I heard talking about that on serious the other day. Well, you just don't have, you don't, again, I know you get a nostalgia for the old days, but the problem is you just don't have, in all seriousness, you don't have enough reps to go around so people like it for the extra arm or the system. They can go down and throw to different drills, right? One-on-ones, whatever. There's just not a lot of reps and that's where a guy like Felipe gives us a lot of flexibility. And he's an ideal right now to be that third quarterback and it can do other things. We need Marcus and Desmond to get as many reps as possible. You just don't, the rules are what they are. So you don't have the two full practices, right? And it's harder to manage those reps. Now, some people do it, but that's our philosophy and then we've got enough ex-quarterbacks on the staff that they can throw one-on-ones that they had to. And on the defense side of the ball, what attracted you all to deep forward and how dynamic was his CFL take? Deoffered. Yeah, there's Mike Ford. I know there's a lot. There's a Ford's in there. Mike Ford and then Deoffered. Deoffered. Yeah. Yeah, Tuscalo. A guy that obviously our pro department had eyes on and wanted to bring in, we brought him in for a workout. Those guys do a phenomenal job. And so we worked them out. So there's some traits that we liked and we're gonna continue to work with them and develop. The entirety of your off-season program, what's the one thing you hope that there will keep out of it going into training camp? Well, there's more than one thing, but essentially the way that we operate around here. The habits that we want to enforce, practice habits off the field, the way we teach and install, learn, really learn the language. That's what you're essentially doing. There's a lot of, there's only so many routes that people run. There's a little nuances to it. Maybe you have conversions here or there, but if most of these guys have run the routes, you're asking, it's a different language. It's learning a new language.  Thank you for every position here. Is it different, say, for Deseret Ridder versus Arnold versus maybe Justin Schaefer? Just depending on your background. Are you expecting the roster to look different next time you're here for camp next month? Probably.  Things happen over the summer, you know. Like I said, I don't think you ever carry those guys, their phones are always on. So, yeah, it's not like we sign them, put them on scholarship and there it is. I'm wondering about as wide receiver in particular when you've got so many in this camp right now. Is it your expectation that there will be a smaller number when you come back for camp? Probably. But again, there's a lot of things that could happen. You know, it could change. There's a lot of different strategies.  Yeah, you have said a couple of times, and I don't know if you're joking or not, I think you're serious. When you say that Alameda Zaccheas is one of your favorite players to coach, why is that? I am being serious. You try not to play favorites.  I've got three of them sometimes. Some days, I'm partial to some of them more than others, but I'm serious with players, same thing. We love all our players, the guys that we get to work with, but I have a great appreciation about guys like OZ. He was an eighth round guy. Came up the hard way in the NFL. He's dependable, smart, play multiple spots. That's a very underrated position, too, when you get in the game day, you know, takes one play and a guy can go out. And if that's 50% of your game plan, like you're in a bad spot. Unless you got guys that can go in there, they may play the Z, they can go in there at F, they can go in there at X. He's even got a capability to play emergency quarterback. It's ironic, as much as I don't like the University of Virginia, that he reminds me a lot of Darius Jennings, who I've brought up before, and DJ was the same thing. Like in any industry, if you were gonna look for somebody to hire for a job, he would be a guy I would highly recommend. Of course, the offseason is progressive as you try to ramp things up, going forward more and more. I know you can't get in the pads here, but how do you try to get the intensity up from practice to practice, not only through a mini-camp, but as you get set for this dead period, going into regular training camp? Well, that's why I kinda look at it as a build-up. The rules are what they are.  It's kind of an interesting calendar. I didn't make those rules, but they are what they are. There's certain things we do competitively when we're being smart in some of the seven-on-seven, some of the stuff we try to do on strength and conditioning, and all I'm saying is these aren't real practices, and that's not a shot. I mean, it's an organized team activity. Some people call them practice, we understand that we have different things that I'm not gonna give everything away that we try to do behind the scenes, and so it's a build-up, and then there's an expectation. When we come to camp, it cranks up, and as you get in the pre-season games, you're ultimately getting these guys ready, ready to go by September 11th. Coach, you have the opportunity to coach Anthony Furkskirk, which was really cool in Tennessee, so can you talk to me about his character and how you see him being a mentor to the rookies out there and the younger Titans, like Kyle Pitts? Yeah, Furks, another guy that's interesting story, out of Harvard, and I always joke with these guys and probably serious more than not, just because you went to Ivy School doesn't mean you're smart, I think he's a applied mathematics major, so he sees the world very black and white, and sometimes there's gray in football, so I get on him about that, but all seriousness, he was an undrafted player, that people wanted to make a fullback. He was in the jet training camp, he was with KC in the off-season, we brought him in as a tryout guy in 2018 as a rookie camp, and he flashed, and we saw him as evolved, he really wasn't a fullback, he was more of a receiving tight end, and so he earned a roster spot and we get in the camp and somebody that took advantage of it because we had Delaney Walker, who was of that similar to where Patterson is right now, some of the things where you may manage him, and then the opportunity was there and he took off and ran with it, up and down, practice squad, and then in 19, he made some of the biggest plays down the stretch against New England, I think in the regular season, it's Kansas City in two minutes, so as a guy that's been fun to work with, happy to work with him again, and he's been with me now in three different roles, tight end coach, offense coordinator and now head coach, so he can kind of help fill in the blank sometimes, so we're happy to have him. Okay, Adam Ritter was a fan, I asked him about that more generic, much about all the rookie, but with Ritter, what you're sending him away for the next five, six weeks, is that do you kind of give him a plan of saying, hey, by the time you get back to camp, who wants you to do it? I get the trouble. It's a dep here, Mike. Well, wait, but guys ask him. No, he has expectations and they are different and all seriousness, they are different at quarterback. Yeah, absolutely, but it's a dead period. When you work with him to say out here, are you seeing that growth in Jim day-to-day that you need to see? Yeah, I mean, regardless of your hot take on your, you know, the three reps of your, I love, I knew there was always somebody in the crowd and you're the guy, you're the guy in a 707 OTAs, but no, in all seriousness, Desmond's doing a good job. He's very intelligent. There's a lot of things that you can't see. I mean, in all seriousness, I do the same thing if I were you. I mean, you're watching the competitive part and you're looking incomplete and there's a lot of things that go into playing quarterback when we ask him to do. Clearly he's got to continue to improve there and you guys come out to training camp, you need to see the results as well or in preseason, but behind the scenes, the things that he's done that have impressed me as a rookie is really from the neck up, how he's operating. We do these rookie walkthroughs and we do these installations on the field and his command. And so then you're betting on some of the physical things that you've seen at times to catch up, but he's light years ahead of motion and quarterbacks have been from the neck up and I will give him that compliment publicly. What did you realize that that might be the case? Oh, I mean, there's a lot of that goes into, you know, the scouting of a player from the area of the scout to the national scout, you bring them in, you talk about them, our experience, our ability to meet with the player and what we took away from it on the film and what we were excited and that's why we took them. After that dip period, how easy is it for you to tell who is pretty staying sharp and who is it? Like where does it, in particular at quarterback, what are some of the tentals that you know that? You could tell if they've been working on their own, just the recall of stuff, call and plays in and practice just how sharp they are. It's like, difference in if you prepare it all semester and you're ready for the exams or you took the syllabus and said, all right, here's what I can try to cheat the system and I'll go cram the night before, you can tell. But yeah, that'd be one clear way when they come in and have a kind of command he has, recall, all that stuff. So you saw my transcripts? Maybe some of mine too, depending on the class. You guys seem pretty excited about the signing of Casey Hayward and A.J. Terrell was pretty psyched about that. What have you seen out of Casey during the offseason work? Very smart football player. We knew that you've gone against him at different times, watching from afar, you bring him in, you know people that coach and are close to him and a lot of things that people told you that worked with him fast, we're starting to see. You know, the guy loves football, got a very smart football mind and hopefully he can pass some of that wisdom down to some of the other guys. I thought it was interesting, Drake Lemon said that this is a really close rookie class and he says I've been with him for a long time. Is that something that you also kind of look for? Close rookie class, like really like they mesh well with each other, is that something in the scouting process that you try to look for, is that just a coincidence? Well I think it goes to some of the character traits that you get along with, I mean it is a team game and you want guys that, and everybody's prideful, you wouldn't have made it this far, but you do need to have the ability to rely on other people to be successful in football. So it's a good character trait and you're never gonna get it perfect but it is something you value. With Drew Dawn and Matt Hennessy, how are you seeing them push each other? I know, don't know. No, no, I mean you are. It's no different than the quarterback room, I mean you got guys that want those jobs but they're gonna push each other to try to out work and they have a good spirit of cooperation while at the same time competing and right now we're not doing a lot of the heavy team stuff you'll see there in training camp but whether it's guys work off the field, meetings, weight room, yeah it's been very pleased. I imagine like what you're saying, the stuff off the field is they're almost with the offensive line because you don't have the pads on because you're not kind of doing the real live work that you do in training camp. How do you kind of evaluate where they are at this point? Yeah, I told it together, do you like? But no, well a lot of stuff, it's actually a good thing again, how you want to use the time where they're at fundamentally because there is a lot of things you can do individually, you're trying to enhance and there's a ton of individual drill work you can do this time to try to enhance it because as you get closer to games there's only so many hours and periods you have to practice so a lot of things that fundamentally we're trying to enhance right now that we can, same thing in the classroom, other year understanding as we evolve but they know the basic foundation, that certainly helps and you can evaluate all that as well. Some of the guys say that during the dead period I mean, is that something you can encourage or you can't even visit that period? That's a rusting type question and again, you just hope you have the right guys, they're gonna prepare different ways, they know the expectation coming back in. If they do, again you got guys around the league that love to leak it out there and show how good of a guy they are, good of a teammate, there's other guys that, it's pro football, these guys all pretty much work. I don't expect our guys to work. We'll see how many guys wanna be Instagram stars. Let me come back from Karen. Coach, you talk about when your guys talk about wanting to be together and the type of suspicion they'll use, how does it tell you about what you guys thought and selected and bringing them in and the culture? Yeah, it makes you feel like you're on the right track with the right type of guys. Certainly a test along the way you're like, all right, well at least we didn't just completely whiff on the character of somebody. Yeah, it's intentional, but as I said, it's not perfect but it's a step in the right direction for sure. Yesterday, Desmond Werder was telling us the biggest transition from college to pro-overhang was play-calling and being able to digest that. Does this kinda go back to what you were talking about from the neck up, he's light-years ahead of rookies, have you seen his play-calling ability be able to improve and be able to adjust that? He's been working on it and he can grasp it and there's a lot of different ways you can expedite that process or there's not a perfect way to do it but you understand, and that's part of it too, you gotta understand the game, how it's being played at college, how plays are being called, whether they have the signs and they have the single-callers with the hats that were like D-Led's colors yesterday, that's neon green, you look at Ohio State and they have a neon green, they have a Carolina Tarheel blue hat on, it's just like who's who and their signal one. So there's a different way they communicate, a lot of it's on the line of scrimmage. So we're flexible in how we've adapted but there's still a command that you expect when you do huddle up and adapt to different ways. We've used wristbands before so you can talk to them with simpler play calls but you do appreciate the fact that he can command to huddle, they can go in there and it's not just the game of telephone, I call, play, we put a play in from the script and then he plays a game of telephone and you can't remember what he said. You can just tell, you can just, you watch them operate and again, step in the right direction, long way to go though. Did you see that at the very beginning or have this just been gradual? Well, that's the one thing I think you try to evaluate that I do like about the All-Star games, where you see a little bit of that there, what they ask them to do, which is form to most those guys. So I was pretty sure after our scouting process, that he could handle all that. Do you do anything interesting in your head period? No. I keep my private life private. I'm not on Instagram and I post in a quote of the day or a Bible verse or anything like that. So maybe I'll start a burner account and do that for you.


Okay, yeah, let's jump in, talk about discrimination. So let's start with, what is discrimination? What does discrimination even mean as a concept, as an idea? Yeah, so actually, let me say one thing I should have said before, which is I'm here for myself, not for PLF. I just wanna make that clear to people. I work at PLF, I have my own views. Everybody at PLF doesn't necessarily share my views. So with that disclaimer anyway, we can jump in. So yeah, it's good that you raised the question, what is discrimination? Because it has, I mean, it's got a legal meaning, and it's the meaning that I think a lot of people think about in terms of anti-discrimination law. And we can talk a bit about that, but it's got a normal sort of just objective meaning, quite a prop apart from that. Most people think of discrimination as bad thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a neutral concept, and it's a necessary thing. We have to discriminate, we have to make decisions. We have to exercise our values, we have to think constantly. We should discriminate often. Discrimination is a good thing in many, many contexts. The question is what are the grounds or the reasons that we are discriminating or making decisions about whom we should associate with, about all kinds of things. What kind of food we should eat, what should a job should I take, et cetera. So there's a lot packed into that. But one of the really important things for people to get is that discrimination is not a dirty word. And it is really unfortunate that modern views of discrimination just hold that any form of discrimination is necessarily bad or it's tainted in some way. And even the forms of discrimination that are outlawed are often entirely rational, proper behaviors. And we can talk a bit about that because anti-discrimination law is gigantic. And I mean, I could go into, I don't wanna blabber on too long, you're on, but I could talk a bit about how it's thought about in the legal realm and kind of what it means to even think about or talk about anti-discrimination law. Sure, we should definitely, I mean, that's the next point we should make. I'll just say yes, I mean discrimination.  We discriminate between restaurants, we discriminate between the values that we have. You can't do everything and you shouldn't do everything because you should have a hierarchy of what's important to you or what's not. And if you're rational, you discriminate rationally. And if you're irrational, you discriminate irrationally based on the wrong hierarchy of values based on irrelevant aspects, irrelevant criteria. And we'll get back to kind of irrational discrimination, I guess once we talk about the context for discrimination law. So tell us a little bit about discrimination law. And also I'm curious, is this, is it just something that started in the 1960s? Was there any kind of discrimination law before that or is it really a feature of the Civil Rights Act? It's no, not really, although there's a number of points. So I mean, the statutes, the 64 Civil Rights Act is the sort of seminal, big anti-discrimination statute passed in 1964, obviously. And that comes at the tail end of the whole civil rights period and the battles against Jim Crow, which I would sum it up as efforts to end legitimate efforts, good efforts to end state-sponsored, state-sanctioned, state-enforced racism. I mean, it's probably better just to use the term racism because that's where this whole idea of discrimination law or where it really evolves from. So its origins are entirely proper in the sense that it is proper to excise or purge from government any distinctions on the basis of race and many other kinds of distinctions. And think about it in a positive way. The positive principle is equality before the law and which is a necessary component of the rule of law. You can't have a rule of law that applies to people based on non-essential characteristics or based on non-essential things, things that the law shouldn't take into consideration. So if the goal of law is to protect rights, you can't say, and the law can't just protect the rights of white people and not black people, which is in fact what we had in this country for a long, long time and not just in slavery, but in the gym, like so many of the policies and so much else that happened in the South, you had de jure slavery and then segregation. And then after that, it was de facto in a certain way that they managed to keep it going for many, many years. And that kind of culminates in the 1960s, 1950s, 1960s and all of the battles over civil rights. But the 64 Act, the statute that you referred to, and there are also analogous state laws. It's not really the first thing. The first thing to think about, I think, or the first legal measure taken to ban, let's call it state-sponsored racism or just the improper, irrational discrimination by government is the 14th Amendment. So that's the Civil War Amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments right after the Civil War, you get the 13th Amendment abolishes slavery, the 14th Amendment, or the 15th Amendment, it says essentially equality in voting rights. The 14th Amendment is integral and really, really important because what that does is it essentially says that everybody in the nation in America is an American citizen and has the rights of an American, not the rights of a citizen of Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama or even Maine or anywhere else. It's as an American, you are entitled to all the rights that any American has, in particular the rights that are protected by the Bill of Rights. And I would argue that this concept goes back to, and I think the framers of the 14th Amendment were aware of this, this goes all the way back to the Declaration of Independence so that you can think about the Bill of Rights as well it protects certain rights. And then you have the 9th Amendment that's supposed to make sure that it protects a whole panoply of rights. But I think the better the intellectual statement is really contained in the Declaration of Independence which is, government is instituted among men to protect rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that covers like the whole ball of wax. That covers all of the rights that individual human beings are entitled to as human beings. And the equal protection component of the 14th Amendment, really so the 14th Amendment does really three things. It says states can't deprive you of life, liberty or property without due process of law, without equal protection of the laws and violate what are known as the privileges and immunities of citizenship which is another way of thinking about what rights are. We can get into why it says privilege and immunities but it's basically right. So really three absolutely crucial components to the rule of law and to what it means to be an American or just a rule of law system but I think certainly integral to the American system. So that's really the first. Jim Crow, why wasn't Jim Crow, why wasn't the 14th Amendment used against Jim Crow laws if that's the case, earlier than the 1960s? It was, but it was a spotty, I mean, there's a couple of reasons for this. First of all, what the 14th Amendment talks about is state action, right? So basically the states can't cause states discriminate against individuals or in any way deny people the equal protection of laws, right? So the states as governments can't pass racist laws, let's say. So the states, the southern states were creative in a horribly evil way, right? So they knew, okay, so we're gonna, we'll abolish all of the laws that are on the books that openly discriminate or openly violate the rights of black people. And then what you have is a period of efforts by the states to sidestep the 14th Amendment by essentially allowing state actors, the local sheriff or maybe I should just put it this way. What you have is a period of time in which state government officials are engaging in racism and really, I mean, they're lynching people, let's just like flat out, these guys are members of the clan, right? And so they're using their state office in a way that is still, it's a difficult issue because they're in the kind of this gray area. It's not strictly speaking the state operating or a government acting. It's individual government officials engaging in all sorts of racist behavior and the violation of the rights of freed slaves and black people, but they're not really doing it in a quote official capacity. So it's a difficult issue that has to be sorted out and litigated for a long time. What counts as state action and what do you get? What do you do when the local sheriff comes to your door and knocks on the door and he says, you have to come outside.  Now, is that really the state acting? It's not really the state acting, but it's somebody acting in sort of the capacity of a state actor. And so what you get is this idea of or in, I forget exactly what it was passed. And it's like late 19th century Civil Rights Act that seeks to deal with this by essentially saying, this is a law called now 42 USC section 1983. What that basically says is individuals have a cause of action against officials that are acting under color of state law. That is they're not acting with the explicit sanction of the government, but it's kind of a wink and a nod. And now you can sue them. So this talk many, many decades to get sorted out. Now there's a whole lot we can talk about, but the bottom line is they found ways around it and there was reluctance on the part of the courts and the federal government to sort of trample. It's not necessary, it's partly states rights, but it's partly really just, I think exhaustion with we had a civil war, we don't wanna go back there, we don't wanna start another civil war. So there's a period of time from like the end of the civil war up through the 1960s in which these issues are being fought and battled and sense in court, in riots, in all kinds of things. Years, hundreds of years. I'll just stop talking with this one last point. We can develop it more. Slavery and race issues is one of the hardest issues, if not the hardest issue that this country has ever dealt with. I mean, really in the post-revolution period, it ranks up there with the hardest things that America has ever dealt with. And it's not an easy thing to solve. How do you deal with that as, you know, how does the federal government, how does any government deal with that? How does a society deal with it? It's hard. And that's why it took a long time because it was really, really hard. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of the stare, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  But at least the people who are liking it, I wanna see a thumbs up, there you go. Start liking it, I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. Of course, you should also share. And you can support the show at your own book show dot com slash support on Patreon or subscribe star or locals and show you support for the work, for the value, hopefully you're receiving from this.  You'll know what shows are on, when they're on. You'll get notified, right? So yes, like, share, subscribe, support. Like, share, subscribe, support. There you go. Easy. Do one or all of those please.