David Anderson

He set receiving records at Colorado State University and eventually landed in their Athletics Hall of Fame. Not bad for a guy who didn’t have the size of a “typical” wide receiver in the early 2000’s. These days, David Anderson would fit right in.  

David grew up in California and played at Thousand Oaks High School, a hot bed for college recruiting. Despite having numerous D1 scouts and coaches at his games and dominating at wide receiver, David’s first scholarship offer came in the late fall of his senior year. During his visit to Fort Collins, he committed to play for Sonny Lubick.  

After a stellar career at CSU, he was selected by the Houston Texans with the 4th to last pick in the 2006 NFL Draft. Like Sonny Lubick, Gary Kubiak had an eye for hidden talent. David played 9 games as a rookie and stayed with the Texans until he was cut in the summer of 2011. He got picked up by the Broncos for training camp, then cut again. From there he bounced back to Houston, had a short stop with Mike Shanahan in Washington, another quick stint in Seattle and called it a career.  

After his playing days, David went back to school to get his MBA and venture into the business world. Eventually, his love for math and communications led to a startup called Breakaway Data where he is currently the CEO. David is also a husband and father to three young children who keep him plenty busy.  

Listen to David’s story and conversation with Susie Wargin on the Cut Traded Fired Retired Podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
People ask when I knew I was gonna play in
the NFL. I had a pack a rite, which is
a deep over. We ran it out of emotion, so
I'm coming in the motion and I did a lot
of visualization always still do and still back then did
of what the play would look like. And I run
out there and they do it slightly different. But I
saw the safety move and I saw the corners start
getting nervous about me coming out, and I was like,

(00:21):
I'm gonna press him outside. He's gonna flip his hips
and chase me. I'm gonna cut underneath him. I'm gonna
be wide open and I'm gonna catch this and I'm
gonna go in between the corner over there and that
safety and I'm gonna start riding this puppy right down
the sideline. And it still gives me chills. I did
it and it was perfect, and I'm literally running and
it felt like the matrix like the whole things went
and I was like, oh, I see it, and boom.

(00:42):
I put my foot on the ground. Bradley hits me
right and stride. I take off right down the sideline.
From then on the game had been slower.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Welcome to Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired, a podcast featuring conversations
with professional athletes and coaches who have been gracious enough
to tell their stories of changes, setbacks, and moving forward.
I'm Your Home, Susie Wargen. David Anderson wasn't your prototypical
wide receiver, but his size didn't stop him from earning
a scholarship at Colorado State University, setting school records, being

(01:10):
inducted into the CSU Athletics Hall of Fame, getting drafted
by the Houston Texans, and having a six year career
in the NFL. Of course, there were some lows in
all of those accolades, like getting cut three times by
Houston and again by the Broncos, and developing tendonitis that
he may have been able to prevent if he knew
then what he knows now. After retiring from football, David

(01:32):
went back to school for his MBA and ventured into
the startup tech world, where again he found some lows,
but he learned from them. These days, David's a husband,
father of three, and the CEO of Breakaway Data, a
fascinating company working with athletes, teams, and leagues on deep,
deep dives into data which helps athletes better know where

(01:53):
they stand from a health perspective and hopefully prolongs their careers.
Ladies and gentlemen. David Anderson Cut Traded Fired, Retired Podcast
with Susie Wargen. David Anderson, Hello, how are you?

Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm great? Are you?

Speaker 2 (02:08):
I'm good? Thank you. We've been trying to do this
for a long time, but you live in California, so
it makes it difficult. So finally you're here.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
You didn't want to do the zoom ones, which I respect.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I know it's fun in person. I really like the
in person.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
You got to have the vibe and the energy and
you do looky in the eyes of it exactly instead
of looking at myself and zoom, which is all yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
You just get the good thing. And you had a
good workout this morning, you went and hit the hills
and so here we are. Now let's go all right,
We're going to go way back in the time machine
to your very beginnings in California and kind of go
through your career and you're doing really cool stuff now
after retirement from the NFL. So we'll start with California,
which is where you are now and where you're from.
Went to Thousand Oaks High School.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah. I was born in Northridge, California, and then in
nineteen ninety four, that north earthquake struck my house and
shook us pretty good. We were like literally right on
the epicenter. WHOA, I'll never forget. I got to give
my mom ad shout out for this. She's normally always
scared him get hurt or something like that. But the
earthquake happened and the stairs literally separated from the second story.

(03:08):
Be like me jumping from me to you, which is
like three feet where they were off the wall. My
Mom's like ready too, and this is the middle of
a seven point nine, which realistically, I think people thought
it was like a nine earthquake going on. We jumped
to the stairs, run down the stairs, get out of
the house, and then there was just many earthquakes from
then on. That was at like four fifteen in the
morning on Martin Luther King weekend when I was in

(03:30):
nineteen ninety four. Yeah, and so I was in fourth
grade or something like that, and my dad built he
was a civil engineer, built that house one of like
four houses on the block that didn't get red tagged,
meaning all the other houses are condemned. No one was
allowed back in them, which was cool because comes summer,
no one had moved to those houses and they had
n't bulldoze them. So as little kids, we were going
in there with baseball bats and just smashing chandeliers and

(03:51):
windows and stuff like that because they're gonna be torn down.
So it was like a cool, cool summer. And then
after that summer, going into the next year, going to
the fifth grade, I moved out to West Village. I
actually was supposed to go to Westlake High School, to
the public school right next to my house. At that point,
I had never really played football. I played like four
weeks of Northwards nights. I didn't really like it. It
was in the middle of soccer and basketball, and so

(04:13):
I was kind of missing practices and stuff, and I
didn't really catch a rhythm in football. And so now
I'm an eighth grader going into high school. I was
really really good at basketball. It was my sport. I
was pretty much full grown. I was dunk in a basketball.
I was playing on all the elite teams. We were
traveling to Florida doing all sorts of cool stuff, so
everyone was recruiting me as a basketball player. So where
I'm from in southern California, there's a group of private

(04:35):
schools that are really good in sports, Notre Dame, Sherman, Oaks, Harvard, Westlake, Cresby.
All these guys played really good football and basketball, and
there's a group of public schools are really good since
that area has grown and grown. But it was a
decision on where I was going to go to play basketball,
and I went to Westlake. This is like completely illegal,
but I went to Westlake to go play on there.
They only let me play on their soft rash and

(04:56):
their freshman team, and I scored like eight points. And
then too is like and Oaks like, once you come
play for our varsity and JV team. And I scored
thirty five as like a JV player and then like
thirty as a varsity player as an eighth grader. Oh
my god, and They're like, come on over. And so
then I enrolled in Thousand Oaks and then all my
friends are like, let's play football. So I was like
all right. So I played freshman football, absolutely loved it.

(05:16):
Dominated had a lot of fun. Played running back. I
was just running around and everyone once again kind of
full grown. So I was five to eleven one eighty. Like,
I think that was key. I was comfortable with the contact,
which I think was key growing up and playing football
is a lot of kids they don't get comfortable getting
hit or being hit, and so like I was comfortable
with it. And then sophomore year played varsity so I

(05:36):
was playing varsity basketball and freshman football. For all those
people out there, think you got to keep playing varsity sports.
And then my sophomore year play varsity basketball, varsity football,
ran varsity track and started doing all that.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
So three sport varsity athlete at Thousand Oaks.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, and that was what I renther one the two Oka. Yeah.
I didn't even to really go out there. I was like,
the track coach was cool, He's like, just in between
football workouts, come come to the meets and whatnot. But
they were so long. Oh god, meets they're so long.
They're out there for five hours and you run two races.
I'm like, I can't do this.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
You got to wait for all the seals and everything else. Yeah, No,
it's a long time.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Like it's a fun atmosphere for the first hour and
a half because it's you know, all really fit, fun
people having a good time, and then you're like, all right,
I'm done right because you're like you get to hang
out with like four other high schools, you know what
I mean. And then yeah, after like my fifth or
sixth meet, I was like, yeah, I'm good. I didn't
really run. I would run every now and then for
the team when they need some points, but I was just.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Like this, well, and those coaches love it. If the
smart ones will say, hey, if you're in another sport,
you know you're conditioned, you're in great shape, you're doing
something else, and so it just helps them out. Maybe
in just one or two events, it makes sense.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
And the hundred, you really I was okay, but like
even the hundred is like it's like ninety seven point
five of your face, Like you can only go ninety
seven point five percent at least I could, Like I
don't know anyone that can go maybe once you become
a professional sprinter and you can go a hundred, right
for one hundred, But like it was like that sweet
spot of not trying to run as fast as you
can run off the go because it comes like seventy

(07:02):
meters and you're just like just out and yeah, and
then everyone catches you.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, no kidding, all right, So you said you started
at running back. When did you switch over to wide
receivers sophomore year?

Speaker 1 (07:10):
So I had a really good high school quarterback. Ben
Olsen was my high school quarterback. Who's a parade All
American right to UCLA, right to BYU. First went on
his mission, then went to UCU. Oh wow, okay, So
he was the number one recruited player really of our class.
Him in Mauric's Clorette. Him and Maury's Klite were the
top ring players. And we would have like Steve Spurrier
in the stands, Pete Carroll in the stands. We'd have

(07:32):
like everybody at our football and basketball games. And I
just wasn't getting a lot of love. I would make
tons of plays. I was two way starter. I was
returning punts, I was doing everything. MVP of the league.
My senior year over to the quarterback, and still didn't
get any scholarship offers until my early November, right before
Thanksgiving from Colorado State.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
That was your senior year.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
It was my senior year. It was the first time
I got an offer. So I was I was sweating, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
No kidding. Who was recruiting from see.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Jesse Williams, Jesse Williams, and then I brought in Matt
Lubick to a trip right in Dan Hammersmith. They all
came watch me to play basketball. And then I trip
out here right after Thanksgiving. So this is back in
mind you there's no cell phones, right, So I trip
out here and I don't come. I don't came with
my parents. So I come to find out that this
is I'm one of like three athletes ever in Colorado,

(08:21):
say in Sonny Lubick Era that didn't bring their parents.
I have an older brother, it's ten years older, another
one was twenty years older. And my older brother's ten
years older. Eric is like, don't bring mom. He's like,
you're not gonna have mom out there with you. Go
get loose, go without mom. And like I go. I
come on the trip and everyone's got like both parents
and like even like brothers and sisters and siblings, and
I'm just rolling solo to like you know, and they

(08:43):
do like these tours and stuff. I'm like, I don't
want to do this, Like I want to go do
what the students are going to do. So like I
go get in the mix with some of the players
and they take me downtown. I remember we went to
a dueling piano bar. They snuck me in and I
was supposed to be like a JC recruit, like always
twenty one years old, and I just got shmammered and
I'm laying on the piano table. I'm like, I love
Colorado's day. There's the place. I get back to my

(09:05):
hotel room and my mom calls the hotel room that
had a message. She's like, you just got an offer
from Northwestern. And I was an academic kid. I wanted
to go to Stanford. I want to go to cal
I thought about Princeton or Harvard, like that's where I
wanted to go. I didn't know much about Northwestern. Coach
Lubick he finds out too, and he's like, I know
you have an offer for Northwestern, but we want to
you have an offer here and we won't know if
you want to commit right here, right now. And I

(09:26):
was just like, uh, yeah, I think I'll do it.
And I kind of told him yes, I'm not kind
of I did tell him yes. And then I remember
I got on the plane ride home. I landed and
my dad called me and he's like congratulations are going Northwestern.
I mean, my dad didn't have the best relationship. He
was living in Guam. My parents been divorced in s
eighth grade. If he would have told me to go
to round at Colorado State, I probably went to Northwestern.
But he said go to Northwestern. I have daddy issues.

(09:48):
I go to Colorado State.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
First step submitting him.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Jesse Williams was ecstatic. Coach Lubick is like, holy smokes,
we stole one and that's how I got to Colorado's date. Wow?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
And then was your mom okay with that?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
They weren't happy at first, and then I told her.
I was like, I'll go back to school. I can
always go back to school. Blah blah blah. I had
Anne Gil, you were communications mane and Gil called my mom,
called my dad.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
If you're going to have a person, call your mom
and dad, make it a Gill doctor. Gil's amazing.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
I should call my mom and my dad told her
she'll take care of me. Blah blah blah. I was
going to major in math, but then they had these
math mods.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Wait wait, wait, you're going to major in math, but
then you became a speech communications major. So here's that's
the reason I was a speech cam major because there's
no math.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Here's what happened. I would have been a sophomore had
I gone to UCLA because all the AP credits and
all this stuff, I would have been a sophomore. Nothing
transferred to Colorado State. I'm like, this is a joke.
What do you mean I can't be I don't have
any credits to transfer. They're like, nothing, nothing transfers over
state bound. I don't know if this is still the rule,
but no California AP test transfer to Colorado, which is
a joke. So then I come here and I was like,

(10:49):
all right, I want to do speech cam. I was like,
what math rex do I need? And they're like, oh,
you just need six credits of math. So what do
I do. They're like, oh, you can take these math
mods best thing ever and you just go in there
and pass these tests and you get a credit, a credit,
a credit and you can get three credits. And I
was like, well, let me try it. And I do
the first one. And there's like nine tests to get
eight credit and typically people do them like two a week.
I did all nine, got a credit the first day,

(11:10):
and then went back the second day got a second credit,
and I did got three credits in three days, and
then people were like who is this guy? I literally
turning the test as like kevi the next one, and
I would just run right through them. I was like,
I only have to get a B in this. I
was like, give me this, give me this, give me
this thing. So I cruised through math mods. That was
my freshman year here. I was a parme league kid.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
And then freshman year. What happens football wise?

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Freshman year, I so this was the last year that
they had freshman football camp. So as a freshman, you
show up early with like fifteen or sixteen kids from
your class, plus like about ten to twelve walk ons.
So there's only twenty eight of you and you're doing
two days for three days. So you're just like you're toast.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Oh yeah, and you're at altitude and.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
You're a outude. And then all the big kids show
up and now I'm trying like I didn't want a
red shirt, so I coached with Williams. I came here
to play, so I come here to play, and then
all the big kids show up and I start catching
a rhythm. Me and Holland were on the second team,
and I start finding a rhythm and I start making
a couple of plays. I start going against a first
team guy here or there, and I start making a
play or two. And then I made three plays on

(12:11):
special teams with coach Snyder, like they had me rush
a pat. I came off the edge and blocked a pat,
and then I went through and blocked a punt, and
then I could punt return. And so coach Niners like
I can use them on special teams. And then Matt
Lubick's like, I'll find a spot for him throughout the
year to play a couple snaps a receiver so I
didn't have to run.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
It was Mat your receivers coach at Lubicks.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Was my receivers coach my first year. And then start
off the year at Virginia, we beat Virginia.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I remember that.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
And then we come back and play CSU Bradley Van
Pelt famous spiked helmet game. I got in for one snap.
You played one snap one snap against that game, so
I did play. And then I started to play more
and more at UCLA. So we were two and oh
and we go to UC where like number twenty two
on UCLA was like a top ten and we lose
on two point conversion. Brad and I'm staying with Brad
right now. We literally just have the wine talking about it,

(12:56):
because you know, like you will only remember remember, like
really remember so many games, like you could point to
the Utah game I remember, but like I really remember
the Colorado game as a freshman still still makes my
hair stand up. I remember losing that UCLA game and
being so sad because Sports Illustrated was there, and like
we were going to be on the cover Sports Illustrated,
and like we were hot because Fresno State was the

(13:18):
that was the yar. David Carr was tearing up everybody
and they were the hot team. And then there was like,
oh Colorado States, this year's Fresno State. We were going
to be that team. We still we still dominated the
mount West on the Mountain West that year, but like
it would have been three and oh after beating the UCLA,
So that was my freshman year. I end up catching
I had one touchdown against Fresno State. I ran the
wrong route. Brad rolls out, gets chased, circles back the

(13:39):
other way. Since I ran the wrong route, I was
in the perfect position. He throws me the ball. I
catch it, run for a touchdown. I was like a
sixty seven yard touchdown. Another catch, I broke one hundred
yards and I had a touchdown. We lose to Fresno State.
But I get on the bus and my phone. It
was the first time now I had a cell phone, right,
so this is now I had. My phone is blowing up,
and I get on the boat. All my buddies from
high school. We're losing. Everyone's sad. I'm like, did you
see that shit? They're like, you're the man. I was like,

(14:02):
I can't believe I scored in college, and so I
was excited. It was hard to hold back my own
excitement from like feeling like I had finally belonged and
kind of like.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Arrived at corsh And that was.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
My freshman year. So at that point, the game was
still pretty fast, like I hadn't caught up to it yet.
We had some really good defenders at the time. Dexter Win,
Rtt Nelson guys are all playing pro Brian Save was
playing NOSAG. We had like five or six guys on
that defensive side that were in the end playing in
the NFL. So like you don't really realize that when
you're playing how big of a difference that makes. If

(14:34):
you're going up against someone on the daily that is
going to play in you get a lot better.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
So then my freshman spring season comes around, Joey Kapari graduated,
so our starting X left and Chris Pittman was starting Z,
so he moved to X and Z was wide open.
Eric Hill was here, super fast guy. He was the
starting Z, but he was like a true Z, and
I was like an X, an H, a slot guy, ANAZE.

(15:01):
So I could do all three. And so when we
went three wide my freshman year in spring ball, I
got on the field and what the difference was. I
can move in the slot, I could kind of move outside.
It was back in the time when even just bunch
formations were just starting. Some now you're stacking guys. I
was always really good in the stack because I could
shake someone and then a faster guy could like Eric Hill,
can go buil the top off, and then I can
kind of wiggle around in the middle. And so like

(15:23):
us three kind of caught a rhythm together as the
three guys.

Speaker 2 (15:26):
Can I ask you a question though about your height?
So that's one thing that people talked about a lot
with you know, wide receivers, you tend to see him
bigger and you weren't always the biggest guy, and so,
but did that help you in a way to be
able to fill in all those spots wherever you needed
to be?

Speaker 1 (15:40):
At that time, it didn't really matter. Like look at
Tyree Hill, Like if you can get open, you can play. Yes,
you're fine, right, I think people sadly now, or maybe
it's not sadly. Maybe it's okay. If you're like under
six feet in white, they think you're just a slot receiver.
If you're under six feet, realistically, you can play outside.
And you know there's plenty of people to play inside
and outside. I always mirrored my game off Steve Smith,

(16:01):
who played inside and outside. That's why I kind of
thought I thought I played a lot like Deon Branch.
I didn't think I played a lot like Wes Walkreave
and that I was compared to them. And I come
to find out the reason why is those guys were
basketball players. Wes Welker was like a football player, so
I was a basketball player, always playing football. I had
If you looked at the way I released on the line,
it was like someone guarding me at the top of
the top of the key or something that I would

(16:22):
wiggle them and then get around and I had like
a little bounce in my step and stuff like that,
opposed to like football players are like taking angles and
they're like running through shoulders and stuff like that. I
was a little more of the basketball off the line
and whatnot, So I think my height and whatnot, I
didn't really think much of it. I knew that, like
there's obviously players bigger than me, but they couldn't do
certain things that I could do. And I started to

(16:44):
a little bit because I thought I did it a
lot until I got to the NFL. But like I
was starting to find what kind of player I was.
And I think that is the key in any sport
and probably in life, is like who are you? What
are you good at? What kind of routes are you
good at running? How are you going to catch the ball?
How do you get yards after the catch?

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Don't compare yourself to others.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah, I mean you can try to snatch things of
people's games, like ooh, that's cool. I like how he
does that. I'm gonna try that out. And then you
got to try it out and see if you can
do it. And if you can't do it, that's okay.
It can be done a different way. I think where
a lot of players got stuck is they're like, oh,
I should run the route like this, you know Chris
Pittman back in the day, because that's how he gets open.
I'm gonna run like that. It doesn't work, it doesn't
work well. You better find how you can do it,

(17:22):
get open fast and it works for you. Otherwise, like
you're just gonna be waiting for him to leave and
then maybe you know just so. So I found my
rhythm pretty quickly my freshman year, and then my software
ended up starting and I had a gangbusters year my
sophomore year. That was actually my best season. Three. Two
was my freshman year. Three was all Mountain West year.

(17:43):
Four was we were terrible in five five right, Yeah, yeah,
because Brad was my Brad was my Yeah. I broke
I broke the season record with Brad as my quarterback
my sophomore year, and then I rebroke it my senior
year with Holland.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Two different quarterbacks, two different quarterbacks. Yeah, that are very
different style quarterback could.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Not be more different could not be more different.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
How do you get used to that as a wide
receiver when you have somebody who is a Bradley that's
a scrambler and you just and all over the place
and Justin's who was just a Bradley.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Bradley's one of the best football players I've ever played
with still to this day, even guys in the NFL
like Brad. We were we were reminiscing over a cecil
Sap run where he took off running, broke through the
pack and then Brad was right behind him like blocking
and like paving the way on just like a random
run and like you see that now and it's like
on ESPN. He would do that two or three times

(18:35):
a game where he's like picking guys up, pushing guys
blocking because you didn't what Brad was coming downhill. You
didn't want it. He didn't want any piece of VP
coming downhill.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
No, that's the same thing in him.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Mountain West linebackers were like two thirty five to forty five.
Brad was two forty five and like not fun to
tackle and like had funky stiff arm and had a
little wiggle to him. You know what was cool about
playing with brad is he he had a true command
of like the game of football. He understood the the

(19:06):
nuances of the game, and he wasn't scared to just
do whatever he wanted. You can see that in his
normal life he's going to kind of do what he wants,
which is something all I think all of everyone always
envies is that, Like I wish I just had that.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, people hate that about him, but it's it's a
great quality about it.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
The only reason you hate is because you wish you
could do it right. Like, yes, we used to have
a Thursday night game and half of us would go,
you know, party or whatnot, and he would go on
a camping trip for like three days by himself. He'd
be like, Okay, come back Monday with like Patu little
oil and like thirty feet drum, yeah, and so and so.
Like that would play itself out in the huddle where

(19:44):
you'd get a play call and be like, ah, that
we're not gonna run that play, and he'd run a
different play and like hammer and all these guys go crazy,
but he'd you know, go for forty yards and he'd
be successful with him and then we we were more too.
So the difference between Brad was what do we get.
Used to we would go two wide a tight end,
but we dreas and Matt Bart's really good, and so
we go two by two. And we also had sap

(20:05):
in the backfield, so we are more in a north
south team. And the difference there is you can get
a lot of your yards on double moves. You can
get a lot of your yards on play action pass.
So you might not think as a slot receiver or
like I am that I'm catching the ball over fifteen yards,
But when you can play action and boot out Brad,
so now he's Brads one on one with a linebacker
from the inside chasing him. Brad can either set up

(20:27):
to throw the ball far or he can take off
and he's one on one against the guy that's not
going to tackle him. And so we used to put
the defense in some awkward positions because then if you
don't get aggressive on our run fakes, we'll just give
the ball a sap for nine yards, Or if you
do get overly aggressive and try to come off the edge,
you could bloop into Dreasen for like another twenty yards.
So we had a lot of ways to combat people

(20:48):
in that play action game when we went with justin
we want a little more three wide, which now would
be like five wide, But we went a little more
three wide then on first down, and so I was
playing a lot more hs. We were doing on more
screens getting the ball of his and sooner and so are.
We did a good job of adapting to the quarterbacks
as much as we could. We were a little inventive
as an offense. I think more than anything, what coach

(21:09):
Luck always did was like, just get the best players
of the ball. You don't want to know how you
screw it up is you try to get fancy with
play calls and all that stuff. Like, just get your
best players the ball and see what happens.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
And the beauty of Sonny and that coaching staff was
they adapted their coaching style to the players styles, opposed
to trying to hammer down their own scheme with guys
that can't do it.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Yeah, I mean you see that all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
All the time, David, I can't. I mean, I'm like,
that's not their skill set. Yeah, figure out a way
to make them successful.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
You see. I actually had a really long conversation with
some of my teammates on the Texans is a lot
of them are like coaching high school football, and some
of them were like offensive linement. They're called me and
they're like, hey, what type of like four wide offense
should we run? I was like, do you have four
good receivers? And they're like no. I was like, how
many good receivers they have there too? I was like,
then go to wide. I was like, I was like,
and you want to know how to surprise everyone right now?

(21:57):
I was like, go under center. Everyone's shotgun, which means
these defensive linemen can all keep their head up and
they can rush the passer and react to what's going
on in the shotgun. And that's nice to be a
defensive line. Be light on your feet, and I have
to worry about someone just smacking your mouth. If you're
under center and you hike the ball and there's an
offensive guard putting his helmet right into your face, you
have no time to react. And all these guys are

(22:18):
on skates, they're just getting punched in their mouth all
over like once or twice, I can handle it. But
if you do that thirty times a game, they don't
want to do that. Defensive end, defensive tackle's favorite thing
to do is rush the pass on third and seven
and if they can do that on first and ten,
but they're happy. And so that was something Sonny was.
We were always physical. We played a physical brand of football,
which I think is the first thing is like we

(22:38):
weren't the biggest team, but we played a physical brand.
We would wear you out. You could say that kind
of like about Air Force with the epitome of it.
Air Force plays a very physical game of football. But
they all look like me, right, and you know what
I mean, And so like even their offensive lineman shot together.
They're gonna shop you down, They're gonna beat you up,
and you're just so worn out and like yeah, and
so like we would know that, Like it doesn't matter

(22:59):
if we don't get any if we're three and out here,
we're gonna run the ball twice. We're gonna beat him
up a little bit. And by the third quarter, those
two runs are gonna go for twenty two yards apiece.
And so that was the march through Colorado State. We
saw a lot of different coaching changes. We had continuity
at the top, but we were always getting picked off.
Our coaches were good. Brian Snyder went to the NFL
Larry Kerr goes to UCLA. That was a big hit

(23:19):
for us.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, that was Kerr left.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Matt Lubick leaves, he goes to Arizona State. Funny story
about Matt leaving him Mark stepping up. Maybe I'll go
back to that story, but you can tell now. And
then there was a bunch of others left. So Matt
leaves after my junior year.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
So you have a new receivers coach, which is.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
His younger brother Mark. Mark is four years older than me,
I think, and we would party together, oh jeez, not together,
but we would like see each other, Like he would
like come with me to the bar, but like I
would see him at the bar because I'm twenty one.
I graduated at twenty two, So like I would see
him out in about my junior year. So Mark pulls
me into the office and he's like, hey, so I'm

(23:56):
gonna be the receivers coach. I was like yeah. He's like,
we can't really be boys name. I was like yeah.
He's like, and I'm gonna have to get after you.
I was like, go for it. I was like, do
use me as an example right off the bat. I
don't even care you got to and so like he did,
and he did and he did, and it was like,
I was like, that was an odd place to pick it.
I remember, I was like, you're just you want to
really yell probably Dustin Osborne, but you're gonna yell at

(24:18):
me and then you can, ye know, at Dustin next.
I was like, so okay.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
So two thousand and six, fast forward through CSU. That's
when you are going to the NFL Draft. You do
go to the Hula Bowl and East West right, so.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
I get invited to who I don't go? I go
to East West. That year is crazy, So I stocked
up on credits to graduate, so I was like playing
my senior season. I'm taking eighteen units so I can
get out in three and a half. So I graduate
in three and a half, so I don't have anything
to do. I don't have anything to do my second semester,
so I can just train for football. That's not completely true.
Out a three credit class with Anne Gill, which was

(24:49):
like a senior credit class. So I just had to
write a gigantic taper a half. Yeah, so I did
have that, so but more or less, I grab I walked.
So I graduated three and a half years. Then I
go train for the Combine. Now what's wild is like
you finish your last game. So we finished the San
Diego points at a bowl game. You go on winter
break for like two weeks. Christmas comes, then I go

(25:12):
to Florida to go train. I go train in Boca Ratone.
That's old farts out there training for the forties and
all that stuff, running routes, I slim down, I get
in like track speed. Wait, I do all that. Then
you go to the East West Shrine game and they
tell you this is the most important six days of
your life. Da da da Da da da. And so
you're like so psyched out. I had a pretty good

(25:32):
time there.

Speaker 2 (25:33):
And you talk to a lot of scouts and a
lot of teams there.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
Talking to a lot of scouts, do a lot of teams,
You do a lot of stuff as a player you're
trying to like So the East West is right below
the Senior Bowl. Senior Bowl, I'd say normally all but
two of those guys are drafted. Okay, East West, it's
like fifty to fifty maybe a little more, maybe like
seventy percent of them are good draft. Yeah, what if
something around there's always turned and fifty five to two

(25:56):
and sixty five players that get drafted. So you figure
the Senior Bowls inviting seventy to eighty, the East West
invite in seventy to eighty, and then there's like guys
that don't make either of those two they're still getting drafted.
So you figure that's eighty eighty, there's one sixty, there's
ninety guys left, so like you never know where you are.
So you're like, all right, these are other players that
are probably getting drafted. These are more like second day picks,
more like free agents, guys that I'm going to see.

(26:17):
I did a really good job in the first two days,
didn't have a good game because like the coach didn't
want to start me and put me in. Then I
didn't have the rhythm with the quarterback. That's always the
crappy thing about like all Star games is like the
practices really matter. The games which end up on TV
everyone thinks matters, but like are kind of irrelevant. Like
by that time all the scouts have lost, everyone is gone.

(26:38):
They don't care because they know that like if this
quarterback throws you the ball is kind of irrelevant right now.
Like so circumstantial, Like he wanted to see what it's like,
what Dave has one on one, what's doing on seven
on seven? So like at that point, like you're actually
not even that gassed up for the game because everyone's
kind of gone. Everyone that matters is kind of gone.
So then I can train combine, Go to the combine,

(26:59):
do okay, come back here, do much better. On my
pro day, I get drafted seventh round pick two fifty
one to the Texans. The special teams coach calls me.
He's like, Hey, if you want to make this team,
you're gonna have to be my guy. Blah blah. You
gotta have good weeks of practice. So now I'm showing
up to the Texans and like, if you're the first,
second or third, even fourth round pick, you got some
time to develop and to figure out the mix. They're

(27:20):
beating the fists, six seventh rounders up, you're in special teams,
you're doing all this stuff. So I went hit the
ground running. So I'm returning punts, I'm returning kickoff, I'm
running down on punt, I'm running down on kickoffs. I'm
playing receiver slot X y Z. And the good thing
that I did is I walk in there and Kyle
Shanahan's my receivers coach. Mike McDaniel is my graduate assistant coach.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
And I told them. I was like, I'm gonna learn
every spot. They're like, we're gonna start you with Z.
It'd be good for you to know H. I was like,
I'll learn H and Y and X, and so I
knew that was my way of stealing reps. The older
vets always told me it's all about snaps. Like Mark Brunner,
the thirteen year VET, when I showed up, He's like,
my only advice you rookie, get snaps, Like you gotta

(28:02):
find a way to get on the field. That one
can tell you this, that or the other. And I remember,
like even when I tell people about Fantasy now is like,
just look at how many snaps the guy takes. Like
that's tells you how much they like it.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Snapcount is huge.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
It's literally all that matters. Yes, especially as like if
you're not the starting receiver or the starting tight end,
are you still getting a bunch of snaps on special teams?
Are gett snaps here? Because you can replace twelve snaps.
It's hard to replace twenty five snaps. Yes, it's really
hard to replace forty snaps, and it's damn you're impossible
to replace eighty. So your goal is again as many
snaps as possible. So I'm trying to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Let's go back real fast with the draft and Gary Kubiak,
who we all know very very well and obviously was
the one that was the head coach of the Texans
at the time, did you have any idea that you
might go to the Texans? Had he chatted with you
at the.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Only thing I remember is I run my forty. I
finished my forty, and he goes, hey, if you're available
late in the drafter for and get you. You're not
thinking about any of that stuff when you're in the combine,
all these lights shining. You look up and Bill Belichick's
sitting there like staring at you. Bill Park This is
one parcels so around there all these coaches are still.
You're running forty, You're about to shit your pants, and
you're just like, uh, in mind you. They totally screwed
me Anderson I was wide out number one A and

(29:07):
they told we were gonna run. Let's say they said
they were gonna run of receivers. At eleven, they decided
for TV time they were gonna switch the quarterback and
receivers because they wanted Vince Youong, Matt Lioner and all
those guys go first. I was warmed up, ready to go,
and they're like, hey, gotta wait thirty minutes, and so
I ran like ten more forty, staying warm, and I
was completely gassed. Oh man, I didn't know what to
do and I couldn't like call my trainer because I

(29:28):
didn't have my phone then right, they were like no phones.
They didn't want anyone doing anything squirrely with phones, not
like what people have now. And so like I'm just
out there, like, okay, I got five more minutes running,
Oh another five minutes are going. I'm just like I
was exhausted. So I ran a four or five five
that I came back here in a four four four,
So like that's a huge difference, huge difference, and like,
to be honest, didn't really matter unless I ran a

(29:49):
four to three that never labeled me as a face guy.
So I remember when I ran my forty Kobe, because like,
if you're there, we'll get you. I got a lot
of love from the Broncos. I got a lot of
love from Carolina or is it Baltimore, And it was
one of those teams. There's like three or four teams
that wanted me that were talking a lot to me
and my agent. I remember I was in my apartment

(30:09):
with Matt Bart's We're watching the draft. We're watching the draft,
and I'm just like freaking out because all these players
I'm way better than are getting drafted ahead of me.
I see them get drafted. My phone's going on and off.
After the fifth round, teams, Hey, where are you at?
Blah blah, how you doing? Hey, we're looking at you here,
We're looking at you here. And then the six round
hitt and I was like, I gotta get out of here.

(30:30):
And so my brothers with me we go get like
a two city Burrito or something. I forgot what it is.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Big city Brito, Big city Burrito. Come back, it's still here.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Come back, yeah, come back. And then then my phone's
ringing and they're like, hey, we're going to take you
the next pick. And then mel Kiper was talking about me,
and all I got was the thing shut up at
the bottom. Oh yeah. They didn't like I didn't even
hear the announcement and my name being called kind of
did like at the end they kind of say it,
and then picked two fifty one and then draft was
over two fifty five.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Oh my god, you were fourth to the last. It's
funny how many people, David, I hear that they're like
just sitting there and I couldn't do it anymore, so
I had to go do something. And then they get
picked like right either when they're out doing something or
right when they come back or yeah, I mean it's
so nerve, right, and it's such a mind f when
we're all calling you and everything's going on.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
It's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible. And then like there's just
guys you blatantly know you're better than you're like I had.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
That's the hardest that was.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Like that was like a third he wouldn't even make
third team All Mountain West, and this guy's getting picked
ahead of me.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Right, And then how long did they last in the league?
Not six years?

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Right? Six years? Not six years? The wild thing is
like I come to find out, like Kyle Shanahan broke
it down for me. He's like, David, if we look
at you traditionally you would think he maxed out his upside, Like,
how much more of David Anderson? How good is this
guy going to be in the NFL. It's not necessarily
was he a great college player, that's true, it's how
much better is he going to get in the NFL? Oh?

Speaker 2 (31:52):
Interesting, So do they think you tapped out?

Speaker 1 (31:54):
And they're like, yeah, they thought you might have tapped
out in college, and so you come there and like
it's hard. The NFL is hard.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yes, the NFL is hard.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
I don't think people realize that. Like I always laughing,
They're like, oh, Alabama could beat the whatever, the Carolina Panthers.
I was like, they would get rolled, absolutely rolled. Carolina
Panthers as bad as they are are full of the
best players from Alabama, the best players from Michigan, the
best players from all these teams high school all Americans,
college all Americans. They all are unbelievably talented the entire NFL.

(32:21):
Some teams are obviously more talented to the others. Some
teams have better schemes that fit the players and that's
why they win. Better coaching sure, but like player for player,
it is unbelievable. I didn't know so my draft class
was Mario Williams. Jmiko Ryans is now the coach. Charles Spencer,
who started at left tackle and then broke his leg
against Dwight Freenny spin move, Eric Winston, who played for

(32:41):
eleven years, was NFLP president, Owen Daniels, All Pro tied end,
Wally Lundy. We didn't have a six round pick, and
then me that was still to this date the most
talked about Texans draft class. Like snap count, we kill everybody.
The only one that would compare would be now. But
they had C. J. Stroud and Will Anderson and it's like, well,
you have to the top three picks. I hope they're
gonna get a bunch of snaps. Yeah, we were doing

(33:03):
it with like our fourth rounders and our seventh rounders,
so like tons of snaps, tons of All pros, tons
of Pro bowlers in that draft class. We all kind
of stay together. And then what was really really cool
is like our receiving core reasonably stayed together for a
long time in Houston. It was Andre Johnson, Kevin Walter, myself,
Andre Davis, and Jacoby Jones. We just lost Jacoby, but yeah,

(33:24):
we were all together for like five years, which is impressive,
which is like unheard of.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Absolutely, Yeah, and you have some great success with the Texans.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
Yeah, rookie year practice squad for eight weeks, I have
one catch. You look this up. Two thousand and six.
I let the NFL and yards per catch one catch
for twenty seven yards. Yeah. I still don't know why
they didn't throw me the ball. I still I give
Kobiak and Kyle Shannon so much shit for that. I'm like,
I could not have done any better. It was a slant.
I make three people miss, I go over twenty seven
yards and you don't throw me the ball. The rest

(33:52):
of the season. That was like week ten too. I
was like, and we're not going anywhere. It's not like
we were playing for playoff position, like killed me the ball?

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Play a lot as a rookie.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
I played, Yeah, and like enough snaps. I was doing
the same thing I was doing. It fell a lot
like my freshman year of the stage issue, you know,
I mean, like you're getting in for a snap or
two an offense here, it's wildly fast. Let me back up. Actually,
the CU game my sophomore year, people ask when I
knew I was gonna play in the NFL. I had

(34:22):
a pack a rite, which is a deep over. We
ran it out of emotion, so I'm coming in the
motion and I did a lot of visualization always still
do and still back. Then did of what the play
would look like. And I run out there and they
do it slightly different. But I saw the safety move
and I saw the corner start getting nervous about me
coming out, and I was like, I'm gonna press him outside.
He's gonna flip his hips and chase me. I'm gonna

(34:43):
cut underneath him. I'm gonna be wide open and I'm
gonna catch this and I'm gonna go in between the
corner over there and that safety and I'm gonna start
riding this puppy right down the sideline. And it still
gives me chills. I did it and it was perfect,
and I'm literally running and it felt like the matrix,
like the whole thing went and I was like, oh,
I I see it, and boom. I put my foot
on the ground, Bradley hits me right and stride. I
take off right down the sideline. From then on the

(35:05):
game had been slower, like that's not my sophomore year.
The game was slow, really snow in practice like I
could slow practice down. I knew where to be and
when the game slows down, you don't always have to
run full speed. And that's how you can actually play
at the right speed. The NFL, the game is three
steps faster, not just the step, it's about three steps faster.
You have to play faster and think faster. So that's

(35:27):
the thing is so like it took me a little
longer to get there, like the end of my second
year started to slow down a little. But like the
difference between the NFL and colleges, the NFL changes every year.
Rosters are changing, peoples are changing, schemes are changing, the
game is changing, and so like you have to really
stay on your on your craft to like stay up
to speed with the game. That's just really hard to do.

(35:47):
Every year. You got to do it. You're in, You're
out pretty much weekend week out to stay on your stuff.
And so like that that rookie year a lot like
my freshman year, and then kind of like my sophomore
year where the matrix clicked in the second year in
the NFL, it clicked in a little bit more and
I was running routes on guys and beating our best
players and lining up against our number one corner and
doing a good job and stuff like that, and so

(36:09):
like that started getting into a rhythm. My second year
was it was nice.

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Talk about your touchdown you had against Cincinnati when you
got into the end zone and you did the little Cone.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
Bryan dance and you got on the show. Well, this
is fun story. So I had watched Cony my whole life.
I've been a big Conan fan. I remember being in
college and him interviewing like Donovan McNabb and being like, hey,
why don't you do the string dance when you throw
a touchdown? And he like stands up and does it,
and Donovan's like, you're an idiot, because you know, Conyan
is like the most silly of all of them. Absolutely,
And I was like, if I score, I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
So my friend's not that in college.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, in college, I was like, if I score them,
do so my rookie year I don't score. So I
score my second year against the Titans, but we're down
forty two to seventeen, so I'm like time not the time.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Nice good job. There's some people have a problem with that.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I read the room. So then fast forward, like four
more weeks, were playing the Bengal and we're already up
seven to nothing, and then I score fourteen and nothing.
I score and I dance do a little string dance.
So the announcer makes fun of me because he doesn't
know the joke right. But the best part about the
jokes is they're not for everybody, especially Conan's jokes. He
knows he wants to make like these three people laugh.
So that I did it, Like even my teammates didn't

(37:17):
know what I was doing, right, No, yeah, I wasn't
telling anyone this is Conan. I was like, I'm gonna
do it, and we're gonna see what happens. And so
I do it. And so I'm like, hey, guys, come
on over. A bunch of bunch of fellas and guys
and girls come over to our house. On Monday. We're
watching Monday Night football and we're gonna watch con O'Brian.
So we watched Conan and so he does his monologue
and then he sits at his desk and he's like,
I don't know if you guys watch football on Sunday.

(37:38):
And I was like oh, and he's like, but I
saw something and I was like, oh my god, Oh
my god, and like he and then he puts the
clip on the show and like everyone goes ape.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Shit.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
It was so fun. Like I was like, oh my god.
And I come to find out they invited me on
the show, but you can't go. You can only go
on Tuesdays. And by that time, the show's like, ah,
the joke's kind of worn out. We're not gonna show it.
Tuesday been all right for.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Oh And I was like, damn, so you didn't get
to go show.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
But they showed the clip on the show. Okay, yeah
that's cool.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
So everybody came over and saw it.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, then I had Yeah, it was great. It was
a great fun laugh and it's still to this day.
Like everyone asked about that, I was like, well, I
scored a lot more touchdowns, not a lot more, a
handful more, but none was just have gotten the.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
You didn't get the highlight from it?

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah, the highlight like that. Yeah, Like I always laugh
and say, like I was also planning on drowning that
out with a ton of other touchdowns. But if YouTube
hadn't caught on yet, highlight sclips are a little different
then and then.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Like today's social media would have been crazy.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
And we didn't go five ye and I didn't score
fifty touchdowns the NFL, So there's that. Yeah, that didn't.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
Help you, all right. So let's fast forward to July
of twenty eleven. That's when you get released by the Texans. Yeah,
what happens there?

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Get released on my birthday? Oh stop, July twenty eighth,
Get released on my birthday? Picked up by the Broncos.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Well, what happened with the release? Did Gary call you in?

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Rick Smith called me at the GM. It was the
third time I've been cut by them. Get cut my
rookie year, get put on practice squad, I get cut
my second year, and I get brought back week two, third, fourth,
fifth year, fine, six year, Get cut in twenty eleven,
go to the Broncos. I really wish I would have
had a different run on the Broncos because this was
back during the lockout year when they were trying to

(39:12):
protect vets and not have them to come show up
at the facility and have to play right away. They
want to give him a two week buffer, but I
got signed the day after the camp started, so I
had to wait two weeks. So they're all practicing for
two weeks. So I missed the first two weeks of camp,
and so everyone is already like in a groove and
found a rhythm and I haven't even been on the
field yet. And not only that, I can't work out

(39:34):
the facility. It would take me and Willis McGahee to
like twenty four fitness or something like that, and we
had to work out with like the weight. It was
so terrible weird, and so like I was like getting
out of shape and like like I had.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Because you lose that conditioning.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
They couldn't throw to you, You couldn't throw at the quarterbacks,
like you can't be on the field practicing at the watch,
and so like way behind, You're way behind, and so
like I never really got caught up the Broncos at
their own issue. Then with the Orton and Tebow and
going through that whole miss like yeah, and then I
get caught up in the mix because Tibo was not
the person to be a slot receiver for Orton was

(40:09):
and Brady Quinn was who was the third and so
I asked, like can I go back down and play
with Brady? And I'm like what I was, like, I'd
rather get some team. I'd rather go third team and
play with Brady than be Tebow's slot. And that was
kind of like like, oh, but Tibo, to his credit,
like that's not his style, you know. I mean, he's
more like Bradley, like we were talking about, he's a

(40:30):
two by two guy. You got to give him power football,
and so like they knew that when they moved him up,
but like you know, that wasn't no surprise to anyone.
They didn't and they didn't run a lot of three
receiver with him in there, right, and what to.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Do with them? Yeah, and so he did way better
than they thought, and then they had to use him.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, and then so never really caught my rhythm there.
I get cut by the Broncos. I go back to
the Texans, which was weird. I don't get my number back.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
It feels like you don't get four back.

Speaker 1 (40:53):
No noon took, so I had to wear seventeen and
just felt like like your call. His girlfriend dumped you,
and then she wants to you can come to the wedding.
Still You're like, well, I don't want to be at
the wedding with the girlfriend just dumb exactly, So you
like go back and then I get released again and
I go to the Redskins. So then I've played the
last nine weeks of the season on the Redskins. That

(41:14):
was greatly. I loved it. Who is your terrible facility,
Mike Shannan terrible facility? Okay, so that's that famous staff,
Kyle Shanahan, McDaniel, McVeigh, Lafleur, they're all there and I
all know him and I and I do really well.
But it was only on a one year deal and
then I was like my ten and I just was
gotten bad, like I was just getting beat up. And
to be honest, to go from three teams in one year, like, oh,

(41:37):
that's tough. It's tough to go from a team where
I was on the Texans, where I was a locker room.
I was an influence in the locker room, in the
community and everything, and all of a sudden, you go
to a new place and you got to start all over.
And it's different if you go somewhere and you start
all over and you're like the man and they build
stuff around you. But when you go in there and
they're like figure it out, Like you got to try
and make new friends. You gotta fight figure out, like, Okay,

(41:58):
what is this city? Like what spot should I stay at?
Where do I get an apartment? Where?

Speaker 2 (42:03):
And so like you're your fish out of water. There's
not a lot of peyton mannings that come in and
somebody goes.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Here's everything, here's the most important people in the community.
Here's the new charity stuff that we will going to do,
blah blah blah. And here's the best five houses to
buy blah blah blah. You're like, hey, so here's the
apartment because you're only gonna be here for six weeks,
or you can stay in the hotel. I stay in
the spring Hill Sweets Marriott in Aspurn, Virginia for nine
weeks when I was with the Redskins for nine weeks.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
And that's tough hotel living.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Gross. It's gross. If you close my eyes and put
me I could smell it. It just has that terrible
spring Hill sweet smell.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Right, Never stay to spring Hills, never again.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
I'm a Courtyard Marriott guy.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
There you go, Okay, so now your start your body's
feeling it. And when you're done with Washington.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Mentally body, no. I stay in shape that year and
then I end up going to Seattle for like mini camp,
and then Pete's like how you feel? And I was like,
I need to go back and try to rehab. So
they released me, and then I try to rehab again
and try to catch on with some teams.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
What's bugging you? What's what's really bad?

Speaker 1 (43:03):
Ten and nine is on my knees, which looking back,
is something I could have solved with just better self monitoring,
self maintenance. I never got injured my entire career, never
broke using the phone, never had a single surgery in
high school, college or pro and so like the benefit
of that is I'm healthy. The problem with that is
you never really learn. You just slowly tick off one
percent of your body every year you play. And all
of a sudden I looked up at yours, like you're

(43:24):
I'm going into your seven. I was like, damn, I
feel like ninety three percent, which is essentially exactly where
I was. You just didn't have that suddenness that you
used to have. There was like one or two moves
you couldn't make anymore. And you're like, oh man, you.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Never rested, because that's the one thing if you are injured,
your body gets to heal a little bit.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
It's like I always just joke. It's like an airplane flight,
Like you sit there and that's what you do, like
when you're on IR you sit there and you heal
like if you're not, you just kind of keep going
and blah blah blah. So then yeah, I finish on Seattle.
I stayed. No, I get cut and they bring interrell
Owens out that year. Oh jeez, that who was that
roster spot was? And so I get cut and then
I and then I go I go to a bunch

(43:59):
of like I went tried out with the rams and whatnot,
and so I was trying to still get picked up.
I do color commentating here at Colorado State. I liked it.
It's not my cadence. My cadence is not four seconds
give me a SoundBite, my cadences let me talk for
two minutes. What I have to say is wildly more
important than the next four plays that's going on. Why

(44:21):
is there an issue? Also? Why can't I bag on
our team? And they they're like, you can't bag on
the team, that you can't say something about you got
to be a homer, And I was like, what's the
no one wants to hear homers, like was Colorado State
ram football? Yeah, you know, I'm.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Gonna tell you what's wrong.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I'm gonna tell you what's wrong with I think literally,
we were playing Hawaii and we were losing Hawaii, and
one of them says, Dave, you know when you guys
are playing Hawaii, you guys used to beat them pretty well.
What's the difference between your teams and theirs? And I
was like, we're more talented, we had better players. Like
you looked at the field at that time, Shaq Barrett
was the only NFL player like lined up there. We
had six on defense, Like I said, we had five

(44:57):
on offense. When you're playing in the Mount West, that's
wildly different. Has eleven off their team, half the team's
gonna play, but playing they have had eight or nine
on offense, eight or nine on defense. So you are
up there with those guys, like there are guys that
you can compete with. But if you got one or two,
you got a bunch of accountants out here that are
gonna get blasted by a first round draft.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Bright So not can work exactly work. So you try
a couple of different things commentating.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
Then I take the gmat do really well in the
GMAT and then apply to NBA's programs. I also get
picked up by ESPN First Take and they asked if
I want to go do ESPN First Take and I said,
can I kind of do it? And they're like no,
it's either all in or all out. I was like,
do I have to live in Bristol and they're like yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
I was like yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
So end up going to graduate school. It was either USC, UCLA,
UT Austin, or Northwestern. I picked USC for their Sports
Business program, majoring in data science. Like I took an
operations class and I started coding and whatnot, and the
teacher's like, this is random. You're NFL player that like
wants a code and I was like yeah. They're like

(46:04):
this is a different door for you, and they kind
of shepherd me to like a slightly different data science program.
And then I meet these two professors on campus, Rejieva,
Maheswarn and Yuhun Cheng who started a company called Second Spectrum.
I was the first non technical employee there and I
was getting my MBA, which is like you think you
know everything about business when you walk out of your NBA,
but you don't really know anything, and so it was

(46:25):
a good kind of like, Okay, these guys are I
get in the startup mix. We grow to that company
from six to eighty people, we sell to Genius Sports
do pretty well. I learned why it's called capitalism and
not laborism. Though if you're an investor like Steve Balmer,
you do really well. Posted to like some of the employees,
but still had a nice little exit, and it'd been
a consultant start my own company at that point called

(46:46):
Gains Group. Where I realized when I was at Second
Spectrum that these teams, these leagues, these players, these players associations,
they don't know anything about tech and data, and rightfully
so they're about winning games and selling tickets to fans,
and this data thing has come and kind of like
caught them by surprise of how big it is and
how much it can actually help their business and help
their teams and all that stuff. So that should be

(47:08):
my world, and so it fit the other side of
my brain. I would say, my mom goofy, silly, fun, sporty.
My dad was sporty too, he was a track guy,
but much more he's an engineer, and so like I
had both of those sides, and so I do miss
some of the silliness of media and some of that stuff,
and I can get that run of my own business
a little bit, but certainly exercise the other side of

(47:28):
my brain and data science, and so did really well
at Gains Group. We built up that consultancy, end up
taking a project with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Dodgers project
turned into a company called Breakaway Data, and then that's
where we are. Now you're the CEO CEO of Breakaway Data, and.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
You help all sports, not just NFL, it's any sports athletes.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
So one of the biggest issues that is going on
in sports and plaguing sports is that all this data
is collected off athletes. Right they're out there running around,
they have tracking devices, they've had devices their helmet, devices
on their cleats, they're working out and training, they're monitoring
theirs of efforts, they're monitoring all these different things, and
then the athletes don't have it, they don't take it
with them, they don't get to look at it on
the regular And some teams will claim that they do

(48:09):
a good job of that, and they can, but let's
be honest, there's five at the most five maybe six
with coaches, and there's one hundred players, so you can't
give it to them all the time and have them
understand it. And today's athlete is different. They grew up
looking at visualizations. They grew up with the device in
their hand. They grew up understanding like Madden teaches you
data visualization. Apple Watch teaches you data visualation. When's the

(48:31):
first time you looked at a bar chart or a
pie chart? We were doing math class in high school
or college or whatever it was. Now my daughter's used
to that, she's seven years old, and so like, you
understand all that data and information a lot better, whether
it's do osmosis or you're just trying. And I just figured,
like we got to start giving this data back to
the athletes now, not just like from like a hey,
this will be cool, but like it's in GDPR laws,

(48:53):
it's in California Data protection laws, it's in the cbas
Like these athletes are guarantee their information. So this is
where the bucks going. Let's go that way. And that's
what we did. We started a company that gives all
the athletes to information. We landed some big contract with
some leagues. We got the biggest on of the biggest
players wow to be some ambassadors and help us out.
And it hasn't been easy being starting own businesses, not
for everybody say that, like that has been a grind

(49:15):
and that is a different type of anxiety than I've
ever been used to because as a football player, I
can control my effort and as an entrepreneur you can't.
I can't go will people to respond to my emails.
I can't go will people to like buy you know
what I mean, Like you have to be very you
make them do it. Yeah, but if you want to
get seen, it might be a run play the other way.

(49:37):
But if you want to get seen, go blast the
corner and then run and kill the safety. And you
like show up on film. You can't just show up
on film when you run a business stuff, do you
know what I mean? And so like you can't give
that extra effort and stuff like that. People are like, oh,
you stay up late, and I'm like, sometimes you're like
that juice is not worth the squeeze to send someone
an email too in the morning, Like they think you're
a weirdo exactly, and so like.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Oh, the best thing that's ever come out is being
able to schedule email because I get up early, early,
and I'm like, I don't want them to know that
I'm doing this at five am, so I schedule everything
at eight am to plus. Then I don't get a
bunch of stuff back.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yeah it works. I'm with you end, So like that's
that's where I'm at now. It's been a lot of fun.
We've got a team of twelve. We're growing. We're based
in California, so I went back home Los Angeles where
our offices are officially and Nelson Gundo. We've got someone
who works with us in London, so we're working with
atp NBA, our biggest clients. We've got some NFL players,
English Premier League players. We had Andy Murray before we retire.

(50:30):
I have some really good guys that are like using
our using our platform, I would say, because it's it's
an application that aggregates all of your data information, right,
So think of it like in a way Apple Health
for sports, where your whoop, your Aura, your fitbit, all
that stuff plug in. But so does your game statistics,
so does your medical records, so does all that stuff.
So if you're an athlete, and this will be the

(50:50):
truth for the like Lebron James. You want all that
information one place, as you go from team to team
and as you travel throughound you try to play as
long as you can. That data is gold because it
tells you where you're at, Like and I look at
my own career. I just told you, like I was
losing one percent a year from something that is completely preventable,
like ten and itis. I wish that I had my

(51:11):
own device to tell me, Hey, Dave, you're at ninety
three percent when it used to be a one hundred
and here's how you fix it.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Interesting, and where are you gathering all the data from?
I'm assuming it comes from so many different sources.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Right, anywhere and everywhere, right, So, like medical records are
typically done by the team and the league level. So
you plug into a device there wearables if you have
an Apple watch on that plugs right into the phone,
or rings plug into the phone. So that's on device aggregation.
The teams have certain data. So if they're running GPS
and practice, which pretty much everyone does, they put a
little beacon on the back of a guy and they
do load monitoring, like how tired are they, how fast

(51:44):
have they been running? Stuff like that, So that we
plug into a team software, and then there's game statistics
and whatnot, which you and I see every day. The
box scores, the box scores and even some more kind
of like advanced stuff. We plug in and we can
put that all in. So those are your major buckets
of information. And then what makes us unique is, like,
you know, people want to talk about our official intelligence
and all this stuff, and like that whole world runs

(52:06):
on data, right, Like you need data to plug in there,
and if you really want a cool analysis of yourself,
you need more data about yourself, and that's what we
can kind of provide you. And then our goal is
to say, this is what we do for the pros.
This is now thus standard of how this is done
in professional sports. Let's take it downstream absolutely so that
a high school athlete can eventually now he's now he's

(52:26):
not going to do the amount of tracking that a
professional does because they're not spending as much money on that,
but he can monitor himself, he can run a ford,
he could do all this stuff and see how he
compared to David Anderson, you know, when he was in
high school and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Because and hopefully prevent injury play longer play longer. Play
there you go.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
Yeah, you know what I mean. Like playing is fun,
have more fun, play longer. Of course, Injury prevention is
the kind of buzzword around it. Load monitoring is some
of that stuff. It's really hard to do. I always
laugh at people to say we prevent injury. I'm like, no,
you don't.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Well, real stuff can happen.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Don't play, don't play. The only way to prevent injury
is stay on the sideline. If you're in the mix, yeah,
you can get hurt. It's just amount of time.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
That's fascinating, and you love it.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
It's really cool. It's really cool. Like I've enjoyed using
my sports background and making that a unique offering of
what we do. You know, like I'm a five to
ten average looking guy, but I can use the NFL
as like my Aces spades in my pocket. Because a
lot of people don't know that I played when I
walk into a room and they're like, oh yeah, let

(53:26):
me tell you. We were out to dinner and some
guy wanted to tell me about NIL and wanted to
tell me about all this stuff.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
I was like, I got it.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
I got it. I was like, don't worry, Well, what
did you do. I was like, I played in the
NFL for six yers. He's like, oh, oh okay, yeah,
it's like, what do you do. You do window coverings? Well,
let me tell you about window governing.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
You got that right, stay in your lege.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Yeah, And so like that's cool. I get to take
what I did really well and apply it to a
job that is unique and new and fun. Now is
the startup world easy every day? Absolutely not? Is it hard?
Fundraising is a completely different muscle for me. That's hard
to do. I've got to be good at it, but
it's still it's hard to ask for money. Whereas before
you go play sports, you show them your stats, they

(54:05):
argue over how much they're going to pay you, less
of like let me show you about this future and
like that encapsulate this and you're like, eh, that's different.
It has been fun working all over the world in sports.
That has been the coolest thing is like I always
I've loved all sports. Like when we were here, we
used to play rec basketball, you know, I played beer
league softball. Still I play with my daughter and we

(54:27):
would play soccer. Like I love all sports. And so
being able to like travel the world see these other
teams play and getting the immediate respect of them, knowing that,
like I played in the NFL, so I can walk
in those locker rooms and get love where a lot
of other guys can't. Yeah, and that is cool. Yeah,
you're you got your You're not a suit, you know
what I mean. You're like, you're one of them. You're

(54:47):
one of them. You're not playing, you're not in that mix,
but you're still one of them, which.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
Which is huge because there is a lot of respect
that is you can't you're either there or you're not exactly.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Yeah, and so that that's been fun.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
That's cool. All right, last question, and then, David, as
you look back through and you mentioned all the times
you get cut with the Texans and there's ups and downs.
There's ups and downs in the business world, what advice
do you give to people that are going through some
of those tough times of how when it does seem
really tough, how do you keep going?

Speaker 1 (55:13):
I think you have to take a step back and
just realize that, like this is just a small picture
of your bigger story. Whether it's been a bad day
or week, or month or even a year, it's one
of many. And I think sometimes you get caught up
in the drama and the issues that you're currently facing
because they feel really heavy and hard and it happens

(55:34):
to me all the time. But then you take a
step back and you realize, like, oh, I've been through
this type of stuff plenty of times. Maybe it's not
the exact same problem, but it's a problem that I
felt the same way, very passionate and very stressed about,
like how do I get this right and it works
out and it's okay, And if it's not, that's okay too.
I'll figure out how to maneuver if it's not okay,
and we'll make the best of it. And I think

(55:55):
just kind of having that kind of like bigger picture
mentality and attitude about life, life and situations is helpful.
You don't always get to do that in the moment
and being in the situation because if you watch Instagram,
you know, I always joke it's and I say, watch
Instagram because that's what it seems like. But uh, like
it's like fly with the Eagles, be grounded, don't be silly,

(56:16):
be serious, you know, I tell you, like, look at
all these different things. So whatever I say, there's always
a great another quote that's the opposite of like, you know,
handling yourself. But I've found that like being present means
acknowledging and listening and hearing and feeling what's really going on,
but also being present in the big picture of like
tomorrow I'm gonna wake up, it's gonna be Sunday. And
that's okay too, you know what I mean, Like it's

(56:38):
it's fine just to you know, there's not You don't
have to feel the weight. It's not as heavy as
you it is sometimes, I think, but I try to
find the joy as much as I can. It's hard
for me to function without fun. If it's been a
couple of days without fun, I gotta do something fun.
So I'd always say, like find your release, you know
what I mean, You got to find your release of
like some seriousness, because sometimes you'll be handling these problems
and you think the best way for me to handle

(56:58):
the problems is sitting on front of I can and
to do this, and it's like probably nice. Probably go
for a hike, go get in the ocean, go for
a run, go see some friends, get away from it
for an hour and a half. You come back, you'll
be in a better place. And I think that's key too,
is just to kind of like know how to separate
yourself from some of these things for sure, can find
some clarity.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Very important. All right, Hey, this was fantastic, absolutely, thank you. Finally,
I'm so glad we got together. We did. Yes, all right, well,
good to see and best of luck with everything and
with your with your family and.

Speaker 1 (57:26):
Always go rams to day and go rams.

Speaker 2 (57:29):
Yes, all right, thanks David, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
David.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Well, if you're hearing this, you've listened to the entire episode,
and first of all, thank you. Secondly, if you enjoyed
this episode, please rate and review on Apple podcast and Spotify.
New episodes of Cut, Traded, Fired, Retired are released on
Tuesdays on nearly every podcast platform. Get social with the
podcast on Twitter and Instagram at ctf our podcast, and

(57:51):
check out the website ctfurpodcast dot com. I'm your host,
Susie Wargen. To learn more about me, visit Susie warton
dot com. Thanks much for listening, and until next time,
please be careful, be safe and be kind. Take care