Speaker 1: This week on a Happy Half Hour.
Speaker 2: There's probably nobody that I've played with in my career
Speaker 2: that would be better suited for daddy daycare than Luke.
Speaker 3: One of your theories is that dudes need quest. One
Speaker 3: of my quests in life is to find something that
Speaker 3: Luke Keigley stinks at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that might be a long quest.
Speaker 2: What's the cow?
Speaker 1: It's time for the Happy Half Hour, presented by Southern Star,
Speaker 1: an official bourbon of the Carolina Panthers. Here are your hosts,
Speaker 1: Darren Gant and Cassidy Hill.
Speaker 3: Hello, friends, and welcome to a very special episode of
Speaker 3: the Happy Half Hour. Normally Cassidy Hill would be sitting
Speaker 3: here in the other chair, but she's a mobile on
Speaker 3: special assignment covering the senior ball for Panthers dot Com.
Speaker 3: So I went to the bullpen, got a very special
Speaker 3: guest for the Happy Half Hour and listen, our friends.
Speaker 3: The Happy Half Hours, always presented by a Southern Star,
Speaker 3: an official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the
Speaker 3: spirit of the Carolinas. You can celebrate it double this
Speaker 3: week because this week's very special co host is none
Speaker 3: other than America's long snapper, The longest tenured Carolina Panther,
Speaker 3: or the man who holds the record for games played,
Speaker 3: which he breaks every single week.
Speaker 2: Jay J.
Speaker 3: Janssen, how are you, sir?
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. It's the off season, so I'm
Speaker 2: a little upset that we're not sipping on bourbon while
Speaker 2: doing the podcast. That'd really make for some fun.
Speaker 3: We actually are, as far as the listeners know.
Speaker 2: That's fair enough.
Speaker 3: So it's a great product and it's a you know,
Speaker 3: I'm hoping we can have a little fun here with
Speaker 3: this conversation because, as you mentioned, it is off season
Speaker 3: and we get in these you know, kind of formatted roles. Okay,
Speaker 3: we know on Wednesday this week during the regular season,
Speaker 3: we're doing this this this during the regular season. I
Speaker 3: like to kind of take it in different So naturally
Speaker 3: you're here, you are. You are one of my favorite
Speaker 3: people in this building to talk to in any format,
Speaker 3: but especially now. I mean it's off season. You know,
Speaker 3: we'll get to free agency and all that other stuff
Speaker 3: at some point, but right now it's kind of that
Speaker 3: one weird time of the year where football people are
Speaker 3: sitting around not knowing what to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, so early on in my career, my wife would
Speaker 2: always say something like, you know, two or three weeks
Speaker 2: into the off season, she'd say, you know, you're starting
Speaker 2: to act a little bit bored. You need to find
Speaker 2: something to do. And I've learned now over the years
Speaker 2: and gone by. Our season, you know, ends on a
Speaker 2: Sunday afternoon, we come back, we do an extra interview
Speaker 2: with with coaches in front office on Monday, and by
Speaker 2: Tuesday morning at ten am, I was bored. Like I
Speaker 2: just knew I was gonna be bored eventually. I needed
Speaker 2: something to do. I'd need a routine to look forward to.
Speaker 2: So I just basically said, you know, whatever that was,
Speaker 2: you know, January third or whatever, you know, January seventh,
Speaker 2: every the season, at whatever that date was, I just said,
Speaker 2: I'm immediately now bored, and I need to find some
Speaker 2: stuff to sink my teeth into. I'm not gonna wait
Speaker 2: two or three, two or three weeks to then decide that,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm you know, I'm actually bored. So this
Speaker 2: is fun for me. Normally, on a you know, normally
Speaker 2: on a Tuesday or I guess we're recording this on
Speaker 2: a Wednesday. Normally, on a Wednesday, at noon, we're out
Speaker 2: on the practice field, mm hmm. You know what, now
Speaker 2: that it's wintertime, I don't mind being out here because
Speaker 2: there was a few col practices down the stretch in
Speaker 2: the regular season.
Speaker 3: No doubt, have you ever considered like woodworking or no
Speaker 3: any kind of hand crafts that you might be able
Speaker 3: to busy yourself with.
Speaker 2: No, so, so I do. I do think men need hobbies.
Speaker 2: I do think men need some activities. So my off
Speaker 2: season activities have been primarily constructed into two things. It's
Speaker 2: been buying minor league hockey teams m with with some
Speaker 2: partners that we've been working with now for coming up
Speaker 2: on two years, and also taking a plethora of baseball
Speaker 2: swings off of our We have this little uh it's
Speaker 2: called like a personal pitcher or something along those lines,
Speaker 2: shoots golf balls out of a standing machine on a
Speaker 2: tripod at you know, forty five to fifty miles an
Speaker 2: hour from twenty to twenty five feet and I work
Speaker 2: on my swing. And I figured, if Andy Dalton can
Speaker 2: go play tennis and feeling can go play golf, I'll
Speaker 2: go hit a bunch of baseballs in my garage and
Speaker 2: that'll keep my hand eye coordination up for the offseason.
Speaker 2: At least while it's too cold to get outside and
Speaker 2: play golf or something like that.
Speaker 3: It at least keeps you ready for the next home
Speaker 3: run derby during time I'm ready.
Speaker 2: We do about a home run derby once every six years,
Speaker 2: and I'm the two time defending champ. Of course, that
Speaker 2: lasts over about a thirteen year span, so yeah, I'll
Speaker 2: stay ready. And of course, as everyone knows, Olsen and
Speaker 2: I coach baseball together, so part of the thing that
Speaker 2: I'm always trying to do is trying to understand, in
Speaker 2: all honesty, what they're feeling so I can coach it better.
Speaker 2: And I think there's a value in coaches and teachers
Speaker 2: doing the material while they're teaching it, because you start
Speaker 2: running into the problems that your athletes are are dealing with.
Speaker 2: You know, we often, you know, I've got a sixth
Speaker 2: grader or fourth grader or second grader, kindergartener right they're
Speaker 2: doing math homework. Well, that is so rudimentary to me.
Speaker 2: I can't feel why that's challenging to them. So you know,
Speaker 2: you end up looking at them like, why can't you
Speaker 2: figure this out? So I figured as often as I can,
Speaker 2: let me go humble myself take some swings off of
Speaker 2: a machine, try to get go and take some ground balls,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, throw to targets, and remind myself
Speaker 2: that any athletic venture is pretty challenging, especially if you
Speaker 2: don't do it often, especially if you haven't been, you know,
Speaker 2: like me trained in long snapping for twenty years. You
Speaker 2: realize kids are just picking it up or still young
Speaker 2: and growing in their bodies. There's a lot of challenge
Speaker 2: and skill, and so there's a humility and in taking
Speaker 2: a live at bat versus a twelve year old and
Speaker 2: maybe swinging missing a few times, you realize these games
Speaker 2: are pretty challenging, even at my age.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your life really is a sitcom. I told you
Speaker 3: this the other week. You said you were going away
Speaker 3: for the weekend with your wife. I said, who's keeping
Speaker 3: the kids. You're like, I may leave him with Luke
Speaker 3: or Greg And it was like, your life is a sitcom.
Speaker 3: You say these things just very casually, like it's a
Speaker 3: thing everybody does, except the people you drop your kids
Speaker 3: off with, or Luke Keigley and Gregil.
Speaker 2: That's right. There's probably nobody that I've played with in
Speaker 2: my career that is would be better suited for you know,
Speaker 2: daddy daycare than Luke. Of course, you know, you know,
Speaker 2: he's still he's still single. So we're working on we're
Speaker 2: working on all that. But between him and Greg, I mean,
Speaker 2: we we do a lot of things together, right We've
Speaker 2: got the you know, we've got the baseball team. They're
Speaker 2: doing the football thing. We we do a lot of
Speaker 2: our life kind of in the same orbits, and so
Speaker 2: our kids have sort of learned over the years that
Speaker 2: they're just kind of part of the family in various ways.
Speaker 2: And Greg brings kids home from sporting events and you know,
Speaker 2: Luke Luke might show up and cook pizzas on the
Speaker 2: nie as it's happened a few times. So everyone's kind
Speaker 2: of got their own little skills and orbits. And you know,
Speaker 2: to my kids, that's coach Greg and we call him
Speaker 2: Big Luke because my oldest son's named Luke. We call
Speaker 2: Luke Keigley Big Luke. And my daughter, who's in second
Speaker 2: grag calls him the man in the Jacket because the
Speaker 2: first time she really met him, he showed up at
Speaker 2: our house. It was a really rainy day and he
Speaker 2: had he had a big old jacket on, and my
Speaker 2: daughter called him the man in the jacket, and until
Speaker 2: this day he is still known as the man in
Speaker 2: the jacket in our house. So doubt they're just part
Speaker 2: of the family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally normal. I've said I kind of hate Luke
Speaker 3: Keighley in some ways because A he's so polite and
Speaker 3: so gracious, and so he's well mannered, well mannered. He
Speaker 3: was raised well. His family should be proud they raised
Speaker 3: a good boy. But he does all this and he
Speaker 3: just kind of rolls out of the bed and he's
Speaker 3: perfect at whatever he does. When he started doing radio,
Speaker 3: he was like, I don't really know if I'm man
Speaker 3: good it is, and people who heard the first couple
Speaker 3: of games were like, oh, you're actually great at it,
Speaker 3: which kind of figures, which leads me to this question.
Speaker 3: You and Greg coach baseball together. Does Luke Keikley have
Speaker 3: a decent baseball swing?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I've never seen I've never seen Luke
Speaker 2: swing a bat. Yeah, but I have to I have
Speaker 2: to laugh though, because he's just an unbelievable person. There
Speaker 2: have been many games where he just showed up. He
Speaker 2: texted one of us during the week say Hey, are
Speaker 2: you playing baseball? Like, oh, yeah, we're at you know,
Speaker 2: ten and two, and he had just look up online
Speaker 2: where we're playing and show up at the field and
Speaker 2: just sit in the bleachers with the moms and the
Speaker 2: dads and cheer the kids on and get a pretzel
Speaker 2: and leave, leave after a couple hours. And he just
Speaker 2: part just in the group with everybody else. So I've
Speaker 2: never seen Luke swing a bat. I can only imagine
Speaker 2: he'd be fantastic at it, because to your point, I
Speaker 2: think he's just he's one of these incredibly gifted athletes.
Speaker 2: But I know he played a lot of lacrosse. I
Speaker 2: don't know if he played a lot of baseball growing up.
Speaker 2: So I'll have to I'll have to dig deep on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got friends who swim. And when Luke decided
Speaker 3: he was bored the other off season wanted to run
Speaker 3: a triathlon, all my friends over at the MAC were like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he just comes in and he's hanging out in the
Speaker 3: locker room, Like, hey, guys, I'm Luke. Yeah, we know
Speaker 3: who you are, Luke, but he just does that. You
Speaker 3: have talked. One of your theories is that dudes need quest.
Speaker 3: One of my quests in life is to find something
Speaker 3: that Luke Keigley stinks at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that might be a long quest. Right,
Speaker 2: we have these, you know, my wife and I say,
Speaker 2: you got your quests, You've got your side quests that
Speaker 2: might go along with it, and every once in a
Speaker 2: while a mini quest which might you know, take maybe
Speaker 2: take ten minutes or fifteen minutes. But in my opinion,
Speaker 2: men really really appreciate quests. That one might be one
Speaker 2: of the long ones, because I don't know that Luke's
Speaker 2: bad at a whole lot of other stuff. A word
Speaker 2: I heard not too long ago, let's call it six
Speaker 2: months ago that I really enjoyed was the word earnest.
Speaker 2: And Luke is an earnest person. He is kind, he
Speaker 2: is intentional. Anything that he does he set his mind
Speaker 2: too to be the very best at, and even if
Speaker 2: it's not super important to him, he takes it seriously
Speaker 2: because it's important to the people he's doing it with.
Speaker 2: You know, I would venture to guess the first time
Speaker 2: he ever walked into to do a radio game for
Speaker 2: the Panthers, he might not have known do I love it,
Speaker 2: But he knew that the people working with him and
Speaker 2: around him took it very seriously, so he wasn't going
Speaker 2: to be casual about it, and and you know so
Speaker 2: that I think that obviously suits him really well. It
Speaker 2: was fantastic for football. But it's again, there are people
Speaker 2: that believe how you do one thing is how you
Speaker 2: do everything, and I think he would certainly be a
Speaker 2: fitting example of that when it comes to taking things seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of your other roles, in addition to hockey owner,
Speaker 3: baseball coach, long snapper, America's long snapper, is you are
Speaker 3: part of Greg Olsen's support staff. You like to help
Speaker 3: Greg with statistical preparation, his analytics stuff for his broadcasting career.
Speaker 3: And this is what I noticed the other weekend. Greg's
Speaker 3: not calling games during the playoffs, says you may. I've
Speaker 3: heard some guy named Tom Brady instead. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's your thing suit yourself. I think Greg's a
Speaker 3: lot better at it. But you've always helped Greg with this.
Speaker 3: You guys were just bored the other weekend and through it,
Speaker 3: weren't you.
Speaker 2: Well, this has been sort of evolving for years and
Speaker 2: years and years, and I've joked with many people the
Speaker 2: stuff that rolls off of Greg's tongue now on a
Speaker 2: broadcast or on a national show he and I would
Speaker 2: argue about six seven, eight years ago when we played together.
Speaker 2: He's he and I have always talked strategy and situations,
Speaker 2: and you know, I've learned a ton from him about
Speaker 2: offense and defense and all that stuff. So we're always
Speaker 2: kind of going back and forth. And this has kind
Speaker 2: of gone on for again, going all the way back
Speaker 2: to when we were both playing here in seventeen and
Speaker 2: eighteen nineteen. Why do we do this? He'd come up
Speaker 2: to me, Why do we do that? Why did the specialty?
Speaker 2: We have always exchanged information. And I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've heard, but Greg was a long snapper for so yeah,
Speaker 2: he knows just enough to be dangerous. I know nothing
Speaker 2: to be dangerous, but I played often of line in
Speaker 2: high school, so I have a little bit of understanding.
Speaker 2: So we kind of started from there and we just
Speaker 2: kind of keep growing and and so one of the
Speaker 2: things that that I've done is his broadcast career has
Speaker 2: continue to grow, is just kind of help continue to
Speaker 2: kind of grow with him in terms of preparation, research,
Speaker 2: thinking of new ways to explain concepts that you know,
Speaker 2: every year in the NFL there's tons of new concepts,
Speaker 2: ideas that might be strategy, it might be analytics, it
Speaker 2: might be a use of timeouts. There's it's constantly evolving.
Speaker 2: There's more and more information. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that I think is really kind of special is that
Speaker 2: he's willing to just keep growing and growing and growing.
Speaker 2: His parents were both teachers. I have a heart of
Speaker 2: a teacher. I really believe in his heart. And he's
Speaker 2: a coach and a teacher. So he goes on a
Speaker 2: national broadcast and he wants to teach football, and I
Speaker 2: love teaching football and I love learning football. So there's
Speaker 2: been a natural connection for the two of us, and
Speaker 2: that obviously there's still great games going on right now,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of people. I think the people
Speaker 2: that really love Gregan on broadcasts are the ones that say,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tune in and I'm going to get
Speaker 2: a great broadcast, but I'm gonna walk away learning two
Speaker 2: or three things about football. And it might be a situation,
Speaker 2: it might be an arc release, you know, from the
Speaker 2: tight end. It might be did why did this play work?
Speaker 2: Versus man's own? And I just learn a little bit more?
Speaker 2: And I watched his broadcasts and did I learn a
Speaker 2: little bit more? And so yeah, certainly playoff games everyone's watching,
Speaker 2: and there were some great situations and and uh, and
Speaker 2: he went to work on trying to begin to at
Speaker 2: least explain one or two. So the fan walks away
Speaker 2: a little bit more knowledgeable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you guys, I could tell one of the things
Speaker 3: that kind of got under your crawl over the weekend
Speaker 3: was chasing two point conversions. And again I commit this
Speaker 3: from a anecdotal historical perspective, because I was sitting in
Speaker 3: a press box at Super Bowl thirty eight when John Fox,
Speaker 3: who wasn't necessarily an analytical type, started chasing them early
Speaker 3: and got stuck in that pattern with how did how
Speaker 3: did you guys get to the point or let me
Speaker 3: ask you like this, when did you realize that that
Speaker 3: was the wrong way to go about this immediately?
Speaker 2: But it's situational, so so in this particular case, I
Speaker 2: believe the score was it was fourteen six, and I think, yep,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember. It can't take a couple. It
Speaker 2: came a couple of times. And this is the Washington game, right,
Speaker 2: because something similar came up in the in the Chiefs bills.
Speaker 2: But so it was fourteen six, but it was in
Speaker 2: the second quarter. And you know, Greg is known very
Speaker 2: much as being the super aggressive analytics guy. And I
Speaker 2: think where he gets a lot of pushback from other
Speaker 2: analysts is or work. Maybe not pushback, but where he
Speaker 2: differentiates from a lot of analystss A lot of analysts
Speaker 2: are still trained in sort of this old quote unquote
Speaker 2: old school football mentality, and so he's viewed as aggressive.
Speaker 2: And where he and I have always tried to discuss
Speaker 2: these things is optimal does not mean aggressive. It's trying
Speaker 2: to make the right decision at the right time. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that coaches tend to do is
Speaker 2: they don't like certain numbers. They don't like being down
Speaker 2: too that feels after a touchdown, So the score goes
Speaker 2: from fourteen six to fourteen twelve, in their mind, they
Speaker 2: think to themselves, oh, I go for two here, because
Speaker 2: that's what we always do. What made that situation different
Speaker 2: was we were in the second quarter. And the way
Speaker 2: we describe early game situations is you're in a point
Speaker 2: accumulation phase of the game. The goal is how many
Speaker 2: points can I score? And what's the best way to
Speaker 2: score points? Is it a field goal, is it a touchdown,
Speaker 2: is it a two is it a one. I actually
Speaker 2: like going for two and going for two more often
Speaker 2: than most people. I think it's actually tends to be
Speaker 2: the right decision. But in that particular case, I believe
Speaker 2: and Greg made the same point. Dan Quinn only went
Speaker 2: for two because he was down two to make it
Speaker 2: a tie game, not because he thought this is the
Speaker 2: best time for me to go for two. That begins
Speaker 2: to pivot as you get later in the game where
Speaker 2: you're running out of possessions and you're hoping to turn
Speaker 2: that kicking a pat in the fourth quarter to go
Speaker 2: down one. Well, now you're still losing, and if the
Speaker 2: game ends and nobody, nobody else scores, you lost, whether
Speaker 2: you're down to or one. That's why teams go so
Speaker 2: and the I think I retweeted it was like an
Speaker 2: old account is called the analytics straw Man, and I tweeted,
Speaker 2: always go for two. You know, you know the quote
Speaker 2: is from analytics, always go for two. And the answer
Speaker 2: is no, it isn't. It's not always the right answer.
Speaker 3: If it was fifteen twelve, you wouldn't necessarily feel that
Speaker 3: same compulsion too.
Speaker 2: No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 3: Knowing you can't tie it, You probably just you know,
Speaker 3: if you're in that quote unquote traditional football mindset, you're
Speaker 3: probably just kicking taking the point.
Speaker 2: So like one of the things you saw this year
Speaker 2: with the new touchback, or with the new kickoff, or
Speaker 2: with the dynamic kickoff, is there was no real benefit
Speaker 2: to taking a kickoff a fifteen yard personal foul after
Speaker 2: a touchdown on the kickoff. Historically, that's what everybody did, right,
Speaker 2: I'll kick my I'll kick my pat and then I'll
Speaker 2: kick off from the fifty and try to pin you
Speaker 2: down inside the you know, inside the twenty and try
Speaker 2: to get some field position. With the way the rules
Speaker 2: set up, there wasn't really a big advantage. So everybody
Speaker 2: put the ball at the one this year and everybody
Speaker 2: went for two. But I think what you would have
Speaker 2: seen it, let's say the score had been fifteen twelve,
Speaker 2: is let's put the ball on the one and go
Speaker 2: for two. Whether they got it or not, that was
Speaker 2: the right decision in the point accumulation phase. But if
Speaker 2: the game is in the fourth quarter and it's fifteen twelve,
Speaker 2: the question is whether I get this game to two
Speaker 2: or one, I still need a field goal to win,
Speaker 2: and I don't get any benefits so which thing, which
Speaker 2: option is most likely to get me under three, and
Speaker 2: which case the pat would be most likely to get
Speaker 2: me under three, because I think this year the number
Speaker 2: was like ninety six percent. So as my wife often says,
Speaker 2: you've said too many numbers. You need to move on.
Speaker 2: But the idea is there is different phases of the
Speaker 2: game that require different things analytically, and the answer in
Speaker 2: analytics is not always go for it, and it's not
Speaker 2: always go for too, and it's not always throw. But
Speaker 2: teams tend to have historically aired on the quote conservative
Speaker 2: side when that hasn't maybe been optimal and the or
Speaker 2: in the case of Dan Quinn in Washington, maybe we
Speaker 2: saw the flip, which was it was aggressive but not
Speaker 2: necessarily optimal.
Speaker 3: Right. I can imagine your wife sending you to the
Speaker 3: grocery store to buy milk and you coming home with
Speaker 3: a two gallon jug of milk, not because you need
Speaker 3: two gallons of milk, but because it was the optimal
Speaker 3: price of That's right, Yes, I only needed a pint.
Speaker 2: That's right. There are there are well, I'll I have
Speaker 2: to say, there are some things that I'm very anetically
Speaker 2: analytically minded, and there are sometimes like it doesn't. It
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter football, baseball, sports. I'm trying to solve
Speaker 2: puzzles because there's a It's a little bit like I
Speaker 2: stopped playing Monopoly once I figuregured out how you're like,
Speaker 2: how the game's designed for you to really sort of win.
Speaker 2: The beauty of analytics is it's a little bit of
Speaker 2: market inefficiencies. So it's always changing, you know. I fell
Speaker 2: in love like a lot, like a lot of math
Speaker 2: nerds in college, I fell in love with the book Moneyball.
Speaker 2: Everyone goes, I've seen the movie now. I was like,
Speaker 2: you got to read the book, as people often say,
Speaker 2: and I fell in love with that. But if you
Speaker 2: remember from Moneyball, the goal was you're trying to find
Speaker 2: people to walk, right. That was the market inefficiency. It
Speaker 2: wasn't that walking was some sort of uniquely special thing.
Speaker 2: It was nobody paid for someone to walk, but that
Speaker 2: was causing winning at a higher rate than the market
Speaker 2: sort of anticipated. So we see this now all the time.
Speaker 2: In football. You got to pay the quarterbacks. The running
Speaker 2: backs shouldn't get paid any money, like you see all this,
Speaker 2: But eventually there's going to be a market inefficiency. And
Speaker 2: when that market inefficiency hits, you got to go to
Speaker 2: the other side of the equation. Right. We've seen this
Speaker 2: a little bit with running backs as that position has
Speaker 2: been devalued over the years relative to other positions. Well, now,
Speaker 2: market inefficiencies allow really good teams to sign Saquon Barkley
Speaker 2: for twelve million dollars a year, pair them with an
Speaker 2: excellent offensive line, and now all of a sudden, they've
Speaker 2: got a really good advantage on the rest of the
Speaker 2: because nobody's going to overpay. So if you're Saquon Barkley,
Speaker 2: go I'm gonna go to the best offensive line football Like
Speaker 2: there are these markets, sometimes market inefficiencies actually help the
Speaker 2: better teams that already exist, because if you're Saquon, I
Speaker 2: could make twelve million from the Eagles, I could make
Speaker 2: twelve million from Baltimore. I could make twelve million dollars
Speaker 2: in nil money. If I go back to Texas, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go pick the exact location where I can thrive.
Speaker 2: And so Philly this year has kind of been able
Speaker 2: to capitalize on the fact that no one was really
Speaker 2: going to pay Saquon more than twelve million, so he
Speaker 2: gets to kind of pick where he wants to go.
Speaker 2: And that's a huge advantage for team that was well
Speaker 2: suited for a running back.
Speaker 3: And as it pertains to the Carolina Panthers, those market
Speaker 3: inefficiencies are named Damian Lewis, Rob Hunt, che Behubbard.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Look, let's look back at last year's draft, right,
Speaker 2: Jonathan Jonathan Brooks, the number one rated running back on
Speaker 2: the board, went forty eighth. All of a sudden, that
Speaker 2: doesn't seem quite so inefficient. When the number one running
Speaker 2: back in the in a draft class is drafted in
Speaker 2: the third pick. That's a very different equation. Right Like
Speaker 2: if you told me nobody was allowed to draft a
Speaker 2: d end until the fifth round, you'd see the fifth
Speaker 2: round with thirty eight d ns. Because that's the that's
Speaker 2: we know that position is valuable and at some point
Speaker 2: it gets so devalued that eventually it's a very good value.
Speaker 2: It's it's like a stock, it's like a business. Eventually
Speaker 2: things get pushed too far. So the beauty of analytics
Speaker 2: is at some point they flip, and are you willing
Speaker 2: to flip? You know, it's the old zig when the
Speaker 2: other zag, and that happens all the time during football.
Speaker 2: We saw it last week on the playoff. On the
Speaker 2: playoff games, the Tush Push only went six for twelve
Speaker 2: this week, right like that? Would you know? A year
Speaker 2: ago it felt virtually undefeated. But as more people are
Speaker 2: doing it, some people aren't quite as good at it right,
Speaker 2: and everyone's getting a lot more practice because I may
Speaker 2: only play Jalen Hurts one time, but if I play
Speaker 2: seven other teams that do it, I begin to learn
Speaker 2: how to stop it. And even Jalen HURTSI was stopped
Speaker 2: twice this week.
Speaker 3: Might have something to do with not having Jason Kelsey
Speaker 3: in the middle of it anymore, who was really good
Speaker 3: at that particular thing.
Speaker 2: You know. But you know, even Philly I think at
Speaker 2: one point, I think Greg had a game and we
Speaker 2: looked it up. I think they were still operating at
Speaker 2: like ninety five percent for the year. So Kelsey was
Speaker 2: uniquely good at it. Jalen Hurts is the perfect build, right.
Speaker 2: He's five foot, he's a little bit. He's certainly on
Speaker 2: the shorter side. Everyone's seen the squatting videos. He's incredibly strong,
Speaker 2: and they practice it and they are organized when they
Speaker 2: do it. I don't know that every team necessarily, you know,
Speaker 2: the difference between him and Allen doing it is six
Speaker 2: inches and weight. And you know, the Bills weren't pushing
Speaker 2: him in the same way that I mean, Philly's like,
Speaker 2: you know, four hands on the button. Let I mean
Speaker 2: we are pushing with everything we got. It's a little
Speaker 2: bit different. So but again, every team gets to practice
Speaker 2: it because every team's now gotten the playbook, and it
Speaker 2: makes it a little less valuable.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also, I keep going into the wayback machine.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if somebody had decided to start doing
Speaker 3: that with Ryan Khalil and Cam Newton?
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, Greg was on Greg was on Colin
Speaker 2: Cowhard yesterday and I was watching it and and he
Speaker 2: brought this up because the comparison is, you know, Cam
Speaker 2: and Josh are very similar athletes. And that's Greg brought
Speaker 2: up the story he had actually told Luke and I
Speaker 2: this last week when we were watching the games. Was
Speaker 2: on on our offense back when Cam was really rolling.
Speaker 2: In those types of situations, they would often call a
Speaker 2: play where they got under center, and it was something
Speaker 2: that was designed for the outside fourth and one. It
Speaker 2: may be it may be a toss, it might be
Speaker 2: a power, it might be counter but he Cam was
Speaker 2: under center, but It was more of a B gap,
Speaker 2: C gap, D gap run and if they left those
Speaker 2: gaps open, they would actually yell out. I think one year,
Speaker 2: I think the code word was Jackie after old you
Speaker 2: know Jackie Miles are old equipment manager, and Cam would
Speaker 2: get up to the line of scrimage yelled Jackie, Jackie, Jackie,
Speaker 2: and that was I'm gonna sneak it. Now there wasn't
Speaker 2: a push, but it was sort of a two play thing.
Speaker 2: If if they take away the inside, we're gonna run
Speaker 2: our play. And if they don't take away the inside,
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna do it on my own. Now we're
Speaker 2: seeing with the toush push, that's like the call to play.
Speaker 2: And so how many variations I'm sure my guess is
Speaker 2: in the Super Bowl Philly will have some sort of
Speaker 2: alternate off of it. We've seen them do it a
Speaker 2: couple times. Obviously, kan't see doesn't do it at all
Speaker 2: because the one time Patrick Mahomes snuck, I think his
Speaker 2: kneecap popped out. Yeah, so not everyone does it, but
Speaker 2: and would certainly be good. But you know the evanager
Speaker 2: having six foot five Cam Newton was you could run
Speaker 2: Q power, you could you could audible to a sneak.
Speaker 2: You can do a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: Uh, it's a lot easier when your quarterback six five,
Speaker 3: two sixty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think back then, I mean I think
Speaker 2: he was him and Ben Roethlisberger, other than Tom Brady,
Speaker 2: those were the three best quarterback sneakers for like it
Speaker 2: was like five years. They had. Tom had kind of
Speaker 2: a skill to it, but and then Ben and Cam
Speaker 2: were just bigger than everybody.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. To circle back a little bit, you were
Speaker 3: talking a second ago about undervalued commodity. So I'll put
Speaker 3: you on the spot here, among current teammates or teammates
Speaker 3: from last season, who was the guy who was better
Speaker 3: at the thing than most people realize?
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's a great question. Well, certainly for the money,
Speaker 2: one of the most valuable players on our team was
Speaker 2: Mike Jack making a million dollars, traded a seventh round
Speaker 2: pick a player Michael Barrett. We traded for him, and
Speaker 2: you get a I think he was a seventeen game starter.
Speaker 2: He might have missed one in there, Uh, seventeen game
Speaker 2: starter and played really well opposite you know, JC. And
Speaker 2: that was very valuable because you think about what is
Speaker 2: a starting corner in the NFL worth It's probably worth ten, twelve,
Speaker 2: fifteen million, depending on your quality, you know, a variety
Speaker 2: of factors. So to be able to have someone that
Speaker 2: played to that level of you know, I'm probably not
Speaker 2: helping our front office in any sort of contract negotiations,
Speaker 2: but like to have someone to play at that level
Speaker 2: of a high quality starting corner for a million dollars
Speaker 2: was really really valuable to the team. I think lesser value.
Speaker 2: There's a value to that sixth offensive line. Now, a
Speaker 2: bunch of different guys played it this year, is mostly
Speaker 2: you know, Brady and Chandler, but there is value. And
Speaker 2: if you look around the league, power run teams, and
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know if we'd call her
Speaker 2: Sells a power run team or not, but certainly Tuba's
Speaker 2: running style seems more conducive to more of a power style.
Speaker 2: Having that sixth offensive lineman, maybe he's the tight end,
Speaker 2: maybe he's the full back, looks a lot like Baltimore
Speaker 2: and the Chargers, you know, the hardballs, Like they've got
Speaker 2: that three hundred pound defensive tackle who puts his hand
Speaker 2: on the ground and plays full back. Right guys three
Speaker 2: twenty he's wearing like forty four. Like it always looks
Speaker 2: kind of funny to me. I think those positions are
Speaker 2: valuable because that's probably worth three four five million dollars.
Speaker 2: And those guys are on rookie contracts and they tend
Speaker 2: to get overlooked, but that matters in the run game.
Speaker 2: It feels always a little strange same because he's he's
Speaker 2: fantastic and has been for a long time. But I
Speaker 2: always think Adam is Adam Thielen is kind of every
Speaker 2: year sort of over overlooked and undervalued for what he does.
Speaker 2: I mean the ability for him, both for Andy and
Speaker 2: Bryce this year, just throw a ball up to Adam,
Speaker 2: He's gonna go get that, Like there's a huge there's
Speaker 2: a huge blessing for a quarterback when you can throw
Speaker 2: the ball away from a defender and protect the team
Speaker 2: from a turnover and then your wide receiver goes and
Speaker 2: just catches that ball. That's a huge, valuable, very valuable thing.
Speaker 2: So those are just a couple of them. I know
Speaker 2: I'm missing out on guys.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean the guy I think about it in
Speaker 3: these terms is is Shaw Smith Waite. Because you can
Speaker 3: take a fifth round pick, sure and that guy becomes
Speaker 3: your nickel, and he was kind of growing into that
Speaker 3: role over the course of the year. If over the
Speaker 3: next three years he is your starting nickel for the
Speaker 3: cost of a fifth round pick, that's tremendous value.
Speaker 2: Well, and that is why the draft is such an
Speaker 2: interesting phenomenon every year. You you know, So what I
Speaker 2: was when I when I first got in the league
Speaker 2: was two thousand and eight. So in two thousand, after
Speaker 2: the twenty ten season, there was this whole lockout, And
Speaker 2: what happened with the lockout was money was going to
Speaker 2: be reshuffled around. And the number one story it was
Speaker 2: sort of pitched to the players coming out of lock
Speaker 2: at us, we can't have JaMarcus Russell making gobs of
Speaker 2: money and flame out. That's hurting the veterans in the league.
Speaker 2: And of course at that point, once you're in the league,
Speaker 2: everyone's a veteran. So it's basically forget the rookies who
Speaker 2: don't exist yet.
Speaker 3: They're not members of a unions and they're not right.
Speaker 2: So it's like, how do we get more money in
Speaker 2: the hands of veterans. So one of the number one
Speaker 2: thing that came out of all of that was the
Speaker 2: Ricky wage scale, and of course the juxtaposition of in
Speaker 2: two thousand and ten, Sam Braffers the number one overall
Speaker 2: pick for the Saint Louis Rams, he had a six year,
Speaker 2: seventy two million dollar contract, sixty million dollars guaranteed. That
Speaker 2: next year Cammed drafted by US number one five year
Speaker 2: deal it might have been it was four years, twenty
Speaker 2: two million. Then you had the fifth year option that
Speaker 2: so you had all this, So the difference in guarantee
Speaker 2: was sixty to twenty two. It was the only time
Speaker 2: in the NFL history where the money went down right
Speaker 2: and obviously went down from a guarantee standpoint by like
Speaker 2: by like sixty five seventy percent. The institution of the
Speaker 2: rookie wage scale is the number one reason why the
Speaker 2: draft matters, because you are going to find starters in
Speaker 2: the NFL draft, and when you do, you have three
Speaker 2: to four maybe five years of low paying highly competens
Speaker 2: are highly talented players. So let's say the nickel is
Speaker 2: worth six million dollars a starting nickel in the NFL
Speaker 2: on the open market, everyone's a free agents worth six
Speaker 2: million dollars. You're playing Shaw Smith, Wade seven hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty grand, and you do that for the next three years,
Speaker 2: you're getting eighteen million dollars worth of playing value and
Speaker 2: paying them two million bucks. And that's huge for the team.
Speaker 2: And that's why the draft matters so much. Obviously, being
Speaker 2: being really good at finding those players matter, but it's
Speaker 2: also why you see stuff like right now, I don't
Speaker 2: know that I heard anybody back in October, November, December saying, Oh,
Speaker 2: there's just a ton of quarterbacks in this draft. I
Speaker 2: guarantee you there's going to be two or three likely
Speaker 2: draft in the first ten picks, because if you're right,
Speaker 2: you're getting a fifty million dollar value for five, six, seven,
Speaker 2: eight million dollars and that's a huge advantage. And that
Speaker 2: same value lasts all the way through the draft. Obviously,
Speaker 2: it gets harder as you go down finding those guys,
Speaker 2: and that's where you need a great scouting department to
Speaker 2: You call them diamonds in the rough. But they're overlooked
Speaker 2: for some reason, right, But what is that reason? And
Speaker 2: in Shaw's particular case, the big reports kind of coming
Speaker 2: out of Mobile was maybe he's under size, but man,
Speaker 2: he's a dog, he's tough, he's competitive, and I think
Speaker 2: that plays in the NFL, if you can, if you
Speaker 2: can fight through some of those physical limitations, this is
Speaker 2: a really competitive league and you need really competitive people
Speaker 2: to be successful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I look at the guy he replaced, Troy Hill,
Speaker 3: and Troy Hill was that old head vat who who
Speaker 3: had done this particular job for a decade and was
Speaker 3: pretty good at it. But then when you see I mean,
Speaker 3: and I think it made sense in the spot this
Speaker 3: team was in last season. If you think this guy
Speaker 3: over here can transition into somebody who can be a
Speaker 3: three year player for you down the line, you do
Speaker 3: that at that.
Speaker 2: Point absolutely, And guys play in two roles. It's really
Speaker 2: hard in the NFL to give young players positions over
Speaker 2: veterans because there's no you can't fool a locker room.
Speaker 2: You just can't do it. So guys have to earn
Speaker 2: their spots. But once guys do that, it makes a lot.
Speaker 2: The locker room goes Okay, I get it, they are
Speaker 2: at about the same level, or maybe the veterans been overtaken,
Speaker 2: and now this is this is how I got in
Speaker 2: the league. This is how someone else is going to
Speaker 2: get in the league. So there's always a little bit
Speaker 2: of that, but you have every front office has to
Speaker 2: be mindful of if you just start giving away positions
Speaker 2: well drafted. You know Sean the fifth round, he's the starter.
Speaker 2: The rest of the locker room goes, are you are
Speaker 2: you trying to win or are you just trying to
Speaker 2: play the rookies? And so young guys have to earn it.
Speaker 2: The good part is once they earn it, they have
Speaker 2: the respect of the locker room, which is really what
Speaker 2: matters is did you earn this spot? Are you helping
Speaker 2: us win? That's all the locker room really cares about,
Speaker 2: is are you helping cause winning for this team? And
Speaker 2: Sean did a really good job this year, and he
Speaker 2: was one of a lot of draft picks that contributed
Speaker 2: a lot throughout the whole season, no doubt.
Speaker 3: And it's going to be interesting look at it. And again,
Speaker 3: Cassidy's down at mobile. Stay tuned at Panthers dot com
Speaker 3: for all the latest from down there. Draft is going
Speaker 3: to be a big topic of conversation. Panthers sitting here
Speaker 3: with nine total picks, eight in the first five rounds,
Speaker 3: so again, their position to acquire those kind of value guys,
Speaker 3: I mean, Dan and Brandt have shown in their one draft,
Speaker 3: they're willing to move that board around. So while they're
Speaker 3: sitting there at eighth overall and you know, nine total picks,
Speaker 3: eight in the first five rounds, I don't necessarily anticipate
Speaker 3: that's going to be what they finish with, just because
Speaker 3: that's what they've shown us in their one set of
Speaker 3: data points.
Speaker 2: Every front office has their own style, right, and if
Speaker 2: you if you named a team, I could probably tell
Speaker 2: you this is generally their style. Doesn't mean you won't deviate.
Speaker 2: But I don't know that Cincinnati has traded many picks
Speaker 2: in like thirty years, like they just don't do it.
Speaker 2: Their styles. We're going to stay in our spot and
Speaker 2: we're going to draft New Orleans. They are never going
Speaker 2: to trade back. They are always going to trade up.
Speaker 2: Howie Roseman kind of works the board, but on draft night,
Speaker 2: Howie Roseman's going to trade up because he's going to
Speaker 2: go find his guy. He might be right, he's gonna
Speaker 2: he's going to identify. So everyone's got their style, right.
Speaker 2: I think one draft is too soon to just say
Speaker 2: this is the Panther style. But what I what I
Speaker 2: would imagine is going on is you've got highly competent
Speaker 2: scouting skill. You know, Dan obviously scout for probably about
Speaker 2: a decade, obviously played a really really long time, which
Speaker 2: you know Olsen says all the time, like, don't discredit
Speaker 2: playing career as like on the job training. It may
Speaker 2: not be like he's you play seven years in the NFL.
Speaker 2: You're watching a lot of tape and you're evaluating other players.
Speaker 2: So you're going so, so Dan may have been a
Speaker 2: scout for ten, twelve years, whatever is, you might as
Speaker 2: well just go ahead and call it twenty, right, So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of scouting experience. You also have lots
Speaker 2: of people in the front office that are comfortable working
Speaker 2: other sides of being in the front office, considering trades, negotiations,
Speaker 2: and the more of those people that you trust in
Speaker 2: the building, you can do and be more dynamic during
Speaker 2: the draft. If your GM is picking the players and
Speaker 2: trading up and trading down and negotiation and he's the
Speaker 2: only one doing it, it becomes too much. If you
Speaker 2: have lots of people that have jobs and roles and
Speaker 2: you're working well together and you've planned stuff out, you
Speaker 2: can be a little bit more fluid in the draft.
Speaker 2: And I think that was a value I think the
Speaker 2: biggest going back to last year. Obviously who you draft matters,
Speaker 2: but beyond who we drafted, the ability to sit at
Speaker 2: thirty nine, collect a future second round pick, and move
Speaker 2: back and then use some of that to go back
Speaker 2: was one of the bigger moments of the draft for
Speaker 2: the Panthers because you're sort of creating something out of nothing,
Speaker 2: which now we get to reap the benefits of. I
Speaker 2: think that's always the tough part. When you're a fan.
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, thirty or thirty nine, like we're gonna
Speaker 2: got a good player here, and then oh, the Panthers
Speaker 2: traded somebody you know, you know, they traded the pick,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, I wanted a player there. But
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, now we're sitting here, you know,
Speaker 2: two months before the draft, going huh, I'm glad we
Speaker 2: got that extra second round er. So there is a
Speaker 2: little value in being patient, and that's where you have
Speaker 2: to trust does the front office. You know, you might
Speaker 2: be sitting there at thirty nine and they don't have
Speaker 2: any players they like for that value, but they got
Speaker 2: a trade and that's a benefit to the team.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I think's helpful is having
Speaker 3: people with different perspectives. Because Dan morgan looking for dogs,
Speaker 3: he was a players. He knows what tough and smart's like.
Speaker 3: When John Fox walked in and said, I'm going to
Speaker 3: keep the guys who were tough and smart. The ones
Speaker 3: who aren't I'm getting rid of, Dan was one of
Speaker 3: the guys who stayed and was part of a Super
Speaker 3: Bowl team. Brent Tillis comes at it from a completely
Speaker 3: different perspective, and he's more analytical. He looks at a
Speaker 3: lot of things like a math problem. But one of
Speaker 3: the interesting things to me watching them go through that
Speaker 3: draft process last year was the chemistry between the two
Speaker 3: of them because they think differently what they're aligned and
Speaker 3: that sounds easy to pull off, but it's really not.
Speaker 3: And things as simple as knowing each other's inside jokes
Speaker 3: and being able to finish the sentences for different guys.
Speaker 3: I mean, for a couple of dudes who met each
Speaker 3: other on a zoom call in January last year, they
Speaker 3: worked together pretty well, to the extent that Brant knew
Speaker 3: it would be funny and Dan wouldn't notice if he
Speaker 3: turned around and was wearing a fifty five jersey in
Speaker 3: the draft room.
Speaker 2: As someone who works very closely on a daily basis
Speaker 2: with a dog in Olsen. I identify very much with Brant,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure Dan and Greg probably would be very similar.
Speaker 3: And this seems fair.
Speaker 2: I think what everything you just described is dead on,
Speaker 2: and where you get value is when you have people
Speaker 2: that are interested in learning and collaborating. I've learned so
Speaker 2: much from Greg. Greg has learned a lot from me
Speaker 2: to the point now where we sort of talk alike
Speaker 2: when it comes to like football and how we see things.
Speaker 2: I think having a front office where you've there's a
Speaker 2: respect for each other's style, there's a respect for each
Speaker 2: other's expertise, but there's a melding together. It's not you
Speaker 2: or me, it's not dogs or analytics, it's how do
Speaker 2: we put this together for the betterment of the team.
Speaker 2: And I've one of the cool things that I've that
Speaker 2: I have seen is I've never really heard anyone describe
Speaker 2: them separate. It's always Dan and Brandt, Dan and Brant.
Speaker 2: So while probably on an ORG chart, one is over
Speaker 2: the other, I'd imagine I don't know what our ORG
Speaker 2: chart is. I imagine as general manager and president football Operations,
Speaker 2: Dan's in charge, but I've never seen Dan go out
Speaker 2: of his way to make Brandt sound like he's beneath him, right,
Speaker 2: And I've never and I've never heard Brandt sort of say, well,
Speaker 2: this is what I did and not and what coach
Speaker 2: Canalis has said about those guys, what Dave Temper has
Speaker 2: said about those guys. It helps when everyone feels like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm value whether the one, whether you're one and I'm
Speaker 2: two or I'm one and year two. If we're working
Speaker 2: together and people feel valued, that stuff really matters. And
Speaker 2: one of the one of the things that I got
Speaker 2: asked a ton right after the season was stability, right
Speaker 2: that was a common theme kind of especially in the
Speaker 2: locker room right after the game or yeah, after the game,
Speaker 2: on exit interviews after Atlanta, and and the number one
Speaker 2: thing that I think benefits the Panthers in the long
Speaker 2: haul is going into twenty twenty five, we have a coach,
Speaker 2: a quarterback, a GM all on the same timeline. There's success.
Speaker 2: No one's in a rush or not wanting success right away,
Speaker 2: and that probably hasn't existed all if we're really being honest,
Speaker 2: all the way back to about twenty sixteen, because we
Speaker 2: had Cam injuries we had ownership change, we had coaches.
Speaker 2: You know, Cam got hurt again, we had a coach fired,
Speaker 2: a GM fire. There was a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Quarterbacks didn't work out. There was a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: going on where there was different people on different timelines
Speaker 2: and quarterback needs to win this year, but the team
Speaker 2: isn't ready to win yet, so then the quarterback. We
Speaker 2: could go any one of these and the timeline is off.
Speaker 2: There is such tremendous value in everybody being on the
Speaker 2: same page, the same timeline and growing together. So my
Speaker 2: guess is, instead of me fighting you, it's how do
Speaker 2: we take the next step together? How do we take
Speaker 2: the next step together, versus Hey, I got to win
Speaker 2: this year and the guy you're working with is like,
Speaker 2: let's build for the future. Like that's I mean, that's
Speaker 2: really tough. And that's where I think you see a
Speaker 2: lot of issues around the league and no one's immune
Speaker 2: from it. We look at Kansas City and Philly and go, oh,
Speaker 2: they've got it all put together. Well, seven years ago
Speaker 2: Philly looked in disarray. Yeah, you know, Kansas City ten
Speaker 2: years ago looked We're seeing the result of some of
Speaker 2: these sort of intentional steps and that's what everyone's trying
Speaker 2: to recreate in their own building with their own style.
Speaker 3: Speaking of intentional steps, we long ago across the thirty
Speaker 3: minute mark of the Happy Half Hour, So I would
Speaker 3: like to again thank our friends at Southern Star, an
Speaker 3: official bourbon partner of the Carolina Panthers, celebrate the spirit
Speaker 3: of the Carolinas and the second half hour of the
Speaker 3: Happy Half Hour this week, which I knew was gonna
Speaker 3: happen when I invited you into this studio, JJ Jansen,
Speaker 3: So wanted to ask you a couple of quick things
Speaker 3: before we get out of here, because we do each
Speaker 3: have other things to do today, believe it or not,
Speaker 3: And I just a little peak behind the curtain. JJ
Speaker 3: and I do this weekly around the coffee machine. Yes,
Speaker 3: this is a normal type of thing. And the conversation
Speaker 3: starts when when he came into our dojo, I was like,
Speaker 3: I've got one question I want to ask JJ, and
Speaker 3: then we're going to see where it goes. So we
Speaker 3: did that and this is the place we ended up.
Speaker 3: But wanted to ask you a couple of things, not
Speaker 3: necessarily rapid fire, but just wanted to get your thoughts
Speaker 3: on him. You mentioned earlier in the show, you are
Speaker 3: a part owner of a couple of hockey teams, now
Speaker 3: two hockey teams.
Speaker 2: Three hockey teams hockey and a baseball team.
Speaker 3: Okay three, which are the three hockey teams Charlotte Checkers.
Speaker 2: Charlotte Checkers is our AHL team. And then we own
Speaker 2: two EHL teams, the Savannah Ghost Pirates. They are the
Speaker 2: EHL team also for the Florida Anthers. So double A
Speaker 2: Hockey ECHL, Savannah Ghost Pirates, AHL, Triple A Hockey Charlotte
Speaker 2: Checkers both feed into the Florida Panthers. We won the
Speaker 2: Stanley Cup last year. And now the third team is
Speaker 2: an expansion franchise which only recently existed. I almost wore
Speaker 2: my sweatshirt today and I wish I had now the
Speaker 2: Greensboro Gargoyles, And so that will be an EHL team.
Speaker 2: We will be affiliated. We don't yet know who that
Speaker 2: affiliation will be. With affiliation in hockey matters for a
Speaker 2: variety of reasons, but obviously players coaches. It's minor league hockey,
Speaker 2: much like baseball. We're a little bit different in the
Speaker 2: football world. Our minor league guy, so to speak, are
Speaker 2: practice squad. They're here with US. But in the hockey world,
Speaker 2: much like the baseball world, so much of that sport
Speaker 2: is geared around playing that those guys are moving up
Speaker 2: and down to stay ready for the big club.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, as a hockey owner, who is JJ Jansen's
Speaker 3: favorite hockey player of all time?
Speaker 2: Growing up? I was a Phoenix Coyotes fan, so I
Speaker 2: loved Keith Kachuk and Jeremy ronick I, you know, obviously everyone.
Speaker 2: You be hard pressed not to, uh, say, Wayne Gretzky
Speaker 2: and one of the other ones. Because my dad was
Speaker 2: from Philadelphia, so I always really liked Eric Lindross. But
Speaker 2: as you can tell, there's not a ton of current players.
Speaker 2: So I'm kind of getting caught at the speed on
Speaker 2: NHL hockey.
Speaker 3: Right, See those are yeah, because I mean I kind
Speaker 3: of half expected you to fake that and say, oh,
Speaker 3: Wayne Gretzky of course growing up, Yeah, but I didn't.
Speaker 3: That's an actual hockey answer. You're a person who has
Speaker 3: watched hockey before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like hockey a lot. It's probably I've always
Speaker 2: thought this, it's probably the best in persons sport to
Speaker 2: go watch the speed. Uh it's got a good flow, right,
Speaker 2: you get five six minutes of just NonStop action followed
Speaker 2: by about two minutes just sort of you know, obviously
Speaker 2: in the NHL, I don't really think that there's TV timeouts,
Speaker 2: but there's about a two minus where can kind of
Speaker 2: catch your breath, go to the bathroom before the next
Speaker 2: face off. Our kids are falling in love with Checkers games.
Speaker 2: We often the kids always ask can we go sit
Speaker 2: on the glass? So I try to pull some I
Speaker 2: pull some strings. You know a guy, I know, I
Speaker 2: know a guy. But everyone's very kind there. There's really
Speaker 2: I'd encourage anyone that's listening. Certainly I'll put in my
Speaker 2: plug for the Checkers to go to a game, go
Speaker 2: to a bunch of games, because there's not a bad
Speaker 2: seat in the house for any for anyone that's been there,
Speaker 2: been there recently. My kids have a blast. It's really
Speaker 2: a great environment. And I just think hockey in person
Speaker 2: is probably the best thing to watch it. It feels
Speaker 2: fast paced, but there, I mean, the game's out over
Speaker 2: quickly like it's it's fast pace, and you get you
Speaker 2: get twenty minutes to catch your breath, and the players
Speaker 2: need a break, and so do the fans because you're
Speaker 2: you have to be locked in otherwise you might miss them.
Speaker 3: You got young kids, uh, feel free to steal this move.
Speaker 3: Once upon a time at a checker's game, I took
Speaker 3: my kids and they're two years apart, so I think
Speaker 3: they were probably like in the six eight, nine, seven
Speaker 3: range at this point. But my son got bored and
Speaker 3: he was ready to split sure, and I said, you know,
Speaker 3: his sister wanted to hang around. She was digging it
Speaker 3: and she was like, well, he just shut up, and
Speaker 3: I finally told him, I said, listen, at the end
Speaker 3: of the third quarter, we can go okay, And that
Speaker 3: satisfied him because he was getting out early.
Speaker 2: And that's right.
Speaker 3: His sister got to see the entire game. So feel
Speaker 3: free to use that move.
Speaker 2: I will, unfortunately, already coached them up on the ad.
Speaker 2: We did a fifteen minute intermission lesson on icing and
Speaker 2: the variety of rules around fighting, which I'm still learning.
Speaker 2: Ryan Bellrose and Thomas Barbo both hockey guys, both from
Speaker 2: the from the Northeast Canada. They came to a game
Speaker 2: and I picked their brain for a while, like all right,
Speaker 2: help me understand Like what Sometimes they will drill drill
Speaker 2: a guy in the back with a cross stick and
Speaker 2: no one calls anything, and sometimes it's like a minor
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's a major, and sometimes it leads to
Speaker 2: a brawl and it's like, I don't know what is happening.
Speaker 2: And one of the guys said, think of it like football,
Speaker 2: Like sometimes they miss calls, like that thing that you
Speaker 2: saw someone didn't see. It's like, okay, well that makes
Speaker 2: a little bit more sense, but you're still there's still
Speaker 2: a lot of of the smaller details that I'm learning
Speaker 2: along the way. But it's a great game.
Speaker 3: Yep. All right.
Speaker 2: Your baseball team the gaston Ghost Peppers. Pe people know
Speaker 2: it historically as the Honey Hunters. This past season, we
Speaker 2: when we bought the team, wanted to go through a
Speaker 2: full rebrand, so for the full season we did a
Speaker 2: we were just the Gastonia Baseball Club and we had
Speaker 2: a bunch of these what if nights. So there was
Speaker 2: a bunch of random I say random that they're all
Speaker 2: were nods to Gastonian, the surrounding areas, the Arni acts.
Speaker 2: My daughter loved the Galactic dynos. There were fun names,
Speaker 2: logos we did. We sold a bunch of merchandise. I
Speaker 2: liked the Ghost Peppers. I thought the colors were cool
Speaker 2: as a it's a bright red, it's this like neon
Speaker 2: green black. I thought this will really look sharp, and
Speaker 2: but ultimately we left it up to a fan vote,
Speaker 2: so the people of Gastonia, the fans. All these names
Speaker 2: were submitted, people bought gear the whole bit, and the
Speaker 2: Ghost Peppers was the one that was selected, and I was,
Speaker 2: certainly I was. It's like whenever you're when your candidate
Speaker 2: wins and you're you're particularly excited in part because like
Speaker 2: who I voted for.
Speaker 3: When you met that makes me smarter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it almost feel like you're voting like you're it's
Speaker 2: like you guessed how many jelly beans were in the jar,
Speaker 2: even though you're just casting a vote. But Atlantic League Baseball,
Speaker 2: like I for anyone that hasn't seen it, I would
Speaker 2: equate it to like double a triple A ball. A
Speaker 2: lot of these guys are fantastic ballplayers, but maybe they're
Speaker 2: twenty seven years old and a team doesn't want to
Speaker 2: pay them to be in a affilly. There's much like
Speaker 2: any other baseball football, there's rules on minimum payments. Right,
Speaker 2: So if you've been in the big leagues for a
Speaker 2: little bit in and you're back in Double A, you
Speaker 2: still have a minimum salary that may be well in
Speaker 2: excess of what their standard Double A budget might be.
Speaker 2: So some of those guys end up in independent ball,
Speaker 2: which is what the Atlantic League is. I believe we
Speaker 2: have ten teams, and when you're in independent ball, there's
Speaker 2: still scouts. I mean, we had a Dodger scout as scouts.
Speaker 2: Many of the games I went to. Our general manager
Speaker 2: was at the same scouting events that all those teams
Speaker 2: send guys to. And we had two or three guys
Speaker 2: this year that were signed off of our roster to
Speaker 2: an affiliated team and ultimately made the big leagues. So
Speaker 2: this is really good baseball. It's just they're in they're
Speaker 2: not maybe an eighteen year old, or their minimum salaries
Speaker 2: have gone so high that teams are less likely to
Speaker 2: take a shot until you prove, like, oh, that guy
Speaker 2: is throwing ninety seven and he is getting everyone out,
Speaker 2: all right, We're willing to pay him because we've now
Speaker 2: we've seen it with our own two eyes, So it's
Speaker 2: good ball, okay.
Speaker 3: Two Gastonia Ghost Peppers related questions Number one, uh J J.
Speaker 3: Jansen's favorite spotting Gastonia.
Speaker 2: Is the ballpark I haven't gone on to a whole
Speaker 2: other a lot of places over there yet.
Speaker 3: Okay, the correct answer is Tony's ice Cream in Gastonia.
Speaker 3: Tony's ice Creamny's ice Cream Gastonia. It's an old grill,
Speaker 3: hot dogs, Hamburgers, but they make all their own ice
Speaker 3: cream right in a factory right behind the place. Oh,
Speaker 3: I'm it's super close to Sim's Legion Park over in Gastonia.
Speaker 2: I'm in. I have we talked about this?
Speaker 3: We have not talked about that.
Speaker 2: Okay. Ice cream.
Speaker 3: Tony's ice Cream is my number one recommendation, and along
Speaker 3: with Gastonia Ghost Peppers. Second half of the season, some
Speaker 3: people started calling Bryce Young the Carolina Reaper. Yeah, is
Speaker 3: that a good nickname or bad nickname for Bryce Young?
Speaker 2: And if so, why fantastic? So I started so when
Speaker 2: we did car Talk with him, right before we posted it,
Speaker 2: I think I took a picture of a like I
Speaker 2: got like a Google search Carolina Reaper, and I just
Speaker 2: posted it. And the best part was the people is
Speaker 2: like one of those if you know, you know, a
Speaker 2: bunch of people are like, oh my gosh, I know
Speaker 2: who's going to be on car Talk. And one of
Speaker 2: the beat writers, Mike Kay in the locker room the
Speaker 2: next day said that was an ugly looking ghost. Pepper,
Speaker 2: I said, you've missed it like that. That is the
Speaker 2: Carolina Reaper. I think it's a great nickname. Look, we've
Speaker 2: where we have where we have been as an organization.
Speaker 2: You were two and fifteen last year, right, so when
Speaker 2: as we were going through the season and we beat teams,
Speaker 2: coaches got fired. I mean that was going on, that
Speaker 2: was a real thing. But what makes what makes the nickname,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, awesome. Obviously you've it's it's spicy. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it'll kill you, right, which is fantastic. But Bryce
Speaker 2: has this personality, this this smirk when he's really feeling himself.
Speaker 2: In the second half the season, you could see the
Speaker 2: confidence right right after I've taken a little bit of
Speaker 2: credit for this, after kart Talk, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the visor from college came back. So we're helping, we're
Speaker 2: helping build some good vibes around here. And there's something
Speaker 2: really good about something so small and unsuspecting killing you.
Speaker 2: I think it is a perfect nickname for Bryce, and
Speaker 2: he obviously played great in the second half of the season,
Speaker 2: but there's just this Bryce shouldn't come as a surprise.
Speaker 2: He's a Heisman Trophy winners, number one overall pick. But
Speaker 2: because we struggled last year and he took a lot
Speaker 2: of he took a lot of the criticism for it,
Speaker 2: and we didn't get off to a great start either.
Speaker 2: And now all of a sudden, we went four or
Speaker 2: five games there we played well and one defensive coordinators
Speaker 2: were getting fire, quarterbacks were getting benched, like and that
Speaker 2: that's a fun spot to be in. It's all part
Speaker 2: of the process to getting you to winning the division
Speaker 2: and getting the playoffs. And and look, if you're if
Speaker 2: you're winning a bunch of games down the stretch to
Speaker 2: the point where teams are firing their coach like in
Speaker 2: some kind of weird, ominous way, that's a good thing. Like,
Speaker 2: that's that's kind of what you're gunning for. You're trying
Speaker 2: to get rid of people.
Speaker 3: All right, you're in the locker room, you're in the meetings,
Speaker 3: you're on the plane, in all the places. Have you
Speaker 3: ever heard Bryce Young tell a joke or say a
Speaker 3: funny thing?
Speaker 2: Yes, cart Talk was one of the funniest things that
Speaker 2: I've heard him say. He's got a really dry sense
Speaker 2: of humor. He likes to build jokes over time. He's
Speaker 2: not like this, I'm gonna stand and hold court and
Speaker 2: be loud. Cam did that, Greg did that. Khalil would
Speaker 2: be that way. Like he's a little bit again, he's quiet,
Speaker 2: it's a little more cunning, it's a little smug, there's
Speaker 2: a there's just some layers. It's a slow burn. But
Speaker 2: he sets you up and then all of a sudden
Speaker 2: you got hit and you're like, whoa where did that
Speaker 2: come from? And it's I mean to me, it's really
Speaker 2: really funny. And again I saw this with Cam Cam's
Speaker 2: first year with the team, like he wasn't he wasn't himself.
Speaker 2: He would but you didn't know. You're just like he
Speaker 2: feels uncomfortable. It takes a couple of years for your
Speaker 2: personality to really come out. Because again, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you hand bryce the keys to the car. He's twenty
Speaker 2: one years old. We don't play well early, and then
Speaker 2: you're expecting. I'm sure in his mind it's like, what
Speaker 2: am I supposed to say to the thirty seven year
Speaker 2: old long snapper? What am I supposed to say to
Speaker 2: the thirty two year old wide receiver? Whatever you were
Speaker 2: back then, which was you know, fourteen months ago whatever.
Speaker 2: It was, like, how am I supposed to lead then?
Speaker 2: And you need a little success and you need to
Speaker 2: be able to build relationships, and that happened. That takes time.
Speaker 2: Like no people can say, oh, OTA's you know that's
Speaker 2: gonna help us. The nine weeks are good, not so
Speaker 2: much for the football, but just like beginning to get
Speaker 2: to know people, what makes people tick, and you gotta
Speaker 2: build relationships and usually you got to go through hard
Speaker 2: times in order for those relationships to really kind of
Speaker 2: dig deep. So we've done a little bit of that.
Speaker 2: We've come back out the other side.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't want to go and crown us any anything,
Speaker 2: but but you feel like the trajectory is one that
Speaker 2: something we can kind of just keep on building into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: Things are good. Things are good. This did not disappoint.
Speaker 3: I walked in here with zero expectations in one question
Speaker 3: and here we are almost one hour later. Thanks very
Speaker 3: much to America's long snapper, the host of Kart Talk
Speaker 3: and all the content here at Panthers dot com, JJ Janssen.
Speaker 3: We appreciate it. We'll see y'all next week on the
Speaker 3: happy half hour and I don't know how we're gonna
Speaker 3: top this.
Speaker 2: Se y'all, thank you,