Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion

LA Rams General Manager Les Snead dives deep into some of the strategies that made the Rams a Super Bowl Champion, including assessing character, how to draft the right player, the complicated nature of trading players, how to build a team, hiring the right coach, hidden performance, why it’s so important to be relentlessly curious, and so much more. A native of football-crazed Eufaula, Alabama, Snead served as a graduate assistant at Auburn University before he spent 14 years as an NFL scout for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons. He became the Rams’ GM in 2012 and over time built a reputation as an executive willing to make insightful draft picks as well as blockbuster trades, including his move to draft future Hall of Famer Aaron Donald in 2014 and to trade for superstars Von Miller and Matthew Stafford on the way to winning the Super Bowl in February. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  There was this element, right, of as we were getting closer to the playoffs and, you know, he brought one of his replica Super Bowl trophy and put it in our locker room, right there when everybody went to get their new clean clothes, pick up their laundry for the day, right, that trophy stared at you and he would handwrite a message, what we needed to do that day, each day before each of our playoff games. We didn't know if he was going to be a leader or not. We didn't know he would affect the passer, but then you see that, hey, I've got one of these. I know everyone else in life. You really want one of these? Let's go get one of these.

• 0:56Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. The goal of this show is to master the best of what other people have already figured out. To that end, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover what they've learned along the way. Every episode is packed with timeless ideas and insights that you can use in life and business. If you're listening to this, you're missing out. If you'd like special member only episodes, access before anyone else, transcripts and other member only content, you can join us at fs.blog/membership. Check out the show notes for a link. Today, I'm speaking with Les Need. Les is in his 10th season as the general manager

• 1:40Shane Parrish?

  for the Super Bowl winning Los Angeles Rams. His tenure is marked by strategic, aggressive moves. If you like American football, you'll love this episode. We even geek out a little bit. And even if you don't like American football, there's a lot that can be applied to business. We talk about assessing character, dealing with issues such as violence and sexual assault, drafting, free agents, trades, the role of data and analytics, developing drafted players, team makeup, hiring a coach, leading the team, and why he's relentlessly curious. It's time to listen and learn.

• 2:24Shane Parrish?

  You were raised by a single mother and I'm curious if you can tell me some of the lessons your mom taught you that you still think about today and try to teach your kids.

• 2:33Speaker 00

  Being raised by a single mom, the sociology there, I wouldn't change anything because it can be, you're gonna, you're gonna earn grit. But I, I think the one, the one lesson, probably really good and, and sometimes bad is she did at times have to work a couple of jobs to make ends meet. Uh, she wasn't college educated and we were in a small town and she's become a pillar in that small town. But she really worked and it meant something to her. Probably just growing up in that environment and, and seeing it, watching it, right? I always said, there's no sick days, right? You gotta go in, into work. But I, I think that's, I think that's

• 3:14Speaker 00

  the, the number one lesson. The, the other one is you spend a lot of time as a young kid alone. And in those days, right? Pre phones, pre iPads, right? If you were bored, you had to figure out how to not be bored. Uh, you, you had to, you had to learn proactiveness, staying ahead of the curve, things like that.

• 3:36Shane Parrish?

  You told me you were fathered by football. What does that mean?

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Football was something that I was, for whatever reason, I was really attracted to. And I think if you, if you grow up in the Southeast, football is very important in that part of the country. If you've seen the, the commercials for, you know, SEC football, right? Or just the SEC in general, there's just something different. It's part of the culture, it's part of the fabric. Uh, it's part of the social hierarchy. So I was very attracted to football and as a kid, you had to earn things in football. I can remember in those days, the first time I actually played, let's call it football with pads on the middle school team. So sixth, seventh, eighth grade. So I think seventh grade is the first time you go out for the middle school team.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  And, and that year, you're really going to sit on the bench. There's one school, if you were third string, you, you had to be third string and you played scout team and, and. If no one knows what scout team is, that's that's basically a team that's getting the the starters and the contributors ready to play the next opponent. But I remember this story. There was in those days, there was a company that made helmets, bike helmets, and those were the cool helmets. And then in those days, the Rydale helmets were the less cool helmets. So our school probably had maybe five to seven bike helmets. So fast forward to eighth grade, you know, trying to earn your keep, even though I was fortunate enough to earn

• 5:03Speaker 00

  a starting job, I didn't get one of those bike helmets. That was trauma for someone in our because that that meant something, right? There was a badge, that was a badge and honor. Football was something that, right? If you wanted to play, if you wanted that bike helmet, you actually had to earn it. And those coaches in those days, I remember that coach of our middle school, his name was John Portevent, and he always had a saying, one more round. You know what? You're going to get knocked down. There's going to be days where you're gonna, you know, you're gonna have to get back up and you're gonna have to go one more round. So I think starting in in eighth grade, all the way through high school, my high school coach, Wayne Woodham, he had a saying, as you think, so you become.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Didn't really know what that meant then. And it's probably changed over my lifetime as I've really, you know, grown to understand what it really meant. And and my wife Kara has mentioned, you know, your high school coach was teaching you stoic philosophy at such a young age. But each coach, each person I've worked with, all the way to Tom Coughlin, who's won two Super Bowls, I do think they played a part in being the father that I didn't have.

• 6:14Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about some of those one liners that you remember that stick with you today that come just top of mind.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  There's a coach now who was one of my first college coaches, and he's now a head high school coach in Birmingham, Alabama. But his name's Chris Yeager. He was one of the first coaches that taught you how to win a battle. Didn't just somewhat yell at you to go win a battle and then maybe get mad at you when you did, right? One of my first college head coach, Robert Maddox, and I went to Troy State and then transferred. Ego, that's where I truly learned ego is the enemy. If we're gonna, if we're gonna bring Ryan Holiday in there. He was such a humble person. It was all about, it was not about him, it was about the team. Pat Die Senior, someone who coached at Auburn,

• 7:03Speaker 00

  you know, make mental toughness a habit. I remember Pat Die Senior would, he'd probably, he'd probably practice at, at one o'clock, you know, every August in, in the hot, humid south, only because he knew that we were going to be playing one o'clock games on Saturday. It wasn't a television schedule then. So guess what? People were going to come to that stadium and, and melt. You know, they're going to be frosty, the snowman in that humidity. But he would always say, hey, we're gonna, he was engineering, right, uncomfortableness, so that when we got to game time, it would, it would be easy. Terry Bowden, someone who came in and coached at Auburn and, and you could just, hey, energy is very contagious. There is a contagious

• 7:44Speaker 00

  leader. Probably the, the person Rodney Garner, who's been coaching in the SCC a long time. He's at, he's at University of Tennessee now. I mean, he's definitely, he was my closest father figure because I practiced for him at Auburn. I didn't play a lot, and I also GA'd for him. But he, he was one of those very similar to my mom. From Leeds, Alabama, grew up, his sociology, you know, was, you know, you had to go to work every day and it was definitely, hey, you can't call in sick. Tom Coughlin, you just learn consistency. I mean, that every day is routine and it, it's pretty much the same and it's intentional. So, Sean McVay, and you, you understand what true efficacy is and, and you understand we being greater than me. So,

• 8:29Speaker 00

  Dan Reeves, who is one of the winningest coaches and he just passed away. He was someone when you brought a good idea to him, or maybe it was even a bad idea. But maybe when you're young and spunky, you think it's a good idea. He would snap at you for bringing maybe something different to the table. But what he always did and what I still do to this day, and if you, if you talk to any of, anyone who works with me that I partner with, if I snap at someone, I will always circle back. And it's because of Dan Reeves. Owners that I've worked for, Arthur Blank, who started Home Depot, he, I learned from him. You sit down in a boardroom with him and his first question was going to be the elephant in the room.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  So you learn that, which has been really good as I've become a leader and not just a lieutenant. Stan Crocker's current owner and he's someone that, you know, you, you learn the art of patience. Sleep on it. I'm going to leave people out, but even though I was an only child, single mother, dad wasn't a, a presence in my life. Boy, was I fathered by some titans who walked this planet and, and wouldn't be here talking to you without them.

• 9:41Shane Parrish?

  One of the things that you, you said there that stuck out to me was, I think it was the first one. You, you learned how to win a battle. What does that mean? Winning a battle in the sense of a football team and what goes into that?

• 9:54Speaker 00

  Throughout time, I think we always want things, I mean, there's an element of impatience, right? So maybe in that moment, I didn't earn or win that battle for that bike helmet. But what I did know, what I did come to find, maybe didn't know then, or maybe my frontal lobe probably wasn't evolved enough to be as quantum to know that there might be another chance to earn a bike helmet. There might be another chance to earn something maybe more lucrative than a, than a bike helmet, but there definitely had to be, right? A process, there had to be an intention. So that I would say there's a North Star goal.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  In football, if winning the Super Bowl would be, right, climbing Mount Everest, that's gonna be one day in February, but there's gonna be a lot of, there's gonna be 364 other days to get to that, that peak. And what, what you have to do, even though you wanna get to the top, at some point, right, you have to, you have to take that first step. And that first step is not gonna be at the base of that mountain, right? That first step may be, right, going to buy mountain gear for the first time. It's gonna be the training that goes into it. So, earning winning the battle is really somehow engineering, designing your calendar,

• 11:19Speaker 00

  right, in an intentional manner, where each day you can focus on getting to the mountaintop, but the mountaintop's not gonna be earned on that day. But there is a, there is a mountaintop for that day. If I spend a lot of time as a general manager, one thing I really like to spend time on is our processes, how are we engineering them? What's the goal? It's on a Friday in May, what's the goal on, you know, on a Tuesday in July? And that might be renewal, right? But each step of the way, the other 100, 364 days before you, you have a chance to, you know, get to the peak of Everest.

• 11:57Shane Parrish?

  Well, let's talk about that a little bit, cuz you won the Super Bowl this year, and then that lasts for maybe a week, and you wake up and all of a sudden you're, you're six weeks behind every other team when it comes to scouting and when it comes to the preparation for next year, and you find yourself at the bottom of this mountain again. And yet you're the champs. How do you, how do you fend off complacency and earn it again?

• 12:19Speaker 00

  There's a few nuances in that question. So if we engineered our processes correctly, even though we played a longer season, we wouldn't necessarily be behind. We're in a contention phase, we're aware of that. That's why we do a lot of the things we do. So we also design our calendar so that if we do play into February, and then while the, the, the new league year begins a month later in March, we're not necessarily behind. So what we did intentionally do was try to focus on all of us getting away, players, coaches, staff, and just renewing. Cuz we, we definitely needed to come back and, and not be, you know,

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Still afraid not be exhausted and still want to compete. I was, Ryan Holiday spoke in Los Angeles a couple of days ago. So I went down to see Ryan and I was, I hadn't seen him in a while and he's obviously written bestsellers and then he's in the process of writing probably a four book series and he finished the one on courage and he has a second one that he's finished, but it's in the publishing phase. And then he was like, okay, on June 16th, even though the second book of that four part hasn't even, let's call it hit the market or the shelves yet, he's got to go back and begin writing that book. And he mentioned something, I said,

• 13:47Speaker 00

  that's, that's, that's very similar to what we're doing. He says on June 16th, when he goes to Sid and his study to begin book three, the blank page is going to be staring at you and it's going to mean something because at that point, I don't, as Ryan and I said, and when we come back for camp in August to begin, you know, the journey, maybe to, to attempt to repeat, writing a bestseller, repeating, yes, that's this North Star, but ultimately that, that August day, that blank page is going to stare at you and all we're going to want to do on that day is actually, all he's going to want to do is really write a good first page and see where that goes the

• 14:30Speaker 00

  next day. And what we're going to want to do is, is, is write, have a really good practice and then go from there.

• 14:37Shane Parrish?

  Let's talk about the, the window of contention, as you mentioned, and you have a concept, the flywheel of a team. And I'm curious as to what that flywheel is during a window of contention versus what that flywheel is if it differs during maybe a phase of rebuilding. And then I guess another sort of add-on to this is can you always be in the window of contention?

• 15:00Speaker 00

  That's a good question. That's, can we always be in a window of contention? I think the vision would be, let's at least attempt to. But right in, in professional sports, there's going to be attrition, there's going to be change every year. So then when there is a change at quarterback or a position that's really, really important or really, really good player, at that point you have to. You have to adjust, adapt and deal with. So in our case, if in, let's call it four to five years, Matthew Stafford decides to retire, we're going to be in contention as long as Matthew is our QB and as long as he's, you know, still able to play like he plays. So at that point for us,

• 15:46Speaker 00

  who will, who would replace him, right? And that's, that would be a big, big if then statement of whether we contend. So, but the interesting thing, I think when we are in contention, at that point, I think we're trying to build a team and not just collect talent. We've simplified it by saying in football, you're, we're either building and at that point, we're trying and the vision is to hopefully break through. And then once we break through in that, in NFL football, that could be, right, having a winning season and getting to the playoffs for the first time after not being there for a few years and building. And you make, and you can measure

• 16:27Speaker 00

  some steps and see momentum and, and feel momentum and things like that. But when you break through and you're able to do it again, I think at that point, the model of your team is probably closer to being complete. So there's some tweaks along the model that may become easier to identify, right? There, if we make this tweak, we might have a chance to go from good to great. If we actually trade Jared Goff, who's a young quarterback, that we were good with, that we were a perennial top 12, top eight, and even got to a Super Bowl. If we tweak the model, even though it's a big event and make a trade for Matthew Stafford, right, is there a chance

• 17:12Speaker 00

  to be a perennial, let's call it eight, four, even number one team? So I think that's the, that's the difference in contending. You're actually, and then the also thing gets into it, you're building a team and not collecting talent. So we have to know within the locker room because the players are the most important people in our ecosystem in, in terms of what, what we're trying to accomplish on Sunday afternoons. Do we have the, the right leadership? I was just chatting with Sam Walker and he's, he's good friends with the assistant GM of the Baltimore Orioles. And he was with the Astros, so. When you're a baseball GM, it sounds like you go in and you try to remodel the minor leagues. So it does take a while.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  And at that point, right, you're you're probably in this mode of you're collecting a lot of talent. The vision is for them to gel together. And then when they're in their prime, break through to winning. And now you have this core team that's in their prime. And and that's the window of contention.

• 18:11Shane Parrish?

  When you went into the Matthew Stafford trade, I'm curious how you identified Stafford, who who played in it, I would assume a different system in Detroit. And identified that he, you know, having experienced the same system for a while, could make the transition to LA. And then what went into the thinking behind trading it for him? And yeah, there's an opportunity. What's the downside? How did you? Can you walk me through that decision?

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Systems in the NFL do matter, right? They're they're different. I think the average fan or just a fan in general, you know, that you look down and well, OK, everyone's playing football. But there is a difference, right? In in the tactics and the systems of each, right? Each NFL's teams, offense, defense, and even special teams. So so here's the interesting thing on Matthew Stafford. And and then I'll I'll try to I'll try to give some bullet points and and you can ask them there. We did think Jared Goff was a good QB. And there was a possibility that he could become a great QB. So when we made the move for Matthew, we felt like he was great now.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  And he could help us in our window of contention be great. That window of contention had players like Cooper Cup, players like Aaron Donald, Jalen Ramsey, that were in their prime. So in our model, maybe it was going to be right, a better results if we aligned our core players with a with a QB that was there already, but and not in the process of getting there. So more, as I said, Jared was a Was probably a student for Sean. Matthew was someone who could partner with Sean. He's our head coach in our prime, but he's also our play caller. So that was going to be an alignment that we felt like would give us an edge.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  And in going back to systems, Sean was mentored by John Gruden and then mentored by Mike Shanahan. Their systems are pro-style systems. Here's the interesting thing about Matthew is he grew up in an era where even in Pee Wee football, there was an element of a pro-style offense. Pro-style offense really is, it puts a lot on the QB from his ability to not only learn the game, but to process the game quickly. So let's just say there's a pass play call, not a run play. Depending on what coverage the defense presents you or gives you, and usually after the snap, because everyone's going to try to disguise it, the QB has to know, oh, on cover four,

• 20:45Speaker 00

  I'm going to my number two. On cover three, my number three receiver is going to be the first target, right? So it's based on that. Where today in college football, in high school football, in Pee Wee football, a lot of teams are running what we call the spread. And I think adults who are coaching at those levels realize it may be better if we take, if we take the heavy lifting off the quarterback and maybe put it on the coaches. So they're doing things to make it a little bit simpler for quarterbacks. But so with Matthew Stafford, even though he had, he had had a lot of different offensive coordinators in Detroit, he was definitely someone who was raised in a pro-style offense,

• 21:29Speaker 00

  who had a lot of reps at really dropping back in the NFL, being able to write, read a defense and process it quickly and know the answer. To the test, real quick.

• 21:43Shane Parrish?

  At what point do you as the GM, how do you decide to move on from players? They got you where you are, that won a Super Bowl with you, but they are in their prime. And these, you, you start thinking about contracts in the future and you can sort of box yourself in. How do you think of it that it looks from the outside in as a fan, it looks like Belichick. Sort of like moves on a year or two before the decline happens.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  That is a, I think he's definitely done a really nice job of that. And he's in, in, my wife calls it Fallon's basement too. There's times, right, when, when he's able to pick up a player, right? That may be devalued for some reason, uh, but has a chance to thrive. In, in their system and I do think if we got into that, I do think at the time, if you were a player and you chose New England, you were choosing New England, probably for a chance to have team success, do something special. From a team standpoint, not necessarily make the Pro Bowl as a, as an individual.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  We have yet to maybe experience that in Los Angeles because we, we've made some trades. And with younger players and they've become our core. What we've probably done a little differently with that core is while we had the highest paid. Uh, defensive player in Aaron Donald, and then we paired him with at the time, the highest paid cornerback in Jalen Ramsey. And we also have always tried to pair him with a higher paid and higher paid. Pay means nothing is really hey, good player that can affect the passer. Right with Aaron Donald, because teams are going to try to take away Aaron Donald.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  And we've always been a team that believes in affecting the passer, harassing the passer. And that compounds over a game and, and, and it kind of frazzles quarterback, things like that. So, but we've always tried to pair that so that if, if a team does, let's say, put. Two people on Aaron Donald, sometimes three, we have other players who can win some of those one-on-one matchups. So what we've done is we've had a, it's called a top tier quarterback being paid. And we've, we've paid our skill players, some of our eligible receivers. So we have this core of players and it's maybe eight to 10. That are highly paid at their position if you compare them around the league.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  What in turn where we're probably similar to New England is we don't necessarily have a lot of, let's call it middle-class players, and that is players that are veterans, players maybe in their fifth, sixth, seventh year, but not highly, highly paid, but make a good living. We've had to in turn really rely on less experienced players to contribute to start to play important roles who are who are on their rookie contracts. We've yet had to take one of our core players, right? Cooper Cup, someone like that and say, you know what? It's best to move on now because they're still thriving. What we've had to do, this particular UFA class, we had to let our starting right guard go.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Like he helped us win a Super Bowl, but we weren't able to pay him what the Carolina Panthers paid. So we probably lose every year two to three young starters because we can't pay them what they demand on the market and we have to rely on, you know, their backups, players that we have in our development system, which is really our roster to move up and and take their place.

• 25:23Shane Parrish?

  I have so many questions here. I think the first one is sort of with Aaron Donald. He might require three people to block him and he might not get anything on the stat sheet, but he might be the reason that the quarterback gets sacked. And how do you account for stats like that where it doesn't show up on a stat sheet? But it is sort of affecting the play.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I mean, I think that's the difference between stats. We call it, we term it hidden production. And I'll try to paint the picture for everyone. If Aaron Donald lines up.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  I'll say this, so in offensive line, there's usually five players, a center and two on each side of the center, right? So let's say Aaron Donald lines up between the two offensive linemen on the left side of the center. So we call that a tackle and a guard and he's between those two. Most of the time, or the majority of the time, another, a team's gonna probably put a tight end over there. So now there's a third player to the left of the center and the line's gonna slide to Aaron Donald. So that means the center, he could either go toward Aaron Donald or away from Aaron Donald. And a lot of times, the center's job is to, is to kind of clean up,

• 26:40Speaker 00

  if you think of basketball, just make it hard for the player to drive to the basket, which at this point is the QB. So oftentimes, right, you're gonna get two, sometimes even three players aware of Aaron. So let's go back to when we made the trade for Von Miller. The reason we made that trade is we knew, we knew that Von really wanted to win a second Super Bowl. And we also knew that when we add players like Von Miller, that when we've had, we've added, when we've added good rushers in the past who are model with Aaron Donald,

• 27:21Speaker 00

  you see those teams still slide to Aaron Donald and now Von Miller has one-on-one opportunities. Or let's say now, he, it's three, it's two on Aaron, two on Von, now we're gonna have a Leonard Floyd, we're gonna have, we're gonna have to have someone else, you know, get to the QB. But I think in this particular year, Aaron Donald's sack production, Von Miller's sack production.

• 27:51Speaker 00

  And they're probably, if you can measure, right, whether you're pressuring the QB, things like that, a little more subjective than objective. But both of those players' production, right, went up when we paired them together and Vaughn got healthier and teams were in a conflict of who they doubled when. And then when each of those players, right, felt that this was their moment in a one-on-one matchup, they cashed in. That's the hidden production, right, where our front office, our coaching staff sees every single game from Aaron Donald. And it's one of those where it's not on the stat sheet, but when

• 28:35Speaker 00

  he's on the field, he is creating havoc and conflict in the, in the opposing team's offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, how do we protect? And even in their play calling during the game, we, we might play a team that's very explosive, right? A team that likes to throw the ball down the field, attack down the field. But a lot of times when they play us, they're going to speed it up. It takes a little bit longer to throw the ball down the field, where they're going to do quicker passes underneath, passes, less down the field passes, less explosive plays. What that now forces the opposing offense

• 29:16Speaker 00

  to do is to earn, right, points. They have to go on longer drives. Let's call eight to 10 to 12 play drives to get a field goal or a touchdown. And the more plays they have, that's the, the more chances, you know, they have a chance to make a mistake.

• 29:30Shane Parrish?

  So if there's hidden production, then there's also sort of like hidden overproduction in a way, right, where people are getting credit that I wouldn't say is undeserved, but maybe they're getting the stat whereas as, as Donald does not. How do you think about that when it comes to sort of contract negotiations where somebody's like, I'm best in the league at all of these things. And, and you know, and part of that reason is because of this hidden production of other players?

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Definitely. And I think, I think that's the nuances, nuance of what we do. On a daily basis and we have seen some of our players, especially, I mean, in particular on the defensive line, move on to other teams and be less productive, right? Because that other team might not have a an Aaron Donald. If the team that one of our defensive linemen went to doesn't have a player that maybe demands a double team here or there, that player's chances for for single teams is is going to be lesser than he had with the Rams and production goes down. And that's you're exactly right. What we would have to do on the other side of that is when we're evaluating players,

• 30:43Speaker 00

  what what scheme is he in? What players are he playing with? What are his Robins actually doing to help him have Batman like production? And if and if we can't, if we can't match that on our end, it's probably best not to to make that type of investment. And and I think that's a lot of times when you see teams pay another player from another team. It it makes news. The player comes to your roster and now he's one of your higher paid players. That puts a little bit of a spotlight on the player, right? Your fans are looking at the player. And and and even that player now feels a different element of pressure that he might not have with the previous team, right?

• 31:28Speaker 00

  He might have been partnering with Aaron Donald and okay, that there's an element of less anxiety. And and then maybe that player now feels like I've got to be an Aaron Donald. And so there there's a many of psychological layers that go into it that you see a lot of times. Those type acquisitions don't pan out or or might not. It's better. It'd be better to say this. Probably do not live up to speculative expectations, but in some of those moments, hidden production is not measured.

• 32:01Shane Parrish?

  Well, did you watch The Last Dance on Netflix with Michael Jordan?

• 32:04Speaker 00

  I did watch that.

• 32:06Shane Parrish?

  So so one of the elements is speaking of hidden production that stood out to me as a fan was that Jordan made the team better, not just on the court when they were playing a game, but every practice. He wouldn't let anybody sort of half ass it. He wouldn't let them give anything less than 100% or he would just go after them. Is there a value to players who do that too that we don't see as fans?

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Spot on. We probably do not win the Super Bowl if we do not trade for Von Miller. Not necessarily for the sacks or him harassing the QB. When he comes to work, like he he's happy to come to work, like he really likes going to a football locker. There was this element, right, of of as we were getting closer to the playoffs. And he was able to connect with our Aaron Donald, our Jalen Ramsey, right? Because those two players, some of our best players in our team, but they respected Von. But in a in a very light way. And and he brought the replica, you know, he brought one of his uh his replica Super Bowl trophy.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  And put it in our locker room, uh right there when everybody went to get their new clean clothes. Pick up their laundry for the day, right? That trophy stared at you and he would handwrite a message, right? Of what we needed to do that day, each day before each of our playoff games. And I and I do think, I think when you're living through it, all of a sudden you can feel it. But when you reverse engineer it, after there's been this special result. You can probably see these pivotal moments where, wow, uh we traded for Von Miller. Not this, we didn't know if he was going to be a leader or not. We didn't know he would affect the passer. But then you see that, hey, I've got one of these.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  I know, Aaron, you really want one of these. I know, Jalen, you really want one of these. Everyone else in life, you really want one of these. Let's go get one of these.

• 34:10Shane Parrish?

  When you're not, when when the team is sort of outside of a window of contention. And you're more collecting talent at this point. How do you balance the the speed at which you can collect talent? Versus being competitive on the field? And and I bring this up in the context of sort of Sam Presti and Sam Henke. And what they've done in other leagues where they sort of uh. Acknowledge what they're doing and tell everybody to trust the process and it looks bad for a year or two, but then they're back into contention. How do you think about that?

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Those gentlemen you just mentioned, right? Very bright humans. Let's just say they're sitting in the room and they're designing their blueprint, right? And they may come up with, we would love to have a, we'd love to be a team like the Golden State Warriors and shoot a lot of threes and things. And you have this blueprint, but sometimes, right, depending on what players, what human beings at what positions were born when, right? When we go to build our team, right? Who's in the draft? We don't get to determine. So we may have penciled in, we really want a QB. Well, what if in this particular draft, there isn't a QB? What if in this particular

• 35:28Speaker 00

  draft, you know, the other 31 teams have a say too? So what if they get the QB before us? So it's one thing to have a blueprint, but in the spirit of any Duke, there's an element of poker involved and luck involved and adding it all together. If good players at positions you've identified to really be how you're going to build your team, they're just not born at a certain time. So maybe they're born a year earlier and then drafted a year earlier, or a few years later, you miss out. And going to the Aaron Donald story, when we drafted Aaron Donald with the second pick, we had two first round picks then. So at that point in time, we were in that building. We're going to try to collect as much talent as possible. Different

• 36:12Speaker 00

  in NBA, probably we got a little bit easier. But when we picked Aaron Donald, we had drafted Michael Brockers a couple of years earlier with a first round pick. We had a player named Kendall Langford, who had been starting for us, and we had Chris Long and Robert Quinn. So technically, we didn't need Aaron Donald. We had a lot of other positions of need. Now, what we were able to do, and I'm sure the basketball GMs are able to do too, is in the second and third level thinking is going, okay, Robert Quinn at the time was a really good pass rusher. Chris Long was a good pass rusher. We have Michael Brockers, less pass rusher, more run player. But if we add Aaron Donald,

• 36:58Speaker 00

  right, if we add that piece, maybe we don't need a defensive lineman. Maybe now our team is actually imbalanced, and we have too much resources in the defensive line. But what it was going to do is lead to us affecting the passer, right? And that's a very important thing in NFL. So when you're collecting talent, again, you're trying to collect pillars. So pillars and have them grow together. And then, once you break through, I think that's when team builders probably need to be a little more specific, right? Where sometimes you do draft for need, because you have core players, and maybe you need to draft for need because, right, there's a void there,

• 37:42Speaker 00

  and winning now, right, winning this season's important. And maybe you pass on a player to another position who may be a little bit more talented. But you know what? The player that you need is actually good enough to help you take care of the business of contending.

• 38:01Shane Parrish?

  When it comes to sort of players, you also operate in a salary cap. And so how do you think of, this is an additive wrinkle to all of this, right? So not only do you have this sort of like window of contention, and you also have positional value as it relates to the salary cap. And it seems like there's a general scorecard, at least going around the internet, where, you know, wide receivers are valued at X, quarterbacks are valued at Y. How do you think about positional value in terms relative to what you can pay for the best performer at that position?

• 38:37Speaker 00

  It's probably case by case, probably depending on year, coaching staff, scheme.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  I call it where your where your where your bread is buttered. Here's here's what we did intentionally do. When we hired Sean as our head coach, he believes in passing the football and having explosive pass plays. Right to attack a defense that way to apply pressure at all times. That way on the defense is going to give us the best chance to win. So that's that's fast forward. That's that's a blueprint. That's a vision and it's actually been working. So what we've determined is in this moment of contention with with Sean as our head coach,

• 39:26Speaker 00

  with him calling plays, we're going to play a lot of three wide receiver sets. We better have capable wide receivers ready to step in. So we've probably been imbalanced at wide receiver and our eligibles. Guys I call a catch the football, run the football, score touchdowns. We've deemed based on who we are, based on our DNA, based on, you know, our fastball, that we're going to pay eligibles. Now, some teams may not, right? They they they may value, maybe there's a a team with a defensive head coach who might want to run the ball more. So they may value offensive lineman more and be a little imbalanced there.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  So I think I think it's a team by team thing. And I I would probably argue that it is probably better to attempt to be dominant and imbalanced somewhere than be balanced in the fact, okay, we're going to have, we're going to pay one wide receiver and then we're going to pay two offensive linemen and we're going to pay one. I I to me, that's that's on paper. That's a blueprint. That's not real life. That might not be what gives a team an edge to to try to be one of 32. That might be a formula that, okay, we can be, you know, one of 12, you know, four out of five years.

• 40:54Speaker 00

  So point being, you asked, how do we do it? We do know what probably the league, when you aggregate who's getting paid and at what positions, probably what the league. Values and you can probably look at each of the other 31 teams and and break down their contracts and and figure out what their models are. But we do it based on, hey, it's it's case by case and in this particular, I like to say, hey, how are we going to win the game? Why are we, why, why are the Rams going to contend? And it's right now, it's Sean McVay offensive points. Now, we can't forget about the defense and we certainly can't forget about special teams.

• 41:31Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me a little bit about hiring Sean McVay. So up up until that point, he wasn't a head coach, he was an offensive coordinator. A lot of coordinators don't make the transition from coordinator to head coach. How do you think about that that leap and the job requirements being different? And and what accounts for most of the success or or non-success?

• 41:53Speaker 00

  The math is against a head coach from succeeding, right? So every year, if there's five to eight new head coaches, they're usually going to, right, teams that haven't had a lot of success recently and the success rate is, the math is is against you. So I think, uh, let's just say the the traits being, hey, definitely need someone who can stand in front of young men that are warriors, that are confident and have those men buy in and want to follow, follow that coach. I always say, will they follow that coach up a hill and go to bat? That's one thing, that's a very hard one to identify. The coach definitely needs, in today's NFL, tactics are very important.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  The the coordinator, the potential head coach, needs to be an expert on the side of the ball. Uh, and and then I do think a coach needs to be, there's an element of humility and and we're going to find that coaches are are very confident. They read it, they better have efficacy, they better not believe they can win, but know they can win and how, right? And and they've done it somewhere else. It's it's not a false hope. But the humility part comes into this is, is it takes a lot of people over the course of the, you know, 365 days in a calendar year to help a team thrive on a journey.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  So the humility part is when the coach, who is really the the alpha leader of probably the the team in the building. Can be vulnerable enough to say, okay, I'm not an expert in this area and I'm going to delegate. That's tough for coaches to do, but what it it does do is if you try to do everything, maybe you can do that a year or two, but at some point, there's going to be an element of exhaustion and burnout. And also, there there might be an element of like you're diluting yourself, right? If you're really good defensive play caller, but you're trying to help on special teams.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  If you're trying to micromanage what hotels a team stays at when they play on the road, it could actually dilute you from right what you're really good at. Sean checked all those boxes and the biggest question with Sean was, is he too young? I mean, at the time he was 30 years old. The one thing that really tipped us and said, all right, let's let's shoot the cannonball for Sean would be when we chatted with players that he coached, each one of them to a T articulated back to us. And sometimes this is done through an agent. Number one, it was funny, a few of them said, why hadn't they hired him yet? They should have hired him yesterday.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  But in each case, right, each player said, hey, this guy commanded the room. This guy, they would run through a wall for him. And the third thing is they said, he taught us football. He simplified complex football better than any coach they had ever been a part of. And and there was even some defensive players who said that they would sit with Sean and he would articulate what an offense is is trying to do. And they would even learn how to play better defense. And then and then we ended up pairing Sean with Marshall Falk at a dinner with our owner, Stan Kronke. So Marshall Falk was a long time St. Louis Ram legend back in the greatest show on turf.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  But knowing Marshall, Marshall's a very intelligent football player.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  So for him to respect you and follow you up that hill analogy, he'll follow you up the hill if he knows that you're going to put, right, the team in position to thrive, dominate, not just get by. And, you know, at that dinner, it was one of those where I think Stan could just sit there and listen to Sean and Marshall talk football. Now you're able to say, all right, you know what, age is, age is not in, let's, let's shoot the cannonball and hire Sean.

• 45:58Shane Parrish?

  I, I want to switch gears a little bit to sort of like drafting and acquiring players. And I, I think it's very difficult to assess a player's true character. What are some of the metrics that you use as well as questions that you might ask when you get a chance to interview them before either trading for them or signing them in free agency or?

• 46:18Speaker 00

  This one's a, this is a very good calculus formula. And simple, it starts with, we like to say, there's an element of physical talent and you add it with the player's intangibles, then the other, other side of the equation is going to equal a useful skill in the NFL. We break it down into what we call football character, personal character. And then there's this element of, we call it football acumen. And we use a lot of, uh, probably independent tests to, to, to help us decide this. But I often say, when you're going to pick a defensive lineman, uh, it might be different than one of the major consulting firms, right? Looking

• 46:59Speaker 00

  at MBA students. There, there's a different job requirement. So we've actually partnered at times with the, the military with some of their tests in that, hey, there's an element to, to be able to measure someone's combative attitude on the battlefield, but also be a useful citizen in public. And then it gets into the, the similar stuff that have us also, you know, thrive is, is elements of conscientiousness and, and things, and things like that. And in one of the, the third equation to that is the ability and it- To learn football and process football. So there's an element in going to the military.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  We have some testing that can measure someone's ability, capacity to intake and accurately recognize patterns. A part of that test is how fast can you do that? There is a possibility that your brain, you were born with a brain that wow, you can really accurately identify pattern recognition. And the reason we do pattern recognition is because football is a lot of, there's a lot of pattern recognition. So in the military, if somebody is very, very accurate, accurately recognizing these patterns, but they analyze it, takes them a little slower to do it. They may be better suited for maybe a job at the Pentagon type job, right?

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Or, or someone who's designing plans, but not necessarily executing them where you're the soldier on the battlefield, and especially when you start getting in some of the elite forces, right? They, they've got to be able to do both, right? Identify patterns accurately, but also really, really fast. And when black and white turn gray, know the best solution to, to thrive in that moment and not necessarily sit down and, and wanna write out the pros and cons and overanalyze it. So that's, that's one of, that's a very important, important part of the intangibles. And, and at the end of the day, everyone in the NFL is, has the physical ability,

• 49:04Speaker 00

  right, to play football, or they wouldn't be there. Some players have the physical ability, mom, dad, God, genetics, to be Hall of Famers. Some do not, and they may never make it to the Hall of Fame. But I think in this equation, the players that probably become Hall of Famers are the ones that are gifted genetically with that physical talent, but they also are gifted, right? Or have been socialized or mentored, the conscientiousness to prioritize their life's work and dive into it and get better. And they've been gifted with the ability to process things quickly, things like that. And then it, the, the players maybe that have that talent

• 49:48Speaker 00

  that don't necessarily live up to those expectations are probably missing, you know, some element of the intangible. And I think the, the interesting thing about it is we're dealing with Very, very young men, I always say they, when we draft them, they can't rent a car. There's a reason they can't rent a car, right? Their frontal lobe is not evolved yet. So that's a, it's a fun calculus equation and each player is different, but that's in simply, in simplicity, that's it.

• 50:16Shane Parrish?

  What are the intangibles that sort of stand out? If you were to like create a list of five, what would be the first five that you would write down?

• 50:23Speaker 00

  I think the first five, so let's go intangible. I think number one would be passion to be a part of football. That's gotta be the player's North Star. There's the element of when the, the human really identifies and really gets in a flow by actually coming to the football facility and, and let's call it studying football, studying how to get better and also working physically to, to, to have their body, you know, in prime condition when it counts. Those people succeed. Uh, I think, I think the next thing would definitely be the ability to, to, to process the geometry of the game. I do think there's a, a love of winning because there, there, there is a subset of

• 51:07Speaker 00

  humans that would be, that may be passionate about football and may have the acumen, the ability to process football, but the love of winning would be if they had a choice between, let's call it having a winning season or being the, the receiver who caught the most yards, they would choose winning season, even though there is an element there. If you, if you're, if you lead the league in receiving yards, there could be more financial rewards. So, so those are definitely, those are definitely three. I do think conscientiousness is one thing, like if you're going to put in the work, you definitely have a chance. And, and the other one is, is the element to handle pressure situations. Uh, and I was gonna say the, the confidence to, to know that you're gonna thrive in those

• 51:51Speaker 00

  situations and some, some people, it can be overwhelming and, and very stressful and boy, that takes a toll on the human. So.

• 51:58Shane Parrish?

  A lot of players have like a, um, you know, in college, they have like a momentary lapse in judgment or they do something serious like robbery or there's allegations of sexual misconduct, um, or domestic violence. How do you think through those issues when it comes to drafting a player? It seems like most teams sort of.

• 52:21Shane Parrish?

  Still draft players with some of that baggage. How do you decide when, when to do that? And when, no, I'm not going to touch this. This is, this is not too bad.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  And another great question, case by case, we spend a lot of work on those players. So I think each year, there's going to be a subset of, of those players. And early in the down, right? We have to decide, are we just going to eliminate them from our thought process? Because they will, you know, figuring that out will take more energy than, right? Than the player who just checks all the boxes and it, and it becomes a little easier. So I, I think that's number one. There's always that element of, uh, how talented are, are they? Uh, because this is a, you know, this is a game where I, I, when I said football's physics and geometry, physics means something, right?

• 53:13Speaker 00

  If you're just, if you're just bigger and faster and stronger and more powerful and more explosive in a short area than another human being, but you can, you can have a lot of wins on, on a football field individually. Once we get to the point, and I, I say this all the time, we're dealing with young men. Uh, we're dealing with, a lot of times we're drafting from college. So when we were all in college, they were probably, we were all immature and probably did things we regret. But there is some different levels of, of the immature incidents that you have. At that point, we have to dig into, we, we bring in a lot of experts, again, use the psychological testing.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  One, one, we partnered with a group that began it, you know, they actually, they're actually screening for, you know, soldiers. Maybe they just sign up for basic training and have something to them that could be, you know, that could lead to, you know, the special forces, the elite teams. We go to their hometowns and chat with the coaches and teachers and mentors and get the complete picture. And figure out if the young man, right, is worthy. I mean, we're all worthy of a second chance. So there could be an element, if this is a pattern and this is going to be 50th chance, that that probably means something. But I think at that point, you we have to

• 54:34Speaker 00

  really get to know the person and the person has to be receptive, right, to development, receptive to things that are not just, let's call it, hey, listening to your position coach, but are are you willing to build a relationship with one of our professional counselors that we consult with to help provide the individual, right, with tools that maybe his background, his sociology didn't provide those tools. And at that point, we really spend time on them. And when we feel like, you know, it's worth taking the risk, right? And maybe you draft them a little bit later, because when a draft class comes in, it's almost like that's your freshman class. It's almost like that's your that's your freshman fraternity

• 55:17Speaker 00

  class, whatever. That's kind of your your gang, your tribe that you're going to hang with. So there's moments where you go, hey, let's let's draft a lot of A plus kids and then maybe we'll put in one C kid intangibly, C minus kid intangibly, and definitely hope that, right, the gang, the tribe there will bring you on in our culture as a whole. So there's a lot of strategies that go into into when you really dig into, hey, is is that, you know, an immature incident? Is it just a college incident? Is it a, you know, it's just, you know, that's that may be normal in in person's background? And you try to

• 55:57Speaker 00

  figure out is, okay, if it actually is a destructive behavior, like, will they, with a player determine and use our resources to, let's call it consistently behave more productively? Do you pay attention to the mock drafts at all that everybody sort of like seems to publish on like ESPN? Well, I would. The answer is yes. I would. The interesting thing, I don't necessarily read them, let's call it for entertainment purposes, but it is fascinating how many people and smart people are interested in the draft. And so what we do in our analytics department definitely monitors the mock drafts and you're able to blend up the mock drafts and they

• 56:41Speaker 00

  and they aggregate them. And what it what it probably does is is let you know.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Right if where the player is most probable of getting picked in the in the draft. And it's not going to be down to the number of like, oh, this guy's 28, so he's probably going 28. If if a player has an aggregate draft, I mean, mock draft of the 28th pick in the draft. That's first round, but late first round. Our research probably shows that player is probably going definitely in the first three rounds. Might not be the first round, but for the most part, he's probably going in the in the first three rounds and probably even the the first two rounds. So you can use it, you know, in in those types of ways.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  Now, the the farther you get back in the draft, it's interesting the what our analytics group has has come up with. And the the farther people fall in the draft, it's a little harder to predict. But there's definitely ways you can utilize, you know, the mock drafts to your advantage of of just knowing where the player is most likely to be drafted.

• 57:50Shane Parrish?

  And and sometimes, I mean, they're they're completely off. I I think it was you and Sean who were caught on TV sort of when the New England Patriots picked Cole Strange in the first round. And I think the projection was you guys had him in the third round. How do you think about a pick like that where it just sort of like breaks these models that other people have?

• 58:13Speaker 00

  Well, that's a that's an interesting one because that video, if you want to call, I guess it would be. My teenagers would say it went viral, right? In in a sense, a lot of people watched it real quickly. And there was an element that got taken out of context that, OK, Sean and I were, let's call it mocking New England. So Sean Sean apologized to Bill. Obviously, it didn't bother Bill a lot. There's not a lot that that bothers him. So we actually called the player. Great guy, but here here's what the where a player is projected to go pre-draft. I call that speculation, right? By by third parties. And then where a player is drafted.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Is I call that his IPO and then at the end of the day, what he does after that pick is his stock price, right? And that's the, that's the most important thing in this instance, when we first started our process, probably, I mean, usually it's a two-year process, but let's call it early fall. He's a young man at Tennessee Chattanooga, which is an FCS school, you know, not power five, not group of five, the, the, the third level down. We, at that point, we had a second rounder, but then we traded that for Von and we, we were left with a third rounder. But through the process, Cole Strange is someone we watched initially, but then that player went to the All-Star game. So the Senior Bowl is the,

• 59:36Speaker 00

  is where the, the best senior talent in the NFL draft who elect to go to an All-Star game, they usually go to the Senior Bowl. Well, he went to the Senior Bowl and he really, really had a good week there. So, once a player at a lower or a lesser level of football has a good All-Star game, that usually means, uh-oh, he is, his, his stock, if you call it, his speculative draft position would be, or heading farther from the, let's call it our third round. And then he, then he went to the combine and he really blew the combine drills out, which they're not football drills, they're more, football is quantum, that whole processing, right? Physics geometry comes in it, but a lot of times the combine drills,

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  I call them more linear, they're kind of A to B to C, you can train for them, you don't have to think, you don't have to process, it's not read, run or pass, it's, it's just trying to be as fast or as explosive as possible. But at that point in time, but he really dominated those. So, point being, we really knew at the time, okay, Cole Strange will not be there with our third round, but we had done some work on him. So, in the, in that video, Sean was really mocking myself for, hey, I can't believe you had us, you know, wasting time on Cole Strange when he was gonna go early anyway. But, as I can say, when you're, you're trying to figure, you're using mocks and things like that to figure out, uh, who's

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  gonna be there in the third round, you really have to, you have to do your work on, I would say, preparation's better than being surprised. So, being prepared. So, but the interesting thing about that, I think, uh, where New England got Here's the bias that comes into that. The New England Patriots have been really good. And they probably know what they're doing. Cole Strange had a good career at Chattanooga. He just happened to be an undersized kid coming out of high school, didn't get, you know, went to Chattanooga instead of the University of Tennessee, proved it at the All-Star Game, proved it at the Combine, again at the Pro Day, this kid belongs. Well, the bias that gets in,

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  oh, the Patriots reached is that whole, well, you have third-party people saying this is, right, this guy's either a second or third-round draft choice. Well, New England traded back in that draft, and then they determined that they would take him at, let's call it pick 28, instead of maybe pick 39. But, right, on a vertical board with 22 positions, I mean, the difference between 28 and 39 is really not a reach. Let's just say, we said, pick 28 was a reach. Well, there's 22 positions on the field. So my point being, if you pick the next best 22 players,

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  what is 28 plus 22? 50. So that I would, my point being is this, if the next best guard could be picked 51, right? You see what I'm saying? If that was Cole Strange was that guard, and then you go 22 other positions, so right around 50, 51 would be the next guard. So I try to get people to think that way. So it's not necessarily, the difference between the 28th pick and the 50th pick is, is, is probably a lot less than most fans, the naked eye, interpret.

• 1:03:03Shane Parrish?

  That's really interesting to think about. It seems like, I mean, Belichick's earned the right to do whatever he wants in the draft at this point, right? Um, I kind of like the controversy around it as a, as a fan, because I, I think it brings people on attention to smaller schools.

• 1:03:17Speaker 00

  And, and now, what's, what is interesting probably in, in today, in the media climate covering football today, right? And I would say it's the, it's the media's fault, it's probably the consumers' fault. The first round is really, really covered. So probably eight years ago, I mean, there was, there was a little more nuance and analysts were talking about second, third, and even fourth round picks. But that doesn't sell anymore. That doesn't get clicks anymore. So I think what happens is the general fans are primed in seeing a certain amount of players mocking in the first round. And then when all of a sudden a stranger, no pun intended, Cole Strange pops into the

• 1:04:01Speaker 00

  first round, whoa, it's like, wow, how is that possible? They've reached.

• 1:04:07Shane Parrish?

  We didn't see this coming.

• 1:04:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yes, so I think it's.

• 1:04:10Shane Parrish?

  No, it's funny because I mean, if the media could draft players, they'd be NFL GMs, right?

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  And I would say some media probably could and could do a solid job of it. What a lot of times the media doesn't necessarily know either, right? Is some of like, like we said, some of the intimate, intangible research that's been done and also some of the intimate medical research that's been done. And so each of these players are going to get an extensive physical. Now, what it usually means is most of these players can play football. Some of them, I mean, there's, there's some tough stories where all of a sudden, maybe your spinal column is, is too narrow and it makes it a very, very dangerous proposition. And now there's a decision to be made, retirement.

• 1:05:00Speaker 00

  But a lot of times what the media, what the general public doesn't know is maybe, maybe he has an arthritic knee, right? And, and so his, his knee only has so many reps in his spine and it's just aged for whatever reason. He has an older knee than his age. So a lot of times some of those things come into play that isn't speculated about because it is intimate knowledge.

• 1:05:24Shane Parrish?

  When we were chatting last, you said you and your wife were author stalkers. And I'm curious as to some examples that where you've taken knowledge from other domains and applied it to football.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Going back to when we talked about growing up in a small town, probably cared too much about football or more than I should. Somewhere along the way, I said, you know what? I really appreciate a liberal education. Probably early 2000. And it was actually Jim Collins' book, Good to Great. Where I sat down and read that book. And, and had this wow moment of like, holy cow, there's a whole nother world out there. And that, and that's not, I'm not going to say that's a, let's call it the required reading in the, in the, in the liberal arts. But, but from that moment on, uh, I did figure out that for the first time ever, my English teacher, right, what, what she was planning in me that, hey,

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  reading is going to open you up, uh, to some new worlds. It's going to be very beneficial and impactful in your life. That, she was planting those seeds and I promise you, I was digging them up and throwing them back at her. I, I have a fear of being bored, so reading interesting stuff definitely occupies the mind. I, a major fear of losing, like, losing is so painful. I mean, like, winning doesn't mean, winning's just, I call it, winning's your job. Losing's, there's a stress and drudgery tax to losing. It, it takes a toll. So I think the fear of losing is like, who can I talk to? Who can I meet? What can I read? Will that actually help the Rams gain any, any, any type of edge?

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  So again, that's the, the author stalkers. So when, when we sit down and we read a book and we think, my wife, Cara, does an unbelievable job. She knows football, so she has a background in, in covering football in the media. So she's nuanced, so she can read something, pass it along to myself. And she synthesizes, right? This concept, this idea, this insight, this wisdom. And I'm one of those that when I read something, I like to really study it. I, I have a fear of like, did I get the most out of that book? Like, there's some books you read and you're okay, I, I generally enjoyed it and there's, but then there's these that where you, I put in a pile and I'm like, I gotta get back to that. What am I missing? That thing was so impactful. And it's usually those.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Those authors that I go, okay, if they'll chat with us, we'll reach out. Fortunately, in my position, fortunate because a lot of, a lot of people appreciate professional sports. When we have stalked them, they've emailed back.

• 1:08:04Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, of course. Your, your wife Kara set up a tea for you and Jim Collins. I'm curious as to some of the, what did you take away from that?

• 1:08:15Speaker 00

  We can go on for, for many days. So going back to Good to Great, a lot of that wisdom, you could synthesize it to, to building a team. So, and, and I have reread that book. And I mean, it is, it is marked up, it is penciled in and it is old and it's awesome. Jim's even signed it now, but, so it was, it was probably, it would be, it would be my professional bible. And even when I got the second chance from 2012 to 2016, when we did, when, when our ownership moved on from Jeff, our coach, I could have easily, I could, he, I could have easily been a part of that attrition as well. Just we hadn't, we had gotten close, we just hadn't pushed it over the top.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  But when we got that second chance, definitely was, I was definitely determined like, what can I do differently? And then in hopes of what can we do differently as an organization? So she happened to reach out to Jim for a birthday present. And we were lucky that the person who was vetting our email, she was a, she happened to play college soccer at Florida. So it was interesting. She said, and she has said since that she went to Jim and going, hey, you've never really delved into sports. This might be interesting, but it's probably because of, right, her passion for sports. So that's the long story. Ended up going to the T. He gets in the flow by research.

• 1:09:39Speaker 00

  So his calendar, his day, it's blocked, it's guarded so that he can do his research. But there, obviously he probably has, I mean, he does consulting and people come to visit, things like that. But he does have these things he called Ts where you would come in for 15 minutes. And take winning the Super Bowl out, probably the, the best accomplishment or the most fulfilling accomplishment was when I call it the gatekeeper kept coming in and saying, hey, Jim, we're at 20 minutes. Is the, he was like, finally, he said, you know what? Clear the rest of the schedule, call my wife, tell her we're going to order out. I'm having an interesting conversation. It was like, you know what? I can retire now.

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  Jim Collins is clear, cleared this afternoon to talk to me. Very fortunate then and Jim. Really, really, I call it, I'm a, I guess I'd be, I'm a pro bono mentee of his and I do think Jim is so curious. He termed at least diving into our organization, right? That whether it's our organization, whether it's professional sports, that it could be one of the more sophisticated, like, human collaboration projects going in that there's a lot of people that are somewhat in silos, but need to work together symbiotically in the same direction to thrive, to have a chance in battle. And, and football is very similar to Jim's flywheel, right?

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  There's like we talked about, there's only so many games and there's a lot of days and there's an element of monotony to it where you have to keep just coming in and, and where, where, where is there a leak today? How, how do we not only fix the leak, but design something where that it no longer leaks and things like that? So there's an element of monotony to it where you just keep going away and then there's that moment of a breakthrough. And you really can't pinpoint, like, like Jim would say, there's not this one moment. It was a lot of moments, uh, as you, you know, you turn that flywheel that compounded into breaking through and now contending.

• 1:11:42Shane Parrish?

  Well, talk to me about that flywheel. It, it starts with keep the main thing the main thing.

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  The main thing, it would seem very simple, but we're in the entertainment business. There's a lot. You know, the NFL is a big entity. It's a big entertainment thing, but what do you spend an 80% on of your time on? So how do we continue contending? And what do we gotta do today to continue contending? Now, right, that's the big picture from the organization, but now when we sit down in our department, right? Our, our offensive staff, our defensive staff, our special teams staff, our athletic performance staff. So that's a staff that's, that will, will be into improving the physical development, our training, medical staff, and that's, hey, preventing injury and, and rehabbing injury, our, our.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  Player engagement psychological staff where you're improving and providing tools to have the best mental health as possible, the best mentality. So the nutrition, there's so many silo expert, the part, I mean, expertise type departments in the building that like they now have to go, okay, on this Wednesday or this Friday in May, what do we do today to write, help the Rams continue contending? So that's, it's really trying to take a big concept. Wow. How do you contend in the NFL? But the reasoning behind it is, okay, it's

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  really just that simple, right? And my day is going to be different than Sean's day is going to be different than Raheem Morris, our defense coordinator's day is going to be different than Reggie Scott, our director, you know, our VP of Athletic Performances day, right? Because they, they, they're experts in these domains. And then at the end of the day, it's up to us to come together symbiotically. When you get stressed about something, what is it that you have to remind yourself? I think I actually maybe in a sick way, like stressful situations. I, I think that's a genetic gift. I don't know if I learned that. I've tried to really journal and kind of figure out when that occurred. But fortunately for me, when there's a stressful situation,

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  I'm normally at my calmest. And maybe that's because I, I have evolved in, in the, in, in the chair of general manager, you do realize when there are some stressful moments that there are probably eyes on you. So there is an awareness there. But I think if, if there wasn't some sort of genetic gift where you, I truly believe that, okay, I've talked with Ron Holliday about this. He wrote the book, you know, the obstacle is away. Okay, there's an obstacle there. I mean, wow, this is, this is actually an opportunity, right? To, to grow from that obstacle, maybe in, in a, in a sick way, it's, there's an adrenaline moment of like, wow, this is, this is really living.

• 1:14:44Speaker 00

  Now, I am fortunate, and I'll use the asterisks, right, of where I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast and maybe have been on it, I've never, I've never had to deal with major personal tragedy or health issue, or, you know, some set of losing some job because the, a major financial stress. So I'm fortunate in those, and I'm not saying, I would hope that I would react the same way in those moments. So a lot of the, the stress and anxiety comes, right, professionally. But, you know, raising children, things like that, you're going to go through those moments. But even in those moments with children, and they've

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  failed, they've made errors, as a father, you're trying to, I'll, we like to say sometimes, just go outside, lay down, look up at the stars, and, and there's that meditative where, okay, this is a big planet, tomorrow's probably gonna be here, and whatever happened today, there's a chance it gets better tomorrow. And what I do know is, once the emotions of whatever happened dissipates, there's actually a learning up, you know, there's an adventure to be had, there's a, there's a chance to grow forward. So, with that, so I do think I'm blessed to, it was my high school coach, Wayne Woodham, as you think, so you become, it was some of the Stoic philosophy. But somehow, I do think, Shane,

• 1:16:09Speaker 00

  that I was, I've got some Stoic DNA in me somehow. Maybe it's that morning plunge I do in the Pacific, where every, every morning, that one of the first things I do within the first 30 minutes of waking up, when I am in California, is I, I go dive into the Pacific Ocean, jumpstart, I would say that ignites your day.

• 1:16:30Shane Parrish?

  Yeah, that, that'll get you going, for sure. Final question, what does success mean to you?

• 1:16:37Speaker 00

  Success, wow, good one. When I was a kid growing up in sports, like, it would, again, small town Alabama, so we played tennis, but I, I really enjoyed like doubles tennis and not singles. So there's twofold, did I really appreciate teamwork, collaboration, or was I just not really good at tennis and I needed? You know, a partner to to bail me out. Same with when I did play golf in high school, you know, the the team winning versus a good score individually meant something. Success now is can I do my part as a leader, right?

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  So that are we has a chance to experience that fulfilling moment? That's special, yes, but also are we actually has a chance to have a meaningful impactful experience along, you know, the journey that we're going to have together in professional sports? Because that's that's very fortunate. So I think and and as I get to an age now where I've been fortunate enough to be a GM for for 10 years, there's that element of now of, okay, success might be what do I need to do now to maybe give back right to the game? In in this particular case, my life works been football. I mentioned earlier, I was raised by football.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  Hey, football at all levels, teachers, coaches mean a lot. So what can I do right to give back to the game? And in the big picture of the planet, I'm just in football and somebody else is in another domain. You're in your domain and we're all diving in, right? Trying to somehow make an impact. And then that all works together symbiotically for hopefully a better experience on this planet.

• 1:18:34Shane Parrish?

  That's great. Thank you so much, Les, for taking the time today.

• 1:18:37Speaker 00

  I really enjoyed it.

• 1:18:49Shane Parrish?

  The Knowledge Project is produced by the team at Fernham Street. I'd love to get your advice on how to make this the most valuable podcast you listen to. Email me at [email protected]. You can learn more about the show and find past episodes at fs.blog/podcast. To get a transcript of this episode, go to fs.blog/tribe or check out the show notes. Can you do me a small favor? Go online right now and share this episode with one friend who you think would love it. Thanks for listening and learning with us. Till next time.