We welcome you to Flowery Branch and the Ticketmaster Studios, West Durham, Derek Rackley, Dave Archer. This is the Falcons 2023 pre-draft show presented for you tonight by Truist and the full hour ahead exclusive visit coming up with Falcons General Manager Terry Fontenot, head coach Arthur Smith. The impact of what's already happened to this Falcons roster in free agency and before we're done, they call it our expert analyst selections of what Atlanta will do in tonight's first round. Bottom line is the excitement of the draft is real and it's real in Atlanta, right? Well first of all I just want to say I'm glad to be up with you guys. You guys are kind of the veterans here of this free draft show and I'm kind of the rookie so I'm joining in but I am. I'm excited about this. I think back to the year 2000 when I came out, first of all I can't believe it was already 23 years ago and the excitement that I had as a player I can only imagine it's the same for those guys that are potentially going to be drafted tonight but I'm excited to be here to chop it up with you guys and see who are going to be the next young players to put on the Falcons. Let's go! It is time. Yeah it's been a fun free agency period. Atlanta has done an unbelievable job in free agency. Now we get open those Christmas brothers. It's Christmas tonight. We're going to open up those and you got to pick your own packages. How about that? Get an opportunity to select some guys that are going to add this roster in what has been already an unbelievable offseason for the Atlanta Falcons and adding personnel and creating depth. Remember when I was a kid, don't you always want to pick the biggest box, right? It's not because maybe the TV or something was in there. I don't know if it's going to be the pick in the biggest box but hopefully the fastest box. The fastest box. Okay. How did we get to this though? I mean you mentioned 2000 Arch was a handful of years before that when he was taken out of Iowa State and here's the deal. This has become one of the five biggest nights in the national football league. I mean Super Bowl is still number one, right? But the draft's not far behind here Dave. How do we get to this night being this? Well at the NFL. The NFL that's the behemoth 94 of the top 100 TV programs us last year were NFL games or NFL opportunities properties. So what we did was we got rid of the chalkboard and the grease board and now we have these all this dynamic stuff to look at and stages for people to walk across and gigantic hugs and we've got we've got concerts before the things start. They created a monster situation but it's what the NFL is. It's the it's the favorite sport in the country that everybody's locked on to and everybody wants to know everything they can about it. And here's the irony of it. One of the great cities for the NFL is Kansas City. One of the heritage cities of the AFL of our hunt and unbelievable history. Oh by the way they've been pretty good here recently. So they're hosting tonight and they're expecting somewhere in the neighborhood before the weekend is done of about 250,000 people to be their butt rack. The core idea here is not changed. The event has getting better is job one for 32 teams.  However many years you want to go back the number one goal for every team here the Atlanta Falcons and 31 others is how do we make our roster better? How do we bring in a guy coming from college fit him into the culture the chemistry in the system that we already have in place. Some of it will be new especially in the defensive side of the ball for the Atlanta Falcons. But how can we bring these guys in and make our football team better and find a way to play into the month of January which is something that the Falcons have not been able to to do over the past few years. You get the right hits. You hit on the right guys and they end up developing through your franchise. Now you're playing into January. I think the rewarding part about it is guys is the frameworks in place. You've established a physicality with this foot team is going to play with on the on the offensive side of the ball with the run game. You've talked about how you're going to play for 60 minutes which they've done the last two seasons. That framework's in place. The culture if you will is in place. You've added some people to that and now you're going to get adds more to that. Well it's an interesting scenario for Atlanta because it's been a couple of years where Terry Fontenot and Arthur Smith have had to go brick by brick if you will in rebuilding this franchise. However the offseason momentum is real. The excitement for this football team is real. There's no doubt about that. And it's clear that Terry and Arthur embrace these challenges and more when they arrived in Atlanta a couple seasons ago and now this team finds itself on the rise. This was never going to be an overnight haul. This is not going to be something that you get a new coaching staff in here. You get a new front office in here and everything magically changes. As you all know we went into last year with the most dead money in the history of the NFL. 86 million dollars in dead money. You knew that it was going to take a couple of years to even begin to see what Terry Fontenot and Arthur Smith want to build in Atlanta. We have an open checkbook for the first time. We do have a lot of cap space and we're excited about our plan going in the free agency. Patience from the organization, the patience from the owner, the patience from the fans. Because of that discipline we're able to put ourselves in a little bit better position right now. We've got to make a splash. In free agency first? Absolutely.  Go get a guy that can help our football team win. But more importantly, Mike, we are news. We are moving the needle. We haven't done that. You're always building, you want to build a championship roster not just for one year but for several years because you're putting together a puzzle. You're not trying to add a few players. We have a whole team that we have to put together and so you want to make sure that you're doing the right things and staying within parameters at every spot. Jonu Smith, they make a trade for him. Tidy in from New England. Every time I step on that field you're going to get every ounce of me, every passion. Tosses end zone. Oh, Jonu Smith. Put the ball in my hands anywhere on the field and I'm just going to make plays. David Anyamada comes over from the set. I play my hearts out. Expect great things. Wins on every down, every down in distance. Runs into his own blocker and then is brought down by Anyamada. Hey, Ellis, a linebacker who had seven sacks last year. He just goes out in balls. Steps up in the pocket and gets sacks. Caden Ellis. I'm so excited.  Start with the Taylor-Heineke piece. Expected to sign with the Atlanta Falcons. Full circle. That's where it all started. Found a little football here. Grew up in Swanee. He's coming in to be the backup quarterback.  Yeah, I plan on just trying to be that veteran presence but hopefully Desmond can stay healthy and I can help him in any way he needs. The other thing the Falcons have done today and this is the big splash. It's Jesse Bates. You got a lot of talent, a lot of young people and a lot of great people that care about winning. So like I said, I'm excited to be a part of this. I saw a great opportunity for me to come in and feel like I can be a difference maker on this defense. I think it's just going to be a great opportunity for me to go out there and play and make some big plays. I'm just excited for the opportunity and to be able to play with the guys and really see what we can do this season and I think we'll shock some people. This year, this team's going to be a very competitive, tough team and won a lot of ball games. Arthur Smith said he wanted a violent deline and I could bring a lot of violence. I think that we're going to put each other. It's going to be competitive. By the end of the day, we're going to bring the best out of each other. No, we got to bring the A out and we got to make sure that everybody in the A is knowing that the Falcons here too and the South got something to say. They are building that team piece by piece. The next big piece, the number eight overall pick in the draft, what's their strategy going into next month? What it helps when you do a lot of good things in free agency and whether you're moving around, whether you're moving up or moving down, it helps you to have discipline and say, let's just continue to improve this team. Knowing who they are, if they're truly passionate about what they do, they want to be the best football player they can be, they want to be the best person they can be. We believe we have a strong culture and a really good locker room and we want to make sure we add to that. Well, the one thing you find when you hear Terry Fontenot and Arthur Smith talk about the last two years, you respect number one, their discipline in doing it. Number two, the fact that you knew that you weren't going to have a full load of ability to do things financially and otherwise, maybe until now. And it strikes me every time I hear them talk about that build, how important what has happened the last 90 days and now what's going to happen this weekend. Yeah, I mean, I think you go back, you kind of talked about it West, two years when they came here, it was like Terry Fontenot probably so excited to be getting his first general manager position, but then looking at all of the X's and O's, if you will, of the roster and the salary cap situation and he probably had one of those, okay, I got my work cut out for me because they did. They were so strapped from a cap perspective, they were going to have to eat so much money into the cap, they knew it was going to be a process. And I went back to a quote that Terry Fontenot said just a few weeks ago. He said, we had to add to every phase, we just want to make sure we have the right discipline. We have to set parameters because if we don't, we'll find ourselves in a bind again. So they had to be very disciplined these last two years, but they finally got themselves to a point to where they could be players in free agency. They could truly go out and try to find difference makers and they were able to do just that. Yeah, and I think that deep sigh you talked about was he knew what he was getting himself into, it was presented to him as he began to evaluate this job before he took it, but that deep sigh was who this really is going to be an interesting ride. And it's been one that he's shown a tremendous amount of discipline, both he and Arthur Smith working in lockstep to secure talent, to put a team on the field that frankly has been extremely competitive in the first two seasons. You're talking about 13 of the 16 games this last, 13 of the 17 games this year were one score games. You went from not being able to win in your own building to win in six of the nine games that were played in Mercedes Benz Stadium. So the thing has begun to turn and he's turned it with guys that he had to go find to kind of try to plug in because of what you're talking about being strapped. But I think that now with his ability to kind of spread his wings a little bit and then go find the right pieces to plug in, it should be pretty rewarding. Well, they both respected the process. They covered the checks and balances you got to do. And now the free agency hall is being lauded by just about everybody that covers the NFL as one of the best in terms of filling need. It seems like they have found an answer for every possible solution that they had to attack when they, as you said, they attacked the roster. Well, I think that answer may be a little bit bold. I think he certainly certainly have gone out and they've secured better talent. I think when you look at the roster, the 53 man roster, how many of you are actually on the roster right now, it's a much deeper roster rack than they've ever had before. If you get a guy go down, you're going to plug another guy and you go, wait a minute, I like that guy. That guy might be a starter, you know, and when those kind of deals we see it in the secondary. We see it in a lot of places and they addressed everywhere on the team. It wasn't just and he said he was going to do this in January. We're not just looking at going and getting a quarterback because we got a young dude here or find a guy to play receiver. We're going to attack every level of the defense. Every facet of the offense is going to get addressed and they did that. Yeah, and as a football guy and maybe call it a little bit of an average fan, you just kind of see all the signings. You're like, Oh, God, you know, they've added a lot of really good players. But then as I started to really dig deeper, getting ready for this pre draft show, you could start looking at the current roster that they had. And then all of the additions in every single year, fellows, they have a tough job narrowing it down to the 53 man roster. But to your point, Arch, about some of the guys that they're going to have that maybe your second string, maybe your third string, they're really going to have some difficult decisions this year because they've got some players on this roster that go three, four deep. They want it to be difficult. They want that competition. Terry Fontenau says iron sharpens iron. This is going to be one of the first years where there's going to be some really good players that potentially don't make this football team. All right. I'm going to put the expert analyst on the spot here. Who's the most important free agent signing? Can we can we kind of initiate him like some of the things that you and I do together on the podcast? Sure. Let him know that it's not just one. You're going to ask a question. We're going to kind of change the rules a little bit. I'm going to give you two. I'm going to give you two signings. And I'm going to go with Jesse Bates, obviously one of the biggest splashes that we made in Free Agency, but I'm going to combine him with Kaleas Campbell.  Jesse Bates, maybe one of the better players at his position in the National Football League, bringing in experience, bringing in playmaking ability. And we'll, from day one, we'll kind of demand the respect because of what he's done throughout the course of his career. And then you have Kaleas Campbell, who may not be the most dominant defensive end right now in his career. But when you talk about a guy that opens his mouth in the locker room or on the practice field, every single person will stop and listen to him. Because of what he's done, because of the teams that he's been on, and we're talking about a Walter Payton man of the year, one of the most respected players in the entire National Football League. You got those two guys as leaders, as captains, as quarterback of your defense. It's a pretty good start to the offseason. Well, another thing Rack will tell you as we've worked together is you got to cheat the other guy a little bit. And that's pretty strong when you just came with there. So I'm going to cheat the game a little bit here. And I'm going to go with defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen. Oh, you're completely cheating today. It's Jerry Gray coming in as the defensive coaches here. I think you got Jerry Gray who comes in as a former D.C. at two places in the National Football League. One of the more respected defensive back coaches in the league played D.B. was the number one pick out of Texas. Knows everything there is to do about the defensive back position. You bring him in to aid first time defensive coordinator, was a co-defensive coordinator in New Orleans over the last couple of seasons. And think about the teams that we played. We've called the games. Those games against New Orleans are tough. And they are very difficult to handle defensively. He's going to bring that attitude to this team with the help of Jerry Gray and tutoring some of those guys maybe young or old and getting them ready to dial into play. All right. So let's pivot from the Falcon Free Agency Hall, which as we said a moment ago has been lauded by most everybody as one of the best in the league to now what happens in the next three days because the reality of this is Atlanta now gets an opportunity to match. You told me a month or so ago the door is wide open for the next three days. Five picks in the first 113 for Terry Fontenot as we take. How do you then put perspective on what Atlanta needs to do in this draft? Well needs is an interesting word to use because certainly you can you could plug some guys in. But I think what they've done is they opened the door as you mentioned because of what they did free agency. They're not pigeonholed into having to go after somebody or reach for somebody because they need this. Now certainly there's some places they need to bolster whether it's the edge rush add another corner whatever it is but they have the ability to flex out and get those guys whenever they feel like that's the best player on the board. You'll hear Terry say that a number of times. I think that's the beauty of it and there's enough draft capital with five those five picks you're talking about to be able to move around if you want to remember they traded up to get Arnold Evacati late in early the first round early in the second round he was projected as a first round pick. So I love the versatility they have. I think they're a wild card in the draft. I don't think you know what they're going to do. Yeah I agree. I mean they could stand pat at eight and end up with a really good player. They could trade up. They could trade back. They've got a lot of options here because they had such a successful free agency period. But when I look at this draft whether it's the first round pick or you go second third fourth I think they just need players that strike fear into the opposing team and that could be taken a lot of different directions but the way I look at it is pass rusher's been a struggle a little bit here for Atlanta. How about bringing in a guy that strikes fear into opposing offensive tackle or a defense offensive coordinator that says you know what I got to make sure I have a tight end here because if I don't this guy is going to give us a problem or a wide receiver that has so much speed that when he gets on behind the defense he's going to create an explosive play if not a touchdown. Anything like that a player that strikes fear into the opposing team opposing players opposing coordinators that's what they're looking for. Would Ryan Nielsen say to back up what Rack is talking about in his introductory press conference we want to play with violence on the defensive side of the football. I mean that sends chills down my back and he's going out and gotten some of those guys but that's what Rack's talking about find those kind of guys on both sides of the ball that can make you have a problem trying to prepare. That's terrific stuff. All right so you know how the Falcons have set up their roster through free agency and what they retained from a season ago but what about the rest of the NFC South. The division lines have changed a little bit new coaches and new markets so to speak. So let's welcome our friend Steve Weiss from NFL Network into our pre-draft show presented by truest tonight and the landscape of the offseason Steve. So now as we start this draft who do you think the favorite is in the NFC South. Yeah great question Weiss. Look the state of the NFC South is the division itself is wide open. So let's start with the New Orleans Saints because they're the team that's got the most established experience. Defensive lead team Cam Jordan, Marshawn Lattimore to Mario Davis shouldn't change too much because Dennis Allen is still going to oversee that but they are going to miss defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen an awful lot. That's talking to people with the Saints and then Derek Carr is going to come down there. He's got weapons. He's got a very good offensive line. So can his experience and the fact that he's a very good decision maker get this offense back on track that's the key. Now let's go to Tampa Bay. Who's their quarterback? Is it Baker Mayfield? Will it be Kyle Trask? Either way it's not going to be Tom Brady. The main thing that the Buccaneers have to figure out is can they run the football. For two years Tom Brady gave them a lot of gloss over to some flaws on their offense. Their offensive line was nicked up last year. If those guys come back healthy that should help. Defensively they still have a lot of good players in place. So they should be competitive but that depends on the quarterback. That quarterback will or will not turn the ball over. Carolina definitely a team on the rise. They have got some defensive pieces. They've invested in the offensive line. Now will it be their quarterback? Bryce Young, CJ Stroud, can they adapt quickly? They've got an incredible offensive staff. I mean Thomas Brown, the former UGA running back comes over as the offensive coordinator. You've got Frank Reich, you've got Jim Caldwell, you've got Josh McCown. The brain power is immense but that's a lot of cooks in the kitchen. What's going to be the actual voice guiding that rookie quarterback. And then let's come to the Falcons. Okay they've established themselves as a physical run first team. But now you bring in John U. Smith to go with Kyle Pitts, Drake London. How is the passing game going to change? Especially now the Desmond Ritter who can run but he's more of a dropback quarterback. How is that going to complement the run game? And then you see defensively all the pieces that they've added in free agency starting with safety Jesse Bates, David Anyamata at defensive tackle. You know they just add some really nice pieces on every level of this defense. Ryan Nielsen he's got to put it all together but again the talent there along with some of the buying and the chemistry that they've developed should make the Falcons tough. But this is a bunched up group West here in the NFC South. We'll just see how many teams can get on that plus side of the 500 record. Okay Steve thanks very much. Look forward to having you back with us later in the program. But in the final hour before the draft starts tonight Tori McElaney of AtlantaFalcons.com sat down with head coach Arthur Smith and GM Terry Fontenot about their mindset going into the eight o'clock start. We're inside the war room and you guys are on the clock and it may or may not be the number eight pick. I mean the draft is so unpredictable. Trust all the work that's gone into it because it is unpredictable. You game all that out. You have so many it's exhaustive having all the conversations of all the different scenarios. Whether we want to trade down or not again if we get a great offer always consider that but you've got to be all right going to make that pick at eight here we go. A lot of people say best player available. Sure but best player available if you're loaded at tight end like we feel right now. What you don't want to do is get desperate when you're pulling a guy you've got down here and then you put him with an eighth pick and then it's probably unfair. That player if you trust how you the process and how you grade it. Look at this offseason acquisition. Welcome Jesse Bates. I've been one of the best safeties in the league. Arthur Smith is reunited with John Newsmith. How about this one? David O'Yanada. When you added so many good players to the team like you say you don't feel desperate. Well we're not throwing darts. It's not like draft day with Kevin Costner. It certainly doesn't feel like that. It certainly doesn't feel like it does when you're calling plays in the game and you've got a forty-second clock. A lot of value has been found in like the fifth round. What confidence does what they have done in their development give your staff about not just identifying talent but developing that talent. Never about a hundred percent. I mean there's something that's happening or you get to the point where we're at right now. It gives you confidence but you never can get complacent thinking just because hey we hit in 21 on a certain spot or 22 that we've got all the answers because you don't. We're human beings that are assessing other human beings right so there's no perfect science. It's not a math equation where we say okay if we do this this and this and this will happen and this is the desired outcome. The numbers are what they are. I mean the amount of guys we have on our roster now going to the draft and we've had the last couple years it's going to be a hard competition. Is that what y'all set out to build the very first day when y'all got in here we were like we want to create this environment where it is difficult to get on. Yeah iron sharpens iron like man sharpened man and the other minds that we have to worry is we always look at it like the players that are the 90 players that are here they're not just competing with the 90 players here they're competing with the other 31 teams players outside the building. Even get into the seasons you know something that you don't have any major injuries it's gonna be a hard roster to make and that's where you want to be and that's where we feel really good and get headed into the draft and in training camp. It is it's 365 247 we're constantly looking to improve this roster because it's going to bring out the best in the people and the cream really rises in competitive situations. Tori thanks very much great stuff with Terry and Arthur we appreciate it now I've done a little math here Rack and Arch will tell you it's you know math can sometimes be a little tricky here. If you take the end of the 22 roster and the potential 23 week one roster I've got eight new starters and that's before the draft six on defense and two on offense so the the change in attitude the change in not only in the building but certainly among the fan base is certainly merited here but we all know no guarantees in the NFL so what are you missing I guess what are you looking for in this draft to amplify what you've already done well you got to put all everything together right we had this free agency that was everybody would kind of laud it was successful brought in a lot of really good players they got another really important test or really important element of the offseason coming this weekend right bringing that piece into it but then as you know we talked a little bit about culture we've talked about the organization you've got to put all that stuff together because as you know arch you can have a bunch of really talented players and if they all don't learn the scheme and they don't want to learn how to play together and they don't really buy into what the coaching staff is selling you won't have success you can have as many talented players if you want but if they're not bought in to what this coaching staff is trying to do we've seen it over the last couple years they want to win up front they want to play physical they want to run the football and they want to play stingy on defense they started to add some more bodies to make them successful but you've got another piece in this draft to make that happen yeah and so what do you do to to maybe take another step okay you got to get off the field on third down you cannot stay on the field you were teams are converting at 45 almost 46 of the time that's 31st in the national football league you got to be able to get after the passer and you got to be able to defend the run game that's going to put you in passing situations on third down the other side of the ball on offense you got to be able to cash in you get in the red zone which Arthur Smith's offenses are noted for go back to the numbers in Tennessee they were very good in the red zone that's an area that they've got a they've got to increase so what do you do you find players that can affect those areas of the field getting off the field on third down rushing the passer might even be a combination deal defending the run game which would be the interior linebacker and then on the other side of the football making plays in the red zone and there's some guys out there they're going to help you in all those categories all right we got a lot going on here so now we'll take the draft and we'll take free agency and as we move forward here where's Atlanta look it feels like that this organization has learned a lot in the last two years Dave and the ability to live through that may pay off here for them yeah I think that the the idea of establishing racks talked about it we both talked about it the the culture in the idea what you're supposed to be that's the hard part about it when you come in new is you're trying to you hear a change of culture and re re-establish things or or you established things they've done that yeah so now they had to plug in guys that fit that mold I think they did a really good job of that right yeah absolutely there's you look at some of the guys obviously the Jesse Bates makes a splash right you got some other guys I think about like a Mike Hughes and a Jeff Okuta those two guys come in here as former first-rounders not just guys that were maybe six or seventh rounders or street free agents they were first-rounders that had their challenges early on in their career maybe the organization wasn't the right fit maybe they were banged up Jeff Okuta has been banged up throughout his career he's a number three overall pick just a few years ago that comes over to this organization and he's now probably trying to prove his worth he wants to come out and show everybody why he was such a dominant player at the college level you've now got these guys that are hungry coming into a team that is really kind of trying to turn over a new leaf is really exciting times for a land all right we're getting ready to take the turn now toward the draft at eight o'clock tonight and when we come back three positions on the field the Falcons might go in the next three days and the top three players at those positions and still ahead expert analysis and picks for tonight's first round coming up right with the eighth big doing man in the twenty twenty two NFL draft want to be a falcon the Atlanta falcon select oh yeah great London what are you bringing to the Atlanta falcons I think just playmaking ability guys he can go up and get the ball better than anybody else in this draft class his catch radius is off the charge oh my goodness Drake London caught Drake London touchdowns down the sideline London goes up and makes the catch my goodness this is the newest dirty bird Drake London rise up the Atlanta Falcons are redefining season ticket memberships get the best seats at the best value become a member and take your love for Falcons football to the next level stand out as a season ticket member wherever you go with free and exclusive members only gear get ultimate ticket flexibility to sell back or swap game tickets when you can't attend and best of all playoff priority and access to members only events all year long your seat is waiting rise up we're in flowery branch at the ticket master studios and our pre draft show continues presented tonight by truest all right uh three positions the that the falcons might look over the course of the weekend and maybe the best guys available at those positions uh not necessarily saying it's going to be early but at some point over the weekend and uh i'll tell you what wrack will let you start i know you're getting excited because just you get to dive into x's and o's but i'll start this thing off and i'll start with the defensive backs a position that's very much in play for Atlanta at number eight or wherever they draft in the first round and i'm going to start with my top three i think the widely regarded as the number one corner in the draft is christian gonzalez out of oregon went to the combine and absolutely blew it up with his speed ran a 4.38 showed a 41 and a half inch vertical and an 11 and a half inch broad jump what does that mean to somebody that doesn't know that means speed that means explosiveness that means top tier athleticism and then you look at his tape like we're seeing at oregon and he backs everything up with his play on the field he ends up picking off passes this year um just a phenomenal player all around he's gotten really good size to him as well maybe not the tallest corner in the draft but widely regarded as the best will probably come off the board first maybe devon witherspoon but we'll get to that one in a second my number two corner in this draft fellas is a guy by the name of joey porter junior out of penn state now he may not be number two on everybody else's board but let me tell you why he's number two on my board that doesn't really exist but anyway i love the fact that he is get in front of your face of wide receivers he is a press corner that wants to get contact he wants to reroute you and in the nfl that's what you need to do is disrupt timing some of these quarterbacks just want to get the ball out of their hands joey porter junior is going to get up in your face number two he has gotten length he sits just shy of six foot two what does length do it eats up space if you get beat off the line of scrimmage sometimes that length helps you catch up or down the field it helps you elevate and go up and make a play on a 50-50 ball he's got the length and number three like i mentioned his name is joey porter junior his dad was joey porter and he was what they call an enforcer when he played in the nfl i don't know this for certain but i would imagine his conversations with dad after a game were widely different than most everybody else playing in college football when he got in trouble when he did not play well i'm sure dad told him that in many different words that we cannot repeat on the air so he had probably had a much shorter leash and you know what we joke about it but there's something to be said about that a guy that comes from that pedigree i think he's really good finally devin witherspoon from illinois is my final corner and like i said he may end up being the first guy to come off the board but had a phenomenal season for the alina i actually called his game the first game of the year against wilman i said wow this kid can play right here first team ap all american was injured or nursing an injury at the combine so he did not run there he showed the speed at his private workout at a 4.4 240 so he's definitely going to be one of those top corners coming off the board all right i like the choice of dbs i'm going to go wide receiver this is not a heralded wide receiver class but i think it can be a productive one it's not going to start till probably around the teens in the first round and we're going to go with the guy that was the number one wide receiver in all the mocks when the when the whole process started so the one oh mock the number one receiver was jackson smith and jigba of ohio state and really he was listed number one despite being injured most of 22 only caught five balls was terrific in 21 for the buck eyes ryan day uh talks all about his route running i think he's a physical guy he's fast enough maybe not the fastest and uh he's going to be a player for somebody the injury thing does give you a little pause on smith and jigba the number two guy and i did this for harsh i mean quentin johnston of tcu was one of the major reasons sonny dykes his team played for the national championship last year he exploded he's a big guy he's got big speed and he makes a lot of big plays 60 catches half doesn't touchdown got slinging it to him wasn't bad either but look at him make it the high point stuff i mean i think quentin johnston really can help somebody at the next level uh so you go from fort worth texas and i'm going to the commonwealth of massachusetts nobody's moved faster and higher in the last two weeks than ze flowers of boston college it's almost like they they didn't know he caught 130 odd passes in the last two years he caught 78 balls for a dozen touchdowns a year ago from an offensive quite frankly could not run it across the street for uh for jeff haffley now haffley made news in the last 10 days when he talked about flowers loyalty because in today's college football ze flowers a year ago did not take the bag in the portal rack he stayed and played another year at chestnut hill because he wanted to be part of the program that's where i went with wide well ze flowers will snap some ankles when he gets the next good boy the dude can move and quentin johnson's favorite player randy moss i think you saw that in somebody take their i'm going to take best players available guys and this is an exclude willy anerson because i don't think will anerson is going to be available for the falcons if they pick in that eight spot so let's start with jaylen carter the big kid out of georgia and why not the good was dominating in the in the interior tremendous size and athleticism he's lightning quick in his first step you see it in all the tape nobody can nobody can block him singularly and he beats double teams readily a heavy handed violent hands 47 quarterback pressures in the last two years uh the guy is a dominant player on the interior let's shift gears ago the offensive side of the football how about bjohn robinson running back from texas this guy's got it all you hear about generational running backs i don't know about all i don't even know what that means but the dude can run okay he can start and stop he's got incredible vision he had the most broken tackles of any running back in college football a year ago and by the way he knows how to find the end zone he had almost 1600 yards rushing a year ago 18 touchdowns great vision for bjohn robinson and my last guy tyree wilson big kid out of texas tech now where do you play tyree six foot six 271 pounds is he a four three defense he's in he's a five technique in the three four is a stand-up linebacker yes he can do all of that he can do all of those kind of things and by the way he's got a seven two wingspan you want to try to throw the roll around this dude you've got a problem not only is he tracked the ball carrier down with it's a quarterback or running back he also has the ability to bat balls down on those bubble screens so a problem is what all these guys present he's d all the above right like i mean he named three positions and went yes we'll keep an eye on those guys good stuff here the countdown is on now to the first round where will and who will the falcons pick all the mocks are done and when we come back we give you the last word on what atlanta might do next how's it going how you doing you you ready to be a falcon yes sir all right i took this on curtsy don't with the 74th pick the atlanta falcon select desmond ridder i think what the falcons fans can expect from me as a player is a person who's going to come in and work every single day and give us absolute best gonna zip it down the field there is london who makes the catch shoots it in zone i mean wide open elimination first from the pocket to the right ridder going to throw it up trying to come back bernard catches it touchdown atlanta holy smokes that's a wrap man rookie season over with sorry next year let's go to work so what will the falcons do in the first round tonight of the national football league draft well you'll hear from david derrick in just a moment but let's rejoin steve weish of nfl network and get his thoughts on where atlanta goes in the first round all right i think the falcons do go corner uh at number eight even though you know they they brought in some veteran corners they've got some players there but you can never have enough corners and i think the pick if he's there will be devin witherspoon at the university of illinois he's a guy who can play in the slot he can play out wide but because they've got some pieces on the outside i think his natural position right there is in the slot he'll allow jesse bates to play free richie grant to do some things as kind of a rover in the middle and i think he just really fits no one ryan nielsen did down in new orleans and you saw a lot of three safety kind of three or one corner two safety looks in the middle of the field i think that's the type of player if it's not him i think it's christian gonzalez could be wrong edge rusher could be just too hard to pass up um because you know you've got some good guys but you get a dynamic talent off the edge that's huge but again i just look at how ryan nielsen built his defenses and they really really like a lot of ball hawks in that secondary well steve thanks very much so devin witherspoon of illinois and that's a guy we've already talked about and you're right is a playmaker for sure in the second year we also said at the top the doors is wide tonight for the falcons is maybe it's been a decade or so five of the first 113 picks belong to the falcons so i'm going to start the expert analyst segment here love it uh even though i clearly do not qualify as such um i'm going to tell you i think atlanta trades back okay okay so i'm not going by the rules like you guys did earlier in the show okay very quickly i think atlanta can go back a couple spots and get what they want and what they want is bijan robinson okay because i think robinson is the guy that fits the bill here um you guys mentioned it earlier arch you said it beautifully i mean he can catch it he can run it he's the doke walker award winner uh it's the start stop ability it's the speed um i think the vision is really good and i'm with you i don't know what generational running back is but this guy was the best running back in college football a year ago i think he'd look really good with a bird on the side of his helmet well i tell you i called a couple of his games over the last couple of years and it's one of those situations arch i know you see the same thing when you watch him he might come off the field because he's getting a drink of water or he just catches breath but you just sense a different feel when he trucks back on the field you just like okay texas is going to be all right here comes bijan yeah that's not what the opponent saying they're saying uh-oh uh-oh but he i can tell you haven't met him at big 12 media day's quality human being as well a guy that cares about the community which is in the dna of an atlanta fountain all right uh next rag all right let's go uh we talked about edge rusher was a need um how about a guy that's could be an edge rusher he could be a linebacker he could be a cover player i'm going to go with nolyn smith out of the university of georgia and the reason is this guy gives you so much versatility first of all he's a winner back-to-back national championships with georgia but even more interesting the fact that he had a torn pectoral muscle this year so he basically had to embrace being a leader and he didn't just embrace it like he excelled he acted like another coach on the field when he couldn't play but when he was on the field he was making a whole lot of plays like this and then he gets healthy goes to the combine this year runs up 4.39 40 at 6 2 and nearly 240 pounds so what do you do you put him on the edge you tell him to to run around an offensive tackle if you want you could say lock up on that tight end if you want you could say lock up on that slot receiver at 4.39 in the 40 this guy brings you so much versatility and he would be happy to stay at home with atlanta hasan reddick uh michael parson's maybe sign us up for that kind of like that okay yeah i think i agree with you rach there's no question he's got that kind of versatility savannah zone by the way just down the road and savannah is where he hails from all right i was scribbling stuff down i was raking stuff out i was listening you talk and all this kind of christian gonzalez you completely sold christian gonzalez is this a big time player now and i agree with rach at origan 61 197 ran 438 at the combine 41 and a half inch vert and you're gonna see tape from both colorado and you're gonna see origan saying what the heck they got the wrong they got the wrong tape and no he played at both places 18 starts at colorado followed his defensive back coach dimitri martin to origan and he started origan for interceptions as rach said earlier he's a guy that's a ball hawk he can track the football he can mirror receivers you know he reminds me of guys aj terrell it wouldn't be it wouldn't be bad to have another guy like that on the other side love this guy christian gonzalez is my selection i tell you what those are all good uh we'll see what atlanta does tonight it's going to be a very interesting weekend for the falcons as we said five picks in the first 113 it's been terrific to be with dav archer and derrick rackley uh and thanks to our wonderful crew here at atlanta falcons dot com don't forget atlanta falcons dot com we'll have all the coverage tonight and all weekend long now coming up in a couple minutes arch and i jump to radio and join mike conti for full first round coverage of the draft tonight on atlanta's v103 fm which is also available through the odyssey app thanks for watching the pre draft show presented by truest from the ticketmaster studios in flowery branch good night hello in the 2021 nfl draft he is the highest in history he's an absolute freak show the alana falcons select kyle pitts it's all kyle pitts wide open holy smoke caught touchdown first career scoring catch for kyle pitts and nobody followed him how do you not follow him


So hi everyone, this is Peter. My name is Adam. We're from Red Hat and we are working on a project called Fedora modularity By the way, we have stickers for you. So if you come here after the talk you can get one or two Yeah, only 25, but that's fine So I'm not sure who of you was on Langmuir's talk last year here in FOSDEM He was talking about how distributions are great But not really and how we might need to change them to To be ready for the future. So let's start with why they are great because I think that's still true They ship package software, which means it's pretty easy to install. They also ship dependencies and everything else with it So it just works. They integrate it and test it. So nothing breaks really and some important thing it's also patched for security vulnerabilities because For example, if you are a developer and you're developing your application, which is included in the distribution You might not have pretty much time to patch for some security holes. So distributions can do it for you and These tools have a lifespan which basically means they're released at some point Die at some point. This is for example Fedora and if we have if you have a look at a bit more detail We can see that I have for example distribution version one it includes some libraries and software which is Pretty much frozen for the whole lifetime and then I have another distribution or another version and the same story there This is fine, but there are some problems because for example applications are Released at their own pace independent of distributions and They can also come in multiple versions, which means Conflicts right Distributions often include only one version of every application because they got dependencies They can conflict with each other and it will be impossible to install So we need to choose a version, but how to choose the right one? That's a tricky question Because for example, if you are a developer you might Prefer this one fast and latest because that's what developers want But if you're assist admin for example, you're running an application You don't want it to change so much right so you might Prefer the other scenario so I Guess the right answer. We need all of them. We can't just choose one But how to do it? Well, there are several several solutions to this so for example we can have Distribution on a fast track and another one which is a bit slower So for example, this can be Fedora. This can be CentOS or Ubuntu Ubuntu LTS if I'm a bit more crazy, maybe I can have continuous upgrades But this still doesn't allow me to mix and match versions as I want So another solutions are software collections. How many of you heard about software collections? All right, so that's like half so software collections are kind of special Packages which entals of her in a separate space so I can Install like more versions of the software on the system But it's pretty hacky. It doesn't work always So that's a solution, but not ideal Another thing would be Linux containers Who are not who of you know? Linux containers Almost everyone that's great. So yeah, we know it's an isolated space which looks like system and it's for Single application and I can run multiple containers on system, but sometimes If I put stuff in the container, I need to look after for it. I might have problems with updates And still I'm building containers out of a single distribution. So If I install some different version of something this can get conflicted as well so That's we that's why we are working on modularity which kind of combines everything together and Now I have like one minute short animation with subtitles. So I won't be talking. So if you could please read This is a talk. I'm not supposed to be talking here. All right, so that's basically it. So it will look like this We will have something Some something called base runtime is just tiny system with a pretty long life cycle and another software and The software would be like How do you call it in English? Independent sorry independent of the distribution, right? So as I said base on time, this is what Peter is going to talk about Which is a small system Containing software with proven API stability like kernel and glibc and some come some basic tools to make it boot and the software run as a module and Module is similar concept to Android applications or iPhone applications So it's pretty independent on the system and it includes all the dependencies in itself and As I said modules are like applications. So it can be database. It can be Firefox, but it can be also lamp stack or Basically any group of packages and it will looks like this. So I will have packages and some metadata and I can also have packages as an API and as dependencies which The difference is that if I for example have a Firefox module The Firefox package will be API. This is the only package I care for but I can have all of dependencies libraries, etc Which are not guaranteed to be stable, but users won't care about this users care only about the API and Modules are defined as a by module MD file and Basically defines everything which I'll show you right now So this is the module MD. It's kind of cut off on the top, but there's nothing important Important is that we have some names stream version, which is an ID of the of the module Description licensing some references where is the project leaves backtracking some optional metadata and Here is the important part. So I have dependencies there is the base runtime and And To build it they are built requires which is based on time and based on time built I guess Peter will tell you more about it and These are lists of the components So I can include packages in my module and I can include another modules in my module Which might be useful? For example, if I have an application requiring Python, I don't have to list all the Python packages I just place the Python module and In the RBM world If I have a source package, I can build multiple binary packages of it but Oh, sorry So in the RPM world, I have source RPM packages Which are packages containing the source code and if I build it I can build multiple binaries and I don't want to Probably include all the binaries. They can be devil packages and stuff so I can filter them Thanks to this filter here. I can specify the RPMs API and in the future there will be more types of API just then not just RPMs and Also something called install profile, which is interesting Basically explains how to install the module and I can have more ways to installing So for example, if I have web server, I can install it as a production or as a developer With a different configuration So that was module MD and Module MD is modules are built in something called factory 2.0. I Don't have time to talk about factory 2.0, but if you can Google for example or find Talk recordings from Defcon, which was like last last week You can find some interesting stuff about that and Yeah, and when we build them modules are delivered as multiple artifacts which can be RPM repo linux container flatbacks OS 3 ISO, whatever and The distribution when we put it back together will look similar to this picture So I have base runtime the minimal system Peter will be talking about And I have the modules running on the system In this example, I have RPM packages here and container images here and As we can see as I say The module contains packages and all their dependencies, right? so there are Some challenges how to deal with for example conflicting packages in these two scenarios, so That's why we use technology similar to software collections to avoid that or we can use containers and What should I choose RPM so containers? Well, I don't really care because the workflow can be pretty similar So for example This is pretty bad, I will just make the window. Yeah, so In Fedora we use DNF to install software so I can type DNF installed HDTPD, which is a web server. I can Configure it by editing the configuration file. I Can add my index HTML and I can use system control start HDTPD So that's the workflow in current Fedora. This can be the workflow in the module Fedora and I can't say if it's container or RPM packages. It's probably pretty same For both and maybe even a few days later. I can DNF update So the workflow will stay the same Even with modules, which is I guess important So how all of this works? So we focus on the package instead of on the distro version So for example in Fedora, we we store all the packages in this gate, which is distribution gate and Each package has similar has several branches. So for example f24 f25, which is like Fedora 24, Fedora 25, Fedora 26 and We want to change that to Reflect the package. So for example, I can have package and have branches according to the versions. So instead of building Distribution versions from the this gate. So taking like All the branches f24 to build for that 25 and talking all the F25 branches to build for that 20 sorry 25 I can use Modules to build modules Yeah, so I can in the module md. I can specify Packages I want to include in a module and I can just mix and match whatever I want and Then I can install it on base runtime we call it module streams and That's that's like very end of The module we don't call it versions because in some cases it would be true But if I have for example lamp stack, I can't say what this version of a lamp stack because I have a version of database I have a version of PHP So that's why you call it streams. And these are basically just variants of the modules and Before you install you will be able to choose the right version or you can just download ISO With the versions pre-selected so the user experience will be kind of same like with Fedora today and And you can use DNF DNF update will work. It will keep your system up to date So that's basically it about Modular distro and now better will tell you something about the base runtime, which is the minimal system I can give you a microphone I guess I will just hold it. Okay, so as I mentioned The base runtime is a module that sits below all the other modules all the other stacks that we have This part is meant generational cord though So I will provide some background on what generational core is what base runtime really is and the difference between them base runtime Was originally meant to be only the lower layer of the of this diagram It was meant to provide hardware abstraction layer with system tools utilities and short libraries to be provided by other modules Included in a stack that we wanted to call the generational core This initiative is temporarily on hold. However because of the complexity and the introduction of modularity to Fedora, we don't have all the resources and the plans and the And the clear idea how to actually separate it what what components go into which module and so on Also because the name is quite quite long and nobody could pronounce it. Nobody really understood what generational meant in this context We decided to just Broaden the definition of base runtime itself include some of the system tools and libraries Not to do not the share libraries layer. I will get to that But basically when we talk about the base in February 26 We mean base runtime no generational core. We must we may still revisit the idea of the generational core in the future So the implementation don't don't worry about the picture. It's not really important if you can't read it Yeah, it's a module like any other it's defined in a module and the file It lists all the components that we want to build as part of the base runtime module It provides a stable and minimal bootable system on bare metal machines on virtual machines it also defines the Container base image for both system system the end spawn and docker files just docker The components that we include were inspired by the LSB core set POSIX user land and the atomic host Currently we we include 700 binary RPMs defined by roughly 170 source RPMs when installed as a container base image for Docker. It's a 82 packages and Takes roughly 88 members max of this space How we actually implement it is that we have this the module I just described Which is something we something we want to ship, but we also have to build it somehow So we have another module called Temporarily based on time built environment which includes all the build dependencies of the components in based on time It also includes all the build dependencies of those build dependencies and all the entire recursive build dependency chain currently, it's roughly 2800 packages which one build is roughly six six thousands binary RPMs Although we will ship the base base runtime built environment We won't be supporting it in any way and in the future. We hope that Parts of the built environment will be split into into the applications themselves and base runtime will build up and only on itself and The applications that provide the components needed to build it So Okay, yeah, yeah, I will I will try yeah, I know I'm just quite speaker So the challenges that we face when developing based on time is that There's more than one day one way to do it actually so choosing the right content is it's the biggest challenge we decided to to go with the Yeah, well with the LSB core set and and the atomic host set and The posix user and set I mentioned in previously But it's definitely not the not the finalist We may or we may exclude some of those components or or add something else to the to it Keeping it as small as possible is important because we minimize both the memory this space The space footprint as well as the attack surface and of course smaller set means that we can rebuild it more much more faster and We can also test it faster another problem is Building the whole set we started with federal beta federal 25 beta and just hope that to Selected those 3,000 packages We needed for the for the base one time and based on time built environment and hope that they would magically rebuild themselves And it would just work That didn't work as expected we got like 400 fail to build from source issues in the big in the first run That was mostly because parallel was removed just before federal 25 beta was branched Many packages build require parallel, but don't explicitly state the build dependency So they were failing and it was mostly caused by auto tools and auto conf So we fix some of the issues and then we based our sets to use federal 25 for this candidate 3 which and the build dependency failures the build failures dropped to 180 back then So we created a new tracker back and we were reporting all the FTBS issues to the package maintainers It was mostly the The missing build dependencies, but it was also another more poor packaging practices for example and the lack of CI in federal I wasn't helping Another issue was the Unresponsive maintainers for example when we reported those FTB FS issues We gave all the maintainers two weeks to respond. Otherwise, we would just fix it for them In most cases we had to wait the whole two weeks because there was no response whatsoever In other cases The package maintainer had a different opinion how to fix the issue which is not always a problem But it it just slows down the progress Of course the discussion helps if it's if it has potential Another issue is that we are developing base runtime and all the modules in parallel with the traditional release We since we are trying to build it. We haven't actually got past that yet we are working with the frozen package set and Federal is still introducing new changes in raw height that includes gcc7 package conf And basically anything Also when a maintainer fixes an issue for example when with the building the package They often rebase the package which means new dependencies and new build failures caused by the by the rebase That's not always This is a picture with With the build dependency graph of the current base runtime self hosting prototype it includes those 3,000 packages And the build dependencies between them As you can see When trying to minimize the build dependency chain both for runtime or the self hosting prototype because it just takes forever to rebuild And with all those issues, it's it's just a nightmare Many of those dependencies are obsolete And could be removed because they were added like years ago and nobody really cares anymore But finding them that's that's the problem. I Can provide SVG picture later So what we plan to deliver in forever 26 The proof-of-concept base runtime module With the first version of the API Hopefully all the packages in the API will also ship with the devil sub packages so people can actually use our API That's not as easy as it sounds because the devil devil sub packages often They'll require stuff like pearl and we don't want pearl in base runtime, of course We will also ship the build build environment module although unsupported We will ship several Yeah, we will ship system and container Management modules such as DNF, which is not part of base runtime because it moves at a different pace The same for Docker for example We will also ship Yeah, like a proof-of-concept of the selection of the dynamic Dynamic languages modules mostly for Python Again the same situation as with pearl we don't want Python in the in the base runtime But many of our tools including our PM build unfortunately required In the long term we would either ship like a small set of Python standard library including like small small Python interpreters similar to system Python we have now But completely disconnected from the Python 3 federal ships today We will also ship project bolt run which is a funny name for federal 20s 26 server composed entirely out of modules Unfortunately federal 26 won't have any updates So the reason is big that body cannot handle any artifacts besides RPMs. We are working on fixing that though And it will be made entirely by the majority working group members the reason is again that we have no infrastructure for N processes to to process like this for example module submission requests and Changes in the package database 477 we hope that base runtime will be much more stable all the API will be usable The packages that are not meant to be a part of API will be repackaged and shipped differently So that couldn't be accessed by anybody who is not meant to be using them The same for the dynamic languages runtimes We hope to finish these system Python and Python trees plate for instance We will support automated builds and rebuilds. So whenever you push to this get you will you will Both build a component and the whole module and all the modules that depend on it We will ship updates The update for bodies is in plan The modularity infrastructure will be open to public so anybody will be able to submit a module and build it There will be a new new release of Fedora server and more content. It doesn't have a name that you receive and Beyond Fedora cloud Fedora workstation. Hopefully that will include modules like known for it for example Yeah, we we hope that module releases will become our primary deliverable and the traditional release will be still available But will be composed out of modules. So we will pre-select several modules for the users and flatten them out into a traditional release And it will be awesome Yeah, so that's the end we have plenty of time for questions if there any You Right so yeah, the question was if I for example have an application that depends on a library so how do I How do I make it not conflicting with other libraries, right? So as I said, I can maybe Switch back to my slides So You can use containers so the module can be installed as a container and the container will be we'll have solved that already Oh, if you want to install it as an RPM, we might need to repackage The libraries of the dependencies in a way that will be installed in a separate path It's content. It's content as it's a price Yes, yeah, so there's no way to share No, nothing containers containers are meant to contain everything in themselves, so Just to further cover that right so based runtime will have some libraries that are shared amongst other things Yes, well at the beginning it's probably gonna be more stuff than we would like So also, we would like that shared set to be smaller so you can have independent versions Right yeah Yeah, there needs to be optimizations, but yeah, that's I guess more for the future in the RPM worlds Yeah, if we have one library of a certain version I think it would be just once on the system still but yeah in the containers That's no choice basically, but we can still use layering. So for example, I can have the base on time layer there I can have some Libraries layer, etc. And if they're the same for the same container, they will share both storage and runtime resources If I understand correctly the problem you're trying to solve is The problem of installing mutually That's not the only thing another is that yeah, yeah another problem is that we want another problem we want to offer Applications not packages and we want them to offer them an upstream driven life cycles not the distribution driven life cycles So we will we will ship the RPM repository or container Depending as the as upstream releases new versions not as we just decided And what about Different The question is about it Basically the same the same packaging is basically the same version but built against different different versions of dependencies We will build all the variations against all the all the dependencies in the chain So yeah, there will be a lot of artifacts available in the repositories on the service and mirrors, but The install it the system management tools should choose correctly which module variant to install for you Well there is because we track how we build it so we know it Your opinion of which is correct So yeah, maybe I'll try to answer differently each module will contain all the dependencies, but also the build recipe so it will We always build the same time So for example, it will reference particular version of the base runtime It will reference all but basically if there are more versions of recent I really built against both against all of them but in a module I can specify all the packages by branches for example, but When I build them the both system will save the exact commission she's so it will be reproducible at all times and Yeah The module defines all the software it needs You can say Whatever that means exactly right if this isn't really meant to be exposed to end users per se Except that you may have multiple versions of something available to choose from so that doesn't mean that it'll be that you can Arbitrarily create your own modules what I mean as a developer you could but that's not the concept here The concept here is that these things are still all the fun of the server side much like our cams are today But the units of measure are quite a bit bigger for the most part so that The individual things and have individual life cycles that doesn't mean that you can't go in there and twiddle with the packages But you know you're gonna have a different user experience. Yeah. Yeah. I mean the reason why I'm asking those those questions is I mean this very problem. There's been a lot of interest in the last two or three years and most people have Tending towards the Functional declarative approach that's used by Systems such as But you're still adhering to the imperative approach. So obviously you don't think You don't agree with the other That's a big move So that's a that may be the long-term right answer, but that's a that's a gut rewrite And no way to distribute the existing So, you know, even even if we were a hundred percent sure that the next answer was the right answer We can't just turn it off, right? So, you know, I think we're kind of walking towards towards that direction Okay We'll meet you Perfection in the sense like we won't know so we try it. Yeah, right? So let's let's put it together It's not it's disruptive, but it's not train wrecking, right and see how it works I mean, you know, and then iterate rather than make a big bet There are questions Yeah, okay, so question was How do you run containers? Do we run them on Docker? Do we run them on system? The end spawn and the answer is we will be using OCI containers Which will be able to run on Docker run on Run C and for example, if you have a no CI image You can imagine I Had pretty nice example for example You can imagine PDF which could be built by different tools, but you can open it in the browser We can open it in this reader on your phone. So the OCI image will run on multiple Container engines, but I'm not sure which which would be the default We can do both. Yeah Yeah, I have to find it. Oh, there is it Huge Well, as you can see it'll be a lot of building because yeah when building a module we need to build all the packages But I hope there will be some optimization some nice filters to Not have the cover for the screen as that as big as on this picture. Yeah As for the comments were in container run times the container space is still a warfare zone so if we were declarative about any particular tech there we would be wrong, right? So the objective here, I think is that we want to do kind of the OCI model Which is the open standard and then use different technologies to run them depending on scenario Like, you know, there's some of the reasons for the system need container stuff This is because you sometimes want to run a container before something like a Docker game comes up So you need to work well just like everything else We have to be kind of flexible about the container run times and we want to use because we're gonna need different ones with different kinds of Yeah, right. So do we have any more questions? All right, so I guess we can wrap up Thanks for coming


As some place along the line, when we get freedom of the press, we never put any provision in there about it. Sure. Back up a little bit, please. Back up a little bit. President D'Alti, it's good to have you. When are you going to start talking, man? Have you ever started talking? I'm going to tell you a story here in our town. President Johnson from now on just kind of approved Israeli atomic river papers the next day said, President reveals he can't. No, wait a minute, how was it? No, he walked the next day said, President reveals he can't swim. Practically a regime would have elections. There is not a relation to this.


as the co-host today of this week's episode of Talking Tax. My co-host, or really the main man here is Tom Yamachika, President of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii. And our special guest today is Lauren C. Hayes. She's a William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii graduate. And she's currently with the Liberty Justice Center based in Chicago, although she's living in Florida. She's a graduate also of Indiana University with a business degree. And she's gonna help us talk about the Governor's Housing Emergency Proclamation. That's our topic today. It was the topic of Tom's most recent column, which is published in various newspapers around the state and also on the Tax Foundation of Hawaii website. So check that out. But basically we wanna look into, was that a good idea? He used his emergency powers under the state constitution to declare a housing emergency and he suspended all kinds of laws. It generated a lot of backlash from people who didn't like some of those laws being overturned or suspended, some of those laws. And so actually this was issued in July. And since then he has just like like last week, he updated the proclamation. He had been, there had been many lawsuits filed against him and some of them have really good reasons for their arguments. Anyway, much of it is still in effect. He revised it and got rid of some of those things that people objected to, but there's still a lot of laws that are suspended. So we're gonna talk about the whole wisdom of whether this was the right thing to do, whether it'll achieve its goals. Tom, you wrote that article, you were kind of questioning whether it was a good thing. Since he revised it, have you changed your mind at all about what the status of that situation? Well, let's kind of start with the background. What is it, what the emergency power statute is and where we go from here. The emergency power statute we have in Hawaii is a statutory framework that lets the governor basically when an emergency is happening or when an emergency has happened, the governor has given extraordinary powers to deal with it, including suspending all kinds of laws at his discretion if they're gonna impede the emergency or the emergency relief effort. And we saw that play out during the pandemic because Governor E. Gay, his predecessor, used the emergency power statute and kind of chained emergency proclamations. I think each one lasts 60 days, but he kept it going through the state of emergency for about a couple of years. And obviously when you do that, there are questions that can be raised about well, are you doing the right thing? Are you really making yourself king? Why do we have a legislature if the governor can just sweep all those laws aside and that kind of thing. But we're talking today about the current governor and the current so-called state of emergency that was used to justify an emergency proclamation for housing, the creation of a housing czar, which had the ability to sidestep or circumvent different kinds of processes that are currently in place that regulate housing. There is, for example, a permitting process. There is a process for what happens if you find a historic native Hawaiian artifacts or burial sites. There's a process for historic structures. There is a state land use commission. There are county zoning and permitting bodies, all kinds of stuff to get through. And not surprisingly, housing is a big problem here in Hawaii in terms of trying to get anything built. You have to maneuver through all of this stuff. So the governor basically has issued this emergency proclamation to kind of cut through all this maze, this labyrinth of laws regularly and regulations and so forth. And the question is... I'll red tape, but there are good reasons, I guess, for some of those laws. But anyway. Yeah, well, of course they were. I mean, that's why they were passed in the first place. Theoretically, they were good ideas. But in total, they combined to just create this sludge that people have to trod through taking years to get anything built, if they can get it done at all. This goes back to me, in my mind, this has something to do with the police powers of the government. Supposedly the police powers under state law, as you know, and as you noted, I think in the article that, an emergency in Hawaii under state law is whatever the governor says it is, right? So it doesn't matter. Even though in the proclamation, it says to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the people. I think that's the essence of state police power. And just about any law, you can do just about anything if you can say you're apparently, if you can say you're protecting the health and safety and welfare of the people. So there is no definition. I know there were some people saying, well, this isn't really an emergency, but according to the law, it's up to him, right? So that's a problem. Lauren, what do you think about that broad stroke? Let me go back a little bit here. During the COVID era, the Grasshopper Institute of Hawaii, which I'm affiliated with, we did put out a report outlining the problems with the state law and we urged reform for one thing to make the cutoff point for the emergency, 60 days subject to approval of the legislature if they wanted to extend it. That law didn't get passed. There were some other things that the Institute proposed relating to reforming that law. But yeah, Tom's right that even before this housing proclamation, the governor, Governor Green, the current governor had issued a homelessness proclamation in which he suspended almost all the same laws. We started to look into that. We were doing some research on that about all the laws that got suspended. And then he came out with the housing proclamation, which was just way more general, but it was all the same stuff. Anyway, it seems to me that this police power is like, it's pretty broad. I mean, don't you think Lauren about that? I do. I think that this is definitely a situation of government overreach. There's several issues going on with the proclamations for housing. The statute you mentioned, the HRS 127A, it defines disaster or emergency as basically an occurrence or the imminent threat of an occurrence. So, and that occurrence has to be the threat to loss of life or injury to people, loss of property or loss of environment. So it's pretty specific. And traditionally speaking, like you mentioned, most of us think of a hurricane, a tsunami, a wildfire, natural disasters out of our control, not something that has taken decades in the making and is really not an emergency by traditional standards. So I do think this is a situation of government overreach where we have a housing proclamation for a problem that is multifaceted. It's not just about the over-regulation. There's other aspects to why people can't afford homes in Hawaii other than the permitting, although the permitting is a big problem. The issue with the proclamation itself, it not only I think is unconstitutional, I think it exceeds the governor's constitutional authority. The governor by Hawaii constitution and our doctrine of separation of powers only allows him to enforce laws, not create laws. And in this proclamation, he not only created an agency but he promulgated rules for that agency to follow and basically suspended county and state laws so that he could have his own agency decide for affordable housing. And at first glance, it appears as though, oh, it might help everybody with the permitting. Everyone complains from developers and contractors to single family homeowners, they complain about the permitting and there's valid concerns for the time it takes for a permit to get approved in Hawaii. But this proclamation only addresses affordable housing or at least it purports to only address affordable housing. So it is very interesting. Well, I mean, you mentioned that this isn't traditionally what you call an emergency, but there really are not a whole lot of guardrails around what a traditional emergency is. I mean, if you're saying, for example, that an emergency can't be if it's months, years or centuries and they're making, well, what about if astronomers found an asteroid that they predicted it's gonna slam it to all who in three months time, certainly that disaster was years or millennia or hundreds of millions of years in the making, we just happened to be at the tail end of it. And we got three months to go, and you say that's not an emergency because of that reason? I mean... Not necessarily. So according to the statute, it defines the emergency as an occurrence or the imminent threat of an occurrence. So in that situation, it would be the occurrence or the imminent threat of the asteroid hitting Hawaii in your example, where this is something that is... When we talk about housing and the issues behind the permitting, even the building beyond barriers working group has admitted that part of the problem is lack of staffing. That's not an overnight problem, 30 to 40% of the required employees for the different agencies, they didn't disappear overnight. Another problem that isn't being addressed is... You can say the same thing about the wildfires. I mean, because of understaffing, all of these non-native dry brush grew and grew and became tindra all along the way from the mountains to Lahaina, it got ignited by whatever spread like crazy and leveled the town. I'd be arguing that in that situation, sounds like it would have been a nice thing if the governor had declared an emergency to clear the fields of the tinder before it, they caught on fire. But of course, they never did that. You know, the whole Lahaina thing is just poor land management and bureaucracy to the max. But as far as the housing proclamation goes, yeah, he suspended laws like, I think it's called chapter 76 that will allow him to, that will allow the government agencies to hire third party viewers and contract the private sector, because right now there's a state, Supreme Court decision, the Kona decision that won't allow counties or the state to hire contract workers or privatize anything if it's traditionally, if it's just something that's traditionally been done by civil service workers, which are all unionized, of course. And then of course, the original law also suspended like you said, historic preservation, the original proclamation, excuse me, and environmental impact statements and even public record laws, which is outrageous, but they did that during the COVID era too. So- I mean, during the COVID era, it was even worse in the beginning. Yeah, I mean, it was suspended. Yeah. Our freedom of assembly, that was just outrageous. And so, Governor Green, he grew up, he was trained in that environment as the Lieutenant Governor. And even during the Governor Ege's era, he was in charge of an emergency proclamation to create a Kauhale little village for homeless people under emergency proclamation. So I think that's where he got the idea for the homeless emergency proclamation once he became governor that he signed while he was giving his state, his inaugural address, as I recall. But then it turns out he was also working on this broader housing proclamation. And I think the arguments that Earth Justice, I think it was Earth Justice, but anyways, Sierra Club and ACLU and all these other groups, they were saying, first of all, this isn't really that kind of an emergency. Secondly, he consulted with like over 200 people over periods of months about this before declaring it an emergency. So obviously this is stuff that could have been handled legislatively. I mean, because that's what legislators do. They get together and talk for months about things like this. And he backed down. I mean, I don't know if you wanna call it backing down, but maybe it was, he wanted to be Pono and Ayhanaka Kauhale, like the Grouchy Institute anyway. Okay, I'll restore all those laws, at least a lot of them. And we'll try to make it, we try to accomplish what we want with what's left. But I think, whereas, for example, in the Grassford Report, our conclusion was trying to sue over that COVID emergency proclamation was very problematic because the courts tend to favor, they tend to side with the government in times of emergency, a clear emergency, which in the first shutdown for two weeks is what we were told, right? But after it started dragging out, you thought maybe you might have a better chance of winning in court. But we didn't do that because the Grassford Institute didn't sue because of the fear of possibly a precedent that might make winning such, that a precedent that might go against the claim against the emergency proclamation. And actually there was a suit that was brought on the big island by some people or other, and it was brought in the circuit court level and the government won during the COVID emergency proclamation. Well, they won by being dismissed, right? I don't think they had a precedent. Well, yeah, I mean, there certainly isn't any appellate case law on it, but the question then becomes, look, I mean, are you going to argue that emergency proclamations or emergency laws are invalid because you had a lot of time to plan them out? I don't think that's a valid argument because you want that kind of deliberation if you can. You said that in your article and I think that's a really good point, but what do you think about that, Lauren? Well, I understand that deliberating on a certain emergency ahead of time is important. The things that he's deliberating on really should be taken care of by the legislature and by the people. This type of issue is not something that should be taken over by the governor, almost in a dictatorship manner, because what he declares as an emergency today while it seems good on its face because everyone in Hawaii, or most people in Hawaii will agree, yes, housing is an issue, yes, permitting me is an issue. Maybe tomorrow the emergency doesn't, isn't something we agree with because it's another long-term thing that's on his agenda. So picking and choosing battles and what is an emergency outside of the traditional occurrence or imminent threat of an occurrence to loss of life, property, and environment, I think we're really opening Pandora's box to what could potentially be an emergency. We've seen it with a couple other governors across the country recently.  So, and I'm paraphrasing here, but basically I'm gonna suspend the Second Amendment. And that was very quickly, yes, very recently. And that was very quickly fought with a lawsuit. I just saw the news the other day that the Colorado governor issued an executive order saying all state agencies will stop, I think immediately using gas-powered lawnmowers. And so where does it, how is that an emergency? Or is that something that can be better taken care of with the legislature? And I think that if we start to erode our separation of powers and make judgment calls like, well, it benefits us today, it may not benefit us tomorrow. You know, and that I think is absolutely slow. That's something for the courts to say, I think. Oh, I agree. That's something for the courts to say. And there are standards that the courts can use to say, well, is this emergency or not? And there's a process behind it in 127A. Somebody files for injunction against enforcement of the emergency powers. You can be in a three-judge court and then off you go. But none of that's happened yet. I'm not insensitive that you're sympathetic to this executive order. And as I'm I actually because of what it hoped to achieve, like Lauren said, I think everyone kind of liked the idea. But when you get into the nuts and bolts and really the rationale behind it, then it becomes more problematic. And I'm just wondering if you're being swayed more by the goal as opposed to the process. Well, yeah, I think the end has a little bit to do with it as well. I mean, here you have a kind of long running problem that we've had in our government for decades. And we've given the legislature tons and tons of years to do something about it. And for whatever reason, they couldn't or didn't or won't. So, and relief hasn't happened. And I think if I were to go to the legislature today and I told them, well, you should do X, Y, and Z, somebody's gonna ask me, well, where the heck is the evidence to show us that X, Y, and Z works? And for that reason, I think it's a good idea to once in a while go in, break the system, and then see what drops out, see what's working, see what's not, and then you can go to the legislature and say, all right, these are the parts that are broken. These have to be fixed. The land use part's okay, the historic preservation part's okay, but this permitting garbage has to be dealt with. I think that raises a really great point. The working group that he created, really the purpose shouldn't be to determine what projects go forward, but it should be used to determine where the issues are in the process. What is the root cause of the delay in permitting, the lack of developers, the lack of affordable housing, get to the roots of the problem and present those issues to the legislature and say, hey, we have convened state and county officials, we've convened nonprofits and for-profits, get the community's input, talk to the construction industry, talk to single family homeowners and find out what's going on. And really, I think that you then take that information to the legislature rather than dictate, well, now that we have found it, we are going to be the sole determining factor of projects going forward. Yeah, I think one of the really cool things about this emergency proclamation and coming from a democratic governor even in this really blue state, which loves regulation, tends to love regulation, is that it so clearly identifies so many of the laws that have caused this problem. I mean, even aside from that it's an emergency proclamation, it's a wonderful blueprint for what things need to be changed. And I do think the legislature was, it has been finally coming around, there have been some tiny steps recently that we never would have seen a few years ago. But I do like the idea that it was creating a Petri dish, creating a little like, enterprise zone. That's sort of, he's trying to have an enterprise zone for the whole state and let's see what happens. But couldn't he have done that like, for example in the revised emergency proclamation, they exempted Lahaina from any of the changes. So I think that's what it was. So everything there is gonna be up to the people of Lahaina to decide. Well, 60 days later that can change too. Right, that's part of the problem. That is part of the problem. So you're gonna build, you're gonna have a housing revival in 60 days. No, so he's gonna have to extend it, right? How about 60 days later? No, so here we go again, you know, three, right? Well, I mean, he has previously announced that he's gonna do this for a year. Yeah. Yeah, I believe in the rules that even says that anybody that they hire for this working group or any of the agencies, the term won't exceed a year, but I'm sure, you know, just issue another proclamation and, you know, that can change. Yeah, and at any point, you know, somebody can, you know, bring a suit to invalidate this, which I think is the legitimate way of dealing with it. Do you think the court would go along with that, Tom? Do you think that, you know, that the legislature here would side with the governor and say, no, it's... Well, I think Lauren's right up to a point. I mean, I think she had mentioned initially that at least during the first, you know, a few days, weeks, months of the supposed emergency, the courts would probably be willing to give the governor a lot of latitude, but as time wore on, I think their patience would be limited. And I think that's kind of the correct result. I do think there's one argument out there that I haven't seen presented yet in a lawsuit that has some merit. So the governor's basically policy and procedure or practice has been to issue these recurring emergency orders every 60 days. And the statute I think is pretty clear that it says that the emergency proclamation will terminate at 60 days or by separate proclamation, whichever occurs first, you know, and standard statutory interpretation requires that you read the clauses that, you know, are conditioned upon each other and whichever occurs first, I think the interpretation is that, you know, if there was an emergency proclamation, he has 60 days. And if for some reason the emergency ends at 45, he can issue a separate one and then it ends at 45. By the same token, if the emergency still exists on day 49, he can issue a proclamation day 49 saying the emergency still exists. And I'm going to restate everything that was in the first proclamation and proclamation number two has 60 days, which is what Governor Eagie did. Right. In which case, I think that that violates the non-delegation doctrine and the separation of powers. And we run into a serious constitutional issue. And I don't think the courts in Hawaii have yet specifically grappled with that. I don't think that anybody's brought that forth just yet. Yeah, it occurred to me too when I was talking about the lawsuits that prompted the governor to revise his emergency proclamation. You know, when I saw the content of, when I saw the arguments that they were putting forth, I thought, wow, these are really good arguments. This is going to be a tough one if it goes to court. And I wondered if maybe Governor Green, you know, thought, well, maybe I better back out because if I don't, or, you know, change course, not only would he make all the progressive people happy, they were the ones basically pushing the lawsuits, but, and he's a progressive, so he wants to make them happy. But also he might have been a ferret of a precedent that could lock him in the future to, you know, less broad, broad based proclamations. You think that could have been a factor? At some point, precedent's got to be made. And I think during the early part of a declared emergency is the easiest time for the state to get in there and reaffirm that the power exists. So if I were the AG, I would want the challenge to be made now in the early stages of the so-called emergency and have the court's rule. Yeah, I can't speak for her, you know, the rationale behind walking back some of the, you know, emergency proclamations and the laws that were suspended. But I mean, I do think that a consideration might be, you know, precedent creating law that says, you know, this type of situation is not an emergency under the statute, you know, so that could prevent him from doing, you know, kind of what I mentioned before, that this Pandora's box of, oh, well, anything can mean emergency, even though the housing crisis has been in place for decades. Well, let's just hope that in general, some good comes out of this in terms of the blueprint that the emergency proclamation provides for the legislature to pick up on and run with. There's a lot of good things in there that need to be changed, you know, that are the guideposts for change. Yeah, and I do think this is a, and at bottom, it's a grand experiment, and I'm all for, you know, proper experimentation. Yeah, I commend the governor for the, it's actually bold and, you know, to some extent, too bad, he can't be a dictator in this kind of a situation. Although, again, if you look into the particular, setting up that body, which gets to approve which projects, you know, can be authorized and all of this, I think it really, even within itself, it's got too much red tape going on there. So that's ironic. But the sentiment is proper. Lauren? I think you raised an interesting point. If you watched the last Building Beyond Barriers working group, I believe it was August 29th in their meeting, you know, the projects that had been presented so far, and of course it's in only its early days, they were all government projects for affordable housing. And the irony is that they're government agencies asking the same government agencies for permission to do their project. So why couldn't they have gotten it done before under the laws that were in place?  This is government agencies asking the very same government agencies that have created that bureaucracy. So it's an interesting dynamic. Thank you so much for being with us today, Lauren. It's really been great having you. I'm sorry. Thank you. Person in Hawaii. I'm sure you'd like to come back for a vacation sometime. Absolutely. Tom, last word. Well, like I said, this is a grand experiment. And I do commend the governor for, you know, teeing it up and taking a swing. I think we need more bold moves like this who really expose what's wrong in the system that we now have, you know, break it and then try to put it back together better. Right on. Thank you very much, Tom. Lauren, our listeners today, our viewers, thank you for being here today. We'll see you next time. Aloha. Thanks for watching. You're on Think Tech Hawaii.