Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Unfiltered | State of NFL, New York Giants Future & MORE

I was in town with a bunch of my college teammates, and we went from, you know, this was our third bar maybe that we had been to. A few Guinnesses had been consumed, and one of my friends decided that I needed a bodyguard. I go to the bathroom. He follows me to the bathroom. I walk out, and this guy comes up to me and says hello, and I shake hands, and my friend pushes him away and says, "Sir, we're not doing well." It was you. And I said, "Joe, I think this one's going to be okay. I think he's okay."

It's called the Helmet Head.

It's named after me.

Well, there was a book that I read in college by Peter Golenbock, who wrote the Bronx Zoo, but it was called Personal Fouls. It's about that pretty disastrous North Carolina State season after they won the national championship, when Valvano was still the coach and there was all sorts of turmoil and tumult on the team. Nobody really got along, and there was this player on the team named Quentin Jackson who had this very large head. And I can't remember if it was Shackleford or Washburn, but they constantly made fun of him, calling him Helmet Head, and it was a running joke in the book. So, I didn't really want to name the bar Andy's Bar. I wanted it to be something sporty but something that had some inside meaning. So, Helmet Head.

Well, I mean, that is a bottle cap picture of Mark Messier. The further away you stand from it, the more you can see it's him. And the artist who makes it roams around bars on Saturday nights at two in the morning and collects the bottle caps. I guess it's very hard to find the black bottle caps. I know.

It's fun to hang out with that guy. He kind of puts the picture at a distance and creates it. But Mark, I grew up a lifelong New York Ranger fan, and I wasn't sure they were going to ever win the Stanley Cup in my dad's lifetime, let alone mine. But when they won in '94, that was one of my most favorite nights of my life. So I remember that very well. There are some pictures over there, that Giants-Green Bay NFC Championship game, and then the Giants-Patriots, this is the 2007 season, 2008 playoffs. That was an incredible magical run that I don't think anybody had on their bingo card, the Giants winning the Super Bowl that year, and that was the undefeated Patriots team.

That was obvious.

You know, I have a 22-year-old son who grew up here in Seattle but is a diehard Giants fan, and I tried to tell him early in his life that it's unusual to have two Super Bowl wins. You know, they won when he was four years old and when he was eight years old. I had to wait till I was 18 before they won, and we lived through a lot of bad years early in my lifetime. So, he's getting his dose of being a diehard sports fan, which is, unless you're a Patriots fan in the last 15, 20 years, you go through years that are harder than others. That's what it's been the last few years. I remember we sat down as a team when we were doing our preseason production kickoff, and I was asked about the Giants, and I said I thought they were going to be better than people think, because I actually do think the Giants have some pieces. They have I think they have a future franchise quarterback in Dart, and they've got a number one receiver in Nabers, and they have a clearly a number one left tackle in Thomas. I think they have two pretty good running backs in Singletary and Tracy, and they've got some pass rushers — Carter and Thibodeaux and Burns. I mean, they have pieces. It's been a difficult season, and I do think there are some things to build on. It's been a very difficult schedule, but it's hard to feel overly optimistic.

That's a great question. You guys are well equipped to answer. I mean, I think from my amateur perspective, you know... you know more than us about it; we're taking notes over here. First of all, it's really hard to know if you have a quarterback or not if you don't have an offensive line. We've talked about this before. Just look at Daniel Jones this year. The whole foundation — if the foundation isn't right, you can't learn anything. So, the Giants offensive line this year has actually been pretty good, and I think it's been part of what's helped the quarterback play. I still think you buy Dart a lot of time with his legs. So there again, there's a foundation on the offensive line, but you have to keep building there. Some guys are, you know, there are going to be some decisions in free agency, but I think you have a franchise quarterback, you have to prioritize making sure he's got the right offensive line in front of him. The coach — the leadership of any organization always sets a lot of the tone, and there's no one way to do it. There are lots of ways to do it. The Giants are going to have a new coach next year, and whoever they choose will have to set the right culture. I think they have a lot of young guys who are excited, aggressive, and enthusiastic. It's very energizing when you watch them on the field. When they had Dart and Singletary together, it was very energizing. You really got only, I don't know, like maybe a half of Nabers with that group or something like that in the Chargers game. I do think they have a lot of young dynamic guys who will be exciting to watch together, and you want to cultivate that. At the same time, you want the team to play in a disciplined way, and you want to make sure that your best players stay healthy. I also feel like the Giants this year have had missed tackles. There's also an emphasis on the fundamentals. You can't pass go and collect $200 in anything that you're doing if you don't nail the fundamentals. So who they pick as a coach for this next chapter is going to matter a lot too.

I do.

No. The first thing when the schedule comes out, I look at what our Thursday Night Football schedule is, and then I look at the Giants schedule, and my assistant within 48 hours has all the games on my calendar. Sundays are usually not a problem, but the Thursday and Monday nights are a little harder sometimes, especially on the West Coast.

There's a reason why 95 of the top 100 rated shows every year are sports. It's really the last appointment TV that exists, and the NFL is the biggest, most popular league, most watched league in all sports in the US at least. It really has been great. I think collectively we've done a really nice job building a great experience for fans. I think it's been good for the NFL too, and it's been good for the Amazon business. It starts with the product. It doesn't matter whatever business value you think you might get if the product's not great. When we started doing Thursday football, as you remember, a lot of people said, 'Is streaming actually going to work, or is it going to be interrupted constantly?' I think the quality of the production has been outstanding. I'm not saying this just because you guys are with me right now, but I think our production team, our directors, in the booth and in the studio — top to bottom, we have amazing talent that brings the game to fans in a different way. We've used technology on the analytics and the AI side, so things like Defensive Alerts, which allow us to circle somebody who we think is likely going to blitz the quarterback, or Pocket Health, if you've seen that new AI feature that basically color codes when a pocket is healthy after your own heart, Whit. I think we've done a good job innovating on what the customer experience looks like. And it's good for the business, because football is so popular. Our Thursday Night games are in prime time. More people want to sign up for Prime. We have drawn our audience up about 60% from when we started, up double digit percentages every year. Just look at what we did on Black Friday — we had 17 hours of television. It brings a lot of people. They sign up for Prime, they stay engaged in Prime longer, and it turns out they also shop even if they came in initially to watch some of our sports content. So, it's been very good for our customers and for the business, and I'm really pleased with how it's gone.

Yeah. I think the collective team has done an amazing job.

And you know, just because it's been good — in any business that's hard, challenging, and dynamic — just because it's been good doesn't mean it's going to continue. You've got to keep working at it. And there are so many things we're working on, Thursday Night Football and the rest of our sports programming that we're excited about.

Yeah, I knew that one was coming.

I do think that the game itself, but particularly the postgame show that you guys did after the Giants-Eagles game this past year. I just thought it was electric. It was awesome. We were actually watching it from the game, and we were further up. So we've been down there before, but we were further up. Just watching how energized the crowd was, and both Dart and Singletary were, and then I enjoyed the challenge with the shirtless challenge. It was kind of a chilly night that night, but you don't seem to be too impacted by those fits. I thought that was a really amazing night. You always remember the first game. To your point earlier, everything is new, everything is an idea, everything is a rehearsal until you actually do it. I also think that we had — it may have been obvious to everybody else — but all you can do when you're building something, when you're building any kind of product, a new broadcast, you have ideas and you have hopes on how people are going to work together and how the product is going to come together, but you just don't really know until you try it. I just think that the chemistry in our studio and the people that took hold, it was amazing. I think we all hoped it, but it's remarkable what you guys have done. I would say one other for me — I went to the Thursday night opener this year in Green Bay. I had never been to Lambeau before, and it lived up to the hype in every way. You guys have played there a lot of times, but where we did the pregame show at that house across the street with that look at the facade of the stadium to where they planted the stadium right in the middle of the city with the hotel across the street, the stadium itself and how on top of the field the fans are — everything about it was amazing, even the postgame. That's one of the coolest parts, being able to hang out with you and sit down and have a beer and have a talk. Your leadership resonates throughout everything we do. You were talking about the Defensive Alerts and Pocket Health. Sam Schwartzstein has been a big part of that. One of the things he did was reach out to us and said, 'Whit, you played O-line forever. What do you think? How does this look? Give me some input. Fitz, you're the quarterback. How are you seeing this? Why do you like this? Why do you not like this?' For us, even though we're a very small part of that, to feel like we're part of this team and part of something, it starts at the top and trickles down. That's been one of the biggest joys for us in the last four years — having that experience. I mean, we don't have to like each other. We could do the job and go home. But inevitably on Thursday night, Al Michaels is up at the bar telling stories, and gosh darn, we're going to be there, too.

Yeah. I can't go to bed if Al's up. That's for sure.

I would say the one thing we all have that's most scarce is time. How you spend that time is obviously a personal choice and there's no right or wrong, but I think most people are busy. I'm sure this is true for both of you guys as well. They are very intentional about their time, at least when they're working. When you have time off, you can do whatever you want. So, I try to wake up every day at 6:00 in the morning. I come downstairs, I work out for an hour, and I read while I'm working out. I have a bunch of things I print out the night before so I can — I've kind of perfected on the elliptical being able to exercise and read. Then I have ESPN's Get Up on. I get to work by 8:00 every day, and I'm in meetings most of the day. The first thing I do in the morning is create a prioritized list. I take my calendar, which is printed out for the day, and then I create a prioritized list and staple the new day to all the prior days in that month. I keep them a month at a time. What's useful is I always have 20 or 30 things on my list. I never get through all of them. But each day, I don't want to just keep doing the things I had on my list the day before because they may not be the most important anymore 24 hours later. So I always try to re-prioritize every day what's important so I can keep track of it. I'm in meetings most of the day, but I try to save an hour or two a day where I'm not in meetings and I can just think. I can read about what's happening in our business or businesses. I can think about new ideas. I can write, I can communicate with people. And then I try to get home in time for dinner every night. When the kids were younger, I tried to have dinner with the kids and put them to bed. I try to see Elana, my wife. We still have a couple date nights a week. For me, everyone's different, but if I have a little bit of that — the balance of working really hard, exercising, and also having some time with the family at the end of the day — helps.

Yeah, it's a really good question, and I wish there was a clean answer or an equation. I don't always get it right. There are plenty of times where I'm in a hard meeting, and I see the phone and I can pick up or not pick up. If it's one of my family members, I want to pick up the phone. If I know it's an emergency, I will. If it's not, I don't know. It just depends. But you ask yourself questions like that. Like everybody, there have been occasions that I've had to miss along the way, and I try to limit those. But all the ones you do, you always ask, 'Was it the right call or not?' I've tried to have steady traditions with the kids. Now it's easier for me because I had two, and you have four — I won't even go there with Fitz's seven... don't even... for what I'm about to mention, you'd have to do every day of the week. But with two, from the time both of my kids were three or four, I would have one day a week with each of them where we'd have breakfast and then I'd take them to school. Even now, with my daughter 25 and my son 22, we still have that. We don't always eat, but we still have that breakfast together. Even though you spend a lot of time together as a family, it's also nice as a parent to have that one-on-one time with your kid. You learn a lot sometimes in different ways than what they might say in a bigger group. It's also a placeholder for you to share or to ask some questions where you have a chance to influence. I do think that most people — I don't know about you guys, but definitely for me — we have these tapes that are always playing in the back of our head. A lot of those tapes were made by our parents or whoever played that role of being a parent. Without being manipulative, if you can help be part of forming some of those tapes, it's a good foundation that the kids can draw on later in life. So I don't always get it right. The balance... I'm still working at it, but I try.