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NFL SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF FOOTBALL OPERATIONS INTERVIEW

I was fotunate to have the opportunity to talk to David Gardi from the league office and here is what happened:

Q: You’ve been working in the NFL since 2003, so at what point did you realize that working in the NFL was a legitimate possibility?

A: Well Luke I probably had a little bit of a leg up because my dad had coached in the NFL and then he worked in the NFL office in officiating back in the late ‘80s. So he took a job at Hofstra, which was a Division 1 AA program in New York in 1990 so he had a lot of contacts at the league office and he was able to get me an internship in 1995 when I was in Law School. So when I got into the NFL office and started interning, I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do, Unfortunately they didn’t hire me out of law school because they wanted me to go get some experience so I worked in a law firm for seven years and I always wanted to go back and I, really, was patient about it and it took me seven years to get back and I got hired in ‘03 so I’d say it was the internship I had in ‘95-’96 when I was in Law School was really what sold me on, not only I knew what I wanted to do, but I also had such a great experience there and they definitely indicated that they wanted to hire me back someday so I kinda felt like I had my foot in the door at that point.

Q: Do you ever get time to just sit back, relax, and watch football games on the weekends?

A: My son is a high school football player, so about the only football I can watch other than the NFL is his games and I can’t say that that’s going to be relaxing, it’s likely he’s going to be the kicker next year on the varsity team so I’m not sure how relaxing that’s going to be. But then I go to two games every weekend, I either go the the Thursday Night/Sunday Night or Sunday Night/Monday Night, some combination of the two and so when I’m at games, and if you do the math, I went to 45 football games, NFL games. Sometimes I go three a weekend, I’ll do Thursday, Sunday, Monday, I’m there and I don’t necessarily, I enjoy watching the game, I do watch it for a lot of different things, I’m watching it for the officiating, I’m watching it for game operations, and I’m watching it for discipline that we may have to impose on players on Monday, whether it’s fines or suspensions. I’m also, sometimes when I’m at games, I’m also watching red zone and things like that on a monitor that I have, so I’m also trying to watch other games as well so the days of me relaxing while watching a NFL football game as a fan are over, someday I may go back to that, if I leave the NFL but that’s kinda how I watch games now.

Q: Do you like what GM John Lynch and HC Kyle Shanahan have done in San Francisco in year one?

A: Yeah, I feel like they’re on the rise, it was a tough division 2-3 years ago, I feel like LA’s gonna be really good in the division, I’m a little worried that Seattle and Arizona may be on the decline, or at least Arizona may be rebuilding, so they have the opportunity to make a little run and I mean the NFC’s a tough conference, I’m sure Green Bay’s gonna be good with Aaron Rodgers again, I’m sure New Orleans will have a great year, Minnesota’s good, obviously the Eagles, it’s just a tough conference but I like where they’re headed, I’ve gotten to know John Lynch a little bit, I don’t know Kyle very well, What I probably will do is go out there for training camp, and spend a little time with him at training camp. But yeah, I think they’re making all the right moves, and it seems like they’re getting younger, on the defensive side of the ball they had some guys that were very prolific guys 5, 6, 7 years ago when they made their super bowl run and I feel like they’re getting younger now so yeah, I like what they’re doing.  

Q: When it comes to J.J. Watt, do you take pride as a league when you have someone like J.J. who does what he does for a city coming off such a horrible disaster like Houston?

A: Yeah I mean, our public relations group has tried to focus on highlighting the great things our players do, because, as you can imagine, between if you go back to Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, all the things that were in the headlines, our guys were portrayed as, those guys were what casual fans knew about our players, the bad stuff. So we had to do a better job of highlighting the good things our players do, so we’re trying to focus on that, our football operations group has a unit that handles player marketing and those stories and yeah, [J.J. Watt] won man of the year this year, but when you see the other nominees for man of the year you realize, there’s a lot of guys doing some great things and you’re young enough to realize, that a lot of people like to highlight the negatives and make news of the negative, sometimes the positive news doesn’t really resonate with people. But yeah, I mean, [J.J.] is the guy you want to be the face of the league and certainly the Texans organization. I have heard nothing but wonderful things about him as a person so yeah, it’s amazing what he did and I’m sure that’s not the end of it too, that’s the type of guy who will continue those types of things in the community.

Q: What is a normal work day like for you?

A: Well, look, in season has a different pace to it, in season it’s being on the road and traveling, going to games, trying to solve problems, trying to solve problems before they bubble up for the next weekend. So our week is short because I’m usually at a Monday Night game and then I’m normally at a Thursday Night game and it’s just Wednesday and maybe Tuesday afternoons that when we have suspension cases, which we had 11 suspensions last year, that takes up a lot of our time on Monday and Tuesday. The offseason used to, I’m sure, before I started at the NFL, used to be a time where you can relax and catch up, but we don’t have that luxury anymore. So from Super Bowl to April 1st is probably my busiest time of the year because I’m involved in all the playing rule changes and changes to the rulebook and policies, which get voted on by our owners in March so that’s a busy time of year for me and then we just had two rule changes, that happened at our May Owners Meeting. So typically April 1st to June, I can try to catch my breath a little bit. But this has been a difficult time because we’ve had two rule changes and I had to do a lot of work with that, so anything can come across my desk, what I try to do is try to spend time with each group that I’m responsible for and the Game Operations group, the League Policies and then Player Discipline, some days you can play a little bit of catch up which I’m trying to do this week and next week but I’m on my way to the airport to go down to a club visit for the Miami Dolphins and I’m spending two days with the Dolphins, so this time of year we try to catch up with some of our teams because this is the time of year we can actually talk to them sensibly, obviously there’s offseason workouts and mini camps and stuff like that going on. But at least they’re not in the middle of the season where they’re stressed out so it’s a good time to get some good dialogue going, got dialogue with our teams, our GM’s, our Head Coaches, all people like, I’ll meet with the Trainers, the Doctors, the Equipment Managers, the Video Directors, all the Scouts so we’ll get a chance to get some feedback and see where things are. So it’s a pretty chaotic pace, but I’m wired that way so I’m okay with it but I do get a little bit of downtime, hopefully in the first part of July, middle of July.