The NFL Films Podcast: Eddie George

Eddie George joins the show (19:12) to discuss his episode of A Football Life with Keith, Paul and the film’s director, Erik Powers. Eddie shares some thoughts on the running back position in the game today (32:43), his love of Shark Week (29:40) and the challenge of being both a subject and actor in his own film (22:12). Erik then dives deep into the creative process and shares the story of Eddie’s lone acting appearance alongside Steven Seagal (51:40). Finally, Greg Cosell joins the party to give his perspective on the evolution of the running game and considers Eddie’s fit in the modern NFL (1:03:19). 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, Welcome to the NFL Films Podcast. Before we
start the show, just a quick note. This episode, which
will focus on Eddie George of Football Life, was actually
recorded in the middle of the regular season around Thanksgiving,
and folks, this is a good one. We talked with
former Heisman Trophy winner and Tennessee Titans running back Eddie George.

(00:21):
We took a deep dive into the creative mind of
Eric Powers, the film's director, and of course we spoke
with the guru himself, Greg go Sell. You can watch
the re air of Eddie George of Football Life this
week Thursday, February and nine pm Eastern on the NFL
Network and also watch it on demand on NFL game

(00:41):
Pass at game pass dot NFL dot com. That's February
nine pm Eastern on the NFL Network and also on
demand on NFL game Pass at game pass dot NFL
dot com. And if you enjoy this episode, check your
feed next Wednesday for Jim Kelly A Football Life's podcast
feature an exclusive interview with the Hall of Fame quarterback

(01:02):
Jim Kelly. Alright, Folks, enjoy the show today on the
NFL Films Podcast. Eddie George, A Football Life we will
delve deep into the film and it's making with director
and producer Eric Powers. We'll be joined by perhaps the

(01:27):
only Heisman Trophy winner to start in a Broadway production
of musical production of Chicago, Eddie George himself will be
with us. We will also, of course, get the unique
in depth perspectives of noted NFL Films guru Greg Cosel.

(01:47):
I'm Paul Camerada. I'm Keith Cosro. Welcome to the NFL
Films Podcast. Paul, Yes, Keith, how are you today? I'm
I'm good. Let's get right to it. What is um
the most fun kind of a football life to do?
We've done a lot of them. We're on our seventh

(02:09):
season of a football life. We're close to the finish
of it. Is that an opinion question? You're asking me
my opinion or uh? There's a great consensus that the
running back position is perhaps the most fun type of
football life to produce. Correct, Almost without a doubt there.
If you get to do a running back football life,

(02:30):
you get the best footage by far, that's true. You
get usually an unbelievable college montage. You get a great
career arc because they burst onto the scene usually they struggle,
they have rivals. Every running back has a decline. That's
a little bit sad and a finish, but a running

(02:52):
back football life has always been, always been. We've done
more than fifteen of them, and this season is Eddie George. Well,
Eddie George is He's in a unique position because he's
a singular running back for a lot of reasons on
the field and off the field. He might suffer from
the uh, what's the word. It's not a stigma. He

(03:15):
never won a Super Bowl. Okay, he might not be
in the Hall of Fame, so people don't He's one
of those guys people don't need jerk yell at Eddie
George when the conversation comes up about well this is
what we do. Like you're not. It's like you didn't
have a great career if you if you're not, Like
is he a Hall of Famer? You know, I don't
know if he's a Hall of Famer, but I know
that Eddie George was great and it was great to
watch him, and he was like one of the best

(03:36):
players in the NFL for almost a decade. And he's unique.
I think his running style, I think his body type
at the running back position. Certainly what he encountered off
the field made for great fodder for exploration for an
episode of a football Life. So that's why noted NFL film.
He can't be noted. There's only one noted guy. Sorry.

(03:57):
NFL Films own producer and director Eric Powers joined us
today to dive into Eddie story. Welcome Eric, who is
the noted NFL Films producer. We said, it's Gregg noted
NFL Films. Would you disagree? I mean he has noted ted,

(04:18):
depending on where you're from, By Mammy, he's noted. I
can't see King among others have noted. Yeah, but you've
had You've had hbo Emmy Award winning documentaries. We've got
Ken Rogers running hard knocks like are good. There's nobody's
making notes of that, though there's one. It's like the belt,

(04:39):
there's only one. Yeah, do you know that? We almost
had our own NFL Films belt really well for Top
one hundred, uh, the series we do for NFL Network.
There was a great debate about whether to do a
trophy or a belt. After like three years of it,
it started to become a thing with players. They were

(05:00):
they wanted to be J. J. Watt was excited that
he was voted number one by his peers, and it it
was like, is there a trophy? What? Like, what's the deal?
So there was like a whole debate before the next
one what should we do? And there was a ground
swell to do a belt, which I think we should.
I think there should have been a belt. You know,
who spoke out against that? Nobody spoke out. Somebody said there,
it has to be a trophy. It can't be a belt. Outstand,

(05:23):
it's a travesty. It should have been a belt. I
did an interview at Larry King's house several years ago
and he had his trophy room with all the things
that from his difference appearances, all his memorabilia. His most
prized thing was an w w E championship belt. It
would be anybody's most prized thing if you get a belt,
if you get a championship belt, there's no trophy that

(05:45):
compares to a belt. I'd say almost every other sport,
at one time or another, we've seen them emulate the
celebration of having a belt, even if they don't have
a belt, Like the belt is the goal universally, sort
of of Aaron Rodgers does it. Who's the hockey player
Dino Ccerelli from the Red Wings? You know Crelli? Did
he do the belt? I mean the belt is something
that everybody. Larry King has the belt. If I were

(06:08):
an active NFL player who somehow got the top one
d number one got the belt, I would wear it
out for all the home games. For the intro with
the pyrotechnics. Yes, I don't have that image with a trophy.
It's a one mm. I think we should still switch
to a pome Oh yeah, retroactively have to give him
out too. If there was a belt for like the

(06:29):
Greek god of NFL running backs, that belt would go
to Eddie George. Unquestionably, nobody ever looked as cool running
a football is Eddie George? Agree? Can we all agree
on that he pops off the screen everywhere Ohio State?
His Ohio State footage is awesome. So you got to
do a full, a full Eddie George college segment. Yeah,

(06:54):
we were able to do it justice without having to
kind of he was stills or work arounds like we
were able to show is most influential games, good and bad?
And what do you think is the most interesting aspect
of Eddie George at Ohio State, well, the fact that

(07:14):
he came into a team that already was an incredibly
loaded running back room. I think I think five of
his teammates went on to play in the NFL, just
you know, in the running back depth chart. And the
fact that he has this game freshman year, he's the
goal line running back against Illinois and he fumbles twice
and that's it. He's he's out of the rotation. He's

(07:36):
not even getting practice snaps anymore. Like a lot of
guys would have transferred, transferred away, guys who would have stayed,
they would have gotten lost in the shuffle. There was
already that much talent, and there's even more coming in
through the door. And the fact that he was able
to rebound from that and not only get playing time,
but to become a Heisman Trophy winner like that, that
sort of pressure and despondently that would have crushed most people.

(08:00):
Let's listen to Eddie's teammate Raymond Harris and his mother,
Donna George, described Eddie's freshman fumbles against Illinois during the
early nineties. Illinois had to be our number two rivals.
He fumbled on the gold line in a crucial moment,
they were able to scoop that up and score. Of course,

(08:21):
he was emotional about it, but it's fine. The team
was still behind him, coach was still behind him. Got
into that position again, we lose the game. The fans

(08:42):
are screaming at him. We hate you, Eddie, you Eddie,
see you suck. He came up of the tunnel and
I took him aside, but I see tears in his eyes,
and guys, let's go ahead and cry it out right now.
Because after you cried out all that hurt, disappointment that
you have inside of you, you're gonna walk out here.

(09:05):
You're gonna feel better about yourself because you're going to
do better. It was devastating. I was in the dining
hall and one of my teammates said, don't drop your trade,
big boy. I wasn't able to get a practice rep,
let alone get to the game. You spent a lot

(09:27):
of time around Eddie and and the the perseverance and
the um focus that he has to get himself through
different points of adverse in his life. Uh comes up
at a few times during the film, but as someone
who interviewed him, who studied the footage who absorbed it.
What is it you think about this guy that enabled
him to do that. I mean, if he's doing it

(09:47):
at that young of an age, it seems to me
there's something innate, some special stuff in him that helped
him push through all these because there are different kinds
of crisis, but the bottom line was he figured out
a way to get through it. How did he do that? Well,
I don't know if you can credit the military school
that you want to or if you can say that
he's the sort of person that he already had that

(10:08):
innately in him and that's how he was able to
get through military school. But his mom ended up sending
him away his sophomore year of high school. His grades
were I think he said he was at one point
something that he just wasn't interested in classes and talking back,
and he got sent to four Union Military Academy. And
maybe he already had that discipline, maybe he learned it,

(10:30):
but I think that was the defining point for him
going forward of whatever adversity was going to come. Being
out in the middle of the country, abandoned away from
his dream of using football to reunite his his family
and his dad. Getting off drugs like that could have
been the moment that he folded it in, but instead

(10:51):
I think it might just go back to if he
was able to get through that, all the other obstacles
in life are small by comparison. It seems like there
was something artistic in him in terms of how he
viewed the world. That again seems like it had to
have been innate. And then his has since been cultivated
by the the interest that he's pursued. I think that
comes from his mother's genes, her nurturing. Like um growing

(11:14):
up before his parents ended up separating, his dad was
an absentee father, and his mom, Donna, wanted to expose
him to culture, so she enrolled him in ballet classes
and she was the one who nurtured him creatively. And
I think that he's found different forms, whether it be writing, acting,

(11:34):
it's just ways to express himself. Is there not a
whole body of NFL players who took ballet out there?
It seems like the herschel Lynn Swan famously win Swan,
four times Super Bowl champion, Len Swan all right, right,
the now Eddie's expressiveness comes out famously on the field

(11:58):
in the NFL. I would argue that Eddie George is
the peak, the apotheosis of the pregame huddle. One work today,
one word, that's attitude. We got to play with the
attitude today. Let's come out old fire and that's put

(12:19):
the biting them out. It don't stop. It's our to win.
It's our time now play with a controlled rage and passion,
controlled right, a controlled rage. That's an all time Who
who hasn't gone out to a turkey ball and played
with and play with controlled rage and passion, Who hasn't

(12:42):
made that speech to themselves? I'd be terrified to be
looking across the line of scrimmage from you on Thanksgiving warning,
I'm looking forward to this year first turkey ball ever
with my kids. Nice. Yeah, very very exciting. But Eddie
gave so many great pregame speeches that we had to
stop using them like you would. It was like, oh,

(13:04):
we can't none another Eddie great pregame. So he was
the best. He he enunciated so well, and this was
before he was an actor. There's only one other guy
that I can think of who is that is good
at that as Eddie. Yes, and that would be Ray Lewis.
Let's talk about interviewing Ray Lewis, how did you ever

(13:25):
renewed him before? This is my first time talking to him,
and really don't have a lot of experience talking with
people about rivals, Like guys really love opening up about teammates,
whether they be college, whether they be prose, I'm not
really sure, like are they going to be kind of
withholding for praise? Are they going to be confrontational if

(13:45):
the rival got the other end of them? Are they
going to be generous with praise? Rageous? Lights up talking
about Eddie and one of the things that he said
is people ask me all the time if I missed
the game, and he said, no, I don't because I
gave the game everything that I had. But I'll tell
you the one thing that I do miss and that's
looking into Eddie George's eyes across the line of scrimmage.

(14:07):
It's like that's that's the thing that he misses most
about the game, as those confrontations and that division rivalry.
We've interviewed him a bunch. He's been in a lot
of shows both about himself and other people. I don't
ever remember him explaining with such candor such an anecdote
as he did in this show where he talks about
how he realized Eddie George uh was better than him

(14:28):
in terms of some of those points of attack confrontations,
and how he needed to change his body type put
on weight that he wasn't equipped as he needed to
be to go up against Eddie George. I thought it
was a really cool moment. Well, it is something that
I didn't know myself, and I didn't really think that
I kind of would gain fifty pounds for somebody else

(14:50):
and completely go from being a speedy, fly around guy
to oh, now I'm going to be able to just
thump him in the middle. And when he ended up
talking a about the two of them, just their confrontations
in the whole, he was getting revved up, like he
was stomping his foot. He was like he was. I

(15:11):
think that he was getting back in his memory to
being back on the field. And if we had a
set up pads in a helmet right there, he would
have run right out. Having done your homework and your
research before that interview, did you expect Ray to be
that um magnanimous about Eddie and and and describe him
the way he did. No, because their division rivals, and

(15:32):
like you know, there's that game where they ended up
playing the Billick video on the JumboTron. And I mean
the teams were so similar, Like Derek Mason was talking
about it, It's like they were both built on similar
style defenses with power running games. And Eddie and Ray
were just the opposites of one another, and a lot
of times, you know, opposites they just I would think

(15:55):
that they would clash, and the fact that there is
just that mutual respect between the two of them, it
wasn't necessarily what I expected. There's more, Ray, when he
came in the league, admired and almost looked up to Eddie.
He viewed him as as the star, as a bigger star,
and and someone that he was going to almost have

(16:16):
to dethrone that It was kind of how he he
phrased it was he wanted what this guy had. That
he had, the successful college career, he had, the fans,
he had, he had everything, and he was going to
have to work in order to take it from him.
Here's Ray describing seeing Eddie at their first Pro Bowl

(16:37):
they went to. We went to our first Pro bowls
again in and when a wakiki with the hotel, and
this is where all the fans are at, and I
walk up and of course we're Baltimore, and nobody knows
who the heck Baltimore is. We want two years in existence,

(16:58):
coming from Cleveland, and we pulled up to the hotel
and Eddie coming up the Hindsman going to Tennessee and
just having this incredible criers or early. The people there
was like swarming. He's signed this, take a picture, and

(17:18):
I was pushed all the way to the back of
the line, and I found myself going and sitting over
there at the bar, grabbing me a drink and saying,
I'm just gonna wait for him. It started to show
how popular this guy really was, Like you know, how

(17:39):
big he had become so fast, so fast, I mean,
and of course he won the Eysman, so he already
had his fan base, but too to have that type
of impact on the league so quickly, you know, I
knew from that moment that he would be a force
to be reckon with for a long long time in
this league. From my couple praise, I mean, ray Lewis

(18:01):
is never second to anybody in any room, and he
clearly was in awe of Eddie and what he was
Eddie was the standard to which Ray aspired. That's uh,
incredibly here. It's funny. We just don't we don't like time.
I don't know that it's been as kind to Eddie
George as to some other of his contemporaries, but totally agree.

(18:26):
We talked about it a little bit when we talked
about Jim Kelly. When you don't win the Super Bowl,
people forget every other thing that that you you've done,
which is so remarkable. And Eddie having not won the
Super Bowl, and he scored two touchdowns in that Super Bowl,
he was great. They they're won one yard shorter winning
the Super Bowl, and he he was their best player
for a long time. They built an entire offense around him.

(18:48):
And we'll talk to Greg Costell later on in the
show about that and and what the Titans did with
Eddie George, whether it could be done today, and and
where Eddie George fits and the pantheon of run backs.
But first let's talk to the man himself, Eddie George,
who has agreed to to give us a call. Eddie. Hey,

(19:16):
this is Keith Cosro here at NFL Films, and I'm
with Paul. Hello, Eddie and and Eric Powers, your producer
of Your Football Life. Okay, how you guys doing, Hey, Eric,
how you doing? Many good to hear from you. Yeah,
to thank you for taking some time to join us

(19:37):
on the NFL Films podcast, which is we are celebrating
your Football Life episode and uh so talk to you
for a few minutes about that, But we wanted to
start um with a couple more random questions. I think
a lot of this film is about your second career

(19:59):
as an actor, and we've been wondering if you could
play one role in any movie, what role would it be?
Probably James Bond, the big James Bond fans. What's your
favorite Bond movie? Moonraker, Moonraker, Moonraker. Yeah, Roger Roger more guy. Yeah.

(20:24):
And if someone could play you in the Eddie George movie,
who would you want to play you? Probably it just Elbow,
who has also been mentioned as a future James Bond correlate. Now, well,
the man who played Stringer Bell would certainly make a

(20:45):
great Eddie George. I total agreement here. Um. Okay, so
did you watch your your film? I did, I was,
I was. I admit I was a little nervous. Um
because to put you know, an entire body of work.

(21:05):
One's NFL life for football life. Uh in forty six
minutes and ten seconds. You know it's um you're curious
to see how it's done. But I thought it was
done extremely well. I watched it with my youngest son
and and he was like, oh my god, that was excellent.

(21:28):
And my wife and and then my son they loved
watching A Football Life, so UM, it was cool. I
thought it was really well done. Um, the telling of
the story from beginning middle in um, you know, just
the contributors that you guys would put in there with
my teammates Coach Cooper and Jeff Fisher, Ray Lewis, Kevin Dyson,

(21:52):
Derek Mason, and Brad Hopkins. I mean, it was just
it brought It really brought a fold emotions and um
and just have being in those moments and I guess
it's capturing a lot of that and telling the story
was was really really well done. I thought I was
really excited about it. Eddy. What were the challenges for you?

(22:14):
You're a guy that I mean, it's a document in
the film you not only act. Would you appreciate the
production of a of a performance, the writing that goes
into it sort of the thinking out the story before
it's portrayed. But those are portrayals, and in this this
particular project, the way Eric designed it, you had to
both kind of be a uh, the subject of a documentary,

(22:34):
kind of be transparent and candid, and also be actually
part you're actually acting on on stage to a certain degree.
Talk about if you or tell us about what the
challenges of that were. Yeah, I think the uh the
challenges are are just that it's it's really um getting
into getting to the truth of the character and and

(22:55):
and and finding out you know, what he wants and
what he's willing to do get it, and how are
you's going to get it? When you get it, what
do you do with it? You know, you ask yourself
those questions as an actor when you're putting on a performance.
So it's making general assumptions, is really delving into the

(23:15):
work the writing itself, because the answered it there and
you know, creating this a backstory for that person, so
it's really creating a whole human being. And you get
so immerged into the process of that that it's like
trying to unlock the pixel puzzle of a character. And

(23:36):
you're trying to piece it together to figure out, you know,
who this person is, um and whereas the documentary, you know,
it's just being who I am and and just telling
the truth and and sharing the story and telling the
story and paying homedge to those that helped me achieve

(23:59):
this get this point. It's interesting you mentioned the jigsaw
puzzle aspect of of acting, because as documentary filmmakers, that's
really how we approach making documentaries, even though they often
seem chronological. You know, when when when Eric attacked this
your story, I think he's got to kind of unlock

(24:21):
it and figure out how to get to really the
core of view and the place he got that that
was surprising to us that we hadn't really ever seen
before in any pieces we've done about you or anyone
else had was your relationship with your father, right all right.
I mean that's the essence of of you know, me

(24:43):
playing the game of football and you know, King Jeff
the game from him. My had other you know influences
like my uncle and uh my coaches, but my father
was the one that really um inspired me to play
the game of football. There's a bite late in the
movie and will play it play it for you now, um,

(25:03):
and then and then get your reaction to it, having
having seen how it all plays out, because it really
felt like sort of the emotional heart of the film
that Eric made. It was just me and him, and
I guess he kind of sensed that I was coming
towards the end and he said to me, you know

(25:24):
who the greatest running back over seeing play and I'm saying, yeah,
you know, Jim Brown, say nah, you And this is
the first time that we ever had a chance to
pray together in my life. I started praying and I

(25:47):
got on a few words and then I started to
cry and I couldn't speak anymore because I was just,
I guess overjoyed. I guess I finally had, you know,
my dad out there for me for something. You're just

(26:08):
watching it and hearing it just brings up so many
different emotions, you know, for me personally, and to see
the complete work, um, and just to get you know,
the different perspectives of the other people. I mean, you
could have a perspective of yourself, and because that's accurate,
but when you step outside of yourself, when you hear

(26:29):
with other people and other how other people view you,
it's also interesting. But UM, as far as my father goes,
I think that was I guess it was full circle
for me. I guess it really um for the peace,
for the peace to me and saying Okay, I guess
my my football career is now complete. You know, I've

(26:53):
heard those words, you know, for my dad, and I'm
comfortable now with that. You know. Uh, I'm hearing that, Eddie.
There's that. In addition to that moment for me. The
other one of the more powerful sections of the film
was when you and and Taj primarily are discussing that
your your confrontation and battle um through ambient and I'm

(27:15):
just curious, how did that portion of your life, how
was it influenced by what you had seen your dad
struggle with? Uh. That was strong in the sense that
I know that addictions UM, addicted behavior runs in my
family on you know, on both sides. And I didn't

(27:37):
want to walk down the path like that. You know.
I never was into recreational drugs at high school, college
or professionally, and I didn't want that to be the
gateway to something more serious. So I, instead of masking
the problem, I had to tackle it head on and

(27:58):
deal with whatever I was going through at that particular
time and lay it out there and not self medicate,
but let's talk about it and let it out and
be honest with be honest about it, and do it
through the form of counseling. You know, sometimes we approach
someone to to do a film, to do you know,

(28:20):
are you ready to do your football life? And they'll say, no,
I don't. You know, I don't I'm not ready for that.
But to do what you did and with the honesty
you gave to this project allows some other people to
see your example and the things you went through. Um
and you know, other players who are transitioning from the

(28:41):
end of their career, which is a big part of
your story here, other other players who have struggled or
or you know, whatever issues, or anyone in life has
struggled with anything. It's just, you know, I guess it's
just a lot of gratitude we have for anyone willing
to open up and be as honest as you were
in the in the show, So we we really hit
appreciate that. I would also say it helps anyone who's

(29:03):
Heisman Trophy UH sustains an injury. I think and follow
from your example, how did that thing get repaired. Did
it get repaired? Are you still walking around with a
fingerless heisman trophy? Did get repair? They sent me a
new one. I could have kept the old one. I
should have kept that when it was a broken finger.
Good for them, that's a good return policy. No one

(29:27):
other person we have to ask you about. Maybe the
most interesting sound bite of this film is um Ray
Lewis's description of your relationship on the field. And let's
give that a listen. We knew we were good. We
go to it and so with anybody. There was one
team in particularly the one that gave us fits, and

(29:48):
that was Baltimore. Baltimore. God, contact was so crucial for us.
I like look at people to see if if you
if you blink and if you wink and you shut them.
I got you at Joe game, never shut him. I

(30:12):
saw another lion. If you know anything about the Serengetti,
mail lions and mail lions a thing with the same
pride you gotta dance, but you got the same set
of steals. So that's like, so I guess the question there,
Eddie is um lions in the Serengetti. Have you been
to the Serengetti. Do you like nature movies? Did you

(30:36):
view did you view Ray as a lion? You know,
that's funny, UM to the analogies, father, And we've always
talked about about that, you know, we talked about you
talked about uh watching like I love Sharp Week, you know,

(30:57):
and the Sharp Week. You know, we watched at the
the Great White White reached the water when the seals
go across h during the time of year they go
across a certain bay in the hunt or I like
watching uh nature as well, you know. So it's funny
that he uses that as an analogy because at that
particular time, that's that's what it was. You know, it

(31:20):
was two leaders going head to head and we both
knew that year what it was about. And he definitely
brought out the best in me, There's no doubt about it.
They didn't listen. There are there's certain people, um, in
certain games that you have to prepare for differently. Like

(31:41):
you could prepare for a game physically and mentally, but
against a guy like that, against Ray Lewis, you have
to prepare spiritually. That's a totally different preparation. Like no
one is around me during the course of week in Baltimore.

(32:01):
It's quiet. I got you know, I'm reading my scripture.
I'm getting spiritually prepared, because that's what it takes to
be a competitor like that is spiritually because you're going
to get tested physically, you're going to get tested emotionally.
And the only way that you can carry through you've

(32:22):
got to have a strong spirit. Um. We see a
lot more running back by committee. Not many guys running
the ball three d fifty times in a season like
you did. Two questions, I guess do you wish you
you got to play today, might have been able to
play a little longer? And and question number two? Is
there a running back playing today who you admire? There

(32:44):
are a couple of running backs that I admire. I
like Ezekiel Elliott, of course, Linard for Nett, and I
love his running style. Derrick Henry reminds me of myself, right, Kay,
Kareem Hunt. There was somebody else that was it's a
great rookie class it is, isn't it? Yeah? Yeah? For

(33:08):
that I I really I think he's a grown man.
I really think. So do you wish you could play
in this era where where you like in New Orleans
you've got mark Ingram splitting carries with the rookie kamara Um,
which probably not because the whole sharing of the of
the carrying the load. And look, I come from the

(33:29):
era where the running back position was held high esteem
and the offense ran through the running game, and guys
like Nni Smith and Rome Vettis, Curtis Martin, Marshall Fault,
they were all the focal point of the offense and
they touched the ball, you know, more than sixty of
the time. So you have to split that up. It

(33:51):
takes you, it takes you out of a rhythm. I'm
more of a rhythm guy, and I'm not going to
go in the game and rip off a ninety yard
run and have eight care race four hundred and sixty yards.
I'm gonna have thirty four carries, you know, four hundred
sixty or a hundred fifty. You know where my first
twenty or two team might be for thirty yards, but

(34:11):
then over time it opens up. So I'm more of
a where you grind, you out play the mental game
and the physical game, and where you out versus just
being spotted. I've never been um that that type of
player where I can come in and out of the
game because it takes me complete out of my rhythm.
So the one other question we have to ask about

(34:33):
your football life, Um, what did we screw up? What
did Eric get wrong? Or what what's not in there
that you would like to see in there? Mhm, my
acting coach. Uh, she will she Unfortunately she passed away
about three weeks ago. Oh, I hadn't heard that it

(34:53):
was it was yeah, it was sad, and she just
really meant a lot to me, and that I mean,
you don't have this cut beautifully, but I would have
loved her seen uh something from her so I can
give and share with her son um or in memory
of because she really was the a strong influence in

(35:18):
a in a guiding like for me once I left
the game. I mean that's where in her studio I
was able to really open up and be honest and
be vulnerable and be willing to go places that I
wouldn't have the courage to go places I wouldn't go.
You know, she was the one that really gave me
the um the confidence to sing and to go on

(35:41):
Broadway and to be in Chicago. And you know I
spent a lot of time Um, at her place and
just her being a good friend and she just really
meant a lot to me and and she's really a
part of that transition. So um, I don't know, I
just I just felt like, you know, I I have
loved to see something from her and that if it

(36:02):
if it if it's if if it makes sense in
the whole story, I don't know was the only thing.
What was her name, Eddie, Anna Maria. I'm so sorry
for your loss, Eddie, and we'll UH at minimum will
make sure we can do something special with UH with
a clip on on on social media or yeah, yeah,

(36:25):
I would I think you know, I would appreciate that
to show her contribution to that time. All right, now
we we've got to let you go at UH in
a minute. So um, we just wanted to thank you
again for for taking part in this, for putting up
with Eric powers Um through this laborious process. But thank you.

(36:47):
Listen list, I'm willing to be you know, go do
the pedous process of getting it done because I wanted
to be right. You know, you have one shot to
get it right, and this is something that you know,
I want to out with me so my son's kids
can see this and their kids, kids, and and no,

(37:11):
you know so now I appreciate it, man, I really do.
Thank you so much for taking a little extra time
to talk to us today and good luck in the
coming months and years. Was your second career. Thank you,
Eddie George the man himself, Paul, I have a bone

(37:35):
to pick with you. Um. I thought I really had
hit on something nice there with you know, telling your
story and being honest and open, and I think he
was ready for a big answer, and you went right
to the Heisman trophy story. You don't think jumped all
over it, and you don't think it's equally important to
find out about a fingerless heisman trophies and his sure

(38:00):
you of the Downtown Athletic Club. I don't even know
if it's called that. Anyway, we both knew that we
had to get out of the zone we were in.
It was in a we were in a darker place
and we probably want to be on a call like that,
and but I was trying to smoothly, like kind of
bring us out of there with one last kind of
you know, let's acknowledge where we just have been, give

(38:22):
you one last chance to say something, and then boom,
hit him with the heisman. I think jumped on. It
was a lot of casero though. I think like there
might have been a lot of words coming out of
you that we needed to like get back to cut
that We kind of cut some of that out. What
do you think, Powers, Yeah, you're the producer here. I'm
starting to wonder why we don't have more interviews with
two different directors. It seems like it goes really really well. Yeah. Yeah,

(38:45):
just you know, and I didn't like that question that much.
I'm ask my question created by committee as a long
and esteemed history. Powers we Um your thoughts um having
heard Eddie Eddie was very happy with his film. Yeah,
he was positive about it. And this is the first
time I've actually heard feedback from a subject before. So

(39:06):
it's it's great. My stomach is now rising back up
through my body from just being all the way down
on the floor. How much do you keep the subject
sort of, you know, angel devil on your shoulder while
you're editing and consider what his response might be to
the creative choices that you're making. Do you do you
have to kind of compartmentalize from that or do you
think you know Eddie's gonna see this at some point. Well,

(39:29):
I think it's kind of the idea that the subject
of your film is the hero of the story, and
if you are going to have the negative aspect, that's
just to make the valley deeper, so the peak looks
even higher. So if anything negative does happen, hopefully it
will be bounced out by a redemption some point later
in the story. That's a something that comes up a lot,
you know, in our position here, because we're NFL Films,

(39:51):
We're not, you know, necessarily an independent filmmaking company. We
worked pretty hard to have authenticity in these films. So, yeah,
you want to have the negative to make the valleys,
make the peaks higher. But also, you know, people want
to hear someone's real story, not just the fluff version
of it. So to hear Eddie George recounting the struggles

(40:15):
he had after retiring was powerful for a number of reasons.
Um not only the one that I articulated so well
to Eddie on the phone, but also because I think
that it clearly shows that the film is the authentic article.
Well Rimant Harris phrased it in a way that all
NFL players go through it. It's It's as if you

(40:36):
go to undergrad and then grad school and everything, you
want to be a doctor, and you've spent decades just
towards this goal, and then after three years they tell you, Okay,
you're done being a doctor. Find another job. The emotional
investment that you have and everything that you've worked for
it's going to get undercut and there's not going to
be much warning at all. And it's being cut out

(40:59):
from a family, from a social structure, from your purpose
in life. And how does someone adjust after that? Like
I had my own adjustment after college and I didn't
have anything like playing in the NFL. Let's hear Eddie
describe the depression he went through after retiring. You're gonna
hear from Eddie and his wife Taj. I couldn't sleep

(41:19):
at night sometimes because I just didn't know, um what
tomorrow was going to bring. It was difficult to say,
what am I waking up too? What can I be
excited about tomorrow? You know? I used to enjoy walking
in the locker room and getting the game plan and

(41:39):
breaking down film and getting my teammates, practicing, the camaraderie,
the laughter, enjoy the pain, the stories, all of that
was gone, what do I create now? So that kept
me up a lot, and I would take ambient start
off one, one and a half, two and two and

(42:00):
a half. I've never seen Eddie in the years that
we've been together addicted to anything but food and working out,
So I never thought twice about him being um attached
to this ambient. I never realized he was taken more
than one or or more and more to be able
to sleep. And it was one night at my kitchen

(42:22):
table and I took two ambience products having the conversation,
and I wake up the next morning in my bed
and she says to me, you scared me last night
because a minute we're talking, the next minute you passed
out and said help me. So my question coming out

(42:46):
of that is, at what point in the interviewing process
and the filmmaking process and your relationship with Eddie were
you going to get to that, Because you know, it's
something you're aware of as a filmmaker having studied a story,
but it's also the not not the first thing you're
going to ask a guy right now. The first phone
call that we had with him. We approached it then
because I thought that would be the ark of the

(43:07):
film was he had his purpose for playing football and all,
and then once that was gone, he ended up going
to the press state and then acting was what took
him out of it. And if he hadn't agreed to
open up about that, then we would have had to
make a very different film. So that was the first
time that we brought it up, was then, and then

(43:28):
in the actual interview we probably went a little more chronologically,
and then that was kind of towards the end of
the interview. So he so he was out. He let
you know right away that he was open to talking
about it. Yes, did you ask the other subjects about
that chapter of his life? And because obviously you you
interviewed them. Typically in these things, you interview people individually,
including the subject. They're not together, they don't see each

(43:48):
other's reactions until much later. Was that a topic, potentially
sensitive topic that you brought up with the other folks
in his life. Yeah, we talked with I think the
majority of the other subjects who were relatively close to him.
We brought it up with them, and I would say
that the majority weren't aware of it until after the
fact that Eddie hit it from himself and he even

(44:09):
from his closest family. He like his wife, saw the
signs of it, but he didn't really talk about it
until they had that incident that he shared in the
film that he referred to it as kind of that
football mentality that you're you're tough, you take it on
in your own and he eventually just realized that he
needed help. Did he What was his reaction on that

(44:31):
initial phone call? Was he receptive? Did you have to
persuade him? He was receptive, Like he is very open
about all sorts of things in his life that it
takes a lot of strength to be comfortable and to
share that with other people. The other thing, and we
talked about it in the call with Eddie, is the
story of him and his his dad. Did you approach

(44:52):
that too before shooting or is that something that evolved?
That was something that evolved Eddie and wife Todd they
wrote a relationship advice book. I think it was Married
for Real that I got a copy of that, and
he kind of alluded to a relationship with his father
and it was something that I had a few questions about,
but I didn't know the full arcilate relationship. And then

(45:14):
we ended up doing his main interview. He just opened
up a vein and there were a number of things
that I had never seen before. And then we arranged
it that for our second shoot. When he came into
the Philadelphia area, his dad was in the area, and
we built a shoot where he visited his dad. What's
the relationship today, Uh, well, Edny no longer lives in
the area, so he's only able to visit periodically. But

(45:37):
we founded him when he visited him for Father's Day
this year. So you know, let's talk about that scene.
He goes and and he visits his father. UM very early.
Let's listen. This is Eddie and his father and his father.
As you will hear it can be hard to understand.
As his speaker, my father actually lived right aund the
corner of my grandmother. He wasn't um in my life

(46:00):
a lot. I love my father, Um, you know, I
I knew he had his his his battles with addiction,
and I didn't see none of it. Too busy. They're
watching highlights here of any plan we could not. We could,

(46:24):
but the reasons and I know I can't find a
blue because I tried every which way. How do you
successfully who knows such that I wanted him desperately to
get off of it. I was hoping that if he
could see me living out his dream or um being

(46:46):
successful as a football player, that he would get off
of the drugs and be straight. And I will go
outside by myself and play in the front yard. I
will put towels in my shoulders to mimic shoulder pads

(47:09):
and just imagine the possibilities it would go to these
games every Friday night to watch Up with Dublin play.
There will be another game going on called free for
all on the side of the bleachers. My father will
come to the edge of the stands, look down and
see what I was doing, and he would say to me, boy, hey,

(47:33):
you take it up the gutting down the right sideline.
Do you have it in your boy to go all
the way? So if you detected sort of changes in
Eddie's voice there, it's not your ears playing tricks on you.
Eddie kind of plays a couple of different roles in
this film. It's a really, really remarkable thing that Eric created.

(47:57):
I want to have him trying and explain it, because
as if making a document entering forty four minutes about
a life doesn't have his own its own challenges. Eric
essentially created a stage play and nested it inside this documentary.
Explain um where it came from, how it unfolded, how
it developed, and uh, if it came to fruition or

(48:17):
as you envisioned. Tell us about that process. Well, kind
of the nexus of it was in a previous interview,
it'd seen that Edie had referred to writing his own
one man show, and the original goal was if he
had a script that was ready, that we would stage
it for one night and that would kind of be
the backbone, and we would visit on different chapters of

(48:38):
his life and intercut it with football footage. When that
wasn't going to be a possibility, moving on in another direction,
ended up realizing, well, we don't need a full working
play for that. We can kind of create those scenes ourselves.
So when I did the main interview with him down
in the Nashville area, I kind of had seven different
scenes that I had in mind, and I kind of
hit those hard with questions and using his answers, ended

(49:01):
up writing scripts out of that, and then when we
ended up filming in a theater, we kind of had
it for moments in his life that there wouldn't exist
video footage, but we're very formative that we would be
able to go to these scenes where he was almost
like a ghost of Christmas past, watching younger versions of himself,
living through these moments that were really important as an experience.
This thing is Eddie watching himself and explaining his own

(49:24):
life to you. He's being reflective, but again he's performing
at the same time. It's just a really I've never
seen anything like in the series, at least I don't
know Keith. If there is no, we have not had
had one quite like this. It fit well, and Eddie
had done something like this previously on a Thursday night
football open that was really well produced by CBS, where

(49:45):
he was backstage and he gives a one it's it's
a little bit modeled after Birdman and the one take
idea and he he gives a monologue and we were
when Eric presented this idea to make the film, we
were initially a little bit apprehensive because we didn't want
it to look like we were doing something somebody else
already did. So I think it's to Eric's credit that

(50:06):
he found a totally different way to do it that
even included Eddie's sons, right, Yeah, we had um for
two of the scenes. It was his younger son, Eric
was playing Eddie at military school on his first night
that he was out there, and then the other one
was the one that we had heard where he was
playing in the front yard. And then his other son, Jayer,
is a junior at Vanderbilt. He ended up playing the

(50:29):
college age version of Eddie. And it was our DP
Albie who really figured out the framing and the idea
of having Eddie and a lot of the shots in
the foreground looking on in himself like I'm not necessarily
a visual person, and he kind of figured out how
to make that work nice. These are not nine to
five processes sometimes. And I just wanted Eric, if you

(50:51):
tell us about your editing schedule, Eric, because it's not
the most conventional as it relates to the other producers.
But I think the proof is in the pudding of
of how you work. So how do you work? I
don't believe that inspiration follows the schedule. So sometimes the
best times at night are from four o'clock until two

(51:11):
in the morning. That it's when the office is quiet,
when the internet isn't updating pages for distractions anymore that
that's when the entire world slows down and all of
a sudden, the footage starts talking to you. So I
might not be the first car in the parking lot,
I might be the last one at night. But just

(51:32):
as long as the cut is in the can, I
think it works out. Have you always worked this way? Yeah?
I think so, And I get it from my mom.
She's the same way. One thing we weren't able to
get to on the on the phone with Eddie was
Stephen Sagal, Um, do you wish you'd been able to
interview Stephen sigal and why? Well, when Eddie was getting

(51:58):
into acting, well, we wanted to use as a demonstration
for his progression as an artist. Was his starting point
was kind of as Steven Segall's right hand man in
this action movie Into the Sun and the hope was
coming out of the Block six commercial break, we would
have Eddie in a helicopter with Steven Seagal by his side.

(52:20):
And this is a spoiler alert for a movie from
two thousand and five. But Eddie doesn't make it to
the opening credits of the movie. So we were hoping
to have Steven Seagal at the very least for this
movie clip. But in two thousand and sixteen he kind
of through and with Vladimir Putin, became a Russian citizen,
and at last sight he was giving a news interview

(52:40):
with the Kremlin as a backdrop, and that made a
little bit tougher for us to clear the footage. And
oddly enough, this wasn't the first time something like this
has happened to me. Last year, we did a piece
on Charlie Brown and Lucy pulling away the football, and
the voice actor for that, who would have probably been
six when it was originally recorded, is currently in prison

(53:01):
on an assault charge that he compounded by verbally assaulting
the judge in the courtroom. So we sometimes have are
things that we want for footage, and we have things
that because of the legal system, we can't clear. Let's
listen to Eddie talking about his experience acting with Steven Seagal.
I enjoyed it. I mean, Steven is great, I mean
he was fantastic. But I was so bad, man, it

(53:25):
was so bad. It was so bad. God blood in
my mouth and acting like I'm dying. I told him that, Um, well,
if you go back to Louisiana, tell my mother I
love her and I'll miss her gumbo. I mean it was.
It was bad. It was so bad. I want to
watch it because it sounds horrible and I need it

(53:48):
so I can tape it and then I can send
that out to all of our friends. I need that.
If this is really a football life, this show is
as good as you, guys, you know say it is.
You guys, uncover some of that film and that footage
and we will play that in some way, shape or form,

(54:10):
or we don't play it and we just shoot it
to me or someone else so we can then circulate
that out. So that was former Ohio State buck Eye
Raymont Harris, a teammate of Eddie George there in search
of that Steven Seagal clip. It did not make the show,
as we said. Uh, A clip that made the show
that I don't know that I've ever seen is pregame

(54:31):
Super Bowl thirty four Eddie and Steve McNair. It's a
sound camera in the uh, sort of the bowels of
the stadium before they go out on the field. And
what's funny about some of these shows is the Rams
won that Super Bowl spoiler alert and so the pregame
footage that most of the world gets to see from
then forever more is rams pregame footage. So a great

(54:54):
clip of Eddie and Steve McNair doesn't really get into
circulation because the story ultimately that we tell over and
over is typically not the Titans. It's almost what we
would call a lost treasure. It's one of these clips
we dig up and it helps tell this story. In
your research, you talked about the footage. Talking to you,
any other clips come up that you hadn't seen before,
seeds of a future story? Um, I know that sometimes

(55:15):
that's a way that you find inspiration. Mm hmm. No.
I can't think of anything from like a TV broadcast
or whatever for this one. Like I've been looking for
like through other TV broadcasts. I found a story or
two there was, I guess, like for a future project.
It was funny how everyone really opened up about the

(55:37):
Music City Miracle and everyone's role on it, like Jeff Fisher,
Kevin Dyson, Derek Mason. They just wanted to the nitty
gritty of like who is supposed to be? Like it
was it was Mason's role, but he ended up getting
injured and Dyson hadn't even practiced it, and then Fisher
ended up saying that he was actually five yards in
front of where he was supposed to be, so that's
why it looked like he threw it forward. And they

(55:59):
just got very into the xs and os of it
that I think we can do a future piece about.
But because it was so far away from Eddie, we
weren't able to include it in the story. Right when
we were watching rough cuts of the film. Eric had
a much longer version in the first cut of The
Music City Miracle, and like Eric said, we ended up

(56:19):
cutting way back on it because it just kind of
got you away from the core of Eddie story. After
after all, he wasn't even on the field. But when
you hear Eddie tell the story of the Music City Miracle,
here you see just how theatrical and dramatic he is.
Just instinctually like his description of it, it's very unusual.

(56:42):
Ball straight up in the air, and I noticed Lawrenzo
Neil going to catch the football, and I'm saying, damn,
we've done really lost the game. Now he's going to
touch the ball. It was over, so he catches the football.
I'm like, Lawrenzo just get on the ground and he
passes the Frank. I said, oh, here we go. You
know what are we doing now to throw it all
over the field to see? I said, just get on

(57:03):
one knee. Let's see what can happen. I like our
chances with Steve mac throwing it in the end zone
for hill Mary and Frank is over there. I said,
what the hell is Frank wanna do? I mean, get
down on the ground. So Frank under ground throws a
ladder across the field. Kevin Dyson catches it. I said, okay,

(57:23):
that's interesting. And all of a sudden, I see a
form of blue jerseys form a wall and not one
Buffalo bill. I said, oh my god. I look around
for any penalty to see was the lateral? Kevin sprints
down the field unscathed. Everybody's going crazy, man, I run

(57:44):
on the field. I'm like, oh my god, I just
witnessed something crazy happened. And you know what this happened
that there aren't many players who tell stories in that way,
as we know, you know, we interview these guys quite
a bit, and that that's a storyteller looking back to
how he was when he entered the league, like you know,
we interviewed him as a rookie and then over the

(58:06):
years and even as guys become more polished, you don't
see it to the degree that he was once he
got into acting, Like after that point he becomes much
more visually expressive. His gesture is just you know, it's
not a talking head with him, like you're getting a
full bodied limbs and everything. Like, he's very expressive and engaging.

(58:27):
How does that influence your part in putting a film
like this together and portraying him? Does he does he
sort of impart his will on it? Or is he
let you guide him into how you want your story
to unfold? Well, I don't think that you guide the river,
like you just follow where it goes and listen to that.
We have trying to listen to it. We so we

(58:49):
have our narration sessions and it's been Josh Charles for
all our episodes of the series. And you know, we
got to line thirty with him and we were done,
and he thought that he was missing, you know, another
half of the narration lions. But Eddie doesn't need help
telling his story. You don't need that connective tissue because
he's such a good storyteller, rivaled only maybe by Ray

(59:12):
Lewis h exactly, It's amazing. These guys are like mirror
images of each other in every way as players, as rivals,
and as like speakers and emtors, as like the human
embodiment of football player from late era twenty century, from
the from the in turn of the millennium. We should,

(59:34):
you know what, we should just listen to more of
Ray Lewis talking about lions. Who wants to listen to
more Ray talking about lives? For you to watch him
from its elegion standpoint, you're saying to yourself, like, that's
a that's a hell of a man right there. That's
a nice built young man. But when you start looking
his eyes and realized that there's no give in him,

(59:56):
there's no pack down in him. And every lion response
to another lion, Most lions they wait for that response
before they give you the approval. And to look deep
in his eyes. Yeah, he's wanting to present lion. Do
you think that Ray views all players and like the

(01:00:19):
animal kingdom and some hierarchy or is everyone a lion
on a football field? Because to make it to the NFL,
you're you're basically at that level, there's no way everyone's
a lion, because there's he's the lion most they're the
rest of the gazelle. He's on the attack. The whole
blinking thing. I think bears that theory out right. Eddie's

(01:00:40):
a lion, right, yeah, you have to dance, right, there's
other lions, other male lions, and the pride you dance.
I mean, but I would think that if they are
the lions, then there's a lot of other guys out
there that aren't lions. And what are they? Well, I'm
thinking back to the Lion King and you have whatever
Timon and Pumba were, and has that ever been established

(01:01:02):
that they're real animals? Oh? Yeah, one's a mirror cat
and the other one is some sort of like ward hog.
I thought because he had a song when I was
a young ward Hog. I don't know who this is
in the NFL, though, maybe that's like Tony Saragosa, but
he was the goose, ken Stabler, snake. Who else is
an animal nickname? Anyone? Really? Fair enough? Let's get back

(01:01:28):
on the task when we talk about his football footage
as a running back, Eric, because I think I think
he you know, I mean It's like it reminds me
of when we watch the high school footage of one
of these guys, and typically the guy who makes it
in the NFL is like a foot taller and a
lot bigger and wider than everyone else in the field
in high school. I wouldn't say he's bigger, but from
the running running back position, he typically is bigger than

(01:01:49):
the typical running back. What were some things you notice
going through his because I'm sure you went through mountains
of his action footage. What jumped out to you about
the way he played the game of football. I guess
I went through and we have our logging system where
everything that you know someone's flagged a note is in
the Saver system. So I went through and I think
it was like fifty plays, just like looking for patterns

(01:02:13):
and all, and it's just there's not a lot of wiggle.
There's vision, and then there's just brute force. And the
way that he described it in the film was he
didn't care if he was getting two or three yards
early in the game because he felt like that was
an investment in the future, that in the fourth quarter
it was a dividend, that that's when the guys would

(01:02:34):
be worn down that that's when they might shy away
from tackles. That's when he was going to break it.
And in watching his footage, you can do that in college,
in high school because you are physically bigger than the
other guys. But when you no longer have that and
every collision is full force, like, I don't know how
he played more than one or two years. Like, it's

(01:02:55):
just incredible strength and endurance to be able to do
that for better part of a decade. Yeah, twelve thousand,
over ten thousand rushing yards, almost twelve total yards, seventy
eight touchdowns. I mean, he was productive as hell. The
football talk, I think it's gotten it's gotten us headed

(01:03:16):
in the right direction. Here for our next guest, do
you hear it? Paul? Is it? Why it is? It's
the sound of noted NFL films guru Greg Cosell charging you. Yeah,

(01:03:39):
you know what that means. Time for Greg Costell. Welcome
back to the podcast, Greig. Good to be with you. Guys.
You watched Eddie George did and we have Eric Powers here.
You know what I was just saying to Eric that
I loved the whole concept. I had no idea what
to expect because you know, every football life is different,
and just the whole idea of the acting. And I

(01:04:02):
feel like I should be reciting Shakespeare now as we're
getting started here. You know, he's an inspiring I know,
but I really like the show a lot. Eddie George
running back anachronism? Could he exist anymore? Have we seen
the last of the Eddie georgees? You know? As I
was watching and then obviously the football parts of the show,

(01:04:23):
because there were so many really intriguing and interesting parts
besides football actually, which made it so enjoyable to watch,
I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking, how
would Eddie George be seen coming into the NFL draft
in a time when do we have featurebacks in the NFL? Yes,
there's a few, but it's certainly not the way I

(01:04:46):
think most teams now envisioned putting together an offense with
someone who has to be a quote unquote foundation back,
someone that you start your offense with giving the ball
to twenty times a week. And Cos and I were
talking about this this morning because when I was watching
this weekend the show, I was thinking to myself, I
remember him carrying an awful lot for a long period

(01:05:09):
of time. So I looked up the numbers and they're staggering.
I mean and and I didn't do the math, but
Kas told me that for I think eight years once.
So yeah, I looked up on on Pro Football Reference
three hundred. He averaged three hundred forty carries a year
for eight years. Emmitt Smith averaged three hundred carries a year.

(01:05:31):
This is the all time leading rusher by a mile
is Emmitt Smith. And part of the reason he got there.
He averaged three hundred carries a year or thereabouts a
little more for the Cowboys for thirteen years, which is
completely ridiculous. But three hundred forty carries a year for
eight years, There's it's off the charts. So many of

(01:05:56):
these teams now that run that much run out of
what we call in personnel, meaning there's three wide receivers
on the field, and so it's very much a spread type.
Look offensively, you're still spreading the field horizontally. The Eddie
Georges of the world ran in tight spaces, you know,
they ran with fullbacks with multiple tight ends. It was

(01:06:17):
a different mindset of how you play. But just the
sheer number three forty carries a year for eight years.
Could anybody even do that? Now, By the way, Eddie
George didn't play fifty years ago. No, we're we're talking.
I mean, I think his career didn't oh five. But
it's not it's not, you know, like less than generations.
Make an interesting point, it's not like complete games in baseball.

(01:06:39):
You can go back to the seventies with pictures like
Ferguson Jenkins who through thirty complete games, but that was
in the seventies. That seems like a totally different era
of baseball. You're you're right, uh ball, it's it's not. Uh,
it's not going back thirty years. This was he played
what was his first year in the league seven is

(01:07:00):
I think it was six? Yeah, so he made it.
Part of that eight year run was into the two thousand,
so it's not that long ago. Here's here's Eddie talking
about his own running style. And then and then we'll
listen to Eddie's teammates describing Edie's role in the Titans offense.
My dad was the one that exposed me to football.

(01:07:22):
He loved runs that would not just making miss but
just supposed at will on you. They loved Jim Brown
loved Walter Payton, the heart that they played with. I
wanted him to talk about me the same way I
grew up, wanting to emulate a lot of those running

(01:07:43):
backs to create my own style. He's like like the
fastest guy ever, just just his tenacity. There's no way
in the world that you are on first contact going
to bring down to seven. The approach and bringing down
Eddie George was have one guy get there, slow him down.
I didn't hope that the homies arrived. Did the average

(01:08:08):
five yards six yards? It carried for your note, he
was a bulldozer. He was truly three yards in a
cloud of dust. But can third and fourth quarter That's
when you start to see Eddie exert his will over
the opposing tacklers. It's like, um, a boxing match. First quarter,

(01:08:30):
just okay to three, Well, guess what those twos and three,
they're gonna have to hurt you and keep body blow,
keep taking going up the gas team bang bang, not
trying to knock you out yet, but just take away
your will. The three quarters and then the fourth quarter,
you see now it's time to break off the big runs.

(01:08:57):
That that was Eddie as well as just teammates Derek
Mason and Brad Hopkins. You know, it struck me listening
to that is how the game has changed, though in
a short period of time, because I don't think that
most people now think of the running game as attrition.
I think they think of it as scheme. And even

(01:09:17):
for guys who carry a lot, and there aren't that many,
but I think even with those kinds of runners, it's
not so much attrition. And Kaise you're obviously a Steelers fan.
I don't think of Levian Bell as a runner in
terms of he's wearing you out. You don't want to
tackle him, you know. I think it's more of a
scheme thing today. The way for teams that run the

(01:09:39):
ball a lot, they don't just run the ball now
by saying here we are stop us. They run it.
I would almost say tactically and strategically more so. Well,
I mentioned earlier that we would hear his teammates described
ATI's role in the offense let because I think we
should go a little deeper into that Jeff Fisher offense
and and and its own evolution and maybe the the

(01:10:02):
end of Jeff Fisher's career we were going through such
a change from identity wise, offensively that the running shoot,
which was the featured offense before Eddie got there. You know,
we're trying to figure out ways to do things with
a tight end and have a big, bruising back behind
us really balanced things out and there wasn't a more
perfect um component to really add to that offense to

(01:10:25):
be able to have that kind of diversity. I think
that was Less decks. His His actual philosophy was, you
can't go bro making a profit. So if you go
for full four, you you got a first down. You
just methodically going down the field, and Eddie was obviously
the main component to that, and he knew he's gonna
get the ball. Uh, depending on the complexity of the game.
You know, anywhere from twenty or thirty times a night.

(01:10:47):
Eddie was never known to run away from anybody, and
I don't think you really wanted to run away from anybody.
He would rather pound you in the ground for four
quarters sixty minutes. So Fisher and mentioned they're less Deco,
who is his offensive coordinator at the time, built this
offense around this this power back who they could just
bludgeon you with. We're not seeing that today, No, not

(01:11:12):
in a strict sense. I mean you could argue maybe
Jacksonville might be looking to do that to some degree
for Leonard four Net. You're right, with a couple of
Bill Parcels tree foot football visionaries running at the helm there,
I want to can't be a coincidence. So the way
Maron and Coughlin probably at least were schooled, it's no

(01:11:32):
coincidence because Fournette was the fourth pick in the draft.
When you draft Leonard Fournette fourth, you have a plan.
You're not drafting Leonard Fournette to be a piece of something.
You're drafting Leonard Fournett to be the foundation. Well, right,
can Leonard Fournette be Leonard Fournette if he's getting fifteen
twelve to fifteen cars game and splitting the carries with somebody? No,
not not that kind of back No, because we had

(01:11:54):
we had Eddie on the phone and asked them, would
you want to play now and and and be like
that and maybe your career would be three four years long?
Probably said no, it's exactly right. He said, no way,
I wouldn't want to do that. No, And I'm sure
four Nett it would have no interesting. Well, it's interesting.
He was in a very unique situation too, because Steve
McNair got there in ninety five, the year before Eddie,
but he didn't really start for a couple of years.

(01:12:15):
As I recall, I don't think he became the full
time starter till maybe year three, So Eddie was already
entrenched as the starting running back. And I think that
went together well because what you had is you had
obviously Eddie who was the foundation, and you had a
young quarterback who was capable of making plays outside of structure.
And I think those two things tend to work together

(01:12:37):
reasonably well because earlier in his career as a starter,
Steve McNair was not a consistent pocket player. He became one,
and I think he was an m v P one
year with Peyton Uh they were co m vps. I
believe maybe two thousand three issue of memory serves me correctly.
Um So he developed into that. But I think when
you have that bruiser, that that foundation back, that bulldozer,

(01:12:58):
and then you have a quarterback that can do the
play action game and then make some plays outside of structure,
you can sustain your offense. Because the one thing about
Eddie George is as good as he was, he was
not a four point eight, four point nine yards per
per carry guy. He was really more of a three
point nine four point one four point two guy, which
is okay, right, And this in that context, yes, the

(01:13:21):
question becomes, as the game has changed, would that be
seen as okay? I don't I don't know if it
would be. That's what makes this so fascinating. And as
Paul said, even though it wasn't so long ago, I
think there's been some some reasonably fundamental changes in the game.
You know, it's always easy to throw oc cliches and say, well,
it's still about blocking and tackling, but the tactics of

(01:13:42):
the game have have somewhat changed. Meaningfully. We're talking about
a lot of things that have changed. There's another element
in this film that's a thread throughout, and that's Eddie's
rivalry with ray Lewis. And what I'm wondering is they
they're such a great portrait that Eric paints about the
one on the importance of the one on one matchup.
Is that something that's still important in today's game? Or

(01:14:03):
have we tactically and schematically taken the significance out of
one guy beating another guy? Is that not as important
as it once was, and Eddie George and ray Lewis
were colliding with each other, I don't think it's quite
as important because I don't think offenses are kind of
set up that way. You know, obviously we're speaking about
Eddie George, but it also makes you wonder about someone

(01:14:24):
like ray Lewis. Would he have been? And it's easy
to say, because he's going to be a Hall of Famer,
it's easy to say, oh, yeah, he would have that's
easy after the fact. But would ray Lewis have been
an every down player playing against you know, three wide
receivers on every snap? You know, I don't know the
answer to that. I mean, he was a really physical, intense,
tough between the tackles player. He certainly wasn't slow. It's

(01:14:47):
not as if he was a plotting linebacker. But you know,
you wonder would those kinds of matchups that happen inside
the box and confined space, which is really what what
Eric Show portrayed with Eddie and ray Lewis? Would do
those matchups really exist today? Do we talk I don't
think because we talk about those kinds of matchups in
today's NFL, receivers and dB the only example. Well, what

(01:15:12):
I was thinking about those Ray saying that he had
to gain a lot of weight once he saw Eddie
and they met in person. Maybe if Ray came into
the league now, he would just say, you know what
I'm gonna play at You know you want to be
a fleet right right? A middle linebacker can cover it

(01:15:32):
back or a tight end. No, you're exactly right, And
that's a great point. That's why I was thinking about.
You don't really see, as Paul said, those kinds of
matchups over running back today. Now we'll see where it
goes with with Leonard four Nette. But Eddie George was
a finisher and he was he was a contact back,
which maybe for net becomes obviously Adrian Peterson was a

(01:15:54):
contact back in his prime. But I don't know how
many of those guys are really out there or going
to be coming into the league. I find it fascinating
too because of his height. There's a logic to me
that if you're going to run the way you just described,
you'd be smaller or more compact, but less surface area
for the tackler to attack. He was the opposite of that.

(01:16:14):
If he was coming out now, Paul would people say
he's too upright and not see him as a top ten,
top fifteen kind of draft choice and say, hey, great
college back, too upright, can't run like that in the NFL. Alright,
great stuff. Any of anything else about Eddie that that
jumped out of you while you're watching the film, that
that we haven't touched on to me would really stay.
That about the film was sort of the dichotomy between

(01:16:36):
Eddie as an actor and Eddie the football player, because
there was such obviously a physicality and a mental tenacity
to him as a football player that you don't associate
with acting. But I'm sure, like any profession, there obviously
is a mental tenacity, but it's not it's just part
of that seems like it's anathema a big part of

(01:16:59):
acting as you have to make yourself vulnerable, and if
you're this invulnerable guy on the football field, how do
you open open up yourself that way? But it's interesting
you say that, Eric, because I think the one thing
about football, and we say this always in our matchup
room here at films, the eye and the sky doesn't lie.
So in some ways, as an athlete you're always vulnerable
when because if you make a mistake and you're in

(01:17:21):
the film room. You can't hide, you know, because everybody
knows you made the mistakes, so there's no excuses. So
there is a certain vulnerability to that. No one likes
to be pointed out as having made mistakes, but you
can't hide from it because the mistake is right there
on film. It's interesting there's a preparation for performing in
front of a more intimate audience than an actor by

(01:17:42):
having a perform in front of and he's also used
to being told that he's done something incorrectly and how
to correct it, so which is probably very interesting when
you're starting out as an actor because obviously he's not
starting out at the top. He's starting out at the
bottom and he has to learn, so he's going to
be corrected a lot, and he's used to that. He's
not taking that person I would imagine. I didn't spend

(01:18:02):
time with him, but I imagine he's not taking that personally.
Greg in the Matchup Room and now you can see
NFL Match Up, the Matchup Show on ESPN weekend Mornings,
starring and produced by Greg Cosell. Greg does anyone in
the Matchup room watch footage with the controlled rage. Well,
this particular week when I was watching the Cowboys left tackle,

(01:18:25):
I think I had a little controlled rage. Very good,
Very good. Follow Greg Cosell on Twitter at Greg Cosell,
watch him on the NFL Matchup Show on ESPN, and
listen to him here at the NFL Films Podcast. Thanks again,
Greg for thanks guys. Another entertaining, informative conversation with Greg

(01:18:50):
Cosell breaking down Eddie George. Diving into Eddie George of
football life was great when he stops by, So Eric,
thanks for coming by. Um, what's your neck football life vision?
Do you have any? Do you have any any that
you're kicking around? I don't know the player yet, but
I want to do one that's kind of Jumanji, where
we custom make a board game and it's kind of

(01:19:14):
like the story of the person's life, maybe playing with
their kids. Interesting. So you're sort of developing the skin
of the storytelling structure, maybe even before the subject comes
to For yes, I found a proper artist up in
Long Island, like I got some idea. That's a dangerous
approach because you can run into big trouble if you
forced the subject to the structure. You have to find

(01:19:38):
the right subject for that idea, you might have to sit.
I might not find him this season, but that's what
I'm kicking around as an approach, like you may have
to sit on it for five years. But I thought
it would be more difficult if I had the idea
to find the person afterwards. So I did the search
first for how do you physically put this together? And
I've got in my back pocket and it pops up

(01:20:01):
so awesome. Thank you Steve Moseley, our engineer, Bennett Whisseltier,
our producer, Rich Owens also our producer, and Eric Powders

(01:20:22):
the one and only congratulations on Eddie George football life. Paul.
Thanks to noted NFL Films guru Great Cosal for stopping
by again to the podcast. Diving in Eddie George with us,
always a pleasure to have. You can follow us at
NFL Films, Like us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, YouTube,

(01:20:48):
all your favorite social networks. From the home of America's
football movies here in Mighty Mount Laurel, New Jersey. This
has been the NFL Films Podcast. I'm Paul, I'm Keith.
Take care of your one