Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Do we understand the Vikings' plan now? (a Fans Only podcast)

Episode Date: May 8, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Minnesota Vikings fans' questions, including whether the team is betting on last year's group giving up on Mike Zimmer, whether fans should be unhappy with Matthew for selling them on a receiver only to see the Vikings take defensive backs, if the Vikings could do something different with Ezra Cleveland and if the plan is to skip out on the highly touted 2023 QB class next year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here, and this is another fans only podcast where I answer only fan questions. And I've got a lot, and there's a lot backlogged here from the draft. So I always try to get through as many as I possibly can. I'll try to be short-winded. I've still got a ton of them. So if you sent me an email or if you sent me a tweet responding to the thread where i asked for questions i'm trying i'm doing

my best and we'll get as many as we can and i appreciate all of the questions that have come in and uh i guess all we look for is for it to be interesting right i mean we can't control who they draft who they trade for or any of those things but we can have good discussions and you guys with all these great questions really really help uh with that so i'm going to start out with a couple of emails and then we'll get to some tweets and uh we'll have a good time but first let's open a Diet Dr. Pepper. All right, we start with Chris via email. He says, hello from Toronto.

I'm a 63-year-old diehard Vikings fan. I grew up with a little bit of Joe Cap and a lot of Fran. The Hail Mary brought me to adolescent tears. The miracle paid me back, I suppose. Please answer this for me, either in writing or on the air do you think it's fair to suggest that to any degree the vikings brain trust decision to not blow it all up is because they realize that the team was not offering maximum effort last year especially the defense and that zimmer had lost them and they are hoping to force a change. Um, uh, meaning the players were hoping to force a change. I'm not that thrilled with

the decision not to tear it down, but it would be a whole lot easier to swallow if we factored in what I've just suggested and not just hoping that Kevin O'Connell gets us an additional two wins in a playoff spot. No, I don't think that the Vikings weren't trying last year on offense or defense. I do think that there was a lot of frustration within the players and there were on the offensive side, players looking around and saying, are we doing the right things and you know at some point adam thielen justin jefferson they looked really frustrated and they expressed frustration in different ways i think part of that was just that they wanted to push the ball down the field more often they wanted to throw the ball more and not run on second down all the time. They didn't want to be a run first

offense with those players. But I don't think that the defensive players didn't try or that players in general were sort of throwing up their hands and just giving up because they played in so many close games that I don't think that they would have been in so many close games that i i don't think that they would have been in so many close games and argued so many times with us in the media about how good they were like there were many times where players came out and said you know you guys are criticizing us and our record isn't what we're supposed to be but we're better than this and they said it adamantly adamantly not just like ah well we're better than our record kind of thing but with indignation and you also had a lot of veteran players last year like veteran players who have been around the league like Patrick Peterson or

uh Delvin Tomlinson like these guys Harrison Smith they're not just they're not giving up I don't think Bashad Breland was giving up I think he was just bad and I think that that was the case for you know the run defense at times that it just wasn't good when you lose Daniil Hunter and Everson Griffin at the edges you're probably playing guys that aren't particularly good against the run Sheldon Richardson was never a good run defender and they asked him to play a different position. So, you know, it was really kind of what we thought it was, which is, yeah, the environment that Mike Zimmer created was pretty ugly by the end, because I think that he expressed his own

frustrations by pointing fingers and by criticizing his own players, sometimes through the media, sometimes to their face. But that didn't create any type of atmosphere that anybody wanted to be a part of. But that's also because they were losing and because they were giving up a lot of points. I mean, it's really hard for me to say that those players were not trying though, because

they were fighting, uh, all the way to the end of the playoff race. They just kept not winning. It's not like they were getting blown out. I mean, even in the game against the Rams, um, where the Rams were decidedly better than them, they still fought back to have a chance to be there at the end of the game and it ends up as a one score game so i i didn't see any of the giving up signs i did feel like certain players under mike zimmer got anxious in those big situations maybe because zimmer was too hard on them or maybe because they're not that good i mean mean, that could also be the case too. I mean, sometimes the explanation isn't any more complicated

than the roster was nothing more than an 8-9 roster last year. And the point differential does not look like a team. They were about an even point differential for the year. I think it was just under 0. I mean, that doesn't suggest a team that just threw up its hands and gave up i mean even through the final game of the year against chicago they got down in the game and came back and won um so i don't think that guys at this level i mean are really like giving up on their coach unless you're talking about someone completely incompetent

like matt patricia but i don't think anyone ever believed that mike zimmer was incompetent i think that they just thought that he was a dinosaur in a lot of ways with the way that he viewed offense and i think that they got exhausted of his attitude and of his finger pointing and all those sorts of things that every time things went sideways he was kind of the first to panic and that went for most seasons outside of 2017 so yeah i mean i i think what they're really hoping for is some version of what you said which is that kevin o'connell can bring a more modern offensive approach and they must really think this since they didn't give him anything to work with all offseason anything new that he can

bring an offensive approach that is McVay-ish and that he can create a situation where players don't feel like the coach is going to rip their face off if things go wrong and that they're much more comfortable trying to make plays and that they're much more heard when they have suggestions and and they're kind of working to play your strengths instead of saying you do what I tell you to do like that's what they're banking on. Is that worth two wins and a playoff spot? I don't know. Um, and the other part of it is, you know, Mike Zimmer's defense last year, they had 51 sacks and 16 interceptions. Um, 51 sacks is second, 16 interceptions is 10th. I mean, so like not everything went completely against them last year.

They're going to have to have a lot of the same things that did go right, go right again. Like not be more injured than they were, not have bad injury luck, especially on the offensive side. I mean, there's a lot of things that they're kind of banking on. Every team goes into the offseason thinking that everything that went well last year will go well again. And surprisingly, a real shocking number is that the Vikings ended up at the end of the year, and some of this was playing from behind for sure. But this, you know, the thing of like, oh, they're just going to pass more and that's how they're going to win.

They ended up throwing a lot of passes last season. Their running attack was not as effective and they ended up leaning more on passing. Let me pull it up here. Yeah, here's a funny stat for you. Last year, the Rams threw 607 passes and the Vikings threw 604. So yeah, I mean, they're relying on really the players collaborative efforts and really the atmosphere and maybe maximizing those pass attempts a little bit better and not having a lot of them come in third and long situations which i believe kirk cousins was either at the top or top five last year for third down and long pass attempts like they're trying to reduce those but yeah

they're kind of counting on a lot of things around the edges to make the difference i don't think it's necessarily effort uh or that the team gave up on zimmer uh i but i think that uh the locker room the situation how the players felt like all of that is going to matter and should be very different under kevin o'connell now can ed don Ed Donatell scheme as well as Mike Zimmer can he create those 51 sacks off of scheme if they can't rush the passer with four this year if anybody gets banged up I mean you know those things are kind of yet to be seen all right let's go to another email here this one comes from Andre he says I was very upset when the Vikings didn't take Jamison Williams at 12th. First, I got unhappy with them.

Then I got unhappy with myself. Then I got unhappy with you. You convinced everyone that receiver was the money pick. Clearly, Kweisi Adafo-Mensa did not agree. One thing that I've been wondering about based on Kweisi Adafo-Mensah's initial reaction to criticism is about team chemistry. All the draft coverage by the Wonks tends to be about positional value, but you already have Justin Jefferson there and hit a home run with another stud receiver, and now you have a problem.

Everyone wants the ball, J.J., Cook, Thielen, Irv Smith, and there's not enough ball to go around. There's only room for one Pavarotti on the stage. Everyone wants the ball, J.J., Cook, Thielen, Irv Smith, and there's not enough ball to go around. There's only room for one Pavarotti on the stage. So could this pick also be to keep Justin Jefferson happy? Well, the Los Angeles Rams did not take this approach. They kept getting wide receivers after wide receivers, and sorry if you've heard me say this before, but that was one of the reasons I thought they might do it is because Kevin O'Connell came from a team that if they had lost Robert Woods and not signed Odell Beckham beforehand when they got their chance, they lose the Super Bowl.

I mean, they had no receivers beyond that. And that was really key to them. I just mentioned the number of passes that were thrown right like 600 passes yeah they can find a way to get the ball to other people other than justin jefferson i mean justin jefferson had what 150 targets that means 450 passes went to other people they threw the ball to cj ham they threw the ball to tyler conklin like no i don't think that not drafting jameson williams was because they want to keep justin jefferson happy by getting all the targets i i don't think that's the case and if it is then that's absolutely

ludicrous that would be tremendously flawed thinking especially when you look at i mean even the green bay packers are a good example of this where you know davante adams is the elite of the elite wide receivers in the league and yet they've been in the playoffs a couple of times in recent years and what happened davante adams didn't catch 18 passes for 250 yards and the rest of the guys were forced to do the work against good teams and the Packers offense slowed down it slowed down against Tampa and the NFC championship two years ago and it certainly slowed down against San Francisco in the snow when you know they were really designing their whole defense to shut down Devontae Adams I mean we've seen this play out for the Vikings over the years Jameson Williams he, if they had drafted him or another receiver would not have to get a hundred

targets. If in his first year, first two years, while Adam Thielen is still around, if that player got 50 catches in their first two seasons per year on 75 targets, say, I mean, that's, that's huge. Like they were throwing to kj osborne last year they were throwing to laquan treadwell a few years ago it's not about only one football and by the way somehow jake reed made it through with chris carter and randy moss and somehow robert smith got the football and that's when teams threw less than they do now this has always worked historically to have multiple good weapons there's no such thing as too many great players on an offense so look I mean I think that the logic is sound to want Jamison Williams at number 12 and to think

that it's the right pick or the money pick I think think it's sound. I don't think that it necessarily has to do with them not wanting more receivers as much as it has to do with them trying to maximize the value of the draft and get more players. Like this roster, it was really thin. And what Kweisi Adafo-Mensa decided to do was restock the cupboard in the secondary because their secondary was horrendous last year. So that was the route that they took rather than adding more weapons. But I think when you look at the history of the Super Bowl and who makes it, it's always the best offenses.

Always. In recent years. Since 2015, find me a bad offense that was in the Super Bowl. You won't. And a lot of those teams didn't stop at oh we've already got the weapons so the logic is sound and the people who supported wide receiver have a really good case but it's also not like the vikings did something so insane by trying to get multiple secondary players with those draft picks i lean one particular way toward the wide receiver

because I think offense wins, but you still have to stop the pass at some point. But also here's the other thing too, that when we have these conversations, I am not trying to tell you, I know who they're going to draft. I'm giving you my logic and what I think is the right thing to do. If they listened to me and did everything that I said, they would hire me as the GM. I give you ideas based on research and based on the guests that we have and my read of the situation for my reporting. And I give opinions on what I think that they should do, their potential options. But hey, I didn't think they should trade for Chris Herndon, right? I didn't think that they should trade for a kicker slash punter, but they did it.

I didn't think that they would extend. Well, they gave a short extension to cousins, but I didn't think that they would extend him when they fired Zimmer and Spielman. And they did like this. This isn't the, I know everything they're going to do because I'm a soothsayer. This is, I'm giving you opinions on what I think they should do. And we try to break down what they might do. But I mean, this team has always, since I've been covering them, done things that I wouldn't advise. And I bet they'll continue to do that. And sometimes they're right. And sometimes I'm right. I mean, and and I bet they'll continue to do that and sometimes they're right and

sometimes I'm right I mean and sometimes I think they did great stuff uh you know and that and that is the case well not as recently with Rick Spielman with a lot that they did but you know there have been uh drafting Justin Jefferson for example that was something I was really on board with so you know uh that's that's how all football conversation works. So you agreed with my take that they should have picked a receiver. They didn't. And now we see how it ends up playing out. It's also possible that they just didn't like the fit of Jamison Williams in their offense.

And how would any of us know that, right? Like maybe their scouts were looking for certain things with receivers, and they said Chris Olave has those things, but not Jamison Williams. So we would have taken this guy or not that guy. We don't know. Like those conversations, just like I said before the draft, when someone said, what's the buzz? What are you hearing?

And it's like, what? They don't tell people. And then it played out exactly that way with the draft with with the quarterbacks like very clear that the league does not come out and announce what they're doing in the draft so you know that's kind of how this game works but i think that it the way that they decided to go will give us a lot to look at for the future to say was their process correct versus the results like i thought maybe they should go one way they thought they should go another and we'll find out we'll definitely find out because jameson williams is in detroit if it ends up you know working out one way or the other there are things that i don't think are going to

happen that happen um and there are things that i don't think are going to happen that happen. Um, and there are things that I expect that do happen. So like, that's, that's all sports conversation, man. Um, but I don't think at all that their logic should be, oh, there's only one football. Okay. Well, what happened when Adam Thielen got hurt last year? You know? So anyway, all right, moving all right moving on moving on okay this one from uh at robot de juret sorry if i'm pronouncing that wrong uh good sir did quacey do a good job i've got judd screaming about judd's old ad screaming about the jimmy johnson chart and the fans are bleeping themselves about how this is spielman part two but it seems like the moves were win in the margins

kinds of moves analytically driven but a reef's post about the big board placed minnesota 20th out of 32 in terms of value um not being good like 20 20th. So maybe by the time you're hearing this, you've already noticed that there's an interview with Arif where we talk about this. It's a really good conversation. So make sure you take a look for that. But did he do a good job is a really hard question to answer. And that is what has made for a lot of interesting discussions about this draft already.

Did they do a good job is truly impossible to say until we get a look at it. I mean, we'll know fairly early if they did a good job based on how people even look at camp. So last year, did they do a good job? And then we saw Kellen Mond and we saw Davis, and we saw Chaz Surratt, and we thought, no, probably not. I mean, but Kenny Wongwu, Amir Smith-Marset, there's some potential there. Okay, maybe those will work out. Christian Derrissaw looked like a bad pick at first because he couldn't get on the field,

and then when he did get on the field field he was very good and showed a lot of potential so did quacey do a good job here i think that um he he did like so many other things in sports when it comes to decisions he did some things that we can say were probably the right thing to do or that are very much defensible and then he did some things that we're going to scratch our heads about. And Spielman part two, I think anybody who's saying that, I totally get where you're coming from. Like, are there nuances to this that are different? Yes.

When you look at the relative athletic scores of a lot of the players who they took later on, you know, that was not necessarily a spielman thing to look at the percentiles of athleticism and all those sorts of things like i think they looked at them but how much they took them seriously didn't so much show up uh and of course people have looked at this and they've charted this and the vikings were not one of the teams that was going hog wild on athleticism they were more toward the back of the pack with that under Rick Spielman so he was picking the players

that he liked basically and they picked the players that they liked but also seemed to factor athleticism with a lot of them on day three which I think is smart but then they also reached versus the consensus board so like the answer is it's very complicated to whether he did a good job. I think that the Spielman thing and calling it Spielman Jr. is really based on the whole offseason. That the sum of all of the parts of the offseason are the team is not vastly different in its philosophy, in who they want to be.

This was not the rebuild draft. Like if they're 20th on big board value and other charts say they did well in whatever trade and the first two players become really good in the draft, we're going to say that they did a good job. Or if they find some diamonds in the rough because they made good bets later on we're going to say that they did a good job i don't think that these things these charts automatically just mean you won or lost the draft all they are is a bit of a guideline the day after to help you react to something that honestly you can't react to right after but that's the draft and there's so many conversations to have about it and interesting elements of it that we have to talk about it but when and we have to give our reactions but these are the ones that i think everyone should be the least confident in like of all

things that we ever talk about with football postraft i mean go back and look at draft grades i mean the famous example is russell wilson but i mean all draft grades seem to be an a minus or a b plus i don't know i mean there are certain drafts that some people go crazy and give an f and well how how do you know how do you know because if two players become great it's not an f and is there a chance that the top two guys that they drafted specifically could become great yeah no there is so the answer to your question is i i don't know if he did a good job i think that there are things that we will look back on and wonder about if they don't work and we'll say well, there was another way that you chose to go against. So because you chose against drafting Jamison Williams or Kyle Hamilton, by the way,

or Jordan Davis, by the way, because you decided to forego those picks, if those guys become great, then we're going to look back on it and go what happened there and have a reasonable second guess there are definitely situations where it's not reasonable to second guess but in this case there would be reasonable second guesses so that's the best i can do is we we won't know for quite a while how this draft will play out but it gives us something to always keep coming back to with this draft because of the decisions they made all right this comes from at add plus verb fans only question since quacey seemed fine going with a high risk injury pick like booth jr why not go all in and get n'Kobi Dean and the fused spine guy,

if you remember Paul Hodowanek in our draft sim, drafted a guy whose spine had been fused back together. I forget who that was. At least you could say he had a clear around the margins approach. See, that's a funny thing. The last question says it looks like they were trying to win around the margins. And the next question says they weren't trying to win around the margins. And that is exactly the way that I would define this draft in trying to talk about it. It's like, well, there's an argument for it and there's an argument against it. And I don't like to waffle on the fence. So I'm going to pick the side of maybe they should have just gone with a selection at 12 because that sort of speaks to me more.

But I'm also not like jumping up and down and banging a table and saying that they screwed this draft up like no one ever has before. Yeah, N'Kobe Dean, I don't know about that one. That's all the hardest thing to figure out is the medical stuff, because a lot of draft analysts had Booth as a high player, and I believe the Vikings did as well. But clearly there were people in the league who did not feel that way because of his medical situation. And so they would

know what nicobe dean's issue was for somebody that good and that talented who was that successful at georgia i've got to think that it was pretty rough and you know there's a there's a history of these going either way like uh if anyone remembers daquan bowers there was this knee issue that ended up blowing up and he basically never really played i think and let's see there was other ones like robert kim dg was another one i think that had some issue i forget what it was but i i think there was some issues there with the injuries and he dropped in the draft and then never became anything i i do think a player that good gets into the third round because of injuries it has to be something pretty serious

um and if someone has had their spine fused back together that's just a that's not good at all not not that that was dean's issue that was somebody else but anyway um so i i don't know or maybe they didn't feel scheme fit and they liked how Brian Asamoah fit better scheme wise at that position. And they felt much better about his health. That's probably it. hack i probably would say that it's not that you should trust your doctors and if you and if you get burned every once in a while on those then kind of so be it like you're you're better off kind of trusting what you see in all the medical stuff that you do leading up to it so yeah that's you know when we when we categorize these things we're going to put them into here's what you can second guess down the road. And here's what you can. Like if they didn't draft, if they didn't draft someone because of their injury history,

you kind of can't second guess that because we didn't look at their MRI or whatever they do with them. I don't know. Uh, uh, we didn't give them a physical, we're not doctors and we didn't even speak to doctors about the issue so you can't really second guess that with booth you can wonder about the history because we do know it right we do know about because he told us the injuries that he's had and how it hindered his play uh and it kept him away from the combine. Those are things that are tangible. When it comes to they didn't draft this other guy because of medicals that we don't know about, there isn't a whole lot to grab onto there.

Core injuries, quads, you know, these things, you do have concerns about them with Andrew Booth. I think he could be a really, really good player if he's healthy, though. So I think they did do a good job of getting value there it's just you know that the whole thing like trading down to a division opponent is risky and taking a player with that many injury issues is risky and so you know that goes back to the last question about did Kwesi Adafo Mensah do a? Well, he did take some risks here. And we'll find out if those were necessary risks. And the same thing goes for the character issue with the second-round guard.

It's like, was that a necessary risk? Did you have to do that in the situation that you're in? And that's something we'll be asking about all the first three picks and even drafting a linebacker like did you have to do that when that's kind of risky in certain ways uh all right this is from dennis an email here since the vikings use the second round pick on a guard is it possible the new coaching staff moves ezra cle Cleveland back to tackle um I'm gonna go with no uh because they have two tackles I will never really understand why he didn't get a chance and why they had to spend another draft pick on another tackle in Christian Derrissaw because think about this like there's so much

with the Spielman era where you can go gosh you should have maybe seen that coming right and one of those is you draft ezra cleveland and you don't trade riley reef at the deadline when you're what were they one in five in 2020 if they traded riley reef and moved ezra cleveland to, they would have, what, one in five, six, so what, 10 games. They would have had 10 games to evaluate Ezra Cleveland as a tackle and know whether he could play for the future and maybe not have to spend a first round pick on Christian Derrissaw.

It could be a all's well that ends well situation,, in a lot of instances, they have told the truth with some of this stuff. Like they gave an indication that they weren't going to draft a receiver, you know, that kind of thing. Uh, in terms of pre-draft commentary, they praised Garrett Bradbury. They didn't try to replace Garrett Bradbury. So the tea leaves were readable and we'll remember that for the future when we go to the combine next year and all that stuff is like well a lot of the things that they say might be along the lines of what they're going to do and i forget whether it was kevin o'connell or quacey dafl mensah had good things to say about ezra cleveland and i think ezra cleveland is a good player

uh it feels like it would be a mistake if they were drafting a guard to replace somebody who's been pretty good and is a good athlete he's not great he's not unbelievable but he's also just playing left guard for the first time last year and I thought did okay had a decent season uh somebody that you can put in and not feel like it's going to be a wreck i feel like their second round pick is to eventually play right guard that they were looking down the road at that and saying all right well he'll compete in the first year in the right guard competition with chris reed and jesse davis but those are short-term options we want a longer term option

um you know that's that's a pick that is by far the most questionable of the entire draft, even for that reason. Like drafting down the road for a guard, there's a lot of them that are available in free agency. The Vikings have not spent money on them, though, and I guess maybe that's what they're thinking, is that they'll be in cap peril again next year, which that's kind of how it looks.

So maybe that's the thought is to have by 2023 as good of an offensive line as they possibly can have. Also didn't show a whole lot of belief in Wyatt Davis there. And I think that's maybe one of the parts that's hard to reckon with is drafting some of the same positions that they drafted last year before they've even put their hands on anybody from last year it's like we've seen players develop KJ Osborne caught zero passes his first year and then was good for them last year and so you're drafting another guard without even seeing Wyatt Davis on the field I mean you really must not believe that he's going to be the guy there. All right, next

question. This comes an email. This is formerly at Vikings jazz fan deleted Twitter last week. Well, sir, that is a good choice. That is a very good choice. I love the jokes on Twitter and all the random football stuff that pops up but i do not blame anybody who decides to move away from that um let's see fans only question do the two trades to division rivals set quesia dafo mensa up for being as nearly judged for how the players on other teams do as it does for how the players on the Vikings do a hundred percent. It does. Yeah, absolutely. Because if you just draft your player, we're always going to do the thing where we look at who was drafted next and go, ah, or, or, or here's a good example, 2016.

I think it's totally unfair to go, the Vikings could have had Michael Thomas. Like, okay, well, look, there were a bunch of receivers taken before Michael Thomas. It wasn't just Laquan Treadwell. You could do that all day long. Like, oh, well, every team should have taken Tom Brady. Well, they certainly should have. But when someone's taken in the second round, a lot of teams pass and you picked your guy it's just it's just bad luck oops and so if they picked at 12 let's say they took kyle hamilton

because they really wanted the safety and then jameson williams became great we might go oh could have had jameson williams yikes kind of like the Anthony Barr Aaron Donald oh could have had Aaron Donald took Anthony Barr yikes but look I mean that's the draft is is so hard to project that they took a player that made sense to rebuild their defense around who was a great college prospect and Anthony Barr and so you whiffed that another guy was better but if anybody had known that Aaron Donald was going to be the greatest defensive player of a generation, he would have been picked number one. And clearly that was not known.

In this case, when you trade for more or less one for one or two for one, I don't know how much Andrew Booth counts in this because they had to trade down and then trade back up. But I guess he does let's just make it easier on ourselves and say that if jameson williams becomes a superstar and neither lewis seen or andrew booth moves the needle then we will look at this and say it didn't work out and it was questioned at the time if lewis seen and andrew booth turn out to be able to change the fate of the vikings defense in the future and they are two years from now a number one defense because they have this amazing secondary and jameson williams is not that good then we will say they they got it right and they won that trade

and that's how we're going to look at it down the road christian watson less so for me it's still that but I think that the Packers were trading up to get Christian Watson regardless and you know the Vikings got the better of that trade by quite a bit I think they got the better of that trade by a lot if Christian Watson becomes a great player which he very well may with Aaron Rodgers it't shock me, but that was kind of fate anyway. The Packers were going to make that happen. They were going to reach on Christian Watson no matter what. And so the Vikings just took advantage of that and were able to use that draft capital to move up, to take a corner that they think can be great. That one is so much less so. I mean, I think that there will be your classic narratives of revenge game

for Christian Watson. The Vikings traded out of that pick. But it's more about Jamison Williams for me and more about the idea that you gave a premium position potential star player to a team that's adding a lot of talent over the last few years through the draft in Detroit. Okay, next one. I've been going hot so far. Let me get a drink of Diet Dr. Pepper here. All right. Okay.

Next one. Mark in Seattle, which he calls sea squawk hell. Do you believe it's possible the Vikings will address the edge rusher position in free agency now that the draft is over? Yeah, it's possible, yes. They don't have a lot of money to do so. When you look at how much cap space they're going to need for the draft class, it's quite a bit. I think it's like $10 million.

I could be reading this wrong, but I think that's how much they need. And they have about $12 million in space now. So they need to create more space if they're going to make a significant signing. They might be able to move a little bit around and shuffle and make two and a half three million dollars to sign someone but in terms of any sort of significant signing you're not really going to be able to do much more than what they did last year with someone like sheldon richardson so maybe that guy i've brought him up before jerry hughes who uh has played in a 3-4 type of system before and it's just a good player got a lot of pressures last year didn't get a lot of sacks

i mean maybe that's an option for them if there was one position that i would say yeah add that guy for that last second addition i would probably choose defensive end. I don't think that that can be why they didn't address it in the draft. I know that's not your question, but I don't know why they didn't address it in the draft. I truly do not. Because if we were looking, and this is what it is for me too, is we always look at the immediate roster and say, well, they needed this, that, this, that versus what they drafted. But I think when you look down the road, you don't see Zedarius Smith here that long. Two years is really what his contract is. It was three years, but it's kind of bogus third year. Uh, Daniil Hunter may be gone next year, the way his contract is set up.

And if he's not healthy, then that's very much what he could end up with. And then, you know, when, when you look at wide receiver, even that was part of that conversation is, you know, the wide receiver spot, how much longer is Adam Thielen here? Is it a year? Is it two years? All that sort of stuff. So, you know, I, I mean, I think that, you know, when we look at that defensive end is one of those positions that is going to be needed in the future and is always needed. They also didn't get, you know, a pass rushing defensive tackle either. And that would be part of the conversation as well. So, I mean, yeah, like they could still add one, but it's really only one more player if they're going to spend any money without moving money

around uh and that's probably the position that i would choose if that was going to be the case um okay so let's go on to the next one good question um let's see oh did i do this again where i forgot to put the name i am sorry this happens sometimes where i forget to put the name in the file and i apologize for that uh hey matthew i have a question for the next mailbag you do question is what would it take the vikings for the vikings to get a top tier quarterback in next year's draft if they don't absolutely suck like 2 and 15 is it even possible to get one without tanking well this circles back to one of our theories which is that when quarterbacks are first round prospects we don't know whether they're going to be good or not and let's say the vikings end up drafting 20th and they want to move up to 10th

to get the fourth best quarterback prospect because everybody's drafting them at the top if you take the fourth best quarterback prospect the way things are now and the way this draft class looks i think those odds are very similar to the first quarterback which let's just say for saying's sake that it's Bryce Young is the number one quarterback. Let's just say, like, I don't know that right now and nobody does, but if so Bryce Young is taken number one and you get the fourth guy, but the difference between the first and the fourth guy is not like in terms of prospect caliber is not like it was this year where one guy was a first rounder and all the other guys were third or fifth rounders. I think that your odds are very similar. Now, of course,

the number one overall pick is going to have the best odds of, of being a future hall of famer franchise quarterback. But I think that there's more, um, maybe more maybe variance when it comes to this than there used to be. I don't know. It just seems like recently there have been so many times where it's not the first guy taken who ends up being the best. And that goes Baker Mayfield versus Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson is a good recent example. Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson being taken after Mitch Trubisky so if you're picking the third or fourth quarterback in a really great quarterback draft I don't think you worry too much about that what you do worry about for the future is that if you're 20th and

you have to trade up for a quarterback it's going to take a future first and that's where you're really putting your future on the line because look at Chicago. They traded up to get Justin Fields and then look at their draft this year. I mean, they just didn't get players. I mean, they got a couple of what second rounders, but they didn't have a first round pick. They didn't have a guy who could really, really help their rebuild. And that's the spot the Vikings could be getting themselves into if they're doing it but really the only way to get a top tier quarterback in the draft is to you know take take one probably in the top half of the first round now that's where even then if anybody's worth a darn they're

probably going to be taken in the first half of the first round uh unless it's that one outlier situation of lamar jackson but most of the time usually those guys are taken a pretty high even even the josh allen's even the um you know some of the other the mahomes it's not like mahomes was the 32nd pick or something like that so uh you probably have to get into the top half and there's going to be a lot of competition too yeah i mean by taking this route they really have to have a great season because it's going to likely take a lot for them to be able to get a top tier quarterback next year in terms of using trade value and there's going to be a lot of teams i think i ran through it on another fans only but i mean we're talking about probably

probably like 10 teams that could be looking for a quarterback in that draft and there's maybe there's five todd mcshay and mel kuyper have possibly six or seven being taken but more likely it's five six in the first round and there's going to be more teams than there are quarterbacks and the vikings you know are going to be in that mix so okay let's see um let's go to uh richard via email here overall i think the draft in this offseason has been boring and a disappointment considering i was hoping for drastic changes but i think the rebuild portion of the plan is becoming more clear as much as i despise the move extending cousins gets you a top five nfc quarterback for 2022 and probably 2023 and our 2022 pick draft picks should position

us to move on from high-priced veterans like Smith and Kendricks in a year or two the surprising part of the draft was that we did nothing to position ourselves a quarterback for 2023 I think Kweisi sees how insane the rookie quarterback market will be in 2023 and realize how many teams will reach for quarterbacks out of desperation, which is how we got Ponder. These reach picks also will push the top end talent at key positions down the draft board so we could draft a receiver or edge and build a young core for the 2023 draft. A much better spot to acquire a quarterback in 2024. Maybe it's wishful thinking um i have to believe we're building towards something uh okay so a lot there if they wait

till 2024 to get a quarterback and kevin o'connell is not the lock master who can unlock whatever magical potential is supposed to exist for Kirk Cousins, who, by the way, will be 35 by 2023. Waiting until 2024 is just like you're really running it all the way to the end again, which they already did once in 2020. And that didn't work either. Boy, that would be really something uh you know ponder by the way ponder we're talking about reaching from someone who was more of like a third rounder to a first

can if anything kenny pickett is this year's ponder now i don't know that because the steelers you know may and may not have been the only team who thought he was a back-of-the-first-round quarterback. But if there's any quarterback that was probably a reach, it was him. Christian Ponder, though, I mean, that was a massive reach. That won't be next year. These quarterbacks who come out next year are evaluated already right now as first-round talents. So it's not like, oh, this guy is a third-rounder, but teams were desperate. No, there's just way more talent. And the analytics back this up.

Anthony Tresh from PFF did a look at even the analytics on next year's quarterback class, and the numbers just speak higher of those players already. And they're not even in their final season. So, yeah, I think if they're waiting until 2024 wow what a long couple of years also i mean you know you all right the kirk cousins top five nfc quarterback is sort of like uh i mean one would be like hang a banner um for that like is that is you know okay wow like you the you have the fifth there's only seven teams to make the playoffs um that would be one also is it even true like so you have Dak Prescott

Aaron Rodgers Kyler Murray Matt Stafford Tom Brady like these are all in the same ballpark Jimmy Garoppolo is very equal to Cousins, maybe a little better if he's healthy, if he's still playing for San Francisco. We don't know what Trey Lance will be. Carson Wentz won more games than Cousins has in the last two years, by the way, last year playing for Indianapolis. And I think Carson Wentz is bad, but I think Washington has a better roster than the Vikings.

Jalen Hurts had his team in the playoffs last year. Their roster got quite a bit better. I don't know. Does that matter? I mean, if there's a lot of equal and the rosters aren't better, is that going to matter that they have a finger quote top five NFC quarterback? I don't know. Like, I'm not even sure what to do with that. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Like, I'm not doing a great job of answering you because I just think that if, if they

go through this year and go eight, nine again with the same direction and the same quarterback and then say, no, let's sign up for one more year of this. I mean, I, people are going to lose their minds, right? Like you're going to be like, are we being just gaslit out of, out of this universe about this quarterback? Uh, it already kind of feels that way based on the fact that they have accomplished nothing with him. And yet they still keep going back to that. Well, it already feels that way. And if they have another season, that's not a success with him and then pass on those quarterbacks in the future. Oh my gosh.

I mean, it would be one of the most baffling things. Well, you know, the Vikings find a way to baffle, but one of the most baffling things since I've been here, maybe one of the most that I've ever covered, if they do not have a successful season this year and then pass on first-round quarterbacks and don't trade up to get one. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what their time horizons are based on how they feel about the roster. But, you know, it is a game of whack-a-mole. If you drafted Brian Asamoah to replace Eric Hendricks, okay. Or Louis seen to replace Harrison Smith. Okay. But you're still going to need what wide receivers to replace Adam Thielen, um, you know, defensive lineman to replace the Darius Smith like it's always this moving target and the only solution usually is to fill those spots through free agency using money that you have because you move on from

your quarterback that's what usually gets that job done uh not keeping an expensive quarterback and having a bunch of weaknesses in a very thin roster and hoping that Brian Asamoah becomes Eric Hendricks which uh possible but pretty hard Eric Hendricks is an all-pro uh Harrison Smith is one of the great players of the last decade I mean Lewis Lewis scene looks like a nice player but what an outcome that would be right uh in order for that to happen so yeah I think that if if their idea is to wait until 2024 with Cousins it has to be paired with a quarterback who's sitting for a year that they drafted and it has to be paired with basically that they couldn't move on from Cousins with the stipulation that you know if they win 12 or 13 games and they're amazing,

then okay, keep going in that direction. So what's a fans only podcast. Great questions, great questions, uh, all sorts of stuff to talk about here. And I know I still, I still have tweets that, you know, I haven't been able to get to that people ask me about. So there's more of these to come this week. It's amazing how energetic this can be with just reading these tweets and these emails. So great stuff. Purpleinsider.com is where you can send them. I try to get to all the questions that you guys have.

And I have a great time answering them. So I really appreciate you guys. And we're coming up on, it's going to be a rookie minicamp. We'll have takeaways on that at some point. The schedule, folks, the schedule is coming out next week. Excited about that. Excited to break that down in a bunch of different ways. So lots to come.

And look forward also to that conversation with arif hassan where he explains the whole consensus draft board thing and uh we have some fun there so all right good times we'll do it again soon thanks everybody