Mike Jack, Tesson.  Mike Jack. I just want to kick it off and thank everyone for being here this morning. It's the first day of real work, first day of, you know, really why we're all here. Super excited to get this thing started. It's been a long off season.   Before we kick off, something that I haven't done yet that I want to take the time to do is thank the scouting staff. You know, we get us three up here. You know, we get a lot of the credit for things and a lot of the hate for some things. But we have a tremendous staff. We have men and women that give us their all and they help make our jobs easy when it comes to making decisions. So I want to thank Ven Moreno. Ven's done a really good job for us.  And Ven is a strong and solid voice for us when it comes to player values and getting these contracts done. So I want to thank Ven, Brian Gardner, John Salgie, Kevin Turks, Mike Bonney, Dale Thompson, Brandon Taylor, Bryce Wasserman, Casey Callahan, Patrick Callaway, T.J. Early, Matt Miller, Tom Roth, Wes Slay, Max Curtis, Rob Ritterer, Patrick Wu, Corey Cooper, Michael Johnson, Adam Bondi, Matt Emerito. And we also have two, well, three new additions. Sarah Bailey, who will be our director of football research and development. So she'll be working with Chad, Allie Archer, who will be our Amy Adam Strunk women and sports intern. And then we have former Titan, Kalen Reed, here doing the Nunn-Wooten internship. And last but not least for me is Max Curtis. Max has been my right hand ever since I got here. He's helped keep me organized from a life standpoint, from a work standpoint. And we're looking to grow Max's role, you know, not only in helping me and assisting me, but growing him in terms of his evaluations as a scout. And then finally, these two knuckleheads to my left and right, Chad, whom you guys have met, and Anthony Robinson, who you guys will get to know here shortly. You know, I have history with Anthony. We started our careers together in Atlanta. So I was super pleased and excited to be able to get him and steal him from Atlanta. And then you guys know my affinity for Chad and what he brings. So with that, we'll kick it off. So Sarah's role and how that's different than what you inherited from Chad and John and all that? So like we said, Sarah will be leading. Our research and development, a.k.a. analytics, should be leading that for us. And talking about some of the things that, you know, when we first met, when Chad met with you guys, some of the things, just in terms of creating models, you know, that allow us, that gives us another way to evaluate players. Chad, you can kind of go into a little bit more specific, but she'll be adding an extra component for us to make sure we're seeing these players the right way. Yeah, I think we're building a foundation right now in that department. And the most important piece of that foundation is the people. And we had an opportunity to check around the league and get recommendations for that role through the contacts that we had. And Sarah came highly recommended.  As you know, they won a Super Bowl there. She was a Division I track athlete. She's got an undergraduate degree in mathematics, master's degree in statistics. And when she came in here and through her interview process, she just, she knocked it out of the park. She was really, really, really dynamic, very smart. And I know she's going to be a major asset to us moving forward. And I feel really good about where we are heading. Now this department is going to continue to grow. We got a plan on how we're going to build this out. And it'll be under Sarah's leadership. And also obviously I'll be very involved in there as well. Do you want to make sure and use analytics? Is it just across the board helping identify people for ready list during the season, identify guys for the draft and through the free agency and on the field as well? All the above. We're going to use it. I mean, Sarah and I and Allie's coming in to help us a little bit too. We're going to be creating tools. It's a tool that we're going to use to help with the coaching staff, help with the personnel staff, help with the salary cap, sports science, medical. We're just creating tools and to help us to make better decisions, more informed decisions. Like I said, it's going to be a process. And we do have some tools in place and we'll continue to build upon those. It was a long date. It was a month long date. You know, like you guys, I'm pretty sure you guys know, we brought them in for the visit, which I felt went really well.  And while we're on it, it was from top to bottom. It wasn't just us and personnel. It wasn't just Mike with the coaches, but we had help throughout the building. Jihari Matthews, Amy, Tina Tuggle. Everybody played a part in getting him here, right? Because it wasn't just making sure DeAndre knew that this was the best place. It was also making his family know that this was the best place. So we didn't only recruit him, we recruited his family. So when he came in and he had his family here with him, we made sure they got to see what the city of Nashville had to offer, you know, because they're going to be more involved with the city, as opposed to him. And so we rolled it out and let them see. And so, you know, thank you to those people that I mentioned, and thank you to the city of Nashville for stepping up and showing out for us. Well, I mean, again, and, you know, it all comes down to the player and their wiring. And I think Hop is made of all the right stuff. You know, I know a couple guys that trained with him, you know, and so that's a part of it, using your contacts. And each and every one of those guys were like, this dude still has it. You know, and now we hope we get to see that. And I believe that we will.  And I think he feels he has something to prove. I mean, yeah, I think we have a roster that will compete again. It all starts today, you know, on the field and something I kind of said from the get go, you know, we don't have to set the 53 until, you know, September. So we'll continue to work, you know, and continue to, you know, look to add players. We've already brought players in for workouts and tryouts that, you know, we identified that can help, you know, make a competitive roster. And that's what we're always looking to do is build a competitive roster. So we are where we are now, but we're not, we're not done. But that's just a part of it.  And again, it's all about creating competition at every position, you know, so we'll continue to look, you know, at that spot. And hopefully our guys here step up, you know, again, it's about building, you know, the best 53 that's going to give us a chance to win every week. Yeah, I mean, we brought George in to get a look at him. And that was the extent of it, you know. I mean, Jamarco's played a lot of ball in his league. He has versatility, which is, you know, key for the old line, you know, the name of the game is getting the best, you know, seven to eight guys active on game day that could do a bunch of things for you.  And so we're confident in it. I think the first thing is you won't, how's that like playing football? All right. And the first thing for us is the people, you know, they're, before they're football players, they're people. And we want to make sure that we're bringing in the right people to have the right football character and what we're trying to build here in our culture and our organization. How would you, Anthony, describe the relationship with Rand before you got here and what's the process been like and kind of getting up to speed with this roster while continuing to do your job and put the players throughout the league? Yeah. So, like Rand said before, we started together in Atlanta back in 2008. We actually walked in the building together. And from there, we just developed relationships. You know, our families are close.  So we kept that bond throughout, you know, the change. You know, I've been in Atlanta the entire time. He's, you know, been a few stops before getting here. But we've made a conscious effort to maintain that relationship.  And of course it helps when you have that friendship in that, you know, that relationship. Chad, is there anything in terms of maybe analytics in terms of Deandre that maybe you guys saw in the last year that you liked particularly that said maybe you still had a high productive? Yeah. I think it's important, you know, with my background with the scouting and also cap and analytics. Like all of it goes into the decision making. And I think it's important that we all understand it all goes back to the tape. That's where it all starts and that's where it all ends. And Hop is a proven player in this league. We all know that. Of course, yeah, we looked at the analytics. I had Sarah run analytics on him and what that looked like and what his rim probability is on the field and, you know, how productive he is. And we looked at the GPS and all the things that go with it. Yeah, sure. That's all part of the process. But at the end of the day, we get together with Scouts. We evaluate the tape. We get with Coach Mike and his staff. You know, we're really excited to have him here.  When he was out there last year, for the time he was out there, he's still making plays. He has a lot of ability. He's going to continue to do good things for us. We're excited to have him. Hold on real quick. You guys can ask Chad scouting questions too. He's not just analytics. He can answer the scouting questions too. What's the season look like for you as far as the scouting standpoint as you're working with the group?  I was very fortunate to come from a scout driven organization in Green Bay. You talk around the league. Many people will tell you that's probably one of the best scouting organizations in the National Football League. You look how many general managers that you've produced since Ron Wolf worked for all those guys. Ron Schneider to John Dorsey to Reggie McKenzie, you know, with Brian, you know, Ted Thompson is a huge mentor of mine. Russ Ball on the cap side, come from a great organization, a great foundation, and that is the foundation to why Ram brought me in and adding these other pieces. But as far as my fall, you know, the way that's going to look or my role, it's a really great thing that I have been here. I've been a seasoned veteran. I really trust him. He's got more cap inside and out. He's probably forgotten more cap than I even know. So I have someone I can trust as well as having Sarah Bailey here to be able to lead a department on the analytic side. So I'm really excited to have her cell free me up to allow me to go out and fall and evaluate prospects. So I just told a Rob. Hey, just tell me who you want me to go see and I'll go see him and give my evaluation. So I'm excited about being able to do that as well. Yeah, now that's none of my business. You know, I haven't talked to Derek, you know, about that. You know, as a former running back, I'm biased. I know Chad is a former running back. He's biased as well. You know, I mean, it's something that, you know, those players are going to have to continue to do whatever it is they do or they're doing to figure out what's best for them. But to answer your question, I hadn't talked to Derek about it. I mean, again, I feel like for where we are right now, I think we have quality depth, you know, all the way around. But, you know, like I'll continue to say, we're going to always continue to look to improve it. I'll always continue to look to add competition at each and every spot. Yeah, I don't think we're going into that in my frame of, you know, let's see what position X has, you know, for the first week. And if it's not there, then let's move on. I think some of these young guys that have come in, I think they've earned, you know, the opportunity to compete and show what they have. And we know that that's going to be, you know, a process. Some of these, you know, kids, this is their first time around. You know, none of these rookies have ever been in full pass in the NFL setting. So that'll work itself out.   I know it's an early invasion weighing that against a sixth receiver or a fifth safety or whatnot. How tough is it to weigh that value, you know, for some of those final roster? I don't think it's tough. I think it's one of those things where, you know, I think every team in the league, because it's a new rule, I think every team in the league is going to weigh that. You know, and it's a puzzle. It's playing with pieces. You know, one thing I learned from Kyle Shanahan, it's not always a one-for-one. You know, you're not going to cut a receiver for a receiver. You know, adding a receiver may cost you a DB or it may cost you a D-limit. You know, our job is to put the best 53 and not necessarily we have to have X amount at this position. So we're going to build the best 53 and just go from there. What changed in terms of going back to Kevin Biden? I think KB is the consummate pro.  When I think of KB, I think of, you know, just professionalism, a guy who puts his team first, a guy that's all about his team. And we're very appreciative of his willingness to work with us, you know, to restructure his deal that gave us the space and room to sign hop.  You know, we do everything together. You know, there won't be a player that we bring in that we're all in agreeance on, you know, that can help us. Again, I've always said, like I feel like I'm in a very unique position coming in as a first-time GM and having someone as established as Mike, you know, in here already. So it's a culture and what it means to be a Titan, what it looks like, you know. And we, and these guys, because we're all new, we're just coming in following the blueprint, you know, knowing what it is that we're looking for, which makes it easy.  And, you know, we're just not in the business of giving away good football players. It's no different from any other player.  It's really as simple as that.  It's the name of the game is coming in, being able to play fast, execute your assignment and do it to the best of your ability. You guys let the everything play out legally before any kind of decision is made or can you make any kind of decision before, you know, you feel like you have enough information? I think as a whole, as an organization, you know, we have our core philosophies and beliefs. And it's, you know, a situation that we take very, very seriously. But also, you know, we have to let due process run this course and we have to gather, you know, all the facts. You know, it's not as, you know, we're playing with people's lives here. You know, and so in order to do so, I feel like we, you know, have to have all the facts before we make a decision. And that's our approach. You know, we've been in contact with Hassan, you know, throughout this process and, you know, we'll continue to let the process run this course and from there we'll make a decision. That's good. All right. Thank you. Thank you.


Gentlemen, welcome back to game 4 of the final season of Wheel of Munch. We got off to an incredibly hot start with two wins, but sadly, last game, my hot streak of winning close games came to an end. That's fucking- oh my god! I literally said let's make a very smart decision.  Lost by three points, I didn't play my best game, but my opponent played a really solid one too, so I can't be that upset about it. Now, looking on the bright side, we still have an awesome team to work with.  So right now, my corners aren't great. Sauce Garner's obviously amazing, but Lattimore and Lageria's Snead definitely need upgrades. Darno Docket is amazing, but Anyamada, JPP, and Dominic Robinson obviously could use upgrades too. Linebackers are looking a lot better, but BrewServin is kind of scary, and Clay Matthews, our power player, Clay Matthews, going into game 4, does not have a single upgrade. It's actually so sad. Even if we got him one upgrade, he's in 85. We gotta get him all the way to this 93, and then get one more upgrade, which will take him to his 98 overall Ultimate Legend, but we're a ways away from that, so... I need to play Matthews to have like one sack and a pick six, and we can just take him all the way to 90, just like that. Offensively, half of my offensive line is awesome. The other half is trash. My hatback is okay. Cornerback is amazing, fullback's amazing. Wide receivers are looking really good, and Hawkinson, I hate to say it, is outdated at this point. There are so many good tight ends. Hawkinson is technically a 95. Dude, there's way too many good tight ends in the game. I do think I need to get another tight end. Also, my buddy has continued to grind the field pass for Megatron. He's at a 95 right now. We're always entitled to the best version, but there's only so much we can do. Hopefully, my next episode will have a 97 overall, though. That'd be awesome. Also, since last episode, this absurd Ring of Honor promo got dropped. There's a gold 99, Randy Moss. There's a gold 99, Barry Sanders, who I would love on the team. There's Lawrence Taylor, Prime Time, Tony Gonzalez, and tons of amazing 98 overall players. I don't know if this was a solo drop, or if they plan on updating this. I hope they plan on updating this with more players, but we'll see. Either way, fingers crossed, we could get a Ring of Honor player on our squad, but that's up to the wheel, not me. All right, ladies and gentlemen, the first wheel spin of today's episode, we've got to redeem ourselves after a tough loss last time. So let's hope this is good. Series Redux jackpot is awesome. I think Redux goes all the way up to a 96 now. We're not going to get a 98 overall, but yes. Series Redux does go up to 96. This is a jackpot I can take whoever I want. What do we need the most? I think defense. We need defense. Dude, we need a left end so bad. Right now, my left end is Dominique Robinson. That's just not going to cut it. For left ends, there is Judevian Clowney, who is a stud. And then there's Chase Young, who we've had previously, Mario Williams, Cam Jordan. What about right ends? I'm not sold on any of those guys. Right ends, there's, ooh. There's this Aaron Donald. This Aaron Donald is actually nasty. I had this Aaron Donald on my squad before, actually. I do think I like him better than Clowney, but I don't have to go either of them. Again, this is a jackpot. Linebackers are good. I could technically go kicker. Ooh, what about a tight end though? What if I'm not going to go Aaron Donald? What if I went with a tight end? What's my best option? Hawkinson himself, Owen Daniels and Erts. I think I do have to go with Aaron Donald here. All right, I made my decision. Our series redux jackpot is gonna be 96 overall, Aaron Donald. He gets really good discounted abilities. He's crazy good. I think we even had this Aaron Donald on like one playoff game in a previous season of Wheel-O-Mot. And before we go into our next wheel spin, let's take a peek at just how good he is. So I'm gonna put him at right end and I'll move JPP to left end. Double or nothing at inside stuff. Then he does get edge threat elite for 2AP, which is amazing. I talked about that before. It's edge threat and under pressure baked into one. It's an awesome, awesome ability. So we'll go edge threat elite on Aaron Donald. So to get edge threat elite, I'm gonna have to make some adjustments right now. Got one on sauce, one on Micah, three on Eric Berry. But I do love Eric Berry. Deep in, deep out, in enforcer and crusher. I'm gonna take pick artist off, Marshawn Lattimore. And I'm gonna take one ability off Eric Berry. I think enforcer is the least needed there. All right, that takes us to our second wheel spin. Our first one is a huge D-line upgrade. Very happy to have it. I would love to get a corner with this next one if I get a choice. Ooh, a little MM typo on this. Two times 96 weekly wild card packs. I have these two packs right here. They're a 96 plus weekly wild card, any week fantasy pack. I know that sounds like a whole lot of jargon, but you're gonna understand when I open this pack. We're gonna have a choice between 96 Quan Alexander. He would be all right. He would actually be a pretty good pickup because my MLB2 needs an upgrade. And our other option is, come on baby, Anthony Walker. Ooh, two monster linebackers. Do you like I'm gonna want Anthony Walker? Let's see what the comparison show. Anthony Walker is six foot one with 94 speed and 97 acceleration. That is a really good middle linebacker. I think I'd still use her Nitchki though. And then Quan is six foot one with very similar speed, a little bit less excel. I've already got Micah. The pick here is it's Anthony Walker.  Happy to have him and you know what? Now that I look at him, he might have like a nice discounted ability for free. He's gotta have something, right? He gets Crusher for one. I don't know if it's worth using that. He does get zero AP Lurker and zero AP Enforcer. I'm gonna give him Lurker. Justin K's, it's free and that's awesome. And this is two of these packs. So I get one more right here. Give me a DB. It's a veteran first, it is. Number one, Josh Johnson.  Number two, I thought that said CB. So I got super excited. Josh Johnson will not be making this lineup. So whatever player we're getting, it's this one right here. It is!  What am I gonna do with Alex Heismith? Alex Heismith is kind of nasty. 6'3 with 93 speed. His block shedding is 96, bro. He almost could replace JPP. Is Heismith gonna be better than JPP? Alex Heismith might be my new left end. This is interesting for sure. But how big is Alex Heismith? That's gonna matter to me a lot here.   Yeah, you are gonna replace JPP. Demoralizer for zero, that is almost useless. No outsiders for two, an edge threat for one. Unpredictable, an edge threat elite. I guess I will run demoralizer on him. I'm not interested in moving stuff around. Although a one AP edge threat, it's not that bad. I'm just gonna give him demoralizer and I'm gonna let him just play. Darn it, well, weekly wildcards definitely has some good DBs. So that would have been nice. We end up with two linebackers. Now let's see JPP compared to Heismith. That's gonna matter to me a lot here. So Heismith is two inches shorter, a lot faster, more acceleration, less strength. Heismith is better. I know it says Heismith is technically a 91, but I don't care, man, he's a stud. I even can put JPP at detackle too. This is super, all of this is super weird for me. I'm not used to making these bizarre inputs here, but hey, we'll get weird. And for this third and final wheel spin, I think I want offense at this point either offensive line, potentially another tight end, Ring of Honor.  This is not Ring of Honor jackpot. This is Ring of Honor random team. So I'm gonna wheel here with every single Ring of Honor team on it. I can take one player, but they have to come from this team. Please be an alliance. Please be an alliance. Please be, sit, sit, sit, sit, let's go. It's happening, it's happening, it's happening. Saekwon, Saekwon, I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm sorry.  I can take any Ring of Honor player. I'm an alliance. I can take like Herman Moore or something, but it's so obvious I'm not gonna do that. Oh, yes, baby, yes, baby, yes. I'm here for the one and only, the greatest running back of all time. Barry Sanders, oh, Sanders. Let's talk about this card. Five foot eight, two, oh, three. So he's not the biggest running back in the game, and I know that those are kind of the meta running backs, but he's got 99 brake tackle. He even gets 90 truck, 99 change of direction, 98 speed, 99 acceleration, just disgustingly good stats. He even has decent impact block. His route running is actually mad good.  Number one, he gets evasive baked in, totally free. He gets tank for a one. He's such a small half back that it's so important that he has tank. He gets tank for one.  So I'm gonna take tank here for one AP and I'll also take backfield master. Backfield master gives you more hot routes, but that's not exactly needed since I already have those things to Herbert, but what this does give me is improved catching from the backfield. Tank evasive and backfield master for one AP. And of course, I am gonna give an ability. I'm going first one free for Barry Sanders. Oh my God, it's actually happening. My hat back is no longer Saquon Barkley. It's gold 99. Barry Sanders is literally so much better in almost every stat. We'll also throw Saquon as our backup half back. Let's activate Barry's ability. That's our first ever gold 99. We got Barry Sanders and Megatron too. Oh, I'm so happy, man. Clay Matthews is still in poverty.  Everything else is awesome. We're headed here into our fourth game and if I lose, only do I lose and fall to two and two, but I lose Barry Sanders. We cannot let that happen. We have to go in this game. And of course, we've got the challenge wheel as well. More important than ever honestly because just in case I lose this game, I have to be able to salvage Barry. Oh, what better? What better a challenge? Let me make sure you guys can see it. Hat trick with one player. One player on my team needs three touchdowns. Passing touchdowns with my quarterback does not count. All right, gentlemen, you see it there. Our current record is two and one. Our first game, a narrow victory, second game, a narrow victory and the third game, a narrow loss. Let's get into the fourth one, baby. Let's go. Oh, 99 Mahomes, Odell and Justin Jefferson. Hey, I got some studs myself. Clay, we're going to sag the QB. We're going to get TFLs, man. It's going to be an amazing day for you. Lots of people come out in this formation. Is he running that thing? Oh no, he's got a little handoff to Henry who's going to go for a very mean den yard stand. C.B. does that again. Yup. Clay! Clay just got ran over. Clay, that's a great start, buddy. That really is a great start. Now I think it's a pass. I'm going to try and get the sack with Clay right now. Yup. Palamalu, every day we stray further from God. Palamalu, what are you doing? 39, that's okay. It's okay, it's okay. He's going to throw something short.  He got me. He got me. Nice play. Saus big hit. We'll take it. First in 10, he's going to throw it left side. Complete a fumble. God, are you kidding me? Oh my God, that was so...  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a range quit, which means we do get a Clay Matthews upgrade. All right, Clay Matthews is now an 85 with 83 speed. Yeah, we're slow but steady. Slow, steady wins the race here with Clay Matthews, man. Now this has not happened in a long time where we got an instant range quit. So let me remind you the rules. I'm not going to end the video, but I'm also not going to take three more wheel spins. This is to prevent the team from getting too good too fast. So number one, I do get a spin on the range quit wheel. So let's take that first and foremost. I don't know if I really earned that range quit, but hey, force fumble, touchdown, and he quit. It's two of any pack. Any is emphasized here because I could open a training pack or a coin pack. So two of any pack in the entire game. I'm going to go with a Ring of Honor pack, which is 291 plus Ring of Honor players and 182 plus elite. So it's kind of just a Hail Mary. Really looking forward. You know who would be really good here? Actually that has Ring of Honor. So Moon Nails doesn't help, but there's a kicker. There's Gary Anderson, a 91 overall kicker. I could get him right now. You cannot pull the gold 99s by the way. So I'm not even looking for those. Oh my God. Yes, yes, yes. Oh my God. I'm him, bro. Let's go. That's exactly what I needed. All right, so Gary Anderson huge and Larry Tharp might be a good left tackle. And then a game changer pack. I'm doing a game changer pack because I've had really good luck with these. Our first game changer is 90. Kempier Lewis will not make the squad. Mike Asiki will not make the squad.  Hey, I'll take over kill on kickers, man. I've needed, I have needed kickers. So we'll go over to special teams here. Let's compare these two. Gary Anderson has 95 power, 85 accuracy. Bass has 95 power, 78 accuracy. So we're definitely going to Gary Anderson. And presumably as a 91 overall, so we should get an ability. I'm gonna give him Zen kicker for a slower meter over 45 yards. We're gonna be able to hit from deep now. Like really deep. I don't know exactly how deep but 95 kick power and Zen kicker. I'm hoping at least 56, 57 yard field goals. We lock in our players. Thanks to the Rageco, which is amazing. And I will take one wheel spin. So yes, I get it normally since I'm playing another game. It should be three, but to get a win that quick, I also didn't really earn it. And so now the only player that we'll be fighting for on this next game is whatever player we add here or players depending on what we get. Our wheel spin. Ooh, it is going to be player 96 free agents. I'll let you guys see that again. 96 free agents. So, so I can take a free agent of my choice. Free agency dropped some really cool cards but the 96s are interesting. Jacoby Myers, Paris Cable, neither of those are even on my radar. Draymond Jones and Cameron Sutton is kind of on my radar. The Lions picked him up, but he's very short. I actually think my best decision here is Isaiah win a 96 right tackle. He won't be going at right tackle because I do have Abraham Lucas, but he will be going at left tackle. He gets one AP edge protector, which is really nice. He also does get zero AP post up, but I'm not going to be using that on a left tackle. I think edge protector is more important. We'll throw that there. Unfortunately, he does not get the left tackle position, but whatever, we'll throw him in at left tackle. Isaiah win a 92 at left tackle, but that's okay. Stats are incredible. I think he's going to be really, really good anyway. So we'll throw him in right there. Ethan Pochich, I'd love to get him out. A legitimate left guard. And all of a sudden, my offensive line is really, really good. I do have to take one AP off of somebody to fit Isaiah win in here, and I think it's going to be Megatron. I don't think I need deep out of lead on Megatron. I really don't throw the ball to him that much anyway. Looking good boys at 95 overall. We are three and one, so we're a game closer to the playoffs already. We've got ourselves a kicker. We still need to get a dub right now to keep Isaiah win on the team, potentially get some upgrades for Clay Matthews, and we still have the challenge wheel. So we're going to use the same challenge wheel from last game, which was a hat trick with one player. Big top three, baby. We got Barry Sanders up there now. He's got friend. Ooh, he's got ring of honor, Randy Moss. All right, it's a ring of honor battle. This will be fun.   It looks like.  Oh, wham, wham.  Oh, big hit. He is chewing clock. Why? Why, man? Why?   I'm on a couple. Okay. Hey, good defense, gentlemen. It's third and 10. I am going to light this QB up and Clay is going to get a stat right here. Are you ready? I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Go, Clay. Shit, how did they get such good blocking?  I blitz seven didn't get pressure. We also didn't cover down field. That was all just not good. Every part of that was not good. What is this defense? What is this defense? Well, let's try and run the ball against it. We got Barry Sanders for a reason. Hey, he's going to take an extra couple on the end. Barry over the middle, too open. Was he open? You're barely open. Oh, great blocks.  I don't even know how that got positive yards, but it got five. All right, third and five. I see that blitzer there. I could hit Megatron, I think. Yes. Dude, seeing that blitzer is big. That's really, really nice to see. And Megatron just took a big hit from Ronnie Law, but Megatron's big himself. So he ate it. Now we go PA crossers. Except there's going to be no play action. Yup. Oh, there's a lot of things I wanted to throw on there. But I'll just take my six yards. This is solid drive right now. Let's not, let's not get weird. It's not the same, you know, man coverage every player used to. So I respect that. All right, first and 10. That's the first quarter in the books. We got to remember, we're looking for a hat trick with one player. What about Justin Jefferson on this skinny post though? I think he got him. Oh, he torched it.  Hey, all right. We beat man coverage, gentlemen. All right, so Justin Jefferson's with our first touchdown. Maybe I got to keep going back to him. All right, two point conversion. I'm handing this off to Barry. We're going to punch this in. Cut it back. Hey, hey, great start. Let's go, gentlemen. Eight to seven. How do we get Clay Matthews some stats, man? How are we going to pull this off?   Yeah. Big blitz and I'm going there with Clay. Oh no, I'm going to fake it.  He's going to be utterly spooked. Is he going to quit? Please quit. I get another Clay upgrade if you do. Don't you understand, Jaden? Hey, Marshawn Lattimore. Why is Lattimore good? Lattimore has no business being this good. All right, well.  You guys can literally see the moment that Barry Sanders decided he was not going to block this guy.  I guess he is five foot nine and Reggie what's like six foot six. Come on, man. You could give more than an ounce. Unbelievable.  So I'm going to motion Justin Jefferson inside here. I don't really expect him to be open. I don't know if Jefferson was open. I think Barry's going to be open. He is. Ooh, just barely. We got to get Justin Jefferson in the end zone.  Ooh, he might just have him off jump. Whoa, if that was his user, that's an interception. Luckily it was a knot and Justin Jefferson now has two. That was such a scary pest. Look at Fred Warner right there. Oh, if that's a user, I'm in so much trouble. Two point conversion. We can make this. Oh my God, this is huge. A, right over the middle. Two possession game. Let's go. Okay, so as it stands, Clay Matthews has one upgrade and our challenge wheel is almost complete. That's so not, dude. He actually might quit. Oh, can we pitch this to Clay? Clay, get behind me. Clay, Clay. Come on, Clay. Shit. Ooh, I think he's going to quit. Yes, yes, yes. That's even better. Except not for my challenge wheel. Hey, two rage quits. There's nothing to complain about there, but wow, I fought and I fought for that challenge wheel. Hey, a big W though. We're a step closer to the playoffs and we got ourselves two upgrades for Clay Matthews. We got one upgrade for the rage quit and we get one upgrade for that big TFL. That's huge. So those two upgrades right there takes Clay Matthews to an 89 overall. Next is 91, then 93, then the ultimate legend. I am going to open a pack. I know I didn't complete my challenge wheel, but bro, he completely robbed me of being able to. I totally could have completed that. As a middle ground, I'm going to open one Ring of Honor training pack.  They're almost always 91s. That's why I feel comfortable opening this, but if we get the 98, is it dead? 91, Joe Morris, it's always, it's always that. I think more importantly though, we do get a spin on the rage quit wheel right here. Two rage quits, one episode. That's a beautiful day right there. 93 jackpot, so any single player in the game, but they must be a 93 overall. I'm going to take myself a left guard. I already kind of know that. All right, 93 jackpot. I'm going to go with 93 overall, Rager Saffold as my left guard. Now we do get a discount on post up. I'm definitely going to run that, since I want to start running the ball more. All right gentlemen, things are looking good. Two rage quits on today's episode. Three upgrades for Clay Matthews is massive and one more win to the playoffs. So hopefully, at least by the second round of the playoffs, we'll have 98 Clay Matthews. But if I have an awesome next game here, I'll have 98 Clay Matthews for the first round of the playoffs. So that's the goal. All right boys, thanks for watching as always. I will see you guys in the next wheel of mud. Peace out.


Tommy here from Lauren Systems and I'm joined by Jason. How you doing, Jason? I'm good. How about you? I, well, I'd be better if there was better marketing out there. Well, there is good marketing out there. There's companies doing it right. And normally I'm never here just to dump on a company. But I, we're just gonna have your, throw your take right on here and start with it. A little over a week ago, a certain vendor when poked about their claim of 100% security went all wonky us in a huge back and forth system. And a lot of screenshots had to be grabbed because kind of as expected when someone makes bold claims in security, like zero breach stops all the time, including unknowns. That's, I don't know. I'll leave links to all these things we're talking about, by the way. Yeah, it was, it was interesting. I believe the reporter that is in the article I linked there, she said she captured like 91 screenshots. Wow. Like there were 150 comments in the post and it was, it was pretty spicy. And this is a problem sometimes in our market. Security is a really tricky thing. I can say my door is locked at my house. Does that mean I'll never get breached? No. Can I buy two locks? It means I'll never get breached. No. It's just, it's a securing to your risk tolerance. It's a mitigation of someone just walking through my door. But I would never say in the most absolute terms, 100% secure, never get breached. That's just, don't say it to your clients either. Don't listen to it from vendors. Those vendors are stretching the truth. And I, this is, this is kind of a tricky because if I'm not mistaken, you also commented there was some security flaws found in the product itself. Not in the security product, right? So, but this is the company in question here is a giant umbrella that owns a lot of other companies. And one of their sister companies, which actually does RMM tools and tries to play in the MSP space.  And some of the vulnerabilities are like cringe worthy. Like these are things that like you could come right out of like try hacking or something and like directly apply those skills without any actual huge knowledge. These were like run of the mill sequel injections. That's kind of a problem. And the company in question here is Komodo, or what do they call themselves? And I had notes, it's a sectigo and exactium, I think is the other one or excitium. How do you say that? I have no idea. So if you start digging in and I left some links down here, and this goes back over 10 years of kind of systemic bad behavior by Komodo. I believe that's why they started changing name products to try to separate. I mean, everything going back to do you remember the super fish scam? They were involved in that. Oh, really? Yep. Installing this is actually Travis Orvindy picked at them for installing VNC servers as part of a backdoor system. I got links to that. There's just, you know, let me pull some of these up. They're just wildly crazy to think all the things that they've been involved in. This is when they were called Komodo. This is the Komodo Internet Security installs and starts a VNC server by default. Hold on. I had not previously seen this. Yeah. It's crazy. So there's something, other bad behavior. Everyone loves Let's Encrypt, except for people who try to sue them for trademark trauma and lose. Oh, that's Komodo again. Komodo caught breaking new CEA standard one day after it went into effect. Is there a certificate authority? Which is just a big problem. Huge, right? Yeah. So basically, they're like the root of the trust anchors on the internet. And they really, really abused that privilege. Oh, don't worry. There's more. This is more recent. Oh, yeah. I saw that one. Yep. Yep. They have the most science certificates. This comes down to them not handling certificates bad. This leads up to, this is just a pattern of behavior we're trying to establish with the company here. I'm not here normally to, as I said, just bash on vendors, but I'm looking at pattern of behavior. How do we get here? Do they make one guy make one marketing mistake? I don't think so. I think we kind of have a, this is how they behave in, you know, in uncovering all of the nonsense that went around with the founder who's not the CEO anymore, but he's the founder. He also seems to engage in bad behavior outside of the company realm too. Definitely saw some pretty hot takes with some of the things he was doing there. It's like, I don't know if the new X thing, I don't know how to say either. If it's a direct descendant of Komodo internet security, or if it's a new product, right? It's not like that lineage isn't super clear there, but I found a press announcement, one of those buried news press releases they did that says basically excited. I'm going to call it that as I think that is formally Komodo security.  Well, even though Wikipedia page has some things and but I mean, again, to the point, right? It's like, if you look at the Komodo page, there's, they seem to have like 40 different security products. So which one of the security products actually make up this new thing you're selling this new tool they're selling? I have no idea. Yeah. And I get that as a big company, you have a wide variety of products and things like that. And if you are built by acquisition, sometimes you have products that have teams that behave badly. So that can taint the rest of them. But this is something they have to consider. The optics of running a big company is like, look, you're involved in a lot of silly things here that doesn't give me any confidence that even if you started a new product from scratch with a new team, that it isn't tainted by everything in the entire history of the company. But I mean, I talk to vendors about this all the time, you know, if you watch a restaurant rescue or, you know, the Gordon Randy show or whatever it is, he tends to go into these restaurants and say that restaurants that have big menus tend to have bad food, right? Because, you know, you can't you can't make everything really well, right? So I'm very suspect of companies that have a million products. It's like either you've not focused your resources around one, you're playing the shotgun approach. And I beat on vendors in our space when they're trying to branch out into new like semi related areas. I'm like, no, make your core product better and then make another one. Yeah, they try to be the everything store. And I think this leads us to let's give people some tips on how to choose a vendor and vet them a little bit. And we can probably start with thinking about, are they trying to be the everything store, which is really, I don't, and this is a hard thing to get into. So it's not easy. But think about this. How do you figure out how they're funded? Because when they're funded by and you can dig into this a little, especially when you're making a lot of commitment as me or you would be with our business and how we are structuring things as we have so many endpoints and so many businesses that depend on us, we put a lot of faith in those companies. So I like to do a little due diligence and look at how they're funded. How does the CEO behave?  Kyle's been clear on his path, clear on how they do things transparent and above board. So kind of like that gives us confidence, not only that they have a good product, but that they're going in the right direction or not just trying to do, I'm gonna lower the price, get a land grab, build clients, sell it for a higher price and leave you guys holding the bill. Yeah. And my experience is when these companies tend to get owned by private equity or these giant venture capital firms, at some point or another, they make a pivot and the pivot becomes a land grab and then it becomes price raises and contracts and all that other stuff. I tend to use CrunchBase as a resource to figure out, you know, where the funding's coming from. Some of the venture capital people, especially in the MSP space, just they have a bad rap and a bad history. So I tend to avoid companies that are backed by them. Yeah, you can look around out there for some of those. Some of the other things too is don't go with companies that make absolute insecurity claims. Don't make them yourself, but companies that do that from a marketing standpoint, that feels kind of cringy first, but it feels like desperation too to sell a product. Yeah, I have a slightly different approach and different take on that. You know, if you've got a company that's offering you 100% security, 100% no breach or whatever the case is, ask them to put their money where their mouth is, ask them to ensure you for a million dollars in damages if there's a breach. And when they very, very, very quickly start to backpedal, you will learn how much they actually believe that claim. I think I like that one quite a bit. What are some other tips for trying to figure out if they're a good vendor and a good fit? Obviously, they didn't start the product yesterday. Honestly, this one needs taken with a little bit of a filter, but you can check Reddit, especially like slash r slash MSP, if you're an MSP. Every vendor has some amount of like griefing and gripes that go on there, but there are certain vendors that it's just a pattern of terrible. And if there's a pattern of terrible, then maybe that should be red flag. Yeah, it's hard to establish, but yes, reach out to your peers. This is, you know, you go to these vendor events like, I mean, you are going to be at Datacom, we are at some of the other events, and interacting with the vendors gives you a better feel for how they are, how they behave, because they also seem to hire people that behave in the same way. Don't let one impression jade you, but for the most part, there's a correlation between the people that seem to represent them and who hired them to represent the company. I mean, recognize when you're being sold, right? So it's like a couple of things that are absolutes. Your implementation will never look as good as the demo, just accept that. So, you know, part of my due diligence in process when I'm selecting a vendor is, I want them off the demo path, right? It's like, I will push and push and push until, you know, we start to dig into edge cases and things like that, that get them off of their script, and once they're off their script, you can usually tell how it's actually going to go. Yeah, ask the hard questions. Don't be afraid to, you know, see where they end, as I just was doing a product demo yesterday and I got them stumbling in the demo because I said, do you do this? Well, I said, no, I just, just give me yes or no. I'm not, this isn't making, I'm polite to them. I said, this isn't making or breaking, whether or not we continue this demo. I just need to know where you're at with this. Is it on your roadmap? Is this a feature you have now? You will have in some period of time. Get, like you said, you kind of, it's not the goals and trip them up, but it's to make sure, like you said, to figure out what the product can actually do because they'll always talk about their perceived use cases because they're going to be the things that it plays best with. I actually aim to trip them up. I do the same thing when I interview people, the questions tend to get harder until you can't answer one because I want to see how you handle not being able to answer one. Yeah. It's, so yeah, there's a certain amount of discomfort that, you know, you aim for in that. And again, you know, ask the community, right? The community, we are a community and we will tell you pretty frankly, usually whether or not something's good or not. You mentioned roadmaps, like seeing that they have a good roadmap and more importantly, that they're actually hitting items on the roadmap and they're not just constantly punting is huge too. Yeah, that's, that's a really good point too, because you can look at the track record a lot of companies and look at through their releases and see if there's been changes over time, you know, and I love companies that do a good job of making their blog posts on that public. So you can kind of go through iterations of it and go, Oh, cool. Here's a year ago, they posted this was what they were doing. Hey, look, here's a year later, there's a follow up blog post about how things are going, but reach out into forums and things that really ask questions of people who use the product and there's sometimes it's hard to get an opinion out of people when it's good. It's easy to get a pillow, people want it's bad, but Yeah, I often times when I'm doing that, I tend to avoid the vendor's own forum too, because I'm sus of anything that goes on in the vendor's own forum, right? Like, do they have people in there? Like only the only the most engaged, happiest customers tend to engage in those things or the very angriest customers. Like it's not, I don't think either case is representative of the experience you're likely to receive. Right. And there's places that do have a little bit better experience. Actually, MSP geek is a good one. So check out there. Is it discord or Slack right now? I kind of, they're pushing everyone to discord. Okay. Officially, it's discord now. So I mean, you can link MSP geek.org in the description. And yeah, you get some good people's opinions in there. They have some vendor groups and you can just ask some questions you'll find actually I've found it to be very helpful in there when you've got a question about product or something you're looking at. Cause you know, there's a lot of very active, quite a few, I don't know exactly how many members they have, but it's quite a few real MSPs in there dedicated to helping other MSPs. You'd be shocked at how much your peer groups can help lean on that. I mean, vendor shows can be a little hard to go to and all that or stuff we mentioned, but the easy low hanging fruit to bet the vendors is hitting Reddit, our MSP and MSP geek. I mean, and just seeing how the vendor engages the community, right? It used to be, you know, when I first started at this, there was really not a lot of community and you know, there was a Reddit, there was a couple of discords, but like the community, I feel like has grown and blossomed and seeing how the vendors engage the community is also very important because some of them just don't do it very well. No, they don't. And some vendors would love to tell you that Reddit is not a thing that matters. They are wrong. The smarter vendors are spending more time replying it. That's definitely something to think about. So we'll leave links to everything we talked about down below. Hopefully this gets you understanding of what not to do and what to look for like the red flag warnings of the company's claiming absolutes. We'll leave links to that, Komodo and Iterian and some of the shenanigans that they've been involved in, but use those takeaways to say, all right, the company I'm looking at for a product I want to use, I want to integrate into my stack, doesn't have any of this history and go from there and ask questions. Ping me or Jason? Follow Jason on LinkedIn. I'll link to that post. You can follow him. He occasionally has some spicy takes on other vendors that have behaved similarly. But it works, though. Like if I call it, I found there's been several vendors where it's just I constantly beat on them every time they do it and they eventually stop. I think that's actually the more important thing because our goal isn't just to have some laughs here. We're not doing it for the walls. We actually love when a vendor goes, okay, fine, we've decided we want to, they may never tell us an apology. That's fine, though. Cool if they did, but more likely they'll change your behavior. That's awesome. If they'll change behaviors, then here we are. Awesome. Everyone's better for it in the end. So we'll leave you with that. And thanks for joining us. Thank you. And thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video. If you've enjoyed the content, please give us a thumbs up. If you would like to see more content from this channel, hit the subscribe button and the bell icon. If you'd like to hire a short project, head over to laurancesystems.com and click the hires button right at the top. To help this channel out in other ways, there's a join button here for YouTube and a Patreon page where your support is greatly appreciated. For deals, discounts and offers, check out our affiliate links in the description of all of our videos, including a link to our shirt store where we have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and designs come out well randomly. So check back frequently. And finally, our forums. Forums.LauranceSystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics covered on this channel. Thanks again for watching and look forward to hearing from you.