We are officially in draft season. It's on.
Get ready for it. So of course we have
to bring in our resident GM who is part of
the group that drafted Mr. 199. It is
the one and only Scott Pioli, and if you
were wondering who Mr. 199. It was Tom
Brady. Hey, you know what, Scott,
great to see you. How have you been?
I'm doing well, great to see everyone here today
, really, really back in New Jersey for a
little while. Love to see it, love it
. All right, so we also love to see
pro days. They're ramping up at this point.
So shoot it to us straight at this point.
What do scouts and GMs get out of these pro
days? Yeah, I'm a big supporter of pro
days because I think what happens here is you get
an opportunity to see the players that maybe didn't do
drills during the combine, you know, players that
were maybe banged up at the end of the season
, or they had injuries at some point in the
season. They've had a chance to get themselves fresh
, to get themselves prepared, gives you insight as
to how much of a pro they are and how
much they want to prepare for football. So you
get to spend some time there. You also get
to spend time with coaches, you know, this
past week I was down at the University of Virginia
, saw Tony Elliott address everyone, all the scouts
, he and his assistant coaches and everyone in the
organization had extra time because it wasn't in season.
To talk to scouts, GMs about players and you
know, right during the season there's time time constraints
, so I like seeing the the players there,
but I also like to see what players that are
teammates or former teammates are there that are there supporting
them. It gives you a little bit of insight
as to what kind of makeup the player has,
whether he's a good teammate, whether his teammates like
him. You know, what we've seen here though
is there's people that spend time with these players the
night before, it's kind of like a private workout
in, in the sense that more teams are doing
so many more private workouts. In addition to pro
dates, owners are spending a lot of money.
I remember when we were with the Atlanta Falcons,
Arthur Blank gave Thomas Dimitrov, Dan Quinn, and
I full use of the of his private plane to
go do private workouts and spend time with players,
which is really critical. It really helped us with
guys like Chris Lindstrom and Grady Jarrett. But hang
on what you got for us, Scott. I
, I, I know you got some more questions
, but I, you know, as I mentioned
, with the UVA pro day this week, and
while I was there I got to see my boy
Chris Long, but I got to see, you
know, all the history of UVA. And it
reminded me of one of my absolute favorite NFL trivia
questions. Now, Kyle, I'm gonna ask you
to stand down just for a second here because I
think you know the answer. You actually did something
on this. All right. UVA had an offensive
tackle by the name of DeBrickashaw Ferguson played 10 years
in the league for the Jets and only missed one
snap, so he played 10,707 snaps out of a
possible 10,708. That one play that he missed.
At left tackle, he was substituted for by a
pro football Hall of Famer, so I wanna ask
the rest of the crew, who was that one
player that filled in for De Brickashaw Ferguson. At
left tackle. OK, so, uh, uh
. Oh my goodness. How long ago do you
remember this, Kyle? Don't answer yet. Do
you remember this? I do, yeah, and
it was, he was taken out for a ridiculous
reason, and this is the only snap he ever
missed. I do remember it, Scott. This
is a great trivia question. Come on, we
need a little, a little help. All right
, so if I'm just thinking of Hall of Famers
for like uh Revis. Is that Different position.
Darrelle Revis. I don't know what is the answer
. You know you're asking a good question though,
and we're just what's this is played left tackle in
the 2008. How's that possible? I'm like he
saw the script. Let's see it a little bit
. That's the thing and he lost his rep.
What? I mean that is a complete shot in
the dark. I know I was very embarrassed too
. I'm like, oh no. This is Jets
Kyle, isn't it? Yeah, you know,
different position. I tried to help her out and
be like position, position. Come on, get
with it. That's right. That was my UBA
wow, that's nuts. That was dope. OK
, alright, well, I don't know if I
can recover from that honestly. I'm so good,
great job, Scott, but you know, classic
GM though former GM to have that that fun trivia
knowledge, so appreciate that. Because I mean you
had me um I'm I'm looking at the league right
now and this free agency and these new signings and
I'm seeing T Higgins and Jamar Chase and they both
got signed. If I'm a GM or a cap
guy that situation figuring it out seems like a nightmare
because there's, it's just tough and there's only so
much space there's only so much money. I mean
, I talk a little bit about that if you
were a GM, how you handle that? And
is this the new norm to have two guys that
are, you know, top tier guys that are
getting paid and on the same team? Well,
here's how I feel about this, you know,
if you have great players and you have an opportunity
to keep those players, you better keep them,
and this is something that the Bengals haven't always done
, and I give a lot of credit to the
Brown family and. For doing this, yeah,
there was a little pressure from Joe Burrow, but
one of the things that you want to do is
I have always believed, and the people I worked
with have always believed the best free agent signs you
can do is sign your own players, players that
you have developed, players that you have seen within
your system. You know their strengths, you know
their limitations, rather than going out and finding a
free agent somewhere else that performed in a different situation
, they have two of the best wide receivers in
the entire National Football League. They have one of
the best quarterbacks in the National Football League. The
Bengals and the Brown family made a decision to go
against doing things the way they did and made a
great decision by keeping these two players, I think
. It's the last game of the damn season,
Scott. The Jets are backed up about 300 yards
from the end zone. They take the Brickashaw out
on some cockamamie trick play under the Eric Mangini jets
. They toss it around like idiots for a few
seconds, and they ruined De Brickashaw's 10,000 snap streak
as he's sitting there on the sideline. It was
terrible. Here we go, last play of the
game, last game of the season. Season,
it's over. This is how the season ended with
their 10,000 snap streak watching. I think that's Lavernus
Coles maybe, and Cromartie eventually gets it. They
do nothing other than lose, which they had perfected
at that point. And then losing the game,
they also lost one of the great Ironman streaks of
all time. Now I'm pissed off about it,
Scott. I'm pissed off and I'm I'm, I'm
actually happy you brought it up so I can get
the frustration out. All right. OK, now
let's talk about something much more constructive, Scott,
uh, and that is specifically an article on NFL.com
about players to watch and something that you are always
, always very passionate about, which is the International
Pathway program's pro day. So everyone check out the
article, but more importantly, Scott, everybody loves
a road trip. Can you tell us an anecdote
about the road trip with these beautiful players trying to
realize their NFL dreams? Kyle, so this was
great. So the NFL and the NFL leadership group
at IPP decided they were gonna take the team or
take the group of players on a road trip,
and they wanted to go to the senior Bowl so
they could see top players that are gonna be drafted
, young players, and what that looks like,
and spending time with the players after that down at
IMG Academy. I asked them about their experience,
and many of them talked about the fact that they
were able to go to the senior Bowl and see
players that are some of the top players in the
country make mistakes, get yelled at by coaches,
get corrected continuously on the same mistakes, and they're
like, wow, that's the same thing that happens
to me. So it made them feel less anxious
about some of the mistakes that they've been making and
what they've been preparing for, so they told me
about that. But Kyle, the number one thing
that came out about their road trip to Mobile,
Alabama, they drove from. Sarasota, Florida,
to 8.5 hours later to Mobile, Alabama, they
had one demand of the IPP group and one demand
of the NFL. They wanted to go to Bucky's
. They said if we're gonna be here in America
we see real America and sure enough, not only
did they stop at Bucky's in Alabama on their way
to Mobile, they had such a great time.
They saw they were taking pictures. You had to
see their faces light up when they were telling me
uh uh about Bucky's, and I tell you what
, they had so much fun they asked for a
Bucky's stop on the way back and they said,
hey, now we've really been to America, we
got to see Bucky's truck stop. Awesome, awesome
. Take that Cracker Barrel. I just learned about
Bucky's this year from Walt Anderson who sent me some
Bucky's merch that is hanging in the locker room.
I mean, I'm definitely a little bit more of
a wah wah girl, but Bucky's, I've heard
is amazing. So Scott, you're always educating us
. Thank you so much for hanging out with us
this morning. Cheers to Darrelle Revis and uh we'll
be back after this. Oh.