This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

Really great show for you guys today.

Nate Tyson is going to be joining us a little bit later. We're going to talk about some of the Russell Wilson rumors, some of the proposed rule changes that came up today from the Bills and the Ravens. A lot of fun stuff that we got to. Before we do that, though, I am absolutely thrilled to welcome ESPN, Monday Night Football Analyst, and for our purposes here, a former pro-personnel director in the NFL at two different organizations, Lewis Riddick. Lewis, how are, man? I'm good. I'm good. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So when I was thinking about the ways I wanted to talk about free agency this year, I wanted to try to hit it from as many different angles as possible. It's kind of the benefit of doing three podcasts a week when there aren't any games going on. And one of the things I really wanted to get into was the way that it looks from the team side. Because even as somebody who covers the league, I just don't think I know as much about it as I should. And I'm sure most general fans don't. And you're in a unique position to talk about it just because the roles you filled in front offices over the years.

So I just kind of wanted to take people through what that process is.

When you're a team looking at the landscape and free agency, the players you want to chase, all of that. How do you build the plan?

So let's just go back, just if we're doing this hypothetically.

So for the 2021 class of players, the guys that are about to hit free agency here in a

couple weeks, when do you start putting together a list of guys, potential targets,

all of that?

I think, you know, as a pro personnel scouting department,

you're compiling all that information.

And you're basically, you're building your report base on that coming years,

free agent class all the way back in in the summertime, basically.

It's almost the same as college in the sense that, look, you know as soon as,

as soon as this free agency period, more or less after the draft is for all intents and purposes over,

and you're moving on to the

2021 season. You're already thinking way ahead to the next crop of free agents coming available

the next year, which would be 2022. So let's just go back to last year. As you start heading

into training camp in a typical offseason, I mean, obviously last year, a lot of things were

thrown into disarray.

You're already starting to prepare during the season to look at as a general manager

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