YouSaid · the spoken record

Les Snead

lines on the record: 89
first: 2022-08-23
most recent: 2022-08-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“A meaningful, impactful experience along the journey that we're going to have together in professional sports because that's very fortunate. So I think, and as I get to an age now where I've been fortunate enough to be a GM for 10 years, there's an element of now of, okay, success might be what do I need to do now to maybe give back right to the game. In this particular case, my life works, been football. I mentioned earlier I was raised by football. Hey, football at all levels, teachers, coaches mean a lot. So what can I do to give back to the game? And in the big picture of the planet, I'm just in football and somebody else is in another domain. You're in your domain and we're all diving in, right, trying to somehow make an impact. And then that all works together symbiotically for hopefully a Better experience on this planet.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Success. Wow, good one. When I was a kid growing up in sports, again, small town Alabama. So we played tennis, but I really enjoyed doubles tennis and not singles. So it's twofold. Did I really appreciate teamwork, collaboration, or was I just not really good at tennis and I needed? A partner to bail me out. Same with when I did play golf in high school, the team winning versus a good score individually meant something. Success now is can I do my part as a leader, right, so that... Are we has a chance to experience that fulfilling moment? That's special, yes. But also, are we actually has a chance to?”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tomorrow's probably going to be here, and whatever happened today, there's a chance it gets better tomorrow. And what I do know is once the emotions of whatever happened dissipate, there's actually a learning op, you know, there's an adventure to be had, there's a chance to grow for it. So with that, so I do think I'm blessed to, maybe it was my high school coach, Wayne Woodham, as you think, so you become. It was some of the stoic philosophy. But somehow I do think Shane that I was, I've got some Stoic DNA in me somehow. Maybe it's that morning plunge I do in the Pacific. Every morning, one of the first things I do within the first 30 minutes of waking up, when I am in California is I go dive into the Pacific Ocean and jumpstart, I would say that ignites your day.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, I am fortunate, and I'll use the asterisks where I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast and maybe have been on it. I've never had to deal with major personal tragedy or health issue or some set of losing some job to cause a major financial stress. So I'm fortunate in those and I'm not saying I would hope that I would react the same way in those moments. So a lot of the stress and anxiety comes right professionally. But raising children, things like that, you're going to go through those moments. But even in those moments with children and they failed, they've made eras as a father, you're trying to, we like to say sometimes just go outside, lay down, look up at the stars. And there's that meditative where, okay, this is a big planet.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually may be in a sick way like stressful situations. I think that's a genetic gift. I don't know if I learned that. I've tried to really journal and kind of figure out when that occurred. But fortunately for me, when there's a stressful situation, I'm normally at my calmest. And maybe that's because I have evolved in the chair of general manager, you do realize when there are some stressful moments that there are probably eyes on you. So there is an awareness there. But I think if there wasn't some sort of genetic gift where I truly believe that, okay. Talked with Ryan Holliday about this. He wrote the book The Obstacle is a way. Okay, there's an obstacle there. I mean, wow, this is actually an opportunity, right, to grow from that obstacle, maybe in a sick way, there's an adrenaline moment of like, wow, this is really living.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As possible, the best mentality. So the nutrition, there's so many silo expertise type departments in the building that they now have to go, okay, on this Wednesday or this Friday in May, what do we do today to write help the Rams continue contending? So it's really trying to take a big concept of wow, how do you contend in the NFL But the reasoning behind it is, okay, it's really just that simple, right? And my day is going to be different than Sean's day. It's going to be different than Raheem Morris, our defense coordinator's day. It's going to be different than Reggie Scott, our director, you know, our VP of Athletic Performances Day, right? Because they're experts in these domains. And then at the end of the day, it's... To us to come together symbiotically.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The main thing, it would seem very simple, but we're in the entertainment business. There's a lot. The NFL is a big entity. It's a big entertainment thing. But what are you spending 80% on your time on? So how do we continue contending? And what do we got to do today to continue contending? Now, that's the big picture from the organization. But now when we sit down in our department, right? Our offensive staff, our defensive staff, our special teams staff, our athletic performance staff. So that's a staff that will be into improving the physical development, our training medical staff. And that's, hey, preventing injury and rehabbing injury. Our player engagement, psychological staff, where you're improving, providing tools to have the best mental health.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talked about. There's only so many games, and there's a lot of days, and there's an element of monotony to it where you have to keep just coming in and where is there a leak today? How do we not only fix the leak but design something where it no longer leaks and things like that? So there's an element of monotony to it where you just keep going away and then there's that moment of breakthrough and you really can't pinpoint like Jen would say there's not this one moment It was a lot of moments. As you know, you turn that flywheel that compounded into breaking through and now contending.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rest of the schedule call my wife, tell her we're going to order out. I'm having an interesting conversation. It was like, you know what? I can retire now. Jim Collins has cleared this afternoon to talk to me. Very fortunate then, and Jim, really, really caught it. I guess I'd be a pro bono mentee of his. And I do think Jim is so curious. He termed at least diving into our organization, right? Whether it's our organization, whether it's professionals force, that it could be one of the more sophisticated, like human collaboration projects going in that there's a lot of people that are somewhat in silos, but need to work together symbiotically in the same direction to thrive, to have a chance in battle. And football is very similar to Jim's flywheel, right?”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were lucky that the person who was vetting our email, she was playing college soccer at Florida, so it was interesting. She said, and she has said since that she went to gym and going, hey, you've never really delved into sports. This might be interesting. But it's probably because of her passion for sports. So that's the long story. Ended up going to a tee. He gets in the flow by research. So his calendar, his day, it's blocked, it's guarded so that he can do his research. But there obviously he probably has, I mean, he does consulting and people come to visit things like that, but he does have these things he called teas where you would come in for 15 minutes and take winning the Super Bowl out probably the best accomplishment or the most fulfilling accomplishment was when I call it the gatekeeper kept coming in and saying, hey, Jim, we're at 20 minutes. He was like, finally, he said, you know what? Clear the...”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can go them for many days. So it's going back to good to great. A lot of that wisdom you could synthesize it to building a team. And I have reread that book. And I mean, it is marked up. It is penciled in and it is old. And it's awesome. Jim's even signed it now. So it was probably my professional Bible. And even when I got the second chance from 2012 to 2016 when we did when our ownership moved home from Jeff, our coach, I could have easily been a part of that truition as well. We had gotten close. We just hadn't pushed it over the top. But when we got that second chance, definitely was, I was definitely determined. can I do differently and then in hopes of what can we do differently as an organization so she happened to reach out to Jim for a birthday present and”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With us, we'll reach out. Fortunately, in my position, fortunate, because a lot of people appreciate professional sports. When we have stalk them, they've emailed back.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think the fear of losing is like who can I talk to? Who can I meet? What can I read? Will that actually help the Rams gain any type of edge? So again, that's the author starts. So when we sit down and we read a book and we think my wife Kira does an unbelievable job, she knows football. So she has a background in covering football in the media. So she's nuanced. So she can read something, pass it along to myself. And she synthesizes right this concept, this idea, this insight, this wisdom. And I'm one of those that when I read something, I like to really study it. I have a fear of like, did I get the most out of that book? Like, there's some books you read and okay. I generally enjoyed it. But then there's these where you, I put in a pile and I'm like, I got to get back to that. What am I missing? That thing was so impactful. And it's usually those authors that I go, okay, they'll chat.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Holy cow, there's a whole nother world out there. And that's not, I'm not going to say that's a, let's call it the required reading in the liberal arts. But from that moment on, I did figure out that for the first time ever, my English teacher, what she was planning in me that, hey, reading is going to open you up to some new worlds. It's going to be very beneficial, impactful in your life. She was planning those seeds and I promise you I was digging them up and throwing them back at her. I have a fear of being bored. So reading interesting stuff definitely occupies the mind. A major fear of losing. Like, losing is so painful. I mean, winning doesn't, I mean, winning's just, I call it winning's your job. Losing's, there's a stress and drudgery tax to losing. It takes a time.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going back to when we talked about growing up in a small town probably cared too much about football or more than I should somewhere along the way, I said, you know what? I really appreciate a liberal education. Probably early 2000. And it was actually Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, where I sat down and read that book and had this wow moment of like.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of them, I mean, there's some tough stories where all of a sudden maybe your spinal column is too narrow and it makes it a very, very dangerous proposition. And now there's a decision to be made retirement. But a lot of times what the media, what the general public doesn't know is maybe has an arthritic knee, right? And so his knee only has so many reps in his body. And it's just aged for whatever reason. He has an older knee than his age. So a lot of times some of those things come into play that isn't speculated about because it is intimate knowledge.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I would say some media probably could and could do a solid job of it. What a lot of times the media doesn't necessarily know either, right? Like we said, some of the intimate intangible research that's been done and also some of the intimate medical research that's been done. And so each of these players are going to get an extensive physical. Now, what it usually means is most of these players can play football.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And now what is interesting probably in the media climate covering football today, right? And I wouldn't say it's the media's fault. It's probably the consumer's fault. The first round is really, really covered. So probably eight years ago, I mean, there was a little more nuance, and analysts were talking about second, third, need, and even fourth round picks. That doesn't sell anymore. That doesn't get clicks anymore. So I think what happens is the general fans are primed in seeing a certain amount of players mocking in the first round. And then when all of a sudden a stranger, no pun intended, Cole Strange, pops into the first round. Whoa, it's like, wow, how is that possible? They've reached.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pick 28 was a reach. Well, there's 22 positions on the field. So my point being, if you pick the next best 22 players, what is 28 plus 22? 50. So my point being is this, if the next best guard could be picked 51, right? You see what I'm saying? If that was Cold Strange was that guard, and then you go 22 other positions. So right around 50-51 would be the next guard. So I try to get people to think. That way. So it's not necessarily the difference between the 28th pick and the 50th pick is probably a lot less than most fans, the naked eye interpret.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They probably know what they're doing. Cole Strange had a good career at Chattanooga. He just happened to be an undersized kid coming out of high school, didn't get, you know, went to Chattanooga instead of the University of Tennessee, proved it at the All-Star game, proved it at the combine, again at the Pro Day, this kid belongs. Well, the bias that gets into the Patriots reached is that whole. You have third-party people saying this is right, this guy's either a second or third round draft choice. Well, New England traded back in that draft, and then they determined that they were taking him at, let's call it pick 28 instead of maybe pick 39. But right on a vertical board with 22 positions, I mean, the difference between 28 and 39 is really not a reach. Let's just say we say.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On him. So, in that video, Sean was really mocking myself for, hey, I can't believe you had us, you know, wasting time on Cole Strange when he was going to go early anyway. But as I can't say, when you're trying to figure, you're using mocks and things like that to figure out. Who's going to be there in the third round? You really have to do your work on, I would say, preparations better than being surprised. So being prepared. But the interesting thing about that, I think. were New England Here's the bias that comes into that. The New England Plague has been really good.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A good week there. So once a player at a lower or a lesser level of football has a good all-star game, that usually means, uh-oh, he is his stock if you call it his speculative draft position would be are heading farther from the, let's call it our third rounder. And then he went to the combat and he really blew the combine drills out, which they're not football drills. They're more football as quantum, that whole processing, right? physics geometry comes in it but a lot of times the combine drills i call them more linear they're kind of a to b to c you can train for them you don't have to think you don't have to process it's not read run or pass it's it's just trying to be as fast or as explosive as possible but at that point in time but he really dominated those so point being we really knew at the time okay cole strange will not be there with our third round but we had done some work”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then where a player is drafted is I call that his IPO. And then at the end of the day, what he does after that pick is his stock price, right? And that's the most important thing in this instance. When we first started our process probably, I mean, usually it's a two-year process, but let's call it early fall. He's a young man at Tennessee, Chattanooga, which is an FCS school, you know, not Power 5, not group of five, the third level down. At that point, we had a second rounder, but then we traded that for Vaughn and we were left with a third rounder. But through the process, Cole Strange is someone we watched initially, but then that player went to the All-Star game. So the senior bowl is where the best senior talent in the NFL draft who elect to go to an All-Star game. They usually go to the senior bowl. Well, he went to the senior bowl and he really, really had.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's an interesting one because that video, if you want to call it, I guess it would be my teenagers would say it went viral, right, in a sense. A lot of people watched it real quickly. And there was an element that got taken out of context that, okay, Sean and I were, let's call it mocking New England. So Sean apologized to Bill. Obviously it didn't bother Bill a lot. There's not a lot that bothers him. We actually called the player Great God, but here's what the Where a player is projected to go pre-draft. I call that speculation, right? By third parties”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Research probably shows you that player is probably going definitely in the first three rounds might not be the first round, but for the most part, he's probably going in the first three rounds and probably even the first two rounds. So you can use it in those types. Now, the farther you get back in the draft, it's interesting what our analytics group has come up with and the farther people fall in the draft, it's a little harder to predict. There's definitely ways you can utilize the mock drafts to your advantage of just knowing where the player is most likely to be drafted.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The answer is yes. The interesting thing, I don't necessarily read them, let's call it for entertainment purposes, but it is fascinating how many people and smart people are interested in the draft. And so what we do in our analytics department definitely monitors the MONC drafts. You're able to blend up the mock drafts and they aggregate them. And what it probably does is let you know where the player is most probable of getting picked in the draft. And it's not going to be down to the number of like, oh, this guy's 28, so he's probably going 28. If a player has an aggregate draft, I mean, mock draft of the 28th pick in the draft, that's first round, but late, first round.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“College incident? Is it a, you know, it just may be normal in person's background and you try to figure out is, okay, if it actually is a destructive behavior, will the player determine and use our resources to, let's call it consistently behave more productively?”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That maybe his background, his sociology, didn't provide those tools. And at that point, we really spend time on them. And when we feel like it's worth taking the risk, right? And maybe you draft them a little bit later because when a draft class comes in, it's almost like that's your freshman class. It's almost like that's your freshman fraternity class, whatever. That's kind of your gang, your tribe that you're going to hang with. So there's moments where you go, hey, let's draft a lot of A-plus kids and then maybe we'll put in one C kid intangibly, C minus kid intangibly, and definitely hope that the gang, the tribe there will bring you and our culture as a whole. So there's a lot of strategies that go into when you really dig into hate is that an immature incident, is it just a”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For soldiers, maybe that just sign up for basic training and have something to them that could lead to the special forces, the elite teams. We go to their hometowns and chat with the coaches and teachers and mentors and get the complete picture and figure out if the young man is worthy. I mean, we're all worthy of a second chance. So there could be an element if this is a pattern and this is going to be 50th chance that that probably means something. But I think at that point we have to really get to know the person and the person has to be receptive right to development, receptive to things that are not just, let's call it, hey, listening to your position coach, but are you willing to build a relationship with one of our professional counselors that we consult with to help provide the individual right with tools?”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How talented are they? Because this is a, you know, this is a game where when I said football's physics and geometry, physics means something, right? If you're just bigger and faster and stronger and more powerful and more explosive in a short area than another human being, you can have a lot of wins on a football field individually. Once we get to the point, and I say this all the time, we're dealing with young men We're dealing with a lot of times we're drafting from college. So when we were all in college, we were all immature and probably did things we regret. But there is some different levels of the immature incidents that you have. At that point, we have to dig into, we bring in a lot of experts again, use psychological testing. One, we partnered with a group that began it. They're actually screening.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Another great question case by case, we spend a lot of work on those players. So I think each year there's going to be a subset of those players and early in the down, right? We have to decide, are we just going to eliminate them from our thought process because they will, you know, figuring that out will take more energy than the player who just checks all the boxes and it becomes a little easier. So I think that's number one. There's always that element of”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There could be more financial rewards. So those are definitely three, I do think. Conscientiousness is one thing. Like if you're going to put in the work, you definitely have a chance. And the other one is the element to handle pressure situations. And I was going to say the confidence to know that you're going to thrive in those situations. And some people, it can be overwhelming and very stressful. Boy, that takes a toll on the human.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the first five. So let's go intangible. I think number one would be passion to be a part of football. That's got to be the player's North Star. There's the element of when. The human really identifies and really gets in a flow by actually coming to the football facility and let's call it studying football, studying how to get better, and also working physically to have their body in prime condition when it counts, those people succeed. I think the next thing would definitely be the ability to process the geometry of the game. I do think there's a love of winning because there is a subset of humans that would be, that may be passionate about football, may have the acumen, the ability to process football. But the love of winning would be if they had a choice between, let's call it having a winning season or being the receiver who caught the most yards, they would choose winning season, even though there is an element there. If you lead the league and receive it,”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Famous are the ones that are gifted genetically with that physical talent, but they also are gifted right or have been socialized or mentored, the conscientiousness to prioritize their life's work and dive into it and get better. And they've been gifted with the ability to process things quickly, things like that. And then the players maybe that have that talent that don't necessarily live up to those expectations are probably missing some element of the intangible. And I think the interesting thing about it is we're dealing with. Very, very young men always say when we draft them, they can't rent a car. There's a reason they can't rent a car, right? Their frontal lobe is not evolved yet. So it's a fun calculus equation. And each player is different, but that's simplicity. That's it.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Some of the elite forces, they've got to be able to do both, right? Identify patterns accurately, but also really, really fast. And when black and white turn gray know the best solution to thrive in that moment and not necessarily sit down and want to write out the pros and cons and overanalyze it. So that's a very important part of the intangibles. And at the end of the day, everyone in the NFL has the physical ability, right, to play football, or they wouldn't be there. Some players have the physical ability, mom, dad, God, genetics to be hall of famers. Some do not, and they may never make it to the Hall of Fame. But I think in this equation, the players that probably become Hall of Fame.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Learn football and process football. So there's an element in going to the military. We have some testing that can measure someone's ability, capacity to intake and accurately recognize patterns. A part of that test is how fast can you do that? There is a possibility that your brain, you were born with the brain that, wow, you can really accurately identify pattern recognition. And the reason we do pattern recognition is because football is a lot of. There's a lot of pattern recognition. So in the military, if somebody's very, very accurate at accurately recognizing these patterns, but they analyze it, takes them a little slower to do it. They may better be suited for maybe a job at the Pentagon type job, right? Or someone who's designing plans, but not necessarily executing them where the soldier on the battlefield, and especially when you start getting.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The battlefield, but also be a useful citizen in public. And then it gets into this similar stuff that have us all thrive is elements of conscientiousness and things like that. And then one of the third equation to that is the ability and it.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a very good calculus formula and simple it starts with, we like to say there's an element of physical talent and you add it with the player's intangibles, then the other side of the equation is going to equal a useful skill in the NFL. We break it down into what we call football character personal character. And then there's this element of, we call it football acumen. And we use a lot of probably independent tests to help us decide this, but I often say when you're going to pick a defensive lineman. It might be different than one of the major consulting firms, right, looking at NBA students. There's a different job requirement. So we've actually partnered at times with the military with some of their tests in that, hey, there's an element to be able to measure someone's combative attitude.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just get by. And at that dinner, it was one of those where I think Stan could just sit there and listen to Sean and Marshall talk football. Now you're able to say, all right, you know what, age is not in. Let's shoot the cannonball and shape Shawn.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Room, this guy, they would run through a wall for him. And the third thing is they said he taught us football. He simplified complex football better than any coach they had ever been a part of. And there was even some defensive players who said that they would sit with Sean and he would articulate what an offense is trying to do. And they would even learn how to play better at defense. And then we ended up pairing Sean with Marshall Falk at a dinner with our owner, Stan Cronkey. So Marshall Falk was a longtime St. Louis Ram legend back in the greatest show on Turf, but knowing Marshall, Marshall's a very intelligent football player. So for him to respect you and follow you up that hill analogy, he'll follow you up the hill if he knows that you're going to put the team in position to thrive.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's shoot the cannonball for Sean would be when we chatted with players that he coached each one of them to a T articulated back to us and sometimes this is done through an agent. Number one, it was funny. A few of them said, why hadn't they hired him yet? They should have hired him yesterday. But in each case, right, each player said, hey, this guy commanded.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Area, and I'm going to delegate that's tough for coaches to do, but what it does do is if you try to do everything, maybe you can do that a year or two, but at some point, there's going to be an element of exhaustion and burnout. And also there might be an element of like you're diluting yourself, right? If you're a really good defensive play caller, but you're trying to help on special teams, if you're trying to micromanage what hotels a team stays at when they play on the road, it could actually dilute you from what you're really good at. Sean checked all those boxes. And the biggest question with Sean was, is he too young? I mean, at the time he was 30 years old. The one thing that really tipped us and said, all right, let's.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The coordinator, the potential head coach needs to be an expert on the side of the ball. And then I do think a coach needs to be, there's an element of humility. And we're going to find that coaches are very confident. They better have efficacy. They better not believe they can win, but know they can win and how, right? And they've done it somewhere else. It's not a false hope. But the humility part comes into this is it takes a lot of people over the course of the $365 days in a calendar year to help a team thrive on a journey. So the humility part is when the coach who is really the alpha leader of probably the team in the building can be vulnerable to enough to say, okay, I'm not an expert in this.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Math is against a head coach from succeeding, right? So every year if there's Five to eight new head coaches, they're usually going to write teams that haven't had a lot of success recently. And the success rate is the math is against you. So I think let's just say the traits being definitely need someone who can stand in front of young men that are warriors, that are confident and have those men buy in and want to follow. Follow that coach. I always say, will they follow that coach up a hill and go to battle? That's one thing. That's a very hard one to identify. The coach definitely needs in today's NFL tactics are very important.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we do it based on hey, it's case by case. And in this particular, I like to say, hey, how are we going to win the game? Why are the Rams going to contend? And it's right now, it's Sean McVay. Offensive points. Now, we can't forget about the defense, and we certainly can't forget about specialty.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is probably better to attempt to be dominant and imbalanced somewhere than be balanced in the fact we're going to have one rod receiver and then we're going to pay two offensive linemen and we're going to pay one to me that's on paper. That's a blueprint. That's not real life. That might not be what gives a team an edge to try to be one of 32. That might be a formula that, okay, we can be one of 12, four out of five years. So point being, you asked, how do we do it? We do know what probably the league, when you aggregate who's getting paid and at what positions, probably what the league values. And you can probably look at each of the other 31 teams and break down their contracts and figure out what their models are.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Deemed based on who we are, based on our DNA, based on our fastball that we're going to pay eligibles. Now, some teams may not, right? They may value, maybe there's a team with a defensive head coach who might want to run the ball more. So they may value offensive linemen more and be a little imbalanced there. So I think it's a team by team thing. And I would probably argue that”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is probably case by case, probably depending on your coaching staff. Where your bread is buttered. Here's what We did intentionally do when we hired Sean as our head coach. He believes in passing the football and having explosive pass plays, right, to attack a defense that way, to apply pressure at all times. That way on the defense, it's going to give us the best chance to win. So that's fast forward. That's a blueprint. That's a vision. And it's actually been working. What we've determined is in this moment of contention with Sean as our head coach, with him calling plays, we're going to play a lot of three wide receiver sets. We better have capable wide receivers ready to step in. So we probably been imbalanced at wide receiver and are eligible. Guys, I call it catch the football run the football score touchdowns.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the defensive line. But what it was going to do is lead to us affecting the passer, right? And that's a very important thing in NFL. So when you're collecting talent, again, you're trying to collect pillar. So pillars and have them grow together. And then once you break through, I think that's when team builders probably need to be a little more specific, right? Where sometimes you do draft for need because you have core players and maybe you need to draft for need because there's a void there and winning now, right? Winning this season is important and maybe you pass on a player to another position who may be a little bit more talented. But you know what the player that you need is actually good enough to help you take care of the business of contending.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different MBA, probably we got a little bit easier. But when we picked Aaron Donald, we had drafted Michael Brocker's a couple of years earlier with a first round pick. We had a player named Kendall Langford, who had been starting for us, and we had Chris Long and Robert Quinn. Technically, we didn't need Aaron Donald. We had a lot of other positions of me. Now, what we were able to do, and I'm sure the basketball GMs are able to do too, is in the second and third level thinking is going, okay, Robert Quinn at the time was a really good pass rusher. Chris Long was a good pass rusher. We have Michael Brocker's less pass rusher, more run player. But if we add Aaron Donald, right, if we add that piece, maybe we don't need a defensive lineman. Maybe now our team is actually imbalanced and we have too much resource.”
2022-08-23 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Les Snead: Building a Super Bowl Champion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT