Episode 57 Rod Wood
Brian Kruger:
Welcome to the podcast The Common Bridge with Richard Helppie. Rich is a successful entrepreneur in the technology, health and finance space. He and his wife Leslie are also philanthropists with interest in civic and artistic endeavors, but with a primary focus on medically and educationally under-served children. My name is Brian Kruger, and from time to time I’ll be the moderator and host of this podcast.
Rich Helppie:
This is Rich Helppie your host of the Common Bridge. Today we welcome to the Common Bridge a very special guest. Rod Wood is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Detroit Lions football team, a member of the National Football League. He runs all of the football and business operations for the team. He reports directly to the principal Owner and Chairman, Sheila Ford-Hamp. He was appointed Team President in November of 2015. Shortly thereafter he assisted the Ford family with the search and the ultimate hiring of Bob Quinn as the franchise’s new general manager in 2016. Rod’s got a great approach to business; everything’s on the table, looking at every piece of the operation: fan experience, facilities and imaging of the Detroit Lions. And at this time the professional sports have an important role as we are dealing with the Corona virus and the resulting restrictions on movement, and also, of course, center with the social justice issues of the day. And we’re going to be talking about that.
A couple other things in Rod’s background-over a hundred million dollar investment he led into a complete overhaul of the fan experience, including new video boards at Ford Field, and I can tell you, having been there, it is a great fan experience; re-branding the team but emphasizing the classic Honolulu blue and silver. Off the field he provides support for a $600,000 commitment from Mrs. Ford and the Detroit Lions players toward the launch of the Detroit Lions Inspire Change. This is the team’s social justice initiative in the city of Detroit. This initiative will continue into 2020 through grants to nine Metro Detroit organizations. At the legal level Rod serves on the NFL’s Investment Committee, and he’s very well suited for this because for eight years prior to his appointment, as team president, Rod worked closely with the Detroit Lions and the Ford family in his role as President and Chief Executive of Ford Estates. Rod came well-prepared to the Ford family and to Detroit. He was Executive Vice President for Wealth Management for The Wilmington Trust Company in Wilmington, Delaware. And prior to that, he was with Comerica Bank where he oversaw offices in four different states-over 12 offices. He has a lengthy resume for philanthropic work and indeed his entire biography is on the website RichardHelppie.com. Rod’s a local guy-graduated from Goodrich Michigan High School, went on to get his bachelor’s from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree from the ABA Graduate School Of Commercial Banking. Rod, all of this responsibility you’ve got with this background, where are you spending your time today?
Rod Wood:
Well this year is incredibly unusual given the pandemic. So I’m spending all of my time at our Allen Park training facility. In a normal year, I kind of split my time half between Allen Park, where the team is, and Ford Field where their business operations are, but all of our business folks are continuing to work from home. And so this year I’m here with the team, the coaches and the players.
Rich Helppie:
Well today we are going to talk about the Corona virus and how football can be played. We’re going to, of course, touch a little bit about professional sports in this hyper political world and quest for social justice, talk a little bit about the reporting industry and perhaps any changes in professional sports. Hopefully we get a chance to talk about a Super Bowl, and I anticipate some education, some insight, and possibly some policy ideas. So Rod, football in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic-what are the NFL’s plans for this 20-21 season?
Rod Wood:
Well, right now we’re full go to start the season on time, the regular season. We’ve made a lot of decisions along the way. The off-season was very different: no trainers in the building with players in the spring, the draft, as you probably all remember, was done virtually, no mini camps or OTAs, which is Organized Team Activities in the spring, no rookie mini-camp. And so we started training camp a few days ago, under very different circumstances with all the normal protections in the building: social distancing, face mask, everybody’s wearing a tracker to track their connections to any other players, coaches, et cetera. Anybody were to get the virus, we can do contact tracing the next day. Everybody gets tested, including myself, before they come in the building. I get my temperature taken four times, I’m wearing a ring to track all of my bodily activity that gets uploaded to our doctors and staff here. But all that being said, we’re in the building, we’re playing football out on the field. So far everybody’s remained healthy. I think we’re now on the day 19 without a positive test anywhere in the organization. So hopefully that continues and we can open the season on September 13th at home against the Chicago Bears.
Rich Helppie:
Well, that preparation is fantastic. I think that makes the Detroit Lions better prepared than most countries and probably leveraging the best of the best of technology. It seems like the NBA and the National Hockey League have done really well with their bubble approach. Major league baseball-we’ve had some successes, some setbacks. As you study those, have there been any helpful do or don’t lessons from the other major sports, and I didn’t mean to leave out soccer.
Rod Wood:
Well, we’re certainly watching all the sports, the ones you mentioned, even what’s going on with Indie racing and NASCAR racing and PGA Tour. All of them have similar, but in some ways, different protocols. You mentioned the bubble approach with the hockey and basketball. I think that suited their situation because they were really trying to wrap up the season that had been suspended, and they could go to a place with a much smaller number of players and coaches and have everybody together than you could ever accomplish with the football team. We did have the benefit of not having a season interrupted. All this happened during our off-season. So we were able to kind of be preparing for this season from the very beginning to be very different than any other season. The other sports unfortunately had their seasons either interrupted, or in case of baseball, delayed. I think the things that we’ve learned, our testing is very important, but testing isn’t the only thing. You still have to follow good social distancing, wear a mask, you wash your hands, be careful when you’re not in the building when you’re out in the community or home with your family or at the team hotel. And the one difference, I think with baseball that is unique in that they do travel to other cities and when they are there, they’re there for three or four days at a time. When we’re going to go on a road trip, we fly into a city at four o’clock, five o’clock on a Saturday, have a team meeting, have meals. Everybody goes to bed, we get up, have a breakfast and at 9:00 AM we’re going to the stadium. So we can kind of replicate a bubble, even when we travel. And I’ve described what we’ve done is, at least right now in training camp, we’ve created 32 bubbles, one per team. So we’re in the Detroit Lions’ bubble and the Chicago Bears are in their bubble and on and on and on. Once we get to the season, when we are traveling and playing against other teams and other cities, we have very strict travel protocols, and hopefully we continue to have very good testing results and we can maintain everybody’s health and play football and not have this spread and disrupt the season the way it has happened in baseball for a few teams.
Rich Helppie:
Well I’m very comforted to hear about all that preparation because I just can’t help but think about those big linemen in there, on the eighth play of a drive, they’re breathing heavily, their close quarters over and over again, every hit you’ve got body fluids and sweat, sometimes blood. It sounds risky, but it sounds like you’ve taken all the precautions possible. Did the player’s union have to get involved in crafting these rules?
Rod Wood:
Everything that we’re doing was negotiated between the league and the player’s association. And I think we’ve come to a very good place where the players feel incredibly safe, which is very important. And we will continue to keep them safe and hopefully not have a spread like we’ve seen in other sports and in communities that don’t have some of these protocols. And I know talking to our players and coaches, they actually feel safer in our building than they probably do at home because they know how often it’s cleaned-all the plexiglass that we put in the facility that separates every locker from one another and how we’ve handled the weight room, how we handled the meal room. I no longer go to our dining facility, as an example, I have an app on my phone that I order breakfast, lunch and dinner each day at home, and then it’s delivered to my office and I eat by myself in my office so I’m not interacting with the players in the meal room. Even in the meal room, they have tables that are separated by plexiglass, so that they’re sitting next to each other, but they’re not able to have any transmission of coughing or sneezing to one another. And then when you get on the field, football as a contact sport, you’re not going to be able to have social distancing while we’re playing. But hopefully if everybody arrives without the virus, everybody leaves the game without the virus because we’ve made them safe when they got there and hopefully that continues through the season.
Rich Helppie:
Are the players given the option if they want to opt out this season?
Rod Wood:
There was an opportunity for players to opt out the first couple of weeks of training camp. There were two ways you could opt out: one, you could just decide not to play. And if you did that, you were given a stipend for this year, which was really an advance on next year’s contract. And your contract with it had two years remaining. Those two years are really now 2021 and 2022. And you can do that with no questions asked. And then you could also opt out under a different protocol if you had any high risk health issues yourself. And there was a list of those including diabetes, heart condition, et cetera. And if you opted out under that high risk situation, you had a higher stipend and it wasn’t an advance on next year’s salary. It was just a payment for you to sit out this year to protect you and your family. There is going to be an opportunity for someone to opt out during the season if someone in their family should contract the virus or they have some other unique situations. But so far those that have opted out across the league, I think it was somewhere around 65 players. We had several that opted out here, and those that are in camp now, we’re 80 guys in camp. We expect those guys to play and be part of the team.
Rich Helppie:
How about the NCAA, as we’ve talked on this podcast that some of the Power Five conferences have elected not to play, some are going forward with their seasons. As you described the protocols that you’ve put in place at the professional level, I’m just thinking that’s just too difficult in a college setting, particularly when the player athletes are going to be attending class and interacting with other people.
Rod Wood:
Yeah, it’s very different. First of all, college football is 180, I think, institutions-multiple conferences, big schools, small schools. And you don’t have one governing body. While you have the NCAA they do not make decisions for every conference, for every school. And they don’t have a union to negotiate these kinds of protocols with-the players are not employees, they’re student athletes. So it is very different. I think they have the complications of, are they going to decide to have students on campus? And if they’re not going to have students on campus, how do you justify having football players there to play football? I think that they all struggled with it. We’ll see what happens with those conferences that are still trying to play and hopefully they can play because college football is important for a lot of reasons. I think that’ll be exciting for some people to be able to watch college football, especially in parts of the country that they’re going to play. And it’s important for the NFL because those are our future players. And we want to be able to see as many good players play safely this year as we can, because they’re likely to be the future of different NFL teams.
Rich Helppie:
Well, I think that sums it up well, let’s want them to play and play safely. Rod, thinking about the fans, that in game experience is so special. And I know during your tenure, as president, you’ve done some very serious investments in Ford Field. There are bands that are producing live music, there’s team mascots, there’s cheer teams, on field reporting. I know some of that won’t be continued and I’m just wondering, what can the fans expect? There’s no pre-season tune-up. It seems that home field advantage, being able to create crowd noise when the other team’s on offense, when you think about it from a fan’s experience point of view, what are some of the big take-aways our listeners might want to understand?
Rod Wood:
Well, I think you’ve hit on a lot of the things. It’s going to be very different. It’s not going to be that different than what you’re experiencing watching some of the other sports right now. We remain hopeful that we’ll be able to have fans at some level in the stadium at some point during the season. That’s going to be a decision that’s largely guided by the health experts, and in our case, the state of Michigan and what our governor and her advisors think is appropriate. And so far, we’re still working with them to come up with what those standards might be. But in terms of what will go on on the field, it’s going to be football and we’re not going to introduce any other risks to the players or coaches by having cheer teams or announcers or halftime shows. That’s something that is going to be missed this year, not only in Detroit, but across the whole NFL. But the most important thing we want to do is play football because that is the sport and that is what drives fan interest. And I think the games will be presented on TV in a way that is not that different than what you’ve experienced in the past. There is a lot of interesting things that we’re thinking about in terms of crowd noise, et cetera, to make the TV experience feel very similar. The end game experience for fans who attend in person, it will be different. The crowd size is going to be limited, if we can have fans at all. And the experience during halftime, et cetera, will be different. Getting in and out of the building will be different. But it’ll be safe and that’s the most important thing-is to make sure everybody feels safe when they come to a game. When that’s allowed they’ll be required to wear masks, they’re going to have to fill out health questionnaires, there’s going to be social distancing, there’s going to be arrival times and departure times, and concession stands will be different. But it’s all geared towards making people safe, and also ultimately comfortable, to come to the games when that’s allowed.
Rich Helppie:
Well I know I like to attend a game every year and I look forward to that full experience, or however modified it might be. Sports are big business, and I know the economics with different sports varies, and the team economics may vary. When you do your financial analysis-and I know you’re a very strong financial guy-is there an average economic impact for each game presentation? And I’m thinking about the revenue picture for the teams and the ancillary economic benefits that happen in the communities, and are some franchises more challenged than others or has the NFL’s revenue sharing made things fairly equal?
Rod Wood:
That’s a multifaceted question. I’ll talk about the league and the teams to begin with. But one of the things I think that makes the NFL so powerful and so successful is owners, a long time ago, realized whether they were in a big market, a small market, a successful franchise today, or a team that’s struggling, the whole league is better when all 32 teams are as healthy as possible. So almost all of our revenue, whether it’s TV revenue or sponsored revenue or gate revenue, is shared relatively equally among the 32 teams, there are different percentages based upon different types of revenue. And then each of those revenue sources also are what funds the salary cap. So the players are receiving a significant percentage of that revenue as part of the salary cap. And so the big market teams that are generating higher revenue are, on balance, making less than they would if they weren’t sharing revenue with some of the smaller market teams and the smaller market teams, on balance, are making more than if they didn’t have that revenue share with them. But I think what that allows is for every team to have a chance to be financially situated so they can compete and put a winning team on the field. So you don’t always see the biggest market teams playing in the Super Bowl. You don’t always see the most successful franchises financially winning the Super Bowl. The Kansas City Chiefs are, by most market standards, relatively small market within the NFL. They’re the reigning Super Bowl champs. So I think it’s a very successful model. Obviously this year revenue is going to be affected by the pandemic. We’re going to have less fans at games. We’re going to have less sponsor revenue. Some of the sponsors might struggle financially to make their obligations to us and we’ve prepared for that. Thankfully we have the national TV revenue, which is a major driver of our overall revenue. I would expect TV ratings will be very strong this year, given the pent up demand to watch live sports. So hopefully that will help offset some of the revenue we lose from the local side.
I want to come back to the part about the other parts of the cities and states that rely upon NFL games, and I think you can extend it to college football too, there’s going to be ripple effects. Certainly, if we do not have fans or do not have full stadiums, that’ll affect restaurants and bars and parking and hotels, and you take that to the college towns, they are really driven by a lot of that activity. But it’s kind of the situation that we find ourselves in with the pandemic. And right now the health and safety of everybody is driving these decisions, not whether it’s the right business decision or not, or they’re going to help a local business. And hopefully everybody can continue to get through this year and we’ll have a much better 2021 and 2022, once this is behind us. But it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be tough on a lot of businesses.
Rich Helppie:
Rod, I really am comforted to hear you talk about the health and safety, the higher purpose above the business of football and the game of football. And of course we play sports in the context of a culture and an economy. And of course we have social responsibility and social justice issues that have leapt to the fore. Professional sports are not immune. I know that the Lions are doing something around a program called Inspire Change, and I do want to ask you about that. And I don’t think anybody would disagree with the idea that the phrase Black Lives Matter is an absolute truth. And in fact, on this podcast, we’ve talked about the roots of racism in the United States, and the journey ahead in scrubbing racism from our society. There doesn’t seem to be any dispute about that, but it does seem that there’s push back in some of the organizations in the political linkages of specific groups and, while no group is perfect, I can see that a reasonable person can see a group as taking on the next battle in the war on racism and another person can see the extrapolation, the exploitation by political parties and others. And how does the NFL address this nuanced difference without looking either as uncaring about racism, or perhaps as a pawn in a political movement that their players, their owners and fans may not all support. That has to have absorbed a lot of your time over the last several months.
Rod Wood:
It’s tough enough with the pandemic. And then you have the issues that unfortunately happened this summer with George Floyd and the other issues around the country that really raised this issue back to everybody’s top of mind-discussion points, you layer on top of that presidential election with all these issues, again, being discussed from every side. And I would say, the NFL has an opportunity because of our platform to do things that can benefit the society as a whole, and also bring these issues, I think, to everybody’s attention in a way that they can be discussed and hopefully improved upon over time. I will tell you when those issues happened this summer it was a really difficult time for our players, many of whom can very much relate to those stories and those incidents, and it became a big topic of discussion and basically trumped football being talked about for a long time.
One of our players is a close relative of Ahmaud Arbery, and so it hit home very close. One of our players grew up not very far from Minnesota, so he knew, back home, what was going on with the George Floyd situation so it was a real heart wrenching discussion. And I think it was an opportunity to educate a lot of our white players and our white coaches about what it’s really like to have grown up as a young black man in America. And some of the experiences that they heard were eye opening, heart wrenching, disappointing. And I think it really brought our team together in a way that was incredible. And I think there’ll be a lot of positive things that have come out of it-and I’ll come back and we can talk about Inspire Change, which is one example of that, in a second-but there’s a lot of things that we’re going to do this year. And I think people are going to be more engaged and more involved. And we’ve sponsored a lot of things to help people get educated about the issues and to register to vote. And if you want to make change, you can start at the ballot box by understanding what the issues are and how to make real change by exercising your right to vote. We are working very closely with our secretary of state and other organizations to educate our players about all that, and try and make Ford Field perhaps, even available as part of election night. And so there’s a lot of things that we can do because of our platform and when we do something, and when our players do something, that draws attention. And I think that can benefit not only the organization, but our players and society as a whole.
Rich Helppie:
I encourage you and applaud you and support you to keep pushing. Do you mind telling us just a little bit about the Detroit Lions program Inspire Change? I’ve looked into it, it looks really well organized, very close to my heart about the things that you’re concentrating on. And I was just impressed with the programmatic approach to very tough and delicate issues.
Rod Wood:
Yeah, I’d be happy to talk about it. I’m very proud of it. Inspire Change is an NFL sponsored program, but really run by each team and its own market, really coming out of the issues even three or four years ago when the issues of racial inequality and social justice were first being discussed particularly through the sports world. And what Inspired Change is, each team is encouraged to work with its players and fund a certain amount of money. And whatever the players come up with, up to a certain level, the team will match. And then a joint group of players and people from the organization pick local organizations, in our case, that we think can really help change social justice and racial inequality. And so this is our third year of doing it. We were the first team I’m aware of in the NFL that said, regardless of how much money our players put in, we’re going to put in the maximum amount. And I’m proud to say that each of the last three years, our players have put in the full amount and we’ve matched it. And I think were at the top of the list of all teams in the NFL, in terms of the local economic impact that we’ve been able to use to support organizations that largely focus on education, children, and we’ve had different organizations over the last couple of years. Some supporting our military-military families that have lost family members in the different overseas wars that we’ve been involved in. And I can tell you that our players are engaged and it’s not just their money, it’s their presence. They show up at these events, they show up to talk to these organizations. We bring some of them in to see us practice and participate at games. And again, because of our platform, when we do something that draws attention beyond what those organizations could ever generate on their own.
Rich Helppie:
Rod, I just want to encourage you to stay with this and the important role that people that have been strivers to make the most of their talent and reach the pinnacle of a sport, that the NFL has got to meet that consumer desire and the social needs of the country at the same time. And it’s real substance. And along with the substance there is symbolism, like we’ve seen with the NBA, with their jerseys and the logos on the playing surfaces. And I like to watch sports for escapism and relaxing and bonding with family and friends, and at the game, I like it when everybody stands up for the National Anthem. And while we’re an imperfect country, I’ve always said we’re striving for an ideal. Any comment about how we make sure that that substance and symbolism blend leading us to a better future, perhaps?
Rod Wood:
I won’t comment too much on what we’re going to do along the lines of what you’ve seen with the NBA, but there are plans for the NFL to bring some more attention to this issue once we have a national audience tuning into our games. Obviously the National Anthem was a big issue several years ago for the NFL. I think a lot of the things that were brought up three or four years ago have now evolved and how people view that. I’m not sure what will happen when we get to the games this fall and what happens with the National Anthem. But I think that whatever happens, it will be viewed in a different light than it was four years ago. And I think that there’s a very positive, productive conversation going on nationally, and I can see all sides of it. I understand all different opinions, and I get lots of letters written to me by people on all sides of the issue, and try and listen. And this is as much about educating me and everybody else as it is about sharing my opinion, my opinion doesn’t much matter. I’m trying to learn from what other people’s opinions are and try and do whatever we can to honor everybody’s point of view, respect their point of view but at the same time do what we think is the right thing for our players and the organization and for our city.
Rich Helppie:
Well, I can hear that. And in the research I did in preparation for this podcast, I know that the Detroit Lions and the National Football League have invested heavily in time and money, and frankly, a very sincere effort at being leaders.
Rod, just shift gears just a little bit. On the Common Bridge we talk a lot about the reporting industry outside of sports and how this has evolved over the years and the role it plays and should play. You know, gosh, I remember it didn’t seem that long ago, perhaps it was, that the professional teams used to get free coverage by the print journalists and on the TV news. And I’m just-for those of you in Detroit, I’m just gonna leave Al Ackerman out of this for a little bit, God rest his soul. Today you’ve got so much direct consumer and fan engagement. What’s the role of the sporting press today and how good of a job are they doing?
Rod Wood:
Well, it’s certainly evolved. Print media, to the extent that it still exists, is very different. I think in the old days, whatever the old days were, you’d have reporters go to a game, they write an article and you’d go get your newspaper in the morning and you’d read it. Well now I think reporters are writing articles as the event is going on or broadcasting it live via Twitter or Instagram and writing an article immediately and it’s available on the website or their app. They still may show up in the morning newspaper for those people that are still reading the print copy. But I think even newspapers have evolved to be much more of an online, real time, almost social media source of information. I would say in our case, we have a number of what we still call beat reporters that show up at every one of our games and every one of our practices. And I view them as a way to communicate with our fans. So we engage with them. We still have press conferences with coach and players and occasionally with our general manager and with me. And it’s a way of informing and educating our fans on what’s going on. For the most part, the reporters that follow our team and are here every day, they do it because they love football. It’s because it’s in their blood and they’ve chosen to exercise that fandom through being a reporter and covering the sport that they love. So I think they take their job very seriously and they do a good job at it. I don’t always agree with everything they say, but that’s fine. And then I think the thing that’s really unique is how many almost full time national bloggers, insiders, reporters that follow the NFL. And many of them I know pretty well, and they’re all looking for the new piece of information that nobody else has to be the first one to market to report this, that, or the other thing. And so you have to be on your toes all the time, looking for, sometimes we’re looking for what they may say about one of our opponents, because that may help you. And you’re hoping that somebody in your building’s not leaking something to them that you don’t want outside the building, but there’s a lot of people sniffing around all the time for that one piece of information that will put them first on the Twitter feed or get the most hits on their social media accounts. So it’s very much changed. And I would say it’s instant. I’m not sure what the life of the story is now, but it’s not very long. And back to broadcast, I think the TV revenue from local coverage, to go back to your Al Ackerman example, is very different. I mean, they have to adapt too. We use to stay up at 11 o’clock to watch the scores of the games. Well, you can follow that on your phone. You don’t need to wait around until 11 o’clock. So they’ve had to adapt their shows. They need to be much more human interest stories as opposed to reporting on what happened the night before. And we’ll see how that continues to evolve as we go forward. But there’s so many people reporting on our sport, which it speaks to how popular the sport is. And you just have to be on your toes and looking out for those who are trying to get information from you that you don’t want them to have and use it to get information out that you would rather not have out there.
Rich Helppie:
The biggest event, of course, that’s reported on is the Super Bowl. And we have a few holidays in the United States of America and probably the least secular has been Thanksgiving-all of that’s come under attack at times, lately. But the Super Bowl has become something of a national holiday. Even people that are not football fans, they want to know the date because there’s going to be some great parties and there’s been top name entertainment and some great games as well; big crowds, it’s great for the host city. Do you think we’re going to get that extravaganza with the live entertainment and all the accompaniments or something else?
Rod Wood:
Well, this year’s Super Bowl is in Tampa and I’m, right now, very confident that it will be played on current schedule. Beyond the game being played, predicting how many fans, again, will be able to be there and what kind of entertainment activities may be going on around the game and at halftime, a lot of that’s going to depend on where we are in February and where we are in particular in February in Florida with the virus and the safety concerns that everybody needs to have top of mind. But I agree with you. It’s become a very, very big national holiday, usually the number one rated TV show by a magnitude of four or five over the next highest rated TV shows. So it’s maybe the one thing that the whole country pretty much sits down and enjoys whether you like football or not. It’s an event. And I’d love to be playing in Tampa in the Super Bowl in February, whether there’s fans in the stands or not. I’d like the lions to be there.
Rich Helppie:
10 million Michiganders and millions of Lions fans all across the country. It was 1957 December that the Lions last won an NFL championship, played at Tiger Stadium on turf, 59 to 14 over the Cleveland Browns.
So let’s shift a little bit, a quick lightning round. These are quick responses you can either pass or say, yeah, here’s a quick answer. These are from Lions fans. How are the Lions maintaining progress in the face of Patricia and Quinn’s make or break year-future planning or win now?
Rod Wood:
Well, we’re always balancing the two and I’m not going to comment on things that we said at the end of last year about our expectations for this year and how people have interpreted that for Bob and Matt. But I think that the point is that we expect, now that we’ve had three years of building this, that there’s going to be a pay off this year and we expect to be competitive and be playing, as we said, meaningful games in December. The virus obviously has affected a lot of things as we prepare for the season, but I do think that we have a really good football team and I think we’ve added some talented players. I think it’s hard to remember when you look at the one loss record from last year, 3-12-1, that I think there were eight other games that we had leads in the fourth quarter. So it isn’t that far to imagine us turning that around and having a very strong winning record and being right there where we want to be at the end of the year. But while we’re preparing for this year, you’re always balancing for the future. And it’s not all in on this year, this is part of a long term plan and we expect the pay off to begin this year.
Rich Helppie:
And to that end, what’s the depth chart look like behind Matt Stafford?
Rod Wood:
You know, we learned last year, how valuable Matthew is by not having him for eight games. And so we did invest in bringing in Chase Daniel, a seasoned NFL backup quarterback. You hope that you never have to play your backup quarterback when you have a caliber of starter that we have in Matthew, but you also have to plan for it. So we do have more depth. We still have David Blough back who was an undrafted rookie. He did start five games last year, played pretty well and learned a lot. So he has real game experience in the NFL and hopefully between the two of them, we have backups behind Matthew, but I’m looking forward to seeing number nine on the field for 16 games and turning those fourth quarter scores around and putting the good record out there.
Rich Helppie:
Well, I know that Brian and I, and lots of fans here in Michigan, would love to see that. Rod, this has been really informative. What didn’t we cover today that perhaps we should have discussed?
Rod Wood:
Well, it’s kind of interesting, the whole world is in some ways very different. But it does feel somewhat normal to be back in the building. I’ve said this several times that this all was breaking in March. We were in the building wrapping up free agency. We’d already sent our coaches and scouts home and all of our business staff home for what we thought was going to be two or three weeks. And it became months and months and months. And some of them are still working from home, but we’ve been back in the building since the middle of July. And it’s different because we’re wearing masks and all the other things that I described earlier on, but it does feel like you’re back to work and I’m out on the field every day, watching our football team practice. And so I have optimism that we’re getting through this and there’s going to be NFL football this fall. It will start to feel as normal as it can be in the current environment. And hopefully this is maybe the beginning of turning the corner with the virus and getting back towards normal.
Rich Helppie:
Well, that’s sure would be wonderful. Any further closing thoughts before we wrap up?
Rod Wood:
No Rich, it’s been nice to be on with you. And as you said earlier, we have crossed paths many times, and I’m happy to participate in this, and hopefully it was educational and helpful, and looking forward to the fall and NFL football.
Rich Helppie:
Rod, thank you so much for appearing on the Common Bridge. I know our listeners are going to very much appreciate all of the insight. There’s so many great people in our country today working and being innovative as we deal with the crises of the day. It’s those kinds of activities and actions and leadership that gives me confidence in our future, if we can focus our major political parties on policy versus attacking each other. And if we can demand that the reporting organizations do a better job in giving us facts and trying to let us reach our own perspectives. So again, from the Common Bridge, we’ve been meeting today with Detroit Lions President and Chief Executive Rod Wood. This is Rich Helppie signing off on the Common Bridge.
Brian Kruger:
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