Albert Breer and Andy Gresh break down the Miami Dolphins decision to allow fans to attend home games before Albert talks to former Tennessee Titans scout Blake Beddingfield about the challenges scouts will face in analyzing young players this upcoming season, and of course, the mailbag
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Hey, guys, is out, but we've got great show for you this week. We're gonna kick things off by getting into all the news with fresh don't wanna give you an inside look into how turned the scouting process upside down by somebody who knows all of the ins and outs of it. And as always, we wrap things up with all of your questions and six packs. Let's go all right, Welcome and I'm back in the home office. I am sorry for the delay this week. We had a little like I guess some travel issues isn't the right way to put it, but just kind of work and travel piling up and seven o'clock fight last night back from Florida to Massachusetts. Bottom mine. You're getting in a little later. We're gonna try to make it that much better for you. This week it's the MMQB Podcast with Albert Brier and we are bringing our friend Andy Gresh back in for the takeaways. And Gresh, I'm fresh off of seven training camps. I went and saw the Patriots, Jets, Giants, Eagles, Ravens, Bucks, and Dolphins, and uh, I gotta tell you it was good to see actual football practice again. And once you got through the door, it was relatively normal. But man, like, you look at the outside of these facilities. You look what I mean, you can see the machine at work. Oh, I think they've sort of trying to build their own bubbles, right Like I know that people joked around with Jerry Jones and the Cowboys for basically kind of admitting that. But it's funny you mentioned the old outside of the facilities to where normally there's hustling. There's bustling, there's fans, there's people eavesdropping, like we know in the part of the world that we live in in New England, normally, when they would open up that fence, which is like the side gate over it's over Gilette, there'd be some kid's face pressed up against the front of it because some you know, guy who Hawks memorabilia wanted him there to get Tom Brady's signature on a football at one point in time. And there's no Buzz and Burt. On my national radio show on CBS Sports Radio, I asked, people, are you missing preseason football now? Because everybody hated it, and now that you don't have it, it's like, oh, maybe it wasn't so bad after all, because you can feel detached from your local football team because the coverage is different. You can't go to practice, there's no preseason games. It's like a whole buzz buzz. Yeah, the buzz is very odd, right, And so like I I'm excited for football. I'm really excited to see what it looks like. I just you know, you do wonder and there's part of me that wonders that the NFL is making a mistake. And look, I'm not the big like, I'm not the big like like we need access guys, Like I've always kind of started taking the attitude I'll make my own access, right, Like, but you know, I like when I the one thing I thought about when you saw some of the complaining about like the practice rules, right, like you can't report X, Y and z about what's going on in the field, sort I started thinking about it, Like, if I'm the league, I'm a little can learned about the lack of buzz. Right, if I'm the teams, I'm a little concerned about the lack of buzz. I'm not talking about the football people. I'm talking about with the business side people, right. And then I'm looking at like some of the ratings and the other sports which have been scatter shot, like some of them are up, but I think most of them are down right. And I think that that's because you turn on the TV and it's great to have it back, but maybe it's a little harder to engage with the product that you're not that doesn't look quite like you're used to seeing it. And so if I'm the NFL, I just I sort of look at this and maybe I don't know. For the last week and a half of camp, I tell the team, so loosen up the rules about reporting stuff, because so much of it it's like it's like the stuff that you talk about, stuff we're gonna talk about here. Some of the stuff we're gonna talk about here, just kind of the drama that goes into the summer and position battles and who's gonna play here? And what does this rookie quarterback look like there? And I just feel like because they've choked off some of like what can be reported at training camp, and then the fans aren't there, and then you don't have preseason games, they've sort of like hold a lot of the discussion around their sport. Well, look, unless I'm stepping out of bounds here and blaming the wrong guy. This is one of those where we can tie it back to Bill Belichick because you know, they were among the first, I do believe to sort of put the mandate on people of you know, don't report things you see at camp. I mean I remember doing radio in Boston and catching flak four talking about Darrell Reevus and Gronk working in a goal line situation. And that was on a radio show and I saw it. So, I mean, you know, now we've gotten to the point to where NFL teams they don't want to just try to control their narrative. They want to try to shape your narrative. And the easy way to do that is to, you know, look at the set up now. The setup we have right now. It is necessary because people can't be around each other because of the COVID nineteen. But I think I might know maybe a little bit of the road you're going down here and that we may never returned. Like four, the guys like Bill Belichick and the coaches who don't want you anywhere near the players, who are talking to anyone, knowing that they can control it. For fifteen minutes a week on Zoom with a lot of players. Not only does it hamstring the ability to get information, but from a coaching standpoint, that means that stuff can't get out, and that's definitely an issue. Well, I think the other thing and look like when you saw Darrell Revas covering Gronk and a goal line drill stand other people that were sitting on the hill, you know, and so like, I think that was why they were looser about it in the past. And all of this goes back to like the way coaches thing right like, which is if there are fifteen thousand people there or ten thousand in Green Bay or whatever the number is wherever, you know, I think probably most coaches can look at it logically and say that's gonna get up on some fan blog anyway, So go nuts, you know what I mean, like going Well, I played college ball from and my coach once had us to psych out another team because he was convinced they had come into our stadium and we're watching our walk through. This is how crazy this person was that we dressed like ragamuffins so that we convinced them that we were all a bunch of bums and we had a better chance to win. Of course we're not got our ask kick like thirty eight three or something like that against William been Mary. But but but these these are borderline and I say this, these are borderline people who get in their heads so much that they psyched themselves out in situations like so, my my high school coach, who I who I love in a door and who made a huge impact in my life, he had us where blank yellow plot practice now ls like Lincoln Sudbury isn't a it's not like like we're not hurting for money, right, So blank yellow practice jerseys. And then when you if you if you made starting defense, then you got a black one, right like Theo's black shirts, which was goes back to like we had a couple of kids in the eighties who went to Nebraska. One of them became the fourth overall pick in the draft. Nebraska's the Blacks or some defense. So if you start, if you're starting defensive player, you got you wore a blackshirt in practice. So we wore those in practice, no numbers, no marketings, didn't even say Lincoln Sudbury on them, and we wore those in the scrimmages too, because the coaches knew that other coaches were coming to the scrimmages and they didn't want anyone to know who anybody was, and so you know, it's just it's that's like I guess that's an endemic to two football coaches, right. Um, It's just like I just think in this situation, like what I'm saying is that, you know, a lot of the conversation this time of year is driven by that stuff, you know, and you're just not getting as much of it. But we'll try to give you some of it here. We're gonna get into the takeaways now. My first takeaway is not in football, but it's gonna relate to whether or not we can play football in the fall. And that's just I mean, the continued outstanding numbers, um that we're seeing from a COVID perspective, and I don't think this summer could have gone much better for the NFL. Knock on wood, um. Right now, there are players in camps three, not three perteen three total in the NFL or on the COVID nineteen list, which is I mean, I don't know that, like the most optimistic owner would have guessed that. Right, Let's be real, it's it's a shocking number based on the way our minds have been programmed with COVID and what has happened in other sports, So you have that, right. So yeah, and then over the weekend we had the spike in positives, right, but they were all false And I even think that was a good thing because now they got to kind of it was like a real life It was like a fire drial that you thought was real life, right, like this is a fire dril, only you didn't know that it was fake. So all these teams had to go into this mode, eleven of them where they were dealing with positives in their building on like what they could very easily conjure up as a game day because you think about it, right, those tests, those tests went in on Saturday, right, they got they got the results back on Sunday morning, three weeks before the opener, and so they had to deal One team, the Buffalo Bills, had to deal with the idea that their starting quarterback was gonna be gone, and so they had to adjust. They had to kind of put contingency plans into into motion all that stuff. So they got a chance to look at that they're gonna be able to adjust some of the protocols to work with that. I think maybe they'll you know, figure out a way where in an emergency they can rerun a test. Um. You know, the rapid tests are getting a little bit more, a little bit more reliable. But the bottom line is grash like and I've been at seven of these camps this week, like this is working like this is and and granted they're gonna be some more variable storm of the mix. People's kids, coaches, players, kids are gonna go back to school, so obviously that's gonna be a new piece of the environment. Um. You know you're gonna have in um. You know you're gonna you're gonna have in certain places, you're gonna have you know, the hours are gonna change, and so players and coaches are gonna be over the next few weeks in the building a little bit less, so there's a little less control they or what happens when a team starts at two and six. There are some fair questions to be asked there. But I think to this point everything's been I thinks has gone as as smoothly as anybody could have possibly hoped. Now, I think, because we hear that they're not in a bubble, you almost expect the worst that someone's gonna step on their tails somewhere along the way and you're gonna end up having a problem. And I still think that risk is very real because we're we're we're not at the point where a we have the final rosters yet, be once we start having guys getting injured, they're gonna be people coming in and out of buildings and that's gonna add a layer of complexity. And I'm talking about guys coming in on the Tuesday to try out and maybe getting added to the roster the next day because of injury. So there there's still a lot of hoops to jump through. But Bert, my real hope is that I've always known that when it comes down to it, and when you throw in the looming specter of non guaranteed contracts for a lot of these guys, they need to follow the protocols, they need to work, they need the money. We've talked about that a lot over the years with these NFL players, and I'm hoping that the discipline the players can show when they're on the field is something that they can continue once they're away from the facility. And I would dare say there are two things at work here. But that really help in terms of holding players accountable. Number one, other players, because you know that that part is huge, Like hearing another player is different than hearing it from a coach, because every locker room has their debot. I don't care who you are. From the movie Friday, you know, my mama gave me that chain like it walk in the room and rip it off your neck like that. Kind of those are the kind of people that are they're gonna be running the locker room. And here's the other one. Two And we've seen this in Major League Baseball, and this is what NFL team should adopt. If you go out and do something stupid and break the protocol, you gotta do the old zoom with rubes like me and you, and you're going to be held accountable for you did. Major League Baseball had an example in Zach Pleisack where he didn't give a great explanation and then they get these dudes on zoom and they're like, hey, why were you an idiot? So it's almost like there's a layer of public accountability as well if you're one of these people that they have to contact trace and figure out how you got COVID, no question, and so again like we don't know, um what this is gonna look like. But I you know, my big takeaway, I'm I'm happy to see people trying to find pragmatic solutions and the same being careful but not being like not being being careful but but but not being completely defeatist about this thing, you know. And I can't be scared of it. It's interesting. We all have to realize how to manage. I thought, I I think this is so I you've met my buddy Ron. My buddy Ron is a he's a he's a high school football coach. Down floor was, um, he's in sales now. But um, you know, I when I was down in Tampa went and visited him and his family, and um, you know, we we I was telling them about like what it's like the different camps, and then you know, he mentioned, I've been watching Hard Knocks, so I've seen some of it. So I said, what do you think? And he said to me, Goes said, looks to me like the NFL should be running the country. And Lord, but but I thought it was interesting because it was like, yeah, because like they're looking looking for there neither on the side of open it all up or shut it all down. There on neither side, they're like they're in there, they're they're squarely sitting there and saying, we can't like act like a bunch of like drunk cowboys here right at the same time, we can't like, we can't like lock ourselves in our bedrooms either, So how do we find something in between? And I think that that's again, you know, I'm I can't even believe saying this is political, but I think it's a good way to kind of it said. There's a good example to to look at moving forward. And on that note, number two, I was in my of me my last the last top of my trip, and uh, I got a tour of the stadium um which is going to open for fans, believe it or not, in a little over two weeks um with a college game the University of Miami is gonna play you a b and ten days after that, the Dolphins will play their home opener in week two in front of thirteen thousand fans. And I gotta tell you, Grash, the same thing that I just said about, like this what I just said about, like the way that these teams in the League of Handle training camp. You see it at work in the stadium, and I mean, the thing that was cool about it to me, and look, there's like I could get in the nitty gritty of everything they did. It's like the detail on it's ridiculous, right, Like the amount of people that they have, um the amount of the amount of work that went into this, Like the certifications they got for cleaning, the hospital grade air conditioning they have in the building, all of that is like, it's just it's mind building, the amount of work that went into it. I think what's interesting. It's what's cool about it, though, is that all right, like now we actually have a road back, you know what I mean. Now this is an actual real step back towards normalcy. And you know that the team president Tom Garfinkel said to me, he's like he's like, yeah, a month ago, like I was a no, a month ago, I wouldn't have done this, you know, and like, but you know, the numbers have gotten better, so we're gonna give it a shot. The other thing I think that they think that was interesting that he said was his message, don't you had a message to the fans like if you're not gonna wear a mask, don't come like we don't need we we don't come, and you'll never hear NFL people say that, you know, like that sort of thing like turning away paying customers. But he's like, he's like, but we don't want you here because if if, if we have, if we have you know, six thousand thousand fans in the stands not wearing masks, like we're gonna we're gonna have no fans of the next game, like like simple as that. Yeah. I I think in certain parts of our country right now, using football as weaponry to get people to wear a mask is something that is actively going on and is being promoted by football coaches. We've heard about it in the South with the SEC and they had their coaches put put out a big social media blitz and all that stuff. Um. You know, it's interesting because we live in a part of the country where right now I don't think we could ever envision people going in stands to watch a football game. Yet in other parts of the country it's a very viable possibility. Here's the thing. If if the if the team is going to assume the risk of opening the doors, then quite honestly, bert they have to say stuff like that because they have to there. It's just here's the line, you can't cross it. Um. I went to a NASCAR race in New Hampshire about a month ago where they did the appropriate social distancing bert there was one time where I got a little itchy, sketchy weird about it, and that was the whole scanning process of getting in where you kind of had everybody spread apart, but it was in such a small area that you really couldn't otherwise. When you have such a smaller crowd, you're able to kind of handle the flow and then once you get to your seat, if you're appropriately social distance, you then can then take the mask off to be able to cheer. And that's what they've done at NASCAR races. So I do think that there are some sports out there that maybe the NFL is at least able to look at their model how they handled things. You've ever been on NASCAR track, their massive, massive facilities, there's lots of different ways people can get in. In the NFL. You can lock a bunch of gates and and and keep people out. Sometimes there's fences around these buildings. But it'll be interesting to see because you know, the one thing we have learned in all of this is that our greatest enemy might be other humans, because it's very unnatural for people to listen to the first thing they are old, or to listen in general. Yeah, what was it like? Did it feel fake? Like? No? You know what, dude, it was. It's interesting because because you mean, so that would qualify you like, would you go to a food would you want to go to a football game right now with thirteen thousand fans? Would it be worth it to go or would the experience be better on TV? Um? Now I'd go. I'd go because A I know how to handle myself in terms of having hand sanitizer and all that kind of stuff and having masked and taking precautions. You know. The other thing about NASCAR too is B y O B. You don't you know what I mean? On the whole, you're probably getting something so you're not sliding down the stands, you know what I mean, going on to get yourself something to eat because you're you're they're kind of hanging out and drinking. But no, it did. There was that one spot getting into otherwise that was it quite honestly, you know, it was almost like we could throw a rock, and that's what we had to do to kind of get to the next person based on how they had everyone social distance. It can happen if people comply, and in certain states without calling them out. In the South, we know that there's some of those issues, right right, I mean I just think, like I said, like and and and again, this kind of like this this the it's just a good message for everybody. You need to like like if we want to have this stuff back, freaking follow the rules, like right, let's just follow like it's it's on all of us. And that's why, Like it drove me crazy to see the people in Kansas City that weren't wearing masks in the stands, Like, dude, do you understand like this is a test? Yeah, this is like you are not like just going there to hang out and you're not proving anything to anybody by not wearing a mask. You are being tested by the NFL right now. You are being tested by the chiefs right now, and if you show that you can't handle it, you're not gonna be back in there. So and and and your and to your point there there, well, I'm sure there was a little bit of that, hey, can we let these people in and do they have the ability to follow at least a little bit of rules right now that probably wouldn't be as strict as they are on game day. And to your point, you're finding out that even everywhere, people just don't want to comply. And maybe that's got to be the line that you're not walking in the facility until we know you have one, and you can't escort everybody to their seats though that's the you know, that's the other part of it, and then you're gonna have fans yelling at fans. I didn't see any of that, but then again, we also ran to our seats because we had a you know, we were all lookered up and ready to go. So, you know, I don't know if it's a complete uh apples to apples comparison. Last point there, the Dolphins are gonna shut off alcohol sales at noon at halftime for that very reason. Yeah, because these people might be a little less willing to comply after a few al right, take away number three. Earl Thomas is now a free agent and over the weekend I actually happened to be in Baltimore, UM when some of this was going down, but he got into a fight with Chuck Clark in practice. Basically, the team's leadership counsel spoke with John Harbob about it. The leadership council basically said, if you guys want to, if you guys want to, let him go, we're good with that. Let him go. And then that was the death nail for for Earl Thomas when the players said they were okay with letting him go. Um, I mean, look like this is to me, it's like, I think public perception hasn't caught up with who Earld Thomas is. And that's not to say he's like the worst guy on the on planet Earth. He's a weird guy. He marches to the beat of his own drummer and forever like he had Cam Chancellor and Richard Sherman in Seattle keeping him in check. Once those guys walked out the door, once Cam Chancellor, once once Gamp Chancellor retired, and once Richard Sherman went to San Francisco, you started to see things go a little sideways with roll in Seattle. And now I think you've seen kind of the rest of the picture, and this is gonna be a tough situation for Earl Thomas, because like, Baltimore is one of those places, man, where when you get kicked out of there, like I think it's sort of it leads to some marchediber as across the league. Of course it does. And you know, all I gotta do is a quick Google search to throw in Earl Thomas domestic and you could see that there's that issue hanging over him, which right nowadays in the NFL no one wants to touch, no matter how good the player is. So I guess the old advice for Earl Thomas is see if you can examine why in the world you've got an organization that seemingly loved you to unlove you pretty quickly, and that there were players that were willing to push you off that proverbial cliff as well. And then for Earl Thomas, he's gonna get he's gonna get the life in order outside of football. But we know that sometimes necessity can be the mother of invention, meaning that maybe, just maybe someone, some coach has got a hold of his nose and go, okay, I know that this Earl Thomas, I might not love it, but I'm gonna bring a bit because you have no other choice if you're trying to win a championship. And that's where the old rubber will meet the road in terms of this guy getting a second chance in the league because he has some stuff, uh stains on the resume, let's call it that most teams would say, and I don't want to deal with this dude. Well that's why I like. That's why the context of how you're of the context and what you're signing him is relevant here. And that's how coaches will talk themselves into it. My coach will have a need. Maybe they get to a week and a half out of the season, somebody goes down in their secondary, maybe the young free safety hits a roadblock in his development, and the coach will say, well, we're not buying him at fourteen million dollars a year. We're buying him like maybe a non guaranteed two million bucks. And if I buy low on him, you know what, I can get rid of him at any time. And if he's not making much money, well then you know how much power is he going to have in a locker room where he doesn't know anybody. So you know, that's how some that's how I think somebody winds up talking themselves into it. It's gonna be an interesting like legal fight there too with whether or not the Ravens wind up owing him the ten million bucks, which was fully guaranteed. Um. I do think the kind of comical part about this is whatever legs his argument had, he might have kind of shot himself in the foot on that one when he posted the practice video, because there was some he said, she said going on with the Chuck Clark thing. And I don't know if there's audio that they had the Ravens have their you know, like, maybe there is, and maybe you can tell what ha been, but there's probably some gray area there. I'm pretty sure that you know, the idea of posting practice video and a fight that happened on practice on social media probably falls under the heading of conduct detrimental. Yeah, and uh, And you know that these organizations have got all the different ways written down or at least legally, all the different ways that they would pursue situations like that. And here's the thing with Earl Thomas, and maybe you hit the nail on the head from the very beginning and we didn't realize it in terms of bringing it back around maybe it's a team who has veteran leadership who doesn't allow Earl Thomas to walk in and do some of the stuff that he did in Baltimore. Into your point number he's like number ten in the pecking order, and yeah if he's yeah, like you know, he would he would not. I don't think he would walk into New England or Pittsburgh or Indianapolis or some of those places and be able to take over the locker room or get away with his level of Shenanians. Pit'snna be interesting, Patrick interesting because you know, and make it around a little bit more. And I think there are plenty of players on that football team who would be able to police that attitude, including the head coach who But to your point on the whole setting the tone, walking in the door, that's where the head coach can control it. And then you'd have like the whole revenge factor too. Look with all these guys, there's come on, Rodney Harrison has been making up bs before games since too, but butt kicked up by the Ravens and you go to the Steelers. That's yeah, But but I mean good, it does it doesn't There's always there's a there's a tail of woe that bring a tear to a glass eye with a lot of these guys. All right, fourth takeaway, the rookie quarterbacks, I think it's fascinating across the NFL. But I think what we're seeing now proof of what I think you and I talked about probably in the spring, which was I think teams were probably forced to make a decision on whether or not they were going to play their rookie at quarterback. I'd say before camp even started. I'd say because just because like you only have four weeks, you have no preseason games. On top of that, I think to be fair to the other ten guys in the huddle, you have to start to build an offense for them, and it's hard to do that if you don't know who the quarterback is going to be unless you have two guys that are just very, very similar. So we have three quarterbacks go in the first round. In April, Joe Burrow was basically named starter. Zack Taylor didn't come out and say it, but he was basically named the starter of the minute he got drafted there. So they've built everything through April and May and June and then into training camp into making Joe Burrow the starting quarterback against the Chargers Week one on September. The other two teams, I mean, I'll tell you I was in Miami, like Ryan fits Patricks starting quarterback there, and I talked to Anthony and went about the Charger situation. Whoa Tyrod Taylor's a starting quarterback there? Like? And I think in both those situations you have, it's I think for for for both Flores and for Lynn, in those situations, I think it was this guy is gonna have to come get this job because we have to get ready for the season. And so to be fair to the other ten guys in the huddle, we've gotta let these guys we've got, we've we've got to let these guys out there with the ones, and we got to build an offense around them. And you know what if the other if the young guy comes along and just blows us away, we'll adjust. But just to be fair to everybody, we've got to start to build a plan. And it's easier to do that with our veteran right now. You know. Uh, we touched earlier on the whole thought process of coaches, right at the very beginning and how they can to use the wrestling phrases work themselves into a shoot right, there's nothing there, but they get themselves all fired up. This COVID nine team in this kind of year, Bird becomes the year where everybody can slow play their quarterback situation. Normally, if there was camping competition in preseason games and able to judge, then then then the thoughts of people outside the organization would be very different. And now the fans aren't going to hoot on you for a couple of weeks. If you play the veteran quarterback and you're not good, then they'll be the cries of Okay, put the young guy in and see what you have. I I from a fan and a media standpoint. The psychology is fascinating to me because it's almost like COVID nineteen allows the allows these coaches to sort of double down on those kind of thought processes that automatically get into their head as well. I can't trust him and we can't put him through this, and we can't put him through that. How in the world can I put him out on the field when he might be the most talented guy, but you just don't trust To start a year site unseen, but no preseason game, not having that veteran and with the hands on the wheel to start. So all right, let's let's let's just play a game with this over under on week the two, I starts his first game five five. Hold on your wait, wait, you're asking me to set the so okay, yeah, I would. I would say it's if I were setting the line, I would say by week five, will two would be the starter. Okay, Justin Herbert, oh, I would say week eight because that feels like it's gonna get to the middle of the season before they before they would maybe pull the plug on Tyrod Taylor. And these are independent of injuries. These are if everyone's healthy, what what what sort of spot on the calendar or on the schedule should we'll be looking at for maybe some of these guys to come in. And I would say with the Chargers, they got a much better chance than Miami this year in terms of success as a team. So I'd move back back that back to like week eight. And that's why I like, I think the charge that's why I think the numbers higher with with Justin Herbert like as far as weeks like, it's because the charges I think I have a better chance to hang in the competition and to be there, you know when we get to October and November. If you look at it, like and I've done the I've run all of this over the last few years. If you look at it, the only quarterbacks that had true red shirts. And this is going back to so the game that really really the paradigm changed here in two thousand and eight when Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco came out. Those guys both started very early as rookies, both advanced the playoffs. Flacout got the Ravens to the a f C Championship Game. Since then, grass only two I would, I would say, to true red shirts, right, and you can't even like make any correlation to what it the effect it had under development, because one was Patrick Holmes that obviously worked. The other was Jake Locker that didn't work. But what do those teams have in common. They were both contenders, They were both in it to the end, and I think that's it, you know, like they both you know that the Titans had Matt Hasselbeck, the the Chiefs had Alex Smiths. They both had answers at the position, and they both contended, and so I think you know what most often happens is quarterball. These quarterbacks go to bad teams and if they're not starting from week one, the team falls out of contention, and then all of a sudden it becomes, well, why don't we just don't just see what we have and get him reps and all the rest of it. So you remember, do you remember, Sorry to interrupt, but do you remember how weird it was when Carson Palmer got red shirted that first year in Cincinnati, that he was the number one pick and had to play behind John Kittnen for a year. Yeah, and and that was that's the thing in the past now, right, Yeah, very much. So, I mean, I like you remember that, like that was and Carson Palmer was coming out of USC pro style offense playing for Norm Chow like he was just ready, like a big kid, Like it's not like he had to put on weight or anything else. He was ready to go. And that like Carson Palmer, that situation in two thousand and twenty. Carson Palmer is probably starting a hell of a lot earlier than he did. So I think we'll probably see both Herbert and Um. I think we'll probably see both Herbert and two before the end of the year. I think it's all gonna depend on how long those teams remained in the race. Finally, take away number five. Good on the Lions. I know Matt Patricia has been a little bit of a punching bag over the last couple of years. I think he's handled this beautifully. He like he handled the situation the spring um really really well. They had an open form form with their players. But I really respected about they What they did in the Spring was that they didn't come out with a public statement before they talked to their players, like they didn't. They weren't in a rush to like answer the They weren't the in a rush to answer the mob, you know, like like, well, why haven't the small Lions said anything? We like, No, the Lions were sitting down and talking with their players first, and then you know, they kind of like processed everything and came out with a response as a group. And you know, I think this is another example of Patricia kind of handing the baton to his players and you know, the Lions for those I don't think I even said the Lions For those who didn't who haven't seen it um canceled practice on Tuesday in the aftermath of the shooting of of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. So I think, yeah, like that they did a fantastic I think the Lions did a really nice job of letting the players take the lead on this, and then you know, the players obviously, I think the idea of a football coach canceling practice, you know, the grand scheme of things isn't the biggest thing in the world, but giving up a training camp practice is a big deal in these buildings. So I think so, I think the idea of a coach letting the players make a decision on that, like, that's something that's going to resonate across the football world. No that this is huge because it's a football coach who's thinking about something other than football, which normally at this time of year doesn't happen. And uh from Matt Patricia to do the stop down and to go with his players to those protests, considering you know, they're not in the backyard of Detroit, but it's the whole close enough to where they really felt it was a genuine response, and that's where you have leadership on your football team and the football coach, it's made some mistakes, and Bird, I think you make a very good point on the whole communicating with your players. We've seen in college. You know, Mike Norvell left Memphis and went to Florida State and he was like, yeah, I've communicated with the players, and then ten minutes later a player calls him out. The next thing, you know, you have unnecessary issue on your hands that you created. You know, there are other ways to be able to pass on that football intel. Bert, in all honesty and this, some are going to take this the wrong way, but I'm trying to think from the football coach standpoint, it's the whole. Okay, what would I get out of this other than being known as a good human being? You know what you're doing, quite honestly, team building in the mind of a football coach, that is I think how they will will conceptualize what they're doing and being so out of the box and not having practice and going out and reacting to what is going on in the world, and if the team is together with it, then in the mind of the football coach, hey man, we didn't have practice today, but we had us a team building. Then you know what it's simple too, just he has our back. Right, There's a lot of right that simple, and like how huge that is in the sport of football, where literally your safety, your health can ride on the job that the guy next to you is doing or the job the coach is doing for you. The idea that that that that the people that you are working with have your back is huge in the sport. And you're right, Crash. I mean, I think to some degree this is Matt showing the players that he has their back. It'll be it'll be interesting to see what happens moving forward in situations like this, especially during a regular season. If God forbid, we have a an instance of this happening, And maybe that's really the way we should look at it is hope to God we don't have another one of these instances that happened in Wisconsin. Yeah, let's hope that that's what let's I mean, I guess based on the history of all of this, there may not be a whole lot of reason to be hopeful that it's the last one. But I think we can all we're all on board with that. It's disheartening to not have faith in humanity and think of what we talked about this situation, how different it was for an NFL team to cancel practice, and how trying to get a minimal amount of people to wear a mask to go in a building to watch a football game has to turn into some statement from a football coach because people do or don't want to listen, like we're right now, we're our own worst enemy. And by the way, to bring it back around, that's what the NFL is banking on, is that those sevent players who make these rosters aren't the enemy in terms of COVID nineteen and going out getting it and hopefully being able to just kind of do what a lot of people are doing right now, go to work and go home right now in these times, and maybe the NFL can sort of get through this. Yeah. Absolutely, alright, Crush, good to have you back after after a week off. You were in you were into Santisville. Go get that COVID test now. I actually, I actually am going to get a COVID test this morning, not even joking. I didn't know. I like, I guess CVS. You can get them at CVS now, Yeah, yeah you can. Yeah. Yeah, there's places that uh, there's a drive through tests so I don't know how quickly I'll get my results back, but I uh just put it this way. I think I made some family members nervous being in Florida. So just a kind of ye, I would I would assume there might be one that was pretty insistent. And when you came back and getting checked out, I'll tell you what I actually, I slept on the couch last night. It wasn't because I was in the doghouse. It was because I uh, I just let's let's just let's just take the take, take a little precautions to make sure that that the old governor down there didn't didn't put the family in a bad spot. We all work for someone that just happens to be in our house, who tells you where to go when you get back in after that seven after you land at eleven o'clock at night in Logan, it's my it's my reacclamation process. Crush, appreciate you coming out, and we'll get to our special guests right after this. All right, Well, now we're gonna bring in a guy who I go a little ways back with and uh who was one of the more respected guys in the scouting side in the NFL, and I know, like a lot of fans aren't familiar with a ton of these names, um on that side, but it's you know, there are a lot of great people on that side of the BIS this and a lot of people on that side of the business who are going to have their worlds and already have had their world's upside turned upside down, but are going to continue to have their world's turned upside down for at least the next year or so. Um, so talk about all of that. We're bringing in former Titans college scouting director and I guess I'm gonna call you an entrepreneur now, Um, Blake, he's he's he just started betting Field Sports, so he's doing football consulting as well. Um, he's Blake betting Field. Welcome and Blake Alright. So, like I know you've looked at some of the protocols now and for those who haven't seen it, Um, the scouting world is gonna look different in the fall. So there are gonna be no school calls. You're gonna be allowed to go to games, um, to college games to scout guys. But you know it's that's gonna be kind of I think a school by school call whether or not they let scouts go in UM. And on top of that, you're only gonna be able to do your advanced scouting, I believe a week out, so you're not gonna be able to get multiple looks at different teams that you might be playing UM. And that's added all that's added to the fact that there's no preseason games, So all the stuff that happens in the waiver wire, there's gonna be a little bit more of a guessing game going on there because you have players getting cut that like literally like all the information that the teams have on those guys is going to be off their college taping from their college scouts. And so yeah, I guess, like where I want to start with you is, what do you think the biggest adjustment is right now going on in a lot of these scouting departments and with general managers and directors and those sorts of people. You know, I think if you take it from really two different sides of the scouting process, the pro side is really gonna be affected by the fact that what you mentioned, no preseason games. The film evaluation on a lot of these players in camp will be done just based solely on their college film and I really have no um, you know, NFL film so to speak to to look at really the competition thing you're looking for when you're a pro scout you're trying to evaluate pro players, is really seeing them compete against players like them. Now you have to go back to the college film and evaluate players based on who they're playing against. Are they playing against other pros? And that's tough, you know, I think it's gonna be also tough for the players standpoint, those players that usually had an opportunity in training camp to make their market a game, maybe not with the reps in practice, but actually make their mark in a third or fourth quarter, uh, and have a chance to make a team that's really gonna be effective. But the pro side of things is really gonna be up kind of up in the air. A lot of the pro scouting departments right now would go out to preseason games and start to do their advanced work for the season, getting the two deeps together, getting a lot of the formations and and and different things that they're gonna look at when they do an advance report for the coaching staffs during the year. So not only the way they play, but the type systems that they're gonna run, not only on the off it's a defensive side, but really an important part is the special teams who we're gonna be the core special teams players in week one and week two. That's how you have to start to match up when you're doing advanced work in the pro department. So there's gonna be a lot of things that they're gonna be hitting the ground running on week one, but there's gonna be a lot of players are then not gonna be evaluated. I think you're gonna see less transactions this year in terms of picking up players on practice squad. You're probably gonna keep your own more than you're willing to go out and take a chance on a player that you didn't see until last fall. Um, a lot of these teams weren't allowed to see teams are players work out in the spring as well, So the last view on a lot of these players is last fall during the season. So do you think, like, so, let's stay on the pro side for a second there, so you think it's gonna be last I was talking to Matt Rule about this, and I thought it was interesting because we were talking about the similarities between college and pro and how he's like, you know, like being a college coach, having that experience, he's gonna help. And you know, I thought about the whole hours you don't get preseason games. But the one thing he said that was sort of interesting was he's like, your team is your team like this year? You know, and he and he said, in college, that's the way it is. You know, you got your eighty five on scholarship and that's what you're going forward with. There's no like this guy is gonna be gone. I can replace that guy. You're working with what you're working with. And his whole point was that, like, you know, this year in the NFL you got fifty three, you've got bigger practice squad. It's gonna be sixteen guys in the practice squad that has a sixty nine, So you have eight d in camp, you're really talking about shaving eleven off the roster. And then you're like, like, for the most part, you're just working with what you're working with. Do you question and I think you know, the teams that went out in free agency and really had a kind of a forward thinking approach to free agency and signed a lot of veteran type players going into training camp, whether it's veteran back up, some one year contracts, players that have played a significant amount of time, whether it's you know, started some games, or big core special teams players in the pa US. I think those are the teams that really had a forward thinking going into this year, knowing that these these rookie players outside of maybe your top two round draft choices, are really not gonna see the field very much. You haven't see them in game settings outside of college games. You're not gonna see them outside of a practice, and I think that's gonna be different for coaches to trust a fourth or fifth round pick UH to being you're too deep. I would rather take a veteran UH and being my too deep um that that you've actually seen on film on film and they know what to do. UM. So I think you're gonna see a lot of that as well. Where in the past maybe you saw a fourth or fifth round pick emerged during the season, especially the early portion of the season, because of what they were able to do in the preseason games. But I think you're right, and I think Matt Rule is is really gonna be able to kind of walk right in from the college game and really uh implement what he did in college. And this is our team. This is what we have. These sixty now players are are basically the pool ward we're gonna pick for from this year and and that's how we're gonna go moving forward. Do you so if you're a college scout, then is it sort of on you to maybe speak up if there is a name that like, wow, he's available, you know what I mean, like, is that gonna be Is it gonna be on like that? Because I'm I'm thinking now of like the guy who you know, like the undrafted free agent or maybe even the seventh round pick who like gets cut where you know, maybe it's on the college scout now to raise his hand and say that guy can play, like you should take a look at him. Um, Like, do you think there's gonna be a little bit more of that? Because I have heard that from some gms that that interplay is gonna be there where they are going to have to go to like their area scouts to try to figure out about certain guys. You know, the really good scouting departments will will work together the pro and college departments and and what I mean by that is is a lot of the directors of pro scouting will send a list of cuts or transactions to the area scouts for feedback and for feedback of do you really like this player? Uh, they have access to the reports, but instead of diving into those reports, but really get into a kind of a one liner on each player, UH get get a little bit of a snippet, so the pro director and the pro scouts you can get a little bit of a heads up when a players released. And what they'll do is they'll send those out to an email setting and UH ask for a little bit of a feedback to see if they need to go forward with with claiming a player. Okay, Um, the college side is fascinating to me because and I know you and I have talked about this in the past, but you know, in a way like you know your area scouts, there aren't they aren't just like evaluating football. They're almost like you know, private investigators, you know what I mean, like out there on the road for you guys. And a lot of times I know those guys have like they'll have contact of the Politcal police department, they'll have contact in the academic and I mean the academic world all of that. Um, how do you think this changes the paradigm that that you can't because I know those guys are like this of a year, they would be at fall camp, right, Like it's a great time to get access to to to to certain parts of the program that you might not be able to get during the season and getting to go see him practice in the fall. If things stay this way where that you can't go to practice and you can't obviously you're you're not gonna be able to go to fall camp. Like, how do you think that impacts the job of the college scout big big time? It really does, you know, I think as a as a veteran scout, Uh, a scout will go on into a school setting and he will go through the protocols that the college team has for meet with the pro liaison, maybe meet with a couple of position coaches that they allow. But what happens is is during an entire day when you're scouting at a university, you get there when the coaches get there in the morning, and you leave at the end of practice that they allow you to stay that late, So you're spending an entire work day from seven six thirty seven in the morning, so maybe four thirty and five and nine at one school looking at those players. During that time, you kind of go outside the protocol of the Prolaison. All the contacts you've made at those schools. You're gonna spend time with maybe a trainer, athletic trainer, head of security, UM, the strength and conditioning coaches, the equipment guys, anybody, the secretaries, anybody to give you some information on players that you didn't acquire just from the standard list that the pro Liaison gave you. When you're standing out at practice is a great time to mingle with other position coaches that maybe you couldn't catch it during the day because they had meetings or or they were visiting with players. So um, there's a lot of those things that you wait till practice time, get out to practice early to get an opportunity to talk to some of the position coaches that's no longer on the table. That's gonna be something that veteran scouts are gonna have to use their contacts, uh to be able to get on the phone with these people. And it's it's gonna be a constant catch up game instead of finishing a school in one day. Now you're gonna constantly backtrack yourself and wait for the phone call to come from an assistant coach or or a recruiting director or a pro liaison or you know, a lot of are gonna set up opportunities to zoom in and get the initial information. But that's just that's just part of it, you know. I think the evaluation process for college scouts goes far beyond just the film. Like you mentioned, you're part private eye and meaning you've got to do your background on this player as a football player, as a uh what does he do uh in the in the meeting rooms, but also academically, how is he you know, in the classrooms? How does he deal with the other students at the university. These are gonna be very important questions that are gonna have to be answered, and you're gonna be doing that over phone. Now. In game settings, it's very tough to get the coaches to to loosen up there tight Before games. You can go on the field and and have a brief chat with a couple of assistant coaches, but you know, those conversations are really short and uh more congratulatory and and you know, wishing them into game type setting and just get your face in front of them. But it's gonna be tough this year for for scouting departments. I think if you have a young, inexperienced scouting staff, it's gonna be hard for someone to get a phone call back from an assistant coach if he doesn't know your name and face. And I think that's one of some of the more veteran scouting staff will really benefit this fault. That's really interesting too, because I like, I have heard about some of the zoom calls of the bigger schools they're putting on, and what I'm getting is, well, you know, yeah, but there are twenty five guys in that zoom call and maybe the trainers on the zoom or the academic advisors on the zoom, and like, he doesn't know fifteen to twenty on the call, he's not gonna give He's not gonna spill like sensitive information in that setting. So you need to be able to like get that guy on the phone afterwards or else you're not getting, well, they're not gonna spill sensitive information because they're afraid it's gonna be taped as well. And you know, because they're because they're they're cognitant. That's a great point. They're cognzant. All you gotta do is hit that little record button, like we hit the record, but a zoom here. That's right. You know, you're in a one on one setting with a trainer. He's more what he's willing to kind of tell you, not only the maybe the the injury stuff is a little bit more sensitive with the hippo laws, but you know, he's more he's willing to tell you how often they come in for treatment? Uh do they mistreatment? How do they treat the other student trainers around. You know, he's not gonna do that on a zoom call. He's not gonna put that out there for people that, um, he really doesn't know. And I think that's why the scouting world is so important to have veteran type scouts that have those connections. You know, when I first started in and scouting, I didn't have that. I had to build those uh kind of that reputation, build those those contacts up, and it became a little easier as I got older in the business. Uh So, I think young scouts could really struggle early on. UM and general managers at this time in the fall, they really don't have time to get on the phone and call colleges. They they don't uh, And then you're you're also subject to at the end of a college season, the upheaval of coaches getting fired or or hired some at another school and trying to track them down with new phone numbers, new new email addresses, that type of thing. So really that's why that fall is so important, That condensed four or five months is so important, because once the season's over, coaches move and you know, maybe they're not willing to talk about the players that they just coached because they're onto a new team. Okay, so say you have like and you're obviously in a supervisory position, so you're the one that was sort of telling guys what to do. Um, say they do allow scouts at games. What are you telling your your area scout to get at Florida State Clemson or at Texas Oklahoma or whatever? It? Did it like, like, like, what are you telling your areas goot to go in there and hone in on and get for you? You know, I'll tell you what I'm gonna tell them to do. I would I would have them get there the day that the team arrives at the visiting hotel, and if that's gonna be the setting, if they're gonna go to a hotel, uh, and I'm gonna find the assistant coaches in the lobby of that hotel and I'm gonna have those one on ones there, whether I take them to dinner or have a few drinks afterwards, I'm gonna make sure I get some one on one time with those those visiting coaches. U. I'm not sure how a lot of the teams are gonna do it, you know, if they're gonna have those those hotel settings, but I'm gonna make sure I'm around. I'm gonna get that one on one time, especially at the big schools with a lot of players. You know, when you're talking about some of these schools like l S u Or or Alabama and Ohio State, you're talking about a high volume number of NFL caliber players that you're gonna need information on. If you're talking about one or two players, maybe you can do it uh in over a phone setting, and that's that's okay, but you really want to get that one on one time, So I would tell them in that game setting, get there early. Um, you know, get there at the game as soon as you can. Text the coaches ahead of time to come out on the field and spend a little time with you in a one on one setting, not in a group setting, because in a group setting the coach gets a little bit more uncomfortable. But I try to find out as much information on those as possible. You know where they're gonna be. You know they're gonna be in that hotel setting. You know they're not gonna leave, and you try to you try to go there and uh acquart as much information as possible. And then during the game, like, I guess it's just it's because I know practice access is important, right for body types and stuff like that. So I guess during the game you'd be telling them like just size the guy up, get access to like like like tell me what the guy looks like, you know, And I you know what's interesting I was talking about uh uh. I think it was a college scouting director about this a couple of weeks ago. He said, like, well, you know, like guys like Vick Beasley and Brian Burns who we weren't sure like could they keep on weight. It was important to body type them in the fall because they come to the combine and they're all, you know, jacked up. It's like, do we know that they can play it that way? So I guess during games and be like, kind of how do they interact with teammates? Like how do they like? What do they look like physically? That sort of stuff. You know, I think that's very important. And I think that touches on something that you're they're gonna miss this year is that August of avation at practice. What happens is these players come in at a certain weight and during those two days during the fall practices, they lose weight. And that's why it's so important. Like a big Beasley, for example, who was a first round pick and probably gonna be a first round pick. You know, early on, before his junior year started, you wanted to see what he looked like in August and then compare it to what he looked like in a later setting in November. Uh, in later portion of the season, was he able to maintain that weight? Uh? Did he lose a significant amount? And why did he lose it? Was it? Did he not maintain his his nutrition and diet? Is he not in the year did he come in heavy to put on that uh, that weight that the coach required but could maintain it. You know, those are things that he's gonna have when he goes to the NFL as well. So you know, I think that's important to have those comparables, but you're not gonna have that this year. Um. You know, when you go to a game setting, you're you are out there body type and players to see how they match up with NFL players. Do they look the part, what is what is it? The instanc in their frame? Where can they add? These are all things that go into a scouting report. That's one of the main things. The other part of is how they play and interact during the game, not only on the field, on the sidelines. Uh, you know, are they engaged with a coaching staff, Are they engaged with their group? Are they setting off to sitting off to themselves, uh and not responding to the other group. Those are all that's one of the highballs are always on you as a scout in a game setting. Something you can't see on film, but something you can see in a live game. So you know, those are things that you want to see. If there's any injuries that you've heard of, you can always tell in a in a warm up setting are the favoring and injury and and you know those are things you need to know as well. Okay, so ultimately, how do you think that this is going to impact next year's draft class? Um? You know, you have some kids who have already opted out, like Michael Parson's and Greg Russo and I'm kalb Farley. Like, so you've got the guys who've opted out. You have the conferences that aren't playing but might play in January, Wherry, You've got the conferences right now that are full steam ahead. Um, and we don't know a chaos is to come right like, we don't know. We don't know what this is gonna look like in two months, Like right now, how would you say that this is going to affect one draft? And if you're a scout, how nervous are you about the way all this is playing out now? Um? And your ability I guess to get clean evaluations on everybody that you need to see. You know, I think you have to treat the players that have either opted out or just aren't having a season this year because their conference has decided to opt out. You have to treat them like an injured player even though they're not injured. UM. A lot of times you have a player that maybe played one game and uh was was significantly injured, and that's the way you have to treat them. You have to go back to all the previous year's film. But again you want to see what those players are like, like a like a Parsons for example, though you know he's gonna be a really good prospect in this upcoming draft, you would like to see him on film. What are the progressions he made uh during this during this last see Sason Uh not only on the way on the field, but in his body and as he in his frame. You know, as he continued to game weight and hold it, maintain that uh strength that he's gonna have need in the NFL. But those are things that is there a player that emerges that takes his spot uh in the one draft? I think that could be very important. I think you're gonna see a trend this year in the draft that you're gonna see a lot of players drafted based on the film. Whether it's the A, C, C, Big twelve, or SEC, but some of those other conferences that have decided to play at a lower level you're gonna see players get drafted late that have film instead of maybe a bigger school player that didn't play at all in Uh, you're gonna be eyeball test is so important that the recent history of them playing, you know, when you scalt track record is a is a great indicator, and if you're not playing this year, you lose that. Uh. In a lot of evaluators, especially GM's minds, if you had a player that unfortunately was injured in twenty nineteen and played just a small amount and either opted hour or is not playing in he's even further behind. That's rod Dale, right, Yeah, And he's even further behind because you want to see a player play healthy and you want to see him be able to finish a season that way other other than you know, he's gonna get knocked down because of that, and he's a dynamic talent, but is he gonna be able to hold up for a sixteen game season in the NFL? So yeah, I mean, like it's just it, it's it seems to me too, like with a lot of these I mean, it's just an impossible position for so many of these kids to be in. Like, how do you think you'd advise them right now? Like, if you're a kid in the Big ten, would you advise them to play in January? If you were if you're a kid who is a top twenty pick, would you advise them to go forward with the season? I mean, I like, what's the best Like like should a kid stay in school or should he drop out and start to prepare for the draft? I mean, I like, like, what are you think the best advice for all these kids is? I know they're all in different situations, but what do you think the best way you could advise these kids would be right now? You know, I think it's and this is kind of self serving when I say this, but um, you know, I think if you're a top player and that if your team decides to play in January, which I highly doubt that's gonna happen, But if your team decides to play in January, you almost need to make it a deal with the university that you're gonna play a couple of games to get film and you're gonna opt out after that. Um, it's unfortunate for a team setting and it's gonna be a lot of um, you know, bad press over and initially, but they need that film, whether they play early in January or February, to get a couple of games under their bat to show what they have, uh, and then move on. And I'm talking about top players. I'm talking about first rounders, maybe maybe a high second rounder, but you need to show that film. I think players that are in the in the middle part portion of the draft or a ladder portion of the draft, play the whole season. If you're playing in the spring, you know what is it gonna hurt you. It's only gonna help you to free share value. And you may be the only game in town in terms of just a couple of conferences. Playing in the spring, all eyes are gonna be on you. You have an opportunity to really show late before the draft process to the scouts what you're worth it. Maybe you can raise your game and raise your value. So you know, I think those are those are gonna be a case by case basis with a lot of these players. Uh. You don't want to put a player in in in harm's way that close to the draft because of the medical Uh. But you know, also you need that film as well. Okay, So I do want before you get out of here, I do want to ask you about a specific, a specific, a specific example that I think applies to what some teams are going through a rookie quarterbacks right now, and that you're in Tennessee when you guys drafted a quarterback in the first round in the lockout year, and that I believe, and you know, me and Grass got into this earlier. I believe that was one of two like true red shirts UM over the last twelve years since Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco UM, where a team drafted a quarterback in the first round and really red shirt him for the whole year. Patrick Mahomes is the other example. So, like, what do you remember about that year drafting a quarterback into that environment, and like kind of how hard it made it on on Jake in that situation, and how that might apply to a Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert or to a tongue of a lower right now. You know, I think our our situation was very tough. We had a head coaching change in that setting as well, and it was a late head coaching change. Jeff Fisher left and Mike Munscheck came in, and coach Munschak was scrambling to find a staff because the decision was made to move on from coach Fisher uh to coach Munschack late in the process, and he was scrambling to find a staff. So not only were we going through the draft evaluation part, but he's trying to find that somebody to run his offense that he really wants. When Jake came in, you know as a situation where um, it was tough. You know, it's tough for a rookie quarterback not to be able to come in the building and spend time with his coaches and and that's that's tough for a lot of players, even the veteran players. With this new staff that was coming on board. You know, I think when you have this setting where um, even a Justin Herbert or to uh, those live reps in in preseason is so important just to get through some of the mistakes. Have your mistakes in those preseason games, not the first game of the year. Um, the game speeds up in in week one compared to the preseason. It really does. And I know players talk about it all the time, but when you have players that are veteran players that have been doing it for a long time, they hit the ground running in Week one, very very seldom do they take two or three weeks to kind of get up to speed. That's usually the rookies are new players in a system. Um, so those rookie quarterbacks are really gonna if they if they play week one, are really gonna have some growing pains early in the season, unlike some of these other quarterbacks that have transitioned a little bit faster as a rookie. Do you think, like so, I thought what was interesting was like the Bengals have basically made no bones about it, right that Burrows their starter, and the Chargers and the Dolphins have sort of gone the other direction where they're giving like the first team reps to the veterans, to Tyrod and to um and to Rian Fitzpatrick. So like, do you think it's like one of those things too, Like we're just to be fair to everybody, you have to make a decision earlier, like just to be fair to the other ten guys in the huddle, Like you have to make a decision earlier because you have to build offense, and you have to build offense for everybody, not just for the quarterback, right, Like, So, do you think there's some element of that too, and what's going on now where um, you know that the coach the coaches sort of had to make their kind of had to have a plan for all of this to begin with, where it's all right, like this is kind of what we're going forward with, you know. I think. So in both of those settings, they have back or they have players that have started games, whether it's Tyrod Taylor and Ron Fitzpatrick. They have players that the that the other veteran players on the team have respect for and seen them in games and and they've had some success, um you know, with with different teams, so you know, those are easier. I think situations to put them in first, uh, and then let the rookie ride while he's learning and continue to get reps, maybe get reps and situations in games where they're not gonna have in the preseason this year, but give them some some a couple of series here and there just to get their feet wet. I think with the Chargers they're gonna be looking to win this year, maybe where the Dolphins have a little bit more time to play with while they were continuing to rebuild. So like, I mean, it's interesting too because you kind of like look at like the way it could play out over the year, where and we said this earlier. It's just it. Some of it comes down to like whether or not you're in the race, right like so you know in the end, I mean like if like you said, like that, the charges are contending all year, like you guys were that Tennessee, Like there's just there's no maybe there's no need to for a change or you don't want to rock the boat, you know, Whereas when you know you're not as competitive, it's easy to kind of convince yourself let's just throw the kids out there, no question about it. And I think that's what the Bengals are looking you know, uh, right now, just go with Joe Burrow and uh, you know, put him in with hopefully that he has some veterans surrounding me, whether it's a j Green gets healthy and uh, you know, the offensive line should be solid enough to protect him. They have a running game, have a couple of runners that that can take some pressure off of him, and not everything is on his shoulders like sometimes a true number one pick overall. While but the Dolphins are probably in the best situation where uh they can go and they can play Fitzpatrick until they get in certain game situations and maybe they they found an opponent early in the season where two can fit uh and be very effective early on and to be able to take over from there. Tennessee, he's surprised he's still playing. You don't know, because I'll tell you the thing that about Fitzpatrick is UH as smart as he is, and he's a very smart guy. Uh. He plays the game very loose, and he is he is the He's one of the more frustrating quarterbacks to watch when you're watching him on your team, and then he's very exciting at other times. He's he's unbelievable in the sense that like he can have a three touchdown game with no interceptions, where he could have a no touchdown game with three interceptions. You just never know which fits you're gonna get. But he has that exciting kind of um or about him where you just never know what's gonna collick that day. But he makes plays at times, and Uh, you know, he's he's really good with the team, and I think he'll be very good with two as well. You know, as two uh emerges and eventually takes over for Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, it seems like he's been great with two I don't know if you saw, but two acts. What. I came to one of his press conferences wearing a Fitz jersey, So I guess they're getting on getting along all right. Okay, he's Blake betting Field, former Titans college scouting director. Blake. Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about what you're doing right now with Bettingfield Sports. You know, I worked in the NFL for nineteen twenty years and worked in a couple of the other leagues, the XFL, the a F, and enjoyed that portion of it. Uh, but you know, I started owing football consulting businesses called Bettingfield Sports dot Com. And uh what, I've worked with a lot of NFL teams in terms of evaluations leading up to the draft and uh, working a lot of NFL agents out there actually to uh you know, evaluating players for them, and uh and I started this this company with the idea that, uh, you know, I started working with a lot of colleges as well. With the recruiting departments becoming so big they're really like an NFL scouting department. And and what I do is I go out and I help uh the universities and colleges, uh really set up their scouting staffs and and learn to learn to evaluate play is how to write reports the proper way of going about it. I did that for a number of years in the NFL, and I'm able to to share that I've got a passion for scouting, a passion for evaluating players, and uh it's been a fun process. Um. I've also started another part where I look at high school players as well. Uh. There were some local people here in town in Nashville that, um, really we're outstanding players, but weren't getting offers from universities. And and I have, you know, twenty plus years of dealing and with all the different universities and colleges and contacts there. And what I do is I call up my friends at at all these different universities and uh put these players in front of them. And as I tell the players, I can't get you a scholarship. I can only put you in front of the people that, um, that are doing the evaluations and can and can offer. And what I do is I help these players. Uh. Basically, I kind of promote them to the universities and then they go and take it from there. Um, I can use my contacts that way. It helps the universe these as well. I reached out to a number of my friends at different schools and said, is this something that has been official to you? And because of I have so many years evaluating in the NFL. And they said, like, anybody you give us, we're gonna look at because we know you know what you're looking at. So you know, it's it's been a fun process. Uh. The high school thing that was new to me when I started this, but I've really enjoyed it and and I've helped a number of kids get scholarships, not only uh small school scholarships, but a lot of Power five and top programs too that once you get them on the on the list, once you get them looked at. Uh, the snowball effect happens for a lot of these players. And it's been fun to watch. And I'd like to see kids dreams come true. That's fantastic, by the way, Like I'm just wondering what sort of feedback are you getting from your friends in the NFL scouting world right now about what it's what it's like and how chaotic it is, you know, it's I think it's so. I think early on in the summers they were worried not only about what what the landscape is gonna look like, but you know, their jobs and and and I think that's so important. Scouts are sometimes they've forgotten the heroes of a team sometimes because they're out there doing the day to day work on the road and there we always say out of side of out of mind as a scout, uh, and the team kind of forgets about them. One situations like this where colleges were opting out or players were opting out, you know, there was either one two ways to go. Either the scouts were not gonna be very important because of a lack of schools, or they were gonna be even more important because they really need those scouts with those contacts. And I think it's it's it's swayed from one side the worry of not having that job when the fall comes around to now they're even that would be more valuable for an NFL team, And the teams are seeing that right now that especially some people with with a lot of experience that can make phone calls and and really go about their business. You really don't want to teach a brand new scout how to how to go on the road and evaluate players in this type setting. You want to have scouts that have done it, whether it's a year or twenty years, you want to have scouts that have been there and done that, you know. And and it's so interesting when you were saying, like the experience thing, I sort of I don't know if you watch Hard Knocks last night, but it uh sort of kind of came into focus I think where Anthony Lynn was addressing his players and he said, like, other coaches are gonna call me, and I'm gonna tell him the truth, you know what I mean. Like, I thought it was so interesting because it kind of took you inside what you're talking about, which is like just a network of like who you know. It's like, well, if I see my college, Scott tells me there's this guy that chargers this guy the chargers cut that he really likes coming out, And now I can get Anthony Lynn on the phone to ask him, and I know I'm gonna get the truth. That becomes a super powerful thing in this setting. So it's all kind of works together that way, no question about it. The football businesses is one big fraternity. We just work for different teams. It's just one of thirty two divisions of one big company. We all did the same job. And you never want to lead somebody down a path of of of giving bad information because that reputation stays with you still. Like at Anthony Lamb, what he's saying and that setting is is so true. At the head coach for another team he's looking for a player, he's going to pick up the phone call and say, you know, how was he in your building? Uh? You know what, we're the negatives? What were the positives? Not as much on the film type setting. But if you can't see stuff, you can't stuff you can't see, right, absolutely? Okay. Again, he's Blake Bettingfield, former college scouting director of the Tennessee Titans. You can get you can follow him on Twitter at Blake bad I think right at Blake B E D D. And he's the owner of Bettingfield Sports. I appreciate you coming out like always always happy to be with the Albert All right, thanks again to Blake. He was fantastic, a very experienced connected voice in the scouting world. So I hope you guys took something from that kind of giving you guys an inside look into how it's working inside NFL organizations. Right now, we're gonna jump to your questions. You guys know how this works. Ever since COVID hit, we've gone back to the six pack. The six pack is what we've done since two thousand and sixteen, and at that basically is every Tuesday we put put the call off for questions on Twitter. I'll pick six if I picked yours, do you get a like? That means I hit that little heart thing on the Twitter machine and you get an answer here. Question N one comes this week from Craig Ginsburg, that's at Craig Adam G. What would it take for Baker Mayfield to keep his job beyond this year? First year GM, first year coach that didn't draft him. Could the team move on next year if he underwhelms Now? I think this question obviously is in play with all the third year quarterbacks. It seems to me like year three is when teams have started to make harder decisions on players at that position. Um, you saw it with Mr Robinsky bringing in competition for him this year in Nick Foles. You know, after year three on the flip side, The Rams gave Jared Goff a huge contract, the Eagles gave of Carson Wants a huge contract. So it seems like that's sort of become kind of a critical point for for young quarterbacks. So Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, Sam Donald, Um, all three of those guys are going into year three and coming out of year three will probably look at them a little bit differently because that's the history. I think for Baker Mayfield to keep his job beyond this year, I think he will keep his job beyond this year, just to be clear on it, Um, And I think to keep his job beyond this year, he's got to be a good soldier. He's got to be a good program guy. And you know, I think he's got to show again that he's capable of continuing to take steps in his development. What I've heard there, the stuff that I've heard, you know internally in the building. He's more willing to be vocal in team meetings. That's a good thing. Um. He has shown a playmaking ability on the field. He's been up and down a little bit. He's shown a playmaking ability and ability to hit the pit balls downfield and he's shown an intention to detail with some of the things he's focused on um specifically this offseason, one of them being his foot work out of the shotgun. And so I think you see good signs there. I think what you have to what what you hope for if you're Kevin Stefanski, Alex van Pelt, the guys who will be working with them, is that you're gonna have a better player in December than you had in September. Question number two from Peter Johnson, that's at Peter Johnson and thirty. Which teams do you think will most be affected by having fans or limited fans? I mean, no fans are limited fans, which may benefit all right, Peter, So I I think that the first thing I want to say when it comes to this, there's gonna be an equities across the league. You know, Sean McDermott, who I love and who has done a great job in Buffalo, said that he doesn't think it's right. It probably isn't right, but here's the fact the league. The facts are the league is probably going to lose tens of millions of dollars, maybe up to a hundred billion dollars per team. This year, and they're gonna do everything they can to try to get that money back. Everything they can do to try to preserve any of the revenue that they're losing is a good thing for the players as well, because that's gonna help mitigate the damage done to the salary cap, not just in one but really over um a couple of years after that as well. And so you know, I think that the league, the players are gonna be on board with doing whatever they can to try to preserve as much revenue as they possibly can, which is why this is happening, which is why there will be inequities across the league. As for teams that will be most affected by having no fans or limited fans, I think teams that will be adversely effective are the ones that have a great home field advantage. Seattle is on that list, Kansas Cities on that list. I think the Philadelphia Eagles would be another one that would be on that list. There are certain teams that have a great home field advantage as a result of the noise in their stadiums, the environment teams go, teams have to confront going into those places, and so I think those DOWD teams do lose a little something which teams could benefit. I've kind of thrown a curveball at this to answer this question a few times now, and if you haven't heard it here, it is. I think the teams are playing cold weather cities late in the year could have an advantage because I think that there's that that's just the idea of a team having to go in Buffalo or having to go into Green Bay like for a night game and November December, and you're going into a really uncomfortable environment to begin with, and then there's no juice like coming from the stands and say you fall up, fall behind, tend to nothing, and now all of a sudden, it's tend degrees out, it's snowing sideways like, and there's just no energy in the stadium. I mean to me, I think that the cold weather teams, if this continues late into the year, it could be the teams that benefit because even when you're getting boot or heckled by a team that's energy, So that the idea of being in like a cold weather environment that maybe it's just gonna be uncomfortable to begin with, and now there's no energy in the stadium. I think it could give teams like a Buffalo, like a Green Bay that play outside these environments a distinct advantage. Question number three from Dusty that's at barstool, Dustin, chance of the NFL finishes the season, Dustin, I'm gonna give you the stock answer. It sort of depends on how we're doing in the country in November and December. I'm the NFL is giving itself the best chance possible, considering all the different factors, and play the best chance possible to get a full season played. Will the season finish again, Like, I just think that that depends on how we're doing as a country. And so many of these outside factors that are going to be sort of like injected into the NFL bubble, And that's the spouses of of of players and coaches going back to work, the children of players and coaches going back to work. All these things, you know, could introduce new factors into those ecosystems. If you do that, you've got a lot less of a chance to If that happens, you've got, you know, obviously a diminished chance of finishing the season. And so so much of this is going to kind of ride on how we're doing as a country in November December. But I think the NFL has given itself a fantastic shot at getting it done. Question number four from Graham Bailey. That's at Graham Bailey, Dude, the Brown's land Earl Thomas, Earl Logan Ryan. This is obviously related to the injury situation that Cleveland Browns have on defense. Most recently they lost Gramp del put, a really promising young free safety. That's where old Thomas's name comes up. Graham. Here's what I would tell you, first year coach. I would say, if you needed a corner Logan Ryan, Yes, if you need a safety, maybe Earl Thomas. No, that's a young roster. Earl Thomas would go walk in there and have a lot of leverage in that situation to begin with. Um, you know, and like so I look at it and I say, well, if things went wrong in Baltimore and that place is winning and there's a lot of positive there and that place has got a strong culture and they couldn't do it, then how are we going to pull it off with a group of people who are just getting started right Like it's just getting started. And so I'd be worried about that. If I was the Browns just based on where they are are from a building standpoint, the flip side logan, Ryan could be great for your building, could be great for you trying to build something. So I think some of those decisions, I know that wasn't why you asked that question, but I think some of those decisions will very much be marked by those sorts of things as they should be. Question number five from Christians Plan. That's at Christians Plan. How is Donovan Smith looked in camp? Donovan smiths fine? And I don't think he's the question for the Bucks. Nor is uh Nor Nor nor is Alan mar Pet the question for the Bucks. Nor is Ryan Jensen the question for the Bucks. The question for the Bucks coming into camp where Alex Cappa, their young guard, and then the rookie right tackle Tristan Worth's and Tristan Worf's. From my understand, turn the corner about a week ago, Kappa has had a great camp um and really looks like, you know, he's grown into his body. You know, he was a Division two player coming out of college, I believe, so he's grown into his boys. So you're seeing really good signs there. Those two guys are gonna be so key. I know what. Nobody's focused on them. Um, you know, as the Bucks get all this attention with Brady there and everything else, keep an eye on those two guys. Those two guys could wind up being crucial to where the season goes. Smith's gonna be fine. I think Mark Pet's gonna be fine. Um, you know, Jensen is gonna be fine. Those two guys really really important, as is the ability for the Bucks to maintain some semblance of depth on the offensive line. Need to protect that forty three year old quarterbacks so he can get the ball out there to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and Rob Gunkowski and Cam Brad no j Howard and Ronald Jones and Scotty Miller and everybody else. Question number six, last question of the week. This is from Taylor Rourke. That's at time is after us. What are your expectations for the Colts this year and which are the rookies do you see making the biggest impact this season? Michael Pittman Jr. Or Jonathan Taylor. Yo, Taylor, I'm gonna go with Jonathan Taylor. I think I don't understand why he wasn't seen as the number one back in this draft class. Um, I love what he brings to the table. Now there is a question about catching the ball. The Wisconsint through the ball to him some last year. He's worked a lot on that. And this is a guy who has built like you know, your traditional bell cow. And he runs for three and he rushed for six thousand yards and three years in college. And you've got he's playing behind Anthony Costanzo and Quentin Nelson and Ryan Kelly and in an offense that is going to be looking to run the ball. And so I think Jonathan Taylor is the guy. I think Pittman will be fine. Receivers take a little bit longer to come along. I'd buy stock in Jonathan Taylor right now. Here's the other thing. I do think that the team is closer to being a very real contender, like a team that can advance in the playoffs. And people are giving him credit for you forget where they were before. Luck we're tired. Last year. This was a team that is a really good place from a building standpoint, with young guys like Nelson, like Darius Leonard. They've continued to draft. Well, I ain't there in a really good spot going forward. They've got a long term quarterback question, and that's an important one. I think Rivers is gonna be good this year by Stock and Taylor. I think the Colts are gonna be right there with the Titans and the and the and the Texas competing in the AC. So I appreciate you guys coming out. As always, we want your feedback, We love your feedback. We're gonna incorporate your feedback. We're doing a little longer podcast now. I think this was gonna probably be in Shelby. I'll be able to answer this for me after the show, but an hour and fifteen and twenty. Appreciate the people who have made it all the way to the end, and we want to make this better. So if you want to shorter listen, let me know and we'll make it more rapid fire. I'm just trying to give you guys the best football content I possibly can as we get closer to the season. You guys know where to find me on Twitter at Albert Brier, on Facebook, Albert are Breer on Instagram Albert Underscore Breer and always listen to all of our podcast you guys know we're all on one feed now the mm QB NFL podcast feed. You go there. You get the Weekend Review podcast, which incorporates all of us. You can get the Week's Side podcast with Jenny and Connor. You can also get the Monday Morning podcast with Gary and Andy. Andy. All of them are good listens. I listened to all those those in the car, not just my own. Um you guys, you're gonna hit that, hit that the subscribe button. You get all of those in one place, same time next week. We'll see you guys,