John, how do you bridge the gap here between your old job and your new job?

Yes.

So my old job was running around and hanging people first for Penn State, then for the

Ravens.

John Urschel spent years on the offensive line of the Baltimore Ravens and his post-football

life is almost nothing like that of his peers.

And my current job is junior fellow for Harvard doing lots of math, trying to solve

really hard math problems and occasionally running into a paper cut here or there.

John completed his PhD in mathematics at MIT last year.

And so we asked him about another really hard math problem, the culture war running through

his old sport.

Well, when you watch football now and announcers are complaining about analytics and coaches

are making decisions that are bringing great backlash to them for daring to indulge in

the practice, the dark art of mathematics.

What do you think when you hear that stuff?

I think it's a work in progress.

There's a lot of things going on.

Analysis of football from a quantitative point of view often comes from someone who has

never played football in their lives and to be able to trust that person and understand

what they're saying and to be able to use that, it takes a lot of communication, it takes

a lot of trust and it takes a lot of understanding.

It's not always the easiest thing to do and it can often take time to build that sort of

...