The Ringer NFL Show - The Biggest Mistakes the Media Makes With the NFL Draft | Big Board

Episode Date: April 16, 2021

‘The Ringer Fantasy Football Show’ hosts Danny Heifetz and Danny Kelly are joined by Bryan Curtis and Kaelen Jones to discuss the biggest mistakes the media makes in their coverage of the NFL draft. Follow ‘The Ringer Fantasy Football Show.’ Check out Kaelen Jones’s piece about Justin Fields. Hosts: Danny Heifetz and Danny Kelly Guests: Bryan Curtis and Kaelen Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Fairway Rowland, Joe House and Nathan Hubbard are joined by a rotating cast of Ringer and golf world personalities to break down the latest in golf headlines and news. They also delve into the world of golf gambling. Check out Fairway Rowland on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to The Ringer NFL show. My name is Danny Heifitz and I am joined by my co-host, Danny Kelly. What is up, D.K.? What's going on? You may know us from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show, which we publish every Wednesday.

But now we are coming to you every Monday and Friday ahead of the draft. And here on Fridays for the big. board we were ranking something related to the draft each week and today we're ranking all the things the media gets wrong about the NFL draft and we had to go to a couple people for this one like there's only a couple people you can go to for this conversation we are joined by ringer editor at large really just ringer consigliary Brian Curtis what's up Brian I need to update my Twitter bio that's awesome I love it ringer consicliary we're also joined by ringer staff writer Kaylin Jones what's up Caitlin. What's up, D.H. How are you doing?

I'm fantastic, honestly. I'm very good. But we had to assemble a stream team today because the draft is inherently ridiculous. It's just where are all these college kids going to get their first jobs? It's kind of a hilarious prospect. But Justin Fields just had his pro day and he's falling and Mac Jones is rising. And it's like, it just seems like a good time to kind of take a step back because this NFL draft industrial media complex that just gets this riled up. and frenzied every year is back in full tilt.

And I think we can kind of look. It's not just, I wanted to look at all the things that the NFL draft, like the media, and I hate to use the term media, maybe Brian, you can chastise me, but quote unquote, the media kind of makes mistakes here. It's not like, oh, this guy was supposed to be good and he's a bust and he sucks. Like, that's not what we're talking about. These are like systemic things that pop up every year patterns in how we talk about the draft, time over time structurally

and now they're happening all again and they're getting this all riled up. So predictable. So predictable. You can set a watch to it. So with all that said and with this Justin Fields and Mack Jones stuff and who's going to go number three to the 49ers,

I think it's perfect time to just kind of talk about this stuff. And with that said, I feel like there's only one place we can really start, which is lying season, which is the nickname people have for April and the idea that like you can't believe anything you hear or read about the draft in the month before the draft,

which is absurd. Brian, ringer consigniary, what do you even make of that concept? I think there are kind of two forms of lying season. The old form of lying season, which we're still dealing with, is the rumor we just heard, is it true or is it something the team put out there to throw everybody off the scent?

I will say that I think that, even that idea has kind of gone completely insane. I don't know where I heard this the other day, but someone was like, Now the Jets, you know, targeting Wilson and number two, is this a smoke screen? I'm like, from what? Smoke. Who are they tricking at number two?

That's like a running back who's in the open field running in the end zone. He starts jukeing in the end zone with no defenders in front. There's nobody to juke. Trevor Lawrence is going number one. You can pick whoever you want. Who are you faking out? That's the first weird level of line that I think has gone completely bizarre. I think we're just all at our own heads.

Number two is content creator lying season. And this is what I would say about this. Here we go. Media, as high fits would put it. I saw the other day, of course, I'm interested in the Dallas Cowboys, Cowboys fan. I think it was Daniel Jeremiah mocked quiddy pay to the Cowboys at number 10, which is an unusual pick for the Cowboys. Everybody in Cowboys Media had a freak out about that. Now, I'm asking, are you honestly worried that that will really happen at number 10?

or is this a great content opportunity for you to freak out about quiddy pay I know nothing about going to the Cowboys at number 10 so you are kind of lying to us that this is a big deal that this one guy put it in his mock draft those are I think of the two levels we're dealing with here yeah I mean DK you do mock drafts for us here

and I'm curious I mean what do you mock draft made is its own thing and then smoke like first of all what do you think of smoke screens and what do you think of mock draft pseudo-smoke screens? So I think smoke screens are a real thing. I think it's something that teams do to throw other teams off their scent. Teams are aware that so I've heard actual NFL coaches and GMs talk about this. Like they have people in their scouting department or in their coaching staff or whatever.

They go and read, you know, local media stuff to try and get a read on what these teams are doing. They look at what beat writers are saying about their teams. and so they're trying to get a bead on what teams are wanting to do. So coaches of these teams are obviously putting out misinformation. It's all propaganda. You know, it's like intelligence work literally. You're trying to like throw people

off your scent. So I believe it's actually a thing. In fact, you know, we'll get into pro days too, but I heard a great story from John Lynch, Forty-Nish GM, like the other day talking about how he was sent to Patrick Mahomes' pro day. And

the main goal, like the entire reason he went, mind you, this is during draft season. This guy is insanely busy. He's trying to, like, prepare his draft board.

He has a million better things to do, but he was sent to Mahomes' pro day to do it, specifically to be a smokescreen, to get people like us, the media, talking about this. And the funny thing is,

like, he went to this pro day, Patrick Mahomes lit it up, and then he went back to Kyle Shanahan. I was like, yo, we should maybe draft this guy. You know,

we have the number two pick or whatever it was at the time. I can't remember just two or three. But they were like, yeah, maybe we should actually draft this guy. He's really good. He lit it up. So we'll get into pro days later. But I think the smoke screen thing is absolutely true.

And to Brian's point, like it's hilarious because it's almost like we're all chasing our tails. It's like someone throws out this idea. And then we all react to it. We write stories on it. We write blurbs on it. We freak out about it. We pot about it.

And then the next day, there's this new idea that something else could happen. And we all, it's like this circular thing. And we have, I start doing mock drafts in January or February. There's multiple months of like content time that we have to fill. From my point of view, because I'm a part of this like machine, I treat mock drafts like discussion starters. I really do. I think it's, I try and guess what they're going to do.

I try and guess what teams will do. But a lot of the times is like, hey, here's this scenario. This would be really interesting. I think it's in the realm of possibility that this scenario will happen. Let's talk about what it would mean. So that's kind of how I treat it. I do try and be accurate, but I mean, it's like chess. Like you can't guess the, you know, one trillion different moves that could happen

throughout the one through one through 32 of a first round. So you do your best to like kind of like pick up on on little things and go from there. Caitlin, you're part of the machine too. How do you parse your information as you're trying to get through 32 different teams and what they're going to do this time of the year? Well, I mean, you know, throw it back at you. You're part of the machine too. So, you know, yeah, like team needs.

team is right yeah right so you know you try to identify what teams are looking for like what you know try to guess to me you're like dk said sorry just both of you i'm going to keep guessing that up um like dk was saying you know there there's you know the idea that you're if you are going to put together a mock draft it's probably to inform the public on you know where a player or where a team might end up going where their ideas might be coming from and what their evaluations might be leading to. So, I mean, as far as like parsing the information from mock drafts, it kind of leads to, you know, a consensus on where players are rated or like where they feasibly could go.

Because ultimately, it does kind of matter. Like some of these guys, the draft slots, I mean, some of them are going to be millionaires, multi-millioners, whatever. But, I mean, there is some importance to where guys end up landing, not only monetarily, like financially, but. you know, where they land ultimately determines how their careers are going to go. So there is some significance to it. But also, just in terms of the mock draft world or really just, again, back to the idea of

what misinformation. Is there just fundamentally, Brian, is there like a misalignment of incentives here a little bit in our world of we don't have a lot of content to talk about? Yes. There has, I don't know if you notice this, but it really has not been a ton of news on the whole draft thing other than like the 49ers trading up to three you know you have a workout right that are important at 40 time you know an injury Caleb farley you know had back surgery right like that's news that have materially affects what's going to happen but there's not much news so you sort of as a

content creator have to create your own news and if i you know and again i i say this is somebody by the way who's not in the machine so i just get to make fun of the machine but if i if i were part of the machine i don't think I would file the same mock draft 10 times in a row. I think I would find that boring, just tweak up the writeups a little bit. I think to amuse myself and perhaps my readers too, I would just kind of change those slots around as if it was a D.K. saying just to kind of even the chessboard thing, like what would happen if this happened and then I can kind of think through the possibilities. But that does create its own kind of content that is not real.

Yes. Yeah. But it's entertaining. And I think to that extent, that's people obviously like it. We're having this conversation on a draft podcast. So people obviously love that stuff. This is the thing. And you made a great point where I'm not going to put out the same mock 10 times.

People I, it's always amazes me how people, how upset people get at mock drafts. It's like, do you want to read the same mock drafts 500 times in the next three months? I don't understand it. Why are you upset with? me for like giving you a different scenario. You know what I mean? I think and the funny thing is too, the draft is always wildly wildly different than what we think it's going to be. Even like the weirdest quote worst mock I've ever seen is going to be it's like the draft is weirder every year. I swear. And so I just think it's hilarious. It's like this own little cottage industry, but it's also

something that gets people riled up. People love it. I enjoy riding mocks and I enjoy um, putting together these scenarios. But like Brian was saying, it's sort of this like fake thing that we do. It's kind of hilarious. You know, it's fake, but also like D.K., because, you know, you, you've talked to people in the industry, like people who are higher up, like Daniel Jeremiah's and stuff like that. The reason why people freak out over when they say something is because there's an assumption that their evaluation is informed on some type of level that like a fan or even a writer reporter or whatnot, there's some type of intel. You're assuming that there is some type of intel that maybe they know that you don't.

So, you know, and again, like, you know, Joe in his, you know, garage or his couch or whatever can come up with a mock draft. And like you said, it'll either be really hit or miss, like just like everyone else's. But the idea is that those top of values, those names, like when Adam Schepter reacts to, you know, Zach Wilson or the Jets, you know, trading away. Sam Donald says, oh, Zach Wilson is probably going to be dragged. Like, I just text them, congrats on moving to New York or whatever, you know? Like stuff like that.

You assume it's going to be, it's going to happen because those people have the authority on it. So lying season and all that leads to this other thing where you're talking about mock drafts and the not having the same mock draft over and over. But then that creates twofold, the perception that as some of those top people who mock like the Mel Kuyper's of the world, change their rankings, there's a true. trickle-down effect in all the other mocks. And that also creates the perception that players are rising and falling. Kalin, you wrote a story about Justin Fields this week.

And one of the great things you included was where Mack Jones and Justin Fields were in all these mocks from the last like 10 months. And it creates this perception. So, I mean, at least in the mock draft world, Mac Jones is rising. Justin Fields is falling. D.K., is that even real? Yes. Rising and falling?

There's multiple layers to this. First of all, from a media perspective, the side of the draft analysts, I think there certainly is a hive mind among draft analysts. And I know people trying to avoid that. But when you see a guy like Daniel Jeremiah who's very plugged in with NFL teams, he runs his mock drafts by NFL personnel and is like, hey, tell me where I'm wrong. When you see a guy like Daniel Jeremiah or, you know, like Dan Bruegel or any of the top draft analysts put together a mock, you're like, like, like Kainlin saying, you assume they have intel. And so that makes you rethink where you might have guys slotted or where you think the NFL is going to go. And so that creates sort of a rising and falling effect among the media.

And I think also what goes into that is, you know, as you get further along in the draft season, you watch more players. You know, some people, some analysts do this all year around. So they're very much plugged into like college guys all year round. think for some people like me, I get a little bit late start. I'm covering the NFL. I'm covering fantasy football during the season. So I catch up a little bit. I can, as I go through players and watch more guys, I get a better feel for how I would rank them. I might find a guy that I hadn't watched yet. And I'm like, oh, this case is awesome. So he's rising on my board,

even though, you know what I mean? It's just this sort of weird thing. But I will say, it's real in the NFL world too. And this is something I've heard. I heard Greg Hoseil talking about this the other day. It's basically coaches, NFL coaches, they're doing their job, you know, all the way through January or all the way through December. And then they start watching guys in January, February. They go to Senior Bowl or whatever. The scouting department already knows all these guys. The scouting department have their grades more or less set throughout, like, the draft process. But when coaches get involved and there's not a clear hierarchy of where, who's making the decisions, who's setting the board.

board. Some teams might have a very clear hierarchy and coaches don't matter. A lot of teams, I think, do incorporate coaches' opinions into the process. And so what happens is you've got coaches watching these guys late and they're giving their input and they're talking to people in the media and they're talking to guys and reporters. And so what happens is these coaches really love one player. He tells a reporter that the reporter starts creating buzz on this player. And so they're rising up boards. And in some cases, these guys might actually be rising on teams boards because the coaches input is coming in and maybe pushing a guy up. So on one hand,

it's a little bit ridiculous to have like really fast and really like sudden movement of guy. Like the Justin Fields thing I think is ridiculous. But I think that there is something to it. And it is the coaches getting involved late in the process and sort of adding their input and I guess changing the narrative around some of these players. So Brian, do you think that there's also to what DeK

is saying, but there's also the effect of the gap between, I mean, D.K. He's talking about like coaches and scouts, and that's real. But there's also a gap between teams and the media in that sometimes, quote unquote, a player rising is actually reporters and journalists actually

catching up to where the team has had certain player roughly all along. And so in that sense, Brian, do you ever see sometimes a stock rising is actually the tail kind of wagging the dog? Yeah, yeah. And that's, probably not like unusual in news for those of us who are not the decision makers to kind of

belatedly realize what the decision makers are thinking in this case NFL teams and to then follow take their cues and be like oh they think this guy's really good oh my board here we go yeah right up this way but to what d k said earlier i think that's absolutely right about it is a real thing i remember when the cowboys drafted demarcus wear i don't know that i was totally sure who demarcus where was like two weeks before the draft the guy from troy small college guy and all of a sudden it was like, whoa, you know, like we're talking, you know, top third of the first round here. And it turned out to be great, right?

Like it turned out to be a great pick. So I absolutely believe it is true. Also, by the way, what's when we're talking about mock drafts? Love the mock draft consensus thing. Because what we're trying to do right now is like slot the first couple picks. But I think if you look at mock drafts as a whole, you'll find that every, every year, like, number 17 is the same in every mock draft. Like someone has a pick later on that they just know.

is going to have like this tight end is going to go at 17 we all know that's happening i don't know if it's patrick sartan of the cowboys this year there's probably another one yeah but have you noticed that there's always one that's a little down it's like how do we all know what pick 20 is going to be but we can't agree on what pick five is going to be yeah i think ser tan is the perfect example of that actually because um it's like oh they need a corner he's the best corner and this is an okay spot for him to go so we're all just assuming that it's going to happen this is the pick and why, why, you know, why try and throwing in anything else? So, I mean, mock drafts, it's just a weird little world.

Is it? I mean, Brian, you wrote about mock drafts a couple of years ago. You did a great thing about this whole little universe that it is. It's really weird because I also feel two different values are also colliding here. One is everybody's trying to say who's going to be good at football, which of these players are actually going to be stars. And the second thing is which of these players are going to be selected by which teams. This is not actually the same exercise at all, as we find out every year.

And you need different skill sets to produce those two different things. Totally. I think my very first act of media criticism, sports media criticism a long time ago was writing a piece about how terrible Mel Kiper was at predicting which players are going to go where. This guy was the ultimate self-styled guru of like, I know this guy's going to be good, this guy's going to suck. But he just, his mock draft every year would be terrible. It'd be like none of these picks are right.

He didn't have any idea where these guys are going to go. And I think it's just because you're trying to do two different things at once. And I also think that makes mock drafts a really weird exercise because it's really hard to be like, I think this guy sucks. Number five. Here he goes. It almost, it's almost like you're arguing with yourself as a draft guru in a way. Okay. So mock drafts are weird.

the whole concept of what we can believe in information is weird you know what else i find very weird pro days i don't get it i don't get the concept i get the concept but the idea that trevor lawrence's pro day was on television kind of blows my mind so caylin you you wrote a great story about justin feels this week justin feels his second pro day was this week that's a whole thing i'm curious caylin do you find do you gleam any valuable information from pro day days, and why can't we just know more about from watching them play college football? So before the Justin Fields piece, I did a story where I spoke to like a bunch of, you know, hop on Zoom and did like asking, you know, four or five different college football

coaches about, you know, the importance of a pro day. Like what, why does it matter? And really, for NFL teams, you know, it's more so 90% of scouting in the evaluation is going to come based on what they seem on film or, you know, what. what they do on the field. Like, that's 90% of it. And you're really doing, and some teams don't even do it anymore,

like that last 10% is happening in pro day. You're usually just doing cleanups and checking to see medical history, stuff like that. And, you know, you're getting a beat on, like, what the player is like as a human being. And, you know, under normal circumstances, you're able to get them, you know, to do workouts, stuff like that,

on board exercises where they're relaying plays back to coaches and whatnot to see how they fit and how they read your system and stuff like that. So there is some type of value to pro days. You know, again, like you mentioned Trevor Lawrence, you know, or, you know, doing his pro day and in short to drawing around the field. Us gawking at Zach Wilson, Chuck and the ball downfielder, Justin Fields, and saying, wow, that is the best pro day I've ever seen ever.

Every year we say this about some quarterback prospect or some receiver prospect every single year. So, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really. matter. It, again, it just drives this whole narrative and this perception and this whole draft industrial complex, as you call it, uh, daddy. Like, that's all it really contributes to. Just to add to that, I think, yeah, the pro day thing is very interesting to me because, um, yeah, we make a big deal out about, about these guys throwing and doing all this stuff against

air against nobody, you know, it's all scripted. But at the same time, like, we're human. these GMs are human their jobs depending on this stuff when you go out and I have to admit like 100% like Zach Wilson doing that like bootleg rollout throw where he threw cross his body and like

whipped it down field 50 yards I was like okay that was a sick throw like that was incredible very physically impressive and I have to admit like it actually changed my opinion on him a little bit like I was like this guy you might have it so

the problem is there's this recency bias like, oh, we just saw this as an incredibly impressive play. You're seeing him in person, in person, like watching games or watching a player play in person, seeing them in person is just different. It's like a human thing. It's a psychological thing. I was talking to Jim Nagy, the Senior Bowl, the director of the Senior Bowl, before the season, he was talking about the importance and why this season was going to be so weird for scouting departments

is the importance of being on the field, at field level for a lot of scouting departments, and seeing these guys, seeing how they're built. And like the Zach Wilson thing, I think it's just one example. But seeing like the type of athlete they are, the way they move in person is just different than on tape. So I think it's a fascinating discussion. At the end of the day, like I kind of land on the side where if a pro day is really changing your grade that much, it's probably a bad process. But that being said, it is a process. Like teams put important, like they put a heavy emphasis, not a heavy emphasis.

They put at least some emphasis on it. they're taking the time to travel to these things. Again, these guys are busy. Like, you guys think we're busy at this time? Like, they are trying to put together a board, do everything. And they're traveling to go watch these guys in their shorts, throw against air. So it does matter.

I would say that media probably hypes it up a little bit more than it should be. But at the same time, teams are, you know, they're putting some stock into it. And so I think it's very interesting. So with all this said about mock drafts and pro days and how we cover these things and how teams actually go about this stuff. Kalyn. Why is Justin Fields falling

after he was considered one, two with Trevor Lawrence since they were like seniors in high school? It's a good question. And, you know, I tried to get into it in the piece that's up on the ringer.com. It's like, I don't understand why Justin Fields perceptively, you know,

gets ding for the same thing that a lot of, you know, good prospects who are black, you play quarterback, tend to get ding for. And, you know, to get into it, like, this is a guy, and someone told me on Twitter, like, this doesn't matter. Like, he was a five-star recruit. He was behind Trevor Lawrence.

Like, that matters in the sense that you have a guy who, of high pedigree, like, scouts have been, have had eyes on him since he was, you know, before a legitimate NFL draft prospect. I think that matters. The perception on him has changed because, again, there's the idea that black quarterbacks are not smart enough to play the position. And that, you know, I know that socially times are changing. So we're getting better as, you know, I guess a human populace or at least an American populace that consumes football.

We're getting better at pointing that out when we see it. But it's still, there's still a bit of an internal bias. Like the fact that, and that's the thing, when you watch Justin Fields tape, and I think we talked about this on one of the draft board shows, like, for big board shows, excuse me, you know, Justin Fields, he holds on to the ball too long. And you're sitting there like, okay, get rid of the ball. Get rid of the ball. Is he not reading the defense?

But the thing is for me is if we're able to, as, you know, outsiders of the NFL spear, so quote unquote, like if we're able to debunk the fact that Ohio State's defense, as Doug Farr pointed out, has really advanced concepts and option choice routes where receivers have to take their time, getting through the routes and deciding, you know, meeting for him to take his time through his read, then he's not going slow. He's just taking his time to his reads. If I'm able to reach out to Justin Field's quarterback coach

and ask him just straight up, like, what is he doing wrong? To me, there's no reason why anyone in the media who might be driving the narrative that he's incapable of doing certain things, you know, like that shouldn't be happening. So I don't really have an answer other than that. It's a perception thing. It's strange to me.

It doesn't really make sense. And I know my piece articulates it a lot better than I just did right now, but it's perplexing. And it does come down to a lot of ingrained racism that, you know, people have biases against black quarterbacks in the NFL. And yeah, I mean, I think times are changing, but racism also evolves over time, right? And I think you did a good job in your piece at highlighting that when white quarterbacks succeed, you know, sometimes it's attributed to brain. And then black quarterback succeeding, it's attributed to brawn. right, there's something innate to their success. And so I was curious what you think about,

and I want to know from Brian about this too, but there's a weird change in recent times where the term athletic quarterback used to be a detriment, like a backhanded compliment. Like Michael Vicks athletic, but can he play from the pocket? And that was kind of a label that followed black quarterbacks. Now that we have white quarterbacks who can do it,

and the games change, but also now that Trevor Lawrence is an athletic, it's called Creating Out of Structure, now that Zach Wilson and Trevor Lawrence can see it. Kaelan, I'm curious what you think about that terminology change. And Brian, too. Yeah, no, it's interesting. It's weird because, you know, the NFL draft has always placed a premium on players who are athletically gifted, right?

So it's strange to me when now, you know, the goalposts are really changing. And Fields is a good example, right? He runs a 4-4. This is a dude who's second fastest quarterback since Robert Griffin III in the NFL draft. So it's weird. that the goalposts are now shifting to accommodate, you know, white players who are more athletically gifted. And I don't really know if I have an answer for that other than that there's the assumption because they're white and can also do the athletic things that they

also have the brain that you mentioned earlier, like the intelligence to also do the things that white quarterbacks are typically like being cerebral. Like think about how many black quarterbacks you hear are being described as cerebral. It doesn't happen. So it's stuff like that. I think the part of the, the fields stuff that really stuck out to me and Kalan pointed this out in this piece, which was really, really good, was the dedication part,

the quote unquote dedication part. I think you got the danyas, you guys pointed this out on the pod too. Like, you know that Clemson game was on TV, right? Right. We all saw that.

Yeah. This is not something that was happening. We could watch the game. Like that was a fairly large college football game that we were all watching. we all saw what his dedication to getting back on the field and leading his team brilliantly to a victory. That just blew my mind. Like that's not even a some guy, some unnamed source told me.

That's something I could watch the playoff and see with my own eyes. So that just, and I think that just speaks to how ingrained all this stuff is when you can watch that with your own eyes and then have reports like that coming out in the media. I think that to add on to what Kailen and Brian were saying, And I think that it's not necessarily fair to Mac Jones, but the Mac Jones versus Justin Fields' arguments and discussions, I think, are centered around Mac Jones' elite processing, you know, polished.

Think like some of these like coded words that have a history, you know, of being based on race in the NFL. That's not necessarily, that's not me saying that they're incorrect. Like I do think that Mac Jones is a quick processor. It's not taking away from what he, you know, does on the field. I'm just saying, like, it's an interesting, like, the contradiction between the two or the juxtaposition between the two, even though I think both of these guys have, like,

elite talent and elite skills. And, you know, so I just think it's a very difficult discussion to have. I think the idea that you see a guy like Mac Jones getting propped up a little bit because of his processing skills and people are talking about him, like he's this, I guess, more pro-ready or something like that, whereas he actually has, like, very few actual starts in college. He's actually pretty raw. So you can see that sort of like implicit bias. It's sort of ingrained in the language of around the draft. And I think that's why it's important for us to point things out like that, because, you know, if we don't point it out,

then it's just going to continue on. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like when you look at Zach Wilson, when you look at Mack Jones, like you mentioned the EK, like those are guys who have skyrocketed it up all of our our mock draft drafts and draft boards and everything else when there are noticeable flaws in this game. And so that was one I think like probably my favorite sentence that I wrote. Like it's like what does a black

quarterback? How special does a black quarterback have to be to not experience like some type of draft flaw? Like because Fields is as perfect. If you look at the course of his career, this is a guy who has played against elite competition has played in what is

a pretty advanced complex NFL system. I know Ohio state fans apparently disagree, but maybe it's just because I don't know jack shit about football and it's complex to me. But like, this is a guy who is a physical freak, which is what we put a premium on the

top 10, the first round is when you have NFL players who look at prospects and are like, that's the guy that I won on my team or I would be, you know, scared to play against. You know, I don't get where, and that's what Quincy

gave reporting, like his field's quarterback trainer is like what we're missing like what exactly are the flaws in field's game. Other than that, he's a slow processor and acts according to his system. So it just doesn't make sense to me in comparison to his peers. Brian, so many times as, I mean, whatever content you're creating, you basically get a lot of information. You have to make a decision about what it means. I feel like with this conversation, the layering of race into all these different areas

of an evaluation. I'm curious if you think that really where it comes down to is who gets the benefit of the doubt and who does not. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's, again, right, we're talking about that is, I think that is actually what it comes down to at the end of the day, right? When you look at this, the kind of information we're dealing with, yeah, and that's, I think Kellan actually just said that, but that's actually a big part of this. You're giving somebody the benefit of the doubt or you're not. And as we've seen, that tends to go one direction in the history of the NFL and not the other direction. Yeah, I think you're totally right.

Having said all of this, and I think it's important that we talked about this, but at the end of the day, like what, I still do think going back to the smokescreen discussion we had, like, there's still a chance that Justin Fields is actually going to be the pick at number three. And maybe that's, maybe the, like, teams are just putting out this negative, you know, narrative on Justin Fields in order to get him to fall or get teams to think he's going to fall. I don't know exactly sure. You know, I guess like from the 49th point of view, say that they really want Justin Fields.

And they're not 100% sure that Zach Wilson is the number two pick. I guess if they really want to get Justin Fields, they're basically telling the world, we're going to take Mac Jones. You don't have to trade up to number two to get Justin Fields. I guess that would be the only reason for them to do this smokescreen. But I do want to point out that Justin Fields, at least on one sports book I saw today, became the new betting favorite to be the number three pick. So not that that means anything,

but I do want to, like, there's still a chance that he is the pick. And I think, um, this overwhelming consensus that he is going to be, that Mac Jones is going to be the number three pick. I think is definitely receded in the last few days.

Is Kyle Shanhan's friendship with Chris Sims also a smokescreen? The tattoos, the tattoos of each other's initials are just a smokescreen. Could that be one of the most elaborate long cons in NFL history? and that's what led us here. Oh, my gosh. All for this moment to mislead people into thinking they were actually going to take Mac Jones with the third pick. I don't know.

On that note, I think D.K.'s right, because before we do get all riled up, I mean, look, if Justin Fields falls outside the top five and false outside the top ten, we'll be revisiting this. But it is worth remembering what D.K. just said that, I mean, let's go back three years ago. Everyone was split between who would go first to the Cleveland rounds. Would it be Josh Allen or would it be Sam Darnold? that was it was it was everyone was between those two adam sheffter tweets like two or three days before the draft Baker mayfield's in the mix and everyone's like what lying season and then the adam shifter chefter tweets two days before the draft they're gonna take baker mayfield basically is what he says and everyone's like what and then we still don't believe it and then it happened and it's a good reminder that what happened there is the brown's GM john dorsey didn't tell anyone until the week of the draft

And then it leaked. And it was like, hey, the actual guy making the decision hasn't spoken to anybody. Worth reminding, Jets' GM Joe Douglas. We don't know if he's spoken to anyone. And then also the Niners here, so much of this Mack Jones thing is based on a similar reason. Everyone just assumed the Browns were going to take Josh Allen, which is, well, he seems like a quarterback that fits the profile of what John Dorsey, the Browns GM likes. He's John Dorsey's kind of player. That's not information.

That's well-informed speculation. And I think there's a massive difference that sometimes the nuances of which gets lost in the giant media game of telephone through Twitter that now gets played. And so I'm very curious, D-K, do you think there's a, well, D-K, you just went on this, I'm going to give it to Brian.

Do you think that there's a real chance here that maybe we're all just losing our minds because Chris Sims tweeted his friend likes a certain type of quarterback? Well, as you said, there's a pretty good chance that Chris Sims knows the answer to this question. Yes. So it's not a, it's not seem.

a bad source. But I think there is, I think there is also a larger thing here where picking certain players in the draft and spending a lot of time on them, a lot more time on them than other players, making them essentially the protagonist or antagonist of the draft. That also happens. Yes. Every year. And what's funny is I think like over the past maybe 20 years, probably more than that,

we have tried, we meaning the media and also the people who televise, they've tried to turn the draft more into a game. Draft is not a football game, to be clear. But what did they do? They took it out of the Marriott Marquis and they put it in Radio City. And then they took it out of Radio City and they put it these big outside things where we have this huge crowd. I remember somebody telling me once the NFL network that they wanted to shoot the draft from behind Roger Goodell as much as possible. So people would see the crowd. So if you're watching it home, you're like, ooh, this is exciting. There's a big crowd here. This is an important crowd triggers in my mind. This is not picking players off a list. It's something big. Right.

prime time. It's at night. And I feel the kind of one of the final stages of that is you have to have good guys and bad guys in the draft. You have people you're rooting for teams you're rooting for, teams you're rooting against. And oftentimes the quarterbacks, because that position is so overvalued, so important, so, so fraught in the draft, those guys become the players in that whole saga. The antagonist. I love that. That's a really good point. Because we've, we've seen these the last few years, right? Because the draft, whether it's, I, the people who kind of become the antagonist or protagonist last few years, Josh Allen was,

there was a massive rifts between establishment, watch the tape dude bros, and then versus like math people who were like, why is Josh Allen's completion percentage below 55? And then Daniel Jones, there was an anti-Daniel Jones movement. DK had Daniel Jones is what, the 100th player in your top 100 solely to have in the top 100.

I was a part of that. I feel a little bit. Trubisky, Justin Herbert, even to a lesser degree. I don't know how much of that was like doubting his skills versus just doubting. Like he just seemed like he looked 14 years old, but it was really tall. So, I know, Kalen, what do you make of the idea that we just had certain guy? I don't know, not that Mack Jones is the guy this year, but guys, we root for or again, specifically quarterbacks the last few years.

And also there's a spotty track record of it. What do you make of that, Caitlin? I mean, it's natural, right? We do that when they're in the NFL. We pick our protagonists of quarterbacks. We pick our antagonists of quarterbacks. Like, for example, last year, Carson Wentz was antagonist. Sam Darnold has been antagonist for much of the year, like much of his career last year.

Like, that's why he got ran out of the Jets when Gardner Minchu is somehow a superhero for, you know, again, like kind of coming out of nowhere. And I think we gravitate a lot in the media to either the flashy when they are, you know, modified superstars, right? like Patrick Mahalves, Aaron Rogers, all that. But you have those guys who come out of nowhere. Justin Herbert last year went from being antagonist in the draft to now everyone absolutely loves quiet Justin Herbert, even though we were ripping Justin Herbert a year ago for being quiet. So I think that's just human, that's human nature.

That's human nature. And I'm not saying it's right. And I think that we definitely like, I don't know if we as a media completely control that narrative. I'm sure how much spotlight we put on guys contributes to that. for example, like this year with Mac Jones, like all of a sudden, and Zach Wilson, we're putting a lot of spotlight on those guys because they're the new shiny thing, especially like Zach Wilson during his year, had a phenomenal season,

sky rockets to being probably the second pick in the draft. But I think that's just kind of how we go about rooting for sports and consuming it. It's the gladiator thing, win the crowd, and you'll win your freedom or whatever. It's like, you know, you have to every, yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like, like it goes back all throughout human history. It's like you have to win the hearts of the fans. And it's totally different. So, yeah, it's fascinating.

It's the odd irony of this. Bill has talked about this, that Fields probably is the protagonist of the season. If he falls past the Niners of three, like you feel like if he doesn't go to the Atlanta four, I feel like people will be rooting for Justin Fields going into this season. I'm not going to, I don't want to say people will be rooting against Mack Jones,

but he's closer to the Trubisky, Daniel Jones vibe of like maybe not Daniel Jones or Trubisky but people, I'm not going to say people wanted to fail but fewer people will be rooting for him to succeed at the very least.

I think that's fair to say. I mean, Dika, does, is that something that exists solely in like people who talk about the draft or does any of that bleed into actual evaluations? I think it, I mean, it's hard to be completely objective, right?

I think everybody has a little bit of human nature with their thing. And so, like, you know, if you're one of those people who can't stand overhyped players, you know, it's like your natural reaction is going to be to hate a guy that's overhyped. It's like the type of person that hates a, hates a restaurant because there's a way, there's a long line. You know what I mean? And so it's like I'm the kind of person who will, I hate restaurants that have a line. I refuse to go to that restaurant. I hate that restaurant. And I think there's probably a little bit of that that goes into like player's evaluations.

Like if this player is just getting hyped and hyped and hyped, you get sick of hearing and it sick of hearing about it. And you're like, man, he's not that good. And it's like this natural human thing. And it's very difficult to be completely, completely objective, I think, for anybody. Back to the protagonist, the antagonist thing. There's also this new trope, I guess, of like being the main character on Twitter, which is probably something you never want to do.

And just the idea that Twitter, because it's obviously an inherently negative site and positivity is reserved for dogs and animals who get friendships and little otters who have a favorite rock. But with humans are the main character. It's always negative. Again, right. Like there's a negative antagonist. It's Josh Allen, Daniel Jones, at Chubesky. Why, maybe this is a reductive. Don't question. Why do we just trend toward negativity in the internet, but also like specifically around the draft? Probably boredom is is mixed up in there. And I think Twitter allows sports writers to just do things they could not do in the confines of a sports article. So, you know, if somebody is, if there's somebody that they have selected as the

protagonist or antagonist of the draft, they just keep doubling down on that and making really funny jokes. And all of a sudden it has this kind of air of a reality show as much as anything. And then everybody else joins in because people want to get in on that action. And it's like, and then they have this weird sort of, you know, and you mentioned some of the guys, Herbert. And they have this weird thing. I was like, I don't know that much about Justin Herbert, but after the draft, I was like, oh, that guy wouldn't want to be Justin Herbert on a day like today.

It also strikes me as the narrative is like totally wrapped up in where they get drafted. So let's say Josh Allen and Justin Herbert had fallen to 15, falling like 10ish picks. And then finally they got picked. Don't you think everybody would be kind of rooting for those guys instead of considering them in the antagonist? Because like, oh, whoa, hey, 15, great value. Yeah. And it takes a chance there. Absolutely.

Yeah. Changes a perception. Exactly. My thought, the thing that I keep thinking about is if Mac Jones ends up the number three pick and he goes to 49ers, ultimately I do think he's going to be good. But people are going to keep going back to that sort of meme where he overthrew the guy at the pro day. And then like whether it was like NFL.com or NFL network just does this smash cut into

Charles Shanahan's face. And he's just like cue the curb music. You know, it's just like, what have I done? What am I doing here? to me, that's the first thing I'm going to think about when Mac Jones gets drafted. I'm like, this is what Twitter has done to me. Yeah.

Can I have one final thought about the media in the draft? Do you have as many as you want? The thought is that we, the media, I'll throw myself in this. And maybe, and Danny Kelly is probably the only exception on planet Earth. We, the media are bad at picking which players are going to be good and which players are not going to be good. I had this guy, Bob Stern, who writes draft stuff for the athletic,

great radio host, great writer. He told me one time he goes, the difference between being good at the draft, is like being a good hitter in baseball or a bad hitter in baseball. If you're good at the draft, you hit 300. If you're really bad, you hit 200. Most people hit like 240.

And if you're Bill Belichick and Jimmy Johnson, their prime, you throw a couple of 400 Ted Williams-style seasons in there. Oh, I got four out of 10 picks right. And once you understand that, you're like, oh, so even the best media draft people are going to be wrong two out of three times. They're going to be wrong.

And if they're right, one out of three times, they're really good at this. They're really, really good at this. So when we talk about all these questions of perception and protagonist, antagonist, getting it right and getting wrong, like, the problem is we have more information now than we've ever had about these guys. We have more clips. We have pro days. We've talked about analytics, all this stuff.

And it's not clear to me we're any better at picking who's, going to be good in the NFL or bad in the NFL than we ever have been. Or maybe we're a little better, but we're not much better. And I think that has to inform this whole discussion, too. The way, the analogy that I like to go to, I think that one's great. And I've been thinking about this more. And I'm sure I'll have people in the finance world yelling at me because I'm an idiot who doesn't know anything.

But the draft and general managers just in general kind of remind me of like hedge fund managers where on a short enough time frame, you can you can look like an absolute superstar you can be peter lynch you know you can just pick every stock right you have it figured out you're beating the market you're beating smp 500 this is like john schneider in his early days with the ceox pick like five future hall of famers in two seasons and then hasn't done jack shit sense basically and i mean that's like an oversimplification but he's been he's been below average sense and the same thing same thing in like the hedge fund manager world is like you know spread out the time

time frame long and after like two or three decades and most of these guys are going to end up worse than the S&P. So I look at it like the same way like teams are teams are just going to get lucky sometimes. You know what I mean. It's just inherently very, very difficult to predict what human beings are going to do and how they're going to develop and how they're going to react in their life to different things. And so anyways, that I think the baseball one's perfect too, but like that's just how I've been like sort of thinking about it more lately. It's just you can get lucky for a few years, but in the long run, I think everybody's probably around the same. So on that, I mean, to that point, though, D.K., like, obviously regression is just a thing,

but I also wonder if there's a human element of these guys aren't being good in a vacuum. It's like you have a couple good draft classes and then you hear, hey, you had a really good draft class. And then you keep hearing that and there's a feedback loop. And you wonder, it's kind of like heat checks happen. It doesn't, it's not as easy to see. see, but the Seahawks have kind of had some, like, the heat check version of Steph Curry pulling up from 40 feet and trying to draft a linebacker in like the 26 pick.

And like, that's a very real thing. And whereas athletes are pretty used to trying to turn out the noise, like if Mike Trout's on a 30 game hit streak, I actually kind of believe Mike Trout wouldn't do anything different on the 31st day. I don't know if that's true for people who weren't quite as used to getting the day-to-day shine, like GMs or hedge fund. People who kind of don't mind like really positive headlines. I don't know.

Is that kind of crazy to think? I don't know. What do you think, Brian or Caleb? I think it comes down to psychology. Like, the psychology of that is really interesting because, yeah, if you are suddenly on, if you get too confident as a human, you're going to think that you are capable of hitting everything right. And so, yeah, when you go to the park and you start hitting against nobody, you hit five,

three-pointers in a row, you start feeling yourself, you step back, do a fade away, and you air ball it, and you look around, you're like, well, I hope no one saw that. The difference is those GMs are doing it in public, you know, and at that point, they're doing it with, you know, selecting NFL players, affecting the long term or even short term stability of their franchises. So it's really interesting to think about because if I was getting everything right in public, I'd be feeling myself a little bit too. Okay. I have one last completely hits bonn question for you guys. and this is the real thing about the draft that nobody talks about enough

and I want to hear from all three of you. Isn't the idea of a draft absolutely ridiculous? Can you imagine if... You're talking about hedge funds. Can you imagine if all the finance majors in college everywhere, all the banks just got to draft them? You don't get to decide what city you're going to live in.

Also, there's a collective bar. You don't get to decide how much money you're going to make. This is absolutely... This is absolutely wild. And like there's no alternative if you want to go in this line of work. Why can't they just have a set pool of money and just like pull from it and the rookies can sign wherever they want? You know, recruiting. Like how are high school seniors have more agency in where they go to college than college seniors have agency in where they go to work?

Isn't this a little nuts, D.K.? Well, what are we going to do for the three months between, you know, the end of the season and the draft end? recruiting flight tracking it's like high school recruiting all over again wouldn't this yeah like the recruiting world is actually pretty like college recruiting world the more i've gotten into the draft the more i look back at where these guys are recruited like three star four star five star guys the nphil definitely looks at five star guys a little bit differently because they think they can get the like until like if you're a disappointing five star guy they think they can untapped that potential or whatever and so

yeah it's interesting yeah Kaelan, am I crazy? Should the draft exist? Oh, dude, you're talking to a soccer fan. Of course, it shouldn't exist. The United States is so unique in that it has this draft system. Even MLS, like there's an MLS draft, which doesn't make any sense. I mean, it does make sense. But, you know, when you look at how, like you mentioned earlier, like the agency that players have at 16, 17, 18 years old,

it should be allowed when they're, you know, 20, 21, 22, 23, and about to become millionaires, especially, you know, because so often we see NFL franchises who struggle, you know, maximizing this potential. It sucks. It doesn't make any sense that the best player like Trevor Lawrence has to go to the worst team. It fundamentally does not make any sense because football specifically, it is about 22 plus guys, plus all the coaches being on the same page and getting everything right. So it's, I mean, one person, can change the trajectory of a franchise. That's why quarterbacks are like the premium of quarterbacks is there.

That's why it exists because it's the most influential position in the sport. But at the same time, one player can't change everything. We just saw a quarterback who had a phenomenal year and it seems still went four and 12. We saw Matthew Stafford, you know, plays entire career out in Detroit and make the playoffs all like one or two times. Like it doesn't make fundamentally any sense. And really, there should be like a whole overhaul of the NFL where realistically, you could have like, you know, those top teams like they do in the Premier League. You have the bottom four teams, the top of three teams get relegated, force these teams out of tanking.

So that's what I think. There's like this whole full-ass discussion that you could have about this. But yes, fundamentally speaking, the NFL draft and every other draft that happens on American soil is stupid. Well, yeah, I'm going to co-sign everything there. And the bonus sucky part is when you decide to leave. the team you didn't want to play for in the first place in free agency, then the sports writers get mad at you. Oh,

everyone gets mad at you. The fans get mad at you. No loyalty. You know loyalty to the team you didn't want to be loyal to. Yeah. And that team can cut you whenever they want. And that was the only like I am athlete. I love, love that podcast.

Brandon Marshall was yelling in his whole meme with the little vein. And they had that discussion because look at the teams. When the Charlotte Watson, you know, for example, like got that content. contract, $156 million. You've signed your name, absolutely, because the team can cut you and do whatever you want after that. Like, nothing's guaranteed.

Danny, you did this whole beautiful YouTube video, which I still need to rewatch because I'm an idiot and don't understand how contracts work. Make sure you check it out. Like, the fact that, you know, it takes you to be at Aaron Rogers, Aaron Donald level or Patrick Mahomes type of level player to have just three years worth of agency in the NFL

does not make any sense. I mean, contracts are its own world of like just nailing smoke to a wall. But I think that this is, this, this just a firm. It's spiral. I only asked because I just wanted to kind of hammer in. The draft's really weird. The whole thing. That's all I was true.

It's just weird when you think about it. That's all. Anyway, thank you guys. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Kaelin. Thank you, D.K., for coming on. This was a lot of fun. This was very cathartic for me personally.

I hope people listening also got some fun out of it. Thank you. this is the ringer NFL show. This is the big board. We'll be coming back to you guys on Monday and then Kevin and Nora will be here on Wednesday. Thank you for listening.