Lost in Translation: Why You Can’t Understand the NFL

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

Speaker 3 I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 5 Green left twins, E-short tight, pass 37 buster nudge, wife, flu to sting, X-Pear Kill, 3-titan left.

Speaker 4 Right after this ad.

Speaker 7 You're listening to DraftKings Network.

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Speaker 10 Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champain, and Fortune Alcoholic Volume reported by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in York, New York, 1738. Centaur design.
Please drink responsibly.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I didn't know, Nate, if you would want to even be seen with me at this point

Speaker 3 on camera at all, frankly, after what I said.

Speaker 10 What? You came after

Speaker 10 my career? Is that what that was? Okay.

Speaker 10 You said my career. is not there's no need for someone to explain we do not need this in this world right now.
There is enough sports out there, sports media to consume.

Speaker 10 We don't need that niche bullshit, Nate.

Speaker 13 So, okay. So

Speaker 3 it's something that I am going to have to do some work to clarify what my actual intention was when I went and co-hosted Dan Lebetard's show in Dan's absence and said stuff like this.

Speaker 22 Can I express an observation about how we've evolved at talking about sports?

Speaker 19 Because we've gotten to a point where jargon, where being confusing and extremely technical has become mainstream.

Speaker 25 And I just want to know when we decided this was a thing.

Speaker 13 It's not often where I have to like text a friend or someone who I considered a friend and be like,

Speaker 14 just FYI.

Speaker 26 This was not about you. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Because I felt the walls closing in. I really did.
I saw the quote.

Speaker 10 I actually listened to the whole thing. I know that's a foreign concept for a lot of people.
I was listening to the

Speaker 10 apex clip. I did grind it.
I did grind it the tape. The audio tape.

Speaker 10 But I did grind it and I listened.

Speaker 22 I think Dan Orlofsky is really good at what he does.

Speaker 16 I think he's the guy who's probably the best at the telestration and the breaking down and the dissection.

Speaker 1 But it just feels like a lot of people nodding at something that they think they should be impressed by.

Speaker 3 as opposed to actually knowing what's happening.

Speaker 9 It's like you're a nerd that came to sports and now you're like, sports are too nerdy.

Speaker 16 I just think we fetishize

Speaker 1 target.

Speaker 27 I became a

Speaker 27 an anti-intellectual avatar, which is a weird position for me specifically to be in.

Speaker 10 There's a Pablo's word, Pablo's dictionary account, isn't there?

Speaker 14 Yes, PTFO dictionary.

Speaker 10 You dummy.

Speaker 29 All right, so if today feels like a national holiday, it obviously should.

Speaker 2 Because the Kansas City Chiefs are hosting the Baltimore Ravens in an NFL regular season game, which means that the biggest and most popular television show in America, by far,

Speaker 30 is back.

Speaker 3 And the fact that it is the biggest and most popular television show in America is of course obvious by now,

Speaker 29 but it's still kind of stunning to me.

Speaker 2 Because I would argue that nobody watches anything more

Speaker 28 that they understand less.

Speaker 2 Because jargon, when it comes to how we talk about football, has truly never been more mainstream. Among not just coaches and players, but fans and broadcasters.

Speaker 30 We have never heard as many people, I would submit, trying to speak in literal code.

Speaker 29 And some of this is a function now of the internet and that fragmentation of media.

Speaker 2 But it is everywhere, as you will see this season, turning jocks into nerds.

Speaker 29 And now nerds, apparently, into jocks.

Speaker 29 which I was accused of being while co-hosting the Lebatard show this summer, leading to articles and headlines and yeah, people accusing me of being, quote, anti-intellectualism incarnate, end quote.

Speaker 28 Or as respected quarterback's coach Quincy Avery called my general position, quote, quite possibly the weirdest take from a really smart person,

Speaker 30 end quote.

Speaker 2 And so what I wanted to do today was call up a really smart football guy who might have been threatened by my position.

Speaker 2 Nate Tice, an NFL analyst at Yahoo and the NFL network who himself is a former NFL scout and a college quarterback and also the son of Mike Tice, the former head coach of the Vikings.

Speaker 10 And I wanted to start by playing Nate, who also has a couple of other key qualities that we'll discuss, this clip.

Speaker 2 This clip of future Patriots quarterback Drake May interviewing with the Giants on HBO's hard knocks.

Speaker 2 Because this is the thing that triggered me in the first place.

Speaker 12 Gundolphin right.

Speaker 32 Gundolphin Wright 72 tundra float H angle. Gundolphin Wright 72 Tundra float H angle.
Yeah, so tundra stands for what? 200. 200.
And what does float stand for? It's got the corner of the out.

Speaker 32 Flat. We call it a flag.
So we end up saying corner flag, but it's flat.

Speaker 32 And the angle is an angle. You got me on that? Easy stuff.
Then you use read it to the right, lend it to the left. It was a flip formation.
Good? Rita to the right, lend it to the left.

Speaker 32 72, five-man protection slide to the wheel so if the strength of the formation is right which what formation is that again yeah gun dolphin right yeah right he's he's there the wheel's over there the line would slide there we'd say 72 rita 72 rita gotcha so let's say this before you go to the next one my cynicism is that so much of this stuff is just like terminology karaoke

Speaker 18 right can you sing the song can you say the words but you

Speaker 10 as as someone who knows the notes who has sung them himself what does that mean translate that for me please That is, well, gun is shotgun. If you don't say gun, you're under center.

Speaker 10 Dolphin, a D word means two by two, meaning two eligible receivers are on each side of the formation. There's three by one, which are T words.
So trips, trio, triple.

Speaker 10 T words are three by one, tells different guys to line up anywhere. So D, dolphin, right.
Right tells the tight end, the Y, that he's going to the right. The Z always follows the Y.

Speaker 10 So the Z and Y go right. Then X is always opposite of the call.
The X receiver goes opposite of that. Dolphin probably tells them because it's two by two.

Speaker 10 The F, which would be the slot receiver, goes into the slot away from the call. So that's just formation.
72. So again, this comes, they use numbers for the protection.

Speaker 10 So the seven is a type of protection.

Speaker 10 The two means it goes to the right.

Speaker 10 So the, and usually you tag the running back. So 72 means the back is going to be aligned to the right and his protection is working to the right or his route is working to the right.

Speaker 10 And this looks like to me, five man protection based on just how the drawing was. So 72 means five mirror protection, work running backs working right.
The offensive line work opposite of that.

Speaker 10 So when he was saying Rita and Linda,

Speaker 10 that's what he was saying too. Linda means offensive line calls sliding left.
Rita would mean sliding right. So then we get into the concept.

Speaker 10 And because it's two by two, you generally have to tag both sides. You tag this two-man concept on the left and this two-man concept on the right.
Depends on the offense, which one you do first.

Speaker 10 This one, they seem to be tagging the X side first. So it's float, float.
And then you hear him talk about it a little bit. He goes, well, that's corner, corner out.

Speaker 10 You know, flag is a different term for corner. Float, flag, out, float.
And so that's probably how they came to that. I've been on offenses floats a formation and not a play call.

Speaker 10 So again, it gets into different offenses. Tundra means.
Tundra means two unders. You hear Drake talking about that.

Speaker 10 An under route is a five yards and in or a cross route, which is exactly exactly what it sounds like, three to five yards and you run across the formation. Oh, and they said H angle.

Speaker 10 Angle is the running back angle route. And then even Drake says, you know, that one's pretty explainable.

Speaker 13 So that is

Speaker 3 fucking insane, Nate.

Speaker 18 What I appreciate is the degree of difficulty.

Speaker 7 I do not underestimate that.

Speaker 18 What I am suspicious of is the way in which people are fawning over this without knowing anything.

Speaker 26 I think they're more like me.

Speaker 18 I mean, there's a lot of people who are just like, oh, this sounds good.

Speaker 24 And I'm like, shouldn't we move past the whole like, you know, being the, it's, it's in Jonathan Lipnicki and Jerry Maguire.

Speaker 3 It's just like, we're all marveling at the kid with the big vocabulary.

Speaker 18 I'm like, we should probably also strive to know why this is so impressive beyond the fact that it's hard.

Speaker 10 Football, more than any other sport, is going to have a ton of jargon because of play calls. And there's no universal term and there's infinite ways to do things.

Speaker 10 Yes, there are rules for formation and different things you you can do, but you're drawing lines in the sand.

Speaker 10 So you have to have some universal terms, all right, is the second outside step and inside. What do we call that? Slant.
Okay, that's pretty universal. Everyone knows kind of what a slant is.

Speaker 10 But what I have noticed is a lot of people have gotten their hands on real deal playbooks,

Speaker 10 Kyle Shanahan playbooks, and they're pretty easy to get, actually.

Speaker 10 Pretty shocking for me entering media to realize how easy it was to get my hands on some playbooks.

Speaker 10 Some black market PDFs. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. The black market.
Yeah. Black market at Nurtim for sports, for football is pretty good right now.
It's booming. Businesses are booming.
But

Speaker 10 when going through that, I understood where it's fun learning a different offense.

Speaker 10 And I think this is what something that's been misconstrued a little bit with football even is that there's more than one way to do things.

Speaker 10 And I think sometimes when a thing happens with football, a play happens,

Speaker 10 I'm one of the biggest persons that does this is goes, hey, this is what this is. This is what that play was that just happened.
You just watched on Monday Night Football.

Speaker 10 But what I have noticed is people use the term, the nickname for it, which if I've always found if you need a definition for the definition, you know, you need to use the word to describe the word.

Speaker 10 That doesn't work. That's not going to make anyone smarter.
And I feel like we got to a point where it's like, I recognize that that play from Shanahan. It's like, that's leak.

Speaker 10 And it's like, yeah, okay, cool. Yeah.
It was a cool touchdown. Why did it happen? Why did they call it?

Speaker 1 There's a Rick and Morty line that nailed this.

Speaker 10 Rick makes a joke and you say,

Speaker 10 man, that guy is the red gren grumble to of pretending he knows what's going on.

Speaker 10 Oh, you agree, huh? You like that redgrin-grumbolt reference? Well, guess what? I made him up.

Speaker 21 You really are your father's children.

Speaker 10 Think for yourselves. Don't be sheep.

Speaker 18 And so the two of us, I will disclose my psychological priors here, right? So I'm the son of doctors.

Speaker 18 And when I listened to that stuff, and I did not go into anything resembling medical school, spoiler alert, dropped out of the first like intro to biology lecture, knowing I could not hang with these people.

Speaker 24 Listening to Drake May, though, it reminded me of physicians who will say like the Latin words for body parts as opposed to what a patient might understand.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 As if to keep it from the patient's understanding.

Speaker 18 And so, Nate, the reason why you are my preferred translator here and my guide into jargon is because

Speaker 33 you have a, I think, specific set of both skills and also inherited psychological traumas, perhaps, from the way you grew up.

Speaker 3 So, for people who did not listen to your previous episode with us, which was one of my favorites, about your relationship and your

Speaker 4 roommate experience with Russell Wilson at Wisconsin, as you say, you were a quarterback there.

Speaker 3 I want to go back in time to when you first learned jargon.

Speaker 35 And if you could explain it in the context of your family,

Speaker 13 I would especially appreciate how your brain came to cod into all of this stuff.

Speaker 10 So my dad was a longtime coach. My uncle was a coach.
They both played in the NFL for over a decade. My uncle played for 10 years.
My dad played for 14 years. They both got into coaching.

Speaker 10 I have another uncle that's a current college coach at the University of Kansas. I've been around it.
And I, uh, it kind of for me, it was

Speaker 10 just one of those going to practice. You hear the terms.
I was a ball boy at seven years old. I'm reading a script, you know, basically how they put out practice.

Speaker 10 I used to have to spot the ball, but then I started learning what those terms meant. Seattle meant double slants.
Seattle on a defense means something different.

Speaker 10 Seattle on offense means something, or for a different offense means something completely different. But because I learned that at seven, nine, 11, then I got into my high school offense.

Speaker 10 Then I got into my college offense. I got to two colleges, one at UCF and Wisconsin under Paul Christ.

Speaker 10 They called the same things two different ways. Because I've been exposed to so many different ways to call, you know, a million ways to skin one cat.
I kind of just realized that.

Speaker 10 I was around this football stuff and I realized different people called the same thing

Speaker 10 different ways that I was like, oh, that's cool. Why do you call it that?

Speaker 10 Like, I'm trying to let people know how sometimes these intricacies, these little minor things, matter a lot and are really cool. Like, why did something happen? How did that happen?

Speaker 10 And that's really, for me, that's that's my, I love learning about things. I love reading, reading about things.
I love what kind of micro histories on something.

Speaker 10 I'm reading one of freaking salt right now.

Speaker 24 It's just, and by the way, you reading a

Speaker 37 literal history of salt does, again, sort of fit with the the tenor of what we're trying to discern here.

Speaker 10 But I also want to point out that it is, in fact,

Speaker 24 really cool when smart people can nerd out about stuff in a way that builds a connection that wasn't able to be, or wasn't encouraged to be showcased, certainly when I was growing up consuming media, right?

Speaker 1 So I want to establish kind of like the polarities of

Speaker 3 football coverage, because historically, when I was growing up, Nate,

Speaker 7 mainstream football coverage was so vibes-based.

Speaker 1 It was about,

Speaker 1 it was clutchness purity tests.

Speaker 39 But we've never ever said Peyton Manning and thought immediately clutch.

Speaker 39 If I say MJ, clutch. If I say Jeter, clutch.
If I say Brady, clutch. If I say Montana, clutch.

Speaker 1 If I say it was who wants it more and all of that shit, of course, is reductive.

Speaker 18 And as a guy who also enjoys, and this is why I think I became somebody who people felt betrayed by, as a guy who also enjoys analytics, I also know the other end of the equation.

Speaker 20 The other polarity is

Speaker 18 jargon in a way that

Speaker 38 gatekeeps.

Speaker 3 For me, it does remind me of another one of your interests, which is another reason why I want to have you on here, which is you also

Speaker 20 love

Speaker 31 board games.

Speaker 10 I do. I do.
Disgustingly so.

Speaker 23 How would you characterize your love of board games, Nate?

Speaker 10 Obsession, borderline.

Speaker 10 It's everything. I didn't realize how much I like board games.
I played like what many people have gone to Catan in like the mid, early, mid-2000s, 2000.

Speaker 16 The settlers of Catan.

Speaker 10 Just Catan now, though. Wow.
Oh, is that right? Yeah. Yeah.
They dropped the settlers up, you know, you know, it's just seal, just Facebook. It's cleaner.

Speaker 10 I really like competition. Uh, I really like kind of puzzly stuff and trying to figure something out, out, maybe make it most efficient, have some strategy with it.
And

Speaker 10 board games kind of was just, it's a click for me. And then all of a sudden I got into that.
I started going, what other games I can I get?

Speaker 10 And then I realized there's a whole world of modern board games out there. Board game geek, I highly recommend for a lot of people.
But I own probably about 100 games.

Speaker 34 And I try to.

Speaker 10 Jesus Christ. I know.
Some of them are like party games. No, that's not a hat.
Guessing games, you know, monikers, these things. But then some are a little more deaf, war games.

Speaker 10 There's one game I have called 1960, The Making of the President. It's a two-player game.
One person's JFK's campaign manager. One person's Nixon's campaign manager.
It's like a,

Speaker 10 it's like a tactics war game. You'd love it.
But

Speaker 10 I am interested in those. I know, but it's, it is something that I love rules as well.
And I love definitions.

Speaker 10 And I love, and I think that's why I like rules because it says, well, you can do this with this. And the most brilliant games, there's one game I love called Carcasson.

Speaker 10 There's other games where I love when they give you like two, three rules and then they leave it up to you.

Speaker 10 They say there's only a couple of rules you have to follow, but how creative can you get with those?

Speaker 10 And so that's where kind of those games click for me because it's like, wow, there's creativity in some of this stuff that maybe you, other people haven't thought of with some of the strategy and everything.

Speaker 13 Right.

Speaker 21 But that, but this all sounds like football to me now.

Speaker 16 The, the, the desire.

Speaker 14 Strategy jargon.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 33 And, and the desire to have people to want to play

Speaker 10 with you. Yeah.

Speaker 33 Like the social aspect.

Speaker 11 And this is where I'm like trying to figure out, okay, how do we broaden the net of understanding?

Speaker 7 And I do think the first step to broadening the net of understanding, to lifting the gate or lowering the drawbridge, whatever my tortured metaphor of choice happens to be, I do want to establish for people who are not initiated into the very basics of the vocabulary here, Nate, how complicated it can get.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 13 How do you begin to explain how hard it is actually to be fluent in all of these, all of these dialects?

Speaker 10 I grew up around it. And a lot of it is just a Rolodex.
And it's just a,

Speaker 10 I've heard other people using this and I clicked for me. And it's hard for me to go, yeah, you can learn that in a year or six months.

Speaker 10 You can learn some things and learn a lot of the definitions and all those, but it's just, it's hard to just use it fluently, like a native speaker. And I'm a native speaker.

Speaker 10 And again, again, not trying to hype myself up here, but this is just how it goes.

Speaker 10 But it's like if someone learns Spanish and then, you know, hola, adios, and you're a gato, you're using all these words, but you're not just going to go, I'm not going to go into Mexico or Spain and go, gato, gato, gato, hola, hola, la, adios, ya, adios.

Speaker 10 You guys got what I meant, right? That to me, as a native speaker, sometimes when I see jargon getting thrown out there, especially football jargon, I'm like.

Speaker 10 Okay, I'm not going to call you out, but it's like, you're not using it right. Or you're using it right, but wrong.
Like it's in the right.

Speaker 27 You forgot the NY.

Speaker 24 You forgot the accent mark.

Speaker 10 So many people go, oh, McVay is great.

Speaker 10 But

Speaker 10 why is he great? Like, what, what does he do specifically? Once the now, the person could go to the bar and he's 1% smarter than his buddy because he didn't just say McVay is great.

Speaker 10 He says, actually, they've run like a power run here. That's pretty cool.
Boom. Oh my God, John's so much smarter than Mike at the bar.
It's that balance, though.

Speaker 10 It's the ones that have to explain it and the ones that do don't or don't want to keep that do want to explain all these things.

Speaker 10 But again, it's just that it's, it's not always perfect so it gets a little edgy and it gets a little full of its up its own ass a little bit

Speaker 4 If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 11 This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Speaker 9 Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

Speaker 11 So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Speaker 8 Learn more at remymartin.com.

Speaker 10 Remy Martin Cognac, Feen Champagne and Fortune Alcoholic Volume recorded by Remy Control, USA Incorporated in Europe, New York, 1738. Centaur design.
Please drink responsibly.

Speaker 9 So the up-and-down ass part,

Speaker 4 I do think there is something to being in awe of what you don't understand and respecting it as an order of magnitude that is different from your

Speaker 14 sort of capacity to translate it.

Speaker 17 And there is one, I just want to play one clip because

Speaker 38 when I talk about performing difficulty,

Speaker 20 I think about how Drew Brees basically sounded like sort of like a Sotheby's auctioneer at one point.

Speaker 3 You might recall him talking to Mike Dirico about Sean Payton's offense.

Speaker 5 There's some very long plays. There's a lot of verbiage at times.
Give me one.

Speaker 5 It could be green left twins, E short tight, pass 37, Buster Nudge, Wife, Flutter to Sting, X Spear Kill, 3 tight and left.

Speaker 9 So just as a matter of translation, Nate,

Speaker 24 when he says that, do you understand it?

Speaker 10 Yeah, most of it. I can translate it.
Because even in football, there's different translations. There's different dialects.

Speaker 10 So like i've never been in a sean payton offense so it's not a literal but i could tell you it's a uh doubles left to be like a two by two formation d equals two by two meaning two eligible receivers on each side he had a kill play there and i think the last play 33 i didn't hear the term that's a run play um 33 is a run direction and type the first three is the type of run and which back sometimes you could go to the two back or the three back All football terminology is, is to get everyone lined up.

Speaker 34 Even like the term kill play, I just want to clarify that for the lay layperson.

Speaker 9 That means what?

Speaker 10 You package multiple plays together and the quarterback based on the defensive look goes from one play. That's the first play called.

Speaker 10 And then you kill it, kill that play, forget it, to the next play that's called in that huddle. So you go like sword kill 34 Bob.
I'm just making up once, but it's just the first place to pass.

Speaker 10 It might be a look, might be a certain box count, might be a certain defense we're looking for. It might be, oh, shoot, we can't block Micah Parsons on this play, so we have to run it away from him.

Speaker 10 It Could be any of these types of things. But again, different translations.
I call it kill. Other places call it alert.
Other places call it can, meaning you have another play in the can.

Speaker 31 What I think about is not just, okay, out of my depth again, I also wonder if all of this is deliberate.

Speaker 3 Like, it feels like you're describing a system that is almost daring you to misunderstand it or to confuse it.

Speaker 25 And is that, is this because the point is to speak in code?

Speaker 18 Is the point so that you can't actually understand it if you're to overhear it?

Speaker 24 Or what, how do you explain why the language evolved this way?

Speaker 10 Well, Sean Payton is a great example right there because his play calls are going to be really wordy. It was a lot easier when it was just a standard run play.
I write 35 Bob. That's a lead zone play.

Speaker 10 And with that play, that's it. We have no shifting emotions.
Now everybody's shifting emotion in every play. Those need words.
You have to tell this player to go to the left.

Speaker 10 And that's before we might, we might even get to the formation. Then we get to the formation.
Now we got the guys shifting and motioning. Now we got to give the protection call.

Speaker 10 So that's another word. Now we got to give the pass concept.
That's another word. We might have to give the cadence.
You know, maybe we do this on two. That's another word, another verbiage.

Speaker 10 So you might just be telling one guy to shift across the formation, and it'll take 14 words to get there.

Speaker 10 The millennials have taken over as all these guys. They understand,

Speaker 10 hey, let's not go crazy here. Sometimes it's those coaches showing off like a Sean Payton, going like, look how much I'm going to do.
That's what I was going to ask.

Speaker 10 I figured old West Coast guys, yes. Yes.
It was absolutely to show off. I heard about these old Raiders coaches.
They would keep their play calls from one week to the next.

Speaker 10 So by the end of the season, they would have 800 play call sheets that the players had to know. And you're running 60 plays a game.
There's, yes, you need a menu, but you need more of that.

Speaker 10 It was, it used to be, and I really believe that's a big way to show off. But then you get into Mike Leach who just goes, right, 92.
And that's it. That's the play call.

Speaker 10 So again, it's different ways to do it but nfo is complicated that's why you need more words it's just to get everybody lined up perfectly right so hold on so so so the broad the broad theory of why

Speaker 7 it's so complicated to to call a play is because

Speaker 14 it's actually

Speaker 36 the simplest version that a lot of coaches can come up with that's like the origin story is that that's it directions for everybody i need to say this quickly because there's a time pressure yep So how often is it that the non-quarterbacks

Speaker 10 are

Speaker 10 up

Speaker 3 because of this very jargon problem?

Speaker 10 More than you think. And that's what's frustrating when you literally tell the person what they're doing and they still mess it up.
But more

Speaker 10 than you think. And I would even say in college, I'll be lower on some guys because I can realize that they're maybe short on a route, that they're guessing on some stuff.
But NFL is pretty good.

Speaker 10 Like the coaches will get through to the players, players, it's their job. And so by that level, you have to have a certain threshold of intelligence.

Speaker 10 But most times when something looks wonky, it's because a receiver was wrong.

Speaker 3 So to go back to those coaches in the West Coast offense, right? So I should point out in the history of, in my personal understanding of

Speaker 3 NFL media coverage history, John Gruden, who is a practitioner, of course, of the West Coast offense, the most public face of it when it came to being a broadcaster.

Speaker 17 I mean, it all started with spider two Y banana.

Speaker 40 Take a six-step setup, and you're throwing the ball to the fullback

Speaker 40 on Spider 2Y Banana.

Speaker 10 Yep.

Speaker 40 Y banana, eight to ten yards, depending how clean he gets off.

Speaker 40 Today we're going to run him on a corner route. Strong right slot.
Two right. Z right.

Speaker 40 Spider two. Spider two, Y banana, Z over.

Speaker 40 And you're going to call it like it's your favorite play you've ever gotten in your life. Like it's, oh man,

Speaker 40 strong right slot. Z right.
Spider Spider-Two Y banana, Z-O.

Speaker 35 I remember this because it was like the first burst of jargon that went viral.

Speaker 10 You're right. Yeah.

Speaker 38 It was a meme because he was teaching Marcus Mariota and Mariota's sitting there and Gruden begins to, again, in a way that was

Speaker 35 that was fun, was nerding out about his favorite play.

Speaker 33 And to you, Spider 2, Y banana,

Speaker 14 when you see it as now this cultural artifact, like the patient zero of

Speaker 18 the term that everybody would like begin to almost repeat to themselves as a part joke, but also a demonstration that I'm in the club.

Speaker 18 I now know what this is.

Speaker 18 What is that play in your mind?

Speaker 24 How do you explain it?

Speaker 1 Is it funny that that became the thing?

Speaker 10 Yeah, it is.

Speaker 10 It's like a short yardage play.

Speaker 10 You'll have a corner route, which is a high angle route, a flat route, which is a short route to the sideline, flat, and then a route coming over from the opposite side. It's a safe play.

Speaker 10 And it's kind of funny for me that he says that's his favorite play because it's like, oh, yeah, everyone runs that. It's kind of like a gimme play.

Speaker 10 Like you usually run it for younger quarterbacks or because it's just such, it's simple to read. Boom, boom.
You look to one side, one, two, three.

Speaker 10 But I think also that it's kind of always a, it's kind of like one of those that always works because you only usually call it like the two-yard line or you call it third and one.

Speaker 10 And usually you're hitting that flat route. You're not even hitting the why banana.
You're hitting like the fullback on the flat. So it's like a quick hitting a little first down.
So.

Speaker 3 And you're saying that the banana, the why banana isn't even actually the thing that you mostly are using

Speaker 10 it. No, it's not the.

Speaker 23 I've been, I've been living, I've been living a lie.

Speaker 10 If I, if you threw it 10 times, I'd say you throw the banana once or twice.

Speaker 3 It's only taken me about 20 years to understand what the f ⁇ was happening in that viral clip. But I want to get to something that a friend of mine, Seth Wickersham,

Speaker 3 quoted for me because I was talking to him also.

Speaker 4 He's an excellent football author, journalist.

Speaker 34 And he reminded me that Bill Pollyon once said something to Michael Lewis, Bill Pollion, the famous GM of the Colts, Michael Lewis, of course, author of Moneyball.

Speaker 31 And what Pollyan told Michael Lewis was that if he wanted to know why a play worked or didn't, he would talk to every starter and every coach and he still would not have clarity.

Speaker 27 And I want to get to this notion, which you've alluded to before, which is that intention for the play seems like an underrated part of decoding what's actually happening here.

Speaker 18 Like, what were they trying to do, which isn't discernible based on just the film and even the full dictionary of terms available to you.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I think when you look at a pass concept and a play, and I think this is where too, is that that's why when you learn the why, it's not always the result.

Speaker 10 There's so much in the process of football that a lot of it comes down to timing and anticipation. Those are words that get thrown around way too much.

Speaker 10 But in the passing game, everything's tied together. And I know we think of discipline as like training and like hard practices, but discipline as far as rules, then I think people realize.

Speaker 10 And I think that's, again, what I try to emphasize where people are like, well, why didn't you just throw it to this wide open guy? It's like, well,

Speaker 10 physics is the quarterback's looking to the right. The receiver's all the way to the left.
Well, why didn't he look left? Because of this coverage, this concept.

Speaker 10 Again, that's getting, you have to get five steps to explain that.

Speaker 10 But I feel like if you just get one more step, then it kind of just, oh, okay, maybe I won't understand that just because the guy's wide open, why didn't the quarterback throw to him?

Speaker 10 Because there's so many rules. I think that's where I have fun with it and trying to break it down.
And that's also where the cool things come because then you see defenders breaking rules.

Speaker 10 Micah Parsons, I'll refer to him again. They call him better bees, which is you better be right, meaning a defender has to be in a certain spot, but he's going.

Speaker 10 I bet you you're going to, JJ Watt used to do this all the time. I bet you are going to run right here.
So I'm going to knife inside and go rogue. I make the play.

Speaker 10 People go, wow, what a hell of a play. If I were coaching a high school footballer, I would probably be ticked off.

Speaker 10 But then that's what makes Micah Parsons cooler is because you understand the rules that he just broke.

Speaker 10 This comes down to the board game thing I said, Mike, where you get three rules and you can stretch them differently. That's what makes it cool.

Speaker 10 That's why Mahomes, I would never use Mahomes as teaching tape.

Speaker 38 He breaks rules.

Speaker 10 He does stuff that no one else can do, but he also understands the rules. And that's also an underrated thing with him.
So it's, I think that's what I'm, I've really tried to find joy in it.

Speaker 10 I do find joy in it. Personally, I try to share it is that when you see those little things and go, Well, that was cool, and that's why it's so cool.

Speaker 10 Because even if the guy didn't make the sack or the guy didn't score a touchdown here, or it's just a five-yard rushing play, there's some little cool things that happen to make that five-yards because of all these rules that are getting broken or not broken, or if there is discipline or something like that.

Speaker 21 So much of the way that the language and the strategy has evolved clearly relies on human brains and mouths and the ability to perform a recitation under pressure and then actually do the thing that the recitation is demanding.

Speaker 33 And I wonder if this is ever going to change.

Speaker 38 Like technologically, Nate, right?

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 33 currently, and just for people who, again, don't know, like the quarterback needs to be the guy who tells his teammates, this is what we're doing.

Speaker 13 Because there isn't the, currently, there's no rule that allows a coach to put microphones and earpieces in everyone's helmets.

Speaker 35 But it feels like if you're designing football in the 21st century.

Speaker 27 That's a solution to help make all of this that much more legible.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 9 What is your, is that, is that, as, as again, as a coach's son, as a quarterback, is that something that you want, like some technological innovation there?

Speaker 17 Or no, are you, are you in the mode of like, it's still actually

Speaker 3 better the way that it's happening right now?

Speaker 10 I,

Speaker 10 I kind of like how it goes right now because when you give some maybe coaches and stuff shortcuts, it long term leads to a worse product and worse ball because they're not actually learning.

Speaker 10 They're not actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. And maybe this is just this, I'm the oldest 34-year-old you ever meet.

Speaker 10 And maybe some of this is just some of some curmudgeon in me going like, no, this is how we always did it.

Speaker 10 Like if you're no huddle, if you, because the XFL did this a couple of years ago, where they had the communication to all the skilled players, the offensive line did not.

Speaker 10 That could lead to some weirdness, some wonkiness, to some like, I think some tempo abuse, you know, no huddling and everyone lines up and just goes, goes, goes, puts the defense at a disadvantage.

Speaker 10 I like having a lot more pressure on maybe the quarterback and the play caller and the teachings that they have to to do, as opposed to maybe giving them a crutch a little bit to like where they all can just hear the play call.

Speaker 10 I think some of that too, some of these OCs are terrible on the headset. And maybe I don't want them talking to the receiver because they get emotional.
And that's like a big thing.

Speaker 10 That's like a real big thing with

Speaker 10 coaches. And as you can see,

Speaker 37 explain how common it is that a coach would be so mad at you that he would be inarticulate.

Speaker 10 Way more common than you would think. It depends on the coach.

Speaker 10 I mean, let's see how many, see how many delay games Harbaugh and the Chargers get this year.

Speaker 10 Maybe.

Speaker 10 That's part of it a little bit.

Speaker 10 It's, I mean, Paul Chris, who is very calm on a game day, think it would be, I was the backup quarterback. So I was the one signaling plays.

Speaker 10 Thank God no one else could hear what he was saying sometimes because a lot of those players would be like, this guy hates me because he, if something bad happened, he would let out just like an explosive, like just,

Speaker 10 oh, this guy can never catch the ball. So I kind of don't want that because I know how some of these coaches are.

Speaker 10 That's another thing that I think gets misconstrued is that it's like, oh, get the play call. It's simple.

Speaker 10 We already heard how long the play call is to for a coach to a player, player reiterate to the other players. I just think that I like that.

Speaker 10 And I kind of want to kind of keep that going. So maybe it's just maybe the oldness of me.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 37 So some of the degree of difficulty here, it sounds like also in your voice, I'm detecting a you enjoy the masochism of it on some level.

Speaker 37 The challenge, and I think about like in Major League Baseball, there's a system called Pitchcom now.

Speaker 3 It's a proprietary push-button player-wearable transmitter that allows players on the field to communicate plays to each other without using any physical signs or verbal communication.

Speaker 12 Every player wearing a receiver actually hears the same instructions in their very own chosen language.

Speaker 27 And so, there's the ability to actually speak literal foreign languages

Speaker 23 and be fluent in the foreign language of, you know, calling a baseball game.

Speaker 35 For you, I feel like there's a loss of romance there. There's a loss of a certain lore when it comes to the shortcut.

Speaker 10 A little bit.

Speaker 10 Like rule bending and finding ways to be best at the rules given.

Speaker 10 I do like those aspects of sports. You know, there's abuses of systems and everything, especially in baseball.
College football, I mean, there's more people that steal signals than you would think.

Speaker 10 like as far as because they don't have the headset comps they're they're working on it right now which i exactly huge yeah that's that's that's a big thing too where these teams everyone's like wow this offense coordinator is brilliant it's like yeah they steal every play like i would be good too if i knew what was coming but even even that right i like to decode a to decode a very basic thing it's like why do college football coaches have on the side like oregon did this famously at the university of oregon signs have made their way onto the football field coaches created a new signal board play calling system this past spring after concerns the ducks hand signals were compromised last season what we have on those boards, each four quadrants mean something to our guys.

Speaker 42 One picture will tell us the formation, the play, and the snap count.

Speaker 42 And all 11 guys in the field know what we're going to run.

Speaker 36 Why do they have a poster board with four quadrants on it?

Speaker 10 It's because they're anticipating in the way that football is also a tactical, almost military campaign, that someone is trying to break their code.

Speaker 36 It anticipates stealing, actually.

Speaker 10 Yeah, it does. Because that's what you do.
These guys gotta, they gotta change it up. And they'll have 40 dummy signalers.
But again, I like that.

Speaker 10 And I, I, again, I, and there's another part of me that goes, Yeah, you're cheating, or yeah, you're

Speaker 10 you're kind of gaming the system, you know, you're not really doing true football, but that's the game. Like, those are the rules given.
You have to signal the play. How do you do it best?

Speaker 10 If you're worried about it, go to wristbands.

Speaker 23 I do want to salute those, Nate, like who can do two things.

Speaker 1 They can nerd out with their fellow dungeon masters, right?

Speaker 21 And they can also, they can also explain the rules to me.

Speaker 3 And I think, I think about stuff that you've done where I'm like,

Speaker 18 what I really love, so you interviewed, again, one of the big protagonists in the football intelligence discourse in the last year or so has been C.J.

Speaker 14 Stroud.

Speaker 21 And so C.J.

Speaker 4 Stroud is somebody who we actually did an episode about through the lens of the S2 exam, which if you did not watch the episode, was a test that was controversial because CJ Stroud had a very bad score on it.

Speaker 13 And there was a back and forth about did he actually try?

Speaker 3 Was he actually just failing a cognitive assessment test?

Speaker 35 And so at, I believe it was the Super Bowl, you sat down with CJ Stroud.

Speaker 9 And what I loved watching, even though I did not understand,

Speaker 25 again, the vast majority of it, was you were in the position of almost

Speaker 13 exam proctor.

Speaker 10 I just want you to talk about your process here against two man, and I can run it through or if you want to out here.

Speaker 43 Yeah, so they showed a lot of two-man in the um in the fringe, also with quarters.

Speaker 10 Well, you see the stroud stuff, that was impressive even for me.

Speaker 43 And I really seen the nickel, and I'm thinking he's gonna back up and play combo, which is just uh, they're gonna play like a mini cover two in the sense of quarters and man, the outside guy.

Speaker 43 So, that's what I originally thought. So, I snap the ball and I see this mic.
I'm looking at this mic. Yeah.
And

Speaker 43 I also see this backside wheel kind of cross cut. So I'm thinking it's some type of man at this point, but I couldn't tell which type of man.

Speaker 43 I didn't know if he would have dropped in and played Lurk or if he could have dropped in and played Lurk. So I really had to see it true.

Speaker 10 It was one robber. Lurk is one robber.
Exactly.

Speaker 43 We always talk about it. That's how we call it.
Okay, you too.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 we have to translate that into English every time.

Speaker 10 All quarterbacks in the NFL are going to be pretty impressive.

Speaker 10 Even that Drake May clip, some people are like, every quarterback can do this. It's like, yes and no.
Like, we can all go, I can go on the board and draw that all up.

Speaker 10 Once the bullets start flying, yeah,

Speaker 10 maybe not so much. That's where the impressive stuff comes in.
But with Stroud and why I found those plays or whether I wanted to show him those plays, it wasn't a touchdown. It wasn't a huge gain.

Speaker 10 It was one, one was like a first down on third 10. And one was like a, like he beat a blitz on another one.
And right away, he just grabbed the pen. He was like, yeah, I'm going this.

Speaker 10 Cause I could tell he was like, yeah, this is, this was good stuff, wasn't it?

Speaker 43 This front side go, this backside will go, and the shell didn't really change. And it's hard to see all this at once, so it's kind of like I'm seeing it in segments.
You don't say. Right.

Speaker 43 And then I see this front side mic jump really hard inside. So when he jumps hard inside, I'm like, okay, I probably have two man here.

Speaker 43 So my read was one to this back, to Dalton on this inside like mini glance, as you can say. And then I have a now route as number two coming by Rob.
And then a China for late.

Speaker 26 And down here, the mika oh isn't against going for a fourth dance so really right here i'm looking for a completion this is my big takeaway from like the only monocultural institution left in america which is the nfl which is football broadly speaking which is that you guys are so much nerdier than the popular conception of what football players are supposed to be right and i love it when you guys let your freak flags fly It's cool.

Speaker 36 I like it.

Speaker 1 Like this weird, this, again, all of the jargon on some level, I appreciate it.

Speaker 38 But now we've gotten to the point where it's been so mainstreamed, where there is an opportunity to

Speaker 13 explain why it's impressive, as opposed to why it's,

Speaker 16 why it's jarringly complicated in a way that maybe initially felt impressive.

Speaker 3 It's, it's the thing of like, okay, I'm interested, but now can you teach me?

Speaker 27 Can you,

Speaker 3 do you want me to sit down at the table with you and play this weirdly elaborate board game that only you guys understand, that I thought I've been watching, but actually really didn't understand this entire time?

Speaker 10 I think you finally had to come on the show to connect that, that, that it makes so much sense I like board games because I truly like when I see the light bulb go on for people.

Speaker 10 Like I really, I mean, I think there's 16 cousins on my dad's side. I would say 10 of us have been coaches or teachers.

Speaker 10 Like it's just kind of like what we, what we like to do, but I truly like to see that light bulb come on. That's why I like teaching board games.

Speaker 10 And i i also think it trains me with some of the football stuff but also you know some of that

Speaker 10 i don't want to be too mean some of the players are boring you know some of the players are kind of have basic takes but not with football and you get them talking about their actual expertise and their actual interests and you see passion you see and rather than give them the same answer they don't want to be here they want to be working working out there's a diet for football there's a diet for sports it just can't always be sugar.

Speaker 10 So sometimes you need some veggies and fruit to kind of make it all a little bit better. Sometimes it was flavor, could be deep fried.
Oh, no.

Speaker 18 Oh, as I say, look, if nothing else, I want this show, Pablo Torre finds out, to be a show where we melt cheese on your broccoli.

Speaker 10 That's exactly it. As someone that went to Wisconsin, or I GA'd at Pitt too, fries in your salad.
That's what, you know,

Speaker 10 as they like to do in Pittsburgh. Yeah, let's put some French fries in your garden salad.
That's kind of what we're trying to do here.

Speaker 10 God.

Speaker 27 Nate Tice, thank you for letting me sit down at the table.

Speaker 13 That, you know, I was a little afraid to ever show my face at again.

Speaker 10 Thank you for hopping over that gate that I set up.

Speaker 10 Appreciate you joining me at the table. Thanks so much, Pablo.

Speaker 3 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production.

Speaker 10 And I'll talk to you next time.