An NFL Player's Work Week with Kurt Warner

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and five G content optimization. We are absolutely on the grind. Welcome to NFL Explain. We are putting in a ton of effort, not only in today's show, but every single show. We are going to try to explain to the best of our abilities, what a player's work week is actually like. I'm like, yeah, she is a deed king Kawala, Hello, how are you well? I'm great? Didn't that sounds like a good hello? Yeah? I could feel the energy and feel the vibe. And I think part of the reason

is probably because you got your workout in today. I'm assuming I did. I didn't get to play tennis today, though I will say that just my run, and that's certainly part of it. It's also because we're, you know, midway through the work week and we're heading towards a game day, which we absolutely love. By the way, because today's episode is all about what a player's week is actually like and La Kurt Warner is going to be our guest today and he's going to lay it out

all for us. Can I I do think it's important. I just can I say some quick thank you? Of course, it's really just one thank you. You know, look, this is a brand new podcast and it takes a village. It's been awesome working with you. Add The one thing that has struck me on social media the amount of people who have hit us up with questions any engagement around the show. I am absolutely just floored by the reception that we have gotten at Mike underscore m at

a Kinkabala. It looks bring on the questions, add I know your your at mentions is more significant than mind so I don't know if you're going through all these questions, but we've already gotten a ton of questions that I think are going to set up great for future episodes. Well, and that's the whole point, right We're talking about things that we're curious about, and certainly what fans are curious about,

and if we're going to be honest Mike. Today's episode is in some ways prompted by things that I read on social media, things like when t J. Watt earlier this year during training camp was in the midst of a contract negotiation with the Steelers. I had quite a few people tweeting at me saying, come on now, the guy pays a game, Come on now, really, Like, shouldn't

he just be grateful that he's playing a game? And Mike, I think the average fan doesn't necessarily know how much actually goes into this profession, because this is indeed a profession. This isn't just showing up to some facility, playing on the grass for two hours and then showing up on the weekend and playing a game that we all dreamed about playing at some point. I mean I dreamed about playing it? Did you dream about playing it? I did?

And then as I got a little bit older, I realized that physically I was not going to be as gifted as some of the other people like t J. Watt or Kurt Werner. Is that what you mean? Yeah, because I did get my work out in as well. Um, but I just look, I just don't look like those dudes, as simple as that. And there's a reason why there's a mic in front of me, and I'm actually not the one at the practice facility actually playing and preparing

for the upcoming week. So I'm with you, And just once again, I really appreciate everyone who's been following the show. If you're writing it, that's awesome. If you're going to write a review, that's awesome too. We love just kind of hearing some of that feedback. So totally encourage everyone to check in with us on social media. So Kurt

Warner is going to be with us. He's gonna lay out what his week look like, which I think is really unique from a quarterbacks perspective, and anytime you can hear a Hall of Famer, that's a win for sure. Mike and Kurt played a long time, and I think he can definitely give us an idea of just how demanding it is to not only be on an NFL roster, but to stay on an NFL roster. Kurt Warner the backup quarterback, number three quarterback last year, Kurt Warner steps

in after the Green injury. He's the NFL m v P. Now he's the super Bowl MVP, super Bowl Champion. Kurt Warner is with us here on NFL. Explain Kurt. I would imagine, and I want to focus in with you on your work week, but I would imagine this is no different than how it was for you as a player that on your off day, or maybe even not on an off day, you would sit with two friends and record a podcast during the season. Fairly accurate in

this day and age, that is fairly accurate. But the good thing is is that it's it's about past, right, And most of the podcasts I do, I get to talk about things that I'm passionate about, and you get me talking about something I'm passionate about and I can talk a long time about it, so it's uh, it's all good. I love talking ball and I love getting into the nuances of different things, so it's gonna be

fun today. Well, I think that before we get into all of the offshoots and all the fun that you're talking about, one of the biggest misnomers that I hear from football fans is these guys get paid so much to play a game. Oh, come on, these guys should be so grateful. And the point I always try to make is you don't realize that there's not actually really an off day. You don't realize that these are professionals

putting in time. I think that people think players show up for two hours of practice, they get an hour massage, and they go home and they play with their kids. So can you just set us straight and Sunday night, your home, you finished your game. What happens. Well, let's first say we do make a lot of money, and we are all grateful, and you're right, it's not just as easy as grabbing a football and running out there and just throwing it around for a couple of hours

and then going home. There is a lot more to it. And the crazy thing is, as a professional and as someone that it's important to, there's times that it can start as soon as the game is over. I know now a little different than when I played, but now they have things loaded up on their iPad when they're traveling back on the team plane, and so you can either watch the game film of the game you just played,

or you can get into next week's opponent. And so one of the biggest things for me is it was always hard to move on and move past the game I just played until I watched it, and so that was the first thing that I did Monday morning. I didn't sleep very well on Sunday because you're going through the game and what could I have done better? What did I miss? So Monday morning, as soon as I got up, I was going into the facility and I was watching the game field. So I could put that

behind me. I could learn from it, because we would always say the game is never as good as you think it is, and it's never as bad as you think it is. And a lot of teams now have adopted this Monday's off. When you win a game, right, victory Monday is what we call it. And so with victory Monday, you know, you don't have any responsibilities. And then, as you guys know, Tuesday is the NFL day off in most cases, so that would say to you, oh, I got Monday and Tuesday off, I don't do anything

until Wednesday. Again, first thing, Monday morning, I was in watching the film. What time are you going into the facility? That very let me just say, I didn't sleep in very often, and that was every stop St. Louis, New York, Arizona. Even as you got more established in your career. Oh yeah, it didn't matter because again that's what I'm talking about is when you're passionate and it's important to you, it doesn't matter that you've played well in the past. All

that mattered was that game. And so I expect myself to be perfect. I expect myself to make the right read every time, and when you don't, that's what hangs

with you. And so that was the first thing I did, is I got in and I watched the film first thing, and then after that it was always getting to work out in to make sure you're working out everything that happened in the game, or you know, getting beat up a little bit, you know, even on a Monday, if you had a victory Monday, I was probably in the facility from let's just say six am until at least noon, if not a little bit later. And then from there

it kind of varied. Earlier in my career, when I was with the Rams, I didn't really have a responsibility in terms of building our game plan for the next week. But after I was getting done all those things that I said, work out and all of that, I would go in and watch tape of our next week's opponent. That was early in my career. Later in my career, I was much more heavily involved in game planning, and so basically all of my Mondays was watching film, watching

cut ups, and then drawing up plays. I would draw fifty or sixty plays when I was in Arizona and would send him off to Todd Haley as who you know well, and and we would go through that and we would start building the game plan on Monday nights and things that I like, things that I saw, things that he liked. How do we mess those things together? So that was Monday, and you know, Monday was a

full day. And the other thing that you know, people don't understand for were Again I don't know if this is for every player, but for me, I never shut it off so constantly. You know, there would be times that I would wake up at two in the morning and there was a play on my mind, and I get out of bed and I go dropped the plays and then try to get back to sleep. And so

Monday's were really really busy. Tuesday technically is you know, the NFL day off, and I would say that is the one day at least for me, that I took more time off than any other days. Now, again, if I was game planning, that was still intermixed throughout the day,

still getting my workout in and doing that. But you know, a lot of teams have kind of developed getting out in the community and doing your community work on Tuesdays, and that was something that my wife and I tried to adopt to set up a lot of things on Tuesday's or for me and my wife, especially as the kids got older, that would be our date day. But yeah, that was kind of our one day off a week, and then from there we we kind of rolled into

the rest of the week. But it's the time that you have to put in and that you've you know you've committed to in the past. That really is what weighs you down, and I think forces most guys to retire. My Kurts only on Tuesday, and he's talking about how the grind can lead to thoughts of retirement. And I need to say, it's not only the grind on the players themselves, but it's a really tough ask for families also, Mike. And it's this is making me think of the Steelers

former great tight end Heath Miller. You know, he retired when he was in his early thirties, long before he really needed to. His body still worked. He was still Ben Roethlisberger's favorite target, but at the time he had three kids. Now he and his wife have four, and he very openly said that he needed to help raise his family. Being a part of helping to raise his children was very, very obviously important to him. And it's not just about what the players themselves are having to

put in, but their families too. Yeah, there's a lot of sacrifices involved, and not even just from a player's perspective, I would also include the coaches. In fact, one of my good buddies who used to be the offensive coordinator with the Ravens is Rick new heisl and Rick would always tell me from his college coaching days, there's two

type of coaches wives, great ones and x ones. Um. So you're right, there is a lot of sacrifice involved from a family perspective, But there is so much more to get to with Kurt Warner, including some of that sacrifice. In some bedrooms, this might be considered romantic and others not so much. You want to hear what Kurt had

to say about his wife and his playbook. If you're listening to NFL explained, America's most reliable network is going ultra with Rise in five g, Ultra wide band and more and more places, so you can do more without the ten times faster speeds. You can download a movie in merror minutes. What yes, that's faster than your morning coffee run lights camera coffee. And while you're at it, go on and download a whole series in minutes or a new song in seconds A one, A two one

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C band and not specific to five G networks. Your results may vary. Not an endorsement speed comparison to Media and Verizon four G LTE speeds, downloads very based on network conditions and five G content optimization. Build the team that will build your business. With Upwork, you can find top developers, designers, project managers and more who can start today so your business can succeed tomorrow, higher at home or in a hundred and eighty countries around the world.

To find the right talent for whatever your business needs. Up Work the world's work marketplace. Learn more at www dot up work dot com. Warner, thanks to Marshall Fall now flows the middle of that as a touchdown pass Summer forty for Kurt Warner. Now in the forty Touchdown Pass Club, There's Dan Marino and there's Kurt Warner. Unbelievable. Kurt, I want to reset here as you take us through

your week. So game day on Sunday, Monday, six am, film film film, probably some treatment as well, because you did take some hits on Sunday. Not to mention that workout, game planning a little bit more later in your career. Sort of the same routine on a Tuesday, although a little bit more of a social life because the real off day, so you do get to have a little

bit of family life balance. Wednesday morning hits. Now what so Wednesday, you know, this is really when our work week starts and in our long days start and kind of the same idea you know, for me as a quarterback, you know, we all know is that you know, we don't really do a whole lot when it comes to practice in terms of conditioning and stuff. And so my work week would always start, um, you know on Wednesday's,

Thursdays and Fridays. I would get up in the morning, usually around five am, and I would get my own cardio workout in either before I went to the facility, or I would go to the facility and get it in first and foremost, just because I knew I wasn't gonna get a lot of cardio and I wanted to stay in shape all season long, so it would be

forty five minutes to an hour there. Treatment again if you needed treatment, if you needed to be in the training room for anything you're doing that time, and again that can be maintenance, cold tubs, hot tubs, all of

that stuff. And then usually as quarterbacks, would start our days earlier than everyone else, so we would have an initial meeting let's just say about seven fifteen if everybody else was starting their meetings at eight seven fifteen, where we would start installing the game planned quarterback wise before everybody else, so we got one shot at it beforehand to really go through the details of what we needed to know what our reeds were going to be the

plays to a degree. Then from their short team meeting usually every day with your head coach, and then we would go into offensive meetings. And those offensive meetings, I mean they could last, you know, hours, depending on when you practice, because again some teams practice in the morning,

some teams practice in the afternoon. But basically from whatever that time was eight fifteen until lunch or eight fifteen until practice, you were in meetings and you were putting together whatever you had to put together game plan wise, and so that could be four to five hours a day in meetings. So Wednesdays for us was usually first

and second down game planning. So whatever we would do, whatever the situational football was for first and second down, how teams like to play on first and second down, that would be everything that we installed, you know, on that Wednesday. And so let's just say we go through the day and however we do it, usually getting home

around five o'clock. I would say, depending on what your routine was at the end of the day or after practice or treatment wise, then from there it was best we could a family dinner for me and the family, because it was the one window I had to you know, to be with with all my you know, I got seven kids, so with all my kids and my wife, the one window that I would have with them, you know,

talk about the day. And then for me, one of my routines that I developed when I was playing is that every single night I would take the game plan or not even take it, but I would have my my coaches. Um. So, if you guys have ever seen a playbook, playbooks usually have like a page of eight boxes and in each box there's a play you know, the formation and how it's run, the motions and all that stuff, and so we would you know, jot on

those all day long. So then I would come home at night and I would have my coaches makeup just plain boxes. So every night I would go back and I would draw up every single play that we installed that day, you know, formations, what we were doing, movements, and then I would usually right in there, Okay, if we get cover one, this is my read. If I get covered two, this is my read, Cover three, cover four, and kind of break it down. This guy is my hot, this guy's my side at just so you know, I

would draw those up every single night. So usually I would say an hour and a half to two hours maybe a little bit more of drawing out those plays, and then again a little bit more downtime, maybe hang with the wife a little bit. And then one of the things that uh that my wife didn't appreciate, but as you say, you never turned it off. I would

bring my game plan to bed with me. So one of our routines when I was in St. Louis, because we had so many plays, was I would bring my game plan to bed and I would give it to my wife and my wife would read the play call. Let's just say it was five post swing. So she would read the end of the play and I would have to tell her in a way I studied my

game plan. I would have to tell her what formation we were running out of this week, three or right, whatever motion we're running that a scat right post swing. And so she would help me study for another hour or so every night, so I would try to get that game plan down. So again, in the game, you know, you got the microphones in your ears, and you expect to get the whole play, but you know sometimes they

those go out, so you signal five. And my job was to know, okay, this week we're running it out of trips right motion, you know, scot right. And so she helped me with that, and so that was another hour. So here we are nine o'clock at night, nine ten o'clock at night, studying my game plan in bed. Very romantic, Kirk, that is amazing, But you have to tell us the truth. That would Brenda ever read a play and say, Kirk, Kirk, Kurd,

I don't like this play. This is a crap play. No, not crap play in terms of what the play was, because She usually didn't know the play, but she would say I don't like this name, or why do you call it that? Or she would give me some of those, like this is stupid, what does that mean? Or and I would tell her, you know, because we would have

different names for different things. So like we get a call called just horn, you know, like like honker horn when and it stands for a hitch in a corner, and you know, so I would we would say that. She goes, why is it called horn? What does that mean? And I'm like, this is what it stands for. She goes, that's stupid. So she would give me some of those. But it's still funny that if you come by my wife to this day and just say, hey, give me a play call from St. Louis, she'll give you some

terms that we used to use. So she always jokes with me. She's like, how do you guys remember what you remember? Like twenty years ago, you can still remember what yard line you were on or what play you called, you know, at this point in the game. And she's like, but you never remember what my wedding dress looked like. And so it's funny that I could say that to her now. Like, give me a play call from St. Louis,

and I'm sure she could do it too. So yes, that became you know, the romantic part of our relationship was we got to spend time together going through my game plans at night, and so that was really the routine for both Wednesdays and Thursdays. Does she have a favorite coordinator? Though all the coordinators you had, all those a favorite one, I don't think she liked any of Uh.

So she would always joke that, uh, you know that I was having an affair with Todd Hayley because when we were game planning together, I mean it was constant. You know, We'd be in bed or again, she'd feel me wake up at three in the morning and all of a sudden, I'm grabbing my phone and I'm texting something and she's like, oh my gosh, is that your mistress? Is that mistress Haley? You know she would joke about

that because we did, you know, we were talking. We were on our phones more than I probably spent time with with my wife, especially during the season, and so Wednesdays and Thursdays were primarily made up of that. Thursday's was our our third down packages and so instead of first and second down, but basically the same routine all of Thursday, and so those were are really really long days, you know, as I said, whatever five in the morning till ten o'clock at night and then waking up and

doing the exact same thing on Thursday. Mike, I would love Brendan Werner talked through some QB terminology with me. There is no doubt in my mind to d D that she could handle business and probably educate a We should do a whole episode just with Brenda. She just breaking down everything the version two point oh of this one. She's awesome. She I have to say from personal experience, she really is awesome. It's patience of a saint too.

If she's kind of laying in bed and hanging out with Curtain explaining and quizzing him on the playbook, that really is just kind of an awesome story to hear. But coming up, there's more with our Hall of Famer Kurt Warner and a couple of stories of our own. It's NFL Explained. This podcast is sponsored by Kindrel. Kindrel Designs, builds, manages, and modernizes the mission critical technology systems that the world depends on every day. Working side by side with their customers,

they imagine things differently. By forging new strategic partnerships, they unlock new possibilities, creating a world powered by healthy digital systems align with opportunity, oxygen to innovation, and energy to change the world. Kindrel The Heart of Progress. This podcast is sponsored by Kendrell. Kendrell designs, builds, manages, and modernizes the mission critical technology systems that the world depends on every day. Working side by side with their customers, they

imagine things differently. By forging new strategic partnerships. They unlock new possibilities, creating a world powered by healthy digital systems alive with opportunity, oxygen to innovation, and energy to change the world. Kendrell The Heart of Progress. Warner Tank scans the secondary thing. It is the near sidelines to the twenty of the fifty to the five touchdown rams. What a pass by Kurt Warner left by the perfect health

touchdown ram. So then you're basically installed by Thursday, even well Friday right the red zone Friday yep so um, same idea. So it was a brisker tempo on Friday's and usually you were out of the facility on Friday's probably one thirty two o'clock in most situations, so that was the night to get home and get some rest and really start preparing for the game. So Friday's were day that you could get home and spend a little bit more time with your family, and so we would

go home earlier. But my routine in the evenings would be primarily the same, still going through all those details, drawing them up, and then Saturday just vary depending on whether you were traveling or not, but coming in the morning, do your work and a short walk through practice to clean up everything that you had done throughout the week. And then depending on which team I was with, some teams you were clear to go for the rest of

the day you stayed at home. Other teams we would stay in hotels, so we would get to go home for a few hours, do whatever, watch your kids play a Saturday game, or hang out watching college football, or hang out with your family, and then early evening you would have to go back to the hotel, and it would kind of simulate what you would do on the road. So on the road, you know, you get to your hotel, have a little time to relax, and then once again

it's final meetings, going through all the details. Make sure you're you know, you've got all those details ironed out. Yeah, there's this collaboration that you're describing with the people that you're working with. Your preparation is so meticulous. Just even hearing some of the stories that you're telling, and I would imagine it's it's not the same for everyone. But because you did so much of that work, did you always feel ready for every game? Yeah? Yeah, I mean

being ready was not an issue. And you know, to come to your point is that I told you my routine. But lots of guys are different. Like I always say to people, you know, when I talk to quarterbacks a lot, I'm like, you can listen to me and listen Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and all these great quarterbacks, but you've got to figure out who you are and how you need to prepare and how you need to play the game, because for all of us it's different. And so you know, people ask me all the time, how

much film do you watch? You know, and I would tell them I wasn't a big film watcher. And now it's a relative term, you know, not a big film watcher. I watched hours and hours of film every week. I just watched it differently than other people. And it wasn't the end all be all for me. For me, as I've told you guys, you know, studying my game plan with my wife in bed or drawing up the pictures every day, the way I played the game was I

was great at reacting. I was great at seeing defenses and understanding what they're doing and reacting and get the ball out of my hands. So my goal every week, to your point, Mike, about being prepared was being prepared for me was not knowing what the defense was going to do, although I always felt like I had a good idea. Being prepared for me was knowing what I was supposed to do in every situation, every blitz, every protection, every route, what why read is on every single coverage?

That was my prep. And so a lot of the stuff that we talked about has been that's about film study and more about me learning our offense to the point where I knew it like the back of my hand. So now I could play to my strengths, like, all right, what you guys gonna do? I knew what I was looking at. Oh, you're gonna do that bang. This is how I react to it. A guy like Peyton Manning, I'm not gonna say again like I'm not gonna say he didn't prepare and know what he was supposed to do.

But if you watched a lot of Peyton Manning's offenses, they were more simple offenses. You know, they didn't have a million different combinations. He ran the same kind of combinations things he was very comfortable with. But his goal was, I'm gonna watch a bunch of tape and so I'm gonna know when ray Lewis does this, they're gonna bring this blitz. So I'm gonna make one of my funky signals and I'm gonna call the right play in the right situation every time. And that's how I'm going to

have success. Best I've ever seen it. Playing the game before the snap. I played the game after the snap. So the way I prepared was different than the way he prepared, because he wanted to answer all the questions, you know, before the snap of the ball, before they gave him to him. He wanted to have every answer to the question for me. I wanted to do it afterwards.

Show me what you're gonna roll out here and I'm gonna outthink you, and I'm gonna be able to think faster than you can, and that's how I was going to win. So preparation for me throughout the week became

different than it was for other people. But I had to know what made me me and what made me special and how I could separate myself, and so my preparation throughout the week curtailed around this is what I do, this is how I play, And so I think it's always important for whoever is listening to this is that my way is not everybody's way. Peyton Manning's way is

not everybody's way. I work with some quarterbacks that were with Peyton, and I would work with them and I put them up on a board and asked them to talk me through something, and they take twenty minutes to go through what protection they were gonna call. And I'm like, dude, you got twenty minutes, you got you got four seconds, you got fifteen seconds. We don't have time for all this. The problem is other guys would overthink that. Peyton didn't

overthink it. Peyton saw it, understood it, knew the nuances could make the check, and he wasn't given me well if they do, no, this is what they're doing. Boom, I'm checking, I'm out. I'm going Not everybody could do that. So I saw people get handcuffed and not being able to play their game because they were trying to prepare like somebody that didn't play the game like they did.

And so that becomes so important to me. And in preparation of anything is knowing your skill set, knowing what you need to do to succeed, and then developing your game plan or your preparation plan around that. Before we wrap everything up, take us through Sunday morning, because again I'm going to use the fans. I think a lot of people see whoever it is roll In and his fancy suit and his fedora and wave at the NFL Network camera and think, okay, puts on his uniform and

he runs out there. When did you wake up on Sunday? And what was everything until let's call it one pm. Let's pretend it's a one pm kickoff. So let me take you back to the Saturday afternoon. So Saturday is done with practice, go home, and that was kind of my time to lounge around, be with the family and whatever before whatever happened Saturday evening, And so Saturday evening or late afternoon was when my wife calls at the zone.

She could just tell it became three four in the afternoon and she's like, all right, Kurt, time to go, get out, go to the hotel. That's when I got locked in with Saturday afternoon. From that point in time until I went to bed at night, it was all football, playing plays in my mind, talking myself through different things, situational football, what was I going to see? And so that was one of my gifts, was the ability to get focused. Obviously wasn't a gift for my family, but

it paid dividends in the long run. So that was really where it started for me, was that afternoon. And you didn't put a clock on it. It was just as you got closer and closer, it just started to take over my brain. So Saturday night was all football. It was everything that had to do with Sunday. Sunday was no football until game time. And what I mean by that is I didn't look at my game plan.

I didn't go over plays. I didn't I mean again, obviously things were ruminating in my head and different, but I didn't look at a single thing that had to do with football. I said to myself, by the time I go to bed on Saturday night, I'm gonna be ready to go, so I can wake up Sunday and let's go play ball. And so the hardest thing for me was night games. I wanted to wake up, go eat breakfast, go to the stadium and play. So it was beautiful my first year in St. Louis because every

game we played was at noon Central time. We weren't a good team. The year before we had no prime time games. Every game was at noon, So it was get up in the morning, go to the facility. We have chapel or church service if that was something that you did. Then they had breakfast for us, and then they had a time where you had to be at the stadium. For me, if I was on the road, I was on the last bus. I did not want to be sitting in my locker room thinking about the games.

I wanted to show up, I wanted to get dressed, and I wanted to go play. But it was more of a general focus on Sundays where I wasn't touching base with anything specific because I knew that I was already ready it was just I'm buying my time, trying to manage my anxiety and my nerves just to get to kick off. But I didn't want anybody talking ball

with me. I didn't want to have any meetings. You know, sometimes we see it on game day morning and see these quarterbacks and ovid's coordinators walking around the field, and no, don't you know, don't talk to me, just get me to kick off. I got this at this point, So Sunday to me was really just managing things till you could go play ball. I love it. I gotta tell you, current first time I've had actually had an opportunity to talk with you. Can't thank you enough for giving us

as much time on the podcast. Thank you so much for putting into context what the schedule looks like for an NFL player. Oh you got my pleasure being on. And I'm always willing to talk to anybody that wants to talk ball and wants to learn ball. And so that's the thing about a d D is that we

always get to talk ball. And you know, I don't need all the fluff when it's game time, where it's season time, or but we're getting ready, I just want to talk with people that want to learn the game and want to talk about it, and so I always enjoy my conversations with the d D when we get a chance to catch up. Well, Kurt, you are the best.

You of course prompted now eighteen questions about who had what sort of notebooks, And I am definitely texting Todd Haley to say, how come I don't know about this affair with Kurt Warner of all people. Yes, you will have to do that and he'll know exactly. Christie would say the same things. Her and Brenda would talk saying like can you get your husband off the phone? I gotta get my husband off the phone. It's time for day night. So they had plenty of those conversations. Well,

it's great, Kurt, thank you, Thank you so much. Just so awesome to hear Kurt Warner's dedication that he has to his craft and had to his craft and actually think he still has it to a certain degree when you think of him as a broadcaster on NFL Network, he really is tremendous and just hearing some of the stories really remarkable and add there's at one point in our interview with Kurt where you would ask him about other people being involved with him, watching film and being

in a facility. There's a reason why he's a Hall of Famer. There's a different type of work ethic associated with a guy that was able to perform at that level. For sure, Mike, and not always, but in general, the quarterback is the player that has to put in the most time because of the nature of his position and what is expected of him. But it's not only the quarterback that works this way. And in fact, when Kurt Werner was talking about his notebooks, it made me think

of Antonio Brown. You remember those magical years when he and Ben Roethlisberger were arguably the best quarterback wide receiver duo in the NFL. The truth is, Antonio Brown was never the best route runner, the fastest guy, the number one hands in the NFL. Antonio Brown was really and truly one of the hardest working players that I've ever covered in my life. He would stay after practice and catch hundreds of balls on the jugs machine every single day. He'd go to l a fitness to get in an

extra workout in the evenings, and he kept notebooks. Mike, you know how Kurt was talking about studying his playbook at night with Brenda Well. Antonio once showed me the stack of notebooks he had, one for every single season he'd been in the NFL, and every single day he'd take notes on meetings on what happened, and then he'd go home at night and he'd reread those notes and

he'd highlight things. And Todd Haley, who was the offensive coordinator of the Steelers for six years, told me once that Antonio would bring up these obscure things that Haley said five six, seven weeks ago because he was constantly studying those notebooks where he had written down whatever it

was that Haley said that Haley had forgotten. He said, And this all takes me back to Mike too, when we talked to Justin Tucker a few weeks ago, and he said it's the job of a professional to make difficult things look easy, and that perhaps fans don't realize how much goes into actually making those things look easy. Yeah, that's why I loved hearing what Kurt was saying about what his regiment was. During the course of the week.

We could have gone on forever with Kurt, and I think we need to do another episode of d D, not just on what the off season looks like, because I think that's really important. Kurt took us through what the in season week looks like. But there's so much involved, you know. I'm sure Aby was sitting in the off season look at some of those notes that he took. You know, maybe not every single day, but there's other

things that are involved in the off season. But I would love to hear what it's like for a non quarterback, what it's like for a coach, and what they're doing during the course of the week. But I can't thank Kurt enough. I know I speak for you when I say that he was absolutely tremendous in laying out the entire week from his perspective when he was a player. And I will say this, Mike, no matter what position you play, you are working seven days a week during

the NFL season. Heck, I'll give one little, one little more nugget when Kurt Warner said that Friday nights were usually kind of a quieter night. When I covered the New York Giants offensive line code with Pat Flaherty, Pat Flaherty used to send home a take home quiz for his offensive lineman on Friday, So that's what they were doing on Friday nights. In any case, we have to thank Ourage just as you said, he is the best

and that everybody is a player's work. Leak explained brought to you by up work, where you can build the team that will build your business. Learn more at upwork dot com. America's most reliable network is going ultra with Verizon five G Ultra wide band and more and more places with up to ten times faster speeds. You can

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