the first to blame by fans and the teams probably if the offense isn't working out. And listen, if those guys are really good and they like their situation, it doesn't mean they have to leave right away. Like Ben Johnson stayed longer than we thought Ben Johnson was going to stay. He said, let me wait for the right opportunity. I'm going to sit this year out.

So that could happen where you keep a guy. I mean, it's almost like if you are able to keep one of those guys for three, years. That's a great stretch. And then you have to find the next guy. You know, now can you build a pipeline? Can you have a quarterbacks coach under him who's really good, who's really talented, but inexperienced now he's the next guy you bring in. It is a big storyline happening in the NFL and the way those guys perform in 2026. I mean, that'll go a long way in just determining which teams are good and which teams. It's over half the league. Over half the league. Over half the league. It's crazy. It's crazy. All right. His name is Austin Gale, Gail, bringing the juice.

As usual, thank you to Austin. Thanks to Christopher Sutton for producing Stefano Sanchez on video, an additional production supervision by Connor Nevins and Arjuna, Ramgopal. I'm Sheila Kapati. We will talk to you next time on the Ringer NFL show. 21 plus and present in select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 plus and present in D.C., Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem.

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