What does an NFL GM actually do?

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0:46Robert Mays: The Sense of Calm collection from the Pura Calm Partnership is designed to help you unwind, recenter, and find stillness right where you are. Explore three new fragrances, each paired with Calm's most loved audio experiences. Try Sleep Story, a lavender drift into deep rest. Or there's Breathe Bubble, a mindful reset wrapped in white tea and cashmere. And finally, Soundscape, a fresh, clearing rush that restores your energy. Ground your space, quiet your mind, and explore the Sense of Calm collection at pura.com slash calm. Welcome to The Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Over the last couple months, the Minnesota Vikings were on sort of a weird timeline.

1:26Robert Mays: They fired Kweisi Adolfo Mensah really right before the Super Bowl, right after the Senior Bowl. The timing on it was strange. We don't often see that. And so the Vikings were looking for a GM during a part of the calendar where almost all teams across history have been settled in that role. It kind of got me down a road thinking about what types of candidates teams should be looking at for their GM roles these days. Should you be looking at the best scout from the best organization in the NFL? Should that person have more of a business background? Should it be more multifaceted than that? How much analytics should come into play as you're deciding who's going to oversee every aspect of your football department?

2:05Robert Mays: I wanted to have somebody on who has thought a lot about that and has been a part of that world for a vast majority of his professional career. And that is Jake Rosenberg, who is a former VP with the Philadelphia Eagles for over a decade before leaving the organization a couple of years ago. Jake has a lot of thoughts on this subject. He has been open about some of the missteps he thinks that teams make in who they're looking at for some of these GM roles. So that's what we did today. We talked about where teams should be looking for their primary football executive. What are the traits that the best ones have?

2:38Robert Mays: What are the mistakes that teams make in the hiring process? And even when they're building their initial list of candidates and what sort of improvements can we see moving forward to make sure that teams are setting themselves up for success when they're making these sorts of hires. So let's get to that conversation with me and Jake right now.

3:06Robert Mays: Joining us now, former Eagles executive and someone I am very excited to have this conversation with. It's Jake Rosenberg. Jake, how are you doing, man? Doing great. Doing great. Appreciate you having me on. Just before we get into this discussion, I just want you to lay out for people how long you were in Philly, what your role looked like in Philly, what your background is, just to give them a little bit of context and kind of your perspective on what the inner workings of a building actually look and feel like. Sure. I had an interesting career, I guess, in terms of a few different pivots. I spent almost 13 years in Philly working with Howie across three different head coaches, primarily overseeing the financial side of the football team, but really working side by side with Howie on almost everything we did strategically over that time.

3:54A lot of it was around kind of the topic today in terms of organizational design, hiring, restructuring at points. And then subsequent to my NFL career, I left to start a business working with college athletic programs, essentially on what we're talking about today in terms of how to structure to gain competitive advantage with all the transition and change in their world and doing a lot of hiring as well.

4:20Robert Mays: So what percentage would you say it is your fault that I have to have an MBA to read an Eagles contract on over the cap? It is a little my fault. But yeah, I mean, it is. I feel like that's but that that sort of gets to the heart probably of what we're going to talk about. I think that organizational structure and design is a strategic advantage if you treat it that way in terms of each individual department. There's not a whole lot of box checking that should occur. And so I think as we talk about structure, you know, this will sort of fit in nicely in terms of how some teams do it and give themselves advantages and how some teams do it and, you know, start themselves way behind the starting line.

5:09Robert Mays: Timing on this works out well, because this is something that you've talked about openly on social media. You know, you and I have gone back and forth about this. And the Vikings just hired a general manager, right? So the Vikings just went through this process and they kept their candidates pretty close to the vest. But it's it hasn't been very long since I was thinking about who you who should you be looking for to be the general manager of your football team in 2026 based on what the league looks like. And so I want to just start there. I'm like the broadest level possible. If you were an owner, if you were somebody that was part of these growing teams that now include former NFL quarterbacks that are tasked with hiring general managers.

5:50Robert Mays: Sure. What do you think a primary football executive should be in 2026? What should the resume look like? What should the qualities look like? Let's just start there. Yep. I love that you use the term primary football executive right out of NFL language. Sure. Sure. Yeah, I think that the key point of some of the key points to me are that this is a this is a executive. This is your chief executive in a lot of respects. This is your main decision maker. This is the top of your word chart in your football side of things, you know, taking putting coaches off to the side. Coaches to some degree are the talent.

6:32And then this is the, you know, the side of things where you are acquiring and managing talent. Um, so I think the first and foremost thing about this person is they need to be able to synthesize a lot of different data points. They need to have experience in a lot of different areas. I think championship level football teams are built very differently across the league, but the commonality amongst the best organizations and teams are that they hit on a lot of different cylinders. I think that common perception about GM candidates or GMs are great evaluators and scouts and, you know, people who are the bird dogs of sorts.

7:14You know, they're standing there kind of finding players and they're the best at finding players. That's a topic unto itself. but in my view this is kind of mistake number one that most teams make is the list is wrong to start with because they kind of come at it from that perspective um i think when you think about the main tasks that you need your you know for me this is this is kind of like my nerd area is you know i love organizations i love you know thinking about when i was little i was really into forbes and just Forbes was good for me and my attention span. They were like one to two page articles, but it was all about, you know, companies, but organizations, how to build great teams.

8:01Fantasy, I played, you know, rotisserie baseball. Like all of it was about -

8:04Robert Mays: I thought you were going to say you played fantasy finance. Like you put together like the best hedge fund you could back in college. A couple steps nerdier, yeah. And I definitely was about this, but I've always been just interested in what makes for successful teams and organizations, whether they were businesses or whether they were, you know, sports teams. And so I think that the first step in all of this, you know, understanding each NFL club is a completely different organism of sorts, different culture norms, you know, depending on where they're located. Ownership is maybe the most slept on thing.

8:43You know, I think there is a perception or maybe people don't understand the extent to which the owner has an impact on just about everything in the building. Good, bad, otherwise, you know, temperament, pace, cadence, all of those things, desire to win. I mean, that is first and foremost in a lot of what we talk about. It's not the same, you know, across 32 buildings. Where you where you place winning as a priority, I don't think is is number one in every every place. And probably with a lot of the changes going on here in NFL ownership with private equity and other types of influences is probably falling down the list, you know, even more.

9:30But I think that the first step here is figure out exactly what does the general manager do? and what does the general manager need to do to be successful and drive lists?

9:42Robert Mays: I want to hit on the ownership point very quickly before we get into the GM because I want to hit it now and not forget it because I think it is such a crucial component of this. Obviously, you understood the workings of that building very well. And, I mean, everyone, I think, justifiably and correctly, identifies what Jeffrey Lurie has been for the Eagles as the best example of what ownership can be for you in an NFL building. where do you feel like he removed areas of friction that might exist in another building was it the willingness to spend money was it the way you could build the front office was it how you guys sought out information in certain places like because i think the the thing that people they're coming refrain is that owners just get in the way more often than you want them to and i think the best owners just kind of get out of the way and are willing to cut a lot of checks where do you feel like you guys felt that the most where that friction was removed because of how he oversaw the organization?

10:37Yeah. Well, I think that first and foremost, regardless of, you know, I think you come at this one through 32, there's a huge disparity in resources in terms of how much cash they kind of come at this with, you know, and maybe now things have changed a little bit because the league really has become so cash flow positive for these owners. But that does determine a lot of it in terms of how much free cash they have and how you're going to how willing they are to spend it in the short term, long term things of that nature. I think the priority to win is a huge part. I think in Philly, Jeffrey's belief in Howie and Howie's security as a result gives him the leeway to fully express.

11:26I think Howie is like the NFL GM version of a five-tool player in that he has the background and expertise in all the relevant and most important areas. I think you look across the league, one through 32, you'll find GMs who are potentially masters of a domain or two, but seldom are they masters of all the domains. I don't know that there's five tools. I've never really thought about it that way. But I think, you know, some are scouts and they get the job and they really have not refined any of their other tools to that point. And so I think, you know, how his ability to operate with short and long term consideration is a huge benefit.

12:14You know, obviously being really intelligent and understanding all these areas is the best thing about it. Right. Because these things all do come into play. These are pretty complicated decisions in the sense that you're constantly balancing short and long term. You're balancing immediate concerns on the football team. You're balancing X's and O's considerations. Coaches clearly have strong personalities. And so you have lots of people in the building of strong personalities. So I really think Howie's ability to do what he thinks is the right thing and take job considerations, job security. all of those things out of the equation is a huge asset.

12:58You know, and obviously Jeffrey really just does want to win. I think the one part that is way overblown is Jeffrey's willingness, you know, is the financial component being the engine that drives an Eagles strategy. By and large, it's not a strategy driven by the fact that Jeffrey's willing to write huge, you know, upfront checks. That's not the nature of the strategy that has really driven on the cap side. It's just a completely – that talking point, I think, is just flat out wrong.

13:32Robert Mays: What do you think are the nuances of why that's wrong? What do you think are the driving points of the strategy? Well, I think the strategy – yeah. I mean, the strategy is really about playing a proration game and pushing things out into the future. It's about cost of capital to some degree, rising cap expectations. And the flexibility that you have by always being able to roll forward your cap space, you know, in a sense, that always gives you the ability. It's their free options in a sense. Right. And so once you've burned cap space in a year by having a, you know, a salary that could have been prorated, it's gone forever.

14:11The alternative is you convert it, you roll it forward, you know, you prorate it forward. And then if you don't use the space this year, you have it at your disposal next year and so on and so forth and so forth. You may never need it. You may never have a year where you're dying to spend tremendous cash over cap, but you can't go backwards and decide in a given year. Oh, shit. This is the year where we want to go all in or we have certain needs or there's a player out there who is everything. thing. We just can't make it work. And so I think that that's really what it's about. It's about free options.

14:47And whether you care to take a free option, you know, all upside, no downside sounds good to me. That's the way I see it. You know, you don't have to use it. You could roll it forward. But why wouldn't you want it at your disposal?

15:01Robert Mays: Let's go back to, again, a very simple but important question that you framed earlier. What does a GM do? Right? I think we kind of have to answer that before we answer who the person you look at should the person you're trying to find should be so let's talk about that what does a gm actually do because you're right like this idea of the gm is like super scout and bill belichick sitting there with his binoculars at the combine it's like that it really isn't what the job is about day to day so let's dig into what it actually is about yeah and i think the first thing i would emphasize is this is not there is not this is what a GM does, right?

15:36It is really about what is the model that you have laid out here organizationally? What is the coach's role? What is the general manager's role? Do you have somebody who is also kind of your executive VP of football ops or, you know, various different titles? I think this, this is the first step that is by and large overlooked. Ownership chooses, doesn't understand, and it's never presented to them. I'm not really quite sure, but to me, the first step should be sitting down, brainstorming. This is what, and not to self-promote here, but this is the crux of the way that we do our hiring process in my business now aimed in college sports.

16:18I mean, the first step should not be candidates. The first step should be brainstorming to the effect, what do we want this to look like structurally what do we want this role to do and then we find the people who can do those things effectively so I think depending on the model depending on how you want it to work maybe it's a function of whether the owner is in the building a lot maybe it's you know to the effect of who's running business you know like there are so many different considerations but I think the general part of a GM is much more bringing together a lot of the different parts of your football ops that generate information, being the hub and then making, and I'm more specifically focusing on roster decisions.

17:04Obviously, there are a variety of departments that need to be managed, budgets, things of that nature. There's a media component. I think typically if a GM is doing the right, is doing a good job in kind of the middle 50 % of structures, player evaluations probably not more than 10 of their job like quite frankly i think that that's if you're sitting in your office grinding tape and you consider yourself first and foremost a scout i question how well you're going to be able to do that job you know there's just so much involved in terms of managing um you know data has become a huge part of the business you know whether it's on field, you know, next gen type stuff, whether it's, um, player, uh, player evaluation components, um, all of these things are huge parts of the equation.

17:58You know, someone needs to build their consensus models around the draft. I'm just kidding. Um, so I, I just think like, you know, that's a general manager really, um, at the heart of it needs to be an executive. You know, They don't necessarily need to be the best in any single department, but they probably need to be the best in bringing all these things together and understanding how decisions are made. And big picture, balancing short and long term, I think that's a huge part of this, right? You are always confronted with those things. Setting the organizational tone, talent and tolerance is a big question in the NFL.

18:38I think there's teams who will tolerate just about anything as far as background and character. there's other teams who are very stringent about you know what they'll take and who they'll take and I think to some degree when you open yourself up to being more tolerant of certain behaviors there's downstream effects and you know that I think that all those things are should be set by the general manager and to some degree influenced you know in accordance with what the ownership wants.

19:08Robert Mays: Let's talk about structure a little bit and this is hard to do because we're working in hypotheticals. And like you just said, every team is different. And, you know, based on my understanding, right, some of these new structures that have come in, and I wanted to talk to you about this, it's become more and more prevalent where we have this former player who's kind of like that senior vice president or president of football operations or whatever. And I think in a lot of different circumstances, it's a former player who has real relationship with ownership, right? And so they can kind of be a conduit for ownership in the building if that person isn't around all the time.

19:38Robert Mays: Eyes and ears, not like a nefarious way, but somebody who can be or maybe hopefully right hopefully hopefully not correct but is a connection point for ownership within the building that's my understanding of how a lot of those roles have manifested but let's just try to take league average ownership involvement and presence and talk about the ideal structure for a building like that what would that look like to you like if you were building something from scratch in kind of an average way what do you think an organizational structure should look like in respect to former players and their involvement no that's just sort of You're just saying just that is something that is occurring.

20:13Robert Mays: That is just an example of what has been happening recently. Right, right, right. Let's just talk about it. If you were building it from the ground up, if this blank slate ownership brings you in being like, hey, we want to completely remake our football operations. What do you think the ownership structure or the leadership structure should look like? Sure. What would that be for you? Yeah. I mean, I think we've overcomplicated things a little bit here. And I think the reason that things have become overcomplicated is because the process is not good and they're not looking in the right places for general managers.

20:43You know, if you can find a CEO of Walmart to run, you know, an organization of that size, multinational and everything else, and there is a single CEO, we're not, you know, bifurcating CEO, president, you know, all these different things. I'm pretty sure you can find a single person with the skill set to run a football operation. The fact that ownership generally thinks you need somebody to be the GM and somebody to work, you know, Batman and Robin, someone else to do the financial side, and that you can't find a single person to lead your organization, I think is insane, actually. And I think is a function, not to digress, but I do think that common search firms, common where ownership typically looks for advice as they think about it may be time for a change, is all wrong.

21:43and is a case of just owners not getting the right information, not being surrounded by the right people, not taking the time to really go ground level and understand the considerations here. Because there are people in the NFL who have exposure to a lot of different areas. You know, to me, it's not that difficult. If you want to believe that you need to hire a scout as a GM and a scout's going to come at it and you think that 10 % of the job is scouting, by and large, you're projecting the other 90%. And you're hoping that the person who is a good scout is going to be able to do the other 90 % really, really well.

22:26There's people in the league who you can say, by and large, have the actual skill set and are really good at a lot more of the 100%. And then you're projecting far less. um i i just i can't understand it quite honestly um it doesn't seem that complicated as it involves former players you know the one thing i would say about about a model is everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction um where you run into problems is and not to say this about current about the teams that have former players in it um but a lot of times they hire former players with zero experience, not just zero experience in the league, maybe zero experience working in any job, quite honestly.

23:13They need to learn on the job. They need experience matters. And this is a very, this is a niche set of skills, right? This isn't just like, hey, I'm pretty intuitive. I have common sense. I'm going to come in and understand roster management. I'm going to understand some of the strategies. And so I think you're just, you're making some blanket assumptions. I also think you want to make sure that that person is every bit in the line of fire as everyone else. A lot of these structures wind up evolving to a place where you have somebody who is pulling strings, who has set themselves up as in a perfect situation.

23:51There's other people in front of them to take bullets if things don't work, but then they are happy to stand behind, you know, the coach or whomever in the locker room and, you know, be celebrating wins. I think that's a problematic situation. You're laughing like you're knowingly, like there are people you're thinking of as we speak.

24:09Robert Mays: It's uncanny. Right. And I think that is from jump a problem. You know, people talk about head coaches and I think that this is a real issue. Head coaches typically feel like GMs have the ear of the owner. They watch the games with them. And so GMs are in a place where they can heavily color and influence what ownership thinks. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, right? But I think each side in their own needs to have accountability. It's hard to have people in the organization who don't have the same level of accountability. And I think sometimes with the former player structures, there is flash value and fans assume, oh, so-and-so played the game at a really high level.

24:54So-and-so is going to be excellent at this job. so-and-so may be excellent at this job. You have no idea. The owner has no idea. No one has any idea until they learn enough to actually be good and, you know, kind of be on their own. For a while, you know, there's probably a Billy Madison component to this. You know what I mean? Like, it's great. You have the owner's son in your office. You're teaching him how to do the job of being your boss. Like, is that really helpful to anybody?

25:24Robert Mays: I want to take one more quick tangent here because it's something that came up over the last few weeks as I was talking to coaches, and I'm curious what you think about it, that idea of touch points for the owner with a general manager that maybe a coach doesn't have. I probably shouldn't have been surprised by this because I know a lot of buildings do it, but multiple coaches brought up to me that they have a meeting with ownership, coaching coordinators, day after the game happens, just to kind of present why the game went a certain way, what changes are we thinking about. And my first thought when I hear that is kind of like, uh-oh, right?

25:53Robert Mays: Is that a good thing for ownership to be that involved? But at the same time, do you think that might ease a coach's concerns about not having as much exposure to ownership if they know the GM is constantly in dialogue with ownership? I hadn't really thought about it that way, but if I'm sitting in the coach's chair, does that actually make me feel a little bit more at ease, the fact that I'm not worried about necessarily what's going on behind closed doors and what they're saying because I actually have a dialogue with this person? um i don't i'm galaxy branding it it probably depends on what's discussed in those meetings and the level of um question you know the the sort of tone and ire of the questioning whether the gm's in in those meetings um i think ultimately this is about everybody pulling in the same direction everyone feeling equally accountable for the results and things and it's that's a hard that's certainly a hard balance but you do across the league there are deficiencies you know and coaches are only as good as the players they're given right there's no one in the world who's a better coach with bad players than they would be with great players and that's sort of the the balance and I think there is a healthy tension in the best organizations between the GM and the coach coach wants to win every game like it's his last and the GM is responsible for balancing short and long-term, you know, hearing everybody out and ultimately making the right decision for the organization that kind of balances those two things.

27:19But it really comes with the proper, everyone giving, being given kind of the proper autonomy and lane from which to operate.

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30:28All right.

30:28Robert Mays: So you just said that in your mind, teams that are utilizing search firms, teams that are looking in what we see as traditional places, the places they often look for their next general manager, they're looking in the wrong spots. What are the right spots? Like if you're trying to figure out where to find these people, if the idea of the super scout is kind of an outdated way of thinking about it, what are the places and areas to mind if you're going to find the best candidates for these roles in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, I think I would think about the roles in this league where people do gain the broadest level of experience across the most areas.

31:05You know, I think about some of the people with assistant GM titles or whatever the exact titles are in some of these organizations. But there are people in sort of cap roles, you know, cap role expanded where they really do all of these these things. and you're going to bring someone in who has the relationships with agents, who has relationships with players, who understands deals and roster management, understands managing departments because a lot of the GMs are kind of put themselves in a spot where they really are super scout. They really are kind of thinking primarily and solely about the roster.

31:46So to me, it's about putting yourself in a situation where you have the highest floor, but also the highest ceiling, I think the least you can project about someone in that role, the better you feel, right? It's hard to bring someone in. We all know like timelines have really been compressed in terms of how long people get to succeed in these jobs. You present a five year plan and maybe you have two years and that's crazy, right? I don't think that's healthy. I don't think that's good. And then you also probably present your five year plan and by year two or three, there are so many extenuating factors that are being pushed on you that you really never get a chance to execute your plan.

32:30And, you know, and so things go sideways, you know, shout out Jets and Joe Douglas. But, you know, those are not good organizations. And I think you find over a prolonged period of time, there aren't a lot of coincidences in the league. I think organizations are where they are because there are deep there are bodies buried very deeply there and it starts from ownership and it starts with just norms in a building people around the ownership and things of that nature i think if you um were to administer truth serum to a lot of the key media people around the league insiders or whatnot they are constantly asked by ownership who they should interview for positions.

33:15Like you let that sink in for a moment. I consider many of those people, my friends, and I think they're excellent at their job of being NFL insiders, some of them. But most have never worked on the organizational side of things. Most couldn't tell you what people actually do in their jobs. And I think that's the same with ownership. Like, I don't think that ownership knows what people actually do, how they contribute to the team on a day-to-day basis. And so when it comes to filling a role like a GM, they are looking for information all the wrong places.

33:51Robert Mays: So how would you start that process? Because that to me is what's difficult about this. Even something for sitting in my chair, right? Like if we have a GM that gets hired and I don't personally know that person or have never spoken to that person or haven't talked to another individual about that person's role and their strengths and weaknesses, it's really difficult for me to evaluate what that hire is and why it would work or wouldn't work. With coaches, at least we have some body of work that's out in the public about their direct influence on whatever unit they were coaching. But if you were the assistant GM of a team that just happened to be successful, we don't really know what that person was doing day to day and what influence they had on the success of that organization.

34:32Robert Mays: So if you were trying to figure this out, If you were sitting across the table from someone, you wanted to get a sense of what their impact looked like and what it might look like moving forward. What are the questions you would ask? Sure. Hypothetically, if I had a search firm when I was working with ownership and trying to rebuild an organization, how would we start? I think we would start by having a really good knowledge and relationships across the league and really trying to understand different people's, you know, capabilities, qualifications, what they actually do in their role. I think titles are somewhat useless.

35:08There is a title inflation across the league and it's hard to just say, OK, so-and-so is a vice president, so-and-so is, you know, whatever their title is and understand where their competency is. This is where having the right conversations, doing reference work and understanding that. I also think it's about scoping out your job in terms of what are the most important qualifications and experience. And then pretty open mindedly trying to find people who actually have that. And, you know, getting to those people. I think it's about a really good interview process. I feel like the interview process in this league is a sham to a large degree.

35:46interviews are very very poorly constructed they wind up being just social conversations and he who speaks last or he who tells the best joke or you know whatever the situation is winds up advancing you know it may be oh my god this person's so young and so different you know oh my god they're so quirky this is going to be an incredible hire and i think you know i don't overplay experience i think some of the best leaders across sports some of the you know the theo epsteins of the world you know howie whatever they were put in positions probably way earlier than anyone could have said you know here is a 30 year old i'm gonna put them in charge but they had something special and it was identified um but by and large you want to see someone not only who has done it at a high level across areas um but someone who's seen success I think sometimes we ignore the fact that someone is coming from an organization and has never actually seen it done well you know like I think that that matters I would say having sat there with Howie over a long period of time seen the way our roster came together periods of the year where things didn't look great but then how those holes were filled some of the secret sauce type of stuff in terms of balancing roster spots over the course of the year, how you manage your practice squad, just the deal process, how you get to the number that you're looking for, how you start with your structure and work backwards from that, how you manage relationships with the agents, how you communicate to players in sometimes situations are not super positive, but how you maintain those relationships.

37:30if you've never sat there and learned from somebody who is good or been in an organization that's had any success I don't think that you have you know I don't necessarily think that makes for a great candidate I'm not saying the only candidate should come from the best organizations but I think that that's where an interview process you know you may find people who have gone out of their way and studied and learned and sort of second or third hand picked up a lot of these things. So I wouldn't necessarily discount them entirely. I also think in the NFL, a lot of what drives hiring is sometimes you have buildings that are looking to get rid of people.

38:11And the cheapest way to get rid of people is to get someone else to hire them. So I think you need to sort of be leery of that situation. You know, one man's trash is another man's treasure. I think that's an expression used about other things, but certainly occurs in the NFL. You have buildings where people are clearly passed over and passed over multiple times. And then they become a leading candidate for other teams, general manager positions. That's an interesting one to me. The people who know them the best have been around them the most. Organizationally, they have chosen to give other people responsibility over them.

38:48Yet they come back and then there's someone else's knight in shining armor, question. I question that repeatedly.

38:58Robert Mays: The idea, like the interview is like a social experience. I think we've all had one of those or a couple of those over our time in any profession. If you're sitting there and you want to ask a more process-driven question, give me an example. Like what is something you would want to ask a candidate that's like, I want to know how you think about subject X when it comes to managing a roster, managing a front office, anything? Sure. That's, well, I guess it depends on the area we're going to talk about. But, I mean, even, you know, for me, nearest and dearest would be kind of how you approach a deal.

39:34You know, you have one of your best players. You're looking to start extension talks. You know, how do you kind of, how do you present it? How do you think about what do you lead with? Kind of what's your style? Those types of things. I think, you know, negotiating contracts in the NFL is a lot different than negotiating for a car. You know, it's much slower paced, methodical at times. It's a lot less probably scientific than people think in terms of you're not sitting there and like, you know, shooting PFF and all kinds of like metrics at them. You know, you got to be very careful about the things you say.

40:11you basically are negotiating with the player in sorts, you know, so you got to, you may have a whole bunch of negatives about the player and you just need to put a happy smiley face on everything. But I think it's some of that. I think it's, it's problem solving. I would ask direct involvement in different situations, what their role was to what degree, you know, I would ask stuff like this. I would say, organizationally, how do you think about successful organizations? You know, what is the difference between successful organizations and not so successful? Why do you think some coaching hires are successful?

40:48Why are some organizations better at that than others? You know, there's different right answers, I think. But people far smarter than I, there's a science to interviewing. You know, and I think you ask questions to elicit different types of responses. one of the things that I use in our interview process I have a psychiatrist who is unbelievably brilliant who works with some sports teams and you know job descriptions questions everything I run by her because they're unintended you know you're looking for certain responses but then there's also unintended personality types and things that you know some of these jobs bring out um so i think it's really being a lot smarter than the average bear like i would say um a certain team that did gm interviews this year the first round was 50 minutes or 55 minute zoom sessions you know a whole bunch of people on a zoom it was not highly technical highly football oriented it was a lot of social you know just social conversation is that a is that a real interview is that a screening interview like what are you trying to get out of that or is there a predetermined outcome and you're just checking boxes and I think a lot of what we get is the box checking people are working backwards from an outcome that they kind of already have in place which to me is you may have a candidate in mind who you think is gonna be ideal for this but let them win it you know let them go through a fair process and if it's close and you want to give them benefit of the doubt great but i do think we have a lot of predetermined outcomes um i think familiarity is something that is vastly overrated in the nfl is so-and-so worked together for two years at this team cool you know like yeah great great and the first day of work you show up and you guys know each other and you know you're like oh it's great i remember you know first grade second grade when you have kids in your class that you know you're all excited on but then a few weeks later you know everybody you know even the class where you came in you didn't know anybody um so i think the familiarity thing is ridiculous in terms of a coach and a potential gm candidate know each other awesome you know is it isn't competence more important

43:16Robert Mays: i'm i've been struck recently just by how much it's come up and this may be anecdotal you don't want to try to draw too many parallels but with coaching staffs that i think have done a really good job and did a really good job early. One of the coaches just offhandedly mentioning to me, the coordinator even being like, yeah, I knew one of the guys on the staff before we started working together. Like we, I didn't know anybody. And then you just, obviously it's going to be a little bit rockier at first, but not necessarily in a bad way. I think that some of the smoothness early on is not in service of the best version of what's waiting on the other side of that process.

43:47Totally agree. I totally, totally agree. And I think, you know, when it comes to the NFL, The NFL adapts really quickly in terms of schematic stuff. You know, what's the best flavor of the month today? You know, by the time everyone else kind of gravitates there, the smarter teams have already zigzagged away. And I think the same thing when everyone already knows each other, it leads to a certain level of familiarity and kind of doing the same thing. I think when you bring together different people, if it works well, then you have, you know, different parts that you bring together and you're actually creating something.

44:25So I completely agree. I think you need a fair process. That's by and large, that's the part of this is whatever you're hiring, don't overvalue the fact that you spent time with this person and you know them. You go through a process, you figure out what this person's going to need to do and you find the best that, you know, that's out there to do it.

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46:46Robert Mays: I have two more things that I wanted to ask you about. Obviously, if you're going to be in the role and 10 % of it is going to be scouting, and you're going to have such a wide scope of what you're doing, the people that you're putting underneath you that have areas of expertise in all of these things, that's really important. When we talk about coaching staffs, if you're an offensive-minded play-calling head coach, the two most important hires you're going to make are your defensive coordinator and offensive line coach. We go to that consistently. When you're a GM, who are the defensive coordinator and offensive line coach?

47:15Robert Mays: Like, what do you think are the two or three most important hires you can make underneath you in the modern version of your job to set you up for success? Sure. I mean, I think I would start with hiring someone who I trust as an evaluator. Because I do think if you're being realistic about this, regardless in your prior job, if you're a VP player personnel and you spent 95 % of your day watching tape, I think you need to be realistic about the fact that that's going to have to come way down. And so who is going to be your eyes and ears? Who's going to administrate everything involved with your scouting and make sure that that winds up in a good place and that everything that gets to you from an information standpoint is the way you want it?

48:00So I think that's crucial. And that person not only needs to be a really good scout, but needs to be very organized and executive because setting up the calendar, organizing all of these things underneath you is a huge task and is critically important. You know, the grading scale, how they write reports, scout school, developing younger scouts, like all of that kind of falls under this person and is too much for a GM to be doing with everything else they have to balance. And then I think whoever is overseeing the financial side, you know, in terms of cap contracts, to me that role is a combination of a lot of different things I mean one of the things that I loved about that job is there's a quantitative side to it you know obviously you're dealing in numbers it's highly financial hopefully highly analytical where you're trying to understand the difference in nuances and deals how to differentiate players but I also think if you're doing a good job there's a personal side to it that is you know the relationship side in terms of your agent relationships, the coaches in the building, just really kind of, you know, you need to consolidate information from so many different sources to do that job well.

49:18And then I think if you're really going to do the job well, you also need to watch tape because credibly, you need to be speaking to agents. You also at times need to speak to players themselves and explain the difference between one comp from another why this person deserves so and so this person slots behind them um why you are extending this player you know and i think um the best in that in those jobs should be able to explain on tape um why a player is better than another why this player fits watch game tape um and understand what you're doing offensively and defensively uh i i think that that is that to me is what everyone should be doing in their job in terms of how am I better than everyone else that's doing this job across the league um and when you get on the phone with an agent if you're stuttering and stammering and repeating a bunch of stuff that you don't really understand what it means and you're kind of reading scouting reports um and can't speak credibly on your own I think it takes away from your own credibility quite honestly um and it makes you much less effective as a negotiator.

50:27So I think that those are really important. The financial side of the football team, what your cap strategy is, is crucial because different teams handle extensions in a different way from a cash perspective. You know, whatever your cash budget is, you have ownership across the league who are willing to spend more cash over cap. You have other owners around the league who are pretty cash equal cap and you have other There are other owners around the league who are struggling to get there. But whatever it is, your job is to make that go as far as possible. And I think that being outside the box and strategic is a key aspect of that.

51:08And so you need to sit there every day and think, how can we improve our strategy to make us better and more competitive in this area? And I think that sets the tone for everyone else you hire. Everyone else should be not just sitting there checking boxes. It should be about winning in terms of that area.

51:27Robert Mays: The last thing I'll ask you, I want to talk about a couple specific examples where you watched a team's process over the last couple years and where they landed on either a specific hire or a structure. One that you liked and why, and one that you feel like left a little bit to be desired and why. One that I liked. Maybe I'll struggle with that one, though. God, I mean, I would just say I think sometimes some of these processes you see pretty clearly. They don't have a very well-defined strategy in advance. They interview every person under the sun. I think if you're interviewing, you know, 15 people for a specific job, you've probably not done a good enough job up front in understanding what you want.

52:19And I think that's maybe we haven't hit on that, but the level of preparation that should go into making a change, you know, way in advance of actually pulling the trigger. I think that's crucial, you know, and I think that's a almost a year round process, whether you're going to make changes or not. On the coaching side, personnel side, any of these things, you know, you basically have ready list, understand kind of where trends are, understand who the best people are in different areas. And so I think that that is ongoing.

52:54Robert Mays: Who oversaw that in the Eagles building? Because I've always been fascinated by this, where coaches will get fired, right? Like an offensive coordinator will get fired after the season. And then there's like a two-week period where they're scrambling to find a list of guys to fill that job. And I'm just like, these are multi-billion dollar organizations. You don't have somebody in your building who is assigned with figuring out what the next list of coaches should look like. So for you guys specifically, who oversaw that? Because I've been shocked in the past about how haphazard that process has looked like after getting like a tiny look under the hood.

53:30Right. Well, I think depending on the building, you know, coaches, head coaches are typically responsible for their own staff and hiring their own coordinators. um i think you run into issues because coaches are so head down during the season they're not necessarily in a position to to think ahead in what might happen and you do have unexpected firings and departures of coordinators um but i think a better organization is doing this way in advance i think this is an area where a gm could help pick up for a head coach without diminishing their autonomy. In Philly, I always had backgrounds and bios, started doing them from the beginning, honestly, of what I got there.

54:14I have a database of probably thousand plus coaches, personnel people over time, because this is a exhaustive process if you're going to do it the right way. You know, in Philly, I think we were the only team that interviewed Nick Sirianni when he got hired. I think that that's an example of teams are just not doing their own homework. And, you know, and so a lot of the lists that get put out are put out with very specific purpose and reason. You know, everybody has agents at this point, both on the executive side and the coaching side and those agents are seeding these things way in advance of hiring season and so a lot of times you're just you know they're just carrying water for for people who who want things out there so I think that that is a organizational priority should be maintaining lists not only just the list part of it but understanding what they look for what makes that organization special things, different traits work differently in other organizations.

55:27I think Philly, Philly is a situation where you have a really good general manager who has a really firm grasp of what it takes to build teams. And that makes probably finding a head coach an easier process. You know, I think it also leads to more successful outcomes. And I think when you go through a process at other organizations, it's important to define lanes really clearly because you're, there are very few sort of unicorn head coaches in the NFL who are capable of working really outside the coaching lane and into the personnel lane. More often than not, and this is something I deal with on the college side, you know, college coaches are used to being the head of personnel and the head coach and the head of recruiting.

56:12And I think that's one of the things that that's changing out of necessity. There's just too much there now. And so you're getting into a more specialized situation. But in the NFL, I think specialization is a good thing. And it's really about identifying exactly what everyone's lane is and what the responsibilities are ahead of time.

56:32Robert Mays: The last thing I wanted to ask you, because we haven't brought it up at all, and I do think it's really important, just the idea of analytics and its role in all of this, right? Like, even that word is just like, I struggled to find a better word. And so that's the only reason I'm using it but like let's say it's good enough word yeah right like whoever is in charge of your football strategy right like a football like now like research and strategy how what do you think about candidates coming from that background specifically their viability some of the challenges of that and do you feel like is do you think it'd be easier to have that background and be like you just said watching tape getting familiar with how you're evaluating the football football side of it, teaching yourself or learning from other people that side of things, or the flip side of that, where you come from the scouting side and you find yourself being in these meetings, like with the analytics department, learning about that side of it.

57:27Robert Mays: Like, which do you think is potentially the more effective route if you're trying to build the right candidate for a modern GM job? Well, I think that that's a little bit of a trap of a question in a sense. You know, I think that the personal characteristics, this is a leadership role, first and foremost, you know, and so your job is to galvanize, organize, you know, bring together, create processes to make a really successful, repeatable, you know, organization and build teams. I think whether you have the analytics background first and you're learning everything else or you come at it with a scouting background you have a thirst you learn everything else either of those could work it's just a question of who the person is and you know either of those I said this about a scout who sits in his office and watches tape 95 % a day I'd say the same thing about you know this analytics person if they're spending 95 % of the day with their models and they're not out and about and they don't have people who want to follow them and they don't sort of have that, that gravitas, you know, and they're not a leader in itself, it won't work either way, whether they're the smartest person on earth.

58:42I think there's a, there's a delicate balance here between the competency side of things, just checking boxes, being qualified, but also being the right leader to be the forward facing, you know, head of the organization. and coaches are very strong personalities coaches have gotten to a place because they are leader of men they're gonna you know sit there in front of 90 odd you know alphas and get them to to pull in the same direction fighting back against a coach who very strongly wants a certain player has an He's making$25 million a year. Yeah, the pay disparity between head coaches and GMs is to me hard to explain.

59:27I think being a GM in the National Football League is as hard as it is in any other sport. And the magnitude and size of these rosters and what's at stake in$10 billion franchises, I think that that pay disparity is hard to explain at times. but with that being said i think the background matters i think you know how competent you are at all these various areas when you take over is important but you also it is a leadership position um and so i wouldn't really i say if people have worked or not worked out of analytics or people have worked or not worked out of cap or people worked or not worked out of scouting it's as much about the individual candidate, what they brought to it.

1:00:12It's not so much that someone from analytics can't be a very successful NFL general manager. Awesome.

1:00:20Robert Mays: Well, Jake, sincerely appreciate the time, sincerely appreciate the perspective. Thank you very much. And hopefully we will do it again at some point. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right, that's all we got. Thank you so much to Jake for his time. Really enjoyed that conversation. Hope you guys did as well. we'll be back on Monday with our next mailbag I will not be here I am taking a little trip with my family this weekend but Derek and Dave will be holding it down so please be on the lookout for that mailbag coming Monday I'll be back with you guys on Tuesday until then appreciate you listening we'll talk to you very 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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