FLASH MOCK! Plus, Building a College Football Front Office With Former Eagles VP Jake Rosenberg. | Rough Draft 1.7

Summary

Podcast Summary: The McShay Show – “FLASH MOCK! Plus, Building a College Football Front Office With Former Eagles VP Jake Rosenberg”

Episode Date: December 11, 2025
Host: Todd McShay with Steve
Guest: Jake Rosenberg (Former Eagles VP, The Athlete Group)

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Episode Overview

This episode is a two-parter:

1. NFL Draft “Flash Mock” and Top Prospect Discussion: Todd and Steve walk through their rough draft Top 10 (plus) NFL Draft boards, debate positional value, team needs, and engage in a rapid-fire “flash mock draft” exercise for 2026.
2. Interview with Jake Rosenberg: Jake brings inside perspective on the professionalization of college football—especially with NIL, the transfer portal, and how top college programs are building NFL-style front offices. Using his work at The Athlete Group, he describes organizational change, partnership dynamics, and challenges facing modern college coaches.

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PART 1: NFL Draft Discussion and “Flash Mock” ([00:22]–[52:08])

Key Points and Insights

• Prospect Evaluations:

  • Detailed breakdown of Todd and Steve’s respective Top 10 prospects for the 2026 NFL Draft.
  • Heavy discussion of positional value, notably the shifting value of running backs and wide receivers.
  • Ongoing debate about quarterback Fernando Mendoza (Indiana) as potential #1 overall pick—and context of the class’s QB scarcity.
  • Discussion of player performances, especially in big games, the value of adversity, and “intangibles.”

• Wide Receiver Class:

  • Steve is bullish on this WR class (“They reek of NFL immediacy… I’m done hiding from this receiver class” [18:38]), placing three wideouts in his Top 10.
  • Todd is more skeptical—cites testing measurables and concerns over frame/fit (“Top 10? Come on.” [22:43]).

• Flash Mock Draft Exercise:
  ([24:41]–[52:08])

  • They simulate the top 10 picks based on current draft order (Giants, Raiders, Titans, Browns, Saints, etc.), embedding team needs and likely draft strategies.
  • Frequent debate over best overall available (BPA) vs. fit and positional value.
  • Strategic speculation given the uncertainty at QB after Mendoza and Moore, and the possibility of teams trading out to acquire future draft capital in anticipation of a stronger 2027 class.

• Memorable Quotes and Moments:

  • On prospects standing out:
    “It’s kind of cool to be a nerd playing quarterback now.” – Steve ([06:45])
  • On organizational “authenticity”:
    “One part of… their evaluation is always… do they know who they are? Are they authentically themselves?” – Steve ([07:45])
  • On recency bias:
    “I am perfectly happy admitting that I probably, you know, recency bias and the excitement of all of it and I finally got to see what I wanted to see. I’m not saying he’s a perfect prospect.” – Steve ([16:15])
  • Todd on RB Jeremiah Love: “I have Jeremiah Love, number one… When you take away positional value… I think he’s the best player in the draft.” ([14:38])

• Top 10 Consensus "Flash Mock" Picks:

  • See [52:24–51:48] for full rundown, but highlights include:
    1. Browns (via Giants): QB Fernando Mendoza
    2. Raiders: QB Dante Moore (if available)
    3. Titans: LB Arvell Reese
    4. Giants (trade down): OT Spencer Fano or WR Carnell Tate (debated)
    5. Saints: Edge Keldrick Falk
    6. Commanders: WR Carnell Tate
    7. Jets: DT Peter Woods
    8. Cardinals: RB Jeremiah Love
    9. Rams: Safety Caleb Downs
    10. Bengals: Edge David Bailey or CB Mansoor Delane

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction & Mock discussion setup: [00:00]–[03:34]
• Detailed justification for Top 5 prospects: [04:22]–[17:36]
• Wide receiver group discussion: [17:36]–[23:37]
• "Flash Mock" exercise starts: [24:41]
• Mock Draft team-by-team debate: [32:00]–[51:48]
• Recap of Flash Mock results and team fits: [51:48]–[52:08]

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PART 2: Interview with Jake Rosenberg ([60:53]–[112:43])

Theme & Purpose

Jake brings deep experience in NFL front office structure and is now helping college programs adapt to the rapidly changing landscape (NIL, portal, professionalization, organizational complexity). He explains why the era of ‘coach as do-it-all CEO’ is over, and how structures like Oklahoma’s and Florida’s (with a true GM) are setting the standard.

Key Discussion Points

• Why College Football Now Needs NFL-Style Organization:

  • College coaches are “problem-solvers” but have too much on their plate—beyond coaching and culture, now includes salary negotiation, roster management, and agent wrangling.
  • “They are getting further and further away from [coaching and developing] and spending far less of their time actually doing those things.” – Jake ([62:08])
  • The college landscape has added many new variables—team-building now more like the NFL in complexity.

• Oklahoma as a Case Study:

  • Brent Venables’ evolution as a coach, impact of adding Jim Nagy (ex-Senior Bowl), and hiring true scouting/personnel staff enables more time “on the grass” and relationship-building.
  • “Building out a scouting staff is going to have distinct advantages… But it’s hard to assess the main benefit… [which is] putting coaches in a spot where they can spend more time on the grass.” – Jake ([68:10])

• Bringing in a ‘General Manager’ and Creating Buy-in:

  • Challenge is convincing entrenched, control-oriented head coaches to cede power for organizational betterment.
  • “You’re asking them to give up some control and put trust in a process they’ve never been part of… My pitch: If you find the right person to be your partner… they will take umpteen things off your plate, allow you to do what you want to do.” – Jake ([74:11])

• Evaluation and Valuation:

  • Managing portal “free agency” and NIL dollars requires rigorous process—a school must “know they’re paying for the right players” ([97:34])
  • “If you pay retail for every player… you’re limited in how many good players you can have. And we all know, like, cap depth is where you get crushed, right?” – Jake ([91:09])

• Resistance to Change & Education Gaps:

  • Many schools lag in constructing a modern front office because “athletic directors… haven’t come from a professional sport typically” ([86:53])
  • “I think there’s a lot of resistance to change, and I don’t know that it’s… good rationale for it outside of just not having been through this, not being comfortable with it.” – Jake ([86:53])

• The Portal, Recruiting, and Roster Strategy:

  • Portal ≈ NFL free agency; high school recruiting ≈ the draft—but portal is messier, less organized, and “hard to fill a need,” due to multiple visits, bidding wars.
  • “The better your process [and] structure, the better your luck will be, by and large.” – Jake ([105:36])

• Building for the Future:

  • Schools must align budget and resource expectations with ambition (national titles vs. bowl eligibility).
  • Other factors: platform, marketing, off-field opportunities, retention in the face of agents stoking transfer speculation.

Memorable Quotes

• “Being a coach right now sucks in college. I mean, it just never stops. Like, their quality of life is terrible.” – Jake ([82:44])
• “You’re not bringing in a competitor… The GM in an NFL building doesn’t want to win any less than the head coach… You just have to trust that they are going to pull in the same direction.” – Jake ([88:52])
• “You don’t want to fire your great head coach because they were a bad GM. That is a third possibility that never was a thing before.” – Jake ([86:53])

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Timestamps for Interview

• Jake’s role & vision, Oklahoma case study: [60:56]–[68:10]
• Coaches losing touch due to new demands: [68:10]–[71:10]
• Structure, hiring, working with old-school coaches: [71:10]–[77:47]
• Search processes, why schools get it wrong: [77:56]–[79:39]
• On Jim Nagy’s transition & structuring a real scouting staff: [79:39]–[85:56]
• Evaluation, salary budgeting, and funneling the right players: [91:55]–[97:35]
• Recruiting vs. portal (draft vs. free agency correlations), roster construction: [100:55]–[106:31]
• Resources, resource allocation, player retention: [107:16]–[111:18]

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Final Reflections

• Todd and Steve conclude that the NFL model of structured staffing, objective evaluation, and clear delineation of roles is the future of college football’s elite.
• Jake Rosenberg’s experience and perspective highlight why programs like Oklahoma and Florida are early adopters—and why many others risk falling behind.

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For Listeners

• If you want the deepest draft analysis, mock draft discussion, and a unique look behind the curtain of college football’s transformation, this episode is essential listening.
• For full positional boards and future mock drafts, they recommend subscribing to The McShay Report.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• “It’s kind of cool to be a nerd playing quarterback now.” – Steve ([06:45])
• “One part of… their evaluation is always… do they know who they are? Are they authentically themselves?” – Steve ([07:45])
• “Being a coach right now sucks in college. I mean, it just never stops. Like, their quality of life is terrible.” – Jake Rosenberg ([82:44])
• “If you pay retail for every player and the price you pay is directly correlated to what their role is or what their talent level is, you’re limited in how many good players you can have… Cap depth is where you get crushed, right?” – Jake ([91:09])
• “You don’t want to fire your great head coach because they were a bad gm.” – Jake ([86:53])

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For a continuous deep dive into the 2026 draft, evolving front office structures, and the intersection of NFL and college football strategies, don’t miss further episodes and subscribe to The McShay Report.

Transcript

[Todd McShay]

Foreign.

[Steve]

Today's show may be a marathon, but it's also one of the most important shows we've ever done. So hang in there with us. We interviewed Jake Rosenberg, a man who is on the forefront of helping major college programs equip themselves for the tsunami that has hit college football with NIL and the transfer portal. And I'm feeling a rough draft draft in the air with just 133 days until the NFL draft. Men, you good?

[Todd McShay]

I'm psyched, man.

[Steve]

Tuck, roll that beat.

All right, men, we got a big one today. Here we go. Rosenberg, the athlete group is going to join us. Awesome interview that we're going to share with our audience and like if you, if you like or like most of us love the game of college football. If you're interested in NFL general manager slash front office situations and and how it all works. If you're interested in the ever changing landscape of college football like this is I said in the, in the open. It's the most important conversation we've had college football related. I know it's not the CFP. I know it's not the matchups, the rankings, FanDuel odds and all that stuff. The McShay show is presented by FanDuel. FanDuel's got it all. Same game parlays, quick bets for jumping in live and your way so you can build the bet that fits your play. Plus don't miss out on holiday offers and surprises all month long. Download the FanDuel app or head to FanDuel.com McShay to get started must be 21 and older and present in select states or 18 and older and present in DC, Kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem. Call 1-800- gambler or visit rg-help.com call 1-888-78-9-7777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut. But it truly is an insight that that is necessary in today's college football game and I'm excited to bring that and I know you are Steve as well. The McShay report is out. We're about to I mean it's rough draft Thursday, man. And and we just had the college football conference champions championships and Mendoza had an awesome game and that's kind of what the jumping off point. But today we're going to get to the top 10 prospects. We have maybe a couple other things before we we have the interview with Jake Rosenberg, but the McShay report is out. Google it. The MC report. Subscribe Be a part of it. We're kind of this is like the soft launch to the 2026 NFL Draft right now. And you're going to want to be with us along the ride. I think we've proven in one year behind the scenes, the, the buzz, the rankings. Like, I know I'm biased, but no one's doing it like us men. And people are starting to realize it. And I'm getting texts and calls. And you know what? I'm proud of it and I'm not going to shy away from it. And if you, if you care at all about your NFL team, if you care at all about where these college players are going, you're going subscribe to it. So whatever we do on the show today, I promise you it's going to be.

Extended and, and, and probably double the content that you get on the show. You'll get in the McShay report. Okay? All that said and done. This episode is brought to you by McAfee. You want to live your online life worry free. But with all those identity thefts and data leaks we all keep hearing about, it's not easy. Choose McAfee's award winning protection to keep those scammers away. Keep your data and identity safe. Plans start at just $39.99 for your first year. All you have to do is find out [e-mail] Keep it real.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Cancel anytime terms apply.

[Steve]

It wasn't an epiphany Mendoza on Saturday night against Ohio State. It also statistically was just me. Okay.

But it was for me the moment that I had been waiting for. And I want to bring people back without going very much into detail, but this summer we decided to do a full breakdown in Mendoza. I was pushing back against it. I was like, we get Club Nick, we got Nussmeier, we got Sellers, we've got Levitt, we've got all these, these big time program quarterbacks that are getting ready to have this unbelievable season. We'll get to Mendoza during the season. Oh, let's see. He's transferring from Cal, Indiana. Dan and, and you. Steve pushed back and said, no, we need to do something on Mendoza and we need to do something on Matier. And I'm grateful that we did because it, it provided us a foundation for, for where they are as players and allowed us to see the progress that they've made this year. And we shared that with our audience. And at the time I said you, I told you, I was like, I, I'm not fully in love with him, but I'm in love with what he can be and throughout the year, I was hesitant. And as everyone else, Twitter mafia, as you like to call him, is like, oh, Mendoza, number one. Overall, he's this, he's that. The other thing, I'm like, I'm not there yet. And that's okay. It's a long game evaluating college players, as you well know, Steve.

I wanted to see him against that kind of defense. And we saw moments on the road, right? Iowa, Oregon, Penn State, really good defenses. Not necessarily all great teams, but really good defenses on the road where the numbers weren't as good as Illinois, where he's like 23 of 25 or 21 or 23, whatever he was. He had other games where the efficiency was just off the charts, right? I told you I learned more. And I think you would agree from some of the moments and, and overcoming adversity games on the line, how does he show up? And he kept delivering, but I still wasn't ready to go chips all in on him. And it wasn't the best statistical game. But watching him against Ohio State and going back and watching the tape some of the NFL throws, the extension of plays, the toughness after getting like Cole Cock in that first, the first play from scrimmage by Curry, the, the. The. The defensive end for, for Ohio State and bouncing back from that and even the, the ridiculous interviews that he does after the game.

[Todd McShay]

You know, the best thing ever right now, it's like, it's the best thing.

[Steve]

It's like Kurt Warner meets Kirk Cousins. And it's like, it's just different than what you know, it's not this like, shucks or like quarterback speak. And he's just authentically him. And you know what? It's kind of cool to be a nerd playing quarterback now because, you know.

[Todd McShay]

There'S a lot of joy, man. I love the joy.

[Steve]

There's a lot of joy. But there's also, as an evaluator, a lot of trust in that young man, in his mental process and that he's authentically himself. And I talked to about general managers that have. Have been. That are well renowned for. For doing the best drafting of quarterbacks in the NFL. I talked to quarterback whisperers and gurus, I talked to college and NFL coaches and quarterback coaches. All of it spent more time on the quarterback position than any other position. And almost to a te, the people who know evaluations of quarterbacks, the best.

One part of.

[Jake Rosenberg]

In a.

[Steve]

In a sizable part of their evaluation is always. And it's surprising to me, it was in the beginning. It's not now do they know who they are? Are they authentically themselves? Because if they don't and they're trying to be something else, I got a long list of guys that busted when they got to this league because you can't fake it there.

[Todd McShay]

Right?

[Steve]

Got it. And, and we know being in a locker room, if you're not authentic, you get, you sniff through that really quickly. So all of this is a backdrop. Steve, I thought, and you agreed.

If Mendoza is number one overall, let's just go through the list. Who are our top 10 prospects? And I know you have your own list. I know ESPN benefits from that whether they put your name on it or not. I get in trouble. You don't get in trouble in this show.

[Todd McShay]

So far. Let's go. Let's, let's keep it that way. All right.

[Steve]

Let's keep it rolling, keep it moving. Nothing to see here. I want to go through and it, it's fluid right now. We still have, we still have the College Football Playoff, we still have bowl games, we still have the, the pre draft process. We'll be in Mobile. We're excited for that. For the Senior Bowl. We get the east west shrine, we got all the other all star games. We've got the combine, we've got pro days, individual workouts. We got the intel that we're getting all of it to go. But right now I just threw together this list sitting downstairs last night and I, and by the way, I got to 10 and I was like, but I've got four more. Let's go to 15. Then I got to 20. I got 70 deep on my phone last night. I just got carried away. I'm not going to share all 70 today. We've got plenty of process to go through but I am going to share more than 10 on, I have shared more than 10 on the, on the mixture report and.

We encourage you, as I said, to check that out and I want to go through the top 10 now. And I'm curious to get your reaction of what the, of what your top 10 would be and, or where you think I'm crazy because some of it might be a little controversial. Number one for fair, Fernando Mendoza, as I mentioned from Indiana and that is.

[Todd McShay]

Brand new number one overall, Fernando Mendoza.

[Steve]

Yep. All right.

[Todd McShay]

We were already, we already have something to talk about. Let's go. Keep going.

[Steve]

Number two, Arvell Reese, linebacker, Ohio State was kind of quiet by his standards in the, in the Big Ten championship game while others like Curry and Sonny Styles really, I thought had phenomenal games. Kenyatta Jackson, too. The other. The other.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Huge game.

[Todd McShay]

Excited about that for him.

[Steve]

Yep, me too. Maybe a top 100 prospect. We'll see how it all plays out.

Number three.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, here we go. Who's number three? Just get out with it.

[Steve]

Quarterback Dante Moore, Oregon.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Steve]

All right. I brought him back. Remember all the intel and there's, there's one reason why I'm doing it. And his name is Willstein and he's now in Kentucky and he's now, while he's going to coach the. As offensive coordinator, Oregon through the College Football Playoff. He will. He is going to be the, the head coach of Kentucky once that run for Oregon finalizes. And, and he, most importantly for this situation, he's not going to be the OC in Oregon next year. And so all the intel that I got from scouts that I spoke to, where it was like, yeah, man, like, take him off the list. Get him ready for next year. Talk to, you know, people. People have talked to mom and dad, talked to Dante, talked to his agent, talked to the coaching staff. He's going back to school now. I don't know. And what, what also has changed from that point was he started off the season gangbusters. Then he had a little bit of a lull. And, and I'm not saying it was all on him or that it wasn't or none of it was on him. I'm saying there were factors in losing top three receivers. Four, if you include Evan Stewart from the preseason, factored into some of that decline in the, in the mid season sputtering. But since then they've kind of regrouped. They've still had injuries at wide receiver, but his play has gotten back to the level and some would argue beyond what it was early in the season. So you combine all those factors. I don't know if he's going to be in the draft or not. I don't know if a decision's been made.

[Todd McShay]

It's.

[Steve]

We're fresh off of finding out that Will Stein is going to be coach in Kentucky next year. So we'll see how all that works out. But I do think it's important at this point in the process. Remember, January 14th is the date and then there's an extension after that for teams that are still in the College Football Playoff for underclassmen declaring for the draft, that's a huge date. If you're a draft fan. We'll find out about all those underclassmen. And then there's an extension, I think like 20-1-22 or something like that. Because what is it. Is it January 19th is the.

[Todd McShay]

Yes, the first day.

[Steve]

So they have like three days after that to declare. And then it's like three or four days after that. It will be. The list of. The final list of underclassmen will be handed from the NFL and the advisory committee and that group that, that handles all this to all 32 NFL teams. Okay, so that's.

[Todd McShay]

We're already starting to see some names come out. By the way, you see Peter Woods, Clemson.

[Steve]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

I think Emmett Johnson, the running back.

[Steve]

From Nebraska, T.J. parker. Yeah. A handful of names are coming up. So.

Let'S get back to the list. So Dante Moore, number three. Number four, running back, Jeremiah Love, Notre Dame.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Okay.

[Steve]

Don't like having a running back that high. But when I look at the rest of this class, like I've got to remove the position, I just don't know that there are 5, 6, 7 better football players in the country than Jeremiah Love.

[Todd McShay]

Can tell you something.

[Steve]

Number five. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Number one on my board.

[Steve]

Really?

[Todd McShay]

Number one on my board.

[Steve]

Yep. All right, let me. Yeah, no, let me finish the top.

[Todd McShay]

I have a real debate about it, but go ahead, go ahead.

[Steve]

Let me finish the top five and then. And I'll stop down and you can, you can kind of. We can have a discussion and then I'll go six through 10, then we'll have another discussion. So. So Mendoza at quarterback. One, Arvell Reese is a linebacker. Maybe some edge components from Ohio State. Two, Dante Moore, quarterback, Oregon. Three, Jeremiah Love, running back, Notre Dame. Four, Caleb Downs, safety, Ohio State. Been overshadowed some reason this year. I still believe he's one of the best five football players in this draft class and we'll see how the workouts go and everything else. But right now that rounds out my top five. Take it where you want.

[Todd McShay]

I have Jeremiah Love, number one. Because it's basically the same things you're saying when you take away positional value and just look at what he's done tape and production wise, when I wish they'd given him more carries, to be honest with you. But when you just look at the tape and how talented he is, I think he's the best player in the draft. I do struggle between him and Arvell Reese, the edge slash off the ball linebacker from Ohio State. Because I think Reese is probably. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. He's going to go earlier than Love because of that. That position and what he can do.

I am stunned that you have Mendoza one overall and I Do think. Let me explain why I love Fernando Mendoza. I've moved him to my number one quarterback. I, I'm not gonna say that I haven't. I think he's earned that right. That being said, I still have concerns. I still have enough concerns not to think that he's the best overall prospect in this class. And you know, and you, I know you have the same thing because we text, you know, we don't really text about what we're going to say on the show, but we are always texting each other about what we see with players, right?

[Steve]

Yes.

[Todd McShay]

That's, that's, you know, that's, that's in our DNA. That's never going to change. And when we watch Mendoza, we see similar things and tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth, but somet the eyes are too quick to get to.

[Steve]

That's my biggest complaint.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Right.

[Todd McShay]

When he doesn't have his first read. And so those are the little things. And I don't want to rain on the Mendoza parade because I want. This should be all celebrating for Indiana Mendoza right now. That being said, there's reasons why I don't have him as the number one overall player on my board, but very similar. By the way, there are two players that I have in here that you don't.

That we can kind. I want to kind of see if they show up in your top 10.

[Steve]

We'll go for that. Okay. Yeah. Listen, we have a long time to adjust these boards. I am, I am perfectly happy admitting that I probably, you know, recency bias and the excitement of all of it and I finally got to see what I wanted to see. I'm not saying he's a perfect prospect. I, I do like the eyes dipping and some of. There's. There's a quarter count with him when the read isn't what he wants it to be and when pressure starts to come. That's concerning. There's no question.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Steve]

And. And the beauty of this process too is like not only are we evaluating against this class, but then previous classes and where would he stack up with. With the Cam Ward versus A. Caleb Williams, Jaden Daniels, Drake May, etc. So. So we'll have fun with that too.

[Todd McShay]

Well, do Teas. Where do you have him right now? I mean, you can't just say that and not, not where would you have.

[Steve]

I don't. I'm not there yet, man.

[Todd McShay]

I'd have. I'm not afraid. I would have him ahead of Cam Ward. I love Cam Ward. I'd have him ahead of Cam Ward right now.

[Steve]

I would too.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Okay.

[Todd McShay]

That's all you had to say.

[Steve]

But not, not ahead of the other three.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Okay.

[Steve]

That's in terms of their grades coming out. Right.

[Todd McShay]

I would agree with you. That's all you have to say. Don't run from it.

[Steve]

I'm just trying to save some content. We got months to get ready for this draft.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

We could change your opinion later on.

[Jake Rosenberg]

It's fine.

[Steve]

Six through 10. And hopefully this will help Mensch formulate some, some stronger arguments. This is where I have a wide receiver run and you might be really in the order that I have them.

[Todd McShay]

I, I am interested in the order.

[Steve]

I'm done shying away from this receiver group. I know it's not the, the most body beautiful or speed beautiful or all those things. I'm looking at three receivers that just reek of NFL. They reek of NFL immediacy. They reek of NFL production. Okay. I really believe that the more I watch them and, and, and the hard part too is coming off of the grade in the preseason where I thought all these guys were good, but kind of fringe later first. Fringe first, you know. Yep. Because they're, they're just better and they've made the necessary steps and it's a wide, it's a past game driven league in the NFL.

And I just think that their teams are starved for difference makers and playmaker guys who can come in and Mecca Abu has hit a little a lull and has been nicked up. But give what a Mecca was offering early on this season and provide what Tet McMillan. We'll see Long term. I'm still not. We'll see. But, but that kind of, that kind of production. Not, not just long term, but like I need help now at that, at that position. So here it is. Yep. Carnell Tate, 6 overall number one wide receiver out of Ohio State.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Okay.

[Steve]

Makai Lemon, 7 overall receiver, USC number two wide receiver, number three wide receiver.

8 overall on my draft board. Jordan Tyson, Arizona State. So Tate, Lemon, Tyson, all bunched together. What's the workouts matter for this position and cornerback? Probably more than any two other positions. There's a lot of information and data points, if you will, to still come in on all these guys. But if I'm just watching the tape, these are the guys that I think are, are absolutely NFL ready right now. And I'm not saying all three of them will go top 10. They probably won't. I'm just saying they are bona fide first round draft prospects. And I'm Done hiding from this receiver class.

All right. 9. Edge Keldrick, Auburn, ahead of. Reuben Bain ahead of.

[Todd McShay]

Got it.

[Steve]

Bailey, I think he said. Yep.

[Todd McShay]

I. I don't hate what you're saying here.

[Steve]

And number 10, offensive tackle and maybe Pro bowl guard. Francis. Francis, Maui Goa.

[Todd McShay]

It's Maui Noah, right?

[Steve]

I looked it up last night and.

[Todd McShay]

It said, look at what Dan wrote.

[Steve]

Francis, Maui Noah. It wouldn't be the McShay show if I didn't mess up Maui Noah's name. Amazing. But I promise you, I promise you in February, March, April, I will not say it wrong.

[Todd McShay]

You will definitely have it.

[Steve]

That's just how. That's how I am every single year. And that's why, honestly.

The, the behind the curtains thing, Kuiper is absolutely brilliant with player names because he's got that, that photographic memory. And so he would be my resource and I, I would never get a name wrong because, because Mel. So I miss a few things from now, Mel. Not all of them, but definitely that aspect. He was. He was the best with that. So go ahead. So that now you know it. It's. It's Mendoza 1. Reese 2. Dante Moore 3. Jeremiah Love 4. Caleb Downs 5. Then you got three receivers. Tate Lemon, Tyson, 6, 7, 8. Then Keldrick Fox, the only edge in my top 10 currently from Auburn at 9. And then Francis, Maui Noah, offensive tackle or guard at 10. And we saw last year those guards, attack, tackle, guard guys came off the board real early and a handful. So. So it won't surprise me if we see something similar again this year.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, where, where to begin? I mean to have Maui Noah over Spencer Fano from Utah. The right tackle is banana land to me. And I like Maui Noah.

[Steve]

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna. I'll tease the McShay report. Barely, but yes, go ahead.

[Todd McShay]

Okay, so I should say this. I have the same. I'm. I'm overreacting a little bit, but I just think one's a tackle and the other one may be a tackle. May be a Maui Noah from Miami may have to kick inside a guard. I have the same grade on him. I will say that I have as the top five. Yeah, I was a top five player though, I think. And you don't have in your top 10. I think you're too high on the receivers. I have not taken. I. I am. You would think that the people listen to this show would give me more about a Mecca of Buga after my take last year that he was a second round guy.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Wrong.

[Todd McShay]

He's been awesome. I can. I have no problem with that. The makai Lemon hate for me is real. The meanest things that have been said to me on X are about Makai lemon. I'm not joking. Good. I want everyone to know. I want everyone to know he is firm. He's firmly in the first round. Top 10 is. What are we doing now? Like, we're just going to put this kid in the top 10 now his. Let's see the. His frame. Let's see how he tests. He's a really good player. He's going to play early. He's going to be productive. Top 10. Come on. Top 10. And I don't know.

[Steve]

Would you draft a Mechanic the top 10?

[Todd McShay]

This is a conversation that I think is worth having. If I knew he was going to Tampa in the top 10. Maybe. Maybe. I think that's. That definitely something I would consider. I think a lot of it's landing spot and he landed in a really good spot for him and now they use him. It's.

[Steve]

That's oftentimes the case. But yes.

[Todd McShay]

And we're going to get into this because I want to talk about landing spots after this. We're not going to just talk about this in the. In the abstract. We need an emergency mock or a flash mock. That's what we need right now. But I will say this. I don't know how we're branding it, but I will say this.

[Steve]

You want a flashback? We have.

[Todd McShay]

We have to for the top 10. You have to because it's a good exercise for you to see the three wide receivers going in the top 10 is highly unlikely.

Fine.

[Steve]

Let's do it.

[Todd McShay]

Let's do real world stuff, huh? Let's. Let's try to be in the real world.

[Steve]

Hold on, hold on. I know I've got him here. You want the draft order? Yeah. Go, go.

[Todd McShay]

Let's. I can't wait for this.

[Steve]

Got it. Got it. Keep this handy in the office. Every single day, every week, print out a new one.

[Todd McShay]

Try not to change it on me like you did last time. Go ahead.

[Steve]

Let me give you this order. But then I want to know what your top 10 would be. Okay, you jerk.

Flashback.

[Todd McShay]

Here we go.

[Steve]

Giants would be the number one overall pick of the draft. Were held today. New York Giants. Number two would be Las Vegas. Number three would be Tennessee who had the first overall pick last year. Number four would be Cleveland. Follow along because this is very critical because a couple. Couple of these to a few of these teams in the top ten. Now that I Look at it. Three of these teams in the top ten have two first round picks. One of them has a pair, has a couple first round picks next year too. And all those teams have varying degrees of quarterback need. And Vegas sitting at 2 has quarterback need. And I'm telling you that Dante Moore might wind up back at school and without Dante Moore in this class. And if Ty Simpson from Alabama goes back to Alabama, which I'm thinking, there's a, there's a strong groundswell towards that. It's Mendoza or bust. Yeah, good for Mendoza's value. But also it's. If the draft order were today, it's great for the New York Giants, man. There's no choices.

[Todd McShay]

Oh, it's fantastic.

[Steve]

They will get a bounty. All right, so Giants 1, Vegas 2, Tennessee 3. Cleveland 4, New Orleans 5. Tucker, I assume you're throwing up the graphic with me. Six would be Washington seven, Jets eight, Arizona nine, Atlanta. But that's the Rams pick. And that's right from last year.

And 10, Cincinnati.

Flash mock. Drop that on me and say who would be your. Give me your top ten then, big boy.

[Todd McShay]

I got Notre Dame running back Jeremiah Love, Ohio State linebacker Arvell Reese, Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, Clemson defensive tackle Peter woods, who you seem to be out on U2, Utah offensive tackle Spencer Fano, Ohio State safety Caleb Downs, Miami offensive tackle Francis Maui Noah, Miami Edge Ruben Bane Jr. And Auburn Edge Keldrick Falk. And then, sorry. The 10th would be Oregon's Dante Moore, quarterback.

[Steve]

So you have three players in your top 10 that are not in mine. I could tell you correct and go read the McShay report. All three of those players are in my top 20. That's good. And one of them is sitting at 11, one's at 14 and one's at 17. Okay, don't guess. Just subscribe to the McShay report and you'll find out.

So we're not that far off. 70 we're not is equal. Okay, remind me, did you have a wide receiver in there?

[Todd McShay]

I did not.

[Steve]

Okay. All right. So that's wide receivers removed by three receivers. And we have almost an identical list.

But I, I, I like to make statements.

[Todd McShay]

I will point out one name that I think that is going to move up and I am really thinking about moving up in my next update, and that's Washington's Denzel Boston. I think we are losing track of this kid for, for whatever reason, I think he is an absolute dude.

[Steve]

Denzel Boston is in my top 32. He is not in my top 20, but he's not go check out the McShay report.

[Todd McShay]

All right.

[Jake Rosenberg]

All right.

[Todd McShay]

Let's do it.

[Jake Rosenberg]

By the way.

[Steve]

Let's do it.

[Todd McShay]

Before we start, I am rooting for Vegas to get the first overall pick. In this sense, I think it's very interesting.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Do you stay put?

[Todd McShay]

You need a quarterback. You need a quarterback. Do you stay put or you do you entertain draft and what would it take for you not to take Fernando Mendoza, knowing that he's the really only option? Because the jets have a arsenal of picks. They have so many picks. That'll be a fascinating thing to me is whether or not the Raiders will be will be willing to trade back to not take the quarterback and build other aspects of their roster.

[Steve]

You know what the most fascinating, the most fascinating undercurrent of this entire draft will be and we'll know for sure late in January once we get that official underclassman report. But we'll have report we'll know probably by January 14th or shortly thereafter if Dante Moore is still playing ball for Oregon.

This is the thing that we're going to talk about a lot, especially if It's Vegas at 1 or if it's Tennessee at 1 in the or the Giants at 1. A team that doesn't need a quarterback. No matter what we're looking at here. If it is just Mendoza or even if it's Mendoza and more right.

Are you more willing and and this is where advanced scouting and being ready for 2027 is going to be more important this year than any draft I can remember.

Are you willing to say Mendoza is my guy or Moore's my guy? I don't care what's in 2027 or are you more apt to double down.

Gamble, take a risk? We saw this great quarterback class this year turned out to be not so great.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Steve]

But next year.

What if it's Dante Moore and Ty Simpson along with Lenora Sellers who's found a new landing spot or rejuvenated his career at South Carolina because he might be the most talented of all of them. What if it's including Arch Manning who played really, really good ball towards the end of the season? Julian Saying from Ohio State, there's a lot of names that are going to be in that class next year. Check.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Checkers versus chess. I think you did a great job of this with the lead up to the draft last year of when we did we went to this exercise and obviously we're not doing that yet. As we get farther along the process, we'll do this and you Would say, hey benchmark, if you're, if you're picking 17 and you're the Lions and then you're picking 17 in the second round, would you rather have this combination or that combination? Let's kind of look at this in, in going towards next year. Would you take Mendoza knowing that the market for quarterbacks could be flooded and you could have a chance at a Jeremiah Smith when he comes out. Are you saying to yourself, we're going to get our quarterback now? Because I know there's going to be a lot of other talented players that will have a good shot at getting later on. I mean that stuff's all very hard to. And you have to be very careful about it, about forecast, all of those things. Who knows, maybe he goes back and stuns the world. There's all of these things that come into play. Maybe someone gets hurt. Like you have to be very careful about it. But I think it is interesting how teams might be approaching the 2027 draft as they, as they are evaluating players.

[Steve]

For 2026 and do you purposely try to neuter the jets if the jets are one of the teams that are interested. No. No. Seriously, because.

[Todd McShay]

No, I love it. I love it.

[Steve]

They have multiple firsts and additional picks next year. Right. So do you purposely try to neuter them? So yeah, come on up, get Mendoza. But instead of giving me, giving me two firsts this year or something, give me, give me your first this year, give me one next year. So now you're just one of the other, you know, and, and that put me in a position where I can then go up next year and get the quarterback of my choice or I'm in position. So it's going to be fascinating to see the, the draft management of all of this.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yes.

[Steve]

Which teams are. Because if I'm the Rams, I'm like, shoot, I didn't know that was a 37 year old Matthew Stafford was going to be played at MVP type level. He's got it. He definitely has another year in him. Like can we take one of these two first rounders we got this year and somehow trade this? If we don't trade up for Mendoza and we're sitting at nine with Atlanta's pick that we already traded for, can we move off of that one? And will anyone have any interest if there aren't quarterbacks to move up to nine for a different position so that I can basically I want to push, I want to, I want to backload. I want to push that extra first round pick to 2027 knowing that everyone else in the league would like to push. Well, there's a lot of good players. This is a really good draft is starting to shape up. 2027's got a chance to be historic, especially quarterback and wide receiver. All right, all that said, all of that said, let's get into it Giants and here's, here's how I want to do it. So this is, this is your flash mock creation last minute. I do have the picks in front. Always know the needs so we're prepared enough. And now we have the updated board. Let's go through 10 of these picks right Y and instead of you doing one and me doing one, let's try to come to some consensus and, and we'll, you know, we'll, we'll just make it a TMS top 10 flashback. All right, giants picket one. In this scenario, do you agree or disagree that we should have them trade out of that spot?

[Todd McShay]

You have to trade out of this, right? You're going to get something here. Jackson dart. I mean I love Jackson darts game other than the fact he's got to protect himself but Jackson darts appears to have a very bright future. You have plenty of holes on your roster. You are getting out and taking advantage of the fact that other teams are.

[Steve]

Quarterback needy as you should and the two other. So the three teams in the top 10 that I mentioned have two first round picks in 2026. Cleveland sitting at four, jets at seven and the Rams via Atlanta at nine. I think the Rams are going to be much more in the market too. Can we trade out of that spot and find a way to get another first round pick next year? I don't think they're going back.

[Todd McShay]

They're not going up.

[Steve]

I don't. And, and as it currently sits, they, I mean they'd have picked 31 or 32 right now, but we'll see how the playoffs play out. They're going to have a pick in the mid to late 20s, if not early 30s. Yep. So trying to package that with something else to move up from nine to one to get Mendoza. I just don't see less need doing that.

[Todd McShay]

I'm with you. I agree.

[Steve]

So now we're down to Cleveland at 4 and the jets at 7. The jets are sitting there and being like, you know what, there's all those quarterbacks next year. Do we want to move up? But what will it require us from seven to one? I think, I personally think the, the most reasonable trade for given these circumstances would be Cleveland going from four to one.

[Todd McShay]

Interesting.

[Steve]

It might Be a new general manager, might be a new head coach. Yeah. I'm not buying for a millisecond that Shador Sanders is their long term answer at quarterback. I'm just not.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Okay.

[Steve]

I've seen others say that they. Let's give them time and I. I just don't see it. Especially if it's the current regime. Although I. I would say the. The percentages of them both being back to general manager Andrew Barry and Kevin Stefanski, the head coach, are probably slim.

[Todd McShay]

I'd also say that I do think I've said this before and I'll stand by it that I think the jets are the most likely to do it because they have the most firepower. But the Browns have an interesting chip in. In Miles Garrett and I'm wondering if that's finally.

[Steve]

No.

[Todd McShay]

Finally run its course.

[Steve]

No, no, no, no, no. It's not.

[Todd McShay]

I would say this. Why not?

[Steve]

Because you can't trade Miles Garrett, who's about to set the single season sack record and, and, and gives you. And he is the reason why your defense is that good.

[Todd McShay]

I'm telling you right now. If you have a player who's unhappy, who doesn't want to be in the building and you can't listen, what would.

[Steve]

Make a player happier than. Than getting a. Finally getting a franchise quarterback, finally getting the number one overall pick.

[Todd McShay]

He. I don't know. But he's been there before and they haven't done it right. And I'll say this. The Miles Garrett is. Micah Parsons is probably the number two edge in the league. Miles Garrett is head and shoulders above him. I want to be clear about that. But we heard last year that you cannot trade Micah Parsons. Look. What the run that Dallas is on now. I'm just saying.

[Steve]

I'm not saying that we can't. I'm saying. I'm saying we're. We're now creating all sorts of problems.

[Todd McShay]

That's what I like to do. Let's go.

[Steve]

We'll keep it moving. So what about Cleveland? Yeah, let's go in. Cleveland moving up to one. I think it's interesting. Keeps it simple for now.

[Todd McShay]

So we're swapping those two guys.

[Steve]

Maybe a new gm, new head coach, fresh start.

[Todd McShay]

But.

[Steve]

But maybe not. We'll see. Okay.

I wouldn't move on from Stefanski, by the way, but that's just me. Yeah. And I don't have a tie to CAA or whatever else that people are out there saying with certain people in the media.

So if Cleveland's one, then the pick is Mendoza. Right. Obviously.

[Todd McShay]

Right.

[Steve]

Then the Giants would move down to four. We can get to them in a minute. Vegas is sitting at 2.

It's got to be Dante Moore. I don't like the inexperience, but like, you have to draft Dante Moore there. If Moore is in this quarter, in this scenario, he's.

[Todd McShay]

He's in the class, then I'm with you.

[Steve]

All right, so then we've got. So that takes. Let me jot this down. Mendoza's off the board. Dante Moore's off the board. Now pick three.

Tennessee sitting at three. Who would you choose there? If you're the Titans.

[Todd McShay]

Arvel Reese is really.

I mean, yeah, I think they need. Yeah, I would go Arvel Reese because I think that, you know, technically need an edge. I think for. In their system as an edge, he would be outstanding. I would go R.V.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Reese.

[Steve]

I would too. All day long. All day long. His talent level is. Is just different. And I honestly think he's just kind of scratching the surface. This is first year as a full time starter.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Wild. Wild.

[Steve]

So now you've got the Giants at four.

With needs. But. And I get. And Malik Neighbors is coming back.

But I still think in the. In losing Malik, you saw the, the, the. The lack of true depths.

So no wide receiver here at 4.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Okay.

[Steve]

Who else are you taking?

[Todd McShay]

Big boy Spencer Fano from Utah. The right tackle. They have a great left tackle now you had a great right tackle. You have. You solidify your offensive line for a young quarterback that has a hard time protecting himself. Let's make him take as few hits as possible. I build teams from, you know, in the trenches. McShay. That's how you're supposed to do it. I think Fondo is the number five player on my board. You take him at four. That's not.

[Steve]

That's.

[Todd McShay]

That's great for me.

[Steve]

I mean, it might be why the Giants try to move back even more to justify.

[Jake Rosenberg]

I.

[Todd McShay]

That's. Yes. That's why I think they could entertain the jets because if the jets are willing to give them more, they can still get. They could potentially get a fan at 7. I think that could happen.

[Steve]

I don't like it. Men.

[Todd McShay]

4 For Carnell Tate. I love Carnell Tate.

[Steve]

4. Okay, fine. We'll go. We'll go fo.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Steve]

Fine.

[Todd McShay]

It's gonna stick with you.

[Steve]

You're bossy today.

[Todd McShay]

I'm just sticking up for.

[Steve]

I just don't think he's. Well, we'll see. All right, fine. It's. It's a. It's a Collaboration. The tms, I really appreciate.

I'm not good at it. Just ask my daughter.

Okay, so. So here we are at number five.

New Orleans. They needed the way I think. They need edge, they need wide receiver, they could use offensive line. They need a lot of things.

It's. To me, it's. It's Keldrick at 5. I just like the wide receivers more than you do. That's the problem.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. You can go with your guy here.

[Steve]

I don't see there's core. Mansoor Delane is the best corner in the class from what I've seen so far.

[Todd McShay]

I love them.

[Steve]

Agreed.

[Todd McShay]

But I didn't put him in my top 10.

[Steve]

I had.

[Todd McShay]

I love him, but I didn't put him in my top 10.

[Steve]

Go find. He's in the top 15. Go find out where on the McShay report.

And. And honestly, what. As I was doing this exercise, this cornerback class is turning out to be a lot better than I thought with some names that, that like weren't.

[Todd McShay]

You know, I got a lot of work to do there, man, because I'm feeling the same way. Like, I gotta. I need to get sorted out a little bit more here now.

[Steve]

I mean, there's obviously AV on Terrell.

Brandon Sissy from McCoy didn't play at all this year. McCoy, a lot of people think he's still the top corner in the. In the country. Devin Moore from Florida. I talked to a scout recently, said, like this guy, if it's not first, it's round two.

[Todd McShay]

Colton Hood.

[Steve]

Muhammad from Texas, Abney Keith Abney from Arizona State, Colton Hood.

[Todd McShay]

Chris Johnson, San Diego.

[Steve]

Davison Igbosan has done it wonders for his. His career. Kelly Jones, the other cornerback from Mississippi State. So there's some dudes. All right, so we're at San Diego.

[Todd McShay]

State, by the way.

[Steve]

What.

[Todd McShay]

Chris Johnson, San Diego State is a dude to keep an eye on too.

[Steve]

Yes, yes.

And. And Ponds had an awesome game too, in Ohio State. All right, we're done with the cornerback.

New Orleans. So it's. To me, it's Falk or a wide receiver.

[Todd McShay]

I. I mean, I'm gonna favor the guy up front. That's what I do. And I think that folks a better value there. I love Carnell Tate, though. And I'll go.

[Steve]

I'll go there. I'll go.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Steve]

All right. I'm fine with that. So goes five to New Orleans. We thought all last year they were. They would draft the next Cam Jordan replacement. Thought it could be Mikel Williams. Didn't wind up being. Yep. They went offensive tackle, right? Yep, they went.

[Todd McShay]

Kelvin Banks Jr. Good.

[Steve]

Banks Jr. And great. It's been a great pick. All right, so we'll take Bach off the list. So here still on the board now, Jeremiah Love, running back Caleb Downs, Ohio State and the three wide receivers. Tate Lemon, Tyson and Maui Noah. The offensive tackle, guard from. From Miami among the. And then Peter woods from Clemson. Interior defensive lineman. So those are the names still on the board as we get to 6 through 10 in this flash mock. One of our favorite exercises to do. Mensch called it early in the season. It's. It's December 11th kind of early, but I kind of love it.

[Todd McShay]

Second time I've done it too. I like.

[Steve]

I just like these Washington. Here are the needs I've got for him. Edge receiver, corner linebacker.

I mean I can see Tate.

[Todd McShay]

I. I could see Tate here.

[Steve]

Another do it.

[Todd McShay]

Who's your edge? If it's not that it's going to be.

I don't know where you have.

[Steve]

David Bailey and Ruben Bane are down the list. Check out the Machete report to see where they are. But they're. They're in the top 20. I can say. I can say that.

[Todd McShay]

But not there, right? Yeah, it feels rich and I don't know. That's my thing with some of this is the good part of this exercise.

[Steve]

Right.

[Todd McShay]

Some of my guys that I have high. The positional value is not there. I get Tate here, I get Tate.

[Steve]

Carnell Tate, number six pick to the Washington Commanders.

Moving on from that. Then number seven. New York jets couldn't get their quarterback. Got a couple first round picks this year to build around it. Got involved a couple first round picks next year. Quarterback is their number one need. Outside of that, I've got wide receiver.

Interior, defensive line, offensive line as three of the other needs, but they obviously can go in a lot of different directions.

Could this be Mai Lemon or Jordan Tyson? Could this be Francis? Maui Noah?

Could this be. What else did I say?

Peter Woods. Peter woods. Maybe.

[Todd McShay]

Peter woods is interesting to me.

[Steve]

Like.

Smart drafting would say you just gave up an interior defensive lineman in a trade as you're trying to.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Steve]

Let'S get younger. Let's build from the inside out. Let's go. Peter woods here.

[Todd McShay]

Okay.

[Steve]

It just feels good.

[Todd McShay]

And by the way, for. For kind of similar reasons, I kind of like Maui Noah too, but I like woods better.

[Steve]

Okay. I. I don't disagree.

All right, so Peter woods goes seven to the jets. Eight. Arizona. There's. It's gotta be love. I love love to Arizona at 8. Yep. Jeremiah Love, running back. It's the best fit in the. The early portion of the first round wherever Arizona winds up picking.

Yeah. So Jeremiah Love, your number one prospect. My number four prospect comes off the board at eight to Arizona, nine Rams postponing the quarterback thing. Let's not.

Let'S not project a trade here.

[Todd McShay]

Right.

[Steve]

Although I would put an asterisk on this and say less need will aggressively be pursuing trying to pick up a first round pick next year to be part of that.

Arch Manning, Julian Saying, Lenora Sellers, maybe Ty Simpson, maybe Dante Moore. I know I'm missing some other names, but it's a loaded class.

If you talk to some scouts, like, don't forget about Nico. I am Alia, you know, so there's just a lot of dudes that could have big years and propel them.

The Rams. I could see Caleb Downs here just take the best player.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Steve]

I could also see offensive line. I could see offensive line with Maui Noah.

[Todd McShay]

I agree.

[Steve]

Those are the two. Those are the two players specifically for their needs. I've got. I've got offensive tackle. I've got quarterback down the line, safety, corner, receiver. They can go any of those directions. Do they fall in love with the.

[Todd McShay]

Corner after the workouts and all that? We'll see. But right now I like Downs.

[Steve]

Okay. And if downs doesn't go nine, he could go 10 to Cincinnati. But let's, let's plug Downs in. Caleb Downs, the number five player on my board. Where'd you have the Caleb Downs? Six. Six. So good.

[Todd McShay]

I feel about that. Yeah.

[Steve]

Downs goes to the Rams in that trade they had with Atlanta in last year's draft and then 10 Cincinnati. I mean.

It doesn't have to be an edge because, like, I don't envision a world in which.

They'Re.

I think Peter woods, if he were still available, would be on the table. I think Caleb.

[Todd McShay]

Do you feel like it's the best defensive. Best defensive player available at this point? That's what it feels like.

[Steve]

Absolutely. And on my board, I've got Lemon and Tyson at wide receiver. I get Maui Noah at offensive tackle, guard.

Could this be Mansoor Delaney? But you're probably looking at losing. Hendrickson opposite. Yeah.

You'Re losing and. But you drafted an edge last year.

This is either going to be David Bailey, Reuben Bane or Mansour Delaine or Mesador.

[Todd McShay]

I feel like Mesador could get sneaky and. And move up.

[Steve]

I don't disagree.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah, a messador. The edge from Miami is someone to keep an eye on.

[Steve]

But I Do have.

[Todd McShay]

I do have bailey and bain jr. Ahead of him right now, but I just. It's a name to keep an eye on.

[Steve]

I. I'm glad you mentioned it because. Because when I told you back in October, by the way, when I talked to a scout, he was messador over Bane all day long. So that was. That was an interesting conversation. And since then, you've seen kind of a groundswell, right?

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

I love this.

[Steve]

You drafted an edge last year in Texas A and M and Stewart. Right. That.

[Todd McShay]

Yeah.

[Steve]

Powerful.

Pressures, not production, not sack production.

[Todd McShay]

So you're looking for a compliment.

[Steve]

David Bailey feels like the compliment because are you going to draft another one of those guys in Bane? And while I love Mansour Delaine, like, corners have been following the last couple years.

Sliding a little bit longer than you think in the first round because the.

[Jake Rosenberg]

The.

[Steve]

The emphasis, if it's not a quarterback or receiver, it's been on offensive lineman and defensive line. Right?

[Todd McShay]

Yeah. Which is. We've talked. We've talked about Delane. It's going to be interesting to see how well he tests. I'm not saying he's not going to test well. I just want to see what the numbers are because he's a corner. That's just the. The reality.

[Steve]

Let's go with David Bailey right now.

[Jake Rosenberg]

I like it.

[Steve]

And note that it could be. It could be a Bane. It could be a messador. It also could be a mentor. Delane.

[Todd McShay]

I was just gonna say Delane's tape, though, is awesome. And we both said the. The first word that we said when we talked about him was smart. That dude is so good, like, just being a football player.

[Steve]

So there it is.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Throw up. Throw up.

[Steve]

The list, Tucker. It's. It's number one. We had a trade up. Cleveland taking. Taking Mendoza. Number two, we had. We had Las. Las Vegas taking Dante Moore, number three, linebacker Arvel Reese going to Tennessee, number four. The Giants trade back. I try to give him Carnell Tate.

Let me. Let me go ahead. And you went with who. Who'd you go there?

Offensive tackle. Right. Okay. Then at number six, we had Washington, and we wound up giving them receiver Carnell Tate, number seven. No, it didn't go five, five, five was New Orleans. And we gave them Keldrick. Right?

[Todd McShay]

Correct. The Auburn edge.

[Steve]

Yeah, the edge after not taking Mikel a year ago. Then we went Washington, we gave wide receiver Carnell Tate, give Terry McLaurin, another Ohio State wide receiver. The jets at 7. We wound up going with Peter Woods. Right? Yep, yep, Yep. Then at 8, we had Arizona pick that we love. Jeremiah Love from Notre Dame going to the Cardinals, number nine. We had the Rams taking safety Caleb downs and number 10, Cincinnati. Tough call between Mansour Delane at corner and a couple other edges, but we went with David Bailey for the sack production coming out of Texas Tech. This has been a fun exercise.

[Todd McShay]

It's great.

You're really growing as human, man. I mean the way you listen to me now and really work with me. Like, I know you're going to get off this and still be irritated with that pick, but, you know, you've come a long way. I appreciate it. Must be the Christmas spirit.

[Steve]

It's earned. It's earned. You have earned it, sir.

I'm fired up for our guest. We have a guest that we've been honestly since last spring. I, I developed a relationship with him. Let me, let me give you some background real quickly and I promise I, I had all this whole long thing written and I was going to give you a whole. It doesn't require it. And I'm, I'm just excited to share with our audience what. And I said this. We had a pre meeting with them. I told him two things. Jake Rosenberg, okay. With the athlete group. You can look it up. It's theathletegroup.com.com what he's, what he's doing. I'll give you a brief background here, but I told him two things when we met in the pre interview. One is this will not be an infomercial. Okay. Your work will stand on it on its own. And, and there are I don't know how many others in his exact.

Field right now like exactly what he's trying to do. There are out there. I do know this. It is. He is the preeminent in his group with Mark Priceler and others. They are, they are the best at what they're doing right now. That's not from. It's information I'm getting from people that I trust around college football. Okay. The second thing that I told him is like I do have, I don't have a friendship with. I've been talking to him since, since April. You know who reached out to me? Joe Douglas, former GM of the jets, our teammate at college, Joe. Joe and I have a friendship above all else. Joe has twice, multiple times he's told me, you should get with this guy. I think or, or you know, I've told him, hey Joe, why don't you talk to this guy? Like we put each other in contact. But twice now in 25 years of working in this business. Joe has called me and said, you absolutely have to talk to this person. The first was Kevin Weidel. We didn't have money. We didn't, we didn't have like literally did not have. We were working at ESPN at the time. I had no way to hire Kevin Whitele and Joe said, hire him, Figure it out. I've never heard of Kevin Wyll. We figured it out. Kevin came and worked for nothing at the beginning and then a little bit more than nothing for a while. He worked with us for 10 years and outside of you mentioned, I don't even consider you a hire. That was the best hire I've made in my entire career. Okay.

[Todd McShay]

I miss.

[Steve]

Now he's with the Baltimore.

[Todd McShay]

I miss him now.

[Steve]

He's been in the NFL high level scout and is like an impactful presence in the NFL scouting community. Okay. The second one was Jake Rosenberg because Jake had just left the Eagles where Joe was for a long time with Howie Roseman. He was Howie Roseman's right hand man on the personnel side. Jake was the right hand man for Howie on the, on the salary cap side. All those deals and movements, remember, like everyone's like, does the salary cap even exist to the Eagles? Like is it, is it extinct? They keep trading for players, bringing players in, restructuring, backloading deals, turning salary into, into signing bonuses. They keep doing all this stuff. Right. Well, Jake was the right hand man behind all that stuff with, with Howie. Right. In addition to Howie being creative and ahead of his time, Howie hires very well. If you go look at his staffs over the year and where years guys are, look at his tree. It's growing fast. And I'm shocked that more people in the league owners haven't found themselves something. There's no finding another Howie. Howie's one of one. But follow that structure they created organizationally. Okay. So that's kind of the back backdrop. He was with. He was with Philadelphia starting in 20, 2012 won a Super bowl there. Was there like 10, 11, 12 years left before. 12 years. I think it was left before. Left before they won their most recent super bowl. The second one under Howie. Okay. And he did so obviously not realizing they were going to win a Super bowl that year, but recognizing there is such a tsunami that has hit college football and these programs need help. And I feel like with my time at the Eagles, 15 years as a, as a trader in Chicago, time with the Eagles has uniquely qualified me to help some of these programs adapt and evolve to what's going on with the nil transfer Portal and everything else that's being just. Just blasted into the lives of college coaches, especially head coaches. Okay. So when you look at all of that as the backdrop. He left the league in 2024. He and Mark Priceler, who I actually wound up, I didn't even know at the time when I was talking to Jake in the beginning. He's working with Mark Chrysler, who was a producer of mine, like 20 years ago at ESPN. So I've got ties with these people. I'm not here pushing. He's the only one. I'm not saying he's the solution to every program that needs a new head coach or needs restructuring or needs help with it. I'm not.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Not.

[Steve]

That's not why we're doing this. We're doing it because I promise you this is. There's a desperate need for more information. And I know you as fans of college football in the game we love, and just as fans of the NFL draft and. And the NFL in general, like, starving for more information. What's going on behind the scenes in. In draft rooms and salary cap and all that in the NFL, but now even more starved for what's actually going on in these college football programs. Why is it working at Oklahoma and it's not working at other place? Insert team, insert program?

Jake's behind some of this stuff, forefront of all of it. Okay. And he's. He launched this group two. Just about two years ago, 23 months ago, I think it was the athlete group for Florida Gators, the moves they just made. We talked about Urban and how lovely he is with some role, but also in love with the fact they hired an NFL GM with experience and Dave Caldwell, who's been with the Eagles after leaving the Jaguars and actually brought the Jaguars a lot of success, even though he. There were some picks and some things that went on. People didn't realize how great of a job he was doing with that organization. And then he just sharpened the. The knives with Howie the last five years. So Florida is an example. Oklahoma is an example of what Jake has. Jake and his group have been able to affect change with and help them structure the right organization to help support the head coach in the entire football program.

There's eight clients he's worked with. I know there are a handful more that he's now talking with and. And you'll kind of get a sense of where he's going. Most importantly, when you're done listening to this interview with Jake, you will have a much greater, like, significantly greater understanding of what's really going on behind the scenes with college coaching hires with nil with this salary cap with the collectives and everything else. So now's time Steve. And I know you're fired up for this conversation. I can't wait to excited man you and I take it. But now it's time. Let's bring on Jake. This episode is brought to you by Scout Motors. As we get closer to the playoffs, everyone's focused on the future. Who's advancing, who's not. Scout Motors is focused on the future too. The all new Scout Terra and Scout Traveler will combine iconic heritage with reimagined engineering and design. With plans for advanced four wheel drive and optional 35 inch tires. They'll be ready for whatever challenges come next, whether that's winter roads or no roads at all. Join the wait [e-mail] Concept vehicles not available for sale. Features and performance specifications are preliminary and subject to change. Joining the waitlist does not guarantee purchase. Visit scoutmotors.com for more details. This episode is brought to you by Salty Cheezy Cheez It Crackers. Should this whole podcast just be me eating Cheez It? That would be a top notch podcast. You could hear them crunching in my mouth. You could think about how salty and.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Savory and delicious they are.

[Steve]

You can just get Cheez it on the brain.

[Todd McShay]

Oh man, those Cheez it cravings, they get you anyway.

[Steve]

What was I talking about?

[Todd McShay]

Oh yeah.

[Steve]

Oh, Cheez It. Yeah, Cheez It Crackers. Go check them out.

[Todd McShay]

This message may be shocking to many millennials.

[Jake Rosenberg]

If you are one, you might want to sit down right now. Loads of people are searching the following on Depop Low rise jeans, halter top, velour tracksuit, puka shell necklace, disc belt. You likely placed these in the dark of your closet in 2004, never to be seen again. But if you can find it in.

[Steve]

Yourself to dust them off, there are.

[Jake Rosenberg]

A lot of people who will give.

[Todd McShay]

You money for them.

[Steve]

Sell on Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

And there he is, as promised. Jake, how you doing today, man?

[Jake Rosenberg]

Great. Appreciate you guys having me on. Excited about this.

[Steve]

We are too. And I. I think it's an important conversation to have and I think it's the right time to have it. With a little bit of a lull between the championship games and the College Football playoff.

I described it in the in the open here as a tsunami that has hit college football in the last couple years with the NIL and the transfer portal and all the changes that have occurred. Your role in all of this is fascinating to me and it, it's critical. And I, I kind of explained to our audience your background and what it is that you're doing at the athlete group and how you're helping different programs that, that you've, you know, elected to work with. But maybe use Oklahoma as, as the example as you, as you go through this and what you've been able to do for the Sooners football program, kind of how you've structured that, the importance of what you've done. Obviously people can just see the, the result, the quick result that occurred in a, in a one year span from 2024 to 2025. So help us, in your own words, walk us through what it is you're doing and, and what it is you're trying to help program.

Terms of a structure.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Sure. I appreciate it. I think I started this with the idea that college was clearly professionalizing. You had players getting paid and you can tell that there was becoming more and more of professional characteristics in college than there had ever been before. Team building in the NFL is a really complicated process in terms of how many different inputs, how many different skill sets, different things come into play that all impact what the team is like on the field. And college has been by and large a pretty constant, consistent process for a long time. You had one thing to offer, it was a scholarship, and it was yes or no. There was sort of a binary aspect to that. What we've seen now in college football is, as you said, the tsunami has added all these different aspects to what it takes to put a good team on the field. And you know, coaches are problem solvers. They, you know, need things come up every day that people would never know about, that a coach needs to sit there and figure out. And they've always been the person who does that, you know, to some extent, judge, jury, executioner, single person at a program who's driving the vision, who's coaching the team, you know, kind of setting the temperature for the entire program. But what we have is as things got added here in a college football, they didn't have people to do that. That wasn't a skill set that they had ever needed before. And so what do you think happened? The coaches just took all that to themselves on their plate and said, all right, I'm going to make this work and I'm going to figure it out. And I think what we've had is coaches who have incredible skill sets or have gotten to where they are because they are a great coach, they are a great recruiter, they are able to set a culture and a temperature are getting further and further away from that and spending far less of their time actually doing those things. And so sort of the niche, if you will, that we have carved out here is we are objective. I don't have a model or something that, you know, we're going to a school and saying, you need to do this, but by being objective. Having seen team building at the highest level, I worked with a general manager in the NFL who I feel like is the best there is in the NFL and maybe across SP right now.

[Steve]

And Howie Roseman with the Eagles.

[Jake Rosenberg]

And I think, you know, looking at the various times where we've more or less had our worst seasons and very closely thereafter followed by our best seasons. And so I think a lot of that is just bringing together all these different aspects. So what we're able to do at the athlete group with schools is take a very objective look and say, what are you guys doing? Where are all these things? Who's doing them? You know, what skill sets might you be missing? What would be a better, more efficient approach? Because we've seen that just spending money or a lot of money doesn't mean that you're going to win a lot of games, right? That's a matter of strategy and process. And so what we're doing with that is just allowing these teams to make the best use of the dollars that they have. Ideally, it's not going to be perfect every time, but.

[Steve]

So I remember distinctly, right, Jeff Hafley was the head coach at Boston College. And I talked to him, right? You know, I called to congratulate him, reached out and he left to go to, and I live in Boston, so, you know, kind of, I'd gone over to his camps before and, and gotten to know him a little better, but he decided to leave Boston College to go to Green Bay to become the defensive coordinator. And I'll never forget the first thing he said is, you know what, Todd? I just want to coach ball again. And I don't feel like, given everything that's just happened in college football, that I can coach ball and affect these kids and develop them the way that I really want to. And it was weird to me that a college coach getting an 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 year old in the critical stages of their development is saying I need to leave college to go the NFL to go develop and coach ball again. But it speaks to what's, what's gone on, right, with the recruiting and the NIL and the transfer portal and all the externals that you have as a head coach. It's hard to just coach Ball. And coaching Ball is what got all of these, these men to where they are and they're, you know, as head coaches in this profession. So with that as the backdrop and also, like Urban's gone, Nick leaves because it's just, you know, at his stage of the career, it's like, is this all worth it? Jim Harbaugh is leaving. So there's a lot of guys that are exiting and either they're just done or they're leaving the NFL. With Brent Venables specifically, always been a great defensive coach, always been a leader of men, right? Infectious, his energy and all those sorts of things. But you plug him in as the head coach at Oklahoma and now we've got the, we've got all the different elements with Nil and transfer Portal. And it felt like maybe he's not allowed to do what he does best and where he can affect change the most. But then you, you help bring in Jim Nagy and Jim Nagy's staff with like 50 years or whatever it is of NFL evaluation, and then you help them put in the structure with kind of a salary cap, which you excelled at. And we're, behind the scenes, people were wondering with the Eagles, like, is the salary cap real anymore? Because we got, we got Jake over here backloading and turning and turning salaries into, into bonuses and all. Like, what's, what's going on? So. But you're helping with this whole process and I'm not here to try to like, promote necessarily what you're doing, but with Oklahoma, you saw so quickly, it feels like BV is allowed to just coach again. Is that part of what you're trying to instill, like a structure that allows the people to do what they do so well? Actually focus on that.

[Jake Rosenberg]

I think that's 100% true. You talk about whether it's the NFL or it's college. The jump from being a coordinator to being a head coach is a huge jump, right? Like, you have guys who are great coordinators. There are so many other things that come up when you're a head coach that you didn't have to deal with in terms of managing a staff and just a lot on your plate. You're managing strength, conditioning and training and all these things. And then imagine that now you are also trying to be a salary cap manager. You're also doing negotiations with your players. And by the way, there is thankfully more professional representation coming into college. But what representation has been over these last several years has been a smathering of professional representation and a lot of other people who are trying to play agent. And that is super distracting, quite frankly. And so whereas someone who transitioned from a coordinator to a head coach, they need some time to figure that out anyway, now they're adding all these other things to their plate, which in my view, and I think one of the things, core principles, if you will, not that we've said this, but about the Eagles is the strength is the organization Howie has built. Howie is great, but his vision is to build an incredible organization and then it allows people to have very clearly defined roles and do them really, really well at the top of their field. When you don't have a clearly defined role and you're just increasing things and there's all this other stuff coming up, you have people who might be great at something doing a whole bunch of other things that they're trying to learn on the job, and they might be okay. They might not be great at it. I know you have a really educated audience as far as college football is concerned, but even for me coming from the NFL to come over and see coaches who are responsible for developing players, you know, young men like in this, this formative time of their life, they're also the primary evaluators. They've been for just about every program in the country. They are the. The scouting staff. You know, there is not a distinct scouting staff. There is not a distinct player personnel process like there is in the NFL. And so they're already loaded up. It's already a crazy amount of work, but now they're having all these discussions about money. And so I think what we've been able to do and with BV is I think what. Jim, you know, in my view, I think that building out a scouting staff is going to have distinct advantages. It's going to allow them to improve the talent on the roster versus other programs because of how they'll be able to watch, evaluate players who will fit great there, I think that is a benefit, but it's hard to assess the main benefit. Even if that's a scratch, even if they get the exact same roster of players, is putting coaches in a spot where they can spend more time on the grass, they can spend more time with their players and less time scouting and doing some of this other stuff. So I think that's a key part of it.

[Steve]

I was talking to Urban recently and it was interesting and Steve, you can jump in after. I'm sorry, I just. I've done with so many questions, but Typical. I know, I know. I was talking to Urban recently. Right. And. And he was. He's thrilled about the hire. And obviously he has ties Florida and Utah and Ohio State, specifically in Bowling Green, of course. But. But he still has a vested interest in. In Florida and was really excited about the hire of John Sumrall there. Right. And. But he also was very quick to point out that he thinks it's. It's like the structure there is. Is heading in the right direction given where we are today. And he made the comment like, and I don't know the whole timeline exactly. It's not necessarily important, but you know that he thought it was fascinating that Florida hired Dave Caldwell, former former NFL general manager, to be their general manager, and then announced John Sumrall, which is very different from what we're used to in college football, A, even having a general manager. But B, that a general manager maybe was put in place minutes, hours, days before a head coach was announced. And then he transitioned and would kind of like, you know, ingest was like, you know, if I ever were to get back in, I'd grab you and Mensch and I would want you guys to run. So. But. And then I joked back.

Conceptually. I'm very intrigued, Urban, but I don't know that you would be the kind of guy, knowing you, that. That a GM would necessarily want to work with. And I think that's why you're working on Fox, because it's hard to kind of an old dog, new tricks. Right. How challenging is it now when you have a program that comes to you and says, jake, we need your help. We see the success you've had at Oklahoma. You've worked with eight programs now, and we want you to help structure a program and a system that's put in place where a general manager and a front office staff is working like this, you know, together, arm in arm with the head coach to allow everyone to do what they're doing best? How difficult is it if the head coach is in place and how. How challenging is it trying to talk to an athletic director or the. The president or whoever's making those decisions to say, I just don't know that your head coach is going to be as open to this as maybe Brett Venables or some other people have been or some raw at Florida to allowing this structure to be put in place? Because head coaches, by nature, a lot of them, not all are, you know, the power of it and control of the whole thing is very important to them.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yeah, I think that the control is A big part of it. And I think what you're asking people to do who have gotten to where they are, which is the top of the profession, is you're asking them in to some degree to give up some control and put trust in a process that they've never been part of. And I think that's very difficult. And I totally appreciate the position that they are.

[Steve]

What would your pitch be to an Urban or to someone who's so used to having control, complete control of everything? What would your pitch be to them? Of.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Sure.

[Steve]

Hey, listen. Listen to what I'm saying here, because I'm only doing this to benefit you.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yeah. I think that my pitch is if you find the right person to be your partner, because effectively this is your partner in building and running a team, this person will take umpteen amount of things off of your plate, allow you to do what you want to do, which is coach the team and have better players to coach. And I think every coach is better when they have better players. I think coaches in their hearts understand that. They don't want to be in a room negotiating with their own players or talking to agents and doing all this. But they also are not trusting and don't understand how else it would work. And so for me, the toughest part is probably the first three, six months, 12 months, while you want to see, like, is this going to work? How are my players going to be? How is this process going to go? I think the other important thing I'd say to Urban is I am not picking up. I don't believe that you pick up an NFL model and drop it into college. That's not anything that I would endorse. That is not. I don't even use the word NFL model. I would never say that because the fact that recruiting is still such a big part of this process. And it's something, quite frankly, when I jumped into this in my mind, a lot of things that I thought, you know, I needed to prove out or I needed to understand better. I thought recruiting would go away, that this is basically in the NFL free agency, guys aren't taking visits. You know, you're not wining and dining or showing. They are agreeing to a deal in advance during the tampering period or any other time. And then they're coming in to take medical and sign. And I thought that would be the same type of thing in college recruiting through high school. But recruiting even in the portal is a huge part of it, and guys want to take visits. So it's not the same model. And I think what Dave Caldwell in Jacksonville, you know, who is going to Florida with the five years to be informed by working with the Eagles, he didn't go in and say, I want to put together an NFL operation. His. His approach is, I want to be a partner with the head coach. I understand I am not picking the players. The coach is picking the players. But there is a huge part of this workflow of all of this that with a scouting staff and a really good process, we can do in a really thorough way that coaches just don't have the time to do. And when you bring in a scouting staff and all they do is watch players, I think there's value to doing that. There's time, you know, time on test matters. And so when you have a staff of scouts and all they do is watch players and grade and they build out this mental framework, I believe that you're better at it than people who are doing that amongst four other things. And if there's a collaborative approach and the coaches are going to pour into the scouts and make sure it's clear what their vision is for how that team's going to play at each position, what those guys need to look like, think like what they want from a background and mental perspective, I believe that you will get better players. Coaches don't lose control because at the end, the scouting staff is going to pretty much handle the first 80 or 85% and then turn over a list of players that they have curated and say, all right, these are the best 15 players for you. You go through this, you figure out how you want to stack them, what your favorite players are, recruit the crap out of them, and we're good with any of these. So that would be the pitch. It's not a. It's not an NFL model. And I think if someone tells you that it is, it's not. And I think each coach, each building culture is a little different. And so you need to kind of weave those differences in.

[Steve]

And before we create a media frenzy, Urban also did say, I'm not going back. I'm very happy at Fox. Go ahead, Steve.

[Todd McShay]

Well, to kind of build on that conversation, this has been a insane coaching cycle, Right.

[Steve]

And I'm wondering if the way these.

[Todd McShay]

Schools are approaching the search isn't the right way now, as well, as much as it, you know, like, maybe they're doing this the way you would have done this 10 years ago, and maybe you're not looking for that big name CEO coach that's going to get a lot of attention but you're looking for a guy who's going to work better in the new model. Do you think some of these schools are approaching their searches in the wrong way?

[Jake Rosenberg]

I think a lot of these schools are approaching their search in the wrong way.

I have seen in college that there is far less work done on the front end or before a search starts in terms of doing research, understanding the candidates, also understanding internally from a strategic standpoint. How do you want this to operate? Right. Because to your point, I think this is less of a one man band type of situation. I think a school that is really firing in all cylinders with a great strategy and structure, I believe has an advantage over the coach who's handling everything. There are coaches who might be exceptions to this rule, who are just so unbelievable at what they do and are so unique in their ability to process and.

All the things that go into it. But I also would say if you're building a model based on the, you know, the one in a million guy, then you're probably not not doing it the right way. I think you got to build on the probabilities. The fattest part of the curve is going to be coaches who will come in, coach really well, recruit really well, culture really well, but you can handle all the other stuff for them. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

Can we talk about our guy Nagy? Sort of a little bit of a connection here.

He wasn't, you know, he's not recruiting. He wasn't evaluating high school talent when you guys hired him, it was.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Sure he didn't.

[Todd McShay]

I mean, what he did at the Senior bowl is incredible. Incredible.

[Jake Rosenberg]

That's, that's absolutely the key. Yeah.

[Todd McShay]

So when you sat down with him, what made you think you can make the jump from doing this, which he was outstanding at, we all know that, to building a college roster, which I think is a, a different challenge. I mean, when I look at that, the depth of the talent pool, when you're trying to recruit kids out of high school, it's overwhelming. Thank you, Todd. That's exactly the word I was going to use. And then you look at, you know, a player like Trinidad Chambliss at Ole Miss, no one had him, but they were able to get him them.

[Steve]

How are you finding those players?

[Todd McShay]

So when you sat down with Nagy, what impressed you about him and saying this guy's perfect for what we're trying to do? Because I'm not sure other people would have seen the same thing.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yeah. You know, there's always a risk in hiring. Right. Because it is situational. You never know. Exactly. It's like signing a free agent, right. A guy's been incredibly productive. You're dropping them into a new situation. So much of it is situationally dependent. Who are they working with? How are they going to adapt? But with Jim, I think Jim had the NFL chops from an evaluator, no question about it. And if that's what it was pre Senior Bowl, I think you could have made a case that simply based on scouting experience, he was a qualified guy. But what Jim did at the Senior bowl, in terms of where he took the game.

And the different aspects to his job, you know, was he dealing with boosters? No, but he was dealing with corporate sponsors around the game and really bring Hebron Reese's and all these other things and really brought incredible visibility to the game. I think there's a parallel there with what people in college need to constantly fundraise and think about that. Right. Jim hired a scouting staff every year and they would go out, they'd build a board. And so there's just so many different things. And then as the season went along, Jim was negotiating with agents to get players in the game. You know, I don't know if people understand, but there's this push and pull as far as whether players are going to participate in a game. What's the risk reward? And Jim was at the front of that. So dealing with a lot of the same agents that he would be dealing with in the team building process, he did that as well. And so in a sense, Jim was CEO and running this business called the Senior Bowl. That had very direct correlation to what he'd be doing in a GM role, a new role. This is kind of like being a CEO of a startup in a way. Right. There's no playbook for being a partner to a coach in this type of GM model. You know, if you ask me if I think this will in five years from now be, you know, the preeminent model, I do think so. Because I think that once coaches get over this trepidation or there's like a fear, you know, they want to kind of look around and see other people are doing it. It's. It's good, we'll be good. Don't worry about it. I think it'll move in that direction because going back to what Todd said earlier, being a coach right now sucks in college. I mean, it just never stops. Like, their quality of life is terrible.

[Steve]

It's horrible. It's workload. I mean, it's terrible.

[Jake Rosenberg]

It's a workload. It's Constant conversation, you're on the phone all the time and it never stops. You know, there's no boundaries to when players and parents and agents are calling you. So I think if you could improve that quality of life, improve the quality of the players on the roster and get them back to doing the things that got them into the profession in the beginning. I think at the same time you're improving the quality of life, but you're also improving their chances of being successful. And you know, I don't, I'm not taking credit by any means. I just want to be very, very clear. The season that OU has had, you know, an unbelievable coaching staff. Jim and his staff, I know, have done a good job taking stuff off the coaches plates and allowing them to get back to that. But, but this roster, by and large, a lot of returning players, they did well in the portal, all that type of thing, but this is not my creation by any means. But I think what you'll see going forward is this is probably the least amount of contribution that Jim, his scouting staff, because that shouldn't be lost in this. As part of them hiring Jim, they had structured out what a personnel staff would look like, what a budget was for him to hire real estate scouts with real track record. You know, Jim hired two assistant GMs, one, Lake Dawson, you know, longtime NFL scout, personnel guy from the Bills. He hired Taylor Red, who was actually working for me prior to that, who had been with the Patriots for six years, had worked in college football for Dave Claussen at Wake Forest. And so. And then, you know, beneath that, Jim hired the GM who is at Air Force, to, to, to work within his department. So you have this like really well built out, established staff and now because of that they're able to build out a repeatable process. And I think that is the key to like good results in team building is are you doing the exact same thing every time? Right. And as you go through that, you're able to course correct, make adjustments. If you're just sort of flying by the seat of your pants, hair on fire, buildings on fire, and every situation is different, it's really hard to have quality control and understand what you're going to get out of that. So I think as they go forward, you know, from a recruiting class standpoint, from a quality in the portal, I think those benefits will only just now start to come to be because the scouting or you know, what is considered scouting in college has not been anything close to a parallel to what is the scouting process in the NFL. You know, it's just not enough time. A lot of the scouting, because coaches are so time crunch is, you know, they will watch highlight tapes, they'll watch point of attack tapes. Like it is a very like fast paced.

You know, it's. It's not, it's just not the same, are they before they bring in kids for visits in the portal, they're typically not getting medical. They know something about background because they've called somebody to ask. But I think the more that these stabs become specialized.

The more information they'll have about players and the better decisions they'll make about what they're getting.

[Steve]

I've got a few follow ups. This is just fascinating to me.

Resistance of change. I'm sure you have, you have dealt with a lot of that in what you're doing. I also know that you're used to that. I mean, Howie's just a nerd. He's not a football guy. He doesn't know how to, he doesn't know how to run an NFL organization. He didn't play ball. Right, right. How much did you hear? That's that nonsense? Well, yeah, and now he, now literally he's the bar. And it's amazing that more people haven't tried to emulate what Howie, Howie and the Eagles have done structurally and organizationally in the NFL. How much change and, and resistance to change, I should say, have you encountered as you're trying to kind of impart your wisdom and help different programs, you know, put a structure in place that can be successful?

[Jake Rosenberg]

I think there's a lot of resistance to change and I don't know that it's. It's that there's a lot of good rationale reason for it outside of just not having been through this, not being comfortable with it. I think you're also talking about who are, who are managing the coaches effectively. Right. The athletic directors are hiring coaches. The athletic directors by and large have come up from other athletic departments. They also have not come from a professional sport typically, but you know, on the operations side. So they also can't really verbalize or understand how much a different structure might help their head coach be successful. And I think that what you need to be careful of in this world is you hire a great head coach. You don't want to fire your great head coach because they were a bad gm. Right. And I think that that is a third possibility. That never was a thing before. Right. It was part of being a coach is building your roster and you're just basically going to do that through recruiting and scholarships. And now you may have a situation where you have a guy who, who really might be a great coach but has been so inundated and maybe, maybe not as successful in figuring out how to make the money work or how to tie that to building a roster. And so you're in a situation where the result speaks for itself. But he may still actually be a great coach. He just didn't have good enough players. And so if you can get support for that, if you can go in and you can say, hey, look, we're going to give you help. Like I think that, that the thing that I would. You're not bringing in a competitor into the office. Right. It's not. Someone is not trying to steal your glory or if this is a good situation. I use the word partner all the time. Like the GM in an NFL building doesn't want to win any less than the head coach or vice versa. Right. If everybody is motivated to win, you just have to trust that they are going to pull in the same direction. Does a GM want to give a coach a player who he absolutely doesn't want and doesn't think will work there? No, that's, that's absurd. You know, might a GM fight for a player because he truly believes that maybe, you know, the coach is missing something about this player? You know, scout spends so many hours.

[Steve]

And that's healthy players. That fuels some of the best drafts.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Absolutely.

[Steve]

In front offices in, in the NFL. I mean, I, I every single year I talk to scouts, GMs, college coordinators, and they talk constantly about some of the most productive meetings in terms of evaluating and setting our board are the ones that are highly contentious. But at the end of the day, we work through it. And why, why wouldn't that work in college football?

[Jake Rosenberg]

I agree completely. And I think if you have a model where not to say it can't work, but you know, the GM is someone that the coach hired. Typically from a salary standpoint, a lot of the college GMs that have gotten that title over the last few years that are in more of a conventional model, they're, what they're making is a, is a very small fraction of what the coach is. You know, they were hired by the coach. It's very hard to have an honest balance, you know, if you will. And a lot of it is coach driven. I want this player. Go get this player. Go get that player. Imagine you are the GM in that situation. The coach has told you, you got to go get this player. Like, how do you engage an agent In a negotiation, knowing that your boss said you have to get this player, right? Like, can you. Like how he used to say this all the time? Like, you got to walk away at least once, right? Like, they never know where you are until you basically tell them, go screw. If you're sitting there negotiating and I'm telling you it's better in most ways that the real NFL type agents are coming into this space, it will really help. But they're sharks, right? You, you, if you let your guard down, they're going to figure it out and they're going to take your lunch. So if you're sitting there and they know that your coach cannot let you lose this player, you're never getting a good. You're never getting a good deal. And so you wind up building a team at retail, over retail. And so.

This is not a complex salary cap right now, just on the revenue share standpoint, right? It's a cash budget, and that's fine. You're just adding up cash. But if you pay retail for every player and the price you pay is directly correlated to what their role is or what their talent level is, you're limited in how many good players you can have. And we all know, like, cap depth is where you get crushed, right? And so you have to find value. And whether it's for a scouting staff that finds talent off the radar, that they know they could slot into a role, or they find talent off the radar, that maybe have fewer stars, maybe a little less acclaimed, but they know they could build and develop these guys into great players. That's the balance to build a really good roster.

[Steve]

All right, I've got a few, few more questions, and we'll let you go. And we could kind of rapid fire through them, but don't, don't feel rushed. First of all, evaluation versus. Versus Paying a player, evaluating a player, paying a player. There, obviously, we hear so much about, like, the collective and this school has 20 million and, and the Matador Club at Texas Tech had, you know, 30 million and 25 million here and what Lane just got. But when you, when you start to look at, like, how we're using that money and evaluating the player versus paying the player, how much are you trying to help as you try to install, you know, a staff and, and work with, work with a general manager and trying to, you know, Jim Nag brought in, you mentioned some of the names, highly qualified people with experience. How much, how much are you trying to not coach them, but help them with? Because that's, I mean, you were a trader for 15 years in Chicago.

[Jake Rosenberg]

That's right.

[Steve]

You, you, you, you came to Philadelphia and, and Howie is, is, you know, this trade and we're trading on draft day and we're going to trade for this play. An unconventional means, but behind all of that and how he would readily admit you were helping with how do we structure these deals and, and where does the money go and how do we allocate it and can we turn this into a bonus and, and all of that. So how much, how important is it, the, the managing of, of the salary cap, if you will, and paying the player while also making sure you're evaluating the right, not just a talented player, but the right player for that system.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Sure. I think evaluation and valuation is where you're getting to like, that's, that's sort of the, that's the.

[Todd McShay]

We got there.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Yeah. The trade off here we're looking at. I think they're incredible. They're very closely related. I think that one of the biggest issues that schools have had in negotiations, there's an emotional attachment to players.

[Steve]

Right.

[Jake Rosenberg]

And if you don't have a great model or you don't have sort of boundaries set up in advance, it's almost impossible to walk away or figure out when you've hit that point. And it's just not worth it anymore. Because if you're dealing from. Everyone has a limited, limited resources to an extent. And those resources might be significantly different from school to school, but from that, those resources, you need to figure out how to build a team. And that exercise comes first. And I think when I jumped into this, maybe there was some assumption that like, hey, nerd, figure out how much we're supposed to pay these players. You know, like, and I was gonna like set up with like a pencil, but, you know, I'm gonna go pencil behind my ear and like, right. You know, crank away and have hand over like this little machine that would just tell them all this. Well, team building is not like that. It's a dynamic process. You have to kind of adjust and constantly figure out, you got to know what you're leaning on and what kind of options you have, how important a player is, what the role is. Like, what do specific roles pay? You know, how are we going to rotate at our defensive line? Do we want two studs? Do we need five guys? Like, those are the decisions and the discussions you have way before you sit there and actually start signing players. Hopefully. But to that point, no one has ever done this before in college or hadn't. And so a Lot of this just the season bleeds or bled right into the portal. So you never have that moment when your coaches are doing everything right. And you imagine the portal prior to this year was basically an extension of the regular season, right? Beginning in December, they just went right into portal. So basic things that happen in the NFL, you should sit down with your coaches, whether you're sitting down in person and get a very clear evaluation of your entire team, right? From every support staff, the coaches, because you need to make a decision not only whether they come back in the NFL, you multi year contracts, and some of them you may be obligated to come back, some of them you may be thinking about trading, but that informs you going forward, what are your needs, you know, know, what do we see down the horizon, you know, down the pipe here. But these schools, not because they wouldn't do it, they just have never done it before and they don't have the time to sit there in advance. Having a distinct scouting staff allows during this season this process to go on in parallel to not having to worry about game planning and winning every week, right? Because in the past your coaches had to make a decision to some degree, am I spending time on next season or am I spending time on this season? And you know how coaches, it's always about this week. They are going to sit there, burn them in. It could be 0:11. And for the 12th game they're putting in the same time, they work their asses off, right? But it may be taking away from the next season. But you know, how could you blame them? But at least when you set up a distinct kind of parallel process, this is all going at the same time. You're not compromising this season while thinking about next season. But I think that to me at least the player valuation side, like the money side, I think about it like a big funnel, right? It's widest at the top. You have every possible player in the country, high school portal, any one of those might be on your roster for next year. How do you get from that huge group to the very bottom, which would be, these are the players we want to have on our roster and these are the players we need to pay, right? And so before this nerd would sit down and say, hey, this is how we have to pay, I would say, are you sure that these players that are at the bottom of this funnel are the right players?

[Steve]

Right.

[Jake Rosenberg]

And I don't know that anyone could answer that with conviction. And so let's do, let's make sure that the 98% of this in terms of your funnel and how you're getting to this. These players, those are the right players. Let's go through and figure all that out. And then let's also talk to the coaches. How do you want to win? Is this an offensive operation, defensive operation? You know, do you. Are you going to build along the lines or, you know, defensively, are you going to take pass rushes or cover corners? Are you going to play pay off ball? Linebackers? You know, like, these are things you talk about when it's quiet. You don't all of a sudden have the discussion for the first time while there's two players in front of you and you're picking between them. Because I just don't think that leads. Leads to good decisions. And so for me, with schools, I want partners. I want to be able to help them win. I don't think it does a whole lot of good for me to work with a school who doesn't really want to work with me or isn't really committed to actually making a change. Because the only way for me, hey, I want to feel good about what I do. And I think this is fun when you're helping them figure out how to get better and how to win games. No one that works in sports doesn't want to win. We're all here for a specific reason because we're competitive.

But I think that, you know, that's the process. It is a process. It's not. All of a sudden you just snap your fingers and so Florida, with coach Florida, you know, they are going to. It's going to take a while for them to understand, you know, Coach Sumrall and. And David, it's not just going to be like, you know, old married couple from day one. Right. It's new for both of them. Them. But I think that Dave has thought about this for a long time as a good jumping off point and a good way to pivot. And he understands his primary job is to support the head coach. He's not trying to steal glory thunder. He's trying to win. He is so competitive, and he will do whatever it takes. I know he will. Right. And so he will learn. What does coach want to do? What doesn't coach want to do? How can I help him? There's no question in my mind. You have so much untapped, cheap, and sometimes free labor at a school. You have all these students who want to work, which is great, bring them in. But if they're not trained right, these students now have the opportunity to learn Player evaluation from a former NFL gm.

This entire operation will be lifted because of that structure and, you know, and how that all comes to be. There's so much to be gained by that. You know, I think really highly of Dave as a person and a professional, and I think his background, being a GM for that long, he did something right. Right. The Jaguars were within a quarter of playing us in a Super Bowl. Right. Which now in hindsight, that's a pretty good accomplishment with what's gone on there otherwise. And I think Dave would say there's things he, he did, decisions he made as a GM he'd like to have back back, but to have that with five years, I think five years, you know, working in Philly to some degree with me and Howie and now bring that to a college program. It's. It's a. I just, it's a huge benefit from an experience standpoint. And so I'm, I'm excited to see what, what comes from it.

[Steve]

Yeah, I think we all are. When you look at the NFL, right. I, I don't, I don't think it takes a personnel genius to figure out that in structuring a team, the draft has to be the foundation of your, of your organization and free agency trades. But free agency as well is a kind of a supplement. And going out and picking and even like in Philadelphia, you guys were as aggressive as any organization out there and going and hand picking and work and moving and shaking to make certain deals for certain players. But the foundation was always Howie moving around in the draft, getting additional picks, a recognition. Recognition which I, I'm still stunned to this day when I watch organizations that don't realize, hey, it's probably better if I get more of these opportunities because you are going to fail with, with draft picks then, then packaging a bunch of picks always, and moving up and winding up with three, four picks in the draft. I'm also stunned to this day where organizations value and try to build a foundation with free agency. And so here we are now even I think, think many teams have figured out in the NFL, but not all. But here we are now in college football where it's so new. It feels like to me that the portal is free agency. If we're making the correlation between college and the NFL and recruiting is the foundation. It's. It's the draft. A, do you agree with that assessment? And B, what's, what's kind of the process that you're working with when you're, when you're working with a program to hire a General manager. And you're trying to kind of, of give some wisdom to those people on how to manage the Portal versus high school recruiting.

[Jake Rosenberg]

No, I, I agree with you in broad strokes that those are kind of the parallels. They're not perfect because like I said earlier, I think that recruiting underlies all of this. And you know, in the NFL draft you pick a player and he basically has to come to your team. There's no situation that these schools are in where they can and literally pick a player, right? There is always a recruiting factor. Portal's closest. But even in the Portal, what has been the case, and maybe it changes this here because it's a lot more condensed.

Players by and large insist on taking multiple visits. And so in free agency you have certain needs. In NFL free agency, you have a two day tampering window. You know, let's say you need a starter at guard or something. You may have, you know, three or four guys, you work your way top to bottom, but you're going to come to terms with somebody in that tampering period and that person's going to come in, take a physical. Assuming that goes well, they're going to sign in college. In the Portal, you may need a guard, you may talk to four or five guards, you may have one that you really like. You make an offer and he says, okay, I'm going to take four visits. And so you're sitting there, you haven't filled your need for a guard, you have this money earmarked and now you're just going to sit there and, you know, hold your ass for a week and a half like waiting for these visits to take place. And oh, by the way, hey, he really likes it, but this other school just offered, you know, 25% more, 50% more. And that's very difficult. You know, it's hard to fill a need, it's hard to feel good about. It's hard to understand how to manage your money. And so I think that that is a difficult process. I think, you know, another thing that, that really comes to mind about the Portal is it's a very condensed process to bring these guys up to speed to integrate them into a team. You know, you build culture through a coach and that's a year long process.

But when you bring someone in the portal, you need them to contribute almost immediately, right? And so how do you get guys to contribute immediately? You need to spend time with them and develop them. And so the better the model where the coaches are more focused on coaching and developing, the easier it is to Bring these guys along and make sure that your portal players have the greatest chance of succeeding in the short term. But it's, it's difficult. I don't, I'm not simplifying and I think getting yourself into a better structure gives you a better chance. It doesn't ensure anything. You still need to do the work. There is a, you know, I believe that you make your own luck to a degree. The better your process, the better your structure, the better your luck will be, by and large. But if you get a bunch of injuries at certain positions or it finds you where you're already coming into a season weakest, or the ball bounces a little funny, we know your season could go away. That may not be consistent with the level of talent on your team.

But I do think this is about making the most good bets that you can with odds on your side. And over time that brings sustainable success. And I think in the NFL it's not hard to look at. You know, there's kind of tiers of teams where these teams always seem to have a chance. Do we think that that's, it's a salary capped, you know, much more resource constrained than college. Do we think that that's just because they have great luck every single freaking year? No, like we know draft results kind of, of mean revert. You have great draft, you have poor draft, you have great draft, you have poor draft. But these clubs have built an organization that's sustainable, they're really, really good. And so they are ahead in most areas going into a season. And that gives them, you know, that makes them more likely to win consistently.

[Steve]

It was very important when we decided to do this that, that for our audience's sake, that this did not turn into an infomercial as, as you and I talked about, Jake. And can I ask, are you going to wrap.

[Todd McShay]

Ask one more question.

[Steve]

Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, I was about to land a brilliant ending, but go ahead.

[Todd McShay]

No, you can still do it after this.

[Steve]

I will.

[Todd McShay]

I'm curious and I think our listeners will be curious. There's variables I understand, including where schools, where it's with its facilities, how progressive they've already been with their staff. But when you're sitting down with these schools, is there, is there a number that you're talking about to be competitive in college football? And I mean soup to nuts. I don't mean with players, I mean building out your staff, having the kind of facilities that you're going to attract players.

[Steve]

Is there a number?

[Todd McShay]

Is that, is it different for everyone? I'm just curious, what's it take to.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Compete at the college level today?

Yeah, I think that what I would say is there are a lot of different numbers. There are, there are different tiers. I think the biggest thing is if you are being.

If you are aligned in terms of what goals you are providing your coach and your program and publicly do we want to win national championships, are our resources competitive with other clubs that have that goal? And I think when I resources it's complicated. Like this is not pure. There are so many different sort of pipelines, if you will, that go into how to build a really good roster. Right now some of them are explicitly like going into players pockets clearly like rev share direct cash payments. But what is the business around your athletic department? Are you monetizing your all of your assets in the right way? Are you charging the right price for tickets? Like what other categories can you figure out? It's all about resources, right. And then it's all about what kind of platform are you giving to your players to give them the ability to also make extra money from that. And some schools are putting it on a tee for them. They're building, you know, inside marketing agencies to help build these players brands and give them more opportunities. And so if you're a player and you have the same offer from two schools, but one school is also going to help you make all this other money theoretically on you know, off of your name, your brand, do social media posts, do all this other stuff like in that way the same offer, but that school now has really offered you more. Right. Because you're thinking about I'm going to come out of there. And I think all of these things unfortunately take away from coaches want this to be pure. Here, here is a place you have a chance to win. We will develop you, we'll put you in a position to be the best NFL player you could possibly be. Right. That's pure. But you have all these other things pulling away from that. That and you also have an agent community, you know, air quote agent community that are nil only type agents or they're you know, former coaches and, and they only get paid or get paid the most by moving these kids to other schools. Yeah. And so it's, it's not a pure process. And I think on top of all the other things that suck for coaches right now, you know, you get, you bring in a kid as a recruiter fruit, this kid's got huge upside, you know how to get him there. Right. And you feel like by his junior senior Year. This is a first round pick, this is whatever. And I know how to get, I know how to get him there. And all of a sudden there's five people in his ear about why he knows to go, why he needs to go to this school, why he needs to do this, why isn't he playing more. And you're just like, dude, chill out. Like we are going to get you there. And do you know what a first round, you know, corner will make into whatever. Look, you're going to leave for 50 grand, 100 grand, you're going to pay your agent something stupid, you're going to move like it's dumb. And I think that's just as frustrating as all the other stuff to coaches because even if you have great resources and a great program and great facilities, you're a great coach, you still run the risk of losing players and that turnover. And I think coaches in their hearts, they want to develop, you know, they want to spend time, they want to be great. And you know, there's, there's a lack of purity I guess in that, you know, like back to Jeff Haveley. He wants to coach ball, he wants to get his team better, put a good defense out there, think about scheme, how are they going to beat this week's opponent, as do the college coaches. But yet it's, it's all this other stuff that kind of clouds it and takes time away now. Yeah, I appreciate this.

[Steve]

Yeah, it's, it's all fascinating and it is like the more I talk to you, the more it, like it resonates how complicated it all is. And I think, yeah, I mean as of as I was getting ready to say, but I'm glad you asked that question because it was an amazing answer.

I don't know how if you're an AD or a general manager, you don't, you don't go to the website athlete, the athlete group right now and try to, you know, if you have any sense of trying to restructure what you currently have and try to reach out to Jake and his group with Mark Priceler and everyone else, it's just, it's too important. The business is too big. There are too many variables right now to, to try to enter in it and try to succeed in it without the right structure in place. So with that we could go on for honest hours. But, but I think that this provides for our audience a really good understanding of what's going on, what you're trying to accomplish and, and, and most importantly the challenges that are, that all these programs are facing in this day and age and I'm sure this is not the last time that we'll talk and we we appreciate your time, Jake and and just look forward to to seeing what you're what you're up to next.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Thanks I appreciate all the time and everything. Good luck with everything and thanks thanks for having me.

[Steve]

And a good friend of of Joe Douglas is a good friend of ours. So so we'll we'll stay in touch.

[Jake Rosenberg]

But no thanks again.

[Steve]

We'll we we'll talk soon.

[Todd McShay]

Thanks, Jake.

[Jake Rosenberg]

Thank you guys.

[Steve]

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[Todd McShay]

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[Jake Rosenberg]

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