Late-Round Perspectives: Field Yates

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Field Yates is a fantasy football and NFL draft analyst who's been at ESPN for over a decade. Prior to ESPN, he worked on the scouting and coaching staffs for the Chiefs. He's an East Coast dad, a New Englander, and yes, he recently had a shoulder injury. These are his late-round perspectives.

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Field Yates (1:13)

So I'm doing okay, man. So the shoulder is, there's kind of two ways to look at it. On the one hand, like relative to where I was six days ago, I am like remarkably better. I've got a long journey ahead. I'm gonna have to have surgery on this thing in the next couple of weeks here, which will set back the pain relative to where it is now. But for the long term, it's a good thing. So we are focused on coming back stronger than ever, hopefully within like four or five months.

JJ Zachariason (1:39)

My gosh, did you ever think that you're, where were you guys again? You guys were in the Bahamas?

Field Yates (1:43)

We were in the Bahamas, yeah, in Nassau, in the Bahamas, the Bahama Resort, like one of the most, you know, luxurious places I've ever been to in my entire life. It was supposed to be for rest and relaxation. And instead, I was resting and relaxing in an emergency room hospital bed.

JJ Zachariason (1:56)

That's unreal. By the way, for that 24-hour period, I could not open up a social media app without seeing the video of you running into that, into that tackle, like doing the tackle dummy thing. And it wasn't like TMZ was reporting on it and stuff.

Field Yates (2:10)

Oh my God, it was hilarious. Like, you know, and on the spectrum of like ways to have yourself appear on like TMZ or the New York Post, I felt like it was actually a fairly good one. That's true. I also was like, man, it must be a slow news day otherwise. Like if they're latching on to this, or it makes it made me realize just how ridiculous the entire incident was and how just completely unathletic I actually am. But no, you know, it was a funny day in some ways. I guess this is the proverbial like, you know, make lemonade out of lemons here, I guess, because the pain was not so fun for the three hours. The three hours in which my arm was detached from my body sucked. Everything else though around it was A-OK and truthfully, like so many people down there that helped make the process slightly smoother. Stefania Bale probably being chief amongst that list is Stefania. For those in the fantasy community, probably already know is like, you know, the preeminent sports medicine person in the world of fantasy football. And she was able to put some of her PT background to work there as she was kind of keeping me at ease, unfortunately, because of insurance issues and medical concerns. She couldn't actually do anything to me, or else I would have surrendered whatever insurance coverage I had in the resort, would no longer allow their EMT team to take care of me. So while Stefania wasn't unable to just pop that shoulder back in on her own, which she probably could have done and then so masterfully, she had me at ease much more than I would have been without her.

JJ Zachariason (3:37)

Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's nice to have that kind of resource right there when something like that happens. Does it also, I know you have a football background, yeah?

Field Yates (3:44)

I do, yeah.

JJ Zachariason (3:44)

Yeah, you played back in the day, but does it number one, bring you back to that a little bit when that happened, and then also make you, I remember one time I was playing pickup football. I was a senior or something in high school, right? Yeah. And we're just doing stupid things as you do, and we're tackling each other and whatnot. And I broke my finger and it was the top of my finger just jammed and it needed to get pulled back, but no one could do it there. And I was in, literally some of the worst pain that I've ever felt before. And then that weekend I go and I just watch the NFL and a quarterback hits his finger on a dude's helmet and just goes to the sideline and they just put it back into place and he's back out there. Do those instances ever make you just respect the NFLers even more? Obviously you played ball, but that's just like next level, the kinds of stuff that they go through.