X's O's and DiCaprio - Analytics with Bill Barnwell

Thad and Ryan welcome ESPN’s Bill Barnwell for a deep dive into the evolution of analytics in sports, especially the NFL. Bill explains how advances in technology and access to game footage have transformed the way he blends data with storytelling in his work. Plus, Ryan unpacks the latest drama in Los Angeles, breaking down the explosive Clippers saga involving Kawhi Leonard and owner Steve Ballmer.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Rosters to Rings alongside Ryan McDonough, I'm fad Levine.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Ryan.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
We have an awesome show this week. We've got a
very timely guest, Bill Barnwell will be joining us for
the second segment. But before we get into that, there's
an exceptional controversy that has taken place in the NBA,
and our diehard listener, Josh trum Atlanda, wants to ask
you a question, specifically, what do you make of the
Kawhi Leonard Los Angeles Clippers investigation that's ongoing right now

(00:32):
in the NBA.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, So with that, I think we have to go
back a few years to the beginning of Kawhi ending
up as an LA Clipper, and that was in twenty nineteen,
and I think it's easy to forget given what's happened
from twenty nineteen to now, the injuries that Kawhi's had,
the lack of availability for the LA Clippers, how good
he was in twenty nineteen. I was just traded from
the San Antonio Spurs to the Toronto Raptors the year before.

(00:56):
It's a controversial trade. Kawhi did not necessarily want to
be in Toronto, and then he went on to have
one of the great seasons in NBA history.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
That hit the.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Triple bounce shot from the corner in the playoffs to
beat the Philadelphia seventy six Ers. Philly fans haven't forgotten
that one. Joel Embiid was crying after the game. Then
he goes on to dominate the entire playoffs, including the
NBA Finals. The Toronto Raptors win the first championship in
franchise history in twenty nineteen, and Kawhi was not only
one of the best players in in the league that year,

(01:27):
in the playoffs, he had one of the best runs
in recent NBA playoff history. So he was a huge
free agent in twenty nineteen. In the processed dad was
clouded by his uncle Dennis's involvement. Dennis Robertson is Kawhi's uncle.
He's a father figure to Kawhi. I believe Kawhi's father
passed away when he was young, so Uncle Dennis is

(01:47):
very close to Kawhi at some extent. His business manager
and so and Uncle Dennis met with a handful of teams,
the LA teams, the Raptors, maybe a couple others, and
there some stories they were a little bit concerning about
Uncle Dennis allegedly asking for impermissible gifts and benefits from
those teams. The nbba's collective arguing Agreement is very specific

(02:10):
about what you can and can't offer two players, and
Uncle Dennis reportedly asked those teams for a private plane,
a house, part ownership in the team's guaranteed endorsement money.
All of those things are illegal for the NBA's collective
bargainer agreement. So the NBA investigated that they didn't find
anything that was directly tied or linked to the Clippers.

(02:31):
But that started the swirl. That was six years ago,
But that started some of the swirl and some of
the questions around Kawhi Leonard and his uncle Dennis is
involved in.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
You know, you got to admire Uncle Dennis. He didn't
just cross the line, He triple jumped across it there
and right into the jet black of it. How do
you how do you feel this as linked to what's
happening now, the situation involving Kawhi, Clippers owner Steve Boehmer
and the NBA.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, so you may make a great point about Uncle
Dennis and one of the concerns that teams in the league.
In particular, has is uncle Dennis is not a certified
player agent, right, So if somebody's in the league, obviously,
if you're an owner, player, coach, executive, an agent, the
NBA Players Association certifies an overseas the agent, you can
get banned or suspended or fined or disbarred. Well, what

(03:18):
do you do to a somewhat nefarious third party that
who's kind of floating. He's not under anybody's jurisdiction or umbrella.
So that complicated the situation, But really what happened last
week complicated it even more. Pablo Torre former ESPN personality,
he's got a very popular podcast. He did an incredible
expos a basically, and he found out that there was

(03:41):
a company called Aspiration. Interesting name. This is four or
five years ago, coming out of the pandemic. But Aspiration
had an endorsement deal with Kawhi Leonard. And look, we
know NBA stars and Major League Baseball stars do endorsement deals,
but this one was very unusual. That because in all
these leagues it's supposed to be completely separate from the team,

(04:01):
and especially separate from the player's contract. Those two things
aren't supposed to have any correlation to each other. So
the deal Kawhi signed with Aspiration, which touted itself as
a driver in environmentally conscious business practices, including facilitating carbon
offsets as we know coming out of the pandemic, green energy,
green this and that was all the rage. So Aspiration

(04:23):
Sound signed a bunch of stars, superstars across sports and entertainment,
including Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Junior, and Drake. They all
had deals with Aspiration. But the thing that's a pretty
significant red flag that in my opinion, was that none
of those deals were nearly as large as Kawhi Leonard's
Aspiration guarantee. Kawhi Leonard twenty eight million dollars over four years,

(04:46):
seven million a year, And what Pablo Torre found out
in his podcast was that Kawhi did not appear in
any of the promotional materials that the other endorsement other
endorsers did. In fact, it was also reported by a
differ media outlet that Kawhi also had a side deal
with Aspiration to receive an additional twenty million dollars in

(05:06):
company stock, so his total compensation from Aspiration could have
reached forty eight million dollars. Now that why is that
number very interesting to me and a lot of other folks. Well,
that's because Steve Balmer, who is not only the richest owner,
not just in the NBA, not just across all sports,
that he is one of the ten wealthiest individuals in
the world for Forbes and the other groups that measure

(05:29):
these things. He invested fifty million dollars into Aspiration. So
you have a Clippers owner who's former Microsoft CEO, one
of the best businessmen of our time. Basically now saying, geez,
I just kind of blindly invested fifty million in this company.
I didn't know much about it. I'm embarrassed they conned me.
I didn't do my due diligence. And then you have

(05:50):
a star player Kawhi Leonard, who had all those questions
circling around him back in twenty nineteen that have to
some extent lingered in the NBA and the wealthiest owner
of sports. Now you fast forward to say, wait a minute,
Steve Balmer, whose bile accounts a very savvy and experienced investor,
he just handed this company fifty million, and this company
then sponsored the Clippers. They ma did a team sponsorship

(06:11):
deal including the Jersey Patch, and they had sponsorships with
individual players, specifically Kawhi Leonard, and that total compensation happens
to be forty eight million. That's a little bit unusual.
Maybe it's just a coincidence that. But the other thing
that's really a red flag that I want to get
your take on is Kawhi Leonard, who was notoriously frugal

(06:31):
and conservative with his money, a few years back, signed
an extension with the l Clippers that was below a
max extension. It was below the maximum in terms of
dollars and I believe in terms of years that he
could sign for. That surprised a lot of people around
the league. Why would Kawhi Leonard do that? Well, I
think the reason he did that, At least people are
alleging the reason he did that was because, well, what

(06:54):
if they had a way to circumvent the salary cap
get that money in his pocket. That helps the team
keep the luxury tax build down, It gives them more
roster flexibility. And is this Steve Balmer the richest owner
again in all of sports? Is this some kind of
complex plan to do Those who thinks circumvent the salary
cap gain roster flexibility and make Kawhi Leonard Hoole in

(07:15):
a roundabout way.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Well, it's remarkable, Ryan, when you hear the facts as
you just presented him, it seems extremely egregious, extremely ostentatious.
It seems like the type of case Inspector Cluso could
crack if he was assigned to it. How are the
other twenty nine NBA franchises reacting to this at this point.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, they's significant concern now. On the one hand, NBA
owners historically have not wanted everything to be completely open
and transparent, and that's one of the lines that stood out.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Sad Is.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
I think back to the recruitment of Kawhi in twenty
nineteen that got pretty contentious in the Board of Governors,
the group of owners that meets multiple times a year,
and Toronto's contingent especially was frustrated with Adam Silver because
they thought the La Clippers had done things that they
weren't supposed to do, as far as showing up at
Kawhai's games when he played for the Raptors, putting it

(08:07):
out there in the media that he was their main focus,
you know, was their tampering involved. And what I was
told is that you. Rick Buchanan, who's the top a
lawyer for the league, said to all the owners said, well,
do you want us to look at all your cell
phone records and servers, because we can do that. And
the group said, well, maybe not to that extent. No,
we don't, you know, we don't want to open everything
up and have this be an FBI style forensic investigation.

(08:28):
So they did back off a little bit. But yes,
I think the fact that this is Steve Balmer, who
at the time paid a record two billion dollars cash
for his team, I don't think he financed it all
that or brought on any minority investors. This is in
twenty fourteen, before franchise valuations skyrocketed over a decade ago,
and so there are questions about that. And the main concern,

(08:50):
honestly and somewhat selfishly as far as the other twenty
nine owners go, but honestly is did this cost us money?
Because if Steve Balmer, who's blowing the spending that's out
of the water under the old collective Bardinger agreement and
having astronomical payrolls and luxury tax bills, Well, the teams
that don't pay the luxury tax in the NBA fad
get reimbursed by the teams that do so. If this

(09:11):
was the way for Steve Balmer to improve his team
on the court and gain competitive advantages and then also
save some money and then essentially take money out of
the other owner's pockets and keep it in his own,
that's going to be a major issue. So all these
questions swirl, and it is fascinating the timing of us
recording this podcast, because as we speak, this is what

(09:31):
mid September. The NBA Board of Governors is meeting right
now in New York City. I believe the meetings are
today and tomorrow. This will be topic one A. I've
been told that Adam Silver is supposed to have a
press conference later in the day on Wednesday, So we'll
see if he addresses these kinds of things, what he
says about it, because we know it's going to be
hot topic with the fans, the media, and the other

(09:51):
owners in particular. They're going to want some answers as
far as what Steve Balmer knew or didn't know. And
I think for me that this is going to come
down to one thing. Can the NBA proved that Steve
Balmer knew about this, and that he was complicit in
it because again he invested fifty million in aspiration you
know or not? And if if they can't, what is
the extent of what they can do? Saying as far

(10:12):
as okay, he didn't know or we can't prove that
he know new, but we're still going to find him
significantly or suspend him. That's a gray area in a
you know, talk about a slippery slope. So I'll be
fascinated to see how this ends up.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
But that this is a.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Very popular owner who's to some extent of public figure
as the form of Microsoft CEO and the richest man
in all of sports. So this is one that the
other owners is saying, well, because it's him, will he
be given the benefit of the doubt composed as opposed
to you know, Donald Stirling or Robert Sarver who I
used to work for, who were not nearly as popular.
And there was some thought that the league's you know,
you know, working to give do those guys any favors?

(10:48):
Is is Balmer who is more popular? Is is he
going to get you know, kind of a softer treatment
from the league. Those questions do continue to swirl.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
You know, in baseball, we don't see this as prenominantly
because we don't have a salary cap. So yes, there's
penalties to be paid in the form of tax, but
there's less motivation to manipulate things on the top end
because the penalties aren't as severe and there's not a
hard cap. That's that. I think where this shows up
in baseball is a few fronts. One is you know,
I think you just referenced how Balmer will be treated

(11:19):
based upon his reputation. I've often wondered when you're the
leader of an organization, whether it's a GM such as
we were, or an owner like you, either knew and
so you're complicit, or you didn't know and so you
were negligent, and I don't know that either makes you
absolves you from guilt associated with whatever's transpiring. So it'll

(11:41):
be interesting to see with what frame they put this analysis.
And Balmer's inclusion in this is excuse me, I'm sorry
if he doesn't know what was going on? Is that
really a viable defense in this case?

Speaker 2 (11:55):
What you see in.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Baseball sometimes is there's a lot of shared revenues. Is
some team have gotten very creative in kind of hiding
some of those revenues or making them not seem to
be things that they should have to share. And so
you know, they carve out TV deals or real estate
deals or marketing deals that they try to shelter from
inclusion in the calculation of their overall revenues, and they

(12:19):
siphon them off into other companies and as a result,
don't have to share as much of their revenues with teams.
You see that in baseball, You see it more than
you see what you're talking about here.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah. One historical example in the NBA that's getting referenced
a lot and will continue to be referenced over the
last next few weeks and months is Minnesota the Timberwolves
with Joe Smith. What happened in two thousand. Glenn Taylor
the then owner and Kevin McHale then GM got Joe Smith
to sign below market deals to get his bird rights,
which allows a team to exceed the salary cap and

(12:51):
then sign them to whatever. So they did something that
I've never heard of, that they actually agreed on the
contract and signed it, and I think put in a
vault and thought it would never find the light of day.
Well it did, and David Stern, the then commissioner, who
was a very tough guy. He fined the Wolves three
and a half million, which was the maximum fine. Keep
in mind this is twenty five years ago. He voided

(13:12):
Joe Smith's contract. He stripped the team of its next
first five first round picks, two of them were essentially
eventually returned for good behavior, and then he basically suspended
Glenn Taylor the owner and Kevin McHale the GM for
a year. That's the only real precedent for this in
the NBA. One more final point that that I should
have mentioned earlier, that's really important here. The contract Kawhi

(13:32):
signed was also very unusual because in addition to guaranteeing
four years in twenty eight million, there seemingly was a
clause in there that Kawhi Leonard did not have to
promote aspiration at all. In fact, he didn't have to
do anything if he didn't want to do it. The
only condition of the contracts that made it voidable Thad
was if he was no longer a member of the
La Clippers, which is really unusual because think about that,

(13:55):
what's in that for aspiration if that is the case,
and just kind of how looks on its surface, Why
would that be a good deal in any way for
the companies to pay a guy twenty eight million dollars
if he doesn't want to do anything. He didn't do anything,
So that, you know, adds some suspicion that that, yeah,
what Balmer at least knew about it, or you know,
potentially was complicit in it, because because why else would

(14:16):
it happen? That Those are the kind of questions that
NBA teams are asking, and I think to this point
I haven't heard a real good, good answer, And that's
why I think Balmer and the clips are in some
hot water.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yeah, it just it feels like there's a ton of
smoke here not to have a fire somewhere percolating. So
it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out. You know,
the biggest controversy in baseball over the last ten years
was the Houston Astros scandal, you know, coming out of
the World Series and trash cans being involved in in
proprieties about sharing of information in game to enhance their
chances of winning. But to your point, the maximum penalty

(14:48):
at that time was a five million dollar fine. It
was levied on the ownership of the Houston Astros, and
you know, for those of us who were competing with them,
you think about those in those moments, and he certainly
was not near as wealthy is as Balmer is. Is
a five million dollar penalty to win a World Series,
I think that's a payment most owners would make. They
didn't want their integrity taken into question. But the reality

(15:10):
is that finds associated with these things, which are collectively
bargained in large regard, are really a pittance in compared
to the benefits that can be gained from some of
these activities that some of these owners are undertaking. So
it's fascinating to see how this one unfolds, I.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
Think, and Steve Balmer, according to Forbes and other sources,
it's worth over one hundred and fifty billion dollars. The
most the NBA has ever find somebody was ten million dollars.
That's what Adam Silver, the Commissioner, find Son's owner Robert
Sarver in twenty twenty two, three years ago. So there
is a limit that And you know, Steve Balmer probably
has ten million dollars in his ATM account walking around.

(15:48):
That's pocket teams. Dam You're not going to be able
to hurt him financially. So the questions continue, and this
story is not going away. It's going to be investigated
by the league. They announced late last week they're launching
a full investigation I think the two of us and
certainly the other twenty nineteenth, they're fascinated to see where
it ends up. So we'll have more about that story
here on Rosters the Rings as it develops, But right
now we're going to have a football insider, a guy

(16:10):
who brinds more film and knows more about the NFL
than just about anybody, especially from an analytical statistical bount.
That is Bill Barnwell. Stay with us. Will be right
back on Rosters to Rings with Bill Barnwell just after this.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Welcome back to Rosters to Rings. What perfect timing to
have our next guest on Bill Barnwell. As a little
piece of background, Bill attended Northeastern University in Boston, where
he worked for Football Outsiders, a website dedicated to football
statistical analysis. Bill started working full time for Football Outsiders
upon graduation. In twenty eleven. Bill joined Grantland, a sports

(16:44):
and pop culture website originated by the esteemed Bill Simmons
affiliated with ESPN. After dipping his tootsies and covering the NBA,
UFC and Premier League, Bill started specializing in the NFL,
establishing himself as a pioneer in foot ball analytics. Overtime,
Bill has married his exceptional statistical acumen with advanced phil

(17:06):
for roster construction and scheme analysis. Bill continues to serve
as one of ESPN's foremost NFL analysts. Bill is regarded
throughout the industry as one of the brightest NFL minds,
and in addition to reading Bill's work on ESPN and
seeing him across all their platforms and hearing them on
countless podcasts, you can also hear Bill in his podcast,

(17:27):
The Bill Barnwell Show. Bill, Welcome to Rosters to Rings.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
This was great. If I had known I was going
to get that kind of intro, I'll do the show
every week if that's the ego boost I'm going to
get from Hoppy on. Thank you so much that.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
I actually had a lot on the cutting room floor
that didn't even include, which we may hit you on later.
It's something about being part of an improv group in
American Express Concierge as well. But those are questions for
down the.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Road, Bill, I may have signed an NDA about the
concierge stuff. I'm not sure if it still holds up now.
I don't know how long the NBA's last, but hopefully
not fifteen years or so. Bill.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
One of our actual traditions on the show, in addition
to great introductions, is asking every guest their sports origin story.
How'd you fall in love with sports? Bill?

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Oh gosh, So I grew up with a family that
was very, very sports exposed. My dad was a roller
hockey player who played in Manhattan and Brooklyn, so we'd
go to get dragged to all of his games. My
uncle had some sort of undefined role with the New
York Islanders. I'm not sure exactly what he did. My

(18:39):
best guess is something like traveling secretary. So we would
get you know, we'd go to Islanders games and we
would go back into the locker room, and that was
the coolest thing in the world to me. Oh my gosh,
I could be you know, there's actual players here. I
It just it was so much fun and so growing
up in Queen's obviously plenty of sports. You know, you've
got two teams in pretty much every sport regularly plenty
of MSG network and then and you know, playing at

(19:01):
a very low and unsuccessful level at pretty much everything.
But just from the first moments I can remember, sports
were an essential part of my family life. And so,
you know, as someone who was very early on realized
I was not going to be playing sports professionally, started thinking, okay, well,
you know what interests me and what am I actually
good at that might vaguely be sports adjacent.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Bill in the intro of Thad mentioned that you did
different things before becoming one of the pre eminent football
experts and a pioneer in the football analytics movement. What
was it that drew you toward football? And as you
were going through your process dabbling in the NBA and
other sports, what was it that kind of kept drawing
you back to the NFL, where you've really made your name.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, so it all goes back, oddly enough, to a website.
I'm not sure if you guys remember or know of
Do you remember Baseball Primer? Oh? Wow, okay, so we
got an oh yes for Baseball Prime. So back in
the day, this is right when I would have been
starting college as a big baseball perspectives reader. You can't
see in this book's here. But there was like some

(20:06):
nineteen ninety seven nineteen ninety eight baseball perspectus is up
on the shelf up there. But I was also a
baseball primer reader, and I had moved to Boston. I
was starting at Northeastern, and a guy who was another
baseball primer poster posted about this, like very intense, like
twenty five man national league only fantasy baseball league auction

(20:29):
twenty five man, you know, with minor league players. Basically,
just if you are a nerd about baseball, come join
this fantasy baseball league. This sounded great to me. This
is exactly what I wanted to do. So I went
and joined that league. And the guy who ran that
league was Aaron Shatz, who I think, in the next
twelve months started Footbodsiders, so that I went back for

(20:50):
the second year's draft. He had started this football thing. I,
you know, was not expecting to really do anything with sports,
but I didn't really know what I was going to
do with my life anyway, so I sort of asked, hey,
do you anybody to help with the website? And then
that became some data entry opportunities, and it became some
you know, writing for five or ten dollars here or there,
opportunities and one thing led to another. I mean it

(21:10):
was always something where you know, the idea of using
data or using analytics or using evidence to answer questions
is always interesting to me. And that's not a you know,
just had to be a football thing. That can be
a basketball thing. It can be a baseball thing, it
can be a Premier league thing. But I do think
the exciting thing about football. Then this is incredibly unfair,

(21:31):
but this was I think my naivete at the time.
With baseball, it was like, well, everything solved. You know,
it's two thousand and six. We figured everything out. There's
nothing else to learn about baseball. And of course that
you can attest to you how false and obviously untrue
that is. But you know, with football, it was such
an exciting space because we didn't know so much. I
mean a lot of the times when I was doing
research on a topic, the data set didn't exist. I

(21:53):
had to you know, scrape different websites or you know,
sort of go into you know, the web archive to
gather data. I remember very vividly, like going on like
a CNN website that suff for some reason had like
injury reports from nineteen ninety nine that I was grabbing
to do an injury research topic. You know, so that
exciting thing of it being sort of a wild West

(22:13):
of Okay, if I gather the data, I could be
the first person to answer this question. And when I
do the research, I don't even know what the answer
actually is this question. And that was so fun and
excited to me, like more and more to football, and
then of course football being what it is because it
was such a you know, such a cornerstone of American culture.
There was so much interest in football, there were more
opportunities writing about football, and so that inevitably too, you know,

(22:36):
kind of a career covering football.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
Pill You just kind of touched on it a little
bit there. But the state the state of analytics in
the NFL when you started working at football outsiders, like like,
what would what was the average employment status of people
for NFL teams who were dedicated to analytics and statistical analysis?

Speaker 2 (22:54):
It was It's funny because it wasn't. It's not like
there was like, you know, one person or sort of
one like tier of people across different teams. It really
varied from team to team. There were a lot of
teams who had absolutely nothing and who were not interested,
maybe actively actively aggressively excited about how uninterested they were

(23:14):
in analytics. And then you'd have a handful of teams
who would have a totally different range of people. And
when you found out somebody was analytically inclined, it was
like a little small victory, like, oh, you know, for
some teams ABO, you know they're trying to think their
quality control coach is open to using data and reached

(23:35):
out to us. Well, great, that's awesome. We know we
have a guy in Tennessee just picking an organization randomly.
I remembered exactly which organization it was, but we have
a guy in this organization. And then you'd have an
organization where the owner would be super into analytics, and
it's like, well, that's slightly more powerful and helpful to
us if the owner is interested in working with data.
You'd have a couple of coaches and a lot few
assistant coaches, a few gms here and there, and it

(23:57):
ranged like it's not a binary thing. It's not like
you either have you know, the most analytically inclined person
in the world or someone who will not turn on
a computer, there's a balance of some people are more
open than others. Some people are really open and interested,
some people are trying to find different ways to use
it and leverage it. And so you had a really
wide variance from team to team, which then you know,
and I think this is true in other sports as well,

(24:20):
became very clear in terms of the decisions those teams
made when there were people in charge, you had analytics backgrounds,
you know, if you had an owner who was very
analytically inclined. And I don't think I'm telling tales out
of school now and saying that the Eagles the Ravens
are two of the most analytically inclient teams in the
organ in football, from ownership down, that was a Those
were teams that made analytically inclient moves and you could

(24:42):
very much see other teams who did not have people
in those roles, people in meaningful roles there who were
not making quite as analytically inclient moves. And those some
of them work, some of them didn't. But just the
process was very clear and transparent for those teams versus
maybe some other teams who didn't have people in those
those buildings.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Bill is someone who's studied analytics in the NFL for
a couple of decades. Now, what would you say is
the state of the analytical movement today in twenty twenty five?
A Thad and I have talked about it before on
the show. I don't think there's any question that baseball
was the first mover. That's why you were doing this
stuff in the early two thousands, and baseball was way ahead.
Obviously Moneyball popularized it. Then the NBA to some extent

(25:22):
with what Darryl Moore in the Houston Rockets did, I
think was probably in the middle. To me, the NFL
seemingly is the last one, at least as far as
widespread adoption of the strategy. How would you describe the
state of analytics in the National Football League in twenty
twenty five.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah, it's really come a long way. And to start,
I mean, the data is so much more impressive and
there's so much more to work with. The NFL's Next
Gen Stats Project, I mean, is giving out billions and
billions of data points on player moving player data, and
of course that gives you an opportunity to gain a
significant advantage if you can find something that's really valuable
and other teams are really not doing anything with that data.

(25:57):
That's a big opportunity, and there are teams who I
think really trust that information and trust that data. The
access to not just analytics, but access to film has
gone a long way. I mean, it wasn't that long ago.
I feel very old saying this, but you know when
I started, which would have been almost twenty years ago,
now getting very old, you know, it wasn't like you

(26:19):
could pull up the ALL twenty two from a game.
Even if you worked in the league. You would get
tape sent to you with ALL twenty two. You'd have
to load it up, there'd be an intern who had
to chop it up to individual plays, and then maybe
you'd have a assistant internally that would you know, assign
that to stuff. But now, I mean I was watching
the Bears Vikings game on Monday night, and twenty minutes
after the game was over, I was watching the ALL

(26:41):
twenty two. And that's something that is just an incredible
amount of power and information when it comes to figuring
stuff out, understanding what you're doing, and then if you
are someone who's analytically inclined, then interpreting that and turning
it into meaningful data is something that was totally impossible
fifteen twenty years ago. There is more buying. Every team

(27:02):
has analytics people. Now, I will say this, it is
not baseball in the sense that every team has analytics people.
I would say that in baseball, and then you can
correct me if I'm wrong. I would say above ninety
percent of teams have a meaningful analytics department who actually
have a meaningful say and impact into the decision making

(27:22):
on a day to day basis. That is not the
case in football. Everyone has analytics people or an analytics
department because they don't want to be left behind. Do
they actually use that to make decisions? That is still
I think more of a a binary situation. I think
there are teams who are incredibly analytically in client and
who make smart moves and some not smart moves, but

(27:44):
who I think approach things with an analytic bent, but
they still might be very aggressive doing something that analytics
would say is a bad idea. I'd go with the Jags,
for example, where certainly they're open to analytics and I
think they're smart people there. In terms of James Pladstone
and some of the people they've hired but they went
out and traded two first round picks this last year
for Travis Hunter, a player who was not a quarterback,

(28:05):
was not an edge rusher, who does not play He
plays wide receiver, and I guess we'll see how much
quarterback he plays. But they saw him as a transcendent talent.
Maybe he will be, maybe he won't be. I don't
think it's the worst idea in the world, but that's
something that I think maybe other organizations would say, hey,
that's not an analytically inclined booth. There are teams who
will spent money on running backs. The Eagles, the most
probably analytically friendly organization in the league, spent money on

(28:25):
sa Kwon Barkley, and obviously that worked out quite well
for them. So I do think it is easier in
football to make exceptions. I do feel like there are
teams who might be very analytically inclined to say, well,
we're going to trade up in the draft, even though
that's not a good idea, because this is the exception,
and maybe that's not always the exception, it's always easier
for me on the outside to look at it and say, okay, well,

(28:47):
you should stick with your principles as opposed to being
in the building, you know, being the GM and saying, oh, well,
we have a second round grade in this guy, and
he's here in the fourth round. We need to get
this guy. So it's always easier from the outside. But
I do think it has come signific It is so
much further than what it was twenty years ago, and
it's really fascinating to see.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Bill. One just observation I would share relative to the
point you made and how it ties into baseball is
I do think baseball gets a lot of credit for
being on the forefront, but it wasn't universal. You know,
there were a handful of teams that were really on
the cutting edge, and I think what we saw was
a real evolution. So you know, we were having people
who were exceptionally intelligent who were helping inform decisions, but
they were very much separated from the coaching staff. I

(29:28):
think the teams that have done the best, and Bill,
we've had aj Hinch and Scott service to two managers
on the show here is the managers who have integrated
those analytics folks almost into being part of their coaching staff.
I think have had the most success because when you
water down their message to a coach, to a manager,
then ultimately to a player. Sometimes the impact of that message,

(29:49):
sometimes the impact of that information doesn't actually impact the
in game decision making. The teams that are integrating the most,
I think are getting the most out of this, to
say the least in baseball. And I think your path
speaks to some of that evolution. Like you started grounded
in analytics, but you've really matured into somebody who is
really advanced in roster construction and scheme and video breakdown.

(30:12):
Like how did you make that transition in your career?
How did you apply yourself to become an expert in
both sides of the analysis?

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, I mean the reality was, I'm just not good
enough at math to be someone who was going to
be on the level of you know, the quants NFL
teams can hire now. And I mean certainly there's brilliant
people working for NFL teams these days, with degrees and
resumes I could never touch if I'd voted the rest
of my life to studying math or studying development. Just
really smart people. And that's great. There should be smarter

(30:43):
people in these buildings working for teams than me. But
I think with the NFL, like I was not hired
as a quantitative writer at places, I was hired as
a football writer. And so I've always felt like my
job is to be accurate and fair and to give
evidence for what I'm saying, to get evidence or why
things are happening, why things are going to happen, why
things happened, and inevitably the numbers were only going to

(31:07):
take me part of the way. There. You know something
that is maybe analytics adjacent, but we don't really think
about it this analytics. It's a salary cap. And the
reality is if you want to understand what happens in
the NFL, why teams do things, why gms feel leverage
to do things, you have to understand the salary cap.
You have to understand why how contracts work. And frankly,

(31:28):
even now, I mean here in twenty twenty five, like
it's gotten better, but there were still so many times
where I'll see an article or see a video on
a guy where it's like, now'll hear, oh, you know
this guy might get treated and I think it's there's
no way they can financially make that work as the
salary cap, and it's just you know if you can
take care of that and just remove Okay, I'm not
going to say this one dumb thing, because I know

(31:49):
this could different possibly happen. You might have eventually then
land on things that can happen and leads you to
maybe some of the things that might make sense for teams
based on the money and the contract situations involved. And
then with the film, it has really been great to
have the opportunity to see stuff. I mean, when I
was at Grantlin twenty eleven, twenty twelve, the first couple
of years I was there, all twenty two, data was

(32:11):
not only not available, but the NFL was even talking
to the Wall Street Journal and saying, We're never going
to make this available. We don't trust people with this data,
which seemed a little crazy to me that the NFL
wants to make money on everything, was not going to
monetize this video that was going to be dedicated to
hardcore fans. And sure enough, they eventually did monetize it,
and now it does very well for them as a product.
But you know, I'd have to write about a game

(32:33):
or write about a play, and I wouldn't have the
video of the play. You know, I'd have what I
saw on TV. Maybe I'd get lucky and there'd be
a replay, but that was you know, talking to coaches
or talking to beat reports and say, okay, what happened
on this play? What you see? And now I mean,
like I said, having that video ten twenty minutes after
the game or the worst than the day after the game,

(32:55):
there's just more opportunities to learn. I just see so
much more because I can now you know, I can
go on the NFL Next ten stats platform or NFL
Plus and I can go say, show me every third
down from last week, and I'll do that and want
to see every team play, look at to see everything
they decided, every concept they ran. And then eventually you're
going to see more stuff and learn more. And then

(33:16):
on top of that, I think from the from the
knowledge side, something that's been really valuable for me that
it's maybe harder in other sports, but I think with
football there's a really strong culture of coaches clinics. You know,
you can if you look hard enough, you'll find a
clinic of Bill Belichick talking about defense to stick save
and talking about defenses. You can even go to clinics.
I remember a couple of years ago, I was in

(33:36):
Texas for a trip and there was a clinic on
the air raid offense, and I said, Okay, you know,
might as well go, right, Like, I don't know enough
about the air raid offense. It's interesting NFL teams run
air raid concepts. Let me go to this clinic in person.
And I got there and there was a bunch of
high school coaches and me with a little ESPN name tag,
and sure enough, like you know, a couple high school

(33:59):
coaches talk and then a third HI coach comes up
and he says, yeah, I got fired last year and
it was the media's fault and I hate the media.
And then everyone cheers, and I'm like, oh, we well
nervous and I'm going to sneak out of the back
of this this you know, coaches clinic. But really it's
one of those things where I think when coaches and
when players see that you want to learn and that
you want to report on things accurately and kind of

(34:21):
give not just say oh, this guy screwed up, that
guy screwed up, but more just what is the actual
logic behind what happened? Here, you not only learn a lot,
but I think you also open more doors for you
up as well. So I think just you know, sort
of trying to be more thoughtful about elements of the
game that weren't just analytics opened up doors for me
and I think made me a more well rounded and
better you know, I guess journalist or analysts. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Bill fadd and I do clinics about how to run
successful sports podcasts. We're not sure anybody listens or pays attention,
but we do those. Maybe it's just the two of
us talking to each other offline, but now on a
more serious note, I want to get inside your process.
And one of the things we like to do here
on Roster Ster Rings is take listeners behind the curtain.
We were talking about a little bit pre show, and
as I analyzed the three major sports in this country,

(35:05):
I think the NFL, see me, the NBA has the
longest season start to finish. It's really a marathon. Major
League Baseball is the most condensed. What that and those
guys are doing. It's every day for five or six months.
And then the NFL to me, is the most like
a sprint. And so this week was a little bit
unique Week one in the NFL. The Thursday night opener
the Friday night game in Brazil, which is streamed on YouTube,

(35:25):
and then Sunday Monday. So take us inside next week,
for example, give our listeners a preview of what will
We two is like for Bill Barnwell, starting say at
noon on Sunday, because I imagine that's a pretty intense
twelve to fifteen hours of football.

Speaker 2 (35:40):
Yeah, noon on Sunday. I forget what I mentioned it
on the show or off air, but we just had
our first child in March, which has been really exciting.
So I spent you know, the last five months timing
on the baby was perfect. End of March, just before
the draft, really nailed the time in on that one,
which was great. But you know, I last five months,
I've been spending Sunday hanging out with my new baby,
hanging out with my wife, going out and joining Boston,

(36:01):
which is beautiful in the summer. Now it's just I
am here in my office, which is really a couch
and a couple of TVs, and I'm just sitting there
watching I am watching a little bit of Red Zones,
I'm trying to get to see a little bit of everything,
and then I'm quad boxing on the other TV. So
I'm watching four games and TV and flipping back and forth,
and if there's a game I really want to watch,
I am trying to focus more on that, and it's

(36:24):
usually more later in the year, you know, really in
this season, I want to see a little bit of everybody,
just so I get a sense of, Okay, this is
what's happening in this building, and that's building. This is
you know, who's playing well here, who's not playing well here?
Just learning about the league as a whole. And then
I'm not gonna lie. I do want to pick on
any team, but I'll say the Raiders not gonna lie
when you get to December. Usually if the Raiders are bad,
I'm not watching a lot of Raiders. I'm trying to

(36:45):
move on and focus on other stuff. But the beginning
of the year, I am watching everyone. So Sunday one o'clock,
four o'clock games, I'm sitting there and watching, taking notes.
I'm doing some some TV stuff, some video stuff with
Dominique Foxworth through a former NFLPA head. I'm doing that
stuff in the evening, usually during the Sunday night game.

(37:07):
So oddly enough, I don't typically watch a Sunday football
game in real time. This was this week's game, which
was insane, which in the Bills and Rings was kind
of an exception where I did, you know, sort of
sit down for the third and fourth quarter to watch
what ended up being one of the games of the year.
I ended up being really fun to watch, but I
typically skipping that game and I'm talking with my editors,
I'm talking about what I'm going to write about, and

(37:27):
the until about three am I am writing. I am,
you know, trying to talk about the league as a whole.
I'm trying to give the perspective of, Okay, if you
didn't watch this, this is what happened. This was the
most meaningful story from what we saw on Sunday. This
is a you know, sort of a swath of things
that were interesting on Sunday. Just trying to find you know,
because the reality is like, you can't watch eight or

(37:50):
nine games on Sunday in a row. You cannot sit
there as a fan if you're a fan, if you're
a fan of one team, even if you're watching Red Zone,
You're not going to see everything. And so I think
just trying to be thoughtful about, Okay, what did you
need to know what did you need to know about Sunday?
What did you not see on Sunday? What was interesting
on Sunday leads me to stuff that I think it's
been pretty interesting for content. So I'm writing that I'm
getting up a Monday. Last year I was doing Around

(38:13):
the Horn on Mondays, which is no longer a show.
So I'm not doing TV on Mondays, which is a
little easier. But then Monday, during the day, I'm catching
up at what I missed because I didn't get to
see everything. I am watching the Sunday night game. I
am watching clips from around the league. I'm you know,
I might sit there and say, okay, I want to
watch every third down. I want to watch every red
zone play. I want to watch every explosive play that

(38:33):
game ten or fifteen yards. I want to study who
actually played the player participation data, just who was actually
on the field, who got benched, who you know, who
didn't play well as the game went along. And that's
a process throughout the week. That is going to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
That is, you know, if I have a spare half hour,
I'm going to have to watch two teams third downs,
that's watching the ALL twenty two from behind the quarterback,

(38:55):
trying to see what actually happened on a play. Much
easier from that angle that the class I mean Madden
video game angle versus you know, the TV angle where
you're not getting the safeties in the field, you're not
getting to see the offensive line play because it kind
of just looks like a jumbled mess if you're watching
from the TV side, but just learning about, Okay, what
actually happened, you know what worthy, what led to some

(39:16):
of these plays happening, what led to a sack, what
led to a big run, And you don't get to
see that really, you know, it really is unique about football.
It's not like with baseball. You know, it would be
like if on the TV view of a baseball game
you never got to see the outfield. You never got
to see like what happened with defensive alignment or anything,
never got to see, you know, how people were playing

(39:37):
a hitter. It is. It is good for TV and
in football. It is an incredible product on TV obviously,
but there's just so much you miss without watching that
stuff from behind the stanes at ALL twenty two. So
I'm doing that during the week I'm doing my own
podcast twice a week. I'm doing I did my podcast
Monday night after the Monday night game, which I'm watching.
But there's just a lot of you know, Sunday is

(39:57):
very busy, but it is just the start. I mean,
there was so much to learn, and you're constantly playing
catch up because you know, like you said, it is
a sprint. There's never a point during the year where
I'm like, oh, I've watched everything I need to watch.
I am good. There's always more to see, always more
to study, and those are opportunities to gain a competitive edge,
you know. I mean, at the end of the day,
like I'm a writer and I'm not winning anything, but

(40:20):
I am trying to be smart. I'm trying to get
people things that they can't get anywhere else, or learn
things they don't they wouldn't learn anywhere else. And so
the only way you can do that is, you know,
with contacts and talking to people, but also then just
sitting down doing the work, watching and figuring out what
actually happened on.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
A Sunday and Bill you're delivering on that front two people,
and for those who don't read your stuff on ESPN,
it's exceptionally well written. It's extremely thoughtful. I also hear
you asking Ryan and I for parenting tips here, and
I'm going to just offer one. One is that one
thing that I learned is when you're sleep deprived and
you're trying to pacify a child, say from two to

(40:56):
five in the morning, get some go to songs that
you know. Mine were the Gap and the theme song
to The Jeffersons. Feel free to use those if those
help you in any capacity. I mysteriously all three of
my kids know the theme song to the Jeffersons, having
never watched the show, but it was just burnt into
their brain when they were children. I Bill, we would
be remiss to have you on and not have you

(41:17):
weigh in on the bombshell trade that was made a
week before the season started, Micah Parson's going to the
Green Bay Packers. We've had everyone from part owner or
Scott Service of the Green Bay Packers, way In and
former general manager Tom Telesco, Ryan and I have even
weighed in. Skin weighed a local radio host in Dallas
has given us the fan perspective, What is your analysis

(41:39):
of this? Why did this trade happen when it did
or some of the behind the scenes element and why
did this work for both teams?

Speaker 2 (41:45):
Okay, so it was such a fascinating trade. I mean
it is such a rarity, right, I mean talking about
a player at a premium position who is a four
years into what probably projects at this point to be
a hall career. Like he's not one hundred percent lock
to be a Hall of Famer, you know, if he
gets hurt, if he has you know, a serious injury
or something, if he falls off, it could happen. But

(42:08):
we're talking about a guy where he's five seventy seventy
five percent to be a Hall of Famer fifteen years
from now at a premium position. Those guys don't hit
the market very often. So what I found so interesting
is that you had two teams really sort of go
against what they're known for in this move. The Cowboys
eight team that if you know anything about Jerry Jones,

(42:29):
he's about accumulating star players. He always wants to get that,
you know, that highest profile player. He wants to win
the headlines. Maybe that's some of that nonsense, but I
think there is a little bit of truth, like he
wants to be the center of attention and so they're
a very good drafting and developing team. If anything, they've
been too aggressive signing their own players. They actually have
had some contracts that haven't worked out because they have

(42:50):
fallen in love with some of their own guys. But
they don't let guys like this lead. Nobody does, but
the Cowboys especially don't let guys like this leap. And
then the Packers, you flip it. They're a very distinct
franchise and how they operate. They're very sort of Leonardo
DiCaprio esque, and that if you're over twenty seven or
twenty eight, they don't want to hire you, they want

(43:11):
to get rid of you, and so they will. They're
very aggressive moving on from guys after their second contracts,
a lot of players on rookie deals. They draft and
develop really well, and they've been the youngest team in
football each of the past couple of years because they
really are dedicated to no, we're going to build through
the draft, may add a free agent here or there,
but like we are, our core is going to be
guys we've brought through the organization and for first and

(43:34):
second contracts, and so for them to go out and
trade two first round picks to get Michael Parsons is
kind of a shock because that's not eighteen that trades
one first round pick typically, let alone two first round picks.
But I do think there's a logic that makes sense
for both sides. For the Cowboys, you know, this is
a financial thing to me, and maybe it's not what
Jerry Jones was thinking you're saying when he made the move.

(43:57):
But number one, I think if you look at what
the cow Boys do, there's a very big disconnect between
what Jerry Jones says publicly and what the Cowboys have
actually done privately, which I think hence towards Stephen Jones,
his son, having more of a impact and emphasis on
what they do on a football basis. Like Jerry Jones
wants to go get star players, They've drafted offensive and
defensive linemen like he used the last five years in

(44:17):
the first round. That's not what Jerry Jones would do.
If he wanted to go get a star play, you'd
get the flashy running back or the flashy wide receiver.
They have a big analytics department that they did not
have four or five years ago, and they are making
some decisions that are in line with what analytics would
suggest they But what I think it comes down to
for the Cowboys is they had Dak Prescott on a

(44:40):
deal worth forty million dollars a year, Ceedee Lamb I
think was making about five or six million dollars a year,
and Micah Parson's on a rookie deal as well in
the five six million dollars a year range. So those
guys making, depending on how you do the math, probably
fifty two fifty three million dollars a year. And now
on their new contracts, Dak Prescott's making sixty million dollars
a year, Cedee Lamb's making thirty four million dollars a year,

(45:01):
and now Mike is making forty seven. So I can't
do math in my head one hundred and forty. So
basically the idea is this, if you're the Cowboys and
you could not win a Super Bowl with those guys
making fifty two fifty three million dollars a year, how
are you going to do that? If they're making one
hundred and forty million dollars a year. That is I
think the part that they had to answer, and they
had to come up with a solution for. And I

(45:22):
don't know that they ever got there. You know, I
think there was a maybe if they had drafted well
in the prior to or three drafts after between the
Parsons deal and having to pay these guys, maybe it
would have been easier. If they'd had some great draft
class they could say, Okay, we have six or seven
guys and rookie deals we feel good about. I don't
know that they do, and so they sort of, I think,
got stuck in a situation where they had to kind
of make a roster model work that hadn't they won

(45:46):
a bunch of games, they'd won a playoff game, maybe
they would have had things go right, maybe they would
have had a great draft in twenty five or twenty
six and made it work down the line. But they
were going to have to make a roster work with
three guys making such an incredibly high portion of their
cap of their budget, and that was going to be
difficult to do. Then you flip it at the packer's side,
think you have Jordan Love making a lot of money,
but they are It's probably unfair to call them like

(46:09):
the the Tampa Bay Rays of football, but there is
a real emphasis on like let's get our pre our guys.
Let's get our rookie contract. Guys. We know we're gonna
have that built in. We are very financially prudent about
how we build our deals. There are a lot of
their contracts, even their big contracts for free agents are
you know, one year of guarantees and then we can

(46:29):
get out of it after one season. They have a
lot of flexibility, so they had a lot more ability
I think, to go and say, okay, like we have
those pieces in place, we have those you know, cost
control talents around the superstar that we can go out
and make sort of a big splurge for a player,
thinking okay, this might be the guy who puts us
over the top. So I feel like, even though I

(46:50):
like the do the I like the Packers side of
it a little more just because I think it is
such a rare opportunity to get a player that you're
not gonna be able to get in freegency and you're
gonna hope, you're gonna pray maybe you have like a
five percent chance of a first round pick turn against
that kind of player. I do think it does make
sense for both sides, and I do think that in
the long run, I think we're gonna look at it.

(47:10):
It's like we're gonna win, win, but certainly a thing
where we can see why the Cowboys made this decision.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yeah, Bill fed and I have a commitment to you
that if we're back with the team and there's somebody
on staff who likes younger players, we're going to use
a team Leo Nardo, DiCaprio, ESK and then give you
credit for that. That's going to be prominently featured in
the scouting meetings any room I'm in going forward. I
love that term. But let's let's get back to the
running back debate. You mentioned Saquon Barkley earlier, because as

(47:38):
a fan of the NFL, look, I get the statistical
argument that running backs break down, that they don't hold
up as long they're not as valuable financially. But then
I look at two teams in particular who have kind
of gone counter trend to that, the Eagles with Kwan
Barkley and then the Baltimore Ravens with Derrick Henry, and
as a fan, I said, wait a minute, how do
those teams, with the defenses and the quarterbacks they have

(48:01):
and the infrastructure get those guys? So do you think
maybe some of that has gone too far as far
as to shift away from running backs, and you know,
kind of the counter trend movement with those two teams
in particular taking advantage of that potential over correction.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, I mean those are probably the most two of
the three most analytically inclined organizations in the league. Like,
those are the teams who for years would have told you, yeah,
we don't think we shouls been money on running backs,
like you know, we can, we can sort of, we
can build through our offensive lines, we can build through
our quarterbacks, like that's going to be a secondary tertiary
piece for us. So for them to both go out

(48:36):
and say, actually, this is totally wrong. We need to
go out and invest these guys. And then, of course
the incredible results they got last year I think speaks
to you know how that sort of idea of Okay,
running backs don't matter, running backs are overvalued is changing.
And I think the reason why they were smart to
be ahead of the curve and why I think it
is fair to say it has gone too far in

(48:56):
some ways is the prices have changed. If you look
at running back contracts, the biggest contracts are still deal
signed by Adrian Peterson fifteen years ago, a little maybe
thirteen fourteen years ago at this point, but his contracts
with the Vikings were the largest contracts signed by our
running back if you adjust for the salary cap, which

(49:16):
has gone up over one hundred percent over that timeframe.
I mean running backs are making what seemed like a
lot of money. Stecon Barkley I think was around twelve
and a half million dollars a year. Derek Kenny would
have been I think seven million for his first year
last year. That's what marginal second third wide receivers are getting.
And I mean no disrespect to the Diyami Browns of
the world or the Gabe Davises of the world, but

(49:39):
those guys do not move the needle the way a
Sekwon Barkley does the way that a Derek Henry does.
And the other factor is sort of the team fit,
the qualitative elopment to all this, which is se Kwon
Barkley was playing for a Giant's offense. He doesn't have
a great quarterback, not have a great offensive line. He
was the focal point of the offense. Derreic Henry same

(50:00):
thing in Tennessee. Very bad quarterback play offensive line that
I was really banged up. Just those guys were in
terrible situations. And these two teams, the Eagles and the Ravens,
were two of the most running back friendly spots in
all of football. The Eagles have Gialen Hurts. We know,
a mobile quarterback just creates some gravity for your running backs,
and that is an opportunity for them. They'd be more efficient.
They had the best offensive line in the league. Like

(50:22):
they were in a position where he moved from the
worst possible place to be, say Kwan Barkley, to the
best possible place to be Sae Kwon Barkley just happened
to be sadly for me as a Giants fan about
two hours south and with the arch rivals of the
New York Giants, and then with Derrek Henry moving to
the Ravens, where you have Lamar Jackson, a very valuable
and essential part of their run game, is going to

(50:43):
make like easier for him in terms of having the
focus on him. I mean, those those mobile quarterbacks changed
the math for how defenses approach you in the run game.
So they're facing one defender fewer than they would in
an offense where they have a more traditional quarterback, say,
such an opportunity to get you get a player or
players who were undervalued at a position that had gone

(51:04):
down financially when so many of the positions had gone
up dramatically. And I think even if you can make
the case that okay, well, having an average running back
and paying that premium, that's probably not worth it. Like
you can find there's more supply than demand for your
average running backs. How often can you go out and

(51:25):
get a twenty seven year old player who is the
maybe the best player at his position in free agency
and pay you know what you would have paid a
mid tier player at the same position ten years earlier.
That's just not an opportunity that I think was going
to happen at edge rusher or wide receiver or offensive tackle.
And so I think it was really smarter those teams
to recognize, you know, okay, like, yes, the talent is

(51:47):
still there and the price has changed dramatically, and maybe
at the price from ten years ago when in they
made sense, but at the price now, that's a really
valuable opportunity for us. And I mean those are two
of the best free agent signings teams make this pass
off season.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
A number of things you've said have reminded me of
this theory that we came up with when we were
in Texas, which is, you do want to ground all
your decisions in the data. You want to be as
informed as you possibly can. But if you do believe
that everyone has great data and analytics, then everyone's kind
of shooting par, so to speak. And while you tend
to not lose tournaments shooting par, you also maybe don't

(52:23):
win tournaments shooting par. And so there are times where
you have to take calculated risks and try to fly
it over the water and get to the green in two.
And there's a real risk associate with that. You can
land in the water and you have to take a penalty.
But if you get to the green and two, you're
a head of teams. And when you trade two first
round picks as Green Bay, you're taking a risk. You
referenced earlier that the Jaguars did the same thing. That's

(52:46):
obviously a real risk. They're trying to fly the water
and get to the green. Well, so two are these
two teams that are investing in aging running backs, which
is a counter to every trend you see in football.
Most of those don't work out. They have here, I'd
like to just shift the topic to something that has
become pressing in football recently, and I feel like this
hasn't gotten as much airtime as it probably should. But

(53:09):
there's a controversial story surrounding the Chicago Bears, and these
things are terrible. We've talked about this in the past,
Ryan and I have about leaks from within your group. Well,
something was leaked recently reflecting the analysis that they did
pre draft twenty twenty four when they had the first
pick in the draft and they clearly were prioritizing quarterbacks

(53:29):
and they were reviewing tape of all the eligible guys
who were first round talents, Drake May's videos on the board,
and one of the scouts is quoted as saying they
made fun of him, they laughed, The GM left Drake
May off the screen, then he cut the tape off.
What is your assessment of that situation. It seems to
me to be concerning at a number of different levels,

(53:51):
and from a general manager's perspective, I'd love to hear
Ryan's field too, Like when you hear that. My initial
feeling is, first of all, it seems grossly unprofessional. But
second early very concerning that people from our room are
now advertising that publicly. It speaks to an undercurrent of
cultural concerns that maybe much greater than this one clear
mistake that was made within that room.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah, Tyler Dunn reported that story, and I'm you know,
weren't there, so he can't say what the context was.
Maybe it was a little different. I don't want to.
I don't have any reason to think that Tyler is
making it up. I don't think that's accurate story if
that's what he was reporting. But I think it's fascinating, right,
I mean, you know there is in that organization when

(54:36):
you see their moves publicly, there has been an element
of getting very attached to certain players. You know, they
wanted to help justin fields a few years ago, Okay,
nothing wrong with that. They went out and traded a
second round piper Chase Paypole at the trade deadline, a
guy who was buried on Pittsburgh's depth chart because they
wanted to get back by now, like, what this guy
is going to fix our team. He was not a
good fix. He was terrible. Next year, the trade set

(54:57):
round picked for Montes Wet. Well, we need a pass
rusher we need to fix right now, even though there
was a great crop of bage rushers coming out of
free agency, and they maybe could have waited and got
one of those guys, but they said, no, this is
a guy we're stuck to. Once we kind of fell
in love with this one player. We need to get him.
There was no alternative. And then with the Caleb Williams situation,
you know, nothing wrong with drafting Caleb Williams over Drake May.

(55:19):
It's still too early to say which of those guys
are going to work out. But it's not like they
were watching a side went there own pick. They were
watching a guy who went off the board very high
to the New England Patriots. And so what I find
so fascinating about it is, like you said, number one,
what does it tell you about their culture that not
only was this a normal thing that happened, but also
that someone felt like they had to tell a reporter

(55:41):
about it because it was so jarring and so unprofessional
relative to what you should be doing. And then I
think the question I have for you guys is, you know,
even if we're not going through this extreme of laughing
at another player's stock, clearly they wanted to believe Kayleb
Williams was the best quarterback prospect, and they didn't want
you believe that there was anyone else who is comparable,

(56:02):
with Drake May being an example. And so when you
guys are scouting players, when you're going through that pre
draft process, you know, how do you balance the idea
of falling in love with the guy you really like
I think is going to be a superstar and then
poking holes in that player or seeing alternatives and saying, Okay,
well maybe this guy, even if we don't think he's
as good, he can still work out, he can still
be good. You know, you could still be a valuable player,
maybe better than the guy we fall in love with.

(56:23):
I just think that is something on the outside that
I don't have to do, but I feel like inside
team buildings is so fascinating to kind of balance that
thing of you know, you spend months trying to figure
out who you want to fall in love with, and
then it's probably hard to poke holes or feel like
maybe you are wrong before that process actually takes place
in the draft actually occurs.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, I think bill teams need to have a robust
discussion and look at all sides of the issue. Even
if you're certain somebody is the number one pick in
the NBA, times are overwhelming favorites Victor women Yama recently
comes to mind. But at least somebody on staff has
to say, Hey, how's this not going to work? Or
how's he just going to be pretty good but not great?
Let's look at it that way. Is it the injury risk?

(57:04):
Is it the fact that he's never played basketball in
the US. And I'm not picking on Wemby. I think
he's going to be an all time great player, but
you do you need somebody with that perspective. And then
somebody says, well, what if God forbid, something horrible happens
between when we're having this debate and the actual draft,
you know, some catastrophic health issue or car rack or
whatever you know happens in life. So I think it's

(57:26):
a lazy approach to just put all your eggs in
one basket, so to speak, and not really beat it up,
even if the decision seems obvious on its surface, because
we've seen, especially in the NBA history of the NBA,
there were decisions that seemed obvious and you look back
and sign and says, oh, my goodness, how did that
guy go number one? Anthony Bett, poor Anthony Metic gets
beat up a lot, or how did that guy go
outside the top ten? You know, number of examples there,

(57:48):
Yannis Kawhi, Jokic, et cetera. Could go one obvious in hindsight,
they certainly weren't obvious at the time. So I think
that part of it is so important and fat. I
want to get your perspective on it. But what I
would say is if somebody in the draft room did
say that that's BS, because there's no place for that,
right and all of these things. You want to increase

(58:09):
your degree of certainty and have it as high as
it can possibly be, but nobody's one hundred per cent
certain all the time. There's no possible way to be.
We're dealing with human beings. So to kind of disparage
Drake may or act like, you know, he's a joke,
not an NFL player. We'll see how his career goes.
It seems to me like he's off to at least
a decent start, a pretty good start. I know some
fans of the Patriots are excited about him, but I
don't see any reason to take that approach and disparage

(58:32):
a player, because look, we know in twenty twenty five
these leagues the players turn over frequently, the staff turns
over frequently. So if you're that kind of arrogant and
dismissive boy, you better be right because either way, in
my opinion, it's not a good look for the Bears
franchise and Ryan Poles if he did indeed say that,
because what's the upside for him in the franchise?

Speaker 1 (58:51):
Yeah, and Ryan, I think extremely well said. So I
don't want to repeat what you said. I just want
to add a few thoughts to this is I also think,
you know, we aspire to create a forum where we
have real substantive dialogue. When you disparage a player to
that respect, like it doesn't open the door for that.
Like now for somebody to raise their hand and say, well,
wait a minute, I see it differently, and it sounds
like some scout did actually do that. You know, like

(59:14):
it's a real risk because now you think your job's
a little bit at risk because you know you've now
put the the person in a really jeopardy position to
present their side of the story. I certainly have been
in a lot of draft rooms of where you know,
in baseball, we want to say such things as like
this guy has no he's playing center field, but he
has no chance to play center field at the next level,

(59:34):
or he has no chance to play shortstop at the
next level. And when that, when that is left unchecked,
people now all a sudden just degrade the player. I've always
tried to frame it dustly, just saying he has we
have concerns about his ability to play center field today,
or we don't know if he can throw a curveball yet.
But like, that's where our coaches need to engage and

(59:55):
try to get the best out of this player. What
we don't know what the future holds, Like there are
people who played major league baseball who do not look
the part, who do play shortstop, who do play centerfield,
who do catch. So all we know is that maybe
he isn't doesn't have the talents or skills to do
it yet, but we don't know if he never will.
And once we make it a definitive statement, I think

(01:00:15):
it really closes off those conversations, and that's when we
start making poor decisions. And I think honestly, that's where
owners should be very concerned about a decision making when
we're cleaving off portions of the field and not rationally
discussing their talents, but emotionally assigning and ascribing pejoratives to
these players such that they now get diminished in the
room and nobody feels comfortable standing up for them.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Yeah. And I think the other thing I would say
at that that you brought up that really resonated with me.
It's this idea of you should want people who disagree
with you, right, Like I understand, Yes, in football, you
want scouts who are going to recognize where players players
are bad. But like history tells us, we know the
NFL draft is more of a crapshoot than anything else.
Once you adjust for draft position, it is it is chaos.

(01:01:00):
And there's so many factors that go into that. It's
not that scouts don't matter, that they're not good, but
you know, teams turn over their personnel, they change their
styles of play, they you know, injuries are attrition such
an incredibly valuable thing. Teams get stuck on draft position
and so players maybe are not the best players play
for longer. It's not that that process doesn't matter, it does,

(01:01:20):
But I think you have to be thoughtful enough to say, Okay, like, yes,
I think Cale Williams is the best player in this draft.
We're going to take him. Nothing wrong with that. Take
the guy you like, of course, But I think if
you're so dismissive of the idea that a player is
going to go in the top five, is not even
worth watching on tape. Er, We're not even worth giving
the benefit of the doubts to talk about with respect.

(01:01:41):
And most of the people in the room are laughing
with you and agree with you. There's a group think
elements to that, right, Like, you know, I think you're
going to end up with the players who you the
GM like, And you might have the best taste of
energym in history, but history tells us that you're not
going to be able to do it. Even if you're
real Belichick, You're not going to be able to draft
guys consistently at a high level. So you want different perspectives,
you want different viewpoints. A lot of people who are

(01:02:03):
going to actually do their job watch tape and say, Okay,
you don't have to like him, this is why I
like him. We don't have to take him. But like,
let's move on and let's just say, okay, you know,
let's get that perspective because you might have a blind
sponge GM not. You know, even if you're a you're
a really good scout and you get run into that role,
there's going to be positions you don't ally rate as well.
There's going to be, you know, maybe some biases you

(01:02:23):
have in terms of things that have worked in the past.
Having those different perspectives is so valuable. And I think
if you're a Bears fan or really a Bears employee,
I feel like that has to be so discouraging to
feel like, you know, if you don't agree very directly
with what the general manager thinks, you're going to be
laughed out of the room.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Bill that and I feel we actually did have the
best perspective and evaluation ability of any general manager in
the history of our sport. In fact, as we look
back on our ten years, it was the staff and
the owner. If any mistakes were may it was their
fault in any of the credit, you know, for the
good stuff that goes to us. All joking aside, One
of the things that I want to talk to you
about are your kind of thoughts on fourth downs and

(01:03:03):
NFL teams going for it on fourth down. I know
you've been at the forefront of that movement as a fan.
It seems like it's being embraced more. But then reading
your column this week, you talked about how the Ravens
and John harbar our team that usually goes for it
on fourth down and the Numbers said in Buffalo on
Sunday night they should go for it on fourth down,
and they didn't, and they lost the game when Josh
Allen and the Bills came back. So take us inside

(01:03:26):
kind of your the evolution of your thoughts and why,
especially initially, you were so passionate the teams should go
for it more on fourth and short.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you guys remember
the Patriots Colts game from two thousand and eight or
two thousand and nine where they Colts are out of timeouts,
the Pagagtriich are facing a fourth and two. They have
Tom Brady, the best quarterback in the history of the
National Football League. The guy on the other side of
the field is another Hall of Famer in Peyton Manning.
And they went forward and fourth and two and didn't
get it, And it was like it was like the

(01:03:55):
world that ended it was like national news, like, oh
my god, Bill Belichick went forward fourth and two with
ninety seconds left on his own side of the field
when that would have won them the game, and it
was you know, it was such a crazy situation. And
now that has changed, Like the idea of you know,
a team going forward and fourth and one, now that's

(01:04:15):
the norm. Fourth and two, that's the norm. There's still
situations where I think the numbers would say teams are
too conservative or they are aligned too much with you know,
what history tells us. I think even Mike McDonald, the
Seahawks coach, you know, he actually did a really good job.
I thought of explaining his thought process, even if I
don't necessarily agree with it. But they had a fourth
down in the tie game earlier or in Week one

(01:04:37):
where they decided to kick a field goal to take
the lead as opposed to holding onto the football ended
up losing, and he said, well, you know, our model
said we should go for it. But here were some
of the factors for why I thought the model was wrong,
which I don't know. I think the model in tap
sides ont of the things he said, but that's a
different story. But basically, you know, I think we had
objective evidence saying teams are leaving opportunities on the table

(01:04:58):
by not going forward and fourth and one fourth to
that they're by by being conservative, by by building their
ideas of what to do in those situations based on
the past, based on history, based on what they did
growing up. We have pretty strong empirical evidence that is false.
And so it really stuck with the Carolina Panthers, the

(01:05:18):
Ron Rivera era Carolina Panthers, which was a team I
was writing about regularly at Grantland, which lost a ton
of one score games and even beyond the numbers, And
I think this is matters a lot when it comes
to doing these evaluations. They if there was any team
built to be great on fourth and short, it was
the Carolina Panthers. They had Cam Newton who they were
very comfortable using in the run game in a way
that they used. No other team used their quarterback at

(01:05:39):
that point. Maybe Michael Vick would have been the exception,
but they were very comfortable with Cam Newton. They had
a great run game, they were very good, and short
yardage they loved. They would love to run on third
and one, third and two, but then fourth and one
wold come up and Ron Vera would say, oh, well,
we can't stand in fourth and one. They were losing games,
and then they started to go forward and fourth down
and they started winning games. And it was not that
easy of a correlation. They didn't suddenly become a twelve

(01:06:00):
win team because I started going forward on fourth down,
but they did get better, and so you sort of
would have these little things pop up. Our teams would
be more aggressive in situations, and then I don't think
that would change everyone's perspective. But I do think the
NFL is very much a we don't want to get
left behind league, And I think once there's a proof
of concept and something works in one place or two

(01:06:22):
places or three places, once you have for example, the
Eagles go forward on fourth and one against the Patriots
and the Super Bowl and they throw a touchdown pass
to Nick Foles, their backup quarterback, Like I think that
barrier of oh, we're gonna get in trouble. Oh, our
owner is going to be mad at us. Oh the
fans are going to be mad at us. Like you

(01:06:42):
see if you watch an NFL game on Sunday and
fans and fans feel like you're not going for it
in a situation where you should be going for it.
They get booed. You don't see the go for it,
get booed, You don't see the aggressive decision, get bood
You see the conservative decision, get booed. And I think
outside of the building, from a fan perspective, I think, honestly,

(01:07:03):
and this is kind of silly to save it, It's true.
I think people growing up playing Madden and being aggressive
on fourth down and Madden not being such a ubiquitous
thing for NFL fans, I think made it more comfortable
and more aggressive that I think there was a generational
divide between maybe some of the younger people in the
league now being more aggressive doing that stuff, coaches being
more comfortable doing that stuff now if they grew up,
you know, playing video games and actually getting those reps

(01:07:23):
with being a coach making decisions on fourth down, versus
maybe the older coaches who were not doing that. And
then I think from a player perspective, I think there
was this idea that, oh, if we are aggressive on
fourth down, our players are going to dislike. Our players
are going to be furious, they're going to immutiny. They're
going to think that you don't know what you're doing.
We've seen there are exceptions. Players get upset when you

(01:07:45):
don't win no matter what you do. But we've seen,
you know, offenses, quarterbacks, offensive linemen say oh yeah, we
should do that, like trust us, leaning to us, let
us get that yard for you, let us do that,
as opposed to, you know, just punching the ball off
and saying, okay, we'll figure it out later. Well, let
the defense minute. And I think that's been something that's
kind of been a barrier that disappeared because I think

(01:08:06):
coaches have seen I don't have anything to be scared of,
like we might not get it, we might lose, but
I don't need to be scared of that. And so
I feel like that conversation has shifted to dramatically now
that I think a lot of the low hanging fruit
that was there when I first started writing at the
NFL fifteen years years ago, that stuff's not there anymore.
Like if you're not going forward and fourth and one
on the opposing side of the field, you're behind the

(01:08:27):
curve now when you would have been ahead of the
curve fifteen years ago. And so I think for teams
now it's more a question of when can we believe
regressive in the right situation, When can we what can
we do to take the data and these models we've built,
and I think every team has a fourth down model
at this point and actually apply it to our team
to what we do best. And I think that's what
made the Ravens thing so frustrating, is that they had

(01:08:52):
Lamar Jackson and Derek Henering in their backfield to incredible
runners who had been great running the football in that
very specific game. The Bills are a very light defense.
They don't are not typically very good in short gardage
against the run. And you know, maybe it was that
Lamar Jackson had cramps because he had said after the game,
I'm third down. I wasn't feeling that great. They could

(01:09:12):
have called the time out, maybe got him some fluid
scy if that would have got you know, made him
in a better situation. They could have just given the
ball to Peric Henry, who's fantastic. But this idea of okay, well,
the numbers in the past said everything was too conservative.
Now it's much closer to teams are getting to where
they need to be. But I do think you're having
this kind of push coaches to be a little more
aggressive situations where they don't want to be. I think

(01:09:33):
the fourth and one barrier is gone, That is over.
But I think now teams are finding advantages and maybe
leaning into their personnel, leaning into what they do best,
and then being aggressive in situations where the numbers say, hey,
maybe you don't have to be aggressive. I think if
you're the Ravens and you're a great run team where
the Eagles and you're a great run team, you should
be going for it and fourth down every time because
you do have a great run defense. But maybe for
a team that doesn't have a great running offense, maybe

(01:09:55):
it's not quite as clear. So I think we're at
a point now where it's not as much of a
binary thing as it would have been to fifteen years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Bill, it's awesome stuff. It's ironic a little bit that
we're talking about writing the old veteran running backs. These
aren't the spry leg guys, but those are the guys
that we want to have the ball in their hands
at the end. Bill, thank you so much for coming on.
This has been wonderful stuff. Your analysis is so valued,
Your writing skills are exceptional. We really appreciate you coming on.

(01:10:22):
Thanks for joining us here on Rosters to Rings.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Oh anytime, guys. I certainly feel like I would learn
a lot more from talking to you than you guys
talking to me. But hopefully the listener's got a mix
of both when during the course of the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
Yeah, we really enjoyed it. Bill, thanks again for joining us.
He is Dad Levine. He is Bill Barnwell with a
Leonardo DiCaprio esque performance today. I am Ryan McDonough. Join
us next week and every week right here on Rosters
the Rings.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Please join me host Dad Levine and McDonough and other
general managers every week for Roster Syringes on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you get your podcasts.