Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Can Everson Griffen's energy be replaced? How can Kevin O'Connell win coach of the year (A Fans Only podcast)

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Matthew Coller answers questions from Minnesota Vikings fans, from whether the Vikings can replace Everson Griffen's energy with Za'Darius Smith to what would have been a better choice at quarterback in 2018 to the route for Kevin O'Connell to win Coach of the Year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and this is a fans-only podcast. And the reason you are getting another fans-only podcast is because you good folks sent a ton of questions for me to answer. Now, I'm not saying that you should stop sending them. Keep sending them. I'll keep the file full, and we can keep the fans-only episodes going. But I am saying that I have a lot to get through now, which means I need to jump right back on the wagon and start blasting out these fans only

podcasts. So I appreciate everyone who has sent them. If you want to send more, go to purple insider.com top right corner. It says, contact us, just put in their fans only it'll fire right to me. Or if you want, you could just go to Twitter, just tweet at me, say, Hey, fans only question and go from there. So thank you so much to everybody who has refilled up the Google doc with all the fans only questions. Now, before we get into it, I have something to admit and I'm not proud of it, but it's not my fault.

Um, this, I'm going to have to make a very important statement here. What I'm about to open is not a diet, Dr. Pepper. And now I know, I know you guys are saying what, what is going on? You've tweeted at diet, Dr. Pepper. You've told them you have to sponsor the show. This is not me being Minnesota passive aggressive. I went to the store and I walked down to the soda aisle and I looked for diet, Dr. Pepper, and it was all gone. Now, is that because of this show? Absolutely. There's no question that the stock price of diet, Dr. Pepper is rising. There's fear in the streets that there won't be enough for everybody to enjoy

because of the promotion on this show that I've done for free, just because I like it, but I have with me a diet Pepsi. So if I don't have the same vibe as I usually do because it's diet Pepsi and not diet Dr. Pepper, well, you know, we know who to tweet at. Okay. So here we go. Let's open it up. Let's get a drink of this. See how it feels. No, not the same. Nope, not the same. You know what?

Still delicious though, honestly. It's really hot outside. So this actually does taste very good to me. And honestly, look, if Diet Dr. Pepper doesn't want the sponsorship, Diet Pepsi, come get me. I'm just saying. All right, enough of that. Let's get rolling that. Let's get rolling with your questions. Um, let's begin with Sarah via the email. She says,

I enjoyed Everson Griffin on the team and the energy he brought since you're around the players more. Do you think Zedaria Smith brings the same type of personality? Um, I don't know that there's ever been anyone I've been around who was like Everson Griffin. I really don't. Energy doesn't begin to describe it. I mean, the guy was just always on and always electric. And, you know, when teammates talk about him too, it's not just, oh, he had a lot of energy or he was the guy inside the huddle pumping us up. But Everson also worked with other players a lot to help them improve their pass rush moves.

And it seemed like he felt it was important to help other people with becoming better pass rushers because there were people that helped him in his career as he was coming up. So I think that there was a positive effect from that with Everson Griffin. And also just the way that he played the game. I remember talking to someone in the league, maybe it was at the combine about Everson Griffin. And they said that when they would go to game plan against the Vikings defense, it started with Everson Griffin because he was the guy who could wreck the game.

That he was the one that, uh, through four quarters was going to be bringing it the whole time. And if there was any laps, he was going to get a strip sack. He was going to make a big play. And we saw that play out through his career. And I think that that has been really missed over the last two years. Um, you know, of course he was very good at the beginning of last season and through the 10 games that he played. But the second half of the year when he was out, then when he wasn't here in 2020, when he wasn't there for a period of time in 2018, I think you saw a different vibe of just the team and not having Everson Griffin there. So that is very hard to replace his personality, his intensity,

always a guy who's joking around with his teammates and things like that, that it's not an easy person to just plug somebody else into that. I don't see the same personality with Zedaria Smith. I don't think that he's quite as loud as Everson Griffin. Everson also had control of the music, I believe, inside the locker room. And that maybe Z'Darrius Smith won't have that. But no, I think that what Z'Darrius Smith has done early on is kind of what you wanted to see, which is build on his relationship with Daniil Hunter. But he's more of an understated guy.

It seems from a distance, just watching so far in minicamp and having talked to him twice now, I think once in a press conference and once kind of on the side, he doesn't have that level of intensity about him just walking around. Now, as a player, I think he does on a play to play basis. He was somebody that even when he was in Baltimore before he joined the Green Bay Packers, that was someone that was really under the radar and was not getting the type of attention that he really deserved on that defense because I think they had a lot of good players. There was no huge star on the Baltimore defense, but once he went to Green Bay and they started moving him all over the place, he is a player that can impact the game in a lot of different ways. I mean, he can rush

over the middle, he can rush over the outside. And I think the more that he and Daniil Hunter get on the same page with their rushing, especially since Smith is moving around. So it's not like you go over there. I go over here that there could be things where they're used kind of in conjunction with each other, that that relationship will help. I don't believe he's the guy who's going to come in and be super loud and be kind of a lightning rod and just like everybody follow me kind of thing. I think he's kind of more here to do his job and, you know, pair up with Daniil Hunter and be a centerpiece of this defense, but you're just not going to find too many other Daniil

Hunters even around the league. I mean, I'm sure there are other energetic players, but to play that way, to be that person in the locker room all the time. Yeah. I think it meant a lot to this team that is just not something you run across very often. I think it meant a lot to this team. That is just not something you run across very often. I think Everson Griffin was a pretty special player and I don't know that it will happen or not, but to me, that's a kind of a ring of honor type of player. Someone who not only was, I am assuming Everson Griffin is not going to come back and play. Maybe he will. I don't know if it will be here, but if he's done playing, you know, that's somebody maybe you consider putting in the ring of honor at some point because of what he brought to a lot of very good defenses over the years and also what he meant to the organization.

So, yeah, that's what I would say about Everson. That's a very difficult guy to replace. But as a player, Zedarius Smith certainly brings a lot of the same traits. He's not just a pass rusher. He's a bigger guy. He's very strong. He can bull rush people. I think, you know, we really saw that against the Vikings many times playing with Zedarius

Smith. But that is one thing that is kind of missing on this defense. Anthony Barr was someone that was more of a quiet leader, but he called out the defense and he directed traffic. And I do think they were different at times without Anthony Barr in there. So that's going to be a new role. Harrison Smith and Eric Hendricks are much more on the quiet side of the leadership. So who's taking the reins here? I mean, Patrick Peterson maybe kind of becomes that guy. I could actually see it by the end of the season,

depending on how it all goes, being Louis seen who, when he's out on the field, everybody's kind of looking to him. That was part of his role at Georgia. And he strikes me as having that kind of personality, not as off the field, as loud as Everson Griffin or as intense as Everson Griffin, but kind of that guy that on the field is, um, is rallying everyone behind him. He has those traits. Uh, we'll see if he can develop that, but yeah, I mean, I have ultimate respect for Everson Griffin and the way he played the

game because in all of pro sports, you will not find too many guys who brought that type of intensity. He would be the one who would be getting hurt all the time in baseball because he was running out every ground ball, the second base or something as if they hit ground balls to second base anymore. But you know what I mean? Good question, Sarah. Thank you. All right. Onto our next one at i am super b4 uh on twitter sends this one fans only question for you how much more upside do you think justin jefferson has since he's already so good after two years what can he still improve on i don't think that there's any more upside to justin jefferson because he's already got an argument for the best wide receiver in the league.

I mean, I think that to say someone hit their ceiling really early in their career sounds like an insult. But when your ceiling is a Hall of Fame level talent who walks in and starts setting records that Randy Moss held. If we're asking him to be more than that, then I think we're setting the expectations unrealistically to say, Justin, why don't you have more, you know, why don't you have more catches or why don't you have more yards? He already has more yards than anybody else in the NFL over the last two years. And he averages like 15 yards a catch. I mean, there isn't much more you can ask from him there. You can change players' usage so they put up different statistics. Now, I think that's a different conversation.

I don't think that, I mean, I'm sure that Jefferson himself would say, oh, I can improve X, Y, and Z. I can change this about my game. But as he has to improve certain things and make adjustments, defenses are making adjustments for him. So it's the constant cat and mouse game that he can be better. Well, the results stay the same and the results are absolutely out of this world. And we say, Oh, he was kind of the same receiver, but he would tell you the details were better or the way he ran X route was better or the way he approached a certain ball was better. But since the other team is

putting Jalen Ramsey on him or they're double teaming him or whatever it might be going into every game saying we have to stop this player. He has to be better to maintain the same level. And that's what Kirk Cousins actually said about Jefferson after even his first year is he told Jefferson, if you want to make the hall of fame, just go what you did, do what you did last year, only do it year after year, after year, after year for a decade, a decade, and then you will end up in the hall of fame. And I think Kirk is right. I think that consistency is really the key here to be able to stay at this level year after year. Now, as far as the statistics go, could you see him like if he catches 120 passes and has a similar amount of yardage?

Like, did he get better or was it just a different usage? We saw that with Stefan Diggs. Like Stefan Diggs had a great year in 2019. And we all remember the big touchdowns against Philadelphia, the comeback against the Broncos where Diggs just took over these games. And then you go back and look at the stats and you go, wait, the guy had like 62 catches that year because they were using him purely as a deep threat. And then he goes to Buffalo and they throw him short passes and he catches double the number of passes, but he's not a different player. Stefan Diggs did not get better. It's just that Buffalo

traded for him, put him with a great quarterback and a system that threw all the time. And his statistics changed, even if his actual play did not. And, uh, there's a guy who I'm hoping to have on the show soon. Matt Harmon, who's been on the show before from Yahoo sports, who does a website called reception perception. And he looks at all the details of route running. So he has the route trees and the percentage of success. I mean, he puts so much work into it. And I remember having him on shows. It was almost like a yearly thing to come on and talk about how all the numbers that were underneath the surface not the fantasy stats all said stefan digs needs to

get the ball more so he wasn't a different player it's just that how he was used was different so if kevin o'connell decides hey i'm gonna go all out and i'm going to spread the field. It's going to be shotgun four wides and Jefferson goes in motion into the slot and he runs quick slant and gets eight yards, then 10 yards, then 12 yards. His yards per catch are going down a little, but he's getting the ball in his hands more. So at the end of the year, he ends up with 124 catches and a similar amount of yards, but he was more impacting consistently the offense than when you're trying to heave the ball down the field to him and it's boom or bust so yeah i think that the statistics might tweak and the fantasy numbers might tweak but who he is is

probably going to be about the same and so that will be one of those storylines that we're watching for this year how does kevin o'connell want want to deploy just the Jefferson? Because I don't want to change it too much, but I don't want to stay the same. You know, you could see it like both ways for Kevin O'Connell kind of dancing in between how he wants him to fit in his offense, but also knowing that Jefferson was super successful in the role that he was given before. So in his offense, but also knowing that Jefferson was super successful in the role that he was given before. So a good question, but I think, I think that's, I think that in football, a lot of times players do kind of hit their ceiling pretty early, just not quarterbacks or offensive linemen, I would say, but receivers, yeah, they get there

pretty fast. Running backs get there pretty fast. You know, if you could get the ball in your hands, you're probably going to be able to step in right away and be pretty good. Whereas if you're a, if you're a guard or a tackle, there's so much technique, there's so much, you know, size difference that you have to adjust to and all those things where, you know, maybe it's not till you're age 25, 26, 27. So all development curves are a little bit different. Jefferson's man, by the end of the first season, when they started double teaming him, when Thielen was out that one game against Carolina and he was still great. It's like, yep.

I think that's kind of the future. And, uh, it definitely was last year. Folks want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com. Use the promo code PurpleInsider for 15% off your purchase. It is summertime. It's baseball season. They have all sorts of great Minnesota baseball gear. And if you are prepping for training camp, get your purple people eaters

shirt, your can't stop the feeling hat and all sorts of other great football designs. Go there. Soda stick.com S O T A S T I C K.com promo code purple insider for 15% off. okay this comes from on twitter at vikes fan 1930 a fan's only question for you so you have a chance to go back to 2018 to replace kirk with another quarterback in 2018 who would you have signed or drafted would the vikings have been better off based on your decision would zimmer still be the head coach so this is always an annoying one. And I don't mean an annoying question. I mean, I'm annoying about this because in 2018, I thought they should have drafted a quarterback, whichever one was available or trade up. And the guy that was available was Lamar Jackson. And now look, everybody gets them wrong for who's going to be

a good quarterback. You'll hear me say that a thousand times during draft season, but Lamar Jackson had unbelievable physical talent and they could have stuck with Case Keenum, drafted Lamar Jackson, you know, brought back Teddy to see if he could get back to the form that they hoped he was headed toward before and had pretty much just a quarterback battle between case and Teddy and then prepared Lamar Jackson to play. Now they didn't know going into that draft or the decision to sign Kirk cousins that Lamar Jackson would be available. I didn't think it was a bad idea to still draft Lamar Jackson anyway, because Kirk was essentially on a two-year deal with that first contract.

If I remember correctly, and my thought was, well, you know, always be thinking about that quarterback position. And it was no, no, we need a corner. Trey Wayans might not be here forever and that kind of thing. And it's Mike Hughes and he ends up going bust. So there's never anything that is more important than the quarterback position and taking swings at it is pretty much always good in the first round if the guy is that level of talent.

Obviously it worked out for Green Bay and it does not work out every time. That time it would have. Now my alternative option that I thought would have been pretty good, there were two other guys that were on my mind and I remember writing about, one was Ryan Tannehill, which probably would have turned out mostly the same. Although I think he's, I think he's better in the same system than Kirk cousins

is. Uh, the numbers would certainly suggest that he is a little bit better in a very similar type of setup where you're running first and throwing off play action. So Ryan Tannehill was another option because he had played so poorly for what was it? Adam Gase, right? And he was coming off an injury. And my thought was like, well, you know, he had shown some flashes. This guy's got to be better than case Keenum or more talented as a first round pick. And he's taken a team to the playoffs before. Maybe there's a trade option there that never came to fruition and he ended up leaving the following season to sign with Tennessee and Alex Smith being the other option Alex Smith was traded for what a fur was it a first or second round pick and a

corner I think it might have been a second and a corner and you know if the Vikings had to give that up to to get him and then sign him to an extension, if there's a more perfect quarterback out there than Alex Smith for Mike Zimmer, I don't know who that is. Alex Smith was a winner. He was a leader. He was super conservative in the way that he played, but did not turn the ball over, had incredible numbers year after year with turnover differential. And remember when we talked about the advantage that you get when you get a turnover in yardage and how the Vikings didn't take advantage of that? Well, think about your team basically with Alex Smith in charge, not ever really turning it over and you always win that battle. Like you're going to win a lot

of games that way. That doesn't mean you get to the Superbowl, but in 2018 and 2019, I think that they are better off with a quarterback that Zimmer could trust. Delvin cooks in his prime at that point. And even if there would have been some of the same frustrations, and even if the offense by points perform similarly, maybe they wouldn't have turned the ball over as much. Maybe they would have had a little more, I don't know. just like team unity i guess uh with alex smith in charge and you would

have had the same cap problems and you would have had the same long-term issues and of course when you got to the point where the team came apart it would have been very tough to get more than 500 seasons out of alex smith i just thought he would have been a better fit, uh, with Mike Zimmer than Kirk cousins. Now, could they have known that? Um, you know, I don't know. That's hard to predict whether someone was going to be a fit or not with Mike Zimmer, but you knew it was going to be tough because he gave case Keenum a hard time that entire time. So those are the ideas that come up that I think would have worked out better. There was lots of ideas that wouldn't have worked out better. Like, um, I think Tyrod

Taylor was out there. There were, you know, there's a bunch of other quarterbacks that would probably have worked out worse or the same. Um, there was also the idea of just like playing it out and drafting a quarterback the following season or seeing if Teddy could come back. There were a lot of different ways they could have gone. But, you know, only making the playoffs once in four years, it's almost like anyone you would have chosen there, what difference would it have really made, right? Like these last four years, I know that every time we get into July, it's like, well, you know, those things that went wrong last year, you just fix

them up. And this year now it's going to be way different, but we did that every single year and got the same results and going with cousins ended up being at least so far, not even remotely successful compared to where they set the bar coming off of the NFC championship. So even if they had stuck with case Keenum, who I know has not turned out to be a long-term starter in the NFL and neither has Teddy Bridgewater. At the time, we didn't know what Bridgewater had left. It would have also given them flexibility at the quarterback position to be the team that could attract somebody else if they wanted to show up here uh which is something that we

don't talk about a lot so if they had gone case and teddy and let's say it wasn't lamar jackson that they drafted it was somebody else was it uh mason rudolph that they picked okay mason rudolph stinks like whatever but they could have moved on after that and then you know maybe you're in the tom brady sweepstakes right if you can say we've got you know, maybe you're in the Tom Brady sweepstakes, right? If you can say, we've got, you know, Stefan Diggs here and Adam Thielen and a great defense. And how about you come over here? It's like, who knows how that would have shuffled and played out after. But at the time of the cousin signing, my feeling was from watching, I went back and watched his entire 2017 season. And I remember doing a ton

of research and looking at like, what did Jay Gruden say about him? What did teammates say about him? Why did it go so wrong there? And feeling like this is very risky. And I remember reading an article by Doug Farrar of, um, USA today, he's been on the show before about cousins and even about how cousins processes stuff and how like this is going to be very difficult to overcome some of this when it comes to giving him this humongous contract and he wrote that before he joined the vikings and it's all kind of come to fruition so you know they've got another shot at it here with kevin o'connell to make it different and to change those opinions.

But I think there were other ways they could have gone, but they felt the need to go all in and go big, which, hey, can work out great for you. Sometimes it certainly did for the Rams. The Wolves are really hoping that that turns out great. But with this, it has not so far. And they've got pretty much one more chance to make it go right. All right. Next question from, uh, at the Sam Anderson fans only question for you. Have you ever scrapped a podcast? Not because it was outdated or some breaking news happened,

but because it was an absolute dud and you didn't want anyone to hear it. I'm, you know, it's possible that I have done that, but I don't remember ever having to do that. There have been audio issues. And, you know, if you listen to the show long enough, you've probably heard every once in a while there's, I forgot to plug my mic in because I'm always very competent. Like that happened a few weeks ago. I thought it was over the threshold of being able to listen and still enjoy, but that was a mistake. So stuff like that happens. Outdated is usually the problem. So I did, I'll tell you about a couple that were outdated. Um, I did last year, a podcast with Joe Caporoso of turn on the jets about Todd Bowles. Remember Todd Bowles

rumors, everybody were those started by Todd Bowles. Uh, but you know, I, he had been the coach of the jets. And so we did a pretty long conversation about how to avoid becoming the jets and Todd Bowles and all the things that he would bring or not bring to the table. And then I think the next day Harbaugh stuff came out and it was just like, well, this was a great conversation, but the Todd Bowles stuff is dead and here comes Harbaugh. So if I put this out now, it won't be relevant because the finalists were pretty much already out there. So that happens. There was another one where my friend Bobby Peters, who I'm hoping to have on the show again,

he is great at breaking down X's and O's. And he was with us at the combine, yeah, for a conversation. But he and I had gotten together, I think, before maybe the NFC Championship. And it was the same deal where we did an interview and something broke Vikings wise. And I just couldn't put it out there, but it's pretty rare that, and I don't remember it ever happening that I had a conversation with somebody that was so bad that I had to just say, nope. I mean, usually you guys listen to the show, you know, this like the guys at PFF, they're never

going to flop when you bring them on. They've always got good things to say. The other beat reporters, they know their stuff here. We've got a really great group. So if Ben Gessling or Andrew Kramer or, you know, Will comes on or whoever else, Chad Graff, like, you know, those guys are going to be good. So I usually try to pick carefully every once in a while, take a swing, go outside the lines, like with Ali Connolly, if you listen to that one.

But I had already done my research on Ali Connolly and knew that he was going to be good. That's another part of it, too, of the preparation for the show is if I'm going to bring somebody on, I'm going to go look at their other interviews or their other or listen to their podcast and make sure that it's going to be pretty good because I just want you guys to have good content, which is why I sit here answering questions over and over. I'm sort of making fun of myself there, but really like that. I want you guys to get what you want out of it, that you want to hear somebody who's going to be entertaining and interesting, or you want to hear your questions

answered. Like that's, I'm trying to bring you what you want. So I do my best, but no, I don't believe I could think of an instance where that has ever happened. I have had in my radio career, a handful of interviews that I immediately wanted to get out of. But you know, it doesn't happen a whole lot. Uh, all right, let's go to at my skull report, put the owner's hat on. Who would you have picked for general manager? Who would you have wanted to be the head coach and how would you have wanted the money

spent in free agency? And is there someone that you would have pushed for to be drafted? So, okay. All right. So I'm, I'm Ziggy or I'm Mark Wilf and I get to just call the shots on the entire offseason. Okay. Well, as far as GM goes, you know, look, it's very hard to know. With coaches, you know what they did, who they were coaching for. But with GM candidates, I think I said this back then, anybody who tells you that they have an opinion on GM candidates is just making it up. I mean, truly. Because we don't get to interview them.

I didn't get to interview Ryan Poles before the Vikings sat down with him and go through his entire plan without any filter for the future. And the same goes for Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. If I had that opportunity, I could give you a strong opinion on who I thought should have been the general manager. But, you know, Kweisi's a fine pick. He's got a good resume. Like, I don't know.

You always want to have takes on stuff, but it's like until he does stuff, it's hard to say. And always keep in mind too, that even when judging coaching decisions, there's an article from whatever, I think it was maybe New York post at the time or something writing about how Bill Belichick was the worst decision that the new England Patriots ever could have made for a head coach. So in trying to judge these things on day one, it's very hard, but let's just go to the other ones. As far as the decision they made at coach, I think that Raheem Morris, Kevin O'Connell, like those guys were the two that I had put toward the top of the list along with Byron Leftwich. And, you know, Todd Bowles

takes over there. Byron Leftwich is probably going to try to escape the shadow of Bruce Arians a little bit. Uh, it also seemed like the Jaguars were ready to hire Byron Leftwich. And then he said, no, I don't want to work with Trent bulky and ended up staying with Tampa Bay, knowing that he's going to get a shot down the road. But that would have been a guy that I've looked at and said, all right, I know that you've got Tom Brady, but look at these Tom Brady numbers over the last couple of years versus when it looked like he was fading at the end of his time in new England. Also look at the background of the guy, how he relates to his players, his reputation, his character, like Byron left, which checked all those boxes. Raheem Morris checked all those boxes for me too, as someone who's thought of as being

really a brilliant coach in the NFL. But as far as Kevin O'Connell goes, I would have put him right up there in the same realm, in the same ballpark as someone who is a right-hand man to a Superbowl winning head coach. Like, there you go. Okay. Can you do better than that? Like, I don't know. Um, probably not. You never know who's going to turn out, but if you're going to take a swing at it, taking somebody off of the staff that has been so successful, not just winning the Superbowl this year, but they want to play off game last year. They're in the Superbowl in 2018 and it's directly connected to how they scheme. So yeah, I think that one of those three people were at the top of my list and would have been good choices. So let's even say it's still Kweisi and Kevin O'Connell. Now this is

where it's different as far as how I would have directed them to spend money in free agency. Now the draft is, is a little hard to say because you don't know who's going to be available when it happens. Like when you're giving the directive, I want you to draft whoever, unless you're in the room saying you must draft whoever that one's a little hard, but we'll talk about that too. The money in my mind would have been spent a little differently. I think I would have said hell or high water. I want you to refresh this roster. Now that doesn't mean you have to get rid of everyone. It doesn't mean feeling has to go. Harrison Smith has to go go but refresh the roster and set us

up to have a ton of cap space next year if you're spending my money let's spend it really wisely on next free agency so we can try to stack this roster and fill all of our spots in free agency before next season so that means probably moving on a quarterback, getting a new solution. They're not extending feeling in Harrison Smith to contracts that are going to keep them in place through 2023, which is what they did not having any dead cap money. Like that would have been priority. Number one, not even how you spend it necessarily, but how you set it up to spend it in the future. And if they said, well, look, you know, I don't want to coach a rookie quarterback. That's not

any good. I don't want to be forced into drafting Kenny Pickett. I need to keep Kirk cousins. Okay. All right. All right. That's fine. Okay. Kevin O'Connell, you want to keep Kirk cousins shortest deal possible, which is what they did. But you're going to go all in then on Kirk Cousins and spend that money at right guard and at center. And we're going to at least try to give the man the best offensive line we can give him. And by the way, I don't want players who are 32. I want players who are in their twenties that could be here for multiple seasons, even through a reset. If you need that, that's probably how I would have directed them to spend the money. And then, I mean, if you guys listen to all the draft coverage, which I know you did,

if you're still here in July, uh, yeah, wide receiver probably would have been the direction I would go. I think that receivers are just so greatly impacting the game, especially when you can stack two, three, four of them. If we're playing a more wide open system three receivers four receivers it's not like you can't use kj osborne if you got four good ones it's not like it's illegal to say okay kj is a great wide receiver four like that's okay van jefferson is a great wide receiver four for the rams that's probably the direction i

would have gone with them is premium positions at the draft. So it's edge rusher or it's wide receiver. Um, if there is no quarterbacks in the draft, which there definitely wasn't this year. And even if you're keeping Kirk cousins, make sure that you're setting yourself up for the future and not hurting yourself with void years. So that's probably what I would have done different as far as who they hired. I mean, I have a very tough time finding fault with it. Like, of course there will be times where I'm going to criticize the direction or the coaching, but as far as the decision to hire these two people, Kweisi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell, I mean, I think that they made good calls. I'm just not sure that they really set themselves up to get into that next window

of winning as well as they could have for this off season and instead extended the previous window that did not yield results. So they'll get another shot at that, at coaching it better, at GMing it a little smarter. And every time I saw Nate Tice of The Athletic bring up the Corey Vedvik trade. So every time that comes up, it reminds me, yeah, no, they could definitely GM a little better. That's for sure. So good question.

All right, let's go to at Bob Vikings for our next question. There's got to be an at, every single team, right? Guys do broadcast for the Batavia muck dogs was my single a baseball team that I did radio for. There was probably a Bob muck dogs. I'm sure there's a Bob Panthers, Bob Jaguars, Bob Saskatchewan rough riders. Anyway. So you're the Bob Vikings. The question better be good. Let's see. Vikings. Let's see. Oh, sorry. Vegas has the Vikings at 8.5 wins, but has Kevin O'Connell among the highest odds to win coach of the year. This suggests a potential for a high upside on this roster. In a vacuum, how many wins does Kevin O'Connell need for coach of the year?

Uh, you know, I, well, first of all, I think that voters tend to with awards like that. They do like somebody who's new on the scene. So just a couple of examples recently, uh, you know, Matt Nagy shows up and he wins a bunch of games that first year, 2018 he's coach of the year. Then the next year, Kevin Stefanski and here a couple of years later, Matt Nagy is gone. Kevin Stefanski has a ton of pressure, but if you're the guy who appears to have turned things around for your franchise, you are really in a good spot as far as looking for coach of the year awards. So there's that. If you're Kevin O'Connell, it doesn't really take a lot to write the narrative of Kevin O'Connell coach of the year.

Like if you end up with a better performance than last year, you're in the playoffs and your offense is really good. I mean, he's got, you've got a shot there, right? So I think that it does probably revolve around winning the division. I don't know if it suggests they have a high upside as much as it does just that Vegas is very smart. Like there are clearly proven and great coaches who have lower odds than Kevin O'Connell because they know that those guys would have to do something really miraculous. Like what Bill Belichick did last year was flat out unreal. I mean, they had one of the best scoring offenses in the league. They had a number one defense. They went to the playoffs with Mack Jones as their quarterback, a rookie, which, you

know, all the other rookies failed last year. And it's always hard even to make the playoffs with a rookie and nothing for Belichick and because it's boring. It's like, well, that guy, everybody knows he's great. So if you're the new kid on the block who exceeds expectations, which are not that high at eight and a half wins, if you exceed it by one and a half wins and you're in the playoffs and your offense is really good, like you have a shot at winning that because you're the new guy and you turned around the team that was flailing from the previous season. I also think that the voters, they only compare it to the last year or two years. They don't compare it to the Vegas expectations. So they

wouldn't say, well, you know, they only won one and a half more games than expected. They would say, well, they won, you know, two more games than last year, three more games than the year before. And like, see how different it is with Kevin O'Connell. Um, also you need a national TV game that you coach really well, which is very possible at the end of the year, the Vikings have, and I don't know if it's national TV or not just off the top of my head, but they've got an away game at green Bay and away game at Chicago. I mean, if you coach it up against Green Bay and get a big win in Lambeau to win the division, even if it's a 10-7, you've got a great chance to win coach of the year. So I think that that's why Vegas is pointing this way, because they know that coach of

the year voters love shiny toys. And it's very possible that someone who's new, um, you can write this narrative that it got stale under Zimmer and this guy turned it around. Like that usually ends up driving awards like that. Um, but I think that it's probably if just to answer your question, it probably has to do with the division. Uh, if you win the division with 10 games, you're probably going to get that award or get you know get in that conversation for that award who knows who else pops up right but if you win 12 games absolutely because that would be a massive turnaround that would be four more wins from last

year five from 2020 with a lot of the same pieces or very similar pieces on the team and 12 wins gives you a great shot to win the division so i think that the threshold is probably 11 or 12 to say okay this was way different stefanski won it with 11 oftentimes to win coach of the year you have to win more than that uh let me see. I'm just gonna pull this up. So let's see the last coach to win fewer than 11 games and win coach of the year was 2009. So you have to win at least 11 games. And then if you're the new kid on the block, there's a little bit of a extra juice for that. Like Sean McVay was another one, 2017. They went 11 games takes over for Jeff Fisher. Look, he turned it around. Everything's different.

Or if you have an unbelievable season, like Carolina, 2015, Ron Rivera wanted, or 2019, John Harbaugh went 14 and two and he wanted. So probably that's the threshold. Or if your team still wins a bunch of games and goes through a lot of things, if you like for able, you win 12, but you had a lot of injuries and a lot of tough games and things like that, but you still find a way to win 11, 12. But if the Packers win the division at say 13 and four and the Vikings win 11, it's hard to see them getting a ton of attention other than to say, oh, well, they're a pretty good playoff team here. They're in the four seed off we go. That's a little bit harder to see unless they rank in the top five in offense and doing so.

But yeah, I mean, as far as bets go, I don't think it's a crazy bet at all because you know there's just that added benefit of being new that uh kevin o'connell gets in his favor as opposed to you know a lot of other coaches that the voters essentially will get bored of and you have to you know have a higher um there's like a higher threshold you have to win 13 14 games if you're going to be somebody else other than him. So I am not a gambling expert, but that doesn't seem like a terrible pick to me. If you're wanting to bet on coach of the year. All right. One more for this episode. And like I said, continue to send them. I got a good amount of them to do a couple of more podcasts, uh, the fans only. And then, you know, hardcore training camp previews folks,

they are coming on the way. So this one from Emmett's Lawrence one on Twitter question for the fans only podcast, huge fan of the podcast and the writing. Thank you. I have recently been appointed a writing spot for a small website and wanted to know your best tips and advice for starting out in the writing world. Well, I guess I would say that the best advice I can give you is to write and write more and write more and write more. That you can't become a chess grandmaster without playing chess a million times, right? Like every single day for many hours, you can't learn how to play the guitar. These are things that I do. And I'm just only okay at, uh, you can't become, you know, the next guitar player for Metallica by just sort of picking it up every once in a while, you cannot become a great golfer by, you know, smacking it

around at the driving range once a week, and then going a great golfer by, you know, smacking it around at the driving range once a week, and then going out there and hoping for different results. Again, these are all things that, that I, that apply to me for my other hobbies that I'm not that great at, but when it comes to writing, save for this week, where I've just given my tendons a little bit of a rest during July 4th week, and there's not a whole lot to write about. I am writing for the newsletter 51 weeks a year and doing other writing on the side. I mean, just all the time. It's an every single day thing. So even if you are just starting for a small site, but even if you started something else on the side or started like just writing for practice on a blog or whatever, like some WordPress that you could start, it just takes practice to

find your writing voice. And it takes practice with lots of other things. And so YouTube and, you know, self-help tips and everything else, they always want to give you like, Oh, just do this. And you'll like the golf swing, just do this. And you'll like the golf swing, just do this. And you'll have a great golf swing. No, that's no, probably not because you need to master that. You can't just say, Oh, well, you know, I'm just going to tweak my setup. And all of a sudden I'm tiger freaking woods. Like, no, that's you need to tweak your setup. Yes. But you also need to practice the swing out of that setup a thousand times. So you can't just write like one article and be like, Oh, I'm, I'm just good at writing.

No, you need to write and write and write and write. That's one thing. And the other thing I would say is like, be creative and don't be afraid. Uh, you could go through, you know, the purple insider site and maybe look at some things where you were like, dude, you're just out of your mind. You're goofball. Like I wrote about the NFC North race of the rebuilds and compared it to the movie Days of Thunder. And you could be like, what are you doing?

Days of Thunder came out in like 1990. And I know like sometimes it's goofy and sometimes it really works. Like being inventive and being creative. If you write an article like Brett Favre says that this receiver is going to have a big year. There's my article. Like, dude, who cares? Like that aggregation stuff. Who cares? I mean, be inventive, be creative, be different and be willing to take some risks that might not work. If you write some boring stuff that somebody already wrote, PFF says, Justin Jefferson's the

best boom, 500 words like what? And then you just rip off what PFF put out there. Like, I see that so much. And like, what is the point of doing that? Um, most underrated Viking, who cares? I mean, everybody knows everyone on the team already. Anyway, sorry. I, you know, those aren't really specific examples toward anybody. I just, you know, off the top of my head from many years of seeing the same article written over and over and over again, or the same aggregation be different, be different. Um, if, if I, if I already wrote with a bunch of sources and spent a lot of time on it, I did a bunch of interviews. If I already wrote something on a particular subject, do something different than that. Like if you already saw me do it, then do something fresh, take another direction, but also borrow from people to borrow

ideas. Don't do the same article, but say, well, this writer approached it that way. So I need to kind of take some of the same stuff from them. When I approach my article, like you have to read a lot of really good writers in order to, um, to be a good writer. So I think that, that all of that probably applies to just about everything. You have to work at it. You have to try to be creative and really put in, put in effort because you know, what's great about podcasting and writing is the audience will respond to this person, put in the work. You know what? We're at the very end of the show here, but Paul Hodowanek is a great example. Like Paul was in college. He was a gopher and he's like doing

his college stuff when he started to be the intern for Purple Insider. And when he wrote his first article, it was like, okay, there's clearly some chops here. Like Paul knows what he's doing, but every single article he puts more effort into it. He gets more, more creative. He learns to use his voice a little bit better. And now everything he writes is great. If you go to purpleinsider.com, sign up for the newsletter there and you read it, it's great. And that's like super fun to see him develop, but it took a lot of work. He's working all the time and he's seeing the rewards for that. So there you go.

Hopefully that helps you. I appreciate everybody's questions. There are more fans only questions in the file. If I were to count them up right now, I've probably got at least a dozen. So there's a couple more episodes there for sure. Keep sending them purpleinsider.com and at my Twitter, and we'll catch you all later.