Power Players: Panthers EVP Brandt Tilis

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3:28Hi, everybody. This is Jordan Rodrigue, and I am so excited to share with you a new capsule series for NFL Daily called NFL Daily Power Players. As many of you know, I love football. One of my favorite things about the NFL is learning about how teams are built, how decision makers from coaches to executives to scouts to players think and the process itself of the sport. How people do football is the coolest. And I know you think so, too. So in these episodes of NFL Daily Power Players, we're going to talk to football people and learn from them and pull back the curtain of the sport for you just a little bit further.

4:09We'll sprinkle these into your feed from time to time. A little extra treat for our loyal listeners. Today, I'm interviewing Brant Tillis. He is the executive vice president of football operations for the Carolina Panthers. And that means he's basically the central hub of a vast command center. Brandt directs everything from how the Panthers use their salary cap and handles contract negotiations. He runs their operations, including analytics, data, video and related tools. He handles the CBA and other legal or NFL rulebook matters. And he works with GM Dan Morgan on scouting and talent identification in free agency and the draft.

4:47Brandt is a football lifer. He worked his way up through the league for years and spent the last decade and a half helping to shape what we now know as the Kansas City Chiefs dynasty. And yes, that means that he has three Super Bowl rings. He loves to build things, which is what drew Panthers owner Dave Tepper and GM Dan Morgan to him back in 2024. And that's great news for us because we love to know how things are built. So let's get into it. Here's Brant Tillis. Brant, hi. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Welcome to NFL Daily Power Players. So now moving forward, I guess you can introduce yourself as Brant Tillis Power Player.

5:29I know that really would be right up your alley about, you know, kind of fly in league circles, I would imagine. Oh, there's no doubt that people would never give me any kind of grief for calling myself a power player, especially my family. Yeah. Well, we're, we're so happy to have you. Um, we are so excited to talk to you today. And I really want to start with this. Cause this is like, you know, when you ask people, are you a dog person or a cat person? Like this is the defining quality and question to discern someone's personality in my book. And that is why football? Why did football become your career?

6:03Why? Mainly luck. Um, I, I was not an athlete growing up. I love sports, but was not a good athlete. And sports was my passion, watching sports, memorizing box scores, baseball cards, basketball cards, all of those things. And, and I just knew I wanted to find a way in. I've always enjoyed working for a team, being part of a team, and competing. So just trying to find a way to contribute to sports. I've always been math-based. So trying to just figure out, all right, how can I take the things I'm good at and apply them to things I'm passionate about and football fit the mold. I was, I was lucky enough to be connected with a mentor of mine named Mark Benane.

7:01Mark is now the president of the Oakland Athletics, but at the time he was with the Oakland Raiders and, oh wait, no, they're not the Oakland Athletics, right? They're in, I think they're just called the Athletics now. But anyways, Mark, Mark was able to help me get an internship with the Raiders. And from there just kind of went on my path. And, um, yeah, I just, I love competing. I love winning and I love being part of something great. I think it's so cool that you being someone that, like you said, had a real acumen for math and a, and sort of a math, uh, background, but you found a way into football where I think sometimes when we're kids, especially when we're growing up, we're going through the business, you almost wouldn't conflate the two or you wouldn't put one and two together, but what sparked for you, what, what made you feel like that could be, and data and building teams could be a part of, uh, no pun intended, kind of pun intended, your overall equation.

8:02Boo. I know, I know, I know. I'm, I'm a fan of a good pun. Um, the there probably been two things for me one was playing madden and and fancy football and just like understanding that math and uh especially when it comes to salary cap and analytics like those things do apply to winning games. But I think the light really turned on for me and everything kind of clicked into place when I read Moneyball after my, I want to say my senior year in high school, reading that book and just realizing that, oh, wow, there is, like there's an entire complex of analytics and, and numbers and stats and all of these things.

8:59And like, people make good decisions based off these numbers and people also can make bad decisions. And so just, just learning that like, there's a, there's a way for me to really contribute. And that was, that was inspiring to me. I love, I love that because, um, you said something, I was listening and, you know, doing my research on you and, and I was listening to a podcast you did with Field Yates. And you said something that I made sure to write down when you were coming up in the ranks and you very much worked your way up. And one of the things you said was, I just told myself to find a way to make myself useful.

9:40And it sounds so simple, but what did that look like for you, especially knowing you had this passion and sort of like an uncharted territory at that time? Making myself useful was not easy. But it was it was being very aware of what was happening, like all all around me. So when I was at the league office, getting to know the people and the people and what like, okay, this person's job is to do this. And this person's job is to do that. And, you know, these are the things that we have to accomplish as as a unit as department and you know where are their inefficiencies here and so like one of the kind of most let's just call it boring things for my department league office to do with something called deferred compensation which is um which is a a bad word to agents because it requires funding i can get into all the all the details all the details here but but essentially teams have to show the money that they have guaranteed to players for the next year they have to they have to put that into an escrow account and for the longest time trying to figure out how much money was would go into these escrow accounts was like one of the worst jobs in in the department and so it fell like onto me as the lowest person on the totem pole there and just showing like okay okay, like here's actually an easy way to do this.

11:13Here's a different way to look at how to track these things. And then it was kind of a light went on. I think for everyone, oh, wow, like we can make this process better. Oh, and then we can use that, what we learned from that process to make tracking rookie contracts better. And we can track all of the veteran contracts better. And so just being an outsider coming in and taking, let's just call it an ignorant view of things, but it's blissful and making it work. I love that because, you know, when you when you leave the league office and then you go back to working for teams so much of what you're also doing, as well as as trying to, you know, kind of maximize your lane and then also discover new lane scouting and talent identification and X's and O's, you know, beyond what you had already known and all of those things.

12:10You're also trying to explain high concept things, especially quantitative and mathematical things to football people who respectfully don't always want to hear those things or want to even dip a toe in that water. How did you learn how to be a math to football, data to football, you know, analytics to football translator and sort of build those bridges? I've always been able to connect with different kinds of people. So that's that's that's one way is making friends has always been fairly easy to me. so just talking to people um getting to know getting to understand all right this is what this person's interested in this is how to reach this person this is how to connect with this person i've always been able to to kind of figure figure that out sometimes it might take me a minute but but i can i can i can figure that that piece out but the other thing too is and you know this because you've been around teams like you've been embedded with teams football people are much more curious than I think the public gives them credit for.

13:27So when I was in Kansas city, uh, to start out and we had, um, coming up with me, like at the, at the, at the bottom of the, of the organization, it was, it was Ryan Poles. It was, it was field Yates. It was Mike Borgonzi, uh, Ryan Nutt, who's the, um, one of the VPs of player personnel at Kansas city. they were all very curious people and they wanted to know as much as they could about the salary cap, about analytics. And I wanted to know as much as I could about scouting, about how to, how to build a team, how to, how to look at players, how to deal with coaches, all those things. So we were able to kind of grow together.

14:13And then another person who I'm sure you're familiar with, who was really helpful there was Ray Farmer. Ray would always just push us and just sometimes even to like to the point of annoyance of he would play the devil's advocate even when he didn't believe it he would just say okay well defend that position okay you want to trade a six-round pick for this player defend it and he may he may agree with it but he would force us to just to just dig a little deeper and so I think just building those relationships was really helpful to me and and I think it served me well there's such a communal um I think process element to it, right?

14:52Because if you walk across the office, it's the same conversations happening. The offensive coordinators trying to get their calls onto the play callers call sheet for that game and arguing the why of things and, and trying to make convincing arguments. Right. And I think so much about football is a functional argument. And I guess we would, we would call it problem solving, but I guess that, that takes a skill to argue, but I have not mastered it personally, uh, to argue, but to do so functionally. Yeah. Well, and that's, that's the beauty of working for, for a team is everybody just, we just want to win.

15:34So whatever gets us to winning is where we all want to be. And, and I think as long as there's respect to, to someone's viewpoint, and then at the end, the decision is made and it's our decision. So long as we're there, everything else is just a conversation. And, you know, you never let it get personal and it shouldn't. And I don't think it ever has, at least in my experience. And it works. Love that. And, Brant, you know, Carolina is building something, in my opinion, a team very near and dear to my own heart, is really building something solid. And to me, it's keeping an eye on some of the, I guess, more chaotic moments that have happened.

16:23The late game wins, late game losses, things that can be so up and down through the course of the season. But it takes a collective talent and this collaboration that you and Dan Morgan have and then the people in the building to kind of ride those waves on the one hand, but keep an eye on the long-term too. And I guess I wonder, regardless of what happens over the course of a week-by-week result, how do you pull data points from what could be valuable from those wins and losses without getting too caught up in the wins and losses? How do you take a long-term look at what's happening to the team in the short term?

17:12It's hard. It's really hard, especially when we're in the building phase of our life cycle. So we want to keep on developing our players, developing our culture and building this thing so that it's sustainable moving forward. But at the same time, like right now, we're seven and six. um we're we're right in the middle of a playoff race so so how do we how do we do both things at once and what we look for is what is stable about us winning and then what is let's call it fluky or lucky um and it could be it could be what's stable about us losing too like what is stable and what is fluky and what's lucky and and how do we lean into the stability and make the stable things better and minimize our reliance on on luck and so after each game we just we just talk about all right here are the things that went that went well here are the things we could improve on and and if those things that went well are are stable then we feel pretty good about where we are if we think they were lucky okay we have something to work on like we we we need to improve in these other areas or else our our results are going to be luck reliant um and like an example that i have of this is uh and sorry i have to go back i have to go back a long ways because it's it's like the the core memory if you will uh of this is my first year in kansas city it was 2010 we played the cardinals and we beat them we beat them pretty good we beat them uh 31 13 and there was a third down play we were up 7-3 there's a third down play tim hightower you remember tim hightower yeah so tim tim tim hightower gets it gets a swing pass makes the guy miss and he's running for the first down it was third and nine he's running for the first down and eric berry came running downhill and knocked him out of bounds right right at the at the sticks and so arizona punted the ball back to us we got a couple chunk plays scored a touchdown we're up 14-3 and then we were off and running in the game but if eric doesn't make that play what happens in that game like that game could have been way different so yes we we won by by 18 but had that play not happened something the result could have been completely different and so we look for those moments here like what are those moments that the game could have flipped on us it could have been a penalty call it could have been look it could have been a last second field goal by Ryan Fitzgerald.

20:12It could be a lot of different things, but finding out where are those plays and are those repeatable is really important to the process. I say this only slightly tongue in cheek, but it is rather amazing that you do have so many friends considering you have to be the guy that says, hey, that could have been lucky guys. Let's not get too excited for this right after a win and all the emotions of the game flowing. But you you have to look at things squarely in the face. I mean, that's how good teams get good and stay good. Yep. Yeah. And it's a, I mean, it's a core tenet of ours here is just being truth tellers to each other.

20:51Okay. We're going to take a quick break, but there's more with Brent Tillis on the other side.

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26:13Here on NFL Daily, we love to take analysis and turn it into a game. It is our way. And you seem to me like just the perfect person to kind of play this team-building game with. Um, especially because I do think you think about things in, like you mentioned, and like we've talked about such a, I would say microscopic and telescopic space at the, at the same time. Um, so if you're building a team brand, you're starting from scratch, there's, there's no groundwork in the organization. Let's say this hypothetical team on Mars, right? That exists. And you're building from scratch and you can only make three very important core decisions.

26:54And we'll go one by one. What's the first decision that you make? On Mars? Well, you know, we let's let's let's get to be oxygen. Just give me the environment and atmosphere not burning up. There's three. The first place that my head goes to with this is like. Is vibes. What do we want the vibes of our organization to be? And I just think back to my the first time I got to meet with the Tappers in person. was it was in their dining room at their home here in Charlotte and and I walk into the house and Nicole greets me and she's a phenomenal host and welcoming and gracious and then I sit down at the dining room table and then Dave walks in and he starts playfully ribbing me about my socks I The only pair of blue socks I had had my kids' faces on them, so I wore it.

27:54He's giving me a hard time about the socks. Of course he notices that, right? Of course he does. Of course he notices that. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. And Christy Coleman was there, our president, and a couple other members of the organization. And we, it was a great conversation. And it was, you're not supposed to use the word comfortable in football, right? Nobody wants to be comfortable. but it was, so I'll just say it was secure. It was, I felt like I was sitting around my family's dining room table with my parents and sister and brother and aunts and uncles and cousins. And it was just, it was banter.

28:34It was, it was disagreements. It was agreements. It was playful. It was fun. It was curious. It was exciting. Like it was all of those things. and so I felt coming out of that conversation like okay this is like this is pretty interesting if these are the people who own the team and they are this open and they are this enjoyable to talk to I cannot imagine what the rest of the building is like and sure enough I walked in the first day I was here and it was it was that and so that's not every building right some buildings are going going to be different some buildings are going to be are going to be like a little more corporate right and then like some more you know some industries they want like a boiler room type type atmosphere that's like go go go go go like that's and that's us at times but not all the time and and so then like i just think about along with vibes like all right what are the words that we're using how are we communicating with each other one of the things that we're big on here is is trying to not use absolutes always, never, definitely, no way, and just being more curious.

29:47And so I think once you set the vibes, as I just called it, I think you're in a good spot. I love that you include language in that. Because I think that failure to sustain a universal language, whether it's the language of your scouting department and, or the language, like you just said, how people speak to each other in the building. I actually, my theory is that's the number one reason why teams fail. It's, it's nobody understanding each other. Right. And, and that's inclusive to the language of talent identification and everything. And, um, you know, you say the word vibes, but it just, it's so, it's so layered.

30:31And I guess, you know, for me, thinking about that. And you have to be so anthropological when you go into a building like that. That's the biggest decision to that point, you know, that you're making. And so, you know, I think when people look at your title and your job and they see the numbers and everything, but you're scouting. This is anthropology. This is sociology. You're looking, you're trying to feel things just as much as you are to understand them. yeah no no doubt and it's hard but it's also fun and it's rewarding and if you're doing it with great people like we've got here we've got we've got coach canals we got dan morgan we've got a a whole staff of people who they are like-minded in that they're we're just driven to when we just want to win and we just want to put a good product on the field and make our fans proud Okay.

31:25What's your second major decision that you'd make besides oxygen? I thought the vibe answer was so good. You wouldn't make me do two more. Well, you know, we're sticklers here, you know? So after vibes, I would probably go to how do we want to lead? So what does leadership look like in our organization and i i can't speak to everywhere else i can only speak to my experience and like where are we going to find positive tension within our leadership how we we have people that are on different they approach the problem with different timelines right you've got a coach coaches are wired to win the next day right and then you've got a gm and the gm's wired to win for the next one to three years.

32:19And then you've got, you've got a president and, and they're wired to operate or to, to want to win for the next 10 to 15 years. And everybody wants, you know, they want the longer timeline, but their, but their focus is going to be on those, on those timelines. And so how do you have the conversations of let's get to where we want to go and provide tension to each other. And that, am I making sense there? Yeah, 100%. I love that because it goes back to what you were talking about, arguing functionally and challenging each other and pushing each other, but without the egotistical parts of that seeping in or being able to look at difficult conversations very bluntly.

33:08and I think it's I mean and I love the process you're building these with because it does start with number one the you have to make sure that the dynamic is correct and the language is is understood in the building before you can decide how much you can push people even when you you understand their problem solving is all coming from a different angle you're all trying to get to the same goal um so far so far I gotta say I'm pretty impressed because I think when you, you give someone three decisions, you know, to build an entire team with, they're like, well, uh, okay. Uh, quarterback head, but even before that you have to have these fundamental things in place before you can even think about roster decisions before you can even think about, you know, what the nuts and bolts of the actual team look like.