Power Players: Jaguars OC Grant Udinski

Welcome to NFL Daily's Power Players, where we talk to smart people around the league, how they do their job and basically get into how they contribute to the fabric of the sport itself. I am your host, Jordan Rodrigue. And today I am really, really excited. And Jacksonville Jaguars fans will be excited, too, because I've got your offensive coordinator in here for an interview. Grant Udinski is going to be joining Power Players today. Udinski's in his second season in the role after spending the 2024 season as an offensive assistant for the Minnesota Vikings. And I hear from a lot of people around the league about Grant Udinski pretty consistently. He's even gotten head coaching interviews at

just 30 years old.

Which makes me feel incredible. ancient, of course.

The people he works with say that he's incredibly detail-oriented, creative, and plays a key role in the design and the productivity of the Jags' entire offense. And of course, me being a complete dork, I had to dig into the fascinating Jaguars' run game and how he and head coach Liam Cohen design and then teach the concepts they draw up.

I think you all are going to really enjoy this.

Here's Grant Udinski.

I am so stoked today to be joined by Grant Udinski, the offensive coordinator for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Grant, welcome to Power Players. Thanks so much for being here today.

Appreciate you having me.

So we really love to get into people's why.

Why football? Why they think the way that they think? Why they are passionate about the job that they do? So first and foremost for you, what is it about football and coaching? Why was coaching a path for you?

That would probably be about a two to three hour answer if I went through everything. But certainly it was a passion from.

A young age.

My older brother played football and I was really fortunate to be in a family where my dad coached us growing up. My younger brother played football and from Pop Warner all the way up through high school and even into college, certainly a passion playing. So knowing that I wanted to be a part of my life, I probably transitioned to the interest in coaching maybe a little earlier than most, knowing my.

Playing career wasn't going to be very long.

But I think it's all the normal things that people probably get into football for, whether it's the camaraderie and the team element of being a part of something bigger than yourself, working towards a shared goal. It's such a unique sport where you have essentially, whether it's 50 guys on a team or 100 guys on a team, 100 different friends of different backgrounds, different shapes, different sizes.

Where you're coming together and maybe.

You wouldn't be friends normally in a day-to-day setting, but you have this shared goal and this shared experience, and that makes.

That so special.

So a lot of it is really centered around the people, but there's so many experiences over the course of years that have shaped football. If I got into all of them, like I said, I'd be talking all day. But I was fortunate to be in good situations with good people, great teammates, lifelong friends, lifelong lessons, kind of all the cliches wrapped into one.

I don't know you well, but I know of you and I know a little bit about how you think.

And you seem to be someone who's really.

Drawn by how all of the pieces work together, not just the X's and O's, but also how different personalities can fit together onto a team and how everything builds into this big picture of a shared goal. So when, when can you remember maybe first that first sparking for you or really understanding, okay, I'm interested in this on maybe a deeper level than I, than I thought I maybe was when I first started.

That's a good question.

I think it probably honestly started when I was a player. And like I mentioned, I wasn't a very good player, but I was consumed with football and trying to get on the field and trying to figure out how to play or how to get different roles on the So I became obsessed with figuring out.

How do I get on the team? How can I add value to the team?

And it made me start to realize how important putting the right people in the right positions is, how that is the majority of what you're doing as a coach or as a leader, just getting the right people in the right positions. Now, with that being said, then you're on the other side of it. And I'm finally a coach.

And then I get to see the other side of the, you know, the other half of the picture where you recognize that it's not just about putting necessarily a 40 time here at the wide receiver position. and a certain bench press at the offensive line, that there's a person behind that face mask.

And the same thing is true.

Not only for the offensive tackler, the defense tackle, the wide receiver, but the same thing is true for your running backs coach or your nutritionist or your.

Strength coach, whoever it is on the team, because they're all a part of it.

And they all play such a vital role that all of us coming together from a personality, psychologically, you know, social standpoint, it's just as important, the physical traits coming together.

So I would love to.

Say that's something that I just realized as a coach, but it was probably selfishly my inability to get on the field that made me so obsessed with trying to figure out what's the best way to organize a team and people together.

You mean, as I saw in your little write-up bio, playing defensive end wasn't going to be in your career path?

No, not quite.

I'm probably a couple inches too short, too slow into the week, which is not a good combination for me to say that.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure you guys in Jacksonville under James Gladstone are looking for all of the opposite qualities.

Yeah, if there's ever a player that's comparable to me, I think we can try to eliminate him from the board pretty quickly.

So before you get to Jacksonville, you're in Minnesota and you sort of talked about being so curious about the ecosystem and how all of the pieces fit together. And that is a really cool one to get to learn from, you know, from the facilities and the coaches and also the the the medical staff, the training staff and all the little things that you got to be a part of because you were an assistant. You were doing a lot of different things for that team. Can you peel back the curtain a little bit on what that experience was like for you? And what kinds of things were you drawn to? What types of learning experiences did you gravitate toward?

Well, when I first got there, I probably didn't realize how valuable of an experience it would be because I was drawn to the opportunity because of the people I was working with, Coach O'Connell and everybody there, and the opportunity to do the football side of things and coaching and the opportunity to work with the quarterbacks. But then I got there and realized that there was so much more to it where now I am working with the athletic training staff and putting schedules together. And as we plan out a practice, all of these little nuances and details and how we actually schedule and structure a training camp or one individual practice and why we put certain periods where then you talk to the strength coaches and

what we need for warmup, how we need to allot our certain time.

Restrictions based on the CBA when you talk to the contract people.

So there are all these little things that come together that you don't really realize when you're siloed in your role as an offensive assistant or an assistant quarterback's coach. So to be able to be exposed to all that and really all facets of the organization proved to be invaluable. So for me, being someone who loves that stuff, it was like being a kid in the candy shop where I get to talk to the strength coaches and I get to talk to, like I mentioned, the nutritionist because we're talking about what we're having for lunch that day or these are certain days and we have a fuel bar at this certain time putting.

Together the schedule.

So it was, like I said, you know, so valuable, really an invaluable education to go through all that and get to work with such exceptional people just made it.

That much better.

Was it eye-opening kind of on the NFL level seeing what the workload of coaching is?

I think that.

There's certainly an adjustment period getting used to it. Now, anybody that probably gets into coaching probably has a one or two screws loose where if you want to get into coaching, this is probably about the only thing you want to do. So it's hard to compare because you talk to other people who, when they go to their job, they're looking forward to maybe the.

Thing they're doing after the job.

When I leave the facility, I'm looking forward to getting back to the facility. So it's really, there's no fair comparison because it's, If you love playing video games or if you love eating cake every day and you just did that all day of every day, you probably wouldn't be complaining. So I really have no complaints about the workload aspect of it because I'm so incredibly fortunate to not only be coaching.

The NFL, but to be part of a phenomenal organization.

Whether it's Jacksonville or my time in Minnesota, I've been around such exceptional people. People have treated me so amazingly that I really have no room to complain when it comes to the workload aspect. Sure.

But the attention to detail is something that coaches who have worked with you talk about with you. Like meticulous note-taking and just some of the, I guess, drive to make sure the table is set in every single way. Are those habits? I mean, I know we're talking a little bit broader here about... the habits of successful and highly competitive people here, but you know, what are those habits like for you and how did you sort of funnel all of that into what you're doing right now?

Well, I think it's a little bit of a double-edged sword because I certainly am maybe a bit obsessive in some of the details and putting all the pieces together.

I think Liam, Coach Cohen.

Last year at the end of the year, last year we were Doing a short yardage meeting and going through our plan on a very specific situation and a very specific play.

And it's getting late in the.

Night and I'm rehashing every detail with the guys and they probably want to get out of there, get the meeting over, start preparing for practice. I made the analogy, I said, Graham game plans every play like he's got a gun to his head.

And I thought, well, that's a pretty good heuristic.

If you had a gun to your head, you'd probably find a way to convert that third and one. So I actually kind of liked that. He was trying to insult me, but I certainly think his point was valid, though, as well. There's a balance to it. So I try to have a little bit of balance to it. I can't tell you exactly where those habits came from, but I'm always trying to strike the balance of being obsessed with the details and the nuance while I'm not overloading, whether it's coaches or players, and finding sometimes the simpler answer, the parsimony of a Just a simple, concise solution may be better than the most elaborate detail.

Before I make you talk a little bit more about your process and how you guys build, I am curious who mentors have been for you or who people... What has inspired you either creatively in your work or functionally in your work? And who do you kind of lean on either currently or had in the past?

There's probably so many people that because you're learning from everybody that I can't specify or single out one person. Of course, the coaches that I've worked with, so whether it's Coach Cohen, Coach O'Connell, my time with Coach Rula.

And so on and so forth, Coach Nixon. Those coaches have all had a huge impact on me.

But even looking back at my time in Minnesota, I learned so much from being with Kirk Cousins or being with Sam Darnold, even Daniel Jones in that time. My time in Carolina, some of the defensive players I was with, talking to those guys and learning about how they see things, how they view certain plays, how they view a weekly process.

Those are so valuable for me, especially because I was never a player in the NFL. Certainly I played in college, but to get their experience in the scheme, They're the ones living it and doing it. And it's really that same process, like I mentioned, communicating with a nutritionist or an athletic training staff member or a strength coach staff member on what's the best thing for their schedule or the warmup when we were devising those plans. Understanding their perspective was more valuable than me just trying to have that.

Conjecture project how things play out.

So all of those people have impacted me so strongly, whether it's somebody I've coached, somebody I've worked with, somebody I've worked for, that's really hard to single out one person.

Yeah, but your point stands.

I think coaching is so much about empathy, too. And good coaching, anyway, is so much about empathy, because you're trying to get inside somebody's shoes, somebody's head, try to understand, how are you seeing this? And how can I help basically supplement that so that everybody... has success, which brings me to the vision. I know.

Okay.

So everyone wants to talk to the offensive quarterback, the quarterback. I understand that. I don't want to talk to you about the quarterback.

I think he's doing just fine and he's playing awesome right now. I want to talk to you about this run game, because to me, when I think about run game install and it's a year to year or year over year operation, I don't think that you can install like the full vision of what a run game is or manifest the full vision of what a run game can be and just say, okay, we did it in a year and we're done.

And this is going to be what it is.

I think it always is like evolving and taking shape and taking on new forms. And you guys have really, I think, experimented in cool ways with what you want it to look like. So taking it all the way back to you and Liam first putting this thing together, what was the vision for it? What in its most basic explanation did you want to achieve with not only what this looked like, but what it felt like to the opponent, what it felt like for your players?

Yeah, you hit the key word there is what does it feel like for us? What does it feel like for the players?

So stripping it all down, we certainly reevaluated this offseason and our first season together. Some of the schematic things we did in the past, whether it's the wide zone game or some of the gap schemes, and some of the ways we hit certain blocks or have landmarks on certain runs, but it really came down to the starting point for our culture and our play style. And that started with what Liam has established here with cleats and fast.

And he talks about being attacking and being tough. Well, that should show up in the run game, no matter what run we're running. So you'll see, we run a variation of some crack tosses out on the perimeter where you get to it and out on the edge, but we also have runs where we got to run in right downhill and we got double teams right at the point of attack and nobody's pulling and we're just trying to move guys off the line of scrimmage. Whether we're running outside or we're running inside, we still want to have that mentality carry over to everything we do. So some of the fundamentals are different in those blocks, but it really started with the mentality of we're going to identify the defense.

We're going to play on.

Our terms and we're going to attack and be tough in every single run concept we have.

And part of that is almost like the defense.

When you're on defense and you play with great effort and violence and and swarm to the ball, you can overcome a lot of issues. Well, the same thing is true to an extent in the run game for us. So it started with establishing the mentality. And really, as we evaluated the scheme, it goes all the way back to what are we repping in practice?

How are we teaching it in the meetings?

How many reps are we getting at certain things during walkthrough periods or live reps?

And how can we tailor the off season?

So it's a progression all the way from the first moment that the guys step on, you know, step in the building here in the off season, they'll, that first kickoff against Cleveland, how can we build that progression so we have a really firm identity of the run game, knowing that it's going to evolve.

Throughout the year.

I would love to tell you the plays that we're going to run in week one are going to be the exact same plays we're going to run at the end of the year. But we know it will evolve. But the things we think that will stay the same are really our technique and fundamentals of the core concepts.

When we look at the wide zone or you look at the duo or gap schemes, those techniques will stay the same.

But the physicality, the attacking, the toughness, that stuff will be, no matter what the run concept is, that stuff will be the standard.

That stuff will be consistent.

So much to go off of there. And my brain's going a million miles an hour. I could, now I'm the one who's like, okay, can we talk about this for three hours? Um, so yeah, you mentioned making sure there's a teaching progression, but also any evolution progression for the play itself. You can't upload something all in one bite, right?

You have to do it piece by piece by piece and paint the picture as you go essentially with the players.

So what is any play?

You don't have to say the name of it or the call or whatever, not asking you to give away competitive information, but how, where do you start when you're installing something that you know is is going to be a core for you guys across an entire season, whether it's from the duo family or whether it's one of those toss runs, where do you start and how do you progress that play into its, at least its initial version that you see on the field?

Yeah, that's.

A fun process to go through every year because you make little tweaks and adjustments to that teaching process. Because for example, you run a zone plan. We're just going to say we're running this zone plan. It's a standard zone plan with nobody pulling and we're running a wide zone and we're trying to get to this certain landmark. Well, you start with that run knowing that there are five or six variations that eventually you're going to build off of that run. But you try to master all of the different rules and techniques and exceptions to that run.

Throughout the offseason.

And as you are adding in those variations, you're constantly circling back to that initial run that you put in. So that way guys have a firm grasp of the origin or the foundation of what they're built on. So you're scaffolding things up naturally.

To say this run, even though this run.

May only be ran at a 4% frequency of this family of runs, we're going to end up practicing it at a 15% frequency when you look at the distribution of all the runs in that family. So I don't know if that makes sense where you're not necessarily running this run all the time when it comes down to Sunday.

But because of what it means from a foundation standpoint and teaching progression, there's a process to getting the guys to understand the individual concepts that are within that run. Because within that run, we may have a certain combination between the tackle and the guard, and they need to master that so that way we can get to that next run.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Totally.

And I think about it when we're kids and we're learning how to read or we're learning the alphabet and we're going back to the baseline principles of what we know in order to build all of these different words. And then those turn into pages and then those turn into books. And then now, you know, but we don't think about it. We're just going out and doing it. Obviously, we don't think about it step by step by step.

but building a playbook is so similar to that. It's just, it changes all the time, unlike our alphabet, but it does change all the time. And I just think that's the coolest thing about coaching and, and, and playing certainly on the other side of it too. It's, it's all language and different combinations of language.

You're speaking my language right now, because this is the stuff I love.

And I was just talking to actually one of our sports science guys about a book we were talking about, about language and linguistics book, but it's, so much about teaching that language because that language is so important to build the concepts that you're trying to get guys to understand. And just when you read, like you say, the first time you read and you sound out a word. So when you sound out cat, you see C-A-T. And when you're young, you see those individual letters and you're sounding them out and you're putting the C and the A and the T sound together.

Well, now you've seen it.

So many times and you bastard the word cat, reading the word cat, that when you see C-A-T, You just say cat.

You don't sound it out in your head. And it's that same process.

And we give that analogy to the players of when you get a play call or a certain concept, we want they call it chunking. We want that stuff to be chunked together where they have that firm grasp of the concept. They have a conceptual based learning as opposed to just understanding the bits and pieces and trying to put them together on their own while they're out there on the field. Because when you're out there playing football, unfortunately, you don't have time to think you only have time to play. So the more we can take chat or the five different words and turn them into just one sentence that flows clean with those guys, as opposed to all those different pieces of information that they got to

put together, hopefully the faster they'll be able to play, the faster they'll be able to process, and then ultimately hopefully the better the result will be. But that's the stuff I geek out on before I go off on a crazy tangent on stuff.

I appreciate you indulging me.

Oh, yeah. Well, we love crazy tangents on this show. So welcome.

Safe space. You also have to communicate with the front office about... first of all, what all of that is supposed to look like in its full form. You have to reach ahead and say, we want to be able to do all of these different things.

We know we are going to start here.

And then even further back, we have to start with traits and talent identification. So when you're talking to James, when you're talking to Tony, when you're talking with Liam to all of these scouts and front office people, what does that communication process look like?

How does everybody.

see the picture together ultimately, and then go out and find players in collaboration with the coaches and the front office that kind of fit that picture.

Yeah.

When you talk about a previous question, and I promise I will answer that question about who are the mentors and who are the people you learn from, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about James and Tony, because those are two people, of course, Liam as well, that I've learned a ton from even in this short time, you know, year and a half being with those guys and being a part of this organization.

Because for me personally, I.

When you talk about the process of evaluating players and where we want to go, every time those guys speak on whether it's a player evaluation or a process of team building and organization building, there's probably something to 10 things that I'm learning from those guys just.

The way they've used Biggs.

I'm incredibly fortunate and we're incredibly fortunate here in Jacksonville that they are so collaborative and that they have such high capacity to take in so many different inputs and so many different people's opinions.

And they value those opinions, and then they come.

To a decisive and clear solution, whatever that may be what we're facing. But I'm incredibly fortunate to get to learn from James's experiences, from his experience in LA, and you kind of get the downfall of that and everything moving forward. And then you get Tony's experiences in Jacksonville as a player or working in different organizations. So there's so many different perspectives that you're learning from that you try to combine them all together. And then I'm fortunate that those guys listen and whatever judgment they come to, we're ready to execute.

And then you collaborate with them to put things together.

And I'm not gonna let you escape this interview without answering that question because it's so cool. You have to communicate at such a high level with each other, but it's also very simple at the same time. Everyone's got a picture in their head of what it's supposed to look like. And basically you guys are filling in the brushstrokes and the lines and all the different shapes and everything to create that picture. So how does that conversation go?

Does it sound as insane as what I just said just now?

Um, no, it does not sound as insane. I apologize for looking away. We've got people knocking at the glass windows over here. If you've ever been to the Jacksonville facility, everything is glass. So everybody can see you at all times and you can see them at all times. So I apologize for the darning eyes around the way a little bit. Um, but the collaboration process with those guys is great because they do it in phases where we get an initial perspective where I have an opportunity and every coach has an opportunity or, um, provide information how they see a certain player for personnel, for example. And then they may suggest how they see things and you reevaluate and you collect different information and then you evaluate

it independently on different information. So the way they built kind of the phases of evaluating one prospect or multiple prospects at different points of the year or at different points of the offseason really allows you to get different fresh perspectives for yourself and and then kind of take in your blind spots that they're providing that you don't have, because we don't always have all the information.

We're not out there on the road. We're not scouts.

So we don't know all the behind the scenes that's going on on a college campus or for a free agent at the other teams. So I really enjoy that process, not only because of how well they've organized it and structured it and so thorough, and it is a commitment to a process. Like you mentioned process a couple of times.

I've said process 10 times. They're committed to a process. They're not just going to try to make a decision based on an outcome where they're not going to abandon that process just because this player, we're going to treat this differently with this evaluation and this evaluation differently.

So you learn that process and you can go accustomed to it.

Not that any process looks the same because each time you revisit phase two or revisit phase three, a different player is going to, that discussion is going to look different than the phase two discussion of.

A previous player.

But the commitment to going through that and being thorough is something that I really enjoy because, I notice how my opinions change over the course of time and you notice how their opinions change over the course of time, which is where you mentioned that collaboration comes to light.

That's so cool because I think that that's probably got to be one of the biggest, I don't want to say edges or advantages, but it does feel like it would be one is, is being able to communicate throughout in a way that everybody is, um, open with each other's opinions, but then also for communicating needs very clearly. Like, you know, Liam, I think one of Liam's strengths always has been, he's really able to say what traits specifically matches to a specific tiny detail that he wants to bring to life in a system and, and vice versa.

When I, you know, when I covered the Rams in LA, I always saw James Gladstone really pick that up and understand where to go look for that.

So to me, it's, it's all fascinating and it must be cool.

It's almost like you, you know, you're in like the little detective mode or something like seeing how all these little patterns are manifest and how small things and small details shared in these meetings actually turn into real life.

Yeah, I think being around James and Liam and Tony and seeing them work and seeing them put the puzzle pieces together lends itself to a natural ability to trust them and their vision because they have such a clear vision for the team.

So I know in my role as the office coordinator, I'm.

Not responsible for evaluating the players. But I trust that those guys, because of how they collect information, because of how often they've proven time and time again that they're thinking two or three or four steps ahead, they have a clear vision. And whether it's Liam with a play call or Liam with a personnel decision or James with an organizational decision or a team building decision on the long term, it's really fascinating to see. how they're able to have that vision projected all the way out with all the different variations of what could.

Happen between A and B.

And even though you might not have the perfect plan for it, all the different contingencies are well thought through. And the vision is so clear that it makes it easy for people who are following James and following Tony to do our role and try to excel in our role because we know they've taken care of that, if that makes sense. It's just a fortunate position to be in when You don't have to waste time because it is so efficient with those guys understanding what we're trying to get across from what we need. We understand what they're trying to get across from what they need from us from an evaluation standpoint.

Alignment is a big buzzword probably in the NFL. You hear it from a bunch of people. But to truly have that and experience it is special.

Yeah, well said.

Grant, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for being generous with your time. Thank you for joining me on this episode of NFL Daily's Power Players.

I appreciate you having me and thanks for the thoughtful question.

Thanks again to Grant Udinski, the Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator for joining me today on NFL Daily's Power Players. I especially liked hearing more granular detail about some of the teaching points inside this coaching system. Fun stuff in Jacksonville as the Jaguars head to London. Next in your feed, of course, it is more football. We're in week five, you guys, and we are rolling.

Can't wait.

Power Players: Jaguars OC Grant Udinski

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