NFL insider reflects on big career move

As Sam Monson finished up his final show at Pro Football Focus, he reflected on a career that was.

Nothing about his career in sports media is done with; in fact, there is a new adventure ahead at The 33rd Team, where he and Steve Palazzolo have taken their Check the Mic podcast and more to the platform.

But Monson spent the entirety of his career in sports media at PFF.

In a recent interview with Awful Announcing, Monson opened up about the decision to leave PFF and embark on a new journey at The 33rd Team. He reflected on his long tenure at PFF, where he played a key role in building the company from the ground up, and discussed the emotions that came with leaving a place that had become a major part of his life.

Monson acknowledged the deep personal and professional investment both he and Palazzolo had in PFF and how the two of them had grown with the company over the past decade. But it was also time for him to move on to something bigger. He explained that the move to The 33rd Team was driven by a desire for greater control and ownership over their work.

“It’s crazy. A lot of mixed emotions. It’s been a long time in both of our lives,” Monson said in a phone interview with AA. “It’s been basically our entire professional careers on both of our sides. Steve was, obviously, a minor-league baseball player trying to make it into the big leagues. I was basically straight into PFF as a first real job. It’s been all we’ve known, really, for the last 10-15 years. And now, this is the final chapter, the final show. It’s strange but exciting — a lot of mixed emotions.”

New Beginnings and New Sense of Ownership

Monson divulged why he and Palazzolo gathered their bearings and set off for a new company: to feel a sense of ownership over their work.

“It really just came down to the opportunity,” he says. “We created a lot of things at PFF. I personally set up the Twitter account way back in the day. We started the podcast… but PFF owns everything as a company, the way it’s created. The 33rd Team was a chance for us to have a meaningful ownership stake in our show. I think at this point, it started off as kind of a marketing arm for PFF, and just a way of introducing people to PFF and the data and the grading. But I think the longer it’s gone, we built an audience that are there for us, as well as the data, for the information.

“Now, we get a chance to do that somewhere else and try and build a new show and create a real ownership stake for us in our audience.”

While the podcast is nearly 20 episodes in, Monson told AA at the time of the interview that he thought a lot of the new iteration of the podcast would be the same, just under a different umbrella. He noted that a lot of the feedback he and Palazzolo received since they announced they were moving was to not let the length of their show be cut. The previews have been lengthy, to say the least.

“A lot of it is going to be staying the same, just in a new venue and we’re gonna try to keep what works,” he said. “But, we’ll have the chance to experiment with new things and potentially bring on some different guests that we didn’t necessarily have access to at PFF, or really just sort of experiment and see what people are interested in. See if we can find more things that add to the show to make it better and bigger as you go.”

But Monson realizes that being able to grow at The 33rd Team wasn’t possible without what was accomplished during his lengthy tenure at PFF. As he looked back and took a more global view of the company he was saying goodbye to after his final show, and looked fondly back on the people who made PFF what it was and the opportunities it gave him.

“It’s very cool, and you know, it’s so many people,” Monson says. “We tried to give a lot of people a shoutout on today’s show, but, there’s too many. We’re gonna miss people, hopefully, no one takes it as a slight if their name didn’t come up on the show today, but there are so many people that helped create what PFF has become, and when you trace it all the way back to those early days where it’s half a dozen of us sitting in somebody’s living room, to get from there to a company where all 32 NFL teams have PFF firmly ingrained in their weekly processes. Every single FBS college team, and a whole bunch of FCS teams, CFL teams, TV broadcasts, networks, all those kinds of things; for it to be where it is right now from those early days, it really is amazing.

“…We kind of had it sketched out in theory, but we’ve really ticked off almost every single box of the things we thought we could achieve along the way, and it’s because of all the people that helped do that. That early core team was absolutely a critical part of it, but so many good people that we’ve brought in along the way, some of whom are still there, some of whom have departed and gone onto other things, as well. I think there’s a genuine sense of pride of what we built at PFF.”

Monson sees a new opportunity to grow at The 33rd Team. He and Palazzolo began looking for ways to take more ownership of their brand and show, and The 33rd Team provided that chance. Although they couldn’t bring over certain elements like the YouTube channel or RSS feeds, the platform saw them as a valuable part of their content strategy moving forward and a great fit to help elevate everyone’s brand.

The PFF Legacy

While focusing on the future is key, The 33rd Team also had to have recognized the significance of what Monson accomplished at PFF. His track record not only supports their growth but will be essential to his own development as well. Reflecting on his time at PFF, Monson was proud of how it became a leading resource for both the NFL and college football, though for him, it’s more about the bigger picture.

“Overall, what PFF has become, I think I’m very proud of what we were able to do and bring it from just an idea, just a finance hobby into becoming one of the most important analytics companies, one of the most important football companies out there,” he says. “I think it’s an amazing thing that we’ve done. I think there’s a little bits and pieces along the way that I’m extremely proud of, as well. Any time you’re able to hire somebody, to make a phone call to these guys that were grinding earlier for either very low part-time pay or even basically for nothing. And to make a phone call and offer those guys a full-time job and a potential career in this industry, that’s amazingly cool.

“I’m very proud that we built it to the point where we could make those phone calls, and hear what it meant to some of these people. I think we’ve done little bits of content here and there that I remain incredibly proud of. We’ve got some audio shows that I think are amazing. We did a couple of oral history shows that stand up really well. Various articles that we’ve written over the years. So, a lot to be proud of over the years.”

Monson has a lot of pride in how he worked his way up at PFF. He had been doing bits and pieces for the company dating back to 2008 and was one of the first people through the doors. They turned an idea and a hobby into something quantifiable, something that catches the attention of NFL teams. It all started Neil Hornsby reaching out for help on the NFL UK message board(s), and here Monson and CO. are nearly two decades later.

But along the way, there have been misconceptions, and Monson spoke to some of those regarding the grading system and what they looked to accomplish with its creation.

“There have been a lot down the years,” he says. “I think probably the two biggest now are that the grade is some kind of algorithm; it’s a computer spitting out a number based on nothing but stats all rolled into one giant number. Whereas effectively, the grade it comes from a play-by-play analysis. It’s effectively quantified tape study, right? Somebody is going through watching every single play and grading every single player on it. And that all gets rolled up and turned into this 0-100 PFF grade.

“And I think the other one is, the grade itself is, ‘This is what this guy is, period.’ There’s no more context to it; you don’t need any more information. We would always say let the grade as a tool, it’s information and it’s an indication of how a guy played in a specific time period, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what he’s going to do moving forward. It’s not necessarily a definitive… it’s not gonna factor in was he playing hurt with a bum ankle in that game? Was he put in a bad situation schematically in that game? It’s another piece of information that helps you predict how guys are gonna do going forward, as opposed to a definitive declaration that this player is great, bad, somewhere in the middle.”

If you were grading PFF as a company on a scale, there are some trends that the average person would view as concerning. Of course, there’s a lot of potential there with Trevor Sikkema thrust into a lead NFL (and NFL Draft) content role as he and Connor Rogers take the NFL Stock Exchange podcast to the moon. But there’s also been a lot of turnover at the company, including Monson and Palazzolo, which has seen an entire shift in its daily content shows .

It should be noted that personnel movements happen all the time in the sports media industry, but there have been some notable departures at PFF in recent months. PFF reportedly ‘quietly fired’ exec George Chahrouri amid staff discontent earlier this year. Brad Spielberger , a salary cap analyst and former head of research and development at PFF, left for another job.

But just because that might be public perception, that doesn’t mean Monson doesn’t see a bright future ahead of the company he’s saying goodbye to.

“People have left for a variety of reasons and I don’t think we should tar them all with the same brush,” said Monson. “When you look at where some of them are right now, some of these people left for great opportunities and have phenomenal positions now, relative to where they were at PFF, so they’ve gone onto bigger and better things.

“Austin Gayle got an incredible offer from The Ringer; was essentially head-hunted by Bill Simmons. That’s the kind of gig that’s pretty difficult to turn down. Eric Eager is now in an analytics department with the Carolina Panthers inside the NFL. Mike Renner is now working at CBS. A lot of these guys have gone onto some pretty fantastic opportunities.

“And I can’t say enough good things about Trevor… Ever since we brought him into PFF, he’s a phenomenal host. He’s also great as an analyst himself when he’s not hosting and part of the expert panel on any content. He’s great on camera. He’s great at doing everything he’s been asked of at PFF. Trevor’s fronting whatever the new content strategy looks like at PFF in a post-Sam and Steve landscape. I think it’s in great hands. He’s a fantastic person to take up that mantle and carry it on.”

What’s Next at The 33rd Team

Monson and Palazzolo will take up the mantle at The 33rd Team and they’ll arguably have more access than they’ve ever had before. Just recently, Bill Belichick was announced as a strategic advisor for the company found by former New York Jets and Miami Dolphins exec. Mike Tannenbaum, as well as Matt Patricia and Adam Gase.

“I think that’s a really exciting kind of new avenue for us,” Monson said. “The 33rd Team has this incredible rolodex of people in the league, whether it’s current, whether it’s former players, coaches, front office personnel. And just being able to tap into that contact book and potentially use these guys for content or even just information is a really exciting element of what we’re gonna be able to do with them.”

But what are Monson and Palazzolo going to do over at The 33rd Team? Well, Awful Announcing asked Monson what his message would be to those who haven’t listened to their podcast before and to give a tagline and perhaps why those looking to consume NFL content like there’s should delve deeper into Check the Mic and other projects with their name on it.

“We like to think of it as almost like an antidote to the shouty shows, as we call them,” he added. “Like, the modern way that media has gone. The Skip Bayless-ification, the Stephen A. Smith-ification of sports analysis, where you need to find a take, you need to defend it to the death, you need to defend it loudly with as many decibels as possible, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s a coherent point or if it’s true or if you believe it; you just need to make it into entertainment, a theatre production.

“Sports media’s kind of gone in this direction. It’s a sad development and a sad direction that the landscape has gone. We kind of want to be the opposite of that. We want to have measured, reasoned analysis, and sometimes the answer to that’s gonna be, ‘I don’t know. We don’t know which way this is gonna come down.’ And anyone who thinks they do know is crazy or doing it for the camera. They can’t possibly no the answer to this question, right?

“We review every single game. We preview every single game. We try to tell you as best as we can what we think is going to happen, what we think did happen, what it means and do it with a kind of reasoned outlook with as much information and data as we can. And if we can create some entertainment in that; if we can have some jokes and laughs along the way… I think there’s an audience for people that want something beyond the Skip Bayless, Stephen A. Smith-type of content.”

The post Sam Monson explains why he left PFF for The 33rd Team appeared first on Awful Announcing .