April 29, 2021 • 21 mins
Coach Billick looks into the changes that have occurred around the NFL Draft including the influence of data, analytics, information, and media hype. His guests include author and historian Micahel McCambridge, draft guru Mel Kiper Jr., Hall Of Fame TE and GM Ozzie Newsome, and Hall Of Fame GM Bill Polian who lend their insights and historical knowledge of how the draft has evolved from the beginnings to the modern-day spectacle this is the NFL Draft.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Brian Billick, and this is the Q factor. I
thought it would be informative to look back at how
we got here by way of the primary evaluation and
procurement process in the NFL, that is the NFL Draft.
(00:23):
I can't think of four better people talk about this
evolution than NFL historian Michael McCambridge and Mel Kuyper Jr.
And then two football experts to Hall of famers Ozzie
Newsome and Bill Pullian. It's been pretty amazing Brian back
in those days. I mean, I remember being up there
in Bristol, Connecticut during the draft and we get midway
(00:43):
through the second round, would leave the draft for a
tractor poll. It's still highly difficult to quantify, especially at
the most complex, most important position. What's going to make
a player successful in what isn't all of the noise
filters in and now ownership coaching. Other people get involved
(01:08):
and they begin to say, Gee, maybe this is true.
Maybe if we want this guy, we need to go
up to one to get him. Beauties in our the beholder, Uh,
you know, and you do your work, but at the
end of the day and you fall in love with
something something about someone, Uh, you just get infatuated with it,
(01:30):
and then you start not to listen at the negative
of the douars because you're just so focused that this
is the guy. There's no position in sports more important
or challenging to fill than that of an NFL quarterback.
We propose to follow a small group of prospects their skills, stats,
and character traits, and track their performance and circumstances to
(01:53):
see if we could uncover patterns of what separates great
from merely very good to an outright bust, and to
determine why this process has failed so often, maybe even
identifying a formula that translates into identifying quarterback types in
fields beyond the football field. This is the Q Factor
(02:13):
Episode two. How Did We Get here? Part One? In
Episode one, we identified the main attributes it takes to
be successful to quarterback position in the NFL. That is
the combination of physical, mental, and emotional qualities needed coupled
with going to the right team to develop those attributes. Now,
the eighteenth century philosopher Edwin Burke famously said, those who
(02:35):
don't know history are doomed to repeat it. With that
in mind, I thought it would be informative to look
back at how we got here by way of the
primary evaluation and procurement process in the NFL, that is
the NFL Draft. Can't think of four better people talk
about this evolution than NFL historian Michael McCambridge, author of
The America's Game, the epic story of how pro football
(02:57):
captured a nation. And mel Kayper Jr. Who I call
the godfather of NFL draft coverage, was there in the
beginning in when the draft was first televised. And then
two football experts to Hall of Famers Ozzie Newsome Hall
of Fame tied in with the Cleveland Browns, who could
equally be in the Hall of Fame as a general manager,
and Bill Pollian, he is in the Hall of Fame
(03:19):
as a general manager of the Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers,
and Indianapolis Colts. Mike, you have such a great comprehensive
knowledge of the history of the NFL. Just how far
have we come from when the draft first got started.
I think, certainly the draft has humble beginnings, but from
very early on it was clear that an environment of competitiveness,
(03:44):
which the NFL certainly is, the smarter people were going
to devote more and more resources to trying to figure
out who the best players were, who the best fits were,
and how they could get an edge on their opponents.
Um and even by the fifties, which is not long
(04:05):
after the draft started, there was a clear dichotomy of
teams that did their homework. Teams like the Rams and
the Browns would show up to the draft with trunks
and trunks of information, and there would be teams like
George Preston Marshall and Washington that we're still drafting players
(04:26):
out of the back of the street and Smith's college
football yearbook from the previous season, and that had this
exactly the sort of results you you would expect um.
But I think that what we've seen in the past
fifty years is no matter how much time you spend,
no matter how many resources you spend, no matter how
(04:48):
much data analytics you do, and all of those things
are important, and all of those things are helpful, it's
still highly difficult to quantify, especially at the most complex,
most important position, what's going to make a player successful
in what isn't And that's the challenge you guys talk about,
(05:10):
and I think it's a it's a worthy challenge to discuss,
because it's not something that tomorrow or next year or
next decade, anybody's gonna say, Okay, we got it all solved. Now,
we've got it figured out. Mel You've been there from
the beginning. Back in the mid eighties, when ESPN proposed
to then commissioner Roselle about televising this draft. Roselle reluctantly agreed,
(05:36):
but said, but I don't know who's gonna watch it,
And and boy has it changed. This is truly evolved
to one of the major sporting events of the year,
to the point where the draft will outdraw at the
same time NBA and NHL playoff games. It's been pretty amazing, Brian.
(05:57):
Back in those days, I mean, I remember being up
there and still Connecticut doing the draft and we get
midway through the second round, would leave the draft for
a tractor poll, So you know, I mean, it was
pretty the scene. Now what Nashville did with Philadelphia and
Dallas and all over have been able to do with
the draft, that's been pretty amazing to see, you know,
you know how it was viewed then, and obviously the
(06:17):
interest now people said, you know, who's gonna watch, who's
gonna your sitting draft reports when I first put him out,
Who's ever gonna care about who's coming into the draft.
So do you kind of go against conventional wisdom? You
went against what everybody thought, and you did what you
had to do. And I think ESPN did a phenomenal
job early or early on basically garnering that audience by putting,
you know, a production together with all the highlight packages
(06:38):
and all the things they did around the draft to
kind of tie all those NFL fans in with these
college kids are there a lot of people haven't seen before.
So I think it's been a case where I say,
who in late April I wouldn't want to see college
football in the NFL. All come together for now three
days when you haven't had football since the Super Bowl
and you're in late April, get your early juiced off
(06:59):
of the In conjunction with this now interest in the
NFL Draft came the next evolution of the scouting process,
now known as the NFL Scouting Combine, which is the
week long showcase in late February of the top football
players in the country. Tex Shram, the legendary and Hall
of Fame president general manager of the Dallas Cowboys proposed
(07:22):
to the NFL Competition Committee UH to centralize the evaluation
process for NFL teams. Prior, teams had to schedule individual
visits with players and run them through drills and tests,
and it was very inefficient. A number of different testing
groups kind of came together, but in to cut costs
and to centralize the process, they brought together what is
(07:45):
now called the NFL Scouting Combine. They merged these camps together,
and now it is an absolute staple of the evaluation process.
Via that, Mike, the Cowboys were really early in the
sixties were the ones that really kind of took us
into that next age of evaluation probably, and I think
even then there were differences. You know, the Cowboys went
(08:06):
in Originally, Um, the first scouting combine per se was
was Troika with the with and the Rams, because they
were all putting, they were all investing in getting time
on this mainframe computer and one of the things that
was proprietary even then, Um, all three teams were getting
the same data, but they were waiting different elements of
(08:29):
that data in different ways. So the Cowboys might put
more of an emphasis on a player's speed, whereas another
team might put more of an emphasis on a player's
size or how many games he'd played. So even then
in the early days, with the same amount of information,
teams were weighing it differently. And obviously where the Cowboys
(08:50):
got ahead is they eventually got deeper into computer scouting
than other teams did, and they got much more sophisticated
about it. Um By Tom Landry had taken one of
his assistant coaches, RML Allen, and put him in charge
of research and development scouting other teams, but also um
(09:12):
doing regression analysis on on drafts and and some of
the things that Gil had started exploring. And as you
well know, there were there were not a lot of
teams in the NFL that were at that level of
of granular detail about scouting of players. But success followed success,
and pretty soon by sometime in the seventies, everybody realized, hey,
(09:37):
we need our own computer as well. Mail. The the
way that the coverage changed kind of drugged the coaches
into the technological age in the next century, because because
it became so much of an interest to everybody, there
was no hiding out players anymore. Everybody was aware of everybody. Uh. Famously,
Gil Brandt in the early sixties got Cornell green out
(09:59):
of tiny Utah State University in Logan, Utah. He was
a basketball player no one else really knew about. Cornell
Greeney went on to be a phenomenal player for the
Dallas Cowboys. But because of this combination of the enhanced
training methods and identification process. Via the combine the coverage
that brought you, you had to evolve, didn't you in
(10:21):
terms of how you technically looked at these players and
how many you had to be aware of? Didn't you?
Great question? I had a big satellite dish showing that
Rowhouse and Ramblewood Road in Baltimore City back in nineteen
it was in the early eighties, and and trying to
do it that way, and and and then when nobody
else really was able to see some of the guys
and take from the school, that big satellite dish really
(10:42):
helped and allowed me to watch college players. I wouldn't
have been able to say, I would have to go
to the schools and and you always did that. But
I had that big satellite dish was a huge, huge
boost to me and what I was able to accomplish.
And and then throughout the years it made a little
easier now with computers and technology, and we had to
watch kids, and that's what you've always done, trying to
watch every kid at least three or four games a year,
(11:03):
talk to the schools, talk to the code, talk to
as many people as you can as well to get
there they're feelings about that player. But it's really that
the whole process, Briane, has changed. When you had traditional
ways of looking at certain positions have kind of changed.
With the evolution of the game and the way the
game has changed, you've kind of had adjust to the times, Brian.
You couldn't evaluate players now like you did back in
(11:24):
the in the seventies, eighties, and even nineties. Everything has
changed and you have to adapt to that or you're
gonna make a lot of mistakes in terms of your
player evaluation. It's important to look at the media hype
that has grown out of the combine in the draft
as it pertains to the interaction or the effect that
it has on the process itself. In science, that call
(11:46):
it quantum entanglement, where the sheer measurement of something changes
the properties of certain elements, and as Bill Pollian tells us,
the it has a warping effect on the actual raft
process itself. That is what I like to call the
inflation factor. Uh. And and it's really driven after the
(12:12):
December grades are in. You know, you've got these December grades.
They're there, everybody's looking at him. And now all of
a sudden, uh, people who are not football people become involved.
The media industrial complex, the draft industrial complex goes into
high gear. Uh, you know, spurred on by the aliments
(12:36):
and and and the combine, which in my opinion is
hardly worth anything anymore. Uh, and certainly not in judging quarterbacks. Um.
So all of this takes place, and and and people
quote rise and fall close quote on draft boards, which
(12:57):
you and I know isn't true. Uh, but it's reported
out there. And these things take on a life of
their own. And and now all of a sudden, Mitchell
from Whiskey becomes a hot property. When when And this
is not to knock the young man. I hope he succeeds,
and I'm happy that he that he did well on Sunday.
(13:18):
But all you had to do is look at the
sun Bowl film. You didn't have to go much beyond
that his last hole game and say this is not
the first pick in the draft, but all of the
noise filters in and now ownership, uh, coaching, other people
get involved, and you begin to say, gee, maybe this
(13:38):
is true. Maybe if we want this guy, we need
to go up to one to get him. And no
one knows whether it's true or not. And it's very
hard to stick by your guns when every day you
turn on the television set of the radio and all
you hear is Mitchell Fitsky is rocketing up to boards
(14:00):
and old White by the way, Uh, that kid down
there in Houston. He's not the Clemson kid. He's not
very good. He's a product of the system. He's an
athletic quarterback. Uh he can he can't. A SEC is
a weak conference. He can't really play. Mitchell trop Whisky
is the guy who's on the on the on the rise.
(14:21):
Obviously I'm being sarcastic here, but the fact of the
matter is that's what happened. You were at NFL network,
I was at ESPN, we were we were watching. It
was like watching a car wreck. One of the other
byproducts of this absolute explosion in interest and in technology
in following the draft is you can't hide out players anymore.
(14:42):
By that any meaning the old days, you used to
be able to isolate maybe a small college player someplace,
or maybe he was playing out of position that not
a lot of people knew about, but that you knew
about and could hide out and and wait and get
him at a very good price. I used in the
earlier podcast an example of Gil Brandt hiding out Cornell
(15:04):
Green at Utah State University. He was a basketball player,
and every even played football in college went undrafted, and
and gil Brandt had known that this is the guy
he wanted to target, ended up signing him and and
having a heck of an NFL career. So, Ozzy Bell,
it's hard harder to hold out and hide those little gems,
isn't it. That is true? Uh? You know, with like
(15:26):
you said, we're the Internet. It's just there's so much
information that's out there. And even if you got your
one secret source, then he's fired a secret source for
someone else too, you know. So that's you know, if
he's telling you, he's probably telling someone else the same information.
But there there is there is a ton of information,
and what you have to do is to sort through
(15:49):
it and to make sure you can continue to define,
you know, within that information. What do you need, you know,
to get a proper evaluation for you to be able to,
you know, assess the player and say, you know, this
guy can be a raven. Oh that's absolutely right. Yeah,
our permit Indianapolis was putting a guy in the drawer,
(16:09):
you know, and I think the last guy we put
in the drawer was it was about fourteen years ago.
You know, everybody knows everything, and and it's it's just
so hard to you know, when you come up with
a with a player. Pere Garson was the player I
was thinking about. You come up with a player that
that you think you've got to beat on that nobody
else will find somewhere, somehow along the line, usually from
(16:34):
his agent. The information becomes public and you know it's
out there and there you are, you you're you better
decide when you want to take him. So Bill, clearly,
the physical mechanical process of evaluating players has changed a
great deal. Yeah, it's it's changed incredibly. Um. Number one,
(16:55):
there's far more film available. Number two, they're far more
resources to measure intellect, personality, uh, pressure, I performance All
of those things have been are now measurable to one
degree or another via testing or interviewing. Um. And then finally, Uh,
(17:18):
we've got so much more in the way of mechanical
development of quarterbacks, going all the way back to almost
grade school. You know with seven on seven that it's
it's just a completely different animal, and that that's not
including all of the public scrutiny and information that's out there,
(17:40):
much of which is hot air, but nonetheless it's out there.
When I think back to the old days, I mean
we we drafted in a in a vacuum with with
hardly anybody looking. Even though the technical aspect and the
amount of information and the way we process it in
the analytics and the the absolute overwhelming amount of information
(18:04):
we now have players still, at the end of the day,
no matter how you process that, no matter how much
of it there is, it still comes back to your
basic abilities to look at and evaluate players, doesn't it. Uh?
And in doing so then is it not indeed, as
Bill has talked about, ends up getting warped a little
(18:24):
bit because of all the outside influences and information. Uh,
not a whole lot, Um. I mean, at the end
of the day, it's about getting as much information you
can from your sources, watching the tapes, Uh, analytics have
came into the game and what they do they can,
(18:45):
you know, can verify something that you've seen or could
raise questions. Analytic stuff that but it's still coming comes
down to your ability to watch the tape as most
information as you in and uh, not to be afraid
to pull the trigger. Beauties in the ore of the beholder. Uh,
(19:06):
you know, and you do your work, but at the
end of the day, you fall in love with something
something about someone. Uh, you just get infatuated with it,
and then you start to not to listen at the
negative of the doubters because you're just so focused that
this is the guy you know, and and you start
(19:29):
to just eliminate or you start to poke holes at
all of the other guys to make sure your guys
look your guy looks good. So here we have a
process that clearly has multiple elements working all at once
in a landscape or even the sheer definition of what
we think the quarterback position is about is constantly changing.
And now we layer on top of it this avalanche
(19:52):
of information that's now available to the public and an
interest in the process that seems insatiable. It used to
be easier when the club could work in relative obscurity.
But this was before the NFL discovered what Circuit de Sole,
Wall Street and even NASA learned long ago. Spectacle is
good entertainment and even better business. Put all the elements
together and the show is even better. Site sound, lighting
(20:15):
wizardry now treat stock market I p o S. Space
shots in the NFL draft like Las Vegas at stravaganzas
at the draft borring from NASA. The players slash astronauts
are in one place, the draft brain trust slash Houston
Control Center or in another, and the ceremony slash liftoff
is still in another. It's all about the show. In
(20:37):
the next episode of The Q Factor, we will look
at real situations that have been affected by this process,
including our two thousand eighteen quarterback draft class, to see
how all these elements come together to create the roll
of the Dice atmosphere in hopes of selecting a franchise quarterback.
The Q Factor and The Q Factor Audiobook are available
(20:58):
online and We're ever books are sold
I'm Brian Billick, and this is the Q factor. I
thought it would be informative to look back at how
we got here by way of the primary evaluation and
procurement process in the NFL, that is the NFL Draft.
(00:23):
I can't think of four better people talk about this
evolution than NFL historian Michael McCambridge and Mel Kuyper Jr.
And then two football experts to Hall of famers Ozzie
Newsome and Bill Pullian. It's been pretty amazing Brian back
in those days. I mean, I remember being up there
in Bristol, Connecticut during the draft and we get midway
(00:43):
through the second round, would leave the draft for a
tractor poll. It's still highly difficult to quantify, especially at
the most complex, most important position. What's going to make
a player successful in what isn't all of the noise
filters in and now ownership coaching. Other people get involved
(01:08):
and they begin to say, Gee, maybe this is true.
Maybe if we want this guy, we need to go
up to one to get him. Beauties in our the beholder, Uh,
you know, and you do your work, but at the
end of the day and you fall in love with
something something about someone, Uh, you just get infatuated with it,
(01:30):
and then you start not to listen at the negative
of the douars because you're just so focused that this
is the guy. There's no position in sports more important
or challenging to fill than that of an NFL quarterback.
We propose to follow a small group of prospects their skills, stats,
and character traits, and track their performance and circumstances to
(01:53):
see if we could uncover patterns of what separates great
from merely very good to an outright bust, and to
determine why this process has failed so often, maybe even
identifying a formula that translates into identifying quarterback types in
fields beyond the football field. This is the Q Factor
(02:13):
Episode two. How Did We Get here? Part One? In
Episode one, we identified the main attributes it takes to
be successful to quarterback position in the NFL. That is
the combination of physical, mental, and emotional qualities needed coupled
with going to the right team to develop those attributes. Now,
the eighteenth century philosopher Edwin Burke famously said, those who
(02:35):
don't know history are doomed to repeat it. With that
in mind, I thought it would be informative to look
back at how we got here by way of the
primary evaluation and procurement process in the NFL, that is
the NFL Draft. Can't think of four better people talk
about this evolution than NFL historian Michael McCambridge, author of
The America's Game, the epic story of how pro football
(02:57):
captured a nation. And mel Kayper Jr. Who I call
the godfather of NFL draft coverage, was there in the
beginning in when the draft was first televised. And then
two football experts to Hall of Famers Ozzie Newsome Hall
of Fame tied in with the Cleveland Browns, who could
equally be in the Hall of Fame as a general manager,
and Bill Pollian, he is in the Hall of Fame
(03:19):
as a general manager of the Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers,
and Indianapolis Colts. Mike, you have such a great comprehensive
knowledge of the history of the NFL. Just how far
have we come from when the draft first got started.
I think, certainly the draft has humble beginnings, but from
very early on it was clear that an environment of competitiveness,
(03:44):
which the NFL certainly is, the smarter people were going
to devote more and more resources to trying to figure
out who the best players were, who the best fits were,
and how they could get an edge on their opponents.
Um and even by the fifties, which is not long
(04:05):
after the draft started, there was a clear dichotomy of
teams that did their homework. Teams like the Rams and
the Browns would show up to the draft with trunks
and trunks of information, and there would be teams like
George Preston Marshall and Washington that we're still drafting players
(04:26):
out of the back of the street and Smith's college
football yearbook from the previous season, and that had this
exactly the sort of results you you would expect um.
But I think that what we've seen in the past
fifty years is no matter how much time you spend,
no matter how many resources you spend, no matter how
(04:48):
much data analytics you do, and all of those things
are important, and all of those things are helpful, it's
still highly difficult to quantify, especially at the most complex,
most important position, what's going to make a player successful
in what isn't And that's the challenge you guys talk about,
(05:10):
and I think it's a it's a worthy challenge to discuss,
because it's not something that tomorrow or next year or
next decade, anybody's gonna say, Okay, we got it all solved. Now,
we've got it figured out. Mel You've been there from
the beginning. Back in the mid eighties, when ESPN proposed
to then commissioner Roselle about televising this draft. Roselle reluctantly agreed,
(05:36):
but said, but I don't know who's gonna watch it,
And and boy has it changed. This is truly evolved
to one of the major sporting events of the year,
to the point where the draft will outdraw at the
same time NBA and NHL playoff games. It's been pretty amazing, Brian.
(05:57):
Back in those days, I mean, I remember being up
there and still Connecticut doing the draft and we get
midway through the second round, would leave the draft for
a tractor poll, So you know, I mean, it was
pretty the scene. Now what Nashville did with Philadelphia and
Dallas and all over have been able to do with
the draft, that's been pretty amazing to see, you know,
you know how it was viewed then, and obviously the
(06:17):
interest now people said, you know, who's gonna watch, who's
gonna your sitting draft reports when I first put him out,
Who's ever gonna care about who's coming into the draft.
So do you kind of go against conventional wisdom? You
went against what everybody thought, and you did what you
had to do. And I think ESPN did a phenomenal
job early or early on basically garnering that audience by putting,
you know, a production together with all the highlight packages
(06:38):
and all the things they did around the draft to
kind of tie all those NFL fans in with these
college kids are there a lot of people haven't seen before.
So I think it's been a case where I say,
who in late April I wouldn't want to see college
football in the NFL. All come together for now three
days when you haven't had football since the Super Bowl
and you're in late April, get your early juiced off
(06:59):
of the In conjunction with this now interest in the
NFL Draft came the next evolution of the scouting process,
now known as the NFL Scouting Combine, which is the
week long showcase in late February of the top football
players in the country. Tex Shram, the legendary and Hall
of Fame president general manager of the Dallas Cowboys proposed
(07:22):
to the NFL Competition Committee UH to centralize the evaluation
process for NFL teams. Prior, teams had to schedule individual
visits with players and run them through drills and tests,
and it was very inefficient. A number of different testing
groups kind of came together, but in to cut costs
and to centralize the process, they brought together what is
(07:45):
now called the NFL Scouting Combine. They merged these camps together,
and now it is an absolute staple of the evaluation process.
Via that, Mike, the Cowboys were really early in the
sixties were the ones that really kind of took us
into that next age of evaluation probably, and I think
even then there were differences. You know, the Cowboys went
(08:06):
in Originally, Um, the first scouting combine per se was
was Troika with the with and the Rams, because they
were all putting, they were all investing in getting time
on this mainframe computer and one of the things that
was proprietary even then, Um, all three teams were getting
the same data, but they were waiting different elements of
(08:29):
that data in different ways. So the Cowboys might put
more of an emphasis on a player's speed, whereas another
team might put more of an emphasis on a player's
size or how many games he'd played. So even then
in the early days, with the same amount of information,
teams were weighing it differently. And obviously where the Cowboys
(08:50):
got ahead is they eventually got deeper into computer scouting
than other teams did, and they got much more sophisticated
about it. Um By Tom Landry had taken one of
his assistant coaches, RML Allen, and put him in charge
of research and development scouting other teams, but also um
(09:12):
doing regression analysis on on drafts and and some of
the things that Gil had started exploring. And as you
well know, there were there were not a lot of
teams in the NFL that were at that level of
of granular detail about scouting of players. But success followed success,
and pretty soon by sometime in the seventies, everybody realized, hey,
(09:37):
we need our own computer as well. Mail. The the
way that the coverage changed kind of drugged the coaches
into the technological age in the next century, because because
it became so much of an interest to everybody, there
was no hiding out players anymore. Everybody was aware of everybody. Uh. Famously,
Gil Brandt in the early sixties got Cornell green out
(09:59):
of tiny Utah State University in Logan, Utah. He was
a basketball player no one else really knew about. Cornell
Greeney went on to be a phenomenal player for the
Dallas Cowboys. But because of this combination of the enhanced
training methods and identification process. Via the combine the coverage
that brought you, you had to evolve, didn't you in
(10:21):
terms of how you technically looked at these players and
how many you had to be aware of? Didn't you?
Great question? I had a big satellite dish showing that
Rowhouse and Ramblewood Road in Baltimore City back in nineteen
it was in the early eighties, and and trying to
do it that way, and and and then when nobody
else really was able to see some of the guys
and take from the school, that big satellite dish really
(10:42):
helped and allowed me to watch college players. I wouldn't
have been able to say, I would have to go
to the schools and and you always did that. But
I had that big satellite dish was a huge, huge
boost to me and what I was able to accomplish.
And and then throughout the years it made a little
easier now with computers and technology, and we had to
watch kids, and that's what you've always done, trying to
watch every kid at least three or four games a year,
(11:03):
talk to the schools, talk to the code, talk to
as many people as you can as well to get
there they're feelings about that player. But it's really that
the whole process, Briane, has changed. When you had traditional
ways of looking at certain positions have kind of changed.
With the evolution of the game and the way the
game has changed, you've kind of had adjust to the times, Brian.
You couldn't evaluate players now like you did back in
(11:24):
the in the seventies, eighties, and even nineties. Everything has
changed and you have to adapt to that or you're
gonna make a lot of mistakes in terms of your
player evaluation. It's important to look at the media hype
that has grown out of the combine in the draft
as it pertains to the interaction or the effect that
it has on the process itself. In science, that call
(11:46):
it quantum entanglement, where the sheer measurement of something changes
the properties of certain elements, and as Bill Pollian tells us,
the it has a warping effect on the actual raft
process itself. That is what I like to call the
inflation factor. Uh. And and it's really driven after the
(12:12):
December grades are in. You know, you've got these December grades.
They're there, everybody's looking at him. And now all of
a sudden, uh, people who are not football people become involved.
The media industrial complex, the draft industrial complex goes into
high gear. Uh, you know, spurred on by the aliments
(12:36):
and and and the combine, which in my opinion is
hardly worth anything anymore. Uh, and certainly not in judging quarterbacks. Um.
So all of this takes place, and and and people
quote rise and fall close quote on draft boards, which
(12:57):
you and I know isn't true. Uh, but it's reported
out there. And these things take on a life of
their own. And and now all of a sudden, Mitchell
from Whiskey becomes a hot property. When when And this
is not to knock the young man. I hope he succeeds,
and I'm happy that he that he did well on Sunday.
(13:18):
But all you had to do is look at the
sun Bowl film. You didn't have to go much beyond
that his last hole game and say this is not
the first pick in the draft, but all of the
noise filters in and now ownership, uh, coaching, other people
get involved, and you begin to say, gee, maybe this
(13:38):
is true. Maybe if we want this guy, we need
to go up to one to get him. And no
one knows whether it's true or not. And it's very
hard to stick by your guns when every day you
turn on the television set of the radio and all
you hear is Mitchell Fitsky is rocketing up to boards
(14:00):
and old White by the way, Uh, that kid down
there in Houston. He's not the Clemson kid. He's not
very good. He's a product of the system. He's an
athletic quarterback. Uh he can he can't. A SEC is
a weak conference. He can't really play. Mitchell trop Whisky
is the guy who's on the on the on the rise.
(14:21):
Obviously I'm being sarcastic here, but the fact of the
matter is that's what happened. You were at NFL network,
I was at ESPN, we were we were watching. It
was like watching a car wreck. One of the other
byproducts of this absolute explosion in interest and in technology
in following the draft is you can't hide out players anymore.
(14:42):
By that any meaning the old days, you used to
be able to isolate maybe a small college player someplace,
or maybe he was playing out of position that not
a lot of people knew about, but that you knew
about and could hide out and and wait and get
him at a very good price. I used in the
earlier podcast an example of Gil Brandt hiding out Cornell
(15:04):
Green at Utah State University. He was a basketball player,
and every even played football in college went undrafted, and
and gil Brandt had known that this is the guy
he wanted to target, ended up signing him and and
having a heck of an NFL career. So, Ozzy Bell,
it's hard harder to hold out and hide those little gems,
isn't it. That is true? Uh? You know, with like
(15:26):
you said, we're the Internet. It's just there's so much
information that's out there. And even if you got your
one secret source, then he's fired a secret source for
someone else too, you know. So that's you know, if
he's telling you, he's probably telling someone else the same information.
But there there is there is a ton of information,
and what you have to do is to sort through
(15:49):
it and to make sure you can continue to define,
you know, within that information. What do you need, you know,
to get a proper evaluation for you to be able to,
you know, assess the player and say, you know, this
guy can be a raven. Oh that's absolutely right. Yeah,
our permit Indianapolis was putting a guy in the drawer,
(16:09):
you know, and I think the last guy we put
in the drawer was it was about fourteen years ago.
You know, everybody knows everything, and and it's it's just
so hard to you know, when you come up with
a with a player. Pere Garson was the player I
was thinking about. You come up with a player that
that you think you've got to beat on that nobody
else will find somewhere, somehow along the line, usually from
(16:34):
his agent. The information becomes public and you know it's
out there and there you are, you you're you better
decide when you want to take him. So Bill, clearly,
the physical mechanical process of evaluating players has changed a
great deal. Yeah, it's it's changed incredibly. Um. Number one,
(16:55):
there's far more film available. Number two, they're far more
resources to measure intellect, personality, uh, pressure, I performance All
of those things have been are now measurable to one
degree or another via testing or interviewing. Um. And then finally, Uh,
(17:18):
we've got so much more in the way of mechanical
development of quarterbacks, going all the way back to almost
grade school. You know with seven on seven that it's
it's just a completely different animal, and that that's not
including all of the public scrutiny and information that's out there,
(17:40):
much of which is hot air, but nonetheless it's out there.
When I think back to the old days, I mean
we we drafted in a in a vacuum with with
hardly anybody looking. Even though the technical aspect and the
amount of information and the way we process it in
the analytics and the the absolute overwhelming amount of information
(18:04):
we now have players still, at the end of the day,
no matter how you process that, no matter how much
of it there is, it still comes back to your
basic abilities to look at and evaluate players, doesn't it. Uh?
And in doing so then is it not indeed, as
Bill has talked about, ends up getting warped a little
(18:24):
bit because of all the outside influences and information. Uh,
not a whole lot, Um. I mean, at the end
of the day, it's about getting as much information you
can from your sources, watching the tapes, Uh, analytics have
came into the game and what they do they can,
(18:45):
you know, can verify something that you've seen or could
raise questions. Analytic stuff that but it's still coming comes
down to your ability to watch the tape as most
information as you in and uh, not to be afraid
to pull the trigger. Beauties in the ore of the beholder. Uh,
(19:06):
you know, and you do your work, but at the
end of the day, you fall in love with something
something about someone. Uh, you just get infatuated with it,
and then you start to not to listen at the
negative of the doubters because you're just so focused that
this is the guy you know, and and you start
(19:29):
to just eliminate or you start to poke holes at
all of the other guys to make sure your guys
look your guy looks good. So here we have a
process that clearly has multiple elements working all at once
in a landscape or even the sheer definition of what
we think the quarterback position is about is constantly changing.
And now we layer on top of it this avalanche
(19:52):
of information that's now available to the public and an
interest in the process that seems insatiable. It used to
be easier when the club could work in relative obscurity.
But this was before the NFL discovered what Circuit de Sole,
Wall Street and even NASA learned long ago. Spectacle is
good entertainment and even better business. Put all the elements
together and the show is even better. Site sound, lighting
(20:15):
wizardry now treat stock market I p o S. Space
shots in the NFL draft like Las Vegas at stravaganzas
at the draft borring from NASA. The players slash astronauts
are in one place, the draft brain trust slash Houston
Control Center or in another, and the ceremony slash liftoff
is still in another. It's all about the show. In
(20:37):
the next episode of The Q Factor, we will look
at real situations that have been affected by this process,
including our two thousand eighteen quarterback draft class, to see
how all these elements come together to create the roll
of the Dice atmosphere in hopes of selecting a franchise quarterback.
The Q Factor and The Q Factor Audiobook are available
(20:58):
online and We're ever books are sold
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