Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Emergency podcast: Reacting to the Vikings signing Patrick Peterson

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

The Vikings added a veteran corner at a high price. Will it work out? What does Peterson's recent play say about the odds he changes the Vikings' defense for the better? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate. Hello and welcome to an emergency episode of Purple Insider, still brought to you by Scout Logistics and by Symbol, the stock market for sports. Well, Sam, yesterday I started out the podcast saying, is the Vikings stock up now that they've signed Delvin Tomlinson? Why don't we start it the same way? Is their stock up now that they have signed Patrick Peterson? A deal that I must tell you, Sam, now kind of two for two on not really seeing these coming. I expected them to look very hard

and very close at a lot of different veteran cornerbacks. Peterson on a one year, $10 million deal was not really on my radar. Well, per usual, the Vikings decide to do

the opposite of what we prescribe for them to do. So I guess that's not it shouldn't be a total shock. We've been in this business long enough to know that they're going to zig when we for them to do. So I guess that's not, it shouldn't be a total shock. We've been in this business long enough to know that they're going to zig when we want them to zag. I think that their stock might be up in the public perception. It seems like there's a lot of excitement on social media

because this is a splashy name. This is an eight-time pro bowler who was awesome with Arizona for a long time. You know, Johnny Raincloud approach to this for me is that this feels like one of those corners who might be approaching that 30 year old cliff. I know it's not like a hard and fast rule that you have to continue declining once you've started to decline. But like, you know, we saw it with Xavier Rhodes.

He had two straight years of decline and then switched systems and was pretty good with Indianapolis. So it can happen that you bounce back in a new scheme, new setting. That being said, Patrick Peterson was below average last year as a corner, and he was extremely penalty prone. Like if you look at there's a stat floating around that um he hasn't allowed more than one 100 yard game in like five or six seasons but he committed 14 penalties last year um that's not showing up in his yardage allowed those are just like automatic first downs that he's giving up through defensive holding calls, pass interference calls.

So I got to get a closer look, first of all. I mean, we're just reacting to this now. Haven't watched any of the All-22 yet. I probably will. Haven't broken this down as in-depth as I want to. But my gut reaction is that this feels like kind of a gamble. And you are, you know, we talked about last night with the ways you could open up cap space between restructuring Thielen and finagling things a little bit. You could probably sneak in one more big signing.

So this is it. You don't have a lot left. Maybe you extend Harrison Smith and open some things up. But they've really decided to go all in on big names um this is a big name in the twilight though of his career the Dalvin Tomlinson he's probably in his prime Patrick Peterson's not in his prime so can you squeeze like the remnants of what he used to be out of him and make him your starting outside corner. This feels like sign art to Mike Hughes. He feels like it's going to be Peterson, Dantzler, and Gladney.

And those are your three. And I'm excited to cover Patrick Peterson. I think he's going to be a fun veteran to cover, and they needed that in their secondary. I am nervous, though, about the potential cliff that he's about to fall off. Yeah. So there's a lot of thoughts sort of running through my head here. Number one is we didn't see it coming with this specific player. And we prescribed, as you mentioned, taking a lot of shots on a lot of good players as opposed to putting all the chips into one player

but I think we also were saying that because we felt like it was very possible that they would do exactly this because this is Vikings I mean recent Vikings when they had past success with some free agent signings like your Linval Joseph your your Captain Munnerlyn, your Terrence Newman. Those were much more mid-pack type of free agent players that they brought in and ended up with home run type of signings. But in recent years, it's been the big names. It's been Sheldon Richardson. It's been trading for Yannick Ngakwe. It's been paying Anthony Barr a bunch of money, which technically was a free agent signing because he hit free agency and then returned to the Vikings. And then now, and even Michael Pierce would have been the biggest name nose tackle by a thousand miles last year. He was, you know, a $9 million a year player when they signed him.

And so here we are with two more big name players with Delvin Tomlinson. You have a much less hard time talking me into it because he's 27. He's in his prime. He's coming off his rookie deal. And the guy is really good at what he does. And I would project forward that he'll keep being really good. And if 2022 was a Super Bowl year for you, you still have Delvin Tomlinson. And if you love the guy, you could sign him again and he'll probably keep being good into his 30s. This one is different from a long-term perspective. There really is no long-term perspective that you can reasonably expect. Like, yes, it's possible that he is the second coming of Charles Woodson, though. I, I'm not sure he's Charles Woodson level talent. Charles

Woodson is an all timer. Um, but, but Peterson's great. I mean, like you said, eight-time Pro Bowler. Great, great player in his prime. There's maybe a Terrence Newman vibe of someone who comes here late in their career and then extends their prime way past where you would expect. But it's not just a one-year dip from last year. The last two seasons, he's allowed over 100 quarterback rating he's been under a 65 coverage grade which is average is hovering around 65 he was injured or was it the suspension in 2019 suspension suspension right so he was out suspended in 2019 didn't play the full

season and then comes back plays almost 700 snaps, and he was not targeted a ton, which may be what we hear when we talk to Mike Zimmer about this, that when you're playing almost 700 coverage snaps and only 75 targets, they're not targeting you a ton. But when teams did target him, they had success. And as you mentioned with the penalties, that would be the most concerning thing because that's the thing that makes you say losing a step um now if he gives them average to above average play for the price that could be pretty valuable for them in 2021 and that's good and that's helpful for you you needed that that was something that i was sort of pushing for like you're gonna have to get another corner you can't leave this situation coverage is just as important as pass rush for this defense the only thing i wonder about though

is if it doesn't work out and he doesn't give them what they're hoping which would be maybe average to above average play was it worth what you spent versus all the other people on the free agent market that you could have gotten that is is where I hesitate to say that, you know, hey, thumbs up, great move. You got a great player. Well, you may have, or you may have gotten a declining veteran who will say, hey, remember when he played at the end of his career for the Vikings? There have been plenty of those guys in the past, but my hesitation is really the money that you're spending.

It's sort of like the Delvin Tomlinson where it's not the player, it's the contract. And I feel like we say that all the time about these guys. But that's been the MO of this team is we'll throw more money at someone with a name than, say, a Dory Jackson. And I don't know what Jackson will get or, you know, a number of other free agents. Like there's probably a dozen corners who can play and who played better than Patrick Peterson last year. That's that's the hold up for me. Well, it's curious, too, because the reports were that they were looking into a slot corner in Mackenzie Alexander. And then I rattled off. Well, there's a bunch of slot corners available. You can go after Brian Poole or Troy Hill or Kawan Williams.

They're all very good. And I think if you want to go the outside route, there's a ton of those options as well. And again, we don't know how the market's going to fall price wise, but Malcolm Butler, you know, Josh Norman is an available veteran. Jason McCourty, like Buster Screen, there's a lot of recognizable names in their 30s out there. So I guess you are thinking, all right, of the veterans available, we like Patrick Peterson the most. But this was not a very surgical first couple days of free agency for the Vikings.

I mean, they're just slapping big old Band-Aids on things instead of trying to sort of piece this together with a lot of value and a lot of tact and thought. No, I mean, they're taking big swings and, you know, they might come up like Miguel Sano. They might just strike out because they are swinging for the fences here. And when you are giving a big one-year deal and you have limited money you'd like to feel more confident than this i i don't i wish we didn't have to kind of give all the red flags but

i think they exist here and cornerback is a position where you decline a little faster with age you these receivers in this league are so good now that I feel like the discrepancy is getting greater all the time between the receiving play and the coverage play. So some people have raised the possibility of him maybe playing a little safety hybrid. I don't buy that. I don't think they would spend $10 million to switch a guy's position when there are going to be innumerable safeties available here for cheap. I can't get on board with that. So I guess that's another way of saying that I have my skepticism about this. So I was trying to figure out how old Darrell Revis was when he dropped off the map. Let's see. He would have been it would have been 2015 when he really had that fall from when he was with

new england to the new york jets and then that's when it started to slip and that was you know maybe seven eight years into his career so the best corner that i've ever seen in my watching of football durell revis that was when he started to slip was about this age, about like 30, 31 years old. And, you know, Peterson is faster. He's not quite as big as someone like Darrell Rivas, but you know, when you see that you should have some concerns about whether that's going to continue to go that way, because it's not just last year. It's really, I mean, even going back to 2017, by his numbers, we're not quite of the same caliber. He committed a lot of penalties then, and he always kind of has, but last year really went up through the roof.

And so, you know, I guess that leaves me with a number of different questions as like, okay, well, how are you fixing all of the rest of the things now? And that's the biggest one, because when you spend $10 million on one guy, then how are you fixing guard? And I'm the one who sometimes will say like, look, it's kind of your quarterback who causes some of the pressure. And if we're blaming the left guard all the time, like, what are we really doing here? But at the same time, we we're you're spending so much on the defensive side now so let's assume that his cap it's going to be 10 million because it's a one year 10 million dollar deal um i'm sure there's always ways but let's assume it's 10 million so

that's 16 mil just for next year that is poured into defensive players whose impact is questionable it's you didn't get someone who is like an immediate guaranteed superstar complete game changer i mean yannick agakwe was a safer bet than either either one of these guys and did not work out like his recent history in was all he does is sack the quarterback he was was, there were all those stats, fifth most sacks since whatever year and all that sort of stuff. And that didn't work out and it left this giant gaping hole. And so if either one of these don't work out, you're going to have spent so much money there and no money on the offensive line or having to go down into the bargain barrel on the offensive line again. And you're left thinking we did it again. You know, I mean, it's just like that's we, we, I just, you know,

feel like all the things that we said sort of warning signs like, Hey, Vikings don't kind of repeat some of the same mistakes. And it's not a guarantee that this will be a mistake. Patrick Peterson next year might be absolutely fantastic. He has that amount of talent, but if you think of everything as a gamble and a percentage, and then you try to figure out, well, what, you know, number of points will this save us on defense? If Patrick Peterson is even an average Patrick Peterson over the last four years, how many points does that

improve us versus how many dollars we're giving them how many points does 28 pressures and good run stuffing improve us versus what a pass rusher might and i can't make it work they have to improve by like a hundred points in point differential sam and a lot of their cap space that they had opened is spent on two players that don't really get you anywhere close based on what you would project for them next year. Yeah, this is Zimmer flexing his muscles big time and getting his way. And this has been a trend. And like you said, this could be an oops, we did it again moment where they voluntarily let a starter and a good starter on the offensive line go and don't take meaningful steps to replace them that's shocking that that that would happen again and it might be happening

again i mean i still think they find a way to at least bring in a guard i mean even if it's brett jones coming back like i think they'll find a way to add to that room, but it could be, again, they're trusting a draft pick. And, you know, Rashad Hill, I guess, is looking more and more like you're starting left tackle. I'll spin one thing positively here. I think the Vikings lost a handful of games last year very directly because of cornerback gaffes. The Seattle game is obviously the biggest example. The game-winning touchdown against the Cowboys was a miscommunication. They almost lost the Jacksonville game for the same reason,

because there was a flub, I want to say, on the two-point conversion that allowed that game to be tied and go to overtime. So with Patrick Peterson, is he going to know what to do in the fourth quarter? Yes. I feel pretty confident about that. Is he going to have a positive influence on Jeff Gladney, Cameron Dantzler? Yes. So in that sense, it's good. It's just a matter of, can he keep up with some of the receivers in this league? And that is still a bit of a question to me. Can you win with your mind? I guess a little bit.

I mean, Terrence Newman did it, but he was a very unique player who just like stayed in incredible shape. He was built a little smaller, so he didn't wear down as fast. And he was an astonishing student of the game. I don't know all of Peterson's habits yet. I don't know if that's the kind of player that he is, if he's going to age well or not. I'm sure we'll talk to him in the next

few days. We'll find out more. We'll talk to coaches and teammates and get more of an idea of what he's going to bring. Until I find that stuff out, I don't know if I can declare him immune to the age monster. I feel the same way. And I'm just pulling up like Mike Hughes and his small sample size coverage grades, because the coverage grade last year for Patrick Peterson was 53.1, which was 60th out of 83, I think. Uh, and Mike Hughes in his three limited seasons, 60.2, 59.6, and 56.7, which are all hovering around average below average. But Mike Hughes, at least by last year's standard, played better than Patrick Peterson. Now, you can't trust Hughes in terms of his health.

Of course not. It's just to try and give a baseline of how well he played. That Patrick Peterson's PFF grade from last year in coverage was only slightly better than Jeff Gladney's, which was 48.1. That should concern you that it's not going to bounce back up because if it doesn't, there were a lot of games last year where you mentioned gaffes in cornerback play. Well, I remember specifically the Buffalo game where I think it

was Stefan Diggs, or maybe it was John Brown kind of took Patrick Peterson to task a couple of times and they had success in throwing against him. And that didn't look like the same version of the player who was a time pro bowler. And that's where you say that the concern here is more of just the risk that you're taking. It's not that the upside doesn't exist. The upside certainly exists. And it's not that it can't be really good for you. It definitely could be really good for you. It's just that when you have to look back two years to make the case for it being really,

really impactful, that's where just as someone who always kind of plays the odds with every comment that I make or every opinion that I come up with, this is one where the odds are against it. I guess that's the way that I would put it. What are the odds of Patrick Peterson being worth $10 million to the Minnesota Vikings defense next year? not super high. That's the way that I would put it. Well, I think I did the exercise before free agency started. I said, what could you have bought last year with the $9 million per year that you gave Michael Pierce? And I laid out like four free agents that could have equaled $9 million.

And I think we could probably, you know, hindsight being 2020, do the same thing next year and say, well, you could have done this and you probably could have had three productive starters. And you might not bat 100%, but you might get a couple that come in and overachieve at a low cost. I don't know if you can exceed expectations at one year, $10 million, unless you're really, really good. And if you're really, really good. And, and if you're really, really good, unfortunately, you're probably not getting him back. So you really need to be good to make this work for the Vikings.

Cause this is probably a rental. I mean, if, if Patrick Peterson looks like his former self and the cap goes way up, he's probably looking at a longer term deal elsewhere, not here. Unless he's extremely fond of Minnesota. But I've got some I've got some reservations about this. And, you know, I mentioned I look at the free agent list. I think that you probably could have a number of these guys if you just waited a little longer, kind of an impatient approach, to be honest with you, when we knew going in and this I believe this is still true, that there will be like a final wave of free agents that come at tremendous value. And I don't understand why you wouldn't want to wait and see

what comes of that. Maybe they still plan to do that with the very last couple million they have. But they've spent an awful lot at the front end of free agency when there's a pretty vast supply. Hey, everybody, want to tell you about our friends at Symbol. Symbol is a new sports marketplace where you can trade shares of professional teams like stocks. So as we jump fully into free agency season, you're going to want to get in on teams now before your team's stock rises. Go to symbol.app, that is S-I-M-B-U-L-L dot A-P-P. Sign up using the promo code purple and get a $10 deposit bonus if you're a first time user, and then you are off and rolling. Here's how it works. You buy stocks of your teams, and when your team wins, you earn cash payouts that are instantly deposited. If you sign up for Symbol, you also get updates emailed to you directly with the trends

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original Minnesota sports inspired goods, code Purple Insider for free shipping. Well, that's what I was thinking about too, Sam, is just that, you know, patience pays off. And one of the guys that I really like following is Andrew Brandt on Twitter. And he is extremely snarky about free agency because he'll quote tweet a deal and say it's not really worth that much. Or he'll say that one will be gone in two years. And you could look at him and be like, oh, come on, hater. But he was in the Green Bay Packers front office and is well aware of how risky signings in the first two days don't always work out. And if you go back and you look at last year's

signings, some of the ones that were really exciting at the time, you go, Oh, wow. I guess, you know, that didn't really work out for them, even though they won March. And it always felt like to me, they would, with a lack of cap space, have to take the, we're going to have to be really savvy and pick up a number of guys for $2 million and make that work. And instead, well, they let one of those guys that I would have called the savvy signing of Fadi Adenabo, he signs with the New York york giants for 2.5 million dollars i would have called that a savvy signing if the vikings had signed the same player same you know on paper if his name was just like joe smith and he had 42 pressures last year and seven sacks the previous year as a rotational player i would have said ooh savvy signing you know you get kind of a low-key pass rusher here

and instead they sort of overpay for Steven Weatherly, which is fine. It's not a huge overpay, but then, you know, overpay for a run stuffer compared to the rest of the run stuffing market overpay for a corner based on the corner market. Justin Coleman signed for $2.5 million, I believe with the Miami dolphins, correct me if that number is wrong, but I mean, Justin Coleman was playing for Detroit disaster, total mess in the secondary, but he's a good player. Like his, his career has been good player and signs for seven and a half million dollars less. So exciting signing for sure. And they'll, you know, get to put Patrick Peterson in a purple Jersey, a guy who is a big name superstar. But when we look at the end of the day production

for next year and this is what i wanted to ask you what is it going to be for the vikings defense if they let's just say add a pass rusher from here but we know that it can't be a superstar pass rusher maybe they add one more name since they're all about names maybe it'll be you know melvin ingram or jadavia clowney let's just say that they add one more or draft or draft one in the first round and replace safety on the cheap because you're going to have to or or is with a draft pick. Like, what are we projecting them to rank in defense in like best case, middle case and worst case scenarios with Delvin Tomlinson and Patrick Peterson? Yeah, so 29th last year, that that's our baseline. I think worst case scenario, you I guess worst case scenario would be that you lose Hunter and don't really have a good way to replace him. That's the worst, worst case scenario.

Your secondary doesn't take a meaningful step, which we people need to, I think, accept that as a possibility because progress is not always linear. So that's going to be my mantra forever and always like second year players might not take a step from their first year. They might be the same. They might even be a little worse. It's not a guarantee that Gladney and Dantzler are better. Your secondary could be bad again. I don't see how your front seven is worse if you stay healthy. So I think the worst case scenario is probably like high 20s. And when I say high, no, I mean low 20s, like 21st, 22nd, 23rd. Best case scenario is you do keep Hunter, you do stay healthy,

and you have a draft pick who contributes immediately. So maybe that's an edge. Maybe that's a safety. Someone like Antoine Winfield for the Bucs last year who steps in and actually contributes. So I think the defense, best case, could get back to top half in the league. I think probably peaking around 10th. And then did you cost the offense a chance at improving by those investments

i think that's also possible um if we're using yards they were fourth last year but i don't consider them the number four offense i'd say if you find an aggregate of all the metrics they're probably like eighth or ninth but you asked about the defense specifically um and and i think it's probably ranging between 10th and 23rd i don't think they're gonna be like bottom quarter again that was just the convergence of a lot of horrible things happening but i don't think they're like guaranteed to be 2017 vikes again well the the setup to the question was those three answers are not all that different and And you answered it exactly that way. Like the difference between being the 10th best defense and 20th best defense is, you

know, a good number of points for sure, but it still lands them in the middle. The worst case, they're probably not a horror show like they were last year. The middle case is that they become just decent at what they do, which is probably like 15th. And that one is obviously the most likely. And the best case, I just don't see it being that much higher, even if Patrick Peterson plays really well,

because there are still so many questions about the defense. And this is what happens when you invest in singular players with so much money. And I mean, last year, it's like when you put so much into Anthony Barr and then he gets hurt, it's like, oh, could have really used all that other money to give to other people to fill this out. They are still going to be playing with matches here on defense. It appears like their bet for a depth pass rusher being Stephen Weatherly is one that, you know, maybe pays okay, but it's not one that's a big boom. Their bet on DJ Wanham, they've made that same bet on a number of players before who are fourth round picks that didn't sack anyone in college.

So that one is one that doesn't often pay out big. Your linebacker depth is Nick Vigil, who I had never heard of before. Your, you know, safety situation, if they are able to bring back Anthony Harris, is pretty solid. But can it make up for if Cam Dantzler gets hurt or if Jeff Gladney doesn't adapt well to playing in the nickel? Probably not. That's where if you bring in Mackenzie Alexander and he can play either, it gives you a little more flexibility. Patrick Peterson is not a guy who can play either i think he could play better than he did last year and i saw mike clay of espn talking about how arizona played a

ton of man coverage which may have hurt him a little bit and maybe they can play a little more zone with him this year like mike zimmer knows ways to help out his guys and he's made a career out of it so the middle is the middle for a reason. It's the most likely scenario. It's just how much does this help when you usually in the secondary, it's a weakest link type of situation. When Mike Hughes played on that game against Dallas a couple of years ago, they attacked him what, like 16 times they threw it his way. Like they'll go after the weakest link. And so if you put all of your money into two guys and you don't have depth behind, I mean now, cause your depth is still like Mike Hughes.

We'll see if he can even play. And then it's Harrison hand, whoever you draft in the fifth round, like those kinds of things. I mean, it's, it's still leaving you in a lot of places with, Oh, someone turned an ankle and now you're playing someone who is just not great. And it's still leaving you at wide receiver three, maybe with Chad BB and at left guard, maybe with Dakota Dozier. I mean, it's just like, you're, you really are repeating history with this. Even if I love the player that Patrick Peterson was. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head at the end there

that one of the most disappointing things about this is that it sort of breathes confirmation to the fact that the Vikings are not concerned with improving their offense. That's obvious right now, right? You haven't lifted a finger to strengthen it. You've weakened it by letting go of Riley Reif. And maybe you had to do one to accomplish the other. And they've chosen to invest in the defense and try to fix it.

So that's the strategy they've taken. And I can respect that. It's disappointing, though, because I think we both agreed that there was more meat on the bone last year, but the Vikings seemed content with what they had, and the offensive line could continue to be a problem. I don't think there's a lot of scenarios where you can count on your draft pick to step in and be terrific immediately. It is possible, but with the 14th pick, I don't know. I mean, Tristan Wirfs went to Tampa, and he was pretty impactful, terrific immediately it is possible but with the 14th pick i don't know i mean you know like

tristan werfs went to tampa and he was pretty impactful but that's kind of once in a blue moon you don't always get that um you know ezra cleveland took a little bit brian o'neill took a little bit so i i don't know if the offense is going to get any attention the chad bb move feels like there's they're saying okay you're a wide receiver three maybe a draft pick competes with you um offensive line is going to be patchwork so hopefully there's another kind of uh ace in the hole here where where they can find someone at value like we've been discussing but i think the lack of attention on offense should dishearten Vikings fans a little bit. And the thing is, if you rank 11th in offense, that will get you to the playoffs. If you have

a decent defense, will it get you any farther? And this is where I kind of want to wrap up the conversation is just that our big question going into this offseason was, will it be a longer term approach or will it be all in on 2020? And you might as well start printing the all in shirts right now, because that is exactly what they're doing. I mean, they have now made it official with this. The Delvin Tomlinson thing I could have seen as, hey, we'll sign him to a two year deal if we love him. We'll sign him even longer than that. But we've got two years of his prime here which is great and he's a young player and he's good at football you could get behind that one is a longer term type of play because of his age this says no no no no we're fixing it this year we're going for it this year we're trying to win the nfc north and does the 11th the 8th the 14th best offense like did those things get you closer to a super bowl

and the answer is probably not i mean you look at the team that just outscored the vikings i think it was the las vegas raiders and what did they go like seven and nine with a bad defense so they're doing the same thing like look yourself in the mirror that vegas is signing a bunch of players off a free agency like Yanni Kagakwe, and they added a couple other guys to improve their defensive line to try to be a little bit better on defense. And they'll probably be about the same on offense with Derek Carr as their quarterback. It's like Vikings in the AFC West right over there. Do you want to switch spaces with them? And if the answer is not is not really well then you've probably got a

different feeling on which way they should have gone now that doesn't mean that they can't make some other moves here that i would say wow you kind of straddled the line of doing both things and the area that they could do that in is in the wide receiver market the wide receiver market. The wide receiver market is still a plenty. There's guys everywhere and they could add, you know, another rotational pass rusher. It's just that the one glaring spot, the one that Jeremiah Searles calls the Winnebago, the offensive line. I don't see it. I just don't see a path to them having a good offensive line next year. And right now it's hard to even see an average offensive line because you only have three players and we're only really sure one of them is any good out of five.

No, you're totally right. I'm, I'm looking at the, the available offensive lineman left right now. There are some pretty big tackle names, but you probably have overspent. You probably can't bring them in. You can have a, you know, like I've prescribed Lane Taylor as an option, somebody who was hurt in a previous year who maybe could bounce back.

That's probably the kind of solution that you're looking at right now if you do bring in someone else, wide receiver market is, is crazy slow. Like I I'm a man, Curtis, Curtis Samuel waited until the third day to go and didn't go for like terribly much three years,

34 million. I expected him to go for way more than that. Corey Davis is the highest paid receiver in free agency so far. That's awfully surprising to me. So the Vikings might know something we don't. That's possible. We are not future fortune tellers is the word I'm looking for. But grading them on what they've done so far, it's not an A.

It's below an A. It might not be a B. They have a chance to salvage it, though. You're right. So we'll be patient. We're telling them to be patient. We'll be patient as well before we give the final declaration on what that grade is. Hey, everyone.

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That's my guess. This waves a big old flag of our jobs are on the line and we're going to go get a guy who's proven and who is, you know who is expensive but we think that we absolutely need to to get over the hump to get back to being a good defense and we're gonna just throw caution to the wind because for them maybe they view it as no downside like the downside is everybody's out next year the upside is that this works out great and our defense bounces back and we go 11 and 5 and then off to the races back into the playoffs and it's Zimmer Spielman for the foreseeable future like that's I mean I think that there's just more at play than they wanted to sign a decent corner yeah I I can't fault you for for saying that I think you're right and I think they're seeing the lay of the land in the NFC North.

The Lions are rebuilding. The Bears still haven't figured out quarterback. And the Packers are probably going to take a step back. I know we said that last year, too. But the NFC North is there for the taking. And right now I see a top half offense, top half defense that could vie for that crown. And I brought this up in previous shows, too. If you're just trying to get there, then you've done the correct things.

If you're trying to win a title, I don't know if you've done the correct things. I still don't know how this gets you too much closer, but it makes you more competitive. And with fans in the stands, that will lead to more excitement and Patrick Peterson's jerseys will sell really well. And there will be buzz around this signing. I guess we are the negative balance to all of that collar. We are the rain cloud that creeps in on uh on otherwise a happy moment in vikings football well i think we're just the odds makers i would say that we're just the odds makers because if you have say a two and seven chance of something hitting that means it hits twice and that's the way i look at this like you guys are not making a one in a hundred bet because Tomlinson and Peterson are very good players and you have been developing guys.

You're making more of like a below 50% bet that could absolutely hit and you could hit a home run and have a great season and go on from there and feel like you're in a really good position. It just doesn't seem as likely as it not hitting based on the history of signing free agents. And I mentioned Darrell Rivas, like when he went back to New York and everyone went, oh my

gosh, he's just going to be so amazing. And it turned out that, you know, he was just too old at that point to be amazing. And there have been other signings of guys in their thirties that have worked out really well, but you usually say this is one that is at very least a caution. And with his performance last year, maybe even, uh, waving a bit of a skull and crossbones type of thing. Um, but let me say one more thing is just that now we know where to set the bar. And I like that. I like to know where to set the bar the bar is set at you better win because you made the moves to win so that's where you get held accountable by the fans i think and by the media is if it's not a 10 win season if it's not an 11 win season if it's not an nfc north title if it's not playoff

wins then it wasn't good enough because you are the ones that decided to signal that by pushing all the chips to the middle of the table and make big signings. And that's what they did last year, too, with the Anikin Gakwe trade. They said, we're going for this. And then they started one in five. And that's why they received the criticism that they did, think fairly also just as a means of comparison i was looking at last year's corners that sort of signed one year bridge deals trying to kind of get back to their old form i'd say there were two of them logan ryan and josh norman and my spur of the moment pff search i think logan ryan was like worse than 100 last year um josh norman obviously on a pretty good buffalo team he was decent he was decent for buffalo so maybe this can be a josh norman

uh type signing you're paying for better you're paying for better than decent yeah 10 million bucks where you could have spread out to three different corners or two different corners you're really paying for very very good um for 10 million bucks so what it does is it adds a heck of a lot of intrigue to what they do next which we will of course be covering and I'm sure as soon as we post this they'll do something else it took two hours for the previous podcast with Courtney to be up for them to make a huge move. So I'm sure we'll do that again tomorrow when we do our, uh, our round table. So yeah, no, it definitely is. But, um, this, this adds a lot of energy and intrigue to the Vikings off season that I did not necessarily think was going to be there, but it certainly is now. So now we'll wait to see what else they do

to try to win. Good stuff, Sam. Emergency podcasts are the best. Yeah, especially when they're after 9 p.m. That's when we're at our most energized, I think. That's right. That's right. I've had 19 Diet Dr. Peppers, so I'm good to go.