Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Does last year's close games say anything about the Vikings 2022 season? (A Fans Only podcast)

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Minnesota Vikings fan questions, from whether the Vikings' high number of close losses points toward good things this year to Andrew Booth Jr.'s health to Georgia defense vs. LSU offense to whether it's fair to expect much bigger things from the Vikings in 2022 because of an improved defense and offensive scheme. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insiderthew collar here this is mostly a fans only podcast except for i was out at tco performance center for kevin o'connell and mike pettin and eric hendricks press conferences so i figured i would talk just for a few minutes about some of the quick takeaways from that and then we can get into your fan questions of course if you have questions go to the purple Insider website. Send me a question through there. There's like a contact us. Use that.

You can always Twitter DM it to me. My DMs are open or just send me an at tweet and I will throw it in the queue and we'll continue to go through your very awesome questions. But just real quick, the first thing that i took away from listening to kevin o'connell talk on wednesday was about irv smith jr and how they're trying to bring irv smith along and his importance in the offense what his role is expected to be and so we saw irv smith doing some route running in 11 on 11s but theon-11s that we saw at the one OTA practice open to the media were not particularly intense. I mentioned that on some of them, Kirk Cousins didn't even throw the ball in one section.

He did on some other ones, but not all of them and so that sort of speaks to it was not like this high flying super intense training camp like practice situation it was more of almost a walkthrough type of spot um with the way they were doing it when we were watching 11 on 11s and it sounded from what kevin o'connell, like they were going to have more intense seven on seven situations to practice their passing scheme and stuff that Irv Smith wasn't ready to be a part of something like that. So he's still coming along. But I think as far as good signs go for Irv Smith Jr. to be out there at all at this point when it sounded much more like

he was going to need to skip the entire spring, a good sign for his availability. Now, one thing that Kevin O'Connell talked about was just the mental part of this and Irv Smith Jr. processing everything that they're asking him to do which in the past has actually been pretty extensive right like even going back to Alabama where he was used sometimes in the backfield sometimes in the slot sometimes out wide and sometimes as the inline tight end well I looked at the numbers and I mean he was used fairly often as a slot wide receiver in 2020, occasionally on the outside and the majority coming as an inline tight end. And naturally, if you're Kevin O'Connell, you're going to want to use Irv Smith in a

lot of the same way. But what really sort of stands out is, you know, Kevin O'Connell was asked about the progression of the tight end position and how it's different than it used to be back in the day. And well, he agreed that it is a little bit different that you have more receiving tight ends he still talked a lot about needing a three down tight end needing a blocker how important the run blocking was for the tight end position and they have put all of their eggs in the irv smith jr basket because johnny muntz, Ben Ellefson, Zach Davidson, these are not guys who can be your Tyler Conklin,

who had developed over a couple of years and was a terrific pass-catching tight end coming out of college, and they lose Tyler Conklin to the New York Jets. So they really have to hope that Irv Smith Jr. is ready to take the next step that it appeared like he was going to take last year as we headed into the season. And he, of course, had that injury on the last preseason game. I am guessing that Kevin O'Connell is not a big fan of playing your stars in the final preseason game. That's just my guess. I guess we'll see. Every year, zimmer talked as

if he was hesitant about it and every year they did it and many times somebody got banged up i think it was mckenzie alexander in 2018 getting hurt right before the season started in one of those final preseason games but i know the rams either barely play anyone or don't play any of their starters in any of the preseason games and that's probably the smartest way to go um eric hendricks talked around the comments that he made a few months ago when he said the fear-based culture when talking about what they needed moving on from mike zimmer and he acknowledged though that he's had a direct line to ownership and that you know he's been part of the group that's talked with ownership which i don't think was a big secret um but kind of makes it clear uh that the players had a big say in what the vikings decided to do

and he admitted that what that means is especially with some of them coming out like hendricks and saying hey it was zimmer's fear-based culture he admitted that now it's on them to prove that they needed a different culture which i think is is a good point from eric hendricks that i mean if you're going to say it was the last guy's fault because of his culture well then the next guy better have the right answers uh when it comes to that so that was you know semi notable um i also asked eric hendricks just about you know some stats that have come out with uh play action and why he's one of the best in the league at not biting at play action so um that was an interesting answer where he said that he has a really good sense and understanding for the the down the

situation um that's just my nerdy self wanting to understand that a little better, but I thought I would pass that along. And the one other thing was Kevin O'Connell talking about how, you know, he doesn't want to be thought of as an offensive head coach only, that he wants to be a big part of what they're doing on defense, understand everything they're doing on defense, understand everything they're doing on defense and be able to bring the offensive perspective to the defensive side, what offenses are thinking, how offenses can attack them. And, you know, you got the sense that this can cut

both ways, right? Like Mike Zimmer was the defensive head coach until the offense bothered him. And then he became a head coach offense. offense bothered him and then he became head coach offense and that wasn't really an appropriate role for Mike Zimmer and at times as has been well documented here on the show that would cause some trouble and you know it certainly caused some trouble with John DiFilippo with Norv Turner and I mean you could probably say with Clint Kubiak last year even at the same time and so now i mean you don't want kevin o'connell too involved in the defensive side but at the same time eric hendricks talked about learning tendencies and different quarterback drops and

things to look for with the quarterback that kevin o'connell could bring so there's an adjustment period there that i think o'connell is being pretty honest about that he's learning how to you know go over to one side of a practice go over to another side of a practice observe different things talk with his coaches about those things and now be the one who's in command of everything which is something that we're going to watch along the way and and how kevin o'connell. In fact, I think it's really become, you know, the number one storyline of this team going into this year is the new head coach, how the scheme changes things on offense. As we mentioned, how the culture is different,

you know, from OTAs, you can't really pick up on how a culture is different now they might be able to say behind the walls hey this detail is different the way this is handled but i'm not sure that kevin o'connell say playing music in their meetings or something before they start is exactly some sort of major culture shift but that will be something that we watch closely as we go through training camp and into the regular season just how o'connell is handling the things that are bound to come up because i i think the only time i've ever in my entire career covered a miserable otas or minicamp was 2018 when mike zimmer was making things far too difficult on John DeFilippo, which was later written about somewhere. I think it was Tyler Dunn's piece about Mike Zimmer,

but Kirk Cousins throwing the ball in the road out of frustration. But aside from that, there's never been an OTAs or minicamp where I've come away and said, oh boy, this team's going to be a mess or wow, they've got it all figured out, folks. That's so much more for training camp. So there's a couple of notes for you. Just some things that stuck out to me. Feel free to read Purple Insider for more breakdown of what Kevin O'Connell said about Irv Smith Jr. and so forth. So let's get into some of your questions, which of course begins with a Diet Dr. Pepper.

All right. Okay. Diet Dr. P is open. Ready to go. All right. First question. Okay. I am going to do a better job of not forgetting to write down who asked me this question. So let me look it up. All right. This comes from at Dave Whedon. I didn't write down the name initially, but I went back and found it. So there you go, Dave. Mailbag question. I see a lot of arguments that the Vikings had a lot of close losses last season, and therefore they should be able to turn those into wins.

However, we didn't blow out a lot of people out of the water either, and with minimal moves we've seen this offseason, how can we have any confidence that they'll turn those close losses into wins and not turn close wins into losses? Well, that's a good point, by the way, that they also had a lot of close wins. When it came to one score games, they were six and eight last year. And there's even some asterisk around that. Uh, when you include the Rams game where they were losing the whole game and scored at the end to

make it a one score game. So there's a little bit of that, uh, when it comes to that record, but you know, the thing is that if you were able to carry over last year, or if you were able to hit the redo button and just try it again, you know, maybe you would win more of those games. But at the same time, their expected win loss from pro football reference has this, this is based on you know their point differential their expected win loss was 8.5 and 8.5 so essentially dead even the perfect Minnesota Viking record of 8.5 and 8.5 that they should have been either an eight or nine win team based on the accumulation of how they played over the entire season and that says to me well

then yes even though some of those games were close it's not like you got repeatedly uh screwed over by injuries they had some like everybody else had some but in terms of man games lost and quality of players uh daniel hunter was a big one to lose him for more than half the season. Everson Griffin was significant, but the offense aside from a few games of Adam Thielen was largely healthy for the entire year. Some dings and cuts here or there, you know,

Christian Derrissaw missing a couple of games, but back a few weeks into the season, I think what week four derisaw made his debut and played most of the rest of the way i mean i don't think you can look at last season and and by the way like greg joseph made field goals and gave them opportunities to win games for the most part so he missed one that would have won a game but he made lots of other ones throughout the season he was over over 80% in his kicking. It's not like they got horrendous, awful kicking from last year.

So yeah, I mean, if they were able to hit the reset button, try it all again and run through it, maybe they win eight and lose six of those one score games. Like that's how football works. But I don't look at last season as being all that predictive of this season based on those one score games now if they had gone whatever two and ten in one score games and were close week after week and just had something catastrophic and crazy happen then you would say all right thiswin team, they've got a bounce back coming because they were much closer. But when a team is 500 and was essentially 500 in their

one-score games, and we don't talk about the ones that they won, they won in Los Angeles, they won a one-score game against Green Bay, they beat the Lions on a last-second field goal, they won a one-score game where they Bay. They beat the Lions on a last-second field goal. They won a one-score game where they had hardly any offensive production against the Chicago Bears. And by the way, the ones that they lost, some of them, were just well-earned by bad play. So the ones that they talked about all season were in week one and week two. But, I mean, how about the Detroit Lions and

giving up a game winning drive? How about giving up a game winning drive to Cooper Rush? I mean, these were losses that they really played poorly in and deserve to lose those games. And so, yeah, you could say, well, look, it was only one score, but you couldn't beat the Dallas Cowboys when they were playing their backup quarterback and you're at home and the Cowboys. I mean, they what threw for over 300 yards in that game against you with the backup quarterback. I mean, I think that the other part is, too, though, if you want to look at the other element of this, they have changed out a lot. Like I think when you say minimal moves, there have been kind of a lot of moves.

It just hasn't been the ones that we thought outside of Mike Zimmer being fired. So we thought that there would be a quarterback change. We thought that Harrison Smith and Adam Thielen might get traded. We thought that Daniil Hunter might get traded. And so they kept those guys. But you have new faces on the defensive line in Harrison Phillips and in Zedaria Smith, a new linebacker in Jordan Hicks, multiple new defensive backs, Lewis Seen, Patrick Peterson returns, of course course and Andrew Booth so there are different people there but the most different person that can have the biggest impact is Kevin O'Connell but but I don't think that it's really all that relevant last year how close some of the losses were because every team in the NFL is going to lose some of those games that are close. They just had a lot of close games themselves, um, that they won and every game kind of turned out that way. But like,

yeah, I mean, I guess you could make the argument if that, if they had gotten obscenely lucky with close games, which does happen, that there would be an entirely different narrative about this team. And maybe we'd be saying, Hey, aren't they ready to regress but uh i look at it as being you know they're they're running back some of the key pieces but that doesn't really have anything to do with what's going to happen coming up it's a it's an entirely new schedule i mean i can't possibly predict what's going to happen in the one score games this year i just don't think that it's really a sign that they were secretly incredible and just got really unlucky i think that they earned the losses that they had

and now turning it around in my mind is kevin o'connell having a better offense because when you look at those games that they lost close yes sometimes it was certainly the defense not coming up with a big stop there is no doubt about that but like they lost 14 to 7 to cleveland you put up seven points on cleveland you put up even in a win only 19 on detroit only 16 against the dallas cowboys i mean some of these losses that the offense kind of no showed in you know san francisco they gave up 34 but some of that is an interception in their own zone right like that they were not able to go uh back and forth with them they couldn't get a game-winning drive against baltimore they got a kick return

for touchdown so yeah i mean that's where it rests so much on kevin o'connell's scheme and getting more out of the players that they do return, which are mostly the same, and especially in some of those big situations. And you know, also last year, game management was not good last year. And so they've hired a game management guy who, I don't know, is a rocket scientist or something. And that could make a big difference as well. So even though I would say that last year does not predict this year when it comes to the close games, are there areas where they could be better that would help them in those spots? I think the answer is definitely yes. Okay.

Sorry for the intense, long-winded answer there. I'll keep going. Give me a second. Okay. All right. Football. Here we go. This is from at Blaine from. I think that's Nick, who is a big supporter of the show. Thank you, Nick. The Georgia Bulldogs had five first-round picks from the defensive side,

arguably the best college defense of all time. The 2019 LSU Tigers had five first-round picks as well, arguably the best offense of all time. The 2019 LSU Tigers had five first round picks as well, arguably the best offense of all time. What team are you taking in a head-to-head matchup? Oh, good question. That's a fun one. Well, Nick, I would say, you know, I'll go with the offense. I mean, I know defense wins championships and so forth, but you have a quarterback who in his second year is able to take a team to the Super Bowl, a quarterback who in his second year is able to take a team to the super bowl a receiver who in his first year is one of the most dominant deep receivers in the nfl and jamar chase justin jefferson who is a top three wide receiver in

the nfl right now i mean that's just the beginning there's other nfl players on that list and uh clyde edwards hilaire was the running back right I mean yeah I don't know that that's stoppable Georgia did have a lot of great players and a lot of deserving draft picks and freak athletes but the one thing that is always going to win in college football is open wide receivers and we see that with Alabama it's amazing how Alabama suddenly went from having mediocre quarterbacks like AJ McCarron and great running backs and just handing off all the time to now getting their wide receivers drafted in the top half of the first round every year I think that's just Nick Saban adapting

and knowing that the game is a lot about how open are your wide receivers ohio state certainly believes in the same thing i don't know that college defensive backs are stopping jamar chase and justin jefferson because no one even came remotely close to stopping them so even if there is some pressure on joe burrow he's a great playmaker you can slow down their pass rush a little bit with a running game yeah i don't know i i think i have to go with lsu even though the georgia defense was pretty darn incredible but um you know i think that the lsu offense was quite a bit better than alabama's offense this year though good but but better uh and you know alabama was in that game against georgia I think I'm going to go with LSU. Good question. All right, this comes from at Robert Seaman on Twitter.

What was your favorite Vikings draft pick? What was your least favorite draft pick? Biggest sleeper that could develop into a solid starter and most likely surprising bust. Well, okay, so I was trying to think about the last one first and most likely surprising bust is like was if it's likely does it surprise me uh i'm just messing with you robert but let me let me think this over for a second so uh let's see you want the favorite vikings draft pick well you know they're all my favorites right no i'm just kidding uh favorite draft pick. Well, you know, they're all my favorites, right?

No, I'm just kidding. Uh, favorite draft pick is, is Louis scene. I mean, I don't know, like what does favorite mean? The, uh, it, does it mean the guy that I think will be the best Louis scene is the guy I think will be the best. Cause he was the first pick and he's a really good prospect and he came from the Georgia defense. I mean mean i just met these guys so i can't really have a favorite person to interview yet um since lewis scene and andrew booth are the only ones well actually lewis scene is the only one i've interviewed in person so i'll say him for also that reason but i mean look that's always going to be the case right it's like the best value that they got was probably Andrew Booth because he was ranked so highly by a lot of people, but they didn't know what his health situation was going to be like.

So you could say that one. I mean, least favorite goes without saying, right? I mean, a second round guard with serious background concerns is a highly questionable pick and there's you know there's no way around that the biggest sleeper though i like this question because i think the biggest sleeper answer has to go to a caleb evans the corner who's taken in the fourth round out of missouri because he's got athleticism length speed quick speed, quickness that might have a chance to equate to a really good player. Playing at Missouri in the SEC, had pretty decent numbers there. If I'm not recalling correctly, or if I am recalling correctly, he was not the most

experienced player, but had some flashes flashes had some high-end skills so he's kind of the sleeper the fourth rounder i also really like the idea of drafting and taking shots on cornerbacks when it comes to the second round the third round the fourth round like those are really good bets to make so i thought that drafting three defensive backs in the first four rounds those were good bets to make when you're trying to rebuild defensive backs in the first four rounds those were good bets to make when you're trying to rebuild a unit that's going to be really important for stopping the past and the future so i guess i would go with a caleb evans in part because these other ones i just don't really buy an undersized linebacker gonna have to show me um you know a

defensive end in the fifth round that's lanky and big a running back a likely swing tackle a wide receiver who had some big plays in college but didn't get the ball a lot like none of those really sound to me like oh sleeper could be a future starter but a fourth round corner with length and athleticism now you have my interest so in terms of surprising bust no would anyone really surprise you like in a league where the number one pick sometimes turns out to be a huge bust is anyone really a surprising bust like would it ever shock you if whatever player they took turned out not to work um I always think that it's unclear. And I even saw a story the other day from a scout on Twitter,

former NFL scout on Twitter, who's not like one of those phony, I used to be a scout fake accounts, like it's a real person. And he was talking about how the team drafted somebody, one of the teams he used to work for. And then the coaching staff went over to them and said, is this the same guy that we watched on tape? Because in person, he looks way slower. And that does happen sometimes. So no busts would surprise me.

But I think that the best pick, if you're talking about value, is probably Andrew Booth. And the biggest sleeper could be caleb evans all right to co-norm 511 on twitter when grading quasey's draft how much do you take into account the situation spielman left him in the overall draft not being as deep as previous years well the second part of that's not true because even in the video released by the team you hear quesia da fomenta saying the strength of this draft is going to be from what did he say something like 30 to 60 or 30 to 50 it's clear that the vikings believed that they wanted to be picking a lot in that area which they did and that they felt like the strongest group of prospects that they're the

thickest group that they could get the most good players was kind of in the that second round early third round area and i consider if a draft goes and has good players through the third round it's really deep there's no such thing as a draft that's going to produce through the fourth fifth sixth seventh rounds so if you have players even into the second deep into the second round or early in third that's pretty good as far as depth goes um the situation that spielman left quesia daful mensa is a really good discussion to have because it was not an ideal situation for any general manager. And I think that when we evaluate Kweisi Adafo-Mensah in year one, and the first shot at this, we always do have to consider that he shows up and has negative cap space,

and he has three draft picks in the first 155. That has to be factored. Now, when we look back at it are there other paths they could have taken that i would have endorsed more than this one absolutely there were including trying to take even more of a step back and think all future on their moves as opposed to short term short term well we'll trade down in the draft. That'll be our long-term thing. That's where we're competitive rebuilding. You know, getting stuck in the middle is just very much a Vikings thing under Spielman

that you wanted to see them break free of. However, the situation that they took over, I think that the trade down, a major part of it was that they just didn't have a lot of draft capital. You know, they had later draft capital, but not the key draft picks in the first three rounds, which probably heavily influenced the decision to trade down twice is that when you only have three picks out of the first 155, it's very hard to rebuild multiple spots on your roster so trading down makes a lot of sense there i think it had to have been an influence to have especially the

cupboard bear in the secondary so you come in as quesia da fomensa and you're asked okay what's your first act like what are the first things that you need to improve on this roster well the first act was dealing with the immediate questions that he had to answer are you keeping these guys are you getting rid of these guys these established veteran players the choice was to keep them all of them except for anthony barr and sheldon richardson and rashad hill we'll miss rashad hill but the answer was, okay, we're going to keep them. We're going to keep Daniel Hunter, Harrison Smith, Kirk Cousins, and we're going to try to win this on culture and then draft more players and develop them and

develop last year's draft picks and see where we're at in a year. That seems to be their direction. Okay, great. what position do you need to address most to have to be more competitive than you were last year and down the road secondary was right at the top of that list hands down that they had nothing in the secondary to start with outside of cam danzler harrison smith and that's it uh and that's not a lot to build around so drafting Andrew Booth drafting Louis seen a hundred percent influenced by what Spielman left it I don't buy into the idea that the scouts that belong to Spielman were why they did x y and z scouts are going to do their job of what they're asked to do by the general manager.

And then he's going to make the decisions. And again, you see in that video that they released, like Kweisi Adafomens is the one on the phone with Brad Holmes calling that shot and making that decision. So it really didn't have a lot to do with the scouts so much as it is Kweisi's direction. That was, of course, heavily influenced by Rick Spielman. I mean, you show up to the chess board down a couple of pieces and you've got to find a way to try to get yourself back in the game with the roster and trading down was their answer. All right, let's go to, uh, at old dusty trail. Hold on. I need a drink. This has been intense.

Okay. All right. Uh, uh ota question here we go as the coaches get more time with the players on the field do you think we could see some of the younger players from the last regime get traded and maybe aren't considered scheme fits traded i would be surprised i mean it's just really hard to trade people at this point in the year so the way that things usually work out and i'm not saying this is impossible is the team will go through otas and minicamp and then they'll take a long break everybody goes fishing or goes to whatever italy and then they all come back the week before training camp and get ready for camp and so forth. And then it's off to the races for there after that. And nobody gets a break until the end of the season and so forth.

It's really hard to look at players at OTAs and then be like, nah, this guy doesn't fit. Let's trade him. And the same thing goes for training camp because everybody wants to keep their players. They've all got guys that they drafted. We don't see that many now. I mean, the Sam Bradford trade was that way, but we don't see that many trades right before the season.

The hay is kind of in the barn after the draft. And if you didn't trade your guys by the draft, you're probably not making too many trades after and we've also seen how if a team knows that you're trying to trade somebody or if the league knows the other teams know they're just going to force you to cut that guy i mean that's what happened with the new york giants and and james bradbury where everybody knew that they couldn't afford James Bradbury. So they just waited and then they had to cut him. So if there are people that do not fit in the

scheme, and I'm not even sure who this might be like what Ezra Cleveland, like I'm not really sure who wouldn't fit in the scheme. Maybe somebody on the defensive side, but again, who would that be? because they handpicked Harrison Phillips they handpicked Jordan Hicks they brought back Patrick Peterson but who's trading for Patrick Peterson if you don't like how he looks you're kind of just stuck with that unlike Madden you can't usually trade away players beyond guys that are like name players unless you're talking about giving them away for conditional seventh so yeah is it possible that they could trade away somebody for a conditional

seventh in the same way that they traded mike hughes like yeah that's that's possible um i don't know who that would be that is an immediate stands out to me as not a scheme fit but as far as significant players i don't think kevin o'connell's going to come in and say you know what actually i changed my mind on denille harrison smith you're not a fit like those players are good and they're going to fit whatever scheme you want them to be in um but where i thought you were going with this is that some of the younger players from the previous draft might get opportunities and that is an interesting discussion to have because now wyatt davis was not starting with the first team but there's a long way to go he's going to compete with jesse davis and with chris reed so he's going to compete with Jesse Davis and with Chris Reed. So he's going to get his chance.

Patrick Jones, Kenne Wongwu appears to be getting his chance. Cameron Bynum's role is pretty interesting here. Whether Janarius Robinson, who worked out with Daniil Hunter this offseason, can flash. Amir Smith-Marset, three wide receiver sets. We talked about this the other day. And I know some of you didn't love what i said about kj osborne and wide receiver threes but in a three receiver system you know someone like van jefferson for the rams is their fourth wide receiver like it's good to have a good fourth wide receiver

it we we've been trained recently by the vikings that your fourth receiver is someone who just barely belongs in the NFL. It's Chad Beebe or something, right? Like that's not how it needs to be in a three wide receiver system. So that was kind of my point is that teams that run three receivers all the time and put up huge numbers on offense usually have three really darn good receivers. If not your third receiver being great, liketonio brown or odell beckham being picked up by their teams to be wide receiver three that was my point it wasn't not an insult to kj osborne who had a very good year last year but he was 79th in pff grade like you know and

when he took over for theelin i think his top reception total was five. Uh, you know, that's that, that, that was my point about the wide receiver three thing, but Amir Smith, Marseille is a guy who has the physical talent to be very interesting in this offense. And I think that a lot of those draft picks from last year, the story is not yet written. And that will be the big discussion as we go forward which one of those guys are going to get their chance okay this comes from r u f i o x 3 i don't know what that's supposed to spell uh how was the off season let's see how has the off season up to this point differed from what you expected from the new regime well this one could be a whole 40 minutes on its own i think i'll just tell you this from the start from the moment that they fired mike

zimmer and rick spielman what i thought was this will be a full reset button they will take it all the way down to the screws and they will rebuild it in the same way that everyone like tanking is such a thing that people get caught up on. And so I'm not even saying tank, but reset button is much more appropriate. So think about like the year that Philadelphia stepped back with Carson Wentz, his last year in Philadelphia. That Philadelphia team went into the season with no real chance to win the Super Bowl. And they didn't make a ton of moves to win the Super Bowl. And they had drafted Jalen Hurts the year before, knowing that they might have to move on from Carson Wentz because he was expensive and not that good and so they looked forward with their previous draft and lived in reality a little bit there even though it upset carson wentz and philadelphia fans were like aghast that they would draft another quarterback when they didn't quote need one well turned out that you know now they've been able to bring on james bradbury aj brown like they reset their

cap situation to the point where they could trade for aj brown and give him a gazillion dollars like that's what i thought the vikings plan was going to be was to not tear it down but really get that salary cap right and and accumulate more draft picks without having to trade down the way that they did and and then try to get as much young ish or completely young talent as they could on the field so instead of signing a chris reed or jesse davis you were playing a wyatt davis even if you're not sure and even if he turns out to be bad, at least, you know, that that's a position you have to fill for the next year. But think about like this, when you plug holes for short term and let's say Chris Reed is fine at right guard, but not that good. And he beats out Jesse Davis and they cut Jesse Davis. Let's just say, and Chris Reed plays the year

and he ranks 43rd among guards. Well, that's not a pro bowler for the future. Not someone you're going to really sign on to long-term. Then what happens? The guy was on a one-year contract. If he is, I have to check. Maybe it's a two-year deal, but it's not a long-term thing. And then you've got to fill right guard again. And this is where we've sort of ended up, right? Is when you're trying to constantly fill from the bottom of the barrel for some important positions, especially with Kirk Cousins as your quarterback guard is important as the previous regime did not seem to acknowledge. But part of the reason they couldn't acknowledge it was because the cap was so bad that they

couldn't spend a lot of money there. And that i thought they would go differently with this group they have not and now they have some of the same challenges roster wise and how they handle that going into next year and i know we're like far down the road but they've put themselves in a more difficult spot to readjust that for next year and so that's where i thought it would be different. I wasn't sure whether they would move on from Kirk. I kind of thought that they would, but even if they didn't and just let it play out without giving him an extension,

you could have seen that as long-term that's going to open up all that cap space next year and not hurt them down the road. But now it has void years. Now it does hurt them down the road. So that's the biggest difference for me. Okay. Need another sip of Diet Dr. Pepper. Great questions, guys. I mean, honestly, what is the date? May something, middle of May, and you guys have awesome questions in the middle of May the dedication this is what I've found from Purple Insider just a side here the dedication of Vikings fans to 24-7 365 wanting to know every detail being inquisitive caring about this team from top to bottom all the time and wanting to be knowledgeable about this team it it is so great to always talk about because of that because you guys always have interesting stuff that that i get to talk about and and honestly like there's so many good topics

here to discuss that um you know it helps me even like think of ideas of things to write about things to talk about. So I just, you know, I try to share my appreciation for that. Every show just wanted to stop and say that and catch my breath a little from the intensity of the last question. Okay. This is from at seven Oh nine Lori on Twitter. when do they expect Andrew Booth Jr. to be healthy enough to practice with the team? Well, he was practicing a little with the team the other day at OTAs, but not participating in the more intense like 11 on 11s, which, you know, as I mentioned, is it was a little bit muted from maybe past years on what the 11 on 11s looked like in front of the media. Now, they might have been different on other days, but he's not doing like those full everybody's out on the field type of drills yet as he had a core muscle surgery that alleviated an issue that was long-term for him.

And that was why he had said he hadn't been healthy since high school. But that was not the surgery that kept him out of the combine. And you could see why this would be a concern. That was a quad surgery, I believe, that is keeping him out presently. But he's expected to be ready for training camp. We'll keep an eye on it. He's one of the first guys we look for when we go out there. We've got, what, two more weeks where we're out once for OTAs, and then I think three days in a row or two days in a row for minicamp. So if he gets on the field for any of those drills by

minicamp, I think that's a big win for them them but my guess is it will be training camp when he is really ready to practice with the team it is not insanely vital that he's out there practicing like really doing the hardcore drills with the full team uh at this point i i don't look at that as oh no he's so far behind he's out there he's seeing what they're doing. He's in all the meetings. If it was some different circumstance where he was completely away from the team, if it was a contract issue or something like that, it doesn't happen anymore with rookies, but it used to. If that was the case, then I would say, oh man, this is going to be a problem. If he couldn't even go out there and stretch and warm up, if he just had surgery, maybe

that would be an issue. If he was recovering somewhere else with his own personal trainer, which does happen, then maybe that would be a problem. As for right now, though, we'll go on the assumption that he's going to be ready for training camp and he'll go out there as the backup to cam danzler it'll be danzler shannon sullivan patrick peterson and then andrew booth right behind them and we'll see how it all plays out the concern that you have is that when someone has had this many surgeries other things might crop up because of that or he might just be a little behind

physically even if he's healthier not in the same level of shape as other guys because what usually happens is these guys work themselves up to be ready for camp and then that takes them over to the next level to be ready for the season so if you're starting from behind we've seen this before somebody like Latavius Murray got behind Pat El elfline got behind with injuries in training camp christian derisaw needed a few extra weeks that's where you start to worry is if it leaks into training camp so we'll see uh it'll be something that every day number what is he 23 23 is one of the first guys we look for okay one more this from scotty weebles on twitter at scotty weebles good for you

uh is it ridiculous to think that this team won't be much improved over last year we have an actual right guard competition and upgraded our offensive coordinator and uh creative head coach, even with marginal improvement on defense, don't you think our team could be much improved? Okay. So that kind of went in a different direction because of the phrasing that I thought it was going to, but focus on the last part. Don't you that the team will be much improved but it's a lot more variance than it was last year i am a lot less confident in that than i was last year and i've cited many times the vegas under, which doesn't believe it will be different. Eight and a half. But I wouldn't bet it. And I'm not here to give you gambling advice.

If you're good at that, then you do you and you believe what you believe because you're better than me at gambling. I don't really know how to, you know, weigh over unders and bet them like gambling. Listen to a gambling podcast for that but for me it would be very risky to bet a team that is facing so many quarterbacks that could go one way or the other that has a brand new head coach that like look you can talk yourself into he's a creative offensive coordinator and creative head coach but you he could also be bad like that's what i mean by the variance like we don't know i think my first impression of kevin o'connell has been very good like i think

that he is a well-grounded human being which is always the first thing i look for uh and why i've always had i think a good radar for when coaches are an atrocity. Matt Patricia, Urban Meyer, Joe Judge, like these guys from day one were not rooted in reality. They were just some sort of like bizarre football bot. That is not Kevin O'Connell. Seems to relate to people extremely well. Comes across like a very bright, well-grounded, humble guy. I think that's necessary. That doesn't mean he's going to be great right off the bat. And we don't know that. comes across like a very bright, well-grounded, humble guy, I think that's necessary. That

doesn't mean he's going to be great right off the bat. And we don't know that. He could be, but we don't know that. So there's a lot of variance. Like, don't I think they could be much improved? Well, I really, I think that there is a path. I think that there's a scenario, a world, so to speak, where they are much improved. But as soon as you talk yourself into it, you could talk yourself right out of it. And hey, this is what makes Vikings 2022 an interesting discussion. But OK, you try to talk me into it and you say, all right, well, the right guard is better, I guess. I mean, Chris Reed and Jesse Davis davis like is that a game changer

was josh klein a game changer he's better than both of these guys for his career but okay all right well fine kevin o'connell's gonna be a better offensive mind than they were last year okay is he a better offensive mind than gary kub? I don't know. Like, how much better do you need to be to really shift who this team is, is the counterpoint there. Like, do you need to be 12th in offense instead of 14th? No, you probably need to be like fifth. Can Kevin O'Connell take this group,

this quarterback, to fifth? Well, the Rams last year were only seventh, by the way. So that's a tough task because they don't have the weapons or the offensive line of the Ramsams last year were only seventh by the way so that's a tough task because they don't have the weapons or the offensive line of the rams from last year and they were seventh with a quarterback that has some flaws that is not aaron rogers for example so you can swing back and forth on talking yourself into and out of this team and that's one of the things that makes them i think a good discussion throughout this offseason is is what different factors are going to play into this but if you when i went through the w's and l's and had to take a guess at what their record would be

i came up with a little better one more win because of coaching i'm not giving any wins because the right guard is chris reed instead of oli udo that's just not how this works i mean even if you went from oli udo to brandon sheriff you're probably not giving a whole win for a right guard uh even in this situation so i don't know like they face quarterbacks that are questionable but some defenses and some weapons that are better maybe than what they faced last year yeah i have a tough time going wildly wildly different from where they were last year marginal improvement on defense not guaranteed either that's another thing that like can you talk yourself into that new scheme all right well was mike zimmer scheme the problem they had 51 sacks last year well the secondary is better uh maybe but there's

rookies playing in the secondary is that going to automatically make them better is eric kendricks and harrison smith still the same versions of themselves that were great is zedarius smith healthy is daniel hunter healthy like so this is why they play the games as chris berman said but no i'm not i'm gonna have to they're gonna have to prove it to me which is going to be a hard take to repeat month after month here as we wait for training camp but like that's the case is because of the approach that they took in not vastly overhauling the roster, they're going to really have to prove that they can be better than that eight or nine win team as they go along.

And they're going to have to show that I think right off the bat, um, or they could fall behind. So yeah, great. I mean, great question, but I don't think that as the objective observer, and this is why I lean on Vegas a lot, because like those are the people putting the money down to say to check myself. Where am I at with this team versus where the people who are the smartest when it comes to the money and the people who make the most money off of this? What are they saying? And I think it's fair for both of of us me and vegas to kind of still be in the middle with this team until they show otherwise but if you're talking yourself into it i mean i'm not going to tell you you're a fool like for saying hey these things could be a lot

better because there was a lot last year that was troublesome that they could improve on so you know for the middle of may you're not going to find more intense one person in a room talking to themselves into a microphone about football than that. So I appreciate you all. Thank you so much for your questions. If I didn't get to your question and you sent me one recently, uh, you're on the way. I'm, I'm, I'm working my way through them. And, uh, yeah. So we'll rag a show coming up at some point this week. And, uh, Paul Hoda, Wanek, and I will be here. Brett Coleman, who's a great YouTuber. We were supposed to catch up before the draft didn't end up working out. Just things got busy. So he's going to be on the show as well. At some point here soon,

we'll get Courtney back on. So good stuff, everybody. Thanks for your time. And we will talk to you soon.