Interview with NFL Director of Analytics Ryan Paganetti!

Ladies and gentlemen, you are listening to the School of Scott podcast. I'm your host Scott Barrett. And we have a very special guest. This is, you know, maybe the most excited I've ever been to do a podcast. We have Ryan Paganetia, who is formerly the director of football analytics for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Last year he spent some time with the Raiders before that. He was a coach and analyst with the Super Bowl winning Eagles. And that's kind of underselling it a little bit. Ryan, welcome to the School of Scott podcast. I really appreciate it. You know, we've talked briefly the past long been a follower of your work just seeing it pop up on Twitter. When you'd come up with these obscure lists, you know, identifying the reason why J.J. R. Kegel Whiteside's not a good player and different things like that based off their college career. I've always appreciated the unique lists and it kind of caught my eye. And then, you know, more recently I've kept an eye on fantasy. You know, what you guys are doing here with fantasy points. And I'm really excited. It's really impressive stuff. And, you know, it's cool to be a part of this. Yeah, thanks for saying that. And it's really cool. You would even come on just because so many, you know, people, you know, look down on fantasy. Like it's like lesser than or it's not to be taken seriously. But I'll always defend it. Like I think, you know, the fantasy, the guys were really good at it. And like into the weeds of analytics. Like they have an important voice and they're like bringing information to the forefront that that needs to be heard. And you know, sometimes maybe even NFL teams are not. Yeah, what I would say is, you know, there's very tight restrictions on team employees playing fantasy. And it was very frustrating to me. I think you can only win like a hundred or a hundred fifty dollars max in a year. And I am definitely a diehard fantasy guy going back. Like I have a fantasy league with some friends for the last like 15 plus years. And I used to actually make a physical bigboard for the draft and everyone had to go walk up and write their pick in and everyone was kind of going crazy. And we had a lot of fun with that. But I, um, it actually, it definitely the fantasy world was part of kind of my inspiration to get into the league just because I was definitely going to be like a numbers heavy type person. I went to Dartmouth for economics for college and just really anything quantitative and valuations and stuff. And that's kind of a world where in my fantasy league era back before I got into the NFL, I'd be sitting there thinking like, okay, on a macro level with our league rules. And, um, you know, the other guys in my league, should I be drafting receivers before them or should I be take, should I be waiting until the tenth round for a quarterback? And I'm just kind of thinking in that sort of mindset was always something that I was doing. And even by the same kind of principles, those are sort of the ways that I would operate, you know, in the NFL in terms of like with limited resources, like what's the best use of time? What's the best use of our budget for this department or, you know, these employees that are working for me? Like what's the best options to really kind of generate yield? And that, that's kind of how I, uh, sort of aligned myself. Yeah, it's, it's very similar. It's like similar to like any board game or chess where you're trying to optimize and, you know, especially in salary, cap, football, you, you have a set of resources and you're trying to maximize those and give yourself the biggest edge possible, which is generally just like a bunch of, right, micro edges. So I, I can definitely see how, you know, the, the process can be very similar. And maybe it's not too surprising that that's really how you got your start. And then you went to Dartmouth. How do you get from Dartmouth to the Eagles and then the Jaguars and the Raiders? So actually, I, I have an older brother. He's actually run game coordinator with the Saints. We spent a few years together with the Eagles together. But my older brother, um, he went to University of Oregon for undergraduate and his first year there was actually the same year that Chip Kelly started as the offensive coordinator at Oregon. And he actually volunteered to just basically help out Chip and do whatever to participate with the program. And just right off the bat, Chip was killing it at Oregon. This is his first two years at OC. As OC there and then he took over as the head coach for four years, my brother was actually like if you'd watch an Oregon game when they were humming up and down the field ripping out crazy amounts of play. My brother was the guy signaling the plays like making all these, you know, crazy signals on the sideline directly next to him. And, you know, it was super cool to see him doing that all the way up into the national championship. You know, unfortunately, they lost to Auburn by three. But, um, when Chip got his opportunity into the league, I was still in school, but, you know, that connection was really valuable. And I really was just trying to get my foot in the door. So I reached out to just, you know, every team that I could and, you know, Chip was very receptive to the idea like once I graduated that I could, you know, get my start there. And I really am thankful for my brother. But he wouldn't have given me that opportunity if my brother wasn't doing a great job and working super hard for him. So kind of got my foot in the door there. It was Chip's last year at Philly. Didn't go exactly as planned. You know, my attitude there was like, okay, I just got in a lot of times when the head coach loses their job. You know, everyone sort of is scrambling and it's really tough to keep your job. But when Doug Peterson got there, my attitude with him was, I'll do whatever it takes to help this organization win. Like, I, if you want to be a scout, you want me to be a coach, you want me to do numbers things. Like, I'm just trying to work in the NFL. Like, you want me to fill out water bottles, sounds good. And there was like a period of time there where like, I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to survive. And I'll actually, you know, they were just sort of going through like a transition with the front office and people were losing jobs and whatnot. I actually, I was like, it was like, hey, how we, I'll drive people to the airport. I'll pick people up at the airport, whatever I get to do. So like, when they actually brought in Carson Wentz for a top 30 visit, I was like, picking him up at the airport. And I'm like, at any moment, I'm like, am I going to lose my job? And but I just, my attitude was like, hey, you know, whatever, I'm not a loyalist to anyone, whatever I can do to kind of survive. And this sort of role sort of developed for me with Doug, where Andy Reed had had this guy named Mike Frazier that was helping him out. He's, his title's like statistical coordinator. He's been with Andy for 20 plus years. And Doug was kind of looking for sort of a coach analytics hybrid who was his version of that. And just based on my qualifications. And I had over a lot of, we actually had kept a lot of the coaches from the previous year. So I, whether that was Jeff Steltland or Duke Staley or Dave Fipp, and a lot of those coaches sort of advocated on my behalf with Doug. And he had a, he had a great attitude about, you know, trying to use numbers. And I actually, I tell people that part of the reason that he bought in was because he was a new head coach. In the sense that a lot, at the time, a lot of these veteran head coaches were fairly resistant to data driven strategies. They're like, what do you mean you go for two down eight? Or like, forced to what at your at the 50? Like, that's crazy. Like, you don't give him a short field. And he, he was totally receptive. And he wasn't really kind of a victim of success in that regard. And, and I also think, you know, Jeffrey Lurie had a, I don't think I know. Jeffrey Lurie's attitude was this organization's going to use analytics for as many decisions as possible. And that sort of guiding principle for the organization was it made my job a lot easier because I wasn't, I wasn't fighting the same battles that that analysts are fighting in other buildings. When you know that the, the person that kind of writes the petex for everybody values the work that you're doing and thinks it's important. So, that's kind of how I got my start. And, I, you know, I was, I was the guy doing the game management and the booth for Doug. So, you know, basically communicating 4,000 time outs. Like, let's go up tempo here. Let's, let's accept her to climb this penalty. You know, let's, really anything in that sort of realm. And, we kind of got a lot of attention for it during the Super Bowl year. And, there's a lot of people around the league that reach out to me over time and have sort of brought up that they, they sort of look at that year sort of a pinnacle moment for when people actually started believing in analytics, at least in front offices because there was like an actual example of a team winning a Super Bowl utilizing them. And, you know, from there, I've, I've really enjoyed my experience and I've, I've bounced around in a couple different places and now I'm here on the, on the internet and, and we're, we're gonna see how it goes. I have to say you're, you're doing a great job. You are, you're killing it on Twitter. Dropping tons of really cool entry, interesting tidbit stats. You know, it's a great look for anyone, you know, behind the curtain on how an NFL director of analytics thinks. But I want to circle back to your time with the Eagles when they won the Super Bowl in 2018. I think you're kind of underselling just how each, you kind of revolutionized the game of football in a way like on par with maybe, you know, many like of the best players. Because like at that time, like, yeah, no one was ever going for it. And, um, you, I guess, We're kind of spearheading that realization that teams need to go for it on fourth down way more than they were and you really put the pedal to the metal with that when even the most aggressive teams were still far behind you. Then of course, the famous fourth down, Philly Philly Play call in the Super Bowl that year. What led you to the confidence to just really buck the trend way more than anything else is doing? I guess Doug Peterson had to be a believer in addition to Jeff Lorry. Yeah, so what I would say is there was -- so Doug had -- that was our second year together that we won the Super Bowl. But that first year, there was definitely a feeling out process and quite frankly, my attitude was -- I'm trying to survive and if I come out and I'm aggressive with all these coaches saying, like, you need to be doing this, we're messed up doing this, we should be doing this. I didn't necessarily think that that was exactly my role. I did my best to kind of nudge things towards using data, but we went seven and nine that first year and there was -- it's funny how -- and Philly, seven and nine is a disaster. And the coach on the hot seat, like, and that year, you're dealing with that 24/7, you know, the fans want to burn the building down and everything. So that offseason after my first year, I had really developed a comfort level with Doug. I had really developed a comfort level with a number of the coaches. And almost in a sense of survival, there were edges I knew that we could exploit and I really kind of spent that offseason doing all that I could to sort of sell Doug and sell some of these other coaches on what I perceived as really just obvious advantages. And then I would say if there was a secret sauce to kind of getting it done, is I was very good at framing things, kind of like a catcher would do with like a pitch outside the zone. And you know, like for example, I would say things like it's say it's fourth and two at the plus 40 yard line. And analytics says go for it. Well the way I would frame it to the coaches would be even if you think we're the worst team in NFL history, it still says go for it. And also I'm like really? And or if I was like dealing with defensive coaches and like, hey, if we go for fourth and two at the plus four, you get a 96 yard field to defend if we don't get it. And also they're like, hey, actually that sounds kind of, that kind of sounds good. Or you know, that sort of attitude was I think kind of almost hilariously was effective in nudging things. And that being said, a lot of coaches are very much prisoners to success or failure. So my attitude with it was if I'm going to say this to do some of this stuff and no one's really ever done this, it really has to work. And whatever I could do to sort of control that, I was going to do. So part of the reason I say that is, you know, I grew up in Massachusetts. I went to, I don't know, probably 20, 30 Patriots games. That was also really kind of a key inspiration for me to get into the league was just witnessing what, you know, what the Patriots were doing for so long and how they seem to be ahead of people in so many different strategic strategies. But one area that just I could not wrap my head around that other teams were not copying was the whole quarterback sneaks situation. And forever New England was so far ahead of every other team when it came to quarterback sneaks, it really kind of defied any sort of logic. And my sort of view on the topic was like, I'm going to figure out why we're not doing. I think we ran, I think we ran, uh, Philly, we ran two quarterbacks sneaks in 2016. My attitude was like, I'm going to figure out exactly what the bottlenecks are. Why are we not doing this? You know, what's the rationale of the coaches and what is the data say like if we need to manually compile data, we'll manually compile data. And I spent a bunch of, a bunch of time on that really kind of over several months like manually charting exact distance as to go every front at the time, you know, classifying every injury to quarterbacks because that was, that was a little bit of a pushback situation to. And really the main takeaway from doing all that research was not only should we be copying the Patriots, but we should be going way beyond that. And I think that was a little bit of a missed opportunity for New England over time in the sense that their conversion rate was so shockingly high on quarterback sneaks. It actually suggests they should be running more quarterback sneaks than they're, than they even, even their league leading level. And realistically, you should be failing some of the time because your, your ulterior option on a third and one might be, might work 70% of the time. So if you're upset that your quarterback sneaked conversion rates only 94%, like what are you doing? So really, I think the main takeaway from 2016, I want to say there was roughly 68, maybe 70 sneaks in the entire league in 2016. And the main takeaway in that after that season, the off season was, we don't care what front you're in. If it's a one yard to go situation, we're going to just run, we're going to run this play. And we're going to have a way to block it up. There was some evidence of different teams against these so called unfavorable looks to run quarterback sneaks. And there was over say a decade time frame, even against the unfavorable looks, it still was clearly the best play. You know, it used to be in the old days, like the only time teams are run sneaks, if there was one open A gap and it's like the Tom Brady, he just checks the play and he sneaks to that side. And really kind of our strategy was, we don't care if there's two guys in the A gaps, we don't care if there's three, you know, there's a head up nose and two guys in the A's, like we're going to run this play, everyone's going to wedge down and we're just going to do this. And I felt that tied in with the 4th down strategy significantly because there was a number of 4th downs early on in that 2017 season where we got to 4th and 1, we just jammed it forward and we got it. It was also, I'd say, a strength of Carson Wentz, he was a bigger guy. The team invested in the offensive line. We had Jason Kelsey who's kind of the sneak legend, you know, he goes on his new Heights podcast and talks about it 24/7. But we started to have success so not only were we converting on sneaks but we were converting on 4th downs and that really built up the confidence of Doug Peterson and all the other coaches, you know, because it was meaningfully impacting wins. And we also, I think we just, in a sort of somewhat unlikely scenario, we were just disproportionately scoring touchdowns on drives after we had converted 4th downs. And that, that, like, was not going to be sustainable but for that period of time in like the early 2017 season that, like, further convinced the coaches and there was articles in media kind of written about what we were doing and we really just kind of rolled with it and that sort of became our identity. And, you know, we got all the way down to the Super Bowl and at that time there definitely was, there had been articles in what written about a little bit of what my role was at least, you know, helping out during the games. And when we got to the Philly special play, I, first of all, I was kind of not happy because we called the play and then we actually, it was sort of disorganized for whatever reason and we had to blow a time out. So at the time I was thinking like, okay, well, worst case we go for this 4th down and we don't get it. There's actually like a plausible path where we just tackle them three times and maybe they have to punt and we can, we can try to kick a long field goal with a few seconds left. But by using a time out and we only had two time outs left, if we failed on that play they could basically just kneel at three times and we wouldn't been, we would not have been able to stop the clock. Oh, wow. Anyway, so I'm upstairs on the headset. Like it was, dog never wavered. He was going for that play. Like he was just going to go for it. He, and I totally respect his attitude there. But nobody upstairs could hear what was transpiring between Nick Foles and Doug on the headset because like, dog, the head coach has a button where like, you know, they press a button and everybody on the offensive line can hear what he's saying. That button was not pressed. So we didn't know what the hell was going on. And you know, at some point one of the coaches brings up as they're running out into the field and it's like, coach, what you call it and he said, filly special and we're all just like, we're just called a trick play on 4,000 and the Super Bowl. And it really wasn't even like the most obvious goal for a fourth opportunity. It was like a somewhat of a marginal win. Now, that, that scenario coming up in the first quarter is a much larger win because of the field position considerations. But certainly wouldn't have been the end of the world if we had not gone for it. And at the time once he called that play, you know, part of, if I had a whoop head band, a whoop band on my heart rate, like it was, it was, things were all over the place. Because just really everything sort of, you get like adrenaline pumping and everything was sort of in slow motion and the play worked out and everybody was happy and all that. But totally. Really, I put that at probably a 50 to 55% proposition when we called that play that that thing was gonna work and I guess the rest is sort of history there. Maybe the more interesting play that came up in that Super Bowl was that in the fourth quarter, and this is like a scenario where I sort of, I had a chart with like 500,000 situations to go off of, but the way New England played on offense and that Super Bowl was unbelievable. They did not punt in the entire game and I'm sitting there and there's like a graphic that pops up on the screen because I'm upstairs, I can see it, you get access to a TV copy so you can like look for replays and whatnot and so I'm like staring at the TV copy and they put a graphic on the screen and it's like in the early fourth quarter, Tom Brady has like 400 something passing yards. The Patriots have over 500 yards and no punts. And I'm thinking about this, like we got the ball back losing, I think it was 32 to 33 and I think at some point I said, I was like just as everyone knows, they have not punted the whole game, they have 500 plus yards so like we probably even wanna be more aggressive than you even might think. So we got to a third and one and I think it was probably around the 42 yard line, our own 42 yard line with maybe six minutes left. And I had been in Doug Peterson's ear all week that if we got presented a third one situation, we had been so good at sneaks, we really should just have the attitude, we're sneaking two times to get it. And I'm like, I would put it probably near 100% that just from the surge over offensive line and Nick Folls at the time, you know, I would put it between those two things like we're probably gonna get, we're gonna convert it. And sure enough, he was like kinda not on board with it. He's like, I don't know, whatever. And sure enough, he calls it's third and one. Critical moment in the soup bowl, he calls a pass. Nick Folls very nearly gets sacked for a five or six yard loss like he gets hit and the ball almost comes, he almost fumbles. And once he called that pass, I got onto the headset and I said something along the lines of, even if we lose five or six yards, we still should go for it. Now thankfully, that did not end up transpiring, but we, I think you would have gone, so say in that scenario, it's fourth and sixth with like six minutes left on our own 37 yard line. We probably would have gone for it. And that would have been the most controversial fourth down, probably an NFL history if that came up. I'm happy it didn't because, because quite honestly, we would have been certainly less than 50% to convert it. But we converted the next play, it was a fourth and one. We were like a mess route and hit Zachary. And then we went down the field and scored and a couple, there was a few other interesting moments that sort of came up there in that game. But yeah, it was really a cool moment. My brother was on the staff, so it was really cool moment for my family. We got to win a Super Bowl with two brothers doing it together and kind of a special moment for everybody. And it was a great moment for Phil Delphia. The parade was the coolest thing ever. I don't even know how many people were there. It was an absurd amount. It wasn't one of those fake parades where they embellished the amount of people that were there. There was a lot of people there. And from that moment on, you look at so many different metrics in the league that are sort of analytics friendly, whether it's fourth downs, two point conversions, quarterback sneaks, play action. A lot of those numbers, it sort of kind of looks like an AI stock, like the memory stocks right now, like where they just really started picking up after decades of no movement. And it's been exciting to be in the NFL and be a part of it. But it's harder now to get clear edges because the easy ones are gone. Everybody's going for fourth and one now. Everyone's going for fourth. It's not even a controversial. It's now controversial if you don't go for fourth and one, which is very interesting to think about in an eight-year time frame for that to happen. Well, yeah, so I just want to circle back real quick that you revealed to the listeners that you're the coolest person I've ever talked to. You are on the headset in the Super Bowl, and not just any Super Bowl, but maybe the most magical Super Bowl. There is what? Like a thousand total yards from Scrinage in that game. Yeah, it was definitely record-breaking. And go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say, yeah, what were the vibes after Carson Wentz went down? Because he was the MVP front runner. So not good. I think-- this isn't controversial, but I would keep track of the spread and odds to win games and whatnot to help our team. And so we would have tools where we'd factor in the spread and decision models or say we were a significant favorite. We would play faster in the game to try to get more snaps, to kind of reduce variance. If we were an underdog, we would try to slow things down a little bit. But once that happens, our odds to win the Super Bowl in the markets just tanked. People like they can't win with Nick Fools. And we actually had-- and this is the most Philly thing ever-- is we had a Monday Night Football game. I think it was against the Raiders. And this is one of Nick Fools' first starts. And we were struggling a little bit on offense. This was a significant change to happen so late in the year. And the fans-- I think we were like 12 and 2 or something. And the fans in the Philly were booing us like crazy. And it's just the peak Philly thing. It's like, look at the record. This is wild, guys. You guys, come on. I respect their passion. And I love the Philly fans. But they sometimes they kind of drag the team down a little bit with the negativity. And if you say that to them, they'll say just deal with it. It's part of what makes this greater, whatever. And at one point, it was looking like we were going to have a real tough chance to win the Super Bowl. But we had a good record. So we got the first round by. And one thing that I did in that time frame is the offensive coaches were asking me. They said, can you go through Nick's entire career and identify any metrics that he really stands out for being strong in? And we're going to try to really lean on what is he good at? Because it was definitely a different player than once. And the messaging was shotgun, play action, shotgun, RPOs, he was excellent. And part of that was from Chip's years in Philly. When Nick had that unbelievable season, when he whatever it was 27 and 2, and really the whole entire offense that year was out of gun and Nick seemed very comfortable with it with the RPOs, with play action shots and whatnot. And there was great reception with the coaching staff. They're really kind of study what Nick has succeeded in over the course of his previous few years and sort of lean into that more in the Super Bowl. I think in the Super Bowl, ultimately, we ran something like nine mesh plays, which had been really the staple of a previous coaching staff's kind of scheme. But there was a great openness to not just, like, say, this is our scheme. This is what we do, but find out what works for Nick. And I really just as like an example of how I sort of use the markets in terms of helping our staff is, I was basically forecasting the probability that we would play each respective opponent. So when you're the one seed, you could play several different teams. So based on their individual win probabilities, you could basically just map out the likelihood of what team you could play. And then as a result, so when we're in the by-way, we were allocating our time on a percentage-based standpoint, based on what would-- so like if there was a 37% chance we were going to play the Atlanta Falcons, we were spending roughly 37%. Exactly that. I don't think people were doing that. But like, sort of roughly allocating time in a way that we were doing that. I think that helped out a lot. And it allowed us to sort of get ahead. So while that team that is coming off of a playoff game, they just had a tough game. They're just starting their next game plan process. We had already done a ton of preparation for whatever team where we were going to play and ended up being the Falcons. But that's sort of just like an example of utilizing the data and utilizing the public information to kind of capitalize on some things. Yeah, really driving like a million decisions, it seems, for the Eagles, at a time when not too many teams were. Like you said, the edge is different today. The easy wins aren't really there. Although I will say, I think we did see a new efficiency hack really take the league by storm. And that was defenses going heavy, getting matched by base, and then throwing all over them, notably. the Rams and the Seahawks. But yeah, so for the listeners at home, the podcast previous to this, I had Brett Whitefield on. And we talked about all of the top play calling efficiency hacks in the NFL today, based on what our five year sample of play-by-play data has and playing around with AI. And so on this, Ryan, I talked about early down pass rate, under-centered dropbacks, play action, the heavy personnel thing I just talked about. During SNAP motion, QB sneak, the most efficient play call in the NFL has an 81% success rate. And I know there's a few more beyond that. Is there, and I know this isn't new to you. I know you've been on top of these all for a while. Is there anyone you want to single out right now and talk about? I would say that there's, in the end, that the QB sneak issue is very nuanced now, because you really have to sort of, over time, the percentage of QB sneaks that were against an open A-GAP have plummeted. It used to be the vast majority of QB sneaks. It was like an over-underfront and the detacles shaded one way and the Tom Brady or your quarterback just checks in and goes the other way. Teams are way too smart where they're not giving you those ones anymore. And because of that, it has absolutely brought the sneak conversion rates down. And there's now these two sort of worlds of, do you sneak from relatively normal formations or do you just say, "Effit and go with the push sneak stuff?" And you also have defensive coordinators basically really selling out on the interior of the stopping of the sneaks. And you get other interesting nuances now. Some teams are sort of dedicating a full-time tight end to handling the sneaks or some teams have put in a backup specifically for sneaks. And these sort of two paths are becoming interesting. A year ago, everybody was talking about banning the touch push and now people aren't talking about it as much. I think that it's going to be a narrative again. I think part of the reason it wasn't a narrative is because Philly was so much worse on offense, they just faced way less short-yarded situations when they faced way less times. They were down at the one yard line and third and fourth and once, but they really were going for QB sneaks at a similar rate to what they were previously. But the sort of the argument is, do you try to line up in a real formation and run a sneak or have some other play or do you just say, we don't care what you're doing and we're just going to get line up and it's going to be a rugby fest in there. And it's an interesting dynamic. I personally, if I was an offensive coordinator, I would be studying what Buffalo is doing because Buffalo is running as many sneaks as anybody now. You know, they're right up there with Philadelphia but they do it largely out of real alignments. And so the defense has to play a real defense. When you play Philly, you got guys laying on the ground and their people are just making things up, trying to, but you also have like, you basically have 11 people selling out to stop the play. And I think one narrative there is like the defensive line is getting better at sort of eliminating the leverage advantage that Philly had. Philly would get really low. They'd be all in four point stances and they would just almost snow plow forward and some teams are doing a good job of really kind of matching or beating that leverage and going under them. And then it's sort of just creating a mosh pit and there's nowhere to go. And so I think where that's evolving is you know, if people try to come up with counters where they run outside plays like Mark Andrews against the Browns where he took the snap and he ran outside when it was in a sort of a push sneak alignment or you have the Rams will line up in short yardage and then they'll run a number of the Rams, Sean McVeigh-Tree guys have been implementing jet sweeps on short yardage. And I think that's an interesting compliment that sort of makes the, it makes defensive corner sweat a little bit. They're like, all right, we're really allocating to the inside, but I think Puka have like a 4550 touch down this year on one of those. But they're, you're really allocating the inside and now you have a fast player really wheeling to the outside. And I know McVeigh did it in the Super Bowl too with Cooper Cup. But that whole world is very interesting. Just from a macro standpoint, jet sweeps are very effective and those predominantly come, you know, 95% of them come from under center. And that's sort of added juice to the whole under center play action world where you get the guy in fast motion at the snap. One world that we can probably talk for a while about is sort of differentiating between fast motion of receivers or fast motion of tight ends. And that's, a lot of teams are implementing runs with fast motion of tight ends. And when I say fast, I mean like they're moving at a good clip prior to the snap. And it's allowing them to run sort of unique schemes that previously they wouldn't really be able to run because they don't have a player to the front side or back side accordingly. And you see a number of teams are kind of implementing that. It's become sort of an interesting short yardage goal line-ish type strategy where teams are in goal line personnel and they have a tight end and come full speed across the formation pre snap and just destroy a guy kicking them out. And it's really a basic physics problem where like he's moving at a fast beat and the defender is essentially stationary before the snap. That's a whole interesting world. And I've got-- This is-- Go ahead. I just want to make sure I'm following. So this is like how Mike McDaniel used Tyreek. But now you're doing it with a tight end who's just mastered it. It's like, think of it more like what the Ravens were doing with for card. And I know he's half tight end, half full, but whatever you want to call him. But there's bodies like that. But especially with tight ends. And they might start in a tight end alignment and just go from there and come screaming across the formation. It's not-- they're not necessarily doing it from a wide alignment. And the McDaniel thing with Tyreek, that was interesting, is the fast motion outwards. That was sort of like his interesting innovation from a couple of years ago where I think they were calling it a burst motion or whatever. But that was-- that fast motion outwards on the same side was creating some weird thing. As somebody who's sat in five years of defensive game playing meetings, it creates some weird problems. Because you weren't thinking about it. It's also just for fans. It's actually quite complicated to practice as an offense. Because the player going in fast motion outwards can't see the snap occur. And he can't hear the cadence. And so you really have to time up the steps accordingly. Like, OK, he does this many steps. And then the ball snapped. And he knows, OK, I'm two steps outside of the most outside receiver. And then I can start going up field. But it's an interesting strategy that creates some weird dynamics. One area that I think is-- it's a little bit complicated to measure at this time. Maybe there's a world where it becomes more recognized or more simple to pick up on. Is some of these top play callers are moving a lot of pieces before the snap to gather a lot of information about you. So whether that's the most simple one is lining up or running back as the widest player and bringing him back into the back field. A lot of defenses have caught onto that. And they'll check into a different play when that happens. Other ones will be lining up. It's probably the one that I'd say is most interesting is lining up a tight end as the widest player to a side and particularly flexing him out and then having a skill player like a receiver aligned inside of him. And that creates some dynamics where you have to show your hand a little bit in terms of matching pre-snap. A lot of teams are countering that by playing even more zone. But if they're playing a lot of zone, and you have JSN in the slot and some mediocre receiver or mediocre tight end split out wide, realistically it should be a really strong matchup for your elite receiver lined up inside that you almost certainly know they're playing zone and to kind of work a matchup accordingly there. So moving the players around and getting a beat on sort of what information that tells you and then calling the most appropriate play. You see a lot of these quarterbacks have these-- they're like yelling can, can, can, which is like the audible system or the kill, kill, kill system where there's multiple plays being called and based off of whatever pre-snap information you show them as a defense. They're going to move from one thing to the other. And that's something Liam Cohen's doing a job with. It's something Ben Johnson's doing a good job with. And it's really kind of a very open-ended world. And. I think you're going to continue to see people try to solve that time frame of the game. So prior to the snap, knowing as much information as possible, knowing that when you change passing strength against this team, they don't bring the nickel, they do bring the nickel. If the nickel doesn't go with the slot receiver motioning, it's a blitz. There's unique pieces of information about every single defense that you're sort of trying to mind pre-snap. And I think that that's going to be something that if fans want to take a look at, there's a lot of interesting information there. But if you're watching a game and you see a tight end or full back type body split out wide to a side and you see him matched with the team's top corner, just in general football theory, you have to be thinking, okay, the matchup of a receiver on an interior player, whether that's a safety or a linebacker, there's some really strong matchup opportunities to try to exploit. And I think a good example over the years is when Ken and Alan would have these really high volume target games and they would just move them into the slot. And if you didn't travel a top coverage player with them, they knew you were in zone and then he was just going to basically win as matchups there and they were just going to throw them 12 times a game. But I think that world is very interesting. The play actions out of big personnel is a clear opportunity. Right now the biggest sort of issue for offences is solving these two high defenses that are just, they start in a two high shell and they either stay in a two high shell or they spend to a one high and it's the Mike McDonald system. It's a fan geode is the same thing and they have all these different tools to try to handle gaps and handle blocks accordingly in the box. And it gets really complicated. These guys are brilliant. And I've said in offensive meetings, I've said in defensive meetings, you've said in some of the defensive meetings, there's some high IQ discussions. Because when you're a defensive coach, you have to have a solution for everything that could happen. So like if you imagine if you were writing code, you have to have a line in your code for every bug. Like okay, they send the three vertical and then he wheels back. Like okay, well in our zone matchup principles, nobody's taking him. So we have to have an answer. And offense is a little bit more simple. It's like okay, read this triangle, read this high to low. It's interesting but I don't mean to insult any offensive coaches or anything like that. But there's a lot. When you're going against Pat Mahomes or Josh Allen or some of these brilliant offensive minds, you need to have high speed internet as a defensive coordinator to really be able to process exactly how you're going to prevent them from putting up 30 on you or putting up 40. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. The offensive play callers certainly have the more sex appeal. But yeah, the defensive coordinators can be just as smart. It's just maybe not what seems to be, there's no, there's no, well yeah, it's weird how there's so many fewer defensive coordinators or defensive minded head coach than there are offensive play callers also a head coach. Yeah, I think over time this has become a narrative that essentially you might want to be a little bit more motivated to hire an offensive coach because it just matters more. But yeah, well, here's a couple of reasons. One is if the offensive coach is, or sorry, if you hire a defensive coach and he hires an offensive coordinator and the guy does great, he just leaves for a head coaching job in one to two years. And then you have to start all over again. If you hire a great offensive coach, Ben Johnson's not going anywhere. Like he's going to be there. If you want to be there for the next 15 years, like he's, you have him. And then offensive's more, I'd say his offense is more stable on a year to year basis. And that was part of what I was involved with the Jaguar's coaching search when that ultimately settled on Liam Cohn. And we were really kind of emphasizing that we needed the long term success of your team. Like would you rather have a great defense for 10 years or a great offense for 10 years? You almost certainly would rather have a great offense. And you'd like to have both, but if you had to choose, like you don't necessarily want to be the Cleveland Browns of the last few years where they have a dominant defense at times, but they're winning four games as opposed to if you have a great offense, like you're probably going to ultimately win a lot of games. And really part of the reason that we were emphasizing offense to with the Jaguars was that the team had made a massive investment into Trevor Lawrence and he didn't have his best season. The prior year and really was about maximizing him and getting the most out of him. You know, particularly as I think he had not even started the five year extension that he was currently is on. Yeah, so whether it's an offensive minded head coach or a defensive minded head coach, let's say you're the GM of this football team. What would you be telling the coach or the offensive coordinator or the defensive coordinator to do differently? And on Twitter, you're making a, you're going out of your way to talk about how much of advantage it is to pass on early downs or to pass on second and ten for the free play or to make sure you're utilizing the QB sneak. Is that an example? Are there any other hidden, you know, efficiency or edges that just aren't being maximized? I think for sure, just sort of the framing of how you ask that. There's a really delicate balance of general manager and head coach and like what is the organizational structure in different places. And in many instances, you know, it's like it's really not the GM's sort of position to be trying to nudge play calling or strategy in those sorts of ways. Now they may try to do that respectfully, but a lot of coaches sort of view that as like sort of stepping on their turf. But at the same time, like they're also as places where the coaching staff kind of reports to the general manager. But I'd say, like if you're not in the year 2025 using quarterback sneaks or you're one of the lowest play action teams or you, you know, you're just lining up an 11 personnel every time. There's, at this point, there's so many people covering the league and have access to at least some useful data that like those narratives are going to come out like or if you're not targeting your top receiver enough or, you know, whatever that may be. And I think you get sort of a time like the management of the team or the ownership of the team can maybe give a little bit of a nudge like, hey, why aren't we, you know, why did this player only have six targets like, you know, this player on this team has average 11 and a half. And I think, but just on a macro perspective, I think you generally want to be high in play action. You'd like to be high in quarterback sneaks. There is the nuance that many of the teams that are not running quarterback sneaks, there is like an injury risk situation like managing health. So personally, I would consider either doing it with a tight end or having a backup. I think there's a wild card that the chiefs come out and Justin Fields is their short yardage offense quarterback. Like don't sleep on that because they ever since Pat Mahomes had an injury and a snake a long time ago, they basically have run none of those and they've had some times when they've been really strong in short yards, other seasons where they have struggled a little bit. And Justin Fields might be the optimal, the optimal guy for short yardage. And if I was building a team, I would want him on my team particularly for the cost that you'd be looking at for him. And I think at the end of the day, like if you're the front office, I think you just sort of want your coaching staff to be open to data and open to research and whatnot. You know, some of these guys get very stubborn or get defensive. You know, I've talked to guys and tried to sort of, I've been in different places, sort of try to sell the staff on, and there's different buy-in levels. And I've had points where I think two different coaches said to me, "Anneloox is the reason I got fired for my last job." So there's sort of a delicate balance at times. But I think, you know, if everybody in the organization is on the same page, and like you're trying your best to win on a weekly basis, like I think you won't get that much of the management sort of nudging the coaching staff, you know, from my experience. So, a great question. A question I have for you is, in your mind, how stark is the difference between a top five play caller and a bottom five play caller? In my mind, it's like a power law differential. It's almost impossible to quantify how important that is and how big the impact can be. Also, how can you tell them apart? You just said, "Well, more play actions better," which has me nervous for Frank Reich. I don't know if you watched the Stanford offense last year, but they were bottom five and the FPS and play action rate. He's the offensive coordinator of the Jads. There's other teams like that. It's just like, "Look at the Jaguars. Shane Waldron to Liam Cohen or the Bears. It was Press Taylor to Liam Cohen. Shane Waldron to Ben Johnson. I got those mixed up. The kind of night and day difference of the offense with largely the same supporting cast. Yeah, so I think it makes a huge difference. I put like three worlds of where there's just totally different levels, whether and when it comes to the on field product. The first one being offensive and defensive line talent. When your team is overmatched on the online and D-line or one side or the other side, either both or one or the other, everything about operating the team is so much harder. The running back has nowhere to go. The quarterback's getting killed. The receivers don't have time to get open. Defensively, the corners are getting picked on because there's no pass rush. The run games, you have to call more blitzes because the run games are going off. I've been in a situation in Philly where everything was about investing in the trenches. We had games we would be in pre-game warmops to look over at their sort of online D-line and look at ours and be like, "We're probably going to win this game." That was partly why we could swap in a backup quarterback and have success still is because that was the engine of the franchise. The second clear difference is obviously the quarterback position. If you do not have a top 10 quarterback, then you have to do something innovative to try to win. For some teams, if you have a bottom 10 quarterback, you're just planning for the next year's draft. It's really hard for some of the -- it's very obvious when you have the guys that can't do it versus the guys that are in that world where you can win it all. I don't know that play action on our center drop at heavy personnel, cheat codes like that or is it going to help Zach Wilson? Yeah. And to -- I got a lot of great friends with the Raiders and I hope that they win a Super Bowl and I totally respect everyone there. But that roster was on the O-line and D-line compared to Philly. It was like playing in a different sport. And that shows up in a lot of the metrics like the yards before contact or the lack of help that Max had for past rushing and run-stopping and whatnot. And we tried to run quarterback sneaks. Our O-line was not great. We were one of the higher teams in play action. We were trying to take shots and second it's short like Ben Johnson. There was a receptive attitude to a lot of those things. But when you're just overmatched at such a critical area of the field for whatever it is, 120 snaps of game, all these edges that you're looking for, it's really hard. It's great to find those edges, but it's really hard to win. And the Raiders obviously invested more money into the center position this year than anyone else. And I think that that was a big positive to kind of start to get them on track. I think they probably need to continue to invest on both sides of the ball there to kind of help out Gen T and get his yards before contact. Because it was rough at the times. What about Brock Bowers? Are you high on Brock Bowers? What was it like working with the coaches, game planning for Brock Bowers? I don't want to use any hyperbole on this, but my first few days at OTAs or whatever it was. My first few days seeing him play in practice, all I could think about was this is exactly what a first ballot Hall of Famer looks like. Period. It was so incredibly impressive and just sort of as a joke, really not as a joke, but sort of half jokingly, at some point in camp, I printed out the number of targets that was like the all-time in single season record for targets for a tight end and the all-time single season record for catches for a tight end. And I gave it to Pete and Chip and I was, I was saying, this should be the target at least. I think everyone's attitude is based off what we had saw and given the state of that receiver group because the receiver group wasn't a little bit, I would say, there was some room for improvement with that receiver group at least. And because of that, we actually were planning on really featuring 12 and even some 13 personnel as our base offense. And then that first game, we played the Patriots, which is really one of the most surprising outcomes of the whole season. We upset the Patriots on the road. They go on and make some while we were terrible. But Brock had, I think he had over 100 yards and two and a half quarters and then he suffered a pretty significant knee injury. And he tried to play, this is the first game of the year and we're thinking, we're a 12 personnel team. We're going to be doing a decent amount of 13. A lot of those plays went out the window because we were managing his injury and on a week-to-week basis it was unclear whether he was going to play and his health was always managed because we had to. You could tell it impact at how he was doing and ultimately he ended up sitting out. He tried to play for a number of weeks. He wasn't the same guy. He ended up sitting out a little bit. He came back. He had this great game against the Jaguars. Towards the end of the year you got shut down again but what a talented guy. You absolutely could put him out at receiver and him be one of the best receivers in the NFL. It's crazy. And I just given the state of their receiver group right now. I don't know if the Raiders are going to invest another receiver. I know there's a lot of fans and media covering that, suggesting that maybe they need to do so. But if they do not, I could imagine Brock just having a shocking amount of production. And it's a great kid. He works super hard. He's got rare traits, like really, really rare traits. Yeah. I mean a tight end, you can play wide receiver at a really high level. I don't. Travis Kelsey. I don't know who else to name me on that. Yeah. It's really impressive how in college he just was so dominant at really the number one program in college football at the time. And he just completely dominated at that level for a number of years, which I think is pretty hard to do, like as a very young guy in the SEC to just show up and really be a difference maker. But the sky's the limit for him. Like if there's ever going to be a guy that shrinks the gap in the contracts between receivers and tight ends, I would imagine it's Brock Bauer's after this season. And if I was the Raiders, if Brock has a season that I think he's going to have, I'd be looking to extend him immediately. So like, you know, that's sort of an advantage that Philadelphia is ahead of other teams on in the sense that they and more and more teams are now doing this. But the earliest time that they could extend the player, that was a successful draft pick, they would do so. And it was just so much more favorable from a contract standpoint. And a lot of these teams that wait. And I think the greatest sort of counter to that is their enemy, the Cowboys, who wait as long as possible. And then they pay very high contracts as a result. And there's always contract disputes. And I think it just is much healthier for the locker room when the guys are under a long term contract and it's stable as opposed to this constant narrative of, is he going to sign the tag? Is he going to trade? Is he going to hold out? Like that, it really kind of bogs down the whole organization when you're always dealing with those sort of discussions. And so more and more teams are doing it. The Eagles, you know, there's other teams that were ahead of that a little bit too, but really taking those successful draft picks and extending them as early as possible, it really kind of builds the foundation for your team. Yeah, I could really just talk to you all day and I'm looking at the show sheet and I see 15 different questions, but I think that just means I need to get you on some other time. My last question for you right now, do you have any good Pete Carroll stories? Because there's some legendary stories from players, the guy seems like just like a joy to be around and like an elite motivational speaker. Yeah, you have any good Pete Carroll stories for the folks at home? You know, I will ever, forever for the rest of my life, I will be a close friend of Pete and I think I really think he would have got the Raiders turned around. I think especially given how much money they invested this year, I think they spent more more guaranteed money than any team or at least of non quarterback positions. There was massive upgrades throughout the roster. That roster that he had to coach last year was completely overmatched and a few of the difference makers on that roster all suffered injuries. Like Colton Miller went down in week four. He was actually playing quite well at left tackle. Brock had the knee injury week one. He was really going to be the focus of our offense. Max had a, you know, it's now obviously public like you had a pretty significant injury that he played through. And the roster just from a depth standpoint and from like a, if you took the, if you took the 11th through and through 22nd best starters on that roster, it was by far the weakest roster that I've ever worked with. And it's just, we were always kind of just like plugging holes, like trying to deal with this aspect of the roster. Like, okay, we have to stop the run game by doing this. Okay, we're putting the corners on an island. Okay, we have to help the online by shipping more. Okay, now that we don't have guys getting out and routes, there was always some kind of hole that we were putting out. And they're going to be so much better this year just from a talent standpoint. It's very clear. But and I told my favorite thing about Pete is every single day he was so optimistic and positive. And it made it a great time to work there. Like no matter what was happening, he, he, everybody there knew that Pete cared about them and he was going to treat them well. And I'll give you one example. It's like I had a really sort of unfortunate situation early on in the season last year where I had a medical issue when I was at my house and I actually had to take an ambulance to the hospital. And I'm thinking like I'm probably not going to be able to come to work tomorrow. And I just, I sent a text to Pete. I'm like, hey, I just just a heads up. I'm probably not going to come in. And 20 minutes later at like 11, 30 at night, Pete Carroll shows up at the hospital. On announce I had no idea he was going to do this. I don't know if he drove from home. I don't know what went into that. But like that's a type of, that's a type of behavior that makes you like truly, and I just met Pete in March. Like I didn't know him for a long time. And the fact that he did that, he didn't even, you know, he just did it because he's a great guy. And you know as things were kind of spiraling this past year, like I was going to support that guy throughout no matter what. Like I was, my attitude was like I'm going down with the ship with this guy. Like he's such a, such a good person and he cares so much. He checks up on me all the time. He, you know, further coaches on his staff that happened to, you know, not work for the Raiders anymore. Like he went out of his way to try to get those guys jobs. He's bending over backwards, you know, to advocate just such an awesome guy. And I think just there was always funny things going on. Like he's a really good sense of humor. And I'll probably leave you with this one. But you know, he taught a class last spring on, I think it might have been Fridays or something in the spring. And so it was at USC and you have to fly back down to USC every, whatever it was every couple of weeks or every week on Friday. And he'd have these guest speakers on the, on the, that would come in. And it was like an impressive list, like famous people, like all sorts of big time names. But he had told me when I took the job, he's like, anything that, anything I asked you to do, like I need you to just do it. He's like, he's like, I just need you to trust me. Like I sometimes are just going to need your help, some things I need you to do. I'm like, all right, sounds good. So he came into my office one day last spring, he was scrambling. And he's like, I'm leaving really soon. Like I need, I need you to tell me everything that I need to know about Rain Wilson. And this is like, I'm thinking like, is this some guy from the draft? Like is this like a UDFA target from Western Michigan or something? And I'm like, the name, it sounds familiar. And I just type in the name and it's Dwight Shrute from the office. And so he was actually going to Pete's class to speak and Pete just wanted me to get together basically a summary of his career and just so he could, when he was flying down to USC, he could familiarize himself with it. And I got it, I was very amused by that because the office is one of my favorite shows ever. But that was kind of the relationship that we had. We just laughed about it and I just did it. And he's, I think probably everybody that's ever worked with Pete has some kind of wild story like that he just, something crazy happened. Or he had some joke or he had some, something planned. It really was a great experience and it's not a surprise that so many players that played for Pete and coaches that worked for Pete and fans of teams that Pete coached for just really beloved. They just just loved the guy because he treated everyone so well and he had such a upbeat, positive atmosphere and not for nothing. He's a brilliant defensive mastermind. That's the stretch that he had with Seattle was one of the best stretches in NFL history in terms of that there was like a three or four year run where they were just, they were so dominant defensively. And you know, and he had a lot of significant roster sort of decisions that helped that team when the Super Bowl this year. Like he really was the lead person on a lot of those draft decisions from a few years back. And he's a great guy, he's a sharp guy. I think he deserves to go into the Hall of Fame. And I'm really grateful that I got to spend that time with him and I'll forever consider him a friend. And he's mid 70s and he has like insane energy and sharp as a tack. He's got a long way to go. Like he's going to be like 125. That's great. You'd Ryan, this was so much fun. You really delivered. This was an awesome podcast. Really appreciate you coming on. You were awesome at Twitter. Like you must, you must have had like a 5,000 follower burner during your time with the Raiders and Jaguars because because you are so good at Twitter. Can you let the folks at home know how they could follow you on Twitter? Check out your tweets. Do you have a YouTube coming up? What's going on? Yeah, so much just Twitter is pretty simple. My name is Ryan Paganetti. I think I'm going to go the YouTube route. I'm still kind of feeling it out in terms of long form content. If people want to subscribe, it's Ryan Paganetti NFL. And I'm sort of going to feel out how people are receiving what I'm sort of putting out there and sort of go from there. The world of media and public being in the public sphere after not being there for a long time. It's very interesting. But I appreciate people keeping an eye on my work and people have questions if they want me to look into things like I'm happy to sort of research. Sometimes the local fans have the best ideas. Like there might be some New York Jets fan that's a die hard and he just never has really been able to study a particular topic. And he might have a great point like that maybe there's been times I've seen people from my time whether it was the Eagles or Jaguars that some random fan with like 13 followers says something on Twitter and I'm like that's a great idea. Like I'm going to show the GM or I'm going to show the head coach that because there's a lot of really bright people and it's sort of like a wisdom of crowds principle where you know just having an open mind to some of those things is really good. But anyway I'm going to keep hosting where we're going to see kind of how people react to it. So far the biggest reception was there's a lot of people were excited about the whole Ben Johnson run a or Ben Johnson throwing a lot on second and short. I think that that was that was a good one. Your fuel goals tweet we could talk about again my my show sheet is endless. Ryan you have a standing invitation to come on. I really hope we can do this again and folks at home please you know support have leave nice comments and on the YouTube and be sure to follow Ryan and interact with his work [MUSIC PLAYING]