We are back with the Falcons audible presented by AT&T. We're back with a full house to this week We got DJ Shockley back in the house Dave Archer and I am Derek Rackley before we get started on what we've got I wanted to make sure that we threw it out We got to throw it out there that DJ starts a new job this year He starts covering big events throughout the season first We talk about on our podcast that he goes to Houston as the the correspondent covering the Atlanta Braves What happens the Braves win the World Series? Yeah, then they send them to Indianapolis. Yeah, his beloved alma mater Yeah, the Georgia Bulldogs come home with a national championship So so first of all congratulations. Thank you, right? The former Georgia Bulldog. I know you've got a bit you had to been flying high Oh, man, it's been it's been fun in the last few days. I ain't gonna lie Obviously having one one forty one years Dog Nation is beside their stuff and I am too man. It was fun to be there a lot of excited people and Appreciate you guys Elephant in the room here, so the Braves won a World Series talk to me Georgia won the national championship and Falcons fans are watching They're saying where's Alex? What's up? Yeah? They say they say good things happen in three Okay, so we just got away till the 2022 season Hawks went to the what Easter Cubs finals, so Things are looking up in the Atlanta area everybody So anyway, congratulations Georgia Bulldogs. Let's get into Atlanta Falcons. First of all, here's what we're gonna cover There's a quick reactions Not necessarily for the game last weekend We're gonna get the guys quick take on what they felt this season kind of shaped up to be We're gonna talk about the things that we liked and the areas that need to be improved for next year as we've obviously Got a lot of time to talk about how this organization is gonna evolve and how this roster is gonna end up changing We'll talk a little bit about free agency in the NFL draft and then I'm gonna have the guys and even myself We're gonna give our favorite Falcons memory from the 2021 season because there was a lot of good memories There was obviously some times some sometimes that people want to forget When you have a seven and ten season that happens, but we're gonna talk about the positives from this one So guys, let's go ahead and start us off quick reaction today is Combined the two the new general manager and the head coach DJ I'm gonna start with you. How would you grade or rate their first season in charge of the Atlanta Falcons? You know what? I'm gonna give them a C grade because This season was up and down Obviously, I think with coming into this organization. We all knew there was gonna have to make some big moves They're gonna be some big names that left there were gonna be a lot of changes and to come into This organization into year one and try to establish Your particular identity or culture was going to be hard was gonna be tough coming off the season Hey, it was gonna be tough But I think this team continued to show signs throughout the year that gives you much much room for improvement But also gives you some excitement because of the guys that at helm and I think you know, we all heard both guys talk you know was yesterday or so and You feel good about The progression of where this pro where this organization is going because of those two guys at the top And obviously everybody expects things to happen really fast in year one and it's tough to do that But I think this organization is in good hands with both guys that are at the top All right, so DJs middle of the road arch where you got for your grade. I think I'm gonna go be minus I thought that there was a lot of things that this team did That they didn't have it from an asset standpoint. We know about Calvin Ridley not being here That's that's got to be a major thing you count and it can't count against the coach or the general manager Don't foresee that. Correct. How about the addition of some of the bodies you added? Anthony rush Mike Pennell guys you added in that interior of the defense that I thought made them competitive The ability to dodge around the injuries Isaiah Oliver goes down who who had rounded himself into a really pretty good nickel You lose him and now you're playing two rookies three rookies sometimes at that position So I thought dean peas did a nice job on the staff I thought Arthur was growing into what he wanted to be as a as a play caller here But also as the overall seer of the team. This is his first time to be a head coach So I thought there was a lot of dancing around there And I thought that terry and his staff did a really good job of adding some of those bodies we talked about So I think if you combine maybe some of the shortcomings and mistakes they made during the games To how to close a game out all those kind of things the learning process And then adding some of the bodies and the development of players in the off season Or during during the season in the weeks they didn't play I thought that when you add that together b minus seven wins Do what you doubled your win total from a year ago. So I think that's a promising sign as you move forward Yeah, Dave. I'll be quick here. I'm going to piggyback on that one. I think b minus as well I think the positives that come out of this one Is you get some really good performances by guys that were kind of thrust into the spotlight Russell gage played really well this year obviously without having calvin rindley that true number one threat In the national football league on the outside We got a chance to see what kyle pits can do first year in the nfl number four overall pick He gets selected to go to the pro bowl I think we also saw how good foyer luke and can be in that linebacking crew the tackling machine a leader Of that group of the entire defense and him getting his hands on the football So I think there's some positives Obviously the negatives are and we'll get into it a little bit more lines of scrimmage about to be better I think a running game needs to be more consistent. Um, and then Finding whoever is going to be hopefully it ends up being calvin rindley But that number one option in the receiving game take pressure off kyle pits Give the defense something that they have to consider Something they have to respect in the passing game and not focus all their attention at the line of scrimmage So we've kind of given that c b minus area there for the grade for arthur smith and terry font No, so Dave, let me go right back to you Let's talk about the areas I mentioned some of the areas that were positive expand a little bit more on some of the good things that you saw that the Atlanta falcons can build on doesn't necessarily have to be an individual performance But it can be but areas that you feel like this organization can use as a building block for years to come Yeah, I think there's a couple of lynch pin things that to me stick out number one You heard arthur smith talk about it throughout the year. This is a 60 minute team It's not a team that gets down and all of a sudden it's over with now They had a couple games got away from them, but it wasn't because guys weren't competing Now if you upgrade some talent in places here and there and you still have that mentality What does that do is that all of a sudden are you a seven 10 and 17? Are you an 11 and 16? So that can translate to wins, but you have to have that culture You hear the word culture all the time our cultures were coming to work every day And then on sat on sunday we apply that and that means we play for 60 minutes I think that carries over that's a culturally changed scenario that they made happen arthur smith and his staff And I think when you begin to think about what the defense was or wasn't there were a lot of shortcomings You couldn't get off the field on third down. You had a tough time against the run the last couple weeks But what you did do is you took the ball away. They had 12 consecutive games where they took the football away That's a carryover. That's a mentality on the defensive side of the football That's a couple of guys things that jump out to me immediately That are things. Oh, I can that's something weird. That's who we're going to be as you move forward Yeah competing for 60 minutes taking the football away those all those things translate Into victories no matter who the personnel is dj. What are some of the positives you take away from this season? They can build on I think that culture is a big one because obviously When you bring a new staff in here, you want to establish that culture right away And I think the standard and style of play that this team You know start to show late the year is something huge It's something that you can build on going into the offseason going into the next season because I mean you look around the league and we're not going to name certain teams But you look and you don't know what the standard is or what the culture There are a lot of things that's going on with the organization that you say I can't hang my hat on I don't want to go to a place like that when you see Atlanta play You understand exactly who they are, you know exactly how they're going to play and I love that part I love the growth of this team as well I mean ours just talked about some of the things that happened defensively And you think about where this defense was at the beginning of the season to where it kind of got to towards End of the season where you're talking about being able to do multiple things on the defensive side of the ball To take the football away to to confuse quarterbacks a little bit some on the defense side of ball now Obviously, there's always things you can work on but when you see The growth of what dmps was able to call and then you look at some of the young talent that started to play This season on the defense side of ball There's nothing like the in game reps that these guys can learn from a richie grant getting a chance to play In meaningful minutes in a ball game will bowl well for you going into next season We saw Sean Williams come here in the last couple ball games from that safety spot and Was what second leading tackle last ball game that stuff you can build on guys on the practice squad Yeah, Terry and his crew when it found him He wasn't playing found him off the street and brought him in brought him on the practice squad for a couple weeks And then you know, obviously got a chance to play those are things that you can build on within the organization You're talking about some of those big guys up front. You had to go find those guys You had to mold them from the practice squad all the way till they got their moment to play And those are things that I think you absolutely can build on as you get into the offseason say, all right Up top they do have an eye for the style and wish of guys that they want on this team And it's going to take a little bit of time people want it right away Of course to understand that but it's going to take Time for you to establish those type of players and how they fit into your system So I love the growth and like art mentioned the style in which play that these guys play with all year I don't want to digress to our last topic But dj you mentioned terry and you guys talked about some of the new faces that that were thrust into the lineup And again without going backwards I wonder how much of a challenge it was for terry font known as first season as a general manager Having to deal with the fluidity of a roster through this covet mess, right? But not only that like how much better does that make him as a personnel evaluator And somebody that has to juggle moving forward And I would you could probably say that for all 32 with general managers across the league and all the guys that work in personnel How much better they had to become at their job? Because at any given day you had to put a guy on the covet list and bring somebody up from the practice squad And then figure out how you're going to try to compete and win a football game had to have been a challenge But everybody in the NFL is having to work through it This episode in part brought to you by the home depot Everything you need for your next home improvement project is just a tap away on the home depot app The home depot app digital toolbox gives you access to how-to guides project calculators and image search So you'll know exactly what you need to pick up with the tap of the finger You can rent and reserve the right tools for the job Also browse through millions of items from top brands that you can have delivered right to your door Whatever your project find exactly what you need with the home depot app download the home depot app today All right, so let's switch gears dj. I'm going to come right back to you One or two I'm putting a limit on this one or two things that you think have to drastically improve For atlanta to turn that record around next year and get into the post season because that's what it's all about You can sit here and talk about culture You can talk about the good things all you want at the end of the day What is arthur blank want his team in the post season and competing for the championship? So one or two areas where they need to do to get themselves in the post season next year I'm going to focus on one key area and it's something that Obviously we've talked about fans that talked about We got to have a dominant pass rusher We have to have somebody who can change the launch point or could change The outcome of a ball game with the way they get to the quarterback. I mean you look around the league A tj y the miles garrick nick bolster robert quinn we've seen a lot of these guys this season And we know the impact of what that guy can do for you in a ball game when they know it's stirred down Or you need somebody to put pressure on the quarterback We just haven't had the The semblance of a guy who can do that down in and down out I think that's one of the the staples that be really good defense Is that front part of your defense up top being able to get pressure on the quarterback We got a guy in the middle We know it's going to show up every ball game in grady jerry and push the middle We need somebody on the outside as well who can put that same fear And when you have a game plan say this dude cannot beat us and that's the number one thing I think you're coming to it for a quarterback standpoint That's what we look at because we absolutely want to know Where's that guy lining up? He's on my back side and can he's in the front? Where's the line? Is he going to redirect my protection?  So I think having a pass rusher a number one. I think is The the the first step I believe into uh establishing what we want is a dominant defense Correct me if I'm wrong guys one season with vick beasley and then before that john abraham as far as Consistent pass rusher. Yeah, and I wouldn't even say beasley was a consistent pass rusher He had 15 and a half sacks six came in two games So i'm not even sure you got a consistent that was in the 16 season And by the way you were scoring 35 points a game in that season And so he was rushing the pass or the entire game. There was no defending the run So probably your purest pass rusher you've had is john abraham and that's been a long time ago Okay, dave your turn now. Um, what is the area or two that you feel like needs to improve the most? Well shock hit the number one So i'll jump to maybe one a and that would be the offensive line You've got to find a way to secure the offensive line and I mean the interior offensive line I think jake matthews is still serviceable and is solid at left tackle McGarry might be a little bit more of a question on the right side And i'm trying to name anybody out, but there's there's certainly going to evaluate I think you have to be stouter on the interior That translates to giving ryan the ability to climb in the pocket which he was not able to when you watch and you go Back to just the last game when he has the ability to climb in the pocket and or set his feet and shuffle forward He's as good as anybody in the league. We saw throws all over the field fade routes We saw corner routes over deep over routes But if he has to retreat like moch quarterbacks He's going to have a problem completing passes and or getting the ball down the field So I think offensive line for me Is one a to what shocks is maybe number one was I don't think it's any question Lines lines of the scrimmage on both sides have to improve. Yeah, I can't disagree with you guys to me That's that's the most glaring issue that has to improve and and I could throw in there Yes, that you've got to have a calvin ridley somebody comparable somebody in the opposite side Whatever you want to call it, but at the end of the day if the offensive line Offensively is not fixed. It doesn't really matter who you have out there And it's all the people and look and I don't say all the people because you know, I run around In in circles and guys that will be falcons fans and they'll say, oh, we got to have a new quarterback Matt Ryan, he just can't do it anymore And I and I have to stop and I'm saying Matt Ryan is not the problem and I actually want to pat him on the back the way that he managed this year I know he was frustrated. Yeah, he very rarely ever showed it on his face And for a guy that knows that he can sit back there and pick a defense apart and not have the chance to do it I can't imagine how frustrating that is for him But I thought that he handled it Magnificently this year as far as the mental side of it, right? What did he do just kept going out there and competing like you talked about for 60 minutes every single time So we talked about the lines of scrimmage defense pass rush offense got to give him time to throw Let's spin it forward now Let's talk about free agency because there are some guys that had some good seasons this year who has a Expiring contract. So Dave, I'm going to come back to you two or three guys And and you can just you can kind of expand as much as you want that you feel like need to be a priority They need to be in a falcons uniform next year. Yeah one number one is foyer lukin You touched on him earlier foyer lukin led the national football league and tackles 192 tackles. I think you got to go back to 2000 when you find a backer that or someone had that many tackles in one season He nudged out the guy that's kind of been the Title holder for a long time bobby wagner who's been a great linebacker for seattle So foyer lukin led the league and tackles and it's not just what foyer did sideline to sideline Oh, by the way, he had three interceptions and two sacks are sprinkling there as well But he is the play caller. He had taken over the headset He's the guy calling all the plays then why not a guy from yale. You're going to hand him the reins of that But his digestion of what dean peas is looking for His ability to adjust the front. Maybe even some of the guys behind him get guys set up I think there's a huge value attached to foyer lukin Now I don't know what that price tag is. You just led the league in tackles and get in and foyer I hope foyer gets anything he can everything he can but let's hope it is in a in a lana falcon uniform And number two for me and this might surprise you guys I'm going young way coup here number two. No, it doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah Well, you're a special teams guy, you know the value of that. How many games do we win? Just simply because of that unit itself in this league And how many did he win for us this year by coming in and kicking a field go at the end So young way coup who I think is as good as anybody in the league maybe the best in the league right now He has got to be a priority to get him signed and bring him back And I believe he's a restricted free agent which means they have to put a specified tender on him Which means that let's say they put a first round tender on him A team's going to have to give up a first round pick if they want to sign him If I feel like you're you're kind of skating on thin ice you put a second round tender on him and then somebody decides Hey, this guy's really good. We'll give it up to get young way coup. So that might be the decision I like that pick though. Dave. All right, uh, dj same question here You got some other options from free agents. Who do you feel like's got to be back next year? I mean before I say mine, I love the coup call. That is a that is a monster You know, I think guy who was so dependable consistent for you all year long And you you just felt good about when coup came on a free regardless of how long was so I love that part of it I think the guy who everybody, you know When you came into the season, you wasn't sure who he's gonna be what he's gonna be I think cp is that guy who obviously If it wasn't for him Not sure how much offense you will be able to create and we saw a week in and week out We saw when he missed, you know a ball game just how valuable he was to this ball club and Obviously cordial Patterson showed the many talents of what he is about and what he can do in this style of system and give Arthur Smith And give David grown them a lot of credit David grown was trying to get this kid for a long time On his team and the fact that they found ways to use him and be creative and you know Just find ways that to make him a valuable asset to this offense I think what was critical and obviously you're gonna go into the drive into the free agency You're gonna find other playmakers around on this offense to help this offense become You know what you want it to be But he is the guy that absolutely is a chess piece Regardless of who you have on the team who if you have a number one receiver you have a number one back whatever it is This guy has shown the ability to be a game changer then now You find those other pieces and you move them back to a place where he's really comfortable more full-time Returning kick so like I said, even though eight Williams did a nice job This is a guy that absolutely adds value to your team and as it did a lot of different spots on the offensive side And he's already he's already spoken out saying that he wants to be in Atlanta and Carried the sign It's one thing to just say it but another thing to have a sign that says I want to be back here And then walking to locker room with so you don't go seen it when he walked in, you know Oh, cuz now somebody just gave it to me. I agree with you guys. Hopefully that price tag works out for both Let me ask you guys this then. Okay. How much do you think it helps the fact that this is just us as fans now chopping it up He wasn't as effective late in the year the last five games of the season Maybe even the last six games of season. He averaged about 13 14 touches a game and only about 50 yards I think he only scored two touchdowns in the last six games Now that didn't bode well for us as a team because you need him to make more plays but Him being 31 32 years old out in the marketplace and this is the only place that's really been able to unlock the cheat codes on him How much does he factor that in? In your mind and how much does the rest of the league look? Well, that's an older player and they kind of did some stuff with him that we don't necessarily think we can do And we didn't see a lot of production late in the year How much is that all you kind of wrap your arms around that as a falcon fan say wait a minute We can keep him here and it won't cost us over the over the time.  Well, then why do you want him back? Right, right? But maybe if you don't have to use him as one of your top receiving threats your best rushing threat You can now sprinkle him in some more put him in the backfield a couple of times Let him run routes Let him return kicks like he did early on in his career And then maybe you get more full speed 18 weeks out of him 17 games, of course But again, this goes back to the business aspect dj that the price tag on both sides has to work out No doubt and that's a big part of it because obviously these are I mean you mentioned the guy's 31 32 He you know probably had his best career You know stat wise that he's ever had and he feels as though He still got a lot more to do. I mean you think about over the years He's been the you know sprinkle here and there guy So this was his real like full season of being like the guy So in his mind if he goes to the table he says look I'm 31 32, but my body still says hey, I'm 27 I'm 28 because I haven't had the usage like I had this year So there's a lot to look at from both sides But I just know the value of what we saw this season and obviously as the the year progressed like arts mentioned It wasn't what it was for a full season But I mean how many guys can do it for a full season like that? So I would love to see, you know cp back here. Okay, uh switching gears slightly here Because once it was determined that the falcons and all the other teams for that matter Not making the postseason they were able to go ahead and slot where teams are going to be in the draft So found out the Atlanta falcons have the eighth pick I'm not going to sit here and ask you guys who the falcons need to pick My question is this for you arch You talked about offensive line or you could go defensive line lines of scrimmage Do you like Atlanta dressing it in the draft? Do you like trying to find somebody that's going to get their first contract that's already established in the nfl To fix some of these needs. I think if you're looking at attacking the defensive line You're not going to necessarily. I don't know that you're necessarily going to be in a financial situation To get an a-list pass rusher someone that's that's you know, khalil mack Who is potentially going to be available from chicago? I think he's due somewhere around 18 million dollars 20 million dollars in chicago That he may be a cap casualty for them and now you've got a guy. He didn't play very much this year I think you've only played seven games for chicago. Can you get an a-lister like that? That's been an a-lister or do you have the fear that maybe we've we've seen that before I I tend to think that if you're going to go defensive line, it's in the draft There's a couple of really good players at the top this defensive line. It's pretty loaded defensive line wise Whether it's an interior guy or an edge guy, but we're looking kind of edge guy There's a couple guys that come to mind. We won't talk about them yet. We'll have that's a that's a segment for later on But that's where I would go there offensive line I think you could maybe attack the offensive line in free agency and maybe that b-lister That's a solid player that could come in and play From a free agency standpoint would maybe a plug-and-play guy there. So that's the way I would attack it Yeah, I mean the biggest price tag offensively is generally that left tackle position and you're right Maybe that's not the area that but you could potentially steal a guard or a center somewhere in free agency that helps the team That's that's salary cap friendly if you will but improves and this guy has already proven himself through years In the nfl same question dj. I mean does anybody stick out to you that you'd like the reason why I kind of hate talking about guys right now is it's so early in the draft process You could say oh my gosh cave on tibido from oregon. He's going to be the answer It's like there's a lot of time to go in this draft process But how do you think Atlanta needs to address it? I think similar to to what arch mentioned because they Upfront to have a guy like clean Nelson just come in and plug and play You don't see that happen too often and that's why he's talked about is one of the best To to to do it when it came out of college So I I'm alone the same lines as arches There are plenty of guys that have plenty of experience around the national football league that can come in here and play The style in which Arthur Smith wants especially from the interior of the offensive line That can add value to your offensive line right away and when you go in the draft Yeah, you know, you know some of those guys have played a lot of football In college But you never know how they're going to fit when they come into your system into your organization And try to plug them in right away and say all right come be this this destroyer in the only inside So I love the fact that you have the opportunity in free agency to go out and find these guys that they may fit That you know that's played in your system already that can come in and add that value right away So I love the free agency part for the for the offensive line Yeah, and the hope is that we'll have plenty more of these discussions talking about personnel as we work our way through the uh The off season and hopefully maybe we can kind of narrow things down a little bit And then obviously once you get into march and april the organization's going to help make that decision Terry font no did say in the pro season presser That their approach to the draft is still best player available I'm not saying they're going to take another tight end at number eight Or a wide receiver But you'll love the depth on the offensive and defensive lines. I think that's foremost in his mind. So Keep that in mind best player available That might be interesting at number eight Now I've always wanted to be like a bug on the wall in the draft room And when you need help on the lines of scrimmage, I'm always like well when the best player available To you does it end up being a defensive end? Or an offensive tackle? I mean it's best player player available to you Again long ways to go down that process. All right last topic guys Let's go ahead and wrap this up. I want Dave. I'll start with you Favorite moment of this season for the atlanta falcons could be a play It could be a sequence of plays a game. What was your favorite moment this year? I think the thing that stuck out to me is as I love beating the saints I had the ability to beat the saints a few times when I was playing and to beat them in their building Was a big moment. I thought that it was a game where atlanta Somewhat controlled the game and then all of a sudden norland storm back the crowds going bonkers down in the super dome And ryan finds cordial paterson down the sideline on a huge play that sets up the game winner for young waco I thought for me there was a there were a number of moments like that We had a few plays elsewhere and I'll let you guys jump into some of those But for me, I love beating the saints and nothing feels better than to beat the saints in their building And that was the moment that kind of stuck out for me when all of a sudden you said well There anybody can play with paterson. They just can't cover it. It's always a good moment And I know you talked about hopefully trying to spoil it for the saints this past weekend Not able to do it. DJ your turn. I'm gonna go with a guy who had a memorable moment For his career and some that uh, you know, I know he won't ever forget it But how about uh, michael walkers pick six versus cam. Yeah, I mean that was a pretty cool moment And after the game you hear him talk about how he looked up to cam and you know He just enjoyed playing against him and then he gets a pick six and goes all the way to the house with it And I mean it was a big moment in the game too.  I mean, it's just this is this is the guy and now I get to share a room What I mean, those are things that people forget like, you know, these guys are human too They they they have guys that they look up to and uh to have that moment I thought was pretty cool and to see him talk about it and gleam about the other ball game It's pretty cool. Yeah, and the bonus that that week remember his son was born that week So he took his ball took the ball home. Here's the game ball to his kid. I mean They son was born. What a phenomenal week for michael walker. That's a good one shock Yeah, very good. Well, you know, I'll finish it off by saying not necessarily a specific play But I'm gonna say it was the hello NFL from kyle pits in back to back weeks Plays against the jets has a nine for 119 yard performance And they backs it up the next week against the dolphins for seven 163 in that game and it's early in the season and so often Think about the pressure right the pressure that gets placed on that kid's shoulder Highest drafted tight end ever comes into this organization and then he's got to be the savior And early on sometimes it takes guys like until the end of the year for like the light bulb to come off and like Oh, this is how you play. Oh, this is how I kind of go back to my college days This is early in the season and kyle pits and and you know, he's Calm cool collect doesn't say a whole lot. He basically just said hello NFL. What you got? I'm here not to mention the fact that probably helped him get voted into the pro bow As everybody around the NFL said this dude is legit and they got a they're going to find ways to get the football in his hand So really looking forward to seeing what his future looks like in the black and red and what he can do Is his career progresses now that's going to go ahead and wrap it up We enjoyed the heck out of being here with you guys. I enjoyed the heck out of being here with you two Talking a little falcons talking a little NFC south and of course some issues and some happenings around the national football league Our hope is that we will be back on occasion to talk about the senior bowl to talk about the draft the free agency And how this off season shapes up For this organization, but again, that's not really up to us three We'll leave that up to the powers that be but hopefully this content was good enough So I keep uh, oh my bad nudging them keep nudging them that you want some more Uh, once again, i'm derrick wrackley joined by dav archer and dj shockley. Thanks so much for joining us guys Enjoyed it appreciate your rack. Appreciate it. I'd ask you what you're going to do in the off season But I think we're almost out of time DJ hopefully your travels are allowed you to stay around with your family a little bit more and well Manchester united just called They want him to be a part of their party. They're going to try to win a champion Exactly So dj will be traveling the world trying to help teams win championships while me and arch Hopefully end up meeting up on a celebrity golf course somewhere around the atlanta area Thanks so much for joining us once again, of course on alana falcons dot com on youtube spotify itunes Oh, however, we get you podcasts. We thank you so much for joining us all season long and like I said We hope to be back real soon. Thanks so much for joining us right here on the falcons audible presented by atn t


Hey, Jonathan from AJ & Smart here, and this is the ultimate step-by-step guide to running a remote design sprint. In the video you're about to see, our senior product director, Tim Hofer, runs through how we at AJ & Smart run remote design sprints for our clients. We're going to be showing you the digital whiteboard we use, how we transform all of the exercises into digital format, and basically everything you could possibly want to know about running a design sprint remotely. I hope you love it. Let us know in the comments what else you want to know. Let us know in the comments if you liked it. Please hit the like button. Please subscribe. We're trying to grow this channel. We appreciate your attention. Thank you so much. I'm going to hand over to Tim now. Take it away. I'm going to show you exactly how we run remote sprints with our clients using a tool called MyRow. So MyRow is a digital whiteboard tool and there are a couple of other great options out there. We have heard really good things about MyRow as well. So it doesn't really matter if you're using MyRow or Neural or maybe there are other tools that you're using. Most of these tools have similar features. And I'm also going to show you why it's not that important to worry about specific features as long as you can work as a team in collaboration with people remotely. You don't need that much to actually run and facilitate a sprint. So let's jump right in. Before we start working with our clients in a workshop we always make time to onboard them both through the sprint process and to the tool that we will be using in the workshop. So in the case of MyRow we have this little sandbox prepared for them. The most important thing that they need to learn is how do I navigate through the workshop space? So here we have an outline of all the frames that are on the board. So it's really easy for the facilitator of people are getting lost to say, hey everybody, please take a look at the outline and join me at number three, the map. Once you click on it, you immediately jump there. So it's very convenient to get around. Another thing that's important is teaching them how to swipe and zoom. This is something that I think most people are probably familiar with especially if you're watching this video but you would be surprised how many people working for large enterprises or companies actually don't know how to do this because all they're doing at work is essentially navigating spreadsheets. So this is really useful to show them because this will be a completely new experience for them taking the time to show them how to swipe around the workspace. This will make life so much easier for them and I think they will really appreciate if you do that. The other thing that is really good to know is even though, as you can see here, there is a bunch of really powerful features in MyRow and also in Mural and other tools, you don't actually need most of them. For the purpose of running a remote sprint, the most important things that participants need to be able to do is first of all, select an element and copy it quickly and also use it and write something on the sticky note. So like here, we're just showing them how to move the sticky note like this here and also how to copy it. So if you press down option and you drag it like this, you make an instant copy but you can also of course just use copy paste. That's also fine. And that's pretty much all that they need to understand to make use of this tool, which is I think really, really important because it's quite overwhelming. Every time you're onboarding people to a new tool, it's intimidating seeing so many great features and maybe not being able to make sense of most of them. So if that happens and people are worried about this, just tell them, don't worry, you don't need to do much. I'm just going to show you exactly how it's done. So now let's move on to the structure of the sprint that we have prepared here in our sprint template. And I'm also going to show you later on how these things look in practice. So the first thing that is maybe good to know is that unlike a real in-person sprint, we are actually changing the structure and the timetable of the workshop slightly. So usually for in-person sprint workshop, we are blocking two full days and for the same workshop in a remote setting, we are actually blocking three half days. So we're assuming that we're doing the entire problem framing part or end of the first week, then we are running two more workshops the next week on two days so that we can keep the remote sessions quite short because it's very exhausting sitting in front of your computer the entire time. It's very easy to lose focus and get distracted. So our recommendation would be change the timetable in a way that allows you to keep the workshop, the workshops a bit more focused and a bit more concise and you will need to find the perfect stopping point for every day to make that work. But I'm going to show you exactly how we do it. So the actual workshop itself doesn't really change too much. I mean, you can pretty much see every exercise here on the board. You have the map, you have the how might we challenges and we have something here to capture the top voted how might we's two year goal sprint questions and then we also have a sheet here where we can paste the final longterm goal and the sprint questions so that we have a nice little artifact and a checkpoint for people to refer back to. So in a way, digital whiteboard workspace becomes almost like this living document that the facilitator can also change and adapt in preparation of the next workshops. So yeah, you can see how this looks like. This is where we're capturing the concept gallery and it all ends with user test flow, storyboard and then we are at the wall of justice for running user tests. So this is also something I'm going to show you in detail because I think it's very interesting for people to see how that exactly works in remote sprint. So let's move on. What I want to show you now is something that's really important to understand and because a lot of people ask us, so how do you do the map in a remote setting or how do you do lightning demos? So one thing that I need to make clear is that we're never starting from a blank slate. So what you just saw earlier, this kind of like these empty templates, a client will never see that. Whenever we are starting the workshop, we are always using a template that has been pre-populated and pre-filled with artifacts and ideas and sticky notes that are based on client interviews we did in preparation of the workshop. So the map is actually something that we would have ready to discuss and have a structured conversation around. Already in my role like this year, so we would have the facilitator kind of like present this map back to the group and then also allow the participants to give feedback, make suggestions how to change things. Like for example, maybe there is something in there that is actually not relevant at all.  As you can see, it's also just like a list of bullet points which makes it really, really easy to just add new stuff like this here and you can also move things around quite easily. So if you realize, oh, there's actually a step missing here let me just quickly create a new block here. That's really easy to do. It's actually way easier than doing the same thing on a whiteboard where you have to rub everything off the whiteboard and then you'll have to rewrite everything. It can be quite tedious to do that. So if you have the opportunity to work in a digital whiteboard, I think after a couple of times you will really appreciate how much time you're saving doing this. So the map is one thing that we are already preparing same with the challenges and I'm also going to talk quickly about voting here. So this is pretty much the state that clients would see when the workshop starts. So we would just quickly allow them to look through each of these and maybe if they have anything to add at their own sticky notes like this here it is really easy to do. So in my role you actually have built in voting functionalities where you can just select an area to vote on and so this is too big. Let me just make this a little bit smaller. So like this here and once you are done with the setup you can define very granularly what people can actually vote on. As you can see, it's a bit finicky and I personally think it's a pretty good tool but there is a drawback and the drawback is that when people vote on these you actually don't see the votes of other people before the timer goes off. So if you're in a heatmap situation where the voting is a bit of a trick like a mix of actually people pointing out interesting features but also a way for you to highlight specific features that you want to get other people to notice the built in voting functionality doesn't work that well. Another thing that is a bit of a drawback with the voting feature is that you can only vote on specific pre-determined elements in my role. So if you're actually doing a heatmap on a concept drawing you can only vote on the entire image that you uploaded and not on specific features. So I want to show you how we recreate the voting experience with dot votes on my role. So for this, we have just a little red dot here and we're using that exactly like we would use a dot sticker in a real workshop. So this is also part of the onboarding by the way we're explaining people how to copy and paste things. So we just tell them everybody copy this red dot here decider gets four dots, everyone else gets two dots and I'll take your time to read through all of these and vote on the ones that you find most relevant. So I personally prefer doing it this way because unlike with the voting feature that is built in here you can actually see the votes built up while the voting is going on. And you don't have to wait for the voting to finish to see the results, which is quite nice. This also allows the facilitator to see if maybe there is a very interesting and relevant challenge that maybe is getting overlooked by the group and put some additional heat on that just so that it gets people from the sprint team to notice it more. So it's a really good recreation of the actual voting in an in-person workshop and I just prefer doing that. Another really interesting and nice benefit is it is just so cool to see people work together in real time and this is something that you should also know. So currently I'm alone on this board but when there are other people joining the board I can actually see them moving around which is quite nice. So let's move on. So in the end you have your top voted, how might we? You're doing the exact same thing with the two-year goal. You're doing the same thing with the sprint question, the can we questions. And like I said, we're never starting from a blank slate. So every time a client participant is coming to these exercise sheets here they're already prefilled with suggestions from our side and we're getting these suggestions like we're not pulling these suggestions out of thin air we're basing them on interviews we did before the workshop. So very often people will actually see their concerns or their challenges written out already by people from our team. So once the voting is done we have a sheet here where we're just capturing everything. This sheet here will come in handy later on because it's breaking down the long-term goal and the sprint questions in a really easy to understand way. And when we're then going back to the map when we're actually placing the top voted, how might we? This is also really easy to do and you can just copy the sticky notes and move them around like this here. So you can just do it like this here and you can just move them here and here. And with the pen tool you can also very easily draw like the key area on the map that you need to work on really easy to do again. You can make that quite chunky here, quite visible as well and it's also very easy to change and edit it. So this is making it really nice. So with the definition of the long-term goal and the sprint questions, we are actually ending the first workshop, the problem and challenge framing workshop. And it's the first time now that we're giving our participants homework to do on their own time is coming up with lightning demos. And lightning demos are really nice homework because I mean, we are also giving them clear instructions what to do with the lightning demos, how to research them. And we're also asking them to submit their lightning demos basically after a couple of hours after the workshop ended because that allows the facilitator to upload the lightning demos to the board. So the participants from the client side don't have to worry about all of that. The facilitators are taken care of that completely and also breaking it down in a way that is easy to present then in the next workshop. So another reason why we're doing that is because we want to avoid our clients working overtime or working on the weekend to prepare these lightning demos. We're telling them specifically, look, you can run off now, the workshop is done. However, by the end of today, 6 p.m. your time, please send us your lightning demos with a few bullet points and send them directly to the facilitator. And the facilitator can then also check in if they don't receive any lightning demos. So to maybe coach them one on one to help them find really relevant lightning demos as well. So when the next workshop is starting, we already have the lightning demos prepared on a board that looks like this here and we are then taking turns to present them one by one. So another thing that is quite nice to do on a digital whiteboard is embedding a little video. So it's really easy to just capture a video and show your lightning demos like this. So this allows you to be very descriptive in communicating the big idea. And you can also share links. So this is also something that is very difficult to do in an in-person sprint. It's really easy for participants if they are starting to sketch their own concept to go back to the lightning demos, click on a link and just look again at what the lightning demo was about. Okay, so these are the lightning demos and now let's take a look at the creation of the concept. So this is something that we get a lot of questions about like what is the best way to sketch a concept in a digital whiteboard tool like my role. So the answer to this is we are actually just using the whiteboard tool to facilitate the sketching but the sketching itself is happening together alone on paper with a Sharpie in person with every participant. So the way you can imagine this to work is we are running them through the instructions for something like the note taking. We're setting off the timer which is also quite easy to do in a viral like this. Timer is running now and then we are just telling them the specific steps that they need to be aware of. And otherwise they can just remain sitting, they can just remain connected to the group call while they are doing this. And the nice thing about this is also that it is really easy for the facilitator to check in with individual participants. If you find that somebody is maybe having trouble or is looking distracted, you can just check in with them directly and ask them if everything is okay, if they need help, if there's anything you can do for them. So we are progressively disclosing the concept sketching like this. We are moving through these four steps without having any kind of distraction. So with that we're doing the crazy eight. As you can see, it's all really easy to do with the built timer. And at the end, when we are starting our solution concept, this is another instance when we are giving the participants homework. So we don't necessarily need them to keep locked into the call or the workshop working on this. However, we are giving them very clear guidance. We're telling them when they have to submit their concept either as a photo or a scan. Again, like the Lightning demos, they send it to the facilitator and the facilitator is then preparing it for the following workshop like this year. So you can see there is nothing digital on here. It's all on paper with sharpies, like pretty standard concept sketches that you are familiar with from in-person sprints. And this is how we start off the last workshop of the first sprint week voting on the concepts. Again, we are using these red dots as votes and we're not using the built-in voting functionality. And again, the decider can just place their decider dot on the winning concept or a feature that they really like. And it's quite easy to do. Again, this is where the built-in voting functionality won't be as helpful because you can only vote on a specific image but not on parts of the image. So our advice would be just recreate these voting dots. It's a bit more visual and a nicer way to bring across the feeling of collaboration and really working as a team. Which brings me to the storyboard. We often get questions, how do you actually storyboard in a remote workshop? And so one thing that Adrian Smart is doing is differently from the standard sprint process as it's described in Jake Knapp's book is that we introduced a little pre-storyboard exercise called the user test flow to structure the conversation around the storyboard a bit better. Because if you have done a storyboard exercise with clients before, you know that it often tends to go off the rails a little bit and then you have these huge unstructured discussions about a specific screen and it's a lot of like the artist like having to wipe things off the board and starting from scratch and just to introduce some guard rails and constraints to this entire process, we came up with a user journey mapping hack and we just call it the user test flow. So we have a lot of resources on that. So I'm not going to explain the exercise too much but essentially what we are doing here is we are defining a very high level version of what's going to happen in the prototype without going too much detail but just so that everybody is aligned on what is actually happening in the prototype even if we still don't really know what the screens will look like we at least have an understanding of the important things that are happening in the prototype. Yeah, every participant is creating their own version of that perfect prototyping flow and in the end we are voting on one of these flows and the decider can pick one main flow and also pick one extra post it from another flow if they think that there's maybe a feature that is missing from this flow and in the end we're just combining this flow and adding it to the storyboard which has been created here. So we're doing the storyboard in several passes. So as you can see here I've already copied over the post it's from the winning flow to the storyboard and we are doing several passes of the storyboard. The first pass would be essentially us quickly running through each of these sticky notes here to keep everyone aligned on their story that we want to have represented in the prototype and then we are also adding a couple of additional bullet points and this is what we are calling breadboarding. It's based on the shape up process basecamp is using for product development. So essentially what this is is it's going one step deeper into detail compared to the sticky notes but it's still not really on a wireframe level. So let's say we have the sticky note here agent opens dashboard to create new update. We might be able to just ask the client like what do you see actually happening on the dashboard? So let's just look at a few like made up examples here. So this is what breadboarding essentially looks like. It's as you can see it's very low-fi but it's going into more detail than the sticky note. And this is so this is usually the second pass. Another thing that is really convenient is looking at the winning concept again and you can just grab, copy the winning concept, paste it in here and then you can take the elements of the winning concept that are corresponding to the screen you're working on. So very often you don't actually have to sketch anything here. You can just take these drawings and maybe add a few post-its like so you can just change the headline like this and you can just annotate things it's very easy to do. Another thing to keep in mind is that although the storyboard is going into quite a lot of detail a lot of this detail is actually content and it's not so much coming up with the perfect design. So very often it's completely sufficient to utilize these built-in shapes that are part of the digital whiteboard. Let's say you want to create an navigation bar for your app. I mean, this is really just a rectangle with a couple of other rectangles in it. So it is quite simple to do that. And I mean, of course you can go into quite a lot of detail if it's necessary but for many screens it won't actually be necessary. The most important thing for the designer is to understand what's happening on each screen. What is the test they're able to do? So do I need to add any affordances for a new workflow for example, like button? As long as you can add this level of detail it's quite easy to storyboard like that. Another thing to keep in mind as well is usually in every prototype you only have one to two key screens that are essentially 90% of the idea that you're trying to convey and everything else is screens that are not as important to figure out in detail. It can make a lot of sense to just spend a lot of time mapping out these key screens and when you have a capable artist on your team they can quickly whip up something that is almost on the wireframe level. For example, with these built-in functionalities here let's say you just want to show there's a pop-up showing up. Hey, there's a suspicious activity like this here, boom, done. Really easy to do. It might take a while to get a hang of it but so in general it's not a huge problem and as long as you stick to the process I showed you before so kind of like progressively adding more detail starting off with the sticky notes then moving on to breadboarding using things like the existing drawings with a few annotations and then for key screens you can actually create a more high fidelity almost like wireframe type layouts of each individual screen and this is the storyboard and with the end of the storyboard also ends the first series of workshops for the sprint and now I'm also going to show you how we capture testing notes in MyRow. So this is actually how we started using MyRow in sprints. This was at a time where most of our sprint workshops were actually in person. We realized that it's a lot more efficient and a lot easier to take all the notes from user tests in digital format using MyRow. So here you can see the end result of one testing day and how that usually works is that we are working with two people each person has their own laptop in front of them. You have the person conducting the interview and actually talking to the testers and then you have the note taker and both the note taker and the interviewer have the MyRow board open and can quickly add and capture all the feedback that is coming from the tester. So this is actually way faster to do than on paper. It's also producing a lot less waste and you can also work a lot better as a team and like both always have a complete visibility of what the other person is actually adding to the board. So it's really easy to add notes like this here and then copy new post-it notes or just paste them here. So another thing that is really nice is that you can very quickly change the color of the post-its here. It's very convenient to do and you can also sort the post-it notes which is really useful. So using these different colors when you look at the different colors of the sticky notes it's really easy to see patterns emerge like maybe so there's a lot of critical feedback on this topic here, escalation. There must be some issue with it or there are a couple of features that get a lot of positive feedback here. So all of this is really nice. And then in the end we are also looking at adding the sprint questions to the board and it can get a very quick yes or no answer in all of these and that makes it really easy. And we also have things like the intro script prepared here. So this is really easy to test with. Hey, Jonathan here again. I hope you enjoyed that video. Like I said, leave a comment down below if you wanna know anything else about remote design sprints or remote workshops. Do hit the like button, do hit subscribe if you enjoyed this video and thank you so much for watching. See you next week.