Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - An argument against a Vikings total rebuild (Timeline Week, part 2)

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

Matthew Coller is joined by Texans writer Rivers McCown to talk about where the Texans stand as a "tanking" team and whether there's a way out. Were the Vikings right to be afraid of that type of "rebuild" that hasn't gone anywhere? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, along with one of my favorite writers. I read everything he writes, even though it's about the most irrelevant team in professional sports. Rivers McCown, who writes for Football Outsiders and NBC Sports Edge, but also just for fun, also writes about the Texans. Is that why you still do it, Rivers? Fun is an interesting way to put that. Yeah, I guess I have a lot of depressing things that happen to me in my life but i just try to channel through this this texans writing

i mean so a serious question though uh because you have been i've been reading your work on the texans for a very long time and you live in the area and you have a Houston Oilers helmet behind you, but continuing to write about the Houston Texans when you don't necessarily have to is quite the commitment to the bit, considering what's going on with them. See, I guess there are people who say this and people who are like, you know, you keep writing bad things about them. Why do you keep writing about them at all? And I guess it's one of those things where it almost makes me feel more like a loser to just keep it inside and like buried than to just share it.

And I know I'm not like making buku bucks off writing about the Texans anyway, so it's fine. They can be irrelevant and I can just, you know, piss and moan and we can all move on with our lives as Nick Asario said. No, I mean, honestly, I do read everything you write because you do a tremendous job of sort of capturing everything that's going on there and putting it into a really unique context. So I honestly advise people to read your stuff just because it's really good football writing.

And that's why I wanted to have you on, to talk about the texans and break down whether they're going to have good enough you know right guard play this year or something to uh take the next step no that's not that's not what we're going to do this is a timeline week here on the show rivers and what i'm doing is talking with a person from a team that's in the middle a person from the team that's trying to win a championship and guess what you get to be the team that's at the middle, a person from the team that's trying to win a championship. And guess what? You get to be the team that's at the bottom, the Houston Texans. But I want to talk about it. Yeah, I know.

Right, I know. Hey, you had some years where that wasn't the case, right? But lately, not so much. But I want to talk about when you get to the bottom and what it feels like there. Because I think that the biggest fear that Vikings fans had of potentially ripping their team apart as opposed to keeping it together is getting stuck in the bottom. And I guess I want you to explain if the Texans are going to live in the mud forever and kind of in a short summation how they got there we've only got an hour or so to talk but you know how they got there and if it's possible for them to get out of the mud how did they get

there oh that's a great that's a long long answer but let me try to do the short version of it um bob mcnair owned the texans uh he was the founder from 2002 on. He died in 2018. And there's actually like a really long Lamar Miller run that Thursday night that the Texans have been like, this one's for you, Bob, or whatever. And so anyway, his son takes over Kyle McNair. Kyle McNair hires Jack Easterby. Jack Easterby was a Patriots chaplain, also worked for the Chiefs for a little bit. Immediately, it appears that Easterby has some kind of outsized power. They fire Brian Gain, their general manager. And from there, you've got Bill O'Brien and Jack

Easterby, two people who should not be involved in personnel in any way whatsoever, running personnel. And of whatsoever, running personnel. And, of course, you've all heard about the DeAndre Hopkins trade, but I would argue that the Laramie Tunsell trade was probably just as impactful in destroying the franchise, giving up two first-round picks and a second-round pick for a guy who, I mean, he's a fine left tackle, a very good pass protector, but never moved the needle in any real way for this team. At that point, they started losing and bleeding talent after the Hopkins trade more and more.

J.J. Watt walked away, the best player in franchise history. And at that point, Deshaun Watson, at the time, the golden boy, the quarterback who was leading this franchise for the rest of his career, we all hoped, decided to request a trade. And at that point, Easterby brought in Nick Casario as general manager instead of having a real search. They ignored the search firm results that Cal McNair paid for. And now we're just kind of stuck with Easterby and Casario running the show and picking up

some guys who have a lot of character. And that was one of your recent pieces where you were talking about like, oh, we're doing the culture thing now. But there's a weird dynamic, though, here, because everything that I have read from you would lead me to believe that there is no more incompetent franchise, and that even includes the Jacksonville Jaguars, than the Houston Texans at this moment. And yet, you can still see a path to somehow working your way out of this because you're at the bottom. And what I mean is all the draft picks.

They trade away Deshaun Watson and get an absolute haul back. And now you're going to start drafting. And what we know is that your cat that's walked in front of the zoom call could draft just as well as most NFL general managers. And so, uh, you know, if you gave, uh, if you gave the names out on different bowls of food or something, but it's, it's very odd to say that the Texans have now with this to Sean Watson trade, despite everything that you just said, put themselves in a position that has so often worked in the NFL where you accumulate draft capital and then get your salary cap right eventually and start to build it up and make

things happen. You know, people have, uh, have tried to play that game with me lately and and i understand that there is something to be said for having draft picks and all that i know but the texans will probably move on from davis mills after this year i think we all kind of see that coming even if we're rooting for davis most to get better and he's got a chance. It's a non-zero chance. But you have four first-round picks to play with to kind of trade up for the quarterback of the future and all that stuff. I get that. Same time, I just watched the Jaguars destroy Trevor Lawrence's first season. Like, really, just crush it.

And you've got guys in charge who have brought in so many veterans that the team simultaneously has no hope for the future and also isn't quite bad enough to get the number one pick so if you have like a transcendent quarterback i don't know if they're going to be able to trade up for it either so i'm kind of like teetering in the middle of this team is doing the right thing with Watson versus this team is what is happening to the rest of this roster? The, well, you know, this is a thing that we've talked about a little bit here is when you bring in veteran players, that means that younger guys who might develop don't get to play. And I get that they want the team to be competitive uh but it really has no business being competitive and to have even like last year um to have even won the the four games like if you're planning on building on that win four five six seven and then all of a sudden you're talking about having

no chance to get bryce young or no chance to get cj stroud who are the guys who could potentially change your franchise and then you end up stuck in the middle. But I was thinking like there's, there's almost no level of incompetent that can't be overcome by a great quarterback. If, if you end up with, I mean, it's, I mean, right though, because even the Texans with Deshaun Watson are winning 10 or 11 games and cincinnati cincinnati is the the cheapest ownership in existence and what do they like not have a scouting staff or something crazy in cincinnati and then you get the guy and all of a sudden you're different remember when when we were youths and the new orleans saints were the most incompetent franchise in the world

like they were running out danny warfel and trading seven draft picks for a running back and everything else and then billy joe right and then other billy joe right billy joe toliver blue joe uh and then they get you know drew breeze eventually and and everything is just better even though for so long they had no idea what they were doing i mean i think sean payton gets a little bit of depth for that too but but yeah i see what you're saying it's just that i don't know i think the game has changed a little bit i think we're we're we're getting to a point where franchises are getting smarter for once and i just watched deshaun watson in 2020 have his best season ever and win four games like i i get i get the the looking on the upside of being down but uh also man it's so hard when your team provides no hope for any free agent to come in any you know any kind of upgrade that's more than marginal

like it's it's it's really really a tough spot to be in uh well let's talk about this then let's say that instead of like some lunatics running the team who don't know what they're doing what if it was competent people in the position that the Texans were in right now? Like, how would you lay out for them on rivers? McCown. Web.

How would you, it's.com, right? How would you, how would you lay out? How would you lay out for them though? If it was, if you're doing a football outsiders article on here's how my team should

actually rebuild. Like what, what do you think that the things that they should do would be rivers mccowan.geocities.com uh i think i think the way that my my major gripe with the way they've run things is they've just brought in so many veterans and when you are let's be honest when you're when you you're in a position where you should want to tank this this is where the Texans are right now. You should be trading guys like Laramie Tunsell and Brandon Cooks.

Just move on. Don't care about their culture. I don't care what they bring. That's great. They're good people. I have nothing bad to say about them. They just don't belong on this team's timeline. So they're gone.

You sign a undrafted free agent class that's larger than six that would be one of my things and uh uh you know you just kind of play the numbers game at this point you you bring as many guys you think have a chance to camp as you can that are young that will be on four-year rookie contracts or udfa contracts and you try to generate value just try to generate value. Just try to generate value for what's in your lives. That's all I got to say. And this team, bless them, has no concept what that's about and does not care. They don't seem blessed. They do not seem that way. Well, I think that that's a really good point, though, because there are places around the

margins that I think when Kweisi Adafomensa says something like that, when he's talking about scheme around the margins where they can find little extra yards here or there, not running on second down and 10 is the most obvious example that I think the Vikings can find it. But maybe, you know, putting more guys in motion, things like that, running an offense that feels a little more modern. Like there's ways of doing that schematically. I think there's even more ways of doing that from getting those edges when it comes to team building and undrafted free agents, which the Vikings had been doing.

They had been bringing in big classes of undrafted free agents. Trying to accumulate draft picks by trading down was another thing the Vikings were trying to do, but they traded too far down and then just got bad prospects. They just kept getting sevens but but i i really feel like if you have people who are sharp in your front office then you can find ways to just like you said get players who might eventually become something and if you live in reality about who you are and don't, and I am applying this to both of the teams and don't try too hard to compete, like compete for now, compete for next

year, make sure there's butts in the seats that you have a much better chance of building for the future than you do to say, Oh, we want to keep Laramie Tunsil because he's a good football player. Like if it were only that simple, then everyone would do it that way. Yeah. I mean, I do think the NFL is becoming about timelines now. You're seeing this kind of NBAization come in where the Rams just won the title. And you know what they did? They traded for, you know, Matthew Stafford. They traded for Von Miller. They were able to, by the goodwill of that, a la some of Tom Brady's earlier work bring in odell beckham for nothing and like

this has kind of become the new meadow almost for the nfl you you try to get as many guys as you can and if you're not on that timeline if you're not going if the texans are not a matthew stafford trade away from being you know a 10 win team a a 12 win team, then at that point, you got to cut on what you do have and try to get there through the draft. And now you're seeing it, you know, we've got teams that have what, like, like eight or nine teams that have two first round picks now. And then you've got, you know, teams that have zero and that's kind of just haves and have nots right now. I think that that's right. I mean mean i don't know when exactly it started to change that these organizations viewed it similarly to the nba where if you're not first you're last like ricky bobby style but that's where

the vikings so much exists in the middle of this where these teams it's like the seas are parting into okay all of you are rebuilding and all of you are trying to compete for a Super Bowl. And the Vikings are just going like, oh, well, you know, we're here, we're here. We got games every Sunday and some players that you like and enjoy the show, I guess. And that's where I think we've been a little surprised

at the non-new direction from the Vikingsikings is that it just doesn't seem to be going either one of those ways and then their general manager says competitive rebuild and that's why i wanted to talk about the tank teams and your team because that was another option for the vikings which was to take it all apart and decide to rebuild it but there are people who think and i i think it's fair that you can get caught in a texans type of place um but i but i also think that if you're not the texans you shouldn't get caught in that place right like if you're if you're not the giants and dave gettleman doesn't draft a running back or if you don't trade multiple first round picks for a left tackle

then you don't get caught in that place if you have an idea of what you're doing. I don't know. This is definitely a lived experience thing for me because the Texans were the middle for a while. The Texans in the Bill O'Brien era were the middle. They were never going to win the Super Bowl unless Deshaun Watson decided to just win on his own somehow. They didn't have a great team. But at the same time, having lived this life now that I've lived, let me tell you, I do have, I do miss just having simple football conversations about things like,

as you brought up earlier, the right guard. Wow. This AJ Cairns coming in, football conversations about things like, as you brought up earlier, the right guard. Wow, this A.J. Cairns coming in, he could be better than Max Sharping was last year. That's a sentence that I have not seen written on Texans Twitter at all. You know why? Because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the slightest. Nobody cares.

All that matters is that A.J. Cairns is George Warhop's boy, and George Warhop is the new new offensive line coach and they've got to be better than the last offensive line coach and okay that doesn't change it the texans really it really doesn't and i do miss just being able to talk about you know you guys have a right guard situation or two that have been bad over the past couple years i miss being able to have talks like that uh about your team where you're like oh if they just solve this one thing everything looks a lot easier that's really funny because so we're here going oh man if they had taken it all apart that might have been fun i mean well i mean you this goes, though, when you are in the same place for so long, which the Vikings have been now for four years, where they have just run the same thing back and done the same thing with the same people.

And it's the same right guard conversation like that might sound enticing to you to ask whether Jordan Davis or Wyatt Davis is going to be the right guard. And then maybe Davis will beat out Davis and they'll have a great Davis competition and Davis will rise to the challenge. But at this point I have covered this team since 2016. They've never had the same right guard two years in a row. And just like, I don't know, what do you want?

If you're going to continue to run back the same problems with not fulfilling, you know, the spots on the center, the right guard, the left guard all these things and not give Kirk Cousins enough protection and not go all in on the offense and keep the older players on huge contracts and add void years it's like and any one of these conversations if we stay in the same spot for too long all becomes please give me something

different and I battle against this all the time rivers of like is it just because i want to talk about something different or is it right and i think in the vikings case it would have been right and even in the texans case it could have been right to take it apart from where you were in the middle and rebuild it it's just that it happened in such a gross and disturbing way it's just that you lost the 25 yearyear-old franchise quarterback for no reason. That's all. Other than that, though, it was great. Everybody was happy.

But no, I guess to your point, like, there really is a narrative cycle with these teams. And I think you being in Minnesota City that has a lot of fans that have been there for a long time, it's an established fan base. I think that's a different place than Houston because you can, you can kind of do that in Minnesota and, you know, you can take a year or two and fix it up a little bit, change direction, embrace youth or whatever. You don't have to tear down to the studs. In Houston, you can't really do that. This team has been here since 2002.

It had immense support, but their narrative arc just kind of stagnated and stagnated and stagnated, and people were like, why isn't this team going anywhere? And now that everything's gone i mean you can see in the stands there are there were maybe 5 000 10 000 people there at some games last year it was a disaster and i don't think that a team that has more competent ownership would go there maybe i don't know how you feel about the wilfs and vis-a-vis cal mcnair but uh i i do know that it can go really really wrong if you're in the wrong city well the wilf

conversation has gone all over the place um even just over the last year because at first it was they're completely hands off and that's how we understood it and then it was maybe they should actually be paying attention more because it's turning into a bleep show and then it seems like they have decided to pull you know kind of take a hold of the reins of what they wanted and then their vikings former gm is dropping hints that they were really telling him what to do all along and so we've never really been able to figure this out and of course no owner is going to come out and say oh no actually yeah i was telling them to re-sign kirk cousins like they're not going to do that yeah and and

that and that's a that's that is the trickiest part maybe of any of these teams is that every single team except for the packers whose owners have little slips of paper is very much at the whims of some crazy rich guy or two crazy rich guys and whether they really understand the right way to go with the franchise is you know i guess up to whatever team it's really interesting and this is this I won't even talk about the Texans. It's been interesting to watch Jaguars fans beg for Shad Khan to be more involved for a long time. And then all of a sudden Shad Khan

actually gets involved in this coaching search, hires a Meyer and then comes back and keeps Trent Baalke for the entire process and blows up a Brian Lefkowitz combo because of it. So, I mean, I say this about Kyle McNair all the time. As, you know, partially I believe this, partially this is just, you know, fan defense, whatever. You know, if you can have one trait

about your owner that you want, it's that he writes big checks and he stays out of things. And that's what Cal McNair usually does for the most part. It's just that he's hired two people who are utterly incompetent to do their jobs. And that's, it's not something that you can overcome when you're hands off. You know, the Vikings are sort of in a different spot where they write big checks and it seems that they hired very smart people and then they're not letting them do everything they wanted to do. At least that's how it feels. And trying to parse through, did they not accept this particular trade for Daniil Hunter or Kirk Cousins or Adam Thielen because they couldn't get

the go ahead or because they didn't feel like they could get value has become a tricky conversation that I don't know how to exactly put my finger on. But that's where when you're talking about whether you're rebuilding or not, like, let's say, let's like throw out the incompetent people out of the Texans conversation. And when you compare these two teams and you're talking about a team that tried to look into Deshaun Watson, and then they tried to trade Kirk Cousins and they landed on, let's just sort of stick with it and see if we can coach them up. That is, if you're throwing out the Jack Easterby part, not better than having all the draft picks and being where you're at with a roster that you can completely mold in your view now the guys who are molding it have maybe no idea what they're doing in houston but if it's someone who's competent and good it's just hard for me to argue that the vikings are in a better spot than that i't know. I kind of see the Viking. I kind of see Kirk Cousins, I put it this way, as a Matt Schaub kind of guy. I don't mean that as

he's necessarily bad. I just think you've got to build that perfect box around him. And teams will always talk themselves into building that perfect box around somebody like that because it's their best option. It's the same thing the Raiders are going to start with Derek Carr. It's not that Derek Carr is a bad quarterback. He's just not elite, elite, elite. And that's the difference between him and Josh Allen

is the difference between winning 13 games and winning 10 or 9. So I get where you're coming from for sure. But I think that the draft picks in and of themselves are also not a golden ticket i mean the texans have the number three pick right now it's one of the worst drafts of my life as far as me paying attention football anyway uh up there with the eric fisher draft and uh there are about

two guys who i'm really excited about picking at number three. And the rest of it, you know, just trade down and keep moving up until next year. So I don't know. It's fun to have the picks for sure. It's fun to talk about these young players. It's an optimistic side of football Twitter that I haven't been a part of for a long time because of Laramie Tunsell. So that's fun. But at the same time, I also recognize just because you draft these guys

doesn't mean anything's changing. That, I think, is one of the hard parts for Vikings fans when they hear about a rebuild in any fashion is that exact thing, is that when you draft players and you try to build it around draft picks, you have to hit on them and there's no way around it. And I think this is the factor that makes football so tough to pin down. When we look for the different ways to, how do you,

you know, how do you get to the top? How do you get over the top? How do you rebuild your team? Is that it's so often just rests on, did you land Patrick Mahomes in, in the draft? Did you just end up getting silly, dumb, lucky,

like the Vikings and drafts, you know, Stefan digs, Daniel Hunter, Eric Hendricks in one draft. And then all of a sudden, you know, you're a great team a couple of years later, because you've just gotten this all-star team in one single draft, which rarely happens, but every once in a while, it does for somebody. And that's why we'll never really figure it out. As we talk about, well, we should do this, they should do that. You'll never really pin it down because even the worst teams can land great draft picks and even the best teams can completely miss. As I was mentioning earlier with the kind of meta shift,

I think another part of that is also there are a lot of teams, again, not in places like Minnesota. You've got the Rams who just moved to just moved to LA a couple years ago. You've got the Chargers, who are much the same. You've got teams like Tampa, who as soon as Tom Brady retires, are just nothing again. I think there's something to be said about your relevancy in a city at this point. I think that's also a part of the whole trading, acquiring good players, momentum conversation. And I know that's weird to use momentum in that context, but it almost does feel like there is momentum to it. Players want to play up good players. That's kind of how it goes.

So you have a team that's still relevant you don't have uh a team where like the vikings traded kirk cousins you know ran out their version of marcus barriota this year well cool we're going to talk about the triple wolves we're going to talk about the twins we're going to talk about carlos correa like that's that's kind of the situation you you embody you you embolden i guess and there's something to be said for not doing that the vikings too i think you make um a strong argument that in this city with this established cities with this established fan base that there isn't a situation where vikings fans will turn their back on the Minnesota Vikings. And that's why it really felt like this was the right time to strike. And I'm not saying pull a Texans as in any of the other stuff, but in terms of accumulating

as much draft capital as you could and hit the reset button on the franchise, because people will absolutely still be coming to the stadium to see something that's fresh and something that they're being told is eventually going to turn into a winning franchise. And I think that there's, it's an intelligent enough fan base for the most part. I mean, you're always going to have nuts, but that can see the future, can see what this is supposed to mean. And here's my evidence. People sell out preseason games.

So that's based entirely on just showing up to see football and believing that the players you're seeing will eventually become something. And if you were coming to see Marcus Mariota and a group of all young players, draft picks, undrafted free agents, players who they were developing, and you still got Justin Jefferson to make it fun. That is more enticing, I think, than showing up. And this is just based on the last couple of years where, I mean, last year,

they're booing this team pretty often. I think it's more enticing than setting the bar at we should be a winner because we made all the moves to be a winner and then coming short of that like it's amazing how expectations really shape everything and how we view these teams folks the hockey and basketball teams here in town are headed down the stretch toward the playoffs and you can get yourself ready by going to sodastick.com and use the code Insider for 15% off all Minnesota sports inspired goods. That's SodaStick, S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Use code Purple Insider for 15% off.

Right. And I think as I was talking about momentum and you brought up Justin Jefferson, this is also, you know, part of a grander argument for towards keeping things together. When you get rid of someone like Kirk Cousins, you don't actually know if Justin Jefferson's going to be like, oh, great. I'm so happy to play Marcus Mariota. I don't want to trade at all. You don't know if that's going to happen or if, you know, you might have your own Deshaun Watson situation all of a sudden. And obviously not with the terrible parts but but yeah but but yeah it's it's one of those things now where kind of the momentum of the players matters

a lot and you know we're getting into player empowerment uh watson has a gigantic guaranteed contract uh cousins has his gigantic guaranteed contract like this is this is an era now where these guys really do mean a lot and they need to be on the same page as your front office. And I mean, if, if your choices, if I trade Kirk cousins or lose Justin Jefferson, does that change your tone at all?

Well, of course, I don't think that that has to be the case, but of course, and then this is based on not, I'm not saying that Justinin jefferson doesn't like her cousins i think justin jefferson just wants to win uh and now explain them they have to take a step back for a year is tough that's why the mariotta thing always made sense to me because mariotta could still throw you the ball like

larry fitzgerald still ended up with 100 and whatever catches when ryan lind's throwing him the ball or John Skelton. If you could do a little better than that, you could still get the, you could still get the guy's numbers for a year. But, but it is, it is actually a major factor though, of trying to look at the pieces that you have and the important players that you have and how do you tell them that, okay, we have to take this step back this year and we have to get rid of all this talent, but you should still be fine with it because you're getting paid in an era where players do force their way out pretty often. I think that to your point, Jefferson has made that conversation much more complicated

than it would be if they had drafted Jalen Rager. Then there would almost be no discussion. It would be like, well, sorry guys, but it's time to rip it down. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Jalen Rager. I've, I've, I've watched you play for two years and it's over. That's not going to work. Jalen Rager thing is not going to work. Well, let me, let me ask one more thing. And then I have just a little Texans trivia for you because you know, you have to, uh, every time you come on have just a little texans uh trivia for you because you know you have to uh every time you come on do a little texans trivia but um do you think fundamentally

that teams that end up at the bottom that that is the that is a wrong way to go to rip a team apart and try to go all the way to the bottom because of the possibility you could get stuck in that spot. Or do you look at it as the Texans are in a bad position because of who they are, but this would be right. Otherwise, if they had been forced to move to Sean Watts, I mean,

they were never forced to move to Sean Watson, but right, right. But, but situationally, I think is to think about it for sure. I don't think this would – if ownership, leadership, and for the Texans were more aware of how they needed to make things work here, of what they're in danger of doing, I don't think it would be quite as bad.

No, I think it makes sense for some teams for sure um just in this one this one situation it's created a a black hole of football content where nothing you can't see anything happen for you know gosh i have people talking tell me about 2024 right now and and i'm like maybe it's 2025 you don't even know like this could be bad for a long long time let me tell you how that's not that different i mean in a way when you're in the middle you're talking about how can you get to the next step but if you don't win this year and then everyone's a year older and then do you draft the quarterback the next year when your quarterback is 34 years old, 35 years old? And, oh, is it going to be 2024 where they have to rip it down if they don't win a Super Bowl in the next two years?

Right. I mean, this is just fundamentally a thing that because right before we went on and we were like comparing whose situation was worse with the Vikings and the Texans. And it's fundamentally a thing that if they win eight or nine games the next two seasons, it's just in my mind, not better than four. It's much worse to win eight games the next two years than to win four games a season for the next two years because of the league is set up to benefit you. And it's not different in terms of the results. Like they don't give you a little placard that says like, Oh, here's your little championship for winning eight, as opposed to four, like, Oh, you beat one third of the league for wins.

Yay. Like they, they don't do that. And I think that that that's where Vikings fans have gotten to the end of their rope with this is the it's we're just not even better than the jets or texans it's it makes no difference whether you've won four or eight i think the discourse on that is interesting because we live in a society where everything is about the championship 31 teams go home pissed off every year and i i guess what i would say to that is what the rams did this year i think was successful even if they didn't win a championship. I think if the Rams had given up that comeback to the Buccaneers, people would have been like, oh, well, they traded all this. Well, OK, but they became relevant in their city again. And I think that has a big draw.

They have a future to look forward to with that and i think kind of the way the vikings are doing it is interesting because they don't really pick a lane they're not they're not they're also not going in in and in they aren't trading for their versions of odell beckham or whatever they're just kind of okay well let's well, let's stack up Cousins again and see what happens. And we know what's going to happen. That's a part that has been tough because I thought that there was a chance they might do that. That they might move all this money around and trade for star players and say, no, we thought we were this close and we're going to go crazy. And I think that would have been really fun for everyone that just bringing back the same stuff minus free agents who left like sheldon richardson and anthony bar and patrick peterson at this moment um that's that's not really like at least it doesn't even get people juiced up

in march you know we're trained as sports fans especially by the salary cap to be like oh i don't know about this investment long term well okay look the salary cap is be like, oh, I don't know about this investment long-term. Well, okay, look, the salary cap is made up. I'm not saying that it doesn't matter at all because obviously you have teams that have to cut players or get rid of players that are like their, you know, seventh favorite or eighth favorite guy. I get that. It matters to some extent.

But, I mean, it's not my money. And most of these contracts go away in two years anyway. So I don't care. I don't really care about how efficient it is. And of course, Nick Casario is the general manager of my football team. And he does care a lot. And I hate it.

I hate it. Here's how I look at it with the salary cap. Anything you want to do right now can be done. You can charge that credit card right now and buy that Ferrari if you want to. And later when that bill comes, it might hurt you a lot and you might have to sell your house. And that's, that's how I look at it. You may have gotten yourself in such massive debt and that's, that's what happened with the Vikings with, you know, keeping all of their players in 2018, 2019 and the Kirk contract. But had they decided that they wanted to add crazy talent or star talent to this Vikings roster, they could have figured out a way to do it. Instead they've gone with, and I have no problem with signing Harrison Phillips, but like they've gone with and and i have no problem with signing harrison phillips but like they've gone with harrison phillips jordan hicks jordan davis the right guard they've decided to sort of do a thing that the texans were doing with like uh i'm sorry uh i forget some of the

senseless free agents but there's so many of them please tell me which texans you know this is my favorite game yeah no i'm not gonna try to do that but um who was the lineman for the for the seahawks that they signed and they gave them like more money than anyone else ever would have was that um brit is that his name justin brit yeah like players like that but that's what that i mean how is that how is that super different from jordan hicks like it's just we've got? We've got one. We've got one. We've got one. One Texan takes.

We've got one. Is David Johnson still there? No, he's a free agent. Oh, well, good for him. Good for him. He can come back. You never know about that David Johnson. Yeah.

Now, I mean, that's a trivia night question that no one's going to get. Who plays for the Texans? But they did sign a bunch of players to these small contracts and paid them a little bit more than the next team would and said, Hey, you can actually play for our football team. And, um, I don't think that like the Vikings should be doing that with guys where it's like, Oh, this guy has kind of a name Zedaria Smith, but it was a couple of years ago that he was great. Or it's, you know, you know, I mean the, the Jordan Davis thing where he's definitely a starter, but is he a good one? I don't know. Like this,

these aren't things that get people excited. And so I could have bought into a whole argument that we're trying to get people as excited as possible. We're trading for somebody crazy, Tyree Hill. I don't know, trading for somebody crazy. And we're going to have the number one offense, everyone. And it and it's gonna be nuts and that's not what they did either and so i think that's the part that has everybody sort of like oh that's what that's what the dolphins did yeah that's what the dolphins did now they've got the team where we're like oh well i don't know if i believe in tua but hey it could work and it's it does look wild on the field and on paper obviously

yeah no i get it. And I would just say, generally speaking, that you shouldn't model anything that you do after the Houston Texans. Just don't do it. Your team can think better than this. That I think is true. And I wanted you to talk about this

because I knew how cynical you would be about the tanking thing. And I knew that you would push back against all of my, hey, the Vikings should. And I knew that you would push back against all of my, Hey, the Vikings should. And I'm not, I've never said tank. I just mean like completely actually do rebuilding things. Okay. Before I let you go, uh, at rivers McCown, by the way, is your Twitter. If anyone wants to follow you there and read your work, cause it's good. Uh, and if you forget his name, just think what would a journeyman quarterback be named? Oh, rivers McCown. Um, here's what I want from you. I want you to name me. There are six running backs

in Texans history that have more rushing yards than Deshaun Watson. I want you to name me those six running backs, Rivers. Oh, boy. Okay, well, start with the easy ones. Arian Foster. Correct. Dominic Davis. Dominic Davis. Dominic Davis Williams. Oh, he's named Dominic Davis Williams? Oh, that's right.

He was Dominic Davis on the original 2003. What is it? Madden. Yeah. When did that change? I believe he changed it after his playing career. It's been very weird because I post the clips because I've been doing an Andre Johnson Hallson uh hall of fame research piece and i've been posting like oh three oh four oh five stuff that just pops up and he's always dom mcdavis and it's very weird now yeah because i well i i

pulled this up and saw dominic williams and i was like i have no recollection of someone named dominic williams but also it's the texans so i don't know but i do remember dominic davis anyway okay well you're two for two. Okay. This is where it's going to go downhill a little bit though. Ooh, Lamar Miller. Lamar Miller is number three.

That's correct. Steve Slayton. Steve Slayton is number six. So, uh, yep, that's right. Ron Dane. Ron Dane is a phenomenal guest,

but no, Deshaun Watson had more rushing yards than ron dane ron dane let me tell you about ron dane real quick when uh that draft was happening with ron dane when he got picked by the giants of course i knew nothing about the draft this was you know way back when and i remember creating ron dane on the previous year's madden and making him like 99 break tackle it's just like 99 strength. I thought the guy was going to be just like this mega star in the NFL. And he had a career, at least Ron Dane.

The only reason the Texans beat the Colts for the first time was Ron Dane. Christmas Eve 2004, I think. How long did Ron Dane play? This is what everyone is hoping for from 2000 to 2007 i mean that's a running back career at least he had uh a career high for the texans of 17 receptions and 773 yards he was never the heisman guy but he was always a decent nfl running back yeah it's not bad okay so uh two more oh um at this point i'm running on fumes you're gonna let's let's think about um one of them was let's say colorful

are you are you telling me that alfred blue is on this list alfred blue yes i hate bill o'brien so much for this oh man all of my worst nightmares are just watching alfred blue play I hate Bill O'Brien so much for this. Oh, man. All of my worst nightmares are just watching Alfred Blue play and then playing that stupid Will Ferrell clip that's like, you're my boy, Blue. And they just went all the way on that for three solid years, and I hated every minute of it.

Tough, tough. 3.6 yards per carry for his career, Alfred Blue. I'm sure he's a very nice guy. I just hated watching him play and one more we'll say he's a uh has been has been oh no no nothing okay uh ben tate is the other one ben tate really yeah he got hurt so often i'm surprised that he's on this list david johnson if you were all wondering how that trade worked out, not on the list.

12th all time in Texans rushing. You hate to see it. You've hated to see it for two years. Here's my trivia question for you. Okay. Without looking this up, without being on David Johnson's page at all. Okay. How long was his longest run in 2021?

Oh, let's see. Well, then the answer has to be short. I'm going to say that his longest run was 22 yards. His longest run was 15 yards. 15 yards. Let longest run was 15 yards. 15 yards. Let me look at this. 3.4 yards to carry. 228 yards.

In 13 games played. He didn't have a single 100-yard game all season, which means he has two for his entire Texans career in two years. 32 catches catches though. Yeah. A lot of 16, the longest catch he had was 16 yards. You would think that you'd do this by accident.

Like someone would fall down trying to tackle you and you'd get 20. This is, this is a, a Larry centers ask a player at this point. That's right. Larry centers, man, early in Larry centers career,

he could, he could be a little more explosive, but the old Larry centers, I mean, he was just catching those little swing passes out of the backfield and racking up a hundred receptions. Amazing stuff. Rivers.

Always great. Yes. Great. Great. Great. Great. Talk about David Johnson again. Great.

Talk about David Johnson again. And this is, this is the thing about every time we talk, you just seem so pained. We've only, we've only got one life to live. And I just thought that using it on the Texans was the dumbest thing I could do.

So I just went in, went in on it. Someday, someday we're going to do this and you're going to, you're going to be a happy man. I don't win on it someday someday we're gonna do this and you're gonna you're gonna be a happy man i don't know maybe because something outside of football but yeah all right well we'll have to pick another team that wins sometime uh to talk about but uh no you're working football outsiders in nbc sports edge just terrific and i have always enjoyed

following you and i appreciate you being the anti-tank angle to our timeline week, mostly. So good stuff, man. Yeah, good luck with that. Thanks for having me on and I hope it works out better than I think it will. And thank you all for listening to Rivers McCown is a sad man. We'll talk to you next time.