Today is the day that you’ve been planning since Uncle Bob grabbed the game-winning touchdown last Thanksgiving: The ultimate family/friends/neighbor backyard football game. The Turkey Bowl. The Mud Bowl. Whatever you want to call it. So how do you ensure you’ve picked the best team possible whether you’re the Manning family, a thoroughly nonathletic group or somewhere in between?? We spoke to two professional talent scouts — retired NFL player Greg Jennings and ESPN’s Trey Wingo for advice.

1. The essential pieces

“Two things,” said Wingo. “You have to have a guy that can sling it and you have to have someone who can catch. I don’t care who you are. The best hands always wins. In Turkey Bowls, there’s going to be a lot of what we call arm punts — passes that just go up there and hang up in there in the air forever and everyone has a jump ball. So you want the person who is going to snap that ball out of the air and out-jump people. There are going to be more arm-punts than actual passes in a turkey bowl for sure.

So how do you test for that?

“You want to see those jungle-cat like reflexes,” he said. “I need to see someone who is willing to separate from the couch to earn the spot on the team. Let’s be clear: The couch is where you want to be on Thanksgiving. The idea is to not move and become one with the sofa, that’s the whole thing.”

The second person you need: “You want a gamer. There’s two things you can do with gamers: (Tell them) ‘I want you to block for a long enough time for me to throw this pass or you go long on every play’ because they’ll do it,” Wingo added. “That way they’ll make sure they’re in the play and if the machine breaks down, the goal-line dive will be there. And that’s important.”

Just look for the people with athletic ability, Jennings said. “Who can catch who can throw — even if you can’t do those things, who’s willing to stand in your lane? Who’s going to be that ‘I can’t do any of that but I can block and you can’t get past me.’ The mentality and the mindset is everything. Everything.”

2. The mind games

“You want to make sure your team never looks as good as you think it is,” Wingo said. “Because you want them to get suckered into the bet. You can’t just pick all the best players. You try to pick one or two people you know you can count on and then a couple of people that you think could pass in game situation and make a contribution.”

3. The people to avoid.

“You don’t want the guy that’s out there to prove that everything that didn’t happen to him wasn’t his fault because you don’t want to be that guy and you don’t want that guy on your team,” Wingo said. “This is a family contest. I want someone who is competitive but I don’t want someone who is going to ruin the holiday for everybody.”

But find the people who care as much as you.

“My wife,” Jennings said, “As much as I love her she puts on this persona that she doesn’t really care about winning or losing — I know that she does — but the fact that she puts that on, it lets me know she will be OK if we were losing and she would say something like ‘it’s just a game’ and I get that but nah everybody wants to win the game. I can’t have that mindset on my team.”

4. So how do you scout the talent?

“Kitchen silverware tossing. Throwing spoons — say ‘hey put this in the dishwasher’ — to see how they react,” Jennings said. “If they get scared or they get afraid or they are calm and collected. If they can see it and kind of jump a little bit and collect themselves and grab it, that’s everything because instinctive reactions are such a big part of the game. What will your response be? Will it be a complete jump and get out of the way? Because if I throw you a football and your head is turned, you’re not really going to put your hands up. You’re going to jump and get out of the way.”

And then there’s other games. “Whether it’s a card game, game of Dominoes, board games. Playing with kids. Everybody wants to play with kids but pending your mindset, my kids know I’m not going to let you beat me. I’m going to see if you’re playing with the kids are you letting them beat you or are you ‘letting them’ beat you — like you’re beating them and you take the brakes off a bit and let them win.”

But no matter what, they both say? Don’t be that guy. You know what they’re talking about.

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