Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Breaking down Vikings end of year press conferences

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Matthew Coller and Dane Mizutani of the Pioneer Press break down what Kevin O'Connell and Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said about the QB situation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome inside TCO Performance Center. Matthew Collar here along with Dane Mizutani of the Pioneer Press. After we just listened to about 45 minutes of the Vikings brass, Kwesi Adafo-Mensa, General Manager and Head Coach Kevin O'Connell talk with us about a myriad of topics. And you guys won't believe this. The quarterback situation came up and why don't we just not waste any time with that Dane what was your biggest takeaway I'm gonna throw

this at you first because I'm very conflicted on how I felt about their words so what was your biggest takeaway on the way that Kwesi and Kevin O'Connell addressed the future at quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings? I think the biggest thing is that it wasn't definitive one way or the other. I was expecting to walk into here today and walk out thinking, okay, I have a pretty good grasp on how they feel about Sam Darnold because that's the first domino that needs to fall, right? We can talk more about how JJ McCarthy's back on the field, how that's the first domino that needs to fall, right? We can talk more about how JJ McCarthy's back on the field, how he's progressing towards having a positive offseason from start to finish, which is what Kevin O'Connell said. But before we can talk about any of that,

we need to address the elephant in the room, which is what to do with Sam Darnold. So I thought walking in here today, we would get a good sense of okay do the vikings feel like they've squeezed as much juice out of that orange as they can that that is sam donald and they're ready to move on or do they feel like we need to run it back we need to look at the large sample size more than the small sample size that was the two disastrous games at the end but in all the words and the meandering that was said, it was basically just like, we're going to continue to evaluate it. And that's true.

They don't have to make a decision. What is it? January 16th. They don't have to make a decision for a month and a half. And I guess in a way, if they had come out today and said one way or the other, you could argue, maybe they should take longer to think about that because, shoot, they're still emotional about the loss and about the way the season finished. Kevin O'Connell said it's unhealthy how much he's watched the film of that Rams game.

So that's my biggest takeaway is that we don't know anything. And anyone who's claiming to know anything is wrong. We don't know anything. I think the knee-jerk reaction after what happened in Detroit, coupled with what happened in Arizona against the Rams, and I was victim to this as well, was that's it. They got to move on. They got to turn the page and JJ McCarthy's team, and it very well might be. They might do that, but they might not. He still won 14 games and showed a level of quarterback play

that cannot just be assumed will be replicated by a rookie who has not taken a snap, who's barely even back on the field throwing passes. So I think they're going to take the next month and a half. I think March 4th is the deadline to franchise tag him if you want to do that. I'm sure that will be much talked about if they do or they do not but walking out of here today I think it's just I guess we'll move forward and continue to talk about this in a way that kind of takes the whole encapsulation of what this season was and tries to kind of put it into one box but that can't be done and I don't think they've done that today. I thought if you took the quotes and you picked them apart and you use the highlighter and maybe

some strings of yarn and photos and stats, and you're tying them all together on a big board, you can make that picture look like whatever you want to make it look like. I mean, Kevin O'Connell has never wavered in the way that he's talked about JJ McCarthy. And he was asked today about when he talked about him being the franchise quarterback and you and I were both at that press conference in Cleveland when he declared JJ McCarthy, the franchise quarterback. And then O'Connell started his answer by saying, well, I also told you guys that I thought Sam Darnold was going to be great too. And you're like, oh, okay, well that's interesting. But then he went on a long

diatribe about all the things he loved about JJ McCarthy. But then he told us, hey, you know, I've learned over the years that one or two plays changes these games and we can't look at just one game, but we have to look at the bigger picture. And you're like nodding along because I tend to agree with all of it. I mean, the thing about this whole debate is that what everyone wants to do is sort of, well, I don't know if there's picking sides because everyone wants McCarthy to be the starter next year. So there's not really sides, but they want it to be a debate. And I look at it as much more of a series of paths that they could take. And I think all of them make a lot of sense to me.

There's the, let's just go with JJ McCarthy and bring back Daniel Jones as his mentor next year. And that does make sense to me because only they know how far along he really is. And I think mentally, I'm sure he grew a ton, but he is having to rebuild his entire throwing now that he has a new knee, basically. And he's having to learn all those things again that he had to learn about, the footwork, the timing, and for him to just be getting on the field now, which O'Connell and Quasey both announced to us that he's back throwing for the first time. It is January. I mean, there's OTAs and minicamp that are shockingly coming up fast,

you know, in a couple of months here. And if he's got to put on 40 pounds of muscle and relearn how to throw the football and the scheme and everything else for his actual physical movements, they could look at that and say, Hey, that's a lot to put on a guy and look at the attrition of a 17 game season. I mean, Sam Darnold injured his ankle and foot multiple times. His finger was taped up. I mean, there's just a lot of physical battering that goes on for any quarterback. And they might say, let's, let's delay this. And what are our options to delay this? Even if we believe he's our franchise quarterback, or they could just say it's McCarthy time. I mean, but here, here's the thing. If they do decide that he needs more time,

then that's where it gets really fascinating for how they handle it. And the way that Kweisi Adafo Mensah talked about it was kind of in the way that there's going to be a bunch of different options for what they can do. And he didn't go into them because I think he doesn't want to talked about it was kind of in the way that there's going to be a bunch of different options for what they can do. And he didn't go into them because I think he doesn't want to commit to anything, but there is the franchise tag. There is the option of tagging and then potentially trading. If they feel good about where McCarthy is at after OTA is mini camp. We saw that happen with Baker Mayfield getting traded right before the season to the Carolina Panthers a couple of years ago. There's also the option of a short-term deal that allows his first-year cap hit to be low

and then potentially trade him down the road when you're ready for McCarthy, a la Alex Smith getting traded when Patrick Mahomes was there. There's just a lot of different ways that this could go. And I don't feel any more confident walking out of this building today than I did walking in about which way they're thinking, or if they've even made a decision yet. And just to take inside the media room a little bit, I said to, I must've been Seaford or somebody in there. I was like, I don't know if they made this decision yet. It sounds like they have to really meet and have everybody weigh in. And whoever was in the room said, I think it's over. They've made the decision. I'm like, okay, that's where we're at. We're kind of like, I don't't know. And I think it would be disingenuous for anyone to claim that they do know at this point. I did think it was noteworthy that J.J. McCarthy is back on the field.

He's back throwing. That is a huge step in his progression to whether he's the starter next year, whether he's the backup next year, whatever he is next year. The fact that he's throwing again on January 16th is a good thing. The fact that it's January 16th and we're talking, the fact that he's throwing again on January 16th is a good thing. The fact that it's January 16th and we're talking about the fact that he's throwing a football is a big thing. I don't think should be understated. Like he didn't get the traditional red shirt year that we talk about. And the one that people say, Oh, well, it was good. He got to learn this, this, this, and this, and be ready for when he sees it all next year

he saw it through a gopro on sam darnold's helmet he he learned a lot of the intricacies of the offense and the play calling and he was in all these meetings but it's different when you're on the field and all we have from when he was on the field is that raiders game which was awesome and he looked great but he was throwing throwing a Tristan Jackson and Brandon Powell, and the Raiders were playing backups. It wasn't a real game. So to sit here and say we can confidently say that they're going to move forward with J.J. McCarthy as QB1, that's not true.

It's not true right now because I don't think they know. And I think the fact that we can probably go pull the media room and you get five or six different answers on what we think they're going to do next year is proof that we don't know. And I don't think any and that's not like the sexy like thing that's going to get clipped and put on social media and thrown around and aggregated. But like that's the truth is that right now, as of January 16th, they have a lot of decisions to make. They still have time to do them and to make them. But there is a world in which we walk into OTAs next year or next in a few months. And Sam Darnold and JJ McCarthy are both on this roster. Obviously on the flip side, there's a chance that

they just decide to let them walk in free agency. But all of those things still need to play out. That string is certainly still needing to play out before we can say anything. And the dynamic of the general manager and the coach and what they might want, I think is something that I was also hoping to get any hint on. And I don't feel like I did get any hint on, but I would imagine if you're Kwesi Adafo-Mensah that you're thinking about cap space and cap future and all those things. And if you're Kevin O'Connell, you might be thinking as he always is about what the best way to develop JJ McCarthy is while also winning. I mean, competitive rebuild is real.

It just so happened that they were just all competitive and no rebuild, but they want to be thinking, and Kweisi did allude to this, about several years down the road. Well, they're also thinking in the short term. That's how they've done it since these two have taken over. And I know that last year, Kevin O'Connell kind of pointed a finger at the camera and said, like, don't you guys push J.J. McCarthy into this before he's ready? Don't you dare demand him to start before I declare him to be ready.

And we were like, OK, that's fine. And are we going to end up with the same situation or does he think that he's ready? See, O'Connell and Casey just know more than we do. We know that they know the medical reports. They also know what J.J. McCarthy knows, which is they met every week him and Kevin O'Connell and to watch the tape and to talk about football and to talk about where it's at. And they, they said that there was a front row seat for him to watch Sam Darnold be a pro this year, which was probably really, really beneficial for JJ McCarthy. But does that mean you're ready to play 17 games and compete for a Super Bowl next year? That's the thing we don't know when he is only 22 years old and he has physical rebuilding to do here. Now, I think that it makes a lot of sense for them, regardless of what the decision is, to franchise tag Sam Darnold, because when you look around the NFL, there are so many needy teams at the quarterback position. And remember you can franchise tag trade, and then they can turn around and sign an extension for that player. So if say the Vikings

franchise tag him before March 4th, and they trade him to the, let's just still call them the Oakland Raiders until they get a playoff win in Las Vegas. So you trade them to the Oakland Raiders and they could resign him at that point to a Baker Mayfield like extension. And then you could try to get draft capital back where I disagree with some people about the final two games is I don't think some teams will look at two games of the playoffs and say, I want nothing to do with that guy, especially with Pittsburgh and the Raiders specifically having just horrific quarterback play for so long. And I just, I just want to throw this out there about Darnold because I understand everyone's upset. They should be, it was a terrible game, terrible two games. So much disappointment.

I get it. If you compare Sam Darnold to the last 20 years of Raiders quarterback play or the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback play, I mean, maybe you're a little bit blessed to have the problem that your 14 win quarterback with 102 quarterback rating couldn't come through in one game because these teams can't even make the playoffs. They can't even just operate offenses and they have receivers demanding their way out of there because it's so horrendous. If I'm the Vikings, one of the things that they don't know yet that I think has to weigh into this is just how much someone would trade for Darnold if they franchise tag him.

Yeah. And that's where I think you just need to know the market before you do make that bet that you can make that trade because everything you're saying is correct. The level of quarterback play in the aggregate that the Vikings got out of Sam Darnold was exceptional outside of those two games at the end of the year. That's important to weigh, especially for teams that have gotten horrendous quarterback play

for two decades, we'll call them the Oakland Raiders. But I don't know if you can necessarily tie yourself to, and I get it's a year, you can work around the cap space, but a $40 million contract without the guarantee or without a very good inclination that you're going to be able to move him. Because let me just go down this other rabbit hole. You do tag him before March 4th, and you misread his market. And there are teams, whether it's right or wrong, that are so hung up on how disastrous he looked against the Lions and the Rams

that now you have a quarterback on a $40 million contract that hamstrings you from doing things in free agency. It's a big risk. Tampering happens in the NFL. It just does. Sometimes you get caught like the Atlanta Falcons. Sometimes you don't. I think at the Combine in Indianapolis, that's a tongue twister.

At the Combine in Indianapolis, they need to do some recon and figure out, okay, how much would people, one, be willing to pay, but two, how much interest is there even in Sam Darnold? And if they can kind of move through that and figure it out and franchise tag him knowing that there is going to be a market to trade him, then yeah, it does make sense. It makes sense to pay the $40 million whatever price tag up front knowing you're going to move off that money eventually and get stuff back. The reason you are pushing for a franchise tag or the reason anybody would push

for a franchise tag is because you want to get something if you move on from Sam Darnold. The only hangup I have is if I feel in my bones as Kweisi Adolfo Mensah or Kevin O'Connell, that it might even be a little hard to move him. And maybe it won't be, maybe you're right, but that it might be even a little hard to move a guy at $40 million for the price tag. I don't know if I can do it.

I think as hard as it is to let him walk out the door, I think you have to, because I think what the last two games showed outside of the fact that maybe Sam Darnold has areas in his game that he needs to improve upon as good as he was this year it's that your roster has areas of their game that needs to be improved upon you need a you need to fix your interior of the offensive line that's something Kevin O'Connell made very clear you need once you lose Stephon Gilmore probably Shaq Griffin maybe Harrison like you need someone in the step on gilmore probably shak griffin um maybe harrison's like you need

someone in the secondary that can be a lockdown guy you need a penetrating defensive tackle if you can go get them you need whether it's through the draft or through free agency like a running back that's probably not named aaron jones because he started to wear down i think if you give sam darnold 40 million and you end up not being able to trade him, you can't do all of those things to fix the roster in that way. So that's where I'm at with this. If I know that I can trade the guy, hell yeah, I'm franchise tagging him. If I have any seedling of doubt, I don't know if I can do it. Folks, I found something that I didn't know how badly I needed it.

It's called Rocket Money. Like everybody else, I've got many subscriptions to different apps and websites that I just couldn't keep them all straight and it takes forever to figure them all out unless you have Rocket Money. What Rocket Money does is organize all my subscriptions into one place and allows me to cancel the ones that I'm not using. No more hunting all over the place for things I'm subscribed to or getting charged for things I'm not using. I know I'm not alone in this because I learned that 85% of people have at least one paid subscription that is going unused

each week. That's a lot of money being spent on nothing. With Rocket Money, you can easily create a personalized budget with custom categories to help you keep your spending on track. See your monthly spending trends in each category to know exactly where your money is going. Get alerts if bills increase in price or if there's unusual spending or if you're close to going over budget. So check out Rocket Money. It's a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash purpleinsider

today. That's rocketmoney.com slash purpleinsider, rocketmoney.com slash purpleinsider. So I tend to think that it's not quite as dire when it comes to working around the franchise tag if they have to, because they in just extensions and restructures, they can create at least another, I did the math the other day, maybe $20 million. So that would give them about 50 to work on that's not with Sam Darnold. And they can structure contracts that are pushed down the road for when they will go to McCarthy. If they feel that that is an option, it's not the perfectly ideal way to do it. There's no question, but I don't think that the Viking ship falls into the ocean and sinks to the bottom because they've got to structure contracts a little different than they would have otherwise, just as they did this year with their $70 million in dead cap space.

So I'm not quite as concerned about that. Now, if they were going to do a long-term $50 plus million big giant contract, yes, I would say that's a big problem down the road, but they're not going to do that after the way that things have played out. My argument for why they should be able to easily find a suitor for Sam Darnold is twofold. Number one, I'm not even sure the two top quarterbacks are as top as everybody says. I'm not even fully convinced that Cam Ward and Shadur Sanders are going to get drafted that high. Now that's just from watching them in college, but I don't look at any of them as being as good as the first round picks from last year. I think JJ McCarthy would be the number

one overall pick easily in this year's draft. And he was QB five last year. That really tells you the difference. So that's number one. There's also teams that are desperate to get back into contention. Tennessee Titans are one of them. The Raiders are certainly the team that I look at the most. They have not won a playoff game since I was a sophomore in high school. That is a long time, my friends, to not have a single playoff win in Oakland. So I just, I look at it as last year, there was a desperate team who had not made the playoffs in a while that paid Kirk cousins with an Achilles injury and one career playoff win Kirk cousins. It's not as if this was any different from what happened to Kirk in 2019, when the Vikings extended him, he got pummeled by a better defensive line.

And then Kirk comes up short checks down on fourth and eight. And I'm sure everybody thought last year, well, no one's going to pay him 45 million after that. And then somebody did with an Achilles, much older, bad history on that injury, bad history on the quarterback getting to the playoffs and winning bad history on quarterbacks who are 35 or older. And they still gave him 45 million a year, still gave him $100 million guaranteed. It's really hard for me to believe that nobody out there is going to be willing

to trade for Sam Darnold. And here's the bar. The bar is what you would get in a comp pick, which comes, by the way, in 2026, which means you got to wait a year for it, which means that your draft three times and whatever comp picks you get this year, which will be canceled out somewhat by who they sign. You want immediate draft capital. If you're the Vikings, if you can get it. So if you're doing it, I think that you have to roll those dice, assuming that one of the QB needy teams is going to be interested. And yeah, I mean, it's not tampering if two GMs over a beverage at prime 47 at the combine in Indianapolis, if they say, what would you give us for them? Like, are you interested in trading for them? I don't even think that's tampering. I think that's just two GMs having a conversation. So

they should come out of Indy with a good idea. And right there around that time is right when they have to make the decision about the franchise tag. So the timing, the moving parts are interesting. What did you make of O'Connell's answer about why they failed to protect Darnold? Because what I heard was, yes, sometimes we got to get rid of the ball and have to understand the situation. And there's a couple of sacks that Darnold took that took him out of field goal position or ended a drive. But also he admitted that the Rams had a great plan against what they were doing and also pointed to himself. And I just want to before I get your take on that, I just want to point out that going back through the film, it did make my eyes burn to see a fourth and two where there's

one receiver that's running less than 15 yards down the field against a team that was killing them up front. There's a lot of things that didn't make a lot of sense to me in that game plan. And it seemed that O'Connell acknowledged some of the coaching disadvantage, but also didn't back away from saying, uh, Darnold's got to throw the football. Yeah. I was almost hoping for him when that question asked was asked to be very forthcoming about, I could have done much better because like he said, he has watched the film now ad nauseum, an unhealthy amount. I've watched the film a few times now, not an unhealthy amount, just a normal amount after a loss. But I, like you, watch that film and say there needed to be

more eligibles in the quick game. It's what we've said about maybe the one flaw of Kevin O'Connell's play calling is that everything has to be deep down the field. Everything has to be schemed open and plant on that back foot after the five-step drop and let it rip. But what he actually said today, outside of acknowledging that he needs to be better kind of in the abstract, was that, well, we did have some short routes that were there to be, to be made. And then in the same breast said, but they were defended really well. And it's like, yeah, that's scheme that's coaching. And that's frankly, Chris Shula out coaching you in those moments. That's Sean McVay, probably knowing you and knowing what you want to do and telling Chris Shula,

Chris Shula is the defensive coordinator of the Los Angeles Rams. This is what they're going to do. This is what I think they're going to do. And the Rams just had a beat on the Vikings all day. So I was really hard on Sam Darnold after the game. He played terrible. If there's one person whose fault it was more than anybody else, like if you want to say it's sam darnold that's

fair i would have a hard time arguing with you but when you really go back and drill down on that game it was the offensive line it was receivers not being able to get open on press coverage and just getting kind of manhandled at the line and it was the coach and and i wanted more of that today i think i wanted more like this was on me too. And that just didn't really come across. It was still more, yeah, but the play call was there. Yeah, but Jordan Addison was open on that out and up late in the game and Sam didn't throw it.

He didn't say those exact words verbatim, but he did still hint at the fact that like the plays were there to be made we i think he said we need to do a better job pitching and catching we need to do a better job protecting he didn't really say until the end i need to do a better job adjusting on the fly when i can see for a fact that they are taking away our quick game and i think i need to go back and re-watch because the the amount of times that there was an outlet short over the middle quick right off the line i didn't see it as much as he claimed it was there so maybe i need to go back and re-watch the film as well so it's not all sam

darnold when it looks like that and when he leaves the game looking scared and he's curdling in the pocket a la Kirk in his prime, it's easy to just point to that and say the guy took nine sacks. He looked scared. But maybe that goes to your point about looking around the rest of the league. When the league evaluates Sam Darnold, maybe some GMs and some coaches think, man, coach didn't do him much favors, line didn't do him much favors, and maybe they can work around those final two games because the other 16 were still really damn impressive. I'm going to throw something out there that absolutely nobody wants to hear.

So if you're the offensive line obsessed person, maybe earmuffs, maybe fast forward the podcast, the Vikings ranked much higher in PFF pass blocking grade than the Rams. The Rams got rid of the football quickly to open receivers who were there fast. And that's the difference. The Vikings were great at creating pressure. The Rams were great at creating pressure, one of the quarterbacks. And you could say that's Stafford and that is true, but he also had open receivers and he had them fast and that helps the quarterback get the ball out of his hands. There were a lot of times from the end zone copy, which is behind Sam Darnold,

sort of the Madden view where I would freeze the tape and there's no one in it. There's no, everyone is to the outsides. Everyone's running deep. There's no one in front of his face. That's open. Now, Darnold missed horrible throws. The one to Jalen Naylor over the middle. The interception really showed you how shook he was at that moment because 95% of the time this year when Jordan Addison is coming out of his break, the ball is already in the air and he runs to it and he hesitated. The corner saw it.

And that's the inches that you're playing with in the NFL. And even J.J. McCarthy in his preseason game got hit with that same thing, where if you hesitate just a little to throw with anticipation, those corners will undercut that thing and pick it off. And that happened. There was another one where he had a screen to the left side, kind of a little hitch, actually, but the receivers ran out to block for Jefferson. And Darnold doesn't even really look at it and just goes to the left side, kind of a little hitch actually, but the receivers ran out to block for Jefferson and Darnold doesn't even really look at it and just goes to the backside. Now maybe that's

the play, but Jefferson's wide open and no one's even around. It's like pull the trigger. So it started to not happen as the game went along. But as I went through more and more, I felt like, as you said, that's just not my takeaway. There's no question. Kevin O'Connell is a much better tape analyst than any of us, but I'm going to need someone to use their finger and point to me to the eligibles underneath because when it's fourth and two and TJ Hawkinson is 18 yards away from the line of scrimmage, like, isn't that the guy who should get the ball for two yards on a little out route? Like, remember, I don't know why this came to mind, but remember, uh, Chad Henney came in the game that one time in the playoffs for Patrick Mahomes and they went for it on fourth and they threw just like a little

quick, quick out to somebody for a first down. Well, that quick out was Jefferson, but he fell and there was no one else to throw the ball to that's not on the quarterback. So I think that there was way less that was, that was absolutely Sam Darnold's fault while still saying he missed throws and he made mistakes and his timing was thrown off and circling back though, the offensive line was also thrown off because they were forced to block for the downfield stuff. And two of the most impactful sacks in this game came from unblocked corners. That is not on the offensive line. That is on your blocking scheme and how you prepared

to deal with the fact that they would send corners off of the edges. And they were two of the biggest, the strip sack is just a completely unblocked corner that they didn't identify. So I think that offensive lines are impacted by schemes as well and by matchups and the fact that Cam Robinson was getting demolished in his matchup and Brian O'Neill, who's probably playing through an injury. I think it should have told them something. They didn't make an adjustment at any point in the game. All that matters to the evaluation of Sam Darnold. That's the point is that when, when a Raiders or a Vikings looks back at this and tries to make the call, they have to look at it and go, okay, well, this has to be coached better. And I don't think the answer is just one guard and

free agency. Uh, but certainly I'm not anti, I would love to never talk about this again i thought we were a little bit past it and uh we're not so uh anyway just just to close the door on that discussion where do you stand right now we went through this last year with who's starting when they're gonna start and at one point you predicted 30 something touchdowns for sam darnold and probably at other times predicted that he wasn't even going to play. So where, where do you stand right now in what you think they will do after we got a waterfall of words today? I think in my gut, I think JJ McCarthy will be the quarterback week one next year. And I think that's going to be a lot of pressure to put on him. I think Sam Darnold will not be on the roster. I think J.J. McCarthy

will be the quarterback. And I think whether it's Daniel Jones or another veteran backup, that could be the bridge if he's not ready for week one or could be a pretty top tier backup. If he is, I think that's the path that they're going to go down. That's just conjecture in my gut being around this team. That has absolutely nothing to do with what was said today. And if anyone, you made this point earlier, if anyone takes what Kweisi Daufamensa or Kevin O'Connell said today and gives you a definitive answer, they are just pushing their own nerd. It happens. I get it. But nothing they said today would indicate like, yes, they are going JJ McCarthy week one. I just

feel like they are. I feel like when you win 14 games and you have all these expectations and these hopes and dreams for the playoffs and what happens in week 18 and what happens in the round and round one of the playoffs happens. I think there's just a sour taste in your mouth that you're ready to kind of move on from. I don't know that it's the right decision to do that. I don't know that you can in good faith, like put a guy that you've said you care so much about his development and throw them to the wolves in week one and say i hope you're ready i don't know who the schedule like we get that in may like whoever week one is i hope you're ready jj i don't know if that's fair to him especially after you did win 14 games and now

the fan base is expecting more i just think that's what's going to happen i think they're ready to kind of go into that era with him as the QB1. The only caveat I would add, and this is probably unrealistic, but hey, let's bring it up. If I don't franchise tag Sam Darnold and I'm the Minnesota Vikings, I would lowball him with an offer. And I would say, here's two years, let's call it $35 million. And say, you're going to get a better offer from the Raiders. You're going to get a better offer from the Steelers. I am for players taking the bag, getting the money. But if I was Sam Darnold and I had money on the table, but I knew I could come back here and compete with JJ McCarthy to be the starter and slide to the background and be a backup or maybe get traded after that. I would seriously consider it because for his career, yes, the goal is to make money, but the guy, he's pretty frugal. He lives a simple life.

He's not wearing chains, certainly. He doesn't have an expensive car. I talked to his high school coach. He still drives a pickup truck around. I don't think he needs the money, and I don't think he needs the validation of the money. But if you play in the NFL, you should go chase the bag all you want. What I'm saying is if you go to Oakland, you got me. It's the Las Vegas Raiders, but we're going to call them the Oakland Raiders for the rest of our lives.

And you just flame out, then you're just kind of a moment player in time that had a really fun year. If the Vikings lowball him, if he decides to take it, I could see a path where he's on the roster. But if everything goes the way I think it will go, I think J.J. McCarthy's QB1 next year. And I think there is some sort of guy waiting in the wings if he's not ready, but I don't think that guy will be Sam Darnold. So Joel Corey from CBS, former NFL agent did a full humongous breakdown. That was terrific. Go find that about this situation. And he brought up your idea and that is the Baker Mayfield path. Because now when we look at what Tampa Bay got Baker

Mayfield for three years, a hundred million dollars based on one good season, uh, that is a really good contract that carried a $7 million cap hit for this season for Baker Mayfield. Now that's going to go up of course. But if you are the Vikings, I think that the thing that I am leaving open is that you can always trade a quarterback. Always. Sam Darnold had four bad years with the New York Jets and then was traded for a second round pick to the Carolina Panthers. Josh Rosen had one of the worst rookie seasons we've ever seen and went for a second round

pick to the Miami Dolphins. Carson Wentz was washed up in Philadelphia and they were moving on and the Indianapolis Colts paid a first round pick for him. These are not like cars where you drive them off the lot and they lose all their value. Quarterbacks maintain value because Aiden O'Connell is the other option out in Oakland in the Bay area. So, but truly there's so many teams and so few options. And let's go through the other free agent quarterbacks and look at how they played. Russell Wilson fell off the face of the earth. Daniel Jones got cut by his own team and was on the practice squad for most of this year here. Those are the next two best guys. After that, it's Mac Jones. It's Snoop Huntley. It's Andy Dalton.

Like there's nobody. So even if the Vikings did this, sign him to the Baker Mayfield contract, somehow survived the internet burning down their franchise and then got into training camp and went, oh, oh, JJ's ready. He's good to go. We're, we're, we're OTAs mini camp. By the time they get to training camp, let's say three weeks into camp, they go, dude, he's ready. He's good to go. We're, we're, we're OTAs mini camp. By the time they get to training camp, let's say three weeks into camp, they go, dude, he's ready. Another team, you call up the Oakland Raiders and they've signed Andy Dalton. And you're like, Hey, are you interested in a

quarterback who threw 35 touchdowns and the third most yards in franchise history and the sixth highest quarterback rating in franchise history for the sixth highest quarterback rating in franchise history for the Vikings last year. Do you guys maybe see that as an upgrade over what you've got? I mean, the Raiders got to say yes at that point. And with the fact that he would have a reasonable tradable contract that makes it easier as well. So this may not actually resolve itself until they could see what McCarthy looks like, or it might resolve itself by just letting him go, not franchise tagging him and say, you're free frolic about the national football league and try to land with some franchise. That's not a complete joke, Sam, best of luck to you. We love you, pal. I think all of those things

are still very much on the table. Now, another thing that was talked about today was Kweisi Adafomensa and Kevin O'Connell's contract situations. They are now, not before as it was sort of made to seem, but they are now entering the final year of their contracts. And Kweisi Adafomensa's answer was nothing short of long when he was asked about it, but he more or less said that that wasn't a focus of his. He could have just said it that way, but there were other words. And so he went into kind of detail of like, it's a dream to be a GM and I don't think about that, you know, and I just wake up grateful, et cetera.

More or less, I'm not answering that question. Kevin O'Connell did more directly answer the question saying that he does want to sign an extension. He does want to be the coach of the Minnesota Vikings. And I just, you know, I see things vaguely on social media about, well, is KOC really going to want to sign and really going to want to stay here? And is he going to try to use his leverage to get traded or something like that? I think that just from my perspective is insanity to even discuss about as crazy as it was to talk about trading Justin Jefferson. It certainly does drive a discussion, I guess, when now we're kind of bored because there's no football games, but I don't see any universe that Kevin O'Connell is not the long-term head coach of this team.

That would be insane for the ownership to let him walk. The relationship between ownership and the head coach seems to be very good. The players in the ownership, the players in the coach, the results on the field outside of the playoffs have been as good as you could ever ask for the culture, the quarterback enhancement. I mean, all of it is there for O'Connell. That one's not that interesting to me. Kweisi D'Affilmenta might be a little more interesting. I mean, he guided them through this competitive rebuild, but is there something in terms of a dynamic with the two that would lead for him to not be the general manager? I don't know. I guess I just wonder about his vision, O'Connell's vision, the coaching staff, who has power, what everyone's jobs are. These things get a little hot when there's extensions up for a negotiation. But I think for both of them,

why would you not want to have this leadership after the results that we've seen from a franchise that was screwed when they got here? Terrible cap situation. Now we're like, well, they only have 40 million to work with if they franchise tag them. They had exactly like nothing million to work with when Kweisi Adafo-Mensah got here. So I look at it as they guided them through a complete teardown of the old group and rebuilt a new foundation of a team that can compete year in and year out in three years together. Why would you ever want to go in a different direction if you're the Wilves? I wouldn't. And I would make sure that when I sign, because I think it's going to happen. Whenever I sign Kevin O'Connell with that contract extension, I also sign Kweisi to the same extension. Maybe not the same price because Kevin O'Connell is going to be very

expensive and certainly deserving of the money that is coming his way. But we kind of joked and poked fun about like the collaboration and like how that they're just in synergy all the time. It's fun to make fun of because it's very anti football, like to have like these business jargony terms kind of drive the way that you do things in the NFL, but it's worked. And I think everyone is always going to have trouble for the rest of their lives getting over the 2022 draft. It sucked. One of the worst drafts ever. But if you cannot let that go and understand that like Kweisi Dolfamento was one of the best general managers of the year in the national football league with everything he was able to hit on.

Like, I don't know what to tell you that point being like he has to come back to, I think he's earned it almost as much as Kevin O'Connell has. He went, he pitched nearly a perfect game and in free agency. And I think he gets the opportunity because of that to push forward and continue to try and build this thing that looks pretty damn good outside of a couple very obvious glaring weaknesses that, by the way, he's given himself the cap space and flexibility to go address immediately. So I expect both of them to be back.

I expect them to be back and kind of working in concert together, collaborating on the weaknesses, talking about the strengths, throwing it up on the sidelines. Like, I think that's going to happen at some point. The reports about the tension with Kevin O'Connell and the ownership and like, I don't know who leaked to Jay Glazer on the afternoon of the week 18 game in Detroit. I don't know that it was an agent. I don't know that it was an agent. I don't know that it was another team just trying to kind of create chaos. What I do know is, and bear with me,

if you've seen the movie Inception, like they go into people's dreams and they plant a small seed of doubt and that doubt grows and it grows and it grows and it grows and it grows. And the point of the movie is if you can work doubt into somebody's mind, it's a disease that can take over. I think that report by Jay Glazer week 18 planted a small seed of doubt into certain people's minds and certain people with larger platforms that like to just take content and throw it out

into the ether. And I think that seed of doubt has grown and it's grown and it's grown and it's grown. But at the end of the day, like all that's happened is exactly what we expected to happen. When Mark Wilf talked to us at the beginning of this season, way back in training camp, outside of TCO stadium on in Eagan on this campus. He said, I don't expect us to get a deal done now, and we will talk about it after this season. The fact that it hasn't gotten talked about does not surprise me, and it does not change things.

Now, I get negotiating strategy of holding a team's feet to the fire and certainly winning 14 games increases your market value. And maybe you wish that they would have come back to the table at some point this season, but I just don't think that was ever going to happen. So then to see that report about how now there's growing tension between the two sides, I think that's just a convenient way to phrase it at this point when we don't have any new information. I think the new information will come now. I think that the way that they've talked about these contract negotiations from the jump

is they won't happen until the end of this season. And what happened today, Kevin O'Connell and both told us that we've now talked to ownership. They've had dialogue. They've had these conversations and discussions. Generally speaking, deals don't get done the first time you talk. But now that they're having the discussions, I think at some point the deal will get done. So I think I get it. Sound the alarms all you want. I think at some point here, maybe in the near future, maybe in the imminent future, maybe in the kind of distant future, whatever it is, I think we'll be sitting here, we'll be talking on the podcast and saying, duh, like this was always going to happen. This was, this was obvious from the jump. Why were we even mentioning the fact that it wasn't? I think you could get a lot of

attention by saying something could happen. And I'm just, uh just maybe warning you all for draft season and everything else. And that we've gone through that a lot. Justin Jefferson could sit out all of training camp. He could be traded. He could, could, could, could. And here we are, like we said all along. Now they're just going to sign Justin Jefferson. And I feel the same way here.

You don't get very far ever. And this goes for the quarterback thing. You just don't get very far. And I could feel like I could blow up this channel if I wanted to, to make it so much bigger. If I would just play in the dirt with the garbage that gets put out there. And I just can't do it. I can't bring myself to do it, to, to go on and say, oh, I've got 15 trade proposals for Justin Jefferson. I don't because that's bogus. And the same thing with JJ McCarthy, with the people who put it out there, are they going to trade McCarthy after Darnold had a good game? No. And they never were. But man, those people only got two weeks to get in their clicks. Darn, that's too bad for you. Darnold had a bad game. So you only got a couple of weeks to get in all those phony clicks that you get. So there's a lot of that that goes

on. And I feel like half of our job over the last 12 months has been trying to say, yeah, that utter nonsense that you're seeing on social media is just utter nonsense. It's just conjecture trolling because you're not really having a legitimate conversation. You're really just kind of making something up to make sure that it gets people worked up and gets them worried and upset, which means they'll engage with your nonsense. So keep an eye out, folks. But there is one thing, one thing when it comes to a negotiation that I will be intrigued about, and the reason I said Kweisi is a little more interesting here, and that is power. Because I don't know how the power is

distributed. I don't know, they have never told us, who has the final say on the 53. And is that going to change with Kevin O'Connell having so much success? Does he want more roster power? That is something that's real and will be a real part of the discussions. And if there is a gap, they will choose Kevin O'Connell over Kweisi Adafomensa. I am not saying this is going to happen. I'm not concerned trolling as we see or conjecture trolling. I'm only experienced telling that I

I've seen this happen, Kansas city, I believe with John Dorsey and was it Andy Reed at the time there was disagreement there and that's how they ended up splitting. This does happen. Once upon a time, AJ Smith fired Marty Schottenheimer over the same type of thing. This does happen and how that plays out might take some time to work out. Uh, but I assume that when you have this much success, you want to keep going in the same direction. And both guys said they believe they have a strong foundation. No reason for me to disagree with that. So of course, uh, keep your eyes open for clickbait or whatever you want to call it. And, uh, we'll continue to keep you updated out from here at TCO performance center, where we go and talk to them and hear what they have to say. But for now, I don't expect

anything else than this leadership to be going forward. We'll see what happens and we'll see what happens with everything in the off season uh which we will have plenty of time to talk about so dane mzitani pioneer press once it warms up porch podcast back in play uh for us so thanks everybody for listening slash watching and we will catch y'all soon football