What analytical trends and rule changes tell us about the 2026 season

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2:06Robert Mays: Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Really enjoyed today's show and excited for you guys to hear it. We're on the eve of the season now, and I really wanted to do something about some of the analytical things to keep in mind. the situational decision-making things that have really crept into how the league is going to feel this year and the person I wanted to have that conversation with has done some fantastic work in this space since he became a member of the media essentially over the last couple months that's Ryan Paganetti who was with the Raiders last year in a coach analyst role had been with the Jaguars and the Eagles before that somebody who has spent a ton of time thinking about all this situational stuff and what the right decisions are as you're weighing all the different variables And so we dug into a lot of stuff today, how teams are using motion, how teams should be thinking about fourth downs, how often you should be hunting explosive plays versus making sure that you're gaining the yard you need on third and one.

2:59Robert Mays: A lot of fun stuff on this show. Enjoyed digging into all of it. Let's get to that conversation right now.

3:14Robert Mays: for our last show before we start really digging into division previews and looking at specific teams heading into the season i wanted to have one more big picture conversation and i wanted to have it with somebody that i think has been doing some really interesting work over the last month or so since he i was gonna say dipped his toe jumped headfirst into the new media world that he is a part of. Ryan Paganetti, I want you to explain to the people first before we get into this conversation who you are and what you have done over the last few years, just to give them a little bit of context about your background.

3:44Yeah, so I entered the league in 2015 with the Eagles. And then, you know, I was there for Chip Kelly's last year. And then for Doug Peterson's five years, I was sort of in this coaching analytics hybrid role where I was doing the game management. So I was on the headset communicating kind of like when to go for fourth downs and two-point conversions and timeouts and challenges and whatnot and like um and then I also I was actually part of the defensive staff with Jim Schwartz for that time frame and so I got a little bit of attention because you know we went for a lot of fourth downs with coach Peterson we went for a lot of controversial two-point plays like we had the you know the Philly special and all these moments kind of in the Super Bowl and then I was I was in Jacksonville for a few years I kind of was inspired to it was really cool to be a part of the first Super Bowl with the Eagles and I kind of wanted to try to repeat that with a new team and you know I was there you know and really on the little bit more on the front office side there and then this last year I was with the Eagles or sorry I was with the Raiders and uh you know as part of the coaching staff as with the uh made up title that Pete made up called head coach research specialist and I really I really had an amazing time there you You know, like Vegas is awesome.

4:53Like I feel for that organization because it's been like 23 years or something since they've won a playoff game and only a couple appearances, but they're heading in the right direction. And, you know, they had a nice comeback win last night. That was pretty cool to watch, just kind of how things played out there. And I'd love to see them, you know, kind of get on track. And I feel it's tough to win in that division. There's no doubt with the, you know, you could, Clint could do an amazing job. And unfortunately, like you're going up against some Hall of Fame coaches, Hall of Fame talents, and it's a big challenge.

5:21But, you know, I think, you know, the Mendoza era is going to be exciting. And I think, you know, for the first time in a long time, like the era was like really pointing up for that organization.

5:33Robert Mays: I'm excited to see what they do this year. I mean, I think even looking at that preseason game last night, we're recording this on Friday afternoon. The second wave of players, you can just sense like the lack of draft success they've had over the last like three or four years. Like it just even if the young guys in the last two drafts start to pop their heads out a little bit, It's just not a very deep team. It's still not a very talented team. And that's okay. Right? I mean, we're truly at stage one again with them figuring out who they are and where they want to go. And so that's your background before this offseason.

6:01Robert Mays: What are you up to now just so people can be on the lookout for the work that you're doing? So, you know, like I live the life of, you know, wake up at 530 in the morning and going to work. And then, like, you know, I leave at 930 on a Monday. And, like, coaches are, like, literally making fun of me for leaving early. and like then repeat that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, like zero days off, like have a life, like, you know, be with your, uh, you know, family, be with your partner, like all those different things. I'm like, what am I doing at some point? And like it, I was a little bit more motivated to kind of go this route in part just because I've been a part of some recent kind of lack of success, I guess you could say.

6:42And like, it's that, that whole like time commitment is more I guess reasonable when your team is succeeding and so anyway like people thought like my story was a little bit unique and cool and I hear you know from either former players or just like people that have say been a scout and gone into the media world and whatnot like and I'm like I would love to try to take a stab at this in the from like the sort of football analytics and research type world so really like right at the end of June I kind of announced I'm going this routes and I've just sort of been posting a lot of research that I've sort of had have had bottled up on the team side for a long time and a lot of it's kind of gotten some attention and you know I'm getting like random follows from head coaches and hall of famers and I actually I think this year I'm going to have a bunch of different sort of consulting relationships and even some of these broadcasters are asking me to sort of help them get ready for their games which I think has been like a really cool it's a really cool process for me to sort of still be involved in the week to week but also just like actually have a life and uh and not feel overwhelmed in your teams like 2 and 14 and this December and all that so I'm excited for this and like I'm you know I'm on I'm on uh Twitter and it's good that's kind of gotten a lot of attention I kind of just started the YouTube world as well and I uh there's all these different topics I'd like to kind of hit on that I never really got to talk to talk about when you because you're basically shut out when you're when you're a team employee and like you you can't say anything so i'm enjoying it you know like the opportunity to kind of interact with different people like yourself and others in the

8:17Robert Mays: media space it's been great you threw out some really interesting stuff just little nuggets and subject areas on twitter that i found interesting i mean the the idea of making sure we have 50 50 uh propositions when it comes to play calling run pass situationally and some of the stuff ben Johnson's doing. The work that you did about the Patriots end of game, end of half work and like how they would bleed out the clock and the run rates with a certain amount of time left just to make sure they were getting the last possession. It's actually funny. I was talking to a coach on my training camp tour and he was discussing that he had once done a project about that.

8:51Robert Mays: And I was like, oh yeah, this guy was just literally talking about this on social media yesterday. And he was kind of like, oh man, really? I thought that's something I was, I had thought about that maybe other people weren't. And so you struck a nerve with some of the things that you've thrown out there. And I wanted to spend some time today just giving you an opportunity to fill up a couple of those buckets. Like as we sit here on the eve of the season, what are a couple areas of interest, curiosity of yours that you feel like are going to be particularly notable as we watch analytical and situational decision-making unfold for this NFL season?

9:25Robert Mays: I had a couple little like pet cat subjects that I wanted to talk to you about. But for the most part on this show, I kind of wanted to give you the floor to explore some of the things that you find most interesting as we sit about two weeks from the season here. So where do you want to start this conversation? Yeah, I'd say one area that I think is the public space talks about motion usage, for example. And like you see like a positive effect in many, you know, regards there. But there's there's a little bit more nuance there. And there's just from like having some data on the team side and being able to classify different things.

10:02There is a world where like, say, like multiple motion events or like a shift than a motion or what people like Liam Kohn are doing are they're, you know, initiating motions or shifts to to really gather information on what you're doing. and then he has this like the whole drama that he had with robert salad was like it really was based on that he's he's doing something to quickly gather information and then kill the play and different teams would do that just like formationally and maybe a little bit with motions but he's really really leaning into that and like say a player initiates a jet motion and then stops after a few steps and then they and then they're going to assess like okay how did you react did like you boss the linebackers over did you rotate the safeties did somebody run and then they're going to audible you know and i think um that's a whole world where more specific nuance of like the motions i think could be like discussed in the public sphere a little bit more like is it receivers moving is it tight ends like is it ben johnson was the king of tight end shifts so like to give you a perspective like he had so many snaps with a guy lined up outside or changing strength and whatnot he still is like in there these guys are gathering information on you and if you're defensively not doing a good job disguising which that's a whole other narrative we could talk about like you really the disguise rates are really skyrocketed and then the teams that are succeeding they're sort of sitting there in these two high shells and not giving you good information but it's sort of as as things have evolved this sort of time period before the snap it's like you can really mine for all this different information like okay we split out a guy out wide like did a seat that was a tight end did a safety go out with him with a linebacker did they stay too high did they did they get out of a blitz did they change passing strength like there's so many different areas there and i tried to spend a lot of time on that and you know on the team side in the last couple years because i sort of felt like it was like a code breaker and like world war ii like you could just that would be the area like rather than fourth downs or qb sneaks or two-point conversions where some of these things like are already really being pushed like you know i used to bug everybody about quarterback sneaks way back when i was with the eagles and i think we ultimately led the league in sneaks i think from 17 to 20 but um and then that's just taken like i don't even call the tosh bushes sneaks because i think it's like it's actually screwing up all the conversion rates of sneaks because it's actually bringing down the absolute conversion rate because you're declaring to like everybody in the building everybody who's watching at a bar like this is what play we're running yeah and so like and like the defenses are making up these crazy things like floors is a good guy laying on the ground there's like people lined up sideways you know um a couple of different people have suggested that the lions and a couple other teams down the stretch had these interesting nuances of like how they were attacking the shoulders of different linemen um and like second level defenders sort of like down the stretch last year there was a a decrease in the in the tosh push effectiveness but um i also i watch a lot of college football and i've seen so many different teams try to copy that um and it's it they don't have the eagle line they didn't have jeff stoutland teaching the technique and like they maybe just got one rep of it and walked through on a thursday and then they get out there on a saturday or sunday and it's like it doesn't look good like and when that play looks bad it looks like really bad and so i also find it amusing like you know we we had jason so jason kelsey's doing the broadcast or you know he's involved with the ESPN process and we we the Raiders played the Cowboys in the middle of the year last year and I was just like talking to him before the game and he's like yeah this play is getting banned and it was like because at the time there was so much negativity on the tush push just because um there was like the the Chiefs game that like guys were jumping early and then there was like the I think the Giants had a game where it was um they ripped the ball out but the play was blown dead and like they're like we can't officiate this anymore it's just stupid but then the eagles like didn't have success down the stretch so everyone just stopped talking about it it wasn't brought up again i think that's so amusing how the nfl works like that because if you if you pulled the people in the league you pulled the media like week seven of last year it probably would have said like 88 of people would say this thing is getting banned and i want it banned and because the eagles weren't doing it to like win a super bowl or have success down the stretch everyone's like all right we're just going to not talk about that anymore um yeah i because even the i mean the seahawks won the super bowl it didn't come up in the super bowl but they were doing it with a tight end i thought that was kind of a cool and nuance and then even that sort of world where there i believe there was something like 46 non-quarterback snakes last year which was like the highest in recent years i used to be anti having a non-quarterback sneak it because i'm like they're the operations messed up the fumble rates are a little bit higher a lot I'm sure you've probably seen there for a number of years most of the non-quarterback sneaks were like last second a tight end would just like motion over and like get under and it was kind of even worse because

15:03Robert Mays: then you're hurrying the process and it's even more likely that you're going to have like a devastating mistake in that moment yeah and so that population of the rushed ones was terrible so I used to be like I'm against this whatever but then I started my sort of nuanced like moved off of that i'm like well if you're adamant you're not going to do it with your starter i was talking to somebody about this today it's like well kyler murley kyler murray doesn't apparently like running sneaks or have much experience doing it does jj mccarthy have a role does some tight end have a role you know like that like there's going to be different teams where it's a discussion um but even the game last night like there was a highly pivotal sneak that i actually thought was kind of crazy because if you know for people that didn't watch the game the the clock was running with about 17 18 seconds on first and goal at the one the Raiders had no timeouts and they went with a sneak with a no Connell the play was initially stopped and then a tight end who was like off the ball kind of like ran behind Aiden and started to push him but it was total chaos you couldn't see if he got in he ended up getting in but like the game was going to end if he was short because there was not enough time and there was like players at the bottom of the pile with their helmets off and um i think you're this last year there was something like 342 sneaks and back in say 2016 there were 70 in the league so like that's going to remain a huge topic um drives me so crazy it drives me so crazy and i love the fact that you're so vocal and adamant about this because this has been one of my pedestals for so long when you were talking i was looking i wanted to figure out my history when it comes to like the QB sneak and how vocal I've been about this.

16:40Robert Mays: In 2020, just a random tweet. I was like, we as a society have to embrace the quarterback sneak. I have always been one of these people where it reminds me a lot of the meme with a bell curve meme where you have like the Cro-Magnon person on one side and then you have the guy that's like losing his mind in the middle and then the enlightened person on the end. You need a yard. Just sneak it is what's on both sides. and you represent the man who has thought about this more than anyone and you still at the end of the day like just sneak the ball and so i'm so glad that as a analytical and like uh process based society we are getting to a place where we understand the most efficient way to get one yard is to put a man underneath the center and have him sneak the ball forward for one yard because to me it was the most obvious and apparent thing about professional football for like a decade i uh once you see all like i i basically you know whatever we went for the most fourth downs at two boy conversions whatnot like i made this like my like life obsession back in say 2015 16 i was like i needed to find out exactly what the bottlenecks are why teams are not doing this and it was the initial pushback was quarterback injuries it was like one of every four like that was what was told to me on the team side it was actually one of every 491 sneaks resulted in injury which is once every five seasons once every five years yeah and there was a stretch of seven years without one now there have been some high profile ones like Mahomes got a little injury say in set some sometime before they don't do them anymore that's actually been an issue for them at least prior to this last year they were they were kind of struggling in short yardage um but the other one was like you can only do it when it's under a yard that's actually like it was like a myth busters project it was like that's a hoax like most of them actually gain more tom brady actually had this is a crazy stat something like 82 of his career sneaks when it was not on the one yard line gained at least two yards and he and like everyone's like you you can only do it when you have jalen hurts who can squat 600 like i don't no offense to tom he can't squat 600 i promise you like i don't know that was my other thing is i i said something like i think last year i was like You may not believe this, but quarterback sneaks were an incredibly effective play before the tush push exists.

18:54Robert Mays: They were an incredibly effective play. So I'm glad that we both believe in this. I want to go back to the motion thing really quickly because I'm very curious about this. I think that there are two different buckets I want to take here. The first is I was talking about this with an offensive coach two days ago or three days ago on this trip. We were discussing how the motion environment around the NFL in, let's say, 2017 compared to what it is right now. Because when all this stuff started getting introduced and we started living in a more motion-heavy world, it was a lot of the McVay under-centered jet stuff when you pair it with like an outside zone running game.

19:32Robert Mays: And if you go back and you watch the examples back then, any jet motion, two or three defensive players are moving when that jet motion is happening. And it was just a way to get defenses completely out of sorts. I mean, you're just getting them out of string before the plays even snapped. And then over time, defenses stopped moving, right? They stopped reaction to those motions in the same way because they understood what sort of advantage it was giving the offense by just displacing people before the snap. And so I think defenses have started moving less, and it's made those motions less important.

20:06Robert Mays: The information-gathering motions, defenses have started to play with those expectations as well. Like you just said, all right, if we're going to line up a tight end or a running back at number one on third down and they would walk a linebacker out there, it's man, right? Well, now defenses who understand that expectation have started toying with that and they'll play zone coverage while they do things like that. And so I think the displacement motions and the information gathering motions and the way that we used to understand them aren't quite as effective based on how defenses have started to respond to that.

20:39Robert Mays: so I'm curious what you think taking all that into account are the most effective information gathering types of motion that you have seen teams consistently use well over the last couple years yeah so like that's a great point with the running back one has been like it was like a it was like when people play like call duty or something and this gun's too good and they have to like push an update to like normalize it like the the running back one lining him up a wide has been like patched because it's like easy to kind of just fake that or like bring send a linebacker out or somebody or safety and then bring it back in and actually do something different or just play zone when he's out there the tight end nuances are more complicated especially when you're in like 12 personnel and it's like okay well we can disguise one of these potentially but if you start moving multiple tight ends around it's hard to like basically disguise multiple things which i think is why you end up seeing more and more teams just like whatever we're going to be a too high defense that plays cover four like or cover six like because that it's like a universal solution to some of that stuff and um like nuances like uh you know over the years uh say you put a a tight end like say you have a three by one and the tight end is at two instead of instead of one in terms of the most outside guy like well then you have to put in certain rules there and it's like if you have say a slot a receiver lined up as the number three player and then a tight end as the number two and then a receiver is the number one like there's there's always something that you can mess around with it a little bit you saw like in recent years buffalo was like spamming these running back kind of burst out motions where like the back would just sprint out he'd begin to sprint out and then josh would check it based off of the reactions but they're doing it on third down with ty johnson all the time in order to get protection tells that was like a huge part of what they were doing a couple years ago yeah and so so the demeanor of the player actually going fast makes it harder to disguise if that makes sense like yeah because like you you really like you like you can't just like oh lollygag around be like oh we'll send a linebacker out it's like no like they actually he might just go and so I think you see more of that and also even in the core of the formation like things like it's like an off ball tight end and he begins to jet across and then resets or you know things of that nature where it's like oh here comes change of strength motion just kidding no it's not like they're things that if it's changing the runner path strength and quickly like especially when these teams have like oh we have a run blitz to you know and this is how we set the front and like all shine you can't necessarily do that and um that obviously has created more of these defenses that are trying to do like what you said that they're moving less and less but then i think there's like a counterpunch where it's like okay well if they're not going to move then then it's like we start to we start three by one bring a guy across they didn't move okay well let's bring another guy across because like you could just say that's a shift and then bring another one and all of a sudden they're not moving and you have a numbers advantage and you're seeing these things like swing screens and stuff like that sometimes when people just have like a numbers thing but there's there's so many variables taking place before the snap and even in this like player tracking error there's different people trying to like use the player tracking data to try to classify whatever information like beyond is it manner zone like is this are they did they just give away that they're blitzing because the nickel didn't travel or like did they do this because the nickels lined up into the boundary or there's so many different variables that you can sort of mine there and even the best coaches there there's oftentimes something that it just kind of like breaks their defense if you just like try it and like so it's part of the job of these offensive coaches to sort of figure what figure out what that is um and i think that's like a super cool area where like you can really lean into data and trying to study you know a million different things and um i think as particularly with you know the rams having so much success offensively i still stand by i thought the rams were the best team last year obviously it didn't play out with them winning the super bowl but man don't say that in public that day will come for you they uh yeah like they they won the fake super bowl of my advanced stats but like they obviously have a good seat you know good team this year and i really wonder i don't think i was talking to jim schwartz about this i don't think people give enough attention it's but all these fantasy football people are always asking me like who should i take who should i take whatever people don't give enough credit to like when the the defense is really good for that team it it increases the offensive production because they get so many more drives so like the the the stat that was kind of crazy is like over the last number of years the the browns defense was so good that the browns offense had like 50 more drives than any other team and they were still really bad but it's like and then because that's why like schwartz is now all in on expected points because he was kind of getting screwed because he was facing more drives than anybody because you had to incept him into believing in advanced stats because the normal ones weren't working for him anymore because it was too good i absolutely love that like well but there was like a force he's like i'm sick and tired of these like forced fumbles interceptions and like the other team starting at the at the plus 18 he's like i could do a great job here like hold it a field goal but It's like that's an expected point win, but it's like I gave up three points.

26:08So, like, I think that's an interesting world where you're getting more coaching receptiveness to some of these advanced stats because they have, like, certain pet peeves that are, like, sort of actually that those stats actually account for better.

26:23Robert Mays: The motion stuff is I love what you said because that's I've really been interested in that. And again, because I love that the idea of like kind of playing with the trope of more motion equals good. And it's like, well, it depends what you're using it for, because the environment that you're using it in has changed so much. And that point about, well, if they're not going to move, you can use that to your advantage, because then if you are, you can move. And so if you're moving enough and you're moving in the right ways, you can start to build in advantages for yourself. And so I think change of strength on running plays specifically is one that really sticks out.

26:58Robert Mays: Like the Niners are a team that you think about, like think about all of those kind of slam motions that they use with the fullback. I think we'll see a lot of teams start leaning into that stuff a little bit more for exactly the reasons that you're saying. And the formation stuff, that's another one that really jumps out because I think it's a few different areas. if you can change the formation really quickly before the play, you're changing the picture for the defense very fast. But I think some of the best defenses in the league right now, there's so many formation checks and adjustments that are being built into these defensive systems that if you're changing the formation immediately before the play to create something else, you're playing with the check system that some of these defenses have.

27:40Robert Mays: And so that to me is really where it is. Like, can we very quickly change the strength right before the play happens for exactly the reasons that you said? If we're setting the front a certain way for a run blitz, all the mechanics to defend the rung out of these light boxes. If we can try to play with some of that stuff very quickly and then change formationally what we're doing. If we're living in a world where there are more formation checks and adjustments than there have ever been defensively. That's one of the ways that offenses can kind of start to steal back the advantage that they have lost over the last couple of years.

28:10yeah like uh i i i always i've been like a defensive coach but i've i've always had a little bit more enjoyment sitting in on some different offensive meetings or coming with offense ideas because you kind of can be creative and have the first mover advantage versus defensively you're just crafting the best response to whatever they do and it's like you're writing code almost like if this then this if this then this and in some cases your your statement becomes too long and like what you said like so i've been a part of defenses where we set rules where it's like we'll change we'll change we'll reset the front one time but we're not going to reset the front multiple times because it's just like a fire drill because we just have seven guys moving it's like here's our strong side linebacker and our weak side and our three tech and our what you know and so like there you can but but once you figure that out about a defense you can fit you can exploit that like okay if we move the bat say we're in gun and it's offset and we move the back and he floats people some people call it foot like he float he comes across and he's now he's on the other side well a lot of these teams in gun are setting the three technique away from the back because it like helps slow down the run game now not everybody but like so say if the rules of your defense is we're going to set the the four down front three technique away from the back and he moves across okay we reset okay well why can't the offense just it's a quick move why can't he just go back are they gonna if do they reset again if they didn't reset then you now you have more favorable running lanes if like you're you know trying to run against an under front or whatever and if they do move you can just do it again like there's like a whole world where you could like lean into a lot of these things um and then but i think like you said there is there's a little bit of a population particularly offensive line guys that don't like all the motion stuff because it's too many moving parts and they're like don't just motion because there's some random table or graph on Twitter that says to motion.

30:05Because if you move all these pieces at the snap and we're trying to worry about our angles or how we're making our B block or we're getting up to the second level, and we don't even know where these guys are because they're moving, it actually makes the job of the linemen harder. So that's an interesting kind of world I've seen people sort of criticize, at least in the offensive line space, because also they're dealing with enough with these defenses. There's like more movement than ever before with like stunts and whatnot. And they're just even trying to make rules for that. And they're like, well, we got to deal with the stunts and we got to deal with the second level moving.

30:35And like, there's too much, there's too many moving parts on some of this stuff.

30:38Robert Mays: Well, what I think is interesting about that, and I don't know if this is a cause of the movement that we've seen back to this world, but more and more teams are doing this. Are we going to see, is that one of the reasons or one of the benefits to all of these teams going back to a wide zone world that they had drifted away from in the last three or four years? If there's going to be all of these aiming point questions and everything else, Are we going to be in a place where it's just like, just fire off the ball, just fire off the ball. And whoever crosses your face, instead of having this, like the Eagles are the perfect example of this, where I had such a good conversation with Jordan Maulato when I was in Philly, and he was describing to me the way that they used to play when Stalin was there.

31:14Robert Mays: and he was saying to me that it was almost like doing algebra before the play where you're having to change all these aiming points and when it when you when you have there are advantages to playing that way like they they reaped those advantages for a very long time if you can solve the problem you can just bulldoze people but if that problem becomes harder to solve because you have all this movement is it just easier to play in a simpler way and i think we've seen i mean i'm maybe five six teams this year in part because going under center is pushing them this direction but i think there's been a lot of talk as i've talked to teams at training camp about tapping back into more of a wide zone world and i think some of that movement that you're talking about defensively is one of the potential reasons that it makes sense to re-embrace that stuff as we've drifted away from it a little yeah there there's been a split for a long time where um like in the under center world running that a lot of these guys were like robots and they wanted to run at the lesser technique in the inside so they wanted to run to the a gap defender so like the d if the d line was in a three technique in like a shade or two i or whatever they just like they'd be like all right let's just run this play to the two i and um it part of it was because the data actually showed like if you were trying to run it like an under center wide zone two or three technique the penetration that it created there's usually a nine technique a lot of cases like that caused problems and one thing that i think has changed a little bit and you see ben johnson doing this and mcveigh's doing this a little bit and some of these other teams they're not afraid of running those wide zones to like the run strength side but now it's sort of there's like more there's a there's more of an ability to sort of outflank the defense because they're lined up with like 12 or 13 and they're just creating like a four or five man surface and and as long as they can basically it's it's you know the the angle is a little bit wider they can get past the three technique that would sometimes reroute the play and but this last year i saw more runs that just completely got the edge like it was almost like high school football particularly with the rams and they just would run like a wide zone at a five man surface whether there was 13 personnel or 11 where they would have like the tight splits and they would just outflank people and like they had an unbelievable run season and i know ben has been a you know a guy who's not afraid to do that as well in terms of running at like like that was always a tendency with different coaches like schwartz for example that he was totally on top of it's like well i kind of i kind of understand where your wide zones are going because of like i can sort of figure out with your what your rules are and so being sort of a hybrid and and uh like not predictive just like the run past sentences like not being obvious on like which direction you're going when you're in under center like there's a huge benefit there where like really the ball can go anywhere there and like you said just like I could sit here I'm a big numbers person I want like my team to be as prepared as possible for everything that could happen there's like all sorts of different things that you can do schematically that could just like completely screw up a play with a puller or a play with two pullers and there's like that doesn't necessarily happen as much with like a wide zone concept um where there's like different areas where the play can hit and it's just simple and straightforward and then you can build off like the bootlegs and the play actions off of it as well so i think that's a super interesting world and i will say like the the wide zone world appears to be like there's some teams that are really good at it and there's some teams that say, hey, we're going to be a wide zone team this year.

34:49And they're like terrible at it. And that's so just keep an eye on that. Like even the 13 personnel thing, I think you're going to see some teams run way more 13 personnel this year. Some of them may have great success. And then some of them, it might be a disaster. Like I'd actually predict it's probably likely that there's some teams that try a lot of 13. And it's like, wait a minute, we were told that Sean McVay did this and you just automatically win the game. So like, it's a little bit more nuanced than that and um i think that's a trend to kind of keep an eye on um is like these i i'd say probably every staff watches these whoever was the highest scoring team whoever won the super bowl like you see these trends where people watch those in the offseason for ideas and of course mcveigh and clint kubiak and like the seahawks and rams like they were really high under center teams um and they both kind of leaned into differing versions of big personnel groups and so i think Those are totally going to be trends, but sometimes it's often imitated, never duplicated.

35:48You don't know exactly what the rules are, who has what, what's the technique of all the blocks. And so sometimes it kind of gets messy when people go all in on this copycat mentality.

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39:11Robert Mays: What was your next one? If motions was the first bucket, what's the next bucket that you wanted to chat about?

39:20I think, you know, I know you mentioned you want to talk about the kicking stuff.

39:26Robert Mays: Yeah, my thing is, it's a combination of a lot of things involved with the kicking stuff because I think that to me it's a combination of where we're starting field position, how good the kickers are, and the fourth down appetite just changing the way we think about down and distance considerations. And so I was looking up some of the numbers before we started. This number really jumped out to me. In 2023, there were 1 ,348 offensive drives that started at the minus 35 or closer, about 1 ,350. Last year, there were 1 ,990 of those drives. So we're talking about a third more. You're starting at the 35-yard line or better as an offense.

40:13Robert Mays: It's just a crazy increase compared to what it was even two years ago. Well, if you're starting at the 35-yard line, and we're at a place now where one of the other stats I looked up, so we had 89 field goals of 55-plus last year, with 63 % of them being made. We had 48 of those in 2023 with 58 % of them being made. So we're into a world where we're kicking twice as many 55-yard-plus field goals and being better at them while starting five yards, while starting drives the 35 or better, 33 % more of the time. So now let's do the math on that. You need to get to the plus 38 to kick a 55 yard field goal.

40:56Robert Mays: So that is what? 27 yards if you're starting field position is the minus 35. So you need to gain 27 yards in the NFL right now. If you have a decent kicker to be consistently in scoring range, that's just not a lot of yards. And so when you combine that with how often teams are going for it on fourth down, we had a 30 % go rate between the plus 45 and the minus 45 last year in the league. It was 26 % in 2023. So all of those things together, it just, to me, leads to a set of considerations for some of these teams and some of these offenses that still feels new. Like last year felt like a new world that we had entered when it comes to how you think about those scenarios.

41:42Robert Mays: And you know more about those numbers that I presumably do. I just think that all of these different considerations converging into one thing in that area of the field, it just feels like we can mine that for more efficiency and a better thought process and just talk about it more than we even were during last season. yeah I don't want to go too far back in history but when I first started doing like the fourth down modeling in the league the average starting field position was the 21 and so that's crazy when you're making a decision like what the score event results in like you make an assumption at least this is how I used to do it you know there's some debate on how to do it now but you assume like okay say the field goal is made or say you score the touchdown the opponent is starting somewhere around first and 10 from the minus 21 now that assumption is the is really the 30 or 31 and that from an expected point standpoint from a win probability standpoint that is totally different um the the the it actually devalues field goals a little bit further which is i think partly why you see you're seeing way more fourth and twos and fourth and threes that teams are going for over hitting the field goal because from a relative standpoint say it used to be like an expected points that a made a scored touchdown would be 6.6 points roughly and a made field goal would be worth like 2.6 and the idea of that meeting was say you made your field goal which is worth three and then the other team gets to start at the you know first intent at the minus 21 which is roughly say 0.4 points well now that that the ratio between 2.6 and 6.6 is different now because it's essentially a touchdown is almost worth six points because of the field position benefit of starting at your 30 and a field goal is almost worth two points so it's almost like essentially three times as valuable and like you know I hope I hope that the people at home don't make fun of me for that saying like actually it's seven and three like which I understand that like it's but there's some nuance to that as well and then early in the game like you can kind of look at it from an expected point standpoint but whatever they did with the balls this last year it was essentially the equivalent of like turning them into hot air balloons when it comes to the field goals and there's a company named track man that they're involved with the golf broadcast and they have they do all the baseball you know pitching and everything like that the spin rates and the speeds and whatnot they uh they have about eight or nine teams now they have jason meyers as like a client they have uh you know i've been a teams we signed up for their product and this thing is absolutely incredible in terms of what it does is essentially you just put this this device behind your kicker and your punter on on you know field goals and punts and practice and it will tell you exactly how how far the field goal would have been good from like how much movement it was left to right what the launch angle was with the you know anything you could ever imagine and they they had a study that they basically took like 2024 k balls and took these kickers and had them kick with the 2024 k ball and then the exact same session they switched to the 2025 k ball that they got to that they got to work on a ton with like the you know the equipment managers and whatnot and the ball was going four to five yards farther with the exact same kicker on the exact same day and so like that like like you said 2023 to now is like a extreme move but like it even from 2024 to 25 it was incredible and you know I was I was with you know Cam Little in practice in um in 2024 and like part of the reason we drafted him he was like the youngest kicker draft pick ever but he just had such a huge leg and like we were sort of banking on the idea that like he could even continue to improve because he was so young and it was sort of like these baseball and these basketball picks where they like taking the guys that are 18 19 years old because there's such a development curve well he was making kicks then on the device was saying good from 68 and that was before the balls were changed so this last year people were saying he was making kicks that the device was saying would be would have been good from 72 and so like you saw that last preseason he made one from 70 and then I was with the Raiders he literally set the record right in front of us so like they had they it was right before halftime they had like barely any time left and they were at their own 31 yard line and they completed a ball to exactly the 50 and like I can't believe we gave this up we ended up losing the game because of this play they complete a ball just to the 50 they sprint up there they they spike it with like one second left and then he goes and he makes a 68 yarder which was the official NFL record we ended up losing in overtime by one point I was like but it's like like careful what you wish for over there you created a monster yeah I mean he's he's he's probably gonna hit me over from like I actually want to see the Jaguars like fail on a third down in preseason this year at say like their own like 46 yard line or something because I want to see him try to attempt one from over 70 because even the one he made from 70 last preseason like it looks like it was like pretty comfortably in um but uh and even like so when the Bills played the Jaguars last year in the playoffs in the in the you know the Jaguars it's like you could just feel the energy you know they ended up having a turnover at the end of the game but you're like if they can just get anywhere close like cam little can just he might attempt him 75 i don't know like like like and it just it really changes everything where it's like in you know you mentioned like comfortable field goal range well there's like a nuance now like like i've worked with special teams coaches or head coaches and they're like well what is our field goal range in the first quarter and it's like well that depends because like there's like what does that mean does that mean you feel like it's going to go in 75 % of the time 50 % of the time does that mean that you have a chance because if you have Cam Little and Aubrey like then the field goal range is like 70 so it's like as long as we get to midfield like we could kick and it's like so there's nuance there there's there's there's a end of half like screw it range and then there's like what is the actual range that you feel comfortable with like on say like in the first quarter or the third quarter you know like when it's kind of in the normal flow of the game because obviously if you do miss a field goal from the 50, they move the ball eight yards back.

48:01So you could attempt one from the 50 if you really wanted to, or it's either seven or eight yards, but you miss it and the other team's going to start from the plus 42, plus 43 yard line. So it's really the defensive coordinators hate it. They want to go back to the old kicking balls. They want to go back to the old touchback rule. um i there's an interesting world now where like the kickers can become so valuable if you're one of the few guys that can like spray the kickoff and just like dump it somewhere in the landing zone you see guys have tried to do it and especially these last couple years like they've tried to do it really unsuccessfully um where like there's a couple guys that are good and they kick these like tim wakefield knuckleball kickoffs and you have no idea where it's going to go and then a couple guys try to do it it's like oh here this one's out of bounds oh this one landed at the 23 and now it's out the 40 so uh there's like an interesting world there where like you could even argue some teams might even if they could get a kicker that was that good at long field goals or that good at just the kickoffs like you could there's a world where you could just like they could be so valuable because it's almost like a if you're good at spraying those kickoffs it can basically be a 15 yard play you know like if you can just hit it somewhere in the landing zone and force them to start at the 20, you know, versus if your kicker is really bad at that and you have to either take touchbacks or what a lot of teams are doing is they're just kind of kicking it right to the goal line.

49:28And, and even then, like the balls from there are probably getting out to the 32, 33 yard line a lot of times. So there's a lot of nuance to it. It's, it's really interesting. The punters are excellent. They, you know, the punters doing good job of kind of playing keep away with the returners in a lot of cases and doing like directional punting and all that but um at the same time like the punting the total punt counts are so much less than what they used to be and that's probably going to continue where like they just the teams are just going for so many of those you know once it gets like the minus 40 they're going for like such a higher rate of a fourth down attempts that the punters kind of can just hang out and you know have a lot of drives or halves or whatever where they're just that they're not going to get involved.

50:12Robert Mays: What is your, in terms of taking all those things into account, starting from the minus 30 or 31, the idea that we are at a spot where 55-yard field goals, even for the average kicker, being made 63 % of the time at this point, you need two and a half first downs to be in field goal range. As you think about how all of those inputs should affect strategy and how offenses or teams operate, where does your mind go? Yeah, I think it just jumps out at the end of the half. And like, there's, you really want to have all these offensive and defensive plays to handle these like unique time remaining and unique timeout states at the end of the half.

50:49And you're like, okay, we need to get, it used to be like, we need to get to the, to the 39 to have a chance for our kicker. And, you know, it's just, there's a moving target. And like, you have to keep track of like, what's going on with the wind in this game? What's up with the weather? Like, you know, what's up with, you know, like the, the colder, the colder places that the dome. Like I, it's actually easier if you're in the booth to communicate that information in a dome because you don't have to worry about any of that stuff, like swirling winds and everything that could, you know, cause that can still have a huge impact.

51:22And it's weird because like offenses are getting better. They're going for more fourth downs. The field goals are getting better. So like there, there, there's like, rather than like things counteracting, like say kickers are getting worse or offenses are getting worse. It's like, no, they're both getting better. So it's like, how do you capture that? And then like you're, if you're using a 2026, like in-game model of like making decisions, you have to really even like come up with a kick curve that is using like almost incomplete data because you really probably only want to use, you want to rely heavily on what took place just in 2025 in terms of the actual range factor.

51:57but you also don't want to discount the previous years where like you say if you were going to try to come up with the best estimate of like how often a 40 yard field goes in it goes in a 45 or a 50 yard field goal like you really want to have a bigger sample than one year so it's not that many

52:12Robert Mays: kicks if you're trying to model something even if that you can acknowledge that the environment has changed drastically yeah like like oh i i have this like going into last year i'm like i have this great kicker model i spent you know two months working on it i feel like it's the best representation for every kicker and for the stadium effects and everything just kidding it doesn't matter anymore because the balls are going five years farther so like that happened to me last year and like um i i almost wonder like because i i don't know enough about the k-ball process of like messing around with the ball but like there actually might be a world where like there's certain team employees that are like unbelievably valuable that are good at like just scuffing up the ball.

52:52Robert Mays: That's real. I think that's real. We actually did a segment last year on the athletic show, which is the TV show I do with the company for Amazon. I don't think it ever aired. It was part of one of our pilots and Shane Graham came to the set and we did an entire segment on how they mess with the balls and what the actual equipment staff has to do to mess with the balls. But that was in the era where you only had half an hour before the game to do it. If you have all week. Yes, there are certain guys on staff where the kickers like that's my dude. Like I need him to be doing this and the sheer amount of shit you can do to that ball to smooth it out and get it to a place where it's just gonna absolutely fly off your foot now when you have all week to work on it.

53:32Robert Mays: It is like a new world like it is a completely different environment than it would have been when you only had what like 90 minutes before kickoff to take that thing out of the bag. When you take the ball out of the bag and you think about how quickly you have to get that slick hard ball to a place that the kicker feels good about compared to having it all week it's just a massive massive difference yeah yeah it's actually funny i have a crazy story regarding just field goal kicking that i think you'll appreciate i i've never told this one um and i'm still i've been looking everywhere if anyone can that watches this if they can find a tv copy clip of this this is 100 a true story so there is a team that should not be that i'm not going to name them but if somebody finds that they find it there's a team that basically had their jumbotron behind the field goal kicker or sorry in front of the field goal kicker and they created an optical illusion where the field goal posts appeared to be moved to the side but like the the the um the crossbar was was matched equivalent with the with the previous crossbar but the jumbotron was like it had the visual of the what the kicker was looking at but like the field goal posts were moved over to the left so like it it was it was the greatest idea ever so i had this clip and and i can't find i've been looking everywhere for it we actually tried to do it with the eagles but they had this like tiny jumbotron and we but we like went into the stadium we were messing around with like the operations people we actually set it up like that and like the the first game we did like the team made like every single field goal and it was like we were just like whatever we might as well just do it because it's funny but um they're they're like that's a whole interesting i know a couple colleges got attention for this because they were putting like chipmunks and stuff behind behind it's almost like it's like the free throws in college where you get people doing crazy stuff like behind college basketball like there's a world where you could mess around with that stuff and um this this one was unbelievable like it was it was like a picasso of like game management and stuff.

55:35And I will, I hope somebody can help me find it because it was so good. This is probably, it was probably somewhere between like 2015 and 18, but it was like, and I actually talked to one of the kickers about it. And he's like, dude, I, I, I was confused. Like, like, like it's, it's, it's brilliant. And it's like, you know, all these little edges you're looking for to try to like, you know, get something. At one point I actually, there was a sponsor like Dunkin Donuts or somebody and they had a wind meter in the NovaCare or in the Lincoln financial field, you know, like on the scoreboard. And I started asking people, can we put a fake, can we, can we keep the sponsorship, but can we put up fake wind?

56:14Like when the other team is kicking and I'm like, eventually I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to like get in trouble or anything like that. But I don't, I was trying to find out what the NFL rules were because like, that would totally mess with you. if like you're about to take your kick and you see it says like 11 miles southwest and like you thought it was like you thought it was like three miles north then you're like wait a minute what the hell's going on here so um but yeah like the the whole world of of the ball manipulation it's super interesting you know obviously you look at baseball now you know i i used to play baseball i used to follow it pretty closely and i kind of took a break for like a decade and then i see these speeds of these pictures and like it's like oh yeah this guy hit 104 104 104 lefts like what is what is going on here but like i'd imagine part of that too is i think as um that like there's so much like with the ai and big data and like sports science and biomechanics and these guys like figuring out the exact optimal hey this is my launch angle this is like my spin rate i'm if i do if i if i throw exactly in this way or if i get tommy john surgery like i'm literally better like there's like so many nuances there and i think you're seeing something somewhat similar to the kickers because even if you take like 2015 averages for field goal kickers and then you know bump it up to 2023 the kickers got way better and that's what you know independent of the ball is

57:34Robert Mays: improving the kickers are already better significantly better yeah let's take one more quick break and there's one more thing i wanted to hit before we got out of here

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1:00:57Robert Mays: so this is the other thing i wanted to ask you about because it had come up with some offensive coaches they talked to this spring and then it came up again several different times when i was going around to teams for training camp and i kind of plays into some of the work that you did about specifically what ben johnson was doing situationally where you're trying to make sure you're getting as close to 50 50 on some of these play calling scenarios to just give away as little information as possible about the defense. And so the Bears last year led the league in run rate on second and long. I think they were at like 40-ish percent on second and I don't know how we do.

1:01:30Robert Mays: I think it was second and seven plus is the numbers that I put in. And for the most part, we're still in a place where teams do not run the ball a lot on second and seven plus. The league-wide rush rate on those plays was 31.9%. And I think, I mean, think about just fan reaction to second and long runs or even second and long run reactions from the analytics community as recently as like three or four years ago, where when you're running on second and long, it's such a minus expected points choice to do that, that I can understand getting skewered if you're doing it. But now I think we're in this place where some of that stuff might be shifting a little bit in a way that I think is pretty cool.

1:02:12Robert Mays: And it's for a couple of different reasons. One, if we're going to have all these junk fronts and pressure looks from defenses, and they're going to treat second and eight like third and eight, but you still have two downs after second and eight to get a first down, I think it's a little bit easier to convince yourself that running on second and eight into some of those looks is the best choice you can make. And if you look at some of the success rate numbers in those situations, the run the overall success rate on runs on second and seven plus is like 27.6 percent per true media if you're looking at it but that success rate is based on the idea that on second down per their formula you need like 70 percent of the yardage in order for it to be a successful play but that's based on the assumption you're not going to go for on fourth down and so if you're going to be going for it on fourth down more and you're averaging 4.9 yards or whatever on second and eight runs, now running in that situation actually becomes much more viable if fourth down is live.

1:03:13Robert Mays: And the other part of this that I think is really interesting, we're going to be at a place this year, I think, where more and more teams are going to be making decisions on defensive personnel that are situational and not matching offensive personnel. And so if you have more defenses on second and eight, they're going to play dime defense because the pass rate, like I just said on second and eight plus is 70 % or whatever it is. Do we have yet another reason that running on second and seven plus is actually a more viable strategy than it's ever been before. So how teams offensively and defensively handle some of these second down, get back on track situations because of some of the shifting variables is something I'm really interested in because it's come up a lot as I've talked to coaches on both sides of the ball over the last like six months or so.

1:04:01yeah like you said there's a lot of moving parts and um i i think ben is incredible and like i think it's awesome that he like literally doesn't care what anyone else does and he's gonna like do what he does and there's like a mad scientist attitude on this stuff i don't entirely agree with him on the on the run heavy strategy on the longer distances and the the reasoning is while I do think you should not be at zero in terms of runs, I think the discrepancy and efficiency is so large that you're just fighting against the math. And each incremental yard back, like second and seven, it's a little bit more reasonable, second and eight, second and nine, second and ten.

1:04:47And I think there's a balance there. And he's so committed to the whole 50-50 bit. that like i i know you you mentioned the whatever it was second and seven plus the the most common categories that i've seen with d coordinators and offensive coordinators and even like you know just tools like pff and things that they use is like second and one to two split second and three to six split second and seven to ten split second and eleven plus and like ben was basically like a is his run pass was like a magnet so second and one to two is 50 50 second and three to six was 50 50 50 second and seven to 10 was 50 50 and I think it has like a long-term effect and it's helpful as you go towards throughout the season that you can't game plan like what the you don't need you literally just like oh do we call a good run defense or pass defense do we do we blitz do we do we what personnel do we match you just you like you said like you're just limited and like you're kind of off balance there but I think in some of these pivotal moments I would love to have a 50-50 tendency and then it's in the playoffs and it's second to seven to ten and I'm probably throwing the majority of those if that makes sense like I'd like to build up my tendencies to be 50-50 and then lean on the more efficient outcome or the more efficient option once I get in those big moments because otherwise it's like oh shoot we we kept our 50-50 thing going on second and 11 and we ran it and we gained five but we're still in third and six and like you know it's still a tough down so I think but I think I find it really amusing when when people are like has Ben Johnson's offense been solved or like they asked him like are you worried people are going to figure her out and it's like it's like no I'm not worried we were 50-50 at everything they're gonna they're just gonna figure out we're 50-50 and like I was I used to uh you know every single week for a long time like I've given the D coordinator like hey here's all the tendencies I have and so like we're playing the the bears last year with the raiders and i'm talking to pat graham i'm like don't really have anything like good luck bro like but do you think that in your i mean obviously you've

1:06:45Robert Mays: done this for long enough in the last decade that you were a part of this is do you think that consideration in limiting your tendencies and breaking tendencies and being mindful of your tendencies do we think there's a little bit more focus on it now or do you think that more people are just so vocal about it now because anecdotally, I feel like I've heard about this and the considerations surrounding it more in the last year than I had previously, but it might just be the types of conversations I'm having. Like I'm not using that as a true signal. As somebody who has like did this all the time and was working in that space, do you feel as if more coaches, coaches are becoming a little bit more sensitive to the idea than they would have previously in a different era yeah i would say it's highly correlated to the increase in analytics in terms of the staffing there used to be hilariously egregious run past tendencies like up this team takes out their starting tight end and 11 personnel they run 94 percent of it's like the numbers the absolute numbers used to see in like 2016 17 18 19 it was almost like you could you could see like this team doesn't have an analytics department or this team doesn't understand self-scouting or like this team is just like it's all ball all scheme x's and o's and they're missing out on a lot of these things and now i think like you know you get coaches that have been in so many different places and there's been enough time period where it's like hey i was with the jets and we had this run past self scout or i was with the cardinals and we had this and like that gets brought into like a staff and you're like okay well we should check which receivers are in the game or like we should check you know what our under center you know run past tendency is if we're in second and seven to ten like that's a huge one for a long time that i i mentioned this on on um you know on twitter but like this the alternators like the guys who would throw incomplete on first down and then have like a really high run rate so it's actually it's five times as bad if you say like threw incomplete on first down and then were they under center on second and ten because some of these guys are like oh incomplete better go to my runs there's current play callers right now that like over 80 % run in that situation.

1:08:56And, but like, like there legitimately used to be like ones where it's like, oh, okay, like this top tier receiver is not on the field in 11 personnel. This team's 88 % run over like a hundred plays. Like those, those are kind of long gone a little bit. And then the, some of the best coaches that you're around, like they, they want to know every single week, like what are our tendencies? Like if you were game planning us, like what would you be trying to take advantage of? And then it's, then there's the whole world of like I totally respect it is like the Greg I get I told people you know I mentioned this one on Twitter too it's like Greg Roman had a stat from 2019 about week nine through his last game calling plays with the Chargers that they were like on second of one to two and they were not on the goal line they were had 135 runs in one pass and it was like this is this is what we do we don't care that you know we're gonna do it and we're just gonna that's just who we are and like he act they actually were like pretty effect like if you it depends on what you're maximizing if you're just maximizing serious success rather than expected points then running actually makes a lot of sense there if you're pure like expected point maximizing then doing what ben does and trying to go for big plays makes sense but it's the same thing with the eagles and i and i i'll say this is like you know i i again like i i freaking i was with orc jaguar i said like i was like trying to get with a higher pen shot so like he's he's this This guy's a prodigy in terms of you look at the analytics metrics and all these different expected value things.

1:10:23But I find it interesting that he wants to go for explosives on third and one and fourth and one. And I don't necessarily view things the same there.

1:10:36Robert Mays: If we're living in a world where possessions are the biggest currency, is that the right way to treat those situations? I live in a world where this was sort of the Jason Kelsey, Jeff Steltland endorsed attitude of we're just going to be a machine and we're going to get a first down. And that's why, like, you know, I've been a part of teams where like we're going to we probably can run every single time on third and one or fourth and one the entire season. Like maybe it's not entirely sneaks, but like we're just going to run every single play. and that's you know in many of the years the best series success rate teams are the teams that are just incredibly run heavy there now they're you know the max run if you're if you're going to sneak 80 of those like you're you know your max expected points is obviously not going to be as high your your explosive play rate is going to be like zero but like you know like you have to think about particularly you know like a team like new england that never really had like a star explosive run game with Brady, but they always were like a pretty good rush success rate team.

1:11:39And in all those pivotal moments, like, you know, they would just take the first down and like, you know, or either Brady's going to sneak it or a high, you know, super efficient kind of downhill run. And I do think that you like hunting, like exposing yourself to a lot of variants can be cool over the course of a 17 game season. but in a playoff moment, I kind of just want the, the, the, the low, like when every single moment, like you're on the headset and you're like heartbeat slowing down, you're like my entire career is going to be based on this play. Like when the Philly special play happened, like my heart almost like came out of my chest and I'm like, I'm not even gonna be allowed in Philly ever again.

1:12:17If this, if this is incomplete because Philly fans knew who I was, but they didn't know I had nothing to do with like picking the play. And I'm like, I'm like, they're going to kill me. But like, but like, you know, you're in those moments. You're like, I just, I want to reduce risk and like I want to like that doesn't mean not go for fourth downs but like I'd like to just choose like the most methodical outcome and I think that's sort of part of what Belichick sort of secret sauce was for the longest time was absolutely it was not they like oh Peyton Manning has more yards or this team has higher yards per attempt or you know scored more total points but when it came to just winning they that's just all they did and so I think it's a really cool kind of discrepancy you're going to see more teams taking the second and one to two shots.

1:12:59I've heard from several people from several teams who are like, oh, we thought that, you know, Ben being the pass heaviest guy thing was awesome there. We're going to do it. But that also means you're going to see some teams get in a second and one and then not convert the set of downs. Like that, there's going to be - You have to live with that though.

1:13:14Robert Mays: That's a situation where you can live with that. I think over the course of time, that's an easy one. Like that's something where you can't live in like the anecdotal failures. When we get into third down and especially fourth down trying to find explosives, that's one where I think you and I are in the same boat there. Like, I don't know what the numbers would say, whether, and I would be curious to ask you this. And as you've looked at it, maybe you don't have a quick answer to this, but if we're comparing explosive play and like total EPA, like EP-based decision-making versus drive success rate, over time, which do you think is the more valuable metric to a healthy offense, drive success rate or expected points?

1:13:53Robert Mays: Drive success rate. I think it's clear. so that's that that to me is that's the answer right like let's just get the first down and we can continue to play well yeah right and but then it it's it becomes a debate of what are you when are you going to lean on maximizing the drive success rate when are you going to lean on it and i'll say this it's a little bit more nuanced than that what what i think people miss misunderstand is that one incremental yard on a third one or fourth one is worth a massive amount of expected points yes and so like yes the 12 yard gain on fourth and one is worth not that much more different than the one yard gain from from a relative standpoint of the the failure outcome is is horrible in terms of expected points so like the reduced failure outcome is partly why like i would argue like say a fourth uh you know third and one qb sneak is is probably going to have a higher expected you know a higher epa than um you know some long developing play action concept that's trying to push the ball down the field just from a pure standpoint of the the failures are going to be so much less um and then i'll leave i'll say this too if there's i would i would have a different plan on fourth and one and third one and the idea being is like you have two chances on third one but and then also on fourth and one you don't care about lost yardage plays because like whatever a zero yard gain is the same as a minus three for the for all you know in the grand scheme of things and you get more teams selling out with like these exotic zeros or like just everyone's just screaming up the middle trying to stop a sneak and like you see the mark andrews thing against the browns and like you see kind of uh you know this pass play going for a big play but i think if if i'm playing a d coordinator and i'm going for fourth and one at my own 42 yard line and he wants to sell out to stop the sneak on fourth and one then i i would love to just you know run a toss crack play because i might get 58 yards and a touchdown um now i'd be a little bit more worried to do that if it's third and one because if we lose six yards or four yards and we're punting so like there's like a balance there like of sort of classifying those plays a little bit differently but um i as somebody who's fought the qb sneak battle for a long time and like i respect your attitude of like maximizing expected points when i've brought up to people like well you can try to you know we can try to call deep shots and and whatnot, I've noticed that that like almost opened up the door for coaches to not call sneaks.

1:16:20Yeah. So like, so like from my personal experience, I was like, okay, well, I'm just not going to advocate for that anymore. Like I'm going to just stick to one thing. And like, this is the actionable thing. Like just sneak it, bro. Like don't, don't overcomplicate it.

1:16:32Robert Mays: That's, I think that's ultimately where I'm going to land. And I think that those are going to be the moments where, even if I understand the decision-making where my potential frustration with Ben Johnson creeps in over the course of this season and potentially his entire tenure, because I'm with you in that. I think that there are a lot of prodigal aspects to what he's doing, but that's the one area where it's like, come on, man, let's just make it easy on ourselves here. I just hope he doesn't play this in like one of his AI meetings that he apparently runs now, like, and says, like, it just, you know, rips me or rips you or something.

1:17:02It says these guys are idiots or these stat boys or something. But that being said, he's probably going to go. I, you know, I, I was, I was soured on when he said he's going to, you know, he wants to set the record for most points ever. and like maybe I can give some bulletin board material I just don't think it's realistic in this era with less drives like there's so many less drives and you know they're playing teams like the Packers that just grind clock and and uh um you know that being said you know if there was a guy who's going to do it like he's he's the best play caller in the league in my view or you know he's top three at worst and um you know I I'm excited to see what they do this year let's you know see if if Caleb can avoid the man curse and like they uh I I I loved just like even whatever team I worked for I loved watching whatever you know it'd be like a Wednesday and I'd want to pull up his tape and just see what he did the last week because I'm gonna find laterals or flea flickers or or like this super cool blocking scheme I never even thought of and I'm like showing the o-line coach and he's like dude I need like an entire off season to try to install that

1:18:05Robert Mays: but you're preaching to the choir here, sir. You, you know, you don't have to tell me. I, I feel it's been fun hearing a lot of people that I respect have similar observations here over this, this off season as I think he's gotten even more elevated, which has been fun. We could do this all day and we should do it again at some point during the season. I would love to check in with, we're, you know, six weeks in and all the stuff that you've seen about how the league is gone. And we will do that again at some point as we get a little bit more information But before we get out of here, tell the people where they can check out the work that you're currently doing.

1:18:38Yeah, so I'm just on X slash Twitter at Ryan Paganetti. And then I started a YouTube show with Nick Underhill. It's called Paganetti and Underhill. And we're really kind of just digging into different national stories with kind of a statistical angle. And really, it's been super fun kind of entering that space and enjoying it and everything. And I'm really excited for how the season is going to go.

1:19:02Robert Mays: Awesome. Absolutely love it. Appreciate the time. Appreciate all of you guys for listening. We will be back tomorrow. Until then, talk to you soon. 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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