Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Brad Spielberger deep dives into Jefferson, Darrisaw's contracts and Vikings team building

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

Matthew Coller is joined by Brad Spielberger of Grand Central Sports Management to discuss the offseason extensions for Justin Jefferson and Christian Darrisaw as well as overall team build of the Vikings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining the show for the 100th time is Brad Spielberger, formerly of PFF, but now, hold on, I gotta check the Twitter bio, Grand Central Sports Management Director of Football Administration, and they're still letting you come on my podcast. I'm very happy about this. Brad, that you can return. How is the new job? How are we doing? Yeah, we'll see if this episode makes it to air after it goes through compliance and corporate gets its hands on it. But no, it's great to be back.

Happy to be here. I'm also in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania now. So the setup behind me looks pretty much the same, but it's just the same posters in a different room. But no, it's been cool, man. It's been good. We've done a lot of cool stuff. The agency side of the biz is fun. It's interesting. It's different every day.

There's funny anecdotes and whatnot that I'll probably tell you off air. But yeah, it's as silly in some ways maybe as you hear, but I think in a lot of ways, it's actually very, very... I don't know. It's cool to be able to be able to help young men's lives and, you know, do this. The good side of the business is as good as it gets. I'll put it that way. Okay. So what is a director of football administration do exactly? Yeah.

So I am the contract negotiator for, you know, every agent here at Grand Central Sports. So obviously, I think when I say that, some people are like, isn't that an agent's job? I mean, yes, to a degree. But there is so much more that goes into that profession. When you're traveling around, pretty much at any point you could be on a flight, including during the outage, the data outage from a couple of weeks ago,

when one of our guys was stuck in Laramie, Wyoming, which I joked was maybe the worst possible location to be stuck in, which I stand by. No offense to the folks in Laramie. We have a big listenership there. You just ruined it. I know. I know you probably have some sponsors and a good listener hub in Laramie. But no, so there's travel, there's marketing, there's dealing with a million other things.

And so, yes, all of our agents are fully capable and have experience negotiating contracts. But even some of the bigger big name agencies also have director of football administration roles or whatever. And it's just contract nerds that are preparing for negotiations, that are doing valuation work, that are doing market research and analysis to, you know, because again, making a difference of a couple of dollars here and there in the long run is going to add up for not only the company ourselves, but also for the player. So yeah, I'm the contract negotiator and strategist is essentially what it is. Okay. So not that long ago, you and I did a mock negotiation. How similar was our mock negotiation to your actual negotiation? Very dissimilar in every form or fashion.

Well, look, I haven't negotiated a market setting, Justin Jefferson, highest paid non-QB in the NFL deal yet. But, yeah, there's – well, you know, I don't want to get into – I guess it's obvious who I'm kind of speaking of. I will say this. I don't think there's as much back and forth quibbling on the phone or I guess in person would be the corollary that we did. It's more, I think, on the phone or on email or stuff like that. Yeah, I think you kind of picture two guys sitting in a room

hammering things out and going back and forth. Not really how it goes in my experiences thus far. Well, that does make for better content though. If we can fight back and forth as we did. And you know, I'm going to tell you the truth. I don't remember right off hand where we landed in that contract negotiation, but I think that we were pretty close to where Justin Jefferson actually ended up with his dollar figure. He ends up becoming the highest paid wide receiver in NFL history by 50 miles. I don't think in comparison to quarterback contracts that it's actually comparable at all for how much the team is going to have to work around it that for Justin Jefferson's value and what he brings to JJ McCarthy for the future I thought that the deal that they ended up hammering out with Justin Jefferson turned out to be fine it's it's a lot of money for sure but there wasn't any world where the

vikings were going to walk away from that one and go oh good good deal yeah we really got one over on him this was not a daniel hunter situation but give me your uh breakdown your analysis of uh justin jefferson's contract and how it worked out for the vikings yeah i mean the simple reality as we talked about is yes, it's low end quarterback money, but when your actual quarterback is, you know what the 10th, 11th, whatever it was overall pick and is making now kind of even a discount,

even for a rookie deal, which I know sounds silly, but you know, go look at those contracts folks and Caleb Williams probably making 40 million over four years. Well, JJ is probably what 25, 26.

I should know that, but you know, it falls off pretty precipitously. So yeah, I think the big thing you and I talked about is what was happening, was the term, is Minnesota has been very, very hell bent. And I shouldn't say just them. It's a thing across the NFL and we'll get into it a little bit, but their precedent was always five year deals. And you just referenced the Neil Hunter, him as the fondig signed the exact same contract at the exact same time, or maybe not exact same, but very, very similar. And in

both of those situations, yes, the Vikings won by a mile. They clearly, again, it's a third round pick and a fifth round pick versus a first round wide receiver that has immediately become one of the greatest to ever do at his position versus some guys and digs and, you know, Hunter that kind of were clearly better than they were expected to be as prospects, but they weren't, you know, setting records out of the gate. So yeah, four years is still better than three, which was a very much a reality, right? A lot of receivers have signed these three year deals. So I would say Minnesota being able to finally say you want three,

we want five, four years, shake a hand, and we'll move on from there. I would imagine that was the longest holdup of the entire conversation. I don't know the fair fact, but I would guess it was. So I would say it's great to get there. And then, yeah, I mean, you're going to give unprecedented money. You are going to give Nick Bosa plus money. I think we kind of referenced that contract as well. 34, 35 million. His was on a five-year deal, you know, so you get down to four. But you're seeing still more and more receivers getting paid, you know, in the $30 million range. So I think it's a win-win for all parties.

It had to get done, and it did. Okay, let's dive into the nitty-gritty of this, though, and how the cap hits shape out and what they're going to have to do in the future. So for this year, they only have an $8.6 million cap hit for Justin Jefferson. That's pretty nice for the NFL's best wide receiver. And then next year, 2025, still only $15 million. And this is even when you look at the Trevor Lawrence's or the Jordan loves a lot of what teams are able to do is push those bigger cap hits down the road. And when it reaches 2026, then it goes up to almost $39 million, but they should be able to

restructure it. Like explain to me how we get this, like, how does this happen that they're able to do it this way to have only a $15 million cap hit for next year, which allows them to go into free agency and spend what they want and then how they will deal with it when that cap hit does go up to 39 million. Yeah. So, you know, we talked about it's a four year deal and there was one preexisting year. So you do have five years to work with in the original, you know, a year of the new contract overall, but that, I mean 2024. So if you add four onto one, you have five. We know you can maximum proration is five years in advance. So you can only spread cap it over five years. However, they did add a void year in 2029. So they get also that option bonus for $30 million that's due next year is also getting max prorated it's getting split six million dollars

in each of the five years remaining and yes one of those years is a void year or a dummy year but that's how you enable that and i do think it would be fair to look at this originally and say hey well mccarthy's cheap why wouldn't they front load this a bit more and i think that the rationale is actually if he's cheap, but he's good, then we want to go spend on more players, right? Because then it's like, all right, we have a window, the classic cheap rookie contract quarterback window. I don't know if anyone expects it this year necessarily. I think maybe we'll get into that at a later date, but I think Darnold starts the year and then we see how things progress. But if McCarthy turns it on in his second or third season, you want those lower cap

hits potentially in theory. So you can go add free agents on defense or what have you, because then as we saw this off season and as we're going to get into, quarterbacks were not waiting to get paid. If you've shown any flash of anything after three or four years, you're probably going to be top 10 in the market, even if you can quibble with their players worth it or not, that's going to happen. So I don't mind having these cap it to be pretty low in the years where maybe they do feel like, okay, we have a window we want to attack, and then we'll kind of reset the books again in 2027, that range. Well, and they can start pushing all those buttons that they did so much to keep the team together in 2018 and 2019. And then they ultimately paid for it.

But what the Vikings are trying to do is win in a certain window and you'll pay the bill when it comes. But you're going to open up an opportunity here. Explain what they can do when it does get there. 2026, because I look at year three, especially with young quarterbacks as unless you have Patrick Mahomes, uh, where we often see that big jump, especially from younger quarterbacks. Josh Allen was an example of this guys who are talked about in the same way as JJ McCarthy as raw players that are still ascending and developing. He will in 2026, I believe still be younger than Michael Penix is right now. And Bo Nix is right now. And that, but what, what can they do there? Like, how does that work? How do you just, because I think the way we talk

about it is, well, they'll just kind of do the thing and they'll, you know, push whatever Excel sheet and then the cap hit won't be the cap hit. So what will they do exactly? I think what you do there when you set that up, that balloon payment, so you're saying that the 2026 cap hit is $39 million for Jefferson after 8 and then 15. I really think it does, in my mind, kind of get dictated by how J.J. McCarthy plays, where if you have a lot of groundswell of support and

belief going into that third season, let's say he has a great second year and you say, all right, this is his potential last cheap year. And we think he's good enough. And we think the offensive line looks good. Jefferson looks good. Everyone has their head on straight and the team's looking good and the defense is playing good ball. Then I think you would say, all right, we're going to restructure this money. We're going to take this $25 million salary that we owe Justin Jefferson, and we're going to split that out over the four remaining years, or even go back to him and ask, Hey, let's add another void year on there. So we have five years to split this thing out. Obviously you keep a minimum salary,1.25 million, and then the rest of that $25 million all gets spread out over however many years you want. In theory, you could clear a whole bunch of money, maybe $18 plus million off that number.

That is the potential approach. If you're saying we want to spend, we want to add. Here's the example. Let's say you're the Texans bringing in Daniel Hunter. You do the equivalent. You're the Vikings. Like let's say you're the Texans bringing in Daniel Hunter. You do the equivalent. You're the Vikings. You're pretty good. There's this 30-year-old Ed Rusher that makes it to market who you think,

all right, we're going to sign him to a two-year contract for $50 million because we're going all in right now. Like you do the same thing, you know, as obviously the other team in this example. So if not, let's say McCarthy is like, you know, we're not really worried about he's going to break the bank or anything like that. Maybe you let Jefferson's cap hit stay at that large number

so you don't make it even harder to deal with later on. And you say, all right, just pay the full money on the cap and in cash, of course, this year. Because we might be trying to figure out what we're doing going forward, and we don't want to add to the burden in 2027 and beyond. So it's kind of like this inflection point or this kind of – you might make the decision based on how you feel about the roster going into 2026. So they've given themselves a little bit of flexibility there.

I also wonder what the salary cap is going to be at that point after Amazon buys the entire NFL and pays seven gazillion dollars. And then Jefferson will be making 1% of the salary cap or whatever. And there will be some other receiver who's making a hundred million a year. That's honestly, it sounds ridiculous. That's kind of what's happened over the last, maybe five years with the salary cap. And the next contract we're going to talk about is really maybe evidence of how good that can be if you sign someone to a longer term now. But it has made this massive leap, which I think is the reason that you see quarterbacks

getting to $50 million. But Christian Derrissaw, when he signed, and I got a look at the full contract, our friends over the cap.com shout out to Jason Fitzgerald, who I keep trying to email to get on the show. Doesn't respond to my emails. Maybe you can help me out there. Um, I can't, I can't believe this Christian Darasau contract. I truly can't because he signed it early. He could have waited until next year. My expectation was that he wasn't even going to talk with them really about it. And they were going to do the same negotiation because Jefferson was such a rare situation. And then these cap hits $10 million next year, 23 million in 2026, 24 in 2027.

I mean, by that point, he's going to be a middle-of-the-road left tackle as far as he – am I going over the top to say that this has to be one of the best contracts for a player of his caliber in the league? There's two fascinating elements that occurred this offseason that both play into Christian Derusaw in favor, I suppose, of the club. So first – well, I guess it's good for players too, the first one, in that – and we probably talked about it with Justin Jefferson, and he probably now, in hindsight, would love for this to have happened last year. But you and I talked about how it was very rare for a non-quarterback first-rounder to get that extension done after three years.

Because teams would always just try to wait until after the fourth year because they had the fifth year option. But those players were saying, okay, so I'm being penalized by not getting taken later because all my buddies that went in the second and third and fourth round, they are getting deals done after the third year because, of course, there is no fifth year option. They're going into the final year of their contract. So that had been the case forever where there were like one or two non-QB first rounders. You know, we mentioned Colton Miller, I think, on the show. This past offseason, the first rounders and their agents clearly said enough. Like, we're not doing this anymore. And we'll see if it continues.

But, you know, Pene Sewell obviously was first and he's relevant at tackle, tying back into Christian Derusaw. But, you know, Sewell did it. And now, of course, I'm blanking. But there were probably five or six, seven like first rounders from I guess that would be 2022 that have already signed extensions and I'm not talking quarterback of course that year the only quarterback in the first round was Kenny Pickett who I think is in a camp battle for the number two job in Philadelphia so he obviously was not going to get extended but but yeah so that was the first big one and and frankly

team should i think should always try to go as early as possible we talked about but then second i haven't seen an article about it yet and maybe i should feed it to someone who you know i used to work with or love in the analytics community but i think we now have enough evidence to say that we are seeing a change in the tides where and this goes back to like our buddy eric eager and stuff like that that the offensive line is being viewed as a unit that is a weak link proposition and a weak link system. And yes, tackles are still going to make more than guards. And yes, left tackles probably will still narrow the edge right tackle. However, I think all the money across the board is going to come closer together. Where, I mean, center is still miles behind.

Center is probably the most underpaid position in the NFL. And Creed Humphrey needs to change that in Kansas City for everyone's benefit. But left tackle and right tackle are being more and more kind of just blended together. And then now even guard is, again, still going to be below. But it's not going to be tackles making 35, guards making 15. It's going to be tackles making 28 guards making 22 right like that's kind of the current example right now so i think both of those things happen and then the vikings were able to say you know we'll get you're not going to get pennies to all money

you're not going to get tristan worse money but we'll go just below that um and yeah we'll do a four year not a five year which again so first we talk about team-wise. Some teams are hell-bent on five versus four, where Minnesota used to be. But also, if it's a guy with two years left on his deal, you're going to be more malleable. Okay, we'll go four. We have six total years of control. That, I imagine, was more palatable to them.

So, yeah, everything lined up really, really well. He's a phenomenal football player. I think the tackle market, like I was underwhelmed by what Sewell and Wirfs and I guess Derrissaw did. I don't know how we don't have a $30 million a year tackle if you're going to take four or five years. Like Wirfs in particular, I really just struggle to see what kind of went down there. And again, this is where I'm getting into muddy waters.

If you had me on as a PFF, I would say more. I just don't really know what happened with the Wirfs so anyway uh that's all that all that happened there folks us cellular noticed that the way we use our phones has gotten ironic we try to put our phones down for dinner but the menu is on a qr code that's ironic we hit like on social media posts that we don't actually like. Ironic. Which is why U.S. Cellular created Us Mode to help us reconnect with each other and use our phones less ironically. A phone company wanting people to use their phones less? Ironic. Let's find us again with Us Mode from U.S. Cellular. Visit uscellular.com slash built for us to get started well it's nice that you've learned dancing since you've changed the job but i i'm actually just

thrilled that we could still have you on to bring as much insight as you can so i do appreciate that but christian derisaw is a minnesota viking under contract until he's 30 years old, which is just pretty wild that they were able to get this done. And his cap hit when he's 30 years old in 2029, this thing never goes over a $31 million cap it. And there was somebody, I can't remember who it was. So I apologize for whoever had this theory. Uh, but we analyze positional value so much and whoever it was that i was listening to a bunch of different football podcasts suggested that maybe the team that just gathers the most elite players regardless of position is probably going to have the best chance and with christian now you know that you're going to have one at left tackle and you could probably quibble over

maybe the value was more previously when there wasn't as many freak edge rushers who came off the right side or whatever. But to have him at this price four years from now, you know that guys are going to be making a lot more. So I think this is a very favorable deal for the Vikings from their side. Maybe just in comparison to Jefferson, where they knew they were going to have to pay top notch money. And down the road, you're going to have to deal with that. that with this one there's not exactly a whole heck of a lot to deal with which does bring us back to as you have alluded to numerous times J.J. McCarthy and his contract now versus the highest paid quarterbacks we have gone from when Kirk Cousins signed for 30 million dollars a year we were like, oh man,

that's a lot of cheese. I don't know how they're going to work around that. And of course the cap was lower. Kirk always signed short-term deals, so you couldn't spread it out very much. And you always had big cap hits for him, which was part of the problem. But JJ McCarthy is going to make like 5 million bucks while Jared Goff makes 55. What do you make of the ever-growing gap between the guys who have gotten paid? Or let me put it this way. What do you make of the advantage that

the Vikings have, which seems to be ever-growing from having a first round quarterback? Yeah, we did probably talk at some point about the growth of a middle market at quarterback, which I think if you can get the right guy, which more like a guy over 30 like a derrick car kirk cousins like that round of player kind of like i guess a russell wilson if he didn't have the whole you know kind of silliness with his old deal in denver like i think you would have fallen in like a two year 50 million type of situation i think that market is becoming more of a thing but at the end of the day it's still a situation where if you are a young rookie contract quarterback and are even really just like starting with like some reason for positivity and upside.

So if you're a top 20 guy, you're going to get top 10 quarterback money, no question about it. Like I'm not even here to say like, you know, I think the anti-Tua narrative probably has gone too far to a degree. You know, I think Jordan Love looked incredible last year. Yeah, it's a small sample size. Yeah, it's probably scary, but I think intangibly you can't get around stuff like that where if you were to say, well, you haven't played enough, you'd say, okay, so should I have asked for a trade on draft night when you drafted me to be Aaron Rodgers' backup? Like, what are you saying you haven't seen me play enough? Like, whose fault is that? Mine or yours, right? So, but like with a Jared Goff, for example, I understand that he's coming off a great season.

I'm not trying to be a Jared Goff hater. Okay. He had maybe the best offensive line of football. You just made his left tackle a $20 million man and his right tackle basically has the best deal of any tackle in football now. If you really got into the weeds of it. His center is a top center in the NFL. His guard who just left got $17 million a year from the Rams. Anyway, so long story short, you have all of that. The weapons haven't been incredible. They've been solid. Amin Ra is obviously a great player, yada, yada.

It's just you saw this happen with the Rams. They made a Super Bowl. They gave them a bunch of money, and then they couldn't sustain the rest of the roster around it. And you kind of just did the exact same thing. And you paid everybody else, which they should, like,

it's been cool to see a limit. You know, should get $20 million a year too, but it's just, I don't know. Like it's, it's so hard as a club to not do it because, because you can make an NFC championship championship game and that's you know and

they should have won that game they definitely should have and yeah they beat the chiefs in week one so maybe they can tell themselves like that team was good enough to win a ring and maybe they were but it's just i don't know you're just it's just you back you're getting yourself into a corner where you can't get out of this deal and you just have to pay the guy and it's great look i'm on the agent on player side i love And it's great. Look, I'm on the player side. I love it. It's good. Keep it going.

Keep it rolling. It's just tough on the team side. Like if you don't think the guy is top eight or top six or whatever, you probably have a lot of trepidation doing it, but you also know you have no choice. And they don't. And to be fair, they should. I mean, quarterbacks are having a top 20 quarterback in this league.

It makes every Sunday at least worth watching. And that's kind of all you can ask for as a fan. You know, you're sitting here with the Vikings and bears fan. I would love if we had a, the bears had a top 20 watchable quarterback at any point in my life. I'm not sure we have. So it sounds dope. I mean, there's been several games where, uh, there was one where Kyle Orton against the Vikings threw for like 450 yards. There was that one single game that that happened, I think maybe 16 years ago. So it's possible to your point, though. I think that a lot of teams have run into this same conundrum. Now I don't put Jared Goff exactly in the same category as Trevor Lawrence or Tua because both of them have not really come anywhere close.

You get a single playoff win that they had to come back from 27 points for the Jaguars. And then Miami has lost in the playoffs when Tua has gotten them there. Whereas Jared Goff has actually taken a team to the Superbowl. And I think that the way that all of these teams have to look at it, whether you have the rookie contract with McCarthy or if you have Jared Goff is always about windows. And what Detroit did was they drafted so well over the last couple of years that they've had manageable contracts around Jared Goff that will eventually change. But what their hope is, is when that changes, they've already won a ring or they've already made a Superbowl appearance by

the time that this thing gets untenable because of all the contracts. And you could say, well, I don't know if Jared Goff is good enough to get them there, but NFC championship and a Superbowl top five offenses, four different times. times i mean i think that that one makes a lot more sense in my mind or is a lot more likely to work put it that way like i get why trevor lawrence would be signed by the jaguars and when tua didn't play how did that look when he was not the quarterback when he was banged up it looked pretty gnarly so i think people underrate him a little bit too in the same way with golf it's just i we kind of can't live in this world where the only guy who gets paid is mahomes and josh allen like other teams are going to have to find ways to do this but i

think that what the vikings have now is if jj mccarthy turns out to be good they have all the advantages that we talked about them for years not having because of Kirk Cousins and if you look at their overall setup with the salary cap for the next two seasons they should be able to go into free agency next year and your agency should be calling the Vikings for every player you got saying I've seen your cap space. How do you think that they should use this advantage in the future? Because they did some of it this year with Jonathan Grenard, Andrew Van Ginkle, Blake Cashman. They signed these guys to multi-year contracts and of course the extensions. But if you're taking a roster that's two thirds of the way there and is trying to do everything you can to maximize

your first round quarterback when he's cheap. What's the next step for them roster wise? Yeah. Yeah. So just real quick, tying it back to the quarterback market as a whole, like it's what we're hearing about a potential cap or, you know, like a NBA max, like which conversation for a different podcast, but it just, yeah, like that, that position just grows and grows and grows and there's just no stopping at any point in time. So, so do you think, I'm sorry, but you bring this up. Do you think that there would ever be a separate quarterback cap, like a, like a separate contract for, because you might think it sounds ridiculous, but they do it for rookies. They have their own separate contracts. Would there be a levels type of thing for quarterbacks?

And then the rest of the salary cap, could we ever see that split with players want that something like that? So I can tell you that it was discussed probably not in earnest. It was discussed like during the negotiations for the last CBA, I imagine kind of more just like thrown around as like an idea um where the teams that were paying a ton of money to quarterbacks we thought it was like impossible to compete and like an unfair advantage for all these teams with the cheap quarterbacks which i again just think is is insane um not just because i'm a bears fan just because also you do research like

yeah there's data behind superbowls won by rookie contract guys are making the superbowl i get that look at the conference championship participants of the last decade, and all you see is a list of the highest paid quarterbacks in the NFL. I have zero sympathy for that approach, and I get the argument. I think it would be a bad thing, personally. I struggle to see why teams would say because their constraint is more so cash than cap right we know that we talk about the cap and and then of course it influences things but in my mind i don't know how it would work but if quarterbacks are separate and like they can make gazoodles of money but it impacts the cap less the teams are not going to give the more money to other players at other

positions they're not they're going to say well you know, there's always going to be some excuse and some rationale and some reason why they can't do it. So I just struggle to see why it would benefit other positions of the player. If it does, then yeah. I mean, selfishly, I would support it, you know, until we wrap a quarterback. Then I would say it's bad. No, but, you know, yeah.

So it's just to me, it's like I don't see how the downstream effects would actually be positive for other players. I think you'd be pitched as that was what the NFL does, what the owners do. Oh, this is going to benefit you all in X, Y, Z ways. And then Jason and I write an article two years later about how actually the outcome is and the externalities are all negative and it actually backfired and yada, yada, yada. So anyway, back to the Vikings. I think the thing I come back to a lot is like free agency still at the end of the day is about plugging holes and filling depth at non-premium positions in the middle tier markets. I still don't want to be chasing the top of the line players. It's just based on data and results and just how it's gone. And sure, there can be, you know, rare situations

and circumstances where maybe it just lines up perfectly. But yeah, so I mean, you know, just using the Vikings as an example, you have a good year, let's say, but you're okay, let's just go sign four corners. None of them, we don't think any of them are number one corners but we think we legitimately are going to sign a cb2 through cb5 and then just like let three of those let just let that work out or you know the guard spot whatever they obviously have some decent depth there now but but yeah i just do the same thing i've always said um and then still just enable yourself to draft whatever you want for a long term or for a higher ceiling or for premium position, whatever, because you're just saying, all right, we're not trying to fill our safety two or safety three hole because we just went out and signed four safeties. The most was for five mil a year. The lowest was for one and a half a year, but we have a bunch of

starting caliber players at a non-premium position. And so we can focus our our efforts on other things come come draft time the positions that the vikings are going to need to address uh i think are hard to fill without getting a premium player and what i mean is defensive tackle and corner i mean you could say that for anything of course i want a premium player at every single position and then i'll look like san francisco and their roster butles specifically, I found it really fascinating. I think you tweeted this out when you were still allowed to tweet, which was about how almost all of them who have gotten paid have been first round draft picks. And I completely understand why that is. The first round draft picks are going to be the physical freaks who can overwhelm offensive linemen.

They're going to be the quickest, largest, fastest, and it's so much of a physical position that they're going to stand out. And when you do get a Christian Wilkins hitting free agency, that man is going to get paid an insane amount of money, but there's also just one of him in free agency and there might be no other guy. Uh, what DJ reader is good, but I mean, the drop off there I think is significant between those two. There might be one other guy uh what DJ Reader is is good but I mean the drop off there I think is significant between those two there might be one guy a year because teams get these guys and they keep them forever because they're a cheat code to have a defensive tackle like that the Vikings had it with Kevin Williams for many years and at the cornerback position that's that's one that's I

think trickier because the cornerbackback looking at the data over the years seems to rely a lot on a few things i mean one of them is your scheme who's calling the plays for your defense who's on your defense how much pressure you're able to create impacts how the cornerbacks play and also what wide receivers you end up facing. So even identifying by using the data, which guy is elite and worth paying and how he's going to transfer. Was it Tremaine? Was it Johnson?

Yeah, right, right, right. You see this all the time where a guy has one great year and then everybody goes, oh yeah, this is the elite corner we were looking for. Here's $7 billion. And then the guy doesn't fit and isn't any good. So I think from the Vikings' perspective, they have two of the trickier positions to evaluate in free agency

and to even decide which one you want to go with in the draft next year if those are the spots they're looking at. Yeah, for D-tackle, outside of a Wilkins, which was a pretty rare circumstance. And then again, I good player, but like that contract to me was kind of insane. Um, it's what you had to do. I have no doubt the Raiders were bidding against other teams. I don't think they got duped or anything like that. That's not what I'm saying. It's more just like, I mean, you gave like tier one, I'd pass rusher money to a guy who doesn't really rush the pass with all that well, but okay, very, very good player.

And I have no doubt that was the market. It's just was that an efficient market? Different question. So you don't find tier one defensive tackles, and I still would say he's tier one. They don't exist in free agency, right? That was what the conversation was about, too, is the scarcity there. I mean, it's simple planet theory. Like there are fewer guys walking around that are physically capable of doing what

those guys are physically capable of doing than there are edge rushers. And that I think is underrated in the conversation of premium position, all that. It's not just the on-field value against the market, yada, yada, but also what is the availability of tier two, tier three, tier four, and even in some cases, a tier one player. look at the last five years of free agency there's a lot more edge rushers or even trades there are teams more willing to trade those guys like if you find a premium talent defensive tackle that guy is retiring in your jersey that's just how it's been um you know or or you're like are you're choosing to let him go not vice versa right so corner is super tricky and this is also another fascinating and the fact that safety is

making more than corner now is again like contract nerds is like like the talk of the town like like and no one cares there's no there should be like a long from article about it from like espn but like no one kind of is as fascinated by it as myself and other nerds in this realm but it has become so hard to find a player at that position that year over year can be consistently very, very good. That again, I can make it to the age of, you know, like, like Jalen Johnson coming three years after a Jair Alexander on the market and not even getting close to topping him for highest paid at the position. I mean, truly not even close. The Jair seems an older player and there are issues that sounds like it was Neil's report, I think.

But still, getting traded for fairly decent money, not even coming close to $20 million a year, it's fascinating. I mean, that market is stagnant. It is in a standstill. Maybe AJ Terrell gets close. I don't know. Are we just waiting for Pat Sertan and Sauce gardner and some of these guys to come up like and then are they going to push it to like 27 28 million dollars from 21 22 like it's so when we get back to free agency for me the teams that i thought approached it the best

are teams that just again like they signed guys they're like all right this guy is at least like playable like is he great? I don't know. But again, we're not trying to critique teams. But there were some guys that signed this year that are 28, 29 years old, coming off injuries that got paid upper middle tier money. And I just think the downside risk of that is so massive. Giving $11, $12, $13 million for a guy that, yeah, he was good in 2022, but he had a significant injury.

He maybe didn't play all that well. he may have benefited from a heavy zone system and now you're bringing him somewhere let me play more man and do different things more match coverage whatever the case may be like that to me it's it's a risky risky proposition well and if cornerbacks were part of fantasy football we would talk about how they hit the age curve every bit as hard as running backs. It seems to me, uh, even use Xavier Rhodes for an example. And then there's a more older corners who've succeeded like Patrick Peterson, but not that many. Once they get to about 28 years old, 29 years old, they start to drift off. Xavier Rhodes was the top of the line cornerback in the NFL for all of about two and a half seasons.

And then he wasn't. And this happens over and over and over again. And hey, no surprise either. And this is no disrespect to him. Great, great player. And he would island guys, which you don't even see anymore. But also they had the number one run defense, the number one pass rush, the number one, right?

They had Everson griffin daniel hunter all these great players around him so if he just did his job he would do pretty well and with a lot of corners there's so many factors that just go into how you end up playing that i think it's hard for teams to even circle someone and i had in the process of writing my book a general manager say to me, you know, people criticize PFFs cornerback grades. We don't really know how to grade them either. Some of the time, like from year to year or predict how they're going to grade from season to season. And that's the difficult part. And yet for the Vikings, they need them to be better.

So I think it's almost like this. It's almost like a baseball team with a bullpen where you just keep guessing until you get it. You keep drafting them, you keep signing them. And then, oh, Tommy throws 104 and he got lit up with the Mariners, but with the twins for no reason at all. And it might just be small sample. No one can hit him. And then you try to ride that as far as you possibly can. It's a very, very tricky thing. If you don't grab one of the four guys who are excellent, a long-term one more, sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. No, it's just, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, it's the second hardest position in football. I think behind quarterback,

I really do feel that way. And so like, it's just hard to be consistent and the ones that are, they deserve all the money in the world and the ones that aren't, it's just, it's tough. Okay. I came up with, while we were talking a great idea that is never, ever going to happen for the quarterback thing.

And then I'll ask you the last question. What if they could only ever sign one year contracts and there was no cap to them and it's just quarterbacks, but it's only, it can only be one year. So all the owners would have to decide. They would all become free agents the minute that the season ends and all, and then this would be, it's terrible for Jersey sales and fans.

They want their franchise quarterbacks. So it would never happen. But imagine you had to decide each year, how much you were willing to pay for that quarterback to come play for you at my homes every year hits free agency when the clock strikes midnight. But okay, well, somebody is going to be able to willing to pay him X. But what about, what about the Dak Prescott? Like then it becomes almost fantasy draft for quarterbacks.

How much are you willing to pay? And then how much you pay takes like 50% of that goes onto the cap. So you can't just go my homes. Here's $200 million. So there's the, there's a limit that I, that would be insanely interesting and fun. That was, that was my crazy idea that would never happen. The funny thing is my mind doesn't even think of football ramifications. I think it literally like destabilizes local economies.

Like I'm like, I'm local economies like i'm like i'm like beyond even thinking of like on field or roster construction literally sitting there being like this the state the city of since of kansas city excuse me would be like all right we gotta make a lot of money this year and we gotta like make sure you know like because next year like we don't know so like you're like a local barbecue joint near the stadium you're like you know like it's it changes the lives of everyone maybe there would be all right i'll move off this in a second but i'm trying to think of ideas that would make football even more insane to talk about maybe there would be a max protection quarterback contract that you could do for multiple seasons but it's going to cost you 25% of the cap for every year.

You can't mess with it. You can't void year that thing. So you can max protect Mahomes. You can max protect Josh Allen, but everybody else is on a one-year contract. And then you could pay him as much as you want. And it's only 50% of that ends up on the cap. That's interesting.

Football, every offseason. You think we have fun now talking about guard prices. of that ends up on the cap. That's interesting football. Every option you're getting there. You think we have fun now talking about guard prices. We would really have fun then. Okay. Last thing you are a lie, a lifelong Chicago bear follower for what reason? No one truly understands. Uh, but now this is your time. It was your time the last time and it was your time the last time before that correct uh yeah and then when the cutler that was your time when they signed him um there the the rex grossman is our quarterback that was your time as well explain to me why this is really this this this this is the one you mean i you know this obviously is like rose-colored glasses and whatnot but i mean no court none of those we could list a dozen names have stepped

into a situation even the same stratosphere as this one and of course people might quibble with like should they have changed coaches whatnot um i you know the guy has dj moore keenan allen aroma dunes a plus like a cold commit gerald everett one two punch a tight end which is they're more than good you know a stable running backs that are solid and the offensive line you know i think at this point is it should be at least average no like the other guys that i mean justin fields supporting cast and mr bisky supporting cast we're not on the same stratosphere And now it still ultimately comes down to this individual human being and how good they can be. But, yeah, I mean, that's really all we're hanging our hat on. It's just like, shoot.

I mean, they've done all they need to do. You know, you can still get better, sure. But build out a whole coaching staff around him. He's been living in a hotel with Keenan Allen for like four months apparently. And it's funny because he's – with Keenan Allen for like four months, apparently. Like, and it's funny. Cause like,

he's like, yeah, not like that. I'm not being weird. I just get a weird face. Well, I wouldn't want a couple of dudes grinding film. I understand that. I wouldn't want to live with another football man for four months.

So that's like a long time. I thought you were like sharing a room. I would imagine. I would assume Airbnb, I guess. Yeah. I think it's just like a you know maybe a joint there's a door in the middle situation i don't know i couldn't tell you but anyway it's just like they actually built out the whole thing to like actually support the guy whereas in the past i think it literally was like save our job thanks like that was pretty much it. It was just like, please keep us employed. It doesn't feel that way at all this time around.

So, hey, you know Bears fans. We're delusional. You know, we probably all think we're going to win 12 games this year, which we are. But, yeah, so anyway. But, no, I think it's just if it fails this time, at least you can't blame everyone but the guy. If it fails this time, I think it's just, if it fails this time, at least you can't blame everyone. But the guy, if it fails this time, I think it's fair to blame the guy.

Yeah. I mean, when you're talking about, uh, the past, they drafted quarterbacks and then fired the head coach and anytime you're doing that. And this is why I have advocated for extend O'Connell extend quasi Adolfo Mensah, go forward with this thing. Like, don't put pressure on this year and say, well, if it looks bad, then we're just going to change coaches. Like give them the room that they need.

And I am not saying Matt Nagy needed more room. He probably didn't. But when you draft a guy to save your butt, you're probably just, you should just fire that coach anyway. Here, okay, now the last thing which chicago bears quarterback hurt you the most this situation not the player but the field one was the hardest i think most people would agree with this now again i wasn't on twitter like tweeting about how you know he was the second coming and how kill williams Williams paints his name because I'm not a moron.

And as an objective observer, I realized by the end of the year, this isn't working. And yes, the team around him is bad, but an average quarterback would have been able to progress in ABC, XYZ areas. And look, I'm in Pittsburgh now. I live here. I hope he kills it. Sounds like he has been killing it, and I'm rooting for him 100 like that one broke me because i thought like i remember

like hearing trubisky was the pick i know where i was i was in new orleans i was like the kid from north carolina like why wouldn't they take you know redacted but still at the time that was my thought um i didn't know patrick mahomes so i'm not gonna sit here and lie to you and be like oh i thought i didn't know but i definitely wasn't I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and be like, oh, I thought I didn't know. But I definitely wasn't like, oh, this kid's the truth. Like, I'm a believer from jump. And then with him, I thought like mid second season of him starting. So I remember the first game was against the Vikings.

Actually, if you remember, it was like week four of his rookie year. He came in at the end of the game, like threw a pick. And I was like, you know, but we saw some flashes. Like I was kind of bought in a little bit. By the middle of the next year, I was i was like no this guy's making the same mistake over and over again with field i thought he was making a lot of mistakes but they were like a different it was like a different mistake each time and so i was just like eventually he's gonna stop making all of these mistakes but he's not making the same one over and over again a lot

at least as far as i could tell um but yeah it was just like you blame the i mean the supporting cast was as bad as humanly possible he obviously had the coaching turnover you're talking about you know they fire naggy after the first year uh and pace you know in that scenario so that one to me hurt them and then of course like the the highlights the highs were as high as i can get um you know so So anyway, like I said, rooting for him a hundred percent. It seems like a great dude. It was not entirely his fault, but you know, it had to be done. It was not a tough thing for me.

They made the right decision. If you don't think that now still, you know, I don't know. I don't know what you're, you're Justin Fields fan, not a Bears fan. That's fine. That's totally fine. I think that because he could be so spectacular on an individual play that that was what made it difficult how could someone who can do that then also be so bad but also i mean but look when you can't clear

2600 yards in a season passing you just I don't care who your receivers are, who your coaches know what no receiver who makes the NFL and no coach who makes the NFL is so bad. The quarterback can't get to 3000 yards. That would be NFL for sure. Yeah, exactly. Well, uh, I guess I'll wish you the best with that because I think the NFC North, if McCarthy works out, which he is on a good track so far and uh caleb williams does we have some serious battles to go uh over the future and then i'll look forward to traveling to chicago rather than saying oh uh tim boyle is starting this game against the vikings i guess i'll fly there there to Chicago and take the 55 minute Uber ride to the stadium for Nathan Peterman.

Anyway, Brad Spielberger, you're the best man. I am super pumped for you and I'm glad that we can still do this. That's exciting as well. But for you to take another step in your career is well, well earned and I'm happy for you.

And we'll talk again very soon, man. Sounds great. Appreciate you, man.