- 1 day ago
Seth and Sean talk with NFL Draft analyst and former Raiders GM, Mike Mayock, at Radio Row in SF.
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00:00Pleased to be joined by longtime draft analyst, former NFL GM.
00:05The role I most love Mike Mayock in was when he was the color analyst on Notre Dame football broadcast,
00:10because I'm a proud Class of 91 graduate, and I thought you were excellent covering Notre Dame football back in the day.
00:15Well, I appreciate that.
00:16You know what's funny?
00:17As a Boston College graduate, and we don't necessarily like each other.
00:20Yeah, we shouldn't like each other.
00:21What I found amazing was, like, I took that job, and I had never even been to Notre Dame before I took it,
00:28and I didn't really want to like them, like, in my heart of hearts, right?
00:32And after about two or three days, you go, this place is pretty freaking special.
00:37And the first game I did, it was Brian Kelly's first game.
00:40It was Purdue, a home game.
00:41And I got done a long week, and I needed to work out.
00:45So I basically ran over to the stadium on Friday, and I'm running up the stairs, this iconic place, you know,
00:51and I hear the fight song, which, like, is easily identifiable to anybody across the country.
00:57So I run up to the top of the stadium and look out, and there's the band and the students.
01:02It's Friday afternoon.
01:03It's the fight song.
01:04And I'm like, man, how do I hate this place?
01:07How do you hate this place?
01:09Yeah, yeah.
01:10It's, you know.
01:11It's a bunch of 18 to 21-year-old kids.
01:14It's easy to hate.
01:15Yeah, there you go.
01:15That should be it.
01:17Not our listeners.
01:18But, yeah.
01:19Right, right, right.
01:19Any random group of them.
01:20Well, I thought you were great doing those games.
01:22I loved doing them.
01:23NBC was great to me.
01:24And, boy, Notre Dame opened the door for me.
01:27It was really fun.
01:27That's great.
01:28The fun thing about your career, Mike, I don't know if it's been fun for you,
01:31but as an observer of it is you've kind of run the gamut of the different things you can do in and around football.
01:39And I think most people, most football fans first knew you as a draft analyst,
01:44and they loved how analytical you were about things.
01:46And a lot of people were really excited when you became a colored commentator because you had an approach to the game that was –
01:53you were very good at explaining the game and kind of talking about it in a way that not necessarily a lot of colored commentators do.
01:59Then you go into working on the management side of things.
02:03So you've had a really broad experience in pro football.
02:09What's been your favorite part of it?
02:12Other than what you're currently doing now with Sumer Sports, of course.
02:14No, no, I mean, that's easy.
02:18There's nothing like working in part of an NFL team, being in the building.
02:24And it's as a player.
02:25Yeah, I should have mentioned as a player, too.
02:27And I wasn't any good.
02:28I was only there for two or three years with the Giants.
02:30But, I mean, I met contacts for life there.
02:33Belichick was my special teams coach, Parcells.
02:35I mean, there was a whole group of people that have been in my life for a lot of years.
02:38But the point is that, yeah, I had an atypical rise to becoming a general manager.
02:45But the first day I got – the first game we had after I took that job, okay, was a Monday night game against Denver.
02:53And I'll be damned if I don't walk on that stadium grass three hours before the game and I feel like I'm going to puke, like I'm playing.
03:00And when you do a game as a broadcaster, you do a Notre Dame game, you do a playoff game, whatever.
03:06I did a lot of really cool games.
03:08You get fired up and you do them.
03:09You do your best.
03:10But then you just kind of go have a beer.
03:12Like, okay, we did a good job.
03:13Let's go grab a beer.
03:15I throw up five times in my mouth every game.
03:19I mean, you know, refs make –
03:20It's your team.
03:21It's like the – yeah, the edge between wins and losses are so narrow in that league and so many few things, you know, that you can't even describe being a part of that building again.
03:35And it was separated, to your point, by like 40 years.
03:38You know, I was like 25 or 6 when I couldn't play anymore with my knees and I got the GM job when I was, what, 59 or 60.
03:44Yeah.
03:45You know, and I couldn't believe the flood of feelings that came back.
03:48What did you learn from being a GM that's made you a better draft analyst now?
03:53Boy, you know, that's really a great question.
03:56What I learned is when I self-scout, okay, and when I talk to other – like for a year at NFL Network, I was kind of my own guy.
04:03Yeah.
04:03Wrote my own reports.
04:04I didn't have to hand them to anybody.
04:06I compared them with my NFL buddies all around the league.
04:09But I wasn't in the same building comparing notes and arguing about guys, right?
04:13So, you get in the building and what I learned is like, okay, Mike, why did you miss on some really tough boundary corners coming out of college?
04:24Maybe because, dummy, they were speed deficient.
04:27Yeah.
04:27And you love their toughness and ability to tackle and all the rest of it.
04:31You know, why with offensive linemen sometimes you want them to displace people across the line of scrimmage and push and you don't like the guys that just get leverage and position and stand there.
04:40But those guys can be taught that maybe.
04:43You know, so really the answer to that is when you're in a room with a bunch of scouts that have a lot of experience and they just say, you better look at it a little different way.
04:50Even if you're the GM, it doesn't – like even more so if you're the GM.
04:53You can learn from everybody in your room.
04:56And I had – you know, I learned some really good and hard lessons.
04:59Yeah.
04:59We were talking about this the other day about the humility of GMs is way higher than the humility of like a lot of draft analysts.
05:07It's because they – because if you do it long enough, you're just –
05:11You're on the hook.
05:12You very much know exactly what you were right about and what you were wrong about.
05:15Dude, you own it.
05:16Yeah.
05:16Guys that you felt really good about and that you committed a draft pick to.
05:20Yep.
05:20Yep.
05:20That was – I loved that guy.
05:23Yeah.
05:23And there was a reason that I shouldn't have loved him.
05:26Yep.
05:26Yeah.
05:26There's a lot of learning that went on.
05:28And the biggest adjustment was kind of managing people.
05:30Because, again, I was like a one-trick pony.
05:33And I was being – you know, Daniel Jeremiah came in and Charles Davis.
05:37But I was responsible for my own work.
05:39And now all of a sudden I'm managing people.
05:41That was different too.
05:42Yeah.
05:43Yeah.
05:43Yeah.
05:43Like you said, you were your own guy.
05:45Well, and a lot of people – so people step into that GM role or they step into a head coaching role or anything.
05:49And it's kind of – for such a high-profile and important position in an organization, those guys don't really have all that much experience being an employer or just actually hiring and firing and everything.
06:03Is that – was that – you just said it as one of the biggest adjustments.
06:06Yeah.
06:06And I think, you know, we talk all the time about like in this head coaching cycle right now.
06:11Yeah.
06:11That just finished.
06:12Basically, do you want to hire a guy that's had head coaching experience because you kind of know what you're getting.
06:17Yeah.
06:18And he can set your whole year up.
06:19This is how we do it.
06:20And here we're going to start this in January.
06:22We're going all through the year.
06:24This is how many practices.
06:25I mean, they can set the whole thing up because they've done it before for years.
06:28Then you get a 32-year-old coordinator and he walks in the door and he might be dynamic in front of his defense or his offense, but they're his buddies.
06:37Yeah.
06:38You know, when you take that head coach job and all of a sudden you're pulled away from what you do best, which is watching teams, watching tape and game planning, and now you're dealing with media.
06:47And you've got to go meet the guy about the surface, the field on the stadium because there's a problem with the grass.
06:53And then you've got to go down to the training room.
06:54And so there's so many different things involved with all of that.
06:57And we don't know which of these guys are actually going to be really good at it because they're really good at one thing, which is coordinating a defense or offense.
07:07But taking that next step is bigger than people think.
07:10Well, with the Texans, you know, speaking of the coordinators, Nick Haley, first-time offensive coordinator, there's a whole lot of unknowns you have there.
07:17And what did you see from the Texans' offense this year in terms of having a rookie offensive coordinator, CJ, and his performance in the playoffs and all of that?
07:26Where do you put them right now?
07:28Like everybody talks about their defense and justifiably so, right?
07:32Now, this is, what, a 12-win team, right?
07:36So you look at it, and if I'm Nick Casario, you're probably looking at it and saying, number one, are we all in on our quarterback?
07:44I think, you know, he's after year three, so you've got a decision coming up on the fifth-year option.
07:49And with that decision comes, what's he making next year, plus or minus $6 million?
07:53I think the option's $27 or so for the following.
07:56So you're looking at $32, $33 million over two years, which is club-friendly if he's the guy you want.
08:03Now there's been enough questions.
08:05Year one, he hit it out of the park.
08:07Years two and three, you see flashes, but also a bunch of inconsistencies that if you're going to pay this guy big money,
08:14you'd like to see less of.
08:16I don't think, that's my take anyway.
08:19So they've got some decisions to make about him, point number one.
08:24And I'm guessing they're going to go all in.
08:26There's enough talent there, they've seen enough, that I think if you surround him with an infrastructure
08:31that's quarterback-friendly, he can, but you get nervous in the playoffs when you see him throw balls
08:37that you go, wow, where'd that come from?
08:38That just looked like it came out of his hand funny.
08:40Yeah.
08:41You know, what's going on there?
08:42Why?
08:43So I'm not in the building, and I haven't seen enough of their tape to know,
08:47but what I think I would, if I'm Nick, what I'm thinking is, okay, are we all in on this kid?
08:52The answer is probably yes.
08:53If so, what are we doing from an infrastructure around him?
08:56Are we running the ball as well as we can?
08:58You know, what are we doing with our offensive line?
09:00It's getting better over the last year or two, but it's still got to get better in my opinion.
09:03Yeah.
09:03You know, they drafted Earth 3 last year.
09:06I mean, they've got to get better in that offensive line.
09:08The interior, make some decisions with some of those interior guys.
09:11Are they playing guard or tackle?
09:12Are we moving on from them?
09:14But they've got to get better, more consistent O-line.
09:17And then what's happening with, you know, wide out?
09:21You know, the wide out thing, you know, I look at it and I go, okay, you've got Nico, right?
09:25And he's awesome.
09:26Real good player, yeah.
09:26Awesome.
09:27Yeah.
09:27But you're kind of surrounding them with a couple of fourth-round picks.
09:31And the kid from Stanford, big-body kid, did a nice job last year.
09:34But I think you've got to provide more answers for your quarterback.
09:39And that starts with, you know, the personnel side.
09:42But then it becomes, to your point, it becomes the head coach, the OC, everybody.
09:46What are we doing to make this a quarterback-friendly offense?
09:49Mike Mayock is joining us here live on Radio Row.
09:51I want to make sure before we get you out of here, we talked about Sumer Sports yesterday with Big E,
09:56who is going to be hosting that web series that you guys are doing on YouTube.
10:00He mentioned your name.
10:01He said, I'm not the expert.
10:03I'm just the guy steering the ship for all the experts, which includes Mike Mayock.
10:06Tell us how excited you are.
10:07And for the audience who didn't get to hear about it yesterday,
10:10what Sumer Sports has going on in advance of the draft.
10:13It's pretty cool.
10:13Imagine kind of old-school football grinders and me,
10:18and there's another 25 to 30 scouts that have a combined 500-plus years of experience in the NFL.
10:26Okay, imagine a bunch of these old-school guys that are crotchety and don't really deal with analytics
10:31meeting all these new 27-year-old whiz kids, one of whom played at football, Tulane, but he's brilliant.
10:39And they start talking about predictive analysis and separation points.
10:43And my eyes are like, oh, my gosh.
10:45But what's really cool is we're doing a show for 10 weeks, and it's called The Evaluation.
10:50And we're going to – like the first one is on the quarterbacks.
10:54We've got Eli Manning.
10:55I talked to Howie Long.
10:57I talked to Max Crosby.
10:58I interviewed Steve Smith Sr., Luke Keekly for each of these shows, right?
11:05So they're bringing their perspective, which was awesome.
11:08These guys were so good talking about their position, their instincts, what made them good players.
11:14And so we're kind of marrying the old-school grinding football where we're going to give you a report
11:19on a bunch of the college players this year on the show.
11:21We're going to talk about how it's changing with all the predictive analysis through AI
11:26and then bring in the seasoned veterans, the guys that are Hall of Fame-type players,
11:30and put it all together position by position over a 10-week series.
11:34And I'm kind of excited about it.
11:36It sounds like the way you'd want your organization to be incorporating analytics, right?
11:41Like that blend of, okay, yeah, the old-school football knowledge and the on-field knowledge
11:45combined with, all right, we've got this data that'll help you out.
11:49Yeah, and I think fans are really going to like it because, you know,
11:52there's always been this thing around the draft and evaluation, like we're not showing you anything, right?
11:57Teams don't show anything.
11:59But we kind of opened up the door.
12:00There's some really cool stories from, you know, whether it was Randy Moss' famous 40-yard dash at Marshall.
12:07They couldn't run in the snow outside at Marshall.
12:10Marshall, something wrong with the basketball court they couldn't use.
12:13And they had him in an alley outside the coach's offices running through.
12:17At the very end of the alley was a double door that he had to hit when he finished outside, right?
12:25And he ran like supposedly urban legend as he ran like sub 4-3 in the hallway.
12:31So, I mean, there's great old-school stuff, but really good new-school AI.
12:36Well, good.
12:36And people can find that on Sumer Sports' YouTube page, right?
12:39Correct.
12:40It'll start on Thursday the 12th.
12:42Okay.
12:43And it'll be every Thursday thereafter with a different position.
12:46New episodes.
12:47That'll be great.
12:47Yeah.
12:47That'll be great.
12:48Sumer Sports.
12:48S-U-M-E-R Sports.
12:50All one word.
12:51Correct.
12:51That's where you can find them.
12:52Mike Mayock.
12:53Thanks, brother.
12:53That was fun.
12:54You guys are great.
12:55Made it easy.
12:56Thanks, guys.
12:56Absolutely.
12:57Looking forward to the evaluation on Sumer Sports' YouTube page.
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