Wherever ESPN is talking about the NFL, there’s a good chance you’ll see Field Yates.
The 35-year-old has been at the Mothership since 2012 and contributes to NFL coverage in a variety of ways from appearing on SportsCenter and NFL Live, to hosting Fantasy Football Now and the Fantasy Focus podcast. He also works on the NFL Draft and has hosted NFL coverage on ESPN Radio.
But before Yates became an integral part of football coverage, he was a Division III football and lacrosse player at Wesleyan University and spent two years coaching and scouting for the Kansas City Chiefs and four summers interning for the New England Patriots.
So how did a former college athlete turned NFL coach/scout become one of the top analysts around? He sat down with Barrett Sports Media this week to discuss.
(Some answers edited for length and clarity).
BSM: Field, we reported recently at BSM that you just signed an extension with ESPN, congratulations.
FY: Thank you so much. I feel like a little bit of a seasoned veteran now at ESPN. I’ve been at the company for almost 10 years now. It’s a great opportunity and it feels like home for me and my family, and for somebody who grew up watching ESPN, like so many others out there in sports, the opportunity to continue to work there is something that I don’t ever take for granted, not a single day.
BSM: I have always referenced you as an NFL Insider. Some reference you as a Fantasy Football Insider. Is there ever a tug-of-war in how you want to be thought of?
FY: I give a lot of credit to some of the people that I have worked with or for at ESPN for a long time who identified this at an early stage of my career. There is an old saying that I often hear attributed to Bill Parcells. And it goes like this, ‘the more you can do, the more you can do.’ So while it might be useful for your Twitter bio to have a more succinct title like “Insider” or “Fantasy Expert”, or something else that falls under the ESPN umbrella, what I find is pretty valuable is to be able to do a little bit of everything.
That’s something that I take a lot of pride in. Maybe during the months of August to December, I’m more of a fantasy analyst than I am an insider, but maybe between the month of January and the end of the draft, late April, I might be more of the NFL Insider. But I have a strong belief that if it’s football, or something involving football, I have an interest in it. And I’d like to do my best to be as informed about it as I can.
BSM: It’s well documented. You did some on field stuff with the Chiefs and the Patriots back in the day, why did you ultimately decide that journalism or broadcasting was the ultimate avenue for you?
FY: I didn’t know that that was going to be where my next steps took me after I left the world of scouting. I actually got my real estate license, which is something that a couple of numbers that my family still do to this day. But it didn’t prove to be as much interest for me. What I realized was that I was missing football. But I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with the next opportunities in my life, whatever they might have been.
So I sort of casually wrote about football. This was at the time when blogging was sort of the leading way of sports media, right? So I started to pound the keyboard on a blog and started to use my Twitter account to leverage it a little bit.
I had met a handful of people in the world of broadcasting and journalism from my time in the NFL, and they were super helpful in generating a bit of an audience for me by re-sharing my content on social media. And I think that that was kind of the beginning of it, even though I had no clue when I left the Chiefs back in 2011, that I would have any sort of future in not just sports broadcasting, but football period. I thought maybe my days of following sports would be strictly as a fan going forward.
BSM: Do you see yourself as more of a journalist or as an entertainer?
FY: That’s a good question. So let me talk about the fantasy side. Because I think that in fantasy, the reality of fantasy, which is sort of a loaded sentence in and of itself, is that while there are so many people doing fantasy content all over the internet everywhere, a lot of people are sharing comparable opinions.
A lot of what we are required to do is to share information that you can get anywhere, but do so in a way that is entertaining and that draws you back for more. And I give a lot of credit to Matthew Berry, my longtime colleague who’s now working at NBC, because in an industry where there were a lot of people trying to emulate him, his signature style and ability to entertain was always what I thought stood out amongst many, many, many traits that he had.
That’s something that I try to do as well on the fantasy side. I don’t know that every day, you’re going to get something from me that you haven’t heard elsewhere, I’d like to, but I can’t promise that every single day, but what I hopefully can promise you is that whatever information you get from me, has my twist on it, as opposed to something that you heard elsewhere.
BSM: You have had a diverse career at ESPN. Studio shows. Radio. Talk to me a little bit about the growth in your career and things you are proud of.
FY: One thing that I admire about ESPN is that it’s a company that starts with understanding. What are a couple of elements that fit in your portfolio? And when they realize that there are two or three things that you do well, they’re not afraid to challenge you to do four or five things well, and then four or five could turn into 10, or 15, or 20. And next thing you know, you’ve got a full plate.
And now I’m focused on doing things I’m involved in at a higher level year over year. So whether it’s through Fantasy Football Now or the Fantasy Focus podcast, or being a part of NFL Live or being a part of the First Draft podcast or in the offseason, or any of the things that I consider tentpoles of my career, I want to continue to do those things and I want to continue to do those things better than the year before. I’ve been very fortunate to have some people that believed in me and given me an opportunity.
BSM: Did any of your on-field work carry over into the broadcasting world? Did anything you did there – help you here?
FY: I think I spent enough time in it to feel like there are things that I see in a certain way. Part of this is shaped by the fact that I did spend some time on the other side – but I think the most challenging part of our job is that whatever we see, we are not guaranteed to see the entire picture.
And the reason why I say that is because there’s always something going on inside an organization or a locker room or coaching staff that we’re not entirely aware of that could contribute to the on field product, which is oftentimes the only thing that we have to evaluate situations.
So I try to offer up an ounce or more of deference to these teams, and these players in these situations, knowing that whatever I see might not be the complete picture. I am not saying that you can’t be critical of decisions or plays or opportunities. I also try to take a step back that and ask myself if there’s a decision that looks ill-fated the minute it takes place.
My thought process is ‘alright if everybody is panning this free agent signing for being far too rich, let me go the other direction and see, is there something that is reason to believe that this signing actually makes a whole lot more sense than we realize?’
And I think there are numerous examples where things that almost unanimously are either chided or applauded, don’t work out as expected. And so I’ve tried to take that with me in almost everything that I do.
BSM: What is the Field Yates Football Sunday watching experience like?
FY: Well, it’s a great one, I’m very fortunate to be a part of what we call the ‘War Room’ at ESPN. It is next to the ESPN cafeteria, so it’s got proximity to the most important place on campus. We have somewhere between 25-30 people in there in a given week, and we’ve got every game up. There’s a screen allocated for every single game — 16 screens. And then there’s an additional 17th screen that is the size of the other 16 combined.
So we have someone that controls that big TV, which also has the volume playing. So if it’s a critical moment in Bills vs. Ravens, that might be the game that’s on the TV. It’s almost like a mini RedZone within our ESPN walls.
It’s great. The people in there are awesome. There are many, many great people. But I can tell you with complete sincerity that sitting near Chris Berman, on football Sundays, watching the games alongside him, is something you will never ever, ever, ever take for granted.
He is as hilarious as you’d expect. But also a football historian. He has so much appreciation for the game. You’re often reminded that we got into this profession, because we love sports and Bommer (Berman) always says “You love football? That’s a good thing.’” And we love football, and to be able to watch it on Sundays like that is a very good thing.
BSM: Who are some of the teammates you’ve learned from at ESPN?
FY: Wow, a lot of them and there are a lot of things. You have to sort of break it up into a couple of different categories here. A lot of my initial work at ESPN was with Mike Reiss (Patriots reporter) and Mike is the definition of professionalism and passion for details.
Adam Schefter on the news side has taught me so much that I think is useful not just in sports, but also in life in that he has taught me how to build relationships, how to maintain relationships, and how to push stories forward. But I think more importantly, he’s taught me how to know that the story is never more important than the trust.
On the entertainment side, the entire NFL Live crew, what they’ve taught me is joy. Dan Orlovsky and Laura Rutledge and Marcus Spears and Ryan Clark — what you do every single day should be fun. I mean, Mina Kimes, and Marcus Spears probably could not have had more dissimilar path to ESPN.
But each one of them has this legitimate joy that, I think, is a common bond and makes that show so great. Something I’m always reminded of is that while it’s not always just football, on the days in which we are able to talk about just football, it’s a lot of fun, and to never lose sight of that. The NFL Live crew as a whole does a great job of that.
Brady Farkas is a sports radio professional with 5+ years of experience as a Program Director, On-Air Personality, Assistant Program Director and Producer in Burlington, VT and Albany, NY. He’s well versed in content creation, developing ideas to generate ratings and revenue, working in a team environment, and improving and growing digital content thru the use of social media, audio/video, and station websites. His primary goal is to host a daily sports talk program for a company/station that is dedicated to serving sports fans. You can find him on Twitter @WDEVRadioBrady and reach him by email at bradyfarkas@gmail.com.
