The Ringer NFL Show - Thomas Dimitroff on the Draft, the Falcons, and More

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

Kevin and Nora are joined by former Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff to talk about the NFL draft, including what the Falcons might do, trading in the draft, and more (09:00). Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Guest: Thomas Dimitroff Production Assistant: Jonathan Kermah Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Dave Hill takes you on a journey into the underground lives and careers of six professional gamblers. This eight-part podcast is a unique look into the gambling world that you don't want to miss. Check out gamblers on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ringar NFL show. Part of the Ringar Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined by Noel Princeati. Nora, the Super League came in a winner. What was your favorite Super League memory?

Texting a bunch of my friends who follow soccer much more closely than I do being like what's going on and having them explain it to me. and I'm not kidding, four times in that process, somebody compared Tottenham to the Jets. I think that's unfair, but I do enjoy. I don't know. I have no background in this, but just as my friends who are more soccer interested than I am were attempting to put this in terms

that I could understand, I noticed a trend, which is that that happened a lot. Yeah, I think the best analogy that a lot of people were making was it would be like if Duke, UNC, Kansas, Kentucky, and a couple other teams

just started their own March madness. That would be probably, there's no, I think that the thing that people made a mistake on the last couple of days was comparing European sports to American sports at all. Like, they're not analogous

in any way, shape, or form. But if that would be the closest thing, I still think it's a tortured analogy, but I do, I do think that that would be the closest thing. But the real Super League was the friends that we made along the way. And we have our own, Super League, as Thomas Dimitroff is joining as former Atlanta Falcons, journal manager, two-time executive

of the year, and great dude. We talked about a lot of things. Very good interview. I would branch off and form a Super League, just the three of us. That was really fun. I love talking to Thomas. He's so smart. He's so just like game for anything. So I'm in if you want to do it. For our three-person Super League? Our three-person Super League. We didn't ask Thomas about this. The $4 billion per team presumably is available. now we can just say, we'll take that. We'll join the Super League. Awesome.

A couple of odds and ends to get to before we get to Thomas. Alex Smith retires. Great career. I think he, there's so much, it's almost like, you know, almost like a forest gumpian type career. And as much as he touched every corner of football over the past decade and a half, the first overall pick. Obviously, it was not the best quarterback in that draft,

Aaron Rogers was better, but still had a heck of a career. grinded out a, you know, if you look at the stats for some of the, the rookies who were trending down in the first year, Alex Smith is definitely on that list. Grinding out an amazing career was super effective with, with Jim Harbaugh, obviously had to make way for Colin Kaepernick, great numbers under Andy Reid, and all of a sudden he mentors Patrick Mahomes into being the best quarterback in football, incredible comeback, incredible career, you know, I thought it was funny. A couple of years ago, I talked to Josh McDaniels and, excuse me, Dan Mullen, and he was saying, that when the Patriots were studying

spread offense, 06 and 07, to sort of unleash that that onto the NFL, a lot of what they were doing was they wanted to meet with Dan Moen and look at the Alex Smith,

Utah offense. And so there's a lot, you know, we talk so much about the spread revolution. I think a lot of it, for good reason, focuses on the early 2010s when all of a sudden

the Panthers are running plays from Auburn's Playbook. The football team was running, Baylor's Playbook, all that stuff. But I do think the Alex Smith, Utah offense had, was a little bit before that and had a little bit more to do with the catalyst in the very beginning. Obviously, the sport remitted himself many times over.

But I do think from a stylistic perspective, from innovation perspective, from a great dude perspective, great career, Alex Smith. He loosened the jar. Yes. He was. And, you know, I think the comeback for him, you know, I think most people now having seen the video. of it and the footage of it. Did you see Ryan Fitzpatrick story on Chris Long's podcast a couple days ago? Yeah.

Yeah. Where the listener doesn't know, essentially Fitz sent him a text after he had leg injury. And Fitz was basically just like, you know, hey, I broke my leg. I was right back at it after in no time. Don't worry about it. You'll be fixed right up. And he said, you know, I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. And Fitz said he felt horrible about it, but, you know, whatever.

Thanks, Fitz. A couple of great dudes just texting. But I do think that his perseverance and as uncomfortable as we wrote about it on this website. I think Roger Sherman wrote about it. Watching Alex Smith played football last year was a little bit uncomfortable because we saw the depths and the injuries that he had. And I think that it was great for him to get back out there. I think he talked about how he wanted to do it for his kids and his family and both his entire family was at those games cheering last year. So it was just a nice career.

Did you have any interaction with Alex at all? almost none. I remember when he got traded to Washington was pretty soon, not that soon because it was during Super Bowl week, but it was that season was after the offseason where I'd worked in Washington. And I just remember being friends with,

you know, a lot of those beat guys and sort of milling about somewhere in Minnesota, which is where the Super Bowl was that year, and just seeing them all, kind of have to spring into action and almost being a little bit, like just having a sliver of FOMO because he's a cool guy and he's

an really interesting guy, really interesting career and I just remember being like, all right, I'm really glad that it's like 8.30 at night. I'm really glad that I don't have to go report a story right now, but this is going to be interesting for those guys to cover. And it was interesting in maybe some different ways than anybody

anticipated, but that turned out to be true. The one thing about Alex Smith that I've heard from a bunch of people I actually wrote about it a couple years ago is that he's the king of TV recommendations and locker rooms. Like everybody there were, and I'm talking about everybody. I'm talking like, so he was on the chiefs and Chase Daniel was in Philadelphia. And all of a sudden, Alex Smith, I forget what it was like, he loves the expanse. He was into black sales. He was into Silicon Valley, all this stuff. So he's given Chase Daniel TV recommendations and then Chase gives

them to the Eagles locker room and then it spreads. Like he was the TV concierge. for for large parts of the NFL. That's the real spread offense. Anything, anything else? Devante Smith comes in at 166 pounds, according to the medical, medical rechecks. We've talked about it on this podcast. Mike Tanenbaum has said that it's,

it is a concern. Other folks have said it's not a concern. DeVante Smith himself was on this podcast and said he plays big, it doesn't matter. Anything there with the weight that you think is, is worth noting? Well, just if it's me, I'm worried about it. If it's me, I'm not making the pick unless he starts to fall, you know, because the production's incredible.

The talent is incredible. But we've had conversations with a bunch of people over the last few weeks, a bunch of people with evaluation experience. And one thing that's come up a lot that's really stuck with me is when you're talking about, you know, the top half of the first round, those size, weight, speed things, they can feel overblown. because sometimes we'll spend nine years this time of year talking about hand size and things that can be a little bit silly and which offensive lineman's arms are a quarter of an inch longer than the others. But this is a collision sport. And I would be genuinely concerned about drafting a guy with that frame that high. And it's sort of unfair, right? Because, I mean, I guess he can, you know, try to bulk up as much as possible.

but there's to an extent nothing he can do about it and he's done everything that he possibly can to put himself in a great situation to not only be drafted relatively high but help a team. But I'm just at the point, the more that I look at it, the more that I talk to people and think about it, I just wouldn't do it in the top. I don't know. 10, 8 picks or something. I would just be too genuinely concerned about how does this body type interact with the actual game of football? I think he does play big. I do have concerns with him at the tippy top of the draft, but I would like him on my team if the value is right. I do the closer he gets to my own measurements, which he's pretty much there at this point,

the more concerned I get. Right. Right. That's just imagining what it would be like if I was out there, that that is a concern for my prison. But I still think, as we said, he can, he has everything else. And so I think a team,

a team can take a chance. chance if once he starts slipping a little bit, and I think it's, it's going to be fine. All right, let's get to Thomas. Join now by two-time sporting executive, sporting news executive of the year, the first ever ringer NFL show guest to have the BBC World News on in the background as we record. And one of our favorite people in football, Thomas Dimitrov, what's going on, buddy? And what's up, guys?

How are you? We're doing okay. We're doing okay. We're almost at the finish line of, What I would say, Tom, this is probably the craziest time to follow the NFL, just because there's so much going on here. I want to start with that because you did 13 drafts as a general manager. Obviously, you were with the Patriots before that.

You have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of everything that goes on on the football team. Now that you're watching it from just a, you're following with the media, obviously you have connections with teams, but you are looking at it from the outside looking in. What is the biggest thing that you've learned or that surprised you just from your vantage point over the past couple of months, Thomas? Well, look, I mean, you, you know, you can't overlook the obvious. I mean, here we are going into a draft. All these organizations, team builders,

going into a draft with so much uncertainty as far as All-Star Games, as far as season play, as far as combine interviews, the way that we used to do them. You have to remember personnel people, team builders, GMs and coaches, creatures of habit.

And it's very complicated for people to think, we are going to build a team, at whatever level you are, we're going to put our asses on the line with our opinions about players. And ultimately, we don't have all the information that we'd like. At least we think that, right? Sometimes we have to like rise above that. And that's been something that I've been amazed at. That idea along with these major gaps within the draft, research, and analysis of players

who just are really good players and would have been unbelievably, well, exponentially better, but also clear pictures of what teams wanted, but there's gaps. And those gaps are complicated. What's the biggest gap that would make you uncomfortable as far as the knowledge goes with this crop of prospects? Look, there is no way in the world that any general manager slash or head coach team builder would say they're not uncomfortable with, you know, season gaps. I mean, especially when you're talking about a quarterback who is talented in a lot of ways, who has played maybe one game in 15 months? Is that what's Trace? What was Tray Lance? One game. Just about that. Yeah. That's a big deal. And I know that seems obvious. But those are big deals. When you're sitting in

draft rooms and you're getting ready for the draft and you have pieces missing and I'm going to, you know, as a general manager, I'm looking around the table of 20 scouts. And I'm going to the area scout, I'm going to the regional scout and the national scout, and I'm trying to pop them for information and they don't have the answers. And I know that they're very adept at what they do. That is uncomfortable, not just because someone was out partying and didn't get his job done, because that's not, that wasn't ever our staff. But the reality is they're trying like hell to get the information, but they can't. So Kevin, I would say like that is a big, big deal. That is, of course, you're trying to figure out that combined with maybe someone who is also.

also been plagued with injuries and just it just continues to build. Not to put you on the spot, but since we're talking about Trey Lance a little bit, how would you look at him with basically one season's worth of production and then that essentially 15-month gap with one game, not his best? How would you synthesize what's available there? Well, look, I think it depends if, you know, what your quarterback situation is as a general manager. I want to make this very clear, as you all know, no revelation. Of course, I'm no longer the GM for the number four pick. But that said, when you have a quarterback there who is, I think,

a championship caliber quarterback that could win a championship with the proper and appropriate play-calling offensive system in place, I really believe that a player like Trey Lans. And this isn't me saying that I'm going to take Trey Lans, as number four. pick. But I would say in that situation, it would be much easier to think we have a guy like Matt Ryan who continue to school, this quarterback who has limited experience, a la Aaron Rogers and Brett Farr. I don't think in any way it would be four years before then. But what an amazing situation to be in. Amazing is probably melodramatic. But what a good situation to be when you're in that set. So I think it really depends on what your quarterback situation is. If you're looking for

someone to come in right away and to impact right away, that becomes complicated and it becomes a situation where your head coach and your GM have to be very creative with the players they put around this new quarterback. And again, systematically how they approach the offense. You drafted Matt Ryan as your first pick, actually, with the Falcons. Obviously, when you draft a top five or even top 10 or even, you know, top 15 quarterback, there's so much that goes into it because it's not just a position. It's not like drafting a defensive end because a star once he becomes a star almost becomes the mayor of a town, right? Like if Patrick Mahomes runs Kansas City, Lamar Jackson runs Baltimore. I mean, like these guys, Josh Allen is the most popular

person is if you go about one mile north of Westchester, he has the entire state, okay? Like that that's Josh Allen right now. When you're scouting a quarterback that you know is going to be the face of the franchise, what goes into that? And we'll start with the skill set. and all that stuff, and just how you go about even scouting that as separate from everything else, but then the personality of it and just what goes in that we would know about

to drafting a quote-unquote franchise quarterback. Well, look, on the franchise quarterback, of course, you know, you guys have heard this time and again, you go as your quarterback goes, et cetera, et cetera, we've heard that for many years. And honestly, I've been part of, you know, protracting on that topic many, many times, only because the reality is we know how important,

that is. And we know that there are many aspects and from system to system, coach to coach, organization to organization, they may rank the skill set that they're looking for. You know, you could go round and round. You get, you get who are perceived as the gurus of the quarterback position and they may have five other orders of how they look at, you know, how they would evaluate the quarterback. I want to make one thing clear. For me, having been in New England around Tom Brady prior to getting to Atlanta and picking Matt Ryan back in 08, that was big for me to be around the so-called best ever. I really do believe he is the best ever. And although he's been, he was our villain in 16 to probably help oust me out of my job, but that's a whole

other situation. I do like Tom a lot. I think the world of him. But I think looking at him and watching how he functioned within that organization made me realize, yes, we need accuracy. Yes, we need decision making. Yes, we need, of course, intelligence at so many levels. No question, we need the appropriate amount of arm strength to get the balls to different parts of the field, for sure. But I think, you know, and oftentimes people ask me, and you and I have talked about this, what are things that people outside of, you know, an organization might not think about or might not be as focused on? And this comes back to leadership. This comes back to awareness.

This comes back to how they are as a team player. And it's a very, very important thing. You could have strong arm, big time accuracy. But if you're a jughead or you're a, I don't want to start swearing on your podcast, because I know you can swear sometimes. But yeah. But if you have a D-Bag that's involved, that's a tough situation to be in, right? When you have someone out there who has all these.

attributes, but they don't have the team. And what I'm talking about is I'm not just talking about the receivers and the running backs and maybe the O line. I'm talking about the entire team. I'm talking about being able to interact with all people within the organization, especially on the field with your coaching staff, to be able to communicate. That is wildly important. And so you start looking at this and you start, you know, this is probably a segue into Trevor Lawrence and all of this banter about whether his recent comments are something that would affect general managers or teams. Maybe some, some that are myopic and don't understand the importance of being well-rounded and grounded. I'm a big believer in that. And you could look back on that. We can have that

conversation right now. You could look back on Tom Brady, as great as he is and as unbelievably focused as he seems. Aaron Rogers, who is unbelievable at so many levels, focused and intelligent and just like Tom, Peyton Manning, you know, for that matter, Matt Ryan, and all of those guys and many, many more have multiple layers to their life. They may not articulate it as much outright because to me personally, that generation of quarterbacks were a little more reserved and and going farther back not to share their public, share with the public as much about their personal lives because they want to be perceived as wholly myopic and wholly focus. The reality is anyone in my mind that's truly worth what you're looking for as a full well-rounded

leader of a football team has to understand different elements. That idea of not being like so hung up on just football live and die and I wouldn't be able to focus on life outside of it to me doesn't lend itself to making good decisions not only on the field within the organization, with his interaction with his teammates, and honestly the resiliency that you expect from a quarterback. If they're not rounded and not grounded, they're not being resilient in my mind. Or they may be here and there, but it's not consistent. With Matt in particular, obviously they reworked the contract. They've committed to him, at least in the short term. What needs to go right for him to win a Super Bowl?

Look, I believe that put Matt in the right situation, continue to build around him. I think that offensive line continues to get better. Now they lost. Alex Mack, of course, trying to figure out who that center position is going to be, continue to get the young guys growing on the right side. So get that offensive line set, you know, in the situation right now, you know, they have one tight end there at Hayden Hurst. I believe he's a really good athlete, continue to potentially build there. That's not me saying take a tight end at four, believe me.

That's a whole other situation. Not that that guy, obviously, you know, we know that he is, Pitts is fantastic in a lot of ways. get the running back situation there set up. And unfortunately last year, that didn't play out well for us slash them. And I think Matt ultimately get the new head coach in there, who has a really firm understanding of what he wants offensively, get Matt in a situation where he's getting the ball out of his hands. Okay, I'm going to say it.

Go back to the days of Coach Shanahan, who had a really good feel. and get, when I said earlier on, get the appropriate play calling, the appropriate offense revolving around Matt Ryan, and I think he can take it to the, take it the distance. So you've talked about the need to build around Matt Ryan, and then also what a great situation it might be

to bring in a young quarterback and let him study behind him for a little bit. When you look at a draft like this that has five quarterbacks that could go in the top half of the first round, how do you kind of overlay the vertical board and the horizontal board there, where if you weighed it out

and maybe don't take a quarterback, you could get a really, really, really premier talent at a different position. But then you have to square that with all the advantages that getting it right at that position can provide for everybody else on the team.

When you look at the top part of the first round of this draft, how do those things fit together for you? Well, look, I think, you know, Nora, that, you know, again, when you're talking about a quarterback, when you're talking about a building a franchise, You know that you have certain things in place there that you're quite happy with, especially offensively within an organization when you're talking about the opportunity to build around a quarterback, how important it is.

You have to, I'm a big believer in mapping out like most people would be. This isn't, again, a revelation, but being able to map out, stack your, stack your quarterbacks, understand what they bring to your organization, understand the length of time that you perceive it's going to be before they really hit stride. I think you start, you juxtapose the quarterbacks with the talent that's going to be potentially there at your pick, whether one, two, three, four, or five or beyond. You know, of course you start, you know, factoring in the idea while you're looking at the quarterbacks, juxtaposing them with other positions and strengths that you may get, you also really start thinking about the whole idea

of trading back. Everyone says, well, trade the F back. What are we talking about? out here. I mean, let's trade back. It's easy. Get back into, you know, Denver and beyond, it's not that easy, especially when you're moving up to, again, I'll play around in the four area, but when you're talking about moving up to four or five or whatever it may be, that's complicated. It takes a lot. And a lot of times you may be talking. I know how many times I worked the phones prior to drafts and in the middle of drafts, worked my butt off to try to work trades. That area is funky, complicated. You have a lot of people that say they may be interested Nora, but in the end, they're like, ah, let's just stay with what we have. Too often

that seemed to be the case. So I was often, I guess, criticized for always being a trade-up guy. There are many times that I looked and I was contemplating trading back. But there are so many layers and so many scenarios that play out that prevent someone from trading back that is not that easy. So back to your original question, there you are with your quarterbacks, there you are with your other positions and you realize hopefully the, you know, San Fran, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Miami aren't going to be up in that area long, of course. You continue to hear that. As GM, you say that publicly as well, just so everyone knows that. You say it so your owner starts to believe it. You say it so your fan base starts to believe it. And deep down, you're like, my God, we better believe

this. This better be the case or I won't be here long. So there's a lot playing into it, of course. you know, to set that board up is very, very important that you have it right. And of course, what may be right for one team may not be exactly right for another, which segues into the conversation about, you know, is San Francisco really hung up on one quarterback from Alabama? Or do they have a couple other guys? And we can get into that as well when you guys want to talk about that, of course. We want to talk about it right now.

I do want to say that you said you don't want to curse on this podcast, but you are the first person to say the phrase debag, which I appreciate. We're all about breaking, having firsts here, pioneers here. It's a first for us, really? I think so. But you don't really know the definition of devag and we could get into that conversation because I, you know. In football scouting terms, I have no idea.

It's one of those things inside the building and outside the building. They mean different things. With Sympstico in particular, obviously you were the general manager for Kyle Shanahan in Atlanta. It was different because you were not looking for a quarterback. Everyone knew who the quarterback was going to be. and he turned Matt Ryan into one of the best players in football at that point. Help us out here because there's been so much debate over whether or not Mac Jones is the quote unquote

Kyle Shanahan quarterback or what that even looks like. Just start big picture. What is a Kyle Shanahan quarterback? Well, I don't want to answer for Kyle. All I will say about Kyle Kevin is he has an unbelievable knowledge of his system. And what I was really, I wasn't even taken aback. I was really enamored with the idea of a coach coming in as an offensive coordinator when he came in to work with us

and his understanding of a scheme that no one could touch. I'm sure probably couldn't touch by the time he was 12 years old, sitting with his dad as much as he did, with an unbelievably lucid understanding of what he is looking for at every position. That to me is the key. There are so many coordinators, sorry, let me not exaggerate. There are a number of coordinators out there and position coaches who think they know what they want for their system,

but then they add precariousness in it because there are some wishy-washy elements to it. I don't believe that is the way with Kyle Shanahan, which, you know, again, makes a lot of sense why he and John Lynch decided to make a massive move as they did. I mean, in my mind, Kyle had Matt Ryan, who was a stand tall in the pocket guy with adequate mobility within a certain range,

but of course he wasn't some of the really athletic he could pull it down and go a few yards when he needed to. I think Kyle has a real interest in players who have a really good understanding of the system. Intelligence is important for Kyle. His, again, not to speak for him, but like most of the very good and unbelievable coaches in this league over the years, their tolerance for a lack of focus and a lack of understanding of a system is something that is complicated for them to, to, you know, to have patience with, I'd say. So I think that's a very important part. I'm not saying he needs to have the most athletic guy. I mean, we saw, I mean, how many years did he have RG3 in Washington?

Two or three? He got hurt, obviously. He got hurt, obviously, after the first one. Right, but had an unbelievable athlete there. He's had, he's had very good athletes. He's had other guys who were solid athletes. He's had other ones who were more average athletes. I really do believe the understanding of the game, the understanding of the system is going to be really, really important for him. He's done the same thing as his dad did, unbelievably.

So taking running backs who were a little bit more down the line running backs and tight ends that you'd think like, wow, this guy is not a top five or top five round pick. He's taken those pieces and put them together to see how they fit. Synonymous, honestly, with Bill Belichick, who has a really good understanding. And I believe there are similarities where they believe they know the one, two, and three things that are vitally important. And maybe they don't possess the other three things that, you know, the well-rounded all world guy has.

But those three things are vital to their system and they'll go with it and they'll capitalize on it. There I do see the similarity between Bill and Kyle. So in the end, answer your question, I think there are many layers. I think Kyle is a lot more open, though he has a real understanding. of a handful of things that are vital for him to pick. And, you know, at that pick, he has a very good feeling of who his number one shot is. But I think he has other options. If you had to guess, who is it?

I mean, I'm swayed by everything out there about Mack Jones, of course. Yeah, me too. But there is no way, and I want to stress this. As a team builder, head coach GM, you're not going in to a draft after moving up as you do, Kevin, and not knowing that there is an option. Because what happens if, you know, the Jets don't take who they think that, you know, we think they're going to take. Right.

You have to have scenarios. You have to have it. And I've said this before in other situations. In that room, when you're the boss and you take someone, you better be very happy. And the morale can take a quick dive if they see on your face or in the energy that there was a want, want, want, want moment. That's a bad place to start a season off with. We mentioned Bill Belichick.

And obviously there's been some debate, but whether or not how much he trusts his scouts or, you know, his recent drafting track record and all that. We could put that aside for a second because one thing that's fascinating to me is, you know, you came up in this industry talking to Billiuchick about evaluating players and all that stuff. And I'm curious just from watching a football player.

And obviously you're a lifer. You've been in this. You and I talked about this. You've been looking at football. football players since you were four years old. But when you're watching players with Bill Belichick, what's the top thing you learned? Bill was always very, very direct and straight about what was vitally important for our team. One of the reasons why back in 11, when I got on the phone with Bill prior to the draft and he had his opinions about the move up for Julio Jones, what always resonated

in my mind was the many years of being around him knowing that we, the people involved, especially of the people at the top involved in that organization, running that organization, know their organization better than ever and better than anyone else, media, their owner, the coaching staff. We know the direction. So like Dan Quinn and I knew the direction of our team much more than anyone else. People knew spots within the organization, but only the real true team builders know what is the best for the organization. That's what Bill, I felt like Bill made sure that that was very clear over the years that I was with him. I remember a story one time, which had to do with this. I remember when we were watching, lawyer Malloy, was my first year there

and I was responsible, you know, it was much to my chagrin at first because I knew it was Bill's area, but I was responsible for the safeties. It's where I really started doing a lot of defense. Oh, no. That's a pressure. That's a pressure cooker. We're sitting in there in the draft room, and we're going over, you know, the different players at the roster, and he just bought up, brought up lawyer. And it was a, without getting into a ton of detail on the conversation, it was a tough spot. Here I am coming in, you know, my first year there. Of course, I had quite a bit of experience. But, you know, you have a guy there who was a very talented football player in an organization that, you know, is run by one of the arguably the very best in the world at, you know,

as a football coach. And he's asking your opinion about one of his studs. And I remember going off saying, oh, lawyer is this, this and this. He's very good. He has this. And I remember, without getting the detail, Bill saying, are you sure? It started to be put me in that. This was when Bill decided it was time to move on from lawyer. But I remember that conversation.

I thought, there's no way going forward that you can ever BS. You have to be true. You have to compare it to your team that you're looking at. Wow. With the direction of the team thing, I thought that was an interesting phrase you used because oftentimes we look at a team

and say, oh, these are the needs or this is where this team's going to be in two years or, oh, they're planning for the future in three years, whatever it is, they're not trying to win this year. What do you think? I know we're panning with broad strokes here, but what do you think is the biggest thing the median fans get wrong when they're trying to guess a team's direction? Is it emphasizing certain positions over others? Is it just looking at the big picture wrong? Is it not understanding pressure from ownership or whatever it is? Any place you can go want to go with this, you can.

but when we're talking about where our team is going, what do we normally get wrong? Well, that's a, I mean, that's multi-layered for sure, Kev. You were saying you can go anywhere. I mean, yes, 100%. There are ownership pressures and, you know, organization pressures that people don't understand. I mean, they probably understand from afar,

but when they get into it and when you're really looking at these drafts and these mock drafts and you guys are on here talking with such great energy, there are other elements when you're in that chair that becomes, complicated, of course, as a head coach and a general manager. And again, the ownership thing is big. The ownership has a lot of strong opinions about what they want, whether they've given the keys to that general manager or not to acquire. They have, there is no question.

How can you not? How can you not be a billionaire plus many times over and not have a feeling about how you want your team to be? So that is something that is very important. Why communication with your owner is vital. I was very fortunate to have an owner that I was able to communicate very clearly with. Arthur was very direct about elements within the organization that were important to him. And I was, again, appreciative of that.

There are some that are a little bit more, you know, you might find something out somewhere else. And that's unfortunate. So that's one element that is very important. When you're talking about the direction of the organization, again, back to knowing your organization, we are looking two, three, four years ahead, which some, you know, people in the media and fan base may not be looking. They're thinking here and now, this is not for long league. This is what you need to do. That's another part of it that we spent a lot of time with Kevin on from the standpoint of, you know, analytics projecting out what we have, what we will have, how we're even projecting the players to be,

okay, are they going to be around two or three more years or one more year, which is very difficult to project. Sometimes you can get caught up and overthinking that, which is, which is unbelievably important. Look, the sort of, I don't call it the dirty little secret, we don't talk about it. There are character issues. There are, of course, substance issues that you're dealing with. When you start talking about the teams, one of the things that I used to get really sort of miffed about was all of the comments like the people that were getting A plus grades in the draft or the people that weren't, people that were getting C and D grades, the C and D grades sometimes were picking players that were the ideal fit for their system,

not only on the field, but personality-wise. There is no point in the world for a head coach to bring in a player that is a complete jackass, but is very talented, but it's going to be nothing but a pain in the ass for that coach and that staff. That is wildly important. And I think underplayed it at times. Of course, you know, you've seen it.

There are players that come in and they may put one or two years in and then all of a sudden years go by, they're no longer there. They'd have to sign their second and third contract because they've been nothing but a disruption to the organization. So that fit, though it seems a little bit simple, is very, very important. And it's not only the fit for the head coach and the coordinators, you have to look at layers on that, Kim. You have to look at who that position coach is. I'm not saying the position coaches are ruling the roost far from that, even the coordinators. But if you have a head coach who is very dialed into his coaching staff,

And he knows his offensive coordinator and his linebacker coach, or sorry, defensive coordinator and linebacker coach don't like a specific player or do like a specific player. And as a general manager, you're moving away from that idea because you didn't like him. That's a complicated struggle within an organization. So the point is there are many discussions at many levels. Ultimately, the person who has final say of acquisitions, which is usually general manager, is going to make the call. the last thing I'll say, when you make the call on that on that player and you know deep down that you have a couple of coaches within the ranks that aren't fans, that becomes a whole other picture that you have to keep your eye on because in the end, if they're not pulling for that player, you're going to be unsuccessful with your second round pick, whoever it may be. It's complicated. We got a debag and then we got a jackass. This is awesome. Yeah, we're doing great. The vocabulary is really stretching here on the Red Rinefell Show. So 2011, you trade up. to number six.

And Michael Holly's told this story. It's been told Bill Belichick says he wouldn't have done the move. You're going from, I think, 27 to 6. It's a huge swing to get Julio Jones. Obviously, you guys are coming off a good year. You made the playoffs, I think, twice in three years. But this was the move I think you thought was going to put this team into the NFC's elite. When you're taking a big swing like that, especially when it's happening very quickly,

can you describe all of the, I'm sure you had some butterflies, but also just everything you're considering. Did you feel like your job was in the line of Julio busted? I mean, how do you process that when you're taking a big swing in the draft? Because we see it all the time. I mean, we're going to have, obviously, we've already had the Niners take a big swing. I don't think that Kyle Shannon and John Lynch's job is on the line, but a lot is on the line if number three doesn't come through. We might have a situation where someone might trade up in the top 10. maybe the dolphins are open for business and we saw you know the panthers or might do something here.

But when you're taking a big swing in the draft, Thomas, how do you process that? What are the nerves like and what are the feelings like? Okay. So I would say, I believe this, I'm adamant about the idea that you cannot sit on your hands in this league anymore as a team builder. I don't think it happens as much anymore. Yes, there are some conservative people a little more conservative than others. But I think as long as you're well thought and you're studied and you have nowadays, I mean, we have so much more to go on with the analytics that are available from companies like pro football focus.

Like it's unbelievable what's at our fingertips. I know you're a big fan of analytics. Of course, at many levels, whether it's MIT at the symposium recently. You know, those ideas make our jobs that much better. And I love how we're evolving, by the way, as a league that we're able to use that. Right. So it's not just feeling it here. I'm feeling it here. It's in my gut, man. You just got to go for this guy. Owners aren't buying that anymore. I've mentioned that recently. So I guess what I would say going into a situation like that with Julio, when I first looked at the compensation, I want to stress this. And I've said this many times. It had me back on my heels. You know, I was thinking, wait a minute. Wow, this is big. But like anything, you start to become numb to it as you really start ruminating on the compensation. we did a lot of studying again on where the draft picks that we were we were about ready to give up the success rates in those areas at many levels not just you know this guy's a 14% chance of

starting as a fourth rounder but a lot of different layers on that were those studies were really important for me to become more and more comfortable with the bulk of compensation going into a move like that yes I did I've had it from really close confidence other people saying man do you understand your career is going to be hanging in peril if this doesn't work out with Julio. I realize that. But I've also, I also realized through those first few years that playing teams like Philadelphia, and I've told Howie Rosen this all the time, though physically nowhere near similar, Deshaun Jackson used to irritate the hell out of me because every time we played him, he had us on our heels. He was such a good athlete player moving around. And I thought,

we need a player like that. So at that point, we had Michael Turner, who was running his butt off, of course, we had, we had traded, that was, we got him in 08 and 09, we had Tony Gonzalez who traded for, who was vitally important. We felt we needed one more piece on that offense that was going to really pull it together as far as tools to surround Matt Ryan. And oh, by the way, great deal of respect for Bill Polly and watching what he did with Peyton Manning was always something that was a good lead for me. And I thought that we were going to go after a guy and I talked to Arthur at length about, of course, Mike Smith and I talked at length about it. There was not a whole bunch of convincing of Mike Smith. I mean, he was in all the way

from the very beginning to his credit. You know, so he knew that we had a quarterback and he knew that we needed this type of position. So it's a big choice. You know, again, back to we better do something now or again, we won't have a chance to be around here in two years, whatever that may be. That could not only be in the league, Kevin, but it could also be an ownership group who has, you know, little patience with, you know, X amount of years where you're not driving in the playoffs. That becomes more and more the case. So anyone that I talk to, I have always said I would never do anything different, though I got my butt kicked in a lot of different ways about it. I get it. You know, there were half the world that was thinking that, you know, my head was somewhere else.

And other people who were saying, well, maybe there is something there. And, you know, again, I've said this. Respect to the process. I mean, Julio, to me, is the first ballot hall of famer. You know, we were this close to continuing to move on in 16 when that unbelievable catch-off of Julio Jones. I mean, he had done so many things for us over the years to get us very close. Unfortunately, we never pulled it off. But I know that making a move like that, allah, what Sam Fran did, comes with a lot of pressure.

and you concern yourself with the what-is, and then you quickly brush it aside. You won the trade, by the way. Congratulations. Everything's fine. It worked out. While we're talking about aggressive roster buildings, I want to get your perspective on the sort of rookie contract quarterback debate

because that's obviously a nice thing to have, right? And it's something that a lot of teams would like to build around is a good quarterback on a cheap contract. but you've had successful teams with quarterbacks who are earning plenty of money on the roster. So do you see that as, is that a nice bonus or is that something that you need as a strong word? But is that something that really should be thought of as a cornerstone for teams to build around? Is a quarterback on a rookie contract? Yeah, I mean, it's obviously important.

You can do certain things. We've seen at time and again, different organizations who have rookie quarterbacks who are a rookie quarterback contracts and they're able to build. It's an amazing spot to be in. It's funny, however, when you're in the spot, when you start going into the second contract with the quarterback and the third contract, when you look at Arthur Blank and swallow deeply and say,

yes, sir, he is worth $30 million a year. That was the biggest at the time. And obviously quickly, you know, people went by him. But that was a, those are big things for us. And we get to a spot sometimes as team builders. And you start saying, well, of course, when people are out there throwing darts at us because our salaries and our caps are so high, of course they are.

When you have fantastic quarterbacks or top tier quarterbacks that you're paying a lot of money to, now you have to be more creative and you have to be more creative with how you're doing, you know, putting together a rest of your roster. It becomes very complicated. It is so not an easy art. And I would say to you when people say, yeah, well, rookie contracts and then, you know, and we've had this conversation as well, Kevin, I think. the idea of moving on from that rookie quarterback, man, if you have a quarterback that you think

has taken you and you like in a lot of ways, they might not be perfect. And again, every one of these quarterback has a lot of really positives, but they also have some of their issues that, you know, most teams would like to say, I wish this guy was a little faster. I wish this guy had a longer, you know, longer gun. But in the end, full package, we have to keep this player. And we know it's going to cost us money. We just better be damn creative about how we're going to put together the rest of the roster. So look, you have to win with the right quarterback. And if that right quarterback is one run for you to get rid of that person before they get out of their rookie contract, I think is a little bit irresponsible. So I want to get your take on this. Just a couple more for

you. Obviously, there's a debate at the top of the draft after the quarterbacks. It's really interesting to me because, you know, we talked about this a couple weeks ago. But when there's a bunch of quarterbacks taken in the top five or whatever it is, you look at 1999, it goes one through three and then someone like champ bailey's available at eight that's a hall of famer right um and it's just kind of interesting how how that how that shakes out and when you look now um there is going to be deba between kyle pits jemar chase penny sole and i'm curious how you view those positions as far as the value goes and then secondarily i'm i'm interested in just who you think is is the best non-quarterback in this draft so first of all i don't know

if you if your if your listeners know this or if you guys do i'm sure you probably do most organizations, and we were very particular about this, we are going to sit down not only with the head coach, of course, the coordinators and the position coaches, and we are going to truly spend time mapping out, especially when you get new head coaches in, mapping out the value across the board of all the offensive positions and all the defensive positions, ranking them. And then myself in this situation, Dan Quinn or Mike Smith would have sat down and talked about not only the offense and the defense, we would take everyone else out. And then we would rank across the board the value and the importance, one through however many

positions we had on our board of the importance. So what that did for us is it really helped us create our own individual team values of how we looked at, you know, how we looked at what we're talking about here with, you know, a quarterback or a quarterback a tight end, an offense alignment or a receiver. That is really big for us. So back to 11 very quickly, of course. at that point, we knew that we had ranked very high. There's no way we would have ever done that if we had a receiver ranked, you know, seventh, eighth or ninth on our board as far as we wouldn't

have put our organization in that spot. So to me, that is a very important thing. I personally, right now, to get to the point of, not contention, but discussion, you know, to take a tight end at four, for instance, which has been a big discussion point, it's complicated for me. And yet it's tough for me to say that after moving up as high as we did for Julio Jones. Because back to what I said earlier, Kev, if that organization feels come hell or high water, this is what is going to happen for this organization is going to be best for the organization. It's going to take them to another level. Then the value of that tight end over the offense alignment is going to be higher. And back in the day, so to speak, there were a lot of old traditional situations where people would never do these

moves. We've seen it over the last few years. With this relatively younger group of general managers in their 40s plus, they have a different approach. And you and I have talked about this as well. There is so much creativity and so much, I guess, you know, I would say gambling in a sense, but making moves that normally wouldn't have happened 20 and 30 years ago, I don't believe. I think it's been fun to watch as long as they're thought out. I think it's important. That's fascinating. Yeah, that's something we've talked to you and I've talked to. about Nora and I talked about it. I mean, the risks that you have to take in this league now are just so much greater than 15, 20 years ago when it was a more conservative league.

All right, let's get to some quick hits here at the end. Two-part question. I'll start with the first part. If you could take a draft mulligan, do one thing over, whether that's someone you passed on, whether that's someone you took or a process you got away from. We've had some really interesting answers from executives. This is my favorite question. last couple weeks. What, what's the one, what if you think about with the draft that you would have, you'd like to have a do over on? Look, I have, I have a number of them. I mean, like everyone does, if everyone's being honest, and, you know, I could, I could talk about a couple of defensive ends that we had the later years before, you know, Dan and I were, were fired. They were

tough to discuss. But the biggest one for me is going back to the year after the Julio trade, which was massive. 2012 year, we don't have a first round. pick. We end up taking Peter Kahn's in the second round. This was multi-layered as well. So, okay, Peter Kahn's like, okay, what's the big deal? We took Peter Kahn's and Lamar Holmes, two offensive linemen. We thought we could continue to build because we had all of our skill, so-called, you know, how people refer to skill players in spot. And we pick Peter Kahn's to be our heir apparent at center. We move on from our center at the time and who was a big part of Matt's success at the time. And we were, we were thinking it was time. It was time to bring in a

youthful guy who could play some guard, but also move into center. And it was, it was a complete miss at a lot of levels organizationally, but ultimately it was in my, it was in my lap. I made the choice ultimately to go with, you know, a guy that we thought was going to replace the center position. And we ended up bonking on that draft totally. And I think that pick was the catalyst for a 2012 draft that within a few years, no one was left in that draft. It was just a really funky time for us. We came back the next year and I thought we did, we did well. Of course, sometimes you have to be jolted, but the Peter Kahn's pick was complicated for me. What do you think you missed there? Yeah. What was the process mistake there?

Look, I think the process mistake there was we had a lot of personnel people that were out on the road. We had so many people traveled through there and he was reported on glowing. from a personality standpoint and is a good person. Don't get me wrong. But as far as the drive and the passion for the game and the want to be in it, it was lacking. And for some reason, we were not able to dig up and sort of a foreshadow what we thought this man

was going to be on our team. We were expecting him to be a pillar position guy and he wasn't. Pierre Kahn's is a lawyer now. see very very very smart i remember yep i remember i remember i remember our conversations um all right flip side of that what is one pick maybe it was a risk maybe you were thinking maybe i would have some butterflies in my stomach and it turned out you guys crushed it well look i i i would say you know those are those are those are complicated ones we've had a couple we had a couple players over the years that you know we're we're higher picks that worked out we think so i don't know if they were really

necessarily butterflies. But I would say, you know, I really wanted to make sure that we were in the right place with Calvin Ridley. I mean, and I think Calvin is the heir apparent. It was a butterfly pick more. You know, we were focused on positions and that position, but we had a couple other positions in mind and we decided that this was the best position for us to take, knowing that Julio was still around, but it could be an heir apparent. And I believe that he is a very good football player who could be an heir apparent at that position. Last question. Where are you? Are you in Colorado? I am actually in Atlanta now. Oh, okay. Are you, you took the RV down as you fly? You know, I made my way back in my RV because I was in Boulder and I did a little loop. I've done

about four loops this offseason because I've had time to chase some snow out there and get on my mountain bike. So I got back into town about three days ago and here I am. Wow, what an adventure. Give the people some recommendations. What are we listening to? What are we watching? I love talking about stuff you're consuming with you offline. What do we need to listen to or watch? So I'm a listen to his side.

I'm a big fan of staying in my areas of interest, of course. So my football podcast, of course, are you guys, and that is the truth. It's Steve Weiss and Jim Trotter as well as Albert Breers. All of those are. are I think are really, really solid and sound. They come up with really good information, and as well as brother from another with Michael Holly and Mike Smith. Two Michael Holly shoutouts in this podcast.

Wow. How about that? The legend. The legend. No, the legend. I know. The legend. But so that,

that from a listening standpoint on the football side, on the more life side, doctor's pharmacy by Mike, Mark Hyman, very important, broken brain by Drew Truitt. These are really cutting edge. I think medical and good medical podcasts that can bring us back to life when we know how important

that is. Very important for me. And can I say one more? Essentialism. It's a book to read. It came out in 14. Greg McEwen has another book coming out called Effortless. For those of us who understand the importance of the four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss. But you're a big Tim Ferriss guy. Love Tim Ferriss. That idea of having balance in our world is so important. important. I alluded to it earlier with Trevor Lawrence. One of my favorite things about Thomas is the last summer we were on the phone for an interview. We talked for 20 minutes and at the end of it, I was getting off the phone and he said, wait a second, let's talk about the New York Times Daily podcast because I love this thing. And I was like, this is, I promise you there are not 31 other

GMs who are going to end their conversation with. Let's talk about Michael Barbarrow. So that was, that was good. Have you heard of the high performance podcast, Thomas? You really like it. I discovered it last weekend. No, what is, who is it? It's these English guys who just interview athletes and coaches about how to achieve high performance. And it's, it's really good. It's really good. And I just stumbled upon it last week when I was looking for something. And I think you, you would, you would enjoy it. All right. Well, Nora, anything else? I wish I'd written these down. These are good wrecks. We can just re-listen. That's the beauty of podcasts. That's the beauty of the podcast. Just keep hitting 15 seconds back. Thomas Dimitrov, one of our favorite people,

great football mind. Thank you for joining the Rangifel show. You guys are great. Thanks. Nora, great talk, great episode. One week from the draft. I'm fired up. We're all fired up. We got a bunch of shows next week. I think we're going to have one more exciting guest, probably do a mailbag next week. I'm looking forward to it.

We'll probably have the draft night and draft week schedule out pretty soon. This has been the Rungan NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network. This episode came together thanks to the production work of production assistant Jonathan Kerma with additional production supervision by Arjuna, Graham Gapal.