Cut open that DJ Moore hand zone touchdown touchdown pairs.
I am Jeff Jonia blitz is on dot go.
What was like playing for coach Good?
I don't want to answer any questions like that pressure coming is a big trouble.
Dotty goes Mottest Sweat Bears et cetera, brought to you by Miller Lte with the voices that the Bears, Jeff Joniac and Tom Thayer.
Well, many hands make quick work.
It's a phrase often used to describe getting the job done, meeting a goal, but in the NFL it definitely has a legit way to describe the process to building a champion. Yes, the players have to execute, the coaches have to make the right decisions, the GM has to bring in the talent and be flexible in the process.
But there are so many more hands that make it all happen.
And one of them is Bears Chief negotiator and VP of Football Administration Matt Finstein, described by a gentle manager Ryan Pull as an invaluable asset to our football operation, who joined the Bears in twenty twenty two after seven years with the NFL Management Council.
This is Bears et cetera.
Episode one five are brought to you by Miller Lte with Super Bowl winning Bears guard Tom Thare.
I'm Jeff Jonaiack.
Are you exhausted from the off season and the business season at so many things were going on?
No, I'm energized. Yeah, thanks for having me.
The energy comes from the types of people we brought in, the things that were done. Take us through that. Because in your role, people don't don't know a lot about you. They know your name, they know you're the cheap negotiator. But when you get somebody signed or you make a free agent decision or an extension, I mean it's got to be an adrenaline rush for you as well, because that takes some time, it takes some process.
It's the best feeling I have, Like the best possible thing that can happen during my day is going and grabbing a player and helping him to sign his contract because I'm sure it's you know, it's it's life changing money for them, and so just that process, right, it usually takes a long time to get to that point, whether it's quick in free agency and it's competitive, or
it's negotiating an extension over months or weeks. But getting that done and getting to that point and usually seeing them, you know, super happy and excited.
That gets me excited.
Hey, when the season concludes, what is your job up until the day that we see the war room and you guys take the first pick in the draft and then all that excitement happens. But what are some of the details of your job at the conclusion of a season up unto that point.
Yeah, it's a lot of preparation, because I think you've probably heard Ryan talk about this, But for us, when it comes to acquiring talent, right you're constantly thinking about free agency and the draft together, and so we're looking at, Okay, here's the free agency board. It may change, some players may go back to their original teams. Some players can make it franchise tagged, which adds another layer to the complexity.
But we're looking at, Okay, what are our draft picks look like where we could potentially trade up or down or whatever, But what do they look like right now? Who are the players in the draft that are available, and then how do we combine that with a successful free agency to put the most competitive fifty three on the field in September, which is a long way away.
And so we're constantly looking at all, right, what are the different combinations, you know, between both of those things, knowing that there's going to be some unknowns that some things are going to play out during OTAs and training camp,
and then what does that mean for today? Right, So potential combinations of players were going to sign early in free agency or laid in free agency, and then as the draft goes on, right round one, Round two, later rounds, undrafted free agency, how do we put all that together to achieve the goals for the team as a whole.
And so there's a lot of forecasting that goes into it, really, just a lot of preparation and for me, you know, forecasting numbers and trying to see what affects our salary cap this year and then in future years so that I can tell Ryan, hey, if we do this, it may affect how we're going to do something next year or in two years. So that's that's where the brunt
of my work comes in. And then I have to distill all that down and say, all right, here's the amount of money we have to work with, you know, with some margin of error, and here's how we can potentially split it up. And you know, here's Plan ABC. Because things don't always go your way, so you always have to have fallback options and different plans and ways that you can be adaptable and flexible while not compromising your core values and losing sight of the long term goal.
When you when you talk about forecasting, do you have a certain amount of allotted money per position or does that have you don't take that in consideration.
It's individually done.
It's more individual you know, I think we have enough guardrails, right. The salary cap obviously is a hard cap, and so I don't I don't try to put too many additional guardrails in place where, you know, we could potentially jam ourselves up if we're breaking our own rules that are arbitrary to begin with, versus just saying, hey, you know,
this is the talent that you've got that's available. Talent is hard to come by in this league, right, It's probably in a lot shorter supply than people realize, and so we allocate resources that way.
We want the best players available to play for us because that at the end of the day, that's what's going to help us win games.
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down the alphabet do you go on a plan? So you got your plan, A plan, B, plant C. I don't hear many planned des and fs in the world of business, but is that the case?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they happen, and oftentimes they end up working out, you know, pleasantly, well, you get pleasantly surprised sometimes right when you see you know, getting further down the line.
You may not you know, make as many lines.
Or get as much attention for some moves, But at the end of the day, once these guys hit the field, sometimes a're like, Wow, that was a really good deal or a really good move to go acquire that player. So we try to stay as flexible as possible, and
that means having a lot of different plans. I wouldn't say that necessarily, you know, everything that we do fits one precise plan to a t. But at the end of the day, we're trying to stay within our overall sort of constraints and the overall vision where we can at least check off each goal in some former fashion in a way that we'd contemplated before we'd do it.
How'd you get into this?
That's a long story.
Give us a cliff notes version.
I thought I was going to do football analytics, and so I was writing about football analytics for Bloomberg Sports, which was Bloomberg Financial Sports Company years ago, this must be ten years ago, twelve.
Years ago, or certainly before it was a thing for football analytic.
I was their only analytics writer.
They were basically they were doing mostly baseball, fantasy baseball, baseball analytics, things like that. I ended up that helped me get in to the NFL at the league office, and I was still doing analytics game stats analysis. If you remember years ago when they moved the extra point back, I remember doing a project about, you know, here's how
that LFEC scoring. And then very soon after I joined the NFL, there was a lot of reorganization and shuffling, and I got basically dropped into the management council, which is you know, the arm of the NFL League Office that negotiates the collective Bargaining Agreement and deals with player contracts and really everything that has to do with player contracts and player you know, salary and benefits, compensation, everything
between the NFL and the NFLPA. And so at that time, it was twenty fifteen, they were just starting to prepare for twenty twenty CBA negotiations, and so I ended up sort of transferring some of that analytical skill and looking at how players are aid, you know, how money is divvied up among different team salary caps, and applying that towards Hey, if we change this right, if we tweak the fifth year option calculation, if we tweak the proven
performance escalator, how does it affect spending on players? Right Where you've got a certain amount of money that goes to veteran players and free agency or extensions, you've got a certain amount of money that goes to players under the rookie system, restricted free agents, everything, And so constantly analyzing that, engaging tweaks we could make, you know, as we got into twenty twenty and started to make some of those changes, which was really cool.
You know, Matt.
You said you started talking thinking about the Collective Barney Agreement in twenty fifteen when it expired in twenty twenty. How far ahead do you start thinking about a now that you're working for a team and not the league. How far ahead do you start thinking about a player contract, the possibility of a contract extension of a bright guy, for example, Kyler Gordon this year.
Yeah, early, as early as I can reasonably. And I say that because you know, obviously what they do on the field is going to impact that, and so I can you know, I can say, you know, two years early, but in reality those seasons in between are going to have some effect on, you know, what Kyler's negotiation would
look like. So I try to think it about about it as early as possible, But really I'm preparing, you know, probably six months out, because really for me, I just want to be prepared and ready for when Ryan says let's go. And at that point there's a lot of different things that are going to get put in motion, plans and research and things like that that we're going to bring to him, that he's going to bring to Kevin or to George and say, you know, this is
something I want to do and here's why. And then eventually we have a plan put together and we can, you.
Know, get ready to go and execute it.
Matt, I've been a Bears fan my whole life, and the anticipation of watching a Bears game sometimes it adds a tenseness to me because I'm pulling so hard for the Bears. When you watch a game, can you enjoy the game or does every single play, maybe even an injury, all sudden ignite a thought in your head? Or is there any time during the course of a football season that you can just kick back and enjoy watching a game without all those thoughts that are being placed in your head unexpectedly.
I think it's pretty tense for me, you know, I want to win, I think as much as anybody in this building. That's that's the goal, right, We're gonna We're gonna work hard from uh, you know, February through August with all these different things that we do to to put one a winner on the field.
And no lead is too safe, right.
So at any given point, it's not even about you know, the the little things you know that are that I'm thinking about transactions and things like that during the season but at the end of the day, what we're doing here is trying to improve our team and win football games, right, and so that that core sort of goal is constantly what I'm thinking about.
Hey Bears.
Fan Steinhoffels is a proud partner of the Chicago Bears and now open in Orland Park. Steinhoffels is Chicago lands furniture and mattress leader with the largest selection to fit every style and budget at as one hundred percent employee owned shop in store and online at Steinhoffels dot Com. Matt there are scouting report that's like you hear about it in every vernacular in the NFL as you get ready for a game. Do you have scouting reports on agents?
Yeah?
But also I think one of the important things you can do in a role like this is is expect the unexpected. Yeah, And so that can only take you so far. You're always going to get hit sideways with something I think during every negotiation and just being able to stay on your feet and be nimble is a critical piece of it too.
Did you ever consider becoming an agent when you're you went to the University of Michigan, right, Did you ever have any in contact with the football operations there anyway.
So did you ever consider being an agent?
No?
I mean I didn't. I'd ever thought this was a career path for me in college.
You know, what'd you think?
I thought I was going to be a lifelong football fan and just live out my days and spend Sundays on the couch.
File.
So this is the coolest job overage?
Oh, for you, it's awesome.
You wake up every morning energized and excited to come into work and to get something done. And it's awesome.
What's it like working with Ryan Poles?
Amazing?
And it's Ryan, It's the whole crew, you know, it's Ryan, It's I and Jeff Trey Breck down the line. Good dudes, Awesome people, incredible to work with. They they teach me as much as I can hope to teach them, and that that helps me do my job better because at the end of the day, I'm translating everything they're giving me about you know what a player does, you know how he competes, where he may fit on our roster into terms that I can use to better do my job.
So I learned things from all them, and they're all just a great team unit. They work so well together and that just helps me, you know, as I as I try to do my little part.
Matt, You've had time to develop a relationship with Ryan Paul's in his staff, to get to know what he requires out of you. How long does it take you to get to know a new head coach. You bring in Ben Johnson, here's a first time head coach, and do you have to develop a relationship with him to know his spending habits or do you deal directly with Ryan and let Ryan deal with Ben.
A little bit of both. I think Ryan does a lot of that. He handles that a lot himself. But I mean, you know, I do have to have some sort of relationship with Ben, and it's for the same reasons, Right, I'm translating what he's telling me into things that can help me do my job. And I think Ryan certainly takes on the front of that, and you know he can help with that translation.
Really well.
It may take me a little bit longer to figure
it out. But as Ben as all the you know, all of the his coordinators, his assistant coaches tell us things, right, We're just trying to take that information and use it to help us, right, whether it's scout when we're going out scouting players in college or you know, pro scouting, or for me in my job, right, I'm just trying to hear about the things that they prioritize in terms of different players, right both on and off the field, to better help me understand, you know, how I should
structure something or to what extent to balance myself out. So it takes me a little while to kind of figure that out. But having a relationship, the more and more that you do it, the easier it is.
With those guys.
All right, we're gonna let you go.
Time is money and you got a lot to worry about, so we could talk to you for a half hour. But I find this aspect of football fascinating because it's never really discussed much. And when you find somebody of a man like yourself making an impact in the NFL, people should know about you a little bit. So you've put a lot into it in your life and your career. Colemack, New York, do you know else Thomas from Comack, New
York as a Golden domer. Tom Mendoza you know Tom Mendoza is of course business executive namesake of Mendoza College of business at Notre Dame. So that's a uh of course he played with Harball, Bob Costas.
Yeah, these are.
Things you know, right, and uh Rosie o'donald just to name a few.
So wow, what a town. Those are the main ones. It's a whole list. I saw something I never heard of.
But uh, where at where in relation to New York City is that it's a super.
Okay, probably about an hour drive from New York City.
Thank you so so much for your time. You do great things.
Ryan talks about you all the time, said, hey, this is a man you got to get to know, so we got we got to know you a little bit today.
Thank you so much.
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Chicago Bears. Matt Feinstein, Uh, wonderful to hear, Tom, because often the backgrounds don't necessarily relate entirely to football, could be another walk of let They may not even be football fans. I love the fact he's a football fan. That makes it better, That makes the job even more important for me.
Right they thought he was going to graduate with a degree in football pandemonium from Michigan, but look at him going from the league offices now.
Being attached to the Bears the way he has.
It was a great conversation and like you said, there's a thousand more things I'd like to ask him, and he it's a job that's never done.
You know, the first job when you come here with the Bears or in any new situation, you gotta look at the financials. Hey is everything in order? What are we going to do as a franchise. And clearly when Ryan Poles came in, it was to strip it down to the bear wire. Frankly, that's the process, and the first step in that of a rebuild is getting those financials in order to give the franchise a new foundation to build on. And now we're starting to see the
fruits of their labor. We hope it relates to wins, obviously in a Super Bowl, but the extensions that we've seen. We've talked about it on this show many times. That's telling me and telling the locker room that they believe in a cash of players that are going to be their core when they win. They're not going to give people extensions just because They're going to give extensions to people because they believe they'll be the reason why you win.
And I think there's more of that coming. So that to me is a green light go.
Yeah.
You know, whether it's a homegrown guy that you drafted and ben here since the beginning, are guys that you brought aboard and they showed significant traits of being in an alpha male leader inside that locker room and for their position. And I think that's what Ryan Poles has
always wanted to do on this football team. And now I do think when you're a general manager that's been here and you having a brand new head coach, is it kind of it opens more avenues for conversations of what you want to try to accomplish in terms of talent.
And honestly, a year ago, when you draft Caleb Williams won and Roma duns nine, you're already wondering, okay, if they're going to be the stars.
Think they will.
That's going to cost, you know, five years from now and where you want your money to be. Obviously, quarterbacks going to make the money, but I want to put it in my line of scrimmage, and I think the Bears are doing that.
But you just look at the league over the last three or four years, and you look at the way salaries have gone for defensive backs, for wide receivers, four tight ends, every single position out there. They're knowing the start, they're not decreasing their contracts. Every contract has increased in some way, shape or form, and you know, so up and down the line of scrimmage, both sides of the ball and beyond.
It, they're going to get paid.
And that's what Matt said even in his interview, that you're making financial, life changing decisions for a lot of these young guys.
And one of those is not a young guy, but a guy who's still playing in plans to make a big impact for the Bears. Reportedly NFL Network Insiders and Rapidport and Tom Pelasero reporting on Tuesday when we were taping this podcast, at the three time All pro Joe Tooney agreeing on a two year extension not official yet, as we as we put this together, but it was expected when they brought him here. It was something that figured to get done.
Yeah, you know, it's kind of funny because when you bring that up and you talk about agents and everything, Mike McCartney, his agent is an ex Chicago Bear scout. And you know, the way that you know from what the first day you walk into hallis Hall and how you.
Got to get to know it.
Then you walk back into Hallas Hall and you're walking in with a client. It's, you know, an amazing kind of a turn of the wheel from Matt being Matt Feinstein being in the front office of the NFL to now being in the front office of the Bears.
It's it's a definitely change of life.
And if it were you in that position coming over after being a multi time Super Bowl champion and you're coming here with a lot on your shoulders as somebody that's going to lead that offensive line at the left guard position, how would that make you feel to get that belief in you from your new organization that hey, we really do We didn't just bring you here for one year.
We brought you.
Here to stabilize this situation on the offensive line and take us into the future.
Well, Joe's coming in with Joe Toney's coming in with a reputation. He's got a reputation of an alpha male, of a successful offensive lineman.
Not a pro bowler, but an all pro. He's got versatility.
He's shown signs from New England to Kansas City that he can be one of the most successful interior alignment in all of the leagues. So if I was walking in with the same swagger as Joe Toney, I would come in here with the intentions of being an inside the locker room influence and get this thing turned around.
Good news, Chicago United Airlines is getting brand new planes with all the bells and whistles, like Bluetooth connectivity screens at every seat in the room for everyone's roller bag. United proud to fly the Chicago Bears and you too. There's another round of NFL owners meetings. It's going on in Minneapolis on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Again, we're taping this on Tuesday, so we won't know the outcomes of these things, but I wanted to get your
take on a couple of them. One the flag football in the twenty eight Olympics, we know, flag football is booming.
It's booming. It's going to be awesome that it's in the Olympics.
I know there was some hesitation on the owner's part about allowing their players, especially you know, I'm assuming that the guys that they've heavily invested in to participate.
So they had some questions.
If a player got hurt, how that would work out in terms of accountability and how that works with the salary and the whole bit. There are some resolutions to it.
One is one player per team would be allowed to participate, and permitting each NFL's club's designated international to play for his country as well, which would impact a guy like Tory Taylor, the Bears printer, if he chose to Each team would get appropriate injury protection and salary cap credit for any player who was injured while authorized to play in flag football activities related.
To the Olympics.
An agreement that an Olympic flag football teams would implement certain minimum standards for medical staff and field surfaces to be eligible. Now the Olympics will be in Los Angeles, I'm sure there'd be ramp up practices and so, you really this becomes a big thing now it's only one player. But are you putting Lamar Jackson out there? Are you putting you know, say, qu I don't know. Are you allowing that? Is my question to you as an NFL player.
Pretend for a minute that you're current in a NFL player and you want to play in the Olympics.
Well, you know, I think there's a lot of similarity similarities to the modern day Pro Bowl. Those guys go out there and they play a flag football game and they have all these competitions in terms of a display of their athleticism. There's got to be a lot of similarities in that.
Listen, if you take.
A mid range player from the NFL and then you put a bunch of mid range guys from the NFL together for a team, they're going to be the greatest team in the world. So this is not something that now that these countries have had years to build their basketball talent or the basketball teams and they go out there and they're a little bit more competitive against the NBA players. The NBA players are still the NBA players and the NFL players are still going to be a
competitive group of NFL players. And when you have a gold medal on the line for the first time in the history of the Olympics. That would be pretty awesome.
I will watch. I will watch the too.
I will watch to see also how far advanced other countries have become, like we've talked about on this show, like India, for example, they have a massive interest in football. They have a league that has broadcast rights and the whole bit, and they play football. Now what it looks like, I have no idea, but I think we'd be surprised at how many countries are actually playing football at some level.
Obviously it's not at the NFL level in most cases all cases, probably, but how intriguing would that be to watch flag football internationally?
Well, to me, it would be exciting to see a country like Canada because Canada has the Canadian Football League. They have guys on their football team that you have to come from Canada, so they have a larger pool of talent than some of the other countries will have. They also are a passing type of a league, so they're you know, passing their quarterback play.
All that type of stuff is gonna be you know.
I don't know if it's Manda mac comparable to the NFL, but it's gonna be, you know, a comparable brand of football that's gonna be super competitive.
The only one I want to.
Bring up is, and it's not the toush push that's an overtalked topic by now, but the new playoff format that has been suggested by the Detroit Lions. Seven seeds obviously in each conference seated by the best record, So in effect, the wildcard team could be seated ahead of a division winner if the wildcard team as a better record, and the chances are that division winners could be playing road games in the wild crowd round. So you know, I don't like it. You win the division, you've earned it.
Certain divisions are weaker than others. Certain divisions are stronger than I like the NFC North right now, how do you feel about it?
You know, it seems like if someone gets an id in their head according to the records that they finish with, they bring it up as a topic of debate and discussion. You know, probably be a nightmare for the guys like Kyle Kelly, behind the scenes guy for the Bears that has to make all the arrangements of where their team is going to travel, and if the records just unfold the way they do according to right now, there's a lot more anticipation of where you're going to go, where
you're going to play, and what you need. If the seedings go after the season's over, then all of a sudden, you start throwing this you know, and you start deciding on who's going to play where when it just it seems a little bit more confusing to me.
For me though, it kind of defeats the purpose of winning your division, like correct, that's how you get to the playoffs.
But you get a division that's not as successful as some of the other divisions, and then they start this complaint train, And here we are is that they're discussing it at an owner's meeting.
Well, if it does get passed, and I don't know that it will. In the NFC in twenty twenty four, under this proposal, five of the seven teams would have been a different seed, So interesting discussion if nothing else. The on side kick also, right now, you can only attempt an onside kick in the fourth quarter, and only
attempt if you're trailing. Under the new proposal, team could declare an onside kick at any point in the game as long as they're trailing, and it will also allowed the players on the kicking team to line up one yard closer, which would essentially give them a better chance to recover an on side kick.
How do you feel about that one?
I don't know, that's kind of crazy, I don't you know. I like the new kickoff rule that there has been put in place, but not so sure. I mean, are you speeding up the collisions if you allow the guys to add, you know, show you know, come a yard closer and so you know there's a lot of I mean, I would need to see a picture of it on paper to help make a more clear decision.
We're brought to you by P and C Official Bank of the Bears. So now we're in eight OTA season. Tommy, Uh, what do you want to hear? What do you want to see in the OTAs?
I want to hear the terminology come out of Caleb's mouth, clear and concise and know exactly what he's saying to everybody, and then all the counterpieces know exactly what they're being told in the huddle. I want to see, you know, started in putting these pieces in place to eventually down
the road. Sometimes at the training camp or beyond. When they do get a depth chart, the assistant coaches have a clearer understanding who belongs where and you know what position of competition that they are going to be slotted for.
Once a depth chart does come.
Out, well, I'll be excited to watch some of those. The media is allowed, I believe, once a week during the OTAs leading up to the veteran and mandatory mini camp before they head off for a month and then get back for training camp.
It's gonna be fun, Tom, we know it is.
Hey Bears fan steinhoffl is a probud partner the Chicago Bears, now open in Orland Park. Steinhoffels is Chicago Lands furniture and mattress leader with the largest selection to fit every style and budget, and is one hundred percent employee owned shop in store and online at Steinhoffels dot com. That's gonna do it for us, Spashal Thanks to our guest Bears Vice President of Football Administration Matt Feinstein.
Fort time there. I'm Jeff Joningyac. Thanks for listening.
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