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Welcome to Portfolio Perspective: Managing Risk & Seizing Opportunity, a podcast focused on the asset-based lending industry. Join Andrew Pace, Chief Client Experience Officer at Asset Compliant Solutions, as he interviews experts, shares insights, and explores strategies for managing risk, optimizing portfolio performance, and seizing opportunities in an ever-evolving financial landscape. From regulatory changes to technological advances, each episode provides actionable takeaways and deep dives into industry trends. Whether you’re a lender, servicer, or recovery expert, this podcast offers valuable perspectives to enhance your approach and improve outcomes.
Equipment Finance or Auto Finance or some real estate finance, they don't view as deposit gathering, so they're starting to trim those. That means that they're pulling back in some of the areas or some of the sectors of the economy that need their services the most, need lending the most. That creates opportunity.
Andrew:Welcome to ACS Portfolio Perspective. I'm your host, Andrew Pace, Chief Client Experience Officer at ACS. Today, I'm joined by Jeffrey Elliott, founder and CEO of Elevex Capital. Jeffrey brings more than three decades of equipment finance experience to this conversation. He spent much of his career at Huntington National Bank, where he rose to president of Huntington Asset Finance and helped scale the platform to more than $27,000,000,000 in assets, earning a place among the top five bank owned leasing companies in The United States.
Andrew:Along the way, Jeffrey built Huntington's public finance business from the ground up to over $2,000,000,000 led more than $1,000,000,000 in renewable energy project finance originations, and played a key role in major merging activity, including the TCF Bank transaction. He's a certified lease and finance professional, a board director and treasurer of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association, and published author on funding strategy, portfolio syndication, and securitization. In January 2025, Jeffrey founded Elevex Capital, diversified and technology enabled equipment finance platform backed by Sallyport, focused on middle market and specialty segments that banks are increasingly stepping away from. Jeffrey, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
Andrew:It's an honor to have you on. Jeffrey, you spent several decades inside a large bank environment and now lead an independent platform. I want to start by talking about what has changed structurally in the market and why it feels like a turning point. So from your perspective, how is the deposit versus lending tension reshaping commercial banks, and why does equipment finance tend to be one of the first areas impacted?
Jeffry:Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of core to my thesis on the current and future market of equipment finance. The regional banks are really focused on deposit lending right now. As deposits in The United States are slowly shrinking. There are alternative investments out there, so it's a challenge for banks to get enough deposits to do all the lending that they want to lend in the marketplace.
Jeffry:So they're gobbling each other up to acquire more deposits. Along with that, the technology spend that they have to incur to meet all the regulatory requirements and other requirements is pushing them to be larger and larger. So my thesis is to gain the deposits, they've got to get larger. To cover the technology costs, they've got to get larger. If you look back at the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failures, what happened was they were some of the weaker regionals, and when the marketplace happened, their deposits just ran out of their bank easy.
Jeffry:Technology enables people to move deposits very quickly, or company deposits very quickly, and so they go to the money center banks when there's a scare in the marketplace, and then the lowest performing regionals at that time doesn't mean they necessarily did anything wrong, just lose their deposit base quickly. So it's a challenge, and it's a battle for them. So in an effort to do that, consolidate, get larger, and reduce their loan to deposit ratio, they are looking at select areas within their business models that don't really raise deposits, or they don't feel like raises deposits. So they want to protect their full primary bank customers that have deposits, working capital lines, those typically go along with deposits, equipment finance, or auto finance, or some real estate finance, other types of typical transactional finance areas they don't view as deposit gathering, so they're starting to trim those. Today, they get out of them entirely, but they're trimming them.
Jeffry:So where do they trim them? In areas that certainly don't raise deposits or areas where they view are more risky, so why bother? They're less focused, and I hate to say this, on profitability than they are in poor primary bank relationships that contain deposits. So they want to lend to people that bring their total relationship, and it makes a lot of sense, but what does that mean for the general public? That means that they're pulling back in some of the areas or some of the sectors of the economy that need their services the most, need lending the most, that creates opportunity.
Jeffry:Who used to fill that opportunity was GE Capital. GE Capital was a major player, the number one player in our marketplace, and when they pulled out, that left a whole segment of the economy kind of that double B to single B credit profile space that banks would They'll play in that space if they're primary bank in deposits, and they know the customer really well, but if it's just a transaction, they kind of tend to avoid that space, especially the single B space, and GE used to thrive there. Structured transactions mitigate the risks in those credits. Those are pass rated credits from an OCC perspective, but they've got challenges, right? They're either not that large, maybe they're $50,000,000 in revenues, or they don't have consistent cash flow, or they're in an industry that leverages up more than typical manufacturers leverage up, like an aerial lift rental house, something like that, right?
Jeffry:They're going to carry more leverage than a manufacturer, and they should. They have really good cash flow if they're utilizing their equipment properly, But banks decide, You know, that's a little too high risk for me. We get criticized on it, so we pull back in that space. So those little pockets throughout the economy, agriculture, transportation, rental, those types of things, energy, are areas where banks are being very selective. They're still operating there, but they're being selective in how they lend there.
Jeffry:Creates a lot of opportunity, and it's really the space that GE Capital If you look at a lot of the large new independents, they're ex GE Capital people. Now, leads got a few, but we're not based on that, but I used to compete with them and respect them very much, so it was a great competitor. The other thing that goes along with that is the banks just and GE Capital being gone, they were the big training sources, so not a lot of training going on in the industry. I know we'll talk about that as we go along, but that's a big part of what LEVEX is about. So when you see that, in the old days, in the '60s and '70s, banks, they were just being able to do the leasing product, so they were supportive of the leasing industry before they were physically allowed to do leasing, and so they were more secondary markets, lending to leasing companies, wholesalers in the space, and I kind of view that as their role going forward.
Jeffry:Lender finance is a great business for them because they lend to independent leasing companies. They get their deposits, so it's more of a traditional banking relationship. And again, we'll still buy and sell and trade deals with banks. They'll have a capital markets division. They just may not originate as much directly as they used to, is my theory going forward.
Jeffry:Some have already done that. Some are starting to do it. If you look at some of the Citibank's not really in the leasing business anymore, a huge player, but you'll see the market change over time, and I think it's a good time for independents. Now, this could all change if deposit raising becomes good, or they merge enough and there's enough deposits for the big guys and they look for income, then they might go back to leasing products. The Equipment Finance product in banks is one of the more profitable products, so they don't give it up lightly because it really creates a lot of income, but when they get down to it, what they're really focused on are core banking relationships that bring deposits.
Jeffry:Because those transactions don't necessarily do that, they'll forego that higher profitability for lower profitability loans with the funding that comes with it in the low cost deposits. So it's just their strategy, and I think it's an opportunity for independents to take a bigger chunk in the marketplace.
Andrew:Thank you. Thank you. So let's go back to GE Capital's exit- Yeah. And what that really meant for the middle market borrowers. Have you noticed the void of their exit being filled?
Jeffry:Yes. Yeah. So not entirely, but so if you look at some of our competitors, the Capteras, Ainsley Park, Wingspire, Dexed, those type players, those are kind of the replacements for GE Capital. A lot of those guys, not Dexxed as much, but Capteris and Ainsley Park and Wingspire, very much focused on sponsor backed, larger type $100,000,000 revenue, dollars 15,000,000 EBITDA type company, structured finance. They do some leases, but mostly loans or loan type structuring.
Jeffry:They're all really well run companies, and they're doing great. Got tons of business and accessing the capital markets and doing great, and they're really playing in that XGE space, but it's a big space, so there's plenty of room for a lot of competitors. We'll play in that space a little bit. We're not really following sponsors or EPE sponsors around. We're more general in nature, and probably a little bit down market.
Jeffry:I mean, we have some big deals that are $100,000,000 plus and even publicly traded entities, but we're focused probably more on below $100,000,000 revenue companies. We have a small ticket segment. We're in all different segments, and we're very focused on true leases. So we want to own assets and take residual risk and really be an asset player more than just a credit player. So we obviously have credit policy, credit's the first thing we look at, but we're also weighing that asset, and we're structuring around the asset quality.
Jeffry:So we tend to do more hard assets that we can liquidate commodity type assets or in place value assets. Quite honestly, I like in place value more than I hike out of place value assets, and we could talk about that up here all day. When you've got a good business model and you've got a good in place asset that's essential, that's a really good situation from a leasing company perspective. And we're looking at all those types of deals from a true lessor perspective. As we go down market into more small business and small ticket, it becomes more loans, unfortunately.
Jeffry:I'll always push for more leases down there because I still think there's benefits for customers to use the leasing product. They've been burned by it, or they're not aware of it. They don't understand it, and so a lot of times they push towards EFAs and loans. So we do a lot of that too, but yeah, I think the marketplace is still expanding in that GE Capital range, and the pool's getting wider because the banks keep pulling farther and farther. They're getting bigger deals.
Jeffry:The banks are getting bigger. They want bigger deals. They want bigger clients. So there's a huge market. I forget the percentage of companies that are under 20,000,000 in revenue, but it's a huge number, right?
Jeffry:So there's tons of small businesses out there, and even under 50,000,000, it's still a large share. There aren't that many really large companies in The United States, so they're all fighting over the same ones, which is what drives down that pricing to really low levels, but you can compete with, even on those transactions, you're an independent and you're taking residual positions, a lot of the banks don't have asset managers or have retiring asset managers that don't want to take residual risk, losing their skills in structuring true leases. I run into people all the time that all they do is loans. Last couple decades, banks have been loan focused, Especially in things like aircraft. In the early 2000s, a lot of mistakes on too high residuals on corporate aircraft, right?
Jeffry:So they've gone to loan only product, right? Most of the banks are that way. Some will do a little bit. So it's becoming more of a commoditized industry, and here at LFX, we want to be that other choice, right? To truly subverse all those loan options.
Jeffry:We won't be the lowest cost from an implicit rate perspective, but we'll have the benefits of leasing, overall, that may be a better option for a customer if they need that flexibility and those options of a true lease scenario. Sure.
Andrew:So that backdrop explains why the opportunity exists. So it makes compelling is how intentionally it was built to operate in this new environment. When you founded Elevex, what was the core thesis around being a true lessor willing to hold assets and that residual risk?
Jeffry:Yeah, ownership at Salliport Partnership Fund had the concept They were in the factoring business, and they kept getting asked for equipment finance. As they owned that factory business for ten years, they sold it to a bank, and they said, Well, we should start an equipment finance company. So they came to me and said, We want to start an equipment finance company. We want you to be employee number one and build it, and they had a business plan. They weren't equipment finance people, right?
Jeffry:They were smart people, but not equivalent finance people, and their business plan was very good. I said, I like it. You're focusing on underserved markets, and you see the opportunities, see the banks pulling back. And I said, I like that, but there are three things that I'd want LFX to be invested in, and those three pillars are technology, capital markets, and asset management, right? In line with what you do, Andrew.
Jeffry:So technology's first, right? So working at the banks, banks are big and bureaucratic, and while they want to use the latest and greatest technology, they don't move very fast, right? It's like Titanic in a bathtub type thing. Just turn them around, right? And so frustrating not being able to use some of the latest and greatest technology.
Jeffry:So we're building a tech enabled, embedded finance, AI assisted platform. We're not all the way there yet. We're building things. We've got some AI agents doing some things, but it's coming, and we've a development team of engineers that are working on it every day, and some are full time employees, some are contractors, all kinds of things going on. But it's really important that we operate differently, more efficiently, take the friction out of the process, both in small deals and large deals.
Jeffry:A lot of people out there don't believe that there's a need for technology on large deals. I disagree. I think there's huge opportunity to process things more efficiently and quickly. I know of a deal we did last year. It's $1.4 not a huge deal.
Jeffry:The approval came to me, and I'm like, These guys got $10,000,000 cash on their balance sheet, no debt, and they want to do a deal with us at this high yield. And I'm like, Why do they do this? They say, Well, they got to have it done in two weeks, and their bank told them two months. So they did it with us instead of their bank. The bank would have done it for half the implicit rate that we would have done it for, right?
Jeffry:And so that's a way, taking the friction out of the transaction, being able to process things quickly. We're starting to get there, but we really want to go fast. Right now, we credit score in under thirty minutes. We want to do credit intake, meaning application intake, any way that you want to send it in, whether at work, typing it in, they're emailing it in, they're filling it in on our site. We have a dynamic app that helps AI kind of helps you fill out the app, fills in things for you, you verify it.
Jeffry:But an app coming in, invoice coming in, credit approved, compliance, docs created, back out to the customer, signed, back to us in funding, we're going to be able to do all that in three minutes. That's the goal. So we want to be able to do it quick. Now, all things have to happen at the same time and have to be there and available. Sometimes you don't have the invoice or the serial number, whatever it is you're doing, but if you can get it all together and you get that process working right, you can move really fast because you're doing everything at the same time.
Jeffry:You're creating docs. In the old days, you wouldn't create docs until you got credit approval, right? Now you can create docs it's not a person creating You're not wasting time. It's just the system, right? AI is creating the docs or the system is creating the docs.
Jeffry:And if you never use them, so what? No one even knows the difference. It's not like burning a piece of paper. It's just in the system, ready to go, but it's ready to go when you're ready to go. And you still got to clear all those things.
Jeffry:So there's still somewhat of a linear process, but not a total linear process. So that's kind of the tech platform. A lot of AI assistants. You'll see us with AI agents on the phone with us, or AI agents helping with collections on the phone with us, all types of different ways that AI agents can help customers, customer service, those types of things. Secondly is our capital markets trading platform.
Jeffry:We rolled that out at the funding conference, just the concept, and it'll be a 2027 type thing, but really it's about bringing all parties together. Elevex will be a market maker, not the only market maker. Others can do it, but you'll have bid and ask spreads on transactions. You still do business with who you want to do business with. So if you're a bank and you don't like you're bank A and you don't like bank B, you don't have to do a deal with bank B.
Jeffry:You can just take them off your list, But you can post your deals and get more access to more potential buyers. You can put deals in portfolios. We can do lots of different things, transactions. We can have AI assist with documentation review, AI assist with credit, AI assists with the whole syndication documentation process, master assignment agreements, NDAs, all those things, and take the friction out of doing transactions in the marketplace. Also bring in a lot of new partners that don't know everybody.
Jeffry:All the regional banks and big banks know each other. They don't need Jeff to do this trading platform, but my theory is they'll end up coming to the trading platform because it'll be easier to use, right? They'll still talk to same people at the banks. You're not taking away the personal touch here. You're just speeding it up by using technology.
Jeffry:So that capital markets trading platform's key. It gives Elevex a lot of liquidity, but it'll give everybody else a lot of liquidity and bring in new players. There's 4,000 banks, over 4,000 banks in The United States. Most of them aren't part of Elfa or any kind of trade association in the equipment finance industry. They don't even have equipment finance divisions.
Jeffry:One of our areas is we set up leasing companies for banks that don't have it, and they've got deposits and money they want to spend or invest in equipment finance assets, but they don't have access. So this brings them into that marketplace. And then lastly, asset management. As a
Andrew:true
Jeffry:lessor, the number one risk we have is investing in residuals and assets, and so we need strong asset management. We've two thirty plus year asset managers, and we're going train up some new ones and really use that technology to scrape data from the internet to get real pricing intelligence, maintain a bunch of data on our systems. Most banks do asset management on spreadsheets and paper files. They have all this information, but it's just in the heads of their asset managers. They don't have it in any kind of system that's usable.
Jeffry:So we're going to build it into our systems so we can automatically update our curves and our residual positions and really know and be the most aggressive that makes sense in those asset classes. So it's going be a fun journey bringing it all together and then training up new people to really understand that somewhat lost capability in our industry. Everyone's retiring, and no one's training the new ones. So hopefully we can train up some new ones, but you put
Andrew:those three things that's what LDAX is about. That's great. So fast originations matter. You talked about AI, but long term success in this industry is ultimately proven through asset management workouts. You share a little bit why is the shortage of experienced asset managers becoming such a significant risk for the industry?
Jeffry:Yeah. Well, I think it starts with when banks really started shying away from residual true lease transactions. They've gone up market in credit. A lot of up market credits are not as focused on true leases, or haven't been over the last couple decades. Kind of depends on the asset class.
Jeffry:To save money, I think they just allowed asset management to keep dwindling, right? As they retired, they didn't replace them. They don't have training programs, so nobody's training them. A lot of asset managers either came out of GE or CIT or some of these places that would train them up, and so there's just nobody building new ones, right? And so there's just a lack of focus.
Jeffry:But I think it started with they thought they needed them, and they do need them for residual positions, right? And once they got it out of that, I think they just look at it as, Yeah, we have a loan with a piece of collateral. Do I really need a specialist, or can I just buy an appraisal from somebody if we need one? I don't really need to have asset management capabilities. And so you see a lot of banks going around that don't have asset management.
Jeffry:You see almost all I mean, I'm a rare independent that has asset managers, unless you're a really residual driven company, and you just don't see it much anymore, so there aren't as many jobs. I think some of it's the going up market, lack of focus on true leases, and just the aging of the pool of candidates that have the experience, and nobody has training programs. Yeah. I mean, so we're going to try to train them up.
Andrew:Great. And how does Elevatex approach asset management and workouts differently than the traditional banks would?
Jeffry:Yeah. I mean, I think the knowledge is number one, right? We're always looking at the asset. We have an exit strategy day one when we go into any transaction. We're not a distressed player, so we're not expecting defaults and things like that, but we're doing single B credit profiles, so they do default.
Jeffry:There's chance there. So we're aware of what we got to do. We try to partner with people like ACS and our vendors and our dealers out there so we know who to go to if we need to repossess an asset or take it back. We have different strategies depending on how the customer's communicating with us. If they're working with us, we're going to try to get a voluntary surrender, right?
Jeffry:And then take that asset to somebody that's going to help us remarket it. We did that just recently on some assets. If it's non communicative situation, we're going to go into regular plevin or repossession and grab those assets and get them out, if we can, if they're commodity type assets. An essential in place value, we're going to take a different approach, right? So each asset in and of itself has a different approach to it.
Jeffry:We had some assets. We acquired a company, and they had some deals that we just took over servicing for we didn't actually pay for, and they were still working them out, so we're doing the workout for them. They were farms, right? We looked at the assets, and our asset manager said, You know, the best way to do this is to auction them off at the farm when you're auctioning off the whole farm itself, right? Because if you want to do it together, if you just pull that out there, they're going be worth a lot less than in there, even though some of them are commodity type agricultural assets.
Jeffry:So we're doing it in conjunction with the banks that have the real estate, and it's just going to be a more You've to wait a little longer, but you've to be patient. I think a big difference between banks and leasing companies is timing, and it's on both sides of the fence. Banks will be slow to react when there's a problem because they want to, I mean, I hate saying this. I was this guy for thirty years, but they just kind of want to hope that it's going to get better, right? They don't realize when there's a challenge.
Jeffry:They just want follow their write off policy and not go get the asset. We're not like that. If they're not working with us, we're moving, right? So that's number one, work faster. But then on the other side, when somebody's struggling, we try to help them, right?
Jeffry:We'll do a deferment. Now, we're going get paid for doing a deferment, but a guy's struggling, we're supposed to be helping them, not hurting them. We're not just holding them to that original contract. We'll restructure it, right? In a bank, that's a troubled debt restructuring.
Jeffry:They got to report those. There's bunch of regulatory things around it. That's a hard thing for them to do. They get criticized. They got too much of It's the right thing to do a lot of times for a customer that's working with you, and that sometimes solves them.
Jeffry:We will do that for our customers. So sometimes it's timing the other way. We're more patient than a bank will be, but it's more towards regulatory reasons. At other times, we're more aggressive than they will be, and it makes a difference in how you work with your clients and in the marketplace. It's always a tough thing to do.
Jeffry:Banks get put in a tough position when they've got underperforming customers. They first look to write them down, they don't always have the ability to work out a scenario, and so we want to be really good at it. We're still working at it. We're going get better, and we want to partner with different people in the marketplace to help us do that better. Eventually, what we'll do is offer that service to other independents or even banks that will help them with their workouts and with their collections, because we think that's a If we're good at that, we'll be good at the front end and the back end, and we really know what we're doing when we're setting residuals or structuring deals, know the risks, know how to get in and out of transactions, and it's state by state.
Jeffry:We had one in Wisconsin, and the rules in Wisconsin are a little different, And so you've got to learn how to do that with your legal counsel. So having the right connections in all those different states and areas makes a difference on how you pursue your strategies.
Andrew:Of course. If you don't mind, what's your personal mission when it comes to rebuilding training and development for the next generation of equipment finance professionals?
Jeffry:Yeah. Part of my reason for starting Elvix from a personal standpoint was I saw the lack of trading in the banks and in the industry, And I love this industry. I've been in it my whole life. I want to see it continue to thrive and keep growing, so I want to train the next generation of equipment finance professionals. That's really it.
Jeffry:I was just talking to a lawyer this morning about doing an insurance training. We're having some challenges with our teams on the small ticket side about getting the insurance certificates right, and some of it's like titled vehicle type stuff, right? So you can't fund the deal without insurance on a titled vehicle. But you know, if they got multiple companies, whoever your lessee is or your borrower, the insurance policy's got to be written in the name of the lessee or borrower, not some other entity, right? And you got to get the right insurance for the right deal.
Jeffry:So there's things to know. That stuff used to be more commonly known, and it's not. And so I want to train people up the right way. I see a lot of people out there, not people, companies out there, banks included, I'm going to be writing an article about this, doing very poor transaction procedures, like titled vehicles, letting independent lessors hold the titles and not even putting a lien on the title. So you're an unsecured position on that.
Jeffry:Now, you may have trust in that independent leasing company that they're going to transfer it over to you when there's a problem, but that's a big fraud potential if they ever did that, right? It's not a good policy. Or I see companies, they call it prefunding. I don't allow that here, but getting a customer to sign a DNA before the equipment is delivered and in working order at their location. Well, you're asking for a big problem when you do that, and that creates all kinds of PIMZ violations and tax violations and all kinds of issues.
Jeffry:It's just there's a way to solve for that. If you need to fund a vendor before the equipment's ready to be accepted, you just do an interim funding agreement of progress pay. We can do that. It's just a different documentation path you've got to go down. Don't ask the customer to commit fraud by signing off that equipment's been delivered when it hasn't been delivered, and there are big companies out there doing that type of thing just to get the deal closed so they can count the volume for the month.
Jeffry:Those are
Andrew:kind of
Jeffry:businesses that are going to get our industry in trouble. So yeah, I want to train the next generation to do it right, learn how to do tax pricing, learn how to do residual analysis, credit analysis, understand their documents. A lot of people in our industry, I see them, they don't understand the documents, and it's just, I don't know how they can do so well without understanding what they're doing in terms of documentation. But yeah, that's a goal here, is really train everybody up, give them the opportunity to move around in different areas of our company. I usually start people out in credit and then say, If you want to go into asset management, you can do that.
Jeffry:You want to go into sales? Great. Capital markets? Wonderful. Most people want to go into capital markets because that's the funnest, right?
Jeffry:Or they think it's the funnest, but we have some that want to be asset managers, so that's cool. We'll do that, and I think that's a great job for somebody right now because it's going to be like one of the only guys remaining if you've got some time left. Sure, yeah, and you're touching all different facets of the business too, right? From credit to documentation to titling and things like that. Yeah, one of my things I do with our asset managers, they love it.
Jeffry:They've never been treated like this before, is They're in on all the management meetings and all the discussions and brought in on the They're not just stuffies in the back room doing curves and residuals. They're part of the deal team. I tell them credit is app and asset management's app. We got to both work together, and they're at the top of the decisioning. We're not doing this if you guys don't think it's the right thing to do.
Jeffry:And I think others wouldn't disagree with that at other locations, but I think they don't necessarily treat asset management as important as it should be. In my mind, it's just as important as credit. You got to know what you're doing. Getting into a bad industry with the wrong structure and the wrong asset, or getting the assets the wrong residuals, or too long a term, or what have you is not a good thing, and you create your own problems. So learning from the guys that really understand the assets and how we're going to get out of them if we got to get out of them is critical to how our strategy is in lending.
Jeffry:We're trying to structure deals the best we can, and they're very helpful in that. So it's kind of a fun place to work for an asset manager that gets taken seriously like that.
Andrew:Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So before I let you go, we to get the most important topic of our conversation today. You and I both root for teams that know heartbreak all too well, the
Jeffry:Buffalo Bills
Andrew:and the Cincinnati Bengals. I was 13, 12, 13, so my early teenage years, I witnessed four straight Super Bowl losses versus, you know, I think decades of near misses. You guys have been to a few Super Bowls.
Jeffry:Yeah. Great.
Andrew:Last second losses, historic heartbreak. So, Jeffrey, I'm gonna put you on the spot. Which franchise do you think is more cursed? The Bills or the Bengals? And more importantly, do you actually believe either one of us will ever see a Super Bowl parade in our lifetimes?
Jeffry:Yeah. I'm going go with the Bengals. They're more cursed, probably because just the ownership of the Bengals right now kind of creates a atmosphere. Although this offseason, they're really trying to actually get a defense to support Burrow, but we'll see. Know, they've had in both franchises right now have great quarterbacks, and they haven't really got the personnel around them to be successful.
Jeffry:I really thought the Bills these last couple of years were going to do it. I was rooting on them when the Bengals were already out of it after losing the first two games every year, but the Bills just, I don't know, when it gets to playoff time, they just seem to fizzle out. I don't know what happens. Yeah, I'm saying
Andrew:bad luck.
Jeffry:I liked your thumb though. Think he was good. Yeah. And I wish you wouldn't have fired him. Wish we kept him.
Jeffry:I don't know. Who's the new coach now? You got
Andrew:He offensive was coordinator last few years. Younger. You know, he's different style. McDermott was a great, great leader. I think the team outgrew his coaching style.
Andrew:I think perhaps maybe his coaching style is better served with a younger, more raw, greener team versus a more seasoned veteran team, which I think the Bills had, especially the players that are in those key positions. I don't know if his relationship with the quarterback was as good as what it appeared to be, but it was time for a change. I mean, he's been here nine years. I'm grateful for what he did for us. We had the longest playoff drought in professional sports history at 17, and I don't think we would be the team we are today had it not been Prem, so I am extremely grateful for what he did and getting us back in a great spot.
Andrew:But nine years, not many coaches get that many chances. That's true. That's true. You know? Without winning one.
Andrew:Mean, you've had coaches last year, this past year, who've won multiple Super Bowls get fired. Harbaugh, Tomlin. McDermott couldn't even get the Bills to one Super Bowl. We've been to a few AFC championships, but we haven't been able to get over the hump. But I think being cursed for me is almost something that is more almost like supernatural, like wide right, you know, the Music City miracle, that thirteen second debacle, which I think might may really boil down to coaching, the catch no interception catch debate we had with the Broncos last year.
Andrew:I just feel like we're snake bitten. I have in my will that I wanted the Bills to be my pallbearers so they can let me down one more time. You know, we have T shirts
Jeffry:in Buffalo. What's the deal there?
Andrew:Go ahead. We have T shirts in Buffalo that say just one before I die because, you know, we haven't won a a professional sports championship. The the Bills won an NFL championship or an AFL championship before the merger, but they don't talk they don't count that really once once they once the NFL and the AFL merged. We really don't get credit, although we had some great, great teams back in the sixties. Yeah.
Andrew:But yeah, it's been it's it's been heartbreak. Year after year, it's like, okay. How are we gonna lose this year? Right? But, you know, it's been it's been a great ride, and like I said, we're-
Jeffry:I do have to say this because I'm from Southern Ohio and grew up a Bengals fan, and I live in just outside of Cleveland now. I think the Browns are more cursed than both of our teams. They're even worse, and the Jets might be even worse than the Browns, but the Browns are definitely cursed. Just But they make a lot of dumb decisions. Yeah.
Andrew:That's more self They inflicted, feel guilty.
Jeffry:Yeah, self inflicting. They are self inflicting. Like you guys do, you have really good fans. Cleveland has really good fans. Cincinnati, they're more Reds.
Jeffry:They're more baseball guys. They are diehard Bengals fans, but not as much as Buffalo or Cleveland. Cleveland really has an amazing fan base, but it's just like they're just terrible run organization, and they may be more cursed than the both of us. Both of us are at least good every once in a while, or at least lately. But we've had two good quarterbacks, right?
Jeffry:Boy, these Browns fans really are mad that they passed on Josh Allen. They all wanted him, and then they didn't pick it Oh, yeah.
Andrew:They took Mayfield. Yeah. Yeah. I'll admit, I didn't know much about Josh. I'm not a big college football guy.
Andrew:Buffalo's not a huge college football town. The closest big programs, I would say, is Syracuse, Pittsburgh, obviously Ohio State. I mean, West Virginia, those are probably the biggest. So we never really were a college football town, so we were all professionals. So I don't pay much attention to what's going on in college football, then obviously the draft happens, and we had just broke our playoff drought, so I think everybody was still numb.
Andrew:We had a season where we He definitely no got No expectations. Expectations. Mean,
Jeffry:was a great athlete in college. Didn't really complete high completion rate, and every once in while you see that with him now, but he got a lot better. He worked at it, and built up, and he would see because he's great. He's big, right? And he can run, and he has an arm, but he wasn't always super accurate.
Jeffry:He's not like Burrow that hardly ever misses a pass, right? Right. But he's a lot tougher than Burrow. Burrow gets hurt all the time, so challenge. Yeah.
Andrew:And that's the size too. Right? And I think Allen, knock on wood, he did have a foot injury at the end of last season, but he was able to play through it, a wrist injury before that. Think having that big frame, he's usually the one delivering the punishing hits. He's not the one that's getting absorbing all the hits, so I think that helps a lot, but I think it really boils down to luck.
Andrew:Burrow just hasn't been snake bitten with injuries. He's one of the most talented, if not the most talented quarterback in football.
Jeffry:He's so good, and he wants to complete every pass. So he sends everybody out, number one, and coaches let him do it, so it's partly the coach, but they only got five blockers, and then he holds the ball a long time because he wants to see somebody get open. By the way, he's got the two best wide receivers in the league, and they do get open, and then he finds them. That's why the completion percentage is amazing, but sometimes he waits too long and they get him, and then he gets too much. Every once in while he runs.
Jeffry:He doesn't run as much as Alan, but he's a good runner too when he's selective out. Alan runs about, I would call him almost He's not as good as Lamar, but he's one of the best I've ever seen. He runs when he needs to, and he's good at it, and he knows how to do it. He's just got a good sense. Some of those guys, they run, and then they get killed, and that doesn't work, but if you're a quarterback, no matter how big you are, RG3, he kept running, and he just got murdered, and he's not that big of a guy, and he just destroyed Right.
Jeffry:And so some of the guys just don't, but Alan does a good job of not He runs the right amount, and he really helps him, but Burrow, he just holds it a little too long. He's so good at completing the passes. He wants to do it, and he's not afraid, which is good, and I think it'll be good. I think if he could just do a little bit more quick releases and let it go and keep those guys off them a little bit, it would help them. Then they need a defense.
Jeffry:They were the worst defense to Yeah.
Andrew:And again, you talk about that too. I mean, if Ballon had Chase and Higgins, we probably would have had probably won three Super Bowls by now.
Jeffry:That's right. Yeah. I mean, are good.
Andrew:You know, we we had we had the offensive line. We have some good tight ends. We have a couple of really good two A, two B receivers. Up until this past year when we traded for DJ Moore, we really didn't have a number one wide receiver. So we've had like three twos and a couple of threes, but Burrows got two number ones on his team, but he just didn't have the line to protect him, didn't really have a strong balancing running game, and your defense.
Andrew:Right? Like you guys, I was with two two of the biggest Bengal fans I know with Sean McKenna and and Dave Gruber. They came up for the the Bills Bengals game last year, and we were losing the Bills were losing by, I don't know, seventeen, eighteen, 20 points in the third or fourth quarter, and they weren't running the ball, and they were throwing it, and that's why they ended up losing because Burrow throws a pick six, and they just they don't have a lot of they didn't trust a run game, so they're, you know, throwing the football, which plays right into a team that's, you know, gonna that's that's gonna come, you know, try to come back. Right. And it just was a recipe for disaster, and and, you know, same thing with Arbog, first week of the season.
Andrew:Bills were down big to the to the Ravens, and he was still throwing the ball, and he was, you know, not being as aggressive later in the game. You know, he's on our side of the 50, and he's punting on fourth and five or fourth and four, and where the analytics would say, go for it, and he just got conservative, and you let a team like Buffalo who's got a quarterback that will will himself to a win. It's just not a good recipe, so like your coach. Have a phenomenal quarterback. You got two of the best receivers in the league.
Andrew:Shore up that defense and that offensive line, and who knows? We might see a Bills Bengals AFC championship Goodbye. Yeah, we may. Yeah, we'll see.
Jeffry:It's now or never, Burroughs are going to want to get out if they don't get a defense to support him, so I think they had four or five games last year that they scored 40 points and lost. I mean, shouldn't. That's never happened. Shouldn't. Yeah.
Jeffry:That's sad. Well,
Andrew:we'll see. I'll be in Cincy for that game if they happen to host, and you're welcome to come to Buffalo anytime for a Bills Bengals game, or if you want to experience Bills Mafia, you're welcome to come to a game. Enjoy it as a neutral fan. It's probably better that way because you'll leave happy no matter what. So I have friends all over the country that are like, I'd love to come to a game when my team's playing the Bills, but I'd rather come and enjoy it as a neutral fan and just enjoy the experience of tailgating in Bills Mafia.
Andrew:So invitations open anytime. Might I have
Jeffry:to do it when it's not cold. I don't know if can handle it till it's winter. That might be a little rough.
Andrew:Yeah, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. The older I get, the less I can tolerate the cold temperatures myself.
Jeffry:I like I stopped in Buffalo a lot, or I did, because my daughter went to Syracuse, so we used to drive through there all the time, and stop there for lunch and stuff. So yeah, I spent some time there. It's a good town.
Andrew:Yeah, it's nice. We're emerging. We're kind of Buffalo's going through a resurgence, and now our hockey team is thriving and doing well in the playoffs, so it's great. And when the springtime hits, we the snow melts, and we start seeing green grass, and flowers start budding, and starting to see leaves on trees, and playoff hockey, it's just nothing like it in in Western New York when when the Sabres are in the playoffs, and the weather's breaking, it's just people are outside and just so excited. Although it's gonna get cold this weekend, but you would notice from how people are, their demeanors, and how excited they are for playoff hockey.
Andrew:Yeah, that's fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll rip on them. No.
Andrew:We they're they're kinda becoming like America's, you know, everyone's second favorite team, similar to like the Bills. I think the Bills, Bengals, and even the Lions are, like, becoming everyone's second favorite team if their team's out, because I think everyone would love to see what those three cities would do if either of them won a Super Bowl. Yeah.
Jeffry:But Yeah. You get that sense.
Andrew:Yes. Yeah.
Jeffry:Thanks for having me.
Andrew:Yeah. Oh, well, thank you for joining me. It's been an honor and for sharing your perspective on where the equipment finance industry is headed and how Elevex is positioning itself for the future. To our listeners, thank you for spending time with us on the ACS Portfolio Perspective. If you enjoyed today's conversations, please subscribe, share the episode, and join us next time as we continue exploring how leaders like Jeffrey across our industry think about strategy, risk, and sustainable growth.
Andrew:Until next time, thank you for listening.