Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Arif Hasan talks about what we can learn from his consensus draft board

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Matthew Coller is joined by Arif Hasan of Wide Left Football to discuss what his consensus draft board says about this year's QB class. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here on the road a little bit for this episode, but the draft discussion does not stop. So joining me on the show for maybe the 78th time is Arif Hasan, wide left on Substack, the newsletter that took the entire universe by storm after some tremendous reporting that you did on the draft network. I would highly, highly support it. If you want to go check it out, Wide Left again on Substack. And it was kind of like a mix of that movie that they did about the Blackberry or whatever with football. And that's what we got from your reporting. But it was great.

I saw it shared by all sorts of big football people. Ian Rappaport sent it out. It was a great job. Very cool to see you taking what you built from the athletic and going on your own as I have here. I'm very happy to see it. Welcome back to the show, Reef. How are you doing, man? Yeah, thanks for the kind words.

I know they're rare coming from you, so I'll take what I can get. Thanks for having me on. That was a crazy story to write. Yeah, it really was. So people go, go check it out again, wide left on sub stack. I'm sure it's not hard to find. And as far as complimenting you, I don't like to do it to your face, but I'll tell other people that I like you. Uh, so here's what I wanted to discuss. Uh, there's a few things going on in Viking land that we could dive into later on in the show. Like they had a couple of guys in from the defensive side for visits. Is this a indicator that, you know, maybe they could be sticking and picking at 11 and 23, but they were going to use those visits.

There's not 30 quarterbacks that they were going to bring in for those visits. So what I want to talk about is something that comes up on the show all the time, which is this mock draft universe, this draft reporting draft analysis universe that has just exploded over the last maybe five to seven years. I think even more so through the pandemic years when nobody was doing nothing except for watching draft prospects and trying to build brands online. Not that we would know anything about that. Uh, but, but what, what has happened is, and just even today, two friends of mine texting me, one of my friends thinks Drake may is awesome and loves Nate Tice's take on Drake may. And then another one of my friends is terrified of Drake may because Merrill Hodge

and Chris Sims and maybe Kurt Warner don't like him. And I just, what I'm really struggling with all the time is what we should actually be confident in, who we should believe in when it comes to these takes and how seriously we should take one person's opinion with a quarterback over another. So why don't we just begin there? Your thoughts on that? Well, I've got a couple of thoughts. One is that generally speaking, the group of us are pretty good at this, which is so pretty soon I'll be publishing the consensus big board, which takes into account the opinions of like 80 draft analysts on this stuff. And it does a pretty good job of of of nailing player outcomes and and the draft order.

Great. But if you're trying to figure out like, hey, Natai says this one opinion of this guy, Chris says this other opinion of a guy. What what do I think? Well, I think it's a pretty stupid thing for me to say that just average amount. You're fine. That's dumb. So when it comes to draft analysts and what they say and how they kind of get across what they're saying, I think that you should put a premium on their explanation for why something is the case and how that explanation has worked out in the past for them. One thing that is kind of a red flag to me is that some of these analysts, I don't know if you want me to name names,

some of these analysts will put out a quarterback ranking in January, and then they'll put out a different one in February, and it's radically different from January, which that's allowed, that's fine. But then they'll put out one in March, and it's like very different. And then in April, it's very different.

What's going on here? Then a couple of years later, one of those looks really good. And so they tweet out that one. And now this guy has credibility. Oh boy, maybe you should listen to him because he really figured out what the correct order of the quarterbacks in the draft should be taken. And it's like, well, are you listening to this guy's April opinion or his March opinion or his February opinion? Do you know which one to listen to? How well reasoned is it? One thing I really like about JTO Sullivan, the quarterback school, great, great stuff on YouTube. He's having trouble on YouTube. So a lot of his stuff is now on Patreon because of YouTube's poor content ID decisions.

Don't trust platforms. They're not your friends. But one thing I really like about him is is first he is very open about the things that he doesn't know he's not super confident in his ability to project what kind of stuff translates when jumping up to the next level whether he should put a premium on physical talent he can just tell you what he sees based off of his experience being a quarterback for roughly a third of the teams in the league uh and he breaks down like, hey, I really like it when JJ McCarthy did this. I don't love it when he did this. And this matters because in the NFL, you'll see this type of play a lot more often, or you'll have to make this read a lot more often. And hey, you saw Bo Nix do this, and that's great. That's not going to happen very often in the NFL, you know, that kind of stuff.

He's very open about when he gets stuff wrong. Like, you know, he was very wrong about Justin Herbert. And he references that fact. And he's like, hey, you know, this is what happens here. I think Nate Tice does something very similar. I really like it when when Tice talks about his hits and his misses, and he talks about the quarterback process. And you don't have to have been a former quarterback, which both Nate Tice and JT O'Sullivan were to be good at this, especially because we see disagreements among former quarterbacks, like Chris Sims played quarterback, Merrill Lodge played quarterback, right? So it's really just kind of a question of how they arrive at their conclusions, what they say when they talk about their misses,

and what they think as their process evolves. That, to me, is much more appealing. Plus, you just learn more about football. Sometimes it's less, is Drake May good or bad? And it's more, hey, there's a lot of rpo in this college system how much does that like translate into the nfl what is an rpo what kind of reads is that asking the quarterback to make can they make those kinds of reads in the nfl do nfl defenders defend it every differently very differently because one thing we've learned is that defenders in the nfl defended the read

option way different than they do in college because they're insane freak athletes and they can cover both the quarterback and the running back so that kind of stuff doesn't translate but with the read uh with the rpo which is kind of like a read option it's a little bit different because you're asking a linebacker or whoever your read is um to be wrong first you know there's a bunch of other stuff so um that to me matters more i mean jt someone just put out his quarterback rankings video and i watched all of it. And half the video is him saying, I don't like doing rankings. And that's gold.

This guy knows exactly who he is and what he does. And I think that's kind of the way to approach a lot of this is like, yeah, the rankings can tell us who might be good, who might be bad. And we don't know kind of who's going to hit beforehand and stuff like that. But learning about the process along the way is way cooler, more interesting and more informative than anything else. I just also watched that video and JT had the longest disclaimer I think I've ever seen. Although I do understand YouTube watch time is very important. So so JT got me on the YouTube watch time. But that is, you know, JT's been on the show.

I wrote a feature about him about a year ago. And we talked about that quite a bit, about JT does all of his analysis based on the tape. So it's entirely, here is what I saw on tape. Here's how I think they looked on tape. Not, here's what i know about projecting him which would be a scout's job i mean that's a big part of scouting and what kevin o'connell's trying to do is project where they can go from here not just who had the best tape and so jt is sort of laying it out to you here's what i doing. I'm not trying to go into the guy's character.

I'm not trying to figure out everything from his offense. I'm just telling you, here's what I see on his tape about how he performed and here's how I would rank him based on that. And regardless of your process, you're always going to have rights and wrongs. And I've been through them on the show about mine of thinking Josh Allen would be terrible and thinking Lamar Jackson would be great and one for two, just the same way as most guys, you know, Merrill Hodge is making a lot of the rounds, which is Merrill Hodge. Welcome back. Uh, but you know, like he's doesn't like Drake May. And you know, the thing is about Drake Mays, a great inkblot test for this, because when you

watch Drake Mays actual tape from last year, there's a lot of cringe moments and you go, oh man, that in the NFL will get you killed, benched, whatever. But then there's a lot of moments where you go, wow, that is something totally different. So if you are Kevin O'Connell making this decision, you're looking for taking the wow stuff onto the next level and trying to coach the what the F stuff out of his game, which as we know from a lot of NFL quarterbacks who are actually good, you can't always do that. You know, the like Matthew Stafford, I, we saw him get sacked 10 times in a game against the Vikings. He also won a super bowl. So there's a lot of over analysis

as well of like, how seriously should we take some of the criticisms and even some of the tape when we know that he's not playing with north carolina he's playing with justin jefferson and i think that's another part that makes it so hard is that when we're talking about it you and i we're talking about of how does this guy fit with the actual minnesota vikings we're not just ranking here's whose tape looked the best here who here's the guy fit with the actual Minnesota Vikings? We're not just ranking. Here's whose tape looked the best here. Here's the guy who has the best data and analytics. We're talking about how does this guy fit with Kevin O'Connell, with what they want to do with Justin Jefferson. And also if you took Drake may and put them on the New York jets from Sam Darnold's first year,

he might fail because almost everybody might've failed. And now you're in a situation that's much different, which I think in the broader sense, if you are just a draft analyst covering all 32 teams, you are not thinking of a reef and Matthew and our conversation about the Minnesota Vikings. Right. I would hope not for sure. Um, but yeah, I think that, you know, fit in, in the talent around a quarterback obviously determines a lot of outcomes, but also kind of what a coach can accomplish, right? Like, I think you take a look at the Josh Allen case, and I think that there's a lot of NFL teams he would have just failed on, right? It was necessary for a coach, not just to be patient with him, of course, but also to understand kind of what the genesis of his problem was and and coach that out of him right

and so for him a lot of it had to do um with with his release and his arm angle and the way that he was you know transmitting the ball through his throwing motion however you want to put it whatever $50 words you want to use right they had to fix his mechanics uh which is like pretty difficult in the NFL it's not easy to fix a quarterback's mechanics we've seen that time and again right, right? You know, Tim Tebow is the most famous example, but it happens all the time, right? They never tried to fix Philip Rivers mechanics because what are you doing? It's fine. It's working, right? So, you know, that kind of approach where you try to figure out, is this fixable? Is it worth fixing? How much time and resources can we, can we devote to fixing? How much of a runway do we have as coaches to be able to do that um you know that that matters too and then on top of that like you take like so a prospect

like jayden daniels whose highlights are are the best right out of all of these guys phenomenal highlights um if you're like an nfl coach you're like well that's nice i'd love all of that you know run the ball throw it deep that's great it's and six, and I want to run stick. Is this guy going to throw to the open tight end? And based off of what we're seeing, no. And so, so now you're punting, right? And so you have to figure out like, okay, this guy doesn't throw over the middle of the field. You know, is this a product of the offense that he's in? Is this a product of the type of quarterback he is? Because if it's like Russell Wilson, that's the offense, it's the quarterback. He is of the offense that he's in? Is this a product of the type of quarterback he is? Because if it's like Russell Wilson, that's the offense,

it's the quarterback. He is not the offense that he's in, but they managed to make it work through multiple offensive coordinators in Seattle. Right. But, you know, for,

for, for systems that are a little bit more rigid, like Sean Payton's, that doesn't quite work. He's a very throw over the middle kind of guy. And so you have to figure out like, well, if we have Jaden Daniels, are we going to design a system that's going to go up and

out a lot and then make him the check down? Are we worried about him getting hit all the time? You know, that kind of stuff. And then, you know, if it's Caleb Williams, it's like, okay, well, we got to spend a little bit more time in camp drilling on scramble rules because that's where this guy makes a ton of magic. If we don't drill scramble rules, we're not maximizing the things that he's good at. So that's a lot of it too, is that you've got to have a coach that is capable of it. You got to figure out if when you're projecting these guys, if your coach is flexible or rigid,

and if he's rigid or she's rigid, then you have to figure out whether or not that quarterback fits within those constraints. And then obviously if you've got somebody like like a johnny manziel's thrown to mike evans at texas a&m okay well he he likes to live with with dangerous throws and contested catches what if we put him in a system where there's no contested catch receivers oh boy okay great obviously a lot of other problems with johnny manziel but like on the field you know we didn't see a ton of that right well now you have to figure out like if

you've got a quarterback that throws a lot of contested catches, do you have a guy that wins contested catches? Well, the Vikings do, right? But maybe some other places that have really great receivers, like Seattle, maybe they don't. Like DK Metcalf is big. He's not a contested catch guy. And so you have to figure out, like, okay, well, he throws dangerous throws. He throws tight window stuff.

He likes these contested catches. He wants his guys to win it. Do we have the personnel to do that? there's like a dozen other things can he build chemistry the do timing oriented receivers uh maximize him or is it that kind of not important to that guy that kind of stuff so there's like a million things that you know that maybe a person covering the team can do a little bit more to provide um some some context but like when you've got when you're covering 32 teams you're doing the draft it's really difficult for you to really break down fit because sometimes like you might know all the offenses but you might not know you know how

flexible kevin o'connell is or you might not know hey jefferson's not a bit well now we know he's a contested catch guy but he's not a big receiver like in theory is could he win contested catches it turns out he won like 90 of them in college and maybe you forgot that or whatever right knowing a team gives you some advantages on projecting fit knowing the draft gives you some advantages on knowing the ins and outs of a player and and sometimes you have to take a little bit from everybody to kind of get a full picture and i think what you're talking about is something that we can combine with very good analysts of quarterbacks to what they do best and worst. What could be the pitfalls? What could be the ceiling?

And that's why ceiling and floor get thrown around so often. And I think that, you know, sometimes it's, well, ceiling is what anybody who's really good at quarterback could take a team to the Superbowl. We just saw it with Brock Purdy, who is definitely not Josh Allen, but he's also definitely good enough to take you there under the right circumstances, which is what you're looking for. And then you can let ESPN debate all day long of whether your quarterback's good as you go to the Superbowl and not be that concerned about that part of it. But what I like to find out is, all right, here's all the details of the guys. Now combine that with

what I know. And let me try to form an opinion based on those two things. So based on what I understand about Kevin O'Connell, this offense, Jefferson, the weapons, and then what fits with these particular quarterbacks. This can be a bit of a struggle still though, because with someone like JJ McCarthy, he's done under center, which I think helps him a lot. But also if we're talking about accuracy precision, I don't see that totally, but I do see an athleticism that I think that they have been missing with Kirk Cousins. Any shred of athleticism was missing with Kirk Cousins. And I see also a quarterback when I listened to him talk at the combine, you go, okay, I could see this guy in a room talking with Kevin O'Connell, tossing

footballs around, tackling each other and watching tape all day and stuff, right? Doing all the football things. And you go, I think those guys' personalities might gel really well. And then I look at the stats and go, okay, you really got to finagle some stuff to make that work. You got to start getting out your little, you know, your microscope and look, oh, on third downs against teams that weren't ranked, he was really good. And you go, all right. Okay. And I've, and I've asked people about this enough analytics

experts and NFL people. And all of them, when I ask about what stats I should be using, they all go, Oh, it's, uh, you know, because a lot of the stats are so different. Michael Penix played very different teams on a very different team. Drake may played for a really bad team. And I mean, Michigan play, what do they have? 18 people at the combine is like, what? They've got a unbelievable team here. So they might have seven offensive linemen drafted. They're only allowed to play five. That's what I'm saying. They're're they're running back is amazing he got the ball all the time that's where that's where i have so much trouble i think is trying to balance

the playing fields of these guys as i look for who could be a fit you could talk yourself in or out of it based on a lot of the information and also trying to figure out, all right, so do I give Pennix more credit for the Texas game or more criticism for the Michigan game? Like, what do I do with all this? Yeah, I think, yeah, it's, it's tough because like at, at heart, I'm an analytics guy. Right. And so I just, I kind of want to figure out like, Hey, I'm not going to be able to watch all the tape on all of these guys. What's kind of the best way to synthesize all of the information we have available to us, right? That's kind of the goal here. And it's difficult because if there were like strong analytical solutions for quarterbacks, that problem would be solved. There wouldn't be like a 50% hit rate in the first round of the NFL.

The NFL would have figured it out. And as we're getting more data, we might have a little bit more available to us, but it becomes tough. So I think it's really just a question of can we ask some interesting questions that project well? Can we answer some of those questions in interesting ways that help us project well and understand a player? Right. And so, for example, with J.J. McCarthy. Right. You know, the question is like, hey, he's never really had to carry the team. Right. You know, he's not had to, you know, put the team on his back, right? So what are some instances where it was kind of completely dependent on him to dig the team out of a situation? How did he do? And you could take a look at exactly the split that you define, right? The third and longs, right? Where everybody knows it's going to be a throw, he has to throw and he's got to,

you know, find an open guy and get it to him. And statistically, his conversion rate on those throws is really high. The weird thing, though, is that that's also true for Bo Nix. And I don't think anybody thinks of Bo Nix as a third and long guy. And when you take a look at those third and longs, you're like, oh, okay, that's why. Because he's throwing at two yards, and then Troy Franklin's running at seven, right? And it's like, okay, fine. So is that true for McCarthy? And it's like, okay, well, let's take a look at his throws beyond the sticks on third and long, because that's kind of when it's going, oh, wow, he's like really accurate there.

It's like Jaden Daniels one, and then J.J. McCarthy two. And it's like, wait, I'm looking at 20 throws. Is this a good enough sample? And so, um, you know, you, you ask him a question to get some answers and then you take a, uh, then you take like a reality check and take a step back. And I think you do that through a lot of questions you have about a player so that you can kind of get closer to figuring out if this is answerable because the the meta problem is is this a quarterback that can lead the team right and then we start looking at these small answers

start building a case well what happens when he's under pressure well i know under pressure statistics are stable but if the answer is good that gives me something to go on let's find out why the answer is good well what happens when we just get rid of all the play actions? If it's, you know, if it's all, if it's only throws beyond the sticks, if it's, you know, whatever. And it's like, okay, well, I've got like a hundred drawbacks here. They're all throws beyond the sticks. They're not, there's no play action.

Okay. Oh, all of these throws are contested targets. Well, that's probably not good. And you, And you keep on like going down the list. And so eventually it gives you kind of some sense of, okay, well, Michigan didn't ever really rely on JJ McCarthy, but it seems as if the situations where it was up to him to come to the table with something good you know he more often than not did it okay great i still have mccarthy like fourth but i am a lot less concerned after having

gone through that process about mccarthy than than i was before because i was like oh my god they just they're like they're these games where he throws a bad pass and they basically put him in timeout right they like they run the ball 14 times in a row like jesus this is this is a fourth year well it's not a fourth year but it's like a third year quarter he's like you're he's he's your guy and you're just like all right that's enough of that we're gonna we're gonna run our two five-star running backs or whatever instead. And so that was a concern for me. He never really entered the fourth quarter very often with going from behind.

They didn't throw the ball all that often. The game script never put him in a position where he had to succeed. And so that was a concern of mine. And that, for me, put him as a potential second rounder. Now, after going through this process, I'm a little bit more comfortable with him as a potential second rounder. Now I, after going through this process, I'm a little bit more comfortable with him as a first rounder, but yeah, I,

I still obviously have not moved him a ton because I still like Jane Daniels, more Drake, may more than obviously Caleb. Yeah. And even when it comes to that third and long stat and who did he do it against is a question, because if you think about like,

they were massively better than Washington, who was in the national championship game, how much better were they than UNLV? Well, I shouldn't even insult UNLV because they had an OK season. But you know what I mean? Like, well, I mean, it's like Rutgers in Maryland. I don't think he looked good in. And those are those are teams that are dog water. Right. Like, I just like you should like you should be benching this guy halfway through because of how well you're doing. Not because you're like concerned that he's throwing to the wrong shoulder six times in a row. Like, figure it out. And like,, so yeah, I think that's also a good part of it, right? Like, I've had a lot of pushback on the, hey, he had a great supporting cast argument, because they're like, well, you take a look. And you know, this guy's like falling down on

these routes over here. And, you know, I know this tight end supposed to be drafted, but he's a blocking tight end. And it's like, okay, sure, fine. this receiver fell down here this tight end's not as good a receiver as everyone's making them out to be you know maybe Roman Wilson isn't as good as all the draft analysts say uh at halftime they're up by 20 I don't know what you want me to say 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. That's uscellular.com slash built for us. Yeah, I know. And that was my, I guess, hesitation with him as a potentially top draft pick, which actually is going to lead into something else I wanted to talk about. But just to kind of finish the point, it really speaks to how difficult it is to figure out what this might've looked like somewhere else. So if you take JJ McCarthy and you put him into Washington's offense with Roma dunes, a clear top 15 prospect in the draft, and you just

say, Hey pal, guess what? It's all on you. Throw, throw, throw. Does he end up with 4,700 yards and 35 touchdowns and a trip to the national? Like maybe I don't know that he wouldn't like because he does have a lot of talent. He does have a big arm. He's not as experienced as Michael Penix, which also throws a wrench in things because he's older and maybe Michael Penix three years ago doesn't do the same thing that he was doing last year. And now my head is about to pop off when it comes to trying to figure out if this guy's a good prospect, but that's what I wanted to ask you about the

consensus board and what it tells us about whether hype is real. Uh, because I had a pretty fun time with the Desmond Ritter people from a couple of years ago. And I like some of them and I'm sorry, some of you are my friends, but Desmond Ritter guys, I mean, what are we talking about here? So like, I, I didn't see it at all. I just, Willis, I understood where they were coming from. The Ritter thing was just, what are we talking about? Like Cincinnati, Josh McCown, like max for him. Anyway, it doesn't matter that that was one of those okay i end up right on that sometimes i'm wrong on other things and i've always looked for kind of a guide post on this

of how do i figure out if all these people watch josh or uh sorry i almost said josh mccown jj mccarthy uh all these people who watch josh mccown of course were blessed to do so except for that time with the vikings and nate pool but uh with J.J. McCarthy, everybody who watched him came away with like, yeah, I can kind of see it. I mean, I see the tools and I see like the athleticism and so forth. But I don't know if he's a first round draft pick or maybe back of the first. And then a few weeks later, we're all decided he's going in the top five and he's worth the Vikings trading up, which sometimes historically has been true and has totally happened. And other times historically it's been, no, no, no, this was actually fool's gold.

Will Levis was never a thing and so forth. So is there any instruction there that the consensus board and the mock draft universe gives us on how true or false it can be the hype over a particular prospect. Um, the practice is always interesting to me because one of the things that, that, um, I do is I try to find out who the most polarizing prospects in the draft are, right? Where were the biggest rank differences in ranking a player across 80 or so boards, right? And usually before I publish that piece that discusses who the most polarizing players are, I ask like, Hey, Twitter, what do you think? Who do you think

is going to end up as the most polarizing player or the five most polarizing players? And they're never right. It's never who they think it is. Right. Like the one time they got it right, it was like Josh Allen. It was like, fair enough. Right. You all, you all nailed it right it was like josh allen was like fair enough right you you all you all nailed it he was ranked anywhere between 20 and 400th which i think if you're ranking him 400th you're just trying to make a point at that point but fine whatever um but uh you know for the most part you know people are like oh man people have been talking about mac jones a lot he's all over the place you know kind of the same way people talk about jj mccarthy where it's like are people really gonna pick mac jones at three that's crazy i'm as the top of the second round bottom of the first round and it goes a little bit later in the draft and a lot of people you know were projecting by the time all the

rumors had kind of cleared the air right so um what's really nice is that it kind of nails people down into their ultimate take right and so we can have all of these conversations about i don't know if he's that good or whatever um like judevi and clowny a lot of people expected to be uh a super polarizing player because people like oh my god he didn't have any production his final year oh but he was fighting from triple teams and they were running away from him and i don't like his attitude and he was thinking about sitting out and it was like all this discussion about this guy and everybody had a rank number one everybody right it was just like oh well okay i'm glad we did all that uh and in a lot of the guys that are like the most polarizing or sometimes the ones that we don't talk about very often um and sometimes it's a it's a mix for both like robert comdiche

was one of the most polarizing prospects in the draft that he was in because he's this five star. He's this incredible athlete. He tested really well. His production was OK. But it was just like, does he know what he's looking at? I don't like people who like break down defensive line play. We're like, I don't think that he can see more than like two inches in front of him or I don't know what's going on here. But he gets sacks. I don't know. And so it was kind of all over the place. So what I really like about the consensus board is that it does a pretty good job of like forcing people into a bandwidth of opinion and it turns out sometimes people just kind of agree a lot more than they think they do

and they're exaggerating the stuff they disagree on and then another thing that i found out is that when we have these conversations about guys in the second round that that we had a second round guys are being pushed up into the first round. That doesn't happen actually all that often. People talk about the NFL overdrafting quarterbacks, and yeah, they do, right? Obviously, but not by nearly as much as people say, right? Like right now, about a fourth or third of the boards have Marvin Harrison as the top player on the board, right? And then a couple more have Drake May, which is fun.

And then a couple, like one or two, have Jaden Daniels. Caleb Williams is still the most picked at number one. But based off of that, technically, Chicago would be overdrafting him because the average value for him is less than that. Oh, who cares, right? And that happens a lot where, Oh, who cares? Right. And, and that happens a lot where, okay, this guy was ranked sixth on the consensus board, but he's a quarterback. So he goes second fine. Right. But for the most part, if you've got a

quarterback ranked 40, he's usually not going to sneak into the first round. They usually doesn't happen even at 35 or so. They usually, that guy doesn't sneak into the first round. In fact, the guys that quote unquote sneak into the first round are guys that the consensus board ranks higher than the NFL. People like Teddy Bridgewater, people like Lamar Jackson. Those are the guys that get picked like 32, right? So yeah, there's a lot of discussion about this. With McCarthy, I find it kind of interesting

because I think he'll get picked higher than he is on the consensus board. Fun fact, so did Patrick Mahomes. But they were both ranked as first-round quarterbacks. McCarthy right now in the early version of the board I have before I've got people like Brugler and people like Matt Miller and Mel Kuyper putting out their boards. Right now he's ranked 25th. And I imagine as soon as I get more of the boards that are connected to, you know, guys who have like sources, right? Like people like DJ or the people that I just named. I suspect that he'll move a little bit further up in the final

consensus board. I bet he's going to rank at least 20th. Okay. So if he gets picked eighth, yeah, he's overdrafted, but that's like a reasonable overpay at that position. So I don't know. I think that we talk a lot about the NFL overvaluing guys. We talk a lot about the NFL making these dramatic reaches. And for the most part, they do not do that. There are some instances and it turns out that's just an individual NFL team making a bad decision that no one saw coming. Christian Hackenberg with the Jets is a good example of that. But for the most part, it's like, ah, we're overstating our case here. That's usually when a crazed owner, say, gets a text from Johnny Manziel, says, come get me. And then the owner says, all right, let's go. Johnny Manziel's our guy. And that is what's so hard to talk about

when we say the NFL, when they pass on a guy, then we know the whole league didn't like him. But when somebody picks him, say sixth, like Daniel Jones, where a consensus board might've had Daniel Jones later on, probably borderline second round, well, you go, okay, well, that's pretty extreme. That's a huge jump, but normally they aren't that way. When I was looking at this into the past of what the consensus boards had said, most of the time, as you mentioned, it was, Hey, a lot of these mock drafters think that drew lock is a top 20 prospect. And actually no one thinks that. And the same thing for, you know, Malik Willis famously now, and even Will Levis.

Like, oh, these are top 10 quarterbacks because somebody will bet on their athletic ability. But what we didn't realize is that Malik Willis can't read the field for anything. And they knew that. And we didn't. We were looking at his arm. And we were looking at his running ability. And with Will Levis looking at his diet i guess with his drinking mayo with his coffee or well he's he is very jacked but he throws the ball really

strangely we'll see if he works out or not but you know my point is just a lot of times the mock universe overvalues which leads me to this question about jj mcc, kind of a two-parter in your opinion, based on that information, is it worth trading up for him? Somebody that may come out to be 20th on your consensus, big board. Uh, is it worth trading up to number five with the chargers or four with the Cardinals to get him and giving up multiple first round picks? And is it real? Like that's my big thing with McCarthy that I can't really figure out because my new take that if it turns out to be right, I'm going to pimp this home run all day. And if it doesn't, I'll say, I never said that. And I'll delete the episodes is that

I think the Vikings might be able to get JJ McCarthy at number 11. I think if they stay there, there is a very decent chance, even with all the competition that we've overstated the interest in part because Arizona and new England and Los Angeles really want you to think that there's a lot of interest. That's just, that's like my new, uh, you know, putting all the newspaper clippings together on a board and tying them together type of take. But what, like, can we figure out if this is real or not? No, we cannot. Um,

which I, it's so weird to me because, um, during the NFL combine, the general consensus, which I wasn't gathering boards at the time. So my lead on that is just as good as anybody else's, but the general consensus on McCarthy was that of the second tier of

quarterbacks, which included him, Michael panics bone egg and bone x um was that he was the best of those guys so he would be going at the top of the second round maybe he'd sneak into the first right um that was the general understanding of who he was and then the combine happened which is where all these rumors happened it's also when people begin to lie uh and um in and i heard that you know the vikings not from anybody affiliated with the vikings i heard the vikings were like really high on jj mccarthy and i was like wait hold on what does that mean because if you're if like if you're high on spencer rattler that probably means you like him in the third round maybe the second right if you're high on Michael Penix, that might mean the bottom of the

first. If you're high in J.J. McCarthy, does that mean you like him at the bottom of the first? Does that mean you like him at the top of the second? Does it apparently mean he's top five? So we've started modifying our mock drafts and maybe even our big boards based off of this information without really having a context for how this information has arrived to us or what it kind of means right the vikings might love jj mccarthy and to them that means they think that they they value them higher than the rest of the league which means they have an understanding where the rest of the league ranks and if they think the rest of the league places them at 40 and they place them at 30. That's way different. You might be able to draft them at 23 then, right? I think that with a lot of this, a lot of this is just, it's built on a kernel of

truth and then kind of expands, right? I think that it is probably the case that teams like, or the NFL likes JJ McCarthy more than where people had him in January. I don't know if it's such the case that he's going to be picked fourth overall. I don't have a huge problem with the take that you could take him at 11. I think that there's probably like a fifth-year option plus a Patrick Mahomes-type floor where it's like, well, if you like him at 11, you probably like him at 10. You should probably try it up to nine, right?

It's like probably the thing where it's like, well, we get like – we know that teams like to figure out that quarterback position a little bit earlier, and we know that Mahomes went 10th, and maybe that's where the floor is. But at the same time, the franchise tag jumps from – or not the franchise tag, the 50-year option jumps tremendously from 11 to 10. So do we want to make that jump? I don't know. So I don't know.

I think that probably you might have to trade up a couple of spots. I don't know that you have to trade up to four or five. So that's kind of the curious thing to me. You don't have to worry about that if you might have to trade up a couple of spots. I don't know that you have to trade up to four or five. So that's, that's kind of the curious thing to me. You don't have to worry about that if you trade with new England, but if new England, you know, stays put and decides that all the stuff they've been saying about

quarterbacks is true or all the stuff they've been saying about building around a quarterback is false. They've been going both ways. Then, then you have to figure out, well, the Cardinals just super want to trade down it's so obvious how much they want to trade down like um i don't know so um i i don't know how much

of this is true but i imagine it's a little bit i think that there is a perceived increase in his value that's true for some, some sense, right. But not to the point where you have to draft him at fourth overall or anything like that. I mean, I don't, has that ever happened?

One, two, three, four. I don't think that's ever happened in the history of the NFL draft. One, two, three,

four. Why would JJ McCarthy break that? Well, that's like a weird guy to break that mold. I also think too, that every year we hear the teams at the top saying hey come make us an offer come make us an offer and then everyone makes their offers and they're like no marvin harrison they're right so i could see four and five both being like you know these offers

sound great but we're just gonna like take the amazing prospect and we, and you know, the scouts and the GM and they watch the film and the owner gets excited about, Hey, everyone's saying this Marvin Harrison's the best player. And so we need to get them and don't trade down that sort of thing. Even if it might actually be the smarter thing. I've also looked at number seven because that's somebody that has a relationship with Kweisi Daffel-Mensah at the GM ran Carthon. And then, you know, they also need a lot of players. Tennessee does. They have a lot of needs and maybe you're talking about trying to get up ahead of Atlanta, which could be a trade down team. And now again, head spinning. But I think if they stood at number 11, we would all be like, then why did they make that trade for the

other pick? But at the same time, uh, they might be able to just get their guy at that spot. And rather than giving up everything, which kind of goes to the last part of the discussion with defensive players, visiting the Vikings today, Quinnian Mitchell and Byron Murphy, who is kind of my go-to guy. When I bring up this idea of like, Hey, you know, if you decided to try to pick a quarterback at 23, then this fella here looks like he could be your next, what Shreve Floyd you wanted him to be or something like that. Uh, but risking it and waiting until 23 seems to me a very, very risky, uh, because then if the quarterbacks do surprise us and get taken and

you're left with Sam Darnold, Nick Mullins, and Jared Hall, this is going to be an unhappy podcast. I can tell you that if you come away with no quarterbacks, it will make them look like a circus. Oh, by the way, I did want to mention one other thing. Kevin O'Connell's not telling anybody. So if someone tells you, oh man, we're high on this, the guy making the call, the final shot is his, and he's not telling anybody who's in the envelope. I would be surprised if he told his family who he likes and his dad is in the FBI. So maybe he knows you can get it out of him or something, but I don't think anybody else can unless you're in the FBI.

So, uh, anybody who says the Vikings are high on this guy, they love this guy. I just can't buy it because I know who's making the call. So anyway, circling all of that back, uh, the stick and pick idea, here's where I learned to love it. Uh, you've probably seen what is the movie, how I learned to love the bomb, how I learned to love the stick and pick. Okay. Dr. Strange draft. That's what it is. Dr. Strange draft says this about the stick and pick. I started adding up the surplus value of hitting on a defensive tackle or a defensive end with a quarterback that's on a rookie contract. And, uh, my eyeballs popped out of my head because defensive tackles are getting $20 million a year.

If you're great, plus defensive ends are getting 25 plus. I don't know how long it's going to be till someone matches Nick Bosa, but Brian birds, who I consider to be pretty good 28 and at Daniel Hunter, who's neck, you know, may hold up or may not 24 i mean so you're talking 25 plus if you draft a guy at number 23 and pay him three million dollars to five or six over the first four years whatever the range is versus what they're going to be worth in four years i've become more sold on this idea because i also think arif that those defensive linemen they go in the first round usually if they're going to be great so if you're trading for one and paying the guy you're paying through the nose to get that guy jonathan grenard is good but he has one great year and he gets

20 million dollars a year i think that there is a very legitimate argument economically to stay at 11 pick who you want or even go crazy and pick the defensive lin stay at 11, pick who you want, or even go crazy and pick the defensive lineman at 11. If you're confident you could get your quarterback 23, how does that idea sit with you? Uh, I mean, if you, if you, if you bring a quarterback in somewhere, yeah, I love it. But like, that's, you know, that's the, that's the contingency. So like, okay, they, they sit at 11, they bring in JJ McCarthy, or they pick at 11, and they draft like Michael Penix at 23. They try to convince us that the same medical team

that cleared Andrew Booth cleared Michael Penix, and we're all like, yeah, okay, great. That sounds good. Too soon, he was fine last year. He was fine. It doesn't matter he didn't play. He was fine. You're like, okay, great.

Great bang-up job, medical let's let's bring in michael panics fine i'm happy so at 11 you could pick a quinion mitchell you could pick byron murphy um there's like four edge rushers that you could pick um latulatu is tons of fun to watch dallas turner super productive chop robinson is an insane athlete. Jared Verse had a great last two seasons, actually. You know, like, these are all, like, really fantastic guys that are worthy of consideration at 11, right? Byron Murphy, Johnny Newton, all of these guys, fantastic. If you take a look at those same positions

and look at them in the second and third round, which I know the Vikings don't have those picks, but, like, you can manufacture it, right? Like, we can figure it out. Or you take a look at the fourth the second and third round, which I know the Vikings don't have those picks, but you can manufacture it, right? We can figure it out. Or you take a look at the fourth, fifth, sixth round where you used to be able to find edge rushers before NFL GMs got clued into the value of athleticism. It's kind of a wasteland.

There are some guys that I kind of like, like a Martian Neyland or whatever, but for the most part, these guys aren't great or they're nose tackles right which is there's a lot of value in somebody like a jordan jefferson right but you know it's it's not really the same as grabbing like a johnny newton right um the drop off in the top end at those positions specifically is really dramatic in a way that's not really true i think at cornerback as much that's i think definitely not true um at running back i mean the running backs in the

fourth fifth sixth round are genuinely like exciting to me like oh grab one of those guys um but i i think that if if you're like hey man we could we could save a projected like 20 million if we hit um that's super appealing because then you could sign a free agent cornerback and now you've got like a team like a team like oh jonathan grenard and and andrew van ginkle and jared verse and they're all rotating around they're all figuring stuff out boy that's with brian flores trying to trying to like maximize what they can do and oh my my gosh, that sounds fantastic. You could manage without Michael Penix, right?

You could figure that out, right? Is JJ McCarthy without a defense better than Michael Penix with one? I don't know. So I like it. I still think that probably if you've got a strong opinion on the difference between four and five, a quarterback, you should act on it. Right. But if it's not that strong, sticking pick sounds fun. Well, that's the thing is that it comes down to Kevin O'Connell's opinion and his opinion alone.

And then Kweisi Adafomenta has to make it work. So if his opinion is, look, I hate every single one of these quarterbacks except Drake Drake may you're like, all right, get out the checkbook. Here it comes. You know, right. So call new England, tell them it's a blank check. They can have all the draft picks in the world. But if he says, look, you know, I like Drake may the best, but I think that sacrificing our whole booty of draft picks is not a great idea. So I also love Michael Penix's arm and how we jived inside the whiteboard meeting room, Gruden meeting, you know,

Gruden camp style or whatever. And when I took him out in the field and hit him with pool toys, he threw it really well or whatever the crazy stuff. Didn't get hurt by a single pool noodle. It was fantastic. I still want to know what the heck they bought on amazon or whatever to try to help the guy stop fumbling last year because i couldn't tell if he was kidding or if they actually brought in apparatuses or apparati if you will to how somehow stop them from fumbling which is really

just random and they should have not worried too much about it. But anyway, the whole point being that if Kevin O'Connell said, look, I am this close on Penix or McCarthy, both guys could be my guy. We've got to trade up to get McCarthy, or we could take Penix and get another dude, then take Penix and get another dude. So I think that economics only play a very small amount of this, but I also have just, and I looked this up, almost every team or almost every recent

Superbowl, which is generally not the best way to do it, but it makes sense this way. Cause it fits what I'm saying. So, uh, but almost every recent Superbowl has had a pass rush unit that has been elite. And every one of them has had like a defensive tackle freak show or like a Nick Bosa or something. But we've seen the Rams with the top defense with Aaron Donald and you've seen Bosa do it. And I think there's even lesser versions of this if you have a lot of guys, which is Philadelphia, where no one was truly special. But you had five of them who were really good. And usually if you have get them at seven or 11 and then get a defensive player. Because if you pick a defensive player at 23,

it's like picking them at 12 in a normal draft where it's not just all offensive players. So a lot of factors, uh, at play last thing for you is, uh, what do you think she thinks is going to happen? What's your prediction? Come on, say it, say what you think's gonna happen what's your prediction come on say it say what you think go ahead uh i should go go go go um i think they trade up to three i think new england capitulates i think they new england buys the argument that you got to build a team before you can bring a quarterback in um and there's like a long leash at new england anyway so they've got some time. And so I think they tried down, I think the Vikings tried up to three,

and I think that they probably grabbed Jaden Daniels. I think that the smoke about who Washington likes, well, first of all, we've heard three different quarterbacks, so screw that. The smoke about who Washington likes is whatever, and I think that primarily you'll probably get the guy that some people are debating is the top prospect in the draft right like i don't think he is but if so if there's enough people that it's impacting my big board already that think drake may is the number one prospect in the draft

probably the washington likes him probably so um i think i I kind of just want to go chalk here and I think it's not too complicated. We shouldn't overthink things based off of the stuff that we're hearing in April of all times. And that I think doing the trades down, I think that they want to build out a team. They don't really have that. And I think that the Vikings do until they want to trade up.

And I think that that means a Jane Daniels, if they got Drake may even better, but I like both of them here's what i know we're gonna break it down in a crazy amount of levels but i'm not playing a flag so if they do exactly what you're saying they land jay what i'm not doing it i'm not doing it if they are going to if they trade up to get jayden daniels i will go all right good move like here we go i am not i am not going to be like with with kirk cousins because there was a sample of nfl performance with kirk cousins planted the flag i don't think this is going to work and it was uh certainly um

a battle through the first couple of years and then it became clear that it didn't work but then it like suddenly netflix happened and a bunch of games at the end. And then it kind of made a comeback, but then it didn't really, but the point was just, I didn't like the Kirk cousins move at the start. And it was a miserable debate for six years about it. I think with this one,

I hear where I'm going to stand is all right. Kevin O'Connell picked this guy. This is the best chance that they had to win. And if it it doesn't work out it doesn't work out because that's life but it will have been the right decision the only wrong decision i could i could come across where i might question it a little bit would be if they ended up with qb6 with the the last pick of the first round or something and it was like okay so did you just kind of end up with the guy you wanted just have to do that but even then lamar jackson baltimore even pick them with their first pick so yeah they picked the minor league baseball player tight end um so okay i mean there's got to be a limit to this though right Like if they trade up to three and then draft like.

Dylan Bradley. He's the who is Dylan Bradley. He's he's or he's a nepotism hire. No. So University of South Alabama quarterback, the son of Gus Bradley. And he was at the Senior Bowl because it was held at the university of south alabama uh and they were like hey this would be nice and he did okay there and he he he did so well that he moved himself into the conversation to be picked in the fifth round um so so you know if they traded up to three to grab this guy that's you you got to be like what

are we doing here right you've got a that's you've got to have some limits here right okay you went you went extreme you went like somehow or then they they pick them at 11 if they pick spencer rattler 11 i'm gonna have a lot of questions i'm gonna be like what in the world you picked a guy who's six feet tall who doesn't know how to run like this is weird and has like no good college performance i know his offensive line was that i get it but he's like no good college play at any point so that's bad yeah okay fair enough the six generally i should have known that you would pick this apart. The, of the six generally qualifying possible first round quarterbacks, if they land one,

then I'll probably think it was a, at very worst defensible, if not excellent decision. And I also think that whoever gets picked is going to be a happy boy because he gets to come and play with greatness. And I think that in my expectation, I only limit it to the rookie contract. I look at it as, okay, if you end up with a Josh Allen and you sign him to a second contract, that's great. But to me, once you pick them, the clock

starts, you've got four to five years to win with that player. And whatever happens after that, I don't know, but that's how I'll determine it as a success. So like with Carson Wentz, weirdly success didn't turn out to be a great quarterback, but he got you home field advantage that one year and you took advantage of it and you won. I mean, even Baker Mayfield getting them into the playoffs, their one Chad Henney run away from making the AFC championship. It's hard to say that that was a total failure. Did this person put you in position to potentially compete for a Superbowl is my bar at any point in their first four years. So that's a, I think there's a lot of leeway there for Mr. Quarterback of the future. That is, that is a lot of leeway you know like the carson wentz pick was a success it's like

a lot of leeway but they don't win the super bowl if they don't have home field advantage he got them there i look i'm i'm not saying that that the words that you said were incorrect i just think that it's interesting that's all i'm gonna say uh plus i can't give carson wentz any credit like contractually i'm prevented oh right that's right because the carson wentz uh thing that you have about him throwing to the left and all that yeah i guess you know carson wentz's thing is that he went to ndsu oh right right right it was trubisky who didn't throw to the other side but even even trubisky and it's like okay trubisky's got a higher winning percentage than kurt cousins he was terrible and yet that one year if their kicker makes a very

makeable field goal and doesn't doink it then we're talking about mitch trubisky taking his team pretty deep in the playoffs and playoff game winner mitch trubisky as many playoff wins as kirk cousins yeah uh baker mayfield having more home playoff wins than uh kirk um is a thing that happened yeah should they should they kirk cousins it in this draft and which by which i mean draft another quarterback too like should they draft one it and then also in the fourth round no no no it just causes problems uh but hey i mean i guess you could argue that uh that you know san francisco going back to the well with brock purdy was a great decision for them so maybe maybe you're right maybe you're right maybe they should but i i just feel like they kind of

i don't know depend fourth round seems too high. Fifth round is like, nah, nobody cares about that guy. Fourth round, someone will pay attention. Third round you can't do. Well, yeah. Um, the issue then is like, Oh my God, we're out on Jaron Hall now, which like, fine. You give up on a fifth round pick whenever you want, but the people will be talking like, Hmm, you don't like Jaron Hall anymore. What's going on? I did get that question from time to time. You know, they failed on Jared Hall. Are they going to be able to identify a quarterback?

Well, yeah, of course they did. That's a pick designed to fail. Not only that, but that gentleman should not have been playing football in the National Football League last year. He should have spent his entire time throwing after practice and not put on he looked real good before the concussion those four plays were fantastic i did want to ask atlanta what happened to alexander madison on that play you guys like the best play of his life he was wide open anyway uh i'll i'll make a I'll make a deep cut for you because I know we talked about it once. That was Kyle Carter open.

Yes, I knew you were going to rip Kyle Carter. I'm open. If anybody gets it, that means you've been listening to the show for a long time, and I love you very much. And if you haven't, it doesn't matter. Arif Hassan, you're the best man and uh wnba season starts soon we'll be there some links you know we'll hit that up and the wide left sub stack is exploding it's doing super well i'm really proud of you i'm very happy to see it i think it's perfect for your style and that

there are so many people who love the way that you write. So go check that out. And thanks everybody for watching slash listening. And we will carry on with the football. It's going forward to the draft football. you you you