This is the Athletic Football Show.

Welcome everybody to Season 2, Episode 34 of the Football GM podcast right here on the Athletic Football Show every

Saturday, not only during the NFL season, but during the real fun NFL season, which is

the off season where we're at right now, a couple weeks before the draft. I am Mike Sandoz,

senior writer for the athletic, along with the general manager. Good morning, Mr. Randy Mueller.

Michael, how are you doing, buddy? I'm doing well. I guess it's afternoon, whatever. It doesn't

matter. The team guys probably have no idea. They've been in a dark room probably for the last

week or two. What, before we get into, we're going to rank Randy's running backs and tight ends

in the draft today. We're going to hit some other news and notes around the league, including the latest on the lawsuit with Brian Flores and the situation with the audio that came out of Mike Malarkey through the Titans process. We'll get to that. But Randy, you've been in the, what, 35 years in the league. So this time here, a couple weeks before the draft, what's everybody been doing? And I know we got pro days. We got what? What happens? Yeah, I think right now the pro days are starting to wind down a little bit. There are some teams that haven't got all the input of the pro days and daily of their coaching staff, either quite yet. I don't think, I think you've got to guard a little bit now against having too much time on your hands because you don't want to have a bunch of cards all of a sudden start moving rows and moving around on your

draft board. That was always something that I was deathly against. We're not going to start moving

people around all over the place now because one opinion got changed or one coach saw this,

but you have to guard against that because sometimes the loudest voice in the room

thinks they're right all the time. And that comes up probably between now and the draft more

than any other time because everybody's in a little bit of a panic, right? They like their

guys. They want to get their guys up. And I used to work for a group that one of their

instructive values was it, and you tell me if you agree with

this, Mike, I'm trying to get the verbiage right. They said, it's your fault if you don't get your

guys drafted. Wow. And that never made sense to me. It actually made the hair stand up on the back of my head because it's never about your scout or your area or anybody getting their guys drafted. That's the epitome of the opposite of what I wanted to do. And that used to fry me when I would hear that. I want to get it right. And usually the truth is in the middle. So I want to build consensus and hear everybody's point of view. I don't want a particular scout in an area that speaks the loudest, all of a sudden get all his guys drafted. That's not in at all. He wants all the Western region guys to get going. You're like, no, no, what if the guy from Southwest Texas State is better. We want him, right? That's exactly right.

And that should be our goal.

But it just goes to show how many different philosophies are at work around the league.

Everybody sees the drafting process slightly different.

And sometimes the differences are extreme.

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