Exploring Renegade Fantasy Football & NFL Insights

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00:00Hello, everyone. It's Adam Kaplan here again for SportsGrid at Super Bowl 59, and the man

00:06to my right is my doppelganger. He's the great Mike Silver from The Athletic, and also, Mike,

00:12I knew you're entrepreneurial because I know you're a book writer, which we'll get into in a

00:15minute, but renegade fantasy football. So one of your business partners who I ran into, Steve Vandell,

00:20this is an unbelievable idea. Now, I don't know how it works. You've got to explain it. Renegade

00:26fantasy football. Let's get into that first because as a fantasy guy, I don't know what

00:29that is. Explain it. Well, so the worst thing about fantasy, as you know, is, oh, my guy got

00:34hurt. My week is blown up. Oh, they're not targeting my guy. We wanted to create something

00:40where you could do something about it. So we created a way to have real-time substitutions,

00:45and that could be game-saving, season-saving, or just preference. I want to go with the hot

00:51hand right now. And so in all of fantasy football history, you've basically been an owner slash GM,

00:57and you have to sit there helplessly as the games play out. Now you're the coach,

01:02and you really do have an ability. And depending on, you know, your league commissioner can decide

01:07how interactive he wants to let people be. You can spend every second of the weekend monitoring it,

01:13or you could just get an alert on your phone while you're watching your kid's soccer game,

01:17like, oh, my running back's hurt. I need to make a move. It does just open up so much more

01:22possibilities, bigger roster sizes, more involvement. And we spent a season getting

01:29the kinks out in beta, and now the tech is ready to roll. All right. Also, Mike, you wrote a book.

01:34Now, I know when I was talking to you at Jets camp, it's more about the origins of the West

01:39Coast offense and the coaches and the Shanahan tree. Tell us about it. Well, it really starts

01:44with Mike Shanahan. It's coaching Steve Young at John Elway when I came in and did it. And then

01:51it takes you to Washington with that incredible staff he had in the early 2010s with his son,

01:56Kyle, Sean McVay, Raheem Morris, the floor, the floor, Mike McDaniel, all head coaches,

02:01Bobby Slowick and others. And so they have changed the game in the way they approach it. And one of

02:08the things that has changed it for so long, football, an element of football culture,

02:15as you know, was just we don't want players to know why we're doing this. We're just doing it

02:20just listen to what we say. Just do it. It works. And we're in a generation now where players,

02:26I think, are much more into knowing the purpose behind it. And you have these coaches are obsessed

02:33with it. Everything they do, they want to have a why when explaining it to each other and certainly

02:39to their players. And so that way of approaching it has really changed the game. And we've seen

02:44it seep into the pores of so many organizations, the Vikings and Kevin O'Connell this year. And

02:50so many others. So I think people will love it. And by the way, what's your book called, by the

02:54way? The why is everything. The why is everything. And I don't want to give people the impression

02:58it's all about scheme and big picture stuff. It is. But there's lots of dirt. Sure. Oh, I like it.

03:04Okay. Feuding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rivalry. Oh, wow. I think people are gonna dig it. All right.

03:09Also, you're still writing. We love it for the athletic. What's your angle this week for the

03:14Super Bowl? Great. You know, I'm about to write a Travis Kelsey thing. I had a Howie Roseman piece

03:19post today. Yesterday, I was the one who reported that they're taking end racism out of the end

03:24zone. Oh, pretty interesting. Just the background on that. Well, I you know, the NFL would tell you,

03:31hey, we're just, we launched in the wake of the George Floyd protests. So this initiative where

03:39we put slogans and zones, among other things, and racism has kind of been a staple. They would tell

03:45you, hey, look, the New Orleans tragedy, the plane crash, the fires, we're just trying to be

03:49ultra sensitive. So we're going with choose love, and it takes all of us for the Super Bowl. A

03:54cynic would say, look at the optics, you have a climate where lots of institutions and companies

04:00are either voluntarily or involuntarily go moving away from DEI and other expressions of support

04:10for that. And you have President Trump is now who I also reported will attend the first sitting

04:16president to attend the Super Bowl. He's coming to the game, they abruptly kind of decided no end

04:22racism. So I don't think the optics are great. Well, it's as you know, Mike, from attending so

04:28many Super Bowls and working and reporting, it's never a dull moment. I was there for the Eugene

04:32Robinson Super Bowl. We don't need to get into that. Barrett Robbins. Yes, I was there was, you

04:37know, too. But in San Diego, I remember, I'll never forget that. For Mike Silver, a guy, by the

04:43way, who knows it all. I'm Adam Kaplan for Sports Grid.

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