Transcription
The entire goal of the offseason is to identify the stats that will help you win your fantasy league. It's really that simple.
But I'm sure when you watch all these videos, you read all these analysts, the same numbers are repeated every single week. So today's mission to present you with at least five underlying metrics, five completely new stats that will give you an edge in your drafts. And the perfect man for this challenge is Ryan Paganetti. First, Ryan, welcome to the show. And second, you know, tell the people what you've been up to for the last decade that makes you perfectly suited for this challenge.
>> Well, I really appreciate you guys having me. Um, you know, I started in the NFL in 2015 with the Eagles and I've sort of done a bunch of different analytics and coaching type roles there. I was I was there for six years with Coach Peterson and and um, you know, we we managed to have a lot of success there in terms of you know, we won the Super Bowl. we were kind of ahead of the game a little bit on some of the things like fourth downs and two-point conversions and QB sneaks and whatnot. And then I spent three years with uh the Jaguars as director of football analytics and you know I was kind of diving a little bit more into the personnel side in addition to the the coaching side there. And really uh this last year I was with you know Pete Carol who's I absolutely love and I always will love and I I you know I hope to see him in the >> he might he deserves to be in two Hall of Fames in my opinion like just just an awesome guy. he was kind of dealt some, you know, difficult circumstances with a team that wasn't maybe necessarily ready to go last year.
But, >> uh, you mentioned that you worked with Pete Carroll in the Raiders last year. You recently posted that quote, "We had a goal last season in Las Vegas of single season record for catches and targets for Brock Bowers before the week one injury." So, Ryan, how are you guys going to achieve that? And maybe most importantly, do you think that's going to be possible? And is another goal that Clint Kubak might have for Brock Bowers this season?
I just, you know, just from my familiarity with that roster, like we were basically looking at that last year and the talent that we had on hand. You know, I know a bunch of different me, you know, where you really stack your team up in talent is always a little bit controversial and, you know, it's it's very good from like a media perspective to do ranks and whatnot, but there was a consensus that the receiver group for the Raiders entering last season was in some cases 32nd or quite close to 32nd. And there was a little bit of like a situation where Jacobe Myers wanted to get traded and he was kind of our top guy and there was like some instability there and um you know Brock Bowers like had I think he was like graduating from Georgia or something like that. He showed up at some point OTAs and the coaches were just kind of looking around and like >> this is this is there are some things going on and he had just come off his first season that I believe he set like the NFL record for catches for a tight end or something. And um we're just kind of looking around like given the roster distribution saying like this makes way too much sense that we're we're not doing a good job coaching if we're not figuring out how to get him the ball as much as possible. So that was sort of like the attitude and you know I printed out a piece of paper for like Pete and Chip and and I just I think it was either early in training camp or in OTAs just because I and it was essentially like what are the actual records and I'm like we're going to just keep a tally of this every week as like an aiming point and the attitude from them was like oh let's let's smash those records like just given where we were as a team and like what from a macro perspective where we thought like our kind of differencemaker player was and then week one he had a pretty significant knee injury. I think he had 108 yards.
>> Yep. >> Like say two and a half quarters into the game, whatever. Don't quote me on that exact number, but he gets that injury and he was significantly hampered and it was like an ongoing narrative. He wasn't practicing. He's like there's can't even do walkthroughs some days. They we ended up shutting him down for a period. He comes back and gets like three touchdowns in a game and um but then he's you know gets he's still kind of managing it. And so there was there was considerations like managing his snaps like was he getting was he drawing additional attention and um it really the the combination of the injuries and um you know the some other players on the offense clearly not performing really where you would hope and it it just was sort of snowballed where you know then we we even had a play caller change during the season and and like so all those different variables made it a little bit complex. But if I was Clint Kubak and I had and I also just funneled like an insanely high percentage of my offense through one player, if I was thinking I might do that again, like doing that for Brock Bowers makes all the sense in the world just given he nobody can actually with a serious face can like show up to their practice, look at the pass catcher unit and not you actually might think he's the starting XY receiver. like we were going to do that at at different points where we're like why don't we just make him our X and we just 12 will be our base offense and Michael Mayer will be our Y tight end you know I was I was keep certainly keeping an eye on like how unsustainable the JSN target share was last year but then he just kept doing it and he kept succeeding and so like if I was Clint I'd be like I'm just going to try that again like why not [laughter]
>> I think that Trey McBride ran what over a hundred more routes than any other tight end in the NFL last year so Hayden I know that Brock Bowers is one of our favorite picks in board this year.
>> Yeah, >> he's he's going to go crazy. Just real quick, we don't spend a lot of time on this. Is there anything about the Raiders analysis from Ashton Genty? Obviously, the situation was brutal offensive line. Just him by himself comparing him to other backs across the league. Was there any consensus in the building after watching his rookie season?
>> I um let me put it this way like as an as an analytics person there there's like a certain belief system of like I'm a big offensive line first guy. I was there in Philadelphia where, you know, at times we were basically putting practice squad backs behind like a great offensive line and having production and um it was clear that the offensive line really needed massive improvement there and almost certainly Genty will perform better this year. They have some things they got to sort out with some of the offensive line positions still. You know, they got basically two guys that are like confirmed starters and then the other ones are a little bit up in the air. You know, Genty has a unique play style where he's definitely a little bit more of a try to run you over guy rather than like the ultra dynamic outrun you type player. And it's definitely an interesting kind of contrast with some guys like Jir Gibbs where you're sort of like sweating that if he hits a crease, he's going to go like 75. And like that's not to say that Genty can't, but he might get 75 and break four tackles on the way. Gent and and and uh you know, Gibbs or Saquon might go untouched at times. I think it'll be interesting. Um, there's definitely a lot there was a lot of eyeballs on that decision of that making that pick last year. Um, you know that's ultimately like that's the the route that the team decided to go with and it it didn't result in the team improving run gamewise last year and I think it seems like that was an emphasis for this year that whatever whatever other like components they add to the team they really need to get the run game on track.
>> I got to ask uh was this more of like like analytics department? Was there something different? because I know a lot of people that watch fantasy football shows, like their dream job would be like in the analytics department of these NFL teams. Could you just give us some backstory and just exactly how analytics departments work behind the scenes for these NFL teams?
>> Yeah, I I'd say, you know, a lot in a lot of cases there's it used to be like sort of when I started almost like one or two man shops and things have really expanded where now teams aren't shrinking their analytics departments, they're just getting bigger. And you know I I bring up baseball for example where you know some people quote some of these top teams of having you know essentially 40 quantitative people now and like in like the direction of of football like some teams are like approaching tennis and it's probably going to continue to go up especially in this world of like the player tracking data and everything but um whether it's like draft modeling like free agency valuations trades uh game planning leaguewide studies like all sorts of cap implications I think you're seeing more and more of the data really being utilized in all those different worlds. And the thing I think that the Eagles did an amazing job of is that uh you know the it seemed like the message from Jeffrey Lur and Howie Roseman was like basically every important decision was going to be cross-checked with analytics. And if anal if there was some data that said don't do this like they were going to pause and be like you know let's look into this let's think about this and um it's really to me like if if you say if an organization made 10,000 decisions in 2015 there was a lot of places that maybe used some kind of data for like 10 of them and now now you have teams that are basically using some kind of data for nearly every decision. Um, so it's it's it's it's a really uh it's an interesting world where like just like the coaches are trying to beat the other coaches and the scouts are trying to, you know, do a better job evaluating players like the analytics people I think are trying to have better information for their own staffs too.
>> You mentioned game planning uh and trying to understand these play callers and coaches. We love doing that too, Ryan. Uh, because in the end, you know, you don't get fancy points unless people actually score points on the field and yards on the field every Thursday, Sunday, and Monday on top of it. So, let's dive into some of the information you've been sharing uh on Twitter. That is Ryan Paganetti. Uh, everything we talk about today comes from that. And the first chart we're going to bring up here, the play callers with 10 plus yard design runs uh throughout their entire career. So, typically this is viewed, Ryan, from our lens through individual running backs, individual ball carriers. But I love looking at it how you have done it here with the, you know, offensive designers, with the play callers. So, I'm not going to shout out anything. I just want to present this to you since you presented it to us and ask what stood out to you when you put these numbers together.
>> A lot of the the top names are consistently guys that are, you know, fairly well regarded in terms of run game designs. And one thing I think that stands out too is like there's a little bit of a of a consideration that some of the top performers also had a like running type quarterback because that's absolutely has a huge boost in the run game whether they can read a defender whether it's Kyler Murray or you know Lamar Jackson with Todd Monkin but you see some of these guys in particular that you know have succeeded even without what would be considered like a true running quarterback for example like Ben Johnson with Jared Goff and and what you Caleb can can run a little bit, but that's not going to be like a main thing that they do as much as other teams. And then Mike McDaniel with uh you know, Tua certainly wasn't really a heavy run guy there, but you see some of the exceptional like big play upside of some of these guys. How much of it was an offensive line situation in their past? Was there something with running back talent and all that? But I think there's at least some level of concern if like guys over some big samples are showing up relatively low on some of these rankings. I do want to call attention to a couple of these names specifically. So, at the top of the list, it's Todd Monkin at a 14.3% rate. We know that Quinnon Jodkins uh is in the middle of the fifth round. Now, no mobile quarterback and Lamar Jackson attached to him, but point still stands. As you mentioned, Ben Johnson with the Bears, DeAndre Swift also in the fifth round. Then you get to Mike McDaniel third on this list now with the Chargers. We know Martin Hampton is at that one two turn. Drew Petting the 101 attached to Jir Gibbs, which is notable because we know what Jir Gibbs and that rushing attack did with Ben Johnson who's second on the list. So still having a top four guy among this as calling plays in the Zing the run game helps. Shane Stiken obviously Jonathan Taylor the eighth overall pick on Yahoo right now. Ryan, I also want to take you to one part being the explosive plays that we just outlined, but also avoiding negative runs, avoiding dead runs is a major part of this, too. You also posted this chart. Uh, what stood out to me here is how Mike McDaniel on the previous was ranked third on explosive runs rate and then now ranked bottom three in terms of number of dead runs. Now, from the outside, I can guess that that is maybe an offensive line stat. Also, where these runs kind of originate for him at the same time. Um, there's a whole bunch of things I could dive into here. When conversely, you know, Ben Johnson ranks at the top of of nearly both. Uh, what stands out to you? Again, Nick Kayley, the Texans are 22nd out of 26 teams here. So, it's almost would you say combining these two and maybe looking at the overlap uh is maybe the best way to approach how the run structure is going to feature for these teams this year.
>> To me, part of the story that it's telling is that Ben Johnson's really good at coaching football.
>> Yeah. >> Because he's avoiding negatives and he's just methodically getting big chunks as well. And so, like it's interesting how some of these lists are a little bit different. I think the Bills are kind of interesting that they're actually a little bit higher here in terms of popping off some big runs.
>> Um, you know, Kell Moore is up there a little bit higher, which I think is interesting, too, because they they had a little bit of a struggling run game last year, but, you know, there's some reasons to think that could improve. You know, I think uh Mike McDaniels that I think it has a lot to do with the the scheme being very high risk, high reward. Like there's sometimes there's these Yeah. like outside runs, tosses, reverses. um he he'll come up with stuff every every game or two that no one's ever run before and right sometimes those things are awesome and it's a gash and then sometimes like maybe part of the reason no one's run it before is because like it's a little bit of a funky [laughter] deal and then like there's like a two-yard loss in there but you know I think uh it's it's an interesting like if you're just thinking stability and like if you're like I want I want a guy that I feel pretty comfortable on a you know week in and week out basis is going to come up with a run game that's probably going to be pretty efficient. And you know, you're I think you have to at least think Ben Johnson's kind of up there and you know, Matt Lafler up there too. I think was a little bit interesting too, especially because they're like rivals or whatever. Hayden, the thing that stood out to me is Devon Achan going from Mike McDaniel's play calling, which is again third in design run rate that leads to an explosive to now Bobby Slowick who obviously was with the Texans and now gets his second time calling plays here with the Dolphins to 19th. And then also Sloick's offense is ranked 25th in terms of uh negative rush rate.
>> I mean, it makes me nervous, but I think Slo would be smart to kind of study what Mike McDaniel was doing. And also, I think that Dolphins offensive line has really come along, especially when you get Kaden Proctor in there when the Slo offensive lines were terrible with with the Texans. But, uh, I never saw anything like super original out of Bobby Sloic, and that does make me a little bit nervous. But, Devon A's like one of these superstar backs that like it's kind of on you. If you can't make that work behind that offensive line at this point, like you're not going to be in the the play calling chair for very long. From your experience, have you ever been a part of an organization where uh such a prophetic, that's the right term to use, uh in terms of just a great genius moves on and then he's kind of replaced with someone who uh maybe doesn't run the exact same style, but can kind of pick up on some of the uh outlines of what the departed play caller left in his place. If you're if you're a coach in the NFL, like the shelf life is is is short and the turnover is so high. You're you're usually better off following up somebody who was like not well regarded.
>> Yeah. >> Like I I feel bad for the the the O line coach in Philadelphia this year. he's like stepping in for like a Hall of Fame O line coach and like I I don't I I hope he does a great job and he's got some players to work with and everything, but just like the standard that's set at times is tricky and like so you definitely see coaches like studying what was successful with the previous coach because like you don't necessarily just want to abandon everything. Like it would be kind of foolish if the Dolphins just like lit every single run design they had on fire last year when they have they were doing some things that were really cool in the run game and at times they were getting huge plays. And if somebody like is such an outperformer like I can assure you most offensive coaches around the league have had some somebody on their staff is studying what Shawn McVey and Ben Johnson has have done these like last couple years.
>> Um, because it's it's almost like malpractice not to at least take a look at it. Before I move on from the running backs, I had a question about just what NFL teams are doing to kind of grade running backs. Like we have like NextGen stats, the public model where they're doing their best to kind of account for the boxes, how good the offensive line is. I see that some of these charts use NFL fast. That's what I use. I have my own models. Rushing yards over expected success rate. Is there is there something that teams have access to that is just way outclass what the public does? And then follow up to that, do teams uh look at what's what some people are posting onto Twitter and ESPN and stuff. Uh, is there any kind of like making sure that the media doesn't have some idea that maybe we haven't thought of before?
>> Well, I always I was always refreshing Twitter. If I would find something that was good or useful, I would just like print it out and give it to the head coach. I didn't care. Like like there's why would you not use the information? And now that there's so much data out there and there's a lot of like interesting analysis being done, you know, on social media, a lot of times these coaches actually get asked in the weekly press conferences just based off something that came up like, "Hey, you're 30 second in the league in middle of the field throws and it's comes from somebody just like pulled something together." Yeah.
>> Um, the uh in terms of the run game, like there's you when you're on the team side, like you have access to this expected rush yards that on like a play-by-play level. And it's it's honestly I'm not entirely sure if you can get access to that in the public sphere of like the one that's built entirely off the tracking data. And I think you can get like summary stats of it, but on the team side, like you could legitimately say like, oh, this play was supposed to get 2.3 yards and the running back got like 3.9. the play-by-play level information on that. I'm not entirely sure how much of that is available in the public. I think it's a little bit limited.
>> and um, but like it's the same thing with like pass game like the expected completion rates and whatnot. Like it's it's really useful to kind of evaluate um with a little bit more precision and say like okay like great that ball was completed but maybe you shouldn't have thrown that. You tell your quarterback because it was like a 42% chance of completion rate and there was another opportunity and stuff like that.
>> So NFL teams, it's all tracking data now. It's like like for a lot of the public information, it's like the tendant. Okay, how many people are in the box? And then you can build some type of model, but the the team stuff is like all just like we have every single helmet track at this point and all of the models are based off of that. We don't need the the stuff that the public usually has access to.
>> I would say I it's it's still a blend and like that's where you get the differentiation between the teams that are like taking analytics seriously versus not is the ones that are kind of leaning into that a little bit more. But there's still the public sources are are leaned on like PFF had a relationship or still has a relationship with every team. It's the same thing with college like where where you get you know a lot of these objective metrics like what's the personnel in the game what's run concepts and things like that like you in a perfect world you do as much of that as possible with the player tracking but there also is a lot of work that goes into that and so there's still some things like subjectively that are a little bit better. So, there's a world though where it really moves 95% plus towards just like everyone using player tracking data. I wish they just made it all public. It would be so much more fun to do some of this stuff.
>> 100%. Okay. Uh, we can't have a conversation about play callers without bringing up Ben Johnson's name again. Uh, Ryan, you posted that no NFL play caller this century has treated second and short like a free shot more aggressively than Ben Johnson. Among 68 play callers with 70 plus games since 1999, Ben Johnson ranks first and second one pass rate, first and second and two pass rate, first and second and three pass rate basically one, when was this first on your radar? How did it get on your radar? And second, uh why is he so head and shoulders above everyone else? like why is this so important to his game-to-game success?
>> Yeah, so I I think his when he first started really calling plays in 2022, um I have on like a week-to-week basis, I'm like really on top of all these leaguewide metrics. Like as the coaches are worried, I'm I'm doing as much work as I can on like a Monday and Tuesday to help the team with the next game plan and self-scouting and stuff. And then I would try to spend the rest of the week trying to get ahead like all right, what's something that's going on that's a little bit unique? And I remember back then just seeing like, okay, he was there's this guy Ben Johnson with Detroit. Like the expectations were pretty low. They were doing all these like tight end shifts and motions. And it was like standing out some of my metrics and I'm like they were almost immediately like really good.
>> And um, you know, it was a little bit unclear at times like is it just the personnel is really good? Like is are they just stacked on the offensive line? But then he did it again the next year. Then he did it again the next year. And you know, of course, you know, they as their team was succeeding, they start playing in these these island night games and they're running laterals and trick plays. It's and it's like it's really really impressive what he was doing. Um, I thought when he was entering kind of like after three years as the play caller, I thought it was potentially the greatest head coach opportunity. Like if I was I there's half those teams in the league, I would have potentially gotten rid of my head coach if Ben Johnson agreed. Now, you can't just do that because there's rules for hiring. But I he it was so unbelievable like looking at his his metrics in terms of what he had accomplished, how young he was. He's like a computer engineering major. Um, and really he sort of captivated the whole league with what he was doing. And so I I tried to dig into different things that he was doing that was unique. And you know, this this idea that there's a lot of coaches that just look at second and short and they're like, "Let's just go pick it up. Let's pick it Like Greg Roman, I I don't know if you guys saw that one, but Greg Roman had a stretch from middle of 2019 to his end of his Chargers career where every second and one to two it was with that were like not at the goal line they had they had 135 runs in one pass. Like that's just literally what he was. I swear to God and like legitimately so like we played him in the char with the Chargers last year and it was actually it was actually the game that Tom Brady came up and was in the booth and like he's literally sitting next to me and I have like all these tables and stuff and I'd bring it up on the headset different times and like they get a second one to two and I like look over at my at my little chart and it's like here's the run thing and I'm like telling Pat Ram and Pete and like sure enough they run it like that's just what he does and like people at the booths are like oh damn that's cool like how'd you know that? I'm like, "Okay, well, it was a pretty good >> 100% of the time." >> Yeah. And the best part is the one time that they actually passed, it was like an uptempo play in the second quarter against the Patriots and they took a brutal sack and I was like, [laughter] >> "Never again. >> I'm done." >> But that'll be interesting with um >> you know because Greg ended up going joining back on with John Harbaugh and Maggie actually you know was a little bit more willing to throw in some of those situations. But this idea that even in like third and shorts and fourth and shorts, like there seems to be like a willingness from Ben to try to rather than leaning into the sneak thing, he's like, I'm going to try to go for big plays as much as possible.
>> And then as much of the first and second down stuff, >> he's he's so 50-50 in everything.
>> So like he's the most 50-50 guy on first and you know, on second and short, the most 50-50 guy on second and three to six, the most 50-50 guy on second and seven to 10. A lot of the analytics guys criticize him on the second to seven to 10 runs, but I think there's actually like a master plan where essentially >> you can't game plan it going forward as opposed to like I think Stiken's a great coach, but like everyone in the league caught on. They were throwing every time on second and seven to 10 as the season went on. And it's like, okay, do you start calling different defenses? Do you match with lighter personnel? Do you blitz, you know, call pass pressures or, you know, do you line up in fronts because you know that they're not going to run the ball? Like there's there's a balance there where you can get too extreme. And I think that's part of what makes Ben Johnson's offense sustainable. And people have asked like, "Are people gonna catch on to your offense?" And he just like laughs about it. And I'm kind of with him in the sense that what are they going to figure out that you're 50/50? Like, >> yeah, that's what >> it's one thing if you're the Eagles and the team figures out how to stop the tush push. And you're like, well, there goes 90% of our short yardage offense. But he there there is so much of what Ben does that everything looks exactly the same and then he has some kind of change up. And you know, I was talking to Pat Graham when we were playing them last year and he's like, "You don't even because I would give the coaches like attendy sheets and he's like, "You don't even really need to give me one this week because like I know it's just a wild card." He's like, "The one thing I do know is like he's going to call some trick play or something early on next game like so we got to be ready for that stuff." So it's super impressive. And um I would I would expect just when somebody is such an outperformer as a play caller for so many consecutive years like you can't say it was a Jared Goff thing or it was the Detroit O line or it was a Jun Gib. No, like he's he's done it so many times that I think if you were like a fantasy football person, like you you'd feel a lot safer about your investments with a guy that almost certainly is going to have a way to sort of figure out how to get a good offense going, you know, even if they do suffer injuries or have to kind of adapt a little bit.
>> It's kind of interesting to see the the league um a lot of the the trends seem to be backing up what we've been doing in Madden for for two decades. Like the second and first stuff, the the fourth down decision-making and stuff. It just seems like we're in such a new place now that like finding some like younger quality control coach like does seem like where I would be like looking around just because it seems like we've like really flipped things like over even just for the the decade that you started till now it seems like we've like almost done like a a big 180 here.
>> There's been like an explosion in like the ease of uh accessing other teams film or even college film. It used to be like a hassle and now mo more of like the tech savvy younger guys can quickly pull up like hey Louisville's doing this or two lane's doing this or um this was super cool that you know let me let's find all the counter bluff reverses in the NFL like that used to be a nightmare to try to do and you couldn't even do it like unless you just manually start digging and now you can kind of get that stuff and I think the guys that are >> tech savvy or at least have some like savvier people helping them out with their sort of game planning and stuff have definitely have an advantage right now. I mean, th this seems like a long time ago, but in the grand scheme of the league, it's not 15 years ago. Ryan, I was had a cup of coffee with the Rams scouting department when they were in St. Louis. And even in 2011, you had to literally take VCR tapes and plug them in and watch, you know, the college prospects. And then that's what the film was versus everything being in database that is sortable. So, it's not surprising at all that in that last 15 years or ever since that was all digitized, um, everything has just exponentially, you know, progressed so much faster. And one of those things I did want to bring up because we can kind of speed round this, but I know that quarterback sneaks have kind of become your obsession over, let's say, the last 10 years. You wrote that in 2016 there were less than 70 quarterback sneaks. Last season there were 340 of them. And also, no team has ever been stopped on four straight sneaks on first and goal from the one-yard line.
>> Yeah. So, what I would say on that is, you know, I grew up in Massachusetts and I, you know, I my memory I was about 10 years old when the uh Patriots kind of dynasty began and I went to a million games and I followed it. You know, that was the that was the broadcast that you'd watch on 1 p.m. on on Sundays and forever. Nobody could ever explain to me why everyone is not just copying New England. Like they had a stretch for like 15 years where they had double the sneaks of anyone else. And so like I get to the uh Eagles and um, you know in particular with Peterson's first year like I was super grateful I kept my job. I was like retained from the previous staff because I had started a year before and I was like really my attitude was like I'm just going to you know do what I'm asked like lay low. like the last thing I want to do is like try to tell some new head coach like, "Hey, bro, like we got to do this, whatever." But as we developed a great relationship and as I developed a really good relationship with Jeff Stoutland, the old line coach, I spent a lot of time that following offseason after our first year. We ran two sneaks in 2016 and I'm like, you know, there was Doug Peterson's on the hot seat. There's like, you know, with the Philly media is like if you go seven and nine, they're like, you're done. Like, so I was like, I'm not going down like this. I'm like this is such a bottleneck and like this is it once you know the numbers and you've seen like the operation like it's like hard to watch a game or be part of a game and like see the team not doing it. So we just really dug into all that very very in-depth and all the concerns about like quarterback getting hurt. Uh, you can only do it when it's under a yard. You can only do it you can't do it if there's two guys in the A gaps. But now people are like wait a minute we could just put the backup in or wait a minute we could just put a tight end in. because last year you saw more backup quarterbacks um, you know than or sorry more non >> QBs do take sneaks you know than than ever before. I don't even know I was joking with Jason Kelsey the other day like I don't even think you can call them sneaks anymore. Like there needs to be a new word because there's no surprise element in most of these, >> right? >> But um uh and and he is the official sneak champion. Like thankfully like once we had that data he was like basically going to like strangle somebody if we didn't call a sneak like and like so when the players want to do it like that just kind of takes care of itself. But we actually experimented because Gino had very few sneaks in college or sorry very few sneaks over his career and people were like oh maybe it's not his body type. We were experimenting with Brock doing it and we we were he was taking snaps in camp and whatnot. Unfortunately, literally in that first game, Gino got hurt like his groin and it was sort of a lingering thing and Brock hurts his knee. And so, like our first two sneak options, we ended up still doing, you know, I don't know, 10 or so on the year. But it kind of slowed our sort of plan on that. But you see some teams like the Seahawks, they're just like, "Oh, we're just going to literally put a tight end in there every single time." You know, I I think I'm going to put it at about 75% chance that the Eagles at least experiment with some kind of non like quote unquote I I use the word rugby scrum because Pete Carol said it and I thought it was hilarious because like that's literally what the play is. So he'd be like we can have a sneak play but we're going to have rugby scrum as a separate play that we're going to experiment with. And some teams like we brought in like a legitimate uh rugby uh like a rugby coach like and we just like did like a zoom with him and asked him about the leverage and everything. We're like trying to make up stuff on defense like can we push the guys on defense? Like I don't even know what you know what that would look like.
>> And even Ryan last year I feel like the counter punch for the Eagles on maybe four or five touchdowns for Dallas was to pitch it out in those situations because everyone was you know so clustered in the middle then they was leaving the free space to Dallas GDart to get to the edge.
>> Yeah. There there's there's like a if you think of the game theory like big picture like for the longest time sneaks were just so much better than everything else you probably could just keep doing it but it's we've really reached a point where particularly on like the fourth down plays that are not right on the goal line like a mixed strategy is probably the best thing like the Mark Andrews like spin out that he had for the long touchdown and different like 30 40 yard gains like that really is the best way to not only >> you know have the most you know explosiveness and effectiveness but also to boost the sneaks because then these teams have to play. They have to play it straight. There were some snaps last year. There was guys like laying on the ground pre-snap to try to stop like people were just making stuff up and people were then just still running the sneaks anyways and like there there is a point where like okay maybe this does not make any sense anymore. One thing I I'd say is like you know we were our team was just not good. like everyone kind of knew that with the Raiders, but as things were playing out and like we had those injuries and stuff, like I just went down this little wormhole and I'm like, who would be the best player on the team to do this if we were just going to go like with these, you know, scrum tush push type things. And it just so happened that Max Crosby is like eerily similar frame to Josh Allen. They're both 6'4 and 78 and their their three cone times were within 1/100th of a second. And Max is actually bigger. He's heavier and he's faster. And Max is like a really good athlete. Now, Max also had a like a significant health thing, but I like said it to Max at one point. He's like, "Bro, I would get that every single time." Like I you you I really think like there's no compelling reason that you have to say, "Oh, we're doing this with the tight end." Like there's some really dynamic big guys in the in the league that could be defenders, could be re, you know, some of the rece I mean like I would if I'm the Rams like you know say Puka Niku is healthy like that's a dynamic player that has some strength to him like is there >> Donald for QB sneak roll let's see what happens man
>> I actually as I was digging so like this stat that we had there's no team's ever been stopped on four consecutive sneaks on a set of downs in the NFL there's never been three consecutive and I was digging through some college data they're actually is like has been like one or two times that a team has been stopped on three straight. But as I was looking through it, I found a snap of Southern University and I don't even know if I can like post this online because there's like all these college film rules and stuff. Southern University put a guy in that was like 400 lb as a pusher. He is the He legitimately looked like the largest human being I've ever seen in my life and he just completely just dwarfed the entire It's It's completely hilarious. But I also like I've I mentioned it on this thing that I'm doing with Nick Underhill for our little show that we're just doing that's kind of like innovative schematic strategies and whatnot that they were hitting on. I actually think that if I was optimizing this and I still wanted to do the tush pushes, I would actually take it either a tight end or offensive lineman and take him in fast motion, say five to seven yards off the line of scrimmage and towards the tackle box and then on the snap like he immediately veers up and then he's like your second surge player. So if you think about Trent Williams when he just was obliterating people on those kickouts like >> but >> totally experimental. Would not do that.
>> Tell that to the ball carrier. Yeah, like I hate that. [laughter]
>> So well, so like listen to this. So like I'm I'm gonna put my Nostradamus projection is that I'm gonna say that I think somebody is going to do this this running start thing and either it's going to be an injury or it's going to be so effective that the league's going to ban it after the season like it because they were close to banning the pushing >> two years ago and then the Eagles just didn't have as good of a year this last year. But even if you took six games into last season and cons and pulled the media, is the Tosh Bush getting banned? It probably would have gotten 95% yes, it's getting banned. And it was because when they when when the uh when the Eagles play the Chiefs, it was like this incredibly embarrassing thing where guys were jumping early. Then there was another one like the Giants ripped the ball out and they blew it dead early because it was like they couldn't even tell the play was still going on. And there was way too many instances where it really became hard to officiate. Um, but I think if the Eagles say had like beat the 49ers in the playoffs and like the game ended with them just like smashing forward on like I think the thing really honestly probably would have got brought up again in terms like a potential ban. And I and I could see uh there there's there's clearly it was like two votes away from getting banned. I I could see there's like enough annoyance that that could be end up being a narrative again.
>> Ryan, you've said it all. This was electric. You also mentioned that you are doing a show with Nick Underhill. You all can search for it. in the description down below. It's uh Paganetti an Underhill. Uh, we love Nick. He's absolutely one of the best in the biz at what he does uh at at covering the Saints at such a high level and uh also is out there trying to teach people football along with you. So I think it's an amazing uh collaboration between two uh people that again make not just us but everyone else smarter with the game. So Ryan, appreciate it. Uh, everyone go follow Ryan on Twitter and, you know, push him a little bit more, tush push him a little bit more to uh, continue posting uh, some some of this information that's behind the curtain and peeking through keyholes of uh, NFL franchises because Ryan, we do we really do appreciate it.
>> I I appreciate you guys having me. And I'll say um, any fans that if you guys got a crazy idea, just tag me somewhere on Twitter and and and I'll start digging on it. And, you know, you never know. I I got a message, you know, yesterday that, you know, one of the head coaches had basically printed out one of my tweets and asked an analyst to like sort of duplicate it for their own team. So, like the the the world of media is seen by a lot of these guys. Like there's some of these head coaches are literally following they might be following your accounts, they're following my accounts, some of them have burners, like they they're keeping an eye on this stuff. And so, um, you know, for fans like the there there are cases you bring up something like and it can literally have a tangible impact on like impacting your favorite team and like you might notice some tendency or something that the honestly the team's own team you know hadn't figured out themselves. So, it's an awesome time. Like I really appreciate you guys having me and you know I'm excited to see kind of follow a little bit of more of the fantasy space this year.
>> Love that. All right everyone, we're back with two more shows this week. That's yes, four shows per week at least until the season kicks off.