The past few years have seen a drastic change in terms of how football players prepare for games and even more so when it comes to the approach taken during the offseason with strength and conditioning. I'm not in good enough shape to call it an obsession, but I am fascinated by how modern football teams and players -- and athletes in general -- are utilizing technology to improve their bodies and efficiency on the field.

A great example of this is the recent NC State draft class, which saw a whopping seven guys taken from Dave Doeren's program in the 2018 NFL Draft. Bradley Chubb (No. 5 overall) was the headliner here, but there are some serious impact guys in that class. And what people don't realize is that group of guys, and that defensive line in particular, was largely comprised of three-star players out of high school (Kentavius Street was the lone four star).

The result of my curiosity about this is today's podcast, with NC State Assistant AD and Director of Strength and Conditioning Dantonio Burnette (a great follow on Twitter @CoachThunder45). To sort of pull back the curtain, I sat down with Burnette as part of a larger story that will come later, but the conversation was so great and fascinating to me that I wanted to run it as a full podcast.

Some of the stuff they're doing -- 24/7 monitoring of hydration levels, GPS tracking of players in practice -- blew me away versus what I expected to see. Doeren has fostered a great environment for his coaches to thrive in and Burnette has taken advantage of it by using everything at his disposal. There's actually a lot of Moneyball techniques here, in my opinion, both from the way they train to the way they identify prospects who might not be properly rated or are just flying under the radar.

We also talk about how much things have changed since Burnette was in college (early 2000s), how guys like Chubb and Nyheim Hines will fit in as rookies with their new teams and much more.

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