NFL: Move the Sticks with Daniel Jeremiah & Bucky BrooksDaniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks are back with a new episode of Move the Sticks. To start off the show, the guys react to the tragic news of Vikings cornerback Khyree Jackson passing (:15). Next, the pair discuss DJ's first look study on Texas QB Quinn Ewers (3:23). After that, the duo discuss their takeaways from Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt's sit down with Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian (14:10). For the rest of the show, DJ looks at what he learned from reading the book "Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things" (21:50).
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And now move the sticks with Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks.
What's up? Everybody?
Welcome to move the sticks, DJ. Buck back with you, Buck? What is the word man?
DJ?
It was a great holiday weekend, but I think it's really important for us to start, like to acknowledge the tragedy that happened over the course of the weekend. Minnesota Vikings fourth round pig Kyrie Jackson passes away in a tragic drunk driving accident in which he was the victim. He and two of his high school buddies pass away in the fatal accident. And you know, it's just a reminder this time of year one how precious life is. To the fears that we all have in the football community of this little break between the end of like OTA's and mini camps and training camp, and you just always hope that you know, players are able to kind of take care of themselves, be in a safe environment, and that they're able to get back to you healthy and ready to go. And so it's just so unfortunate that three lives pass and we lose an opportunity. Not only would the families lose, but we lose an opportunity to watch a young player who had a lot of promise. That Liam player returned the corner and there was a lot of excitement and buzz around him with the Minnesota Vikings.
Yeah, I mean, it's so so sad, man. It was just literally we were just talking about him. I mean just a few months ago as he's getting ready to enter into the draft, the very talented player, you know, been in Alabama then at Oregon, you know, real long, rangy athletic corner and it kind of just just getting started right, not only in his career, but truthfully in life at that age. And then you get that news, just a gut punch man, and just thoughts and prayers obviously to his family, his friends, his teammates, his coaches. Just just a really really sad, sad situation there. So I'm glad you did that, Bucket's. You know, we definitely want to send our love and support to all those impacted by that. Just an awful situation, yeah, all of a situation.
And look, the one thing that you know, you send out prayers to his family and those guys and even the Kevin O'Connell and the Minnesota Viking's family because it's tough to lose a teammate, and so they not only have to deal with, you know, like the loss of a life, but like kind of putting the team back together in terms of, like, there's gonna be a lot of heartbroking guys that when they show up at training camp that are going to miss Kyrie. And even though he's a ricking yetting been around the team for long, he had already made an impact when you see the tweets and the well wishes and those things. So look as party goes out to those guys, thoughts and prayers to the family everyone affected, and hopefully his family can find some kind of peace in the strategy.
Damn no, no question. Well there's no there's no easy transition when you're coming off of a situation as serious as that one. But on today's show, we are going to talk about one of the top quarterbacks in this upcoming draft class, the guy we're looking forward to watching this fall on the college field, as well as some thoughts that you were able to pull from our Buddy Joe Class podcasts off of a couple of coaching interviews that he recently did.
We'll get to those.
And then I actually had a little book that I finished up this summer that I wanted to hit you up on who a lot of times you get a chance to read these books and and they're not football related, but we find a way to kind of pull it back to football and see what lessons we can take from what we can learn and can help us in the scouting process. So we'll we'll jump into that as well. But I want to start off first of all, Buck Queen yours before I get you to my thoughts on him after watching him for this little first look series on NFL dot Com. I know you go back to high school with quinn Ewrers and knowing him as a young guy, mullet and all here, So give me your give me your early day impression of quinn Ewrs and kind of where you are on him right now.
So I think if everyone goes back and think about when quinn Ewles was coming out of high school, he was regarded as like a bona fide superstar coming out of high school. This is a guy who had a huge following behind him. He was one of the most decorated recruits in that class, and a lot of it was the brand that was quinn Ewrs, meaning had a mullet. He was a little different, kind of had that old Andre agassy look with the hair and the flowing locks. I was exposed to us for the first time at Lead eleven. He was on my seven on seventeen as the quarterback, and I'm gonna be honest with you, like he kind of had this aura about him where he kind of embraced being a superstar.
He kind of walked around, I.
Won't say, like too cool for school, but he certainly knew that all o's were on him and he welcomed the attention. Made his way to Ohio State, never really played at Ohio State, then comes back to Texas. People say, like the nil like kind of started with him, and then he has become a really good player at Texas. But that first exposure to him was man, he was someone who I would say the persona was much bigger than the game. And it's interesting to watch how it's flipped. He's become more of a baller than brand and I think that certainly bows well for his NFL future.
Well, first of all, let's start at the top of what you said there. He needs to get an nil deal with Cannon with the camera images everything. Do you remember those Andrea Agacy commercials back and yes, yes, I.
Mean like it was very much like that, the long flowing locks, he had, the brand, he had, the glasses, he had everything, and you know, everything is bigger in Texas, but he was a big deal and it was a big deal for him to lead because I want to say he.
Even left high school early. Yeah, I think.
And got his clock going right away, and you know when he doesn't, I would say, like kind of make the move and light it up right away at Ohio State because you know, like c J.
Strouds still there like you wanted, like, hey, man, is it hype? Is it? Is it real? Is he going to be what everyone says? And DJ?
Over the last two years, he's made steady improvements to the point where you can think that, a he can be everything that people said that he was going to be when he was in high school.
Yeah, it's interesting because that was my first image of him too, right, is the kind of the mullet. And then like it seems like he feels a little overhyped, goes to Ohio State, He's out of there as soon as he got there. It feels like and he's at Texas and then it was like, Okay, well, now arch Manning is going there, so he's just bridge quarterback, Like they're gonna swallow him up, spit him out, and he'll be and he'll be off, never be heard from again.
So I don't know what my expectations were.
Obviously, I saw a lot of Texas doing the draft prep because of the whiteouts. You watch all those guys, and you know, I just okay, I thought, Okay, he's got a live arm. You know, I don't know what to think of him, but I'm anxious to do a little study on him. So like three games I watched Bama tcut Kansas. Bama game is really good. Man Like, everything is decisive. He plays fast, he plays with urgency. He's got really quick feet, he can climb, get away from from pressure. He's got pretty good pocket feeling there. His feet can be a little bit of a mess as a thrower. In other words, like we talk about it when you're evaluating players, sometimes your eyes can be faster than your feet. Like he's seeing things very quickly and he'll be to the right, his eyes will get back to the middle, to the left, and he's throwing the ball across his body instead of getting his feet connected to his eyes and moving and staying on platform. But still he makes some, you know, some incredible throws. I wrote about it on the NFL dot com thing. I said, look, look he's got to clean all this stuff up. But there are times too where even with all that you know, crossfire action, he's still able to deliver the ball pretty accurately. He can drive it. He can make every type of throw if you give him free yards. We always talk about that with mobility, right, we don't need you to be, you know, the greatest athlete of all time, but when the yards are presented from the defense, can you take him? He can absolutely do that. He's like a thirty yard touchdown run. I want to say it was in a TC or that it was a Kansas scheme. Took off and ran and made some things happen there. There's like a you know, in terms of a comparison, the first name that popped into my mind, and it was one of those ones where I'm like, I can't use this as a comp because a half half or more than for the people this aren't even to know who this player is. And b people will think it's an insult when it really isn't.
But Kevin Cobb.
You remember Kevin Cobb coming out of college Houston. Yeah, yeah, with the Eagles and they make the trade trading with the Cardinals. I think they got what a second round pick, maybe even a first round pick for Kevin Cobb and uh and then Kevin Cobb had injuries and then never to really be heard from again. But something about something about mechanically about him right reminded me a little bit of Kevin Cobb. And I'm like, okay, and that's not it not a perfect comp but there was a little bit of that, and then I thought, okay, with the you know, the combination of kind of the moxie, some of the you know, the poise, the playmaking, not the biggest guy in the world, but of the live arm, I ended up settling on Baker. I'm like, Okay, he's not as advanced as Baker at this point, but I think there's that's the type of quarterback you're going to be getting in in uh in yours.
Yeah.
So that's that's interesting that you talk about Baker because here's the things that you like about Baking. Why the comparison is valid. Sometimes when we're doing comparisons, we're not talking about heightweight, arm, talent those things. We're talking about playing style and how you can envision the impact that he can make on the game. And so some of Baker's best traits worth the cockiness. I won't even say cockiness. I will say the self assuredness, the belief, the confidence that he not only had, but he rejected and gave his teammates in him, meaning that he was so good at what he did that the team had a belief that if we just give Baker Mayfield the ball, we're gonna finish the game. We'll find a way to win. When you watch Texas play, there's a little bit of that belief that they know that we got to do that quarterback and as long as we have a dude, we have a chance. And we've talked about franchise quarterbacks giving the franchise hope when yours has the type of game that if you take him, you have the hope that he is going to be the guy that in a two minute situation, if we need it, he can find a way to get it done.
And I think that is everything when it comes to the evaluation.
Yeah, no doubt some of the areas to improve. Obviously I talked about, you know, getting his feet married up better with his eyes, just keeping those things connected. Deep ball wise, there, you watched the Alabama game as the first game I watched, and I even posted after them, like do this guy throws a beautiful deep ball, man, Like there's a lot of air under it, just kind of dropping it right in the bucket to those those Thoroughbreds. They had a wide receiver last year with the track team with with with the Worthy and Mitchell, and then as you kind of go in those other games, he hung it up a little bit at times where he needs kind of flatten it out a little bit, just gave the safety time to get over make plays. So just forking some things on that trajectory wise, very fixable, very solvable. But in terms of just all the tools that are there, in terms of the suddenness, the quickness, the urgency, the live arm, you know, the moxie, the playmaking, like, he's got everything. Man, I think he's going to have a big year. I know, you know, Arch Manning is going to be the most popular backup quarterback in college football this coming season. And I'm and I'm sure you know there's a lot of longhorned fans that are are ready to accelerate that clock came out on the field because they're excited about him. He's a bigger, he's more physical guy. Obviously, the gene pool was fantastic. I don't think you're going to see him this year, man. I think Quinn Yours is poised to have a big year. I know they lost some receivers. Steve Sarkisian is always going to have white outs. I think Quinn Ewer is gonna have a really good year.
So let's talk about his coach and Steve Sarkisian.
One of the advantages that Yours has in terms of getting ready to go to the next level is the fact that he has had a coach who has not only coached high level college quarterbacks, but he spent time in the league. And you have to remember, Steve Sarkisian had an opportunity to coach Matt Ryan. I think that is critical to note because of how Matt Ryan plays the game and how Matt Ryan was able to be a cerebral playmaker who had the arm talent to make all the throws and really continue to grow as he got more experienced.
In the league. Well Sark can take all of those experiences.
That he had with Matt Ryan at Atlanta and really pass on those nuggets to quinn Ewers. And I would expect quin yours game to make a major jump in year three at Texas. And one of the reasons is now we're beginning to get to the point where you have the experience where you have enough expertise to be able to maybe work a little outside of the framework of the offense we talk about and I think I've heard you said on here where Steve Young talked about good quarterbacks exhaust all of their options when it comes to reading the route. Quinn Ewis has now played enough football where he should be able to get to the point where he exhausts all of the options, meaning that in every pass route there may be four or five options to go through the progression. He should now be able to get to three and four because he knows exactly what is going on. He understands the concept versus the defense that he's facing. And if he's able to do that, it not only helps him what he's doing at the collegiate level, it now begins to give him an opportunity to do some of the stuff that brock Perdy was able to do very early in his career because he played enough games at the collegiate level that has slowed down enough that now he is really running and understanding the offense as opposed to executing plays that the coach has given him.
I also think, and we'll get into this a little bit more when we discussed this book in a little bit, but if you're looking at kind of a formula, a successful formula for transitioning into the NFL, man, it's interesting to look at guys who have, you know, I feel like they've been in college forever and have had some adversity, think about maybe even changing schools. Joe Burrow is a recent example of that, obviously obviously compared him to Baker. Baker is another another example of that. Right, so, you know, Jalen Hurts having you know, some adversity and then moving schools, Like there's there's a there's a parallel there of these guys who feel like they've been in college forever, they've had some adversity, they've been in the spotlight, they've had a ton of pressure on him playing at some of these these powerhouse programs. So there's there's some grit and some toughness I think that's been ingrained in him that I think is going to help aid him once he gets to the next level. But you know, Buck, that's an interesting look there. Yours got a couple more guys to look at here in this series, so we'll knock those out and we'll talk about those on the pod. But I want to use this as a launching point to get to the next topic, which is I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet, but our buddy Joel Klatt has been going around interviewing all the top coaches in the country and had some interesting conversations, and I know one of those was with yours coach there, Steve Sarkjan.
Yeah, it was great, you know, like DJ is fascinating because you and I both know Sark pretty well, and Sark has become one of the top coaches in college football, and I think he is uniquely qualified to achieve at a high level, much like Lane Kiffin, because these guys had an opportunity to work under two of the greatest coaches in college football, Nick Saban and Pete Carroll and listening to Sark talk about what he learned from Pete Carroll and Nick Saban, to me, it was interesting, DJ, you and I both have been on the road where we had to go to SC when SC was like, I mean, look, it was like a rock star campus where they had everybody and how Pete operated and it was a little loosey goosey in terms of it was player driven.
It was fun, it was festive, they got after it.
They won a lot of games, and it looked like their team had more fun than anybody on the planet. Then we've also had an opportunity to go to Alabama and see the machine that Alabama became n the Nick Sabing, where it was buttoned up.
It was detail.
It was I won't say militaristic, but it was no nonsense, strictly business when it came to it. Sark has been able to learn under both approaches and take out a little bit from each guy, and I think was fascinating and listening to him talk about what he learned from both of those guys. He said, they're different, but they're the same when it comes to the objective. Different personalities, but the same in terms of how they wanted their team to play fast. Physical execution was at a premium, but they went about it different ways. And Sarks had the thing that he learned from both. You have to be you when you're the leader of the team. You can't try to be somebody else. You have to be authentic in who you are and how you go about your business while still having some of those old school principles that apply. And I think a lot of times and he said this, and I thought it was interesting. He said they were better the latter part of their career than the early part. Fifty plus is when they dominated the game. And he felt like they dominated later because they had the experience to now understand, oh, I can be myself. I got the expertise. Now I can just go coach and do it. And too often we don't see coaches kind of get to that latter stage of their career where they have acquired all the lessons and learned everything, and now they can apply those lessons while being themselves because they're fully confident in who they are.
So this is a theory I have on this new era of college football. And you tell me where it's where it's right, where it's wrong. But just looking at it right, I feel like because of the portal, Like we talk about anil all we want, but to me, the portal is even more impactful when you look at it, where the talent used to be at you had the top end teams, there's like three or four of those teams, right, and then you had the talent kind of dispersed beneath that. And then even to the point where you get some you know, some group of five teams, you're going to have a few big time players scattered around in the group of five. Now it feels like, okay, that's become now where these monster programs have scattered all of these kids right ail they're pulling all those kids from the group of five up. But now instead of having two or three or five powerhouse programs competing for a national championship, I feel like that number has grown where there's maybe and again we have a twelve team playoff, which is a good number, but let's say there's twelve to fifteen super teams now as opposed to three to five super teams. I feel like that number has grown, and I feel like coaching and teaching and developing, like on the football field, growing throughout the year, x'es and o's all that stuff. I feel like in those twelve to fifteen programs, now they're all going to be ridiculously talented. So now it's like this playing field is the level. And that's where I think coaching is going to have a major impact. If you're one of those twelve to fifteen schools, you all have players. I think the X factor is going to be the coaching staff.
Yeah, the coaching staff.
And what's interesting, and let's give a shout out to our got Joel Klap because Joel has done a really good job of talking to great coaches who will kind of understand it. And not only was the conversation with Sarkeys and I heard him listen talk to Dion Sanders, He talked to Matt Ruhl from Nebrawsk.
He also talked to Sarn Moore from Michigan.
And I would say the theme that we're getting from all the coaches, it's relationships more so than the tactics. Is really pouring into the players, letting them know that you really care about them beyond what they can do for you on the field, and that's when you're able to unlock their secret talents to go to the next level. And as more of these coaches kind of settle in in this new era, it is going to be really important that you get to know your players. And once you develop that bond and that trust between look player of the coach, that's when the teams have an opportunity to go from good to great. So so much of the fear about NIL and portal and all that stuff is like, these guys are gonna come and go.
Yeah, but maybe not when you.
Really build a relationship and make it more than just a transactional thing. I think the thing we always talk about transformative relationships as opposed to transactional relationships, those are gonna be the teams that are always at the top of the run because people know that it's more than just a business transaction in terms of the NIL, it's really about helping them become better players and better people, and then you're gonna get the better team.
Yeah.
No, it's a good point. I think that's again coaches with all the roles that they have to play here in terms of bringing more talent. But then now retention is a major is a major challenge, So you know, there is the relational part of that, no doubt. But I just feel like we're going to get into these games. There's going to be some tight games, especially those two conferences. When you look at the SEC and the Big Ten, it is a battle royale every single week in those two conferences, and I think you're going to find yourself in a lot of close games, and coaching is going to be an x factor late in these ball games, I think, more so than in recent memory, where it feels like every team had three games on their schedule. You know, if you're one of those handful of teams competing for a national championship, you got three games of teams that can challenge you. The rest of it, you just kind of put your head down and plow through it, you know. Now, I feel like that number has increased with the realignment.
Yeah, certainly has increased.
And I'm looking forward to this expanding because one it kind of reminds me of how high school football there is when you have the expanded playoff field and we may know who the teams are going to be in the end, but I do like the added challenge of having to run the gauntlet, you know, before when you just have four teams the semifinals and finals. Now you expand it out, you have the round twelve and you have the quarter finals, semis or whatever like.
You got to bring your game.
And we have seen crazy things happen on a given weekend where like top teams getting knocked off, and it may not seem to be something that is plausible given the separation between the teams at the top, but I think this is gonna be a really good playoff for us because we are going to see teams have to run the game and they're gonna have to be consistent when it comes to the level of excellence to be able to kind of hoist the trophy.
No doubt.
All right, let's take quick break when we come back. I read this book Hidden Potential by Adam Grant, who's a phenomenal, phenomenal writer. Think Again was a great book. I think we discussed that on here before, but this one had some thoughts on it and wanted to jump into it with you, Buck and how we can relate this to football.
So we'll do that right after this break.
All right, Buck, Hidden Potential. A couple of notes I took on here.
First.
One This was a quote that's a great quote from Benjamin Franklin. I'm sure you've heard it before, but I wrote it down because I thought it's very valuable in life as well as you can talk about it in football. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I thought that is a great, great line, and it's think about it. Obviously in your physical health, you can think about it from that standpoint, but even going beyond that, I think of I was just thinking of like situational football. Think about like go back to those Patriot teams and Bill Belichick preparing for that one situation that you might not get for three years, four years, five years, but having covered it and continuing to cover it, that little ounce of prevention is going to be worth a pound of cure when you're sitting up there in the press conference after the game and going, man, you weren't prepared for that.
Huh No.
They are literally prepared for everything.
Yeah.
Preparation is everything, and it takes away a lot of the anxiety when you're able to kind of rehearse the situations that you know and eavily are going to come. And good coaches have the ability to kind of see ahead and see what's around the corner and make sure their teams are prepared for that. When you think about the great teams you talked about Bill Belichick in the pages, think Nick Saban and how Alabama has been able to do those things ahead of time. Where you know, like what I say, practice performance ends up becoming game reality.
I've heard that thrown out a couple times.
And how you practice, what you do in practice, how you prepare your team to get ready to play in practice really manifest itself in how your team performs in those key moments. And you know, just being able to really diligently prepare your team for the situations that they're going to face, it really ups to odds that they can't perform well when they see those situations.
No doubt.
I'll roll through a couple more thoughts on this thing here. I talked about how the goal shouldn't shouldn't be to be the smartest guy in the room. The goal should be to have the make the entire rooms smart. So, in other words, like you want to challenge yourself, you want to hire as many smart.
People and good thinkers as you can.
And we think about this from a baseball front office standpoint where they have a more flatline structure right where there's a handful five seven guys kind of in their leadership team making decisions and putting plans in place, versus maybe more of a pyramid setup that we've had in the NFL forever where it's the general manager and then it kind of trickles down underneath them. This talked about a lot and hidden potential in this book about bringing the smartest people together and collectively making decisions. And along those lines, Buck he kind of poop pooed on brainstorming that basically they said that's been proven to be ineffective. They've done all these studies on it. Brainstorming doesn't work, so he said in brain instead of brainstorming, he talked about brain writing. So and ask everyone for ideas in the room, but don't have them speak up in the room. Have him write them down without saying who wrote it. You go through and discuss each of the ideas and kind of judge and vet them out on their own without anybody else having to lobby for it. Because it's that introverts would get drowned in that environment, whereas the extrovert, the big personality, would take over the room and then his opinion would get adopted. So it was brain writing over brainstorming, which I thought, think about that from a game plan standpoint or getting ready for an opponent. What a smart way to look at that.
Yeah, smart way to look at it.
And I don't know if you had an opportunity to look at the latest version of Hard Knocks where they having the New York Johants and they're doing the off season stuff, and so what they've done is they've kind of gone behind the scenes and kind of pulled back the curtain on how front offices work during the off season when it comes to player acquisition, whether it's free agents, talking about your own team and those things. And so there have been some instances that they've shown on camera where, look, Joe Shane, who's a buddy of you and I, they've had these kind of think tank sessions over players and those things.
And the reaction on the outside is like, oh my god, they.
Shouldn't release this to the public because now, YadA, YadA, YadA, people going to be judged on those opinions that happen behind closed doors. But I'm saying no, I think the public needs to understand how people come about these decisions and how you have the conversations. How hard it is to have conversations when you're scouting. You may be the lone wolf when it comes to a dissenting voice in terms of how the team should go, how a team views a player, et cetera, etc.
But that's part of what a scout does.
My job is to raise it up, to be bold enough to say, hey, I may not see this like the rest of the guys, but can we at least have a discussion. And in that discussion what happens is either you confirm the group thought or you make us at least have to scrimmage it out before we move forward. And great organizations they have that policy where we say, hey man, all of this is business, is never personal. So if we have these hard conversations, just know it's business. It's for us to get it right as a team going forward.
So I love what you talk about.
Not necessarily brainstorming, because the introvert gets drowned out in that, but hey, let's have the discussion so we can just make sure that we're doing what's best for the group before we move forward. And it's not a dictatorship, not quite a democracy, but it's one of those things where everyone gives their opinion and then we go forward and once the opinion is made, as a group, we support the opinion.
So but here would be my reaction to that book. So after reading this book, my thought, and I haven't seen the show yet, but I've seen that clip, the clip that's been tossed out there. I almost wonder and this would be an experiment I would definitely do if you're sitting in that chair, which is instead of hey, at three o'clock, we're going to have a meeting with the four or five of us to discuss Saquon Barkley and what we feel like is the best course of action. Instead of doing that, say hey, at three o'clock, we're going to have a meeting with the five of us discussing Saquon Barkley. I want each of you to send me write out your opinion on this, what you think are the pros and cons for signing or letting him go, and then give me your opinion on what you would do. And those have those five emails printed out, and then when they come into the room, I would literally just read through each one, not saying whose it was this makes sense. Now I've got your real opinion. I'm not worried about you coming in there with an opinion on this track and then listening to where the room's going and all of a sudden, now your opinion maybe slants in the other direction. I think you get more of an authentic opinion in that case.
So I agree with you on that.
And so maybe I said it wrong in terms of scrimmaging out and thinking because now and listening back to what I said. What I said fell in line more with brainstorming as opposed to brain writing. But you right, Yeah, if you do have people write it before the conversation is started.
You get admitted your pot committed now like there's no wavering and wishing and washing like you are.
You get it. Put it off here, you get a true thing.
And not only that, DJ, but if you do it and where everyone has all five hard copies of the opinion, so everyone is reading what he said, we all can see it.
It makes sense. Oh yeah, like that that makes more sense than what I wrote. Okay, I didn't think that or whatever.
And ultimately, because it is hard, it is hard in the room being the dissenting voice just like I would say it is hard, and I will say this is before hot take culture when it comes to media scouting, where people make opinions to create like a sensationalized view, but like giving your real opinion on a player and.
Being okay with that opinion being different.
That is hard if you're doing it with what I call pure intentions, not trying to get clicks, but like pure intend's like hey, DJ, I just don't see him like you see him. This is how I see the player, this and that, and it would be like you and I prepping for the show, but me not telling you what is going on.
I need better TV. When that happens, by the way, it's one of my pets, and.
Then we light it up and we're like, hey, man, guys, we're talking about Queen yours today. And then that's the first time that I've heard your take, first time you've heard my take, and now we have a real conversation, you know, as opposed to, hey, you're gonna take the pro I was.
Gonna say this and then okay you're going to do that. That's the worst kind of TV in my opinion.
Yeah, but it's like from a thought provoking standpoint, you're right, Like if you don't, if you don't put it out there where you give people the chance to be swayed by the room, you now get more of a pure conversation when it comes to what I really think about a player, a situation.
Two other thoughts on here, and I've got a bunch more notes, but we won't go into the whole book. You can read it. It's a great it's a great book. You'll love it, Buck. But this was an interesting one.
Talk to it.
It was talking about like employment and hiring people, and it said an interesting study that they'd done was that they had learned that grade point trajectory was more important than grade point average. In other words, how did you improve over your four years as a And they were looking at it as a student. But think about that. I was thinking about it again as it relates to the draft. So remember when we said, you know, man, the West Coast Scouts could never get on board with Jayden Daniels last year because they remembered the Arizona State version. They didn't allow for the growth that took place as he's at LSU. And then we talked about bo Nicks, the guys in the South could not They could never get over Auburn bo Nix. But this is saying like, basically, it's more it's more predictive if you're looking at the guys that are climbing, versus giving a cumulative grade and punishing you from sins of the past where you might have learned from that. And I just thought that was a that was a fascinating way to look at it. And the other way that he talked about some of these things is.
The key isn't.
The degree of adversity you've faced, but it's how you've responded to whatever adversity you've had. So somebody might have had a really awful story, right, and then they've come out of that that's great. You don't get extra bonus points for that versus somebody maybe had smaller adversity. But still it's they dealt with things the same way, They overcame things the same way. But we've always talked about that, right, hardship When we interview these players, I want to know what your hardship is, how you've overcome things, what's your process for dealing with failure, for dealing with hard times? I think those are you know, looking at the climb and then looking at how you've dealt with the setbacks along the way. I think those are key components and an evaluation key components.
So to go back one to trajectory.
I think too often when it comes to evaluating players, we either have a little recency bias based on the last year as opposed to what we should do is look at the entire body of work. And as we look at the entire body work, and we talked about that graph a, are they trending up? You may have a dip, but do they bounce back up and finished the right way? To me, that is important. And it goes to Jaden Daniels and bo Nicks. How they started was not like how they finished. They finished much better than they started at their respective spots. The other part of it, man, I want guys to have a couple of scuffs. I think too often when it comes to the evaluation process, we're looking for the perfect prospect, guy who has never struggled or and all have done this. We're pointing to a few bad games. Oh my god, did you see Kyler Williams against Notre Dame. Man, he's struggled. He had all these interceptions and YadA, YadA, YadA. Well, yeah, I kind of want to see what he looks like in that, because I not only want to see what he's like the next drive. How was he the next game? How is he the next game? After he throws three interceptions and has a fumble? Does he bounce back or does he play it safe? Because it's going to happen in our league. You're gonna have bad games, and I need to know on the front end, does your respond Does he have the toughness to resolve, to be able to bounce back from a slump, or hey man, as long as it's perfect, he's great. As soon as he throws one early, he's terrible. To me, that is a true sense of who this player is, and it has little to do with the talent, has more to do with the toughness and how he's built.
Yeah.
No, I think that's a great point. And now that you've brought that up, I want to pull this up. Hold on one second here, now, I'm just curious right talking about Kayleb Williams. Let's uh, let's go back and I'm pulling up his game log.
So notre dame.
We all we all said, you know, and everybody knew was this brutal game for him? He had three picks. That was on ten fourteen. The next week he came back against Utah who was number fourteen. They lost a heartbreaker thirty four to thirty two. He was twenty four thirty four two fifty six seventy percent.
Uh.
He had ten carries twenty seven yards and a touchdown. So that was a solid game. They scored thirty two points. But you know, it was a good game, but not necessarily a monster game that he had there, So interesting to kind of look at that. It's just, hey, in the moment exercise, how did you respond to your your greatest test, your biggest adversity?
Good?
Not great, to be totally honest with the other. So it's interesting kind of look, that's an interesting thing to do in evaluation process. I'm gonna make a note on that, Like, instead of just identifying what the worst game was, watching it, what can you learn from it? Maybe there's something to Okay, put that to the side, let's look.
At the next game. What did the next game look like?
Yeah, and then the other thing would be how did they respond after a critical error? So like, as we're tracking an individual game player throws an interception, Let's track his next ten throws one. How did he attack? Did he start throwing everything at the line of scrimmage? Did he push the ball down the field? Did he have the building to stream together completions after the interception? How did he approach it? Because we talk about DJ what if I throw an interception the first player of the game. Now do I play the rest of it in safe mode? I'm scared to challenge the defense or do I continue to rip it and let it go. We're trying to find predictive behaviors so we can project how a player is going to be at the next level, and some of the information that described from the book allows us to start putting together patterns to help us better assess how these players can perform at the next level. No doubt, last one here and we'll finish this up. But uh, you know, you've heard obviously about imposter syndrome. I think it's a real thing, and I think it's fascinating. We've heard about the growth mindset. We've talked about that a bunch of in the past. Connecting those two things I thought was really interesting in this book, just the way you phrase, it was so great. Imposter syndrome says I don't know what I'm doing and it's only a matter of time before they figure it out. Growth mindset says I don't know what I'm doing yet it's only a matter of time before I figure it out. And I thought, man, what a great what a great connection between those two viewpoints, right, because we've all been there, We've all thought, man, this is an area where I'm not comfortable and I'm going to be found out that I you know that I don't know what I'm doing, versus flipping that mindset and saying, hey, this is a new situation, a new environment. I don't really know what I'm doing, but darn it, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep grinding and now I'm gonna figure it out.
It's only a matter of time, yeah, J. And so much of life is about that.
It's about learning when to pivot, understanding Okay, look I may get knocked down a little bit, but I'll continue to figure it out. But a lot of it is your approach and it's your your mentality. People going need to be positive or negative about every situation that they encounter, and if you're positive, you will go about like, oh, you know, every failure brings me one step closer to being a success because it shows me a way that I shouldn't do it, So that means I'm one step closer to finding out a way that I should do it.
And you have the courage to be.
Able to hang in there long enough until you crack the code. A lot of people don't have the resilience and they don't have the stamina to continue to stick with things until they figure it out.
Yeah. No, it's interesting.
It's just a lot of different layers to that book.
But I thought you would enjoy it.
If you're listening to this again, check it out Hidden Potential, awesome book. Really enjoyed it, Buck. We are out of time. Man, it's been a great it's been a great one today. I've really enjoyed it. We've got a couple more. I think we are on a three week schedule now, so we'll have plenty more pods coming and we'll get back into the NFL. Yeah, Nobe, you'll just confirm three a week we're going with, so we'll have more NFL talk as we move forward. But today I just wanted to focus on some of those college topics as well as it's just fun.
I love.
We both love to read, so whenever we find something that we've read that interests us, I think it always makes for a fun conversation.
Yeah, this is a great conversation. And I think that growth mindset that you had, Man, you never know at all. There's always an opportunity for you to grow and get better in whatever field that you're working in. And so I'm excited that we had a chance to discuss that book because I certainly came away with some things that can help me going forward, no doubt.
All Right, that's going to do it for us. So I hope you guys have enjoyed this conversation. Appreciate all your support. Appreciate you subscribing, leaving us those reviews. We really do appreciate it. We'll see you next time right here on Movi stick
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