Monday Mailbag: Best second sports for NFL players, the meaning of 'scheme,' BYO team brain trust, and more
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2025
⏱️ 54 minutes
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Summary
Ever wonder what would be the most beneficial second sport for a future NFL player to play on their way to the league? Ever think about how you'd build your own team brain trust if you couldn't poach anyone currently in the job? Ever consider which current coach could've gotten the most out of Jay Cutler? Good news, this edition of the TAFS mailbag is for you! Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen answer each of those questions, and a whole bunch more.
Hosts: Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen
With: Michael Beller
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Producer: Michael Beller
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. |
| 0:04.7 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:05.6 | It's Mailbag Monday. |
| 0:06.8 | As always, sincerely appreciate all of you guys who sent in questions. |
| 0:10.8 | They were great. |
| 0:11.5 | We always have more of them than we could possibly get to. |
| 0:14.2 | Michael Beller is back to help us read these questions today. |
| 0:17.7 | So let's get to today's Malbag with me, Michael Beller and Derek Klausen right now. |
| 0:27.7 | All right. Digging into another mail bag Monday, always enjoy doing these. Excited to dig into it. |
| 0:35.5 | Beller, glad you're back doing this with us. I know you're here doing it last week, but it's nice to have a little bit of help with these. We got another great batch of questions, and I'm very excited to dig into them. Let's get to it. All right, let's get to it, you guys. John Russell with the first question here. John says during the draft process, we heard a lot about Tetaroa McMillan being a former basketball and volleyball player. The volleyball part piqued my interest as I couldn't recall a wide receiver prospect that was a former volleyball player. I'll pause here. Alec Pierce, shout out Alec Pierce. What's up? And also Mike Gisicki was an incredible volleyball player when he was young. Interesting. That actually tracks with how he plays too. That's a good one. It's built a volleyball team out of NFL players. Skill set-wise, it made sense for the type of receiver that McMillan is. And this got me thinking about draft prospects and are multi-sport athletes at some point leading up to the NFL. What second sport do you think boosts a draft prospect's evaluation the most by position or position archetype? John threw in some of his thoughts for an X wide receiver. He's thinking basketball, volleyball, a slot receiver, lacrosse, DB, soccer, offensive line, wrestling, interior defensive line, track and field, most likely shot put. So those are some of John's thoughts. Robert, why do you get us off, started off with some of your thoughts on this one? |
| 1:45.3 | I like a lot of these. |
| 1:43.5 | I think that lacrosse for slot receiver is perfect. Also, a lot of white guys playing slot receivers. So I assume there's a little bit of a crossover there. The second thing I'll say, the volleyball part of this, one of the reasons I know that my Kisiki was a volleyball player. indoor volleyball is like my favorite sport to watch. |
| 2:01.4 | I don't know if I've ever made this point public on the podcast before |
| 2:06.7 | indoor volleyball rules and so my best friend was a I don't if he was an all-American but he was |
| 2:13.5 | certainly like first team all-state and like went to college on a scholarship to play volleyball |
| 2:17.6 | and won a national championship at Penn State. And so I watched a ton of high school volleyball |
| 2:22.4 | at a high level when I was younger. And it was not long after they changed to rally scoring, |
| 2:27.3 | which completely like changed the way that volleyball feels and works. And so I have a lot of respect |
| 2:32.4 | for volleyball players because to me it is still like my favorite |
| 2:34.9 | spectator sport because of how fast paced it is. |
| 2:37.5 | It's absolutely incredible. |
| 2:38.7 | The one I feel most strong about here, I think all of the other ones that John said are |
... |
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