 This is the OTP presented by Farm Bureau Health Plans. Plan on paying less for the coverage that you need with Farm Bureau Health Plans. Get a quote today at FBHP.com. I'm Amy Wells and I am joined by Rhett Bryan and Coach Mack, Dave McGinnis, and I felt that it was important to do an OTP to explain some things to the OTP people. You guys are our resident draft gurus and do an incredible amount of work and preparation every single year for the draft. Titans Radio obviously has a lot of draft coverage that requires a lot of work, but you guys go above and beyond in your preparation for the draft and pre-draft season. And we reference it a lot. As we are going through the draft process, we reference the work that you guys do often. We use you guys pretty substantially as a resource for all of the draft information. So I wanted to go back and kind of peek through the curtain a little bit to explain to the OTP people exactly what we are talking about when we are talking about your draft preparation. Give them an idea of the work that you guys actually do. Explain what some of the things that we talk about a lot mean and why they are valuable and just kind of run through all that process. And so I think we should start with the genesis of all of this. If we are going to begin, let's begin at the beginning, you know? Makes sense. Yes. So I think that where we should start is, and I guess, Rhett, you should kind of tell us the tale of how you got involved in all of this draft prep with Coach Mack. Right. The 2018 draft, this would have been after Mack's first year on Titans Radio, and he came back into town before he started living here full time. And we said, yeah, we'd love to have you or whatever. And he kind of saw how it was all put together. He's like, all right, this is, yeah, this is legit. Oh, yeah. So I had a chance to talk to him after the draft in that spring and said, listen, I'm sure you've had this ask of you a million times, but I want to learn how this works. I want to learn. I'm fascinated by it. I always have been. I need to know the deets, as the kids say, right? And because Mack, listen, he's still vets because he is so involved and ingrained with people who would know right from wrong and whose foot or horseback, as he would say in the league, because it was 10-year. He still does it because he enjoys the process. He's just not having to worry about his mortgage riding on it, picking a guy, as he would say. But he was very gracious and kind with me about, OK, if you want to learn this, you're going to have to put in the time. Are you willing to put in the time? I said, without question, whatever it takes, I do not care. And so as long as we've been doing this together now, I don't know how he put out with me that first year that we went through all this stuff because he's just, it's baby steps. And he had such good patience with me trying to figure out exactly what he wanted, how we start looking, how we start assembling, all of these things. Now we just talk in shorthand. He knows what I'm looking for. I know what he's looking for. And we just collaborate. And so it's a lot easier now, this many years, removed from that to be able to do this process every offseason. Like this year, we started pretty much right after the season ended. That took a couple of days off. And then we hit the ground running. That's basically the genesis of it, because I came back. I was still living in L.A. And then Mike called and asked if I would come back and do the draft. Because I've always kept, I mean, I've got 39 years of draft in me. I've got, here's the draft notebook we are, we can still see. Here's the 39th draft notebook. And that's how I do when I start through with films doing it. I've got all of them. Because Bill Tobin taught me how to evaluate NFL players when I was with the Bears. You know, this is Duke Tobin's father, who's now the GM and in charge of the draft for the Cincinnati Bengals. So I learned from the very best. Really, Bill Tobin and then C.O. Brickado were the two that taught me about how to vet NFL players. I'd coached in college for 13 years. I knew how to vet high school kids for the collegiate game. I had no idea how to vet collegiate players for the NFL game. Anyway, that's where I started learning. But then they asked me to come back and do it. So I did it the first year and I was listening to them. And of course, as Mike Keith and Rhett and as Jonathan Hutton at the time, they were also organized. And I went, OK, well, this isn't a goober-doober shoe fly outfit now. I mean, they're understanding what's kind of going on a little bit. And so Mike Keith knew that I'd done this. And then Rhett did. He said, hey, I would love to learn the guts of this stuff inside out. And I did tell him, I said, it's work. I said, if you're willing to work, and he said, absolutely I am. So we started digging in. And then the first year, we'd spend five, six hours a day digging in on what this is. Because when you start this process from the bottom up, you have to, first of all, be able to talk the same language. And then you have to be able to understand not only what you're looking for, but who you're looking at. And it's not only who you want to concentrate on, it's who you also want to understand that you don't need to spend as much time on. There's a lot that goes into it. So the way that we work now, and we started, and I'm still the film guy. I watch film. I know people like, you know, when I come here, I gather information. I've got a lot of sources now because, I mean, I'm fortunate. I've been at this a long time. Got a lot of sources. But I told Rhett, I said, because you have so many different sources when you're with a team. I said, Rhett, here's what I need you to do. And we will go through and start, you know, I'll teach you how to watch tape. I'll teach you how to look. But what I really need is somebody that can really dig the background on these guys and find all the other essentials that are just very, very important if you're going to do a draft broadcast. So Rhett, really, and we just call it Rhett stuff. He digs the background on all of these players. And he goes into the minutiae. And he can find them. And he calls me and says, Mac, look, we need to look at this guy. So then what we do is as we go through this process, when we get back, we will start now to start putting these guys in some pods to kind of figure out. And we won't put our draft board together yet. But we'll start putting together in pods guys that we feel like fit kind of in the same genre of by position as to where they would fit in the draft. And then we really start digging into the minutiae of it. After we get through with this, we look at injuries. Rhett does all of this. He looks at injuries. He looks at background. He looks at just where they are, who they are as human beings. And then we start vetting them as players. And then it takes, it's going to take us now until we won't have our final thing done until about a week before we go on air. Because we're always slipping and sliding and moving it. The first year, we got a huge board. And I said, here's how you put a draft board together. So we started with the vertical board. Then I taught him how the vertical and the horizontal board correspond. And that first year, I mean, we were actually, we were there in the studio at the 104.5 downstairs in a big meeting room. And Rhett told him, Mac and I need this room for about three weeks. And so they gave it to us. And we started, we had a huge, huge board. And we color coded it and started putting these things in there. And now it's just, I mean, we can do it like clockwork and going back and forth. And so that's what we'll start to do. But if you want to do a good draft program, and he's right. It's different for me now. Evaluating players, because when you're evaluating to pick a player and your mortgage rides on it, it's a different world. Right. Now, what we do is we evaluate these guys in, not just for the Titans. We evaluate these guys in the scope of the league and as to where they are. Now, we talk a lot on the radio and on the OTP about Titans centric things. But when we're putting this board together, we are putting the board together with the scope of the National Football League draft, the way it will be every year. And it changes. Changes because of the number of juniors that come in. It's changed this year because the NIL has taken a lot of the belly of the draft out from the third round on. And so, but we're deep into it. But, I mean, Rhett's a perfect partner because, and he stayed true to what he said. He said, I will work at it. So now it's a lot of fun. But we give a lot of good, we got to have a lot of good information for our people. And you've done, you do, you do the draft with us, you know, on the two days that we do the draft. I mean, we dig into it pretty good. And a lot of times, I mean, we can, we're pretty close with what, with who people pick because, I mean, I know people. So, while we're on the Genesis, we've gone through the Genesis of the history of he and I working together. Let's go peek a little further behind the curtain and I'll give you what the first layer of this is immediately after the Titan season is over. And we flip that page and go to this next process. And the way he taught me is so he's, he is predominantly the guy who looks at the film and does all of that. And then, again, through conference calls and conversations with people in the know, he is writing up thumbnail descriptions just as he would in his time as a assistant and a head coach. That's what's in the Mac notebook. So, what we do is Mac and I block out some time, hours and hours at a time, where we will start at a certain position group and we'll go all the way through the offense or all the way through the defense. And all I'm doing is pulling multiple sources off of my laptop or screen. And I will read aloud thumbnail descriptions to see if they align with what he saw in film. And if there's any outliers, any anomalies, anything like that. And again, I've done this enough now. I'm not giving him like that used to take a lot longer than it takes now. I'm actually describing to him in probably 30 words or less instead of a paragraph to three paragraphs that every guy has been, especially the top prospects. And look, part of this sorts itself out because if you're talking about Marvin Harrison, Jr., you don't have to spend a whole lot of time on a guy that you know that that guy is the top receiver in this draft. And it just ridiculous talent is going to make someone an excellent pro. When you get to guys that are going to be on taking on day two, day three and even undrafted free agents, that's where the digging and the vetting and looking. And guys will come to the surface as we go through all this process of going to the senior bowl, going to the combine, all those kinds of things. And then the stories and backgrounds start to come out. Like I'm fascinated currently with Zach Frazier, a center and an interior offensive lineman with the West Virginia Mountaineers. And this guy had a nice college career. Unfortunately, I think it was a hip drop tackle that broke his leg on the last drive of the game of his regular season. But what stands out is this guy was a four year heavyweight champion high school wrestler in the heavyweight division. Only lost two matches in high school and those were both in his freshman year. He did. He went undefeated in all three of his upperclassmen years and a four time champion. Now, how that translates to this game, you know, he knows how to operate to leverage handwork, footwork, all of the things that he was going to be asked to do at the national football league level in that short space of the center guard triangle. Yeah, well, what happens to is the longer that we work together, you know, and I would, you know, early on, I would tell Rhett, because he would he would dig and he would read stuff and I said, look, here's what I want you to learn to do. Get me, give me bullet points and things that specifically pertain to how to how they perform or what might separate them. I don't need I don't need the Charles Dickens novel part of this. I said, I don't need it, you know, that's not going to help us. And plus, we don't need all of that for the listeners. We don't. We just don't, you know, what we need is bullet points. And now it's it's really smooth the way we can. We start going through this stuff. But what you start to do and again, I mean, the four of us at this table, the three of us and then Ashley, who's running the thing down there, we can pick. We could pick the top 10 players pretty easy, because I mean, if you have an idea of what you're looking, you can kind of pick where this becomes all of our work and the work really with all the all the draft rooms around the league is separating these players, separating the belly of the draft and finding those guys that you really think might be able to be a difference maker without all of the hoopla around them. Because as you well know, I mean, we've all you've been to, you know, this business. Once you get to practice, then it depends on what you're doing on the grass. And that's what you're kind of trying to dig and look for. I know that that ran Carthon told the people when he was up here on the podium, he gave him a little bit of an insight into the first thing they did with this new coaching staff. And I've done it before all the years that I've coached, they, and I say they, the scouting department had the coaches go through and put profile tapes together on players that they here's here's the profile of a guy that I want to play corner. Here's a profile of a guy that I want to play a linebacker. Here's a profile of a guy that I want for an interior offensive line and had the coaches put that together and then spent hours going through that. Well, that's kind of what we do. We we we profile these guys as to where we think they would fit within the National Football League draft. It's work, but I mean, I love doing it. I love doing it. And well, that's why I chose to come here, not only just for the broadcasting part of it, because this is still, I mean, this is the lifeblood of what you do team wise. But it takes it takes a lot of off, I guess, I guess, off salary time. If you want to put it like that, off clock time for he and I to put this together. I mean, we do a lot of off clock time. And I mean, we're early on and we'll be on the phone later on. I mean, we do this when we had to do it. We had to do it by by zoom during during COVID. We had to do it by zoom during COVID. We do a lot of it by phone now, then we do a lot of it in person. But it's just it's been a smooth ride. And he's, you know, if Red hadn't wanted to work at it, then I, you know, I mean, I don't need to practice my coaching for evaluation or evaluate part. Yeah. But I mean, it's been it's been really good. So he'll like, when we get next next week, whatever it is, he's like, OK, Rhett, we're going to do this, this, this, and this. And so I will prep and I will have all those things ready for us to do. Because with that off clock time, it's valuable. And though I want to spend as much as I, you know, he's got other things to do. I've got other things to do, but I want to be as efficient as I can in this. The great thing about it, too, let me interrupt. The more that we've been together, then we can really have conversations is saying and he'll disagree. So you know what, Mac, really seriously, I know we've got this stack right here, but I really think this guy will be taken up above here. Those are the kinds of give and take that you've got in a draft room. But before you ever make a draft that you want to have, because you don't. First of all, you don't want everybody agreeing. You don't want that. You want really genuine, sought out opinions so that you can weigh the plus, the minus, you know, the right, the left, all of that stuff. And that's what we've developed now over the what we've been doing for seven years, eight years now. And that that's what we've developed. And that's that's why the product is good. So you've put together your descriptions. You have provided some of the context to their life, the background, that kind of thing, your cross-referencing them with other things that scouts or different sources have put together. What happens when you find discrepancies, when you read something one way and you find a different source, saw it completely different? Does that happen all the time? And then the first thing that I do is go to the film. But again, the thing that and that this is this is good because Brett will check me every now and then and go, hey, Mac, you know, seriously, what you know, we're looking at and so I'll go back and check the film and I say, you know what? You're kind of right. And so we'll oh, absolutely. But early on, you know, if you're working with somebody that you that that you know is not working at it, you don't listen to them. I mean, that's just the way it is. Well, and the other thing that happens, too, is I will look at as many different thumbnail descriptions of someone I can find. Sometimes there's an outlier, but if you find the majority agree, it's like, OK, then this has got to be what it is. The majority sees the same thing I see on film because it happens. And we always like like in a draft room, you always you always forfeit to the film. You always forfeit to the film. But the background stuff and the comparisons are huge because a huge scouting staff, we've got twenty three, twenty five scouts on the on the site, just like everybody else in the league, except Cincinnati. I mean, and where the coaches are in the scouting part of it there, which I think is great because I got involved in scouting when I was coaching because I wanted to learn how to do it. And Bill Tobin, you know, was gracious enough to teach me and let me write reports. I mean, you got to you got to learn how to write a report. You got to learn how to read a report. You got to learn how to be rejected in a draft room. I mean, you know, I've had C.O. Bracato cuss me out in a draft room and say no. And seriously, let's go downstairs and look at the film. Show me what you're seeing. You know, what the hell I taught you better than this. And then, you know, I would go down there and try to justify what. But all of that, that's growth and learning how to do this. Well, that's what that's what he and I do. I mean, we absolutely do that. But yes, there's discrepancies, but sooner or later, you get it worked out. It's different, though, when you're not. Rhett and I are not doing this to make a pick. Right. We're not doing this to make a pick. What we're doing is for this draft, all this draft preparation, all these shows that we do, then for the final draft shows that we do, be able to get a be in the same ballpark as we think. Because Mike, you know, Mike does a great. I mean, Mike orchestrates all of it. But then he'll say, OK, look, you know, we're coming down here to the middle of here. Who are the top who are the top linebackers left right here? Mike, where do you think who the top running backs? Where may they be? So we've got our board now that we can we've saved all of our boards. And even when even when we did the one draft in Jonathan Hutton's garage because of covid, we had we had a big board, you know, that we put up there. And we go back and reference it and we go, you know what? For for two dudes just doing it. He and I, I mean, we're we're we're draft central. I mean, we're that's it for the two dudes are doing it. We get pretty close. And we do it for obviously OT people and everyone who listens to Titans Radio. And again, I share his love, though I never did it for a living. I love how a team is constructed. It's fascinating to me. The people that are involved, the human element of all of it. And I'll give you as we go through each draft year and prep, he'll layer something else on because you can't it's a lot to throw at somebody who's never done anything like this. But I can read a thumbnail description somewhere else as we're cross referencing. And I've read enough of them allowed to him. I know guys that are OK. He's not a top athlete. He's not super twitchy. He's not super quick and short area. He's not got a lot of the burst, but he's solid. He has consistency. I think that's a middle round guy. I can I can say, OK, this is probably this is developmental. He's he's an undrafted free agent. I can hear I hear enough of those words and phrases. And you're like, yep, that's it. That's what Mack was. I go, yep, you got that. And the other thing about it is, too, is now when I bring back all the information, you know, because I stay and watch all the workouts and bring back all those raw numbers and red already has them to feed them to red. And then we start it's a layering process. But the other thing that helps us, Amy, it helps me is doing broadcast because now I know these players. I know these guys and we know you know, you know them. If you vet them in the draft, and of course, all the years I've been doing it, it helps with the broadcast a lot. I mean, and it's helped it's helped us. It's helped us. And you've been a big part of this with our pregame preparation in the pregame show that we do, because we can give different aspects of who this player is now that he's in the league with reference to how he got in the league and where he was. And I mean, it's really helped. Well, I think about how important that was just in the realm of the Titans with how many rookies had to play in 2023. At one point it was what 13, 14, I don't know, something like that. And so we had a knowledge of some of those were undrafted. Some of them were top picks. And so you're right, then the base knowledge that you put in there, because all of these guys are going to be playing for somebody that are selected, that are invited here. Most all of them will be drafted. You know, I think and let me just brag on red a minute. I don't like to a lot, but I will. Is that is this this last draft? I mean, you could tell that he was really starting to feel it and could get it. And I've said this and it's a truth. He was the one who went to the senior bowl that said, Mac, I want you to watch this kid because I've been following him. I've seen enough of him. I really think he's going to be. He's got a chance to do something with Ty J Spears. I mean, that and that to me shows. I mean, he gets it now because and I went, OK, and we started looking at him and went, oh, hell, you know what? And that to me was a great moment because red had that was red's guy. And and he had he had vetted him. He had vetted him before I did. And then and then we started looking at him. And so I mean, he's in the eight years that we've been doing this together. He went from not knowing whether he was foot or horseback to being able to ride it at full speed, and that's pretty cool. Seat Geek is now the official ticketing partner of the Tennessee Titans, whether you're buying or selling tickets to Titans Games or to any other live event in Nashville. Seat Geek is the place to do it. Seat Geek, the new official ticketing partner of the Tennessee Titans, so Titans fans can fan. What's interesting about all of this to me is, A, the just amount of work that you guys put into it. You really are incredibly thorough. But then the way that you are able to translate all of that work into broadcasting and being able to explain certain elements of whether it be a player in just his background, a player and his skill set, where he's going to be able to contribute ways on the field, using it on Titans radio during the games or just throughout the season, you're able to take all of this information that seems very specific in terms of we never talk about guys shake or wiggle or all the bizarre words that they use to describe what people can do. We don't use those phrases and words at any other time, other than leading up to the draft, but you're able to take that information and translate it in a way as a broadcaster to the fans to explain what a guy is like. I think it is so cool that you guys have that resource now. And us as Titans radio, the OTP, all of the different platforms that we are on, what a resource for us to be able to bring something different to the fan base. Yeah. Oh, 100 percent. And we have nothing to gain out of it as Mac. We're doing it because we love doing this. I'm not standing on the table talking about a guy because it's going to my life is going to depend on it. I mean, we're passionate about what we're looking at. And, you know, the other part of it is these are people. Just like we are. And you won't hear me say anything disparaging about a young man. If he had a run in with the law or if he had whatever or a myriad of injuries as several guys in this draft, it's going to have a lot of medical checks this week in Indianapolis here. They're people. And, you know, that resonated with me when Rand Carthon came aboard last year about because this is still a people business. And I think that's the thing that I have always tried to do before I ever met Coach Mac and started working with Coach Mac doing this stuff is telling the human interest stuff behind these players because they are not immune to life's problems and sometimes tragedies. And they just have to have the really coolest job in the world and have a nameplate on the back of a jersey and play National Football League football. There's that human element about it because we're dealing with humans. We're dealing with people. Well, and, of course, I've done this for three decades in a draft room, standing on tables for guys or arguing guys down or and then, you know, putting basically my mortgage on the line saying, this is the pick when I was into this is the pick. This is who we want. The draft is fascinating because in a draft room, I mean, for years, I worked the phones in draft room, you know, working trades, you know, working, calling, I mean, and that's why I still have got all these contacts in the league because, you know, and I can talk. And then, you know, when I go to sit over there in Lucas Oil, I'll sit with the position coaches out in the, you know, I can go up to the sweets. I don't do that. I like to sit out with the coaches and listen to them. And they'll ask me because they know I still do this. Mac, what do you see on this guy? You know, so all of that. I mean, it's I'm fortunate because I've got 30 plus years behind me that people still trust me and call me and value my opinion. And but to do it for what we do it for for Titans Radio and then for the OT people and for this, it's pretty cool. I mean, it's it's it's a lot of fun for us. And there's no reason and I like what you said to Amy, there's no reason to to get all technical when we're trying to transfer it to the people to to so how much we know that doesn't matter. What they want to know, you know, is kind of, you know, where they think in where they think in they got this guy. Because look, the draft is so easy. I mean, it really is. And it's an opinion. So it's picking humans, picking humans. And it's an it's easy to get an opinion. How could they do that? How would you know, why would they do? It's a fascinating, fascinating part of this profession. It really is. It really is. And we are so grateful that you guys put in that work and put in all the effort and have all of this information. But I just thought that it would be interesting to the people. It certainly is interesting to me to hear you guys talk about it. So I appreciate you taking the time to to break it down for for me and also for the OT people. I'm glad to do it. Anything to do with y'all, with Ashley, with Amy, with Mac, with Mike. You know, I'm happy to do this anytime. And I'm happy to entertain questions about any of this because I'm still learning myself. I'm what I always say, Mac, I'm in the Coach Mac School of Ball, the CMSOB, rising junior class of 2025. For Brett Bryan, Coach Mac, I'm Amy Wells, and this has been the OTP.