April 26, 2024 • 50 mins
Eric Eager brings on data scientists Sam Bruchhaus, Ben Brown and Tej Seth to go over some notable trades on Day 1, what the betting markets could tell us about day 2 and more.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
All right, we're blessed today tohave Justin Pugh. Justin Pugh is a
offensive lineman for the New York Giants, was with the Arizona Cardinals, was
a first round pick in twenty thirteenby the New York Giants. So he's
going through a lot, or he'sbeen through what a lot of these folks
are going through tonight, sitting therehoping to be picked justin. How you
(00:22):
doing and what was that Knight likefor you in twenty thirteen? Eric,
Thanks for having me on. Thishas been awesome. You came on my
show a few weeks ago, andI'm glad I could repay the favor.
And there's no better time to talkabout it than tonight Thursday, NFL Draft.
These kids' lives are changing for thebetter. The rest of their lives
will never be the same. AndI remember that day so vividly. We
(00:48):
actually may you meant to go toYouTube and see it, but I had
a viral moment there where I gotdrafted by the New York Giants. And
all my friends are Eagles fans,but even though they were pissed, I
went to the New York Giants.They dog piled on top of me,
and it was this unbelievable moment.I'll never forget it. But if you
really want to know what it waslike, go to YouTube type in Justin
Pugh Draft and you'll see it.I wasn't invited to the draft, so
(01:10):
they didn't think I was going tobe one of those top picks. I
think this year they're only inviting fifteenguys. I think to avoid some of
those situations where we've had guys sittingin the green room until the second day.
Yeah, it must be a toughsituation for a guy like Will Levis,
who you know has to sit throughit. And Aaron Rodgers back in
two thousand and five that that youknow obviously, you know, I think
Will Levis might end up getting thelast laugh, as did Aaron Rodgers,
(01:34):
two guys who ended up starting fortheir teams. You what I liked so
much about you is obviously you hada great playing career. You're continuing that
playing career now, but you alsohave a heart for your fellow player.
You have a podcast called The netWorth with Justin Pugh, which everybody can
follow on YouTube. I've been onthat podcast before. What I really like
about it is you don't just talkabout football and offensive line play and a
(01:57):
lot of the things that that's kindof people consider your lane. You a
are trying to learn new things.You had Jack duffin, who's who's a
friend of mine talk about salary capand things like that and and and how
uh players can get paid more becauseof bonus pro ration structures. You had
me on obviously to talk about kindof broader situations for NFL team building.
(02:19):
You also had people on talking aboutnil and how players who can who are
you know, younger much younger thanyou can get paid dollars that you were
not able to get paid when youback when you were playing at Syracuse.
You have a heart for your fellowplayer, which I think is is awesome,
and yet at the same time,you're also educating people who will never
achieve, you know, the playingstatus that you have. Can you tell
(02:42):
me a little bit about kind ofwhere this this idea came from and why,
uh you know, and where whereyou see it going over the next
uh the next little bit here.Yeah, So I started my own podcast
this year. It's called Networth withJustin Pugh. And the reason I started
it was I was trying to buildmy brand. Networking are podcasting is just
a cheat code for networking. Youcan talk to interesting people, learn new
(03:04):
things, get new experiences. Andthe one thing I know is I know
football, and I've been playing itfor years. But then all of a
sudden, I started following and readingyour articles. I start seeing what Jack
Duffin's posting. I'm like, wait, I know nothing about football. I've
just siloed myself on how to bethe best offensive linem impossible for all these
years. So that was the mostintriguing, enlightening experience to start hearing from
(03:27):
guys like yourself and seeing how we'reusing data, seeing how we're able to
make better decisions on team building.At the end of the day, my
north star I'm a finance major fromSyracuse, is to help solve for the
cash flow equation. And we talkedabout this a little bit before. But
when NFL players get their name calledJustin Pugh nineteenth overall to the New York
Giants, all of a sudden,I get a check for a couple of
(03:47):
dollars. Now, all of asudden, my lifestyle jumps up to match
that, and everyone can can relateto that because as soon as you got
that pay raise at work, youwent out and bought something for yourself.
You treated yourself. Now, allof a sudden, at thirty three years
old, I have zero salary,but the lifestyle is still up there with
what I was making before. That'swhy seventy eight percent of NFL players go
broke. Now that's a little misleadingbecause the average player doesn't make it to
(04:11):
two and a half years, Butof those players that make it to two
and a half years, they actuallyend up playing six years or more.
So it's a little bit of someoutliers there. But regardless, even if
it was fifty percent of NFL playerswent broke, that's too much for me.
So through my podcast and through buildingmy brand, it's presenting opportunities to
do media, to meet some veryinteresting people. I actually had a conversation
(04:33):
with Mark Cuban this last week throughpodcasting what I'm doing. So, like
the heights you can reach through goingout there and putting yourself out there been
unbelievable. But I want to goback and help my fellow teammates and send
the elevator down and bring the nextguy up. And that's what it's all
about. Yeah, and I thinkthat that's a cool synergy with what we're
trying to do at sumers. Aseverybody knows who's listening to this podcast with
(04:54):
myself and Thomas who's listening to theDraft show. Now, you know a
lot of our focus has been onbuilding team tools, but we're also in
the in the market for building playertools. I want to show you justin
a little bit of what we're tryingto build for players. Now. Some
of this data is a little bitmade up now, but this idea where
you know, for you as aplayer, being able to be armed with
(05:15):
some of this information, for example, knowing how many wins you've contributed to
your team over the course of years, knowing how much that's worth on the
open market could help you, youknow, have start conversations with agents or
teams even if you if you're goinginto it without an agent in a more
efficient way. Also, because datais so rich now, because places like
(05:38):
Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutionsand they're charting things like what run concept
it was If you're an offensive lineman, for example, and you excel in
a certain run concept, we cando things like you know the the bottom
left here, which talk about whichteams you fit better with, right,
So it's not just necessarily the connectionsthat you have or these really inefficient means
(05:59):
by which we've met player and team. And then obviously there are going to
be situations where our data is goingto suggest that there is a match between
a player and a team because ofinterest from the team side as well.
And so when I when when youthink about this and you think about the
opportunity for you as as a player, what kind of you know, what
kind of opportunities do you think areabounding for for not only this rookie class,
(06:23):
of course, but for players likeyourself. Who are you know,
You're You're not a first round picking, You're You're not a first round pick
anymore. You're not a first contractplayer anymore. You are you are trying
to fit a specific need for teams, and I think data can really help
you do that. It's huge.And we can go back to my conversation
with the New York Giants last year. I wanted to go back to the
(06:43):
New York Giants and I go onthe practice squad. I end up starting
the game the whole straight off thecouch incident where I play Sunday Night football
end up moving out to left guardto fill a void that we had an
injury for. And the next dayme and Joe Shane, the general manager
of the New York Giants, withmy agent, got on a phone call
and we're trying to figure out myvalue. And obviously the team has one
aspect and their business first. They'retrying to save as much dollars as they
(07:06):
can, and I'm trying to getas you know, maximize my value.
To have a tool like this whereI could just text this over to Joe
Shay and or email it over tothe Giants brass and say, hey,
look, this is what I'm ableto do, this is what I'm good
at, this is what your needsare. Let's make a deal happen.
This is what my value is rightnow compared to the open market. Now,
there's other things that play into it, like and leverage and of leveraging
(07:30):
different factors in terms of like wherewe're at in the season, I only
have this much salary cap, andyou know, there's things the player can't
quantify or use data for, likeI'm gonna go have O line dinners every
Thursday and create more cohesive unit.But this is an amazing foundation to start
where it's like, hey, thisis the team that I fit best with.
This is where I'm going to excel. This is where I'm gonna get
(07:51):
the most out of myself. Thisis where I can increase my value going
forward. And now I'm towards theend of my career, I'm not looking
for a long term deal. Butthink about a guy that is going into
the prime of his career and signsa one year contract because he wants to
go maximize value. Look at HollywoodBrown signing a one year deal with the
Chiefs to try to go show howgood he is to get that mega deal.
(08:13):
This is hugely important because it's almostmore valuable to put up good numbers
and have a more successful season inthose one off years. I think this
tool is an amazing I mean,just seeing it for the first time,
I'm in awe and now I wishI would have had it the last eleven
years. Well, that's what wehope at SUMER to be able to empower
because I think a lot of timesanalytics and you know you've you obviously I've
(08:33):
been I think offensive linemen are someof the more progressive when it comes to
dealing with data. You know,we wrote a paper with with Jeff Schwartz,
and I've talked to Mitchell Schwartz beforeas well, and there's a lot
of curiosity and I think that that'sawesome. I do think a lot of
times, though, analytics is almostalways seen as this as this thing where
(08:56):
we're trying to come in and andaudit players. And what we're really trying
to do, though, is isgive you a really firm foundation to be
able to go and talk to talkto the decision makers and say, look,
you might say my value is this, but my value is actually that,
and and this is where we shouldbe starting the conversation. And it's
(09:18):
and it takes you know, thereare thirty two possibilities there and us being
able to help you find the fiveor six where you can have those folks
bidding bidding for your services is actuallygoing to help the players, right I
In my experience as an analyst,almost it's almost always been beneficial to the
players to be able to uncover thehidden value if teams have been using you
(09:39):
incorrectly for the last two or threeyears because of coaching changes that were that
were not your fault. Being ableto uncover that and see value for you
to be added to a different teamis obviously something that you would want as
a player. I would assume yeah, And the one thing that I saw
from the data and there's something thatI fall victim to in a lot of
(10:00):
players fall victim too. They lookat PFF or other stats and like,
oh, they graded me. Here. Everyone's comparing themselves like the best player
at their position. They're comparing themselvesto the Trent Williams or whoever the best
offensive lineman is. It's actually amazingto see the data. It's like,
this is where I fit into theequation. This is my true value,
and that's who I'm competing against.So it's not like you're trying to compete
(10:20):
to be the best of all time. It's like operate in the in the
in the space that you're in.You're a middle of the road offensive guard
or you're upper to middle upper upperechelon, and then you know what you
can command. You know, hey, you take it an upper class guard
like myself, where like throughout mycareer I was always you know, paid
in the upper half, and nowI'm going towards the end of my career
it's like, hey, pair mewith this team because I'm able to in
(10:43):
comparison to what other guards at mylevel will bring to the table. I'm
going to bring X Y Z aswell. Like we get so caught up
in like what was my grade?Why was I not the best player on
the team, and guys get pissedoff of it, and I have in
the past. But when you sitback and really take in the data and
see what it's telling you, youstill can come up with a true value
for yourself and really compare yourself toyour true competition, which is really what
(11:05):
the teams are doing and the playersneed to do as well. So this
is a eye opening moment for meand I'm excited to see where it goes.
Yeah, and what we've seen sincethe twenty eleven CBA, which I
think many people intended for veterans toget paid more. Right, they suppressed
rookie wages quite a bit, andyou had to deal with that as a
twenty thirteen first round pick, whereif you were taken three years earlier,
(11:26):
your rookie contract would have been muchbigger. But what's happened is is hollowed
out the middle class because you eitherget the top end contract to your point,
or you fall out of that topend group and you end up having
to play, as you said,for veteran minimum, there has to be
some middle ground, there has tobe some continuity between those things. So
somebody says like, look, I'mnot a replacement level player, I'm not
(11:50):
the best player in the league,but I'm somewhere in between, and I
can command this and I do thinkthat over time that will benefit the player.
Justin, You've done a ton tobenefit the player. The net Worth
Podcast with Justin Pugh Go ahead andcheck it out on YouTube. Justin,
thank you for joining us, enjoythe rest of the festivities that you have
on draft that. I know you'rea really busy guy and we want to
(12:11):
thank you for coming on now.This is amazing, Eric, keep being
a pioneer in the space, man. I appreciate it. And as we
continue to learn and get to knowmore about this data, I know every
player and every team is going tobe thankful for whatever this turns into.
So I'm looking forward to seeing that. And now on the Summer Sports twenty
twenty four Live Draft show, Ihave Brad Spielberger. Brad is now an
(12:33):
agent with Grand Central Sports Management.You can follow Grand Central Sports Management on
Twitter at GCS sports Mgmt on Twitter. Brad used to be with me at
Pro Football Focus. He added whatI would consider to be a dimension to
PFF, adding the contracts, buthe was also probably the best on air
(12:56):
person at PFF during his time there. Now he's in the agent space.
How you doing. What's it liketo be back on air? Yeah,
very very kind. I was gonnasay this actually might be the first time
in about three weeks that I've hadthe camera on. I got my light
over here, my mic in frontof me. It feels like riding a
bike a little bit. It's beena minute since I fired off some hot
takes. No, it's good though. I appreciate you having me on,
(13:16):
and it's been a whirlwind joining afootball agency in the first week of April.
I would tell you it's a veryfun time to just jump into the
waters two weeks ahead of the draft. Yeah, people don't know Brad's like
Brad's you know, experience is prettyvery Graduated from Vanderbilt, went to Two
Lane Law. We met at theTwo Lane Sports you know, the NFL
(13:37):
contract negotiation competition. We were bothjudges there, I knew very little.
I'm going to say I knew verylittle about contracts when I started judging that
competition. I feel like I'm prettyfluent now, and yet I think of
Brad's ocean of understanding contracts, Iunderstand maybe a bucket and a half of
the water there. When you knowhe also, with Jason Fitzgerald, wrote
(14:00):
The Drafting Stage, which is anawesome book you can buy on Amazon.
I think everybody at Sumer has acopy of it as well. I think,
you know, when it comes tokind of your experience both you know,
going through the sports law program whicha lot of people in the league
have gone through at Tulane, aswell as your time at PFF and r
R and D Group and now comingout of it looking for ways to find
(14:22):
an edge in player selection, playerdevelopment, and obviously trying to, you
know, do the best job forthese players as they come up for contracts
and things like that. What's therole of data in all of this?
I think the biggest thing for mestill, you notice time and time again
is just the asymmetry of information andjust the ability for companies like Assumer to
help agents get on the same playingfield as teams, but also even to
(14:46):
sometimes be a middleman and a bridgebetween two parties where just the efficiency of
information just benefits all parties, right, Like, even if you want to
kind of hold your cards close tothe vest and maybe have some you know,
industry secrets or hidden gems things likethat. Sure that can be good
sometimes, but in the free agentmarketplace, in the draft marketplace, arguably
(15:07):
having something of a consensus big boardand grinding the mops and Ben Robinson all
those various tools, I think itactually benefits the league at large. So
it's the same for agents, right. I think the more that you have
unbiased third parties that are putting outyou know, contract projections. Obviously that
was a big thing that I didat PFF, but Jason does it at
OTC. You know, you know, kids like Daniel Salib coming up and
(15:28):
doing it as well. Josh Keppodid it this past year at eight is
E Sports. So the biggest thingI think really is just the more data
points you have. It's such anthis sport is so complicated convoluted, it's
hard to isolate variables. Just themore data you can work off of,
the better, Yeah, for sure. And in our group at PFF,
you did such a great job ofmentoring Argent Menon, who also does a
(15:50):
lot of the expected contract value stuffwhich we do at SUMER as well,
which basically looks at a contract likeTyreek Hills, which looks like it's a
thirty million dollar apy contract, butyou go through and you say, well,
it's really the likelihood of actually playingout years four or five, you
know, four and five of thisdeal, and you sort of sort of
get a better page. And toyour point, the more the closer you
(16:11):
can get to that information being accurateand fast, the better. And I
kind of want to demo a littlebit of a tool for you here that
we're we have. We actually hadJustin Pew on the show. Here this
is an example of looking at Justinand some of these numbers are made up
because of licensing rights. But theidea, you know, we had war
at PFF, which I know isa big was a part of your contract
projections. You have athleticism scores.But the big thing I think is that's
(16:34):
true. Here is also this ideaof team fits, which you can algorithmically
derive as well as as interested teamsor acquiring teams which you if you have
tools, whether that be PFF Ultimateor in this case of Sumer, are
our GM product teams actually looking forplayers you can get to much like and
I know your wife as a physician. It's much like pairing you know,
(17:00):
encies two met students. Right,It's it's very much similar to that idea
where you can get more efficiently tothis answer, right. And and I
think that that's that's really what we'relooking for here, because I think a
lot of people look at analytics brandand they say, Oh, all we're
trying to do is is make theplayer uh less rich or we're trying to
steal from the player. And andI think when we had justin on he
(17:22):
made a very good point. Nowadays, because of the CBA, it's like
everybody's a rookie deal or better aminimum guy or the max contract guy,
very little in between. What we'retrying to do is take that that big
ass difference between the minimum contract andthe and the and the rookie deals and
then and the max contract and tryto smooth it out a little bit and
get some of those players who arein the middle tier a little bit more
(17:45):
of what they deserve. Yeah,And that's where a bunch of different conversations.
If we're going to talk about howdata can influence like contracts and markets
and things like that, it islike position markets do not decline gradually.
There are these massive drop offs andplateaus and tiers. And I think the
last run for the Patriots to youknow, seventeen to nineteen range, was
they were just loading up on veteransfor about two million a year to five
(18:07):
million a year, just like allthe guys that probably were worth eight to
ten, but there were guys makingtwenty, and there were guys making minimum.
And then the rookie deals obviously,and they said, okay, get
all the guys that are worth fouror five million dollars in the open market.
They're probably actually better than that.And then, like you mentioned,
the match thing is funny. Ithink a lot of the cliches. I
know, I've only been here forthree weeks, but like a lot of
(18:27):
the cliches, and we probably makefun of him poke holes on the outside
of like you know, a coachwill keep signing players he knows over and
over again and bring him to partof it is just again just like I
know what this guy is capable ofdoing. I know that if I run
a certain scheme or do whatever.Justin Pugh and you give Arizona New York
on there where he played, like, you know, there's a floor and
(18:48):
a comfort level that comes with thatthat I think, again, we can
help improve and make even better.But it's kind of less surprising that now
that being where I'm at, whereit's just like they just know that they
are at least comfortable what they have. It's kind of the you know,
like it's just better to to theDEVI and overs the devil you don't and
you can get it out from there. That's one kind of good example where
data can improve that that process,Yeah, for sure. And you just
(19:10):
don't want to have to teach peoplethings a million times, even though you
know you trade sort of that inefficiencyfor the efficient the efficiency of them doing
the job a little bit better oncethey come out of the come out of
the wash. And to your pointabout the I mean, the NFL is
a situation now where because of theCBA, because of new rules, like
therere just is less time to developplayers and people and so you're almost always
(19:36):
going to sort of rush to somethingthat's a little bit more ready made,
and and we've seen that a littlebit more, especially in coaching. I
know my boss Thomas S. Mitchroff, who we get to talk to here
in a second, has talked aboutthat for coaching all the time. This
has been great, Brad. Thankyou so much for taking a little bit
of time out of your draft night, UH to hang out with us.
Brad Spielberger, Grand Central Sports Managementagent, former PFF for with me adding
(20:00):
to the great list of PFF alumniand obviously an alumni of the Tulane Sports
Group and over the cap. It'sbeen great. Brad, have a good
one, enjoy the rest of thedraft. You too, enjoy it.
All right, we're blessed today tohave Justin Pugh. Justin Pugh is a
offensive lineman for the New York Giants, was with the Arizona Cardinals, was
a first round pick in twenty thirteenby the New York Giants. So he's
going through a lot, or he'sbeen through what a lot of these folks
are going through tonight, sitting therehoping to be picked justin. How you
(00:22):
doing and what was that Knight likefor you in twenty thirteen? Eric,
Thanks for having me on. Thishas been awesome. You came on my
show a few weeks ago, andI'm glad I could repay the favor.
And there's no better time to talkabout it than tonight Thursday, NFL Draft.
These kids' lives are changing for thebetter. The rest of their lives
will never be the same. AndI remember that day so vividly. We
(00:48):
actually may you meant to go toYouTube and see it, but I had
a viral moment there where I gotdrafted by the New York Giants. And
all my friends are Eagles fans,but even though they were pissed, I
went to the New York Giants.They dog piled on top of me,
and it was this unbelievable moment.I'll never forget it. But if you
really want to know what it waslike, go to YouTube type in Justin
Pugh Draft and you'll see it.I wasn't invited to the draft, so
(01:10):
they didn't think I was going tobe one of those top picks. I
think this year they're only inviting fifteenguys. I think to avoid some of
those situations where we've had guys sittingin the green room until the second day.
Yeah, it must be a toughsituation for a guy like Will Levis,
who you know has to sit throughit. And Aaron Rodgers back in
two thousand and five that that youknow obviously, you know, I think
Will Levis might end up getting thelast laugh, as did Aaron Rodgers,
(01:34):
two guys who ended up starting fortheir teams. You what I liked so
much about you is obviously you hada great playing career. You're continuing that
playing career now, but you alsohave a heart for your fellow player.
You have a podcast called The netWorth with Justin Pugh, which everybody can
follow on YouTube. I've been onthat podcast before. What I really like
about it is you don't just talkabout football and offensive line play and a
(01:57):
lot of the things that that's kindof people consider your lane. You a
are trying to learn new things.You had Jack duffin, who's who's a
friend of mine talk about salary capand things like that and and and how
uh players can get paid more becauseof bonus pro ration structures. You had
me on obviously to talk about kindof broader situations for NFL team building.
(02:19):
You also had people on talking aboutnil and how players who can who are
you know, younger much younger thanyou can get paid dollars that you were
not able to get paid when youback when you were playing at Syracuse.
You have a heart for your fellowplayer, which I think is is awesome,
and yet at the same time,you're also educating people who will never
achieve, you know, the playingstatus that you have. Can you tell
(02:42):
me a little bit about kind ofwhere this this idea came from and why,
uh you know, and where whereyou see it going over the next
uh the next little bit here.Yeah, So I started my own podcast
this year. It's called Networth withJustin Pugh. And the reason I started
it was I was trying to buildmy brand. Networking are podcasting is just
a cheat code for networking. Youcan talk to interesting people, learn new
(03:04):
things, get new experiences. Andthe one thing I know is I know
football, and I've been playing itfor years. But then all of a
sudden, I started following and readingyour articles. I start seeing what Jack
Duffin's posting. I'm like, wait, I know nothing about football. I've
just siloed myself on how to bethe best offensive linem impossible for all these
years. So that was the mostintriguing, enlightening experience to start hearing from
(03:27):
guys like yourself and seeing how we'reusing data, seeing how we're able to
make better decisions on team building.At the end of the day, my
north star I'm a finance major fromSyracuse, is to help solve for the
cash flow equation. And we talkedabout this a little bit before. But
when NFL players get their name calledJustin Pugh nineteenth overall to the New York
Giants, all of a sudden,I get a check for a couple of
(03:47):
dollars. Now, all of asudden, my lifestyle jumps up to match
that, and everyone can can relateto that because as soon as you got
that pay raise at work, youwent out and bought something for yourself.
You treated yourself. Now, allof a sudden, at thirty three years
old, I have zero salary,but the lifestyle is still up there with
what I was making before. That'swhy seventy eight percent of NFL players go
broke. Now that's a little misleadingbecause the average player doesn't make it to
(04:11):
two and a half years, Butof those players that make it to two
and a half years, they actuallyend up playing six years or more.
So it's a little bit of someoutliers there. But regardless, even if
it was fifty percent of NFL playerswent broke, that's too much for me.
So through my podcast and through buildingmy brand, it's presenting opportunities to
do media, to meet some veryinteresting people. I actually had a conversation
(04:33):
with Mark Cuban this last week throughpodcasting what I'm doing. So, like
the heights you can reach through goingout there and putting yourself out there been
unbelievable. But I want to goback and help my fellow teammates and send
the elevator down and bring the nextguy up. And that's what it's all
about. Yeah, and I thinkthat that's a cool synergy with what we're
trying to do at sumers. Aseverybody knows who's listening to this podcast with
(04:54):
myself and Thomas who's listening to theDraft show. Now, you know a
lot of our focus has been onbuilding team tools, but we're also in
the in the market for building playertools. I want to show you justin
a little bit of what we're tryingto build for players. Now. Some
of this data is a little bitmade up now, but this idea where
you know, for you as aplayer, being able to be armed with
(05:15):
some of this information, for example, knowing how many wins you've contributed to
your team over the course of years, knowing how much that's worth on the
open market could help you, youknow, have start conversations with agents or
teams even if you if you're goinginto it without an agent in a more
efficient way. Also, because datais so rich now, because places like
(05:38):
Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutionsand they're charting things like what run concept
it was If you're an offensive lineman, for example, and you excel in
a certain run concept, we cando things like you know the the bottom
left here, which talk about whichteams you fit better with, right,
So it's not just necessarily the connectionsthat you have or these really inefficient means
(05:59):
by which we've met player and team. And then obviously there are going to
be situations where our data is goingto suggest that there is a match between
a player and a team because ofinterest from the team side as well.
And so when I when when youthink about this and you think about the
opportunity for you as as a player, what kind of you know, what
kind of opportunities do you think areabounding for for not only this rookie class,
(06:23):
of course, but for players likeyourself. Who are you know,
You're You're not a first round picking, You're You're not a first round pick
anymore. You're not a first contractplayer anymore. You are you are trying
to fit a specific need for teams, and I think data can really help
you do that. It's huge.And we can go back to my conversation
with the New York Giants last year. I wanted to go back to the
(06:43):
New York Giants and I go onthe practice squad. I end up starting
the game the whole straight off thecouch incident where I play Sunday Night football
end up moving out to left guardto fill a void that we had an
injury for. And the next dayme and Joe Shane, the general manager
of the New York Giants, withmy agent, got on a phone call
and we're trying to figure out myvalue. And obviously the team has one
aspect and their business first. They'retrying to save as much dollars as they
(07:06):
can, and I'm trying to getas you know, maximize my value.
To have a tool like this whereI could just text this over to Joe
Shay and or email it over tothe Giants brass and say, hey,
look, this is what I'm ableto do, this is what I'm good
at, this is what your needsare. Let's make a deal happen.
This is what my value is rightnow compared to the open market. Now,
there's other things that play into it, like and leverage and of leveraging
(07:30):
different factors in terms of like wherewe're at in the season, I only
have this much salary cap, andyou know, there's things the player can't
quantify or use data for, likeI'm gonna go have O line dinners every
Thursday and create more cohesive unit.But this is an amazing foundation to start
where it's like, hey, thisis the team that I fit best with.
This is where I'm going to excel. This is where I'm gonna get
(07:51):
the most out of myself. Thisis where I can increase my value going
forward. And now I'm towards theend of my career, I'm not looking
for a long term deal. Butthink about a guy that is going into
the prime of his career and signsa one year contract because he wants to
go maximize value. Look at HollywoodBrown signing a one year deal with the
Chiefs to try to go show howgood he is to get that mega deal.
(08:13):
This is hugely important because it's almostmore valuable to put up good numbers
and have a more successful season inthose one off years. I think this
tool is an amazing I mean,just seeing it for the first time,
I'm in awe and now I wishI would have had it the last eleven
years. Well, that's what wehope at SUMER to be able to empower
because I think a lot of timesanalytics and you know you've you obviously I've
(08:33):
been I think offensive linemen are someof the more progressive when it comes to
dealing with data. You know,we wrote a paper with with Jeff Schwartz,
and I've talked to Mitchell Schwartz beforeas well, and there's a lot
of curiosity and I think that that'sawesome. I do think a lot of
times, though, analytics is almostalways seen as this as this thing where
(08:56):
we're trying to come in and andaudit players. And what we're really trying
to do, though, is isgive you a really firm foundation to be
able to go and talk to talkto the decision makers and say, look,
you might say my value is this, but my value is actually that,
and and this is where we shouldbe starting the conversation. And it's
(09:18):
and it takes you know, thereare thirty two possibilities there and us being
able to help you find the fiveor six where you can have those folks
bidding bidding for your services is actuallygoing to help the players, right I
In my experience as an analyst,almost it's almost always been beneficial to the
players to be able to uncover thehidden value if teams have been using you
(09:39):
incorrectly for the last two or threeyears because of coaching changes that were that
were not your fault. Being ableto uncover that and see value for you
to be added to a different teamis obviously something that you would want as
a player. I would assume yeah, And the one thing that I saw
from the data and there's something thatI fall victim to in a lot of
(10:00):
players fall victim too. They lookat PFF or other stats and like,
oh, they graded me. Here. Everyone's comparing themselves like the best player
at their position. They're comparing themselvesto the Trent Williams or whoever the best
offensive lineman is. It's actually amazingto see the data. It's like,
this is where I fit into theequation. This is my true value,
and that's who I'm competing against.So it's not like you're trying to compete
(10:20):
to be the best of all time. It's like operate in the in the
in the space that you're in.You're a middle of the road offensive guard
or you're upper to middle upper upperechelon, and then you know what you
can command. You know, hey, you take it an upper class guard
like myself, where like throughout mycareer I was always you know, paid
in the upper half, and nowI'm going towards the end of my career
it's like, hey, pair mewith this team because I'm able to in
(10:43):
comparison to what other guards at mylevel will bring to the table. I'm
going to bring X Y Z aswell. Like we get so caught up
in like what was my grade?Why was I not the best player on
the team, and guys get pissedoff of it, and I have in
the past. But when you sitback and really take in the data and
see what it's telling you, youstill can come up with a true value
for yourself and really compare yourself toyour true competition, which is really what
(11:05):
the teams are doing and the playersneed to do as well. So this
is a eye opening moment for meand I'm excited to see where it goes.
Yeah, and what we've seen sincethe twenty eleven CBA, which I
think many people intended for veterans toget paid more. Right, they suppressed
rookie wages quite a bit, andyou had to deal with that as a
twenty thirteen first round pick, whereif you were taken three years earlier,
(11:26):
your rookie contract would have been muchbigger. But what's happened is is hollowed
out the middle class because you eitherget the top end contract to your point,
or you fall out of that topend group and you end up having
to play, as you said,for veteran minimum, there has to be
some middle ground, there has tobe some continuity between those things. So
somebody says like, look, I'mnot a replacement level player, I'm not
(11:50):
the best player in the league,but I'm somewhere in between, and I
can command this and I do thinkthat over time that will benefit the player.
Justin, You've done a ton tobenefit the player. The net Worth
Podcast with Justin Pugh Go ahead andcheck it out on YouTube. Justin,
thank you for joining us, enjoythe rest of the festivities that you have
on draft that. I know you'rea really busy guy and we want to
(12:11):
thank you for coming on now.This is amazing, Eric, keep being
a pioneer in the space, man. I appreciate it. And as we
continue to learn and get to knowmore about this data, I know every
player and every team is going tobe thankful for whatever this turns into.
So I'm looking forward to seeing that. And now on the Summer Sports twenty
twenty four Live Draft show, Ihave Brad Spielberger. Brad is now an
(12:33):
agent with Grand Central Sports Management.You can follow Grand Central Sports Management on
Twitter at GCS sports Mgmt on Twitter. Brad used to be with me at
Pro Football Focus. He added whatI would consider to be a dimension to
PFF, adding the contracts, buthe was also probably the best on air
(12:56):
person at PFF during his time there. Now he's in the agent space.
How you doing. What's it liketo be back on air? Yeah,
very very kind. I was gonnasay this actually might be the first time
in about three weeks that I've hadthe camera on. I got my light
over here, my mic in frontof me. It feels like riding a
bike a little bit. It's beena minute since I fired off some hot
takes. No, it's good though. I appreciate you having me on,
(13:16):
and it's been a whirlwind joining afootball agency in the first week of April.
I would tell you it's a veryfun time to just jump into the
waters two weeks ahead of the draft. Yeah, people don't know Brad's like
Brad's you know, experience is prettyvery Graduated from Vanderbilt, went to Two
Lane Law. We met at theTwo Lane Sports you know, the NFL
(13:37):
contract negotiation competition. We were bothjudges there, I knew very little.
I'm going to say I knew verylittle about contracts when I started judging that
competition. I feel like I'm prettyfluent now, and yet I think of
Brad's ocean of understanding contracts, Iunderstand maybe a bucket and a half of
the water there. When you knowhe also, with Jason Fitzgerald, wrote
(14:00):
The Drafting Stage, which is anawesome book you can buy on Amazon.
I think everybody at Sumer has acopy of it as well. I think,
you know, when it comes tokind of your experience both you know,
going through the sports law program whicha lot of people in the league
have gone through at Tulane, aswell as your time at PFF and r
R and D Group and now comingout of it looking for ways to find
(14:22):
an edge in player selection, playerdevelopment, and obviously trying to, you
know, do the best job forthese players as they come up for contracts
and things like that. What's therole of data in all of this?
I think the biggest thing for mestill, you notice time and time again
is just the asymmetry of information andjust the ability for companies like Assumer to
help agents get on the same playingfield as teams, but also even to
(14:46):
sometimes be a middleman and a bridgebetween two parties where just the efficiency of
information just benefits all parties, right, Like, even if you want to
kind of hold your cards close tothe vest and maybe have some you know,
industry secrets or hidden gems things likethat. Sure that can be good
sometimes, but in the free agentmarketplace, in the draft marketplace, arguably
(15:07):
having something of a consensus big boardand grinding the mops and Ben Robinson all
those various tools, I think itactually benefits the league at large. So
it's the same for agents, right. I think the more that you have
unbiased third parties that are putting outyou know, contract projections. Obviously that
was a big thing that I didat PFF, but Jason does it at
OTC. You know, you know, kids like Daniel Salib coming up and
(15:28):
doing it as well. Josh Keppodid it this past year at eight is
E Sports. So the biggest thingI think really is just the more data
points you have. It's such anthis sport is so complicated convoluted, it's
hard to isolate variables. Just themore data you can work off of,
the better, Yeah, for sure. And in our group at PFF,
you did such a great job ofmentoring Argent Menon, who also does a
(15:50):
lot of the expected contract value stuffwhich we do at SUMER as well,
which basically looks at a contract likeTyreek Hills, which looks like it's a
thirty million dollar apy contract, butyou go through and you say, well,
it's really the likelihood of actually playingout years four or five, you
know, four and five of thisdeal, and you sort of sort of
get a better page. And toyour point, the more the closer you
(16:11):
can get to that information being accurateand fast, the better. And I
kind of want to demo a littlebit of a tool for you here that
we're we have. We actually hadJustin Pew on the show. Here this
is an example of looking at Justinand some of these numbers are made up
because of licensing rights. But theidea, you know, we had war
at PFF, which I know isa big was a part of your contract
projections. You have athleticism scores.But the big thing I think is that's
(16:34):
true. Here is also this ideaof team fits, which you can algorithmically
derive as well as as interested teamsor acquiring teams which you if you have
tools, whether that be PFF Ultimateor in this case of Sumer, are
our GM product teams actually looking forplayers you can get to much like and
I know your wife as a physician. It's much like pairing you know,
(17:00):
encies two met students. Right,It's it's very much similar to that idea
where you can get more efficiently tothis answer, right. And and I
think that that's that's really what we'relooking for here, because I think a
lot of people look at analytics brandand they say, Oh, all we're
trying to do is is make theplayer uh less rich or we're trying to
steal from the player. And andI think when we had justin on he
(17:22):
made a very good point. Nowadays, because of the CBA, it's like
everybody's a rookie deal or better aminimum guy or the max contract guy,
very little in between. What we'retrying to do is take that that big
ass difference between the minimum contract andthe and the and the rookie deals and
then and the max contract and tryto smooth it out a little bit and
get some of those players who arein the middle tier a little bit more
(17:45):
of what they deserve. Yeah,And that's where a bunch of different conversations.
If we're going to talk about howdata can influence like contracts and markets
and things like that, it islike position markets do not decline gradually.
There are these massive drop offs andplateaus and tiers. And I think the
last run for the Patriots to youknow, seventeen to nineteen range, was
they were just loading up on veteransfor about two million a year to five
(18:07):
million a year, just like allthe guys that probably were worth eight to
ten, but there were guys makingtwenty, and there were guys making minimum.
And then the rookie deals obviously,and they said, okay, get
all the guys that are worth fouror five million dollars in the open market.
They're probably actually better than that.And then, like you mentioned,
the match thing is funny. Ithink a lot of the cliches. I
know, I've only been here forthree weeks, but like a lot of
(18:27):
the cliches, and we probably makefun of him poke holes on the outside
of like you know, a coachwill keep signing players he knows over and
over again and bring him to partof it is just again just like I
know what this guy is capable ofdoing. I know that if I run
a certain scheme or do whatever.Justin Pugh and you give Arizona New York
on there where he played, like, you know, there's a floor and
(18:48):
a comfort level that comes with thatthat I think, again, we can
help improve and make even better.But it's kind of less surprising that now
that being where I'm at, whereit's just like they just know that they
are at least comfortable what they have. It's kind of the you know,
like it's just better to to theDEVI and overs the devil you don't and
you can get it out from there. That's one kind of good example where
data can improve that that process,Yeah, for sure. And you just
(19:10):
don't want to have to teach peoplethings a million times, even though you
know you trade sort of that inefficiencyfor the efficient the efficiency of them doing
the job a little bit better oncethey come out of the come out of
the wash. And to your pointabout the I mean, the NFL is
a situation now where because of theCBA, because of new rules, like
therere just is less time to developplayers and people and so you're almost always
(19:36):
going to sort of rush to somethingthat's a little bit more ready made,
and and we've seen that a littlebit more, especially in coaching. I
know my boss Thomas S. Mitchroff, who we get to talk to here
in a second, has talked aboutthat for coaching all the time. This
has been great, Brad. Thankyou so much for taking a little bit
of time out of your draft night, UH to hang out with us.
Brad Spielberger, Grand Central Sports Managementagent, former PFF for with me adding
(20:00):
to the great list of PFF alumniand obviously an alumni of the Tulane Sports
Group and over the cap. It'sbeen great. Brad, have a good
one, enjoy the rest of thedraft. You too, enjoy it.
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