May 25, 2024 • 46 mins
On this edition of The Line Change, Jon Jansen talks with Kent Lee Platte about the Eagles draft picks!
-What is Relative Athletic Score?
-Draft trends
-How Howie Roseman approaches the NFL Draft?
-Watch Bad Movies!
-More
-What is Relative Athletic Score?
-Draft trends
-How Howie Roseman approaches the NFL Draft?
-Watch Bad Movies!
-More
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It is episode number eleven twelve.I never get that's a bit at this
point, I'm never gonna get theepisode number right. I'm either gonna be
one off, whether it's one lessor one more than we already have done.
Either way, you're tuned into anotherepisode of the line Change. You
can get it wherever you get yourpodcast. Uh, just search up the
line change with John Jansen. Uh, search up line change because there's a
(00:21):
lot of line changes, but withJohn Jansen, and then you'll see mine
wherever you get your podcast, especiallyiHeartRadio app. Search up line Change with
John Jansen. You can follow meJohn Jansen at Jay Jansen thirty four on
x. You can follow my nextguest over at math bomb. And if
you are any kind of draft nerd, you're any kind of NFL nerd and
(00:42):
you look at our our as relativeathletics score, you're most likely seeing it
from this guy Kent. How doyou say your name as well? You're
at math bomb on Twitter, Buthow you say your name? That's Kelly
Platty. Yeah, the he alwaysthrows people. Yeah Platty, I said
platt So Platty. That's really good. The e he is said all the
way through. I love that yougotta go with the follow through. So
(01:03):
Kent Lee platty Kent. I've beenfollowing your stuff for a long time,
so I just want to ask,how did you get kind of started with
relative athletic score and kind of whatis that like? How did this journey
all start for you? So itstarted a little bit earlier than this,
but the actual idea and the nameall started back in twenty thirteen. This
was the Le'Veon Bell draft. Itwasn't just Le'Veon Bell, it was just
(01:27):
he was kind of the catalyst thatpulled it all together. If you remember,
Le'Veon Bell ran a four six fortyat the combine and the entire argument
around his draft position where he wasgoing to go was about how unathletic he
was, and it was just incorrect, is what it was. A four
to six for a two hundred andthirty pound running back is not bad.
(01:49):
It's not great, but it's nota terrible score either. And some of
his other tests, particularly as Condro, were excellent. Even if he was
a smaller back, they would havebeen excellent. And I just to look
at all those buzzwords that we use, you know, this guy is explosive.
This guy is quick, but notfast, and I didn't. I
just wanted to quantify that better.I think there's a better way to look
at that so that we can allkind of understand what we're talking about when
(02:12):
we look at these testing metrics.And what I ended up landing on was
putting everything on a zero to tenscale. Everybody can understand zero to ten,
it's real simple. Zero's never goingto be the good one, you
know, the tent's the good one. When I designed the cards, everything
is stop light color coded because everybodyunderstands what red, yellow, and green
mean. They're never going to reallyconfuse what those things are. The intention
(02:35):
behind this wasn't to find some bigpredicted metric. It wasn't to find,
you know, some magic number thatwe can use in scouting. It was
just to provide a little bit ofadditional context behind what all of these individual
tests are. Every one of thesescores is up against the player's position group
from as far back as my datagoes, which is nineteen eighty seven,
all the way to a player's draftyear, and it just locks in when
(02:57):
they get to their draft year,so they the score doesn't change, you
know, in years after that youcan always look back at to this guy
was always you know, an eightpoint seven or whatever. But yeah,
it's been a lot of fun.And then back in twenty seventeen night Span
at the database and one online andsince then it's just grown every year.
It's been a lot of fun towatch huge people are using it. Yeah,
it's I see it absolutely everywhere.Every draft analyst uses it. It's
(03:21):
like the base foundation for well,here's the player's physical tools, and then
you know, add into it whatyou see on tape and what this player
does actually on the field. It'slike the first bit of analysis you get
to. So the interesting question nowfor me is because you were saying that
we would say things the buzzwords.You know, this player is explosive,
he's shifty. Do you think nownow that you have quantified it in a
(03:44):
way that people the eye test peopledid a good enough job with it,
or have you started to uncover like, hey, we're uncovering more things about
guys and some of these athletes throughthe ras, Like has it opened things
up or have you kind of seenlike, hey, we've been doing already
a pretty good job of evaluating ifthe guys an athlete or not. It's
really done a good job I thinkof helping us quantify the different types of
(04:06):
players that you see at each individualposition. RAZ currently uses the traditional NFL
positional alignment. So we have defensivetackle, we don't have nose tackle or
three four interior alignment. We onlyhave wide receiver. We've got like three
thousand of them. But we havewide receiver. We don't have, you
know, like a slot receiver anX or Y. They're not broken down
(04:28):
at such a granular level. Nowwe are adding that. That is the
thing that we're working on adding,but it's not it's not ready yet and
might not be for some time.But it has helped a lot when you're
trying to to really quantify where aplayer wins on a football field. You
know, when a player doesn't scorein those those top tier scores, it
doesn't mean that they're a bad athletenecessarily, it means that their their score
(04:49):
wasn't very high based on comparisons totheir position group. But we learned from
the DK Metcalf draft when he cameout that like sometimes those numbers don't matter
if a player he doesn't do awhole lot of change of direction stuff.
If they're primarily a big, fastguy that can run down the field and
that's how he's used. The agilitydrills don't matter because they're not part of
(05:10):
your evaluation. It's just like watchinga guy on the field where if they
don't do the thing you're gonna needhim to do, that's a problem.
If they do the thing you needhim to do, that's great. You
know, it's it's wonderful to seeguys that actually do really well in those
areas. Wide receiver is always theeasiest. I use that as an example
the most, but you can seethis in other positions too. But you'll
have guys who have, you know, lower forty yard dash times, but
(05:33):
they'll have amazing explosiveness drills or amazingagility drills, and that's usually what you're
gonna see on the football field.You know, my Lions drafted amanas Saint
Brown, who had a good scorewas in the sevens, but he didn't
have that elite He didn't have thatelite tier score because of his forty yard
dash. His forty yr dash wasn'tthat in fact good. He ran in
(05:54):
the four sixes. But it alsodidn't matter if you ever watched him play,
because he's not a burner. Heisn't a guy that's gonna beat everybody
all the way downfield. He's anexcellent route runner, and he's very good
at change of direction, and hislower body explosiveness was a very a very
big strength for him, and hetested very well in those areas. So
if a guy tests well in aspecific area and that's where he's win,
(06:16):
you can usually project him to theNFL pretty easily, even if his overall
composite score isn't that great. AndI think that's the part that's really that
Rez has really helped helped to lookat, because even though we're looking at
guys who don't have great scores andstill find NFL success, you know,
we're we're learning to look at thedata more critically. We're trying to understand
exactly what it is that helps theseguys win in the NFL. And it's
(06:40):
really fun to do that stuff.One of my favorite things to do is
find guys who score poorly and stilldo well, because those are interesting.
It's the Jarvis Landry test, Isn'tthat I love that, but that's my
favorite. That's my favorite tested wellin nothing, and the guy ended up
having a really good NFL career,like he was fantastic. So and for
your for your listeners, he testeda zero point two seven out of ten.
(07:01):
It's one of the one of theworst. Yeah, one of the
worst scores ever. And there's threethere's three thousand wide receivers in this database
and he scored in the bottom twopercent. That's amazing. So even maybe
that is an extreme example, isthere something even there where there's a small
test number that you see, like, oh, I can explain a little
bit of why Jarvis Landry is theway he is because that's what I always
(07:24):
like because Patrick Mahomes, you know, didn't like run all that well.
But I always say, like PatrickMahomes somehow outruns every defensive end even though
he's slow. And I remember thatwas one of our first interactions. But
you go, no, if youlook at his ten yard splits and the
fact that he is, you know, spatially aware of where he's at at
all times, Like you add allof this stuff together, Yeah, that's
why he looks faster and that's whyhe's out running defensive ends. So is
(07:45):
there even something like with Jarvis Landrylike a small at Hey, maybe he
tested well in mis kone drill alittle bit, uh, and he ended
up you know, doing well inthis area because I feel like with every
player you can find something. Ican understand why he is the way he
is just by you know, thethings he does in the field, but
also how is his risees and likesome of the things that he tested in.
Yeah, normally that's the case.Not in this one. No,
(08:09):
his tests were just they were justterrible. But there is there is more
to it than that, and andthis is part of why he is my
favorite. It isn't just that hescored so abysmally and still found success.
It's that there's more to his numbersand it's more interesting when you dig into
it, because he did significantly betterin testing at his pro day. Jarvis
Landy was also famously injured at theCombine. He had a hamstring injury going
(08:31):
into the Combine. He tested Ithink he said he was at like seventy
or eighty percent when he tested atthe Combine, and he tested anyway,
He's a great case study for whyyou should not do that. Yeah,
because now the card lives forever forever. He tested at his pro day,
and he tested significantly better than hedid at his pro day. And we'll
(08:52):
see this with guys like XAVII andHoward and Joe Hayden who tested mid you
below average but close to average,and then when they tested at their PROTA
elite level athletes at their prot theywere dealing with an injury when they went
to the combine, and they wentto their prote and significantly improved. Landry
did that, but his score wasgoing from zero point two seven, so
(09:13):
I think he got into the two's. Okay, that was a pretty big
job, but still not great.Yeah, there weren't any any saving grace
athletic testings for him, but wedo see that. You know, even
Tom Brady, who people love topoint out how terrible of an athlete Tom
Brady was, but at the timewhen he came out, his cone drill
(09:33):
was exceptional for the quarterback position whenhe came out, and it's still decent
for a quarterback even if it makesit makes a lot of sense because his
strength was always moving in the pocket. There's a little just a quick move.
Yes, I love that stuff.So you mentioned as well, like
you're you're taking the averages of youknow what these ethnics are. And one
of the things that that's been comingup a lot more, linebacker's been getting
(09:54):
smaller and smaller. Is there evera time where the averages do change or
like you have to think of,okay, well, maybe you know,
I do have to pull the weightdown a little bit for an average linebacker,
things like that. Has anything everchanged throughout since you've been said,
you've been doing this since twenty thirteen, anything changed in how those things are
done? Not due to that.I had changed the entire calculation back in
(10:16):
twenty seventeen because of Byron Jones,because he set a world record for the
broad jump, and at the timeI was trying to account, I was
trying to make sure that every numberwas evenly distributed. The actual raz,
the actual final score that we getis an evenly distributed metric. So there's
the same number of players between anytwo equal distant points. So between one
(10:37):
and two ras there's the same numberof players as there's between three and four,
four and five, and so on. Individual metrics aren't like that.
Individual metrics are all on a bellcurve. Most statistics in the unity,
by a very wide margin. Moststatistics are on Bell curve, and I
was trying to account for that andtrying to find a way to do it,
and I thought I had a decentway of doing it, and then
(10:58):
Byron Joe came along and broke itand it just didn't work anymore. So
I had to go back and rethinkit, and ultimately I ended up just
putting everything back on a regular zeroto ten skill, because again, it's
simplicity, and all you have todo to make it into a percentile is
add another zero at the end,and it's not percentile. You know,
you're just moving the decimal point overone and it's a percentile. It does
(11:22):
cause some confusion, for like howthere's a bigger gaps for smaller testing differences
towards the middle, which is typicalof any Bell curve. That's just how
bell curves work. But for themost part, I haven't really changed the
calculation all that much. Now youmentioned linebackers getting smaller. A lot of
my data, a vast majority ofmy data is post twenty ten, so
(11:46):
there isn't as big of a distancebetween the majority of the data than people
kind of think, because the datagoes back to nineteen eighty seven. But
we're not looking at the same volumeor quality of data in the eighties and
nineties as we all are in thetwenty tens and twenty twenties because the Internet.
Because the Internet, the Internet moreavailable and people were able to do
(12:07):
a lot more things, track alot more of this stuff. Linebackers haven't
gone down by size as much aspeople think that they have, but they
do appear to be getting smaller,at least in terms of weird guys are
getting drafted. Whether or not thatbecomes a long term trend, We've got
to wait and see whether it becomesa trend. And the NFL is cyclical,
so whenever we have a trend,it might just come back around.
(12:31):
You know, every seven or eightyears, we go from bigger, stronger,
lengthier cornerbacks to smaller, more agilecornerbacks because they're adapting to the wide
receivers that are used to beat thosebigger and longer corners. And then once
those guys come around, we getbigger wide receivers, so they draft bigger
corners with longer arms, and wejust it just switches up every couple of
(12:52):
years. I love that because Ialways thought, well, if linebackers are
getting smaller, at least some ofthe top guys and guys that are going
to be starting, they're they're puttingemphasis more on athleticism than they are on
size. Well then when did teamscounter, Well, let's just get bigger
running backs, and bigger running backsare going to punish those linebackers more.
You know, I think teams arestarting to go bigger interior offensive linemen or
(13:13):
bigger offensive linemen in general. Ithink a few teams started to do that
in these last few drafts. Soyeah, that's like there are ways that's
kind of funny. You're you're truein that, and that teams just find
a way to counter it in someway. Okay, if the trends this,
well let's try and counter that insome other way to end up beating
it. I find that very fascinating. So, ras is this thing that
(13:33):
I have been seeing all the time, and I know NFL draft analysts use
it. It's everywhere. Do youknow if teams are aware of it?
And I asked that specifically because there'sa certain team in the city of Philadelphia
that seems a draft a lot ofthese guys. But do you, like,
are teams starting to use this more, are they aware of of what
these numbers look like for? SoI know teams are aware of it because
I've talked to Scout scouts are oneof the one of the top people that
(13:56):
I talk to, Scouts agents,players themselves, So I know that teams
are aware of it, but teamsdon't use brads. I would love that
if teams did, but they don't. Because NFL teams have a dedicated analytics
department, at least if they're evenremotely decent, they have some kind of
analytics department. They have access todata that I will never be able to
get my hands on. I've gottenpretty good at networking and trying to find
(14:18):
ways to get data, but Iwill never data you're missing. What kind
of data would you like to get? Oh, the GPS stuff is going
to be really interesting once that stuffcomes out, but we're so far out
I think on actually getting access tothat data. But I would love to
get that kind of stuff, andthen individual workout data because a lot of
the players who don't who don't test, and I use air quotes intentionally because
(14:41):
a lot of guys that we thinkdon't test still test. Those numbers exist,
we just don't get to see thembecause they didn't do it as a
combine and they didn't do it attheir pro day. They do it in
an individual workout with an NFL team. So NFL teams have that data.
What RADS provides is a useful analogto what NFL teams are using it,
and you see it very easily withteams like the Eagles, the Colts,
(15:03):
the Packers, teams that very clearlyare using something that is at least similar
to what RAZ is doing because they'rethey're they're just drafting all those top tier
athletes all the time, you know. So whatever NFL teams are using,
they all have their own individual metricsthat they have, but a lot of
them do line up pretty well withRAZ. And that's pretty easy and obvious
(15:24):
to see most of the time.Yeah, and so let's go specifically into
the Eagles, because I find Ifind that fascinating and that's why I wanted
to get you on because Howie Rosemanis seeming to align with these RAD scores
and obviously the numbers they have,but they're very clearly trying to get athletes
that are testing high explosive athletes andin any way, whether they test physically
or they're fast, or the conedrills, whatever it is, they're getting
(15:46):
some of these top athletes. Whatkind of trends have you've seen in the
way Howie Roseman's been looking at this? Is it a certain type of athlete?
Is there something that that he's lookingfor specifically? It's just it's very
eye opening because the Eagles do endup in a lot of I think you
just put out a list recently onyour Twitter at math bomb, and the
(16:06):
Eagles were pretty high. Again,I think there were number two in rascore.
So at what are some trends you'reseeing with the Eagles and how they're
drafting these guys. So we're gonnabreak this up into two separate parts because
the offensive line specifically for the Eagleshas been a focus for more than a
decade since I started dracking this.One of the first trends that I saw
was how insane the Eagles were aboutathleticism on the offensive line. They don't
(16:32):
like guys that can't move, thataren't explosive, that aren't quick, that
aren't fast. Anybody's missing any ofthose traits. The Eagles are usually out
or at least tentative on guys likethat. They want the very best athletes
on their offensive line, and theyhave for a long time, to the
point where a couple of teams havecaught up. Now, the Falcons notably,
(16:52):
and the Colts over the last yearshave kind of caught up to the
Eagles, but that gap was prettywide for a long time. Nobody was
touching the Eagles athleticism on their offensiveline, and I think that they've kind
of just noticed that it tends towork out at other positions as well,
similar to how the Steelers have kindof made a few changes in the last
(17:14):
couple of years. I think whenyou fail, when you miss on a
player who doesn't test very well,and the reason they fail is in at
least good part due to the lackof athletic traits. Teams picked that up
really quick and they counter it veryeasily, very quickly, very quickly.
Okay, well, we're done tryingthat. That's something we tried. It
didn't work. We're going to goback to drafting the athletes. So the
(17:36):
Eagles drafted Derek Barnett in the firstround and did not test very well.
I think he had a good coneand nothing else really, and he struggled
throughout his whole career. He wasalways a rotational guy who could come in
if you needed him too, buthe was never a starting quality pass rusher
in the NFL. And then jjRsiga Whiteside is another a good example because
(18:00):
he had that size and speed,but nothing else, and they wanted to
see, hey, maybe we cantry that. But if a guy's that
limited in what they can do,they've got to be really good in the
thing that they're good at. Ifthey're not so good that they can make
up for everything else, then they'regoing to just fall to the wayside.
One of the most common examples ofthat you'll find is these smaller, speedier
(18:22):
receivers. Guys are small and fast. Teams love to try those guys out,
but a lot of times it doesn'twork because you've got to be able
to do more than that. AndI think that that's been my takeaway with
Howie Roseman is when he when hedid draft guys like Derek Barnett and our
Stega Whiteside, Jalen Rager. Howis what they say Jalen Regor didn't test
all that well too decent speed,Yeah, but when you grab guys like
(18:45):
that, and you find out,oh, they are limited in these other
areas. They're very limited in whatthey can do. They the Eagles over
corrected, and I say over corrected, meaning that they just went to that
other extreme. They would just like, Okay, we're we're just going to
go all the way to the extremehere. Not not that they over corrected
it and everything failed fell apart,but they immediately went to the extreme and
they were like, look, we'regonna look for guys that have all the
(19:06):
traits, you know, we wantto have all the traits, or or
if they have a lack of traits, it's only one lack of traits.
If they're not agile, they betterbe fast and explosive. If they're not
explosive, that they better be fastand agile. They don't want to take
guys that have just one area ofstrength. They want guys with only one
area of weakness and nothing else.They don't want guys that have a whole
(19:29):
lot of deficiencies that they have towork through. And that seems to be
what what they've done over the lastseveral years since making those years talking about
five or five or six years trendhere, So not a great a great
length of time to look at thatkind of a trend, but enough it's
notable. You know, Rager wasonly a couple of years ago, but
they found out very quickly that thatwasn't going to work out and they were
(19:49):
like, well, let's move onand go get somebody else. Jalen Rager.
H Yeah, that wasn't one oftheir best. But then then comes
something because they I think what theyalso have done too is getting guys that
are productive in college, even ifit's at a lower level, getting guys
that are productive. The one draftpick that you know, it was good
and I think some people turned aroundto it and started to understand why how
(20:12):
Roseman drafted him. But Jalx Hunt, like, Jalx Hunt, what have
you seen from guys that are playingat a lower level that end up doing
really well in these tests? Isthere anything we can we can take from
that? Because I think it's nota genius swing. You know, everybody
can tell the guys a really goodathlete, and there was production and there's
some things to like about Jalx Hunteven though we played at a lower level.
(20:33):
But still it's taking a risk insome way. But the Eagles felt
pretty comfortable with it in the thirdround. You know, what are those
guys like because it's hard to sometimesevaluate those guys in the lower levels because
they're not facing top competition. ButI think this is one thing that they
can compete with all the other guysin the D one level, the top
top schools. So yeah, JaloxHunt may not have played the same competition,
but he's the same kind of athletethat they are, and I feel
(20:55):
like that's that's where you can finda Jalx Hunt. But what did you
think about about that draft picks specificand what those players are like. Yeah,
so when you get a guy froma smaller school, and this is
another guy that didn't have he doesn'thave deficiencies, right, So he had
the speed. All of his speedtesting was a lead. All of his
explosive testing was ninety fifth percent orhigher. His agility testing it didn't hit
that elite range, but it wasonly just shy of it. Both of
(21:18):
his agility tests were seventy fifth percentileor higher. So he didn't really have
any areas where he was deficient athletically. When you're watching a player at a
smaller school, that's the competition isalways going to be that big complaint that
people are looking for. But whatNFL evaluators are looking at is is he
dominating that level of competition. Ifyou're watching him on tape and he is
bigger, faster, stronger, quickerthan every single player he faces, you
(21:41):
can project that upwards if he's strugglingagainst that competition or if he's only winning
in one way. So if he'seven tests really well for his agility drills
but you never see that on tape, they're probably not going to look at
that as a green flag. Theymight look at that as something that maybe
we can develop it, but ifit doesn't show up on tape, NFL
evaluator is not really going to paythat much attention to It has to at
(22:03):
least show up. One of myfavorite examples to use and is Ziggiansa who
played defensive end in college, buthe also played linebacker and they even put
him at safety sometimes, which isridiculous considering he's a massive dude. But
they did all kinds of weird thingswith him. But when he went to
the Senior Bowl, the Lions hadcoached the Senior Bowl that year, and
(22:26):
they just put him on edge,and they just put him on the edge
and said, you're rushing the passerevery play. That's your job. You're
just going to rush the passer.And he dominated those plays. So they
were able to look at all thatathleticism and look at all the weird stuff
that they tried to do with him. They were able to kind of narrow
down to that, look, wewant to use him as a pass rusher,
and we know this athleticism works onthat level. So when you have
a guy like Hunt who played fora smaller school, he has all of
(22:48):
those athletic trades they pop on tape. He's just not playing guys that are
really going to challenge him a wholelot, which means that he's not developing
his pass rushing moves. He's notdeveloping counters. His pass rushing plan is
probably not very developed because if hedoesn't beat a guy in his first try,
he just is done because he'll beathim on the next one. He
knows he's bigger, faster, andstronger. He'll beat him on the next
(23:08):
one. You know, they gotlucky on a play, But when you're
playing against a bigger competition, ifa guy beats you, you've got to
learn how to beat him back.So if you have a spin move and
he beats that spin move, yougot to have something else go in with
a swim to try to do abull rush, you got to have something
else to go at it. That'sthose things that get missed at lower levels
because they don't get challenged enough toreally develop in those areas as often.
(23:32):
So last Eagles question I have becauseone of the I think the most important
positions for the Eagles, and interms of just finding somebody to play it
is going to be linebacker. Theyaddress defensive back I think very well in
Cooper de Gene and Quinnon Mitchell,and I'm sure I do you agree with
that as well? Right, thosetwo are pretty good. Yeah, So
I think they addressed that well.You know, they address things a defensive
line well, you know, Ithink it was great bringing in twenty five
(23:53):
year old Brice Off. You know, I think Josh Sweat's good and I'm
glad they brought him back, andJalen Carter, I think is just going
to get better. But linebacker hasalways been an issue. And again we
talked about some undersized linebackers and Eagles. That's the one position they're really not
that athletic. M N. KobeDean, if I remember correctly, didn't
score that well. Jeremiah Troter Junior, I think, was one of their
lowest RAZ scores in this year's draft. Can those linebackers work? Like is
(24:17):
there? Do you find one ofthose two guys fit a profile that can
at least work? To me,Jeremiah Trotter, he seems a little bit
like TJ. Edwards and so it'snot perfect and t J. Edwards had
some faults, but TJ. Edwardsstill ended up being one hundred tackle a
year player for them, especially inthe fourth year in the last year that
he was with the Eagles, anddid really well in Chicago. But that's
the position that seems to be lackingathleticism the most, or at least that
(24:41):
radz score the most. But doyou find that those two in some way
can end up producing at an NFLlevel? Yeah, it's possible. And
Jeremi Trader didn't get in an officialRAZ like a final RAZ, but he
did test his agility drills and theywere just okay, and he had almost
exactly the bare average for the shuttleand just above that for his cone.
So he didn't test very well athis agility drills. If he was expected
(25:04):
excuse me, if he's expected torun really well, that might be okay.
We've seen examples of guys his sizethat have found some success. I'm
playing Bolton for the Chiefs, probablythe best example of really good speed,
but didn't really test well anywhere else. But we don't have a whole We
don't have his speed, and Idon't I don't think that was an area
he was expected to test well either. It was his time drill. His
(25:25):
time drills were concerned. He didn'ttest in his explosion drills either. I
don't think there was as much concernover his explosiveness, but there definitely was
about his speed and his agility.If you're a guy who doesn't have a
whole lot of speed and isn't thequickest, you're generally gonna be stuck in
the middle of the field. Ithink I lost you for a second.
(26:00):
There you go, I think gotlost for a second. When you have
a guy who doesn't have those trades, they can still be successful, just
you're probably not thinking of them aslike an all Pro linebacker. You're thinking
of a guy who can get youa bunch of tackles, because when you
put a guy who has really goodinstincts in the middle of the field,
they will usually be productive. It'sjust those that productive productivity is usually going
(26:23):
to be limited to tackles. It'snot gonna be a whole lot of sacks,
a whole lot of picks, awhole lot of force bumbles and stuff
like that. It's usually just understandingangles and where running backs are going to
be, understanding the play design andwhat your defensive players are expecting to do
where they're supposed to be. Andall of that stuff is north of the
neckline. That stuff that we don'ttest, we don't have any way to
(26:44):
test. That kind of stuff youcan still find success. It's just you're
generally not talking about an all prokind of guy. My favorite example to
use for that type player, andalso one of my favorite players ever was
was Steven Tullick. Tulik was asmaller player, He wasn't the most athletic
guy, but he was incredibly intuitivewhen it came to the game of football.
He knew where ball carriers were goingto be, he knew where those
(27:07):
gaps were going to be, andhe knew where he was supposed to be
on those plays. And that's thetype of player that you usually get with
that, which is you can geta guy that's productive, you know,
ten year player out of that.It's just not everybody's going to be an
All Pro. And I'm hoping thathe goes against this and becomes one,
just because it would be funny tolook back, honestly saying that specifically,
but generally, when you're looking attraits, that's the kind of guy you're
(27:30):
expecting somebody that can be that thatwhat's the term that they use in man
the field marshal, Right, yeah, field marshal, Yeah, that type
of player where it's using that instinctivenessand knowing where they're supposed to be and
then just getting there. Gosh,I always blank on his name. The
Lions had a linebacker like that.He went to play for the Cardinals for
several years, played for like tenyears. He was slow as molasses,
(27:53):
look like he's running in sand,but he was always where he was supposed
to be and when the play,when the play started to evolve, he
always knew where he had to getto. And the guy would come up
with, you know, sixty plustackles every year because he just knew where
he needed to be and he wasalways able to get there. You know,
not being fast is a negative,but that's different than being slow.
(28:17):
If you have a guy that's slowthere, they're not going to be able
to play in the NFL. Theyjust aren't. If a guy's not fast,
you can work with that. Still, there's still ways to work with
being not fast, right, theycan make up. The way to make
up for that is instinctually being somewhereand knowing reacting to that a lot faster
than somebody else. Yeah, andI don't think. I don't think Trotter
is slow at all. I doesn'tseem like that shows on tape. Definitely
(28:40):
instinctual. And it's him in theKobe Dean when he was at Georgia as
well, So there is something towork with there. Now. I got
just one general question for the lastone. Because you put out a list
of and ranked all the teams basedon RAZ scores, any team surprise you
and where they rank and in howthey ranked in terms of scores, there
(29:02):
was a lot of them that didn't. The Eagles among them, we've always
known, like I said that they'vebeen huge athletic people. The Ravens are
one that I'm really paying close attentionto because they are impossible to figure out.
When it comes to the draft.It's if they're one of the best
run front offices in the NFL,and when it comes to the draft,
they are just one of the bestdraft evaluating teams in the NFL. And
(29:22):
it's been that way for three orfour decades. It hasn't changed. And
there's no rhyme to that madness.There's no not that I've been able to
find. I'm sure there is.But what that's interesting because I agree with
you. I think the Ravens havebeen like when you talk about the gold
standard of drafting, it's been theRavens. And it's funny to hear that
there's not really any any method day. It's it's I'm sure there is.
I guess they're just open it right. Yeah, But they've the last couple
(29:47):
of years they have been one ofthe top teams when it comes to drafting
athletes, which is a change fromprevious seasons. And on top of that,
their roster has gotten progressively more athletic, more athletic in the last couple
of years than it ever has beenwhich is another thing that's a bit curious
now. Like I said, they'rereally unpredictable, so this could just be
a blip. It's technically a trendbecause we're looking at at least three seasons.
(30:11):
That's a trend, but I justdon't trust it because they're so unpredictable.
So until it's like an established Yeah, until it's an established trend,
I'm curious about. But it piquedmy interest that they've been ranked and they
didn't even rank that highly this year. It's just that they've been moving up
each year, which is normally notthe case. Normally just kind of stay
(30:33):
down there and do their own thing. They will always draft lower testing guys
earlier, guys that fall in thedraft. The Ravens are like, sure,
we'll let them fall to us.They cheat every year and they get
guys that fall all the time.But they're also more willing to take a
risk on guys with lower than averagetesting in the later rounds, where other
teams would just be like, nah, we're not even going to touch them.
(30:56):
We'll get them, We'll get theman undrafted free agency, and the
Ravens are like, yeah, notif you draft them. You know.
So we're talking with Kent Lee Plattyand you can follow him at math Bomb,
one of the better follows, especiallyfor NFL draft stuff, and I
like following it during the season becauseyou still end up posting a bunch of
these raz scores and RAZ cards onTwitter, especially during the season, and
(31:18):
it's such a great follow and reallygood to interact with as well. But
as you can see, this isnot just a sports podcast. We also
talk movies as well, So Ilike to ask one movie question. I
feel like I didn't know that untiljust now, and that may be really
excited. Yeah. I was aboutto say, I feel like I've seen
you tweet some movies, So anyany movies recently that you have seen that
you would like to share. Iwatched Late Night with the Devil and was
(31:41):
really impressed with it. There haven'tbeen a lot of good horror movies lately.
What does it Talk to Me?Or whatever you want with the hand,
it's supposed to be really good.I haven't got a chance to watch
that yet. Yeah, I likethat one a lot. But the format
for Late Night to the Devil wasreally intriguing. It It played out as
if it was a seventies talk show, like a Jimmy Carson type thing.
I knew that going in that thatwas the backdrop to the whole movie.
(32:04):
I didn't know how much they weregonna lean into that going through the show
because the first half, which isall it's really slow. The first half
was really slow, but it reallyis just watching a late night show for
most of that first half, andthen things start to go wild, and
then the third act is insane andit's a it's a lot of fun,
and it was. It was reallywell put together, but that one was
(32:27):
really fun to me getting a chanceto watch that. Other than that,
I've watched a lot of bad movies. Yeah, it's been a lot of
these terrible and I've watched a lotof bad movies. I do like bad
movies though, too. I loveall movies. Yeah, it's different fun
in always I love bad well,because I like talking about bad movies.
I like talking about the Strangers.It was really bad. If you can
(32:49):
see it. I have a Ihave a little picture of a dude with
a bat of there which is frommy favorite movie, which is You're the
Hunter from the Future. That itis not a good movie. So in
the eighties, there was an actornamed Reb Brown. And if you know
who Red Brown is, you've watchedthat movie. You've watched all of his
movies. Because if you know whoReb Brown is, you're a Red Brown
(33:10):
fan. Yeah, he's most famousfor just yelling, like he doesn't have
catchphrases. He just yells a lot. But the movie was hilarious, and
there was a twist in the movie, which is that he wasn't really this
you know, cony and caveman typeguy. It was in the future and
there were aliens and stuff. Youmight have caught that twist though, if
you looked at the title of themovie, which was even over the Hunter
(33:31):
from the Future, and it's justit's just a wild ride. But there's
a scene in that movie where heshoots down a giant bat, which I
don't even think there were giant batsin the movie up until that point.
There just is one. He shootsit down and then he uses it as
a hang glider and he like hangglides into this cave while there's a theme
(33:52):
there's his own theme music, whichis yours World, He's the man.
Oh, and then he dropped kicksa caveman in the face this sounds incredible.
It sounds like bad movies. Badmovies are the best you're missing on
cinema in general if you get badmovies. So I was gonna ask this
question, but it sounds like youanswered it with one. So maybe another
(34:13):
movie or two, because I don'twant to do the letter boxed you know,
four favorite movies, but like,what would be a couple of movies
that really shows you kent taste incinema. So I watch a ridiculous amount
of film. If you want towatch a movie that will that will show
you all of the best parts aboutfilmmaking, writing, acting, cinematography,
(34:37):
the cohesion between the actors that youhave on set, the design, just
that even just the set design ina small set. You have to watch
Twelve Angry Men, the original one. It is one of the greatest movies
of all time, but it's alsoone of the greatest filmed movies of all
times. The way that they framethe characters in every shot, where there's
(34:57):
all these wide shots in the beginningand they like to show people from different
angles, but as the movie goeson, the cuts are quicker. The
camera shots are much closer because they'reshowing that tension, and they're doing it
without telling you, Hey, there'sthere's tension going on. You know,
you as a viewer just get thatbecause it's coming at you the way that
it is. In a similar way, I love horror movies, and I
(35:21):
could give you a different horror movieevery time you ask me. But one
specific area, which is sound design, which is the original Candy Man movie.
The sound design in that movie isone of the best aspects of it
because it's designed to make you feeluneasy. It's not meant to be scary,
it's not meant to jump out atyou have those basically thick mettlements,
(35:43):
the violins and everything just kind ofcrushes at you. It doesn't do that
for most of the movie, butit just it just drags you along in
a way where you feel like somethingis wrong with what you're watching on screen,
which is one of the it's it'ssuch a well done movie. I
love that. And then one thatI bring up a lot is The African
Queen Humphrey Bogart Katherine Hepburn, whichit's it's a fine movie. I watched
(36:07):
this movie every year pretty much.It's one of my favorite movies to watch.
But it's not because it's a greatfilm in that it's well written or
even well shot. It's just oneof the best examples of taking an actor
who is at the very height oftheir craft. You have two of them
there, at the very height oftheir craft. You put them in a
small, condensed situation without a lotof story, without a lot of a
(36:30):
lot of things that they have todraw, and you just say, carry
this movie for me. And youhave Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn who just
their their chemistry on set and theway that they interact with each other,
the way that they work within thatkind of constraints where it's a condensed film
with a small it's basically on oneboat the whole time. And for those
who followed me and you've heard metalk about the movies, the Boat Test
(36:52):
that is specifically talking about. That'sright. That's why that's why I remember
movies, because, yeah, youtalked about The Boat Test. I actually
watched and I was gonna talk aboutthis because I'll usually just review movies on
my own after but since you're hereand talking movies, I watched the Before
Trilogy. I don't know if you'veever seen those Richard Linklater's Before trilogy with
(37:13):
Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy, andit's essentially just following those two around talking
to each other. Now, now, the whole premise of the first one
is they're young twenty years old.They meet on a train and they talk
a little bit and they realize theyhave this connection, and so Ethan Hawk's
character convinces her he come off thetrain with me. Let's have us spend
a day in Vienna, and thenyou can go back to wherever you're going
(37:34):
after that. And they spend thiswhole day and they talk about life,
and it's it's literally just them goingthrough different parts of Vienna with the focus
just focus mostly on just those two, and it's a conversation the entire time.
You're getting everything you need to knowabout these characters through just dialogue.
You're not getting much through other camerashots or other characters coming in. It's
just those two talking. I lovethat, and I feel like that would
(37:57):
pass your boat test. It's alittle bit. There's obviously different scenes and
like different settings at least in partsof the enda, but it's still in
this one city and they walk aroundit basically just talking about life and everything
in love and it's it's incredible.It's absolutely incredible. I love. I
love when you get the actors thathave that type of chemistry and they have
there we just know that that's gonnabe a good movie. And you get
(38:21):
that actors and directors too, Yes, all the time. We all know
Johnny DApp and Tim Burton, youknow, DiCaprio and and all them.
We are crazy. Yeah, yeah, everyone but Mithfune and Usa. You
know, there's there's always those thoseactor director combos. I get the actor
brew one car why but he wasin a lot of that stuff in a
(38:43):
lot of his movies. Yeah,And that's it's obvious when you watch it.
And it's not just oh, theirtheir buddies, you know, they're
their buddies. They get a littlethere's something that like magically happens when a
duo pairs up in some way.Because actually, I think I think to
shar mifuone and a Curasawa didn't evenreally like each other. I don't think
they I don't think they got along, incredible, very well credit.
They just made magic. They justmade magic together. Man. Well that's
(39:07):
good to know because the Eagles Apparentlythere's a lot of tension in the Alchal
room in time, so maybe that'llmake some magic this next season. Kent,
that was awesome, Glad I gotto talk movies. I remember,
I am a very excited. Somaybe next time I'll just get you on
for the movie portion of it.Movie the no sports, no draft,
let's just talk movies a good oneto maybe do it during the summer as
we get ready for training camps andstuff like that. So where can people
(39:30):
find your work and what do youhave going on that people can look out
for? Yeah, you can followme like you already mentioned on Twitter at
math bomb, I'm on of theirsocials. I don't know how much I'm
gonna do. That was kind ofexperimental, but they have like a cap
on what you can actually how manythings you can post a day. So
I got kicked off of all themetal ones during the draft because I posted
too much. But that's unbelievable.That's anti social media that happened. You
(39:52):
really post too much? What doyou mean? And this is all over
running my website, which is ouras dot football. All all of my
data currently is free. We areadding a paid portion of the site that's
not up yet. We're going tohave that up in the next couple of
months, but that the current portionof the site. You can look up
any player from nineteen eighty seven totoday. You can look up all their
tests, what their scores are.You can change positions to see what they
(40:14):
would have scored other positions, changethe metrics that they scored to see what
if he was a little bit taller, what if he did run a forty
anything. You can look at allthat stuff as an on page calculator for
all that stuff, there's comparison pageswhere you can do side by side comparisons.
All of that stuff will remain onthe free side of the site,
and so you can check that outnow and it will remain on the free
sit It's not going to go behindthe paywall I do. When I do
(40:36):
introduce the paid content. That's goingto include all traditional statistics for the last
since nineteen eighty seven, so rushing, receiving, touchdowns, targets. It's
going to include player age. We'regoing to get all of the roster the
end ofvidual roster data, which iswhat I was posting earlier today about is
the individual rosters, all of thatstuff is going to be behind that paywall,
(40:58):
but it's going to be a lotlot of data that you can go
through, and it's going to bein such a way that you can download
it and look at it in allkinds of different ways to find comparison,
to look for those trends, thosetendencies, to try to find things.
We're also going to build out portionsof the site where we don't take into
account size. People have asked aboutthat, about ignoring the aspect of it.
(41:19):
We're going to have one where allof the metrics, each individual metric
is weighted by size, and rightnow currently just just the final score is
but we're going to wait all ofthe individual metrics to see if that gives
us any and we're going to domore experimental stuff like that. I also
have an internship program which i'll bestarting back up probably July, where I
(41:39):
bring in people and teach them howto code and how to look at analytics.
I try to get them into somenetworking. I did have one intern
this pastime that ended up getting hiredby university, so it started out pretty
well and I'm hoping I can doa little bit more with it the next
time, and yeah, just alot of stuff I love. Yes,
(42:00):
so do I see that's a that'sthe thing too. It's all born out
of a love for for football,and uh, it's just always fun to
break it down in so many differentways through analytic numbers like E p A.
You know, that's that's a number, that's that's boomed and to see
how that number correlates with good play. But also you know, raz scores.
Relative athletics score is something that thatreally has interested me. So to
(42:22):
to talk with you for a behindthe scenes look of of how it all
gets put together and what the trendsare and teams look for, that was
really eye opening for me. Sofollow Kent again. All that stuff you
could check out at math Bomb.Thanks again to Kent. More line change
coming up next, Thanks again toKent Lee Platty. Yes, Uh,
(42:43):
the the E is not silent.The E pretty much to follow through.
Follow through with the E, butfollow him at math bomb. Uh.
Relative athletics scorer is one tool Iuse a lot. It's a very easy
way just to figure out an athleteand to one of my favorite ways to
use it is too and I thinkthe Patrick Mahomes example is really good of
(43:04):
that is, so I'm seeing whata player is doing on the field.
How does his relative athletic score orsome of his testing numbers. How can
it explain what a player is doing. Patrick Mahomes is a great one.
I don't think Patrick Mahomes is fastat all. Patrick Mahomes you see all
the time. One of my favoritethings is watching the NFL Draft and they
will be doing forty yard dashes andthey'll show basically shadowed versions versions of where
(43:29):
other players were in previous combines,and they always showed for the quarterbacks where
Patrick Mahomes was. And you alwayssee Patrick Mahomes like a couple of clicks
behind some of these guys. Andthere's of course guys that are slower.
Mahomes only ran a four to eight, Like he's not fast, but he's
somehow every time you watch him,it's like he has this Houdini magic trick
of outrunning all defensive ends. Andit's not just the fact that the guy
(43:52):
runs a lot faster when there's athree hundred pound lineman behind him. There's
enough to explain. I think whatit was. In his cone drone,
he had a a really good tenyard split his first ten yards and also
add that to what you know abouthim and his spatial awareness and how he's
always good at knowing where everybody ison the field. All of that combined
can then explain that's why he's beatingguy the spots. That's that's why he's
(44:15):
able to beat an angle from adefensive end, even if the defensive end
is faster, because he instinctually isgetting there. He knows how much space
he has, he knows that hecan get to a spot, and again,
some of this short burst stuff reallyworks out for him. So it's
stuff like that to really explain howsome of these athletes are able to do
what they do, not just againlooking at the film and how do they
(44:36):
do it on the field and theirtechnique and stuff like that, but also
how their athleticism applies that or howtheir athletic traits are helping with that player.
It's really interesting stuff. Great.I get to talk some movies with
him as well. Yeah, myonly thing with the movies is I watched
the Before trilogy. It's one ofthe greatest trilogies of all time. It's
one of the greatest love stories ofall time. It is Richard Linklater's I
(45:00):
mean that's a masterpiece. Boyhood isRichard Linklater's best film. I think the
Before series is his greatest, greatestachievement, and Boyhood was an insane achievement,
spanning I think twelve years of filmingand they were periodically film every few
years, finally to an end productof twenty fourteen. But the story they
told, and the full story theytold through three different stories through we a
(45:21):
span of eighteen years the first filmand the nine years after that for the
second film, the nine years afterthat for the third film. That is
to me his best cinemat achievement.And that's a crazy thing to say with
how crazy of an achievement Boyhood was. But the Before trilogy, if you
haven't watched yet, great love story, great dialogue between two characters talking about
(45:43):
life, talking about love, missedconnections is It's really great to watch.
So Before sunrits, Before Sunset andBefore Midnight. But that is it for
the line Change again. You canfind the Line Change wherever you get your
podcasts, especially in the iHeartRadio app. Just search of the Line Change with
John Jansen. You will see allthe episodes listed there, including this one.
(46:05):
As well. More line Change willbe coming up next week, but
that is it for the line Changepodcast right here on the Gambler
It is episode number eleven twelve.I never get that's a bit at this
point, I'm never gonna get theepisode number right. I'm either gonna be
one off, whether it's one lessor one more than we already have done.
Either way, you're tuned into anotherepisode of the line Change. You
can get it wherever you get yourpodcast. Uh, just search up the
line change with John Jansen. Uh, search up line change because there's a
(00:21):
lot of line changes, but withJohn Jansen, and then you'll see mine
wherever you get your podcast, especiallyiHeartRadio app. Search up line Change with
John Jansen. You can follow meJohn Jansen at Jay Jansen thirty four on
x. You can follow my nextguest over at math bomb. And if
you are any kind of draft nerd, you're any kind of NFL nerd and
(00:42):
you look at our our as relativeathletics score, you're most likely seeing it
from this guy Kent. How doyou say your name as well? You're
at math bomb on Twitter, Buthow you say your name? That's Kelly
Platty. Yeah, the he alwaysthrows people. Yeah Platty, I said
platt So Platty. That's really good. The e he is said all the
way through. I love that yougotta go with the follow through. So
(01:03):
Kent Lee platty Kent. I've beenfollowing your stuff for a long time,
so I just want to ask,how did you get kind of started with
relative athletic score and kind of whatis that like? How did this journey
all start for you? So itstarted a little bit earlier than this,
but the actual idea and the nameall started back in twenty thirteen. This
was the Le'Veon Bell draft. Itwasn't just Le'Veon Bell, it was just
(01:27):
he was kind of the catalyst thatpulled it all together. If you remember,
Le'Veon Bell ran a four six fortyat the combine and the entire argument
around his draft position where he wasgoing to go was about how unathletic he
was, and it was just incorrect, is what it was. A four
to six for a two hundred andthirty pound running back is not bad.
(01:49):
It's not great, but it's nota terrible score either. And some of
his other tests, particularly as Condro, were excellent. Even if he was
a smaller back, they would havebeen excellent. And I just to look
at all those buzzwords that we use, you know, this guy is explosive.
This guy is quick, but notfast, and I didn't. I
just wanted to quantify that better.I think there's a better way to look
at that so that we can allkind of understand what we're talking about when
(02:12):
we look at these testing metrics.And what I ended up landing on was
putting everything on a zero to tenscale. Everybody can understand zero to ten,
it's real simple. Zero's never goingto be the good one, you
know, the tent's the good one. When I designed the cards, everything
is stop light color coded because everybodyunderstands what red, yellow, and green
mean. They're never going to reallyconfuse what those things are. The intention
(02:35):
behind this wasn't to find some bigpredicted metric. It wasn't to find,
you know, some magic number thatwe can use in scouting. It was
just to provide a little bit ofadditional context behind what all of these individual
tests are. Every one of thesescores is up against the player's position group
from as far back as my datagoes, which is nineteen eighty seven,
all the way to a player's draftyear, and it just locks in when
(02:57):
they get to their draft year,so they the score doesn't change, you
know, in years after that youcan always look back at to this guy
was always you know, an eightpoint seven or whatever. But yeah,
it's been a lot of fun.And then back in twenty seventeen night Span
at the database and one online andsince then it's just grown every year.
It's been a lot of fun towatch huge people are using it. Yeah,
it's I see it absolutely everywhere.Every draft analyst uses it. It's
(03:21):
like the base foundation for well,here's the player's physical tools, and then
you know, add into it whatyou see on tape and what this player
does actually on the field. It'slike the first bit of analysis you get
to. So the interesting question nowfor me is because you were saying that
we would say things the buzzwords.You know, this player is explosive,
he's shifty. Do you think nownow that you have quantified it in a
(03:44):
way that people the eye test peopledid a good enough job with it,
or have you started to uncover like, hey, we're uncovering more things about
guys and some of these athletes throughthe ras, Like has it opened things
up or have you kind of seenlike, hey, we've been doing already
a pretty good job of evaluating ifthe guys an athlete or not. It's
really done a good job I thinkof helping us quantify the different types of
(04:06):
players that you see at each individualposition. RAZ currently uses the traditional NFL
positional alignment. So we have defensivetackle, we don't have nose tackle or
three four interior alignment. We onlyhave wide receiver. We've got like three
thousand of them. But we havewide receiver. We don't have, you
know, like a slot receiver anX or Y. They're not broken down
(04:28):
at such a granular level. Nowwe are adding that. That is the
thing that we're working on adding,but it's not it's not ready yet and
might not be for some time.But it has helped a lot when you're
trying to to really quantify where aplayer wins on a football field. You
know, when a player doesn't scorein those those top tier scores, it
doesn't mean that they're a bad athletenecessarily, it means that their their score
(04:49):
wasn't very high based on comparisons totheir position group. But we learned from
the DK Metcalf draft when he cameout that like sometimes those numbers don't matter
if a player he doesn't do awhole lot of change of direction stuff.
If they're primarily a big, fastguy that can run down the field and
that's how he's used. The agilitydrills don't matter because they're not part of
(05:10):
your evaluation. It's just like watchinga guy on the field where if they
don't do the thing you're gonna needhim to do, that's a problem.
If they do the thing you needhim to do, that's great. You
know, it's it's wonderful to seeguys that actually do really well in those
areas. Wide receiver is always theeasiest. I use that as an example
the most, but you can seethis in other positions too. But you'll
have guys who have, you know, lower forty yard dash times, but
(05:33):
they'll have amazing explosiveness drills or amazingagility drills, and that's usually what you're
gonna see on the football field.You know, my Lions drafted amanas Saint
Brown, who had a good scorewas in the sevens, but he didn't
have that elite He didn't have thatelite tier score because of his forty yard
dash. His forty yr dash wasn'tthat in fact good. He ran in
(05:54):
the four sixes. But it alsodidn't matter if you ever watched him play,
because he's not a burner. Heisn't a guy that's gonna beat everybody
all the way downfield. He's anexcellent route runner, and he's very good
at change of direction, and hislower body explosiveness was a very a very
big strength for him, and hetested very well in those areas. So
if a guy tests well in aspecific area and that's where he's win,
(06:16):
you can usually project him to theNFL pretty easily, even if his overall
composite score isn't that great. AndI think that's the part that's really that
Rez has really helped helped to lookat, because even though we're looking at
guys who don't have great scores andstill find NFL success, you know,
we're we're learning to look at thedata more critically. We're trying to understand
exactly what it is that helps theseguys win in the NFL. And it's
(06:40):
really fun to do that stuff.One of my favorite things to do is
find guys who score poorly and stilldo well, because those are interesting.
It's the Jarvis Landry test, Isn'tthat I love that, but that's my
favorite. That's my favorite tested wellin nothing, and the guy ended up
having a really good NFL career,like he was fantastic. So and for
your for your listeners, he testeda zero point two seven out of ten.
(07:01):
It's one of the one of theworst. Yeah, one of the
worst scores ever. And there's threethere's three thousand wide receivers in this database
and he scored in the bottom twopercent. That's amazing. So even maybe
that is an extreme example, isthere something even there where there's a small
test number that you see, like, oh, I can explain a little
bit of why Jarvis Landry is theway he is because that's what I always
(07:24):
like because Patrick Mahomes, you know, didn't like run all that well.
But I always say, like PatrickMahomes somehow outruns every defensive end even though
he's slow. And I remember thatwas one of our first interactions. But
you go, no, if youlook at his ten yard splits and the
fact that he is, you know, spatially aware of where he's at at
all times, Like you add allof this stuff together, Yeah, that's
why he looks faster and that's whyhe's out running defensive ends. So is
(07:45):
there even something like with Jarvis Landrylike a small at Hey, maybe he
tested well in mis kone drill alittle bit, uh, and he ended
up you know, doing well inthis area because I feel like with every
player you can find something. Ican understand why he is the way he
is just by you know, thethings he does in the field, but
also how is his risees and likesome of the things that he tested in.
Yeah, normally that's the case.Not in this one. No,
(08:09):
his tests were just they were justterrible. But there is there is more
to it than that, and andthis is part of why he is my
favorite. It isn't just that hescored so abysmally and still found success.
It's that there's more to his numbersand it's more interesting when you dig into
it, because he did significantly betterin testing at his pro day. Jarvis
Landy was also famously injured at theCombine. He had a hamstring injury going
(08:31):
into the Combine. He tested Ithink he said he was at like seventy
or eighty percent when he tested atthe Combine, and he tested anyway,
He's a great case study for whyyou should not do that. Yeah,
because now the card lives forever forever. He tested at his pro day,
and he tested significantly better than hedid at his pro day. And we'll
(08:52):
see this with guys like XAVII andHoward and Joe Hayden who tested mid you
below average but close to average,and then when they tested at their PROTA
elite level athletes at their prot theywere dealing with an injury when they went
to the combine, and they wentto their prote and significantly improved. Landry
did that, but his score wasgoing from zero point two seven, so
(09:13):
I think he got into the two's. Okay, that was a pretty big
job, but still not great.Yeah, there weren't any any saving grace
athletic testings for him, but wedo see that. You know, even
Tom Brady, who people love topoint out how terrible of an athlete Tom
Brady was, but at the timewhen he came out, his cone drill
(09:33):
was exceptional for the quarterback position whenhe came out, and it's still decent
for a quarterback even if it makesit makes a lot of sense because his
strength was always moving in the pocket. There's a little just a quick move.
Yes, I love that stuff.So you mentioned as well, like
you're you're taking the averages of youknow what these ethnics are. And one
of the things that that's been comingup a lot more, linebacker's been getting
(09:54):
smaller and smaller. Is there evera time where the averages do change or
like you have to think of,okay, well, maybe you know,
I do have to pull the weightdown a little bit for an average linebacker,
things like that. Has anything everchanged throughout since you've been said,
you've been doing this since twenty thirteen, anything changed in how those things are
done? Not due to that.I had changed the entire calculation back in
(10:16):
twenty seventeen because of Byron Jones,because he set a world record for the
broad jump, and at the timeI was trying to account, I was
trying to make sure that every numberwas evenly distributed. The actual raz,
the actual final score that we getis an evenly distributed metric. So there's
the same number of players between anytwo equal distant points. So between one
(10:37):
and two ras there's the same numberof players as there's between three and four,
four and five, and so on. Individual metrics aren't like that.
Individual metrics are all on a bellcurve. Most statistics in the unity,
by a very wide margin. Moststatistics are on Bell curve, and I
was trying to account for that andtrying to find a way to do it,
and I thought I had a decentway of doing it, and then
(10:58):
Byron Joe came along and broke itand it just didn't work anymore. So
I had to go back and rethinkit, and ultimately I ended up just
putting everything back on a regular zeroto ten skill, because again, it's
simplicity, and all you have todo to make it into a percentile is
add another zero at the end,and it's not percentile. You know,
you're just moving the decimal point overone and it's a percentile. It does
(11:22):
cause some confusion, for like howthere's a bigger gaps for smaller testing differences
towards the middle, which is typicalof any Bell curve. That's just how
bell curves work. But for themost part, I haven't really changed the
calculation all that much. Now youmentioned linebackers getting smaller. A lot of
my data, a vast majority ofmy data is post twenty ten, so
(11:46):
there isn't as big of a distancebetween the majority of the data than people
kind of think, because the datagoes back to nineteen eighty seven. But
we're not looking at the same volumeor quality of data in the eighties and
nineties as we all are in thetwenty tens and twenty twenties because the Internet.
Because the Internet, the Internet moreavailable and people were able to do
(12:07):
a lot more things, track alot more of this stuff. Linebackers haven't
gone down by size as much aspeople think that they have, but they
do appear to be getting smaller,at least in terms of weird guys are
getting drafted. Whether or not thatbecomes a long term trend, We've got
to wait and see whether it becomesa trend. And the NFL is cyclical,
so whenever we have a trend,it might just come back around.
(12:31):
You know, every seven or eightyears, we go from bigger, stronger,
lengthier cornerbacks to smaller, more agilecornerbacks because they're adapting to the wide
receivers that are used to beat thosebigger and longer corners. And then once
those guys come around, we getbigger wide receivers, so they draft bigger
corners with longer arms, and wejust it just switches up every couple of
(12:52):
years. I love that because Ialways thought, well, if linebackers are
getting smaller, at least some ofthe top guys and guys that are going
to be starting, they're they're puttingemphasis more on athleticism than they are on
size. Well then when did teamscounter, Well, let's just get bigger
running backs, and bigger running backsare going to punish those linebackers more.
You know, I think teams arestarting to go bigger interior offensive linemen or
(13:13):
bigger offensive linemen in general. Ithink a few teams started to do that
in these last few drafts. Soyeah, that's like there are ways that's
kind of funny. You're you're truein that, and that teams just find
a way to counter it in someway. Okay, if the trends this,
well let's try and counter that insome other way to end up beating
it. I find that very fascinating. So, ras is this thing that
(13:33):
I have been seeing all the time, and I know NFL draft analysts use
it. It's everywhere. Do youknow if teams are aware of it?
And I asked that specifically because there'sa certain team in the city of Philadelphia
that seems a draft a lot ofthese guys. But do you, like,
are teams starting to use this more, are they aware of of what
these numbers look like for? SoI know teams are aware of it because
I've talked to Scout scouts are oneof the one of the top people that
(13:56):
I talk to, Scouts agents,players themselves, So I know that teams
are aware of it, but teamsdon't use brads. I would love that
if teams did, but they don't. Because NFL teams have a dedicated analytics
department, at least if they're evenremotely decent, they have some kind of
analytics department. They have access todata that I will never be able to
get my hands on. I've gottenpretty good at networking and trying to find
(14:18):
ways to get data, but Iwill never data you're missing. What kind
of data would you like to get? Oh, the GPS stuff is going
to be really interesting once that stuffcomes out, but we're so far out
I think on actually getting access tothat data. But I would love to
get that kind of stuff, andthen individual workout data because a lot of
the players who don't who don't test, and I use air quotes intentionally because
(14:41):
a lot of guys that we thinkdon't test still test. Those numbers exist,
we just don't get to see thembecause they didn't do it as a
combine and they didn't do it attheir pro day. They do it in
an individual workout with an NFL team. So NFL teams have that data.
What RADS provides is a useful analogto what NFL teams are using it,
and you see it very easily withteams like the Eagles, the Colts,
(15:03):
the Packers, teams that very clearlyare using something that is at least similar
to what RAZ is doing because they'rethey're they're just drafting all those top tier
athletes all the time, you know. So whatever NFL teams are using,
they all have their own individual metricsthat they have, but a lot of
them do line up pretty well withRAZ. And that's pretty easy and obvious
(15:24):
to see most of the time.Yeah, and so let's go specifically into
the Eagles, because I find Ifind that fascinating and that's why I wanted
to get you on because Howie Rosemanis seeming to align with these RAD scores
and obviously the numbers they have,but they're very clearly trying to get athletes
that are testing high explosive athletes andin any way, whether they test physically
or they're fast, or the conedrills, whatever it is, they're getting
(15:46):
some of these top athletes. Whatkind of trends have you've seen in the
way Howie Roseman's been looking at this? Is it a certain type of athlete?
Is there something that that he's lookingfor specifically? It's just it's very
eye opening because the Eagles do endup in a lot of I think you
just put out a list recently onyour Twitter at math bomb, and the
(16:06):
Eagles were pretty high. Again,I think there were number two in rascore.
So at what are some trends you'reseeing with the Eagles and how they're
drafting these guys. So we're gonnabreak this up into two separate parts because
the offensive line specifically for the Eagleshas been a focus for more than a
decade since I started dracking this.One of the first trends that I saw
was how insane the Eagles were aboutathleticism on the offensive line. They don't
(16:32):
like guys that can't move, thataren't explosive, that aren't quick, that
aren't fast. Anybody's missing any ofthose traits. The Eagles are usually out
or at least tentative on guys likethat. They want the very best athletes
on their offensive line, and theyhave for a long time, to the
point where a couple of teams havecaught up. Now, the Falcons notably,
(16:52):
and the Colts over the last yearshave kind of caught up to the
Eagles, but that gap was prettywide for a long time. Nobody was
touching the Eagles athleticism on their offensiveline, and I think that they've kind
of just noticed that it tends towork out at other positions as well,
similar to how the Steelers have kindof made a few changes in the last
(17:14):
couple of years. I think whenyou fail, when you miss on a
player who doesn't test very well,and the reason they fail is in at
least good part due to the lackof athletic traits. Teams picked that up
really quick and they counter it veryeasily, very quickly, very quickly.
Okay, well, we're done tryingthat. That's something we tried. It
didn't work. We're going to goback to drafting the athletes. So the
(17:36):
Eagles drafted Derek Barnett in the firstround and did not test very well.
I think he had a good coneand nothing else really, and he struggled
throughout his whole career. He wasalways a rotational guy who could come in
if you needed him too, buthe was never a starting quality pass rusher
in the NFL. And then jjRsiga Whiteside is another a good example because
(18:00):
he had that size and speed,but nothing else, and they wanted to
see, hey, maybe we cantry that. But if a guy's that
limited in what they can do,they've got to be really good in the
thing that they're good at. Ifthey're not so good that they can make
up for everything else, then they'regoing to just fall to the wayside.
One of the most common examples ofthat you'll find is these smaller, speedier
(18:22):
receivers. Guys are small and fast. Teams love to try those guys out,
but a lot of times it doesn'twork because you've got to be able
to do more than that. AndI think that that's been my takeaway with
Howie Roseman is when he when hedid draft guys like Derek Barnett and our
Stega Whiteside, Jalen Rager. Howis what they say Jalen Regor didn't test
all that well too decent speed,Yeah, but when you grab guys like
(18:45):
that, and you find out,oh, they are limited in these other
areas. They're very limited in whatthey can do. They the Eagles over
corrected, and I say over corrected, meaning that they just went to that
other extreme. They would just like, Okay, we're we're just going to
go all the way to the extremehere. Not not that they over corrected
it and everything failed fell apart,but they immediately went to the extreme and
they were like, look, we'regonna look for guys that have all the
(19:06):
traits, you know, we wantto have all the traits, or or
if they have a lack of traits, it's only one lack of traits.
If they're not agile, they betterbe fast and explosive. If they're not
explosive, that they better be fastand agile. They don't want to take
guys that have just one area ofstrength. They want guys with only one
area of weakness and nothing else.They don't want guys that have a whole
(19:29):
lot of deficiencies that they have towork through. And that seems to be
what what they've done over the lastseveral years since making those years talking about
five or five or six years trendhere, So not a great a great
length of time to look at thatkind of a trend, but enough it's
notable. You know, Rager wasonly a couple of years ago, but
they found out very quickly that thatwasn't going to work out and they were
(19:49):
like, well, let's move onand go get somebody else. Jalen Rager.
H Yeah, that wasn't one oftheir best. But then then comes
something because they I think what theyalso have done too is getting guys that
are productive in college, even ifit's at a lower level, getting guys
that are productive. The one draftpick that you know, it was good
and I think some people turned aroundto it and started to understand why how
(20:12):
Roseman drafted him. But Jalx Hunt, like, Jalx Hunt, what have
you seen from guys that are playingat a lower level that end up doing
really well in these tests? Isthere anything we can we can take from
that? Because I think it's nota genius swing. You know, everybody
can tell the guys a really goodathlete, and there was production and there's
some things to like about Jalx Hunteven though we played at a lower level.
(20:33):
But still it's taking a risk insome way. But the Eagles felt
pretty comfortable with it in the thirdround. You know, what are those
guys like because it's hard to sometimesevaluate those guys in the lower levels because
they're not facing top competition. ButI think this is one thing that they
can compete with all the other guysin the D one level, the top
top schools. So yeah, JaloxHunt may not have played the same competition,
but he's the same kind of athletethat they are, and I feel
(20:55):
like that's that's where you can finda Jalx Hunt. But what did you
think about about that draft picks specificand what those players are like. Yeah,
so when you get a guy froma smaller school, and this is
another guy that didn't have he doesn'thave deficiencies, right, So he had
the speed. All of his speedtesting was a lead. All of his
explosive testing was ninety fifth percent orhigher. His agility testing it didn't hit
that elite range, but it wasonly just shy of it. Both of
(21:18):
his agility tests were seventy fifth percentileor higher. So he didn't really have
any areas where he was deficient athletically. When you're watching a player at a
smaller school, that's the competition isalways going to be that big complaint that
people are looking for. But whatNFL evaluators are looking at is is he
dominating that level of competition. Ifyou're watching him on tape and he is
bigger, faster, stronger, quickerthan every single player he faces, you
(21:41):
can project that upwards if he's strugglingagainst that competition or if he's only winning
in one way. So if he'seven tests really well for his agility drills
but you never see that on tape, they're probably not going to look at
that as a green flag. Theymight look at that as something that maybe
we can develop it, but ifit doesn't show up on tape, NFL
evaluator is not really going to paythat much attention to It has to at
(22:03):
least show up. One of myfavorite examples to use and is Ziggiansa who
played defensive end in college, buthe also played linebacker and they even put
him at safety sometimes, which isridiculous considering he's a massive dude. But
they did all kinds of weird thingswith him. But when he went to
the Senior Bowl, the Lions hadcoached the Senior Bowl that year, and
(22:26):
they just put him on edge,and they just put him on the edge
and said, you're rushing the passerevery play. That's your job. You're
just going to rush the passer.And he dominated those plays. So they
were able to look at all thatathleticism and look at all the weird stuff
that they tried to do with him. They were able to kind of narrow
down to that, look, wewant to use him as a pass rusher,
and we know this athleticism works onthat level. So when you have
a guy like Hunt who played fora smaller school, he has all of
(22:48):
those athletic trades they pop on tape. He's just not playing guys that are
really going to challenge him a wholelot, which means that he's not developing
his pass rushing moves. He's notdeveloping counters. His pass rushing plan is
probably not very developed because if hedoesn't beat a guy in his first try,
he just is done because he'll beathim on the next one. He
knows he's bigger, faster, andstronger. He'll beat him on the next
(23:08):
one. You know, they gotlucky on a play, But when you're
playing against a bigger competition, ifa guy beats you, you've got to
learn how to beat him back.So if you have a spin move and
he beats that spin move, yougot to have something else go in with
a swim to try to do abull rush, you got to have something
else to go at it. That'sthose things that get missed at lower levels
because they don't get challenged enough toreally develop in those areas as often.
(23:32):
So last Eagles question I have becauseone of the I think the most important
positions for the Eagles, and interms of just finding somebody to play it
is going to be linebacker. Theyaddress defensive back I think very well in
Cooper de Gene and Quinnon Mitchell,and I'm sure I do you agree with
that as well? Right, thosetwo are pretty good. Yeah, So
I think they addressed that well.You know, they address things a defensive
line well, you know, Ithink it was great bringing in twenty five
(23:53):
year old Brice Off. You know, I think Josh Sweat's good and I'm
glad they brought him back, andJalen Carter, I think is just going
to get better. But linebacker hasalways been an issue. And again we
talked about some undersized linebackers and Eagles. That's the one position they're really not
that athletic. M N. KobeDean, if I remember correctly, didn't
score that well. Jeremiah Troter Junior, I think, was one of their
lowest RAZ scores in this year's draft. Can those linebackers work? Like is
(24:17):
there? Do you find one ofthose two guys fit a profile that can
at least work? To me,Jeremiah Trotter, he seems a little bit
like TJ. Edwards and so it'snot perfect and t J. Edwards had
some faults, but TJ. Edwardsstill ended up being one hundred tackle a
year player for them, especially inthe fourth year in the last year that
he was with the Eagles, anddid really well in Chicago. But that's
the position that seems to be lackingathleticism the most, or at least that
(24:41):
radz score the most. But doyou find that those two in some way
can end up producing at an NFLlevel? Yeah, it's possible. And
Jeremi Trader didn't get in an officialRAZ like a final RAZ, but he
did test his agility drills and theywere just okay, and he had almost
exactly the bare average for the shuttleand just above that for his cone.
So he didn't test very well athis agility drills. If he was expected
(25:04):
excuse me, if he's expected torun really well, that might be okay.
We've seen examples of guys his sizethat have found some success. I'm
playing Bolton for the Chiefs, probablythe best example of really good speed,
but didn't really test well anywhere else. But we don't have a whole We
don't have his speed, and Idon't I don't think that was an area
he was expected to test well either. It was his time drill. His
(25:25):
time drills were concerned. He didn'ttest in his explosion drills either. I
don't think there was as much concernover his explosiveness, but there definitely was
about his speed and his agility.If you're a guy who doesn't have a
whole lot of speed and isn't thequickest, you're generally gonna be stuck in
the middle of the field. Ithink I lost you for a second.
(26:00):
There you go, I think gotlost for a second. When you have
a guy who doesn't have those trades, they can still be successful, just
you're probably not thinking of them aslike an all Pro linebacker. You're thinking
of a guy who can get youa bunch of tackles, because when you
put a guy who has really goodinstincts in the middle of the field,
they will usually be productive. It'sjust those that productive productivity is usually going
(26:23):
to be limited to tackles. It'snot gonna be a whole lot of sacks,
a whole lot of picks, awhole lot of force bumbles and stuff
like that. It's usually just understandingangles and where running backs are going to
be, understanding the play design andwhat your defensive players are expecting to do
where they're supposed to be. Andall of that stuff is north of the
neckline. That stuff that we don'ttest, we don't have any way to
(26:44):
test. That kind of stuff youcan still find success. It's just you're
generally not talking about an all prokind of guy. My favorite example to
use for that type player, andalso one of my favorite players ever was
was Steven Tullick. Tulik was asmaller player, He wasn't the most athletic
guy, but he was incredibly intuitivewhen it came to the game of football.
He knew where ball carriers were goingto be, he knew where those
(27:07):
gaps were going to be, andhe knew where he was supposed to be
on those plays. And that's thetype of player that you usually get with
that, which is you can geta guy that's productive, you know,
ten year player out of that.It's just not everybody's going to be an
All Pro. And I'm hoping thathe goes against this and becomes one,
just because it would be funny tolook back, honestly saying that specifically,
but generally, when you're looking attraits, that's the kind of guy you're
(27:30):
expecting somebody that can be that thatwhat's the term that they use in man
the field marshal, Right, yeah, field marshal, Yeah, that type
of player where it's using that instinctivenessand knowing where they're supposed to be and
then just getting there. Gosh,I always blank on his name. The
Lions had a linebacker like that.He went to play for the Cardinals for
several years, played for like tenyears. He was slow as molasses,
(27:53):
look like he's running in sand,but he was always where he was supposed
to be and when the play,when the play started to evolve, he
always knew where he had to getto. And the guy would come up
with, you know, sixty plustackles every year because he just knew where
he needed to be and he wasalways able to get there. You know,
not being fast is a negative,but that's different than being slow.
(28:17):
If you have a guy that's slowthere, they're not going to be able
to play in the NFL. Theyjust aren't. If a guy's not fast,
you can work with that. Still, there's still ways to work with
being not fast, right, theycan make up. The way to make
up for that is instinctually being somewhereand knowing reacting to that a lot faster
than somebody else. Yeah, andI don't think. I don't think Trotter
is slow at all. I doesn'tseem like that shows on tape. Definitely
(28:40):
instinctual. And it's him in theKobe Dean when he was at Georgia as
well, So there is something towork with there. Now. I got
just one general question for the lastone. Because you put out a list
of and ranked all the teams basedon RAZ scores, any team surprise you
and where they rank and in howthey ranked in terms of scores, there
(29:02):
was a lot of them that didn't. The Eagles among them, we've always
known, like I said that they'vebeen huge athletic people. The Ravens are
one that I'm really paying close attentionto because they are impossible to figure out.
When it comes to the draft.It's if they're one of the best
run front offices in the NFL,and when it comes to the draft,
they are just one of the bestdraft evaluating teams in the NFL. And
(29:22):
it's been that way for three orfour decades. It hasn't changed. And
there's no rhyme to that madness.There's no not that I've been able to
find. I'm sure there is.But what that's interesting because I agree with
you. I think the Ravens havebeen like when you talk about the gold
standard of drafting, it's been theRavens. And it's funny to hear that
there's not really any any method day. It's it's I'm sure there is.
I guess they're just open it right. Yeah, But they've the last couple
(29:47):
of years they have been one ofthe top teams when it comes to drafting
athletes, which is a change fromprevious seasons. And on top of that,
their roster has gotten progressively more athletic, more athletic in the last couple
of years than it ever has beenwhich is another thing that's a bit curious
now. Like I said, they'rereally unpredictable, so this could just be
a blip. It's technically a trendbecause we're looking at at least three seasons.
(30:11):
That's a trend, but I justdon't trust it because they're so unpredictable.
So until it's like an established Yeah, until it's an established trend,
I'm curious about. But it piquedmy interest that they've been ranked and they
didn't even rank that highly this year. It's just that they've been moving up
each year, which is normally notthe case. Normally just kind of stay
(30:33):
down there and do their own thing. They will always draft lower testing guys
earlier, guys that fall in thedraft. The Ravens are like, sure,
we'll let them fall to us.They cheat every year and they get
guys that fall all the time.But they're also more willing to take a
risk on guys with lower than averagetesting in the later rounds, where other
teams would just be like, nah, we're not even going to touch them.
(30:56):
We'll get them, We'll get theman undrafted free agency, and the
Ravens are like, yeah, notif you draft them. You know.
So we're talking with Kent Lee Plattyand you can follow him at math Bomb,
one of the better follows, especiallyfor NFL draft stuff, and I
like following it during the season becauseyou still end up posting a bunch of
these raz scores and RAZ cards onTwitter, especially during the season, and
(31:18):
it's such a great follow and reallygood to interact with as well. But
as you can see, this isnot just a sports podcast. We also
talk movies as well, So Ilike to ask one movie question. I
feel like I didn't know that untiljust now, and that may be really
excited. Yeah. I was aboutto say, I feel like I've seen
you tweet some movies, So anyany movies recently that you have seen that
you would like to share. Iwatched Late Night with the Devil and was
(31:41):
really impressed with it. There haven'tbeen a lot of good horror movies lately.
What does it Talk to Me?Or whatever you want with the hand,
it's supposed to be really good.I haven't got a chance to watch
that yet. Yeah, I likethat one a lot. But the format
for Late Night to the Devil wasreally intriguing. It It played out as
if it was a seventies talk show, like a Jimmy Carson type thing.
I knew that going in that thatwas the backdrop to the whole movie.
(32:04):
I didn't know how much they weregonna lean into that going through the show
because the first half, which isall it's really slow. The first half
was really slow, but it reallyis just watching a late night show for
most of that first half, andthen things start to go wild, and
then the third act is insane andit's a it's a lot of fun,
and it was. It was reallywell put together, but that one was
(32:27):
really fun to me getting a chanceto watch that. Other than that,
I've watched a lot of bad movies. Yeah, it's been a lot of
these terrible and I've watched a lotof bad movies. I do like bad
movies though, too. I loveall movies. Yeah, it's different fun
in always I love bad well,because I like talking about bad movies.
I like talking about the Strangers.It was really bad. If you can
(32:49):
see it. I have a Ihave a little picture of a dude with
a bat of there which is frommy favorite movie, which is You're the
Hunter from the Future. That itis not a good movie. So in
the eighties, there was an actornamed Reb Brown. And if you know
who Red Brown is, you've watchedthat movie. You've watched all of his
movies. Because if you know whoReb Brown is, you're a Red Brown
(33:10):
fan. Yeah, he's most famousfor just yelling, like he doesn't have
catchphrases. He just yells a lot. But the movie was hilarious, and
there was a twist in the movie, which is that he wasn't really this
you know, cony and caveman typeguy. It was in the future and
there were aliens and stuff. Youmight have caught that twist though, if
you looked at the title of themovie, which was even over the Hunter
(33:31):
from the Future, and it's justit's just a wild ride. But there's
a scene in that movie where heshoots down a giant bat, which I
don't even think there were giant batsin the movie up until that point.
There just is one. He shootsit down and then he uses it as
a hang glider and he like hangglides into this cave while there's a theme
(33:52):
there's his own theme music, whichis yours World, He's the man.
Oh, and then he dropped kicksa caveman in the face this sounds incredible.
It sounds like bad movies. Badmovies are the best you're missing on
cinema in general if you get badmovies. So I was gonna ask this
question, but it sounds like youanswered it with one. So maybe another
(34:13):
movie or two, because I don'twant to do the letter boxed you know,
four favorite movies, but like,what would be a couple of movies
that really shows you kent taste incinema. So I watch a ridiculous amount
of film. If you want towatch a movie that will that will show
you all of the best parts aboutfilmmaking, writing, acting, cinematography,
(34:37):
the cohesion between the actors that youhave on set, the design, just
that even just the set design ina small set. You have to watch
Twelve Angry Men, the original one. It is one of the greatest movies
of all time, but it's alsoone of the greatest filmed movies of all
times. The way that they framethe characters in every shot, where there's
(34:57):
all these wide shots in the beginningand they like to show people from different
angles, but as the movie goeson, the cuts are quicker. The
camera shots are much closer because they'reshowing that tension, and they're doing it
without telling you, Hey, there'sthere's tension going on. You know,
you as a viewer just get thatbecause it's coming at you the way that
it is. In a similar way, I love horror movies, and I
(35:21):
could give you a different horror movieevery time you ask me. But one
specific area, which is sound design, which is the original Candy Man movie.
The sound design in that movie isone of the best aspects of it
because it's designed to make you feeluneasy. It's not meant to be scary,
it's not meant to jump out atyou have those basically thick mettlements,
(35:43):
the violins and everything just kind ofcrushes at you. It doesn't do that
for most of the movie, butit just it just drags you along in
a way where you feel like somethingis wrong with what you're watching on screen,
which is one of the it's it'ssuch a well done movie. I
love that. And then one thatI bring up a lot is The African
Queen Humphrey Bogart Katherine Hepburn, whichit's it's a fine movie. I watched
(36:07):
this movie every year pretty much.It's one of my favorite movies to watch.
But it's not because it's a greatfilm in that it's well written or
even well shot. It's just oneof the best examples of taking an actor
who is at the very height oftheir craft. You have two of them
there, at the very height oftheir craft. You put them in a
small, condensed situation without a lotof story, without a lot of a
(36:30):
lot of things that they have todraw, and you just say, carry
this movie for me. And youhave Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn who just
their their chemistry on set and theway that they interact with each other,
the way that they work within thatkind of constraints where it's a condensed film
with a small it's basically on oneboat the whole time. And for those
who followed me and you've heard metalk about the movies, the Boat Test
(36:52):
that is specifically talking about. That'sright. That's why that's why I remember
movies, because, yeah, youtalked about The Boat Test. I actually
watched and I was gonna talk aboutthis because I'll usually just review movies on
my own after but since you're hereand talking movies, I watched the Before
Trilogy. I don't know if you'veever seen those Richard Linklater's Before trilogy with
(37:13):
Ethan Hawk and Julie Delpy, andit's essentially just following those two around talking
to each other. Now, now, the whole premise of the first one
is they're young twenty years old.They meet on a train and they talk
a little bit and they realize theyhave this connection, and so Ethan Hawk's
character convinces her he come off thetrain with me. Let's have us spend
a day in Vienna, and thenyou can go back to wherever you're going
(37:34):
after that. And they spend thiswhole day and they talk about life,
and it's it's literally just them goingthrough different parts of Vienna with the focus
just focus mostly on just those two, and it's a conversation the entire time.
You're getting everything you need to knowabout these characters through just dialogue.
You're not getting much through other camerashots or other characters coming in. It's
just those two talking. I lovethat, and I feel like that would
(37:57):
pass your boat test. It's alittle bit. There's obviously different scenes and
like different settings at least in partsof the enda, but it's still in
this one city and they walk aroundit basically just talking about life and everything
in love and it's it's incredible.It's absolutely incredible. I love. I
love when you get the actors thathave that type of chemistry and they have
there we just know that that's gonnabe a good movie. And you get
(38:21):
that actors and directors too, Yes, all the time. We all know
Johnny DApp and Tim Burton, youknow, DiCaprio and and all them.
We are crazy. Yeah, yeah, everyone but Mithfune and Usa. You
know, there's there's always those thoseactor director combos. I get the actor
brew one car why but he wasin a lot of that stuff in a
(38:43):
lot of his movies. Yeah,And that's it's obvious when you watch it.
And it's not just oh, theirtheir buddies, you know, they're
their buddies. They get a littlethere's something that like magically happens when a
duo pairs up in some way.Because actually, I think I think to
shar mifuone and a Curasawa didn't evenreally like each other. I don't think
they I don't think they got along, incredible, very well credit.
They just made magic. They justmade magic together. Man. Well that's
(39:07):
good to know because the Eagles Apparentlythere's a lot of tension in the Alchal
room in time, so maybe that'llmake some magic this next season. Kent,
that was awesome, Glad I gotto talk movies. I remember,
I am a very excited. Somaybe next time I'll just get you on
for the movie portion of it.Movie the no sports, no draft,
let's just talk movies a good oneto maybe do it during the summer as
we get ready for training camps andstuff like that. So where can people
(39:30):
find your work and what do youhave going on that people can look out
for? Yeah, you can followme like you already mentioned on Twitter at
math bomb, I'm on of theirsocials. I don't know how much I'm
gonna do. That was kind ofexperimental, but they have like a cap
on what you can actually how manythings you can post a day. So
I got kicked off of all themetal ones during the draft because I posted
too much. But that's unbelievable.That's anti social media that happened. You
(39:52):
really post too much? What doyou mean? And this is all over
running my website, which is ouras dot football. All all of my
data currently is free. We areadding a paid portion of the site that's
not up yet. We're going tohave that up in the next couple of
months, but that the current portionof the site. You can look up
any player from nineteen eighty seven totoday. You can look up all their
tests, what their scores are.You can change positions to see what they
(40:14):
would have scored other positions, changethe metrics that they scored to see what
if he was a little bit taller, what if he did run a forty
anything. You can look at allthat stuff as an on page calculator for
all that stuff, there's comparison pageswhere you can do side by side comparisons.
All of that stuff will remain onthe free side of the site,
and so you can check that outnow and it will remain on the free
sit It's not going to go behindthe paywall I do. When I do
(40:36):
introduce the paid content. That's goingto include all traditional statistics for the last
since nineteen eighty seven, so rushing, receiving, touchdowns, targets. It's
going to include player age. We'regoing to get all of the roster the
end ofvidual roster data, which iswhat I was posting earlier today about is
the individual rosters, all of thatstuff is going to be behind that paywall,
(40:58):
but it's going to be a lotlot of data that you can go
through, and it's going to bein such a way that you can download
it and look at it in allkinds of different ways to find comparison,
to look for those trends, thosetendencies, to try to find things.
We're also going to build out portionsof the site where we don't take into
account size. People have asked aboutthat, about ignoring the aspect of it.
(41:19):
We're going to have one where allof the metrics, each individual metric
is weighted by size, and rightnow currently just just the final score is
but we're going to wait all ofthe individual metrics to see if that gives
us any and we're going to domore experimental stuff like that. I also
have an internship program which i'll bestarting back up probably July, where I
(41:39):
bring in people and teach them howto code and how to look at analytics.
I try to get them into somenetworking. I did have one intern
this pastime that ended up getting hiredby university, so it started out pretty
well and I'm hoping I can doa little bit more with it the next
time, and yeah, just alot of stuff I love. Yes,
(42:00):
so do I see that's a that'sthe thing too. It's all born out
of a love for for football,and uh, it's just always fun to
break it down in so many differentways through analytic numbers like E p A.
You know, that's that's a number, that's that's boomed and to see
how that number correlates with good play. But also you know, raz scores.
Relative athletics score is something that thatreally has interested me. So to
(42:22):
to talk with you for a behindthe scenes look of of how it all
gets put together and what the trendsare and teams look for, that was
really eye opening for me. Sofollow Kent again. All that stuff you
could check out at math Bomb.Thanks again to Kent. More line change
coming up next, Thanks again toKent Lee Platty. Yes, Uh,
(42:43):
the the E is not silent.The E pretty much to follow through.
Follow through with the E, butfollow him at math bomb. Uh.
Relative athletics scorer is one tool Iuse a lot. It's a very easy
way just to figure out an athleteand to one of my favorite ways to
use it is too and I thinkthe Patrick Mahomes example is really good of
(43:04):
that is, so I'm seeing whata player is doing on the field.
How does his relative athletic score orsome of his testing numbers. How can
it explain what a player is doing. Patrick Mahomes is a great one.
I don't think Patrick Mahomes is fastat all. Patrick Mahomes you see all
the time. One of my favoritethings is watching the NFL Draft and they
will be doing forty yard dashes andthey'll show basically shadowed versions versions of where
(43:29):
other players were in previous combines,and they always showed for the quarterbacks where
Patrick Mahomes was. And you alwayssee Patrick Mahomes like a couple of clicks
behind some of these guys. Andthere's of course guys that are slower.
Mahomes only ran a four to eight, Like he's not fast, but he's
somehow every time you watch him,it's like he has this Houdini magic trick
of outrunning all defensive ends. Andit's not just the fact that the guy
(43:52):
runs a lot faster when there's athree hundred pound lineman behind him. There's
enough to explain. I think whatit was. In his cone drone,
he had a a really good tenyard split his first ten yards and also
add that to what you know abouthim and his spatial awareness and how he's
always good at knowing where everybody ison the field. All of that combined
can then explain that's why he's beatingguy the spots. That's that's why he's
(44:15):
able to beat an angle from adefensive end, even if the defensive end
is faster, because he instinctually isgetting there. He knows how much space
he has, he knows that hecan get to a spot, and again,
some of this short burst stuff reallyworks out for him. So it's
stuff like that to really explain howsome of these athletes are able to do
what they do, not just againlooking at the film and how do they
(44:36):
do it on the field and theirtechnique and stuff like that, but also
how their athleticism applies that or howtheir athletic traits are helping with that player.
It's really interesting stuff. Great.I get to talk some movies with
him as well. Yeah, myonly thing with the movies is I watched
the Before trilogy. It's one ofthe greatest trilogies of all time. It's
one of the greatest love stories ofall time. It is Richard Linklater's I
(45:00):
mean that's a masterpiece. Boyhood isRichard Linklater's best film. I think the
Before series is his greatest, greatestachievement, and Boyhood was an insane achievement,
spanning I think twelve years of filmingand they were periodically film every few
years, finally to an end productof twenty fourteen. But the story they
told, and the full story theytold through three different stories through we a
(45:21):
span of eighteen years the first filmand the nine years after that for the
second film, the nine years afterthat for the third film. That is
to me his best cinemat achievement.And that's a crazy thing to say with
how crazy of an achievement Boyhood was. But the Before trilogy, if you
haven't watched yet, great love story, great dialogue between two characters talking about
(45:43):
life, talking about love, missedconnections is It's really great to watch.
So Before sunrits, Before Sunset andBefore Midnight. But that is it for
the line Change again. You canfind the Line Change wherever you get your
podcasts, especially in the iHeartRadio app. Just search of the Line Change with
John Jansen. You will see allthe episodes listed there, including this one.
(46:05):
As well. More line Change willbe coming up next week, but
that is it for the line Changepodcast right here on the Gambler
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