Aden Durde | How a Londoner cracked the NFL - The Sports Agents

0:02Gabby Logan:This is a Global Player original podcast. Hi Mark. Hi Gabby. We've had an interesting week, haven't we? We had Aden Durde come into the Sports Agent's studio and had a chat about everything really, right back to when he was a kid and how such a lovely sliding doors moment, wasn't it? That he ended up becoming involved in American football. Yeah, the most innocuous kind of way that somebody could ever get into a sport, which we won't reveal now because you will hear it in the interview with Ad. I can't think of another, really, certainly one that we've spoken to, who has gone from real grassroots, basic playing and coaching in one country to the top of the tree in the other.

0:50Well, I think the thing is, it's really hard to find a comparison because it's such an American-dominated sport. you know, nowhere else in the world, no other region in the world has anything like, you know, the levels of fandom and, you know, participation. So, so there isn't, is there a sport that dominates a country in kind of, I suppose we've done an episode on sumo. The closest thing we would have, would have had is, you know, somebody breaking into one of the big stables in Japan from another country. And that's, that's honestly, as far as, you know, in terms of domination to, to infiltrate like that.

1:21And we get into that, don't we? How culturally did, you know, you asked the question of him how hard it is to be an outsider but I think the sport it feels to me wants the world to love it as much as it can so it likes foreigners oh oh massively they are so

1:36Gabby Logan:outward facing you know more and more and more games are being played not not now just in London but across the globe you know there's one in there's one in Melbourne for the first time this season. In the first week, I think the Rams and the 49ers will play in Melbourne. And they are unashamed about that. They want to grow it wherever they can. From South America to Australia to Europe, they will take games there.

2:14Gabby Logan:The Sports Agents with Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Honestly, Ads, you're sat here with Gabby smiling. It's surreal for me for you to sit here as a Super Bowl winner. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. It's been your career, so I guess you don't find it surreal. But the pride that everybody over here has in you and for you for what you've done, you must really feel it. Yeah, you do. It's probably one of my favourite things I wasn't expecting. that because you just like you said you go through it's your career so you're just working and you don't really look up and you have these kind of touch points of where you do stuff and it's fun and you've you've achieved something but over here people don't really necessarily see it the same way because it's not a big thing over here but this was obviously do you not think And when you come over, do you not see the growing interest, the fan base increasing, obviously the matches that have been brought over?

3:21Yeah, it's completely different to when I started. But it's just, I mean, like with my friends and family and the people, it's like, that's the thing Ad does, you know, like he's over in America. And then like my mum's probably my biggest fan, but it was just like cool. My brother came, he couldn't come to the Super Bowl, but he came to like the NFC Championship. and it was just that to just see like they facetimed me from when we was in the locker room at the end of the Super Bowl and it was just like to see those things were kind of they were really

3:51Gabby Logan:cool they're probably some of my favorite things when you first started out in this sport and take us back to where that was and when that was did you have this as the ultimate goal well definitely not coaching no um I didn't even think about coaching until I started coaching at the Warriors and I kind of got tricked into that so I I didn't think about it then but I think once I started playing the game I kind of found the game before I really I would necessarily say love I loved playing the game more than I loved watching the game a little bit I would say to start and how did you find it it was on channel four and then um so random that my mum said oh there's actually an American football shop opened up.

4:40Where was it? It was either in Southgate or Palmer's Green or Barnett or somewhere. Like an American football shop. Who has one of them? Like, you know, ever. Obviously, it didn't last very long either. Someone who was completely mad about the game. Exactly. But we went down there to buy a football, me and my mate. They had an advert in the window for like 12 to 16-year-olds to play. And I just went along. And that was to what was the kind of the team that would feed into the Warriors, was it? No, that was a team in Hayes in West London. And it was like, so back then it was there was no Internet.

5:16There was. So it was just literally you turned up to a park. Guys, 20 kids were playing. A guy was coaching. And then that team after a while, it folds because the guy can't do it no more. And then I was like in the world of British American football. I didn't know about it before then. and there was a team way closer to me in finsbury park so we moved like all the kids that still wanted to play we all went down to finsbury park and we trained there and in the end that team folded and then we went to like a really stable team in south london called the london olympians and that's where i kind of started and that was basically they some of the guys ended up moving on to become the warriors and that's how i ended up coaching there right so it was a little sign in a shop window.

6:03I know, it's crazy. Tiny acorns. Yeah. And then this huge oak tree of a Super Bowl final. Isn't it? I mean, imagine if that sign

6:12Gabby Logan:hadn't been up in that shop. That day, yeah. How bizarre. I know. And it's like, then you think about some of the coaches that look like used to just turn up. If they weren't there, you would have just not done it anymore. And like you say, totally grassroots volunteers, people who just had a similar passion, keeping the sport alive. No doubt. Like these guys, The guys specifically have changed my life. I know them. Obviously, my story is I'm doing this right now. It's extraordinary. They've done it to a lot of people. They've changed a lot of guys' lives that were maybe not necessarily going down the right path of life.

6:50You understand what structure. You understand what accountability consists. These guys were just the model of consistency. They showed up every week. like sometimes i remember when we played for the olympians it's crazy like another guy who played with he won the super bowl too he won he won it with the steelers he played with me and um it was just like us two at practice sometimes and this guy would just coach us for a game that you can't play with no more than like eight a side at the least he would just coach us and so then you you you're thrown in you say to coach something that you weren't necessarily considering but you obviously had an aptitude for it's funny because when i the last team my professional team was at kansas city and um the guy actually that was our kind of player development he was like a player engagement he looked after the players looked at what they could become after football he actually was the head of the nfl academy for a while he came up to me one day and he was like you should get into coaching i was like no i shouldn't have after i've done this i'm going back to england i want to go home for a bit and um he was right I went I went back and you have that period of trying to redefine what you actually are like I wasn't at the top of football but I'd been playing football for eight I think eight years professionally on and off and it everything I'd done was driven towards that so once I came out of it it was like what do you do went a few different directions but I wanted to stay part of it so I went to the Warriors on Sundays and I used to like train the kids like more like movement skills and then Tony Allen the head coach he was like why don't you start coaching and I did and that was it the start of the journey

8:36Gabby Logan:yeah but that journey that coaching journey particularly in a sport that is basically played in I mean I know there's European leagues and so on and so forth but essentially at the elite level is played in one country by that country's inhabitants and coached by those countries' inhabitants. Still needs a lot of doors to open for you. And actually, a lot of open-mindedness, I would have thought. I look at sometimes how we within British football have sort of treated Americans sometimes. And we have, Gabby, haven't we? They sort of become this Ted Lasso figure of fun. and and actually you going the other way has needed doors open and open-mindedness hasn't it and you found that presumably yeah I definitely have I met some great people that gave me opportunities and believed in me in different various points of the career and I'm very lucky I am very grateful for it I think yes you might have that attitude from people outside and different people watching but i think inside is different i think if you bring value if you work hard and you respect people and you're honest i don't see why you coming from a different place is because it's not i mean obviously you're involved in a pathway yes to try and encourage more players to feel that they can go there and have careers but it's not just this country sending players you know it is a truly global sport it hasn't it yeah it's really changed and is is obviously you're a greater advantage if you go to school in america and you're playing this sport all the time aren't you but what the sport recognizes is different physicalities and different sporting skill sets yeah and we've had lewis re sammet on the podcast who of course gave it a really good he did he gave it a real shot didn't he i never actually got to meet him um but yeah he did i think it is becoming more global like i was part of the international player pathway um I got to work on it for like three years, four years.

10:42Seeing those guys come in, it's not just about athletic ability. It's not just about, like the guys that I've seen make it, they are athletic freaks. I know it's kind of I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, but they have, their best traits aren't that. Their best traits are resilience, like listening, ability to adapt, ability to work to see the landscape and how to adjust in the landscape how to learn off other people's movements is that's why I feel like I was ready to coach because I kind of done it as a player I I had and I didn't succeed as a player to where I wanted to get to but I always had to watch always had to learn I always had to like just be quiet and and then let my work show what it could do and um i've taken those things and i thought those guys in like fa and jordan moritz anthony those guys like were shining examples of that i mean i've said this to you before gabby i

11:45Gabby Logan:from working in this sport for the time that i did i i find it the most fascinating sport to either deconstruct or work in or work with pundits in because it has it has everything It has everything on from brute force and physicality that we talk about in rugby to deft skill, which again is rugby, but to that, to the intelligence of the number of plays you have to learn. but also Osi and Jason would break down a move with me and they would be looking at the position of the feet of say of an offensive line or a defensive line so you've got these great big massive blokes who just block and shove people but actually the indications are you're looking at just maybe the direction of their toes the direction of their toes something the daintiest thing for the clue it is a sport ads isn't it of such You're taking in so much information all the time.

12:44Yeah, such subtlety. That's the thing that makes it hard, I think, for some guys that come from other sports at times. Because it's like us doing sports that we've lived with here. There's a subconscious learning, you know, to the game and you can do things. It's like, I feel like I used to get the guys to kind of just watch the game or play the game on Madden. Because you have to understand the flow of the game from different positions. It moves in different ways. It happens quicker. it happens slower like there's repetitive patterns that happen within the game and and if you play it your whole life you those things just they're just registered hours yeah so it's like if you're trying to catch up and come from behind that's what i'm saying is that it's almost like you have to work double time so mark was kind of educating me ahead of final about kind of obviously it's his this is his area of expertise about he was into it in inverted commas gal not so much about the whole but about your role specifically you know as as a defensive coach when he was talking we're talking about where your career might go and what might happen next for you um and whether or not that is a natural progression that you would want to then be the head coach yeah the whole team is that that's for you is on the cards I think when you go through this and just like I said it's like I said about listening and seeing and observing I think when you get into these positions and I haven't been in it before so like I'm just I try and learn from other people's experiences and watch is that if you get caught up with where you go it's very hard to like lead people it's very hard to be to hold the same accountability for the the standard that you're trying to create within the group of people that you're doing on a day-to-day basis because at times your mindset's somewhere else and I feel like I've seen people either lose the players get bitter not be able to focus on the things that are truly important to like the outcome being winning but also the outcome just creating a group of people doing things like a way that they all believe in so I kind of I don't really go there I'll be honest with you if it comes up things change when they're meant to change and i had some interviews this year you do them i didn't get them just keep going that becomes quite public knowledge obviously that's one of the things that mark was yeah so it's very different obviously to what happens yeah did you interview for two yes i interviewed for the cleveland browns and the atlanta falcons that transparency which i

15:13Gabby Logan:was talking to gabby about is both at coaches level and players level i mean players contracts are published you know there's been a whole wave of moves over the last month in what they call free agency everybody knows what you know they're going to get a four-year 30 million pound contract but 20 million pounds of which is is guaranteed i know that you know you had two head coaches interviews does that transparency which we seem very afraid of in european sport i think is does that transparency do you think help i would say i don't really know any difference so um it doesn't hurt you everyone knows where you're at they know like you can address like those elephants in the room that you're gonna carry on like we had a couple of days off because we had the bye week before the playoffs so i had a day and a half to work on it that's my day and a half to work on it the rest of it i'm gonna give to the us trying to win the beat the 49ers you know at the time that's who was playing next you can address that if it needs to be addressed or you can talk to the head coach about it.

16:19So I think transparency and honesty are the key to building the right type of way of life in a team. So I would say yes to that answer. In terms of the, it's a very short season compared to, say, our never-ending football season, where you've got kind of about 12 days from the end of the Champions League to the start of a World Cup and then that finishes and there's about two weeks, I think, before the regular football season starts. So pretty much always on. How much time do you actually get away from the sport? Because I imagine there's a lot of pre-season camps and things that you have to do.

16:58You don't get much. And the more you win, I've realised you get less. The longer it goes on. Yeah, but normally, like this year, I had five days just before the end of February. And then I've had these this week. And then we go till June. And then in June, you get like five weeks off. And it's really that June, July slot is when you get your downtime. Right. So what are you doing between now and June? There's a lot. So like once you finish the season, you kind of reassess what you did, how you did it. You self-scout. You look what you need to kind of, would you add anything? Would you just, you subtract anything?

17:41And are you reporting to somebody on this? Yeah, the head coach. Right. And all the coaches do it. There's quite a lot of coaches on staff though. And then while this is going on, the first thing you hit is free agency. So you have to like watch the free agent players and give your reports on them. Then the draft comes up. You have to prepare for the draft. to watch those guys so you're doing like kind of a few things in line with each other at different parts of the days and then by the time we get back the players will be back in two weeks after that

18:10Gabby Logan:and then it's rolling what what's amazing gabby is that for ads's team the seahawks they've lost several of their most influential players because they got to the super bowl won the super bowl the way it works ads is is basically isn't it depending on where they are in their contracts it's like now we've won this we're we're at the end of our contract it's time for the big payday but because there's the salary cap you can't keep everybody so so so several of the several of including the the mvp the most valuable player in the super bowl the man the man has now gone to a different team yeah the other thing whilst you on the one hand you're kind of gutted i'm guessy as a coach the philosophy within the nfl is they've done really well they deserve the payday and if that happens to be somewhere else then so be it because that's how the system works yeah i think you have to um be happy because that's what you it's not you work for the payday but you work and you do the good stuff and these not these things normally come hand in hand and i i think you've got to be happy for people do the fans kind of react okay to that then are they quite Not all the time.

19:24I wouldn't be if I was a fan. No, I would be. But like you also keep some. Like we kept players too, you know. So like it's a kind of juggling act that our front office so like you have scouts and GMs, they do a great job. Seattle's a lovely place to live, I imagine. It's beautiful. Yeah. It really is. Like I say, like Texas is kind of like where I started in America.

19:47Gabby Logan:And you were at Dallas. Yeah, I was at Dallas, I know. but Seattle is by far the most beautiful place I've ever lived. Yeah. It's kind of like Canada with America combined, and you've got the beauty of it. You've got everything. And I imagine quite an obsessive, because it's a smaller place. Oh, yeah. Everybody knows about this football team. Yeah, and they've done a great job creating. They're called the Twelves, the fan base, and when you're there, the place is rocking. You can feel it in the ground. Yeah. When you get to third down, two minute on defense, you can feel it. And we played the 49ers and the first kickoff of the game, our returner, Shahid, he took it for a touchdown and the place was on fire.

20:33It affects the game. They can alter the move. So has your life in visibility kind of changed? Are you getting mobbed? Oh, no. No. You can still walk down the street. yeah i can definitely do that sometimes someone will be like can i have a picture yeah but no i

20:52Gabby Logan:don't give up it's quite it's quite a good sport to hide your visibility isn't it given given well given the players wear a helmet that way do you know what that was one of the big things when we started doing the coverage was to try and when we were talking about players to put a graphic to put a picture of the player up alongside stats or whatever so that people could actually see what they look like because there aren't that many i don't think ads in all fairness who are recognizable because they spend so much of the time with their helmets yeah it's like way more than it is when i when i was younger but like yes it because like you might wear a helmet you might have like a visor on you don't necessarily like unless you're like the guy that everyone sees every time on tv yeah i agree with you we ask you a little bit about the halftime entertainment yeah um of the final i didn't really see it you didn't see it but you must have heard the fallout of uh bad bunny and the kind of the kind of social commentary that kind of went on afterwards and the president getting involved what was your take on on that and whether it does it bother you at all that you know maybe the sport isn't talked about in that moment or is it all part and parcel when you're there of the whole spectacle of a super bowl when you're on a team our head coach does a great job and the team does a great job of like creating a bubble so the noise isn't there it was we was talking about the other about a week ago between the staff everything felt normal so the first week you have two weeks once you win the nfc um championship you have two weeks to a super bowl it feels like a long time so the first week you practice at home in seattle and then you will get on a plane and you arrive and then it's like on and you do these media things every day but practice just felt like practice and the noise kind of like you get used to doing interviews so you just sit at a table and everyone comes around but you don't really feel it like when we got to the super bowl we had to practice we like kind of practice the halftime time because it's longer so the players had to be in locker room a longer time so i had to warm up part to go get ready to go back out and what do we want to refocus on when do we want to talk to each other we don't have to give more the information at the same time we can relax for a bit i'd say like not none of it really kind of got to me if that makes sense yeah that dallas documentary that we've talked about loads have you seen the dallas documentary on netflix the jerry jones no i haven't seen it oh my god it's amazing i mean i know you've been there or were there but it is absolutely amazing but that does include michael irvin telling the story of i'm fairly sure it's the michael jackson halftime that he that he sneaked out of the team locker room to watch to watch the halftime show because it was Michael Jackson yeah honestly you have to watch it it's amazing I mean we talked about a little bit about the transparency both for players and for coaches when you look at English football and I mean this week on the sports agents we've talked a little bit about Spurs current managerial situation and you know their third manager of a season Nottingham Forest have been the same situation does does it look like it could do with some kind of you can't kind of regulate it but there just needs to be a bit more consistency or you think perhaps that there's a better way of doing things when you've worked in a system like you have yeah it's hard i think it's like hindsight it's a great thing to have but i think when you when you're not in it it's easy to say like oh continuity is what you need and it is what you need you know like you've got to be able to ride the the the rough situations and the really good situations and i think at times there does come a point where there is a time to separate from one another at times when it's just like you've unturned every stone and sometimes it's time to move on exactly and sometimes you unturn every stone you find the answer and you take off but it must be hard it must be hard for the person to work in an environment where they're on the clock that fast because I think there's principles that you have that take a while to set in stone because you're coming into a place that once you're new you're doing something a different way and I think that's harder when you come in when you're actually playing games than when you bring a group of people in and you can live together train together and then you start building those standards together so it must be hard I've never been in that situation with coming in the middle of the season like I've come to two new teams yeah and like being with other coaches and built a kind of new way of doing something that's different to that team and really enjoyed doing that um but I haven't been in that situation but it must be very hard and so given given you know your support of English football but also working in American football and now as a as a coach and as a defensive coordinator do you appreciate the challenge that the NFL system throws up of you really shouldn't be able to repeat a Super Bowl challenge because everything is is designed to make it as equal as possible and and not for a period of sustained success do you like that challenge or now you're in this senior position does it does it frustrate you it's a good great question the challenge is not thinking about repeating something because nothing's ever the same so like you said we lost players players moved on we've got new players um there'll be so many different circumstances when you when you create a standard a way of doing something you have a system and you execute as well as you possibly can and sometimes it goes right sometimes it goes wrong but you have to have processes behind it to kind of look at that and say okay how do we adjust how do we move forwards once you do that there is a time where i feel that teams do kind of there's certain things that aren't in your control that happen that help you win at times they just happen you're like the guys are playing the guys between the white lines are playing at such a level they feel confident in themselves that they do things that like allow you to go to the next next place and next place and i think you have to restart and start again we talk about a lot and and make sure we go back and try and create the standard and the way of life we believe in on defence and go from there.

27:12And does it make you just finally, when you look at multiple winners in sport, the energy it's taken to do what you did, and you look at whether it's in football and what Manchester City have done in the Premier League or whether it's Kansas City or whether it's the Patriots. Does it make you really appreciate how hard it is to be multiple winners? Yeah, you have to respect the fact that they've been able to do that for a long period, a sustained period of time. And it's great to study. And there's some things you'll be able to see. And there's some things that you can get anecdotally. But it's like their coaches, their players created something.

27:52But I've been thinking about a lot of those things lately. And you're right, it is exhausting. I think that's the biggest thing I realized when we won is that I was just exhausted.

28:04Gabby Logan:I'm not surprised we went to the after party and I said to him I've got to go to bed I was like I'm done you're probably operating on a level that you don't realise almost in terms of your energy aren't you and what it's taking out of you and then I mean we just had a weekend off from no match of the day and honestly we were exhausted weren't we we like to bring it back to us on this podcast lovely to see you out congratulations oh no thanks very much thanks so much for coming in thanks for your time guys thank you yeah thank you The Sports Agents The Sports Agents With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman Elsewhere this week it was all about our football really rather than American football Tottenham are on to their third manager of the season that's Roberto De Zerbe so we talked to the Marseille-based journalist George Boxall because that's where De Zerbe was manager before Spurs and our regular Spurs podcaster Flav Bateman You know the horrible cliche They are putting the arm around the player, reminding them how good they are, but mostly making them feel comfortable.

29:06Gabby Logan:I don't think De Zerbi makes players feel comfortable at all. In fact, the opposite makes them feel uncomfortable and the ones that float are the ones he sticks with. It does take several weeks to really get to grips with how De Zerbi teams play and I'm not sure if Tottenham have that kind of time on their hands. And then on Thursday, after Italy failed to qualify for their third successive World Cup, we brought James Horncastle, the Italian football writer, onto the podcast to talk a little bit more in depth about where it has all gone wrong for Italian football over the last couple of generations, really.

29:40And looking at Serie A, looking at the failure to invest in young players and how this has become a political issue, as you'd imagine, in the Italian parliament. The headquarters of the Italian Football Federation in Rome has been pelted with eggs. The youth movement from the Prime Minister's Party, Giorgio Maloney, they have been protesting outside of the offices of the Italian Football Federation. The papers, politicians, the Italian public believe that their system is still rotten.

30:12Gabby Logan:That's it. If you're following this on the newsagents feed, then please just search for the sports agents, hit subscribe, and then you'll never miss an episode. You can find them on YouTube, Global Player, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we love you emailing in as well to thesportsagentsatglobal.com, your questions, suggestions for things you'd like to hear. Or you can contact us on social media at thesportsagents or comment below in the show notes. New episodes every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. We'll see you then. The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

30:50Gabby Logan:This has been a Global Player original production.