Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - A draft analytics roundtable with Tej Seth and Eric Eager

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Matthew Coller is joined by two of the top analytics analysts in football to discuss how we should use stats to look at the QB position Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and from Sumer Sports, both Tej Seth and Eric Eager joining me for a special episode where we dive deep into what the analytics say about the NFL draft. So we'll call it our analytics roundtable here. Tej, great to have you. Eric, great to have you back on the show. I want to start, you guys will never believe where I want to begin this conversation, with quarterbacks.

Because I think that quarterbacks are by far the hardest position to evaluate using statistics because so many other things impact them. If it's a defensive tackle, it's him versus the guard over and over and over again. And you can look at those numbers and I think that they project pretty well. But Tej, why don't you

start with this? What is the biggest challenge in your mind of trying to figure out which quarterback statistics matter when we're trying to solve this problem? Who's going to be good in the NFL? Quarterback statistics have a lot of variability going from college to pro. And we usually default to something like the consensus big board when looking at quarterbacks where you have to trust the evaluation of multiple people watching the film on these quarterbacks, looking at the tools that they have to kind of project how they're going to do in the NFL. When you look at this class in particular, a lot of the things that we think matter and can translate something like completion percentage over expected to measure

accuracy, pressure to sack rate to measure how good they are at avoiding sacks. The top quarterbacks in this class, whether you talk about Caleb Williams, Drake May, Jaden Daniels, they didn't rank that highly in those metrics last season. They all took a decent amount of sacks. Someone like Drake May's accuracy was a little bit lower than what you would want. So you're really trying to balance what some of these people who really can dive into the film

and evaluate these quarterbacks think with what some of the metrics are saying. And there's a pretty big disparity this year from both sides of those things. And that's very interesting to me too, Eric, because you've talked a lot about this pressure to sack ratio as's very interesting to me too, Eric, because you've talked a lot about this pressure to sack ratio as it pertains to Jaden Daniels, but Drake Mays is not perfect either. And yet when you pull up Jaden Daniels box score stats, they are unbelievable.

And I will say that most of the quarterbacks, when we go back and look who succeeded, they usually do have good box score stats. They should, right? Because they're the best quarterbacks when we go back and look who succeeded they usually do have good box score stats they should right because they're the best quarterbacks in college football how do we weigh when we look at touchdowns interceptions completion percentage things that we've wanted to throw out in the past but i think still matter with some of these underlying stats without overvaluing one particular sort of quote analytics statistic yeah it's a really good question I I think that what I what where analytics can kind of bring a lot of context is in finding you know the answers to hidden questions of the past which can come and

help us try to answer future questions like I I think about Justin Fields. Taze wrote a really awesome article while he was my intern at PFF about completion percentage or accuracy, actually, because PFF collects whether the ball was caught or not, but also whether it was accurate. Accuracy over-expected by college quarterbacks. And Justin Fields had the best mark of anybody in that PFF era. Now the PFF era was relatively thin at the time. And we don't go back and automatically say like completion percentage or accuracy over

expected is a terrible way to measure quarterback play. It's more, we go back and say, Justin Fields hasn't been a, uh, a productive NFL quarterback relative to his draft slot. Why? And you look back, it's like, well, the pressure to sack ratio for, for Justin Fields, uh, was not great in college and it didn't get any better in the pros. And when he was in college, he had like twin towers protecting him. He had all these things working for him. And okay. So then that, that begs the question, right? And then we go

back in time and look at historical quarterbacks. Dan Marino led the NFL for seven straight years coming out of college in sack avoidance percentage. And we didn't have the great data back then. So we could always only go by sacks for drop back. Randall Cunningham, on the other hand, who Vikings fans may know for the 1998 year where he was basically the MVP of the league, Randall Cunningham led the league in percentage of dropbacks that were sacks in five out of his first six years, healthy years as a starting quarterback. And so now you're starting to get a clue because Randall Cunningham didn't win more than 11 games as a starter until he went to Minnesota. Well, what happened in Minnesota? He had Todd Stussy, Randall McDaniel, Jeff Christie, David Dixon, Corey Stringer, four pro bowlers. So when it comes to drafting Jaden Daniels and retroactively, when it comes to drafting

Justin Fields, what it means is not that you have to eliminate these players from the discussion. What it means is you have to have your eyes wide open about what it's going to take for those players to succeed. What it took for Randall to succeed in Minnesota was three great wide receivers, an offensive line full of four pro bowlers, and a head coach who was going to event or an offensive coordinator who was eventually going to go on and be a head coach who won a Super Bowl in Baltimore and Brian Billick. So when I look at Caleb Williams, Drake May, Jaden Daniels, all quarterbacks who have struggled in a statistic that matters right and it's sticky it all it means is when i draft jayden daniels i have to say i also need to build an offensive line because i know that this thing's going to it's going to not be it's not going to change right whereas if i draft josh allen for the 2017 buffalo bill 2018 buffalo, we know that deep ball accuracy is not all that stable.

It's mostly a wide receiver statistic. So if I bring in Stephon Diggs and John Brown into the mix in Buffalo, I can change that statistic for him. I probably can't change pressure to sack ratio. So what I can do is change pressure and change that statistic. So again, it's all this work can come in and not eliminate players, but it can, it can contextualize the environment in which this player is going to have success. And that makes our ability to draft these players a little bit better than normal. I love how Tej was smiling politely through the Dan Marino and Randall Cunningham portion of this. And, uh, I wasn't born when Dan, you and me, Matt, we're not alive the Dan Marino and Randall Cunningham portion of this. And I wasn't born when Dan, you and me, Matt, we're not alive when Dan Marino was a rookie either.

So like, it's still, it's a blast from the past, but yes. But I did see him hobble around post the Achilles injury and still not get sacked. So there is something intrinsic about this with certain quarterbacks. And this is where now Vikings fans, if the Vikings draft Bo Nix are not going to be pleased. I think they're going to say, what the heck, weren't we supposed to trade up and get the best quarterbacks in this draft? But there is a part of me that's very intrigued by Bo Nix, even though I don't see super high end skills because this man never got

sacked at Oregon. And he also got rid of the ball quickly. So it wasn't just, oh, he had this offensive line. He stood back there and stood back there. He played in rhythm and with timing in college, which you don't always see because the edge rushers aren't great. The blitzes aren't as intricate. And so there's not as much pressure generally on these quarterbacks, but I wonder, Tage, what you think about the different environments. So you have such different teams between Michigan with J.J. McCarthy, and he's younger as well, and North Carolina, which had a miserable roster around Drake May. So a question I think we have to try to answer is how do you factor what was helping J.J. McCarthy, what was working against Drake May? Starting with J.J.

McCarthy, there is probably some signal in the volume at which he was used on Michigan's roster. You can look back at past Jim Harbaugh teams and kind of see how much they like to rely on the run. But if you had a truly transcendent quarterback, you'd probably want to lean into him a little bit more than Michigan actually did. Now, with all that saying, when J.J. McCarthy was asked to do stuff, he performed pretty well. He was very effective. He was able to do a lot of things. You think about the final drive against Alabama, where he could take Michigan down the field and put that game into overtime. I think he still performed well, even despite the volume being pretty low. But like you said, the supporting cast was there. You had a top five offensive line

in the country, and you had a pretty good scheme that was put in place to really maximize his skill sets. I think when you look at the Vikings, you have the weapons and you also have the scheme. So it's a little bit easier to project JJ McCarthy onto a team like the Vikings than it is like a team like the Patriots. I think Bo Nix is also similar in that regard, where he played in an offense where his average up the target was really low. His time to throw was really low. And it was a lot of getting the ball out quickly, like you brought up, and getting the ball into his playmakers' hands.

So I think that's also something that's a little bit more translatable to the type of system that the Vikings want to run. Eric, do you have a take on the age issue with the quarterbacks? Because I asked Kweisi Adafo-Mensah this at some point in the many times we've interviewed him over the off season. And he said that with other positions, he factors it more, but with quarterback, it's maybe a little bit less. And I think that's one hard to project growth. I mean, the one thing you could say for JJ McCarthy is if he played for two or three more years and then got in Oregon's offense, what would his statistics be like?

That's something you're trying to project out. At the same time, I can already see the growth of Michael Penix Jr. I can already see the growth of Bo Nix, where there's no guarantee that J.J. McCarthy or Drake may ever get to that point where they're playing as dominant as those two other quarterbacks. Yeah, I mean, Damon Arnett was the classic one where the Raiders took him and he was like a 23-year-old corner. And you're thinking like, well, why does it matter? It's like, well, if you have the scars and the warts of being a fifth year corner in the big 10, like you're of course going to be a little bit better than somebody who's just coming out of high school. And that like in those more physical positions, age does matter because you're sort of evaluating people at different levels. And I think quarterback's a little bit different

because the game of quarterback is not, you're not evaluating them physically. Like, let's be honest. Like most of these guys, you know, and this is where I think Tej and I would both give credit to, even though we're analytics people, we both give credit to the film people. There is like, there is an element of the Drake May, the Josh Allen,

the Patrick Mahomes, where when the guy has it physically, I'm just going to give it, give it to him a little bit more on, on the scale, because most of these quarterbacks now you are just, you're dealing with guys who have it from a physical standpoint. And then you have the guys who are more like robot type guys, like Justin Herbert, Mahomes, Allen. Those guys get an extra boost. But for quarterbacks, all these guys can hack it physically. It's all about mentalness now and the processing and all that kind of stuff. And while I do think that being younger and being able to pick up the game

is obviously a benefit, I don't see as big of a able to pick up the game is obviously a benefit. I don't see as big of a negative to having figured it out later. Like there's, and there's a ton of like a research suggesting that like late bloomers do a pretty good job in like knowledge work and stuff like that. And football is very much a knowledge work game when it comes to quarterback, your man, your management. So I, I agree with Casey. I don't really have a problem with a guy's

with, with an age when the guy is playing a position like offensive line quarterback and things of that nature. Um, especially when it comes to the mental part of it. And especially when it comes to quarterback and, um, I I'm going to be more likely to reach for a younger guy than to ding an older guy for being old. Letj, let's talk about the tape people because there's a lot of tape people. It's not three people who we know their strengths and weaknesses and beliefs and how they watch the tape. Now, if you followed certain analysts who are good at this over a number of years, a couple that I like, Nate Tice, Derek Klassen, those type of guys that I've

followed them for quite some time. So I kind of understand how they tick and what they see, but now we've got Kurt Warner showing up and we have these former quarterbacks. I was watching Colt McCoy and Jay Gruden today on YouTube, breaking down quarterbacks. And my mind is swimming because we have some former quarterbacks and analysts who look at Bo Nix, for example, and say, wow, that ball comes out. This guy processes quick. He's pretty accurate. He's completing all these passes. Love him. And then there are others that look at his tools and go, I don't see what's going to make this guy special. The same with Pennix, where some people look at him and go cannon arm and other

people say well he's not really a scrambler he's not the most precise with his accuracy i have started to have a lot of trouble figuring out by the end of draft season how i'm supposed to use this tape in conjunction with what i know statistically with how they play so how do you deal with this issue we get so much information during draft season, and there's some incentive for some of the more newcomers, not the Nate Tice, Derek Lassen types, some people who are more coming onto the scene with quarterback evaluation to have something that is a hot take. And that's how they can grow their Twitter account. You think about Kurt, Ben Kurt, as in like someone who's been trying to do that and, you know, executing it pretty well. But yeah, when you look at like all this information together, like this is really where the wisdom of the crowd research really

comes into play. You think about some of the work Benjamin Robinson has done with grinding the mocks. You think about Arif Hassan, who's done a lot of work on his own consensus big boards and those and how those are predictive of NFL success. Because when you are just taking one person's evaluation, the residual or how much they could be off from what actually happens can vary both positively and negatively. So when you are combining 10, 15 people's evaluations, rankings, grades into one holistic measure. And then you could even, if you get a little bit more advanced, throw some data into it. Then you get a better feel of what this quarterback is from a general consensus standpoint. And that's always been what has really helped me evaluate all positions, but especially

quarterbacks is starting with the consensus big board and kind of making adjustments from there once I dive deeper into the actual prospects themselves. So let me follow up with you, Tejan. That is just when we look at the consensus board, what we see is there's a clear divide between the top four and then two others. How much would that matter to you? If the Vikings were considering Pennix or Knicks with the 11th overall pick, would you come away saying,

I don't know, guys, the consensus board was not buying those at all. Your risk is higher. Or would you say, look, if Kevin O'Connell picked them out, then you're going to take his opinion over the outside world. Yeah. I mean, it really goes back to last year when Eric and I have talked about this before, but like when the Panthers were looking to trade up, you know, because there was like a general top three with Bryce Young, CJ Shout, Anthony Richardson, like there was an argument to be made, like they should be looking up to trade with the Cardinals at three and not necessarily the number one pick because like, we don't know which of these guys is going to be better. You know, research by Cade Massey and Richard Thaler shows like in the first round, there's a

44% chance that the next player taken at that same position ends up having a better career than the previous player taken. So I think once you go to each tier, I'm not going to fault anyone for kind of swapping the order of the players in that tier. It's just when you reach a tier backward is really where you can start to get into some trouble. And like, you know, personally, I would take Penix over Knicks just because like he kind of picked like what I would chase in a quarterback more, but like I wouldn't fault anyone for taking Knicks over Penix because they believe in some of the qualities that he has over

over Penix. Folks, we all have smartphones and we know that they are pretty amazing, but they can also be amazingly distracting, especially when we're around other people. So U.S. Cellular wants us to reset our relationship with our phones by putting down our phones for five. That's right. A company that sells phones wants us to put down our phones and see what we can find. Learn more at uscellular.com slash built for us. That's uscellular.com slash built for us. Yeah, I think the idea would be that if you're taking the top three, your odds are probably very similar that they're going to work out. JJ McCarthy has his own personal odds.

And then there's maybe a big gap between the other two, which that's just based on the consensus idea. The hard thing to figure out though, is if you drop into the Minnesota Vikings situation, and this was just a conversation with Daniel Jeremiah, who said that agents for these quarterbacks want them to end up with the Minnesota Vikings because you get Justin Jefferson. And this is where history maybe doesn't tell us the answers to the NFL draft. It's different human beings. For one, I think about this all the time

where we go, well, this guy reminds me of that guy. Well, what the heck? They were born in two different places. They have two different parents. They went to two different colleges. They're 20 years apart in age or something. And we go, yeah, he's just like that guy. Like, oh yeah, just like a page is just like you and me, Eric, like, uh, you know, a lot younger and everything. I mean, like, come on better hair, but much. Oh, well, I mean, that's where we were, uh, at his age as well, hairline wise, but that's not the point.

The point just being that I don't think history does a great job of giving us the answers with the NFL draft because Sam Darnold drops into about the worst situation you ever could. If we could morph him from 2018 to here, is he a great quarterback? I don't know, but he's not that quarterback. I could guarantee you that. And that's where I think all the research kind of, I'm not saying I throw it out when it comes to an individual draft, but we don't get to draft a thousand

first round quarterbacks. We still have a mini sample. And by the time we know if the guys before succeeded, the NFL has already changed onto something else. It's gone from, hey, now we're throwing deep play actions to wait. Everything's underneath. Wait, we don't like scramblers. Now we do.

Now we don't. Again, I just think it's an impossible task to try to look back in history for any answers about whether this is going to work or not for the Vikings this year. Yeah, that being said, so I agree with you in the sense that we are too comp heavy. That's even like we do racial comps, right? Like for decades, we had a hard time comparing black quarterbacks to anybody who wasn't another black quarterback. And that, of course, made things incredibly hard for us. We always compared every white wide receiver to Ed McCaffrey or something like that.

It was always like there was issues. Um, that being said, and I think the biggest contribution analytics is made though, is not about the player. It's about the structure of the draft itself. And what Tej is talked about is sort of this idea of the, you're not going to be able to outdraft teams for the most part, your play player for player. Uh, the consensus big board is going to give you a pretty good idea.

Um, the consensus big board kind of creates a market. And if you're reaching on a player, you're the one team that's trying to tell me that the other 31 teams are wrong. I'm going to bet against that every single time. Whereas if a guy falls, all 32 teams are saying, guy is not as good as what the media and the consensus mocks had. And I'm going to bet on the 32 teams more than I'm going to bet on the media. And that structure, I think, is fine. And that's born out of history.

When I say, okay, Drake May reminds me of Jordan Love, there's just too many degrees of freedom there. It's Jordan Love lost all of his wide receivers. That's why his sophomore year at Utah State was better than his junior year. So there's a little dip. Drake May lost Josh Downs to Indianapolis, and that's why his second to last year was better than his. But we don't know the mental makeup.

We don't know does Drake May get does drake may get to go to minnesota after a trade and sit behind sam darnold that's not the same as sitting behind aaron rogers because the moment sam darnold starts to play like ass like they're gonna want drake may whereas aaron rogers we remember 2021 week one they went to jacksonville and played new orleans and rogers looked as bad as he looks in interviews now uh on the football field and so like but there was never calls for jordan love and and so like no situation so i think that history can give us a guide on the structure of the draft which is you know how to how to handle, how to handle positional value, how to handle general team building strategies. When it comes to the actual players, I do agree.

I think it's really hard to have any definitive statements because this is such an efficient and rich industry of every team putting eyeballs on these players and the market and the sequence list being relatively straightforward and efficient. And sometimes we also have to factor in too, that when we talk about reaches and history, that there is information that sometimes is available behind the scenes that has not been shared publicly. In fact, that happens pretty often with prospects. And so we'll say, why was this guy drafted higher or lower? Well, it might have to do with something that we just did not know and nobody let get out. And especially with the quarterbacks, there's a lot of, I think, smoke screening that goes on of, oh, this team definitely wants that guy. And, oh, we've heard some bad things about this guy's

leadership. So maybe he should drop to our draft slot. When it comes to the draft slot, the Vikings are 23rd and 11th in this draft. They trade up to 23rd. We all assume that the next day they would end up with the number three pick in a trade up so far that has not happened. My question for you guys is when it comes to a quarterback, how much is too much? So if we were talking about Kevin O'Connell having the apple of his eye be Drake May at the number three overall pick, that was his dream. That's all he wants in this world is Drake May, number three overall. But the New England Patriots keep pushing the price up and up and up and say, we'll only do it for four first round picks or something like that.

They have two this year and then the next two. How much is too much if you're going to try to get your guy, your dream quarterback, and we'll just assume that we all believe that there is a tier drop off from the first tier Drake May to the next quarterback i yeah i think when it comes to this particular class from the way i see it i think a lot of the jj mccarthy steam is from teams like the giants like the titans like the like the falcons even even the Chargers, who really, really want their pick to be one pick more valuable. And if McCarthy goes four or three,

then obviously then the Chargers having an opportunity to take Marvin Harrison Jr. or trade the pick, they gain immensely from that come up. And so there's just a lot of there's, I think that that's where, I mean, Jim Harbaugh himself, he said, Oh, JJ McCarthy is the best quarterback in the draft. Well, you got to think about his incentives when it comes to that. Um, I think that this has always been a three quarterback draft. I think McCarthy is a good prospect that if he falls to the Vikings at 11 and they can't think of it, get a trade, they should absolutely take them to the, to the quote that a quasi had,

which is like, there are guys that you trade assets for because they're impervious to support. And then there are guys who need support that you don't trade assets for. And I think that that he was referring explicitly to the may and the Daniels of the world versus the McCarthy's of the world. I think that that's very real. And I think if you're Minnesota, you are competing possibly

with Denver, Las Vegas, maybe New York Giants, maybe even the Jets who, you know, maybe won't have Rodgers for the future. And so it will cost a lot. And then that is the question you have to say is like, and Casey's done a really good job with this like what is your price and what is the what is the final price that you'll be willing to pay is it 11 23 and next year's first round pick is it a little bit more and and you know stick to it because i do think that there is going to be a bidding war for the third pick all right tage how much is too much then do you have a draft chart you got your you know your abacus chart that you can throw this into, or is this one you have to throw it out? I won't really fault a team for trying to trade off and getting a franchise quarterback that often I'll fault for teams for when they

trade up and they draft a wide receiver linebacker, like different stuff like that. Like it's more justifiable when you take a premium position, but still because of the uncertainty that we talked about later. But like when you, when you trade up for a quarterback, that is an investment. Oftentimes, these GMs are hinging their tenure at their team on the quarterback that they're about to take. So you want to make sure you get that right. You don't really want to become cheap when it comes to that. But when you look at the Vikings in particular, 11-23 and their next year first is is definitely a justifiable um haul to give to not to go up to number three or number four overall and end up taking a

quarterback there I think once you start to dip into more than that you have to give up a future second next year or your future first in 2026 like that's where Cressy can kind of hold his line and kind of go into his backup plan if he has to, where they're sitting at 11. After pick, whether someone trades up for three and four, there's really no team that screams quarterback need until you start to get to the Broncos at 12 and the Raiders at 13. So maybe those are one of the teams that trades up and takes JJ McCarthy or Drake may at number three, number four. And then he kind of waits and sees what the draft board looks like and either decides on Pennix or Knicks at 11, or even waits until 23 to take one of them and really adding, you know, a high higher end player, um, that can, you know, non-quarterback at 11, like that could be an option. Or, you know, you even look at past drafts and like, it's usually the last quarterback of like the tier that really gets hyped up before the draft that falls more than we think. I think Will Levis is probably like the most recent example

of this, where you remember like on the draft broadcast, they showed 0.1% chance of him making it as far as he did in the draft. And like, I think that when you, when you look at that and like, you look at the past tendencies there from teams, like maybe you do wait, wait until 23 or even day two to end up getting a quarterback. If the price is too expensive to move up to three or four and you have to give four first round picks and additional picks on top of that. There is a point where it's too much and it makes sense to just draft somebody else because also if we dive into the surplus

value, which I'll let you guys explain more into, but the surplus value of a quarterback on a rookie contract and say a defensive tackle where those guys are now making 20 to $25 million a year, or an edge rusher where the top edge rusher is making $34 million a year. If you thought of the surplus value between the rookie contract and a player that's at the top of his craft in free agency, or even an average player in free agency, you are talking a massive amount of cap space saved if you hit on both of those players, which Eric makes 11 and 23, very attractive at the same time, if there is this drop-off and they're not totally

sold, then I would rather sacrifice that. But let's say that they are fairly sold on multiple quarterbacks as Kweisi Adafomenta has said that they are quote in love with multiple quarterbacks, which of course, does that mean Caleb Williams and Drake may, and that's it. That is many quarter that's multiple quarterbacks, but that surplus value and the need that they will have in the future for positions you can't obtain easily specifically defensive tackle and corner, I think makes 11 and 23 a good option for me. If the difference isn't gargantuan between who you would take at 11 and who you would take trading up right i mean and and that's i think you you say it you said it perfectly which is the quarterback part of the draft is about surplus value and scarcity now

with these premium positions that are non-quarterbacks it's less about surplus value just more about scarcity right because the cost if you fail i mean i i i once uh you know when i was uh talking to somebody in the league like hey why did you make this trade it's he's like well we failed at this position in the draft three straight years and we need we need this position to win the super bowl and it's like okay that makes sense right and uh you know why did Montez Sweat require a second round pick and a big contract why did DJ Moore require a part of being at being the first pick trade last year well it's because the Bears failed miserably at drafting for three four four years and they didn't have any picks because of the Khalil Mack trade.

So like you have to, even though the surplus value isn't necessarily going to be as big for some of these players who are, um, you know, that isn't like the surplus value is going to be, is going to be bigger for some of these players. It's not going to be as big as quarterback. The scarcity is still immense because you look at like some of these league tables for d lineman uh corner less so but still a lot like you just if you do not get them now you will not you will get guys like byron murphy and dean lowry and harrison phil no offense to any of these guys but those are the guys you're going to get in free agency if you slough off

nowadays in the draft and so if they and so having-23, I think, puts them in a position where if they strike out completely, and I hate to say this to Vikings fans, and I always have been the wet blanket on this entire thing, and I'm optimistic, but there's a really good chance that they don't get somebody at three. If they strike out completely in this draft, 11-23 is a good start to building around one year of Sam Darnold and being competitive and what's going to be the toughest division in all of football. And that's, I think, part of the calculus. And you get a deep tackle in there, you get a corner, you get a third wide receiver to

really turbocharge that offense, et cetera. That's a good start. And to your point, a, a getting them positions that are just simply not going to be accessible in free agency. If they walk out of this thing without a quarterback, um, you can expect T or TCO performance center in us bank stadium burned to the ground. And I would be carrying the torch on that. I don't think in this draft class, they can have that happen. And even when Casey was asked, is there a world where that's possible? He kind of went like, Hmm, maybe, but not really. No. So, uh, I, I mean, I get your point and it

really does speak to how hard those positions corner specifically and defensive tackle are hard to get. It's what they're lacking. It's the difference to me between them having an okay defense and potentially a great defense under Brian Flores, which is my next question, Tej, which is the step after you draft the guy. So you've picked them. Everybody's happy. I don't care how they got them, but they got them. How do you be successful from there though? What is the biggest, like if Quasey called you and said, Taze, you know, I need some help here. I need to know what we need to do as a franchise to make this work. What would be at the top of your list? Yeah. I mean, first I got to turn off my phone

from do not disturb for incoming calls from, from Quasey here. But I think, I think like, you know, if you, if you take the quarterback quarterback um you know there there should be a lot of focus on the offensive side of the ball i think like going back to the panthers example like they took bryce young supporting cast wasn't fully ready to have a rookie quarterback come in now this was the off season where they put in the work really you know trade for dionte john Johnson, build up their interior offensive line. I hope that they're a team that takes maybe two wide receivers on day two and, you know, kind of like just gives themselves opportunities, even though their defense will probably be pretty bad. Like you want to develop your rookie quarterback first. So I say that as the same principle for the

Vikings, where if you don't feel good about certain parts of your offensive line, which I know the Vikings tackles are really good, but maybe there's some movement on the interior offensive line. If you don't feel good about your wide receiver three or what tight end looks like, you know, with TJ Hawkinson still injured at the beginning of next year, like that is really where the focus should be in this draft is to build up that supporting cast. And you can trust what Brian Flores did last year for you on defense to have the defense perform better than their talent level. And you can build up defense in the next year. Once you kind of confirm, like we have a quarterback that can run an effective offense, it doesn't have to be, you know, a top 10 offense next year, but it can be effective. And he shows that he has promise because of the pieces that you gave him to help him develop and build up his confidence. And then like step two next year's first rounder and you've already used

the second rounder to move up, then my draft night next year could be a pretty uneventful, but it puts a premium on hitting on late rounders. How does one go about weighing their odds ever so slightly? Everything is a crap shoot. Everything past the fourth round. We know that there are consent once I think once the consensus goes past a hundred, just kind of throw it out. Uh, it's very valuable at the top, but it's not as valuable later on. The Vikings found Ivan Pace jr. As a undrafted free agent, because they listened to our friend Haley English, who had listed him as a Haley's hero last year. She did a great job. IDing Ivan Pace through his statistics.

So I guess pressure's on you guys to pick me out some late round picks that the Vikings should get because I don't know the answer to this for how you're supposed to identify them. Well, one question. Who did the Chiefs pick with their first pick in 2018? Was that – I have no idea. Who was that? Well, so they traded their first rounder in 2018

for Patrick Mahomes, that pick. The answer is no one cares because the quarterback hit. It's Breeland Speaks, who played one year for the Chiefs and now plays for the Michigan Panthers of the former USFL. He's the leading sack guy there.

Of course it matters but like it's one of those where and i don't want to cop out of this answer i do have some i do have some players i like but like it's the vikings did the competitive rebuild for two straight years the competitive part i mean tasia's lions won two more playoff games during the competitive part of the competitive rebuild than the Vikings did. Let's not mince words here. And now they've gotten to this point. The quarterback choice is the only choice that matters, right? So the subsequent picks are just, for the Chiefs, it was Kareem Hunt.

But Kareem Hunt lasted a year and a half for them. It was Breeland Speaks. It was McColl Hardman. It was a bunch of guys that kind of fit in once the quarterback made it. So, yeah, if you look at this draft, there's a running back for Troy, Kamal Vidal, who I think is very good, does a really good job in a lot of the metrics. There are other positions, linebacker, running back, positions that will help supplement players. But you've put yourself in a position now where the quarterback is what matters like everybody talks about how the Rams won the Super Bowl based

upon all these like these little fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh round picks that fit that roster perfectly but the answer was Matthew Stafford going in there and lighting the place up with Cooper Cup in the offense with Sean McVay in the image that he really wanted to. And so those players are going to be rounding errors to what the eventual quarterback brings. Yeah, I think that's true and not true because in one way, it is, yes, the quarterback is everything. The not true part is if the quarterback is just some, if the quarterback is not Patrick Mahomes, if he's not everything, then everything else becomes amplified. So the depth you have on defense, whether you have a left guard or not, we went through this with Kirk and

they could never solve the problem, but now they have more cap space in doing it to solve the problem. Still, they're going to need Josh Metellus. They're going to need Ivan Paces and Cam Bynum's who are later round picks that they need to develop into being good role players, or they're not going to really compete for a Superbowl. And there's no better example than Amon Ross St. Brown as a, as a part of the Detroit lions is a fourth round pick who becomes a star. And that's where I want to finish this here is there are other teams in this draft in the NFC North,

specifically the most interesting is the Chicago bears. How far away do you guys think the Chicago bears might be from the best team in the NFC? If Caleb Williams is what they think he can be. Taze, you want to go ahead? Well, yeah, I mean, obviously this is something I think about can be. Tej, you want to go ahead? Well, yeah. I mean, obviously this is something I think about a lot as a fan of another NFC North team. And I do think that through a combination of some luck and also just the resources available to them, the Bears have

done a really good job of building their roster. I think Caleb Williams is, we talked about situations earlier, Caleb Williams is someone who's walking into one of the better situations that a number one pick can walk into. And so I think they are relatively close because you are going to be able to add someone who's the top quarterback in this class. And you're probably going to be able to add someone who has a decent chance of producing their rookie year at number nine overall, whether they maybe trade up a little bit, trade back a little bit stay there like you'll you should be able to add another top 15 talent in this class um and so based on that and based on like what they did on defense with the montez sweat trade and how their defense really improved in the second half

of the year like i think the bears uh you know are definitely a step below the Lions and Packers right now. But a year from now, we could be talking about them as that next team that could take that jump and go from seven wins to ten wins and be a team that can really compete for the playoffs very soon because of just the infrastructure that Caleb Williams is walking into. They executed it as well as you can to go all the way to the bottom, pick out the mark in the draft, which was Carolina last year. That could be really bad the following season. And then here they sit with cap space and players that they've built up. It's a good spot. I think they're the team to chase. Eric, would you be more risky if you're the Vikings knowing that Caleb Williams is in Chicago and Jordan Love, and then we're downplaying Jared Goff, he who runs top five

offenses consistently over his career? No, that's to me, if you are, if you are Quacey and you are asking yourself, do I pile on another premium pick to trade up and get Drake May at pick three, I look at the division and say, I need to. That's how I look at it. And there's an element of, do I need to build this? There's also an element of, do I trade back and try to wait this thing out and maybe see if Detroit declines and if Jordan Love isn't the real deal and maybe Chicago rolls snake eyes again on quarterback

and you get lucky again. But in all reality, the way statistics work is the chance that the Chicago, Green Bay, Detroit, one of those teams fails is pretty high. The chance that all three fail is pretty low. And so you're going to be looking up at at least one pretty damn good team in this division for the next four or five years. Because Detroit has a great coaching staff.

Ben Johnson's not going anywhere. If he didn't take the 16 million from Josh Harris this year, he's going to be, he's going to, he's bought a home in Detroit. He's going to be calling plays there under Dan Campbell forever. So that team's going to be pretty good. No matter they, they went to the NFC championship game last year and they didn't hit on a one player on defense and free agency. So they're, they're only going to get better. I think, especially once they move to their quarterback of their future Chicago, to your point, now there's questions about head coach there,

but they have a very fat tail as far as performance there. And how many head coach quarterback combinations in the NFL have a better ceiling than Matt LaFleur and Jordan Love? Not very many. So you have to swing for the fence here because this franchise, this fan base, as you know, from running this channel and this, and this, uh, this awesome company you have, like this fan base gets bored of eight, nine, nine, and eight, 10 and seven, very fast. And if that's where you

want to land this plane for the next four or five years at best, fine, but it's not going to, it's not going to make people very happy. All right. Last thing for both of you. Give me one thing in the NFL draft, the most unsure thing in sports that you are sure of one take that you have formulated over months and months of staring at all NFL draft data, reading every film piece, watching every analysis, listening to every single episode of purple Insider. What are you sure of? Tej, you first. Because, yeah, because you're right,

because the NFL draft is so uncertain. But something I feel sure of is, I haven't looked too closely at the draft props, but whatever the offensive tackle prop is, I feel very confident it's going to go over in this draft. I've been looking at a lot of the offensive tackle data that we've feel very confident it's going to go over in this draft. I've been looking at a lot of the offensive tackle data that we've gotten from Statsbomb. These are very high performing guys. And then you just look at team needs across the board. And so many teams need offensive tackles. You even have some sneaky teams in there where their offensive tackles are

getting older. And you could see the team, like I think about the Eagles and Lions, where you could see them kind of get someone to play interior at the beginning of the career and then kick out to tackle once they're ready. I feel like there's going to be so many offensive tackles drafted in the first round next Thursday in this draft just because of both the team needs and the talent level in this draft. Well, Tej brings up a great point too, because one of the things that teams have soured on since the re-issuing of the CBA in 2020 is the fifth-year option. Remember, teams used to go back and trade up back into the first round for Johnny Manziel and Teddy Bridgewater and Lamar Jackson because the fifth-year option was cheap. It has become

more expensive. However, for tackles, it's not that expensive. And one of the reasons is because tackles take forever to mature. And so, for example, Jedrick Wills' fifth-year option for Cleveland was just $11 million previously. That's a surplus once the guy becomes a starter. And the closer you are to the ball, you look at like Derek Brown, defensive tackle, of course, for Carolina, two bad years and then two good years gets a maximum deal uh you know Andrew Thomas terrible for one year now two you know three three good years gets a big deal um I think teams are going

to trade back into round one for offensive tackles this this coming uh this coming uh draft and so if you're betting bet the unders on quarterbacks, wide receivers, basically any other position but offensive tackles because of what Tays just said. This one though is more of a slam dunk and I just wrote about it for Sumer Sports. Do not draft kickers. There is no reason to draft kickers. There's no discernible

difference between kickers who are drafted and kickers who are not. And that goes all the way back. And this includes I even kept Sebastian Janikowski in the stew because he's actually a positive point for taking a kicker. Even then, taking kickers. And this is all the way back to Mike Tice being pissed off that the Jets took Mike Nugent in the second round before he could,

and he had to settle for Mike Ettinger, Paul Ettinger. This is a universal truth. Do not draft kickers. Vikings fans, remember your first season in Minnesota covering the Vikings. They did not let Blair Walsh go because they drafted him, and he had a really good year, and they gave him a contract to try to save the marriage, and they did not make the playoffs that year that you first started covering the team

precisely because they hung on to Blair Walsh too long and they cut a good kicker, Kai Forbath, because they drafted another one in Daniel Carlson, who ended up being good, but not for the team that drafted him. Do not draft kickers. Never under any circumstances draft kickers. I do think that 2016 team had some other things other than the kicker happened to them, like Teddy Bridgewater's knee blowing up. But other than that, you're exactly right. No, I agree with you. And now all you have to do is look to the UFL for all of your kickers where they've got awesome ones and samples of playing pro football.

So anyway, a wonderful analytics roundtable here, Sumer Sports, the Sumer Sports Show. Both of you guys are on that podcast feed, so it's the smartest football talk out there. Make sure you go listen to it. Tej, Seth, Eric,

eager, phenomenal stuff, guys. Really appreciate you guys taking the time. Yeah. Having us usually when we're all in person, you guys tower over me. So I like this podcast format where we can all be at the same level.

Well, we'll just end on that. I won't make any further jokes. Thanks guys. Football. well we'll just end on that i won't make any further jokes thanks guys football