HIGHLIGHT: Will McClay On Christian Parker's Influence In The NFL Draft

0:00Well, you get the new coaching staff that comes in, right? Christian Parker and he starts hiring any staff. What are the conversations when you sit down with Christian Parker or the D-line coach or the linebacker coach? How do those conversations break down when you're trying to get their input on what are the particular players that you're looking for, style and all that kind of stuff? How do some of those conversations go? It's, you know, we sit down and we break it down from the very intimate, but beginning parts of it is, okay, what are we looking for in the position? What does that position do? How does it fit with them what we do? Every coach has traits and things that they're looking for and the funny thing is the players make coaches, right? And so you're always looking to find that best player that they've ever coached. Well, they're not all the same. So we're looking for those traits. We'll go down and look at all of the guys that they've drafted or worked with and talked to them about the different traits.

1:00And so then you start finding commonality and language and then you start vibing with it. If you know and understand football and the way that it's, you know, they're trying to fit the pieces in together, you have those conversations, you find out what they like and what they don't like and you try and match it as much as possible. You know, I've been dealing with Will since the Desperado days. You're not going to take me away from the Desperado days. Hell is a head coach, by the way, Will. I went to a lot of other games. Hell is a head coach. He's a rice grad. My daughter's a rice person. She's a cheerleader right. So we got a rice bond here. You're not going to take away this rice bond, okay? He took shots at you. No, we, you know, I didn't take shots at him. I just basically told him that when he was a young guy, back in the 30s and the 30s back in the 30s, and when he was a fourth, fifth round pick, nobody thought that he would be here, but he worked himself to the point. There you go. And, you know, as a scout, you know, you've gone with the different seasons

2:01coordinates and picking guys for their schemes. I don't know if you just asked the similar question, but from what Quinn was looking for to Zimmer or to, you know, obviously last year and now this year, Christian Park is 34, you know, and he's a young guy, you know, how different was it with him compared to some of the other guys in the past? Each coordinator comes in with what they're looking for. It's how well they describe it. And then how well they answer the questions about what do you do when you don't have it? And then you think about the process and the way that they explain it to you and what you have to do is everything's not going to be perfect. I'm not going to get you everything that you want. So how do we find ways to operate with what we do have and make that better? And so when you talk to Christian and he talked about the, he talks about the different ways that he constructs the defense. It's not just the players within the defense.

3:01It's what the defense can do and how you can adjust the defense based off of what you have and don't have. So the way that he put those things together and explained it, it gives you that security that he knows what he's talking about and putting the pieces together. And every coach has it. We're going through the same thing all the time. But it's the conviction and then it's the plan and then it's how you deploy. So everybody does it a little bit different. But you get excited when you talk to Christian and the staff and you talk just the whole staff offensively and defensively with our staff right now. There's a connection and a connectivity that makes you feel like you have an opportunity for it to have success because they're putting people in the right places the right way.