Innovations in the Game, Coaching Philosophies & Caleb Williams Evaluation with David Shaw

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We've got a lot of fun content scheduled, by the way, as we get deeper into the summer and head towards the season. We have a chance to kind of stretch our legs a little bit, be creative, do some fun stuff. So hope you guys will continue to hang with us as we get to the summer. I would like to do something we don't do often on here, which is encourage if you get on Apple Podcast, get a chance to drop us a review and a little write up on there. We appreciate those. We don't often ask for it, Buck. I feel like we're, I feel like this should do many. It's every now and then we like to lob that out there. We're closing in. I think we get to the fall. We're going to get to the 1000th episode. So hopefully a little big celebration. I know a lot of you guys have been with us from the jump. So we appreciate you guys so much. I think you're going to really dig this episode today because we've got one of our good friends. Guy Bucky and I have both known for probably 20 plus years. Yes. David Shaw, who was coming off a very successful run there at Stanford. He is now a free agent. He's going to be doing some media work this year. He's going to be hanging with the family. And then he's going to look to the future, which he's going to get into a little bit during our conversation. Is that college ball? Is that in the NFL future for him? Well, he's going to let you know. It's a really fun, wide ranging conversation. But here's our chat with David Shaw. All right, Buck. Well, here he is. Coach Shaw, it's awesome to be with you once again, man. It's great to see how you doing. I'm doing great. I'm doing great, especially with you guys, man. He's you're my guys. You know, I haven't seen you guys in a while. It's good to catch up and do this even if it's front of other people. Well, there's a lot of stuff I'm looking forward to talking with you about today. There's so much ground we can cover. But I want to start first of all with just tell us what you've been up to, man. I know you did some awesome work for us on the draft coverage, but what's it look like for the last few months? It's been great. My two sons right now, one's a high school senior, another one's in seventh grade. They're doing a lot of tracks. I'm hitting all the track meets. And, you know, as a football coach, you're always looking at your schedule and your kid's schedule and zipping back and forth. And now I can complete freedom. I can do that. My daughter's home right now. She's going to start school in the fall. So we've had a chance to do a lot of things together, too. So this has been a great time for family and sports and doing some stuff for the NFL Network, which was awesome. And now just looking forward to the fall and see some UCLA football games and spend some time with my family and hopefully prepare for that next chapter. They're real quick though. Real quick though. You got to tell us why, you know, it's not just because chips your guy and you guys are buddies going back along. Well, you got another reason to go watch some UCLA football this fall. Yeah, my son, my son committed to UCLA Carter. So he's going to play football there and I'm excited to go down there and watch some games and, you know, I have to be careful though because right he's like, Dad, this isn't this isn't your thing, right? So I don't want you around too much, right? Like, OK, so I have to kind of be just with the parents. It can't go hang out with the coaches. So I'm just looking forward to being a parent, letting him have his face. And it's going to be a lot of fun. I have to ask you this because I went through something similar with my son. Like when you're watching football games as a parent, how hard is it for you to turn off the coach shop heart as opposed to a I'm going to help them out if they just do this. We can is that been a difficult challenge for you just to watch it as a spectator and a parent? You know, just watching sports with my kids. Gosh, you know, my daughter's 20. So since she started soccer like second grade, right? I found a way for those two things to coexist. So they don't battle anymore, right? So the strategy side of me, right? So looking at the overall scheme and the technique of my kids as well as the other kids, like that's one thing. And then there's just the supportive dad, right? I don't usually say a word during the games. I don't. I just watch a lot of times though. I kind of have to stand away from the other parents because I don't want to hear the things that they're saying both both our parents and the other parents. I just need to be like, you know, so I'll go on the field. I go to the side. I just watched, but I watched with a lot of pride. And whether they do well or don't do well, I'm just excited that they're competing and excited that they're active. So yeah, I can do both. And so for my kids now, they know if they want to be coach, they can ask me and then I'll help. But the one thing they don't ask if I see anything that has to do with my hot buttons, my guys who've always played for me. Now I have my hot buttons. Effort, any lack of effort. I'm coming full speed, right? Those are my two hot buttons besides that I just want to watch and enjoy and let it play out. However, it's going to play out. But really just being a proud dad in those moments is fun for me. I love that. By the way, my spot is down by the fence. So it's I want to the stands is no go. The stands is a no go. You don't want to hear it. It's usually it's usually your own fans. I don't want to hear what they're saying that you got somebody's parents are ripping on kids on our own. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear what they're saying that you got somebody's parents are ripping on kids on our own. Team it's uncomfortable, man. So I like to go down if you can't get down to feel that it's just going on the fence kind of by myself away from everybody. So I feel that from a dad standpoint coach. What about you know what what has happened for you over the last year and this kind of transition phase that you're into now? You know what? Why did you know that was the right time to end a very successful chapter at Stanford and and what does the future hold? Let's let's fast forward a few months here about what would be an ideal situation for you going forward. It's really hard to describe even to my wife was we're going through it is right around Thanksgiving and I had no anticipation of stepping down and that week hit and it was like an avalanche of thoughts in my head. And it just felt like the right time right where we were Stanford still is at a crossroads. I'm athletically with this new world, especially in football and men's basketball and even women's basketball and the volleyball is now getting into it and all the the NIL transfer for was it's it's it's huge. And there's a lot of changes that needed to happen. You know the the Provost just said she's going to step down. So I'm like, you know what? This is like the perfect time if I was going to leave. This is the perfect time right we had two seasons in a row that weren't up to our standard. I'm comfortable in my skin, you know, hey, let me take those on my shoulders. That's blame me. That's fine. Throw it all on me. Not a problem. I'm also point to those previous 10 years, but that's okay. And as again, this is a perfect opportunity for someone else to come in and still their program and start to build with the new way that Stanford's going to have to compete in this new world. And the more I thought about it, the phrase that really hit me was, this is not my job anymore. It's felt like someone else's job is time for somebody else to step in. And I love my players. I love their families. And they all understood they got it. It wasn't a difficult season. It wasn't that stuff. I'm a football coach. I've been through the ups and downs and highs and lows. That stuff doesn't bother me. I sleep all night because I know that our guys give the best of them. But I kept thinking about it. I was like, you know what? If I was ever going to step away, this is the time. And then someone randomly hit me with the Bill Walsh quote that kicked it off also, which was 10 years. You know, 10 years is about the time. And this was year 12 for me. And I was feeling like, gosh, it just feels like time. I love Stanford. I love everything about it. I love the people that we recruit and all the sports. I love the non athletes and the things they're doing at Stanford. But it just felt like the right time for me to put a bow on my career there. Lend any help and support I can from afar and really look towards the next chapter, which over the next few months and really starting a few months ago, shortly after I stepped down, I started my NFL preparation both for the draft, which was a lot of fun for the NFL network and NFL now, which is really cool. And all the different shows that was some things for and NFL plus was amazing a day one. But really just preparing for the next NFL cycle. And for a lot of people, I used to say this all the time. Like, I was never trained to be a college head coach. All my training for 10 years was to be an NFL head coach. Right? That's what I was trained. So I never felt like I made the conversion. I operated and thankfully Stanford allowing to the way that we recruited and what we did. I operate like an NFL head coach at Stanford, the way we did things when we practiced our schemes, they were all NFL style. So now just switching now to going back to hopefully the NFL world and doing those preparations to see if there's a fit on the franchise aside and on my side. You know, David, I think it's so interesting in terms of the differences between the college game and the program. And you said you always operated like an NFL head coach down in college. When then we're preparing for life as an NFL head coach, how different is it to take what you've learned at the collegiate level and then try and apply it at the NFL level? That's an interesting question. Because like I said, I don't feel like I ever completely converted. Like the biggest conversion to me, honestly, are the hashes. Right? It's just a different world with those wide hashes. It's a different world. And the NFL, as you say, we're always in the middle of the field. So for me, all season study wise, we studied the NFL. I did study a lot of colleges. We looked at some things that people did that were good. Some wide receiver screens and some spread concepts and rest of the ball concepts. But for the most part, we're studying the Chiefs. We're studying the Eagles. We're studying whoever's doing well, who's running the ball well, who's throwing the ball well, who's using their tight ends well. We did that a bunch. So running an NFL scheme on the offensive side and also running an NFL scheme on the defensive side. Right? And our defense was a Vic Fangio offshoot. So we would look at all the different Fangio. We looked at the four Uniteders. We looked at some of the things the Eagles were doing. So for us, we were always, as a staff, we're always in the NFL mindset. And it was part of our sales pitch to our recruits. And every single year, including this year, you talk to our guys as they go through their NFL camps and they get their books. They always shared me a text. They coach. I know 80% of this playbook. Right? Because we've got guys going to places that use offshoots of Bill Walsh's West Coast offense. Nobody calls it that anymore. They all call it something different. It's a spread. But you look at them like, oh my God, it's the exact same principles that I ran as a freshman. It's Stanford. So our schemes are very similar. And we, our heads have been in the NFL world for the last 15, 16 years. So for me, football wise, it's not that much of a conversion for me. You brought us mentioning points, Coach. I love you. You mentioned Coach Walsh, so I know what he means to you. When you think about some of the things that have been in this game forever that don't change, I mean, you go with some of the core philosophies of that offense that are still obviously seen on Saturdays and Sundays every single week. But there's also change and there's things that, you know, some advancements and some, and it could be not only in scheme, but also in technology. What have you seen maybe over the last year or two or maybe even looking out into the future? Like what innovations are coming and maybe how does technology factor into what's going on in this game? That's one of the biggest off the field battles for College and Pro is that, especially being here in Silicon Valley, right? As a Stanford guys coach, I was pitched so much stuff you can imagine. Hey, coach, you can do this. Hey, coach, you can do that, right? And whether it's for training, whether it's for meetings, whether it's for practice. And a lot of times high school coaches are using more things than NFL and college coaches. High school coaches right now, they have those, those cameras and they're watching practice during practice. Right? They get through the night on seven and during the water break. Look at, Hey, look, what's watching right now. So we watch it. Hey, okay, the next period, you got to change this and get stepped with this. And so there's a lot of coaching going on during practice. Now, college wise, there are a lot of rules about time that you want to be as efficient as possible. You may not have as much time for that, but, you know, on game day, that's, that's the biggest question on game day. How much more can we do? Can we have more video on the sidelines? Can you use video up in the booth right now? College, it's a no no part of it is you have the haves and the have nots. And my, my good friend, Davos Sweeney, like five or six years ago says, Okay, if you go down this path, just remember, I'm going to out spend all of you. So you can't put a cap on me. So as soon as you crack that door open, I'm going to put more money than anybody in college football. So that's been one of those things like, gosh, if we start allowing things to happen in Western Michigan is going against Clemson. I mean, it's not going to be fair, not that that would be fair right now. But so that's the idea is, is how can we start to crack that door open, especially on the college football side and keep it even. And the NFL side is okay, how do we make things better? And how do we not create unfair advantages? You know, so that that's always going to be the conversation. But we, as I was on the rules committee for college football forever and we met every single word the NFL rules committee. So they were a lot of back and forth about how far can we push this envelope. Now college football wise, a lot of the stuff it's it's been crazy and fascinating is stealing signals. I mean, call it what it is, right? I mean, so now you've got the fake signals and the false signals and the sheets on the sidelines. You know, because we're trying to say, okay, what are you doing? Okay, what are you doing before we decide what we're doing? So that's a balance in college football that is a little bit in the NFL. They've cut it down with the head pieces, you know, inside the inside the inside the helmets for the guys, but there's still some signaling that happens that coaches are still trying to pick up on. So there's always that gamesmanship. So how do you, how do you mitigate it? Did you put your pieces in everybody's helmets? You know, that's one thing that could stop the ceiling signals, but then, you know, is that now going too far. So the teams that hold up real quick the teams ever like cracked the code of the cardboard plays. So in other words, you've got like we all have seen it right you hold up that you hold up the board and it's got four different images on it. Are the people really cracked some of those codes with what people were doing? I've heard rumors that some people have cracked some people's codes, you know, I don't think very likely the see the movie the imitation game. You know, where they, you know, they cracked the code, but they can't tell the the closing side of the practice so they allow some bad things to happen just because they don't want to give it away. So that's like getting a be on a test. Okay, let me get this one wrong and this one wrong just to make sure not that I've ever done that. But yeah, those, that's that's that's part of it is that gamesmanship of like, okay, we think we know, but then those teams will say, okay, we're going to put up the same board, but we might have a signal that says ignore the board. Or we might have a signal that says, go the upper right quadrant or the or the lower left quadrant. Right. So it's not just the board. It's the other signal that goes with the board. So there's, it's a lot of insanity. Some of it's fun. Some of it's too far. But if you can find ways to get through that, you go back to just coaching football. So that's the balance to me between, you know, some of it, it's, it's not cheating necessarily. But that's a battle that hopefully once you can get through that, that would go. Not there. Just playing football. Are we going to go back to just sending the wire receivers with the plate in and out the hotel like, yes, the year, can we just go back to just shelling the wire receivers back here with the play so we don't have. We don't have to stick. That was the way that used to do it. And then, you know, rumor is also here a couple of different places where the receiver would forget the second part of the play. Or maybe put his own tag at the interplay. So you can't say this, but hey, don't forget about me on that. I used to have to go over to the sideline. At Northeast Louisiana, when I was playing for Ed Zombrecker, I used to have to shuttle as the quarterback. Oh, did you play with, you got your conditioning in the wine house? If you play for me, that's what that's what we do. We're doing that now to high school. You come over here every time. Every time come to me. So I can tell you exactly what it is. And you run back. So you get your conditioning, your car to your fit. You're all there. Well, that way, if the play, if the play gets screwed up, there's only one guy to blame. Like, you know, if they send it in with the receiver, you know, the receiver's blaming the quarterback, the quarterback's blaming the receiver, the coach doesn't know. And the coach is giving it to you directly. There's no fall guy. No, no, no fall guy. Coach, I have to ask you this because your style at Stanford was so distinct, right? You guys were a power football team. You were jumbo, sic, you were heavy. You came downhill at people and that style worked for you guys forever. When you think about going somewhere else, do you think that style of football is more specific to what you had at Stanford? Do you think that style can carry on elsewhere? Can other people take that style and say, you know what? I can play in the SEC and play this. I can play in the big 12 and play this style. What do you think is just specific to what you had based on the personnel and the kids that you're working with? I think you have to have a philosophy, but part of your philosophy is who do we have? Right? And if you don't have the guys, there's nothing worse than trying to do something that you don't have the guys to do. And to me, I was, I'm a Bill Walsh disciple, right? I'm a John Gruden disciple, and that's where it starts. Like you have to look at who you have, and if you have to cater to what you do, actually Coach Bill, you should do this with our staff in Baltimore. You say, okay, he says, I know what you want to do, but let's put up your skill positions in order. Forget about not the quarterback, but the skill positions in order. And the top five guys, that's what personnel you should be in, because your best players should be on the field. Right? So if you're top five offensive players, if two of them are receivers, and two of them are tight ends, you should be a 12 personnel team, because that's your best players. And so for us, for years at Stanford, obviously our tight ends were the best in America. We are still tight in the only one with anybody says, where we have, we had that group. So to have Kobe Fleaner and Zach Gertz out there and Dolph Schulz and Austin Hooper, like those are our best players have those guys on the field over and over and over again, and then have the runners that we had. I mean, Toby Gerhart was just a beast at 1800 yards, and then it's Stefan Taylor, who was a career leading rusher with Tyler Gaffney, who rushed for 1700 yards. So we had big physical NFL backs, and it changed a little bit with Christian McCaffrey, the style that we did, but it's still the same philosophy. Right? We did have as many great tight ends with some good tight ends. We're still some 12 personnel, but we had some good receivers too. So we were a little bit more 11. We spread people out. We still ran the ball physical. But then, like we said, we looked at Christian. What does Christian do? Well, the pin and pull scheme from the Philadelphia Eagles that they ran with Shady McCoy. We had never we hadn't done much of it before. We said, Oh my gosh, this is a perfect fit for Christian. So we put that in for him and we had guards that could pull and athletic. So we had that group of guys. Okay, you know what? Let's do this. We had a Josh Garnett who ended up winning the Outlet Trophy, who was probably the best pulling guard, either for Ben around. So now looking at your scheme, we can have the same philosophy, but now it has to look different because our players are different. Well, you mentioned C-Mac. I want to ask you about that because we had this discussion. I know you had it as well covering the draft and being involved in the coverage. You know, you got guys like Beechon Robinson in last year's clash. Look at your mere Gibbs. And there was, you know, we ended up with two running backs going on the first round. And I was kind of advocating through the process and buck out having these discussions about, you know, there's kind of, we almost need to give some of these guys their own designation, maybe rebrand the position a little bit because, you know, we're not talking about two down players. We're talking about guys that can not only catch the ball to the backfield. You can put guys out on a route. You can get them out the slide. You can split them out wide Christian. Obviously, you go back to when he was coming out the combo. He had the best wide receiver workout. Anybody at the entire combine is a running back. So we label Nichols Nichols, right? We have corner piled. He used to always, when we were starting in the draft million years ago, they were all in the corner pile. Then we were able to pull the Nichols out and made them their own position. Is it time, Dave, and again, you be running an NFL team next year where there's not saying all the running backs, but there are those special ones that I almost feel like we need to pull them out of that position. I don't know what we call it, but we almost need to rebrand it. Yeah, I would just assume call it the C-Mac, right? There you go. The C-Mac, the guy that you can't put in a box, right? Yeah. There are running backs, and I agree, and I watch, of course, both of you guys all are going through the draft process and your podcasts and all your stuff, the NFL Network and other places where I agree, the position of running back has been devalued. It just has been. That's just the way we're playing today. That's fine. You need to. One superstar, you're good enough anyway. You need to have two really good solid backs, and they can have the same style. They can have different style, but there's a difference maker position like a Christian calf. You like Bijon, like, you know, say quads, or they're not like everybody else, right? Yeah, they can get you 12 hundred yards on the ground, but they might get you 800 yards in the air. For some of those guys, they're going to get you. They could be a pro-bo-returner also. And like you said, but Christian Christian Christian could be a starting wide receiver in the NFL right now. There's no question about it. He's probably the best slot receiver in the league when they put him out there. You can't cover him. This short area of quickness is insane. So when you have a guy like that, he's not a running back. Right? He's a five tool guy. Right? He's a guy that you can place anywhere that they can't get a beat on. The guy that lines up 70 yards back there, or now everybody's in the shotgun, five and a half yards back there. Right? And you know where he's going. He's coming out the backfield. Okay, great. That's a position. And it's valuable, but it's not as valuable as a guy now that can line up anywhere and do anything. One of the most fun I've had a practice in my 16 years at Stanford was the Christian's two years where he was the guy. He would go to one on once with the wide receivers and DBs. And I think in two years, he's probably covered twice. Right? I mean, he was in and he would get upset because he's like the first route is always going to be a go route. Like Christian, we got to we got to mix it up. He said, I need to get the trust me. They respect you. So I want to I'm with those guys to respect me. I'm going go the first route. I said, but now they know you're going to go. And it didn't matter. He's still right by the job. So it's one of those deals to where this guy could play anything. So that yeah, I agree that he's not a running back. He can affect the game in so many different ways. And any way that you can isolate him against another human being is a win for your team. That is a different position. That's what Bijon gives you. This guy can catch the backfield. He can line up out there. He can go deep. I mean, how many times during the year did he go deep up the scenes and just run by people and make these those difficult, awkward back shoulder catches. He's not a running back. So I was wondering if anybody was going to have that in them to say, we're going to make this pick because we see it that way. And I was excited that a lot of Falcons did that. Wow. TKMX gets it online. Besides, I can buy TKMX have some Star Shop and own them online shop. Now, I have TKMX DA. I have to feel my back and shed some to own the application pricing. Yeah. I would click and connect. Can store others and they can store up on custom laws. I want to lean on your experience with Bill Walsh because I want to be able to make this happen. I want to lean on your experience with Bill Walsh because having played under Mike Hongren, Mike Hongren always would coach Walsh and everything was about what he learned from coach Walsh. So I learned something from coach Hongren. I want to see if you learned this from Bill Walsh as well. He talked about practice standards and he talked about when we are operating on offense, a good practice day is when the ball does not hit the ground. The way it's efficient, it's effective, we're in and out. When you go back and think of your about your time playing for coach Walsh and all the things that you learned, when it comes to setting high practice standards, what exactly did you learn from him? Just getting the job done wasn't good enough. Right? It wasn't that the ball got completed. It was was the ball the foot in front of the numbers or not. Right? Was the ball placed properly? Did the receiver have to break stride? Right? Did you get 16 yards or did you get 15 and a half? Right? Then that was Bill. Like it was, it was like he didn't care that the ball was completed. He didn't care that the quarterback got the ball off. If there was anybody near him, gosh, you know, line coaching to take that tackle back over there and work on his kickstep, so make sure there's nobody around the quarterback. It was the desire to reach perfection. Right? And you have to have that desire. Will you ever reach perfection? Absolutely not. But it was, that was the coach's job on practice to say everybody has to be perfect. And the Bill Walsh's analogies, I was still using with our guys and a lot of them, they know what the Bill Walsh name is kind of, but they don't really know. And you're like, Bill, we'll talk about a symphony. Right? And I'm not football coaches don't talk about that. They want to talk like it's a, you know, car crash. You know, Bill was like, no, like it's, it's musical. Like it has to be a symphony, like everything's perfectly orchestrated, everything's smooth and efficient. And when you go back and you watch those teams, that's the way Joe Montana played. That's the way Steve Young played. That's the way Jerry Rice played. That's the way Roger Craig played. And it was beautiful. It was beauty. It was, it was as rhythm. And yes, there's a violence and a physicality to it, but you watch those teams play, watch those offensive lines play with Bob McKittrick. Right. And everything was just blocked perfectly. And then the scenes were there. So it was really about not just getting the job done, but how well can you get it done? And how can you get to perfection? Can your hand be exactly where it's supposed to be? And I had one, and I still feel so bad about it because I would get so upset. Our 12, our out our outrots with 12 yards, right? Speed cut balls, I mean, kind of 12 yards. And I was a Z. So I was off the ball and I was back and we actually had to be off the ball right now. And I was like, I'm not going to be on the ball. And my stride was perfect for 11 yards. And Bill would be on me. It's supposed to be 12. I'm like, I can't, it's a 12. But, but it was one of those things too. Like, he didn't care that it was a first down. He didn't care that the ball was too. He didn't care that my route was great. He was like, can we get one more yard out of your route? So I was trying to creep up. And I was feeling of, gosh, everything has to be perfect. And when you can find a coach that believes in that, and a group of players that feels that way too. And I think that's what you see in a lot of the best teams in the NFL. That's what you see in Kansas City. That's what you see in Philadelphia. You see these teams that have enough guys that they want to do it perfectly. They want to be great. And they want to be great on every single play. Coach, you just mentioned some a lot of stuff I'd like to get to here. But when we look at the quarterback position under Coach Walsh, obviously, no way did it better. In terms of creating an environment for these guys to flourish, not only from a scheme standpoint, a personnel standpoint, maybe even just a psychological standpoint, kind of building that cocoon where you can grow a successful, in this case, Hall of Fame quarterback. You just saw a bunch of quarterbacks go off the board in the first round. These guys are going into new situations. What do you think is important in terms of the foundation to be put in place for these guys? Not saying they're going to be Hall of Famers Pro Bowls are even great. Just to give them a chance. What do you have to do to give these young quarterbacks a chance? So I was approaching like a coach, right? And so for me as a coach, number one is, where is this guy? Where is he mentally? Where is he physically? Where is he comp competitively? Where is he off schedule wise? Like, where is he? What can he do? What can't he do? Let's start there. And sometimes your answer you get to is, he's just not ready. Right? There's too much that he has to learn, and you can't learn on the job. You learn in practice, right? So some guys just aren't ready. No matter how talented they are and how good they might be down the road, you play a guy too early. You can ruin him and I can get fired. Right? That's the two things you got to worry about. So some guys aren't ready. If a guy is ready, okay, great. You start with the downside. What do we, what is too much? And that's what John grew up. I thought did a great job. We just, let's test these guys. Let's push these guys early and make it really, really hard for him. So we know where the line is. How much is too much? How much can we put on this plate? Okay. Now we know how much we can't do to him. Now we know what we can do with him. And then the second part for me is to me, there's three parts. That's the first part. Where is he? What can he do? Next is the most important thing outside of that. What do we have around him? Right? How's the offensive line? How's the defense, right? Because we've got to be able to get him in the ball back and we've got to be able to cover his mistakes. He's going to throw a couple interceptions. We've got to have a defense that can protect him, get an offense line that can protect him and we've got to have a running game. He's got to be able to depend on something else. Let's say he throws a bad ball. Okay, great. We've got to get him back out, get him some cheapies, but let's run the ball. Let's get some offensive efficiency going outside of just counting on his arm. And then the third thing for me is, okay, what are the weapons around him? Who are they? What do they do well and then mesh it and what they do well with what he does well? Three step, quick game, all that stuff, screens. Yeah, that's great. But we also have to throw the ball down the field in the NFL with. So what routes can these guys run? Do we have a tight end that can win one once? We have a Christian McCaffrey that can make everybody's life easier. No matter what position that is, do we have adult and shorts that can be a great blocking tight end, but can also win inside where the quarterback needs to step up and find that guy over the ball. So those are the things for me that we got to be able to protect him with the offensive line, the running game and the defense. And then what does he do well, mesh that with his weapons and give ourselves the best chance to be successful. Buck, can I ask a question for you, Buck? I'm going to prompt Bucky to ask the question that I love when he asks this question because long ago he came up with this theory, which we've used a bunch on the pod, Buck, about when you have old quarterbacks, what the weapons can look like, but then maybe with young quarterbacks, what you need there. Go ahead. I just pushed you. I just wanted to push you into that. So, Coach, I have a philosophy when you have a young quarterback is really important to put veteran receivers around them because there are a liability and dependability in terms of route depth, knowing concepts and those things. I think it's too hard sometimes to have a young quarterback and a young receiver core because you got a lot of learning occurring at the same time. So in a perfect world, this kind of dub tells to what I was going to ask anyway, team building in the National Football League, DJ and I talk about, it's probably easier to build an offensive centric team and have a defense that maybe can play Ben, but don't break, but get stops. As you're thinking about building the perfect team in the National Football League, do you skew towards maybe building around an offensive philosophy that we're going to be great on offense and we can be fine on defense, but we want to put our energy into building the best offense that we can build based on the way the game is played with the rules. All right, I'm going to try not to straddle defense here. But the components all have to be there, the order with which you do them sometimes is not up to you. Right. Imagine you're walking into a team. Where are we? Where is our strength? Right, you may have a strength someplace that you have to play into, you have to play into whatever strength you have and then build upon that. But I'll say this, what you can't do is overreach on a quarterback because you want to quarterback. If there's not one there, then you have to find the best, best answer right now for whoever you have right overreach on a guy and putting a guy out there and say we're going to win, you're not fooling anybody. You got to be good up front on defense. Right, you would get Philadelphia, you would get what they're doing up there there. We're going to beat you up up front, right? And they're basically just adopting Georgia's whole philosophy and defense. But to be able to put pressure on other people's quarterback is as important as your quarterback playing well. So for me, there is a balance there that you have to have to have to where you've got to be able to make some things happen on defensive side. You've got to get those stops like you're talking about. You have to have people that win one-on-one battles on the defensive side. That's interesting. We always talk about quarterbacks and pass rush. It's like, let's just start there. Who are the contending teams? Well, let's look at who has A-level quarterbacks and A-level pass rush. Those are the Super Bowl contending teams. That's like it. To get into the party, that's what you got to have to even get to the party. And I'll go back to Buck's first point, which I agree 100%. Like if you have a young quarterback, there's a lot of variables with a young quarterback because he doesn't have the experience. Now, if you've got young receivers, now you've got even more variables. There are a lot of things that go out there and say, okay, this is what we practice and on game date, that's not what it looked like. And where did we start because they're both wrong? So there's that comfort in having that veteran present, some kind of veteran presence. Now, if you've got a special young guy like what they had in Cincinnati, you've got a special young quarterback and a special young receiver. Not granted, they had some experience together in college. That's a little bit of an exception to where, okay, these guys are exceptional, but they're still learning as they go, but they've got some really good pieces around them as well. So that's a big thing for a coach. You want to have as few variables as possible. So sometimes the more young guys you have, offense, defense, everywhere, the more variables and the more holes you're trying to plug in the dam as opposed to, okay, we've got a veteran team. There are a lot of guys that we know exactly what they're going to do. They know what we're going to do. We're on the same page. Now let's plug these young guys in here in these limited roles until they earn more. And I'm big on that. Young guys earning the roles that they have. But I think that's also how you get your veterans to respect you. We're not going to turn their careers in my career over to a young guy who's just figuring it out. No, no, no, we're going to be a veteran team. We're going to cater our veterans needs. This is their career too. This is what they've established themselves. Let's let these young guys earn their way in there, utilize their skills and their talents. But let's make sure that we control the variables in a football team by keeping those young guys in the roles that they've earned. Yeah, that's one of the things we always talked about too. When you have sometimes you have a first year general manager, first year head coach, first year offense coordinator, first year quarterback. It's hard to have all everybody adjusting to this thing for the first time. That's what we're talking about. White outs and quarterbacks. And I mean, man, you got to have some dudes in there that have a back in their football card track record that you can rely on. There's no question about it. The veteran presence on teams on winning teams is always significant. It always is. They know what they're doing. They don't come in every week with a whole bunch of questions. Hey, what am I doing? What do we call them? What are we doing on third down? Okay, God, a coach. I'm here for you. You got to have the majority routine has to be there when you're a young team. Okay, great. Just know that you're going to be a learning experience. You may do well. You may not do well, but those groups that groups going to learn the veteran teams, veteran, laden teams, they win championships. Coach, I want to ask you this because we saw this happen down in Carolina where it appeared that owner David Tepper really kind of challenge Frank Wright to put together coaching staff. That didn't feature a lot of his buddies or like minded guys. So to take a bunch of guys with expertise in a bunch of different areas, put them together and challenge them to figure it out to grow together. So one of the challenges of a head coach is obviously hiring coaches. How do you go about that process to say that we need enough diversity and what I mean, diversity, and our staff to push us to be maybe something that's out of our comfort zone, but it will help us put together the best product on the field. To me, that's one of those things I love as a coach is your coaching staff. You end up spending more time with your coaching staff than your family during the season, right? So for me, it's not just about the expertise. It's about the personalities. We're going to be in a submarine together for six months at a time. We have to be able to work together. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but we got to be able to work together and present something to the players and gives them the best chance to be successful. So for me, I always liked the diversity of age and experience. We love to have young youthful coaches, but I always want a couple of sage older guys that have been through some of the wars, been through a lot of experiences to add that experience to our staff, as well as our young experienced coaches that are fired up and excitable. Having that combination, I think, is really important. Having during opinions is important as well. And those different experiences are great, but we can't have such different experiences and opinions that we can't find common ground. So that's the challenge. And for me, like interviews, I love to interview potential coaches with the staff. So there's an exchange of ideas. Where are you? Here's where we are. Oh, that's a great idea. Hey, what about this? So you find, can we find some common ground in those conversations? But I'm not a big fan of just finding the hot receiver coach that's going to be a coordinator. Okay, let's just bring him in. There has to be some kind of a philosophical agreement. We have to be close, even with very inexperienced, we have to be close philosophy wise, because when it's all said and done, none of us are playing the game. Right, we want to give the game plan to our players and have them go out there and execute. And there can't be, well, this guy says this and this guy says this, which one would we do. We have to do the same page and work with the players to help them go out there and perform and help us win a trophy. Well, you talk about hiring staff. One of the other things we've had discussion on here before, we don't understand, so maybe you can help us here. Why in the NFL, where you have no limits, right, you can put as many guys in your operation as you want in terms of support staff. There's some teams and some of them have been very successful in doing this where offensive line defensive line. So if you have your offensive line coach, it could be your assistant offensive line coach, it could be the third guy in the room, but there's one guy in that room that's coach the defensive line, so that every single week when you're getting ready and you're game planning and opponents, they can tell you this is how they're going to attack you. This is what they do. This is what they see in your group on the offensive line. This is where they're going to get you. And this is where this defensive scheme having coached in that scheme and coach that position. This is where they're vulnerable and bouncing those ideas off and you flip it over to the other side as well. You think about being that defensive line room and having an offensive line guy, and you're like, Oh, my gosh, well, first of all, I know offensive line play and this left guard is a tomato can. So that's the guy that we can go at. And when I watch him, I see it differently. I see how he struggles when they're twisting from one side versus the other. He doesn't see it. It just seems like, gosh, it's such a no brainer. And I know some very successful teams that have done this. And I know you can go too far when you make Matt Patricia the offensive coordinator like that's, that's a bridge too far. But I just don't understand when the resources. There's no limits. Why would you not do that? There. So I mean, obviously the Patriots have done extremely well on this over the years. And my first year coaching that I played wide receiver at Stanford for four years. My first year in coaching was coaching outside linebackers and strong safeties. And it was invaluable, right? Not just for me to learn, but also for me to communicate. Okay, well, here's, here's what this scheme is. This is what they're trying to do to you when they run this curl flat. Here's what the quarterbacks looking at, etc. So I'm with you all the way there. I think as long as you have someone on the staff with enough experience or the opposite side experience. It doesn't need to be in every single room, but I think a lot of times you can get just get that extra voice to say, Hey, you know what? I know the scheme that they're running. Here's what gives that scheme trouble. You know, but you can also have it from a guy like Vic Fangio when he came to us at Stanford, Vic and such great experience. He could do it on both sides of the ball. He would come back and say, Hey, you know what? This hurts this defensive scheme. This is why we stopped running it. So if you guys use this, they're going to have a tough time and to do it on the flip side to say, Okay, Hey, I know this is what we've been doing, but I've coached against this offensive scheme. What we've been doing is not going to work. So we're going to have to switch something up to account for what they do. So having enough of those experienced voices, they don't have to be completely on the opposite side. But as long as you have those voices on your staff to be able to give you those nuggets because really we're not talking about overall scheme. We're talking about those minor things that help you convert one more third down or help you get one more pressure or help you get one more turnover. That's what you're looking for. Just somebody on the honors staff to say, Oh, I've seen this before. And here's what we should do to counteract it. You know, David, since we're talking about coaching, this has been a big fascination on the media side where people are looking at the hot offensive coordinator and saying he should be the next head coach. Coming from your background where you have been a head coach and you've called plays. How challenging is it for you to be the head coach of the team, while also being the head of the offense. And if you could give any advice to the newbies who are doing it this year for the first time, what would you tell them. I say this my little phrase delegation is sanity. Right. What can you delegate, right? You try to do it all by yourself. It's so hard. There's so many different things that you have to account for. I get Randy Hart, old defensive line coach, he's retired now a lot of credit. Randy came to me one time early in my first year. And he said, other way as a head coach, make sure you come by the defense meetings. Make sure you come by individual on the defensive side. Make sure every defensive player sees you outside of his drill sees you in his room. And you're not the offensive head coach, you're the whole head coach. And I was such great advice. So at that day, I changed completely. Every day during individual, I would go by and I would stand by every group and I'd watch them. I'd contribute. Much like we're just talking before Daniel, I'd say, hey, on a defense, you're like, hey, don't forget the quarterbacks looking at how your body is. So you need to make sure you're getting the back out of there. And make sure that you, whatever it is, whatever tips I can give them so they can see me as the head coach. Because when things get difficult, they want to know that you're on their side. You're the whole head coach, you're not just the offensive head coach or the defensive head coach play caller. So if you are the play caller, you got to have someone that you depend on, someone that you can, can banter with someone who can tell you, hey, coach, be careful of that. Don't do that. Or be able to say, hey, you know what, I need to step out because I got to, I got to put out a fire someplace, especially on the college side. I got to put out a fire. Hey, you take this for me. So for me, I had, I too, when I first took over the Pep Hamilton, who was outstanding. I could leave the room and leave Andrew Luck to his capable hands, right, because he wouldn't just turn Andrew over to anybody. Although Andrew could probably handle anything. But turn Andrew over to somebody I trust. That's like Mike Boongrid, who was phenomenal. He goes down there at Rice right now, who's an unbelievable offensive line coach, offensive mind period. I could leave the room and say, that's going to be taken care of so I can go do something else. Or I don't have to stand there and watch the wide receiver drills right because that's my passion as an old receiver. I don't have to watch that because I trust my receiver coach. I have to have somebody that's there that can depend on and I can allocate that to so that I can go stand by the DB's. I can go watch the defensive line. I can interact with those guys so I can be seen every single day as the head coach of the entire football team. Coach, this has been so much fun, man. The time just flies by. We sit here and you look up and you're like, oh my gosh, we're just, I feel like we're just getting started here. We can go in so many different directions. We're not going to keep you much longer. One of the things I definitely wanted to ask you about though. We've put one draft in the rear view mirror. So now we look out the windshield to the next one and know it's an early look. But you got a chance to see Caleb Williams up close there at USC. The numbers speak for themselves. The skill set seems to be pretty obvious. But what was it take away being on the field? We always say in scouting, there's nothing like seeing a quarterback live. That's a different experience than just watching the tape. What did you take away from seeing him? There's only one 10 out of 10 that I've seen and that's Andrew Luck. When Trevor Lawrence came out, I thought he was the best since Andrew. He's not a 10. He's a 9999. And the only thing I would say about Caleb is there are times where maybe he takes maybe too many chances because I'd say this are the quarterbacks, but all offensive players like that football has everybody's face on it. The entire organization, right? That's our baby. You got to take care of that thing. Sometimes he takes maybe too many chances, but his improvisational skills are to the level of Patrick Mahomes. You get mesmerized watching this guy play. I went back and watched all of the Oklahoma stuff just because he was new and hadn't seen him with USC. So all of that. And then after we played him, I still went back and watched him because I just I want to keep seeing this young man grow and special. There's, like I said, to me, it's Andrew one in this generation and K the Williams number two. And I don't know. I don't know if there's a close number three. This guy is this guy's different. His accuracy, his athletic ability, his strength. Right. So you're going to take a guy who's got Andrew Lux accuracy, but he's got the build of the behemoth of a quarterback in Philadelphia. And he's not going down easy, right? And we played against Roblesburg all those years. Just getting a guy clean to the quarterback means nothing. Right. We got a guy on the ground. And how many touchdowns do West Ben throw as he's holding off or outside the line back and looking down the field and making the throw. And this guy's either going to do that or he's going to make the guy miss and he might run for 40 yards, but you had a clean guy that should have been a sack. So he can mitigate the issues with the entire offense. If you don't block well enough, he'll make guys misses miss, but if you give him a clean pocket, he can deal from the pocket. But if you also let him run, it's not just about his speed, like here with a Kyler Murray. And this guy's got natural make you miss ability. And what I love most about him that the great ones all have. He plays the game with a sense of calm. A sense of calm. He knows he's better than you. Right. He's going to run just fast enough that you can't catch him down the field to see if anybody's open. Right. Oh, you know, the I need to pause for a second. So I'm going to let you get a little bit closer to me. Right. It just, it happens every single game. So I don't have enough praise that I can give this young man. I'm not a big fan of the favor nails. I don't care if anybody pays their fingernails. It's had nothing to do with that. You know, sometimes they have some, some, not more than PG 13 messages on those fingernails. You tell one was the famous one that he got a lot of blowback for. Yeah, even on ours for our game. You know, there's, there's some, you know, colorful language there. And I would just say like you, you are the quarterback of this next generation. You are the guy. Be that guy. Be that guy that my, my, my 13 year old's going to look up to and say, man, I want to be like that guy, you know, and, and, but as far as like on the field stuff. It's truly, truly special. Man, I love that. Like I love to hear that's like lofty praise. All the quarterbacks you've been around for to talk like him and glowing light. I can't wait to really, really study him because there's one thing to do TV scouting is another thing to study somebody down tape. I can't wait to put him on the scope. One of the things coach you talked about, like he takes chances, but he didn't turn the ball over. I think he had like, I think he had one or two interceptions during the regular season, something like that. It's not like he's not taking chances. Like he puts the ball in tiny, tiny windows. We, when Angie used to come back and work out at Stanford, there's one time I went out there and we worked together and he was doing this to, he's rolling out to the left. And what do you call disassociation, where he would disassociate the top top of half of his body from the bottom half and make these, these throws with his hips twisting and put the ball on the money every single time. And I'm like, okay, yeah, that takes some work, but that takes just skill. You got to have that, right? You can get better at it, but you have or you don't. But you put Caleb on there and we would say that the quarterbacks, there's got to be, you got to run for minimum three, first downs a game. You got to use your legs, etc. It's like, you know, vitamins, right? We just need him every, every day, every day. There's five a game with five plays a game that other guys in college football can't make. There's five in every game that you just say, Oh my gosh, right? And so much of college football is, you know, and I have to throw out the receiver screens. You have to throw out the cheese. Like, yeah, anybody can throw those. We got to find the third or five where you're throwing the ball between windows. We want to see those plays, the red zone plays. But for this guy, it's five times a game. If you cut those things out at the end of the year, you're going to have 50 plays that you just say, Oh my gosh, this guy is special. I said that was the last one, but you've got me thinking for one more here. And I'm curious on this one. You said your son is going to go play for chip. I know you and chip have a relationship. I'm excited to see your son with a creative offensive mind like Chip Kelly and what he's going to be able to do with him. He's excellent. When you look at, we talked about Caleb Williams. I know he won't be there for when USC and UCLA joined the big 10. But I think there's, there's the expectation that, Oh, you know, UCLA, USC, they're in for it when they jump in there and they have to play Ohio State and Michigan and Wisconsin, all these teams on a yearly basis. It's a different brand of football. But in your opinion, can those two programs be successful joining that conference? I think they can be. I do. I think there's a lot of things that have to be worked out. The travel is going to be brutal. It's just it's brutal. It's brutal to say you're going to have however many conference games and half of those conference games are going to be on the road. And that's minimum two times zones away. Those guys coming back and having a short week and a Friday night game. I mean, it's hard to get those guys lakes back. And I know the tip, especially it's sports science down there's outstanding right there. They're going to find a way. But that's tough for people that are still students. Right. These are still students in the NFL. Now, hey, we got two West Coast games. Let's stay back to back out there. You know, we got we got San Diego and we got San Francisco. Hey, or I'm sorry, LA and San Francisco. We'll just stay on the West Coast or we'll just stay on the East Coast and just can't do that with college kids. You have to be able to bring them back. They have to be back on their dorms. You have to be all those things. So those are logistics. But I think over time, they're going to compete. The big question for me is, is 10 years down the road, right? Because this was a, this was a six year deal. They signed eight year deal, whatever it was. These, these aren't long term deals. So are we aligning again at the end of this big 10 deal? You know, the Pac 12 deal when they make it. Is it going to be a short term deal also? So are we going through this again, eight to 10 years later, where things are going to be switching again? And do we go back to two big conferences? Do we go back to a bunch of small conferences? Do we go back to, hey, let's put it all under one umbrella? Like they talked about years ago and just say, hey, let's just divide it like the NBA and say, okay, we're all in one conference. We're just in a bunch of different places that make it feeds now better as a, as a tournament. So it's going to be fascinating. Hopefully I'll be able to watch from afar. Safe distance. We're very safe distance. Watch all these things, right? Because in the ACCs, we'll talk about that in the big 12 needs banning or they can track. What's going on? The next decade is going to be fascinating because I do think eventually it's going to settle because with these, these, these rights are so big. It's the amount of money is so massive, but streaming is taking over the world. So now eight to 10 years from now, are we paying these companies paying these big, big, big salaries and these big things? Or now does it all even out? Is it almost like a tech bubble to say, we spent a whole bunch of while ago? Now we don't have to spend as much anymore. So it's going to be fascinating to watch. Well, this has been awesome, man. They appreciate your time. It's great to catch up. I'm excited to see what the future holds, but in the meantime, I'm excited we get to have you back on here a few more times during the fall that we normally get to, man. So we appreciate you. I'm looking forward to love you guys, man. Take care. Oh, you're the best, man. All the best of the family, man. Congrats to your son. Appreciate it. Thank you. Look, biggest takeaway is there. I thought we went in a lot of different areas. I mean, that's the cool thing. When you have somebody that is like us in terms of that lives in the college space and the NFL space, it just opens up anywhere you want to go conversation wise. No, I think the coolest thing is just to hear him take the wealth of experience that he's had. Collegially, the NFL to put that all together and give some of these answers. But I'll be honest with you, the stuff that gets me excited is the stuff that he said about Caleb Williams. The quarterback from USC and how he just talked about Andrew Luck and then Caleb Williams. And then for him to make the descriptive of the guy can do some of that Pat Mahomes like stuff. We've heard people try and put the Pat Mahomes comparison or tag on others. But when you watch Caleb Williams and the special stuff that he's able to do, that might be the closest comparison that you can have in terms of someone who has the ability to improvise, but plays with a calm, cool demeanor where the game doesn't appear to be too fast for him. He certainly is a special player. Yeah, I mean, shoot, he talked about where you are in Jacksonville right now in Trevor Lawrence. And we gushed over Trevor Lawrence coming into the draft process and I think we both agreed that he was the best one since Luck. And neither one of us had a chance to really do the deep dive on Caleb Williams that time will come. But coaches already done it and played against him, saw him on the field and watched all their games and crossover tape there while he was at Stanford and said he would put him too. He would put him behind Andrew Luck and the more significant part of it was he said it wasn't like a huge, huge gap. That's pretty close. That's high, high praise coming from a guy like Coach Shaw. Yeah, high praise. And so that part is fascinating. But then the other thing, like you have to the running back conversation or the difference maker as he dubbed it, the player that we talked about. So it was just just a fascinating conversation. He has so much knowledge and expertise. I can't wait to bring him on later in the year to talk more. I mean, you know, we love studying the trends, how the game is advancing the innovations that teams are bringing into it. I can't wait to pick his brain as he has an opportunity to sit and watch and really study without the added responsibility of being a coach himself. No doubt. Well, that was a fun one again. Be on the lookout more fun conversations and again get a chance to be a little bit creative as we get towards the off season. So we're looking forward to these conversations and these visits. I hope you guys have enjoyed hanging with us. We'll be back later this week for one more episode of Move the Sticks. We'll see you then. ♪ Thank you.