Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Emergency podcast: The Vikings will part ways with Dalvin Cook

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Matthew Coller reacts to the Minnesota Vikings reportedly being set to release Dalvin Cook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider is presented by Oakley. Express yourself. Build a look that's made for you. When you wear Oakley, there really is more than meets the eye. Try it for yourself. Oakley is not only the best looking, but the best quality. So head on over to oakley.com for more information today. Hey everybody, welcome to a full-blown emergency podcast. I know yesterday we had a semi-emergency podcast to talk about Daniil Hunter, but this one we actually have Delvin Cook news. We have waited a very, very long time for Delvin Cook news. It feels like we've been talking about this since maybe, I don't know, the very end of the season, what the Vikings would do with Delvin Cook. And now this morning, Tom Pelissero of NFL Network reports that the Vikings will part ways with Delvin Cook.

And this has been the expected outcome for a very, very long time. And there was always the kind of possibility that lingered over this situation that they would try to work something out, that they would try to find a trade partner or wait, wait, wait to find a trade partner until someone got desperate or that they would at the very last minute come up with a deal for him to take a pay cut and stay. But the minute Alexander Madison came back to the Vikings, it seemed inevitable that someday we would be talking about them releasing Delvin Cook. And it appears that's where it's going, unless there's some last second trade that happens. The release of Delvin Cook is not official yet, but as Hunter says in the comments,

it was the most obvious move from the very beginning of the off season. But I want to get into that and of course, take lots of your comments and your reactions to the Vikings cutting Delvin Cook. And we'll have lots of coverage of this. I did an interview just the other day about the fantasy angle of this, kind of assuming that this was coming. Also, Sam Monson, Dane Mizutani are also going to react with me for tomorrow's show. So lots going on to cover the exit of Delvin Cook. But I think that the place to start here was that the Minnesota Vikings did not have to do this. So what I mean is that when you look at their salary cap situation right now,

they have $9.7 million in cap space, according to overthecap.com. Of course, they can use some of that to lighten the load for extensions for Justin Jefferson, TJ Hawkinson, possibly Daniil Hunter, and so forth. And they can push some of that money into 2023, which is helpful for negotiating those long-term deals. But they did not absolutely unequivocally have to move on from Delvin Cook because they had traded Zedaria Smith, because they restructured Kirk Cousins' contract, because they released Adam Thielen, because they released Eric Hendricks, they could have done something to keep Delvin Cook if they wanted to, and they did not want to. And I think that that is kind of an interesting takeaway of this, that when you look

at the numbers on this move, when you look at just how Delvin Cook has played over the last two years, it's not just last year that rushing yards over expected stat has been brought up a number of times and it's a good stat, but even his PFF grade dropped significantly in 2021. His yards per touch has been going down for four years. He's had injuries that have piled up over a couple of seasons. And interestingly, I was just looking at this, how the Vikings as a whole have performed in their running game by expected points added. So what is their running game been worth?

And since 2018, they have only had one year where they were in the top 10 at producing expected points added through the run game. And I would assume that Kweisi Adaflomensa knows all of these things, that their run game with Delvin Cook, in part because they leaned on Delvin Cook so much, I think that hurt their overall efficiency. It has not in totality during his time here been a great running game. Two years, he was really, really good. And in 2020, he was great. And the Vikings overall running game was great. But on the whole, it was just either okay

or over the last two years, straight up bad as a running game. So I think we often look at a player's individual fantasy stats and kind of say, okay, well, he averaged this yards per carry and so forth. But Delvin Cook had a lot of negative runs that were balanced out by some big runs. It was kind of, it became after 2020, especially the Adrian Peterson famine, famine feast as a running back for Delvin Cook. And that's not particularly good when it comes to

looking to have an overall efficient running game. And I'm already seeing a lot of people talking about, well, I guess the Vikings are going to have to pass every play because this guy and that guy. And I made a little list of players last year that had better yards per carry and PFF grade than Delvin Cook. Brian Robinson Jr., Ramondre Stevenson, Chuba Hubbard, Damian Pierce, Raheem Mostert, Isaiah Pacheco, Devin Singletary. You guys get the point, right? That Delvin Cook has name recognition, but the production for two straight years has not been reflective of the paycheck or of the Pro Bowls. And yet just because when someone elevates themselves to a star, that's how we look at them for the rest of existence. But for a very long time, teams have stuck with running backs

too long. And this is a smart move by the front office to look at the totality of what he's done and their running game last year, which was just wholly inefficient and ineffective and say, we need to do better than that. And we need to find out who can do better than that, which could be a combination of their running backs. Or it could be that Madison is better for a short period of time. It very much could be that Ty Chandler has a chance to sneak up and become that guy. Or if nobody is that guy, is the next man up, then they can know that as well after this year

that they don't have the next guy on the roster. But when you spend a third rounder, fourth rounder, fifth rounder, and seventh rounder on all these running backs, at some point you have to give them a chance to play. And now there's going to be a full-out training camp battle to find out which one of those guys is going to get the majority of carries. Clearly Alexander Madison is the leader there. And I don't think that determining what Madison can do is as simple as just looking at his

yards per carry in small sample sizes. When he did run the ball a lot in short yardage, he did run the ball a lot in the red zone. And when he's had a chance to get starting opportunities, he's done pretty well. But it might be one of these other players. It might be Chandler, Wongwu, or McBride, or some combination of all of them together. And we've seen plenty of success around the NFL with that before. I mean, how about Atlanta last year? They had one of the best running games in the league, and they're throwing out multiple

running backs. I mean, this is a pretty common thing. Baltimore was doing that last year as well. There's lots of teams who go into their seasons with running back combinations. For a long time, the New Orleans Saints with Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram, those two guys were a very good running back combination. So there's lots of ways to approach the running back position, but an older and very expensive player who also you feel an obligation to give the ball to

is not a very good approach. So I think what we've seen from this front office is kind of a little bit what Will Raggetts and I were talking about yesterday, if you watched or listened to that show, where Kweisi Adafo-Mensah has fully grabbed the reins of this roster. It took a lot longer than I thought. When we sat down with Kweisi Adafo-Mensah at the NFL Combine, we were talking with him about just, you know, where this roster stands and everything else. And one of my big takeaways was, you know, I think this is going to have some major turnover going on here. And it didn't happen really right away. And when it didn't happen right away, I was kind of scratching my head.

Like, wait, are they going to do this stuff or not? Are they going to rebuild or not? Competitive rebuild or not? What's going on here? And even though it took a while, that's where we've gotten to. And when you look at all the players that now have parted ways with the Minnesota Vikings, it is a haul. I mean, this is a complete redo of this roster, aside from the quarterback, the star number one wide receiver, the offensive line.

Like, that's pretty much it, though. Everything else now looks a lot different. And I think that this is what they should have done in 2020 instead of trading for Yannick Ngakwe, instead of trying to kind of push the chips to the middle of the table. I don't mean with Delvin Cook in particular. I just mean take this longer- the chips to the middle of the table. I don't mean with Delvin Cook in particular. I just mean take this longer term approach to the roster. That doesn't mean that you can't still compete for the division, but if you were trying to desperately cobble together every single cap dollar to keep Delvin Cook and make sure that he's getting his 300 carries, I don't think that that is a very efficient approach. And the reason that

they hired Kweisi Adafo Mensah is to have an efficient approach, to be smarter, to see what's next and not what just happened. And I think that's what Kweisi Adafo Mensah has really done. So it took a while and we had to wait and wait and wait through the whole summer. It is June 8th. I would not have guessed that I would be waiting until June 8th for them to make some of these moves. And it always existed in the back of my mind. Like, are they going to get nervous? And especially after they signed Dean Lowry, like, are they going to get nervous about

this rebuild and then run away? And there was always rumors of, well, maybe they'll keep Thielen. Maybe they'll keep Delvin Cook. Maybe, you know, they made an offer to Patrick Peterson, but it seems like all of those things were just kind of like, well, you know, I guess we would do it at our price,

but only our price. And again, I think this is the exact approach that the Vikings need to take. So let me say before I get to some of your comments here that I totally understand where a lot of fans would be broke up about their favorite players, a lot of their favorite players. My gosh. I mean, Eric Hendricks, Adam Thiel.

I mean, these are guys that you buy their jersey. These are guys who end up in the ring of honor. They're that level of players and now they're gone. And that's not easy for anybody to deal with. But I think that of all the sports, football is the one where people most understand that this is kind of how it goes. You can't hang on to these players forever. And I was looking at running backs who after the age of 28, since 2010 have had success. I only found 16 seasons where a running back was 28 or older and average four and a half yards per carry and got over a thousand yards. And several of them were Adrian Peterson. So, you know, Marshawn Lynch was mixed in there. I think LaShawn McCoy had one. And, you know, the injury history with some of those players

is not what it is for Delvin Cook. And I think that people understand that now at this point. And all along, I think that savvy Vikings fans have understood they leaned on Delvin too much. The second half of the seasons was always going down and they could never go to somebody else. And that's the difference now too, is that if they struggle, if one of these guys struggles, the next man is going to be up and there was no option of next man up.

But I do get it though. You spend a lot of money on tickets and on jerseys and everything else because you really invest in players. And then you have a GM who just says, well, inefficient, see ya. But that's also sports. It's everything in sports now. It was going on in baseball, you know, long before football where teams were being efficient with their moves. And I think that that is the reason you hire a GM who has an economist background is to put the proper value on things and not waver from that.

And also, I think you have to give credit to the Wilf ownership for signing off on all of these moves, because a lot of our discussion early in the offseason was, are the Wilfs really going to let them do it? Are they going to say, no, no, we have to keep all these star players because they're our favorites. And I think that if there is a positive effect of winning 13 games last year, it's that they earned a lot of trust with the ownership from a year of working together in a year of success to now go to them and say, it's time for the bloodletting.

And this has been a almost complete bloodletting. If they move on from Daniil Hunter, full-on, complete rebuild. And we're almost there anyway. I mean, I think we're almost there at this point. It's what had to happen. And I think it's exactly the right move. There's no guarantee for anything. There's never a guarantee that the next Delvin Cook is walking through the door.

But I remember when the Vikings released Adrian Peterson, that there were a lot of Adrian Peterson fans, and I don't blame you for that, great player, a lot of Adrian Peterson fans who were like, the Vikings are making a huge mistake. You're never going to be able to replace that player. And then Delvin Cook came in and was a star right away. This is how that position tends to work.

It's also really dependent on who's around that player, how they fit in the system. And I don't know that he was the best fit for that system as opposed to the Stefanski and Kubiak. So that's kind of the instant reaction is the near totality of the Vikings offseason, I think has put them in a very positive position to rebuild a lot of this roster and to find out who can play and to potentially draft a quarterback in the future.

They have not signing on to Kirk long term, at least so far. There's still some boxes to be checked for this to be a completely successful offseason but I think not being fooled by a 13 win year not chasing what happened last year not chasing a win against the Giants and saying we need another nose tackle because the Giants ran for a key first down in the playoffs that's the old approach. This is the new approach, and I think it's the right way to go. So let me run down some of your comments and continue to react to that. If you disagree with me, I am happy to have that conversation. So jump in the comments and we can discuss it for a while here and then keep your eye

out for a lot more conversation about Delvin Cook being let go tomorrow. Let's see, from Sloth, just like with Kendricks and Thielen in March, this is 100% the right move, and I'm super bummed not to get to watch him play in purple anymore. Yeah, I'll say this. I mean, Delvin Cook was one of the most exciting players

for the Minnesota Vikings, and think about when you come off of an Adrian Peterson, who is maybe top three most exciting running backs of all time. What? Barry Sanders, Gail Sayers, and Adrian Peterson. And then you bring in another guy that at any given time could take off and run for an 80-yard touchdown. And at his best, I thought he was going to go almost every time he touched the ball.

And that really shows you just how ruthless this position is. I saw Jason Fitzgerald of over the cap talking about how like, look, they gave him a $63 million contract two years ago. And he only, or he only made two years out of that long-term contract that they gave him when our team's going to stop doing this and it just feels so ruthless it feels so heartless to say that when we all watched how great Delvin Cook was but at the same time it just wasn't there last year he had a few home run plays He hit some high speeds in the open field, but that burst where you thought he was going every time and that burst that kept him from getting could make that offensive line right even though the line wasn't always the greatest at run blocking I thought last year the

they did pretty well especially Ezra Cleveland was not a great pass blocker but was a very good run blocker we know Garrett Bradbury can do it and I think that their expectations should be that he produced more than he did last year with that offensive line. Folks, I've been wearing Oakley's now for a few weeks. And let me tell you, there is a reason that Justin Jefferson and a bunch of other football players wear these things because they are awesome. I've got the matte black prism, Sapphire polar sunglasses on, and I've been doing all sorts of summer things with them. I've been hitting golf balls in the water, jogging, playing basketball, getting sunburned, but my eyes are in

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He was a great running back. Too bad the league doesn't appreciate running backs anymore. I get it though. Yeah, I think that it's not so much of an appreciation. It's just an understanding of the data, right? It's an understanding of what happens when you overly appreciate a running back. And now even think about like all of us love running backs. Okay. They get the ball all the time. They're super exciting. They're really fun. There's some, you know, they're just some of the

most likable players in the sport always have been. When I was growing up, it was like Thurman Thomas and Emmett Smith and Barry Sanders. But at any era, when you was growing up, it was like Thurman Thomas and Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders. But at any era, when you're growing up, you could talk about the running backs from your era. So if you're a lot older, you'd be like, hey, Walter Payton, Billy Sims, you know, guys back in the day. If you're older than that, Chuck Foreman, how great was he? Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Gail Sayers, all those guys, right? And if you're younger than me, you could still say, hey, remember Sean Alexander, Adrian Peterson, and even now, Delvin Cook, Derrick Henry,

all these exciting players. So I think it's easy to fall in love with running backs because they make big plays and they're great to watch. And the best ones like Delvin Cook or Derrick Henry or Barry Sanders, those guys are highlight reels. So you love them, but there's so many numbers to show that at a certain point, it's probably over. And the PFF, Tej Seth, who's been on this show, he did a study in 2021 that showed that 1500 touches. So between catches and runs,

1,500 touches was kind of that fall-off point for rushing yards over expected. Guess how many Delvin has? 1,503 in the regular season and, of course, a handful more in the playoffs. But Delvin Cook is right at that marker, and if you're Kwesi Adafo-Mensah, you know that. And so as much as you do appreciate how fun he was to watch and how much he brought to the table, you also have to acknowledge that this is about what's next,

not what's about before, not what happened before. And I think that they made too many decisions in the past about what happened before. Hey, Kyle Rudolph has been great for us before, but he wasn't going to be great into the future when they signed him to an extension. Even Harrison Smith signing his extension, one year later, they have to go back to the guy and tell him he's got to take a pay cut. Because it's about trying to project the future for these players in the general manager's job

and not just rewarding them because you like them. And I think that, you know, a lot of times they sort of close their eyes and put their fingers in their ears and just said, like, no, we don't, if we don't acknowledge the regression, then it won't happen. And then it did. Right. And that even happened a little bit last year with someone like Adam Thielen. It was pretty clear that his yards per catch were going down and that maybe the quick twitch wasn't as quickie and twitchy. And yet, you know, they bring him back out. He catch 70 passes, but at 10 yards a catch wasn't really an impact player.

And I guess you could look at last year and go, I think you could have seen that coming. And so this year they've taken the approach of seeing that coming. What's going to be next. And Delvin Cook could go somewhere next year and run for 1500 yards at five yards to carry. And I wouldn't be shocked. I mean, go back to Sean Alexander. That was his big season was 28. And then he fell off after that. So it's still possible that there's something there with Delvin Cook. I don't know that we're going to look at his season for whoever he ends up playing for and go, oh, wow, what a great move. He ended up running for 40 yards.

No, he'll probably run for a lot of yards and get the ball a lot, but that doesn't mean it was wrong to project him to continue to slide because we're going on four straight years of yards per touch going down for Delvin Cook. And at that point, how could you ever predict, oh wait, now this is suddenly going to go up and you get the cap space, which we can talk about as well. From Sloth here, he was hitting a buck 89 with 25 home runs. Madison will hit 270 and do a better job of setting the table for the big sluggers,

Jefferson and Hawkinson. Yeah, I do think that Alexander Madison is probably a, maybe a better pass blocker and definitely a better pass catcher. And I don't think that, you know, one, one thing that I noticed last year was that nobody on the defensive side was taking Cook seriously in play action anymore in 2019 and 2020 play action was, I mean, just like linebackers crashing down, trying to stop Delvin Cook. They were terrified of him. And then by 2022, they weren't. And they won't be terrified of Alexander Madison.

You could still make play action work with Madison, but no one is going to be saying, oh man, linebackers crash immediately and we'll try to figure it out later because we've got to stop this running back. Well, that's not how it's going to be more likely than not with Madison. Maybe with Ty Chandler, maybe with Kenny Wongu, maybe with Dwayne McBride, we'll see how that all plays out.

We don't have much of, um, you know, a sample size on that, but I think what it can be is just a little bit more efficient in the way that they approach it, that there's no, and, and, and Josh speaks to this with obligation is the right word he says memories of delvin cook are largely that he was good but overused and overpaid overused is definitely the thing so think about it this way like when he would start to fade in the second half of a season nobody else was coming in nobody if he was healthy it didn't matter if his shoulder was dangling his arm off his body or whatever had gone wrong he was playing and he was getting the football and if you are uh you know if if you're running alexander madison out there and he's banged up

well maybe he gets 10 carries and Ty Chandler gets 15 carries, because there's no obligation for that player to be a superstar pro bowler, and you can be on the whole more efficient, even though the player at fully healthy is nowhere close. I don't think Alexander Madison is close to peak Delvin Cook, but how many actual weeks did we get per year of peak Delvin Cook? Usually about what, seven or eight? So can you be better on the whole? Because through eight weeks of last season or nine weeks, Delvin Cook was averaging five yards a carry. And then he ends with below four and a half. And he ends up with three and a half yards per carry in the second half of the season. I mean, it's just kind of

typical of what Delvin Cook was for this team that they felt like they always needed to lean on him. And now with a rotation of running backs or opportunity for anybody to win the job, there isn't so much that feeling that they need to kind of be all in on Delvin Cook all the time. And especially when Mike Zimmer was here, it was Delvin Cook was always the answer for him. Oh, the offense is struggling in the first half, more Delvin cook all the time. And especially when Mike Zimmer was here, it was Delvin cook was always the answer for him. Oh, the offense is struggling in the first half, more Delvin, like more cowbell or more bell cow. That's a good way to put it more bell cow running back. That's how it always was for them. And even last year, you could see the wheels turning sometimes with Kevin O'Connell, or it was like, Oh, I haven't run Delvin enough. So I think I need to run Delvin

here on first down. And they seem to run a lot on first down and now they don't have to. And so, yeah, that 270 hitter can give you a little more consistent running game, but also you only have to run when you want to. You don't have to run because you think the guy needs touches. And these are the small little things that add up over a season to being 27th and expected points added. From our buddy Chuck, great to see you, Chuck. Let's see, Kweisi Adafomensa must have gotten the Wilfs on board with the rebuild, right? Thielen Kendricks Cook, all gone in one swoop. Surely they've signed off in the overall plan. Yeah. And Matthew, not me, but in the comments, when are we going to deeper dive into meddling ownership?

So those are very two different comments and interpretations. I tend to look at it much more the way that Chuck does that. I think what happened was, and this is not something I know or have been told, but I think we can put the pieces together here. Kweisi Daffomensa and Kevin O'Connell get in and they hear about the toxic situation and they hear all the players saying, hey, 2021, we should have been a good team,

but the culture and the bad luck, there was bad luck. We didn't have to give them that. There was bad luck in 2021. The ball bounces off Bashad Breeland and is caught, and Dallas wins with Cooper Rush and all that. So there was bad luck in 2021. The players are all saying it to ownership.

There was a meeting with players and ownership, the player leadership. And I believe, based on what they've said, that they told them, we think we can be good. We know we can be good, but we need a better coach we need a smarter coach maybe one who throws more often I don't know if that was said but we certainly need a better culture and we need to be more scientific in our approach give us a chance and so ownership gave them that chance and they proved it to be right with 13 wins now Now they didn't go deep in the playoffs, so you can argue right or wrong, but they proved that they were better than what they were in 2021.

But I think that part of the discussion there had to have been Kweisi Adafo-Mensah saying, okay, I will get you Zedaria Smith and I will bring back Patrick Peterson and I won't cut Adam Thielen, all those things. But next year, Kweisi's cooking. And like next year it becomes my roster. And I decide where we go with that. Or next year, all these players are going to have to go because we're not projecting them to be good. And that's, that's how it looks. And so, yes, I think that this was probably agreed

upon before well, before it happened happened I don't think they got to the end of this year and said you know what I think maybe we'll rebuild now I I don't think that they just haphazardly went into it I think that they had this idea and things could change I mean if Delvin had averaged five and a half yards to carry they would have changed their mind but if the players that were on the older side played like they kind of expected, Kendricks isn't as quick, Thielen isn't as fast, Delvin Cook doesn't have the burst anymore, which is what you expect for players with their mileage, then I think they probably agreed on this direction beforehand. That would just be my guess. That is, again, that's not me reporting that that's exactly what happened.

But now that we see the results, that's what it looks like probably happened. And then with the Kirk Cousins situation, that's the thing that complicates all of this, which we can get into at some point. From Hunter, I'll certainly miss Cook, but excited for a running back by committee rotation. And we'll see if that's what happens. We'll see if the running back by committee ends up happening or if somebody just steals this job. And this is what Joshua asks.

Will we see a true rotation? I have doubts. Heard the comments about Madison's three down abilities. One of the other running young guys will have to flash for KOC to incorporate a true rotation. Now that might be true. And based on what the Rams have done in the past and of course, O'Connell doesn't have to be the Rams, but what the Rams did is mostly leaned on one guy in the past. And, you know, that was Todd Gurley, or sometimes it's been Cam Akers or Daryl Henderson, and they haven't had a great running game all the time since Todd Gurley. But I think that Alexander Madison is the only

running back at the moment that knows how to pass protect. And if you're going to throw the football 70% of the time, which I think we all agree is a good thing when you have Jefferson, Hawkinson, Addison, you know, so forth, Osborne. I think we all agree it's better for them to throw the football to Justin Jefferson than to run it 50% of the time, right? You need somebody who can pass, protect, and catch the ball out of the backfield like Madison can. You need someone who's going to get lined up right all the time when you're going to throw out a ton of different formations. And one thing that Wes Phillips was talking about the other day is just getting lined up correctly is a lot of memorization and a lot of a challenge for players to remember all the different ways that they're supposed to line up all the different formations.

So you need a player who can do all those things for you. But if there is a, I think in the best case scenario, there ends up being, he's like the Mark Ingram, like kind of the grinder, kind of the hard-nosed guy who knows how to do everything. And maybe there's an Elvin Kamara type of situation with somebody else. And they split 150 and 150 carries or 180 and 120, something something like that I don't know if it's going to be a rotation as in hey you're out there now then you're off then you're on there it might be a little more situational but they also don't want to give up tendencies so it's like oh well if Ty Chandler's out there in first down he he's running the ball. So it's a very delicate balance.

But the three down thing, what someone else has to prove to them, I don't think it's necessarily flashing as in a big play in training camp or preseason. I think it's flashing that they can get all of those things right. You know, I think if they can get all those things right, the lining up, the pass blocking and so forth, then they've got a chance to get a lot more playing time. From GA007, all the current Minnesota running backs might still not be better than Delvin Cook, though. Now, that is certainly true.

I don't think any of them are more talented than what Delvin Cook was. But it's not really about what Delvin Cook was, but it's not really about what Delvin Cook was, right? What we're trying to project or the Vikings are is what's going to be better longer term in the future. So is it going to be better next year than if you had Delvin Cook? I don't know. They were 27th in rushing EPA last year. So it wasn't good. Can you improve on 27th? I think you probably can. It was a very inefficient running game last season. As a whole, can you be smarter with the way you use your running backs and a little more efficient as a whole as an offense? vision, cutting, speed, top speed. I don't know. Probably not. Probably none of them are. There are very few running backs with more natural rushing skill than Delvin Cook ever, right? I mean, just percentile wise, he's way up there. Really, really good. But is he going to continue to be really, really good? I think since we've seen signs several years in a row that he was drifting off

and those skills that at his peak, yeah, he is absolutely phenomenal, but it's not about his peak. You can't go back in time, grab 2020, copy him and paste them over to next year. If you could, you'd be really good. You just do that with every player, copy and paste their peaks. And this is one of the hardest things about being an NFL GM is that players are always rising and falling. And it's not like basketball where a guy comes in the league at 19 years old by 23, he is who he's going to be until he's 34. It's not like that. I mean, hockey is kind of the same way. Somebody is in their peak for like seven or eight or nine seasons, where in the NFL, it might only be two.

And there's a reason there's only a handful of players in the Hall of Fame, because those are the guys that extended their peaks like a Patrick Peterson beyond those couple of years. Dalvin Cook's probably not going to the Hall of Fame. He's more of one of those sort of quick couple-year stars and then drop back, unless he completely proves all the numbers wrong. But if you're looking toward the future, you have to figure out, is any one of these guys who's in the backfield right now going to be your next three-year player?

Because when you look all over the league and you find running backs, they're not just from the first or the second round. I mean, there's running backs from all sorts of rounds and all sorts of places. Heck, Cordero Patterson last year averaged 4.8 yards per carry and scored eight touchdowns. And that man was a wide receiver. So that tells you, I mean, the Kansas City Chiefs, look who they're starting in their backfield last year to win the Super Bowl.

So, you know, I think that it's more about what you're going to be able to do in the future with a rotation or finding out if one of these guys can be a star back than it is about what he's done in the future. From Matthew, seems different, Matthew. All of us are here today. Seems like, uh, Kweisi is much more patient and calculated with making these major roster changes rather than reactionary trades like the previous regime. Yeah. I mean, I think that last year there were reactionary things that were like the previous regime. Jalen Rager is here and Ross Blacklock is here. So maybe they didn't love what they saw from, I forget, Armand Watts. That's who they

moved on from. And they kind of made a snap decision to go get Ross Blacklock. And then that really didn't play out. And Jalen Rager, oh, we need a punt returner. We badly need a punt returner. No one can return punts. We're trying interns out there catching punts and nobody can do it. And so we got to go get Jalen Rager. And then he was not an impact punt returner and certainly didn't help the offense at all. Maybe he'll be a little bit more of a part of the team this year if he does well in training camp and gets the offense but they did that last year and the reason is because they were really trying to win last year they were really trying to show that that's who they really were in 2021 and they were

they were trying to prove that and i don't mean this specifically for quacey and kevin o'connell i mean the organization as a whole and the players and the ownership trying to prove that they could kind of run that back and do better. And they did prove that they did run it back and they did do better. But this year when your GM is taking or feels comfortable to take, and this is where it ties into the Wilfs feels comfortable to take a longer term approach. All of a sudden they seem so much smarter, don't they? Don't they? I mean, this is the thing with GMs and why it's hard to judge

because ownership, pressure, timelines, all these things impact how smart you are. Once upon a time, we would have said, man, Rick Spielman's crushing it. He just drafted Diggs, Hunter, Waynes, Kendricks. These guys are all starters. They're really good. Look, he found Tom Johnson out of nowhere. Look, he's making all these good moves. And then once the pressure gets turned up,

then all of a sudden the moves seem worse, right? And I think that that's what happens. You guys know I like to talk about chess sometimes. And there's an idea in chess that the more you pressure your opponent, the more you attack, the more you threaten pieces, the more mistakes they're going to make. And I think the same thing goes for pretty much anything. Hockey, it's like this, right? Where defensemen get the puck, and if you put pressure on them, they're more likely to make a mistake. The great ones don't. That might be true for GMs and also chess players as well.

But most people make mistakes when they're under pressure. And if Kweisi Adafo Mensah does not feel pressure, and it seems like he does not, to win this year, it feels like he's got time to build his team, then he's able to make moves that are more efficient and smarter. And that is a better place for this organization to be. Sometimes people want guarantees that it's all going to work. And I don't know, I can't tell you that, but I can tell you what is smart by the numbers. And especially since you've seen a lot of teams over the last five, seven years, start to be like baseball teams. They've started to be hyper-efficient with

their draft capital, with their contracts, with their decisions they make with older players. Obviously, Philadelphia is kind of the top of that, but there's a lot of teams that have been smart that way. And I think now you can put the Vikings into that category when I'm not sure that you could have before. From Hunter, not to move the conversation away from Cook, but if they trade Hunter, how many wins are we thinking? Well, I think probably eight, I would say. Eight or nine. I mean, offense can always get you somewhere, right? And that's the thing about their rebuild here is even though moving Daniel Hunter would make it a full rebuild now that all these other guys are gone and it's

almost officially official that Dalvin Cook is gone, that it is a total refresh, rebuild, retool, reworking, reorganization, whatever the heck you want to call it, but it is not a tank. And I think that is a important distinction because there is a big difference between retooling, refreshing, reworking, rebuilding, and tanking. Tanking is what the Chicago Bears did last year. They freaking tanked. They tanked the heck out of that thing. And you know, on this show, they get credit for that because that's a good long-term approach, but that's not what the Vikings are doing. They are not ripping it all apart.

They're not tanking. They're not going to win three games unless they trade Kirk for nothing and play Nick Mullins or Jaron Hall or something. But I don't think they're going to do that. So that, yeah, I mean, it's not a tank. So they're still going to be competitive. As long as Justin Jefferson is catching footballs for you, you're going to be competitive. As long as Justin Jefferson is catching footballs for you, you're going to be competitive. You're going to score points.

I think that just by having him, Hawkinson, Osborne has looked very good in OTAs. I expect him to be a good player and we'll see what happens with Addison. The running game kind of can't be worse than it was last year. And the offensive line at very least, and this is a low bar, but last year they had their highest PFF pass blocking grade since 2017. They were much closer to an average offensive line, even despite the guard struggles. And so I think you can have an average offensive line, if not a little better, depending on improvements. You can have a running game that maybe creeps a little more toward average because you're not relying on the same running back all the time. And you can have

a passing game that's every bit as good as it was last year. And you're going to play in shootouts and you're going to face hard quarterbacks and you're going to give up points. It actually could kind of be a fun season. I'm really thinking about 2014 for what this is going to be like. And I know that's a while ago now, but 2014, they hire Zimmer. It's it feels much more like O'Connell and Casey Adafo Mensah just got here and did all this stuff than it does that they've been here for a year. But I think 2014 is a fun year for the Minnesota Vikings. You could see it. You could see all the future pieces.

Now a young quarterback was part of that, of course, and that's not part of it this year. But seeing the young pieces is a fun thing for fans, I think, and kind of feeling less. One of the things that has really hung over this franchise and the fan base is the desperation to repeat 2017. And we've talked about that a lot from the front office perspective, but we haven't really talked about it from the fan base is the desperation to repeat 2017. And we've talked about that a lot from the front office perspective, but we haven't really talked about it from the fan perspective that when

every year fans are told this year's our year, we're going to get back there. We signed all these players. We hurt ourself for the future. We extended the quarterback. We did all these things. And this year's our year. This year's our year.

This year's our year. And then you miss the playoffs and then you miss the quarterback. We did all these things. And this year's our year. This year's our year. This year's our year. And then you miss the playoffs. And then you miss the playoffs. And then you lose in the playoffs in the first round. I mean, that is not. I mean, last year was really fun for fans. So I won't say that it wasn't. But as soon as they lost to the Giants, as soon as that game ended,

that same feeling came sweeping back into the fans of where it had been just the previous two years. It felt exactly the same. Like, oh, well, there's us again. Always a bridesmaid. It's not good enough to really compete. And if that shackle is kind of off of the expectation of going deep in the playoffs or your whole season was useless i think it it can be kind of an interesting place for fans to be with the team sort of like no one expects us to be all that great let's see what happens let's see who's good and sometimes you'd be surprised sometimes this actually works out because the older players were fading and the younger players are just faster right so uh you know there may be that because the older players were fading and the younger players are just faster right so uh you know there may be that because the defense certainly looks slow as hell last year

and maybe just by proxy of having a new defensive coordinator and young players and young running backs that you know maybe um you know maybe that ends up turning out to be there just as good or better than last year not 13 13 wins, but more of a 10 win team. And they ended up making the playoffs, uh, from Dave Casey can't handle dealing with cook and Hunter at the same time, more red flags. Is that a, is that like a joke or I'm not really sure what you mean. There there's a handful of people that show up in every, um, live or whatever broadcast we do that seem to like want to insult Kweisi at Afl-Mensa. And I don't really get it at this point. Like last year we were saying, I don't really see it. Like what,

where's the analytics? Like where are the smart moves? Where, where's the rebuild? Where's all these things. And they did very much a lot of the same stuff that they did before with Kweisi in charge of his first year. And the draft was pretty questionable, how they handled the positional values and everything else. I think this off season has been a total opposite, total opposite of what we saw last year. These are all the things that I expected to do, for them to do, when Kweisi Adafo Mensah got here. I expected them to move on from all the older players who had had a ceiling and only got you so far and were past their prime. I expected them to draft players who had high PFF grades and who played premium positions.

This was a premium position draft for the Minnesota Vikings. They draft a running back in the seventh. Everything else is premium positions. I mean, nose tackle. No, I don't know. So, you know, I don't know. I think that if you're looking for the next five years of him being your GM, just say five years, is this offseason a positive toward that?

I would say majorly. If they had brought all these guys back and they had tried to sign some veteran player who was supposed to be the difference maker, like Michael Pierce or something, I would have been as low as it would have been on Kweisi Adafo-Mensa. But instead, this is the long-term approach that was necessary. And I think that there's maybe some forest through the trees. And Dave, you know, with a response, just Hunter is our best defensive player, he says. Since Quasey, the draft, we have one player starting, ranked as one of the worst guards last year.

Besides Hawkinson, every trade he's made so far is a disaster. Well, I mean, I don't see a Zedaria Smith trade as being a disaster. I see that as moving on from an older player to open up opportunities for future players, create a lot of cap space, get some draft capital back. I don't see a Jalen Rager trade for a late draft pick as a disaster. Yannick Ngakwe trade is a disaster. The Jalen Rager one is probably ill-advised and falls under the same categories last year. But I'm not going to defend every move that they made last year. I didn't like a lot of the moves that they made last year. I didn't like that draft.

I thought that that draft was the most Spielman-y draft. I mean, trading down too far, drafting non-premium positions, didn't like it. Didn't like it. And sometimes you don't like a draft and it works out great. So far like it. Didn't like it. And you know, sometimes you don't like a draft and it works out great so far, you know, it hasn't, but we'll see. The guard, again, I didn't like the pick. I don't want to defend that, but the draft has not been decided yet how that's going to work out. But I think that you have to separate when Kwesi takes the job and most of the hay is in the barn for the scouting department and

the direction has already been decided for him when he gets here to this year where he decided his direction. So it seems. And I asked him that at the combine, I asked Kwesi, like, how different is this? Or maybe it was in the draft. Like how different was this? And he's just said night and day, completely different from the preparation standpoint, because last year he was just trying to get the job and then having to come into a situation where most of the work was already done on the draft by the scouting department and so forth. It isn't, it isn't to say at all that all the moves have worked. Certainly not. And I think last year there was reason to go, what are some of these moves? But things have changed over the last couple of months.

And I think that this right here is kind of a drop in the bucket of a Vikings rebuild that is now going to be very, very interesting to watch in training camp. So that's my instant reaction on Delvin Cook. I appreciate everybody participating, jumping into the comments, jumping in. I, I promised an emergency pod as soon as this happened. And I have been promising that since freaking March.

So we made it, it happened. And there will be lots more coverage of this and discussion. Even a fantasy for all you fantasy players. I recorded an interview with Ian Harditz of fantasy life.com about the fantasy implications of Delvin Cook leaving. So lots of coverage coming, beat reporters, national people, everybody's going to be commenting on this. So I look forward to more interesting discussion about it.

And thanks so much for everybody for tuning in. And there's still more emergency pods that could be coming, and we will be here for you when that happens. So take care, everybody.