Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Day 3 Vikings Draft Recap

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

The Vikings picked a tall corner, offensive tackle, kicker and two interior players. How did they do? What's our final thoughts on the draft as a whole? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here to put a bow on the Minnesota Vikings NFL draft. And it was a less eventful one than we usually run across, that's for sure. I mean, normally there are a lot more picks, especially in the Spielman era where there could be up to, I don't know, 10 to 12 day three picks. So it was much more sparse. And I actually felt guilty yesterday because I just watched basketball last night and watched the Wolves and that was great. And instead of, you know, covering the draft, which is usually day two is a long night.

And day three was mostly also kind of sitting around waiting for things to happen. And then I was on every conference call with the Vikings today. So we heard from Ryan Grigson, multiple scouts, Kwesi Adafo-Mensa. So I have brought you everything that I have learned about the Vikings day three draft picks. And we will get to opinions as I see you guys are already starting about the draft as a whole and we will jump into the J.J. McCarthy discussion what happened with the Falcons I'll get your reactions after having a couple of days to stew on it and read everybody's opinions

and everything else but I thought it would just be a good way to begin the show by running through each pick telling you kind of what I think telling you what what we learned today a little bit of numbers and stuff like that and i did see also starting to get the udf phase in that they signed a guy gabriel murphy out of ucla who we had actually talked about on the show with chris trapasso a few days ago as someone i thought could be a later or mid-round target um and already he's being compared to Ivan Pace Jr., which always happens. And I think that was a little bit of a rare situation, but somebody that I was intrigued by in the UDFA market. And of course, over the next few days,

you're just going to hear a lot of opinions on the show here, reacting to everything that the Vikings did. So I'm excited to break that all down. So let's begin with day three here. And the first pick was number 108, Kyrie Jackson, who is a six foot four cornerback who is 25 years old. And the reason that he is 25 years old coming into the NFL is that he quit football coming out of high school and just kind of for two years didn't think about football and was trying to pursue a career as maybe a gamer. I mean a legit like not gamer as in football but video gamer playing 2k and had some opportunities

there that he might have been able to become a professional gamer. Was working at a grocery store. Got the itch again to go back and play football. He goes to community college. He has a year taken away by COVID. He goes to Alabama. It doesn't work out as a very good fit there. Then ends up at Oregon and has a breakout year and was absolutely terrific for Oregon this year. Allowed a 41 quarterback rating on throws into his coverage.

And the stat that really stuck out to me about Kyrie Jackson was that when an opposing quarterback, I think we're talking about the former Pac-12 RIP, when an opposing Pac-12 quarterback threw into his coverage. They had the ball either intercepted or knocked away by Kyrie Jackson one out of every four times. Actually, better than that. It was 11 out of 38 attempts, according to PFF. So makes plays on the ball.

He graded extremely, extremely well as a tackler, as a run defender. He's an aggressive player. And it really doesn't take a whole heck of a lot of work to look at Kyrie Jackson and say, that looks like a Brian Flores guy. Somebody who's aggressive could play up at the line of scrimmage. He has more height than you would normally expect. And I asked him about that on the conference call, like, Hey, how do you kind of deal with that? And he said that he has different ways of if he's facing smaller receivers, he has to focus on certain things, bigger receivers.

He can be physical with them. And I'm a little nervous about the height because there aren't too many corners in the NFL that go at 6'4", but he ran a 4'5", which is a reasonable enough 40 time. And he can make up some of that ground with his size. I, at this point now do not concern myself with player ages right now, maybe three drafts from now when all the COVID stuff is over the COVID years, but everybody was playing against the same competition, which was all older. So we had that discussion about Pennix and Knicks, and clearly the league thought that they were top 12 quarterbacks,

despite being older, because everybody's older now. So many of these draft picks, the first comment, well, you know, he's an older player, right? Because that's our life. For this draft, so many guys had the COVID thing, pushed their eligibility back. And we complained about it last year with Makai Blackman. Well, he's 24. Is he ever going to get better? And Makai Blackman came out and played pretty well for a middle round draft pick. So

with Kyrie Jackson, I thought the right position, number one, might have a little bit of positional flexibility. He didn't do that in college. He was only an outside corner in college, but eventually might have some positional flexibility or someone who can bump into the box because of his size, his ability to stop the run. And you just know that Brian Flores is going to want corners who can come up to the line of scrimmage and make a tackle

because they are going to have lighter boxes scrimmage and make a tackle because they are going to have lighter boxes guys walking around and moving around you need defensive backs who could tackle and that's why metellus was valuable for them that's why byron murphy jr was valuable and even cam bynum became a very aggressive and good tackler as well. So we'll see how he adapts to the size issue when he's facing NFL wide receivers, that even if they're smaller, they're built like rocks and it's a lot harder to push those guys around. And his scouting reports are not flawless.

They say that he still needs work to smooth out the technique because he's played and the power five, I think it's under 700 total snaps or something like that, about 700 total snaps. I mean, that's not a lot for Kyrie Jackson, but an intriguing prospect. And one of those that you look at and you say fit it's it's, it's gotta be fit. Oh, is my, Oh, I'm sorry. It's my my jacket some of you are telling me to adjust adjust the jacket oh you're right thank you thank you the jacket well i appreciate that johnny the jacket flopped in and got uh tucked into the back we can't we can't have that how does it look we

look better now can't have that can't have that while we're talking about football. We got to look good and feel good and talk about football. So yes, Kyrie Jackson is all about fit to me with Brian Flores and his numbers are good. His combine numbers are at least good enough. They didn't blow your mind, but he had some quickness, some explosiveness numbers that were solid. The 40 time was good enough. And this is somebody that you draft in the fourth round. And this is what we have to make sure we keep in mind because I saw a lot of reaction today as there always is. And as there should be to a draft, but we have to remember that because the second and third round picks were taken away or traded away that we can't react in the same way. I mean, if you drafted Kyrie Jackson in the second round, you would go, all right, what happened there, right?

Like how did you pick this long shot kind of guy who has traveled this long journey here in the second round? Well, you don't want to do that. But in the fourth round, it's just a different story. That's somebody you like, somebody you buy into. He's got some past history with Durante Jones. They're from the same area. All right, that's fine. And cornerbacks, depth in the secondary, this is something that is still being built up for them as we have Shaq Griffin as a starting outside corner at this moment. Caleb Evans,

not really sure. Andrew Booth Jr., not really sure. Even someone like Jay Ward, is he a corner? Is he a safety? What you're doing is you're just sort of throwing numbers at it right now because you can't go into free agency and spend $20 million on a guy at this moment. You're gonna have to wait till next year to do that.

You can't spend a first round pick on a guy at this moment because you wanted Dallas Turner. Instead, you got your edge rusher. You didn't wait on the cornerback, which they could have done, but they chose to go with Dallas Turner. I'm pretty comfortable with that. Pass rush is a big deal. So when you do that, you have to take a swing at a corner. That's what they did with Kyrie Jackson. He fits a lot of the measurables and has a little bit of intrigue to him, I think, because he is a developing player still, even though he is on the older side. So there might be some upside there that hasn't been realized yet for Kyrie Jackson. And just an overall interesting guy to talk with. I thought he had very much cornerback mentality.

Those guys are extremely confident normally, and you have to be to be a corner. The next guy is Walter Rouse, who was taken in the sixth round. So if you had things to do in the middle of the day, if you were leaf blowing those leaves that didn't get chopped up in the winter because it never snowed, you could have done that in the middle of the day. There was a long run of picks where the Vikings were not involved. So they didn't try to trade back.

They didn't try to trade up. They just stayed with what they had, which I thought was also notable that they didn't toy around with the board and try to move up here, try to get those picks there. I actually had expected a little bit that the Vikings might try to move back a couple times from that 108 just to pick up anything, but they must have really had their eyes on Kyrie Jackson at that time and decided to take him at 108, which left them with 177. That's several hours later at 177 where they picked the offensive tackle Walter Rouse. Now I know that you guys are feeling pretty good about an offensive line pick and you should because offensive line is

always good. You need more of it. We were on a call with Walter Rouse for about maybe 15 minutes and I don't know if anybody remembers this. It's one of the early viral clips, maybe of the deadspin era. We're talking about years ago where Tomchanical engineering or something like that. And he also wants to be a doctor at some point after his career. This guy is one of the most intelligent people that you're ever going to run across and had a really good final season at Oklahoma where you saw it kind of come together for him, especially as a pass protector. And interesting just from that standpoint where he was at Stanford, he was kind of just okay. And he's a very natural and good athlete, was a great basketball player, has an incredible vertical jump for a guy who's a six foot six and 320 pound tackle.

So they pick him up. He's somebody that is again on the older side at 23 years old, but had very, very good past protection statistics from last season. And he comes in and gives an opportunity to be immediate depth at the tackle spot, which is important because they brought back David Questenberry, but they lost Ole Udo. And you could say, and I thought Ryan Gregson made a great point later in the day about this, where you could say, Hey, look, they got Christian Derrissaw. They got David Questenberry. Don't really need to draft the tackle, but you kind of always do because a, I mean, you never know with tackle, like which guy's going to really nail the technical part. And you know, if he becomes good, that's a huge value add for you at some point down the road. I don't know, is Brian O'Neill here forever? Hard to say might take two or three years to develop, you know, Walter Rouse. And you're looking at maybe right tackle as well, because he did do practice reps

at one of the bowls. I think it was the shrine bowl or one of the, I think he played in two of them and he took some practice reps at right tackle. He's going to have to learn that, but a swing tackle is valuable. And what Gregson said was like, Hey, we got 17 games now, and you're going to get injuries along the way on the offensive line. And Raymond correctly pointing out no sacks allowed last season. So they get a super high character guy that may be able to learn some positional flexibility. I don't necessarily see guard here, but I also never saw a guard with Blake Brandel, and he might be the starting guard. Maybe there could be something there.

Run blocking was not graded as high by PFF. Not a disaster, but you're really looking at the pass protection. If a guy goes down, you need somebody behind him. And I don't know how much longer Questenberry is going to play. Like it's not a bad decision to pick a tackle pretty much at any time. It's sort of like the other premium positions, corner, receiver. It doesn't matter how many you have. Go ahead and pick that guy.

But man, if you have time, go back and watch this guy's conference call. So impressive. He's been through a lot to be there. Lost family members, lost his dad a few years back, and has persevered to get one of the highest educations that you could get in the United States of America, a well-playing football, and then elevating his game. So, I mean, you're just not going to run into too many more impressive human beings than uh walter rouse well but as far as the immediate to him just depth on the offensive

line that's fine now the next pick now i'm going to need your reactions in the comments to this because uh it was a little bit split and i'm a little bit split. The next selection was number 203 in the sixth round, Will Reichard, the kicker from Alabama. Interestingly, Eric Eager, a friend of the show, analytics wizard, did an article about why it's a bad idea to draft a kicker that historically drafted kickers and undrafted kickers don't perform any differently. And even when you look at the UFL or the XFL or the whatever FL that they run out every spring, a lot of those kickers end up becoming good NFL kickers because they've proven at the pro level that they can do it in the XFL or in the UFL or USFL. And that's where they end up coming from is you take the best guy from there with those reps

against pros, even if they're not the best pros, there's still a better chance that they're going to succeed with that as far as your sample than usually with college. And there's been a lot of kickers that have come out that have like, this guy's different. This guy, this guy's worth the draft pick. And so many times now, Justin Tucker maybe was once upon a time, I think it was, he drafted, but I mean, if you find them, it's great. If you find your kicker and you drafted him, then it's phenomenal. If it's Daniel Carlson and the Vikings had stuck with him and been nice to him, then it's phenomenal. If it's Daniel Carlson and the Vikings had stuck with him and been nice to him, maybe he becomes their kicker. He'd still be kicking for him right now. And so drafting one, I don't think is always a disaster. And this is where I don't want to overreact because it was so

clear from the Vikings conference calls. We talked to the guy who scouted him, Steve Sabo. We talked to Matt Daniels, who is the special teams coach for the Vikings. And we got the whole breakdown of why they decided to draft this guy. And the biggest thing is that throughout his career, he's just extremely accurate. And I feel like that should be fairly projectable. And he has been successful from 50-plus after the middle part of his career. Over the last two years, he is 8 for 10 from 50-plus. And again, I have no idea why kicking in the NFL is different than kicking in college. I truly don't. There should be no explanation for it.

Is the football different? Maybe there's less pressure, but I don't know. If you kick for Alabama, there's less pressure but i don't know if you kick for alabama there's a lot of pressure so i really i truly don't have any explanation we have seen it at times though a guy gets drafted roberto aguayo he's going to be the next great whatever kicker and then it just never uh works out but if they wasted uh the pick it's a sixth round pick they probably weren't going to get the next great nfl player in the sixth round so it's hard to get worked up at it as like oh my gosh fire quasars i like don't go crazy i think you can go i don't know man i'm not sure if that's

working and it actually feels the same way that i felt about Jaron Hall last year, where fifth round quarterbacks, what's the point kicker? What's the point, but they really liked him. It's okay. And if he turns out to be a very good kicker as he was at Alabama, then that's a lot of points. And they left points on the board by sticking with Greg Joseph the last few years. If you can get an elite kicker and you have to do it through the draft, then it'll be worth it. It's kind of the same thing as anything else, where if somebody trades up for that quarterback and the quarterback's great, you never talk about what they were traded for. The same thing goes for this kicker. Okay. They drafted a kicker what a stupid move right and then

well if he's good then we'll never talk about how oh well it was a waste of an asset or whatever else because as we know those kickers can really torture you and the thing that they focused on a lot in their discussions with us on the conference calls was his clutch kicking, his kicking in big moments that he has a five-year sample of kicking at Alabama, which is just a lot of football on the biggest stage. And they talked about his personality, being able to handle coaching, kind of nerves of steel type of guy. We've seen this soft kicker before melt down when he has some troubles and uh you know you don't want that so okay it it's fine with me if we were grading should i have been grading these picks i guess for fun maybe i'll do that uh later in the week but if i was forced to grade this it can't be

more than like a c plus because it's a kicker but it's fine fine. It's not a huge deal. The next guy, Michael Juergens, I actually am quite interested in. Wake Forest left guard slash center. Now, this didn't happen until the seventh round and pick 230. A long day. A long day. Starts at, what, 11 o'clock and wrapped up talking to Kweisi Adafo-Mensa at 7 o'clock. So up talking to Kweisi Adafo-Mensah at seven o'clock. So yes, a long day.

But this next draft pick, Michael Juergens. So what was really noticeable about him is that, I'm sorry, I got to stop. Julius, you're right. If you can't have a strong opinion about a sixth round kicker, what are we doing here? You're right. I really should. I should give you, I should give you my actual take and then like a performative internet take. So we can grab it and share it on Twitter or something. I should have been like, what are you doing? He's probably the

worst kicker. He's going to miss wide left. Or is that right? That's what I should have done. But realistically, okay, let's see him compete. We definitely all agree with this. Competition is necessary in training camp. Now, here's my question, though. So in training camp 2018, I thought that Kai Forbath kicked better than Daniel Carlson. I didn't think it was that close. And yet the Vikings cut Kai Forbath because they had drafted Daniel Carlson. So they've got another guy, John Parker Romo. If he outkicks will Reichard, are they just going to stick with him? Or does it matter that the

practice squad is bigger so they could shuffle them onto the practice squad if they had to cut him? A lot of the problem with drafting kickers is that you feel beholden to them because you have a scout and you have a special teams coordinator and you have all these people in the organization who are saying, hey, we spent a draft pick on him. Why are we cutting him? I thought you identified him as the next great kicker. Whereas if it is a safety, nobody pays much attention to that, right? Because it's not a big camp competition and so forth.

So there's a little bit of pressure to keep that guy on the roster. And sometimes you pick a worse kicker because you are beholden to him because of the draft pick. That's what you don't want. If you're okay with cutting him, if he's bad, that's fine. If he turns out to be more skilled of a kicker than anybody else, because they ID'd him as that, then you're going to feel fine. But I got to say, if we have a quarterback competition and a kicking competition in the same camp, can you imagine the numbers we're doing on this show? I'm very excited about that. I'm just like, let's just hope that John Parker Romo makes it to training camp so we can get this real competition because it feels like when you draft the guy, there's not going to be a, an actual competition. So we'll

hope we have been robbed of it in previous years. Uh, anyway, back to Michael Juergens, uh, this is the guard that everybody wanted. He actually played really good football at guard and he at center, his grades by PFF word were okay. They were decent, but at guard, he was really exceptional. Nick asked, do I remember Corey Vedvik when he was going to kick and punt? Oh buddy, do I ever, I've only made, I've only made jokes about it. I don't know, publicly, privately in articles, whatever, about a hundred thousand times, because I can't believe that was ever a thing. No one is going to kick and punt. Okay. And then like, although I guess I never would have believed Otani would play outfield and pitcher, but it wasn't going to be that guy. So back to the guard, everybody's favorite pick has to be

the guard, right? And this could be depth for them it's a mature player who's been around he's had a lot of reps and positional versatility gives them a backup for Garrett Bradbury because they lost Austin Schlotman and somebody who had you know good numbers production is not necessarily a freak athlete but is also not small it's like a big guy so you know okay that's good that's what you want and what you're always hoping for if you're the Vikings is just landing somebody who could be quality depth that may develop into a starter after a year or two. And they talked a lot about how Juergen's leadership as a center was important. His commitment to the technical elements, all that sort of stuff. Very high IQ player. It's a high IQ position

with all of these things. You have to talk about them like, Hey, maybe in the best case scenario over a year or two, he could compete for the job. If he competes for the job right away, well, then that is a huge home run. If he competes for that left guard job right away, I just wouldn't expect it when he's drafted in the seventh round. Only notable that he played much better at left guard than he did at center, or at least by his PFF grades. And that means that there's some versatility there that could be valuable. Now this draft pick was out of certainly left field, Levi Drake Rodriguez of Texas A&M University Commerce, which I have never heard before. You've never heard of before, unless you somehow went there and are listening to the show, which would be really random if that was the case and uh it's so out of the blue that they selected Levi Drake Rodriguez that I went to

nfl.com to find a quote or some information about him and I could not find it I don't believe he even has and correct me if I'm wrong I don't believe he even has an nfl.com draft profile that's how random it was and uh yes, I am aware that people are already comparing him to John Randall. I congratulate you on your draft day buzz because everybody by the end of the draft is a little punch drunk at this point. And that's kind of what happens. It's sort of like when they get a linebacker UDFA and you go, Hey, that could be Ivan Pace. It's like, Oh, well, you know, I'm not going to tell you no today, but maybe not super likely that Levi Drake Rodriguez becomes one of the

best players in NFL history, like John Randall, but we'll see an intriguing guy. Let me tell you, we spent about 15 minutes with him too today. And this guy was shot out of a cannon. I mean, the energy of Levi Drake Rodriguez was just very evidence from over a zoom call on his phone. And like, they talked about him as if he's somebody that really dominated the competition at his level at Texas A&M Commerce. As Julius mentions, there's an article written by a friend of the show,

Kaylin Kaler, going to get her on at some point to talk about it, called Prospect X, where she goes through the whole process with him, but he's sort of the mystery prospect. Then she reveals it on draft day. Turns out it was a Viking and a great insightful article. The guy is a ball of fire and he wants to be waking up at, you know, whatever, three o'clock in the morning and be the first guy out there rising and grinding. And he kind of just has this natural energy that is hard to match. And he also has, from what they talked about, worked on his pass rush moves a lot. So it's not just, hey, he's running up the field like a crazy man with his hair on fire against lesser competition, but somebody to watch, totally

agree, Jared, early Mr. Mankato favorite, a hundred percent. he is the one that's going to get the big articles in the newspaper and so forth maybe at purpleinsider.com we'll see he's gonna get a little bit of that that buzz from just being an interesting guy an interesting story but what a little of him i could actually find playing i can see what they were looking at. I mean, again, very small, but he was on the radar of the people who look closely at the smaller school guys. So every year there's probably five to seven smaller school guys who could potentially be good. And, uh, you know, he was on those guys radar, Emory hunt, I writes for cbs and he was talking about him so this is not as random as some people thought uh they were um targeting him for a while their area scout

had their eye on him they uh then it sort of went up the chain they kind of explained the whole thing that the area scout looked at uh rodriguez and went like this this might be an NFL talent. And so then it kind of goes to, all right, the college director is looking at it. Kweisi Daffomenta is looking at it and they're making a decision. Is this somebody we want to bring in? And then they brought in him for a 30 visit where they get 30 guys they can bring in, which is, again, pretty rare to bring in someone from the FCS and they were totally sold on him as a person and believed in him as somebody who's a good enough athlete

and has enough drive to be there. So I don't know how you can really criticize that pick. When I talked about draft overconfidence, which, of course, everybody has, but just because your favorite draft analyst hasn't heard of the guy the team drafted doesn't mean you give it an F. And also in the seventh round, this is the exact seventh round swing that you take. If you draft a guy out of Alabama on the seventh round, that means everyone's looked this guy over

a hundred times, right? And the chances of that guy turning out are pretty darn low because he was on the big stage. Every scout looked at him, every team looked at him and they all said, I don't think so. But with someone like Rodriguez, he's the diamond in the rough that every scout dreams of finding presenting to their team saying like, I don't know how much of baseball history nuts you guys are. It's just the first example that comes to my head, a scout that found Fernando Valenzuela. There was a big, I think it might've been a book or an article about the scout, just watching him play in Mexico and thought this guy's unbelievable. They sign him, you know, play in Mexico and thought this guy's unbelievable. They sign him. He becomes a great pitcher. Like that's, that's the dream. Right. And how often does the dream come true?

Very rarely. Do we look at Rodriguez as, oh yeah, next year he's going to compete with Jerry Tillery and, you know, Harrison Phillips or something. No, but is it worth a shot if people in your organization like it versus what else? Like what's a better idea is my thought. And I got a couple of, well, my favorite draft analyst has never heard of this. Like, well, your favorite draft analyst doesn't spend his whole freaking life scouting talent and traveling all over the place and watching all these schools with hopes to find that one guy, which is what the Viking scout did in finding Rodriguez. So a cool day for the scout to have his guy drafted and also for Rodriguez to get a shot from Texas A&M University Commerce. Going to have to work on finding out what that is. It sounds like it's in Texas, and that's about the best that I've got.

But look, I mean, he's big enough. And if they thought from his pro day and so forth, his all-star bowl game, that he's fast enough and he fits the radar or fits the baselines to be on their radar, then, hey, that's good to go. As far as UDFAs, I don't often try to chase down every report on every UDFA. The Vikings will announce it at some point. They'll send an email. Then it'll have all of them in it. I usually wait for the email.

So if they've sent it out, then I haven't seen it because I'm talking to you guys. And as far as the UDFA names, well, I'm not going to get too much into that, breaking down every UDFA. There's some of you who want that. I think that's a little bit much for me. But I will say that Gabriel Murphy is the most interesting of those, a versatile guy with a ton of production at UCLA. I was very surprised to see him not get signed. He was one of the guys

that I would draft Sim in like the fifth round when I was going through looking at just kind of the data and scouting reports that Murphy might be intriguing. I don't think we should set the bar of being the next Ivan Pace, but you have this trust suddenly in Brian Flores to be able to target guys that are going to work for him. So Murphy is one that might have a chance to be a versatile type player. And yeah, Tycoon, he was projected in the fourth round by some people, at least definitely the PFF simulator. I think I was always taking him in the fourth round. So, you know, I don't know. I'm sure there's a reason why he wasn't drafted. It might be undersized. It might be that he's not

a freak athlete. Flores has a way of finding these guys. And when they pick them up, I go, oh, okay, well that's worth watching. But as always the case with UDFAs for me, I'm going to have to see it first. Like Ivan Pace last year, when they signed Ivan Pace, I went like, all right, well, okay, that's great. And his data was great. And my intern had picked him out as like somebody to watch and whatever, but it wasn't until training camp where, oh, okay, this UDFA is doing something.

So we'll kind of, we'll go so far with that, with, you know, Gabriel Murphy and everybody else. But, you know, Flores does have a tendency to, you know, Gabriel Murphy and everybody else, but you know, Flores does have a tendency to, you know, see these guys and know what's going to fit for him, especially when it comes to versatility. If you played four positions in college, Brian Flores is going to watch you. And so I'm, I'm intrigued. I'll put it under the category of intrigued. So let's go back. So that's, that's all your draft picks. And I think, uh, overall, as far as the final day, it's no different than any other day three, where you just have a couple of picks

each one of these guys, I could see doing something for the team, whether it's a swing tackle or it's a rotational defensive tackle rusher, or it's whatever. And there is maybe some upside on Rodriguez. Potentially I could see any of the offensive linemen becoming guys because middle round offensive linemen do develop sometimes over a couple of years to be good players. Okay. Those are worth shots. How premium were the positions? Well, corner is. To me, in this situation, guard is pretty important. Defensive tackle was important. But these are always multiple year type of things where even go back to last year in the later round picks. Do we know yet about Jay Ward, for example? The most criticized pick by the Vikings last year that was mid to late round was Makai

Blackman, and he was immediately good. So, you know, I don't know. Like, it's so impossible to take a swing at figuring out what they've gotten for themselves on day three. I just in terms of the approach, though, I do notice that I thought that for the most part outside of Rodriguez, it was played pretty safely. There wasn't five or six total freak guys that, hey, maybe they'll become something, or maybe they'll be the worst player ever. That was Ade Aruna. Remember him? Sixth rounder. Whoa,

this guy's an athletic freak, but he was playing basketball or something. Now he just played football. There's not those guys. They took a lot of mature players and quasi dropped some nuggets about this in his post press conference, post-draft press conference, where he was talking about players. Number 30, I think he said 34, maybe a random number 34 through 50 is what he was talking about and saying you know it's important that we're better at players 34 through 52 and if you're a little bit better than your competition with the middle part of your roster then you have an advantage there I totally agree with that I mean always with depth I look at as being extremely extremely extremely important. And one of the reasons it was so hard to win with cousins aside from natural factors that are Kirk cousins, but they could never really put together

that depth and they needed to hit on a bunch of draft picks to be at least good players. They didn't do it. So if you get a solid swing tackle out of Walter Rouse. Well, no one's going to look at that and call you a genius or something, but that's still a really good pick because that's valuable and you'll need it and your tackles will get hurt. They always do. Offensive linemen always get hurt. If Kyrie Jackson is just an interesting piece that you can throw in in certain situations or he becomes a rotational player or depth it's still good because that's what you need that's what they have not had for some time that's what you're looking for and then the kicker is the one probably to um debate the most so that's the the

rundown of all that as far as if we're trying to grade it i I don't know. I mean, somebody, one of you mentioned Chris Trapasso. He'll be on a Tuesday, Tuesday evening. We're going to record and he'll have a better idea of how to grade these players versus what he thought. So, you know, because he scouted all these players, wrote up reports, although I don't know if he had a scouting report on Levi Drake Rodriguez, but he'll be able to, you know, tell me a little better what he thinks if he had a scouting report on uh levi drake rodriguez but he'll be able to you know tell me a little better what he thinks if he thinks that they you know we're a little bit off here or reached or whatever i just look at it as okay they played it safe and they got players who were older they're more mature they'll fit in and that their ceiling is likely not that high that's what they

decided to do that's perfectly fine with me. Um, you know, so that's, that's how I'm looking at it. Could they have tried to take a bunch of edge rushers or corners who ran four, three or something like that? Wide receivers who ran four, three. Yes. And if it was my draft, I might've picked a running back. I just look at what they have in the backfield as being, I don't know. And a lot of running backs other than Aaron Jones for a year, a lot of running backs fell down the board big time. I mean, Jalen Wright ending up where he was, he averaged seven yards a carry this year, like a guy who's super fast. I might've gone with a running back at some point. There's a value there.

If they fall so far, then you're getting a good player. They decided to not go with a little more exciting players and maybe went with more safe players. That's okay. That's the third round. You take your swings and you see what happens. As far as now resetting to the entire draft, I think with the entire draft we can look at as a whole.

And with Kweisi Adafo-Mensa, the way that he put it tonight was that they left everything out there as far as making this quarterback decision. And that's something that I 100% believe that Kevin O'Connell, Kweisi Adafo-Mensa, the organization as a whole, did everything they possibly could have, including acquiring number 23, which they didn't ultimately end up needing to trade up. They did everything they could to make this quarterback decision. You're going to have opinions. I have had opinions throughout draft season. I think it's probably a good time to wipe the slate clean with those opinions now that draft season is its own thing. It's its own entity in itself, where we look at these guys and we talk

about them and we break them down and we have tape watchers and analytics people and everything else. And we try to solve the riddle that is the draft. But once the guy's on the team, none of that really matters anymore. If I think, which Kweisi Adafomensa did talk about this, by the way, that it was really hard to project J.J. McCarthy because of his lack of passes in college, that doesn't matter anymore because he's on the team now. And we're going to get new information all the time with these guys. So we're going to get new information when we get to rookie mini camp on JJ McCarthy, just a little, just a tiny little, but new information. And then it will go to OTAs and

then it will go to mini camp and we're going to watch him and we're going to compare him. How does he look versus Sam Darnold out there? Are we going to have Justin Jefferson back on the field maybe to talk about with JJ McCarthy? How does he look throwing to these receivers? Does he look like he's comfortable? Does he look like he's shaky? Like new information is going to happen all the time. And we don't have to always hold on to what we thought during draft season. If you think that someone's ceiling isn't that high, well, did anybody think Dak Prescott's ceiling was going to the Superbowl? No, I'm sorry. Not Dak Prescott. Brock Purdy, Dak Prescott's ceiling leading number one offenses. Both of those guys are good example.

And with, you know, Dak Prescott, like fourth round pick wasn't supposed to have high end tools. And again, we're talking about top offenses year after year from that guy as a quarterback and Brock Purdy and Jalen Hurts there are a lot of these quarterbacks through the years where the draft analysis going into it was uh ceiling's not that high ceiling's not that high but your ceiling if you're good enough is as high as the team around you most of the time. And then there's this other level of quarterbacks who are just mega freaks and they're the best of the best and they've always existed. But the funny thing about those quarterbacks is that only a few of them have been drafted number one overall, or even number three overall. I mean, Dan Marino

is not a top draft pick, but instead fall down the board. That's the first example I'm going to because I'm old. But even recently, where the Vikings drafted their quarterback is the same place that the team that just won the Super Bowl drafted their quarterback. So I look at it as total clean slate from anything that we thought before of JJ McCarthy. We argued about it through draft season. We broke it down through draft season, but let's now just lean on this new information and I'll get everybody's opinion on it. As, as you know, I know that some of you who listen all the time desperately want to hear from Jeremiah Searles because he was against drafting J.J. McCarthy.

And again, that's just what I would suggest is, all right, so you were against that, but we don't have a sample of him playing in the NFL. This is not like they signed Russell Wilson where you could go, look at how bad he was. Or Kirk Cousins in 2018 where you could pull up what he did in Washington and say, we've already seen this. How does this guy win in the NFL? If he couldn't win there, that's not the case with JJ McCarthy. My biggest takeaway from the first day with JJ McCarthy was two things. So I guess that's my two biggest takeaways. Number one is how freaking young this guy is. I mean, I know I keep getting older.

They stay the same age, but he is so young that you look at, you look at him in the face and you just go like, man, this guy is, he is not anywhere close to the best that he could be as far as his peak goes. So you're going to have to give him time. And the other part of it was just how dedicated this guy has been to being a great quarterback from the time that he was a little kid. I mean, he talked about from fifth grade is when he decided that he wanted to be a pro quarterback and is dedicated to that since then. I mean, that is really something quite unique. I think for somebody that young to dedicate every ounce of his being to trying to be a good NFL quarterback. And sometimes people like that overachieve versus what we think they can do. And some of you have

brought up, you know, Teddy Bridgewater and. McCarthy. And there's definitely more raw talent in J.J. McCarthy. But there's some of the same personality, the magnetic personality. And this is what I'm working with now. I'm working with the new information that we have to make a determination. And what I do know is that they put a lot of effort into this, into figuring out, could he fit within what they want to do eventually? I don't think they looked at it as we got to draft our savior right now. I don't think that he will have every chance to succeed.

He'll have every chance to try to chase a Super Bowl. And you know what? If at some point we get to a spot with JJ McCarthy three years from now, where we go, ah, you know, just didn't have quite enough and Caleb Williams beat him again. Then I at the scouting reports and say, they just don't matter now. Like he's here and whatever anybody thought of him going in does not really matter at this point. Every pass he throws in training camp, I'm not going to be like, oh, well, you know, NFL.com didn't like that pass. Like that's, that's not going to be it.

We're going to, we're going to take a broader view of J.J. McCarthy as a multi-year project to be ready to eventually lead this team to a Super Bowl or to compete for a Super Bowl. That's the way we're looking at it. And however it goes from there on, we will find out. But that is my approach to this now. And one of the reasons, by the way, that you guys have maybe waited 46 minutes for this, but I saw the other day, somebody right before draft season saying that they had Spencer Rattler ahead of Michael Penix. And they gave all these reasons, you know, so he throws a nice football, they had a bad offensive line or whatever. And then we're talking about numerous trusted draft analysts

who had Spencer Rattler ahead of Michael Penix. Penix goes eighth overall. Spencer Rattler, I don't even know when he went. I think he ended up with the Saints. Was it fifth round, sixth round? That means that the evaluation of the people who are telling you about the facts of a quarterback could be five rounds off from what the actual league thought the people who

do this all the time. I mean, if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about how spotty and random and just guesswork a lot of this is, and it's my own too. I don't, I've told you guys this. I don't trust my ability to watch college quarterbacks and go, oh yeah, well, it's going to be this or that or other thing. I mean, Joe brings up a great point in the 2018 draft. No, 70. I remember exactly where I was,

who I was talking to, a draft analyst who I had on the show when I was back at 1500 ESPN, and they were saying, I asked, hey, would it be worth it for the Vikings to pick a quarterback this year? I mean, like, hey, I know it'd be in the second round or whatever, because they don't have first round draft pick, but should they be looking at this QB class because we weren't sure about Bradford's future?

And the answer was, no, there's nobody good in this quarterback class. This class is no good. That's the class Patrick Mahomes was in. Come on. I mean, that's how poor we are at figuring out what they're doing in college to the NFL. So throughout this entire time, I felt more comfortable with Pennix because what he're doing in college to the NFL. So throughout this entire time,

I felt more comfortable with Pennix because what he was doing in college is what I've seen Kevin O'Connell ask his quarterbacks to do in the NFL. And we will never know whether they would have picked Pennix or McCarthy. McCarthy is much more of a, all right, everybody pull back, pull back expectations. Let's, let's be patient here where Penix would have been. And this is why it's so weird. Penix would have been a pedal to the metal. Let's go week one, Michael Penix. You should start buddy. You're 24 fire it up. Let's see the cannon. And the now tenor of this thing changes. And Kweisi Adafomensa talked about how he went through scenarios with the organization, with the team and tried to prepare

everybody for this is what's possible with a trade up. This is going to be our mentality. If we don't trade up, this is how we're going to have to approach it. If we stick at 11, this is what's going to happen. If we get this guy or that guy or the other. And I imagine that part of that running through scenarios to prepare everybody for what they could, you know, have to be dealing with going forward. Part of that is look, you might draft a guy that hasn't played a ton of football and we're going to have to believe in it and put all our resources into him and spend a year being very patient, wanting to see him, but knowing that we shouldn't like, that's a scenario that they had to run through.

So that's where it is difficult for us because it would be so much easier to, for us to react to if they drafted Michael Penix and we're like, all right, well, we're going to see him week one, no matter who they're playing, like, let's go. And we'd be able to evaluate every training camp practices. Oh, Penix look great today. Well, I don't know, Penix threw an interception, but instead they looked at JJ McCarthy as someone that now the pressure doesn't ramp up really until after this next season going into 2025. I think all of us plan on continuing to watch football until then.

And we don't have to try to react to, or he's not starting week one. Is he a bust or whatever? We just have to let the thing play out. But you know, when it comes to you know, Michael Penix, the outside world doesn't know what his medicals are, but you know, who does the Atlanta Falcons? Like that's the, that's the hard thing about draft season in general is when the Vikings go out to

Washington and they sit down with Michael Penix. And of course they can, you know, do whatever the medical stuff at the combine and so forth. And their people they can, you know, do whatever the medical stuff at the combine and so forth. And their people are going to know, is this guy's knee going to blow up? Is the surgery really good? And he should be fine. Like there are people who do this professionally that project injuries and health going forward. There's lots of football players who have previous injury histories, right? So they're going to look into it and then they're going to sit down with the guy and they're going to go through this and they're going to figure out, can he lead our offense? Can he be our franchise quarterback?

The Atlanta Falcons believed in Michael Penix as a franchise quarterback, which meant that all those who were worried about his medicals were too worried probably about his medicals. And if you evaluated him as being too inaccurate or too messy with his footwork or something well the people who are doing this all the time looked at him as being special with his arm strength and probably with his heart and with his mind as well and that's why he goes as a first round draft pick so that would have been a different scenario though we would have been talking about him jumping in right away. Like, Hey, he's like, it's time to win. It's time to win. Now he's in. Now we just have to take a different approach because with

McCarthy, if you're looking at it from the Vikings perspective, you're saying we see a little bit of it. Okay. So what you see from McCarthy is yes he's winning a lot yes when it comes to times he has to pass the football there are a lot of good plays and that means scrambling too that's something they've talked about a lot it's very important to them since fourth and eight it's very important to them that J.J. this. He rolls out, he throws on a line. Like he's very good at scrambling, make it plays with his feet on the move. And he's got the tools. He could throw the football hard enough. He can run fast enough, like all those things, but it's just harder to see. And this was the challenge for me. It was the challenge for them.

They acknowledge that it's just harder to see when you haven't seen it yet. With Patrick Mahomes, that's what makes the league passing on him so weird as he threw for 5,000 yards all over the place. But with someone like McCarthy, you're chopping it down to, all right, how many NFL throws did he have? How many actual NFL throws? And then you're bringing that sample down and down and down, cutting it out and going, all right, we got to put this together. So he's got to do this over and over again,

maybe in a year from now, Kevin O'Connell is going to put a lot of pressure on his quarterback. And that means that they can't rush him. That's my biggest takeaway of this entire thing. I told you guys from day one, if they draft a quarterback, I will give it nothing short of an A. I am giving this an A. But I also know that this path is going to have pitfalls. It's going to have potholes. It's not always going to be something that looks like it's getting there. And everyone wants to be the first person to call it, especially if you're calling it today, then you're going to be the person who's like, told you McCarthy wasn't good enough. I'm not being that guy. I am not planting the flag.

I could go back someday and go, you know, I was skeptical about that. Or I did wonder about that. If something doesn't turn out to be fixable or whatever it might be but there's no planning a flag right now other than to say that watching this play out is i think one of the most interesting and exciting things that's happened to vikings fans in a while and you want it tomorrow and and certainly you do i think we get rookie minicamp in like two weeks you want it tomorrow. And, and certainly you do. I think we get rookie minicamp in like two weeks. You're going to have to wait for the report. There's going to be a live show after rookie minicamp, maybe for the first time ever, there will be a live show after rookie

minicamp to break down what we saw from JJ McCarthy, which the last couple of rookie minicamps with Kevin O'Connell, they've barely thrown a football. So I don't know if he's really going to show too much, but we'll do it anyway and try to react to something. So I guess from my seat, I have to both react to everything I see and also keep perspective on when is the right time to actually start evaluating this draft pick. That's what makes it harder to evaluate J.J. McCarthy. I think if you're skeptical, there is a big difference, by the way,

between being skeptical and going, okay, maybe we didn't get the highest ceiling guy, or maybe we got QB5. That is part of my job all the time, is to wonder, is this really going to work for the Vikings versus just being so distinctly convinced that like it dots, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work out. It's going to be a bust.

He's going to be the next, you know, who like, we don't have to do that. We don't have to do that. We can let it work its way out. And, uh, as far as we haven't even, we've gone this far, haven't even talked about Dallas Turner, who I just, you know, I've read a lot on this and I will have people on the show to talk about it. I've read a lot about this, about how much they gave up and so forth. And I talked to, you know, Dane Mizutani, if you saw that conversation on the show and I keep going back and forth a little bit of, yeah, if they stayed at 23, they would have been fine.

I think they would have been fine. But when it comes to trading up to get your guy, though, I'm just good with go get the person that you really want, right? If that's who Brian Flores believes can be the difference maker that can be special, then you should just go get it. And you're not going to be that concerned later on about what you gave up. Is it right by the draft charts? Probably not. Was it eventually when you get around to, all they had to go for 23 but they had to get

23 and all that and you add it all up it's a haul and a lot of these picks have not always worked out to be totally worth it because on draft day it seems great but then you know they get on the field and they've got to play but the highest end of dallas turner is a superstar edge rusher. You can say that without being like, I don't know, maybe like, no, you hate the superstar edge rusher is his ceiling. It's worth a chance at that. That's going to get you places, right? Not okay. Well, just an okay prospect or whatever. Somebody who is a true difference maker. Still, I would have been okay with them sticking and picking and staying at number 23 and taking a cornerback, maybe just as much or more than I was for trading up. But they got somebody who is a top three defensive player in the entire draft.

It's very hard for me to go to Brian Flores and say, no, how dare you go get your guy? You should have waited. Like, no, I mean, especially if they had this different value, if there was a lot of times, but you might have tiers, you might have your first tier. This is special players, second tier, maybe difference makers, third tier, just kind of good players potentially and if that's the last guy that is in the tier of greatness potential greatness then trading up to

get into that elite tier is the right way to do it and you know again it's something that we'll look back at and we'll wonder and if it goes wrong though, I won't go back and say, Oh, well, yeah, draft chart. Like, no, no, no. If it goes wrong, then that's just a random draft for you. But where they were going with it, the idea and everything kind of comes back to the defensive coordinator. It's like, if he's buying, then I'm buying. And that's just where we're at right now because he's proven that he understands how to evaluate talent over many years of his career he was good at it in Miami they was good at it in New England like that's what that's what they're good at and yes like they they overpaid technically for sure they did there's no debating that like there's you don't need a draft chart to know that overall they overpaid, but they didn't overpay

if he reaches what he could potentially be. And that is the only realistic way to do it. And I know that if you did every single draft like that, where you just kept reaching and reaching and reaching that in the longterm would not play out well for you. I get the sense that Kweisi Adafo Mensah gets that, that like he doesn't want to just keep trading up. But the thing is that this shows you a lot of times you just can't do anything right. I mean, if you're the general manager, because when he trades back, then all of you knew Louis scene wasn't going to work out that night because you're like, Oh, they traded back. They went back too far.

They didn't get their guy. I knew that Kyle Hamilton was going to be great. Right. And then, so now they say, all right, let's go get our guy. And now it's, well, they gave up too much. It's like, I don't know. What do you want? I mean, it's, it's hard. It's hard to figure out. And usually history will just eventually tell us whether it was the right move or not. But in my opinion, Dallas Turner is a potentially special prospect. There weren't a ton of those on the defensive side and two of them got taken before him. If he was the last one that was

special, go get them. It's fine. So yeah, I I'm giving it nothing short of an a, because that's what it is. They did exactly what they needed to do to complete the start to finish competitive rebuild. And if you were wondering, Kweisi Adafo-Mensa is in on the joke when it comes to the competitive rebuild. And he said that he wished he had used maybe different words. So we couldn't use that constantly, but I actually disagree with it. I think that calling it the competitive rebuild while he may have regretted it because he probably saw it and heard it written or on social media or whatever a million times it also really galvanized what it was it made the strategy very clear and then it was about executing it i don't think one time since the

end of the 2022 season have i said what are the vikings doing which by the way from the time i got here 2016 to 2022 i did ask that question many times what are they doing i i did uh but not recently recently i have said much more. I get it. I get what they're doing. And I see it and I see how it could work. And I also see how there could be pitfalls to this. And one of those pitfalls is,

see, if you're saying that you think McCarthy doesn't have the highest ceiling, like I don't necessarily disagree with you. I don't see the same level as Drake May. Otherwise he would have gone number three and not Drake may. So the, their evaluations don't see the same level of potential quarterback. And even the way they talked about it going in, it's like, well, we love them at a, at a certain price. They love them at a certain price for a reason. They didn't love them as a trade-up price for a reason. My guess is that they were very comfortable with him or Michael Penix.

So if you're saying that today, if you're saying, hey, I don't know if it's going to get there, right? All I could say is we're going to find out and we're going to have to go from there. That you couldn't magically go like, you know, move your fingers and Robert Kraft's face and be like, number three, give it to us. And then he would just do it because even though I'm sure they tried to offer a lot, they weren't giving up that pick. They were drafting Drake May and the NFL doesn't want anyone to tell anyone who's being drafted. That's the biggest takeaway I had there.

So you can't magically make that happen. All we can do is see how it plays out with McCarthy. And even if his ceiling isn't as high as May, but you put a better team around him, you can still go where you're trying to go. So yes, I could see exactly what happened with their competitive rebuild. McCarthy completes that today. It's officially finished. The draft is over and they have a team. There might be a few other guys that get added to it, but they have a team. Now they have the 2024 Minnesota Vikings. That's pretty cool to think about an actual depth chart, a roster that we can write out. Maybe I'll do this today and take a look at and go, man. All right.

This is the team that we're looking at. Uh, Ryan, I disagree that competitive rebuild was the dumbest phrase of all time. I think that competitive rebuild actually explained to everyone and allowed people like me, a reporter to explain to everyone what they were doing as they were moving on from Delvin Cook, moving on from Adam Thielen. That's tough for a fan base to take when you win 13 games and then you don't extend your quarterback and you move on from all your veteran players.

But when you tell the fans, when you respect their intelligence to tell them, here's how we're approaching this. And yeah, it's a phrase. I mean, he said a hundred other things that explain this, but it's the phrase that stuck. Then it's exactly what they did. And they worked it out to get to this point

where they would have tons of cap space for next year. And they would have a rookie quarterback contract and they would have stars around that player and a first round receiver. Then, I mean, yeah, Nick, you're exactly right. It gave context to what they were doing. Like that's exactly right. So when you get rid of Eric Hendricks, you're not like, huh, what are they doing?

No, it's, I get it because in the future, the cap space is going to be really necessary. And they are more of in a trying to make the playoffs, but not quite there yet. So they did this in a way that was very clear to all of us. So when they moved on from Kirk, it wasn't a surprise. And when they drafted McCarthy, it wasn't a surprise. And now they have an opportunity to build around that and complete what they started. Now, it's a great question. It went by too fast for me to grab who said it. But a great question is what's the actual timeline to win now? Because this year, all right, well, yeah, I'm not sure how it's going to go because

you got Sam Darnold. You can win with Sam Darnold. You have a talented team, but it's not a complete team. In my opinion, 2025, and I agree with you, Edwin, that keeping next year's first is a huge deal. Because then if, look, if it doesn't go well and they win six or seven games, then you're going to get a top draft pick and the following season is the year. We can all see this now. You could see it from space that if it's going to work, it's going to go 2025. Joe, you're exactly right. 2025 through 2027, the window is wide open. Yes, I agree with you, Preston, that the NFC North is totally stacked and that's part of the reason why you have to do it this way. Yet you can't just go with, well, let's run back Kirk. Let's see how it goes. Let's try to get a guard in the draft. And maybe that got, you can't do that with Caleb Williams in the division or with Jordan love or with Jared golf.

You can't do that. You have to do better than that as a complete team. And then really they're going to hope that JJ McCarthy gets there. And a lot of this rests very simply on whether JJ McCarthy gets there. Jonathan, I think we have a good shot at the playoffs this year, probably wildcard. See, I even think that that's a little bit too high of a bar to set when we look at the rest of the NFC, that it is going to be a difficult task

to get to the playoffs. Possible, I wouldn't make a big bet on that. I would just say it's possible, but it's so much more about 2025. And Miles, yes, 2025 free agency is going to be really something. It's possible, but it's so much more about 2025 and miles. Yes. 2025 free agency is going to be really something. It's going to be really important.

But my initial reaction was that to the other night's draft that they had completed this competitive rebuild part. And now we need to call it something else. That's what we need to do. We need to call it something else. That's it. It's over competitive rebuild over. Now it's what the next phase. And then the next phase after that, there's an intermediate phase, which is next year. And after that, it's the window. Then we just call it competitive. Then we just call it. You're going for it. Uh, Ken seven

wins would be my guess too. Maybe eight. This team is well coached. Could be more than that. Especially, you know, on the defensive side could be a little better than that. Sam Darnold could play a little better than he ever has before. Uh, but this, this, I completely agree with from Rick tick. You want a super bowl, not a one and done in the playoffs. Like it was in the Kirk era. That's even if you made the playoffs, I mean, the Vikings didn't make the playoffs very much with Kirk cousins. Although before we, before we wrap up here, because I have writing to do off of what we had today with these conference calls, I'm like buried in all these quotes and everything from today. And I want to be able to write it and recap it and everything else.

And we've just got a lot, uh, just, just, you know, a lot, um, to talk about going forward, but, uh, just, you know, to kind of put a bow on the entire thing. It's a good place for this team, the best place that they've been in a long time. And today wraps it up today. Didn't change it because, you know, look at the draft of the, they pick a swing tackle and a corner and guys who maybe two years from now

can be depth or some part of it. That's day three for you. The whole thing though, is really franchise shifting. And we're going to see how that goes. And we're going to see how it plays out. But franchise shifting, a new energy, a new light being let in through the window that felt like it had gone dark for some time. That's where we're at now with this organization. And it is

from my perspective. And I think all of yours is a very, very refreshing thing and a very exciting thing. So that's, that's kinda, that's kinda how I feel about it right now is that now every single thing becomes very interesting to me. I mean, having to go out for OTAs and mini camp in the past was, I don't know. What are we looking for now? It's all right.

Well, let's see what the next bit of information we can get and how we can talk about it and how we can process it and what we learned from that. So I appreciate everybody, of course, coming along for the ride. And there's just going to be so much more to talk about as we go forward here. A lot to discuss, a lot to break down from this draft. And one of you asked the other drafts that I liked.

I have to look at them. I just, I've been so, you know, horse blinders with everybody. Of course, Chicago had an incredible draft, but I don't know every player that they took. We'll get to that with Chris Trapasso. That's going to be one of the things is how did these other teams do? How did the Vikings competition do going forward? So thanks everybody for all of your time. I greatly appreciate it. And if you enjoyed this, if you're new to the show, if you enjoyed this, stick around, subscribe, like, favorite, whatever you want to do, and hang around for something that's going to be really,

really entertaining to follow over the next, not just this year, next year, into the future. And I'll be here for you. So thanks everybody. And we'll see you all again very, very soon. Football. You thought I forgot. Football.