Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Change my mind, Kirk Cousins and comparing the offense to 2019 (a Fans Only podcast)

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Vikings fan questions, including one burner account suggesting we "get over" Kirk Cousins being the quarterback. Also what play call we'd dial up at the goal line with any Viking players ever, other Minnesota athletes and where would they fit in on the Vikings and comparing the Vikings to 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. This is a fans-only podcast. Matthew Collar to do it of course, all the way through the season and keep up with it because of the positive feedback. But I mean, this is the time for questions folks. So if you've got anything on your mind, send me a DM on Twitter or an at tweet,

totally fine. Either way, tell me that it's for fans only or go to purple insider.com. Send me an email there. i think there's a contact us and then just go there send the email and i will answer all of your questions uh so if it's a little offbeat or unique or whatever uh very welcome to that anything to do with the nfl is totally fine it doesn't always have to be about whether it's Chris Reed or Jesse Davis or right guard. Although I will take your hardcore football questions. Uh, so let's open a diet, Dr. Pepper, and, uh, we'll get started. All right. Okay. Let's, uh, open up the old, uh, fans only file

here. I want to start off with one that actually isn't a fans only wasn't submitted as a fans only question was submitted as a iTunes comment, which by the way, if you leave it there, I'll find it. Also, all of these things end up getting to me. So five-star reviews and comments on the iTunes. If you know, if you're into that, then please do. Those are always helpful. They help other people find the show. So if that's something you want to do, people will ask sometimes, like, how can I support the show? One is the newsletter at purpleinsider.com. You can go there. Or the other way is to just leave reviews, just listen, and that's good enough for me. So, okay, let's start with this. It's just a bunch of random letters.

K-F-J-E-I, you know, whatever. It goes on for a while. And the comment says this. Was a big fan, but the show has turned into ripping on Kirk every pod and making it seem like the Vikings are hopeless because he's on the team. He will be the quarterback for the next two years. Time to get over it and come up with some original content. So, I wanted to talk about this because it's, I mean, of course, all right, it's not interesting.

Like, the way that this comment is written is not interesting at all. But there is an interesting angle off of it. I mean, first of all, we are actually not a hundred percent sure that he will be the quarterback for the next two years. That really depends on what happens this year. Even though he has a no trade clause, that no trade clause can be waived under whatever circumstances, or they'll call it a no trade clause sometimes. And it might just be a list of teams that he doesn't want to be traded to. So let's just say that, you know, it's eight teams that Kirk is allowed to say, you can't trade me to those teams. They will still call that a no trade

clause, but that's not really a no trade clause. That's just, Hey, don't trade me to the jets for example um so it's a little bit different when it comes to that uh if they do not have a very good season and there's a decent chance that cousins is traded away and they hit the reset button and draft a quarterback so it is not a lock that he will be the quarterback for the next two years. Now, the other parts of this, first of all, if you were a quote, big fan of the show, and then suddenly became a not big fan of the show because of the way that I talk about Kirk cousins, then you were not a big fan of the show. Like that's just, you're just lying because I've talked the same way about Kirk Cousins, whether it was AM radio in town, the old purple podcast or here, uh, since the pretty much the day that they signed Kirk Cousins, when they signed

him, we had the conversation. Was this the really the right move? Is it the right move to pay Kirk Cousins as much as they're going to pay him. Will they be able to keep the team together? Mike Zimmer at the combine in 2018 said, if they sign Kirk Cousins, it's going to be very hard to keep the roster and the number one defense together. And in 2018, I agreed with him. So this is not new. Uh, I have covered how many games now of Kirk cousins where they have gone in as, Hey, if they win this game, then they can make the playoffs or this is the biggest game they could compete for the division in 2019. And they know show against the green Bay Packers. All they need to do is beat Cooper rush. And they know show all they need to do is beat Cleveland at home. And they

know show offensively. Uh, we've been through this ride a lot and I've always stayed in the same place on the quarterback. And that place is that a quarterback of his talent will frustrate you and will let you down and cost too much. I, that, that has not changed at all since I've been covering this team. Um, however, I think that it actually is a major challenge to talk about a team in a way that you want to get people excited about, right? So what are the storylines? What should we be interested in? What are we looking for? What can we all talk about? We do a fans only podcast here. So I can understand what you guys want to talk about and I can talk about those things, right?

What are our discussions as me doing the show with guests and with fan questions? And that's the best part of the job, is when we can have great discussions. The Kirk Cousins discussion is truly not a great one. I mean, anybody who has a Twitter account that likes the Vikings knows how not great it is, knows how frustrating it is to keep going back to the same things over and over. The people, the handful of people left who absolutely can't get enough

Kirk cousins in their life, tweeting out all of his stats and quarterback rating and so forth. And most everybody else being in the same spot on this quarterback. And so when you talk about it being hopeless, you know, one of the, the difficulties for me is I don't think that this is the approach to get to a Superbowl. I have never thought that, and it has not come even remotely close to happening. Right. But I also don't want to tell you in the national football league where Matt Stafford just won a Superbowl after years of toiling away, where I was in Philadelphia thinking after a case Keenum drive to score a touchdown that I might be covering the first at the time Superbowl at home, like anything can happen in

this league. And there's a lot of unknowns when it comes to every single team, every single year, the NFC is weak. The Viking schedule is weak. Like there's a lot of things that could go, right. There's a lot of things that could go wrong, like on and on and on and on, which is why we all watch. And there's a lot of things throughout a season and an off season that happened that changed the future, which is why you all listen. Right. And all of that is super intriguing to me. But based on the history of this quarterback and the rosters that they've been able to put around him,

would you like me to tell you something that I don't think? I mean, would you like me to do a show where just because it's not as sunny that uh, that you want me to just lie to you? Do you want me to tell you that? I don't think that now look, I'm wrong sometimes. And I could be wrong about this. I have not been wrong about this so far. And history says that I shouldn't really change this opinion, that it's going to be very difficult to get very far with this situation at quarterback. That to me is reality. Prove me wrong, basically, is the way that I would put it. Now, that doesn't mean we can't

ever have fun discussions about the quarterback. Where does he rank? Who would you take over him? What they're going to do next at the position? How can you get the most out of him? How can Kevin O'Connell coach him? How can they design the passing game? How can, you know, the offensive line, if they improve, how much better can he be? How will he perform against certain other quarterbacks and certain other teams? I mean, there's a lot there to talk about, but the bigger picture, it's going to have to be one of those like change my mind things. And they have had, I mean, like I said, since day one, I've been in the same spot and I've held that sign up in front of me that said, change my mind.

And they haven't, I don't know why I would change my mind now on the bigger picture of this. So yeah, I mean, I'm going to always do my best to talk about this and everything else with the team in an interesting way, but I would say probably two years ago, this became not interesting anymore. It's really not interesting. It's not an interesting quarterback situation. If we're ranking all the quarterback situations in the NFL, where does this one rank? I mean, you'd rank the jets much higher because we don't know what Zach Wilson is like. Once you know what a player largely is, it just becomes not that interesting. So I guess what I do struggle with sometimes

is I want it to be fun and I don't want it to sound hopeless. And I think that that is the only valid part of this comment is that sometimes I'm certain that it does sound that way. And it does, but also for fans that I talk to on a daily basis, it feels that way. I mean, there's a lot of different ways you can talk yourself into it. And we have a game on here specifically designed for that. Talk me into to make arguments that we don't necessarily believe in. So I even tried to cover my bases there. I even tried to give you Will Raggetts, who is a more optimistic, he's less jaded. He's a younger man. Give him a show. And he's brought on some people in the football

stratosphere who are Vikings fans and have talked optimistically about the team. So, you know, I try to cover all bases and not dwell on that idea of being hopeless. But I also think that a lot of Vikings fans feel like they're in that same spot going into this year. And so there's a lot of things that we're going to discuss, but when it comes to the overall feeling on what they've done at quarterback and having cousins be the third highest paid player in the, uh, in the league by his salary cap, I mean, that's not something that I'm going to change my mind about. So until proven otherwise, which is totally fine. I didn't think Matt Stafford would win last year. Show me is what I would say. And, uh, you know,

we'll always set the bar at, can they win the Superbowl? Not, can they get back to the playoffs with nine wins or whatever? Can they win the Superbowl? Not can they get back to the playoffs with nine wins or whatever? Can they win the Superbowl? And so they're going to have to prove that. And if they do, then it will be a really fun ride. And I guarantee you, if they do, there'll be a lot of people just like random letter person who will say, hi, you didn't believe in this, that, or the other person. And I would say this, if they win, it makes for a lot of great discussions and it makes for a lot of fun, but I have to have reasons to talk about those things. If they're going into an NFC championship, that's reason for me to say this, this worked. This was a great idea. They nailed it by bringing him back and giving him

an extension. And O'Connell was the guy all along. And let's talk about how they match up and what they need to do to win and all those other things. And that will be a lot of fun. But have these last two years been a lot of fun for anybody? They really haven't. I mean, really, the last four years haven't offered a lot of fun. So they're going to have to, I think for a lot of people, not just me, they're going to have to prove that this was the right way to go about it. Um, so I don't know

that that exactly is hopeless other than I would probably categorize it as reasonably skeptical, but also intrigued by what is to come here, which I think if you're, if you're reacting to what we talked about with Judd Zulgad, I mean, we went through a bunch of different scenarios, why there's reason to be skeptical, all the areas that they can do things differently and better. And that's always how I approach it anyway. I mean, lean into the Kirk didn't come out of nowhere. Lean into the Kirk came from me saying, why don't you try this with Kirk cousins, as opposed to running with Delvin cook on every first and second down like you would in 1993. So maybe they'll do that and we'll get a test case. And then I get to be right either way. I always win. Okay. That's enough. But you know what?

It's a common thing though. I mean, it's a common thing that, uh, we have discussions about, you know, like, how do we talk about this? And I remember saying, if they extend cousins and don't draft a quarterback, I'm going to have to work through some things to figure out how this can be better. Like what the scenarios are, because it's always been my goal to talk about how it can work or how it can't work. And what are the odds of those things? That's always been my approach. So I hope that that answers the question, even though it wasn't a question. It was just and also, man, put your name on it, like put a real name on it, as opposed to a bunch of letters. Go to SodaStick.com. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K. Our loyal sponsor. Check out all of their great Minnesota themed gear for your playoff run in hockey or for baseball season.

If you're headed out in the nice weather to a baseball game. That is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K. SodaStick.com. Hats, T-shirts, hoodies if you need them for a cool evening in the summer. SodaStick.com has you covered. Okay, this from Jeff via the email. Let's see. If you had to make a Vikings team using only players from other Minnesota professional sports teams all time, who would you pick?

Don't need 22 starters, dark horse quarterback, alternate universe, Joe Mauer going to Florida state to play football. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, Joe Mauer is the pretty obvious kid. You know, he's got the best case for quarterback. He would be the pick there. But let's see. I mean, wide receiver, Byron Buxton is one of the fastest people that I have ever seen. I mean, not only that, but he's also pretty tall. A lot of times with baseball players, when they're that fast, they're like, you know, five foot 10 or something. You're old, the old Otis Nixon or Kenny Lofton, Like they're not the biggest guys, but you know, Byron Buxton is kind of a tank. So I feel like he would be a great wide receiver.

I think the same would go for Anthony Edwards. I mean, here's the crazy thing about basketball players. Anthony Edwards is as big as Kyle Rudolph in terms of his height. Like think about Kyle Rudolph. I don't know what Anthony Edwards weight wise is, but in terms of height, he is, I think he probably weighs as much as Irv Smith and he's as tall as Kyle Rudolph. And the guy is a guard. Like that's how big NBA players are. Yeah. I will take Anthony Edwards as the like rich man's Kyle pits. Uh, as I mean, I think he would be based on his height.

He would probably be the best tight end, like the best move tight end in the NFL. Um, as far as like other quarterbacks go now, that's, that's, I think a little bit difficult other than Joe Maurer. I mean,

a lot of baseball players I'm sure can throw the ball. Like what pitcher had the best arm? Are we going to go? Oh, how about like Johan Santana? He would be like a drew breeze or like Steve young. Johan Santana could be Steve young because even though he was not throwing the hardest,

just as Steve young and drew breeze did not, he was the most accurate hardest just as Steve Young and Drew Brees did not he was the most accurate and really clever and savvy so I think Johan Santana would make a pretty good quarterback certainly nobody else can play on the offensive line but maybe maybe like Patrick Beverly would make for a very good cornerback he has a lot of cornerback vibes to me. Um, aside from that, I mean, there's a lot of NBA players who are so flexible and so bendy that they would make amazing edge rushers, but maybe some of them are a tad too tall. Those are the first guys that come to mind for me, um, for making up some somewhat of a team. Uh, maybe see uh gosh there's got to be some power forwards

like michael ola candy maybe could be like a bust left tackle or something just was very large uh and i mean he wouldn't have to move as much he doesn't have to run all the way up and down the floor that that was that was a cheap shot that was too much but that's a fun question see those are those are what i'm talking about for June questions. It's like, if you got a, if you got a question like that, that's pretty ridiculous, but also fun. I'm totally for it. Thanks for that one. Uh, this one comes from, let's see, hold on. All right, here we go. Uh, at Donovan JPD1. Hi, Matthew. Big fan of your podcast.

Thank you, sir. My oldest son and I are on a quest to see the Vikings play in every NFL city. We only have eight left. This year we go to D.C. and Buffalo. We'll be spending several days in Buffalo. Any advice on must-see, do, or eat? Okay. Well, look, I mean, I don't think that I have to give you too much as far as what to eat.

All right. But I will say this, that on every pamphlet about Buffalo being the home of the wing, it'll tell you anchor bar. But as so many things are with, you know, different cities and whatever about perception and reality, anchor bar is more of like a, uh, uh, what would you, what would you call it? Like it's just sort of a touristy kind of thing, but it does not have the best wings. I don't think, I don't think even close. Now this is where you want to do some research because wherever you stay in whatever hotel, try to look up the dive bar that's near you or the,

the little place that becomes yours. So I lived in a, in a small little, I don't know what you call it. It's not a suburb. It was like just, it was on the outer loop of the city called Kenmore. And there was a place called Mike subs that I used to go to. This is right around the corner from my house. And that was like my place. So whatever it is, wherever you're staying, that is the closest either dive bar, just like small little hole in the wall. I bet they have amazing wings. And if you're a little farther out, maybe you go to Duff's. I think Duff's are fine. Some people kind of hate on it a little bit because it's more of a suburb chain as opposed to really in the city. But it depends. Now, if you're out at Orchard Park, gosh, there's I forget the name of the place. There's like a famous hotel that is out there and near there that has a restaurant in it. And that's where like back in the day, Bill's players would go for their wings. So obviously you might want to check that out, but I mean, what to see, look, you're going to have people tell you Niagara Falls is corny and, uh, yeah, kinda, but now if you, if you have the enhanced license and you can go over the border to the Toronto side or the Canada side

of Niagara Falls, I should say not Toronto side, or the Canada side of Niagara Falls, I should say, not Toronto side, but the Canada side of Niagara Falls, go to the Canada side. But even if you can't do the maid of the mist where you go into a boat and you go right up to the falls, it looks like a gag. Like it looks like a planetarium or something. When you're down there, you cannot believe that you are at the bottom of the actual Niagara Falls. And it just looks incredible. So if you got some time, I say do it. I mean, it's absolutely the number one most touristy thing to do.

But go for it. Because aside from that, I mean, it's Buffalo. You know, these are the things that they're about is Niagara Falls and chicken wings. That's it's not just perception. It's reality. So give those things a try. OK, this comes from at 10K beers for fans only. You spoke in last week's episode about how you and your wife mainly talk sports.

I know you used to cover baseball for a while and you mentioned covering hockey too. Um, but if forced to cover a sport, what would you be least excited to cover? Okay. I like this one. Uh, curling or snooker. Uh, yeah, I covered hockey actually for a long time. Um, hockey was the sport that helped me kind of separate myself a little bit because I had initially done an internship with a radio station where the host didn't like hockey. And so I started going to AHL games and coming back and talking about them and things like that. And then when I got hired in Buffalo, I started covering the AHL team, going in the locker room, interviewing the coaches, everything else. And so I got to know the two AHL coaches that I covered super well, and they were incredible for teaching me the game.

And then I got to write for ESPN as a contributor, just like a once a week article for ESPN hockey for a long time too. And that was a really good experience as well. So I would do things like, you know, trade deadline suggestions and kind of fun articles like that. So that was how I really, um, kind of made my background as a journalist with baseball. I was a play-by-play person, which is a lot different. Um, that was kind of hanging around the stadium a lot, talking to scouts. That was really, really helpful because the scouts, they go from little town to

little town to little town. I mean, if you're a slightly sane person, they want to have a conversation. They're pretty bored. They've been in their hotel all day long, you know? And so, uh, I got to talk to a lot of scouts and really, uh, over a couple of summers learned about the scouting process in baseball. I'm sure it's changed since, but there's a lot of principles of all those things that are similar. So those were great experiences that helped prepare me to cover football, uh, which is a little different than both of those things. But as far as what I wouldn't cover, um, is snooker considered a sport or a game? I'm not really sure.

Curling is a wild one. We've got some great curlers here in Minnesota, right? Can I say, okay, there's a couple of different ways to answer this. One is, you know, anything for me, anything that is going to make me money in order. Like you have, like if you, if you tried to cover curling for your life, it would be pretty hard to make that a career. So that's part of it. Uh, is there a lot of interest in something like curling and I'm not dumping on curling. I'm just saying like, is there a lot of, is there a lot of people who would sign up for curling.substack.com newsletter and you know, Matt's

curling blog or podcast or whatever, like probably not. So that isn't a no, because I don't like the sport. There's always interesting people. And I've talked about chess a few times on here. And, you know, just to give you an example, there's a chess player from Minnesota named Wesley So, who came originally, I think, from the Philippines. And he was literally abandoned by his family. And so his adopted parents are from, I think, Minnetonka. And he has become one of the top 10 players in America at chess. And it might even be in the world. He is one of the top players in the world and he

beats the other day in a tournament game. He beat Magnus Carlson, who is the greatest player on earth and arguably the greatest player of all time. That's a Minnesotan that's chess. How many, how many of you out there are super compelled by chess masters? Not but i've gotten into it because of youtube and now i love talking about it and if you don't know wesley so you should check him out because it's like a really cool story or look at his wiki or something but there's always interesting stories and interesting people in every sport there's nothing like i don't know soccer but i guarantee you if it was like 15 minutes into a soccer game, I'd have about eight opinions and want to ask a bunch of questions. Like football is amazing.

And I grew up loving football and wanting to talk football and all those things as everyone does, because it's football folks. But what is really at the heart of this is storylines and discussions and things like that. And so I think that that's even why I wanted to bring up the Kirk cousins thing at the beginning. It's like my favorite part of this is asking good questions and having good conversations and questioning what the team does. And, and, you know, just like, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fun in, in all of that. And then as a writer, I love to learn things and then share it with an audience about sports. So I think that the answer to your question is wherever there's interesting people playing something, I would be interested in covering it because I am more of a

journalist than anything else. But at the same time, like you have to be in a place covering something that's going to have interest because I wouldn't want to be writing the greatest snooker columns of all time and have no one read them. And, and, and really it's, I mean, this really tells you that like, as much as we love analytics and everything else, that it's always, it's always about people when it comes to all, all of these things, right? The coach's relationship with the quarterback. I wrote an article interviewing a bunch of local coaches who were former quarterbacks. So from like Concordia and maybe UMD, like a couple of different places. And it was so interesting to get their background and how they were impacted

by being quarterbacks. Like that's the stuff that really interests me. And I think I could apply that to just about anything. I mean, anybody who knows me at all knows how much I enjoy the WNBA. And so like, if you were to ask me, Hey, what's going on with the Indiana fever? Like I would tell you all about the, their recent history and how they've built their team and what their future is and the people who are making the decisions, which they fire their coach like nine games into the season. So it really kind of shows you that there's a lot of elements of football in just about everything and the team building and the storylines and things like that are my favorite part of covering anything. Um, that said, uh, I don't even know what snooker is to tell you the

truth. All right, let me get a drink here. Okay. All right. This one comes from at oh hold on sorry i keep going too far in the google doc at derrick morin on twitter you should do a show comparing the 2019 starters and backups on offense to the expected starters and backups this year, I would watch slash listen. So on offense, I mean, Jefferson instead of Diggs is your biggest difference. Riley Reif was pretty good in 2019. I would say whoever was playing on the offensive line was probably Mike Remmers at right guard. I don't know that Mike Remmers will be a ton different than Chris Reed or Jesse Davis, but there's probably a slight improvement there. Uh, if not a, maybe a decent size, we remember Remmers for being really bad, but you know, he was a guy who played in the league

for a bunch of different teams, just like Chris Reed or Jesse Davis has been around for a while and his team decided to let him go. So, I mean, there's not like a massive, massive gap there. You know, number three wide receivers, a little bit better. KJ Osborne, uh, Delvin cook 2019 is absolutely unbelievable. I don't know if that version is still there with Delvin cook. I mean, last year he dropped significantly and where he was rated by PFF, but, uh, 2019, they were really, really effective at running screen passes. And then, you know, of course you have the same quarterback and that was their best offense, you know, but a part of that was the schedule. That season was their easiest schedule in a very, very long time. And it's

not that this season couldn't be very easy, but I'll see if I can find this for you real quick. That season in particular, and it was really well coached by Kevin Stefanski. So I think that what you're trying to tell me is that you think this can be a top 10 offense because the players are similar, but the players aren't much different from last year or from 2018. Like there's, this has been the same offense. It's really been circumstances and how severe the ups and downs of Kirk cousins are. That's really been the things that have determined. And then of course, yeah, when, when the defense fell off and the offense was somewhat similar, you know, it wasn't the same.

So let me see. I had this stat not too long ago with the strength of schedule. So in terms of like modern era, recently strength of schedules, 2017 was actually one of their weaker overall schedules, 2009 and 2015 were all in the same ballpark as 2019, according to pro football reference. So, you know, I guess that's no surprise, right? That like having an easier schedule is going to help you get farther.

I mean, that's not a shock. And if you remember that year in 2019, there were a lot of games where we just kind of went, okay, well, I don't know if we really learn a lot about that team. And then the times that they really needed big wins at Seattle, at Kansas City, the Matt Moore game, against Green Bay at home, against, you know,

let's see, San Francisco, of course, is where they ended their season. But that was really, like, I'm looking back at home, against, you know, let's see, San Francisco, of course, is where they ended their season. But that was really like I'm looking back at and that was really the only key games. So, I mean, the strength of schedule, the health of the team, they lost Adam Thielen a little bit in 2019, but it wasn't super detrimental. They also had Kyle Rudolph, by the way, who caught a ton of touchdowns in 2019 what was that i'm gonna look that up um let's see i think kyle rudolph was a pretty big yeah uh no i guess he had six in 2019 and what a weird year it was for stefan diggs he only caught 63 passes but had over a thousand yards yeah that was a strange season because it started off so disastrously and then they beat a bunch of bad

teams and then, you know, they had some really tough games down the stretch. Yeah. I mean, look, the offense, you could say, oh, well, it's just like 2019. Or you could say it's just like last year. I mean, you have to assume that Kevin O'Connell is going to be as good as Kevin Stefanski, which we don't know. And that's really the biggest question of the year. If they're somewhere between 10th and 15th on offense, that probably isn't getting you all that far. If they are somewhere between 5th and 8th, then that probably is getting you somewhere. I mean, the margins are kind of thin for error, but when you look at how many points it's actually worth, you know, to be a top 10, top seven offense versus being 14th, you know, it's kind of a lot over a season.

And that's the margin between if Kevin O'Connell has a great strategy or if they struggle to pick up the offense. So I think that that's one of the biggest questions that like from day one, we really, really are going to watch closely is just how much of an impact Kevin O'Connell can have over their last few offensive coordinators since 2019. But I think it is worth keeping in mind the, the schedule element of that in 2019. And we don't know.

You can have people tell you, oh, well, they have the whatever-eth ranked schedule. You don't know until you really get into the season how difficult the schedule is going to be. But it's a good question. Okay. So this comes from AntiGravgravity 19 on twitter fans only question now that the league is devoid of fitzmagic and the entire mccown factor uh family really all that yes you're right i guess you're right that the mccown fact uh family i should say factory of mccown's that were just coming out as journeyman backups all the time who is your your journeyman QB of choice? Seems like

the end of an era, but Teddy has racked up quite a few stops. That is a great question. I think absolutely Teddy Bridgewater is becoming the definitive journeyman quarterback, especially if he plays for Miami, let's say Tua gets hurt and he plays like six games and wins three. That would be the most journeyman quarterback stuff that I've ever seen in my life. So I think Teddy is a really good nomination. But there's two different things between, there's a journeyman backup or fringy starter,

and then there's the journeyman starter. So those are different. And then there's the journeyman backup. So Chase Daniel is the journeyman backup who plays for a bunch of different teams, but never actually gets on the field very often. If you're talking about the journeyman guy, who's like a fringe starter backup, that's Teddy. If you're talking about someone that's a journeyman starter, that would be like a starting quarterback that just ends up playing for a lot of teams. Like Chris Chandler would be the a starting quarterback that just ends up playing for a lot of teams. Like Chris

Chandler would be the journeyman starter. So he's always starting in the league, but he's playing for a bunch of different teams that is suddenly becoming Carson Wentz. I think Carson Wentz is the journeyman starter. Like, does anyone think that he ends his career with Washington? Probably not. Uh, Andy Dalton is the same thing that he's, well, I guess he's sort of faded into being the backup. Hasn't he? So Andy Dalton, maybe if he continues his career, his kind of ending as a Fitz magic, like, let me see. Let me think. Uh, Mitch Trubisky seems like he could be very Fitzpatrick Ian where he plays for, you know, seven, eight different teams. And he starts sometimes and he's a backup.

Sometimes, uh, Jacoby Brissett is definitely the straight backup. So is case Keenum. What a career for case Keenum, just bouncing around all over the place at this point. So what I would say is that the journeyman backup and journeyman French starter, the things that Ryan Fitzpatrick has been, it's alive and well, man, it is alive and well that there's, Hey, did you know, did you know that Joe Flacco is still in the league? That is absolutely insane. I was just looking at all the different backup quarterbacks. Joe Flacco is still in the league. So yeah, uh, that's not going anywhere. There

will always be great backups and journeyman quarterbacks. But shout out to Ryan Fitzpatrick. I mean, what an awesome guy. He truly is. Like anyone who's ever been around him that I've known has said he's the real deal. All right, this is a long question via the DM from at Bob underscore Vikings. He apologizes for the length of the question. So bear with us,

bear with me and Bob Vikings. I've heard statistics consistently referenced as to why we have a ceiling on offense. Example 11 last year's total offense or 16th in some sense that they were 14th in scoring. Okay. So we'll just clear that up. Are we underselling the impact of Kubiak and his skills as a play caller, as well as missing Smith? Well, I'm going to probably go

one at a time, kind of a sentence by sentence here. Um, so missing Smith, Tyler Conklin was good last year. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying that you can't do a little more with Irv Smith. You can Irv Smith is a little more of a yards after catch guy definitely can go down the field better, but Tyler Conklin played really well. And if it's going to be a major impact over what Conklin was, then he, then Irv Smith has to be excellent. So, would say that that one I would not put a massive amount of stock into because Conklin played way above expectation. But could it be a little better if Irv Smith is healthy the whole season and plays up to expectation like he looked at in training camp?

Yeah, no, for sure that that could be helpful. Underselling Kubiak and his skills as a play caller. The difficulty there is that we don't know if Kevin O'Connell is a great play caller that we're going to have to find out. Kevin O'Connell has a lot on his plate and he's going to be the head coach. Like just because he comes from McVay, he didn't call plays with McVay. So we really can't look back and say, Oh wow. He, you know, dialed up this or that or whatever like that you know he was the offensive coordinator but he wasn't calling plays i don't know what to do with that was kubiak good at it uh not really but the other part of it was

if you remember he was good at it in terms of the opening game plan there were a lot of games where they scored opening touchdowns and the scripted plays were really good. So will the scripted plays continue to be that good? Um, is there area for improvement there though? Yeah, no, I, I think there is. Um, but the question is though, like how, how far can you really go with the same people and a lot of different offensive coordinators that have not gotten more than this like if the quarterback's highest offense that he's ever led is eighth because he plays in a very conservative type of manner um you know where drives sort of end prematurely because of a lack of aggressiveness and so forth. And that's always happened, even with Sean McVay in Washington.

I mean, how much farther do you think you can go? Like if you improve by a decent amount, let me get this number for you. Because if you improve by a decent amount, you go from 14th to like 10th. You have to improve an unbelievable amount to be in the top five. So that's why I talk about the ceiling and how really, really important it is for them to have an excellent defense. If they're going to be great. Okay. So last year, the Vikings scored 425 points in order to get to 10th place, they need to score 25 more points. So an entire game's worth of points to get from 14 to 10. If they score an entire game's worth of points and improve, we're going to say,

look how well Kevin O'Connell did. Uh, they have to go from four 25 to more than four 60 to get into the top seven. And if they need to go from 425 and score over a hundred more points, if they want to have the number one offense in the NFL. So could they go for 25 more points because their play caller is better and they have Irv Smith? Um, yeah, that's possible. But if you're talking me into getting into the top five where you need 50 more points over a season, that's a little bit harder for me. So I, you know, I'm always trying to put in the most realistic sort of predictions or expectations and saying that, you know, a tight end and a different play caller are going to be worth

50 more points over a season. That's a little, that's a little excessive to me. So then, you know, some of these other, you know, criticisms, how the offenses would look like the best in the league when it was scripted and then non-existent, um, in some of the other moments where they would flatline like, yeah, I mean, but that's also been the quarterback's history as well. So I think that just it, when it's always the quarterback's history to have ups and downs, I don't, it's really about like flattening out those, those downs, but I don't think you can fundamentally change though that part. So, yeah, I mean, the rest of the question is kind of making the case for why Kubiak was bad

and O'Connell could be better. It really goes under the number one thing that I'm most interested in for this whole season is how much better Kevin O'Connell can be than, um, Clint Kubiak. So yes, there's, there's area to improve, but if you want to talk about this team being a playoff team, going into the playoffs with a chance to do something they have to have a fringe top 10 or better defense to be that ed donatel's defense really has to step up in ways that zimmers did not over the last two years just like in 2019 we were talking about like their offense is okay it's pretty good uh, I mean, they had a top five defense, uh, which helped them a lot in terms of making the playoffs. Uh, okay. One more, one more.

Let's see this from, uh, Josh Smith, a friend of the show says, say that the Vikings are in the same general scenario as the 2012 49ers in the Super Bowl. Okay. Fourth down at the opponent's five-yard line, trailing by five with under two minutes to go. Okay. You have all the offensive personnel from Vikings history. What are you calling? What play would you design for this hypothetical?

Who are you going to? For what it's worth, I do think that some sort of trips formation with moss carter and justin jefferson and throw a boundary pass to carter for a touchdown wow that is a question i mean there's so many skill players fourth down five yards to go at the goal line i think i call i think i call two plays. This has been a thing, right? About how they're calling two plays, which is very common, uh, by the way. So you call two plays in the huddle. One of those plays is to spread it out. I might go with a little slant, not a Russell Wilson slant, but something that kind of cuts over the middle of the field. And the other play is a Dante Culpepper delay run. I mean, how many touchdowns did Dante Culpepper have in the red zone where everybody was covering the

wide receivers and he runs in? Uh, I think that Dante especially could get met at the goal line and plow his way in because of his power. Uh, I think that call pepper is the quarterback. You clearly pick in this scenario because of that, uh, because he could shake off, you know, somebody trying to sack him because he was so large. Uh, he was very, very accurate, um, for most of his career Moss in the back of the end zone is an obvious pick, but I'll give you another one would be a delay run to Robert Smith. Like you're at the five yard line, you're in the shotgun. And if you get a certain look, if I don't know, they're in man coverage or something, you just run a delay run to Robert Smith into the end zone and nobody touches him. And Robert Smith, of course, quick enough to,

you know, dodge a tackler to the other day, we were talking about the most exciting players and Matt wrote in via the email and nominated Robert Smith. I mean, just Robert Smith's first two steps were so mind-blowingly fast. Like it's no wonder that the 1998 Vikings scored as much as they did. Just unbelievable talent at every part of that offense. Imagine the more great players on offense, the more points you score. What a time. So that's kind of the way I would approach it. Love the question. Love hypotheticals.

Love different scenarios. You guys really brought them with this episode. And as always, I appreciate it. Again, purpleinsider.com. Just send the contact us. Or if you want to go to Twitter, send me a DM. And I'm happy to answer these questions. I think we can continue to have a lot of fun throughout the summer. And then folks,

we're not that far away. Enjoy, enjoy your fishing on the lake, enjoy your golf, but just keep in mind it's right around the corner training camp, not that far away. So we'll continue to have some more fun discussions. Uh, next week, uh, we'll be talking a lot about, you know, predictions. Mike Clay from ESPN is supposed to come on the show, uh, you know, and things like that. So we will have a good time. Thank you all for listening.