Transcript 0:19 Welcome to Norse Code, the number one podcast for your Minnesota Vikings. I'm your host producer. My name is James Piekutowski. Thank you guys so much for listening. 0:26 And on the other end of the tin can and string, we have our analyst and co-host. You know him from numerous blogs and podcasts around the internet, most notably from the Wide Left substack. He is Mr. 0:36 Useful Human, Arif Hassan. Arif, have you ever hugged an Italian person before? 0:41 [laughs] Look, it's very easy to, on a grainy image at an exclusive adults only resort, um, to hug an Italian person and just come away with the wrong impression. It's happened to all of us. I... Who [laughs] 0:56 that he is without, without grainy sin, uh- [laughs]... cast the first stone. Unbelievable. Um- What a, what a, what a week for journalism. [laughs] In quotations really. 1:11 Uh, for those who have missed it, uh, I don't even know if we wanna have its own section, but the, uh, the Rossini-Vrabel, uh, there's so much potentially that, that could happen as a result of this thing. 1:23 You, you know how, you know how scandals used to be called affairs in, like, newspapers in the '60s? What, what an apropos name- As it turns out... the Rossini affair. [laughs] Right. 1:34 As it turns out, the Rossini affair is, uh, absolutely a thing here. And, um, yeah, uh, problematic for Mike Vrabel, to say the very least, uh, being potentially caught in, uh, in this. It... 1:47 'Cause, yeah, for, for a while it was affair, and then in like, the '90s, everything turned into gate. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, that's, that's, that's not gonna- And, and we're still-... 1:55 that's not gonna work here... recovering from and like a, and like we haven't dropped gate entirely, but we're doing a better job of not automatically going to gate. It took a while. 2:04 We had to, we had to survive through the 2000s and a little bit of the 2010s where they did it, but I think we're, we're through gate. Yeah. We're, we're, we're firmly back in the affair situation. So, uh, 2:18 Dianna Rossini, who spent most of last year declaring that Aaron Rodgers was gonna sign with the Vikings- Mm-hmm... 2:24 uh, has moved her attention towards Mike Vrabel, who on multiple occasions has put out pretty interesting tweets about Mike Vrabel. Uh, the year that he- Man... 2:37 the year he didn't get signed as a coach, and she had said that she had spoken with somebody at the Senior Bowl about why Mike Vrabel wasn't hired, and the res- and, and the reasoning was because he was too big and of, like, an imposing presence. 2:52 [laughs] Yeah, man. There's- Uh, to- There's some fun tweets if you go deep into her Twitter thing... 2:59 there, there's a video I think from 2021 where she talked about, like, "Hey, it makes sense that, that Mike Vrabel's always tweeting about his wife. I mean, she's hot. 3:08 If my husband was attractive, I'd tweet about him all the time." Hey, man, uh [laughs] what is that? What are you doing? 3:17 [laughs] The picture, the picture that got posted on, I forget if it was Twitter or Blue Sky, uh, that showed the, uh, the, there was the image of Tiger Woods in the front seat of the cop car, and he was just like that, like we, like, oh, exhausted look, and it said something along the lines of, like, Dianna Rossini's husband waiting for her to get back from an exclusive trip. 3:37 Like, oh. God, man. You, uh- Anyway, it's the beginning of the show. Uh. [laughs] It, it is the beginning of the show. We're not off the rails. No. [laughs] This is all, oddly enough, topical. Right. Yeah. So yeah. 3:49 Uh, I mean, I don't know how many Italian [laughs] people you've hugged. S- sorry, Sarah Sivian was... I- this was a joke tweet, right? Like, I can't- I want to believe so. Yeah. 4:03 Uh, Sarah Sivian tweets out, "Sorry, but I have to say some of the commentary on the, quote, 'situation' with a certain NFL coach is completely ridiculous. Have you ever hugged an Italian person before? 4:12 Stop and ask yourself if you're falling for a double standard. There are hit pieces now-" [laughs] And this is the part, so that part was, like, very funny, but the next part made me think maybe it's not a joke. 4:22 "There are hit pieces now on right-wing websites about a harmless one-off joke she made months ago as if it was an actual crime, all because of a picture of a hug?" Which I love following Sarah. She's great. 4:35 Uh, she does really great hockey reporting. I follow her Substack. So I don't wanna, like, go, like, sh- push back too hard or anything like that. But, like, they had, they, they interlaced hands, right? 4:45 Like, the hug was a hu- like, you do the hug, and it's like I've seen people hug. It could be very platonic, obviously. Uh, and then the hug ends with them pulling apart with, with enmeshed hands, which is intimate. 5:01 Like, I can't... I've not seen a hug like that that wasn't more than platonic. Like, that's the sort of thing where if that happens in your friend group, you're like, "Oh, well, those two-" Oh, they're- "... 5:14 are getting together." Oh, okay. Is there something you wanna tell the friend group? Right? [laughs] Like... They're... All right. We're here for board games. You're- [laughs]... you're apparently not. Okay. 5:23 [laughs] Which is fine, but, like, that's a new dynamic now. Yeah. [laughs] We, you do kinda have to run it by the rest of the polycule, but fine. Oh, all right. 5:33 [laughs] And with that, welcome to this episode of Norse Code. Hope you guys are all doing well. Uh, we have some draft stuff to talk about. 5:41 The, the draft is happening here in just a couple weeks, so, uh, Arif brought on Alex Katzen. Uh, he'll be discussing some draft stuff. And we have the mailbag as well. 5:50 Before we begin, thank you guys so much for listening to Norse Code. 5:54 If you enjoy the show and would like access to things like the bonus episode and the Discord, all of that, you can go over to patreon.com/norsecode for $3.50 s- for $3 and 50, 50 cents a month. 6:04 Hey, the painkillers are kicking in. Uh, pain pills are kicking in. All right. [laughs] Yeah. Uh, you get access to all that, so, uh, patreon.com/norsecode. 6:13 Somebody actually posted that they prefer the episodes of Norse Code when I'm on pain pills. I do notLet me be perfectly clear [laughs] I, I do not. 6:22 Uh, you can also go to paypal.me/norsecode for a one-time donation, or you can go over to norsecode.threadless.com for any wonderful, any number of wonderful pieces of Norse code merch- Wow... 6:31 including the puzzle, which if you get it- No... at the right size [laughs] No. You can just single out Arif on a bo- [laughs] the Arif body pillow portion of it, as we discovered this last week. 6:47 So do we, do we think that... So it got, it got posted on Blue Sky, and one of... I, so I have many objections, one of which is that I'm wearing only a thong in the puzzle- Mm-hmm... 6:59 and also that I'm on a body pillow- Yeah... among probably several other objections. But the one I chose to voice, which is probably fourth or fifth on my list of objections- [laughs]... 7:10 is that I am depicted multiple times in this puzzle, so there's multiple images of me, as a white guy. 7:18 [laughs] And, and, and so I wanna know, do we think that that was a printing error unique to that specific puzzle that got shipped out, or do we think that that's, like, that's on the, that's on Threadless? 7:30 I think that- I think that's on Threadless. Oh, good. Great. The picture, 'cause it, uh, other images from that were shown, uh, in the Discord, and, uh, it did- We were comparing and contrasting puzzles? That's... 7:43 All right. Well, we were, we were comparing and contrasting that, uh, the, the image that he was showing to what the actual logo was, or the, the image that was put up, and it, it did brighten it up considerably. 7:54 So even Dusty, who is a ghost in there, and a ghost in real life, but, uh [laughs] He got washed out of all things. [laughs] He got, he got washed out pretty good, so. Okay. 8:05 Uh- So I apologize, I apologize that it changed your ethnicity. I, I hope this does not [laughs] What, what a sentence, man. [laughs] I know. Well, this is, this is where we're at. 8:17 Uh, as the person who uploaded the image, I uploaded the correct one without, uh, without whitewashing anything, so I apologize that Threadless has done this to you. 8:25 I, I strangely, I trust you on that one because- [laughs]... that's, that is a lot of stupid effort to go through [laughs] to, to, to whitewash the image. 8:36 Um, the, the picture on the website, which we have to be clear, they didn't make a puzzle and then take a picture of it and put it on the website. 8:46 They clearly just, like, digitally added the image that Jim's uploaded onto a blank puzzle, obviously. Uh, d- first of all, it has Dusty as ghost colored, which we all know is a faint blue. Um- That's canon. Yeah. 9:02 And I am, well, as I always am, ethnically ambiguous, but I'm certainly not obviously white, right? Like, that's- [laughs] That's not something people just look at you and just see immediately. Right, yeah. 9:14 And, and on the image that's on the website, I appear to be the appropriate amount of not obviously white. So it is in the printing process and/or, like, obviously, the ingestion of the image. 9:28 But the image that's uploaded certainly looks like it is at least appropriately colored. As much as I would love to blame you or Drawplay Dave, s- how- Or Luke... 9:37 how, how much I would love to blame, well, Luke, obviously. Um, but how much I would love to blame Drawplay Dave, I, words can't express the degree to which that would make my day. 9:50 But it very much seems like the evidence is not there to support such an allegation. Nope. This, uh, this is not on Dave. This appears to be on Threadless. Apologies. 10:00 But if you'd like to get this wonderful piece of merch [laughs] Right... that, uh, that, that we have discussed A greater chance for a whiter Arif. Yep. If you would [laughs] if you'd like your... No. That is not- Mm... 10:11 a sentence I want to start saying. Mm. Um, anyway. No, finish it. Uh [laughs] Well, if you're inviting it. 10:18 If you'd like to have your Arif white, please go over to norsecode.threadless.com and, uh, and pick up the puzzle of the 10-year anniversary image. Uh, and with that, let's get into the show itself. 10:31 [laughs] I don't know, I don't know how we recover from that, but we're gonna go over to an interview that Arif conducted earlier today with Alex Katzen from Wide Left, Chargers Wire, and Football Sheets. 10:41 And we'll be back with the mailbag. Cool. So I'm here with special teams pervert, uh, Alex Katzen. Uh, he's also the COO, I guess, of Wide Left. Um, I gotta look into our org structure to see if that's still true. 10:56 Uh, he writes for Chargers Wire, Huskies Wire. Uh, he records data for Football Sheets, and he also does a podcast for the Chargers with Guilty as Charged, right? 11:08 So he has about as many jobs as I did six years ago, I guess. Yeah, that sounds about right. Um, as far as I know, I'm still the COO at Wide Left. 11:20 Uh, I would hope that I still am because we just had a board meeting earlier this week, or was that last week? I don't remember what week it was. That was this week, yeah. Yeah, it was like two days ago. 11:29 And, uh- [laughs]... I was still presented as the CEO in that meeting, so I think so. That's crazy. Uh- That's wild. Who did that? But [laughs] yeah, I, I don't know. Uh, but yeah, I'm all over the place. 11:40 It was a great board meeting. I'm doing all sorts of shit. We were like, we were like, "Yeah, so our conclusion is that we should write more articles." It was an incredible board meeting. [laughs] Right, yeah. 11:48 It was a really productive board meeting. We're really good at business. Um- [laughs]... you know, I think, I think we're sort of like the preeminent business people in the industry, which- Yeah... 11:56 sounds not true based on what you just said about what happened in that meeting, but there are many companies, as we've profiled on Wide Left- That's right... that have not come to this conclusion. Yeah. 12:06 [laughs] So actually, I'm being serious. [laughs] I, uh, I just reread through my Draft Network piece because it, it was actually relevant to something I was doing in a completely unrelated group chat. And, um, 12:23 yeah, dog, it's crazy how bad you can be at being a company.Yeah, not like us. That's, we would never do that Not, not like us. Uh, okay. 12:33 So, uh, I brought you on without a plan in mind, but I figured we'd both do, like, spreadsheets for the draft as, like, a notable thing that we do. So, like, what is Football Sheets? 12:45 So Football Sheets is a continuation of the spreadsheets that I have operated since 2021 or 2022. 12:53 I can't even remember what year it was at this point, but for a long time, I have maintained sort of a collection of spreadsheets going all the way from college football to the NFL. 13:05 So I have a spreadsheet that tracks college football during the season, and which players are transferring, and which players are declaring for the draft, and who's going back to school, and all these sorts of things. 13:15 And then there's spreadsheets for what's happening at All-Star games, and how are guys measuring in at those events, and, you know, how do they do at the Combine, and how are they doing at pro days, and things like that. 13:26 And who's getting picked, and where, who's signing with what team as an undrafted free agent. And, and then there's spreadsheets for, uh- Coaches... 13:33 if you are in the NFL now, uh, what's happening in the NFL transactions. And, you know, and there's some stuff with the coaching side of that as well, uh, for both NCAA and college f- or for both NCAA and the NFL. 13:46 And so it's really, the way that I equate it, essentially, is if you think about, for the draft specifically, uh, you think about, like, most media people that do draft coverage, you are doing... 14:01 Either focusing on one team, or if you are, like, the Dane Bruglers of the world or like our friend Corey Kinnan, who runs the Daft on Drafts Substack or, or whoever you may be, that's doing, like, a draft guide as an independent media or a, or, you know, as a media not affiliated with a team, when I say independent media. 14:18 Those people are essentially trying to present their work as if they are an NFL team doing scouting for the draft. 14:29 Uh, and it's, there's a whole bunch of challenges that come with that because you are one person and you are, in most cases, evaluating on a general basis rather than evaluating for a specific fit or a specific team the way that a team is. 14:42 Because a team doesn't really give a shit about how generally talented a player is if they don't fit the scheme that the team runs. 14:51 And so you are doing all of this work already of, you know, 10 to 12 scouts and personnel people in an NFL building. 15:02 And those 10 to 12 scouts and personnel people also have scouting assistants and areas assigned to them, and all of these different things where they keep track of all these things, of how did a guy test at his pro day? 15:14 How, is this guy in the draft? Did he transfer? Where is he? What happened to him? Where did he go? 15:21 And if you are a media person writing a draft guide, you don't always have access to that information in a very clear way. 15:28 And so the reason I started Football Sheets in its primordial form, which was just a collection of Google Sheets that I had, uh, a link to a folder, and you could just access it from my Twitter account- Just give them access to it. 15:38 [laughs] You'd update, like, who was subscribed to the Patreon and manually change who had access to it- Yeah... based on if your subscription was current. Exactly. And even before that, it was free. 15:48 You could just click a Google Sheet that was linked on my Twitter account. You could have access to it for free. 15:54 And then eventually it became a paid thing on Patreon, where I updated all that manually, and now it's on Football Sheets. 15:59 And so if you've seen it before on, on my Twitter or on wherever, like, that's where it is now, if you didn't know that. 16:05 But the very first version of that was born out of the fact that I was also doing draft content, which I still do, and this information is not easily accessible. 16:15 And so I found myself looking at six or seven different sources of like, you know, draft declaration trackers of, like, did this guy declare? 16:25 A whole bunch of trackers had all of these players that technically declared but were out of college eligibility, and so they didn't have a choice. 16:32 And so it wasn't really notable that they put out a graphic that they were declaring for the draft because, like, the other option was that they were getting a real job. 16:39 Which, in fairness to those people that include those on the trackers, I guess that, like, in 2020, Purdue quarterback Elijah Sindelar did decide to be an electrician instead of going to the draft, so- Right. Right. 16:52 Classic... sure, I guess. Like, sometimes that's important, but most of the time it's not very notable. And so I had a really hard time collating all of this information. 17:02 I ended up just doing it for me and my friends because we needed it in order to do our job. Job in quotes there, but in order to do our job. 17:12 [laughs] Uh, and it just kinda continued to spread from there, and now I do it for a, a group of I don't know how many people, a lot of people. [laughs] Um- Quite a few people... 17:23 and a lot of people in higher places than you would maybe imagine, that you would think maybe have re- access- Yeah... to resources and staffing that they wouldn't need such a thing, but, uh, you would be surprised. 17:32 And the kind of institutional affiliation that you would think comes with access to this data kind of organically, but instead it's been farmed out to an overworked pseudo contractor who's now on Patreon. Right. 17:45 Instead, they pay me for it. And so- Right... essentially, I am acting as your entire set of scouting assistants that you would have in an NFL building. 17:54 Which normally a team has anywhere from, like, three to five of those people, to my understanding, depending on the team. Uh, I mean, unless you're like the Bengals and then you- Yeah... have, like, one guy. 18:04 But, [laughs] but like, you know, I guess one to five- Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah... 18:08 uh, you know, to widen the range to be generous, but, like, anywhere from, like, one to five people, like, I am doing that for the media people that are doing the job of anywhere from 10 to 12 personnel, scouting people, depending on how you look at it. 18:21 Uh, and so that's essentially what Football Sheets is. Great. 18:24 So that kinda leads into, and you already covered this in your kind of description of what it is, but, like, it kinda leads to this question of, like, you know, what we're both doing and, like, why does it matter? 18:36 Like, again, having access to information about whether or not some guy is becoming an electrician or famously a Lowe's employee, um-I, 18:45 that ob-- like, intuitively it, it's, like, pretty relevant, but, like, I think that kind of the concentration of information is one of the technologies that we've, like, taken for granted over the course of our lives that now has suddenly become relevant again in a space where there is no concentration of information, especially for you with college football especially, where information is, I'm not gonna say necessarily at a premium, but the ability to access it quickly and easily is, right? 19:13 So, like, what, what value do, do you provide, do I provide [laughs] uh, in, in offering this kind of service in a way outside of just, "Hey, is this guy, um, eligible to be in the draft," or whatever? 19:28 Like, what does that kinda give us? Well, like you mentioned, it's the concentration of information, right? 19:33 Like, yes, we are used to having that concentration of information, but also, like, we are the concentration of information. That's why people are used to having it is because we are doing it. Right. 19:44 If we weren't doing it, someone else probably would be doing it. But if that person also wasn't doing it, there wouldn't be any concentration of information. 19:52 And you just have to wait until the NFL puts out a list and says like, "Hey, these are the guys that declared for the draft." 19:58 But even when the NFL does that, they only count players who are juniors or lower in class status. And this is important right now especially because of the NCAA's rules. 20:12 And so with COVID eli- eligibility and all the different lawsuits that you see in terms of, like, what are... Like, nobody knows what the NCAA eligibility rules anym- uh, rules are anymore. 20:21 And so there are a bunch of fourth-year seniors, fifth-year seniors, sixth-year seniors that are declaring for the draft with additional eligibility remaining that could make a decision to go back to school for another year. 20:34 And when those players do make a decision to go back to school for another year or declare for the draft, that is not reflected in the official information provided by the NFL when they put out the list of, "Here's the guys that declared for the draft." 20:46 Because the NFL is only concerned with special eligibility cases, which are players who are a fourth-year junior or below because either they have not satisfied their degree requirements or the NFL has a list of guys of, like, these are fourth-year juniors. 21:00 They satisfied their degree requirements. They're declaring with eligibility remaining by NC- by, like, our antiquated understanding of what the NCAA rules are, which is the five-to-play-four rules pre-COVID. 21:13 So right now it has a ton of value because most media people, it's very difficult to do that and also all of your other things that you need to do in your job to keep track of those things. And so 21:26 it is also difficult for me to do that- [laughs]... but I also get paid to do it. Right. So I might as well do it. 21:32 Uh, and so- Right, you're dedicating a portion of your day exclusively to that so that other people- Right... have time savings, and that gets multiplied out, which is why it's a money-making endeavor. Correct, yeah. 21:41 And so it is important in that sense in terms of, like, it is the concentration of information. 21:46 You can go there, and you can see, like, okay, this guy decided to transfer instead of declaring for the draft, or he went back to school, or he did this, or he did that, or he's in the draft. 21:55 Okay, cool, like, I, like, know that I need to write him up now. 21:58 Uh, and so I have a ton of peop- like, there's this huge surge of people that subscribe around, like, November, December, January when the draft deadline begins to hit because they're like, "Well, I need to cross-check all of my lists to make sure that I'm watching the right guys before I go to the Shrine Bowl, the Senior Bowl, The Combine, all of these things." 22:14 There's a huge influx of people in March who want the pro day results because pro day results are not public. The results that you see on your Twitter timeline are not the official pro day results. 22:25 They're results that are released by the school or an agent or the player themselves or by the player's teammates who are hand-timing things w- on their iPhone at the pro day or by reporters- Tools... 22:37 who are hand-timing their events on their iPhone at the pro day. Like, it's- Which doesn't rule. [laughs] Right, it's from a d- a bunch of different secondary sources that are not official. 22:49 And there is an official table of pro day results. You know, people will tell you all the time, there's no official pro day results. That's not exactly true. The NFL does distribute a report. It's called the APT. 23:00 And I wrote about this last year for Wide Left before I was officially, like, a real employee of the company. 23:04 But, so if you have more questions about what that is or how pro day reporting works, you can go back and read that piece. But essentially, the APT, which nobody knows what it stands for- [laughs]... 23:15 the APT is a report that the NFL teams generate that is usually generated by the scouting assistants and low-level scouting personnel that attend pro days. And so 23:25 each pro day designates a timing scout and a data entry scout. Sometimes that is the same person. Sometimes it is a different person. But they are always going to be from the same team. And so it might be one guy from a 23:39 team that is local to the pro day. It might be one guy that is from a team that just, like, just so happens that, like, that's the first guy that gets the pro day. 23:48 It might be that there's two guys that are at the pro day, and one is the data entry scout, and one is the timing scout. 23:53 And essentially, pro days operate on a wisdom of the crowd model, where it is an aggregate time for all of these events. 24:00 Like, there are certain things that have discrete measurements like the vertical jump and the broad jump and height and weight and all these things that can be measured discretely, and so they don't need to be, like, consulted on. 24:12 But for the 40 and the three-cone and the shuttle, you take every scout that's in attendance. You ask them, "Hey, what did you have on your stopwatch?" 24:22 And you come to a consensus about like, "That's about the median time. I think that's what we're gonna go with." 24:26 And so another common thing you'll see all the time is that you need to add.05 or.08 or point whatever to pro day 40 times in order to compare them to combine times or in order for them to be accurate or what have you, and that's not true. 24:40 That's not mathematically correct because the scouts at the pro day are already doing that. 24:46 You only have to do that for times that are reported by questionable sources.But if they're being reported by Dane Brugler, for example, who has access to the APT report, all the times on The Beast, on The Athletic's huge mega draft guide that just came out earlier today as we're recording this, all of those times are from the APT report. 25:07 If you were getting those times from Daniel Jeremiah or someone like that, that has access to the APT report, those times are the times. 25:15 You don't need to do any sort of adjustments to the times in order to make them more correct than they were before, because the scouts are already doing that at the pro day. 25:24 And a lot of people don't have that understanding of that, and so that's also a value that the concentration of information comes with, because there are not very many people that have access to the APT report. 25:35 I'm very lucky that I happen to know people that do get it and are willing to send it to me in order to disseminate out to the people as part of Football Sheets. 25:44 And that is, like, a huge driver of the business, because you can't find them anywhere else. It's not [laughs]... You can't, like... The only other place that you can find them is on Draft Scout- [laughs]... 25:55 which is a website that was made in 2003. And also, the 40 times on Draft Scout are averaged. And so the 40 time presented as the final time on Draft Scout a lot of times is not a time that a player ran. It's just 26:11 the in-between between the first two times. 26:13 And I haven't gotten a chance to talk to the Draft Scout guy about this, I doubt I ever will, but I assume that what that is is part of the, like, "Well, you need to adjust pro day times in order for them to be correct." 26:24 And so if you're adding another.05 or.08 or what have you onto the time that's on Draft Scout, you are double counting the correction for a pro day time. 26:34 And so a lot of my job ends up being education around a lot of this stuff, around, like, hey, like, the information is concentrated here, but also, like, how do we parse this information? 26:45 What do we do with this information? And, you know, like, that's a huge part of my job also, and that's why it has a ton of value, because, like, most people don't know that. 26:53 Like, 90% of people, I would say even 90% of people in the media don't necessarily know that. And so you have to go through that and have to say it, and, like, it comes up every year, right? 27:03 Of like, "Oh, well, pro day times aren't comparable to combine times." Yes, they are. 27:07 Like- So what, what's interesting about this is that I have run the numbers on this one, specifically on people who have run both a 40 at the combine and a 40 at their pro day. 27:20 And, and I haven't done this for, like, five, six years. Maybe the data has changed. But, uh, the most recent accounting I have... So, uh, I didn't have access to the APT. 27:27 I had access to, uh, Draft Scout or, or kind of someone who scraped Draft Scout website, which I will say Draft Scout is only okay at preventing scraping. Um, but they're not the worst in the world [laughs]. 27:41 Um, but, uh, doing that, I, I expected to see pro day times to be faster, not because of what you mentioned, that people seem to think that there's, you know, that they happened to time faster, but because you only re-run if you think you can run faster, right? 27:56 Right. And so which is one reason to be suspicious of, of this kind of data anyway, because you don't actually know what's behind it. 28:03 Uh, and so you have to come up with a couple of reasons and see if you can test against it. Um, you know, on average, the difference was, like,.01 seconds. Negligible at all. 28:11 Um, and, uh, fully explained by the selection bias of people who run fast 40s at the combine choosing not to run again. 28:19 Uh, and there was only one or two schools that where it was faster, and you would actually expect that on a distribution level, right? Because- Right... 28:26 if on average, you know, the time is gonna be the same when you run it at either, uh, instance, uh, there are gonna be some schools that are slower and some schools that are faster. 28:34 So nothing notable appeared to me except I think it was, like, Ohio State, which everyone already has a good joke about anyway. 28:40 Um, but it, I think that the APT thing is, is super interesting, or the Draft Scout thing was super interesting when I was editing this piece that we'll link in the show notes, um, about, like, averaging the times. 28:52 I found that, like, really interesting because very often when you have a wide range... C- 'cause they run the 40 twice, right? Right. 29:00 So when you have a wide range between the first 40 and the second 40, sometimes that's because conditions change between the first 40 and the second 40. Right. 29:08 Like a gust of wind, right, is now blowing directly into the [laughs] player's face- Right... on the first 40 or the second 40, which is why you run it twice, right? 29:18 Um, they used to have them run in opposite directions outdoors. I don't know if they still do. 29:23 Uh, and sometimes, you know, maybe then it's appropriate to average 'cause then you're doing wind in both ways, but I don't know. Um, but there's a reason, like you said, that scouts confer and come up with the time. 29:32 But the numbers don't tell us that there is any reasonable difference, even though that's kind of, like, logged wisdom for what we do, which makes it always interesting to me when people choose to 29:43 either throw out pro day times when they're, when they're doing some athletic testing or whatever, or only use the pro day times when they're filling in for the lack of combine times, which gives a soft incentive for players to just not perform at the combine if, if the supposition is true that you're gonna do worse at the combine than the pro day because someone's gonna load you with 224-pound plates instead of 225-pound, right? 30:08 Like- Right... it's, I don't know. 30:10 It's, it's interesting, but also I think that the process by which this data gets recorded, fascinating to people who happen to be the kind of people who listen to this podcast, but also I think should really inform our understanding of the way this process, like, plays out. 30:26 Yeah, absolutely. So I have a couple of different stories that I can tell about that. So- Let's go... the APT 30:32 will log weather conditions, the type of turf that you ran on, whether it was inside or outside, like, all of these different things. There's all these different factors that it also has information on. 30:41 And so a lot of the times, if wind is over 10 miles an hour or so, they'll have you run in both directions outside, uh, like, like you mentioned. 30:49 And so s- in that case, averaging 40 times I think is relatively reasonable because you're trying to get a sense for, you know-What the, what the wind effect was essentially. 31:00 Um, sometimes there are tracks that are famously a little bit downhill. Like, I think Virginia Tech was one that it's, like, famously- [laughs]... 31:07 sloped a little bit downhill where, like, you can run a faster 40 going one way because you're running downhill. 31:14 Um, there's also, like, people bring up Jake Bobo's 40 time all the time, the fact that he ran a 4.9 and went undrafted and end up, ended up on the Seahawks as an undrafted free agent and has carved out like a, you know, what is now a second contract NFL career. 31:27 Jake Bobo only ran a 4.9 at UCLA's pro day that year because UCLA, at the time, did not have an indoor practice facility, and it rained in LA the entire week before UCLA's pro day. 31:39 And so the field was completely waterlogged. It was pouring rain when UCLA's pro day occurred, and so you could not run any faster than that. 31:49 Like, it was impossible to run faster than a 4.9 because you were running through a puddle. Like, you were running through water. [laughs] Um, and so, like, that 40 time is not real. 32:01 Uh, but that's the 40 time that gets logged. It's the 40 time that's official. It's the 40 time that shows up on The Beast, and it lacks essential context, you know? 32:08 And sometimes, you know, like, you'll get a throwaway line or someone will put out a tweet of like, "Oh, man, well, it was pouring at UCLA this year," and so, like, ah, I don't know. 32:15 But, like, that, that story does not survive along with the time, right? Yeah. Like, that- that's only for nerds. Um- [laughs] 32:25 By the same token, right, there's a lot of schools that have slower turfs, especially lately because of how quick the ter- the turf is at the Combine now- Mm-hmm... with the new turf at Lucas Oil, right? 32:35 Like, this has been a point of discussion the last few years. The track seems to be getting faster and faster and faster at Lucas Oil Stadium, but there's a lot of tracks around the country that are slow. 32:44 Washington, which is a program that I cover, is a, is one that is notorious among players for being a slow track. And so Washington's top two prospects this year did not run a 40. 32:53 They didn't run at the Combine because they were not comfortable doing so, and they just didn't run at the pro day because they were like, "Well, my time is gonna suck, and so what is the point of running the 40 at my pro day?" 33:03 Because Dempsey Indoor is well known to be a slow track comparatively because of whatever factors that may be, right? And so there's all of this different variance about it, you know. 33:15 And, like, by the same token, right, like we had all this reporting about Tetairoa McMillan's pro day last year, um- Mm-hmm... 33:20 mostly from Dov Kleiman, who is not someone you should be getting reporting from in the first place, but, you know, posting all these clips and, like, okay, well, he posted this on his YouTube channel, and he called it his pro day, so this is his pro day, and yada, yada, yada. 33:33 But it was outside. And then when the APT came out for Arizona's makeup pro day, because that was when the Big 12 was having an all-conference pro day that Tetairoa McMillan did not attend. 33:43 But he had a makeup pro day at Arizona, and on the APT, it mentions all the workouts, including the 40, were done inside. And so that clip that went around about Tetairoa McMillan's pro day was not from his pro day. 33:58 [laughs] That's why there's no scouts that you can see in the video, because it's just a training session. It's just a training session that his family showed up to. It's not his pro day. 34:08 And so there's all of these different things, right, where it's like you're missing so much context that it, that you can really only get if you have data to this level of granularity. 34:21 And, like, for that reason, right, like pro day times don't need to be adjusted. They are doing all of this adjusting. 34:28 They're doing all of this accounting for surface type and wind and weather and all of these different things. You know, like, all of this is mentioned. 34:36 Like, Jalen Milroe last year was noted as somebody that on his first 40 at Alabama's pro day, he was weaving severely, and so his second 40 time was much faster, 'cause he ran in a straight line. 34:46 He ran 40 yards instead of 50. [laughs] And so- [laughs]... his time was faster. Like, things like that happen, and they are all noted very 34:56 diligently and very, like, in a lot of detail on the APT report, and those things are important in terms of developing the context that we have in terms of the lens that we see these prospects through. 35:09 Yeah, so what do you think is, like, the value at the end of the day of having athletic testing at all? Like, we're both nerds. 35:18 We love data, but, like, we can easily fall into the trap of assuming that having data is the same as understanding that that data is valuable. What have you found about the value of data? So I think it's... 35:34 I think it can be hit or miss sometimes, right? Like, I think that we know that most NFL teams, at least in the modern era, place some value on athletic testing to some degree, right? 35:46 Like, uh, Kent Lee Platt, who does RAS, uh, and we can, we can talk about RAS if you want, but- For sure, dude... [laughs] but he does a, a very good job at cataloging all of these prospects. 35:58 And one thing that he points out almost every year is that there has not been a player drafted in the first round with a sub 5 RAS in, like, I think it's eight years now. Like, it's a long time. 36:13 And so, like, if you are not at least an above average athlete by RAS's metric, you are not gonna be a first-round player. And so sometimes that data is useful in being a little bit disqualifying, right? 36:25 Like, sometimes it's like, okay, like, we have this data. He tested bad. [laughs] Like, you know, like Lee Hunter for example, the Texas Tech defensive tackle in this draft class. 36:35 He went to the Combine and tested poorly, where his RAS is, like, a two. He's not gonna go in the first round. It's a disqualifying process. And before that, he was in first-round mock drafts. 36:45 And so it's a little bit of a disqualifying process there. 36:47 I think it's also valuable in the sense-On the very, very, very other end of the draft, in terms of undrafted free agency, there are so many times where NFL teams will sign a guy to an undrafted free agent contract purely because he jumped 40 inches or ran a 4.3 or, you know, tested out of the gym at his pro day. 37:05 And having that data about who those guys are is really helpful in projecting, like, this guy is gonna get signed to a UDFA contract versus this guy's gonna be a mini camp invite versus this guy's gonna go straight to the UFL or straight to Canada. 37:20 That is important to have. And it doesn't seem that important to have because it's, like, such a, like, thin margin at the very end of the draft where it's like most people don't really care. 37:29 But there's a lot of people that care about that because there's a lot of people that predict UDFA signings. 37:36 There's a lot of people that say, like, "Oh, well, you know, maybe this is a guy I had borderline UDFA but, like, I might bump him up into the seventh round now," because we also know that NFL teams, a lot of the time, will use seventh round picks on players that they are planning on signing in UDFA, that they are worried 37:52 negotiations will not go their way. Right. Yeah. And so- It famously happened with Tommy Sweeney- Right... [laughs] who had agreed- Right... to terms during the seventh round- [laughs]... 38:01 the UDFA contract and was it the Panthers learned that the Saints were doing it or was it the other way around? And- It was the Panthers learned the Saints were doing it. 38:09 And so they were planning on taking him, and so then the Saints traded back into the seventh round to draft him. [laughs] They, they were out of picks. 38:16 They were just doing UDFA calls, but they traded back into the seventh to draft Tommy Sweeney because they heard that the Panthers were going to- [laughs]... either draft him or sign him. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one of the two. 38:27 Uh, this is also famously something that happened with Max Duggan, the TCU quarterback that the Chargers drafted in the seventh round a few years ago. 38:33 He was another guy where, like, the Chargers were negotiating with him in undrafted free agency. They said, "We're not gonna win this bidding war. We have a seventh round pick left. 38:40 We were gonna use it on this other guy, but we think we can get that guy in undrafted free agency for less money, less guarantees. So we're just gonna draft the quarterback." Uh, so it happens all the time. 38:50 And so that data is valuable to have because if a guy jumped 40 inches and ran a 4.3 and did all these things at his pro day and he's sort of a borderline draftable prospect, that guy's probably gonna get drafted off of that because there's gonna be a bidding war for his services in undrafted free agency. 39:07 This is useful proj- for projecting, like, guys that are going to stick around as undrafted free agents in terms of, like, guys who are going to make a 53-man roster, guys who are gonna make a practice squad, maybe make a 53-man roster in year two. 39:19 Like, that data is valuable for those sorts of things of, like, most of those guys generally are better athletes, unless it is a guy that, like, fell completely out of the draft because they were a comp- a very poor athlete, but before that they were projected as, you know, an early to mid day three pick. 39:35 And so the, on both ends of the spectrum, there is, you know, certain, certain ways to make that data valuable. 39:44 I think it's also valuable for a lot of team specific things because, like, again, using RAS as a facsimile here because we don't really have a, a better metric to use, right? 39:53 Like, teams have an internal formula, and most teams have different ones, an internal formula to determine their own quantification of athleticism. 40:04 And a lot of teams have thresholds that they will not draft the guy if he is not a good enough athlete at XYZ, right? And so, like, the Packers are the most famous example of this. Yes. Yeah. 40:14 Like, the Packers thresholds are famously very stringent. They've been the same way for 20 years. 40:19 And so, you know, you'll, you'll post a mock draft and Packers fans will be like, "Well, this guy doesn't fit the arm length requirement to play outside corner for Green Bay." And I'm like, "It's a naming exercise. 40:29 Like, please calm down. It's November." Um- [laughs] But those thresholds- Um, the, the- Those thresholds become important, right, when we get to April- Yes... 40:41 because if a guy measures in or runs a certain way or, you know, jumps a certain way, then, like, that guy's not gonna get drafted by the Packers. 40:50 And we can sort of like, like, historically you can go back and you can look and you can sort of figure out what those thresholds are for yourself of, like, okay, are we sort of, like, at or near the threshold? 41:00 Are we way below it? Are we above it? Like, and figure out, you know, like, okay, this guy's gonna be not on the Packers board. This is gonna be a guy that they're not gonna take. 41:09 This is gonna be a guy that they're maybe more interested in than consensus. And that helps you as an analyst if you were doing a two, three, four, seven round mock draft, right, as you get into the middle rounds. 41:20 But it also helps doing the first round of mock drafts, right? Like, there's a ton of things where it's like 41:26 if and when the Packers had a first round pick earlier this year, right, it's like, well, you know, like, their corner room is pretty bad. Like, maybe I'll take Clemson's Avion Tyrell as a corner for them. 41:36 Avion Tyrell's arm- arms aren't long enough to play outside corner for the Packers. He'd be a slot for them. 41:40 So maybe that pick doesn't make as much sense as taking somebody that maybe is ranked lower than consensus, like a Colton Hood from Tennessee or a Chris Johnson from San Diego State or something like that. 41:51 And maybe that guy makes more sense for the Packers to draft. And so it makes you a better mock drafter and, like, predictor of where talent is going to end up to have this data. 42:03 So, uh, y- to, to the point that you had made about, like, identifying UDFAs, right, are guys who, like- Mm-hmm... you know, didn't play football, right? 42:12 So, like, we've got, like, a relatively high profile example as far as these things can be high profile of a couple of IPP players, specifically Uwa Bernard from Nigeria. 42:24 I believe, um, Joshua Weru from Kenya also got, like, a tiny bit of press as well. But, like, y- relatively speaking, you know, these guys got a lot of press. In actuality- Mm... they got virtually no press. 42:34 But for a little brief moment on Draft Twitter, people were talking about Uwa Bernard from Nigeria because of his pro day. 42:42 Which, um, y- he, 6'4", 308 pounds, likely gonna play defensive tackle, but he hasn't really played much football. So wherever you're gonna put a 308-pound guy, maybe this guy, right? Ran a 4.63 40. Holy crap. 42:56 A 1.58 10-yard split.39-inch vertical, oh my God. Uh, 10.10 broad, oh my God. Uh, and then average to below average agility. So 4.57 shuttle, uh, kind of above average. 43:09 And an 8.13 second three cone, which I regret to point out is the most important workout for a pass rusher. Um, but still, whatever, right? 43:20 Like, this guy jumps through the roof, has an outstanding pro day, and ends up getting, you know, a couple of articles written about him, you know, some yard barker aggregation, some dove climbing tweets, right? 43:31 An RAS card that looks really pretty. Um, that's the kinda guy that could go from, you know, non-priority free agent to priority free agent, or from even PFA all the way to a seventh round pick, right? 43:43 Like, I mean, and we all remember, we all, Vikings fans who listen to this podcast remember Moritz Böhringer, the wide receiver/tight end from Germany that was drafted in the sixth round- Right... 43:53 right before the Falcons were going to, so I guess they sniped someone, uh, who didn't end up working out. Um, but like, it's this kinda stuff, right? Yeah, 100%. 44:03 And look, like, a- as many examples as we have of these athletic guys that maybe don't have as much football experience or, like, don't have the same level as t- of tape as, like, you know, supreme athletes at their position, guys that are gonna be drafted in the first two rounds, like, as many examples of we, as we have of those guys not working out, NFL teams continue to make that bet. 44:25 And so it's still important for us to identify those players even if the, the statistics say that they are probably not going to pan out to be, like, a useful NFL player. 44:35 Because it is, it is still useful in terms of, like, projecting where a player is going to go. Mm. And if you are a forecaster, which, you know, is part of the consensus board ideology, right, is that there's- Mm... 44:48 forecasting consensus boards and predictive consensus boards, right? Like, if you are a forecasting analyst, it is important to have information about those sorts of players, because you are trying to be correct. 45:03 [laughs] Like- [laughs]... you're trying to be right. And so if you n- if you want to be right, you should have this data at your disposal. 45:10 And so for a guy like Uwah Bernard, it's like, yeah, he's never played football before. Will he be good? Pro- I mean, statistically, probably not. I hope he is. I hope he's the best defensive tackle of all time. 45:22 But statistically, that is unlikely. That is, that is probably not going to be what happens with Uwah Bernard. 45:28 But an NFL team is still going to have the hubris to draft him anywhere on day three of the draft probably this year. And we see this all the time, right? 45:38 Like, NFL teams continue to do this, despite the fact that we have all of this additional ancillary data to suggest that NFL teams are not actually very good at developing talent in most cases. 45:51 With- with just like, just like how, like, earlier, like, you know, a couple years ago we were like, "Man, Josh Allen's gonna ruin quarterback drafting for everyone else," 'cause he worked out. 46:00 And then Brock Purdy is ruining NFL drafting for quarterbacks now. Um, uh, Jordan Mailata might be ruining our ability to- Right... evaluate. But, like, not everybody's Jeff Stoutland, right? [laughs] Right, exactly. 46:13 And that's the thing is that, like, there is a human element to this, right, that I think is an important part of being an analyst and being a forecaster and being predictive about how things like the NFL draft work. 46:27 Because the NFL draft is a very soft science. It is not... 46:31 Like, if it, if the NFL draft was a hard science and it operated on logic and reason every single year, somebody would be able to predict a full first round mock draft. That is a thing that would be able to occur. 46:44 But nobody has ever done that before. Nobody's ever really gotten close to doing that before because the NFL draft is not a hard science. 46:52 There is human decision-making involved, and human decision-making inherently includes certain biases towards certain players, hubris about whether or not you can be the ones to develop this guy- Mm... 47:04 even if he's never played football before in his life, but you look at him and you're like, "Holy shit, look at him. He's 6'4, 308 pounds and he ran a 4.63. Like, we have to be able to do something with that guy." 47:14 [laughs] Certainly something. Right, something. We, we, we specifically, us in this building- Right... have to be able to do something with that guy. And you know, there's all these... 47:26 You know, you hear stories all the time about, like, owners getting involved in making draft picks- Yeah, yeah... 47:30 or, like, coaches come in and, you know, it gets to the fourth round and the running backs coach for a certain team is like, "Look, like, let me draft my guy, dude. I've been waiting two and a half days for this," right? 47:41 Like, and the scouts are like, "No, like, he's really not good." And he's like, "I don't care. Give me my guy." [laughs] That is my literal son. Come on. [laughs] Right, exactly. 47:50 [laughs] Like, you know, and so, like, there is, there is a very, very human aspect of this that, like, the data can point you to, right? 47:59 Like, the data can point you in the direction of predicting what human decisions teams are going to make, right? Of like, Uwah Bernard ran a 4.63 at 308 pounds, and, like, you saw all the pictures that circulated of him. 48:12 Yeah, he's locked up. That guy's gonna get drafted. [laughs] He's never played football before in his life. 48:17 And, like, maybe that's unfair to all these guys that have gone through four or five years of college football and, you know, one guy is missing out on an opportunity 'cause Uwah Bernard is getting drafted instead of him, right? 48:27 Like- Mm-hmm... whatever guy was gonna be Mr. Irrelevant before Uwah Bernard was discovered- Right... in Nigeria. [laughs] That guy probably wasn't gonna make it either. 48:36 Yeah, but, like, it would've been nice, [laughs] right? Right. And like, yeah, it would've been nice for that guy. That's cool and everything. But also, like, we know- [laughs] Right... 48:43 from studying what the NFL draft looks like in prior years that that guy's gonna get drafted. 48:49 It doesn't matter if he's never played football or not because we have this data that says like, "Holy shit, look how fast he ran. 48:56 Look how green that RAS card is."Someone's gonna take a chance on that because of curious- Look how green that co- There's at least one NFL team who's like, "Man, look how green that number is, dude." 49:08 Yeah, and it's Chris Ballard. [laughs] It is. It is. Uh, known, known RAS enjoyers, the Indianapolis Colts. Yes. Um, yeah. 49:17 I, so I, I was looking through the list of IPP athletes on current NFL rosters, and it is, like, it's, like, two people but, like, one of them's a kicker so, like, what are we doing? But, um- Yes... 49:27 Jordan Mailata, right? Jakob Johnson. Johnson? Johnson. Um, [laughs] um, uh, who, he's a full back for not the Patriots, or is it also the Patriots? I don't know. Um- Uh, he was on the Patriots for a long time. 49:39 I think he's on the Texans now. Sure, so like- Which is like the Patriots... which, yeah, actually it is, yeah. Uh, Efe Obada, which is kinda all right. 49:48 Sam Musrys, who's been off, like, he's been on, like, three, four different rosters, hasn't done anything. Thomas O- Odukoya, who I don't know who that is. David Bada, don't know who that is. 49:59 Charlie Smith, Ireland kicker, right? Right. TJ Magorunyannga. Oh, I nailed that. Uh, [laughs] um- [laughs] Mapolo Masmwanza. CJ Okoye, but not Christian Okoye, different Okoye. Uh, and Haga Nduibisi. 50:18 I, I didn't know how to pronounce that one so I went fast, and I think that actually was the correct decision. Um, yeah, so that's one guy. Well, and a kicker, right? Like [laughs] Yeah. 50:28 Um, but yeah, there is, there is one IPP player that has caught your attention a little bit, um, e- because he's a specialist but also 'cause you're basically Japanese, right? So- I am Japanese. 50:43 That is, that is a factual statement that I am. [laughs] I'm not... But yes, for the purposes of the podcast and, and, you know, to, for, so the people understand completely, I'm half Japanese. 51:00 [laughs] Yeah. This is the first time a guest has ever contextualized something in my favor for something I've said. Um, [laughs] but yeah, so we've got this IPP kicker who I think he attended Hawaii, right? 51:18 Like, he's not- Yes... he's n- he's not just, like, from, there are other players that are, like, from Japan that we could talk about in a second. But Kanze Matsuzawa? No, I said that wrong. No, that was pretty good. 51:28 Yeah. That was pretty good. Um, he's a kicker. Is he any good? Yes. Um, I actually, so I have a vote for the Lou Groza Award, which is for the best college kicker in the country. 51:39 That's hilarious, but also you, you're probably more qualified than most voters. So funny story about that. 51:45 I actually didn't know that I had a vote until they sent me the SurveyMonkey link to fill out the ballot this year. [laughs] Jesus. Because they didn't tell me. I didn't apply for a vote. 51:54 They just sent me an email in November, and they were like, "Vote for the Groza Award," and I was like- So wait, they, they just, like, read your Justin Tucker piece and were like, "You know what?" 52:02 [laughs] Well, so what I, like, I, I had to look at, I spent, like, an entire day looking into this 'cause I was like, "Is the Groza Award one of the ones that's, like, partnered with the FWAA?" Possibly. 52:11 Which I'm a member of, and so, like, I get a preliminary vote, but I don't get a finalist vote like I do for the FWAA All-American team. Like, how did I get a vote for this? 52:20 [laughs] And it's not affiliated with the FWAA. It's not affiliated with anything other than the Lou Groza Foundation that gives out the award. 52:26 And so actually, I legitimately think what happened is that they saw my tweets complaining about how their voters were bad, and they were like, "Fine, h- here." [laughs] And now I have a vote for the award. 52:40 Um, but, uh, I bring that up- No chance did you give it to Matsuzawa... I did. Because- He, he's that good... Kanze Matsuzawa only missed one field goal the entire season at Hawaii. 52:52 He- How, how many, how many kickers is that true for? Uh, very few. Um, the winner of the Groza Award was Tate Sandell at Oklahoma, who, uh, I think missed three kicks on the year, if I remember correctly. 53:04 It was either two or three, but it was multiple. Uh, Matsuzawa actually broke, I believe it's Jason Elam's record at Hawaii. Oh my God. Um, some, like, longtime NFL kicker that played at Hawaii. I think it's Jason Elam. 53:15 But he broke his record for consecutive made field goals at Hawaii this season. He is legitimately pretty good. Um, there was also a discussion in terms of, like, scouting kickers, uh, which is that 53:29 generally speaking, like, when you're scouting a kicker for the NFL setting, you want a guy to be hitting kicks from 50-plus yards very frequently, and, like, with regularity, and, and in elements and things like that. 53:40 Matsuzawa's playing in Hawaii. You know, it's, it's low elevation. It's outside. The weather is nice most of the time. So, like, there's not that element of it so much for him. 53:50 I, I'd also, if I remember correctly, didn't, he didn't kick very much outside of 50 yards. But, like, he is a guy who probably would get a, like, a small UDFA contract if he was American. 54:03 But because he is Japanese and he's eligible for the IPP, he will probably be on a roster next season. Because- Right, 'cause of the roster exemption... right, because he has the exemption to be on the list. 54:12 And a lot of teams- Can, can you explain that c- uh, exemption real quick? 'Cause it's not just IPP players who get it. Right, yeah. 54:18 So the NFL expanded it l- either last year or two seasons ago so that you, every team in the NFL, it used to just be certain divisions. 54:26 They would rotate divisions, and they'd say, like, "Hey," like, "The AFC West and the NFC West has the international exemption this year." 54:32 But they expanded it a couple years ago to now all 32 teams have an international player exemption that they can designate at the beginning of training camp where they essentially can have a 91st player on the roster. 54:43 So the training camp roster is 90 players. If you designate a player as your international player, you can have 91 players because the international player does not count. That can be a player from the IPP program. 54:54 So, like, the Commanders player last year was TJ Mon- Magorunyannga. Mm-hmm. Um, [clears throat] Nailed it. And, you know-Like the Ravens player was C.J. Okoye, who came up through the IPP program. 55:06 Uh, but sometimes you can also just designate whoever you want. Like, the Ravens previously have used the international exemption on David Ojabo, who is from Nigeria. Uh- That's a second-round pick from Michigan. 55:19 [laughs] Yes. Correct. Yeah. The Bears used their international player exemption for all of training camp last season on their punter Tory Taylor, who's from Australia. 55:29 Okay, b- I, we have to have a discussion about that, right? Like, we can't- Right... count Australian punters specifically. Like, if you're a wide receiver, fine. Right. 55:37 If you're an Australian punter specifically, no way should you count for that roster exemption. Correct, yeah. But he does. [laughs] And so that's what the Bears used it for. 55:46 Um, you know, and so, like, there, there's a bunch of these players. 55:49 And, like, there's a, there's a couple of guys coming out this year that also qualify for this that played a bunch of college football but qualify for international exemption status. 55:57 There's a bunch of guys previously, like you mentioned Thomas Otakoyo as an IPP player. He played four years of college football at Eastern Michigan. 56:04 Like, he was a guy that Devin Jackson, who works for us, scouted at Eastern Michigan. Mm-hmm. Uh, and was signed as UDFA and got an international player exemption with the Titans because he is from England. 56:14 Um, Sadie Traylor, who is in- Well, in, in this year's draft, yeah, Traore. Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. 56:18 Sadie Traylor, the tight end from Mississippi State, went through NFL Academy, which is the junior version of the IPP program. 56:24 Uh, so essentially the way that the IPP program works is they identify all of these players in other sports around the world or people that are associated with American football federations in other countries around the world, and they identify whether or not they think that they have translatable traits to play in the NFL someday. 56:42 If they are under 20, they can go to NFL Academy, which is in London, and basically do a prep year and then be eligible to play college football, um, or go straight from NFL Academy to the IPP program once they age into IPP age, which is over 20 years old. 56:58 Um, and so I know this because Uar Barnard, who we were talking about earlier, was a guy that they identified right sort of on the cutoff between NFL Academy and IPP. 57:08 So they actually discovered him right after his 20th birthday. He wasn't eligible to go to NFL Academy, and so they said, like, "Hey, hang tight. Like, just hang out and work out for a year." Just chill. 57:18 "And then you're gonna be in the IPP class this year." Yeah. Um, and so now he's in the IPP class. 57:22 Uh, so if you played, like, playing college football in the US does not disqualify you from counting for an international player exemption in the NFL. 57:32 Um, there are plenty of players that played a ton of college football that are international player exemptions now. 57:38 Um, there is a edge rusher at Idaho who started his career at Washington, who committed out of Germany, who a bunch of teams went to Idaho's pro day just to, like, ask him, like, "Hey, like, are you a German citizen?" 57:49 Like, are, th- this, that, whatever, to see if he would qualify for the- Right... international player exemption. Because, like, he tested pretty well. He's, like, 6'5", 240. He's, like, fine. Um, 57:59 you know, and so- Right... th- there's all of this calculus in terms of, like, well, who counts for an international player exemption? It could be anybody, and so, you know, as long as you're not from the US. Right. 58:09 Or if you're David Ojabo, um, who is from the US. [laughs] Sort of. Um, and so- But he's got, he's got a Nigerian passport, right? Like, that's the deal. Right, exactly. Yeah. 58:19 [laughs] Like, that, that's the sort of thing. And so, uh, so yeah, so you can use this exemption for whoever you want. 58:24 And a lot of teams have historically used this international player exemption to roster an extra specialist, whether- Yeah... that's a kicker or punter, most often a kicker. 58:32 So Charlie Smith, uh, the Saints kicker, who is now the main Saints kicker as far as I'm aware- Mm-hmm... 58:38 uh, was a guy that the Saints used their international player exemption on and essentially said, like, "We're gonna sort of have a kicking competition, but not really. 58:45 Um, and, like, if the other guy sucks, then we can keep another kicker on our roster for free." 58:50 Uh, the Falcons did this with Lenny Krieg, who's from Germany, uh, who ended up being worse than Younghoe Koo but same, same idea. The Giants did this with Jude McAtamney, who played- Yeah... 59:00 college football at Rutgers, who played a couple of games for the Giants when Graham Gano got hurt this year before the Giants decided to spin the wheel on some free agents. 59:07 And so a lot of teams will use the IPP as a way to, or use the international player exemption, I'm sorry. I shouldn't conflate the two terms. Right. Yeah, yeah. 59:16 But use the international player exemption as a way to roster an extra kicker or punter. Um, and there's actually a guy in Ireland who specific- who basically does Prokick Ireland now. 59:28 Um, and he runs the, a specialist showcase at the Combine as well. And so they- Oh... 59:32 always have a bunch of the, uh, IPP-eligible or international player exemption-eligible, uh, kickers and punters at the specialist showcase at the Combine now because this guy runs it. Um, his name is Tadgh Leader. 59:44 He's from Ireland. I don't actually know if that's how you say his first name, 'cause it's T-A-D-G-H. So I think it- Oh, there's, like, a specific Irish pronunciation for this, like, I- Yeah... specific, right. 59:53 So I'm sorry for mispronouncing his name, but he, he, he's the guy. Um, and he basically runs Prokick Ireland now. Like, the, I'm using Prokick Ireland as the term because people know what Prokick is, I think. 1:00:06 But essentially, like, he identifies all these guys in, like, Gaelic football and, and rugby and o- and all these other different sports and then he says, he says, like, "Hey, I think you could probably kick in the NFL." 1:00:16 And he puts them through a year training camp and then sends them off to the program. That's where Charlie Smith came from. He's from Northern Ireland. 1:00:22 Um, and so a lot of teams do wanna use that exemption on extra specialists. And so for that reason, Kansei Matsuzawa will probably be on an NFL team next year. That's so cool. 1:00:33 Uh, so let's take a look at some of the specialists that are ranked by the consensus board. 1:00:37 So consensus board, very good at ranking a lot of things, not at specialists because it relies on general draft analysts who will throw specialists in at the end and will sometimes take a look at a hang time for a punter or just the overall kicking percentage without taking a look at whether or not they kicked anything beyond 50 yards or if they were invited to the Senior Bowl or Shrine Bowl and then just kind of pencil them in without looking at them. 1:01:02 So I want your takes on the top-rated punters, uh, which I think you like the top punter, Brett Thorsen from Georgia.I do like Brett Thorson from Georgia. 1:01:13 I think that he is, uh, far and away the best punter in the draft. Um, he is very high hang time guy, um, very low return percentage guy. 1:01:22 Has been a very, like, constant starter for Georgia, has punted in some very, very big moments, obviously playing for Georgia. 1:01:29 Um, and so, like, you, you don't really have any questions about, like, the mental side of things, which is a big thing for specialists always, of course. Um, but yeah, I, I like him a lot. I think he should get drafted. 1:01:39 Wow, number one PFF grade last year, number four... Sorry, Teamworks grade, uh, this year Right Um, wildly different hang times the two years. I find that interesting. I'm sure there's a reason for that. 1:01:52 Um, number two, Ryan Eckley from Michigan State. I do not like Ryan Eckley as much. [laughs] Okay. Um, to my recollection, he is not a very good hang time punter, uh, but he was at the Senior Bowl. 1:02:06 And so, uh, as you mentioned, sometimes people just sort of look at the two Senior Bowl punters and they're like, "Those are the two best punters." 1:02:13 Yeah, 4.07 second hang time, uh, last year Yeah, not very good That's, that's not good at all. Uh- Um, for reference-... very high return percentage, too, 52... 1:02:21 for reference for the audience that doesn't know what, like, uh, the threshold for hang time is, generally the worst punter in the NFL has around an average of, like, 4.2 hang time. Yeah. 1:02:31 It's the reason that, uh, punt gola- god/uh, alleged, uh- Right... criminal, um- Right... 1:02:42 Matt Araiza wasn't pu- wasn't drafted is because he would just punt it down the line of drive, and then he had this quote go around of like, "I don't care, I just wanna boot it as far as possible." 1:02:49 And a bunch of people were like, "Yay," and a bunch of people who like punting were like, "Are you psychotic?" [laughs] Um. Yeah. And he won, he won the Ray Guy, I think, or something like that. Um, yeah- Yeah... 1:03:00 so 4.07 is very bad. Um, by the way, Matt Araiza did get drafted. Oh, yeah. But then he got, he got cut after the allegations. That was it. Yeah. 1:03:08 He, he got drafted and then he lost a punting competition to Matt Haack because Matt Araiza also didn't know how to hold. That was also it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:03:16 Uh, speaking of not knowing how to hold, Jack Stonehouse, number three. Jack Stonehouse actually very much knows how to hold. Um, that's- Same thing... sort of his whole thing. 1:03:27 Um, so- Yeah, the Stonehouses have been over this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Uh, Jack Stonehouse is from a punting dynasty. Um- Yes... his brother, his dad, and his- Actually, yes... uncle have all punted- Yeah... 1:03:35 in the NFL before. And so, like, legitimately, he is from [laughs] a, like... Uh, or, sorry, not brother. Ryan is his cousin. Yeah. So his dad, his uncle, and his cousin, his- Yes... 1:03:45 dad's brother's son, [laughs] um, all have punted in the NFL. They're a very big punting family. 1:03:52 Um, there was a story that, uh, he told me at the Shrine Bowl, uh, about how in his family it's a rite of passage to, um, hit yourself in the face with your knee and make your nose bleed because it means your leg is flexible enough to, like, punt effectively. 1:04:06 That's right. Uh, and so I had a very fun conversation with him asking about, like, when the first time that he did that was, and I think he said he was, like, 11. Um- And everyone celebrated? 1:04:17 Right, and everyone celebrated. Got the ice cream and cake. It's like, "Hey, man." And it's a big, it's like a big huge thing in their family. Yeah. And they're like, "All right, yeah, you're ready to go." 1:04:22 And so I do like Jack Stonehouse. Um, I think that he's sort of, like, borderline draftable. I'd probably have him as the second punter in the draft. All right, uh, kickers. Drew Stevens from Iowa is number one. 1:04:34 Yeah, Stevens is good. Um, he is... Again, like, he was at the Senior Bowl, and so people- Mm-hmm... uh, tend to just sort of, like, look at that and they're like, "All right, yeah, for sure." 1:04:44 Um, he also was one that at his pro day at Iowa was like, "I have all these meetings with teams." And so I think people were sort of like- Oh, yeah... 1:04:54 "Well, he must be the best kicker because he actually has meetings set up." Um, but he's, uh, to my recollection, he's, like, fine. 1:05:01 Um, I don't really think there's, like, a, like, for sure, like, surefire, uh, draftable kicker in this year's class. So he is, um, probably gonna be fine. So, uh, the two and three kickers were also, I believe, 1:05:18 the most efficient 50-yard kickers this year and last year. 1:05:21 So, uh, Trace Mack from Florida, number two, and Dominik Zovada from Michigan, number three, who was the number one most efficient 50-yard kicker in- [clears throat]... 2024. Yeah, so I like Zovada a lot. 1:05:36 Um, there was a little bit of iss- he had a little bit of issue this year, which I think was probably mostly derived from holding because his punter transferred to Florida to play with Trace Mack, who then- Amazing... 1:05:50 got better, [laughs] uh, this season. And so, uh, I would wager that that is probably one where it's like, oh, well, uh, I think maybe the holder is good. Um- Who's the holder? But yeah, I, I do like both of those guys. 1:06:04 Um, they are both fine. Um- Wait, is it Tommy Doman? Is that the holder? Yes. Uh, Tommy Doman, the Florida punter. He was at Michigan, um, in 2024 with, uh, with Dominik Zovada and with Francis Okoro this year. 1:06:15 Oh, he's like the number four punter on the board. I almost talked about him. Yeah, yeah. Maybe. He's, uh, pretty good. He was at the Shrine Bowl. He, um, he's perfectly fine. Um, I think- Good... 1:06:23 he'll get a UDFA deal, probably have a chance to win a competition. Um, you know, for one of those teams that sort of sign, like, a mid-tier punter. 1:06:31 Um, even, like, the Vikings potentially who signed Johnny Hekker, who's getting a little bit older. Um- Quite a bit older... I think Tommy Doman. 1:06:37 Yeah, Tommy Doman could be one where you sign him as, as a sort of, like, quasi competition and, like, maybe he beats him out and maybe he doesn't. Cool. Uh, and then also we have long snapper rankings for some reason. 1:06:50 Uh- Yeah, yeah... so Bo Gardner, Luke Basso, and Tyler Zazansky were all very closely grouped together in the consensus board from ranks 433 to 475 are the one, two, and three long snappers. I think that's correct. 1:07:06 Um- Oh, yeah? Yeah. Uh, I, I mean, having all of them sort of in that group together I think is correct also. Um, but yeah, I, I would say that that's-Roughly correct. Um, Dziedzicki was at the Shrine Bowl. 1:07:19 Um, I believe the other two were at the Senior Bowl. Um, Basso is, um, pretty good. He, uh, will certainly be... I mean, all three of them will certainly be undrafted free agents because they're long snappers. 1:07:33 But, um, Basso I know has gotten some interest from a few teams, because that's sort of my neck of the woods. Um, and then Dziedzicki and Gardner are both, like, pretty good. Um, I mean, uh, long snapping is, uh, a, 1:07:49 not less exact science. It's actually a more exact science, which makes it harder to evaluate sometimes because, like, most of them are pretty good at it. 1:07:57 And so, like, it's har- it's much harder when you're watching special teams film to determine if a long snapper is good or bad because, like, most of the time, like, the obviously bad things that a long snapper could do are not happening very often, um, in terms of, like, he's not completely missing the holder most of the time. 1:08:17 Mm-hmm. He's not, like, rolling the snap back to guys most of the time. 1:08:20 Like, and so it's a much more precise sort of, like, you kinda have to zoom in and do, like, Zapruder films of every rep to be like, "Where are the laces on the ball now that I've zoomed- Right, like, is it-... 1:08:30 this in to 240p?" Is it, like, six and a half rotations? Is he, is he always, you know, setting up the ball correctly so that it lands correctly because he's got the same number of rotations? Is the timing appropriate? 1:08:43 Um, yeah, it's... A- and, like, the, the, the film quality that we have [laughs] is not- Yes... wonderful for this stupidly precise kind of scouting. Right. 1:08:57 I will also say, too, that, like, the, the good thing about all three of those guys is that, like, one of the most important traits for a long snapper in the NFL is size. 1:09:05 Um, so the punt rules specifically are much different in NCAA than they are in the NFL. In the NCAA, the long snapper is allowed to release off the line of scrimmage as soon as the ball is snapped. 1:09:15 In the NFL, they are not allowed to release until the ball is kicked. Mm-hmm. 1:09:18 And so, uh, size is much more important in the NFL than it is in college because in college you almost want the guy to be a little bit smaller so that he can just, like, get down the field real quick. 1:09:28 But in the NFL, it's much more important that he is able to, like, deconstruct a block and/or, like, hold a block so that, like, an actual player can make a tackle. Mm-hmm. 1:09:36 Um, and so generally you, like, you are looking for the same sort of size that, like, a linebacker would have. 1:09:42 Um, and so the nice thing about all three of those guys is that they are listed, like, 6'2", 6'3" or taller, and, like, 220 pounds plus. So all three of them clear that threshold also. This has been so phenomenal. 1:09:55 Um, I was gonna talk more about Japanese football players. There is another IPP Japanese player. Or not IPP, just, um- Just Japanese football player, yeah... J- Japanese player. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1:10:05 Um, but we're hitting an hour, and I think Jane will be mad. So, uh, we're going to have more Japanese football content on Wide Left, I can guarantee that. 1:10:16 [laughs] Um, [laughs] um, which is hilarious, but also very on brand. Um- That is a very funny thing that we can guarantee. [laughs] Right, yeah. Um- Don't worry, guys. I know you were worried that there- [laughs]... 1:10:29 wasn't gonna be any Japanese football content on Wide Left. But we can guarantee that it's coming. Yeah. We, we will have it. Look, we signed a basically Japanese guy for this reason. 1:10:41 [laughs] [laughs] Uh, so Alex Katzen, where can people find you? What do you do? Go through the list again. Yeah, the easiest way, honestly, is probably just to go to alexkatzen.com. 1:10:55 It's spelled the same way that my name is. Uh, that has links to everything that I do. It's probably the easiest way to do it. 1:11:01 But if you're looking for something in particular, you can go to footballsheets.substack.com, which is the company that runs all of the spreadsheets, which is what we talked about for the bulk of this episode. 1:11:12 Uh, I also cover the Chargers for Chargers Wire, as well as host a Chargers-centric draft show on the Guilty as Charged podcast. Um, I cover the Washington Huskies for Huskies Wire. 1:11:20 I'm the COO at Wide Left, a Reeves media company, at wideleft.football. And I am generally around, uh, on Twitter and on, uh, whatever else, Bluesky and wherever else that you need to find content. Um- Yeah... 1:11:35 and so- Just look for the vaporwave profile picture. Yeah. On Twitter, I'm @alexkatzen. On Bluesky, it's just @katzen. So, um, either place, you wanna go there. But if you are just looking for, like... 1:11:45 If that is too long of a list and you're like, "What the f- I don't know what I'm doing," just go to alexkatzen.com. That has links to everything that you need to, that you need to see. All right, dope. 1:11:54 Thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. All right, let's go to the mailbag. And the first question is from Eric the Red, who asks, "Is a general manager really necessary?" 1:12:04 [laughs] "Would it be so bad if we just didn't hire one?" That feels like a very Cincinnati Bengals-type situation. Um, no, they t- you probably will want one soon. [laughs] Like, I, I understand it's not gonna happen 1:12:22 before the draft, but... Okay, I got, I just got a, I just got a, a text saying, "Check the group chat." Um, so I'm gonna do that now live on the podcast. First of all, I gotta figure out which group chat. 1:12:35 Let's find out. There's so many. You got the polycule. You got the- I don't know. [laughs] You have the other polycule you're trying to, like, bring down from the inside. Well, that, that part does happen a lot. 1:12:49 Um, let's see. Oh, interesting. Uh, I wish I could explain what it was. [laughs] It's unfortunate. 1:13:05 Um, God, there's so much happening here. Norsecode.threadless.com [laughs] for- Look, I w- I will link it when it is appropriate. That is gonna be a thing. Okay. I... God. Okay, whatever. 1:13:17 James, you can cut this if you want, 'cause I didn't actually end up revealing anything interesting. Nope, this is just- I have to text this person saying I am-I am in a podcast now. 1:13:26 [laughs] Like I am in a constant state of podcast. And as a result, I am unable to tell anyone anything, including the people listening to the show. Yeah. 1:13:37 Whi- which is, which is unfortunate 'cause that is generally the idea behind a podcast. I mean, I, I... Is that what you do when you're live streaming with Luke? 1:13:47 Uh, well, that's, that's not a podcast, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't know why that would be- You know, it's funny you mention that... cool I went to one of my podcast aggregators the other day. Mm-hmm. 1:13:56 Right And I was able to, to find that, and it listed it as a podcast, After Dark, and I, I have, I have listened- Well, you know, you know how like when Dov Kleiman quotes, like, uh, you know- I blocked him years ago [laughs]... 1:14:08 Albert Breer a match now. But yeah. But I'm just saying, like- Yes, before I met him... 1:14:12 an aggregator will aggregate things and kind of mischaracterize or put onto a different platform, uh, from what the original source had intended. 1:14:21 So just because Dov Kleiman tweets out something Albert Breer said on television doesn't mean that Albert Breer tweeted it out. You know what I mean? 1:14:29 So just because you see it on a podcast doesn't mean that it's a podcast. What was the name of the aggregator that I blocked a long time ago? 1:14:39 Wait, was it Dov Kleiman that, uh, declared he was the least racist human being because he had a collection of like Martin Luther King stuff? Yeah. Uh, that was, that wasn't, um, that wasn't Dov Kleiman. 1:14:51 That was, um, uh, the business reporter, Darren Rovell. That's who it was. It was Rovell. Yeah. Okay. Well, uh, getting back to the question, uh, is a general manager really necessary? [laughs] Yeah. 1:15:05 I mean, so you're gonna want one soon. I would, I would argue before the NFL draft, but it sounds like it's gonna hap- have to happen after. Um, but yeah, I think you do. 1:15:18 I think you need someone who makes decisions and then consequently is accountable for those decisions, uh, has a process that you can point to, and then executes on that process. 1:15:31 I would say kinda the general word cloud approach to general managing. [laughs] Uh, you know how rice cookers use fuzzy logic to determine that your rice is cooked? 1:15:41 That feels like the best way to describe how this draft is gonna go. [laughs] And if you have any questions about how to use it, you just use the finger test. It's fine. Yeah. 1:15:51 Uh, let's go to Raul, who asks, "There does not seem to be a good fit between need and value in the first round. Is there a player in the top 10 of this draft that you would stick and pick if a fall occurs?" Um, 1:16:05 I mean, there's like a couple, right? So I think the most obvious is Caleb Downs, who is b- considered like a top five, um, prospect in the draft. Now, he's a safety, so he could drop a little bit. 1:16:15 Sometimes that doesn't happen with safeties. We saw that with, with Derwin James, who didn't fall as far as people thought he might. Um, I wouldn't do it for Jeremiah Love. I would do it for Arval Willis. 1:16:25 I would do it for Fernando Mendoza. Um, I would do it maybe for Sonny Stiles. I, I wouldn't be upset about it, I guess, if it was Sonny Stiles. Caleb Downs, obviously. 1:16:36 Um, I don't know how much I would do that despite, you know, Arval Willis being nominally an edge. I don't know how much I would do that for the other edges that are being considered there, like Ruben Bain, David Bailey. 1:16:47 Pr- I would do it for Carnell Tate. Um, do we think Francis Maunawa knows how to snap the ball? Probably not, so probably not him. Um, Monsur Delane I would do it for. Uh, f- probably not Jordan Tice or Mekhi Lemon. 1:17:03 I, I... That's one where I would, I would wanna trade down and get good, good value if one of those two fell. Um, Vega, I want a prob... How... Can he snap? I don't know. 1:17:16 And then after that, you know, it's, that's, that's just in the pick range. Um, so there's a couple, but a lot of them I think are more valuable as, you know, trade bait, right? 1:17:29 Like if, if David Bailey falls to 18, like obviously the Vikings would benefit from having David Bailey on their team, but I think they would benefit more from trading. But if Fernando Mendoza falls somehow, 1:17:41 I, I mean, like Tom, like, I don't know if it was Tom Brady, but basically people in the Raiders are like, "We're looking forward to having Fernando Mendoza," right? Like they, they've... Everyone's there, right? 1:17:49 Kirk Cousins even said that, yeah. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. Kirk Cousins was like, "I'm looking forward to like coaching the younger clone of myself who is more successful in the Big Ten than I was." Um, great. 1:18:01 Fantastic. Uh, but yeah, so like that's not gonna happen. But like obviously in kind of like a gas mask type situation were it to happen, like yeah, absolutely draft them. Um, yeah, Caleb Downs is the obvious answer. 1:18:15 But yeah, Sonny Stiles, Arval Willis, eh, Carnell Tate. Yeah. All right. 1:18:21 Next question is gonna be from, uh, Big Algernon who asks, "Forget who, but someone said recently that they like to look at whether a prospect actually graduated from college because it shows intelligence. 1:18:32 Is that really a thing, and is that good especially for defensive secondary guys?" All right. 1:18:38 So despite the fact that me not graduating from college would suggest that what I'm about to say is not true, there are a number of intelligent people who don't graduate from college, [laughs] and it's actually a very poor marker of, uh, intelligence. 1:18:54 Now, it is correlated with intelligence because income is correlated with intelligence because intelligence, uh, is correlated, uh, with the ability to kind of predi- there's a whole thing about this. 1:19:06 Um, but like the ability to provide the environment that would make you good at the type of tests that we nominally call intelligence, whatever, right? 1:19:13 Um, but like all of this is to say that, you know, intelligence is, is not a very well-defined measure. It's often very bad. It doesn't measure what people, uh, think it measures. 1:19:25 And then also on top of that, the type of intelligenceThat graduating would suggest or that college classes would suggest is not the type of intelligence you would need, um, on a football field. 1:19:36 So like a lot of intelligence researchers have rejected the notion of, it's called G for generalized intelligence, have rejected the notion of a generalized intelligence because intelligence is this like y- you know, multifaceted million factor thing, and we can only measure some elements of it, and people have been suggesting for decades that if we can measure some elements of it, that gives us generally the overall shape of someone's intelligence, which we now know is generally just like not true, and there's no reason to think that that assumption was true in the first place. 1:20:04 But also on top of that, graduating college like doesn't even tell you that someone is intelligent in the kind of way that college classes would test. Like it's, it's all broken in every, uh, element of that chain. 1:20:17 And then we have just the football specific evidence, 1:20:21 which is that college players who don't graduate from college when they declare from the draft almost always d- I shouldn't say almost always, do monumentally better than the college graduates do. 1:20:35 And we know that because if you're good at football, you declare early. Like [laughs] like that's, that happens, and a lot of players might go back to college and get their degree. 1:20:45 That's, uh, I think that's always a fun, uh, story. 1:20:48 Um, but we get a lot of third year players coming out that have not graduated college that were on a five-year track to graduate college, and those are the best players in the draft. 1:21:03 [laughs] It's, they, the reason a lot of people wait until they graduate college to enter the draft is because they weren't good enough to enter the draft earlier. 1:21:15 Uh, so it is the opposite, and younger players do well, third year players do better than fourth year players, do better than fifth year players, I assume do better than sixth and seventh year players, a thing that we've had to deal with for a little bit now. 1:21:28 Um, yeah, if you declare early, that's because you're better at football than someone who can't declare early. That's what that means. 1:21:35 So all of the, the, the theoretical underpinning of the nature of this supposition is, is already broken at every level of the chain. But on top of that, 1:21:48 um, the evidence that we have directly measuring this is incorrect, and I think the closest I've personally seen of this is like Bill Parcells' rules for drafting a quarterback include like, did they graduate college? 1:22:02 And, um, I'm gonna Google this real quick. Uh, Bill Parcells hasn't coached in at least 20 years, right? Like that's, that's, we can all- It's been a bit, yeah. Yeah, actually almost exactly 20 years this year. 1:22:15 So yeah, it, things have changed, uh, I would venture to say. Um, and we have a ton of evidence saying that a- Bill Parcells' rules for recognizing quarterbacks are all basically broken now. 1:22:29 The, the completion percentage rule doesn't seem to work, and that one is the closest to being a good one. The number of starts rule doesn't work at all. Um, the graduation rule doesn't work at all. 1:22:40 It's, uh, it's not good. So by proxy then, or is it, so by proxy, if we were looking at like the NBA for example, where it's one and done for damn near everybody, like just nothing but idiots. Right, yeah. 1:22:56 Nothing but idiots all the way down. Yeah, if [laughs] but if, if we were to accept some of the premises of this question, yeah, it would be nothing but idiots. 1:23:03 Uh, and that's a good thing 'cause you don't wanna draft, what are we calling him? Cream Abdul-Jabbar, right? Yes. Uh, yeah. Yeah. No, [laughs] we, we don't need, uh, we, we don't need extra attention. Yeah. 1:23:16 Uh, Chandler asks, "Are the Vikings trying to have their cake and eat it too by bringing in Kyler? Uh, he's probably overqualified to be a backup- Mm-hmm... 1:23:23 and should McCarthy begin the year, uh, poorly again, will heighten the pressure to change quarterbacks more than a Mariota level backup would." Yes. 1:23:32 "If Kyler starts for most of the year, that's taking away a whole year from McCarthy's development and taking McCarthy down to the last year of his rookie contract, and they'd have to decide on re-signing Kyler back. 1:23:43 This feels like trying to not move on from McCarthy while also kind of moving on, and it feels like you can't do both, at least not without signaling that you don't believe in McCarthy anymore." 1:23:54 Uh, I kind of reject the premise of this question too. [laughs] Just a little bit. Yeah. I, you, for the q- the, it's weird that the, 1:24:03 the question is constructed with a background assumption that it is possible that McCarthy could start. Um, which obviously it is technically possible, right? 1:24:13 Uh, Murray could get injured, Murray could get, um, arrested or whatever, right? Like what, who knows? Could, could go Puka Nacua. Could go full Puka Nacua, right? Uh- You never, you never wanna go full Puka. 1:24:26 I mean, they're both streamers, right? So you could go full streamer mode. [laughs] Say, say the streamer words, and then you're not starting suddenly, right? Um, [laughs] so it's possible, right? 1:24:38 But it is not if Murray is healthy and doesn't suffer like a Deshaun Watson like drop off. I'm not even talking about the off field, just Deshaun Watson's not good at football anymore, right? 1:24:50 Like if, if Murray has like a 0% completion rate in camp, yeah, he's not gonna start, fine. But, [laughs] but like we- we're talking about 0.0001% outcomes, right? 1:25:07 95% of outcomes, Kyler is starting the year. So the, the, the weird premise of this question is that 1:25:14 you're, you're trying to create this kind of tension between Kyler being a backup and McCarthy, and that doesn't really work. So it is just the second thing. 1:25:22 Kyler is, they're planning on starting him for all of the year, most of the year maybe. He has had some injuries, so it is possible that McCarthyOr Carson Wentz, I don't know, [laughs] um, plays Yeah [laughs] Um, 1:25:37 uh, but, like, are they in a spot where they're trying to not move on from McCarthy while moving on? Yes, but I don't think it, like, fits the premise or fits the, the overall spirit of the have your cake and eat it too. 1:25:56 Because, like, you do just need to do that. Like, they... 1:25:59 Like, the Colts were basically doing that with Anthony Richardson, and he's persona non grata in the organization for a number of reasons that have to do not just with his overall level of talent, but their perception of his work ethic and stuff like that. 1:26:11 Um, which might be an accurate perception. I'm just trying to be careful of my language. Um, but, uh, I, I, I would, I would say that 1:26:21 they're maximizing their odds of a good outcome because if McCarthy actually improves in the ways they need him to improve while practicing, they can move on from Kyler, and we're gonna go through this whole, in the entire off-season, we're gonna be like, "I can't believe that they're not getting a starting quarterback. 1:26:38 They need to move on. 1:26:39 We saw what we had with McCarthy last year," and then they'll prove us wrong, and it'll be fun, and we all get to, like, eat crow except for Thor, who's gonna have, like, the greatest day of his life. 1:26:48 Um- [laughs] Which I deserve it, I would think, right? If McCarthy pulls- A giant, a giant mission accomplished banner that he's had- [laughs] Yeah, right... that's been causing dust- [laughs]... 1:26:57 is gonna unfurl behind him, and he's just gonna start sneezing and coughing because of all the dust. [laughs] Yeah. Which again, well-deserved, I think, if, if McCarthy pulls in an All-Pro season in 2027. 1:27:11 Like, fine, you get that one. But, [laughs] but, like, you know, it... That is fine because you're throwing as many darts as you can at the board, right? And all you do need is, like, one bullseye. 1:27:28 Or I guess if you're... That's not how darts work. James knows this well, so I'm sorry for hurting you. This is accurate. [laughs] But, [laughs] but you know what I mean, right? 1:27:37 [laughs] Um, ignore the actual rules of most ways that you play darts for a moment here and just throw as many darts as you can at the board. 1:27:46 Um, 'cause you only need one to hit, uh, in this imaginary construction of the game. [laughs] This is the worst I can- It's not, I know it's not a darts analogy, okay? Um- It stopped. Yeah, this is great. I love it. 180. 1:28:01 No. Um, I, I think that, I think that this is fine. 1:28:06 I think that you need to have a couple of shots to, to figure out what your 2027 quarterback situation's gonna look like, and having a guy continuing to develop is fine. You can develop players multiple ways. 1:28:18 They don't just have to start in football games for that development to occur. And I actually think McCarthy should not start for the purposes of better developing him because I don't think... 1:28:31 'Cause one of the problems with, with 1:28:34 quarterback development or any player development is that when they start playing in games, they start reverting to habits that they have, you know, if they've not locked in the new habits that they need to lock in, they start reverting to their old habits, and then it becomes even harder to break. 1:28:49 So you want him to lock in the mechanical changes they're making, to lock in the process changes they're making so that he doesn't immediately kind of revert when he starts playing games again. 1:29:02 And it's really difficult to enforce that when he breaks the patterns you're trying to instill in actual games. So I don't think that they're trying to, you know, have their cake and eat it too. 1:29:13 I think that they're actually, you know, engaging in a multi-pronged strategy for what 2027's gonna look like. Now, that makes it sound sophisticated. It's not. 1:29:20 It might be a bad strategy, but I don't think it's bad for the reason that's identified in this question. 1:29:27 Next question is from Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat, who asks: How concerning is it that Ben Solak called the Murray signing, quote, "The best signing of any team this cycle," end quote. 1:29:38 Also, Fur- It's pretty concerning But, but, but also Fur Reef's appropriate reporting corner, how many different ethnicities have you hugged? All right. And which one was the most intimate? [laughs] Okay, uh, 1:29:51 well, uh- It's the Italians... the answer to the, the answer to the Solak question is very concerning. The answer to the different ethnicities I've hugged, uncountable millions. Um, the most intimate, 1:30:07 probably like a seven-way tie. [laughs] We're not gonna list them. No. We're just gonna say that it was a seven-way tie. We're just gonna say it was a seven-way tie and move on. 1:30:17 Uh, Room Temp asks, Fur Reef's not gambling advice corner, what one-year deal type, uh, type of players are worth the vet minimum contract with hopes it was the team and not them being washed? 1:30:29 Like the anti-Russell Wilson, basically. Uh, [laughs] I mean, I think Kyler Murray's actually a really good example of this. Uh, but, like, who's left in free agency that might sign for vet... 1:30:42 Well, anybody who's left in free agency might sign for vet minimum. But, um, probably not Deebo. I think he's probably washed. Stefon Diggs would be funny. Um, I wouldn't say he's washed. Taylor Decker's kinda washed. 1:30:57 You don't need him, though. Marshon Lattimore would be funny for completely different reasons. Actually, get both Diggs and Lattimore. That sounds fun. Uh, L'Jarius Sneed, I don't think he's washed. 1:31:07 Um, he was merely a Titan. Happens to the best of us. Um, so probably L- L'Jarius Sneed might sign for minimum. Um, Jonnu Smith would be funny for completely unrelated reasons. Like, not even bit reasons. 1:31:22 He's just a funny player. Uh, going down this list, I'm not seeing a ton of opportunities here-Oh, Ryan Kelly's a free agent. Um, probably contact him, see what that looks like. [laughs] We'll get Velus Jones. Yeah. 1:31:38 [laughs] Bring me Velus Jones. Bring me Velus Jones. Uh, and then also there's, like, Tyreek Hill, who... He's, he's probably adding value. Just a, just a bit. 1:31:47 Also from Room Temp, "What combination of assault and bigotry will Puka commit next? Will he reach Ty Cobb levels?" Okay, so I was like, "Hey, I know, like, five things about baseball," and one of them is, uh... 1:32:01 Well, actually, one of them is that Ty Cobb is racist, which was really upsetting when I found out that that fact was actually wrong, which means, like, at least 20, probably more, percent of my baseball knowledge is incorrect. 1:32:13 But it sounds like he's not actually racist, and I went through, like, a couple of articles, some actually very poorly written unfortunately. James knows. Um, and yeah, I g- I guess it's a complete myth that he's racist. 1:32:25 Like, it all largely... I shouldn't say all. 1:32:27 It largely stems from this one ghostwritten biography by a guy named Al Stump, who, uh, was so bad at journalism that a bunch of different outlets had already blackballed him for making stuff up, including, like, TV Guide, which was, uh, in my understanding, a more serious journalistic outlet than we would consider in 2026. 1:32:47 But still, that feels like a lot. Um, and Ty Cobb was, like, about to sue him for just making up all kinds of stuff. Uh, and then he died, actually, before he could get to the lawsuit part of that. 1:32:58 Um, but yeah, it sounds like he was pro integra- He wasn't even just not racist. 1:33:02 He was, like, pro baseball integration, um, in several ways and, and, and often complimented, uh, some of the trailblazing Black players in, in baseball. So surprisingly, 1:33:15 despite being the best example that we generally tend to have... Like, 'cause the stories about Ty Cobb are crazy, right? It's like, yeah, he stabbed a Black guy because of racism reasons. 1:33:24 You're like, "Oh my God, he did that? That's cr- Wow. Who would make that up?" Al Stump. Uh, like, someone went in, like, someone went in and looked at all... 'Cause he got into a ton of fights. 1:33:36 And so, you know, like, if you hear he got into a fight with a Black groundskeeper, he got into a fight with a Black bellhop or whatever, and you're like, "Oh my God, he's fighting all of these people of a different race, he must be racist." 1:33:46 No, it turns out he just fought a ton of people, and 1:33:51 actually a disproportionately small number of them were, were not white, and a number of the people that he fought that people claimed weren't white turns out were white. Um, 1:34:04 so he, he just fights people, which I do respect more, right? Like, that's... Okay, I get it. [laughs] Um, it sounds like no one loved hanging out with him, but not for racism reasons. 1:34:20 Just, like, yeah, he'll fight you reasons, which makes sense. Uh, [laughs] And it seems like that- Puka seems like an awful hang too, but that's the only comparison I can make. 1:34:29 [laughs] Pe- people, uh, people, um, aren't, aren't as, like, negative about him, but it's... The tide is, the tide is turning. Well, he might bite you. That is, there's, like, that, right? Yeah. 1:34:40 So, so yeah, the tide is turning. He did check himself into rehab, multiple sources have indicated. I actually don't know how public this is, but I'm pretty confident it was a public report. It was tweeted. 1:34:51 Well, no, not, not the rehab stuff. I know that was tweeted. Oh. Uh, the, the next thing I'm about to say. Oh. Which is that, um... 1:34:59 I think Jordan Rodrigue, uh, reported this, which is that, uh, he had, uh, checked himself into rehab before anyone could tell him that he should. 1:35:10 Like, so the Rams weren't the ones to be like, "You have to check yourself into rehab." He just, like, did it voluntarily. So I guess there is that. 1:35:17 Uh, I know a number of people who have gone into rehab for various things. I can promise you that that does not automatically make you a good person. [laughs] Um, but that is better than it isn't, right? 1:35:30 So I'll, I'll give him that. Was there an actual, like, addiction involved here, or is he just, like, addicted- I don't know. I don't know what the rehab is for. 1:35:36 Like, it- 'Cause that was, that was the thing that surprised me. It was like, he- he's checked himself into rehab. It's like, oh great. Can you go to rehab for racism? I didn't... Or, like, uh, being an idiot? 1:35:45 Is it just like a, like, I'm, I'm too online, I'm gonna- Isn't it just called school? Like, I don't... [laughs] Like, that's just school. No, we already talked about graduating doesn't make you a better person. 1:35:56 It just means that you accomplished a goal. I didn't say gradu- You don't have to graduate. [laughs] Look, there's a ton of evidence that, like, education helps people, okay? That's all I'm saying. But, uh, 1:36:09 what combination will, will Puka commit next? I feel like he's gonna be on the same kinda track for a little bit. Um, the same kind of Aiden Ross, uh, touchdown celebration track that he's been on. 1:36:25 I think that that's gonna be the thread of bigotry he's gonna keep pursuing for a little while. Uh, it sounds like the assaults are not related to that currently. 1:36:34 We'll see if these two Puka storylines dovetail and converge. Uh, I don't know. Who's, uh, who's, uh, who is, uh, more of a persona non grata, him or, uh, Stefon Diggs once this whole thing kinda finishes up? 1:36:50 Um, I have not kept up with the Stefon Diggs, uh, off-field stuff. So my last impression was that it wasn't as bad as it sounds, but that was, like, months ago, so I don't know. Maybe, I don't know. 1:37:05 Right now it feels like Stefon Diggs is much better positioned than Puka is. Yeah. It's, uh, it's not great. Uh, Annie Taylor Joy asks, "For Arif's athletic threshold and unintended consequences corner- All right. "... 1:37:17 since you caused the Vikings to draft Treadwell, will you be contacting the owner of the cursed poster?" No, this was a framed shadow box- Right... uh, to, with a terrible picture of, of Roger Goodell in it- Mm-hmm... 1:37:30 uh, to add your photogra- or your autograph to it. 1:37:33 Additionally, how did this move help your Seahawks?Okay, I don't know how that would've helped the Seahawks in any way, but the story is that the Vikings changed their athletic thresholds because I had been reporting on the athletic thresholds that they had been using in the NFL draft, and I had apparently been reporting them more accurately than even I thought, and I thought I was pretty close to nailing it. 1:37:56 Um, and, uh, after 2015, they changed those thresholds, which if you recall, is a tremendously odd draft to change your thresholds for, right? Because that was an outstanding draft. 1:38:09 [laughs] Uh, and then 2016, 2017, you go, like, Trey Wayne's and Laquon Treadwell, and it's like, "Okay, what are we doing here?" [laughs] Um, 1:38:17 but yeah, I, I wouldn't say that that's the reason they drafted Laquon Treadwell. In fact, they did their own kind of computer vision sort of assisted before we had AI vision tracking. 1:38:28 They did their own version of it, um, to track Laquon Treadwell and argued essentially that he was faster than his 40 time, and so they imputed their own 40 time for Laquon Treadwell, and he passed whatever their new athletic thresholds were. 1:38:42 So it sounded like they were going to draft him no matter what, if he was available, which he was obviously. So I didn't... That's not... And also, if they change because I did some reporting, that's on them. 1:38:54 That's not on me. That's not my fault that they were like, "Hey, we got this system that works, but somebody with a blog might have figured it out, so we gotta change it." 1:39:03 No, that's, that's clearly just bad decision-making on their part. Yep. Mistakes were made. Uh, Anton asks, "What Hell League scoring rule should be brought into the actual league, and which rule would be the most fun?" 1:39:18 I mean, the, the kicking stuff is o- is, is the obvious choice, like immediate, but- Well, so the, the problem with the kicking stuff is that you would never go for a, you would never kick an extra point. 1:39:28 You'd always go for two, right? No. And so we'd miss out on those opportunities, and then the additional kicking rules is that you get points for yardage on kicks. 1:39:35 [laughs] Um, which I think when we had discussed it, we had accidentally made it double points for yardage 'cause we did the, the 30 to 39- The, the double bonus, yeah... Yeah, and that was by accident. 1:39:46 Then we discovered it, and we were like, "Well, obviously we're gonna keep that accident-" Yeah... "'cause that's funny 'cause we're getting 200 points on some games." Um, but, like, you can't really do... 1:39:55 So they're gonna try something like that, I think, in the XFL, if I remember correctly, but they, like, have these rules. Like, you can't go backwards in order to increase the number of points. 1:40:05 So, like, there is, like a, and you can't punt past a certain... So they're, they're doing- Yeah... something along those lines. Um, but it does create some unusual incentives, but are there other 1:40:16 rules in the Hell League that- First, first thing I thought of was that this, was that if you get a, if you pitch a shutout, you get 25 additional points. Oh. And I just, I love that idea. 1:40:26 [laughs] Like, just pile it on more. Yeah. I think that- I love that. So you, you could have, like, a 100 to zero game just by scoring 75, easy. Yep, and, and just not letting up anything. Nope. 1:40:39 I, I think that, uh, I think that works. I do want to run an Oops All Punters league next year, but I have to do that in, like, ESPN. But I do want to run an Oops All Punters league. I like that. 1:40:52 So I'm gonna need to find that with a couple of people to, uh, to, to get that going. Is, what, like a, like a three-team league? I'm trying to figure out how you would make that work. Uh, if you have... 1:41:01 I'm trying to think if it'd be, like, a two or a three punter on a team- Oh, okay... thing, and then you s- spread it. But yeah. Okay. 1:41:11 I- And then maybe have, like, you, you can draft, a punter can be drafted to two separate teams and... Okay. Sure. Yeah. There, there's, there's way to, ways to make it work. Yeah. Yeah. 1:41:19 Oops, Oops Only Punters would, uh, would be good. Uh, Charles asks, "How many rounds would the draft need for a team to select each of you?" Oh. Uh, this is awkward for me. Uh, it might be easier to figure you out. 1:41:36 [laughs] Um, yeah, so, so I currently have not undergone back surgery, so, or any- Neither have I, for what it's worth... Well, yeah, technically neither have you, although it was touch and go for a second there. 1:41:52 [laughs] Uh, touch and go multiple times. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I did, I did a little bit of math on this one, and I figure that w- l- obviously foreign players get drafted, right? 1:42:05 But let's assume for a moment that they don't. Um, and I figure there's about six compensatory picks per round, so 38 picks per round, and I figure two-thirds of the country easily clearing, right? 1:42:17 Because they're, like, 60 and over, or they're babies, or they're like James and, and they're not medically fit necessarily for the NFL. 1:42:28 I'm not medically fit either, but in a completely different, arguably more pathetic way. Um, [laughs] 'cause it's- Why? [laughs] Well, 'cause it's only my choice, right? 1:42:40 That I'm not fit for the NFL, whereas other people- Yeah... are not fit for reasons outside of their control. [laughs] Um, so but, like, a lot of people are just not fit for the NFL in a lot of different ways, right? 1:42:55 And, you know, I've got some upper body strength. I've got some lower body strength. I would say for my size, I'm slightly stronger than average, which for people who know my size is not saying a lot. 1:43:11 Um, aside from the fact that I'm seven feet tall, right? Yeah. So, like, I could take Wemby, right? Um, so I figure I clear two-thirds, but not much more than that. 1:43:23 So I took the country's population, multiplied it by 0.3, divided that by 38, and I got, it was about 2.9 million rounds, right? 1:43:34 I figure the NFL knows me a little bit better than they know-Some random person in Idaho, right? Um, I figure, you know, I'm not 40, I'm not 50, um, I'm not 13, I'm not eight, right? Um, so 1:43:51 I'd say probably, probably around two million or so, I think is... And then that's probably when I get my name called. But I, I'd like Rhett Ellison, I would be out fishing on a, on a boat. 1:44:02 I wouldn't, I wouldn't get to the phone in time. [laughs] You, you don't even take-- You don't even, like, fish normally, but for this particular moment- For th- yeah, for this, yeah, yeah, for sure. 1:44:10 [laughs] You're like, "Nope, I'm, I'm going on a boat." Uh, question is from Mal, who asks, "How j- uh, how is Jim Marshall not in the NFL Hall of Fame? Are we crazy, and does the Hall of Fame suck?" 1:44:23 So I've, uh, I've looked into this a couple of times, and obviously there's, like, a bunch of reasons, right? Like, one of them is that he's most famous for the wrong way run. 1:44:30 Um, but I think some of it is, and, and, and Luke Braun has done, like, a whole history of the Vikings, and so he's spoken about this too, and part of his argument is that Jim Marshall, not quite as talented as, as some of the edge rushers from the era that it went in. 1:44:44 But I think a lot of people will go off of, like, sack counting stats, and the thing is, um, he obviously has a ton 'cause he was in the league forever, and, and so it, it makes it seem like he should be in, but he doesn't really have any postseason honors. 1:45:00 And I think that's an issue with the way that we do NFL awards because if you look at his sack totals from year to year to year, he was never really in the top three of, of sacks, um, created, uh, in any particular year of the NFL. 1:45:15 But over a three-year span and over a five-year span, he ends up near the top. 1:45:20 And so you would think that there would be some consideration for that, and, um, it'd be nice if we had, like, a rolling three-year award system, which would be essentially impossible to enforce because they would all be impacted by recency bias and stuff like that. 1:45:35 Um, like, it would be cool abstractly if we had a rolling three-year award for performance over three years. But mechanistically it would suck because I don't think I trust anyone to do it well. Um, 1:45:48 but, like, in a world where that happened, I think that he would have the type of postseason honors that would get him into the Hall of Fame. 1:45:54 So I think some of it is the fact that he doesn't really have, like, any All-Pros and... Does he have any Pro Bowls? Let me take a quick look. Um, but, like... See, Jim Marshall. Um, but, like, 1:46:07 all you have is the total sack number, and then someone on the Hall of F- he has two Pro Bowls, so someone on the Hall of Fame committee would be like, "Well, why does he only have two Pro Bowls and no All-Star appearances or no All-Pro awards?" 1:46:19 Uh, and then that's kind of where the discussion shuts down, right? Eh, [laughs] like that's... Yeah, that's it. 1:46:28 Uh, and I, I think that if you had, like, a three-year award system, he would get more serious consideration, or a four-year award system, or a five-year award system. 1:46:36 But it's j- it's just not gonna happen because he has nine sacks, 10 sacks, 11 sacks, seven sacks, eight sacks, nine sacks, whatever, right? 1:46:44 Like, he had one year with 14 sacks, one year with 11 and a half sacks, and that's it, right? 1:46:50 Like, and, and, and, and you compare him to somebody like Alan Page, which in one way feels tremendously unfair to him, and in another way feels tremendously unfair to Alan because he was a defensive tackle, not an edge rusher. 1:47:00 But, like, Alan Page has had more seasons of 11 plus sacks than Jim Marshall as a defensive tackle, right? And yeah, he's the greatest defensive tackle of all time, but, like, still, that's kinda screwed up, right? 1:47:14 So I think that's really the big reason, is that he just never had the one year that people will point to and be like, "Wow, holy crap. That's, that's incredible." That's the thing. 1:47:23 Let's go to A Second Jet Has Hit Drew Bledsoe, f- uh, who asks, "For Arif's Romani Angulus, uh, corner, Carson Wentz, sentenced to crucifixion by Pontius KOC, hath returned in some time that's divisible by three. 1:47:40 Hallelujah. What sins have been cleansed by his return, and how have you embraced him as your Lord and Savior?" 1:47:48 [laughs] Strangely, one of the few Carson Wentz questions I receive that Carson Wentz would be more offended by than me. [laughs] Um, I- A true rarity. Yeah. I, I don't think he appreciates this question, A Second Jet. 1:48:04 Um, no, obviously, no. No s- no sins have been cleansed. He has not taken on the sins. He has not granted us... Is it forgiveness? Do we call it for- I don't know Christian theology [laughs] all that well. 1:48:17 I don't know if that's been made clear over the past 13 years of the podcast or whatever. Um, is it forgiveness? Is that what we get from, uh, Jesus dying on the cross for us? 1:48:27 I just wanna let people know we have fully gone off the rails now, um, in case- Really? How can you tell? Uh, in case you had noticed- [laughs]... we are in fact off the rails. 1:48:37 Uh, let's go to, uh, Kyle Segal, who asks- [laughs] "Okay, first of all, how dare you?" Mm. "What gives you the right to just end Norse Code? 1:48:45 You think because you're the hosts and the producers and the creators and legal owners of Norse Code LLC, and somehow that makes you almighty over the show? Huh? Huh?" Uh, yeah, that, that is what we think. Um, 1:48:59 we love you, Kyle. I still need to send him a jersey of, [laughs] of, uh, of, of a player. I can't remember. It was the guy-- Who was the guy who, uh, that was the Vikings quarterback who never lost against Tampa Bay? 1:49:10 Was it Case Keenum, or was it somebody else? Uh, it sound-- I think that's a-- That sounds like a Case Keenum stat, right? Because I think after the Tampa Bay game, someone brought it up- Yeah... 1:49:20 um, that he, that he just cooks against Tampa Bay specifically. But I can take a look at his career splits right now, um, thanks to the newly designed, uh, Pro Football Reference website. 1:49:33 W- I say that like I'm sponsored by them, and in a very technical sense, I am, but, like-In a, in a normal legal sense, you were not [laughs] Right. Uh, three wins, zero losses. So yeah, he's got 100% win rate. Cooks. 1:49:49 Yeah. [laughs] Good for him. Uh, I Hate Carmel, Indiana asks, I love that, uh, "Pittsburgh public schools are closing during the draft next month." Hmm. 1:49:59 "Arif, is this a result of hiring too many local children to promote and update your big board?" Okay, so first of all, I don't employ child labor. 1:50:08 Second, if I did, why would I employ specifically Pittsburgh area children, uh, to do [laughs] that? 1:50:15 Third, if I did employ child labor, in addition to this Pittsburgh question, why wouldn't I just have the tiny kids who are responsible for how AI works now do it, [laughs] uh, instead? 1:50:29 Um- You're just a big supporter of data centers now, not, not child labor. It's different. [laughs] Yeah, not child labor. Um, I don't... 1:50:38 The Pittsburgh public schools thing I think is, like, a unique combination of, like, the traffic patterns in Pittsburgh and the way that they, like, bus kids to school or something like that. I don't know. 1:50:47 But that is funny, and I wish it didn't happen, but yeah, uh, I don't know. [laughs] Uh, Francis Ford Copium asks, "For Arif's skill translation corner, 1:51:00 while madness-ing my March, I thought of all the stories of basketball players who've gone on to play in the NFL. Obligatory Antonio Gates reference. How translatable is a skill such as rebounding? 1:51:11 And with that in mind, will you be jealous when James hooks up with a younger, [laughs] sexier podcast host?" [laughs] I was updating my LinkedIn today, and I did include podcast stuff, so. Incredible. Um- Who's to say? 1:51:30 [laughs] The normalization of podcast culture has gone too far. Oh, God, absolutely. Um- [laughs] People with podcasts need to be stopped. [laughs] Um, okay. So how translatable is a skill such as rebounding? 1:51:45 Not remarkably translatable, otherwise we'd see more Jimmy Grahams and Antonio Gateses and... Was it, it wasn't Rico Dowdle. Um, it was, like, a Dallas tight end that had been, been in the, the final four. 1:51:57 There's not that many, right? Um, but I would, I would imagine we'd be getting a lot more, um, than we do. So I don't think it's actually that translatable. 1:52:06 It's just fun and easy to communicate a particular element of, of playing football and liking it to grabbing a rebound. It's just communication exercise, really. 1:52:18 Like, obviously, footwork and ball tracking and all of that, they are related overlapping skills, right? Timing, jump height. Um, but for the most part, not really. Um, [laughs] it's not really the same. 1:52:33 Um, and I think we'd see a lot more of it. It is maybe relevant that very often the best basketball players on a football team are tight ends, but I think that's just, like, a player size kind of thing. 1:52:46 Like, the tight ends are 6'6", right? [laughs] Like, it makes sense to me. Um, but yeah, I w- I would say that. Um, will I be jealous when James hooks up with a younger, sexier podcast host? I don't know. 1:52:58 Uh, was Dusty jealous when James and I start... I don't know. Well, we all started together in the same polycule, and then- [laughs] Same... We called it a three-man centapod, excuse me. 1:53:08 [laughs] We did call it a three-man centapod. You are correct. [laughs] I forgot about that term, and now I am immediately just... I need a shower. 1:53:18 [laughs] Uh, Beeflo asks, "For Arif's bullying corner, now that Chad Greenway's daughter has won the 5A state basketball tournament and committed to Kentucky, at what point do you have to consider her fair game to cyberbully? 1:53:32 Will you wait until she begins her college career, or have you begun already?" Uh, this feels so dicey. I, [laughs] I, wow. 1:53:43 Um, I think she has to be in the WNBA, which because of the WNBA's eligibility rules, I think she has to be, like, 22 at least, right? And I don't know, man, I, I haven't cyberbullied Chad Greenway in years, right? 1:53:59 Years and years. Uh, in fact, I think most recently, actually, he more recently has cyberbullied me, right? So, like, 'cause after he got that pick on his birthday or whatever. 1:54:10 Oh, well, yeah, and, and he's, he's, uh, he's commented, uh, multiple times- He has... uh, on, on, on the Twitters about, about things about your, about the connection to you before, so. Yeah. No, that, that's a thing. 1:54:24 I did reach out to him at one point trying to get him on as a guest, uh, much in the way to, like, surp- uh, in, in, like, the Luke Braun, like, surprise sort of way. Uh, I did attempt to do a version of that. 1:54:35 Uh, it was like he had to pay X amount of money for charity. I, I tried to, like, arrange something, but it would've been fun to get- Ah, yeah... Chad Greenway on. But, uh- Yeah... 1:54:44 un- [laughs] in the same way that I've also tried to get DeNucci on, it just didn't work out. 1:54:48 [laughs] Uh, let's go to Beef Brewski, who asks, "Remember that rumor about Diggs spending Valentine's Day zipping between two hotel rooms?" I think it was three, but yeah. 1:54:58 Uh, "A different lady [laughs] was in each room. Is Kevin O'Connell doing a similar thing with Kyler Murray and J.J. McCarthy? 1:55:04 We keep hearing he still believes McCarthy could be the guy, but he also reportedly told Murray he could see him as a franchise quarterback. Those ideas can both be true. You can love two ladies at the same time." Hmm. 1:55:16 [laughs] "But, but it's also true that those ladies might not be thrilled about the fact. Or is this Kevin O'Connell trying to avoid the mistakes that pushed Daniel Jones and Darnold into the arms of another team?" 1:55:28 [laughs] I feel like, I feel like there's been a rapid increase in the amount of throuple and polycule related questions over the past year, and I have no idea why. I, it just keeps happening. 1:55:38 It's, it's the future these liberals want. I, I, I don't know. [laughs]I, I love that love is in quotes for this question. [laughs] Um, you can love two ladies at the same... Wow. 1:55:51 Wait, I guess I know your opinion on the matter [laughs] Well- Beep brewski. Um- He's, he's talking like somebody who's been caught before. [laughs] Yeah. No, I love both of you, I promise. 1:56:03 No, in different but unique and fully realized ways. Um, let's see. Uh- Please put down the knife. Yeah, [laughs] pl- yeah. 1:56:15 Um, "We keep hearing still Billies McCarthy become the guy, but he also reportedly told Marie he could see him as a franchise quarterback. 1:56:19 Those could both be true, but it's also true that they might not be thrilled about that fact." 1:56:23 Uh, I, I guess in a way, I don't think he's physically, you know, flitting between multiple rooms to talk to McCarthy and Murray. 1:56:31 Uh, and it does make the quarterback room itself a little bit awkward, but, um, yeah, I, I think so. 1:56:40 I think that this is, I think that this is, like, a classic, you know, I've got two dates at the same time and they're at different restaurants, I have to get up and go to the bathroom, but really I'm going to the other date type sitcom situation for him. 1:56:52 All right, I just looked at the clock, and we need to make sure that you're able, able to be after dark here soon. Yeah, no, I've been looking at the clock. [laughs] We've, uh, we got a couple more questions here. 1:57:00 Deez asks, "I challenge you to a best of three VGC doubles in Pokemon Champions. You win, I don't mention you on social media, podcasts, or shows for six months. I win, the Sumo Corner returns for the next Ba show. 1:57:13 What do you say?" [laughs] Well, first of all, uh, well, you need to specify a lot of things. Open team sheet, closed team sheet, uh, which regulation of VGC would we be competing in? 1:57:25 Also, will you be providing me with a Switch 2 and Pokemon Champions? I don't own either of those things. [laughs] Um, I... So there's a lot of problems here. 1:57:34 Um, 'cause you said in Pokemon Champion, so we can't do it in Showdown, right? Um, uh, the, the... I just feel like if I just wait you out, I win, because the podcast is ending in a year. So I'm good. I don't... 1:57:49 Why do I have to do this? Yeah, just challenge his, just challenge Arif's high score in Pokemon Snap. It'll be fine. 1:57:54 [laughs] Football's Misandrist Niche asks, "For Arif's Remember When Corner, who would win in a fight, pirates or ninjas? I do not remember when. I was born in 2004." Uh, what was Maddox's answer to this? Do you know? 1:58:07 Ah. D- uh, I know many things about Maddox. I, I do remember that I, I don't want to remember. I f- I feel like he had an opinion on this. For people who don't know, I won't explain. 1:58:18 It feels like it's way too difficult to explain. [laughs] Um, but internet personality before we had social media, I guess. Um- Had the greatest page in the in- uh, in the, uh, in the entire, uh, universe. Yeah. 1:58:33 Um- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah... it, it turns out he's just a dick. 1:58:36 Yeah, that was a whole, the whole shtick, it turns out, like, which you could not recognize, or I couldn't recognize when I was a high schooler, was that he is just a dick, and he had, like, a whole book about how he's, like, a dick. 1:58:46 It was, like, the greatest book in the universe or something like that. Um- He was on a podca- I listened to a podcast he was on for a while, and it's- What? That's crazy. Yeah, it, uh, it didn't go well. 1:58:56 I [laughs] it does not go, it does not look good in my listing of, uh, of shows in Apple Po- in the Apple Podcast app. Yes. The Maddox net one still occasionally pops up. So anyway, I think that this is, like, 1:59:07 a, a terrain question, right? Uh, boats, pirates, on land, ninjas. In the air, probably ninjas. I don't know who's better at flying fighter pilots, but, like, or flying fighters, but probably ninjas, right? Yeah. So... 1:59:24 Well, no, a vehicle. Actually, I'll go with pirates in the air. Um, yeah, it is, it is very silly when I was a kid type fights. Uh, I think ninjas felt cooler, so people went with it, but, like, 1:59:40 pirates do have guns, right? Like, that, that feels like a pretty big game changer in the classic loadout. I would imagine that the ninjas, as they operate now, question mark, 1:59:53 would have guns, but, like, in the classic imagining of both of these archetypes, pirates 'cause they have guns. But generally, I think this is, like, a terrain question. 2:00:01 Like, if they're in the woods, like, the ninjas have it, right? So I don't know. Yeah. Longing For A New Bit asks, "Have you gotten any updates on how friend of the show Mahmoud on Ahmadinejad [laughs] 2:00:13 is doing with the current unrest? Is he aware and thrilled with the most recent glory his Wolverines have achieved?" Um, man, I don't know how to break this news. 2:00:24 [laughs] Uh- I'm checking the score of the, of the hockey game right now. I... So I will say that Ahmadinejad, friend of the show, [laughs] glory to the U of M. Um, I will say that he 2:00:42 has either looked up or looked down at the score. Oh my God, I think Denver's goalie is dead. [laughs] Wow, how apropos for an Ahmadinejad question. Next question. [laughs] Oh my God. Uh, he's, he's not moving. 2:00:56 Oh, wait, no, actually? Uh, uh, he's... He got checked at the very, uh, like, right when I pulled this up. It's on ESPN 2. Uh, there are... Oh, he, he is moving now. They're... Like, the trainer is out there. 2:01:08 He got hit hard, uh, against the, uh, a- against the, the, the, against the goal. Yeah, he is, uh- He's moving now. He is now. He was not. 2:01:20 Like, he, he looked like he had, uh, just taken a Peyton Manning, uh, medic- uh, uh, uh, hospital ball right across the, uh, right across the middle of the field. Yeah, good old Austin Collie. 2:01:31 Yep, [laughs] he took an Austin Collie. [laughs] Uh, this- Over the middle, man. We need, we need you to take this one, dude. We need eight yards. [laughs] Uh, okay, yeah, they're, they're showing the replay right now. 2:01:44 It's... I know this is great podcasting, uh, stuff here. Oh. Oof. 2:01:51 Yeah, that's, uhThat's, uh, that's Michigan, uh, ch- [laughs] Michigan player checked the, uh, the Denver goalie and- With his knee [laughs]... uh, bent his neck. 2:02:03 Yeah, bent his neck in a way that should not be, uh, something... Hockey players are strong. Hockey, th- but oof, that's, that's not great. Yeah. Uh, w- this should, leads us into the next question. 2:02:15 Uh, Chandler asks, "For Arif's theology corner," [laughs] "... Michigan won the national championship in men's basketball. Wisconsin won the women's Frozen Four. 2:02:23 Uh, the men's Frozen Four is Denver, Michigan, North Dakota, and Wisconsin. Sadly, North Dakota lost earlier, and I'm bitter. Um, is this proof there is no God?" Yes. Uh, [laughs] "Or that there is one, He hates us all? 2:02:35 James is not allowed to answer this question." Feel like James got in some shots before he got to the part where James was not allowed to answer the question. [laughs] That's the best part. Um, I would say that if, 2:02:49 if, if there was a, a God and He hated us all, the Packers would have more than one ring in their, uh, insane quarterback run over the past however many years, right? Or two rings if you, like, going back to Favre. 2:03:03 Like, I think, I think there would be more Packers rings in a world where God exists and hates us. I think this is just, uh, proof of the randomness of the universe and our ability to interpret patterns into it. 2:03:14 Next question. Yeah. Uh, Ice Delonda Est asks, uh, "Question for Arif's podcasting corner." We're gonna wrap up with this. 2:03:22 Uh, "With North Code LLC shutting down, I've begun listening to your new podcast, Locked On Vikings After Dark." It's not a podcast, it's a stream. Uh, you called it a podcast last, last episode. I don't know. 2:03:32 I don't recall what I called it. 2:03:32 "I noticed After Dark," "I noticed After Dark, in a break from North Code LLC, is funded with advertisements, including a gambling and prediction market app," and, uh, BetterHelp too, if I remember correctly. Mm-hmm. 2:03:43 "The advertising was successful, and now I am $200,000 in the hole. What bet would you recommend I make [laughs] to get out of this?" Uh- Uh, no, you- Al- You need therapy... also. Okay. 2:03:54 Uh, additionally, I'd call the number. Additionally, my wife has a co- uh, has a question for Arif Hassan's JD corner. Hmm. 2:04:02 "How would you design a lawsuit to make Arif Hassan, [laughs] a podcaster, liable for me, Ice Delonda Est, following Arif's advertisements and participating in the gambling and prediction market like he promoted, uh, BetterHelp?" 2:04:14 Uh, there's a code for this. Yeah, Better- These are, these are all, these are all BetterHelp-type questions. [laughs] You can, you can handle that. Uh, After Dark has a po- has a BetterHelp thing. 2:04:21 Just use the, uh, just use the code from that. It'll be fine. Yeah, I assume the code is, like, Locked On or Locked On Vikings. You're good. 2:04:27 You'll get hooked up with, like, um, an anti-gay therapist like you've always wanted. [laughs] Um, [laughs] who is not certified to perform therapy in any state in the United States. It's great. Don't worry about it. 2:04:40 Yeah. Arif absolutely 100% s- uh, 100% endorses BetterHelp, so check that out. [laughs] Uh, that is gonna be the end of this episode of North Code. I hope you guys have enjoyed it, and check out betterhelp.com, 2:04:52 uh, and the app. Uh, Arif, what do you have to plug? Uh, k- okay. 2:04:58 [laughs] Um, I've got a, a Pro Bowl piece coming up, uh, that'll be publishing the morning that this podcast drops, um, about players at pro days that looked good, and then I've got the consensus board coming up. 2:05:11 Um, I'll be comparing the consensus board to other consensus boards and, and their predictiveness. 2:05:16 Um, I'm going to be taking a look at, uh, the normal stuff like polarity and the evaluator versus forecaster boards and all that. So that's all coming up over at Wide Left. 2:05:26 And then also, there's a stream that some people have turned into a podcast, Locked On Vikings After Dark, which I will be recording in 15 minutes. [laughs] Yup. So for Arif, my name's James. 2:05:37 Thank you guys so much for listening, and please remember that you never wanna go full Puka Nacua. [laughs] And, uh, [laughs] we'll be back- Great... soon.
