Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Breaking down Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell's comments about Kirk Cousins

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Matthew Coller and former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sage Rosenfels were on hand for Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell's sessions with Twin Cities beat reporters. What did the new Vikings' say about Kirk Cousins? Can we read between lines? What are our first impressions of the team's leaders? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 🎵 We're in a hall with almost no one around, and we're looking over a baseball stadium in Indianapolis. So it's some nice circumstances that we have here. It's 66 degrees outside, which is basically too hot for my Minnesota body. And you and I spent 50 minutes of our time listening to Kwesi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell talk. And the first thing everyone wants to know, Sage, is your reaction to what they said about Kirk Cousins and his situation. So why don't you give it as your former player listening to a coach and GM talk, and I will give it as a journalist reading between the lines. When I listen to press conferences, because I don't do it very often,

I don't think I probably capture as much as a regular journalist. So I sort of feel like I hear a lot of nothing. I hear coaches giving coach talk or GMs giving GM talk. Of course, they like the players that they have. They like Kirk Cousins. There's a lot of things that Kirk does well. Kirk's really good at when the play is on schedule, he is one of the best in the game at hitting the guy.

You sort of hear these things that are like nothing that we don't already know. So I feel like I never really take away all that much. Kirk is under contract. I heard that. Kirk Cousins is going to be our quarterback. I heard that uh kirk cousins is going to be our quarterback i heard that um everyone's being evaluated in the whole organization and we're starting from scratch and we're just getting going on thing i heard that uh we people talked about this this draft of quarterbacks maybe not being a great draft and then you hear uh quacey saying well hey you know

what the pat mahomes to sean watson draft wasn't really supposed to be very good either. And look how that turned out, which means like, well, is he actually really looking for one of these guys then? Because, you know, one of these guys he might see as the next Deshaun Watson or Pat Mahomes or something. So I probably didn't capture all the little things that you captured. You do like to read between the lines. I don't know what we the lines more than me i think uh from what i felt they like kirk cousins but they're not in love with kirk cousins that's that's sort of the the takeaway that i had all right explain this quote because you are you already mentioned the uh mahomes watson draft one which we'll dive deeper

into in just a second and what they said about how much you can weigh your own odds at success in the draft and how sort of aware they are of the randomness. That's what I asked both of them about. But how about this quote from Kweisi Adafomensa about Kirk Cousins? When the odds are shifted in his favor, he gets the most out of it what does that mean it feels like to me it means that when everything is going right around him he plays really well uh um when he has maybe a better team maybe when he has a better receivers than the other team has defensive backs when he has better receivers than the other team has defensive backs. When he has advantages, he plays well. That's how I see that. Which I totally agree with.

To me, it's like when you're playing poker. When you have a better hand than the other person, yes, you're going to play well. You're going to win more hands than not. My issue with the whole situation is if you have a franchise quarterback that is paid as even a top 10 salary, because anything in the top 10 is 30 plus million at this point, a huge investment on your team. I need to find guys that can beat the other guy in poker when they have a worst hand and somehow find ways because of their brilliance to make the right decisions to at some point you'll have all the chips on your side of the table.

That's the guy that I'm looking for if you're going to make an elite investment at the quarterback position. And there's only a few guys out there that can do that. Right, and that's where it differs from a card game is that there are people who shift your odds where the cards are just flipping to whether you're going to when you say hit me get a five or a seven but if you figure that everyone starts with a certain number based on their team strength so out of 21 for blackjack let's say the

vikings last year started with a 13 how can you get to 21 how can you get closer who's going to make you closer now a number one defense would have made them a lot closer but also a quarterback who can go off schedule make plays that you never thought possible i mean i got kevin o'connell to talk about the no look throw from matthew stafford and he was talking about the details of that throw and how it was ridiculous but it was also within what he was asked to do but it was ridiculous and that's sort of the point is that sometimes going off schedule isn't even necessarily like running around or making crazy plays and you talked about this with joe montana sometimes

off schedule is just waiting for the for the receiver to go through one window into the next window by sort of sticking your foot in the ground and just sort of waiting for it to sort of pass through. That's, in a sense, off schedule because on schedule is you're hitting the first window. Off schedule is you're sort of hitting the second schedule. It's not necessarily running around. By the way, I will say probably one of my favorite moments of the Kevin O'Connell press conference or a little meeting that we had with him was when we were talking about that no-look pass. And I appreciate an old quarterback who can make fun of themselves,

who was not an all-pro or a Super Bowl winner, and Kevin was not. And when he said, you know, I had some throws that people probably thought were no-look passes because they didn't go to where I was looking. And I thought that was, again, I appreciate a coach that can a little bit make fun of themselves especially when that they knew they weren't a great player and so when they see great players they have the utmost respect for them out there and I thought that was the funniest part of this afternoon and I do want to get into what we thought of them in this setting because we sat down with them there was probably six of us that sat down with them for a half hour each or 25 minutes

each and got to really see them in this environment and talk about the roster and talk about football introductory press conferences are like are you happy to be here why yes i am and it's more pep rally than it is informational this was very informational so i want to talk about our impressions of them too but to stay on on the quarterback point was I think both of them acknowledged how important it is in the game today to have that other element of it that is missing from Kirk Cousins game that is a just very clear and objective criticism of his game that holds him back from being one of the best quarterbacks and when Kweisi Adafo-Mensah was asked about the quarterback situation specifically what are you going to do he said everything is on the table so even though they talked about kevin o'connell

talked about they love kirk and they want to build things that are good for him they also say everything is on the table yeah which i think is actually the truth i think at this moment everything is on the table that you're fresh head coach, fresh GM. They have a little runway here, as they like to say, to sort of start over, start from scratch, change things, do this, do that. And I do think all options are on the table for every player on this football team, I think, right now. Because if someone, even one of the Vikings are really good players,

if they get a great offer in some sort of trade, you know what that players on a serve on the end of their career, uh, Harrison Smith or something like that. Right. I really couldn't imagine trading that guy, but Hey, if somebody's getting a first rounder form, we could use that first round to build towards the future. So I really do think like all, you know, 53 men on the roster, uh, if the right deal comes along, they're looking to make deals. And Kweisi mentioned that he called Anthony Barr and told him how much he respects him as a player and everything else. And he mentioned walking by his Walter Payton Man of the Year nomination and all that, but also added at the very end, but there are realities to this thing. And I think that that means means but goodbye and i respect

you and we'll see you later and so i think that with the cousin situation the way that i read it right now is if you're putting odds on it maybe it feels leaned toward uh staying for this year and seeing what they can do and maybe trying to add something to his contract to lower the cap it but it does not sound at all like we're not going to trade him. Because if they had no intentions of trading him, the words we're not going to trade him would probably be said. But neither one of them was willing at all to say, Kirk is our guy for the future.

He's our franchise quarterback. Those words were not said. And so it's often when you're talking about reading between the lines lines it is what was not said is as important as what was said and they again were just extremely not committal to cousins but complimentary of what he does well which i think is probably the right way to handle this for them because if someone comes along and says uh-oh we missed out on jimmy g we need to get a quarterback right now or we're getting fired. Say it's Carolina. Well, you might have to trade for Kirk Cousins then.

And all of a sudden you might go, hey, how about a second round pick? Or how about that late first? Or, you know, things like that, that maybe you didn't expect at this moment from what they were hearing, but all of a sudden can change very quickly. So I thought that that was really interesting that it remained noncommittal as it was from Kevin O'Connell and Kwesi's previous comments. The other thing was I asked directly to Kwesi, what do you think of the idea that it's a weak quarterback class? Now, look, I did not expect Kwesi to say it's garbage and I hate these guys. Okay. So don't tell me that on Twitter.

Like I'm aware that he was not going to trash the quarterbacks directly to us, but I thought it was very interesting that he specifically cited 2017 draft with Watson and Mahomes and how critical people were of that draft. It's not a good class. These guys have problems. Mahomes footwork isn't good enough. Watson didn't throw the ball a great enough velocity at the combine. And that produced two hall of fame talents out of that. Lamar Jackson was 32nd overall. This is an NFL that even let Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo, two borderline franchise quarterbacks, if not franchise quarterbacks, drop to the second round. Like recently, these are recent things that have happened the last quarterback drafted last year was the best one in the first year this happens

all the time and i think that quesia da fomensa really showed remarkable awareness of all of that inciting that 2017 draft but also in saying i understand that you can't predict a lot of this stuff. And that is something that we did not hear from Rick Spielman. And a lot of old school football people think, no, no, we've got the formula. Our scouts have got it figured out. And then when something goes wrong, it's someone else's fault. Kweisi Adafo-Mensah acknowledging the randomness and also talking about the skill set. And he actually slipped in.

Now, this is expert read between the lines in here, okay? He slipped in. Well, you know, with certain guys, they can improve mechanics. Or they can improve depending on whether the scheme. And I thought, who are you talking about? And he also said these words. I was just talking to someone about this. Meaning that this is something that they're discussing,

is this really a weak quarterback draft class or not? And I think that it is in comparison to it does not have a Trevor Lawrence or Andrew Luck, but does it have guys with the potential to become franchise quarterbacks? Absolutely, I think it does. Yeah, there was a couple of interesting things there. By the way, the first, the trade aspect, to go back to uh we were talking about there yeah you know what if the whether the vikings want to trade kirk or not the question is is there another team out there that would like to have him right and if they would like to have him at what cost to them financially would the vikings have

to share in some of that salary cap hit i don't even know know how the NFL rules are on that. And then two, what's the compensation? So I think to have a trade, you have to have, of course, two partners in the various circumstances all to line up. And also, of course, an actual backup plan of like, okay, who's going to be the person if we do indeed trade Kirk? The other aspect was, again, we said about Quasey was, I did love the fact that he's very humble. He's very humble. He's like a stockbroker that has traded 10,000 different stocks over the years, and he got a lot of hits and he got a lot of misses. And that's the way it goes.

And over time, you want to have just more hits than misses, but no one's ever 100% right all the time or even 90 right and he was very um transparent about the draft uh and just picking getting players in general it is a crap shoot and they're going to do their best and he does think that you know using his analytics and using some of his basically mathematical equations of various things that he deems important can help tip the scales a little bit. I liked how he said, you know, it may not for one player make a difference having a little bit more information and how they break it down with their number game. But when you do it for all 53 guys, those start to add up. Right.

And your hits start becoming more often than your misses. Now you're in that 60-40 category rather than 50-50 type of thing. So I did appreciate, I guess, the humbleness of not being a know-it-all. In my history around this league, and I think in sports in general, and college football too, a lot of coaches, a lot of sort of GM-type people, they have a sort of a know-it-all mindset. And I think both these guys don't bring that to the table and that's as a as you know i think it's very refreshing and i imagine for the players

that end up on this team in 2022 they will feel that and that'll be refreshing to them uh that they don't have a bunch of know-it-alls running the show it's funny about that because a lot of times in in my career there are two types of analytics people and there's there is the one that thinks that they can just solve every problem with numbers and i don't trust those people and there's ones that use numbers to figure out what you can't know and the fact that quacey talked about using numbers to figure out what they can't know and then trying to just weigh that in his odds the best he could i think is a very aware thing to do and i and i feel the same way about people with scouting and draft analysts and things like that is that if a draft analyst says here's here's what i think

i see but i might be wrong like that's probably the person who you should trust in their analysis if the person says no i know this person this player is going to be X, Y, or Z, I don't ever trust that because you never really know. Because think about Bill Polian thought Lamar Jackson was a wide receiver and he got roasted for it, and there's certainly a racial element to that that he deserved to get roasted for. But Bill Polian also picked Jim Kelly. I mean, he was behind some of the greatest teams

ever built and yet still could get something so hilariously wrong that that tells you no one is is got any sort of like huge edge on this and I was actually and by the way and the game's changing yeah it always is the games I remember hearing Belichick talk about this the game's always changing some some sort of you know two to fiveyear runs, it's sort of two high-safety teams, and teams use various versions of that. And other times it's like we're basically a lot of single high-safety types of defenses. We're looking for big corners. We're looking for man corners.

We're looking for zone corners. We're looking for different types of quarterbacks. Sometimes you're looking for pure types of quarterbacks. Sometimes you're looking for pure pocket passers because Tom Brady seems to get to Super Bowls pretty regularly still. I remember that era. Then, of course, the new era, which is like they've got to build a pocket pass but also be incredible athletes like Mahomes and Josh Allen and some of these guys. And then some guys like Jackson still are not great passers but are ridiculously good athletes how much better passer can he end up being with time and and work and and all those things that you do in the offseason so I think that's an interesting

thing about football is it's always changing it's always moving uh schemes always changing and uh it's it's and you know, for a long time, it went pros down to college, down to the sort of the high school levels for like the X's and O's of the game. And now like so much of the high school stuff, people experiment and try different things. And then colleges experiment and the pros goes, huh, man, these things that we don't do up here, they're doing, and that's a, and then they start stealing from college and so it reverses the other way so it's interesting to me always how the the game the sport of football uh in all aspects physical uh but also x's and o's are constantly changing and i was thinking about did you hear about zillow what happened with zillow is that zillow

lost like 500 bazillion dollars because what they were doing to buy houses was they were making projections of what they should pay for houses based on a bunch of different analytics. And the analytics were said to be 96% accurate. The problem is that if you miss on 4%, that's a lot of money that you lose, right? And so I was thinking about how the league

probably has all together 96 of all of this figured out of the best you can possibly do but can you be the team that figures out the four percent and i think that takes like you said humility i think it takes like creativity um and also a combination of a lot of different things that are studied through many years. So Kevin O'Connell, this is where it was really interesting. You know what it also takes? Luck. It takes a lot of luck, yes.

It does. You know, the Patriots are geniuses for drafting Tom Brady in the sixth round. Well, if they were so smart, they would have drafted him in the first round. Right. Also, Nikhil Harry was not a good pick. The luck of Aaron Rodgers falling to the 20-whatever pick for the Packers or even Aaron Donald not being the first pick in the draft. There's random luck that goes into all the things that we talk about with the Rams.

I was going to the team that won the Super Bowl, and let's look at them. All the things that they have done over all these years in the last 10 years of building that roster and coaches. At the end of the day, it's like they have Aaron Donald. And how many teams passed on Aaron Donald for him to land there? Who is the great disruptor sort of in the NFL right now. And there's some luck involved in that because they didn't know they had Aaron Donald in a sense.

They didn't know he was going to be this great of a player, right? So I think humility from like a general manager and head coach's perspective. I think you're in this game long enough. You are humbled by what you thought was a can't miss, and those end up being misses a lot. And then the randomness of getting a guy who you think is going to be a good player ends up being a Hall of Fame player as well. I did like that.

I said the humility of those two guys. And part of this draft, a part of this combine is, you know, it's not an exact science, but they're going to do their best to scientifically try to break it down as much as they can. Where it felt different to me, too, was and Mike Zimmer was always good in this environment. So I don't want to say that he always was like cantankerous with us because that's not the case. That would be a misrepresentation. Cantankerous? Yeah, cantankerous with us, because that's not the case. That would be a misrepresentation. Cantankerous? Yeah, cantankerous. What is that?

It's just like ornery. It doesn't want anything to do with us. It sounds terrible. Yeah, it's not good. It sounds like something you catch. I don't think I'd want anything in my life to be cantankerous at all. No, you don't want a cantankerous attitude. So at the Combine, he wasn't this way. But I thought that O'Connell and Casey were really interested in explaining things and laying them out for what they really think in terms of their philosophy that, OK, it's going to be hard to get direct answers. Are you cutting this guy? There's no team in the league here. There's 32 medias who came to get answers then none of us are getting them um you know in terms of specifics but i thought that felt very different of being able to actually

explain instead of the rick spielman approach of being like look you guys don't know anything so that's your problem you know nothing these guys when you ask a question how do you feel about combining analytics with scouting what does the combine do for you? All these things are, I think, have at least a way to explain it so fans can understand what they think, what they're doing here. And I really appreciate that journalistically, but I also think that that's, in terms of modernizing your approach, that's more of a modern way of approaching it. It's like, look, fans are not stupid.

People study this stuff, and they know what they're talking about now and they want leadership that can explain why they did things because stuff will go wrong but why you were doing it what you thought of uh the the you know the combine the draft players and things like that i just thought it was such a different tenor to how they approached it from what we've had in the past that i sort of joked with somebody like what planet did we land on with quesia da fomensa and with kevin o'connell and i think that's like really it should be refreshing for vikings fans that i think you have people in charge who are going to at least explain what happened. We could not a lot of times get Rick Spielman or Mike Zimmer to even just give us the basic,

here's why something is or is not happening. Why is Wyatt Davis not playing? Like even something as simple as that. And I think we're going to get a better explanation of things. It was kind of my takeaway from having this sort of environment. Anytime you bring in a new head coach or a new general manager, it's always like, well, it's a new era, new era at the Vikings facility. Right. But I do feel like this is more this is a generational new era. This is sort of out with an older generation of coach and general manager

guys. I'm doing it for 30 years each and in it to guys who are in their thirties or whatever their age are. They're both in their thirties, I think. Both in their thirties. Yeah. So I feel like there's like a generational era of thinking of communicating

that's going to be very, very new within that building. And, and one thing I wanted to add that Kevin, or I think they both talked about, I mean, Kwesi was talking about with the San Francisco days when they got to San Francisco and how that team has sort of turned around and become a competitor for Super Bowl every year now. But the players that were actually on the roster.

A lot of GMs come in, they say, say we got to bring in our guys we got a draft guy our guys we got a it's like and it's like but just so you know 60 to 70 percent of that roster the Vikings roster from 2021 we'll be back next year so how can those guys how can they they sort of find and make sure they've sort of they keep the right guys going forward because they're going to keep a lot of you know the team's not going to completely be overhauled. They just never are. And he talked about some of the guys in San Francisco, Armstead, a couple other players.

Forrest Buckner, yep. Forrest Buckner that were really good players when they got there. This is not a completely – I know the Vikings don't have superstars everywhere, but this is not an empty cupboard either. There are way worse rosters in the National Football League that doesn't have one of the best wide receivers in the game, doesn't have one of the better running backs in the game. It has its holes for sure, but I think they're very interested

in trying to find the good guys that are on this roster and then really building around those guys still. So before we get too far away from it, the quarterback discussion, I want you to put on record what you think the Vikings should do. It's either, A, they keep him and let him play out his contract and maybe do something to lower the cap hit, but it's basically this is his final year. Trade him away to whatever bid is the best you can get.

And so it's not, oh, if it's a first, whatever. No, it's just the best bid, whatever that might be. We're trading him. Or to sign him to an extension to make sure they have competent quarterback play and then build around it. A, B, or C, what do you think they should do? I think, I don't know if it's A, B, or C. I don't know what yours were, but I think that they, in my opinion,

I think that they do whatever they can to move on from Kirk. That's how I see it. Whether it's a trade, if they could cut him, I know they can't because there's so much money there. But whatever the compensation is in a trade, as long as most of the financial aspect is on someone else's plate, I don't even think it really matters what they get. People are like, oh, he's a starting quarterback.

He should get a first rounder. I just think that they need to move on to a new era at the quarterback position as well. I don't think the Vikings will ever be an elite team with Kirk at the helm. He's already expensive. So it's going to be hard to build a roster around an expensive player that is not great value because he's not an elite quarterback, but he's paid elite money. So you're already overpaying for this position. And to get to where you want to get to by overpaying at the most important position is nearly impossible.

So if I were them, I would do whatever I can to move on from the situation, sort of start over. And it might be a bad year, or it might be two, three bad years up at U.S. Bank Stadium with four wins or five wins. But you know what? When those happen, you get high draft picks. And you see a lot of these rosters, San Francisco being one of them, where they had a couple bad years off the bat when Kyle first got there. And those high draft picks allowed them to get really, really good players.

And then, boom, next thing you know, they're in championship contention. So I think having a, you know, listen, Vikings fans will still show up. I think knowing Kevin as well as I do and running that Rams offense and trying to run the Rams offense, I think they'll be fun games to watch, even if they're only a four or five win football team. I don't think they're going to be boring, but I would try to move on. That's my own personal opinion. I just don't see Kirk making the players around him better. And this franchise needs a quarterback who can go beyond the X's and O's and make everybody around him better football players.

And I've never felt like you have to win four or five games. There are free agent quarterbacks that are available that in their pasts have won nine or 10 games with decent teams or decent offenses. Ryan Fitzpatrick has won. I would say that that option is most attractive journalistically because ryan fitzpatrick is an amazing interview but i mean marcus mariotta is a guy you bring up uh not that i think they would bring back teddy bridgewater but he was 500 on a team with a decent defense and some playmakers last year and you find some backup quote mccoy's a general 500 quarterback uh 500 record you know style quarterback right but at one-tenth the price right and jalen hurts

made the playoffs last year and won 10 games it's like if your schedule turns out to be easier than you expect or even next year they don't particularly have a projected difficult schedule and the guy is competent and your offensive coordinator slash head coach is good you can win 10 games and reach the playoffs and be in a similar spot because you can spend that other money on other places and have a decent team to drop another quarterback into that you draft either this year next year it just seems like a more a more reasonable option to give you flexibility for the future. Years and years ago, probably going back to like 2014,

it was the Russell Wilson-Kaepernick draft, or they were drafted around the same years, and they were playing both of them like deep in the playoffs, and they were super cheap. And I wrote an article for a website about like maybe GM should change their business strategy of you know we're gonna we're we're gonna draft a quarterback every year he's gonna play and if they play great that's great but when they become a free agent let them go and just draft another

one and just keep sort of having the cheap quarterbacks and never pay I know it sounds crazy but to like never actually pay a ton uh you know and they definitely want to overpay but it is true that the the quarterbacks on those rookie contracts is a fact the teams have an advantage and the teams know it like when they have a guy that's pretty good they go out and they start spending money in other positions because like hey we have a guy for you know a million bucks or two million bucks for the next four years that allows great flexibility for the team to go out and sign other players it's the golden ticket and until the nfl changes the structure of how this works it will continue to be the golden ticket um if you have aaron rogers i think you

pay him what aaron rogers needs to make and you void years and you do all those sorts of things because you have a chance to win the super bowl every single time you know you and i have a similar philosophy if you truly have an elite guy right you play you pay him stupid elite money but if you don't have an elite guy what's the point right and the thing is that with quesia daflamenza when you listen to him talk and there are a lot of things that sound like the smart people that i read and listen to all the time. The people from Pro Football Focus that put so much work into it. They have their cap guy, their analytics guy. They have former players. They have like that and sort of see these are some of the things that they land on.

And then you hear them also being said by Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. And you think, I just don't see this person who thinks in a similar vein to what we're talking about saying, saying yes sign me up for 45 million dollars and also that gap is forever is just forever growing like the the amount that these guys are demanding the top quarterbacks versus what those rookies are making is just that it's getting farther and farther away and being i think harder and harder for teams to operate around that huge contract. So that even goes beyond some of the other stuff, the leadership or the playmaking or any of that.

It's just like the reality of where you stand. The bar is extremely high. There's even a question, would you pay Kyler Murray? He's a great talent, but would you really pay him that much money? Because we don't know if he could take you to the next level. But I wanted to ask you about something completely different i asked kevin o'connell what he thought uh in terms of being in those meeting rooms and how you figure out if players love football because i asked him what he was looking for quarterbacks three things he said he was looking for when he interviews

these players right one if they loved football yep which is sort of like oh well yeah i love football so therefore i love football so that's that but i thought his answer was interesting and what were the other two uh so there are two responses oh gosh uh i don't have this transcribed yet let me check if it's in the transcription thing i thought it was like recall was part of it because i was asking specifically about quarterbacks it was recalling plays from the past and what like they were watching It was recalling plays from the past and what like they were watching film to recall these plays or what they're supposed to do. And that gave them sort of a feel

for how much information this player could sort of take in, how much they did take in and how much information they could take in in the future. Yes. So sort of those three things. But the I love football thing was interesting because he said when you ask players these questions, you sort of get into how much do they really like football? Yeah. That certain guys will sit up in their chair. Yes. And you can actually feel it and sort of how they react to that conversation versus like, oh, yeah, man, I love football.

It's totally great. And it's what I want to do. But the guys that really, it means something to them. And that's his most important question. Because I will say, it's a hard sport. There's a lot of sport. And they're all hard in different ways. But football is a physically and emotionally draining sport. It's physically hard. You play hurt all the time.

And to be great, or just to be good for a long time you do have to really enjoy uh the process enjoy all that work that's exactly what i was going to ask you is like how do you love football you because i yeah there are think about this how many fourth round draft pick quarterbacks had a 12-year nfl career like you did uh almost no one i mean kirk but like we did this study with kellen mon like how many guys passed the third round and it was like one in 12 or something had any type of career even as a backup past the third round the nfl knows which quarterbacks are good. But in terms of the loving football, like you are a much more, I don't know, worldly person. You have other interests.

You're not just a like football meat guy. I mean, I guess I want to know like from your perspective of loving football, like, okay, the guy sits up in his seat. He's really interested in it. But I was watching you talk with Kevin O'Connell after we were were done off the record so you can't share what you guys said but you guys were talking for probably 15 minutes and i'm seeing you guys over there faking throws uh here's another one for you pamper my name pantomiming is that what's called throws um and bootlegs and stuff i was like what are they talking about and uh i just thought like that's what it is right is is just always wanting to think about football participate talk about like whatever that it

brings you an extra energy that most people would not have for anything in their life that's how i think of it but i want to know from you as someone who actually i think for me i was a multi-sport athlete in high school uh basketball was really my my true love growing up. Football was sort of like, you know, in eighth grade, I was the first time I wore a football helmet. And it was like, okay, you got to go out for football because everyone's going out for football. It definitely was not like an early passion or I always wanted to be an NFL quarterback. I would rather probably want to have been the shortstop for the Chicago Cubs or play for the Chicago Bulls when I was growing up. That was sort of more of my dream. Football, I wasn't into the, probably the physical violence of it. It didn't really sort of fit my personality. My parents didn't really,

we didn't watch boxing growing up, right? We weren't a sort of a hard-nosed type of mentality. That was not my, my parents were sort of like pacifists, right? So football is sort of an odd thing that I ended up playing. But when I got into it, what I did love was just because I love sports, I loved being a part of a group competing to try to win something. And then as I got into the NFL more and more and more, I really did enjoy all the little details. I think, and I think there's, there's a curiosity there with a lot of times with quarterbacks of a new way to throw, a new way of seeing something, a new play. You're curious to sort of try to solve some sort of puzzle that's always out there and always changing.

So when quarterbacks, we get get together we immediately start talking about these types of things where we're like sort of solving the puzzle oh I like it when I did when I sort of threw the ball this way or here's how I do it on my for this is what I was thinking and um because again it's like we talked earlier it's always an it's an evolving sport and there's always new information always new uh things out there so i can't say off the bat like man i just loved football so much but i think i i really loved the more than uh other sports you know baseball is really like an individual sport sure yeah all right if i go out there and i'm playing third base for the for the twins and i go four for five with the home run and we lose six to two, I'm buying beers.

Let's go out and have some drinks, right? Because I went four for five with the home run. It's a very individualized sport. Football is individual statistics are way less important than the overall team sort of team mentality. And so I think that people just get get sort of obsessed with I guess the winning and the detail of winning and and football is such a from a quarterback receiver perspective the sort of perfectionism it's like being a shooter in basketball you just become

obsessed with being perfect and throwing sort of the perfect ball or the perfect location and mastering the art of playing the position. And it's a position that really is never mastered because the game is always changing and evolving. That's a great answer. I think that there has to be a motivation to be an obsessive psychopath. Like there's really no way around it. like the number of hours that you spend in an unsolvable riddle which is to be a good quarterback i don't know that you can just have like a normal personality and in a room with someone for 18 minutes i also don't know how you figure out what they do it's like think about how narrow it is that you have to be able to relate to people

but also be a complete nut job. How do you do that? By the way, it's a great motivator to be a quarterback and to last for a long time. For me, as a fourth-rounder, money. Yeah, money. It really is. We don't talk about it, but every year I was playing for money. I was playing to, of course, make the team and be on the team and hopefully the team's successful.

But I was playing so I could make as much money as I could. when i retired i could travel i could sort of buy the things i wanted to i could put my kids through college i could you know quasi retire whatever it might be most guys are in a lot of ways playing especially backup quarterbacks you're playing for money because you know you're never going to get that 30 million dollar a year contract so every million you can put in the bank is huge in changing your entire family, possibly for generations. If you just retire with $8 million in the bank, that is a game changer for you, possibly your siblings or your close friends who have maybe an illness

that you can drop 50 grand on. I mean, all that anal retentive stuff, obsessed with the details of playing the quarterback at the end of the day, for a lot of guys, it's how do I maximize? Because there's no other job you can just walk in and be like, hey, if I get this job, they're going to pay me a million dollars. Right, right. And this is your sort of lottery ticket.

I always look at the NFL for me as like every year I play is I win another lottery every single year. But you know that if you're coming out in the draft and you view this as a financial venture, the potential topic. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, by the way. I actually think it shows a broader view of your life. Like a more maturity in that like you see everything as a like a sort of financial transaction in a way like i'm gonna work really really hard because i know at the end day if i work really hard i do all these things financially i'm gonna give myself the best chance to make as much as much money as

possible if you like it seems like something that would have come from like 1968 of like love of the game and like look i mean yes you have to love the game, but you also, if you are motivated by something, and this was where Rick Spielman, I thought, offered great insight once in talking about this, where he said, it has to be something. We don't know exactly what it has to be, but it's got to be something. Whether it is some dudes are just totally obsessed with the game and that's it. Some dudes are playing for the money. Everyone's playing for everyone's playing for the money. And so I tell you a quick story about this i'm in a quarterbacks meeting i'm gonna say it was 2005 in miami the quarterback room was gus ferrat aj feely aj feely and myself and the

quarterback and the quarterback's coach was jason garrett uh and scott linehan former vikings uh coordinator as well and i don't know if we had a couple, you know, Linehan had a hard job. He was the offensive coordinator opposite Nick Saban as our head coach. Well, he also had three journeyman quarterbacks. And three journeyman quarterbacks and have a great player. And so one day I think he was just having a stressful day and he was like, you know, when I'm having a hard day, maybe we had a bad practice day before. And he goes, I start sometimes thinking back to like why I coach and why I played this game back when he played in college.

And he goes, Gus, why do you play the game? And Gus is like, I love to compete and love my teammates. And I love going out there. Nothing better than being on the field and marching down to win a game. And he comes to me, and I sort of say the same thing. I just love competing. I always loved competing. Five-sport athlete in high high school just love being out there trying to win test myself challenge myself gets to AJ and AJ goes I do it for the money and afterwards he was like you guys

are full of crap because I know you guys are doing for the money too that's great yeah to me there's nothing wrong with that and especially with players uh starting that in college with nils like you have you have to take that answer as a good answer yeah someone's thinking about their financial future everyone else can be greedy in the world it seems like all of a sudden athletes can't like say i'm trying to make as much money as possible exactly maximize my value i wonder if there is a real way to get an edge from those 18 minute interviews. But I think at very least what the Vikings have is a former player who would maybe understand some things a little better than people who didn't play the game when it comes to reading

someone and figuring out because you yourself, I mean, you saw a lot of players who were successful and a lot of players who didn't. And all of that is sample size, right? It's like there are a lot of things on the outside that we just don't know of why someone failed. And then maybe you find out later or maybe you don't. But usually people close to it understand. We all make decisions in life based off of our experiences of our past.

And I do think, and I, this is what makes me hopeful about where the Vikings are headed in particular with their head coach is that I am a big believer in these backup quarterbacks being good coaches. I am. I've, I've seen it in the past. I've seen, you know,

I thought, I thought Kubiak for me was, it was a great coach. I ran into somebody last night with somebody talking about Kubiak and they're like, Oh, just, he's the best,

you know? And there's been a history of, you know, because a lot of times the starting quarterback, they've made so much money. Why would they want to get into coaching? Where the backup's like, hey, they didn't really make enough to retire. They got to take what they know. But backup quarterbacks are observers. You observe a lot. You're not part of the games, but you see all of it. And you're in the quarterback's room and the head coach comes in and you're talking about personnel and you're talking about guys you like or don't like and who they may or may not cut. You get to observe things other players don't get to observe. And so I am hopeful that this head coach can take all those experiences

of his past as a quarterback and, you know, use them to his advantage when he's like reading people, when he's reading personalities, you know, and, and, and, and things like that. Okay. One more thing. Just want to go through two things that were said about different quarterbacks today at the podiums that stood out. And then we'll wrap for today and we're going to do one more show from here tomorrow. And we'll track down some other guests as well. Will Rag and we're going to do one more show from here tomorrow and

we'll track down some other guests as well will raggets is going to be on the show courtney is now a bears reporter but she's still going to be on the show i don't recognize her as a bears reporter like who are you oh you're the bears report that's a joke so but just react to these two things quickly chris ballard at the podium said he does not have any direct answer for anyone. Carson Wentz is not going to be there next year. Yeah, okay. You know where I was going. Indianapolis GM basically said no Carson Wentz.

You know, Carson Wentz is a weird one because I think we all know that Carson Wentz isn't good, but he also is good enough to start for a team that can make the playoffs. And I feel like Carson Wentz is fading into the Fitzpatrick Bridgewater ballpark of like, ah, crap, we have no quarterback. Ah, Carson Wentz. Like, I think that's what his future is going to be because this year was the, maybe there's something there with Wentz. And then when they lose to Jacksonville on the final day of the season, it's nope. No, there isn't.

He's just not good, and that's the end of that. One, you know, when he got drafted, it was golf one and Wentz two, and everyone's like, oh, man, really good draft. These two guys are studs. I mean, if they weren't, they would have been not one and two, but, you know, five and nine or something like that. But the two teams at the top of the draft wanted them, and they have not worked out and which is not a surprise. You know, it's, it is, it's a,

it's a crap shoot. But I think he is going to be one of those guys. He'll, he'll make a lot of money. But he's probably never going to get back to that sort of like elite status of being an NFL quarterback. He'll be good enough because there are 32 teams and there's not 32 really good quarterbacks. And about 10 of those are going to have good enough quarterbacks that can win you some games, can lose you some games. But he does have, you know, as he always will, he'll always have these sort of physical attributes of, you know, good NFL quarterbacks. He's always going

to be big. He's always going to be strong. He's going to have a pretty strong arm. And, you know, good NFL quarterbacks. He's always going to be big. He's always going to be strong. He's always going to have a pretty strong arm. And, you know, hopefully over time he does, you know, still improve. Because I do think, it sounds crazy, and, you know, I know like a, you know, the stripes are sort of on him already, right? And you can see what they are. But, you know, I do think NFL quarterbacks over their, you know,

lifespan of, you know, a 15- year career, you still should be learning things and adding things to your game in year nine, 10, 11, 12. That can help you, you know, as your as your physical skills deteriorate a little bit, help him maybe process information, you know, a little bit better. It seems like he's not a super great processor of information. And that is like my biggest thing with quarterbacks. People love using the word smart. He's a smart quarterback. Kirk's a smart quarterback, right? Which means you can give him these different plays and checks and audibles.

And so at the last scrimmage, he can get you to the right play. He's smart enough to go, okay, they're in this look, so we should audible to this. plays and checks and audibles and so at the last scrimmage he can get you to the right play he's smart enough to go okay they're in this look this so we should audible to this that's a smart quarterback but the one that can process information that is as the play is going on so as the ball hits his hand he's dropping back a million things are happening that's not doesn't take smarts now to get to where you need to go. It takes the processing of information, and I don't think that's his strength. And you can really see it.

I mean, if you're trying to figure out, like envision what that is, I think it's just when you watch a game, even on TV, and you see the quarterback take the snap, and it's just like there's that, is it going to come out? Is he going to throw it what's going on here and there are some quarterbacks who aren't perfect at it who can then make plays after something goes wrong but if you can't then that's the deer in the headlights carson wentz has a lot of deer in the headlights moments and i don't know how you change that i

don't know how you bootleg around that or play action or rpo i think it's just a thing that's always going to exist with him maybe he can improve but once you get to a certain age i don't know but there's always who knows there's always the uh the vinnie testaverti 12 in one year or the chris chandler goes to the super bowl that is possible i feel like he's in that range of journeyman starter there's the journeyman backup there's the journeyman starter he's in that range of journeyman starter. There's the journeyman backup. There's the journeyman starter. He's probably the journeyman starter. What I respect, by the way, what Ballard said is, and it's not a guarantee they're moving on from,

but it really seems like it is, they took their shot with him. Didn't work out, and they're moving on. They're not going to try to convince everybody that they made the right decision last year. And I think the good GMs are now doing that. I think they're saying, you know what? We thought he was the guy. We got a year's worth. He's not the guy.

We're going to cut our losses and move on. But a lot of GMs like to, we still have confidence in him. We still think he's a very good player. He did a lot of good things last year. It wasn't all his fault. Year two, now we're going into year three now we're in year four and you're in year four and you haven't really accomplished anything oh then pay that quarterback a ton of money that sounds like a target for the vikings in the trade market to me uh okay last one brian gutekunst the general manager of the packers said that he hopes so about a decision

on aaron rogers before free agency and said a lot of decisions have to be made before that does aaron rogers come back prediction yes i think he's in the packer starting quarterback next year i just don't see him there is a comfortability to playing on the same team with the same players, with his Devontae Adams and the same system. It is very hard. It's not impossible, but it is very hard to go somewhere else. I know Stafford did this year with a dominant football team, but it's really hard to go somewhere else and be super, super successful learning all those new things. And I don't. Yeah, I just I see him being a Green Bay Packer for one more year. I think so, too. OK, tomorrow we will have another show for you.

And there will be lots of other things to look for on the podcast feed and purple insider dot com for written stuff. So what an exciting day. I mean, i really enjoy talking with those two guys and uh just feel like i i don't know whether it'll work or not a lot of it depends on if they get the quarterback right eventually or if they do something with kirk that takes him to another level that i don't know exists but maybe it does uh but in terms of like giving yourself the best chance to build a really good franchise from here, I think they've done it. That's my first impression.

When they start making moves, we'll really know. But my first impression of listening to them talk, I think that they're in the right direction. I think they made really good selections. I don't know whether it'll work, but I think that the Wilfs and their team made very good picks. That's my takeaway. Sports are about people. And I think the Vikings found two very good people to run this organization, and I think that's exciting for the future.

And people that, as fans, as you watch these guys in their press conferences as the year goes, whether they win or lose or have bad losses, I think they're going to be sort of upstanding citizens who will say, I could have done better and not be finger pointers. And so I think that will be really enjoyable for Vikings fans, no matter how many wins they get this year. I think so too. Okay, we'll talk to you all tomorrow from Indianapolis,

Purple Insider at the Combine. We'll see you then.