Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - 5 new Vikings GM candidates revealed

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

Matthew Coller talks about 5 new candidates for the Vikings general manager position that were reported on Thursday by ESPN's Adam Schefter and NFL Network's Tom Pelissero. Breaking down each candidate's background and talking about a very clear overall theme. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Fandul. Matthew Collar here. And guess what, folks? It's in a shocking, stunning development. The names of the GM candidates that the Vikings are looking at somehow made it out into the universe. We're going to do a deep dive investigation. We've got federal agents looking right now for who might have leaked this information out to NFL insiders. but we've got it.

We have five more candidates after yesterday we talked about Terence Gray from the Buffalo Bills interviewing or being requested to interview for the Minnesota Vikings Open General Manager position and we've got a bunch more names. And as I go through this, I'm going to go through all of them. You might start to notice a little bit of a trend and we'll get to that and exactly what that means. But there's also plenty of room and plenty of time for. all questions, comments, thoughts, and feelings regarding the Minnesota Vikings.

So you don't have to stick to the GM search. If you've got other thoughts, other takes, fire them in the chat. And after I go through the five candidates, we will fire up the conversation as well. And you can give your thoughts if you have them on some of these candidates. But I think the most interesting thing is what Kevin Seifert had to say about it, which I will read you at the end after we go through each reported candidates. So let's go. All right.

So this is gathered by Sefert, but reported by Tom Pellisero and ESPN's Adam Schaeffer. The external GM candidates are as such. Los Angeles Chargers assistant general manager Chad Alexander, San Francisco assistant general manager RJ Gillen. We talked about Terrence Gray yesterday. He's on the list. Los Angeles Rams assistant GM John McKay. Seattle Assistant GM, Nolan Tesley, or Tisley, Tisley, Tisley, Tisley.

And Tennessee assistant GM Dave Ziegler. Those are your candidates. And already you can kind of go, I'm noticing something here that each one of them is an assistant GM. Wow, you're sharp. You've got it. And that right there is interesting alone, because there is nobody on this list that you're going to find. that they went deep into the weeds. Oh, this person is somebody I didn't expect.

And look, Quasi D'Almento was an assistant GM when he was hired. But as you'll see as we go through this, the diversity in backgrounds does not really exist in this GM search. So let's start out with first, Chad Alexander from the Los Angeles Chargers. His background, he was with the Baltimore Ravens from 2009 to 2018 was the assistant. director of player personnel in Baltimore from 2009 to 2019. Then he worked for the Jets as a director of player personnel from 2019 to 2023 and then hired by the Chargers.

When someone in the Ravens front office, Joe Horitz, went to the Chargers. He brought Chad Alexander with him. So a deep background in the player personnel, in the scouting, and that is going to become a very serious trend as we go through this. Next candidate comes from San Francisco, R.J. Gillen, he is the assistant GM, but he started as an assistant scout in 2015, became director of player personnel 2021 and was promoted to director of player personnel after that. Okay, here's one thing that I noticed in looking this up. Pro personnel and player personnel are two different jobs. So pro personnel is just on the pro side. So that would be free agent. current players, and player personnel is everybody.

So if it looks the same to you, squint, because you will see the difference. And player personnel is above pro personnel, just to make that clear. So Gillen, though, has only become an assistant general manager within the last year. So he's a little bit more green than some of the other candidates. John McKay of the Los Angeles Rams, he was a scouting assistant in 2016, worked his way up to director of pro scouting in 2021, named assistant general manager in 2025. And if you are doing the math correctly in your head, worked with Kevin O'Connell when he was with the Rams in 2021.

Dave Ziegler was actually a general manager. So he started with the Broncos in 2010, became the what was called in an article. I was reading the Defecto GM of the New England Patriots in 2020, 2020. 2021 as the Patriots were kind of trying to rebuild. And then he ends up getting a GM job with the Raiders. And that did not work out very long because the head coach of the Raiders was Josh McDaniels. And we know how that goes. It goes very short when Josh McDaniels is your head coach.

And so he was out and did a little work with New Orleans and then has been brought into the Tennessee Titans front office as their assistant general manager. So this is a Patriot Way candidate who worked with them for a very long time, earned the trust of Bill Belichick from 2013 to 2021 and is the only person on the list with previous general manager experience, albeit not for a very long time. But I did text somebody in the know with the Raiders who told me railroaded was the word. Just railroaded Josh McDaniels blew everything up. But I think people out there in Las Vegas believe, that Dave Ziegler could do a good job, he just never got the chance because of, yeah,

Josh McDaniels. So Nolan Teasley is the last one on our list. He is from the Seattle Seahawks. He came up in the scouting world. You're catching on, right? In 2013 and then was a scout for three years, got bumped up to director of pro personnel and has been the assistant general manager of the Seattle Seahawks for the last two years. So let's talk about Seifert's takeaway and then my takeaway from this group of GM candidates.

And Ben Gessling reported that there is not expected to be more. So this is the people that they're looking at along with internal candidates. And if you've got takes or opinions, like feel free to jump in and share them on any of these people or organizations they come from. Because that's what I kind of want to focus on when we go back and, you know, kind of have a final take here. but here's what Seifert had to say on ESPN. He said, quote, my big takeaway is that the Vikings are not looking to hire some general manager who would come in with a lot of juice and be the alpha leader of the entire organization and have the authority to overhaul the whole front office if you wanted to.

They are looking for someone to fit in. So that's the way that Seifert interpreted this GM search. But I want to look at it in a slightly, different way and kind of the same way. Number one, hey, do you think that they're focused on scouting? Do you think that they're focused on the draft for the next GM hire since every single one of these guys has basically the same path to their assistant GM positions? I don't think that that is the wrong thing to do. It just stands out that each one of them, if I just swapped names, there was one time as I was making the little graphics where I was like, wait, which guy is this?

Do I, do I, did I have the, because all the paths looked exactly the same. It all went from scouting to player personnel to pro personnel or the opposite. And then up to AGM. And that's where they sit now in kind of the catbird seat to be the next group of people that become general managers in the NFL. Now, when you look at who's been interviewed recently, when you look at how, you look at hot, hot candidates for general manager. My friend Ben Standig, who covers the commanders,

he does a thing where he pulls a bunch of agents. And he asked agents, hey, who's the next GM that's upcoming? And Tiesley's name was on that. And so was Terrence Gray. So these are people who are not a shock, not where the heck did they find this guy? Like, it's, they picked the best organizations and they picked the AGMs who, traveled the same path that most general managers tend to travel through the same ladder that they climb from you got to be a really good scout you got to work your tail off then you got to impress

people in your front office and then you get promoted and then you get promoted and then you reach a point where you actually can't get promoted anymore and then you go work for some other team and that's how this is gone uh so it's clear that what they want is what seafurt is is describing, which is mostly inexperienced people. I would even say Dave Ziegler with his two years of GM experience. There's essentially no experience being a general manager on this entire list. So they're not bringing in somebody from the past who has run a team before and saying, it is your show, take over the Minnesota Vikings.

It's much more going to be a first time, if they go outside the building here, a first time general manager who is learning on the job a bit, but these are guys who have been in front offices for a long time working under good general managers who know the ropes and who have come up in this world the same way as everybody else who works there. So if you hire a long time scout who is an AGM and he comes into a building with a bunch of people who are first scouts, then college directors, then whatever, currently, and some of them maybe have settled into their positions and like them, and maybe some of them are on their way up, they understand the same language as the person who is going to lead the Minnesota Vikings,

unless they go with Rob Brzynski, who does have a different background in the salary cap. But so, so I think that the thing that we were talking about, the mystery box, would you go with a candidate that is going to clear out a front office that's going to be the new czar, new sheriff in town, we're changing the whole Vikings organization. It doesn't look like it. It looks like it's going to be a lot of status quo with a new leader whose job is going to be to connect with these people, which they'll probably do better than Quasi Adafel Menta because they come from the same path and they come from the same background.

And Ziegler played football and maybe some of the other guys did. I don't know. But they, you know, they came from the scouting. They speak the lingo. go. So, you know, I think that if you're looking to keep the train going in the same direction where you have powerful coaches on offense and defense and a front office full of people that the Wilf's clearly like a lot, then whichever one of these candidates goes in there, I mean, they all have a background that would suggest that they should be just fine in doing so. Now, I mean,

who knows in terms of how it really works when they get there, but just a background. There's nothing that what you'd say, is this really going to work? Uh, because all their backgrounds are basically the same. And it's the most traditional way to do it. Um, but I think that there's some other takeaways we can work with outside of just, well, it doesn't look like the bold and the, hey, what if, what if they just blow this whole thing up and go total way different. I don't, I think from their perspective, they've had three of the last four seasons.

be winning years overall. Nine and eight isn't spectacular, but it's still a winning season. And 14 wins, 13 wins, and they must feel like with Flores and O'Connell in place and the front office that has Rob Brasinski and a number of other people that have been there a long time,

many of them dating back to when the Vikings built a team that went to the NFC championship, that the ownership feels like, this is the group that we want and we just want the right leader to take us into the future. I don't think that it's necessarily the wrong plan. It certainly is not the bold plan. Like the way that we've talked about Caleb Banks, it's like the total opposite. This is the drafting Dylan Thineman of GM plans, which is every one of them has a great

resume and every one of them looks extremely qualified and nobody comes. from any sort of different background of like the cap or it doesn't even have to be an analytics person. I even mean salary cap or something else from, you know, the business side or anything else like that. It's like they are going scouting. But there is some things that we can glean. Number one is they have struggled so much. It's going to be breaking news to all of you in the draft. And when Rob said this offseason that he believes in building through the draft, I think that it's time for the Vikings organization to start believing in building through the draft because to understand why they were so bad at the draft under Quasi Adafel Menta

really takes a very long explanation. But it kind of goes back to Rick. At the end of Rick's time, they were also bad at drafting. They got Jefferson, they got Derisaw and Mattelis and Bynum, and not a whole heck of a lot else during that entire time. But when Quasi Dauphalmensa gets here, he tries to take a big swing in the draft by trading down to fill every position of need, totally fails. And then they just decide the drafts is not worth it for them.

So they draft first rounders and then the rest just get traded for Cam Acres and others. You know, T.J. Hawkinson is a pretty good player to trade for. But even then, like you're making in 2022, you're making a trade that sacrifices a second round draft pick. They made big sacrifices to get individual players to try to fill holes when they were winning, whether it's the 13 win season or if it's the 14 win season, which made sense at the time because you just lost Christian Darrasaw, but there's some more draft capital that goes out the window.

And they didn't do a darn thing to get compensatory draft picks. If you look at how many compensatory draft picks they've had, and this is one of the reasons that I would kind of like tear my hair out when people would be asking, do we get a compick for that guy? Like, look, you don't get a compick for anything, okay? Ever. Not with this, not with this front office. Unless it's Sam Darnel, which I don't think a Sam Darnel for a third now looks like a good

trade. But going the route of a bunch of people who have been scouts, really it signals strongly. The next build that we have is going to be through the draft. And I noticed something interesting the other day that now the Harrison Smith is not on the team currently. It probably was altered a little bit by that. But when you look at average age, my friend Ian Hartitz tweeted out about the average age of every team, suddenly the Vikings are creeping up that list. And that's even with Andrew DePaula still, which they should take long snappers out of your average age.

But without Harrison Smith, without Jonathan Grenard, suddenly. you start to look and go, you know what? That's actually not as old of a team as it looked like just a year ago. They still have veterans. They still have contracts that are coming up. But we are very close to this actually being a young team. If a couple of guys exit after this year and maybe turn into compensatory draft picks or whatever after this year, I guess some of them can't turn into comp picks just for the record,

Hockinson and Jones. But someone like Brian O'Neill, Andrew Van Ging. I don't think Ken either because his contract has void years, but whatever. The point just being that they have some veteran players that could be on their way out and they know that Rob Brzynski has set them up with cap space and he has set them up with draft capital because of the Jonathan Grinard trade. And if they go through this season and don't give away a bunch of draft picks to acquire players, they'll have a fairly good amount of draft capital and they could potentially get more

depending on what happens. So knowing that there is a rebuilding process that's going to have to happen, it's not likely to be a tanking process. It's likely to be a rebuilding on the fly process. But what does that take? That takes good scouting and good process in the draft and accumulating the assets, smart decisions in free agency. And you can quickly rebuild in the NFL as we saw.

The Vikings went a dip in 2023 and ripe. back to having a very good roster in 2024. So it can happen, uh, but it's going to have to happen through the draft, especially if you sign Kyler Murray to an extension. And it feels pretty clear with what they did here that they are looking at we want evaluators. We want people who know how to manage the room and get the most out of the scouting department and hit on those players in the draft because that's gold.

If you hit on players in the draft, that's gold. There's really only a couple of ways to build this thing. I mean, one is through some trades. You can do that every once in a while. And you can win trades these days because teams get against the salary cap or whatever. There's sprinkling of free agency, but very rarely do you have a 2024 where you just go out and get a million players in free agency. And then there's hitting on those draft picks.

and that's what it looks like they're aiming to do. But when we go through the organizations, this was the other thing that stood out to me. When we go through the organizations that these folks have come from, there is a lot of, of course, success. But when you look at the organizations that do things on a kind of a next level, like not just your typical run-of-the-mill franchise who is doing the same stuff they've always done, but teams that we generally think of like, oh, man, they made another good move in that franchise. Philadelphia is not included here, but everybody else that we think of that way is represented.

So the Chargers have the Baltimore connection. And Baltimore for a very long time was their front office ahead of the game. I mean, they were the ones. They were adopting. I mean, I look at it through a data lens, of course, but they were adopting certain things. along the data route way before other teams were. And they have consistently managed free agency really well. They've let players go at the right time.

They haven't overpaid people. They've developed players really well. And until, I mean, really last year, they just consistently had good defense after good defense after good defense, even if Lamar is holding up one side of that. But they were always good at finding that one extra free agent to help or draft picks or whatever. They did draft, you know, Kyle Hamilton.

But, you know, you go through their history for the last decade and a half. The Baltimore Ravens have been at the front of the line for some of the smartest moves and one of the best run franchises in the NFL. The Los Angeles Rams, do you even need to say it? And I know the thing is, they went full Rams. But the idea of going full Rams was that they would, screw themselves over so mightily aiming for that Super Bowl and ultimately attaining it that we wouldn't even hear of the Rams ever again. They would just be off into obscurity after they

won that Super Bowl. It would all fall apart. And it didn't. And I know Sean McVeigh and less need have worked really well together. But John McKay has been a part of that in that process of rebuilding and how did they do it? Well, they hit on draft picks, of course. They made good decisions in the draft. They made good free agency decisions. They rebuilt around a veteran quarterback. And when you think about Matthew Stafford, it's what makes it really interesting is that Matthew Stafford was considered not quite Kyler Murrayish, but kind of.

Like he had some major upside seasons, but he hadn't one in the playoffs. He had a losing record in Detroit. Detroit was a terrible franchise. And when he did have his good years, they were very good. and he was talked about, hey, maybe Matthew Stafford's in contention for MVP, but they never quite had enough, whether it was coaching and hiring Matt Patricia, or whether it was defense when they had good offenses or whatever it might have been. Something was kind of always holding him back.

And then he gets to the Rams, it takes off to the next level. There's a big difference there in height and weight and arm strength and stuff. But it's kind of a similar background of a very high draft pick who was with a bad organization that got things turned around in a good organization, but only in part because they made a lot of really good decisions. When you look at their roster, you have, you know, Cam Curl comes to mind for me as not a guy who was drafted in the first round. You know, and you can bring up the Jaredverse thing, but they've built an entire D-line after Aaron Donald retiring, it felt like that should have been it, right? Like, oh, Aaron Donald's done. Their D-line's going to fall apart, but, you know,

Kobe Turner and other guys up front who have turned into really good players for them. A lot of it is through the draft. And then they've made some very smart decisions elsewhere like going to get Devante Adams, which was a great move for them last year. And it has to be paired with great coaching and it has to be paired with great quarterback play or it's going to fail. But they've rebuilt an offensive line a couple of times. Like they just have very good process.

They always seem like they're a little bit ahead of the game. And the Seattle Seahawks are kind of the same way now. But I think that we didn't give the Seahawks enough credit because they didn't win much in the playoffs with Gino Smith. But the thing to focus on with the Seattle Seahawks is that it took years and it was a process. It was slow. It was, all right, we got rid of Russ. And then they got the, you know, the high draft pick from Russ, which was really helpful for them. but Gino Smith comes in and they're just adding pieces, adding pieces, adding draft picks and building it, building it and building it until it becomes this behemoth that no one could beat last year with Sam Darnold in the mix.

And of course, they made the really right decision to move on from Gino at the right time, bring in Sam Darnold. But you look at that whole roster, they built the offensive line on physicality, ability to run the football, Gray's able. comes in and starts plowing people right away. They built a fast, super athletic defense that at the right time, here's DeMarcus Lawrence. At the right time, here's Leonard Williams. And piece by piece. And what I was thinking about a lot today was just about how, you know, I mentioned that power rankings thing yesterday, how it's really in the NFC, it's a roster building contest.

Because everybody, and I'll include the Vikings in this, I don't know how Kyler is going to play, but he's a good quarterback. Everybody's got good quarterbacks in the NFC. I mean, other than the Cardinals, look around and find me one other quarterback that you would say, oh, my gosh, it's awful. Probably Atlanta is the only other one. Tua has some history, but that's the only other one. I mean, Bryce is pretty mid.

But aside from that, a lot of good quarterbacks, and we don't know what Tyler Shuck yet, the NFC South shouldn't count for any conversation. But the point is that most quarterbacks, the NFC, are pretty good. But there's no Tom Brady, there's no Patrick Mahomes, there's no Josh Allen in this conference. It's a roster building contest. So here's the Seahawks, the Rams represented and the Chargers on the AFC side, but they built an extremely good roster around Justin Herbert and had it stayed healthy. Who knows they could have been the team in the Super Bowl.

All of the teams that the Vikings are looking at have very strong top to bottom rosters, not just, well, hey, they kind of latched on to a quarter. quarterback or something like that. So that really stands out San Francisco. They have very much their own way of doing things. But San Francisco has been ahead of the game with roster building for a long time. They have not drafted well recently because they've had so much success, I guess. And then, you know, they seem to have their own view on the draft.

That's who knows about some of the recent draft picks. But, you know, them building free agents and, you know, through trades where they get McCaffrey and they get Trent Williams and, you know, things like that. So I think what you have here is a lot of teams represented that tend to be at the front of the line, not just in, oh, they won, but also intangible stuff that you can point to of this team has a very good way of going about things through the draft or how they've built or whether it's just being patient over multiple years, knowing that you really can't just go kind of all in at one point. it usually takes several seasons worth of good drafting and free agent decisions in order to get there. So now, I mean, the expectation really should be as we get to the, you know, kind of the whole point here is the expectation should really be that the Vikings bring in someone who will stick to mostly the course and is going to build methodically.

And I said yesterday as we look at these candidates, I said when it comes to, the Terrence Gray, what's the edge? And then it turns out that every other candidate has the same exact background. So I could give the same sort of speech. Like, what's the edge? So what's the edge that you get from any one of these people? And I think that the edge is that their organizations have largely been extremely functional. And the only wildcard there is Dave Ziegler. Dave Ziegler having been a GM before for a dysfunctional franchise, but having come from the Patriot way, which at a certain time looked really, really smart, and then at a certain time looked not as smart after Tom Brady left. But I think we would also agree that the Patriots

built a lot of good rosters and were ahead of their time once upon a time. Like, the Patriots were a team that were getting rid of players before they fell off when other teams were signing their veteran players and letting them decline, right? That's something Belichick did. really well. I think Belichick in that front office was good at identifying players who fit the type of scheme. Remember how Jamie Collins was good as a Patriot and then he would go somewhere else and he wasn't good and he'd come back to the Patriots? I think it happened like twice because Jamie Collins was a good fit there. And I think that there's some similarity there with this. And I don't know what Brian Flores connection is either, but that's noticeable here where you have a Patriot, Brian Flores,

Brian Flores came up in the Patriot Way. You have a RAM, Kevin O'Connell. Are we putting two and two together that this is going to be extremely collaborative with the coaches, which I think both coaches are very, very good at identifying talent. Kevin O'Connell wanted Donovan Jackson and Jordan Addison for his offense and T.J. Hawkinson and all of them have been really good fits. Even, you know, Jordan Mason last year coming into this offense. So the players they've added have been very, very,

effective. It hasn't just been Justin Jefferson. It's been an overhaul of a lot of positions on the offense that has worked out. And then, I mean, you don't even have to explain defensively how much Brian Flores has completely reworked this defense in his vision. So there's some of my thoughts on the Vikings' names being released now or, you know, at least told to Tom Pilsero and I shouldn't say released. because the Vikings said we won't be releasing names, but the agents for these GM candidates went, okay, well, we'll take care of that for you.

We'll make sure that our guy's name is out in the news cycle. But anyway, so thoughts, thoughts and feelings. And I'm going to throw a kind of a curveball fan duel question of the day at you. If, like, think about it from a GM perspective, you're going to come in, whoever this is, whether it's Chad or Terrence, or whatever, Dave, whichever guy comes in, they're going to start looking at the future, right? So at this time next year, right now the Vikings over under is eight and a half.

We've talked about that a lot. Like, it's a very typical Vikings over under and they're plus 600 to win the division. What is it going to be next year at this time when next offseason is over under the new GM? This is a hard one to answer, but I'm curious like about you guys trying to look a year in the to what the new GM might do and what his approach might be. And we can talk about that. So, okay, well, let's get into your questions, comments, thoughts, feelings, takeaways, whatever is on your mind.

And don't be afraid to change the subject, like to something else with the team or the NFL. I'm totally fine with that. If you're just joining for the first time or whatever, it's a very wide open chat. and sometimes it gets a little weird. So, uh, Joker starts us off with, uh, what edge should they be looking for in the next candidate? How far opposite of Quasi, uh, will they want the next guy to be?

I think we're seeing how far opposite of Quasi they want the next guy to be. And that is extremely opposite. I mean, this is, this is as traditional as it comes. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Uh, I mean, this is, this is as traditional as it comes. Uh, I don't think. I tend to myself lean toward a little bit of outside the box thinking, but I'll tell you what I learned from Quasi Adaflmenza is that if you go into a place

where you don't necessarily speak the language and you're put in charge immediately, it's a tough road to get everybody to buy in. And Quasi, I think, really struggle with that. Now, if we look at the accumulation of what they did, they got a lot of good players in here, especially free agency and trades, a lot of good players. And they won a fair number of games for a team that didn't have a franchise quarterback. So they settled on a lot of things that ended up working. But the, the way that they jived or gelled together, clearly was not that great or

Quasi Adolfo Menza would be here still. So I think that the, the scouting brain, the pro personnel, player personnel brain is always thinking how can we get the best evaluations now that might be from someone who comes from the rams someone who comes from baltimore those are forward thinking data teams like data driven type of teams that make their decisions and uh not every decision is going to be loved by the analytics community but they make informed decisions and they have good process uh you know and things like that they've hired a lot of analytics people and they want to be ahead of the game like those are franchises that take a lot of pride in being at the front of the line with that stuff.

And once upon a time, that was Belichick in New England. So you can be forward thinking and have a scouting background. Like, you don't have to just be a dinosaur. And I notice also that there isn't anybody on this list who's like 73. R.J. Gillen has very nice hair. And I was a little bit annoyed. I'm like, oh, man, you know, he's got, uh, he doesn't even have the regressing hair line. yet. So, you know, these are mostly, and I don't want to say younger as in there all, like,

very young, but we don't have anybody who's like 62 in this list. These are all people who have kind of been up and coming into this role, which means that they will have to lean on a lot of people who are experienced. They will have to collaborate with a lot of people who are experienced if any of them get hired. But I think the edge is bringing over the things that have worked from their previous employer because the other thing I noticed too is that every single one of these guys spent a very long time with somewhere you know the every single one of them it was like here's you know 15 years with this team or 10 years with this team or whatever it might be all of them were with one team for a great deal of time that was successful so it's not somebody

that's bounced from this front office to that front office or whatever it's coming from franchises that have built teams that have succeeded kind of from top to bottom. And even with Baltimore or Seattle or Los Angeles, they've had to build and build again. I would even say that for San Francisco where they got there like San Francisco in 2019. Not a lot of the team is left by 2023 when they get there again, including the quarterback. So, and really a lot of them have dealt with the quarterback stuff too, like whether it's a big quarterback contract or if it's drafting a quarterback or making a big trade for Matthew Stafford or whatever or changing from Gino Smith to Sam Darnold. So I think that the edge is in the

experience with the franchise that these guys are coming from. That would be where I would go first with that, I think. Let's see. Bryson says, I know the GM searches the main story, but now since the draft, but please tell me, sell me on Jacobi Top. I don't like the pick at all, not athletic and can't tackle well. Well, one thing is always to start with when it comes to a draft pick is we just don't really know how anybody is going to work out. There are a lot of players in the past that we've said, hmm, you know, I, I'm not sure what they saw in that guy that have worked out.

And there are ones that looked like short things that haven't. So on draft day, we never really know. That's a good place to begin. The other part would be that Jacoby Thomas, well, he did miss a lot of tackles. I think one of the reasons he missed a lot of tackles was because he had a lot of times where he's flying downhill, trying to make plays. And we see this a lot sometimes with draft prospects, like, oh, the guy can't tackle. He had this, you know, number of miss tackles because he's around the ball a lot.

I think that would be the explanation and you don't always get it. But he's also been a ball hawk. I mean, he had five interceptions. He was a playmaker. I think that what they're looking for and I remember going through this with someone else. Maybe it was Mackay Blackman. We've sort of done it with Ty Felton a little bit.

Back end of the third round draft pick is somebody you're kind of taking a guess on based on something. And I think what they like from him is his character. And I don't just mean he's a great guy that would marry your daughter. I mean like his mind. He's got a mind for the game. And they believe that seeing it and reacting to it is the best. best skill that a safety can have.

That's why they drafted Jacoby Thomas. And if you watch a lot of his interceptions and big plays, that's what it is. It's just IDing stuff and then attacking the football and making plays. So I think that that's what they liked. And they felt like in this defense, that's what you're going to have to do, that being a safety, I mean, we know this, right? Like, what was Anthony Harris's 40? What was, I think Sadejo was pretty fast, but what was, what's Cambinum's 40?

It's probably like a four or six. So it's read and react over necessarily raw tools. But that one certainly was a reach by a lot of people. And his past beyond just this year at Miami was not exceptional. So I'm not telling you it's going to be the next great draft pick in Vikings history. It's just that we've kind of seen this type of player succeed before. So I wouldn't be shocked if it worked out again. Alex, good to see you, buddy.

can you elaborate on Albert Breer's latest tweet suggesting the Vikings copy the Lions and Rams front office structure with Rob and a new hire? So it's possible that they are they maybe taking old purple insider's idea here from weeks ago or maybe not. I don't know. But it was it was something that I thought of that, you know, quite a while back, of, hey, why not have Rob Brzynski be the president of football ops, and then below him is the general manager and the head coach, and he manages them. And then the head coach manages everybody else.

And it's Rob who speaks directly to ownership. Now, at the owner's meetings, I asked Mark Wilf directly, are you going to change the structure? And his answer was no. In fact, let me get it for you because Sefer actually tweeted that, answer not too long ago. And, you know, Sefer didn't give me credit for a great question. Terrible. Um, I'm joking. Okay. So here's the answer. So I asked him, hey, would you consider like a president of football ops, then GM? And Mark Wilf said, I think we're going to stick to the way we've done it.

It's just a matter of getting the right person. So I, I like that idea. And if they change their mind and Mark decides, hey, actually, that's a good idea to do, then I would be for it. Because I think that Rob Brzynsinski is really valuable as someone who knows everyone in that front office. And also, we saw this year that, you know, he put the guardrails on in a very good way and managed assets in a very good way. And I think if you have kind of the two sides of things really working closely together of someone who understands asset management extremely well and Rob Brzezinski and showed that this offseason with someone who understands evaluation extremely well and getting to the right conclusions with draft boards,

with free agent decisions, with trades, but getting the right evaluations of those players, and that's how it can come together. I think that that could be a very good structure. So I'm for it. And I agree with Albert that that's a good idea. It's just that, you know, Mark Wilf said that that's what they weren't going to do. So maybe they'll change their mind. fine.

The magic scientist definitely need to poach from Seattle. Well, you know, I know that he has had a really good reputation as somebody that's rising in this side and was expected to become a GM. At some point, your team wins the Super Bowl. It's like, hey, people from the Chiefs and the Eagles, like they get hired by other teams, right? Because they won the Super Bowl and they're at the top of the mountain. So, I mean, look, when we go to Seattle's. process, it was all about evaluation and a lot of their draft picks were about fit with what they wanted to be and the identity that they wanted to build with.

It felt like this Vikings draft got criticized for them drafting for fit. But I mean, my thought was, I'm not saying they had the best draft of all time, but, you know, my thought was, well, it kind of makes sense to get players that you feel like are going to fit because look what happened to the 2021 draft and the 2022 draft. when it was either Rick's players that didn't fit, they got rid of all those guys. And then in 2022, when Flores comes in, he gets rid of all those guys. So you need players that your coaches believe fit with their systems. And I think the Seahawks probably did this better than anybody else in the entire NFL.

William says names for GM candidates are okay, but no real surprise rookie class. And their success is the real story. we need to consider. Well, there definitely wasn't any surprise. No, there definitely wasn't. Or do you mean, or is that like two different things? But when it comes to like the group of GMs that we're talking about or potential GMs, there was no real total shock.

No, like, really, they're interviewing that person. There wasn't some GM that worked for a team for 20 years, which never happens, by the way. Isn't that odd that if you get your one shot as GM, you're probably not coming back from it. There's been a few who have, but Tom Telesco, but it doesn't happen too much. So even the fact that Dave Ziegler could be on the list, he definitely got a screw job when it came to Las Vegas.

And I think people were very surprised when he was let go by the Raiders, but he was tied to Josh McDaniels and they just wanted to blow that whole thing up. I don't think that that destroys his chance to, be here, but it shows you what a rarity that it really is, that there are, you know, a guy gets even a second chance of being a GM. So whoever comes in will likely be very inexperienced. Hans, if I'm saying that wrong, then let me know. I think it's funny that the Vikings thought they could keep the candidates a secret.

I don't think they did. They just, they were like, we're not going to announce it. We're not going to tell the world. but yeah, I mean, it was going to get out. Every one of these guys has agents and every one of these guys' agents wants their name to be out. So yeah, it wasn't going to stay a secret. That's why we kind of snarked about it like, let's just wait. And then we'll get the names, I promise.

I don't have to go hunting. They'll come to us. Joker, if they let the Seahawks guy ask any questions, the first one has to be, what the heck were you guys thinking with Sam Darnold? Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. But look, they were at the same. team that was able to manage a situation where they were paying a quarterback. And regardless of, you know, how that worked out and it worked out very much on the favor of

the Seattle Seahawks, they were a team that did something bold. If you go back and look at the reactions to them moving on from Gino Smith, there were a lot of people that melted over that. A lot of people couldn't believe they were moving on from Gino Smith. What? It's not it's not Gino's fault. they didn't win. They never built him an offensive line, et cetera, et cetera. And they just decided Gino was not worth the dollars that he was asking for. And they made a pretty bold move after he

had won 10 games the previous season to move on from him and go get Sam Darnold. And a lot of that had to be the confidence in the team that they were able to build around him.