Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Are the Vikings at a disadvantage without fans? How long until Ezra Cleveland plays?

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

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What is up, Arif? Not much. Just training camp every single day except, I guess, today. Yeah, the day we're recording this. On Saturday, we have a day off. And it has been pedal to the metal. Fast and furious, you might say, from the start of training camp. And I would love to start with just some big takeaways from you,

because you are always good at observing around the edges in terms of training camp. This is like an Arif Hasan staple is being like, well, you know, Neville Clark had three pass breakups on last Thursday, and that was pretty good for him. So give me a big takeaway on how you think the Vikings look so far and a minutiae Arif Hasan classic take. Sure. Big, big takeaway. I think that the defense is closer to what the Vikings want to think it is than the biggest concerns that us in the media had about it. I think the defensive line is performing maybe a little bit better than I expected, and that cornerback group is performing quite a bit better than I expected.

So, yeah, and obviously every caveat in the world, maybe the offense is just worse, who knows. But it really does seem like I still think the defense is absolutely going to take a step back. I'd be crazy not to think that. But I think that the degree to which they'll take that step back is maybe a little bit smaller, and I think it's because those cornerbacks are playing, those starting cornerbacks are playing a little bit better, even if we don't know kind of who that third cornerback is going

to be I think whoever wins that battle is going to to show up pretty positively for a rookie so that's the big takeaway minutiae takeaway I don't know does Alexander Holland's hype count as minutiae because definitely does okay absolutely a guy who had, one catch or two catches all of last year and played one game, and they randomly targeted him in a playoff game. In a playoff game. Yeah, that was stunning. But, yes, Alexander Holland's hype is 100% in the weeds. Okay, great.

The reason I was confused is because the Vikings official account has tweeted out some Alexander Holland's, plural, Alexander Holland's videos. So I didn't know. But yeah, I think that if the Vikings are only going to keep five receivers, it's actually going to be kind of a difficult battle, which the last time I recalled that being the case, it was between Adam Thielen and Rodney Smith, a 6'5 receiver from Florida State. So, you know, maybe that's meaningful. It's the fifth receiver battle and stuff. But I don't know, he looks pretty good in camp and he's even played against some of the starting corners and looked pretty good. So I like it. Quick trivia here. Last year, who was the fourth leading wide receiver on the Vikings in terms of catches? Not running back, not tight end, not fullback.

So it probably goes like Stephon, BC, Thielen, and some more. Was it Laquan Treadwell? It was Laquan Treadwell. Bonus points if you can guess how many catches he had. Under 10. Right. Nine. Nailed it.

You got it exactly right. Laquan Treadwell had nine catches last year, and he was the fourth leading wide receiver, which is when we're talking about making up for Stephon Diggs and how that's going to be a group effort, which does involve Irv Smith and how much he moves around, things like that. But the fact that you have some sort of legitimate battle of guys who look like they could possibly play NFL-level football

is different than the last couple of years. And no one has obsessed, maybe you guys have on your podcast, but I don't think anyone's obsessed over Jarius Wright's role more than I have. But the fact that they actually have that this year. They've missed him for so long. They really have. They really have. They have not had that fourth option.

And we know when Kirk Cousins is supposed to throw it to X, Y, or Z, he's going to throw it where he's supposed to throw it. He's not going to look at Laquan Treadwell and go, oh, better not. He'll just go there anyway. So the fact that Alexander Holland – If the progression calls for it, that's absolutely where he's going because he's a tick-the-check Marks quarterback. Exactly.

Exactly. So if you have Hollins looking like he could play and Tajay Sharp looks like he could play, with Chad Beebe in the mix where you still go, I don't really know what this is or what this even could be if he stays healthy. But I also think that Tajay Sharp has looked like much, much better than previous iterations of Tajay Sharp. Best player to wear number 11 for the Vikings in maybe a decade.

I don't know. I don't know who wore it before Trevo, but I feel pretty strongly about this. But, yeah, no, he looks good. I don't think he looks like outstanding or anything, but if you're asking about your third or fourth receiver, they don't need to look outstanding, and he certainly looks much more than competent at the role, which is exactly the kind of receiver that you're describing as somebody who,

you know, Cousins is going through his progressions and he needs to find the third or fourth receiver. Somebody who you can trust is probably open against the worst cornerback the opposing team has, knows the offense really well, and can catch it pretty consistently, which I think is the issue with Chad Beebe. Now, the first thing you said, the bigger picture, the thing that would be more relevant. Love how we go within the weeds first and then circle back to, oh, the defense.

As is the character of any podcast. Yeah, that's a good point. If you're listening to this, you want to be in the weeds. But on the coverage and how the corners have looked, the early returns have been, I think, way better than we would have expected. Holton Hill looking like he can be a starter is not something that we were at all sure about, and now he's not only taking first-team reps consistently

but has looked good in doing so. Mike Hughes is healthy and is playing multiple positions out there that's something you want of course the emergence of cameron dantzler so far jeff gladney after one day sitting out has been in there and how he's looked i'm not really a hundred percent sure i mean dantzler has some nice reps he's gotten burned a couple of times gladney hasn't stuck out as much uh but when it comes to the defensive line though that's where i'm looking at and going you know we thought it was going to be the corners but hunter hasn't been practicing and michael pierce has opted out and schmar stefan according to them is really really good but if he's asked to play a thousand snaps or something i, that's probably not ideal. Who do you think on the defense is the

biggest swing man to whether they have a good defense or if it's pretty rocky? Yeah, so if we like ignore Daniil Hunter, right, we'll just assume he's good, right? Who's going to kind of swing the defensive line? I think it is probably going to be Armin Watts. I mean, I really like Afadi Adenabo. How well he does is going to mean a lot for how well that defensive line does. But I just think that unless you've got some other consistent pressure production somewhere that can draw blockers away, and I think that's the important part is being able to draw blockers away and really free up Daniel Hunter to go up against tight ends, which he did an unreasonable amount last year, and have single teams against right tackles,

of which there are a number of good ones on the schedule, then, yeah, I think that that's really going to help create pressure, especially for, you know, okay, yeah, fine, the corners look a lot better than we think, and that's great, but they're all young, and they're all going to make mistakes. And so if you can help cover up for those mistakes with that pass rush and I know coverage is like five times more important than pass rush I still think that you know being able to consistently generate the threat of that pass rush whether it's through blitzes or through interior pressure from like

Armand Watts or Julio Johnson or whoever that's going to help cover up for some of the mistakes that that cornerback group is inevitably going to make. So I think that Armand Watts is probably going to be kind of the keystone if we assume that Eric Hendricks is good, Anthony Harris, Daniel Hunter, if we assume all of them are good, who's going to kind of define the direction of that defense? I think it might be what happened to that interior pass rush and you can draw extra blockers. And I think the best candidate for that is Armand Watts. And you'll never convince me that they're not interconnected, the defensive line and the cornerbacks, that they are locked into each other. And I appreciate the efforts and what we've learned in trying to separate those two things,

that your cornerbacks are worth paying more money, and maybe you can rotate in defensive linemen, and they can get pressure if your coverage is really good. But if you got third down in 10 and you have three guys who are absolute beasts who can pressure the quarterback there is nothing better than that if they can beat their linemen in two and a half seconds yeah when you're trying to go down the field and hit intermediate routes and everything else there's nothing that's going to help you win games better than that and with Watts I am really interested to see if over the next week when we

start to get into and I know media rules we're not exactly allowed to talk about like how they're scheming and everything else but but sorry Packers I know you're listening to this that's sort of an internet joke but anyway um with Watts I would suspect that he's going to get in more as we see them start to work with their nickel packages and things like that as they go forward here in their third downs and their situational stuff. Because in the base, it's Jaleel Johnson, and I get that. Mike Zimmer thinks it's very important, and he's probably not wrong to stop the run on first down,

set up these long situations. But if we're talking about pass rush, Watts is just on a completely different level than Shamar Steffen and Jaleel Johnson. Yeah, it's almost an unfair comparison. And that's really more about Shamar Steffen's production and Jaleel Johnson's production than it is about Armand Watts. I think Watts is showing enough that you can begin to consider him a good defensive tackle. But really the amount of pressure production the Vikings have had from those two over the past couple of years is abysmal.

And so the ability to kind of produce that pressure from the inside is unfortunately going to be kind of new for the Vikings, given that Linval Joseph dropped off last year. And so having Armin Watts be able to do that, especially on those long situations or nickel situations where they're clearly indicating that they're going to pass the ball, you know, having him maybe alongside Mata'afa, who I think the Vikings have learned is just probably should not just be out there if there's any threat of a run. Having them both out there in pressure situations, I think, is probably going to be what the solution is going forward based off of what we've seen and based off of what I think makes the most sense. And mind you, I've said a couple of things about how Jaleel Johnson looks a lot better in camp, but a lot of guys end up looking a lot better in camp.

And if it's completely at odds with how they played in the regular season, we should probably wait until the regular season before we can say with any amount of certainty that this is a genuine improvement. And Armin Watts looked good last year. He looks great in camp. So I'm much more confident in saying that he's going to be part of the solution in terms of generating a pass rush up the middle. And I think he's going to eat into the snap share of these other tackles as we go forward, especially because he was good against the run last year.

And so you probably can put him into those first-hand situations, especially because no one is expecting Shemar Steffner or Jaleel Johnson to play every single first and ten. So I think that Watts is going to be a big part of the answer, especially with Michael Pierce opting out. The other thing, too, about Jaleel Johnson is he's going up against the left guard rotation, which has been well chronicled as some people on our beat would say so I have four questions for you that address

relevant topics or well three of them do and the other one's just kind of goofy so let's get let's get into those and then we'll cover a lot more ground here speaking of left guard I have an over-under for you four and a half games until Ezra Cleveland is starting at left guard and not Dakota Dozier or Avion Collins. The under would mean he starts in the fourth week. The Vikings schedule is that they go up against J.J. Watt and the Houston Texans in week four. I think that's going to be the light you know,

light switch moment for the Vikings. So I would say the over is they go up against JJY, get battered. And then week five, they go up against Yale, and they premiere Ezra Cleveland at left guard. Well, let me add this. How many games do you think Ezra Cleveland plays? Like how long does it take him to get in? Will that happen?

I mean, will they turn it over to him? Because I'm almost talking about it as if it's a foregone conclusion, but it is possible that they want to stick with Dakota Dozier. So if you're taking the over, when does that happen? I think week five. Yeah, I think it's right at the over-under. So, yeah, I think he plays 12 games if healthy. But, yeah, that's kind of where I think you picked a really good over-under.

That's kind of where I would nail it, I think. You get four weeks of Dozier. I think Kendricks had five weeks before he started playing. Brown and Neal was something pretty similar. And I think this is not that different of a situation, even though both of them were injury motivated. I think it was really convenient to be able to put Brian O'Neill out there at exactly that time.

And I think we'll find maybe the same thing is true for Ezra Cleveland. So do you think that he just jumps right over Aviant Collins? I mean, Collins has just not really looked to me like he's ready to start at that position. And it might be one of those, this is your last shot, and if you don't look good in camp, even though you were working with the ones, we still cut you. We've seen that before.

The one that comes to mind that's sort of silly is Dayton Jones. Like, Dayton Jones early on is rotating in with the ones. We're like, oh, okay, this guy's going to be a significant role. And then he just, you know, got cut. Yeah, they do it all the time. I think, was it 2014, they brought in Chris Crocker because he knows the defense, played with the ones the entire time, cut them, and Andrew Sandeo starts. You know, they did it with Alex Boone, obviously.

And so, yeah, the fact that there's a rotation with the ones does not mean that they're automatically number two. It just means that, you know, if this works out, it's going to be great. And it does not look like it's working out for Aviante Collins. I think of the two, between him and Dakota Dosher, he's the one that's getting beat more often. He's the one making Jaleel Johnson look, you know, like he's improved a little bit more consistently.

So, yeah, I think that Collins is, you know, fighting for a roster spot because I think the Vikings really like who they've got you know backup tackle I think they've got some options at backup guard now kind of depends on how they like their 7th round pick Kyle Hinton but if they've got two guards in Dakota Dozier

and Ezra Cleveland they've got two tackles Nolito and Rashad Hill they've got a center Brett Jones where does that leave Avionte Collins? So that, I think, might be kind of a last gasp for him, yeah. Do you like Ezra Cleveland starting at left guard if he does play R over under and just barely goes over and ends up with 12 games? Do you like what that does for him long term,

or would you have rather seen him just take this, be a red shirt, and play entirely at left tackle? If it was like the difference between him not playing at all and he plays left tackle next year versus he takes a bunch of reps this year at left guard, I guess I'd prefer left guard. I still think the better plan would have been to move Riley Reif inside and have Ezra Cleveland play left tackle, and maybe the first couple of games are rough for him. But yeah, I prefer that he gets playing time,

especially if it's left-sided playing time because that footwork translates a little bit better. You know, experience on the offensive line is better than, you know, just sitting even if it's at a different position in order to kind of nail that. Get back to conversation in just a minute but first have to tell you about something very cool from our friends at soda stick you probably know them for minnesota sports inspired hats and shirts and hoodies that are screen printed in minnesota but soda stick also has artwork as well you're going to want to check out their man cave prints, 20 by 24 prints representing everything Minnesota sports, from awesome throwback logos to legendary plays at first base to famous disgusting acts in Green Bay. They are on sale now for just $35.

You can't go out to games at the moment, but you can liven up where you're watching them from. You want to get SodaStick's very cool prints. Go to SodaStick.com. That's S-O-t-a-s-t-i-c-k dot com and use the promo code purple insider for free shipping it is interesting that some of the defensive guys are getting sink or swim type of treatment but ezra cleveland if they had thrown him to left tackle right away that would have been sink or swim. We'll bump Reef inside because he's not a part of the team long term. And instead, they're keeping him at left guard, which maybe means it's not a foregone conclusion that Riley Reef is gone

after this year. I mean, I didn't get it. Which is like wild given the cap situation for 2020. COVID aside, you know, the cap situation for 2021, you'd make it think that like Riley Reif could not possibly be in the plans. But, yeah, there's always the chance, I guess. The way they talk about him, it made me think if he's average this year, I don't know, and Ezra Cleveland looks good at guard,

we might see Riley Reif just rework that contract. You just don't know sometimes. All right, here's the next question I have for you. I want you to give me a percentage of impact that the Vikings' pressure rate will have if they have no fans at U.S. Bank Stadium, or the percentage of impact on the Vikings. How effective it will be? Yes. How much that would change if they do not have fans, because Zimmer went into detail.

He said he thinks it's unfair if some teams are going to have fans and other teams not, and I'm thinking of the situation if the Vikings play the Packers in week one with no fans and then have to go to Lambeau and there are fans later in the season, no one's going to feel very good about that. So how much do you think that the Vikings' pass rush is impacted by fans? That's a super interesting question. So I've been reading up on like home field advantage and stuff. Might even like write a piece on it. I don't know if it's

interesting enough to me yet. But there has been an impact, just generally speaking, on home field advantage in situations without fans, both because of COVID and in previous scenarios like when Serie A in Italy playing soccer, they had to ban fans from the stadium in 2007 because of hooliganism, essentially, and home field advantage dipped then. And we know that there's other reasons for home field advantage, things like travel. We know that West Coast teams traveling east, for example, have the greatest disadvantage from a home field perspective, and we know that familiarity plays a role because divisional games have less of a home field advantage than non-divisional games, and new stadiums have a higher home field advantage than older stadiums.

So all of that's true, but we also know that fans definitely play a role. And so how much does that impact specifically with pass rush? I think we see it expressed most often in things like false starts, things like, you know, I think there was an instance where somebody got an unnecessary roughness penalty because they just couldn't hear the whistle. So, yeah, I think it expresses itself most often in whether or not referees will call penalties that favor the home team and in specifically line play. And so I would say that the pass rush will probably be impacted in in in the home field

to the point where they're probably 90 percent effect which would be a huge effect I think but like 90 percent effective because you mentioned and I think you're right that third down is the area that pass rush has the biggest impact in the game and indeed pressure rates double on third down just generally and I would imagine that because fans are loudest when the third down offense is on the field, that's when you see kind of the biggest pass rush impact. And that's when your defensive ends can, quote, pin their ears. Pin their ears, yeah. But when you know a pass is coming, you are going right on the snap. And if you can look down the line and see the ball and the tackle can't see the ball because he's looking at you, and he's got to listen for it, that's pretty tough.

Or if a tackle has to look at the ball and snap around, it has clearly helped the Vikings in terms of sacks, which we know have a huge impact on expected points added, because at home, since U.S. Bank Stadium opened, they're number one in sacks, and on the road, they're 20th. That is a massive jump. Yeah, that is a huge jump.

And you know what? It's pretty similar for interceptions that the Vikings at home, I think, are fourth and on the road are 17th since U.S. Bank Stadium opened. Now, I mean, it's still not the hugest sample, but those are pretty big gaps in terms of effectiveness, especially with the pass rush. And when you can't adjust your offensive lineman to what's coming, Harrison Smith does the thing where he sneaks up to the line of scrimmage and then you have to call out a signal, but then he drops back. I mean, those things are impossible when you can't hear. And if Aaron Rodgers all of a sudden can hear,

he's one of the guys that has the biggest difference between how he's performed against the Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium and against Lambeau. Recently, or at Lambeau, recently at Lambeau versus the Vikings, he's been great for the most part. And at U.S. Bank Stadium, even when they won in Week 16 last year, he was not very good at all. So I think that Mike Zimmer has a very legitimate point. I saw some people saying, oh, excuses, football,

put your jock back on and get out there. Like, no, I mean, it is a good point. If everybody has it the same for the whole season, okay, fine, that's how we're playing. But if, you know, you go to one stadium and they have fans but you don't, I think that that is a difference, and 20,000 fans packed in can still make at least enough noise. Yeah, especially if you get to the point where it's like 20,000, right?

You're filling up basically a third of a standard NFL stadium. Yeah, and what's interesting is it sounded like the way that they'll handle fan noise or artificial fan noise in stadiums without fans is it's just going to be kind of like a constant ambient background noise, which kind of sucks. That also takes away from the energy of the game, probably less than not having any noise at all. But it'd be nice if the noise crested and fell just kind of like it normally does through an NFL game, increases on third down. But then you get into really weird questions about how loud you can make your artificial noise

and whether or not that violates rules. I think the NFL needs to come out with – they don't need to make them public necessarily, but they need to come out with guidelines for what artificial sound is going to be like and how loud it can be. I don't even know how you would admit because if you ask any audio engineer just measuring decibels is uh is almost in art because you have to determine where you're doing it to what like there's so much that goes into it and so developing rules about it is also really difficult uh and it's the same reason that like whoever has the loudest stadium in the nfl the specific record is kind of bs because it measures you know it depends on where you're putting the decibel meter.

That'll change kind of the measurement. And so how do you regulate the way that the stadium noise is going to be? So, yeah, you don't have to regulate, you know, natural fan noise that comes from fans. You probably have to regulate artificial noise. So that's going to be a disadvantage, especially if you can't, you know, increase or decrease the amount of artificial noise based off of the situation, which I think that would be hilarious if you could because the kinds of things an in-house DJ could do on third down I think would be tremendous. Right. Are you only allowed to play shh or can you play music or what else can you do to ramp up?

Can you just play, I don't know, animal noises to throw them off? There is a big point. Third down, Nickelbacks piping in the stadium. The entire offense is upset. The other team would just leave. They would forfeit. But, you know, there's another element to this that goes with just the general concentration. And I don't know about you, but I think there's been an inordinate amount of good teams,

good coaches, good players who do preposterous things at U.S. Bank Stadium against the Vikings. And I just wonder about decision-making or that little tiny difference that you face there from other places. That gap can be between winning and losing. I mean, I don't know, was there noise in Doug Peterson's head when he decided to have his kicker throw a ball at the end of the half last year against the Vikings? There must have been, right? Or when Sean Payton in the Minneapolis-Maricopa game said,

you know what, I think I'm going to have Willie Sneed throw the ball instead of Drew Brees. That seems like a good plan. I don't know what it is, man. Yeah, no, that's all I think are really good points. I think that the kind of pressure that forces you to make weird and hasty decisions, a lot of that comes from just the stresses of the environment, and if you remove a really significant stress in the environment.

Like, it was very clear that Sean Payton, for example, was responding to the crowd, otherwise he wouldn't have skull-chanted back at them, which I think is one of the most iconic images from the Minneapolis Miracle game that doesn't get talked about enough, but certainly I think everybody remembers it. Yeah, clearly the crowd knows it was getting to him enough that he wanted to give it back to them. And if that's the case, it's very clear that, you know, the decision makers are impacted by, you know,

things that we don't always think about. You know, we think about, like, you know, tackles not being able to hear the snap or quarterbacks not being able to communicate a change in the play because of crowd noise. But we don't really talk that much about how difficult it is to make decisions when people are just yelling in your ear. So, yeah, I think that that's going to be another advantage that the Vikings might lose.

I did think it would be a fun idea if I could pipe in loud noise to us while we tried to have the conversation, but I just thought it might be hard to hear for a podcast. It was like, see how confused we get. But I will say, just to wrap this point up, that I think there's only four or five teams that have a positive point differential on the road over the last five seasons. So it's real home field

advantage is very very real oh yeah part of that i talked to the guy who wrote scorecasting about this where the the referees are a part of it too yes and maybe that won't change when they're not pressured from 60 000 angry people uh the next question i have for you comes from twitter actually but i loved it so i thought it was fun. Would you rather sign Delvin Cook to $12 million a year, let's say the standard Vikings three-year contract that says five years, or trade a second-round pick for Yannick Ngakwe and sign him to $17 million a year? And, of course, this would go along with other things

that are naturally going to happen. Daniil Hunter's contract will get reworked and so forth. So Yannick Ngakwe for a second and have to pay him around $17 a year or Delvin Cook at $12 per year. All right, so the biggest issue I have with the Ngakwe scenario is that the Vikings would inevitably spend a good pick on a running back in order to replace him. But if we kind of ignore that scenario where the Vikings try to compensate

for a loss of Delvin Cook, yeah, I'd take Ngakwe easily. And, you know, I think, you know, from the perspective of just taking a look at Delvin Cook at 12 and Ngakwe at 17, that isn't close. I would easily take Ngakwe despite the fact that the Vikings are clearly going to have, you know, cap trouble for the next couple of years. But the potentially equalizing thing is that second-round pick. Honestly, I think that the gap is still kind of large enough in terms of just the impact on the game that somebody like Ngakwe has. And what's really interesting about him is that he has a remarkable knack for forcing turnovers.

He's not just a good pass rusher he's not just great at generating pressure and therefore generating sacks but he also his sacks just happen to be fumbles which is you know really enormous so i think that his his skill set as a pass rusher is high level but his impact is is bigger than his skill set if that makes sense because the way that that he leverages it to create turnover. So he is a fairly valuable asset. $17 million is a lot, but certainly if the decision is between paying Dalvin Cook $1 million less than David Johnson got, then, yeah, I want to pay him Gawkway, maybe overpay him with a pick as well.

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Use the promo code BLUEWIRE at checkout to get 15% off your subscription. Visit NFLSundayTicket.tv and use promo code BLUEWIRE. I do like the Ngakwe idea, and the biggest reason for me why is because he and Delvin Cook are the same age, but we don't know how much longer Delvin Cook's peak will be. We know that Ngakwe's peak will be seven or eight more years. I mean, pass rushers, I mean, how old is Cameron Wake and Terrell Suggs? These guys were playing until last year at age 37, 38,

and still rotational guys that were getting pressure. Everson Griffin was still very effective last year in his early 30s. If you get a pass rusher in their prime who has proven over four seasons that they can consistently pick up sacks create pressures create turnovers there's a pretty good chance they're going to continue to do that for five more years of their prime if not longer so if you were to lock in Daniil Hunter and Yannick Ngakwe on both sides is it worth a second round pick to have basically the thing that you've had that's helped you be so successful with those two edges and immediately replace Everson Griffin,

I think that that's worth it even if you did pay Delvin Cook, too, to somehow make that fit, and especially because you have your corners on their rookie deals for a lot of them. For two that might, you know, and Gladney and Dantzler, we'll see. But, you know, they might go forward with for a long time. You've got some space to play around with there with the rookie deals that some other guys are on. I think it makes a lot of sense.

I think that they should be making that phone call. Now, if the Jags want what they got for Jalen Ramsey for Yannick Ngakwe, that's going to be a no for me. A second-rounder, throw in a fifth or a sixth, you know that Spielman's got 11 of those, so why not, right? Right. Well, especially in a year where it might be difficult to scout and your uncertainty is going to be a little bit higher with those picks.

Yeah, if they're worth a little bit less in practice, even if a lot of teams won't treat them that way, then yeah, throw the second rounder in there because you won't be able to scout as well for that second rounder as you typically would. You thinking this Cook deal still gets done? You confident? Yeah, mostly because I don't think Cook has any recourse. I think, well, the report said something like the Vikings deal did not change significantly

from what they initially offered, and that's a pretty good indication that the Vikings know they have a ton of leverage. And so, yeah, if Cook, you know, he's so close to being injured and trying to get a sweetheart one-year deal instead of a long-term deal that, you know, in his shoes, I think anyone should be pursuing security over anything else. And so if the Vikings are actually offering something like $9 million a year for three years with two of it guaranteed or whatever, that's I think a lot better than a lot of the scenarios that are going to

play out in a COVID-capped year, in a year where, you know, he has another 16 games of wear and who knows if he's going to get injured again. He hasn't played, you know, a full 16-game season. And, you know, 14 games this year, great, you know, much better. I think I would take 14 games a year every year from a running back if that's possible. But still, you know, without a full 16-game slate,

even if we ignore the Chicago game, there's no reliability there. And I think if you're a running back that is attempting to hit the open market, reliability is going to be one of the things because all of these running backs that have hit the market that already had an injury history before, you know, they go into contract negotiations. Well, they're the ones that have definitely been disappointments. I think most of the running back contracts have been disappointments, but those are definitely the disappointments. Yeah. Yep. And you talk about the 14 games. It

wasn't even really 14 because it was a half a game in Seattle. You get injured during the Denver game that limits you. So there are these other games where it's on over the last few years on a pitch count was a thing that happened in 2018. And the way that it sounds like these negotiations are going is, but what we want is to be paid as high as McCaffrey. No. Well, what about a little more than Henry? No. Well, what about, I mean, it's just like the Vikings,

where they are right now as a franchise just don't have to do it. I think even like the ground has changed from where they were even two years ago where they felt desperate to sign everyone because, oh, we signed Kirk and we've got to do this and that. We've got to make sure we keep every guy. That doesn't feel that way now. As we talked about letting some guys sink or swim, letting some things play out, they're in a position to do it.

But I agree with you that I think they'll find some middle ground eventually. All right, last thing for you, Arif. Rodney Adams signed with the Bears. Congratulations, Rodney Adams, who is a good dude, and I have used him as an example on many a podcast of a guy who you just got the sense this wasn't really for him, but clearly he's worked his way back, so we'll see if he has some success with the bears what i want to know from you is who the current viking guy is at camp who will not make the team but will keep showing up on the transaction wire three four years out because these blasts from the past are great like rodney adams i thought he went to do youtube videos like he's still around wow

man oh that's interesting. So who's going to stick around for like a couple of years? Good tryouts. Might never play in a game, but we'll just keep seeing his name pop up. Oh, they signed, you know, they had Bucky Hodges in for a tryout. We saw that for a couple of years, too. Yeah, okay. So they've got to

have like a skill set that, you know, either they're like weirdly athletic like Bucky Hodges or they do something unique like Rodney Adams is a returner. A lot of returners drafted this year. Otherwise, I would say K.J. Osborne. But the NFL loves projects. So let's go with Dan Chisna, who could not possibly make the team this year.

No, no. He's the Moritz Boringer of this camp. That's exactly who I was thinking of. Boringer was cut this year from the Bengals, which was a good reminder that he was still in the NFL. And, you know, that's a little bit, you know, advantaged in his favor because he didn't count against roster limits when he was on the practice squad because of an international exemption,

so he was essentially a free roster spot. But but still like a team has to invest resources and and they chose to do so with with that kind of athletic potential um dan chisna apparently was the was it the third highest uh paid udfa for the vikings after you know names people recognize like courtney davis and neville clark um it was it was the the guy that played one year of football and got three catches at Penn State. Yeah, that makes the most sense to me. I think that, you know, that athleticism is really difficult to find. People love to have a bunch of practice squad receivers, and so there's more opportunities for him than, you know, at other positions.

So, yeah, I'll go with him. Always a running back gets a bunch of different chances because running backs get hurt all the time. And someone's like, who's, like, carried a football before? So Tony Brooks James, I'm guessing, continues to show up every once in a while. How about, like, Jarrell Presley kept showing up. Yeah, that's right. So even after he went to the AAF and was not the best running back there.

So, and they were still like, well, you know, he jumped through the, he had like a 12 foot broad jump or whatever. So let's bring him in. I wonder if, and this, this might burn you, but I wonder if the answer ends up being someone like Kyle Hinton, where he was, I know, right, right directly to the heart, but he was intriguing in college, small school guy, has these great athletic traits and so forth. And I don't know from a few practices whether he can play or not.

But if it ends up, as we've seen this before, Colby Gossett was this guy. Oh, Colby Gossett, he can lift a truck over his head or something. And then, you know, he's on his 18th team now. We can see the same thing from Kyle Hinton. I think the interior offensive linemen are so hard to find that everyone's like, well, maybe we'll just take a shot on this guy. So that's going to be my pick, that four years from now. It's a good pick, actually.

Kyle Hinton is trying out with his 13th team. Yeah. Fair enough. Arif, this has been really fun. People should subscribe to The Athletic if they don't already to read your and Chad Graff's camp coverage. It is excellent, and it's been good. It's been good being out there, having fun, watching football. I've enjoyed it.

Yeah. No, it's been a ton of fun heading into training camp and checking out what the team knows, what we know, stuff like that. Yeah. See you tomorrow, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. All you tomorrow, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

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