Walking in the shoes of a non-playcalling offensive coordinator with Bengals OC Dan Pitcher

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1:42Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. slightly different kind of show for you guys today, but one that I'm very excited about. The amount of turnover among play callers in the NFL these days is absolutely wild. By my count, I'm pretty sure we're going to have 18 new play callers this year. Some of those guys are newly hired offensive coordinators. David Blau in Washington. Brad Idzig is actually going to be the play caller as offensive coordinator in Carolina for the first time. But a lot of these guys are play calling head coaches. That's been the trend for a while now, and we're not going to rehash that here.

2:13Robert Mays: We've talked so much about what the McVeighification of the NFL has looked like over the last decade. But as the rise of the play calling offensive head coach has become the norm in the NFL, that's left a role that we don't talk about all that often. And that's the non-play calling offensive coordinator. If you ask the general NFL fan what an offensive coordinator does for a team, their first response would be, well, they call the plays. Well, what if they don't. As we've gotten more and more play calling head coaches, we've also gotten more and more non play calling offensive coordinators. So I wanted to spend some time today digging into what that role actually looks like.

2:50Robert Mays: For this show, I talked to about 10 coaches around the league, some guys that are head coaches that have called plays or at least did in the past, some that are currently in an offensive coordinator role where they don't call plays, some where people have done both of those things, just to shine a little bit of a light on what that role looks like day to day. At the start, we're going to talk to Derek just about some of the reporting that I did, some of the conversations that I had, and some of the big picture talking points and considerations when it comes to what this role looks like in the NFL.

3:19Robert Mays: And then Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher, who is in this exact role and has been for the last couple years, joins us to kind of dig into the nitty gritty of what his job and responsibilities look like day to day as a non-play calling offensive coordinator in the NFL. Really enjoyed talking to so many people about this subject and digging into it. Learned a lot. Hope you guys will as well. Let's get to it right now.

3:53Robert Mays: All right, before we get to Dan Pitcher here in a little bit, wanted to start this conversation with me and Derek just zooming out a little bit and talking about just the big picture elements of what a non-play calling offensive coordinator role looks like in the NFL. So Derek, these are guys that you've considered talked about consistently over the last, you know, four or five years as this has become more and more prevalent in the league. If you were just kind of taking a step back and you had one question you wanted to ask about what this role looks like for guys in the NFL. What are the areas that you feel like you're most curious about and whether or not I can provide and shine some light on what that might look like?

4:34I think to me it's like obviously because these guys are not doing a lot of the play calling, they are like in some ways a manager of other men. I want to know like how are they going about divvying up the responsibilities? Like how do they go about who handles third down? Who handles what our pass protection looks like? Obviously, pass pro is going to be a lot of your offensive line guy. But like, how do they start to divvy that stuff up going into a week, going into a month of the season?

5:01Robert Mays: I think it's all a little bit different depending on the staff. One guy I talked to, one offensive coordinator I talked to had a really good insight on this because I asked him that exact same question. So what happens is I think we can zoom out even one step further. So different guys on staffs and this is there's no monolith with this. It's all a little bit different in every single building based on the people that I've talked to in the research that I've done. But like you just said, for the most part, there's somebody different handling a lot of the situational aspects of the game plan in any given building.

5:31Robert Mays: Someone will handle short yardage. Someone will handle red zone. Someone will handle third downs. Someone will handle like third down runs. It'll get that granular and you'll have different people assigned to those different areas. And one of the offensive coordinators I talked to said something that really did resonate with me. He goes, the staff does it for you. So you it's either by that person exhibits an interest in that area, or what this person said to me was, I wanted to make sure and his head coach suggested this to him in the spring, ask them what they're interested in. ask them what areas they really want to be studying because that's one little way.

6:12Robert Mays: And this kept coming back over and over again in my conversations. And we can dig into this, this idea of being a manager of people. If you're aligning guys with areas they're already interested in, it's an instantaneous way to create buy-in, right? Somebody is going to be invested in making sure they're doing the best job they can in the third down drop back world if that's the thing they're already interested in. And so I think it's a little bit of self-selection because guys show you what they want to be working on. And other guys, I think they use explicitly be like, all right, what do you want to work on?

6:44Robert Mays: And can we kind of attach you to that? So it's something we know that you're really throwing yourself into. That makes a ton of sense just in terms of, yeah, what is the guy's personal inclination? But even going into a season, let's say you're a wide receivers coach and you're thinking about, you know, moving your career on, advancing your career. there might be even before the season before you meet with your new team on this new staff you might have already looked at every team in the NFL's third and seven passes like they might have a jump start on all of those things because again they're interested and so when the offensive coordinator comes to them and says all right who's handling third and eight plus pass you've got a guy where he's like well I already watched 700 dropbacks of that over the course of the last two seasons I'm pretty ready and locked to go I already have a playlist ready this is what I like in this situation this part of the field x y and z and so all that stuff makes sense i think like go following up on that like a tangential thing with that is there a point in the season and this might even still apply to like guys who are offensive coordinators and calling the plays at what point in the season do these guys feel a shift in the sense of like i'm i'm guessing the first five six weeks of the season they're looking back on a lot of the things they installed and being like how good are we at the things that we put in but then at what point in the season do they start thinking okay how are we iterating how are we changing what do we want to reinstall now what do we want to put in because we had this in already and we want to like have a tweak off of that like at what point does your crossbar kind of change for how you're doing that sort of thing it's a good question I think that there are a couple different things that I would point out and kind of keep in mind with that I had one offensive coordinator who was part of a first your staff recently.

8:23Robert Mays: And he was saying to me that there were moments, and this is also a huge part of this, right? How you interact with your head coach is a crucial part of this job, right? You are a translator almost for some of the ideas that you're getting from your staff and you're bringing it to the head coach before he starts really paring down what the final game plan looks like and what the final call sheet looks like. And this person I was talking to said, there were moments in the first like five or six weeks of the season where he would bring their version of like the rough base down game plan to the head coach on a Tuesday afternoon, which is when some of this stuff happens.

9:00Robert Mays: And he'd be like, I don't like any of that. Like all of that stuff is just not something I would want as part of the final game plan. And then you're at a point where it's just like, oh shit, like, oh, we got to go back to the drawing board here. And so even for individual staffs, especially new staffs, I think there is like an acclimation period where guys are really trying to figure each other out. And then by the back half of the season, it was a situation where those meetings would be smooth for maybe quick for a different reason, where it'd be like, all right, I understand the head coach so much now.

9:31Robert Mays: And we understand the head coach so much now that it's a 10 minute conversation because he's like, good, good, good. I don't like that. I don't like that. And then you can move on. And so I do think that like mid season period, based on this coach that I talked to is when he really felt like he got an understanding of what the head coach wanted. When it comes to like how we're pruning and how we're changing, I think that that old rule of thumb, and I didn't specifically ask guys this much about this, but in talking, I literally had a conversation with an offensive coordinator this week about something different.

10:03Robert Mays: And he just mentioned the Bill Belichick kind of timeline of things where like the first four weeks of this season, you're just learning who you are. Like you're just learning what sort of team you are. And I think that a good example from last year, like the Bears having their bye after week four was kind of the perfect time for a first year staff because they were a really good example of a team that they talked about this a lot in training camp and based on conversations with people there, this is exactly what happened. There was just so much volume that they installed immediately that they always knew they were probably going to have to prune some of it over the course of the year.

10:40Robert Mays: So them having that by in week four and then being able to kind of have that transition a month into the season. I think that's still based on my understanding when a lot of teams go through some of that process. I mean, that even makes sense. Another example of this, I felt like was the Saints. They felt a little bit like a fire hose offense for the first seven, eight weeks of the season. And then obviously they have the quarterback change. And I think they start to pare things down a little bit. So that totally makes sense on that timeline. I actually want to go back a little bit in terms of what you were talking about with the personality of like those meetings actually getting faster because the offensive coordinator who is not the play caller understands what the play calling head coach wants.

11:18I think that's an interesting thing of like which personalities fit into like play calling versus not play calling as the offensive coordinator. Because if you are the play calling offensive coordinator, the offense is an expression of you and what you want to do. You get to be like, this is how we run it. This is how we do all these things. But if you are the non-play calling offensive coordinator for a head coach, there has to be some degree of humility of like you get a little bit of like, this is what I want to do. This is what I think is cool. This is what I think can work. But ultimately, it's Sean McVay's offense or it's Kyle Shanahan's offense.

11:52It is Matt LaFleur's offense. And you have to be willing to bend to whatever that means and try to get into their mind of like, why do they think this is good? What are they going to think is actually good?

12:01Robert Mays: I love you pointing this out because that's exactly what one offensive coordinator said to me because he had called plays before and now he's back in a non-play calling offensive coordinator mode. And I said, what's the biggest difference between, because a lot of the guys, and in the conversation I have with Dan Pitcher, I do bring this up. One thing that another coach said to me was essentially, I do everything except not call the plays as the offensive coordinator. I do the game plan installs. I do so many things that a normal offensive coordinator would do. I just don't eventually call the plays.

12:31Robert Mays: And so I asked this person who works for play calling offensive coordinator now, but had been a play caller in the past. I was like, what's the biggest difference between your role now versus when you were the one calling it? And he said, now, even in the game planning process, I'm always doing it under the service of the vision of the head coach. Like even little things like where something will be placed on the call sheet is tailored to how the head coach himself wants to see it. And so every little thing is tailored to the tastes and ultimately the decision of the head coach. And I think an interesting tension that arises with that, and this comes up in the conversation with Dan too, is that you have to find a middle ground between making sure that you're working in service of that vision while also making sure you're pushing that head coach to maybe step outside of his comfort zone every once in a while.

13:25Robert Mays: Because if you just get into a position where there's nothing but group think all the time, then you're going to be in a spot where things just get rubber stamps too quickly and you're never evolving in the proper way. And so I think the balance that you're trying to find there is really difficult. And the term that Sean McVay used that again comes up with Dan a little bit later is he wanted like a, when he's thinking about an offensive coordinator, he wants a thought partner, somebody that where there's going to be alignment, but there's still going to be enough dissent to make sure that there's a healthy, creative tension in the way that you're building those game plans.

13:59Robert Mays: And I think that's a difficult middle ground to find. And in a lot of ways, that is what a non-play calling offensive coordinator is. You're kind of like the head coach whisperer. You have to be in their headspace and work with their mindset as you're making sure that the right ideas are flowing from your staff all the way to the head coach. And I think that takes time. like you're just never going to be able to do that immediately upon working for somebody I think that's something that only comes with increased exposure increased reps all of that stuff that does get my gears turning a little bit on in in the terms of like which which kind of coach is it easier to find that to strike that balance where is it like is it easier if you have called plays and then you step back to a role where you've never done it before where it's like okay well I understand what that's like so now I understand what he wants or is it sometimes easier for guys who have never called plays and they're in this role where they're like well i have no pressure to call the plays so i can kind of just sit here and i know what he wants a little bit but i have a little bit of freedom to like push him and try to needle him and hope that he has a play caller figures it out or does that just depend on the person probably i think it probably depends on the person and i honestly think that i'm sure with some play callers there's just if you have like if you're the play calling head coach and you are you can almost be this guy who can, if you're a really good delegator, and if you are just kind of like a savant when it comes to your feel for the game, your feel for situations, truly play calling, you can maybe be kind of like an aloof genius.

15:37Robert Mays: You know, does that make sense? Where it's like, you can kind of be this person that like, there's almost like this, you know, artistic element to how you're interacting with a call sheet and what you look like on game day. When you're the non-play calling offensive coordinator, it's almost like the organizational parts of the job are the most important. There's no like eccentric genius part of being a non-play calling offensive coordinator. Like the, I think the most important and talking to multiple people about this, multiple head coaches who work with these sorts of guys, I think their thought in terms of like, what is the most important quality you can have in this role?

16:14Robert Mays: Organization becomes the most important thing. Like Ben Johnson has said that about Press Taylor this off season where he's like he's incredibly organized and that's why he is set up well for this role because that is what a lot of these guys are doing and dan mentioned that multiple times in our conversation where it's like if you are the offensive coordinator one of the most important things you're going to do arguably the most important thing you're going to do is that you're the guy who's keeping the train on the tracks throughout the entire week when it comes to how you're building the game plan on the schedule on which that happens.

16:47Robert Mays: Dan talks about this. And I was just shocked at how truncated and quick some of these time periods were when it comes to how fast the game plans come together. And I think you inherently understand that, right? But then you actually talk about it. And you have guys talking about like, from 2pm to 6pm on Tuesday, this happens from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, this happens. It's such a short time period that you really, as the offensive coordinator, one of your central missions is, can we just keep everything as efficient as possible? Can I keep things moving at the right pace as often as possible?

17:24Robert Mays: And so being somebody who is hyper-organized, can keep everything straight, can make sure that you're a really good delegator and you're a really good conduit for information between the staff and the head coach, i think that is really really important where with a play caller it can be a little bit more of like a whimsical skill set when it's the the skills are not got a feel for calling the place exactly exactly there is like more of an artistry to it where in this role i think it is a little bit more organizational and managerial and i mean that totally makes sense like you are trying to give your wizard play caller as as many weapons as he needs going into battle as he can possibly get so that totally makes sense to me I feel like we've now spent a lot of time on like preparation and going into stuff what does like the autopsy of a game look like for a non-play calling offensive coordinator because the guys who call the plays they can look at it and go that third down call sucked I don't know why I did that whereas like you can talk to the play caller but you can't fully understand and get in the mind of like why did they call that play when they called it so what is their job really when they're trying to dissect the game on Monday afternoon.

18:34Robert Mays: That's one of the, based on a lot of the guys I talked to, a lot of the offensive coordinators in the league, I mean, maybe most of them are the ones who handle that process. And I think part of that is because, and it comes back to this so, so often, the head coach, even if they are the play caller, there are so many things that a head coach is going to be a part of that the coordinator has to handle because the head coach just isn't around. If your head coach is really involved in personnel, especially on Monday, they're going to be dealing with a lot of personnel shit as part of their weekly Monday schedule.

19:08Robert Mays: And so the offensive coordinator is the one handling a lot of like the after action stuff. So they'll go through the game once or twice on their own and then often with the offensive staff before presenting it to the players. and the head coach is often removed from that process simply because they have a lot of responsibilities, duties that they have to handle that are removed from just going back and watching the game. And so a lot of the guys I talk to, they're the ones that handle that. What went well? What went wrong? How do we have to be better at this? And so that to me is one of the biggest things.

19:40Robert Mays: That and the other one is just who handles the game plan installs, right? Like that's different in every single building. Sometimes it's the offensive coordinator. Sometimes it's the head coach. Sometimes the head coach will handle one side of it. I think it was Cole Komet this week came out and mentioned. It was the first time I've seen it mentioned in public, but it's something that other people had mentioned to me. Ben Johnson does the run game installs himself. That sounds like him. As the head coach, he does the run game installs himself. And so Andy Reid was very famously, when he got back to Kansas City, he wanted to get back to having more touch points on the offense, he handles the install meetings himself.

20:20Robert Mays: There are some coaches where they're coming way later to the process than that because either they have more, say, in personnel, they want to spend more time with the defense. That's another thing that's come up is that these things change from year to year based on what your staff looks like and what your team feels like. one head coach that I talked to, and I think this is a really good way of putting it. He's like, I have to be the problem solver. I can't be like the main ideas person because I'm in charge of the entire building. And so if we're having trouble on defense or we're having trouble on special teams, I have to be the one that's plugging the holes in those areas or helping plug the holes in those areas.

21:03Robert Mays: And if that's the case, I just can't be as involved in whatever the game plan looks like. The defensive meetings are happening at the same time the offensive meetings are. And so if you want to be more present on that side of the ball as the head coach, even if you're the play caller, there's just no way you can have your fingers in every aspect of what the offensive game plan meeting looks like. And so I think it's just going to depend on the way the season unfolds and what your team is that season and your staff. Like, I mean, there are moments in talking to Dan where they had an offensive run game coordinator or an offensive line coach who was a really good run game coordinator.

21:42Robert Mays: That was part of his job. He handled all the run game stuff. And so when that offensive line coach was there, he was freed up to handle a lot more of the pass game in the base game plan process early in the week on like a Monday. Well, when they switched offensive line coaches and hired a passing game coordinator, now more work needed to be done on the run game side of it. And so he moves over and starts spending more time there. And I think that's how it is for a lot of different staffs. Like, where do we need the most work? Where do we need the most help? And I think that's kind of a moving target for a lot of different teams.

22:15See, and that goes back to like the flexibility and humility for a role like this, where again, there might be years where, yeah, maybe the head coach actually wants to get more involved in red zone or whatever it is this year. And you have to just be like, OK, he's that's what he wants to do. He wants to take this off my plate. He wants to be involved in this. You have to just be like, be willing to not like take that as a slight, I guess, and just be like, that's where the head coach thinks that he has time and he wants to help us out there and not like, yeah, not feel like your responsibilities as an offensive coordinator being chipped away on.

22:44But that also goes to the point of like the head coach's role always changing and what he needs to put his time in. I think it also makes sense of why a lot of these offensive head coach play callers tend to go for defensive coordinators who like have been head coaches before and can kind of just handle their shit on their own. because again, it just takes stuff off of their plate.

23:03Robert Mays: I mean, it's been described. I mean, I remember the first time that started happening, like when Wade Phillips went with McVay when he first took the job. And the whole idea was essentially, he can just be the head coach of defense. And we see that happen really often, sometimes to a team's detriment, right? Like, I mean, there are teams that just kind of default to that and it prevents them from hiring the best defensive coordinator. And then they're in a spot where they're having to replace them one year in. I mean, the Dallas Cowboys are in that exact position right now. And so I absolutely think that's part of it.

23:31Robert Mays: Just like the entire personality and kind of human management of this entire thing is one of the elements of it that stuck out the most when I was talking to people. and just the fact that the the one of the lines that really stuck with me when i was talking to one of these coaches was when he got the job as an offensive coordinator there were two things he knew he was never going to be able to do again one was just shut the door for 10 hours in his office and work on a project you know just this is what i'm focused on it sounds great i'm going to go like focus on this specific element of the game plan i'm going to go back and watch the run game for 10 straight hours he was never going to be able to do that again and he was never going to be able to look at the comments on social media again.

24:14Robert Mays: Those are the two things he knew were going to be his new reality after taking these jobs. And we talk so much about the gap between being a coordinator and a head coach and why the Peter principle creeps in and guys fail when they move from the scope of the first job to the scope of the second job. And I, before I started really digging into this, didn't really think about it that much from the position coach level to the coordinator level, but it's a massive step up in responsibilities. Like if you're the position coach and you aren't managing any other coaches and you really just have a couple of players, the area that you're in charge of is so small.

24:53Robert Mays: If you go from that to being the coordinator and now you're managing a dozen people, the scale of what you have to worry about every single day grows in terms of like width and like all the things you have to worry about, but it's the different types of responsibilities you now have. Like you go from being in charge of or overseeing a couple 23-year-old players to now if you're the offensive coordinator, you have to manage a 65-year-old line coach who's been doing this for 40 years. You have to manage a young assistant who may be a little bit dissatisfied with his role, has ambitions about his own career and where he wants to go.

25:31Robert Mays: you have to handle those people very, very differently, right? Like what you're going to have to do to get the most out of that line coach in his role is very different than what you're going to have to do to get the most out of a running back coach who wants to be more than a running back coach. You have to make sure you're feeding that second person the right amount of work and the right type of work to make sure they're staying engaged. It's like that guy wants to be a coordinator. I know that I have to make sure that I'm fostering that. And I think there are some guys that they're not ready for that when they take the job.

26:06Robert Mays: Like in their minds, that's not going to be as much a part of it as they might think. But when you get in the chair, it's a little bit shocking. And so you have to do everything you can to kind of make sure you're finding the right touch points with everyone to try, like finding the right ways to motivate everybody, finding the right ways to get everybody on the same page. And I think for guys that have had really specific jobs in the NFL before, that becomes one of the biggest differences. And there are some guys who really come to love that part of the job. Like they really find like purpose and value in it.

26:39Robert Mays: And I think there are some guys who find it a little bit frustrating because it's not about drawing up the best place. It's not about like true ball type stuff. It's much more human than that. And that may be a little bit different than any of the other roles they've had to fill before. I mean, it's the same thing we always talk about with defensive coordinators jumping to head coach, right? Where it's like, oh, I don't get to just tell these guys to go run and hit anymore. I do think that that dynamic, though, is interesting in terms of managing the people. And I think where my mind goes with that is like, does that depend on the building you're in?

27:12Like when I think of like the Rams, I feel like there is an understanding that that room more than any other in the league is a fast track. Like I think if you're in that building you kind of know and i wonder how different is it being the offensive the non-play calling offensive coordinator there and managing a lot of those younger younger guys and thinking about that versus like if you're on like kellen moore saint staff and there's nothing like there's nothing against kellen moore but that is not a place that we have yet picked a million coaches from and think of that as a fast track like is there a different dynamic in terms of how you

27:44Robert Mays: would have to approach that do you think i think there probably is and i also think it's just about what these coaches are doing to make sure everybody stays engaged, right? Like, I think that how are you empowering guys and keeping them excited about their role, even if there isn't a guarantee that they're going to get one of these next jobs. And I think that's one of the things that I kept coming back to with the guys who are really good at this is just the ways that they're inspiring the other coaches on the staff to provide their best. And I think that there are some guys where like, even if, you know, and my understanding is that like Ben Johnson's been really explicit about this with guys on his staff where it's like, just keep coming with stuff that's outside the box.

28:22Robert Mays: Keep coming with stuff that's challenging. Like even if I say no to 95 % of it, that doesn't mean I don't like it. I think it's just about keeping, making sure you're keeping those guys engaged in every way that you can. And I think everyone does that differently, right? Like there's a lot of process stuff that we talk about with Dan and you could do an entire podcast about this, but like how do these ideas get shared? You know, is this a process where you're meeting as a staff? The Bengals do that. Bengals, there's a lot of like staff offensive meetings. There are some teams where the coordinator by trial and error has kind of learned, you know what?

28:53Robert Mays: This doesn't really work for us. Like if we're sitting around in a room, we're not getting a lot of stuff done in a productive way. So some of those teams have gone to like one shared document where guys can just kind of drop in different ideas. Stefanski does this really interesting process where like there are different boxes on like a sheet. And for each individual section of the game plan, you write like you can write up to like I think three or four ideas for like third down and then they collect them as part of the process and they go through all of them. So there is kind of like this complete ownership over the process itself, where even if it doesn't get in, you are allowed to suggest ideas.

29:33Robert Mays: And so the, like these teams that have these shared documents or have these sorts of processes, that becomes another way where if it becomes like meritocracy in a way where it's like, these are, this is a space for you to present your ideas and the best ones will hopefully get in. And I think there are some coaches that do a good job of, all right, I'm going to, even if I'm never going to call this, I'm going to keep it in the game plan because it's a win for this guy. And like those sorts of ways about figuring out how to manage people and get the most out of them again, in all the people I talked to, it just started, kept up, kept coming up over and over and over again, where it's just much more prevalent in their minds and much more prominent in like how they think about the job than we might suspect before you dig into something like this.

30:21It seems like through our entire conversation here, the two central themes are like flexibility in understanding what the job is and a little bit of humility there and then engagement, both with yourself and then your staff. Like you just said, like making sure you can find different ways to get the 27-year-old assistant and the 65-year-old offensive line coach engaged in the same way, but also like you said yourself, because there are some guys that probably take the job being like, I'm just drawing up cool plays and this looks cool in the sand, but that's not really what the job is when you're taking this non-play calling position.

30:51Robert Mays: All right, let's get to our conversation with Dan and dig into a lot of these themes, maybe in like a slightly more granular level. But first, let's take our first quick break. So one of my personal characteristics that I think is good, I think serves me well, but I can see how it could get a little annoying for people in my life at certain points, is that I have an extreme dedication to organization, tidiness, and fastidiousness. And so one thing I love about Monarch is the weekly recaps. I also love how easy Monarch is to use. None of us needs any additional complications in our lives. Monarch certainly does not add that super easy, super straightforward.

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33:59Robert Mays: Joining us today as the Bengals are, I assume, fairly close to wrapping up their offseason program. It is Bengals offensive coordinator Dan Pitcher. Dan, sincerely appreciate the time. How are you doing over there? Doing great, Robert. Appreciate you having me on today and happy to spend some time with you. All right. So where I want to start this conversation is actually kind of in a sequential, time-based way. because I want to give people an understanding of how truncated some of these periods are. So as I dig into, as we dig into, like, your role as an offensive coordinator for our head coach that calls plays, I want to start on, like, Sunday night.

34:42Robert Mays: And in this hypothetical, let's just say you guys played in Baltimore on a Sunday. Walk me through what happens from Sunday when you get on the plane until, let's say, Monday evening. just just walk me through what that 24 hours looks like yeah um okay so we get on the plane um everybody has the game on their ipads uh by the time you get on the plane so for me that's going to be the first um exposure to what just took place right and i'm i'm really just watching it through i'm not really taking notes at that point um every now and then maybe you're leaning over your seat to grab another coach and point something out, or hopefully you're doing it, slapping them on the back and with smiles on your faces.

35:31But, you know, so that's the first kind of, you know, viewing of the tape, you land. A lot of this is going to depend on when is the next game, right? Like, especially in the modern NFL, like it's your week's going to look very different if you are about to go play a Thursday game. If you are, um, if it's a Sunday game, really at any given, at any time, the cadence of the week should be about the same. Um, but a Monday night game is going to look different. Um, you know, so let's just assume a following Sunday game for this exercise, right? So you get, you watch it, you land, um, depending on how long you're in the air, you know, that's going to determine whether or not you can actually accomplish anything productive when you get home.

36:18For me, it's really like, make sure you've seen it. You know what happened when you lay your head on the pillow. And then early Monday is when I'm going to actually watch it again and then type all my notes in and my comments. And so that'll be my second time through it. If we're home, I'll do that Sunday night at my house. And then kind All the position coaches do something similar. Then we will get together as a staff for the first time at 8, 8.30 Monday morning and watch the tape quickly together. Now, again, depending on the week and when we play, sometimes that's truncated. Sometimes I might just pull out a 25-play cut-up of what happened, issues we need to discuss.

37:06If we have all the time of a normal week, we'll watch the whole thing together. and really that's a chance for them to give me an assessment and Zach sometimes is or isn't in that meeting sometimes he might meet with the defense at the same time because in Cincinnati I don't know how it is in every building but in Cincinnati at at 10 a.m we go up and we kind of go over the game with ownership in the front office that we being the head coach and the coordinators um so we kind of have to have talked through it understand the issues understand a path forward a vision for how we're going to solve any of the problems we just had with the next opponent kind of in in light um and then you know be able to present that when when we talk through it with ownership in the front office so that kind of takes care of monday morning um and if i'm if i'm being too long-winded let me know or this is the kind of detail you're looking for no this is

38:03Robert Mays: this is good and then so i'm curious and a lot of the what i've come to understand like so this this process and like watching the game going back over the game you'll do like an after action report is what a lot of buildings call it right so you go through and it's here the positive here's here are the negatives and then that is something that the staff and typically the offensive coordinator whether he's the play call or not is presenting to the players on monday when you guys go back back to the tape so what is your role in okay so you're going through it twice you're meeting with the offensive staff you're meeting with ownership and the front office to go over what the game felt like and then at some point on monday you are then meeting with the players yeah so then go back over what the game happens that that's at like between 1 30 and 1 40 on monday afternoon so we have a two o 'clock team meeting between 1 30 and 1 40 depending on how much information I feel like I need to communicate to the unit.

38:56We will be together in the unit. And that's where I'm really kind of giving my debrief, my autopsy of what just occurred, positives, negatives, things that we knew we had to set out to accomplish. How many of those boxes did we check? That's why we won. That's why we came up short. And then really kind of expressing a vision moving forward for how we feel right now, regardless of what that is, elated, crushed, whatever that is, we got to move forward. And this is how we're going to do it as a staff. This is what the next 48 hours are going to look like. This is the plan that we're going to put together for you guys.

39:39So when you come back in the building on Wednesday, we're going to have this thing figured out. And that's one of the, the touch points, the forward facing touch points for, for me as the offensive coordinator on a weekend and week out basis where I really get to project, um, you know, who it is that we are in that moment in the season and, uh, really hammer home the things that I believe are essential to who we're going to need to be moving forward.

40:14Robert Mays: And so you put that to bed, that team meeting ends at like three, right? So in a 24 hour period, you've watched the game over twice. You've met with the staff, you've met with ownership, you've met with the players. And when that meeting ends, the, the, that game is kind of put to bed, correct? That's when that period it's that, yeah, that's over. It's gone. The next time you'll, the next time you'll even consider that stuff. Well, if it's a division team, it'll be, it'll be when you play them for the second time. If you happen to play a team again in the playoffs, you'll revisit it. But But other than that, I mean, you might not see that stuff again until you get to offseason self scout.

40:50Now, now you're going to you have to obviously have a running view of who you are as a team and how you present to the defense. And so, like, you'll you'll come back across those clips every now and then. But in terms of like the emotion of what just happened, good, bad, indifferent, like that's gone. And that's something you got to learn how to do. Like that is that's a hard thing, man. And that's now year after year after year in the league, you learn how to do it because, you know, you just you feel the everything is so intense. The emotion of it, how much you pour into it, that you have to force yourself to really just cut bait and go.

41:31And that's that's what happens at three o 'clock on Monday. um you know now if i'm being honest the feelings probably uh are residual through the rest of monday you know you're either like preparing with a in a good mood or preparing in a pissed off mood uh but generally by the time you walk in the door tuesday then it's it's gone gone so that 24 hour

41:52Robert Mays: period from when the game ends when you guys put it to bed i i wanted to just lay that out because i think there's so much that happens in that 24 hours and the fact that so much is going on like I think if you told an average NFL fan that when the game is over and you guys are on the plane, you're immediately rewatching what the game was like. And this idea of like the plane being a spot where everyone's playing cards and kind of chilling, like the work starts immediately for you guys as soon as you get on the plane, which I think is notable. I mean, it might be a home game and I'm my wife's driving home and I'm like refreshing the iPad, hoping that it's popped up while I'm driving home to my house.

42:27because a lot of times you're dying to see what actually happened there. You think you know what happened, but yeah, it's immediate.

42:37Robert Mays: So that 24-hour period is followed by another 24-hour period that to me is the most interesting for you guys and you guys as a staff. And that's kind of when the next game plan starts coming together. So I want to just talk about your role in this. So from that Monday at 3 p.m. until Tuesday night when you guys put the game plan to bed and that's how fast it is, right? That's how fast it has to happen because you're presenting it to the players on Wednesday as the offensive coordinator and your current role and what it looks like. Walk me through what your role is in developing that game plan from that Monday afternoon through the end of Tuesday.

43:16Yeah. So, so Monday really, I would say from like three till dinner, um, is in a lot. And some of this I will have been able to accomplish maybe on the previous Friday afternoon or Saturday, waiting to get on the plane, which is really like, I have a pretty, um, like specific process of how I build my own cutups and just like how I organize the way I look at a defense. And it's something that like truthfully I could probably have somebody do for me but like the act of doing it myself is part of the value that I that I get from it if that makes any sense um and so like I spend probably you know depending on how much I've been able to get done to that point I it could be I might just need an hour I might need two hours to like really like get those cut-ups in the order I want them have my have the slides where I want them to really divide this out and and know because like the more you, the longer you do this, the more you realize everything's situational.

44:16So like every, every damn near every call you make in a game, everything that's on the sheet, there's some form of situational influence on that. And so it's like, how do you parse out your opponent and what they look like in all these different field zones and, uh, score differentials and, um, you know, down in distances, like that, all those things are critical. So you get your cut-ups made. And then for me, you know, my role has kind of evolved in the couple years I've been in it. But, you know, last year and then even this year, I spent a lot of time Monday evenings on the run game and really, you know, kind of breaking that down in my own way, studying the opponent, seeing what has and hasn't worked against them from a broad scheme standpoint.

45:00And then as you get a little more granular, like some specific adjustments within run families, that may or may not be working currently against this opponent. And you do all that within the lens of like, what are you doing well right now? And what are you, what do you look like to the defense? Because you're not going to play the team you see on tape. You're going to play the team that's watching you, that's going to become the version of themselves that they think they need to be to beat you. So it's like this thing's going on at the same time. And so you have to, all of it's done. You have to have a really, really good sense of who you are.

45:36and how you're viewed, how opponents view you. And so I spent time kind of organizing the run game that way, getting my thoughts together. There are other coaches doing the same thing and really like to, by the time I walk out of the building on a Monday night, which is usually anywhere between 10, 30 and 11, is like, okay, here's some really good bones of what I think this run plan is going to look like. before I get together with like a smaller group of coaches very early Tuesday morning to hammer out the details on that. And then we get together as a full staff. And basically that's, that's where we get, we have probably 120 % of what we ultimately are going to have for the plan.

46:27Zach's in on that meeting. And that's really where like the, the, the input from the play caller who at this time, like he's, he's doing all the prep himself. The only difference there is like, he's constantly being pulled away to do head coaching things. And so like, it's on me to really drive the, to make sure like the train is moving down the tracks and hitting all these landmarks throughout the week. And then he's going to come in at the appropriate times and really kind of assert his opinion where it's like, all right, we're a little heavy here. We really need to carry five of these seven forms of tight zone.

47:03Like which two do you not see yourself calling? And like, that's where he's going to come and be like, okay, yeah, whack that one and whack that one. And then we move forward. It's really kind of on me to be able to absorb those inputs and then turn it into a cohesive plan that we can actually talk about and consume and make decisions on within the time constraints of a game plan week, right? Because there's a lot of really smart people in our building who have input to the process, and I believe they should have that. It's really one of the things that I tell people, I joke, one of the biggest jobs that I have is to say no.

47:44And to do it in a way that recognizes that I'm saying no to good ideas, and they're coming from great places. and in any one-off situation, it might be a great idea that might score us a touchdown, get us a first down, but there's a million good football plays in the world. And it's how do you figure out how to make them come together and form a plan and then not just a collection of plays. And that also marries with what you're trying to accomplish in the normal down-passing game and how you think you have to play the game as a whole through three phases. and like that's another element another layer that that really zach does a good great job of like he and i are constantly communicating through this whole process of like hey like i'm you know i don't i don't watch a snap of the opponent of the opponent's offense you know what i mean like i don't know what now i have some i watch football i'm a fan so i have a sense for like what we're going up against but you know he's going to be the one that says like hey this is the kind of football game i think this is going to be and as a result these are the areas that we need to lean into.

48:48And these are the areas that maybe aren't going to be as big a part of the plan.

48:52Robert Mays: All right, before we move on, let's take one more quick break. So I'm playing in a softball league this summer and it's great. I'm having a ton of fun. Baseball was a sport that I played my entire life. I was pretty good at it. If we're going to let myself pat me on the back for a sec, always came naturally. And my brain still works the way it did when I was younger, when I was a little bit better at the sport than I maybe am right now. I'm playing shortstop, A ball gets hit to my left, a ball gets hit to my right, and my brain still thinks, okay, that's a ball I can get to, and I can't quite get there anymore.

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51:45Robert Mays: When you're thinking about like how a certain motion or how a certain formation is going to incite a response, is that something that you're always getting from a nugget that you're picking up watching film? How much of that is driven by some of the data analytics that you're bringing to the process? Like I'm imagining like the most dramatic version of this and these like light bulb moments where you're watching tape in a dark room and you're like, I have it. Like I have the answer. How much of that is real and how much of it is like a little bit more boring and process driven than that? Well, yeah, I mean, we're information gatherers, right?

52:18And like, that's, you try to, you try to figure what are the things that we can do, whether it be formationally or motion wise to, to get the defense, to tell us something about what they're about to do. And that's getting harder and harder because the defensive coaches are just as smart as the offensive coaches and they know you're trying to do that. So, you know, they do a good job for the most part of, you know, creating doubt. We try to do the same thing offensively, right? You try to create enough doubt so that it causes the defenders to play slow. So like, hey, yeah, you might have a 70 % tendency out of this formation or this grouping or this motion.

53:05But as long as it's not 90%, that's enough doubt that they still have to play it true. And so, you know, defenses have gotten good at doing that too. But yes, like you are trying to really parse out. And that's where like your, the quality of your data entry with regard to how you break down the tape. So for your young coaches, your quality control coaches, the quality of the data that they enter, and then how the data that we get from other sources is integrated into our system and how we are able to put that in our own languages and get something useful out of it. Yeah, all of that, all of those pieces are critical to kind of discovering what you want to discover about the team you're about to play.

53:50Robert Mays: So you building your own cutups, I'm so interested in this because when you're trying to figure out, okay, these are the most important observations I can make about a defense. This is the type of game we want to play. This is the type of plan that we want to start building. where do you start those cutups? Like, where do you find yourself looking for answers consistently? Like, what are the most fruitful places that you found for yourself that you consistently find those answers? Yeah, I mean, I think the jumping off point is always like personnel-based. And I mean that in a couple of ways. Like number one, like who are the best players you're about to play against?

54:30And do they have special difference-making players that you are going to need to compensate for within the scheme. And most NFL teams have those guys. Some of them are like rare, rare. Others are just like really good players that you better know where they are.

54:46Robert Mays: I don't know if you know this, but you don't have to play against Myles Garrett twice a year anymore. I am actually aware of that. And I'm not upset about it. He would fall into the rare, rare category. um so yeah it's it's who who are these you know who are the unique individuals that you're gonna have to prepare for so that's like one side of personnel the other side of personnel that i'm talking about is like are is this a team that's gonna match like so are when we're in 11 are are we always gonna see nickel are they a team that's gonna play dimes on any normal downs are they gonna play dime and get back on track how much base to 11 are they gonna play is it strategic base to 11 or is it accidental base to 11 can you parse that out based on how much of it there is uh is it is it something that occurs as a result of tempo from the offense or is this something that's a part of what they want to want to do you flip to 12 like you know what what gets us base defense does is this a team that's just going to play nickel to 12 just wholesale is this a team that's gonna you know make an assessment based off of which tight ends you have in the game as to whether they're going to put base or nickel on the field.

55:56So like, that's the, that's one of the, you know, really critical starting points is like, can you predictably say, this is the group of defenders that we are going to have to scheme against based on who our people are on the field. For some opponents, the answer will be yes. For others, it will be no. And so now it's like, okay, in the yes part, well, then maybe you can really kind of hone in on, hey, we want to live in these three groupings because we feel like there's some predictability with regard to the looks we're going to get. If the answer is no to those questions, well, now you live in the contingency world where it's like we expect A, but we know they could give us B and or C.

56:39So if they give us B or C, we got to very quickly be able to get to something in the moment that gives us a chance to have a successful down. And then maybe you pivot to something else, some other part of the sheet. So like, that's kind of, that's part of the cut up building process for me is like figuring out, okay, what, what are we actually up against from a personnel match standpoint? And then you, I mean, you can go, we could, we could do a 10 hour podcast on this and I don't want to get too in depth because some of it is a little bit, you know, speaks to strategy and, and, and when, what we're trying to accomplish.

57:15But I think I'm not I'm not you know, those are those are no, you know, incredibly tight to the best secrets I just shared with you. But that's that's kind of that's one of the one of the big starting points is kind of what can we expect from a personnel standpoint?

57:29Robert Mays: As you've kind of gone through this year over year and you've started to refine your ideation process and how you come up with some of this stuff. what have the most, what have been the most important things you've learned about yourself in terms of how you come up with like, what's going to spark something? What makes you more efficient? Like, as you, I'm sure you've learned a lot about yourself as you've gotten deeper into your career, as far as this process goes, what are the most important realizations been? Um, I think, I think like you have to know, um, like I use the phrase cut bait earlier.

58:04Like there are there are times where like you may have what you think are the the the beginnings of like a really good idea or like a really good um thought process that could lead to hey this this grouping of plays but like like the the time constraints are real and so like understanding you have to make there's going to come there's going to come a point in time where you have to decide, do I keep spending time on this or do I move on? And I think that, that part, especially in this role, it's different than when you are the third down specialist, or you are the red zone specialist, or you have a, a area that you can, you can literally just bury yourself in for like 36 to 48 hours.

58:54And you might come to the conclusion after 20 of those hours, when you are that specialist that I thought I wanted to do this, but you know what? It's just not worth it. And you have to like, kind of make those decisions faster in, in this chair and then rely on the advice of other people to really influence those decisions. And that's where like the staff is so critical, how you set the week up to use their time efficiently and have them doing meaningful work and them giving you meaningful, meaningful material that's usable. Like you, this is, you cannot do this by yourself. I mean, maybe some guys do it and God bless them.

59:38Um, but like, I think if you want to, if you want to work the way I'm comfortable working and which is like, Hey, we, we, we have a cadence, we have a rhythm, this thing moves and that's healthy. And it forces us to make some decisions and go, like you have to utilize all your resources, your human resources in the form of your staff. And so that's something that I've, that I've learned as well.

1:00:04Robert Mays: Before we get to, I want to talk about that Tuesday meeting where you guys are trying to bridge everything together. Cause I think that's really interesting. The last thing I wanted to hit on kind of the pre-process side of it. Now that you guys have a passing game coordinator, what is your charge to Justin? Like when you, I mean, obviously you're not reiterating this to him every week, but when you kind of outline the job for him and like what his process looks like in this similar to my question to you, what is the offensive coordinator for a play calling head coach do? What does the passing game coordinator for a staff do by the time, from the time you guys start building the game plan to the time that he is presenting you with the ideas that he came up with?

1:00:39Yeah. Um, yeah. And I mean, it's just, first of all, Justin's an incredible coach. And I think, you know, a lot of people in the NFL community that have spent time with him would tell you the same um just unreal work ethic and um he's got knowledge he's been he was a national championship winning quarterback in college he's coached in an offensive line room in the nfl he's been a passing game quarterback in the nfl now so like he has the the uh the depth and the breadth of of what he's knows and can communicate is incredible and so he's he's a huge resource for me he's not the only one um you know we've got troy walters our receiver coach who's heavily involved in the in the normal down pass plan and i go right down the list um you know these guys are all really good at what they do but yeah justin like i like the thing like justin for me is hopefully what i am for zach in that like he's half he's half like idea guy half um whole poker like hey i know we like this, but what, what's our answer if, and we really got like, this is still too gray.

1:01:50You know, we need to, we need to iron this out. We have to have an, Hey, he's the guy like, he's the, Hey, like, okay, we're going to in the run game, maybe we're going to can, you know, a third of these looks versus, and here's the criteria. And it's like, okay, Justin, like go, you know, shut your door for two hours and come back with like, what are, what are the looks we want to get to, you know, like, Hey, and he'll, and he's incredible. You know, he'll, he'll watch every single clip and he'll say, Hey, these, this is, this is the best thing, you know, this is, this gives us the best chance to be explosive, but we should probably just go with this because it, it checks more boxes, you know?

1:02:25And, you know, so he's, he's all those things. Um, and he's just a really good check on the process as well as being a significant creator of the content that goes eventually ends up as part of the plan. So, um, it's, it's a pretty, uh, a wide ranging role and he does a really good job in it.

1:02:42Robert Mays: Can you give me a specific example of how you take something from being too gray to being black and white in the way that you want it to look? Sure. Like, um, you know, maybe it's, uh, maybe it's a play action protection, you know, off of, um, you know, So maybe it's a gap scheme, play action protection that like the run that the protection is built off of is like very clear. Like, hey, you know, this frontside combination is working to this backside backer. This puller is responsible for this guy. The receiver's got to block the DB if, you know, he's under whatever distance. Like, okay, all right, now we create the protection off of it.

1:03:20Well, it's not always quite as simple with like, hey, this frontside combination is working to that. well, it's pass protection. So they're not working down the field to this guy. He's not going to necessarily be scraping over the top to meet them. Like, okay, what if he, what if he, what if he plugs in the backside B gap? Like, okay, well then, all right, now we have to really bump it all the way off and the center's got to block. Like, so, okay, what is the rule that tells him to do that? You know, are, now are we just, are we, are they responsible for gaps? Are they responsible for people? How do we, how do we communicate this to them?

1:03:55Because, you know the other thing that I fully believe in is like you have to you got to communicate to the player like you're communicating the highest common denominator in the room like the guy that is going to be able is guy that's going to be able to poke the hose himself the player like that's the guy you're talking to because that's the guy that if he feels confident that he's got the answers then everybody should play confident because that's usually your quarterback that's your center, that's your veteran, those are your leaders. And so that to me is, I guess, maybe gives you some insight into what I meant by that.

1:04:31Robert Mays: How is your relationship and your experience with Joe been on that front? Like, what is he usually asking for? Where do you find like the questions are coming? What canned or packaged answers do you have to have ready for him? What has that been like over the last few years if you guys have kind of gotten further and further into that relationship. Yeah, it's good, man. He and I, we were sitting on Zoom meetings like this in February of COVID before he's getting drafted, right? So we've been together for a long time. And I think there's a trust that's been established there of like, because he's, number one, he's incredibly intelligent and and he's also as like a lot of intelligent people like you don't just tell him what we're going to do you tell him why we're going to do it and um it's it's convincing him of the why you know and i think over the years like we like he's probably to a point where like i still feel like i need to do that and he might tell you like no i trust him like if he tells me that this is the right way to play this game or this is how we need to read this out or this is the adjustment we need to make like I hope he feels that way I still explain to him why because I I know like I'm a lot more motivated and I have more clarity of purpose when I know why and I believe in why and that part of it I think is central to my coaching style I'm always going to be that way I think and I hope he appreciates that but yeah man it's like you know it's it's because there's a million ways to solve problems and you got to solve them in a way that accentuates the strengths of your players.

1:06:21And the big thing I talked to him about, and I believe this with young quarterbacks and as they evolve, you move from a point in your career, you always have to have an answer, a singular answer to whatever you're presented with. The goal is to move from an answer to the best answer. and it's that process of understanding holistically what the defense is doing when they present you an issue here that means they've created an issue for themselves over here and how do we exploit those things and do it responsibly to where we're mitigating as much risk as we can mitigate and then we're attacking where we should be attacking um and just like that whole process like he's involved in that you know like he's he's great at giving feedback and hey i don't I know we're thinking this, but can't we just do this instead?

1:07:14Why again do you want me to, you know, like those are the conversations that are always happening. And the goal is that when we kick off on Sunday, he's a full believer in what we're asking him to do.

1:07:24Robert Mays: So let's go back to that Tuesday meeting where you guys are in a spot where you're meeting as a staff and you're trying to bring everything together. The fact that, and this is true based on people I've talked to, and I've probably talked to eight or 10 guys in preparation for this. And it's different in every building, right? Like there are some places where the run game, like it used to be with you guys, is one person. It's one person in a dark room and they come out and they have the tablets and they're giving them to you guys. There are some buildings where they're pods, right? You have a run game pod, you have a pass game pod.

1:07:52Robert Mays: They meet separately and then it all comes together. Because those two are not talking to one another as that ideation process is happening. But at some point you have to tie those things together. The runs and the passes have to be formationally tied together. The play actions have to be tied together. The protections have to be tied together. What does that process look like of taking two distinct plans and making sure that they have enough overlap and enough connection where it forms a cohesive game plan? Well, I mean, I think truthfully, a lot of that process is what we're doing right now.

1:08:23And like what we do through the offseason of like, when you're putting together the offense without the time constraints of a game plan week, I think you can spend more time and you can be more discerning about like what fits with what. And like, that's really the goal of the off season. It's like, as you're installing, hey, this family of runs matches with this family of protections, matches with this family of keepers, which we like these three or four past concepts off of. So it's almost like when you get to the game planning process, the goal isn't, hopefully you're not like creating a bunch of stuff out of thin air.

1:09:02Like there's gonna, there are gonna be things that you see and like, hey, we don't, you know, should we be should we be doing this like you know you see that the OS is that happened in the league got people having success with this but you don't like those are those are one-offs two-offs like so like the the marriage part I I think like it's it's not that like every week is like oh my god we got to tie this together now it's like well you just got to make sure like if we're if we're pulling from this shelf and the run game and this shelf and the run game like well we already kind to know what goes with those things.

1:09:33And so, um, you know, why you start with the run game as far as like how the process goes typically, I think, well, I think you just start with normal downs. The, the, the run game is the thing like from, you're going to have to have ruled and formated and motioned to exploit front structures and, um, you know, pressure tendencies and coverage tendencies. And then, then you, then, you know, you're really trying to marry the play action game, the screen game, the movement game with those things, because you're trying to make it all look the same with the defense. Right. I mean, that's, that's the goal is, is that, you know, you, you're not tipping your hand before you've snapped the football based on how you've aligned.

1:10:17And through all this, like Zach, he's, he's still very much like, Hey, this is how we need to play this game. We have to be, we have to carry A, B, and C. You know, he's going to come with his own, like, these are, these are in guys, you know, and then look at the stuff that maybe we've come up with and, and thumbs up, thumbs down, sideways thumb, you know, that's kind of how it goes.

1:10:43Robert Mays: And I mean, the fact that he's in both of those, right, like in these like bigger kind of the whole staff and then a smaller portion of the staff, that's not even necessarily a given. I I mean, there are some head coaches that are further removed from the process even than that. Or when they meet on Tuesday, I mean, I've talked to people with teams that it'll just be the head coach and the offensive coordinator. Those will be they'll meet together on Tuesday kind of after everything else has happened. And so the fact that Zach is in those meetings on Tuesday, he actually probably has more touch points and earlier in the process and what you guys are putting together than even some head coaches do in other buildings.

1:11:17Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's again, it's like, that's the, that's the juggle that you have as the head coach, right. Is, is it's kind of the, it's the conundrum of all of these positions in the league of, of like what you did really well at your previous position that may have earned you the opportunity at this next position may not be what you need to be good in this next position. You know what I mean? Or it's tangentially related, but it's not the main, the meat of what you need to be good at. So, you know, Zach, he's, he's, he's really good schemer. He's a really good play caller.

1:11:52He can do all, he, he could be doing all this stuff himself too, but you know, the realities of the role are just, he's going to get pulled away in different directions. So, but yeah, I mean, he's, he's as involved as he possibly can be, you know, like that's the biggest difference in your job as the person coming down with a third,

1:12:09Robert Mays: between being the quarterback coach and the coordinator is just the amount of time and energy you can spend on one specific thing. There's no way at this point, if you wanted to spend eight hours coming up with any sort of part of the game plan, you could close your door and do that. Like that's just never gonna be possible when you're the coordinator. I would say that's that. And the other thing I would just say is like the management and the communication and the motivation's a bad word because you're dealing with all highly motivated, self-driven people. but like the people part of this. That's probably that and like just the time constraints that are real are probably the two biggest things you got to get used to.

1:12:56Like this is a, you are managing people, talented people, very talented people, much the same way as you're managing talented players. Like you are responsible for the management of a group of anywhere from probably nine to 13 people as you look across the league in terms of how big, you know, staff on one side of the ball is. And that's a significant responsibility. And you have to, that has to matter to you. Like that can't just be like some offshoot of the job that, oh, I have to deal with every now and then because your staff's not going to like you. And if they don't like you, they're not, they're not going to be the best versions of themselves and give you quality work, which in turn is going to affect the ability of your team to win.

1:13:38So like, that's, that's a big part of, of the job.

1:13:42Robert Mays: The other people oriented part of this that I find super interesting is the process of if Zach is going to be kind of the pruner, right? If that's what the head coach's role in a lot of this is where you guys bring him 120 % of the plan, he cuts down what he doesn't think fits over time. When you work with people, that process becomes streamlined because you understand what he's going to like and what he's not. And I think that's one of the benefits of working with somebody on a multi-year level and bunch of people have communicated that to me. But what I find so interesting is the tension between making it a streamlined process, but also making sure you have a diversity of ideas.

1:14:18Robert Mays: And in talking to, I've talked to Sean McVay about this specifically, and he, the word that he used and the phrase he used, what I thought was so interesting was the offensive coordinator for him is like a thought partner, right? Like that's what, that's how he sees many people who have cycle through that job. And you want alignment, but you also want dissent. Because if you don't have both of those things, then it's either going to become stale or you're not going to get anything done. So as you've kind of worked with Zach over a multi-year period, how do you find that right middle ground of making sure you're bringing stuff to him that he's going to be open to, but also you guys aren't just rubber stamping everything and never growing in a way that a healthy amount of tension would allow you to grow.

1:15:00Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, it's critical. I mean, that dynamic you just laid out is, um, it takes time to grow that. I mean, I think, you know, Zach, I think would tell you, and I, and I, you know, I've heard him say it publicly. He's told me privately, like he, he does, he's been able to maybe relinquish some of the, um, you know, just like day to day, hour to hour control of the process to me because of the, he does, he knows like there are going to be things that I just know, like not worth our time. Right. Like, and those are usually the things that he and I are like in complete alignment on because we have lived experience.

1:15:40That's, that's, that's taught us that. Right. And, and it, so like that's valuable from an efficiency standpoint um the danger there to your point is if there is there is no give and take in in the process where it's like this is just what we do no i know zach's not gonna like that we're not doing that but where i think the relationship that he and i have is healthy is like there are a lot of things that he and i like there's plenty we see eye to eye on there's plenty that like we we might not be on opposite ends of the spectrum of but like we certainly have like contrasting opinions on things and and he's such a good guy like our relationship has grown to the point where like we can have very open and honest like he knows i'm not calling him an idiot he's not calling me an idiot but i'm like hey listen like i don't know that we should do this or like why the hell aren't we doing more of this and and like he's gonna say The same thing to me.

1:16:42And it might just be he and I in the room together. Like it comes up all the time when we get to the end of the week and we're talking about how do we want to start a game? What are, you know, what are the things we got to, you know, account for on the first drive, on the first play on the first, you know, like, and there's always give and take during that. And it happens in the game plan process as well. So it's like, I just think I know part of my job is to disagree with him. and I think I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't. And I think I have enough savvy to do it in a way that protects our working relationship and our personal relationship.

1:17:22And Zach's a very easy guy to do that with because he's a good person and he wants to win football games and he wants to put people that work for him in position to help do that. So, but yeah, it's something we think about.

1:17:34Robert Mays: Last thing I wanted to ask you. So another coordinator I was talking to, you know, described it as this. He's like, I do everything that a normal offensive coordinator would do calls plays except call the plays. I help build the game plan. I help, you know, curate everything. I'm presenting the game plan to the team when we're in those settings. I'm doing the after action stuff with the staff on Monday. The only thing I do not do is relay the play to the quarterback on Sunday. So if you're not relaying the play to the quarterback on Sunday, what are you doing on Sunday? like what is your game day role how does that actually manifest you know it's it's funny man because it's like i'll preface this by saying like communicating to the quarterback on sunday is an incredibly important job like full stop there's no i believe that that's why that's why i happen to think it's smart from a continuity standpoint and from a communication standpoint to have if you are an offensive head coach and you are good at that like I'd be I'd want to do that too you know what I mean like that's so that makes all the sense in the world to me um and I do much like whoever told you what you just communicated like I feel the same way I do everything that offensive coordinator does I'm just not the guy on Sunday talking to the quarterback in the helmet, but I am very influential on Sunday as are some of our other coaches.

1:19:01And, and I think again, that's very going to be unique to every building, like unique to every play caller. Some guys want hardly any input on Sunday, right? They want like clarity and let me, let me process, think, speak. And if I want, if I want information, I'll ask for it. Right. That's kind of one way to go about it. Some, some guys like we happen to exist in Cincinnati, like there's a cadence of information that gets communicated throughout the entirety of the football game. And it's always in an effort to stay two and three steps ahead of the game and help present the play caller with options and information so that as soon as the previous play is over, we can be start communicating that, especially if you're a team that's going to substitute a lot and you're going to like time is of the essence, right?

1:19:54So like, it's all about setting the table so that you can stay two, three steps ahead as often as possible. And then use information to inform decision-making, you know, uh, use your game management information, use your, hey, you know, four down territory information, use all that stuff to inform play calling. And, And so that's a big part of what I do. And it's really just an ongoing dialogue. It's knowing when to speak, when to shut up, when to, you know, what information to give and when to give it. That's what I'm doing. And am I talking to the quarterback? No. Am I influencing the plays that are getting called?

1:20:38Yes. That's the job.

1:20:41Robert Mays: Well, I've already taken up too much of your time and you're an incredibly busy man. And I sincerely appreciate the insight on this. I'm sure a lot of other people will as well. So thank you very much for the time and we'll catch up soon. Absolutely, man. Thank you. 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. We'll see you next time.

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