How Klayton Adams helped build one of the NFL's most exciting offenses

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1:45Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mayes. We got a good one for you guys today. Somebody that we've talked about a lot on this podcast over the last few years is Cowboys offensive coordinator Clayton Adams. This started when he was the offensive line coach for the Cardinals. In the two years he was there as the offensive line coach, the Cardinals were one of the most interesting and effective run games in the NFL. He gets the offensive coordinator job at the Cowboys last year, and the Cowboys became just an incredibly diverse, effective run game. You look at EPA per carry, success rate, they were really good again last year.

2:18Robert Mays: And I've really appreciated the work he's done in that area, and I really wanted to spend some time talking to him about how you put together a modern run game in the NFL, what the considerations are, what some of the challenges are, how things have changed since he got into the league in 2019 as an assistant with the Colts after coming from the college game. So really cool opportunity to dig into some of the details behind one of the best run game designers in the NFL, how he operates, how he thinks, what goes into it, along with just some of the considerations when you move from being an offensive line coach to being an offensive coordinator?

2:56Robert Mays: Why don't we see more guys transition from those two roles? Why don't we see more offensive line coaches eventually become head coaches? Hit all of that with, in my opinion, one of the more exciting assistants in the NFL in terms of his trajectory, his future. So really enjoyed this conversation with Clayton Adams. Think you guys will as well. Let's get to it right now.

3:26Robert Mays: Joining us now, it is Dallas Cowboys offensive coordinator, Clayton Adams. I've really been looking forward to this. Sincerely appreciate you spending the time with us today. Yeah, appreciate you having me, man. I've been looking forward to it too. So I really wanted to spend today, we'll talk about a bunch of stuff today, but I wanted to spend a good majority of this show just talking about what the run game looks like in the modern NFL from somebody in your chair. And I think part of the reason is because both from afar and now getting to know you a little bit, it's not surprising if you watch the work that you've done over the last three or four years in the NFL to realize and learn that you do love this.

4:07Robert Mays: Like you do have like an obsession with putting together like the best possible version of this, the ideas that come from the ideas that kind of lead into it. And I was trying to figure out at what moment I started being interested in the work you were doing in this area. And I went back over the last couple years, and you guys played the Cowboys in 2023 when you were in Phoenix, when you were in Arizona. And there were a couple runs in that game. There was one that sticks out. There was a play. You guys were in the gun. It was like a little orbit motion with Rondale Moore, and you guys pulled the center.

4:39Robert Mays: And it was like a 26-yard gain to James Conner. And you guys were doing a lot of that kind of stuff that year. And that game was one of the first times where I was like, it's probably time to start paying attention to the Cardinals run game. And then over the last few years, you've consistently put together one of the more interesting, effective run games in the NFL. And I'm just curious, as you go back through your own football history, when do you feel like you fell in love with the process of putting a run game together, either as a position coach or when you got into this job? I would say when I was coaching in college, I was always definitely interested in it.

5:15But the thing that I really appreciate about the path that I've taken of like being a division two football coach as a starting point and kind of working my way up is, you know, like there were a lot of environments where it was like, well, nobody's going to be at the game anyway. So let's just try this. You have the opportunity to be like, you know, at least somebody is going to say they were trying. And so you have the ability to be kind of creative in some of those environments, which I really appreciated. And then I think when I made the transition from going to college football to like kind of taking a step back and being the assistant online coach in Indy and going back and drawing the pictures and doing all that, that was really the year that I felt like I really kind of connected with the way that the NFL works because it is very different.

6:06the fits that you see in the NFL and the way that defenses operate, you know, both from like a very, very sound perspective, but sometimes also, well, I know where they're going to be type of thing. And so that's probably when I got really, really interested in it. But I think that, you know, at the end of the day, all of us as coaches have been in that situation on the sideline. And again, this isn't like me saying, I just love the run game. I don't want to throw the ball, you know because if cd and we're and back are listening we want to throw the ball a lot we watched the offense last year we'll get to it i promise you i'm not trying to pigeonhole you in any way here but uh you know i just we've all been on the sideline in a game where they could run the ball and you couldn't and we've all been in a game on the sideline where you can run the ball really well and they can't and i just have always associated this with like it's a disease for your team.

7:03And so again, that doesn't mean that you're going to run it to win every game. You're going to choose your weapons wisely and do what you can do. But I really think that it makes your entire team better when you're taking big, you know, eight and 12 yard chunks out of them. And likewise, when they can do it to you, it's a really bad feeling.

7:21Robert Mays: So when you got to the league, I want to hear more about that transition and what felt different about it. You said some of the fits were different, the soundness of it, but what do you think were the biggest things you had to acclimate to as you were figuring out how the run game and just even offense had to operate in the NFL versus what you were doing as a coordinator in college? You know, I just like the freedom of being able to say like, oh, we can go under center. Like, that's awesome. There's just so many more things you can do. And then, you know, having quarterbacks that can do quick game from under center and can do some drop back from under center and having like the ability to do all your action stuff from under center, you know, like that stuff, at least in the time when I came from college football, like that stuff wasn't happening at all.

8:05Everything's kind of based on where the back is. Everything's in gun. Everything is about a movement on defense that there's always a DB that's part of the fit, you know, defensively. And when, you know, you get into some of these teams, I've always kind of felt this way of like, oftentimes when I leave the normal down and distance plan and I feel really, really good about like the plan, cause I know where they're going to be. It usually means we're playing a fricking really good team. And sometimes I'm like, Oh man, like these guys are all over the place. And I have to remind myself like it, it might just be cause they're not very good.

8:42Yeah.

8:42Robert Mays: The K the chaos is not born of any plan. It's just kind of a, it's a manifestation of like what's actually going wrong with what that defense looks like. You mentioned the under center stuff, and this is a granular question, but it's one I wanted to ask you. I think that there is a thought among people in the league that when you have a gun-based run game, for whatever reason, whether that's the way that your quarterback wants to live, that you kind of have to box yourself in when the quarterback is not part of the run game. There are only certain runs that you can really lean into. And one of the most impressive things I think you've done over the last few years is that you your offenses have really flown in the face of that I was looking up the numbers today per next gen you guys you have three teams over the last three seasons that were in the top 15 in EPA per carry on gun runs to the running back so let's eliminate the quarterback from this just to the running back last year's Cowboys and then the two Cardinals teams before that and you were really explosive on gun runs even on plays to the running back and that just isn't really the case for a lot of offenses.

9:44Robert Mays: So why do you think you've been as comfortable kind of branching out in the types of runs and the variety of runs you've been able to run from the gun, where maybe other offenses that are more gun-based feel a little bit more boxed in? I'm not really sure what the answer to that question is in terms of what everybody else does. I do know this, like probably 90 % of your run game from the gun is just going to be like, here comes inside zone, which if you watch it in college football and then you watch it in the NFL, like depending on where your aiming points are and all this other stuff, like that play really kind of feels like duo.

10:24And in fact, I think if you watched it in college football, they're probably the same thing. But I just think that like there's so many other things that you can do. I think you have to move the back around. I think you have to have some same side runs. You know, the G play in passing situations from the gun is a really good one that we were, you know, really particularly good at in Arizona because Yelda was such a good puller. And so that was just something that Drew Petzin liked that I kind of lucked into and really kind of started enjoying myself. And it was something that, like, was kind of uniquely good for us.

11:00I think gap schemes from the gun are really good because the way the defensive ends will play your pullers, it just puts the back, like, inherently in trail position behind the second puller. So there's some things that you can do there. And then I think you have to be able to just pair things up of, okay, the back and the tight end are on the same side. The back and the tight end are away from each other. The tight end's off the ball, backs away, backs to them. You know, you've got to be able to know what those tendencies look like for yourself. And then I think you also have to, you know, you have the ability within some of the gun run game to just kind of every once in a while make some stuff up going into it.

11:39you know, and it's like, you know, this, it doesn't always make it into the call sheet and it doesn't always make it, you know, come out of the play caller's mouth. But I do think that, you know, like I've got an old cut up of things that I've just been throwing in there the last 10 years that I've kind of got them organized. And that's usually the last thing that I look at on Monday night and I go, which one of these guys wants to come out today? I think, I think the ability, you know, for offenses to kind of be, what's the word that I'm looking for, is like kind of deliberately opaque, right?

12:18Like we're trying to make this look funky. I don't think the whole call sheet needs to be filled up with that, but I like to have one or two of those each week.

12:26Robert Mays: There are two things that really struck me. I went back and watched all of your guys' 10-yard runs today, this morning, and there were so many of them from the gun. And the two things that struck me as I was going back to watch them were, again just all like a lot of funky pullers that you just don't see in a lot of other offenses you have like a 66 yard gain against the jets on like a crunch type play uh from the gun that where you have like two pullers and it just it hits perfectly and the other thing that jumped out on top of man there's a lot of like weird stuff happening here in a good way was Javante Williams is really good Javante Williams is a really good back he had two explosive runs against Washington one was duo where like he presses the hole and then like a little tiny cut that was just beautiful and then another one he just has like a jump cut off that makes a guy miss coming off the edge for like another 20-yard run and I'm sitting there being like I guess I didn't appreciate how good Javante Williams was last year because every single one of these runs is just massively impressive he's really good and he's really hard to get down behind the line of scrimmage and and uh our own line coach Connor will uh just totally appreciate me saying this but like there were a couple of times where just there's a free guy in the backfield and Javante makes a miss and goes and gets an explosive.

13:35So he's a very good football player, and we appreciate him very much. I'm really glad he's back.

13:41Robert Mays: Let's talk a little bit about you stumbling into that G play in Arizona. So before we talk about the details of it and the ideation behind it, just explain for people who maybe don't understand what that is, what that play actually looks like in practice. Like who's moving? What is the intent behind it? What is the actual play when you call it that? It's like a, it's a unique play because, you know, I think it was kind of Callahan's creation from the gun when they were in Cleveland. I think typically when you think of a G play and there's a, you know, that you think cut the defense and you think, you know, well, this team's going to try to bury a defensive end in the C gap.

14:20And then you're going to try to kind of pin and pull and get all the way around that. And, you know, the gun variation of it is unique because really like the where I think that teams like it best where it's grown, it hasn't hasn't totally caught on around the league a whole bunch because I do think that Yelda Froholt was a huge piece of that thing. But it's kind of to me, it's a really good passing situation play where, you know, one of the things that I'd like to consider when you're going into a game plan is like, all right, they've got an elite pass rusher. How can I make sure this guy never gets to pass rush?

14:51and so you know some of that is trying to trying to run the ball in those situations and and like you know I think we had one my last year in Arizona um it might I don't remember who was against but they brought a nickel pressure and of course the d end is upfield because he's thinking it's a pass and they both ended up outside and it was a it was a really long run I think it hit before halftime it was a big part of us winning the game and you know the guys you're you're still cutting the defense it's just a little bit of a different philosophy with it because you're not really trying to get around the edge.

15:22Robert Mays: So when you, how do you land on understanding that that play is going to be a big part of who you are? And obviously that comes from realizing that Yelta can pull like that. So is that something where you have a sense coming in that he's able to do that? Do you see him do that in OTAs? Like how does a specific and important part of your run game become an expression of the players? Like at what point in the process do you feel like that happens? I think that one of the things that you have to be able to do in the NFL now because you don't really practice like live, you know, and so you're not going to get very many of those blocks.

15:58You're not going to get any of those blocks in OTAs. You know, training camp is going to be very limited. Nobody ever wants to show anything during the preseason. And so, yeah, when you have the ability to do some of those in a preseason game, I think it's important. It also has not been traditionally very good practice play. So it's one of those things that you've got to really tell a coordinator, like, hey, you just got to trust me on this one. But the other thing that I think is important and is worth consideration, particularly in the NFL, is like one of the reasons I like to carry a lot of volume of scheme in the run game is because like we're not really going to know who we are until like week five or six.

16:40And once we figure out our identity, like our playoff identity might be different, you know, or who you are week 16 or 17 might be different. And so, yeah, I think you want to pick some schemes that you think the players are going to be really good at, that you have visual confirmation that we have been good at these things. And obviously you're going to have things that are going to pair with your action passes and things that are going to be part of your offense no matter what. But that play is a good example of, you know, Drew and I that year of just saying, like, we got to run this thing in a game and just see what it looks like.

17:11And then you hit a couple of explosives on it and then you find new ways to run it and you continue to build on it. But I do think that when you him having experience and success with it before had gave him confidence to call it. And then when you see things happen live in a football game, they're just a lot different, you know, than they are when you're watching them at practice or in a walkthrough.

17:33Robert Mays: at what point how how often do you feel like all right this is who we think we're gonna be and then as you actually start to iron it out you do see it live it changes in the first month of the season like do you feel like 50 percent of it carries over 75 percent of it carries over you have to scrap most of it like how much stays and goes typically in a given season from what you think you're gonna be in that way you eventually end up being I wouldn't say um like I wouldn't say very much of it at all comes or goes. I mean, there's going to be some new things you pick up along the way, but I'm always very wary to like throw something brand new on the players.

18:09Um, and that's why the off season studies are so important. It's like, all right, let's get a couple reps and a walkthrough and an install of this thing in the off season. Um, I would just say like your percentages rise and fall. And to me, that happens every, it's happened every single year that I've been coaching is like, man, we're going to be really good at whatever we're going to be we're going to be an outside zone team this year I can just see it I can feel it and you get to week three we're not an outside zone team at all it's so interesting and I I've really come to

18:38Robert Mays: appreciate that as I've covered the league more often is that I think the coaches who have success are a lot of the guys who can embrace that they embrace the uncertainty of what the season is going to be because I think there are some people that they they have such a clear vision of like if we do this, then if we do this, this and this, then we're going to be successful. And then in reality, that's not the things that your team should be doing. And so the ability to kind of be both like flexible and also humble in understanding, like it's okay that this didn't work. That to me is one of the more underrated traits of coaches that I have seen have success.

19:14Robert Mays: And I'm not sure I would have known that or even known to think about that 10 years ago when I started covering the league? I think it comes down to, you know, like there's been, the league has changed a lot in the last 10 years, and I can't imagine how much it's changed in 20 years. But I think embracing the idea that like there is no control, there's only influence. And so what that means is you're going to be wrong sometimes. And I think that it's really important for us to be able to get in front of the players and go, nah, that was me. And I'm okay with that, you know, and I'm going to fix it.

19:49Or, you know, hey, I made a mistake here. You know, that probably shouldn't have been in the plan. And then I think when things go well, like just trying to heap as much praise on them as you possibly can, because they're the ones that got to go do it. And they're really the key ingredient to the entire thing.

20:03Robert Mays: You came into the league at a really interesting time, just talking about the last 10 years and how much things have changed. Because when you got into the league, we were transitioning to the too high kind of light box world that we still sort of live in, right? I was looking at the numbers today. And so in like 2020, we're at like 40 and a half percent light boxes per next gen. That was true for three years, 2020, 2021, 2022. And then it peaks in 2023 when it was like 44 and a half percent. And then over the last couple of years, it started to fall back a little bit. So last season, it was about 35 and a half percent, which was a massive drop off from 2024.

20:41Robert Mays: And I'm curious, did you feel that last year? Like, did you feel the transition back to more teams willing to put more bodies in the box? And what did, how did that impact the way that you guys had to plan or just the way that you guys were thinking about the run game versus what it would have looked like in 2023? We did not really feel that because, and I think particularly because of our quarterback and our two receivers, is that we're generally, you know, we're seeing a lot of split safety looks and we're seeing a lot of shell looks. And it's one of the things I had one of our – shout out to Sarah.

21:20You know, one of the – I didn't invent this, but I do think that this is important for consideration of, like, just how do you win the football game. So for the last three years, you know, people talk a lot about explosive plays and turnovers. Like there's places they'll call that the double positive. This isn't necessarily something we dive hard into with the Cowboys, but other places that I've been, it is. So I track it and I try to follow it. Okay. And so this is where the conundrum comes in. And one of the reasons that I do think that the run game is really important and, you know, not just the jab of your offense.

21:52I think it's got to be the jab and the uppercut. And, you know, you got to deliver the hook with the pass game. But I think if you have more explosive plays the last three years, more explosive plays and less turnovers than your opponent, teams won 89 % of the time. Okay. And so the problem with that is what you have to try to figure out is you're about four times more likely to commit a turnover when you pass the football than you are when you run. You're also about twice as likely to create an explosive play pass than you are when you run. And so there's some give and take that goes with that.

22:30But then, you know, it goes back to that thing about the other team being able to run the ball, being a disease for your entire team is what's the secret sauce there? Well, the secret sauce is if you can throw four explosive runs into a game, you're probably giving yourself a really high chance of winning.

22:47Robert Mays: And you guys have been, I mean, if you look at the rates, like you get your offenses over the last three or four years have been up near the top of the league in explosive runs. I mean, that has consistently happened. That was one of the stats this year that we didn't really love in Dallas was, you know, not quite as explosive probably in the run game as we want to be. And that's kind of where I'm tying this back into is I do think a lot of that comes from teams playing a lot of show, which is counterintuitive because you think, well, no, you should be able to run the ball. And we can, but you're getting a lot of five, six, seven, eight yard runs.

23:20but those guys have vision and distance and they take the air out of it and they're in front of you and it's harder to get downfield. When you're squeaking through a packed paint and you get through, a lot of times you have the ability to finish.

23:35Robert Mays: Curious as the league did start shifting in the first couple years that you were here in the NFL, will we get more of these shell looks, more of these light boxes? I think that the best defenses in the league started getting really good at understanding how to defend the run out of those looks. In 2023, when you were in Arizona, you guys played against the Ravens, you know, when Mike was there and they were doing what they did. And then you played against the Seahawks in his first year there when he was in Seattle. And I think they've done some of the best work at it. But I'm curious from an offensive perspective, what do you think are the hallmarks of a team that defends the run well while they're able to still do it out of white boxes?

24:14I think this goes back to the difference between college football and the NFL in terms of the way the defenses fit the run is those defenses are not necessarily accounting for a DB to be part of the fit. And so what they're doing up front is unbelievable work. You know, they're playing freaking gap and a half. They are violent. They're coming off and striking you. Their defensive linemen are making a lot of plays, but they're not necessarily making a lot of tackles. And so when you see that on tape, like, gee, these guys strike you, They're not trying to get through a gap. They're trying to strike you.

24:47They're setting edges. They're not just pass rushing all the time. That's usually when you know, like, you're going to be in for a real war on Sunday because this team knows how to stop the run. And those ones that you talked about definitely do that. So it's, it's, those are the weeks in my opinion that you've got to try to find some, some, some stuff for them, some things to make them think because they're going to, they're going to play gap and a half up front. The backers are going to try to find their way to the ball and the DBs don't necessarily have to beat her to fit one of those gaps.

25:22Robert Mays: I want to talk about two kind of process oriented things big picture and then a little bit more granular when you're just thinking about the hallmarks and the principles and the foundational elements of like what you want your run game to be when you're starting from like square one walking into the offseason. What is the starting point like what in your mind are the things that you want to build a run game on in the modern NFL if you're starting from scratch. um well i think that uh you have to be able to access all different areas of the defense and you have to be able to choose the tools to beat every team that you play and so that's where i have a hard time saying you know we're just going to run whatever it is inside zone and outside zone or we're just going to run gap schemes when you go into a game you have to be able to ask yourself what kind of fights this is going to be is this going to be a fight in a basement because if it's a fight in the basement, you know, give me a scatter gun, you know, or an automatic weapon.

26:18So maybe you need some power and you need some no huddle. Is this going to be a fight in the forest? You know, then you need the long gun and you're not going to get as many shots off, but they have to be really accurate. So like, I just don't think that you can do that properly if you're just narrowing your scope to we only do a couple of things. I think some of that comes from the idea that if an offense is built from the outside in, then your run game is just there to complement your pass game. If your offense is built from the inside out, which, you know, in my opinion right now is the way that you, it gives you the best chance to win a championship in the NFL in 2026, then really you've got several different layers, but your normal down and distance pass game is really complementing your run game.

27:02Robert Mays: So how do you find that balance of, we want to carry a little bit of everything, we want to be really diverse with, we don't have time to work on all of this stuff to the degree we probably want to. And I think that's the hesitation with some coaches when they think about the amount of volume is that, well, if we have all of this stuff, we're not going to be good at any of it. So how do you try to find the middle ground between those two things where you're voluminous, but also still sharp in all the things that you want to be doing? Well, I think that, you know, I think you got to look at what you did good the year before and see what personnel you have coming back and then decide, like, what were we missing and try to tinker with and add a few things.

27:44And then, you know, when things get left on the roadside along the way, it's because they didn't have a, it didn't have a place where you weren't very good at them. And so I do think that you can't be a hoarder with your offensive scheme. You know, like, you're not going to be able to do everything. But I think the thing that gets overlooked in this entire thing is, like, these guys are really, really smart. These players are really, really smart. The defensive players are smart. The offensive players are smart. And so I don't like I hate this has happened a few times. I hate coming out of an install going, oh, man, there was a lot of wide eyes in there.

28:18You know, we probably did too much stuff this week. But I think if you introduce the fundamentals and principles and concepts in the offseason, and then you install the builds, and then when you get to week six, you pull one of those things out and they go, yeah, I remember that from phase two. You know, that's the right way to build it. And it doesn't mean that you necessarily had to have it in every game plan. You sprinkled it in. And again, it depends on the degree of difficulty of it. So if I'm trying to pull out something that has an incredibly high degree of difficulty in a game against an attack front, you know, like the San Francisco style of fronts where like stuff's just flying all over the place and you need to slow it down for those guys and do things that have a little bit less degree of difficulty.

29:01All right, we're going to run some duo, you know.

29:04Robert Mays: I'm curious, you saying that kind of sparked something. How many different buckets of fronts do you think about? like you have an attack front you have the gap and a half type of fronts you're talking about with like seattle and the way that they want to play how many different types of fronts do you think about as you're putting together a game plan how many buckets are there i think of there as being three and i don't know um where where that lies with the defensive guys uh but you know i think maybe they'd be offended they'd be like yeah no you're not you're not appreciating the nuance of what i do yeah yeah i uh i i think of there being that you know the attack style fronts in the NFL and those guys do what they do really well.

29:41And then there's the teams that are playing a little bit more read and react type technique on striking blocks rather than chasing gaps. And then I really, the third one I think shows up in almost every plan. It's the, these guys think it's a pass. So they're going to be pass rushing and they're going to be kind of just going up field. And so I think it's important for our guys, you know, up front to know when we're calling these plays that what we're anticipating, why we're doing it and what we think is going to happen. All right, before we move on, let's take our first quick break. One thing I love about summer is how easy everything feels.

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32:19Robert Mays: So I asked about the big picture kind of process. I want to talk more about just the in-season ideation. Like when you're looking for new ideas, when you're trying to kind of spark your imagination for things you want to try, where do you look for that stuff? yeah i mean i look all around the league i look at every explosive run every week um and so every explosive run every week yeah and uh and i i've been doing it for a long time and so i've got a cut up of it's called cool shit

32:55it's a really creative name

32:59Robert Mays: listen it cuts to the heart of what we're talking about here it's i appreciate it Yeah. So I've actually kind of got it organized, like, by how I like to think of these different buckets. And so, you know, you'll find some stuff around the league and throw them into those different buckets. And then we'll go through and, you know, plan for, all right, these are the things that here's the staples, you know, that we would always have in versus this style of team. And then, all right, what do we want to do that's going to be, you know, a little bit more deliberately opaque, right? What's going to be kind of funky?

33:32And so then generally I can go back into those buckets and say that this team is kind of in this bucket. Oh, I've been, you know, I've been thinking about this one for a while. Let's give this one a try. And then maybe it gets thrown out. And again, the other part of it is like, I don't ever want to put something on the call sheet that the play caller is like, I'm not calling that. You know, it's a waste of practice time. It's a waste of the run drawers time. um so you know we i i you know i won't go exactly into exactly what the number is but i've been doing you know this long enough now that i've got a pretty stern number that i like to stick to for the normal down and distance calls and we stick to it and uh we find a way to practice all that stuff and enough of it being staples and enough of it being you know kind of like let's make a mess here type stuff um you know we we strike a good balance for the most part some guys that

34:22Robert Mays: that I've talked to over the years, the hesitance with leaning into the cool shit folder is that maybe you know a little bit less about where the bodies are buried with that scheme. Like where are the problem areas? When you're getting to a problem solving place, it can become difficult. What allows you to be comfortable implementing something that maybe came from something else and maybe you don't, is it maybe native to the way that you think about things and you don't know every single detail about why it's happening the way it's happening. Do you feel like you just have an intuition about it when you watch something?

34:55Robert Mays: Like, I understand this kind of implicitly and I feel comfortable doing it for that reason. I would say, number one, like you're going to make some mistakes. So you have to be ready to make some mistakes and you have to be ready to say, sorry. And I think the other part of it is, is if something is very new and has an extremely high degree of difficulty, don't run it versus every look. You know, try to find it in a game where you think that the look is relatively predictable or just say we're only running it versus this look. If you watch every explosive run every week, you're watching a lot of different teams, you're getting things from a lot of different people.

35:34Robert Mays: In the cool shit folder, who's doing cool shit? Like who do you find yourself inspired by when you're looking around the league right now? I think everybody makes their way in there at some point. But, I mean, you know, I really appreciate what the Bears and Lions have done over the last, you know, several years, particularly the Bears this year and then before that, just kind of the Ben Johnson. And I know Hank has been really influential in all that stuff, but I think that they do really good work. The Shanahan guys always do really cool and unique stuff, and I would probably credit them to being the first guys that I had ever seen, like, motioning the tight end full speed.

36:13that to me has kind of been a revolutionary thing the last three or four years like all the stuff that you can do off of that because you're changing the strength full speed now you know there's just a lot of decisions that need to be made you know and so obviously with that like Mike McDaniel I think does a lot of really really cool stuff and yeah there's a lot of good coaches around the league and there's you know none of us are like geniuses or anything like that we're just football dorks that want to win the game

36:42Robert Mays: I'm curious for you, like, how would you describe your own football system DNA? Because you did take maybe a somewhat nontraditional path compared to guys who, you know, I was a QC for this coach when I was 25 and I grew up in this system. So if you had to kind of articulate, this is where I come from, from a football identity perspective as it relates to like NFL coaching trees and NFL schemes, what would your answer to that be? Well, I would say right now, like what we're doing right now is Brian Schottenheimer's offense. You know, a lot of it is, we've blended a million different things and there's stuff the Cowboys have just done forever that you're just going to, because Tony Romo used to do it.

37:28But like I would say that the DNA of this offense is very much what Brian Schottenheimer, you know, is as a play caller and what he believes in as an offensive coach. Now, within that, one of the reasons that he hired me is he really wanted to make a mess a little bit more in the run game and be a little bit more creative there and with some of the play action stuff. And so that's, I think, an area that we've changed a little bit. But I would say right now, this is the Brian Schottenheimer system, and so I'm part of that tree. In the past, I would say that the first kind of coaching tree in the NFL that I was part of was Frank Reich, which I think kind of goes back to, you know, Andy Reid and Doug Peterson and those guys.

38:21And so I think that there's some terminology things that I was very comfortable with that would be very similar to that coaching tree.

38:28Robert Mays: All right, before we move on, let's take one more quick break.

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39:10Robert Mays: so you what i really appreciate about the staff that brian has built over the last two years right so you guys rebuild you remake the offensive staff in year one you remake the defensive staff in year two is that he's looking in places that maybe are a little bit foreign to him people that he hasn't worked with before branching out from what can be sometimes a very insular sort of process as these coaches build their staffs so when you start working with someone that you've never worked with before as the offensive coordinator for a play calling head coach. What are the most important parts of that process as you guys have kind of gained familiarity for one another in the way that you had to last year?

39:47Well, the number one most important thing, in my opinion, is telling the truth. And so and that's something that Shadi is really good at is you're never going to be guessing what he's thinking. He's going to tell you exactly what he's thinking. And I appreciate that direct approach. And so I think that resonates throughout the rest of the staff is like, we can't, we don't have enough time during a game week to like worry too much about anybody's feelings, right? We don't want to be a bunch of jerks to each other either, but like we need to communicate directly. And so telling the truth is a huge part of that.

40:21And so to tell the truth, you have to be willing to hear the truth. And so that's something that I know from my perspective that I'm always working on is just being like, all right, that's what it is. that doesn't feel good but that's what it is and so we need to we need to change and pivot um so that i think and then i think that the one thing that another thing that shoddy's done a really nice job of and he he did he does that he did the thing in creating a staff the last two years that i think every like 20 year head coach is like hey what would you do how would you do it different it's like hey don't hire just your friends go find the best and everybody says that and nobody does it.

40:58And he's done a really good job of that. And it's been incredible for me to watch that and go through the process. And really, you know, he allowed me to sit in and help with all the defensive interviews this year. And it was really, really mind blowing for me how much you learn. And not just about like, football, but like about yourself and about other people and how you want to act and things that you admire and traits that you don't admire. So, you know, to me, that's been really important. And then he's done a great job of, you know, making some social connectivity on the staff. So it's not just, we're a bunch of dudes that go to work and spend all this time together, but don't spend any time outside of football.

41:41You know, he always throws a big party at the end of OTAs for the whole staff and everybody has a really nice time. I had the offensive staff over to my house and the defensive guys were all upset about it. I'm still you know we try to do things outside of football and we spend enough time together as it is but you do have to you have to have like you don't have to be all best friends but you got to be able to tell each other the truth without you know creating nuclear war i love i love you

42:11Robert Mays: personal connectivity i love you focusing on that because it's something that's come up a lot in conversations with coaches and especially guys that are in your exact position where you're not the play caller but you are the offensive coordinator and so you're trying to figure out like how do I take ownership of the offensive staff and make sure that I'm doing everything I can to make this cohesive and feel like we're all moving in the same direction and that comes up a lot where it's like we we need to do stuff in the offseason we need to like the guys need to come over to the house they need to know me in that situation there needs to be trust there because when you get into the season the only guarantee about any NFL season every single year is that There's going to be a shitty stretch of it.

42:51Robert Mays: That's like the only guarantee about any NFL season. There's going to be a stretch where it gets bad. And if you don't have those kind of pre-made connections and that trust when you hit that stretch, that's when it can get rough. And so I think for some people, the idea of how much could a June dinner matter for an NFL staff, it probably matters more than you think it does, in my opinion, for that exact reason. 100%. Yeah, 100%. It's an old Coach Peterson quote, but I say it all the time and I remind myself of it all the time. I don't know how it's all going to go, but I know it's not all going to be good.

43:28The only thing you get into, they're going to land a punch. You talking about having just a little bit more play action

43:39Robert Mays: and just having it be a more prominent part of what you guys were on offense last year. I'm really curious how you try to find a balance when you have a quarterback like you guys do. When this is a guy that if you just want to put him in the gun and let him operate, he's a robot back there, right? Like the way his brain works and just how he can control things from back there, there's probably a temptation to play that way and have that be the style of your offense. But you guys really did lean into so much more under center, so much more run action last year than they had in the last few years in Dallas.

44:10Robert Mays: And so when you're trying to find the right middle ground between allowing your quarterback to show off his capacity, but also understanding that there are ways to make your offense more dangerous and in a healthy way, take things off of his plate. What does that process look like? And how do you try to find the right point between those two things? Yeah, I mean, there's always going to be number one, like Dak just wants to win. And so he is like the most incredible guy when it comes to that type of thing. I mean, he's not like one of these pompous dudes that's going to push back on a whole bunch of stuff.

44:46He will when he feels convicted on something. But, you know, he likes doing like different stuff. And I think he likes the changes that we've made. And I think if you're trying to create success for your team, like that looks a lot different than just having 500 passing yards a game. because, you know, if, again, if you're trying to build your normal down and distance stuff inside out, like where does the smoke break for your left tackle come from? Where does the smoke break for your tight end come from?

45:17Robert Mays: I love that. You know? And so like, there's one thing that I know for sure is like, those dudes aren't as good at pass rushing when they don't know it's a pass. So, you know, if you can try to kind of live in that world as much as you can, you're just not exposing different parts of your team that maybe aren't as good as, as Dak or, you know what I mean? And so you've got to live with the roster that you have and the players, you need to be able to develop them without just completely shell shocking them. And so, you know, to me, that just gives you a little bit, a little bit more of the ability to, to help develop areas that maybe aren't as experienced.

45:56And then, you know, the other part of it is like every single game in the NFL ends with two a minute so like you're you're gonna have your opportunities to do that down the distance all

46:06Robert Mays: the time you know one of the this is something that I just kind of stumbled onto recently because I was looking at how teams operate in like second and long situations and the things that they lean on and one of the things that jumped out to me is that you guys were in like spread looks on second and long at the highest rate in the league by a lot this year it's like 46 percent of snaps or something like that. Is that something that you were consciously doing? Like when you guys were in those situations where it was like, all right, we're going to spread things out, let him see it a little bit.

46:37Robert Mays: Or is that something that just happened naturally without you knowing it? It was just a stat that really jumped out to me when I was looking at those numbers last week. And I'm curious if there was any sort of like intention behind it or just kind of something you guys trickled into over the course of the year. That was it. That was an area that Shadi, I think, has always taken a lot of pride in. And that was a little bit new for me, was like, we spend a fair amount of time looking at our, you ready for the football dork word of the day is the G-Bot, right? That was the one that kind of got popular the last couple of years.

47:08Like, oh, get back on track. What is G-Bot? Oh, second and eight or more. Okay. But that was, he's been very deliberate and intentional about wanting that part of the call sheet to be very thought out. So now we did have like we would play certain people and we knew we weren't playing them again. They'd be like, you know, you guys are this percentage of this. And I know we have that tendency. It becomes a real problem when we don't know about it. And so I think we were one of the better teams around the league in those situations. So I do think that it's it starts with his thought process on it because he's very deliberate about calling those areas, but also demanding certain things in that part of the call sheet.

47:54Robert Mays: When you got around Dak and you started working with him, what struck you just about the way that he sees things and just sort of the acumen that he's bringing to the position? Because I assume that, like you said, all these guys are smart. You have to be able to play at this level. But it really does seem like he's able to operate at a slightly different level on a bunch of different fronts. And so when you actually were around it every day and you got to see it up close, what were the things just about his perspective that struck you when you were seeing it, you know, as often as you were? Yeah, the number one term that I would describe Dak with is competitive stamina.

48:35And just being somebody who's like my kids play club soccer. So I'm around youth sports all the time, which wait till you get there. It's horrible. But I'm honestly not looking forward to it. One thing about youth sports that sucks for me is everybody is miserable. Nobody's happy with their roles because all the fans are elite competitors. And really, like, the truth of the matter is, like, an elite competitor doesn't mean being angry about where you're at and complaining about it. Being an elite competitor means, like, you are an elite crisis manager. So, like, you know that things are going to happen bad.

49:09We're going to continue to fight anyways. I know that I'm going to be able to keep my guys going. And like that, those are the things that he is so good at and has been molded in his life for like that. That guy's never out of a fight.

49:23Robert Mays: When it comes to protection stuff specifically, how did you, what was the process like of kind of getting used to his role in all of it? And like how much he was able to handle in that area compared to maybe other guys that you've worked with? Like, how is the protection plan different in the way that you guys constructed because Dak Prescott is your quarterback? Yeah, I would say it reminds me the way that we do protections is it's been it's been good for me to get kind of back into a system like this because it was very similar to what we did in Indianapolis with Andrew Luck and with with the five quarterbacks that we had in a row after that.

50:02but it was very quarterback intensive, starting with a lot of man principles, quarterback controls everything. And so I wasn't totally shocked by it. You don't see as many of those schemes around the league, but it's really, it's a testament to him. It's just not everybody can do that. And he's very, very good.

50:26Robert Mays: Where, I think that there are some teams, there are some systems where they take stuff off of the quarterback in that area just because there's only so much stuff you can really be intensive about. I think, I'm not trying to put words in their mouth, but some of the people from the Shanahan world, it's like, I'd rather spend more time on figuring out and ensuring that he's very comfortable with the progression, how this play is supposed to read out. That's where we want to spend our time rather than him checking every little thing with the protections. Where do you think is the give and take between the world that you guys live in and a world where you're taking a little bit more off the quarterback's plate in that specific area?

51:03Well, I've lived in those systems too and had success with them. And it's scary because it's not always as ruled out on paper and on the board as you'd think that it would be messier than it is on game day because there are some holes that you can poke at it, but there's holes that you can poke in any scheme. And so to me, it's just what can the quarterback do? How comfortable is he handling some of this stuff? And then you have to make a decision that is best for the offense and move forward. You know, in Arizona, our center handled a lot of this stuff because he was really good at it, and he had been in the system for a long time.

51:38So it's just, to me, it depends on who you have, what their comfort level is. I don't know that there's going to be as many quarterbacks that are coming into the league that are used to having to make as many adjustments and protection. So you're probably, in some ways, seeing kind of the last of a dying breed. And there's probably, in my opinion, going to be some sort of pivot and middle ground created because you can't just go up and say it's not you know it'll work out um and you can't just sort everything all the time either so you know the the two extremes just like everything else in life are probably not the right answer so um you know i think you have to make the decision based on who you are offensively who your quarterback is who your guys are up front how do we want to handle this and what's the best way to move forward.

52:24Robert Mays: The last thing I wanted to ask you is just about last season, you know, and when it comes to your role there and there's some of the things that you guys really were able to tap into on offense. And so the first thing is, you know, you obviously you were a tight ends coach in Indy. And so this is not your first time having a role with some offensive line coaches going from the offensive line job to the offensive coordinator job. You would have never really had a big part of the passing game as part of your purview as a coach. You have done that before, But I am curious, going from an offensive line role to an offensive coordinator role, what is the biggest adjustment when it comes to the scope of the things that you have to take into consideration as you're building the offense?

53:04I think it's, well, number one, like, it's been amazing for me because you just, you really, for me, what it's been is kind of just readjusting my brain back to a few years ago and then being able to kind of remember some of the things we were doing in India and going, okay, this is what this is and this is what this is. And then just studying it and working hard at it, leaning on guys like Steve Shemko and Ken Dorsey and, you know, Lunda Wells and Junior Adams and guys that are in the building is like, hey, how do you think about this? You know, it is really been beneficial for me because I think guys kind of get insecure about like maybe this isn't the world that you're living in every single day.

53:44And I need to be able to support the quarterback and I need to be able to see the game through his eyes. you know like to me I have the ability to to because I'm not insecure about what I don't know is like I get to do that right now um and so especially going into year two that was one of the things that shoddy and I said we really wanted to do is you know I need to I need to spend more time with that side that side of the aisle um which has been really good for me now at the end of the day like the the the screws need to be tightened on the things that we need to be good at. And so I'm going to spend my time making sure that we're good in a lot of different areas.

54:22But, you know, that's been something that's been really fun for me this offseason is getting back into that world. And, you know, I think that what ends up happening to guys is they, you know, you just look at the trend of how head coaches have been hired around the league. And it's really just about, OK, how do we support the quarterback? How do we, you know, put up a consistent play caller in place that's not going to be leaving every couple of years? And I just think that just because it hasn't happened a million times doesn't mean that the right fit isn't out there for for certain people in certain roles.

54:56I think you have to grow into those things. I don't think you're born into them.

55:00Robert Mays: What do you think are the most important things you've learned? Like what are the couple if you had to pick a couple of light bulb moments as you've gotten more engrossed in building being a part of touching the passing game? What are the most important nuggets you think you've come away from in the last 18 months come away with? I think that, you know, like our quarterback coach, Steve Shemko, does a great job of just teaching like how the progression is going to work. And that is something that is a little bit unique to the different styles of pass game that I've been around is I've been around teams that are just pure progression.

55:29I've been around teams that have like true coverage reads where you're trying to get the guy to see whether it's single, high or middle, close, post snap. And I don't think that all those things are totally realistic. and just seeing the way that our guys have done a really nice job of tweaking things based on what's realistic for the quarterback to do. And I don't think that that's really any different than the way that you would teach a center or the way that CPE is going to teach the nickel and the safety on defenses. How do we make his job realistic? You know, how do we get him to skip a couple of steps and do something a little bit faster?

56:01How do we create a smoke break for him? And then how do we also, you know, this is one of the things I like to try to say to the offense when we're installing something that maybe the tight end's not going to like or the left tackle's not going to like is we would be stupid to ask you to do something that's incredibly difficult the entire game, but all of us are going to have to do really hard things today. And so when this one gets called, this is your opportunity to rise up and do something special. The quarterback has more of those than everybody else. And so, you know, it's really just about trying to make his job a little bit easier and protecting him and making him understand and trust.

56:35Robert Mays: one player specific thing i wanted to ask you about you guys have a very young offensive line right guys that were highly drafted been in the league for a couple years as you think about the next step for that group for the tylers you know for i get you got there's three you have three three tylers none of them go by tyler but we got three times i was i was like the two tylers wait no there's three tylers as you think about the three tylers you know cooper's now in year three He was banged up last year. What are the most important things you want to see from that group as you guys all settle into what year two of the offense looks like?

57:12Confidence, consistency, and violence. That's where it starts with offensive linemen is you're going to get beat. There are going to be a whole bunch of plays. You're going against guys that are really good. You're going to get beat at some point. You can't get beat the next play and the next play and the next play because of that play. And so I think taking a drop back pass set for a tackle is one of the most difficult things in all of sports. It's probably like the back pedal for a DB, which is why I know the DB coaches out there feel the pain of the O-line coaches. But it's one of the most difficult things in all sports.

57:47And so embracing that and understanding we need to make this simple and you need to get good at it.

57:54Robert Mays: The last thing I wanted to ask you, you said this. there aren't a lot of guys who've gone from being offensive line coaches to being offensive coordinators. And that means there aren't a lot of guys who've gone from being offensive line coaches ultimately to being head coaches. Why do you think that pipeline has had some fits and starts and had some roadblocks to it? And what do you think are the benefits of having an offensive line background if you were to become a head coach? I think there's a bunch of different reasons but uh like as as it pertains to why that hasn't happened a whole bunch um i think the like maybe the main reason is like the offensive line in a lot of ways is like the team within the team and sometimes guys take that too far and like i know sometimes as the o-line coach you're like who's that guy and it's like well that's our starting corner like you should know who the guy is and so uh being being the offensive coordinator like you got to coach all the players and so you got to sit and, you know, you got to meet with the fourth running back and you got to meet with the seventh receiver.

58:55And those guys should know that I care about them. As the head coach, you got to do that with the entire team. And so the, all the DBs, all the D linemen, like there's kind of this sometimes a mentality when you're coaching the offensive line, like it's us versus the world. And sometimes that doesn't really lend itself into higher leadership positions. And so I do think that there's people that have the capacity to get past that. And I think that there's like, Like, again, just a million different reasons. There's probably a lot of online coaches don't want to. It's like, I freaking love coaching offensive line.

59:28That's the only thing I want to do. So I don't know. I don't think that it all fits into one box.

59:35Robert Mays: I'm so glad to hear you say that because I think sometimes when we conceive of examples that kind of feel like the Peter principle in the NFL world, where guys get promoted to a job and then eventually just are kind of over their skis in that job, whether it's coordinator, head coach, et cetera. sometimes it's a, well, that guy can't do that job. He's not good enough to do that job. And I think an underrated part of it is that sometimes there are elements of that job that guys just don't like to do. Like there are offensive line coaches that when that scope changes, when you are overseeing the entire offensive staff, when you are talking to all of these players, whether you enjoy that part of the job, I think ultimately becomes really important if you're going to get the next job and you're going to be successful.

1:00:16Robert Mays: and I think in talking to you about this, you've enjoyed that part of it. Like the chance to get to work with the offensive staff and learn from those guys and kind of help them in their careers and talking to the players. That's a part of this that you've kind of taken to and really enjoyed in this role in a way that some offensive line coaches, when that scope changes, they might not actually enjoy that part of it. Yeah, I think it's really important to embrace those parts of it and that's not going to be for everybody, But I think that anything that we do in life, if you if you really have a passion for the hardest part of it, that doesn't mean you always like it.

1:00:55You know, like Drew Petsing and I always make this joke about like the different types of fun. Like there's like there's roller coaster fun and then there's fun that's not that wasn't fun at all until you were done with it. and so I think if you have the ability to um to embrace the really hard parts of it and maybe have like a knack for it as well I think that that's really important you know and so yeah I like going into the tight end room when they're meeting and with those guys excuse my language I don't know if I'm supposed to I like going into the receiver room and sitting there and listening to to what they're doing in there so yeah I definitely embrace it well I've uh sincerely enjoyed uh

1:01:35Robert Mays: watching the work that you've done over the last few years. This is a long time coming, getting you on here. You've been a central character, I feel like, in some ways, to the athletic football show over the last few seasons. And so the fact that we get kind of an up-close and personal perspective into the way that you operate and the way that you think about things feels apropos for a lot of the discussions we've had over the last few years. So we sincerely appreciate the time. Well, my 16-year-old, Maya, she listens to all this stuff. And so I always tell her, hey, if they say something bad about me, don't tell me.

1:02:07If they say something good, just send me the clip. So shout out to Maya Adams. She's going to be excited to watch.

1:02:13Robert Mays: When you first told me that, it was one of the more flattering things, I think. The idea that your 16-year-old daughter is a huge fan of the show, that makes me feel good. It feels like we're hitting demographics that maybe people might not think that we're hitting, which is always fun. Sincerely appreciate the time, sir. I know things are about to get very busy for you. I will see you in eight days in Oxford, California. So looking forward to that. And thank you very much for the time. Thanks for having me. A lot of high-level fun on the way. All right, guys, thank you so much to Clayton for his time.

1:02:45Robert Mays: Thank you guys for listening. Really enjoyed getting to get this in before we get to training camp, which we're there. When you guys listen to this on Friday, I will be in Charlotte at Panthers practice, most likely, really digging into it. So a fun month on the way. One of my favorite months of the entire year. Excited about a lot of the stuff that we are bringing your guys' way. That's all we got for today. Sincerely appreciate you listening. We'll talk to you later. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to hit that subscribe or follow button so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed what you heard, please like, comment, and leave a rating.

1:03:19Robert Mays: We'll see you next time.

1:03:28This message is brought to you by Cologuard. If you recorded songs off the radio for a mixtape, it might be time to screen for colon cancer. The Cologuard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off, and you start screening right from your home. It's just three simple steps. Set up, sample, and ship. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, Ask your doctor about the Cologuard test. Available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription at colaguard.com slash podcast.