Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Defector's Drew Magary re-lives Vikings draft night

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Matthew Coller talks with Defector's Drew Magary about his thoughts during the Vikings draft and how he's feeling about the possibility the Vikings can become a quick contender behind JJ McCarthy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me from Defector, Drew McGarry demanded to return to the show to give his takes about JJ McCarthy. I said, no, I've got way too many guests. I'm really busy. He said, no, we're going to do this. So he forced his forced his way back no seriously i i needed to get you back drew because we did a podcast right before the draft where you talked about ranking your quarterbacks all the things that you wanted all of your hopes and dreams and uh well uh not all of them came true so i need to know your reaction how you're feeling and then we could talk about the future of the minnesota vikings but

take me through it how do you feel right so i i that podcast i was like dead certain that we were getting may right i was like we're trading the farm we're going up that's who kevin o'connell wants he made it plain you know with the the church thing i think that's still true i think may was his favorite by far so and then they they but they didn't trade up and so i'm sitting there on draft night and you know the clock's ticking down on uh on the commanders and i'm like well that's probably not gonna happen and then and then i was like well maybe they'll be stupid and take mccarthy at two and then like shifter later on reported he was like he's like well they only consider only consider Daniels or McCarthy at two and not Drake May.

And I don't, I don't know if I believe that, but who cares? Anyway, so then the clock's ticking on New England. And as the clock's going down, like I'm checking, cause you know, the telecast is always behind Twitter, right? It's like, if you like Albert Brewer was breaking those picks like Albert Brewer is useless like in general, but like for this he like he would have the picks before they go. So I could see that or I could see Schefter saying

oh no the Patriots are sticking and picking by the time there was like six or five minutes left on the clock. So I was like, oh, all right. All right. So then four and five happen and and those teams stick and that's when so at the beginning i was like uh all right well it's just good we're just gonna we're gonna have to trade up

like a load to get mccarthy and i guess i'll be like some of the things where i like i would be i would force myself to be okay with it and be like okay and then it was like oh wow like we're gonna get them for nothing, actually. And and, you know, and I actually I do value fourth and fifth round picks because they turn into so much. They turn into serviceable guys, you know, like like, you know, Stefan Diggs was a fifth round pick. Right. So but they trade up with the Jets and they get McCarthy, but they they still have 23. So I'm like, oh, OK. So they get that and a defender, and I don't have to like – I don't have to delude myself into thinking that we will have a passable defense with the free agent tweaks that we made,

but we still don't really have a stud cornerback, and we have a couple of good edge rushers in free agency, but they're small sample size, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we go up and we get Turner and I'm like, ah, bitching. So I'm happy. I was more vocal. I was more pumped up when they announced the Turner selection and my, my son was with me. My, my son likes to watch me watch the Vikings cause he likes to laugh at all the

things I do. And, uh, and they always make fun of me cause like whenever something really good happens, I yell, and that's what I did when they drafted Turner and my son just broke down in hysterics.

And so I was like, all right, that's cool. And then every data Humper was like, I'm like, whatever, go to hell nerds linger. And so I, you know, I ended that night. It was like, it was, it was a thing where.

It's very rare when I go into a Vikings draft, expecting one thing and getting a different thing, but the gang, the different thing I get is actually quite good and perhaps better, right? And it was proof to me, particularly after you spoke to Kwesi yesterday. I know you bumped me for Kwesi and I forgive you, but when I was listening to Kwesi and his thought process and how they went about this draft, it was clear to me that they had a vision, that Kwesi was not going to pay a lot for this muffler right he wasn't going to like the final supposed offer we had to drake may was one

that i absolutely could have lived with because they would have gotten a couple day two picks right that would have been pretty cool i was ready for them to give that give four first rounders it's like i was not ready for them to give Jefferson or anything like that. But so when they, you know, when you had quasi on and he was explaining, you know, sort of his process and all that stuff, I, I realized,

okay, this is someone who is smarter than I am. And that is like, that's a very comforting thought. Cause that's not always true when you're an NFL fan and your GM is Dave Gettleman. And he's like, Oh,

this guy was the senior bowl and he smelled terrific. If we had to draft him, like that sucks. Like, you know, that guy's a moron and you don't want that guy to be your GM. Well, with crazy,

you know, in the first draft he had, you know, he had, he had a draft, you know, he trades down for, to take Louis scene.

And like, everyone's just let down. And it played out exactly like that draft night like it was like it was just as crappy like in practice as it as it turned as it was the night that it happened and so it's like okay does this guy actually know what he's doing or is he a politician is he a fraud and when he said to you yesterday when he said to you we don't want to be the reason these guys fail. I'm not certain I've ever heard a football person say that. Like Sean Payton's never going to say that ever.

Sean Payton is like, you do what I say. And if you don't, you're going in a barrel and we're going to throw you off of the falls. Like that's Sean Payton, right? But like for Quasar to say, look, we have to set everything up you know so that we we give these people the best chance to succeed not guarantee they're going to succeed but you know with that thought in place the resources that mccarthy has in place

and with the coaching that's in place i think that i'm i'm completely rambling here. So I think O'Connell is like, yes, I would accept J.J. McCarthy, and I can work with J.J. McCarthy. He's all right. But May would have been my preference, but I can deal – I can work with this McCarthy kid. And I think that everything kind of turned out for the best. I'm very, very optimistic. And McCarthy, before the draft, I was like was like well i don't want that guy he's you know he's he's a white

guy he looks like me he's a dip he's not he's not gonna be any good but now he's on the team let's go i'm ready to go let's let's fire it up okay there's a lot to uh unpack there but uh there is there's a lot of things that uh we can touch on from there one thing i've heard kevin o'connell say is that teams fail quarterbacks more than quarterbacks fail teams now i don't know how deeply i agree with that i think sometimes you just draft a guy that can't play and the guys who are really good overcome but i also think there's a guy on the roster who was completely failed by his franchise in sam darnold with the new york jets and he could have at least been a better version uh than he was with the jets and we saw that a little bit in carolina

we'll probably see it this year if he has to play that he could have been a good or serviceable quarterback and with the jets looked very very bad bad. Gino Smith might make an argument that he was failed by that franchise as well, et cetera. I mean, he was right. Yeah. Oh,

no question. But that's such a classic. It's such a classic fan argument. The, the nature versus nurture thing. Like, okay, well,

you know, you know, what Tom Brady, you know, had been great. If he had been drafted by X team and not, you know, Bill Belichick, you know, had, you know,

and so you can have those conversations, um, you know, until, until you die and people do, but, um, you know, to hear it from O'Connell, I think is, is actually very interesting because he would have seen, he would have seen the teams fail those players in real time you know and that i think is carries a bit more weight with me um than me just saying it you know because all i do is watch the games you know right i mean he was in a locker room with maybe mark sanchez he was in washington when they drafted duane haskins and pushed him uh to start maybe earlier than they necessarily should have. Dan Snyder's behest because his kid went to high school with Haskins. Yeah, there's a lot of true stories I'd love to know from the Dan Snyder era. But I think that Kevin O'Connell's personal experience with this

as a third round draft pick who had talent coming out of college, didn't really make it in the NFL. And I think that the things that he saw and the things that he experienced impacted him a lot. And I feel like what he's trying to do is give somebody else the experience that he always wanted from a coach to have someone really sit down with him and say, this is how you play quarterback. I will guide you believe in me, trust in me, uh, rather than maybe the way that a lot of teams used to do it. And I think we've seen a lot of coaches start to form that bond with their quarterback and with O'Connell, we don't have to guess if he can do this. We've already seen him do this with a quarterback who was rather

skittish under his previous coach and by the end kirk cousins i thought was playing some of his better football i don't think it was the best football he had ever played but i think it was the most confident he had ever played it yeah but yeah but like like the chicago game last year like he played awful in that game he was crap so it's like you know he was always streaky so there was always when he had the hot streak it was like oh okay he's figured it out well no the guy's 30 whatever 36 whatever years old like it's not he's like i kept having this fantasy that was good like suddenly become have his mark ripping year where he's just okay he's finally got it and it snaps for one year and you win a Superbowl and then he, you know,

then he falls off a cliff or whatever, but that just wasn't what was going to happen. So. The 1991 Mark Rippon year really special. Yeah. It's a great reference. It's very relevant to. Yeah. My, my apologies to the, the younger listeners. My, my point was just that we saw a more confident Kirk Cousins, a Kirk Cousins that was leading a locker room and marching out on the field each week as if he was the guy for the franchise. And the relationship with he and O'Connell was building it together. And that's what you want with J.J. McCarthy.

Of course, it's going to take a lot of time for him. And so I think this is a unique situation to drop McCarthy into. I was thinking about the best and worst situations for all the quarterbacks. I think most people might pick Pennix as the worst situation. I think it's actually Denver because Sean Payton is not like Kevin O'Connell. I think that Sean Payton and that Denver team might be very hard for Bo Nix to drop into, but as far as your socks, it's a team, it's a bad team. It is. And not only that, but also, you know, Sean Payton, the guy who made his entire bones based off of one of the greatest

quarterbacks in history. I'm not certain that that was all Sean Payton. Maybe he thinks it was, I don't know uh if uh Patriots coaches could think that they were responsible for Brady then you know who knows about the ego but I guess the whole the whole point is just that Kevin O'Connell has this belief that you can push the odds in your favor by handling a young quarterback in a certain way and to me that's the best opportunity any quarterback is ever going to get. So even if we have questions about JJ McCarthy and about, Hey, can he actually be the guy? Because he's never had to really do that before since high school at Michigan. He never

had to do that at a high level where the offense is on his shoulders. I think that they're going to give him the best chance to do that. And that's why I want to throw out a lot of the stuff that we thought previously. And I think you can do that. I think you're allowed to do that to analyze the draft to go, well, here's kind of what I think before draft night, then it all plays out and you go, I don't care what I thought before draft night, because now we're going to find out how this, how this goes from a car.

It's ephemeral. It's not, you know, you're, you're, you're buying time until you're burning the clock until the draft then the draft happens and then it's like oh okay these are our guys now i can be in the process of getting all hyped up for the guys that are here because i'm not gonna be like i'll be like well he's gonna suck like i got a season to watch i gotta i gotta get hyped up for this shit. Well, then what are you telling yourself about McCarthy then? What have you come in the last week? Because you did get bumped for Kwesi, so you had a little extra time to review,

analyze some film, and so forth. So what have you been talking yourself into then with McCarthy? Well, I think, I mean, there's a few things. One is like, okay, well, he didn't have to be the man at Michigan. But like when you are the quarterback of a nationally ranked program, you automatically assume pressure, right? You are the face of the team, the leader of the team. People look to you.

And so, you know, the fact that he wasn't throwing for 400 yards a game or whatever, I'm able to forgive that. You know, I liked seeing it from May. Like May had to carry that North Carolina team the two years that he was there. And he did it, you know, as a freshman and a sophomore. That's pretty ludicrous, right? That's why I liked it. And then also, you know, like May, McCarthy's young.

And if Kevin O'Connell believes that he can, um, he, you know, cause Kevin O'Connell was talking about how he could fix footwork, but there's clearly, there's some belief within him that he can make, uh, McCarthy's throws more varied.

He can give him more of a bag. I'm too old to use that term, but like he can, he can help him develop his, his toolkit. Like, and he's, he's young enough and he's raw enough and he's willing enough like the you know i think you know i always you know i looked at mccarthy's face and you know i saw zach wilson for obvious reasons they're both sort of you know all american you know fresh-faced white boys and all that stuff but the knock on zach wil Wilson was that he didn't actually do anything. He was lazy.

But that does not seem to be a problem with J.J. McCarthy, who's also already engaged. So it's like he's got that tucked away. He's got that locked down, so he doesn't have to worry about finding a house house of a spouse or a home or any of that stuff he he can just focus on the football and he's good to go so i'd like i like i like that part the other thing is that um i know the vikings have talked about it i know you've talked about with me where they they don't want to rush them um you know they want to have clear benchmarks for when he is ready

to go i suspect and i texted you this when i was i wasn't drunk but i wasn't sober i so i it was i think that they they have benchmarks in mind for mccarthy but i think that they suspect that they are benchmarks that he will be able to clear very easily and very quickly given his natural talent and his work ethic. So it would not shock me if he was the starter right away in week one. And if that actually comes to pass, if he actually does win the job over Darnold, you know, sort of ahead of schedule, I won't consider that a desperate act. I will consider that to be very encouraging because it meant that when he got to training camp and when he got out on the field with his peers, his new peers, everyone was like, oh, he can play. And that's like a big deal because the opposite happened

with Mond, right? You told me this, like he gets to camp and he just, he sucks right away. Like it's evident. And Mike Zimmer, you know, Mike Zimmer was a bastard about it, but he was correct, right? He was like, if you watch the practice, you'll see this guy sucks.

He can't play. And if that, if the opposite turns out to be true of JJ and he is elevated to the starting position and he's left out of like preseason like if O'Connell's like you know what I don't want to screw this up if he tears an ACL in a

preseason game I don't want that happening if he sees actual if he's starting to get excited and we haven't played the schedule yet that's good and I think there is a non-zero chance of that happening. I'm not going to do what I did last podcast and say, that's what's going to happen. Like I'm,

you know, the cockiest fan in the world. I just, I think there is a, a good chance of that. I think so too, because there are parts of his game that have to be fixed as far as like he is a pitching machine set on super fast all the time when it comes to throwing the ball but i don't

think that's as big as a concern if you're throwing him in right away you can let him figure that out on the field and throw some interceptions and figure out the types of throws he's going to have to make in the nfl You kind of have to? Yeah, I think everybody's okay with that, right? I mean, I think if he's playing week one, two, three, and he throws four interceptions in those first couple of games, none of us are going to say bust. We're going to say, all right, well, you can't make that throw.

You can't make that play in the NFL, and you're figuring that out on the fly. What it would say about him is that all the things that everybody talked about like this guy's a master of football he's all ball he's gonna study like crazy you know all those things that he would be able to understand the offense to where people are supposed to be lined up and that is a huge deal you're supposed to be over there i'm supposed to be over there here's how we adjust the protection at the line of scrimmage to work with the center, get the mic point out there, understand route details, understand when you drop back,

where are the areas of the field that your eyes need to be. And then look, if he shuffles his feet too much in the pocket, trying to create some room for himself, you can go back on tape and try to work through that. If he tries to throw it through the middle linebacker and hits them right in the chest for an interception, you can go, hey, next time we're going to have to work on arcing the ball. That's after practice stuff.

That's the year between rookie year and year two where he's getting with his quarterback coach and he's working on that and they're giving him all these talking points, or I shouldn't say that, but working out points that he's going to have to improve on. But it's all about the mental part, I think, and the are you ready emotionally to deal with this as like leading an entire team? Do you show when you get out there that you could be the guy right away or do you need more time? So I think that it is possible.

I'm always, hey, let's err on the side of sitting the guy when there isn't some huge pressure to throw him right in and that's why you got sam darnold but as far as them making that decision i feel like kevin o'connell is the best suited to decide is he really ready to go out there and lead that entire team that was the other thing that I felt was very encouraging about the draft and about this entire off season where, and I think, I think you felt this too, where we weren't sure if they were going to make decisions based on what was best for the longterm or based on whether or not they could keep their jobs in the interim. Right. Um, you know, know so if and we know i i believe it's confirmed they have four-year contracts quasi and kevin correct is they are they are definitely four-year it was reported no one's ever said for sure uh they didn't leave their contract sitting out at

tco performance center for me to check i'll point to you this way they did not act like men who um believe that they will be fired if they go seven and ten again next year right and that's good like that's really important because obviously the spielman era was just you know was just polishing the same turd over and over again just so you would look you know fairly decent every year and and you would still have fan favorites back and and all that all that crap but you know to have them willing you know to have fan favorites back and all that crap. But to have them willing, to have Kwesi and Kevin both willing to really overhaul the roster the way that they should have. I could tell in your interview with Kwesi last week

that I think finally having the yoke of Kirk off of him has freed him to be himself. He doesn't sound robotic. He sounds very natural. And I think a big part of it is that he has the confidence, not just that this is his team now, but that ownership has his back and is encouraging him to make these moves. And that, I think, is why I feel very good.

McCarthy could still suck. Dallas Turner could tear his ACL in camp. All the bad things can happen, right? That just does. But I was very, very pleased by that. And then I liked the bomb of the draft too. But I always talk myself into the bottom of the draft too but i always talk myself into the bottom of the draft every year of course well i think with quesida fomenta uh for a long

time here he's he's been walking a bit of a tightrope because if if we can infer some things about someone with his analytics background when he he got here, he probably assumed that the team wouldn't win 13 games. And then as he watched them win 13 games, he was probably thinking, I know what our point differential is. I know how hard this is to repeat. I know this probably isn't going to get us where we want to go. And so I'm seeing like potential setbacks. Then he was allowed to take apart major parts of the roster. And last year when Kirk Cousins gets hurt, he may have been thinking the same thing that we were thinking is like, well, you're going to draft a quarterback pretty high. And as you win games with Josh Dobbs and you get farther away from that, it had to be, I think, a lot of anxiety there. Like, are we going to get our quarterback?

Is Kirk going to end up coming back at this expensive contract and, and all those things. And now that the decision has been made and they have the quarterback and they got another player who he clearly really loved and compared to the Rudy Gobert trade of getting a Dallas Turner, or I made the connection. I think he didn't directly say that, but it wasn't hard to put two and two together. But I think that this is now him. You know, they've been saying, like, let let Casey cook sort of thing. It's like, well, he was working with some ingredients there that maybe belong to the previous cook. And now he's got all of his.

And this may pass or fail. We'll see as it goes. But this is his creation now, this entire roster. And I was trying to think how many players are even on the roster that were here when they got here in 2022. I mean, Jefferson, of course, Harrison Smith, but there's really not that many. And so this is his plan and this is his approach. And I think that he's more comfortable with that and probably more

comfortable with 100 million dollars of cap space to use for next season too well that was the other thing is because you know obviously you know before we took jj the falcons took penix and you know was it was a thing where i didn't laugh i was just like i was stunned and i was like that's really stupid but then i was also just so grateful it wasn't me like it's not my problem like way to go falcons you really you're really in your own coffee but that's that's your problem now not not mine where's my you know my team you know it i think there's a trajectory i i was very annoyed at some of the post-draft analyses from the Dredd Anonymous scouts or data humbers like Barmo

where they're like, well, I don't really see the foundation here. And it's like, have you ever watched this team play? Are you familiar with this roster at all? Because I see an extremely clear foundation. And I think the biggest problem that I have right now going into at all because I see an extremely clear foundation. And like, I think the biggest problem that I have right now going into, you know, this season is like the free agent market at defensive tackle is crap guard.

They can probably find another guard third wide out. They can find a third wide out. Like they're not, it's not like they're not all pros sitting there, you know, waiting around for a phone call. But, like, they're fine. They're usable, and I like Brandon Powell anyway.

So I like where the team is, and if they go 7-10 this year, it will not be nearly as annoying a 7-10 to endure as last year's 7-10 because that was an annoying team, and that was an annoying season. I think somebody brought this up to me about U.S. Bank Stadium the last few years and about how it just didn't have the same pop at times. I mean, in 2022, there was a lot of close games, but it felt like the enthusiasm was kind of gone at a lot of times. And you know you're going to cheer because you're there,

but not that same power that that building can have right you're running in place you know you you've seen it before and these fans know it like you they could sense it i mean i just i don't think that the vikings fan base is just show up at the stadium and fight people in the stands and scream for everything yeah they don't shout out philadelphia though you have to respect them but you know i i just think that there is this fan base is when you're watching something that you know is kind of mid then it's like well okay if it's going well i'll cheer and if it's not it isn't i think a seven and ten season could be a louder us bank stadium and more energy in that place for what can be in the future. And this new approach,

new quarterback, new, fresh feeling to the entire franchise than it has been before because of all the things you laid out, including the foundation that they have built. And I went through the list in the Friday mailbag of all the players that are going to be here for at least the next two years. It's hard to protect any farther than that. And there's a lot. So when you talk about this Dallas Turner move and the foundation that they have built now to add pieces, a lot of the work has been done during the competitive rebuild, whether it's just finding an Ivan pace kind of at random in the UDFA,

or if it's, you know, signing Jonathan Grenard to a big contract or Andrew Van Ginkle, like these are multi-year players. And some of them are very young, like Jordan Addison, that they can build off of and build around that. Even this starting lineup is capable of competing for a playoff spot. You add to that and you have potentially, if they can utilize, you know,

McCarthy's rookie contract, and he's good, potentially a consistent contender. Like it's not that hard to see how you could be okay with getting Dallas Turner and giving up some future draft capital because you have so many of those pieces in place. Well, yeah. So there's two things there. One is that the UDFA thing with Pace and with Gabriel Murphy, I don't think that that's actually – I don't think that is entirely luck. I think this is when being in the top two of the NFL PA survey two years in a row since its inception, it starts to pay off

because this is where rookies want to go. And if they're undrafted, then they have even more, they have the freedom to be like, okay. Because McCarthy said, yes, I want to go here and all the other rookie QBs do. But those are guys who were going to be drafted. Whereas Gabriel Murphy can kind of choose or Ivan Pace could have chosen. So it pays off on that end with undrafted free agents, with regular free agents, of course.

And then also, I think that there is the possibility that Kwesi, you know, we lose on the trade charts by getting Dallas Turner. But not only do we have, obviously, cap space going forward, but it is possible that because the salary cap will grow ever larger, and it will because this league just makes money just hand over fist, and it's just going to grow and grow and grow, that there is a potential future where draft picks aren't quite as valuable as they are right now because the surplus and savings that you get from having a guy on a rookie deal doesn't matter quite as much because you're going to, like most teams will have a lot of free

capital at the end of any given season. If the salary cap goes up 30 million, literally every year or something like that. So I think there's a possibility of that there it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that a rookie quarterback contract is not going to be invaluable pretty much you know through every cba going forward but i do think that there's there's some of that there and we also we suck at day two picks anyway so uh recently there have not been the Everson Griffin, Daniil Hunter, or even the Stefan digs in the later rounds, but somebody brought up a good point in the mailbag about how, if you looked at the consensus board that Arif Hassan puts together and where

these players were ranked, that they got even some of the Ufas that they actually acquired players that were either equal or a little better than what they had as draft capital but some of them just ended up being undrafted free agents and a major part of it is just investment so they are willing to give ivan pace i think it was a lot of money like three hundred thousand dollars which is unusual i think it was something like that right yeah he certainly did oh yeah it's the best 300k they ever could have spent but yeah that that is that is a sign of intent it's not just random udfas that pop onto the roster it's we're going to plop down the cash to get this player that maybe usually we think would have been drafted or had higher on whatever

board that sort of thing and the wills were willing to spend it too. That's like, that's good. Right. And the diff, but the difference between somebody who's taken in the sixth round and a UDFA is very, very small. So if you're looking at it as, all right, we don't have as much draft capital at the backend, but we're going to spend a ton to get the top priority free agents. Our odds between Mr. Sixth rounder, who's the 200 whatever draft pick and Mr. Sixth rounder. Who's the 200, whatever draft pick

and Mr. Priority free agent that we paid $300,000 for is very little as far as odds that that player will turn out. So that might be a little way of kind of counterbalancing just what they gave up. Plus I've, I've looked at it as Dallas Turner's a pretty rare athlete. It's a rare player. It's not somebody that you just sort of show up to the draft and like, oh, where are we picking 23rd? Let's just get an elite pass rusher. I mean, he was a top 10 player on consensus board. NFL.com's comp for him was Brian Burns, who I believe is presently the second highest

paid player in the league at that position. So difference makers to me are much more important than what we're doing at the back end of the draft is how i would approach it that's how i would look at it and i think in this case uh quesia daflamenza did too even if yeah draft charts didn't like it yeah and the other thing is that you know it's just it's one year right like it's the next draft like like we we didn't have any day two picks this draft, but we had two ones, right? Which is like, okay, that's fine.

That evens out more than enough, right? And then next year we still have the one. And, you know, I'm going off of what we were hypothetically, what in my mind we were going to hypothetically give up just to get McCarthy. And I thought that that would almost certainly include next year's one. Well, it didn't barely included anything.

So we have that. And then we don't have any day two ticks, but then you get the full compliment of them in 2026. So it's like, it's really not this insanely fallow period that you have to endure. It's not what the Browns are going through right now with like maybe the worst trade in NFL history, like potentially the worst trade,

like Russell Wilson is, is there. That's, that was an awful trade too. But like, but like, you know, Cleveland like has the bones to have a playoff team,

but right now they don't have the ability to finish the job because, because they traded for a sex criminal. So it's like, ah, you know, and, and we're not in that sort of morass. And that is very,

very good. I'm so I'm, I'm looking at this. There's a lot of negative reinforcing here. It's like, well, at least we're not the Falcons. At least we're not the Browns. Also, if we go 7-10 next year, and by the way, I think

we could do better than that. I think we could go a winner eight or nine games. But if McCarthy has a couple of dud games or a couple of rookie moments, but he has a couple of signature wins, if he beats the Packers 38-7 at home and if he has a huge upset against, I don't remember who's on the schedule, but, you know, a Super Bowl favorite and they beat them, you know, like that is enough for me to go on.

Like I can chew on that through an entire off season to come. Oh, I think so too. And sometimes we just don't give fans enough credit for seeing the future when it comes to this. That's right. Fans rock. Yeah. Yeah. Go fans. Go fans. They should subscribe. But I think that what everyone can see now is that it will take time and that they have this operation that now looks more like the Eagles looks more like the 49ers than it

looks like, say Cleveland, as you're mentioning, with an Albatross quarterback contract that you're never going to get out of. Yeah. Right. I mean, that, that is how some teams look. The new Orleans saints, like are the new Orleans saints, a relevant NFL franchise? I don't, I have no idea what the Saints are doing. Just a squad. Just Derek Carr and a bunch of guys. I did want to talk about the Atlanta situation.

Sure. I think that Atlanta might maybe have an idea here of how long this Kirk thing could last, and that may have influenced it. But you were talking about if you know the penix and mccarthy and that decision never had to get made from the vikings and i don't know if it was a battle of hey this guy would have liked one better than the other i think it was you're on two different plans if you have those guys like michael penix is you play day one and it's like let's go win like

you're in charge you're the man we don't have to teach you a whole lot but we also probably can't fix a whole lot because you're 24 years old so fire away buddy whereas mccarthy is like oh everybody might take a minute be patient the kid can't grow facial hair. Let's see how it goes, says two people who can't grow facial hair. I can't. It's true. Nowhere close. It looks horrendous. But it's assumptions, though, isn't it?

Because, like, you know, C.J. Stratt was the youngest successful quarterback in NFL history. He's 22 years old. Like, so you can't – you don't necessarily know, because Penix has flaws in his game, right? That's why he was regarded as a borderline first round pick and not a surefire top 10 pick, even though that's what he ended up being. So there are, you know, there are, there are definitely going to be things that he has to work on because, you know, and you've said it over and over again, you know, it's like, it's like going from high school to medical school. It's like, it's the degree of difficulty is just so much more pronounced.

And you can't predict. That's why the draft is as unreliable as it is. You cannot predict how much a supposedly matured game in college is going to work at the NFL level. Cause you know, you always hear that pro ready thing and it's always bullshit, right? It's like,

he's the most pro ready quarterback. It's Chris Wanky. Like, well, nope, he sucked. So, and I'm not,

again, I'm not saying any of this to, to disagree with you. I'm just saying that, you know, particularly because I'm someone who said, well, they're definitely going to draft with you. I'm just saying that, you know, particularly because I'm someone who said, well, they're definitely going to draft Drake May.

And I'm someone who, after, after the first half against new Orleans was like, was like tweeting, like crazy. Got this guy, Josh Dobbs for nothing. And like,

he's, I think he's the guy like, you know, like I'm that kind of fan. So my, my takes are not terribly reliable here. I wouldn't say you were the only one, at least somewhat fooled by Josh Dobbs. I guess I probably tossed the name Jake DeLome out there at some point, but it did look so good against the New

Orleans Saints. He really was terrific. Yeah. The Falcons game, like he was a marionette, but he was like fantastic. You know, it it was great yeah and uh then it quickly turned back into uh josh jobs quarterback who was two and nine when uh he got here but uh the atlanta thing is is going to be it's going to be interesting to follow because a part of me wants to say ah you, you know, like you said, it's Atlanta's problem. But then there's another part that is so intrigued by Michael Penix, and I liked him so much through this process, I thought that he might be the guy for them, maybe, and be the right fit, and he ends up going there,

and now he's got to deal with this very strange situation with Kirk Cousins. Does it matter to you at all what happens there, what happens with Cousins? No, not particularly. I will say that my first job, I got an ad job out of college and they gave me, it was called an assistant executive. And I was there to replace someone they were going to get rid of, but they had not gotten rid of her yet. And I was not supposed to tell her that I was there to take her job, even though it was like plainly evident. Like she's like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, well, I'm working on the account and just here to help. And, and I couldn't say anything. It was like really weird

and shitty. And so that's probably what Michael Penix feels right now. But other than that, you know, I think, you know, I will always think of that situation in terms of bullets dodged. Right. Because especially if it turns out that the Falcons gave Kirk all that money only to realize that he is not fully healthy like like to me that would be just a catastrophic just like a remarkable just an insane up that like can't be undone like the 23 of offseason moves like it would be just brutal and so i would be i would be curious about it as a league you know as a fan of the league and as someone who follows everything, but I won't ever like have, I won't ever like feel bad for anybody there, you know?

Yeah. One, something I thought of throughout the off season with cousins in Atlanta is that there is no real revenge narrative for anybody uh for him leaving or even when he comes back i i do want to see him play against mike zimmer in dallas that is uh you know there's some conflict but it's him will do well in dallas too like he'll be head coach of that team by week 11 that's not not impossible. That's for the bold predictions article in July. Is that that bold?

Is it really that bold to say he's going to get the shit done? Yeah, I mean, they're a good team. But if they hit any stumbles, I think Jerry Jones probably wanted Zim there just in case he needs to turn it over to an old ball coach. But there is really no juice to a, uh, Kirk cousins, revenge narrative.

I couldn't help myself when it happened because it was just so shocking. And then the statement that his agent puts out, it all feels just like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode or something. You know, they make the pick and it's did it, did it, did it, did it,

did it. And then Kirk is going like this with his face. Well, something you know they make the pick and it's did it did it did it yeah and then kirk is going like this with his face well and you know and falcons leadership handled it so poorly after the fact yeah you know it was like it was like well who's running things here you know and it was right after they were like well we can't hire bill belichick because we're a family here meanwhile the family apparently they're, they're all sleeping in different levels of the house. Well, but doesn't that make you think that they know something that they can't say? No, because that's giving them too much credit because of the Atlanta Falcons. Okay. Fair enough.

Fair enough. I was thinking about the health issue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but yeah. And then they draft, they draft a qb who has health issues of his own so i just i i think it's occam's razor here i think the the simplest explanation is that they're stupid and that's the track record of the atlanta falcons correct so that's where i

that's where i i land on it and again i the high of getting rid of Kirk has not worn off in the slightest and in fact the draft only sort of enhanced that euphoria within me it's like oh my god we like we didn't get the new quarterback I thought we might get but we got a new quarterback and he

can actually outrun like a security guard at a mall like that is cool. I'm very pleased about that. And he can definitely throw the ball in the vicinity of Justin Jefferson, which is pretty much all I require. And he can do that with Addison, too. And you saw the pit tape with Kenny Pickett, right?

So you know how Addison has a history of bailing out quarterbacks. So this is good.'m very i'm very pleased the the ball tracking is is absolutely elite last oh you want wait you want both you want bold prediction oh yeah go ahead go ahead make a bold prediction uh tj harkin harkinson will start week one that's my oh i don't think so i don't know i think it's like you know what i think it is i think it's like, you know what I think it is? I think it's like, you know how, you know how airlines make it so that like you, you'll be on a flight and they'll be like, Oh,

it turns out we're going to get the gate 20 minutes early. Well, that's built into the model, right? They build in that. Your flight is going to be four hours when it's really going to be three hours and 15 minutes. So they have a buffer so that they can fuck up.

Right. I think it's the same thing with Hockinson where they're like, well, look, we had to delay one surgery. And so, you know, he might not be ready for camp.

Don't get your hopes up. And that's all, you know, it's all, it's all under promise and over deliver. And that's what I think is going to happen. And if I'm wrong, you can roast me for it.

Okay. It's bold. I feel like I've covered enough ACLs to kind of have a sense for the timeline. And I think it's going to be a little bit longer than week one. Maybe you'll be right. Maybe, maybe he'll recover. He's from Iowa. Sounds like you're informed, which is like, well, you know, the injury timelines are never easy, but no, no, no, no, I don't know. But how about this? So, you know, the injury timelines are never easy, but how about this?

So, you know, you do contact me occasionally about the Minnesota Vikings, and sometimes you have ideas and say, what about this? What about that? So what's left? What's left in that idea brain that you want me to write about? You want me to talk about? Like, what do you want to hear about now going forward? I mean, I'm very interested to hear about Murphy,

and I'm very interested to hear about Levi Drake Rodriguez. And I'm biased on Rodriguez because it turned out my old defector colleague, Kaylin Kaler, who's at The Athletic now, she did a running feature for us that she brought over to The Athletic called Prospect X, where she would profile an athlete in the draft, someone low level that she wouldn't name, but she would say, this is the best kept secret of the draft. Now, the guys that she has profiled so far, one of them got hurt last year, so he couldn't play. Then the other one I think is, I can't even remember. But anyway, the point is that she did a profile of Rodriguez

where he was the polar opposite of J.J. McCarthy. And that's sort of the beauty of the draft, the great human interest of the draft, where you have a guy like McCarthy who is a blue blood through and through, looks like every other guy I've ever seen on the island of Nantucket, like went to, you know, went to an IMG school, went to Michigan, was the absolute homecoming King there, won a national championship. And then you have this other guy who like,

who goes to colleges you've never heard of and like and has to fight the idea that nfl the nfl people would notice him and consider him perhaps as an undrafted free agent was like that was a big deal and he like busted his ass and ate as much candy as he could to gain weight so that he would be at nfl weight to be that sort of guy you know it's it's very very easy for me because i'm a fan because i'm irrational to be like well you know we had another undrafted guy from a tiny texas school i'd never heard of and he only became john randall but uh so you know i get excited about this so i i'd be i'm very curious to hear what you see when you get to camp because you're good at snap judgments at camp i would like to know if um

which of the pass rushers they have that's so that's van ginkle granard and turner now which one of them will be moved around to center because i I feel like I'll be interested to see if Flores, with this trio of pass rushers, treats one of them as his sort of front seven Metellus. Because I feel like that's going to be a big thing. And then I want to know about Kyrie Jackson. Because what you said was, or was it Trespasso? It was Trespasso who kept comparing him to Xavier and Howard.

And he said Xavier and Howard enough times where I was like, okay, we got the next Xavier and Howard. That's sweet. And so I'm curious to know about that. And I'm curious to know how the team feels about their cornerback room right now. Because Blackman was serviceable last year but was he good can he get better i'd like to know that um you know metellus was was very very good but you know are they going to start grooming him to replace harrison smith in

a fixed position i'd like to know about that um so I have, and then are they happy with the linebacker situation right now? Because they basically, they have two, same as they had last year, right? So is that okay? Like where you see the problems with this team, and it's been true for a while now, is a depth, right? And you were talking about how someone said, I think it was Greg Rosenthal told you,

you need to have 40 good players on a roster to be a Super Bowl champion. I don't think that we are there yet, particularly on defense, right? So I would like to see, I'd like to know how the Vikings or how we can suggest to the Vikings to get the most out of the quote-unquote good players on the roster. If there's 32 of them, if there's 38 of them, Flores already showed last year that he will, if you are good, he doesn't give a shit what position you play. He's going to find a role for you. He's going to want you on the field because having a guy who's sort of out of position on the field but is good is better than having a guy who sucks in a fixed position.

So to me, there's a lot of, you know, it's almost like a word cloud of a roster. And I'm very interested to see, you know is, we were talking about how intricate the offense was with Kevin O'Connell and how it might take time for J.J. to pick it up. There's two things about that. One is that we know Kirk took a while to pick it up, but T.J. Hawkinson picked it up within like three days. And part of that is because Kirk had to play quarterback, so you have to be master of everything everything but also also there is a distinct possibility that kirk is dumb and

that is like that's a hindrance like i'm not i'm not kidding like and he's nice guy decent fan great great husband and father blah blah blah all that stuff great but like there is a possibility that he didn't grasp this stuff because he sucked at it and J.J. McCarthy may not be that sort of person he may have a brain for this but the other thing I'd like to know is if Kevin O'Connell is so much of a scheme guy that he is not willing to tailor this offense to this quarterback and it all it seems already as if he is not going to dumb down a playbook. He's not going to give him a thin playbook to work with just so he can play. And we've seen that happen a lot in the pros where they, you get, you know, sort of, you know, okay, well he's, he's a rookie. So we're going to give him, you know, these five plays and he can run those confidently. And

we'll just work with that. I don't think ko is that kind of guy and i don't know i don't know if that's good or not i think is what i'd like to hear i think uh well first of all you gave me um that's like uh going to cracker barrel where the menu is like eight pages long and yeah am i giving you okay i got i got a lot i got a lot to choose from there that you just laid out um but i think you can do it either way uh I think you can have the scheme and need the quarterback to master it all. I think that's probably how Kyle Shanahan is, or you could try to tailor it up. I think that he'll make some changes,

but there's fundamentally things that he believes are going to work that you can't really alter, or then you're talking about hacking it down too far. So I would prefer that he has it all down and is ready to go to hey let's run out half the playbook and then start adding a little bit here or there now with josh jobs last year not that i ever really cared about this but i mean you probably should have cut the playbook down and tried to operate that way right like that's that what should have happened last year i think or he should have or he should have stayed in his headset all game long like he did

in atlanta like and just use him as a as a puppet like it's kind of you know if you're not going to concede to someone who just got there and is your emergency starter um you know i i i worry about that a little bit i don't worry about um you know his ability to relate to players or his knowledge of the game or anything like I don't it's nice to see your head coach in the sideline and not think that guy is a moron and like you know if you're Mike McCarthy is your coach that's kind of what you think when you're a fan and you're not necessarily wrong to um but i i'm more confident than kevin o'connell that i'm just i and i also like that he and quasi have both said openly listen we're learning how to do this job and so we have to sort of look over what we um

you know what we've done wrong in past years and make sure that we're working on the correct things to improve ourselves so that that that's good, too. The perspective seems all right. So it's I'm just. I don't want to hunt around for things to worry about. I'd like to know what my legitimate worries would be and what they are not and what's not legitimate. Well, those will unveil themselves as we go along.

So people will have to keep listening and uh reading to find out what they are that's how i built this ever the salesman that's right you brother uh drew defector great to have you uh again we'll definitely do it again at some point throughout the summer you'll think of something you want to talk about then i'll say come on and talk about it and um we'll have a good time so i i really appreciate it though appreciate your appearances they've been lots of fun to follow this journey with you it's a totally different perspective from other like hardcore football reporters and draft analysts and everything that come on that i think uh you give a voice to uh many fans who feel the same way as you. So I, that's right. That's right. Be grateful.

They should. Yeah. They should pay you instead of me, but they don't. Yeah. I get paid. I'm more. Okay.

I'm going to stop talking now. Pleasure to have you on. Pleasure to be on. Thank you so much for, for having me. It's always fun.