Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - EMERGENCY PODCAST: Vikings hire Nolan Teasley as GM (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 30, 2026

Matthew Coller talks about reports that the Minnesota Vikings have hired Seattle Seahawks executive Nolan Teasley as their new general manager. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, everybody, welcome to an emergency podcast. Matthew Collar here, this show, of course, presented by Fandul. The Minnesota Vikings have their general manager. According to Tom Pelliserro of NFL Network, the Vikings have agreed to terms with Seattle Seahawks, Assistant General Manager Nolan Teasley as their new GM. And Tom tweets fresh off a Super Bowl win, Tisley, regard as one of the NFL's top young executives will now try to bring a Lombardy trophy to

Minnesota. So let's break this down. The Minnesota Vikings went with a person from the outside that did not have previous ties to the organization. And now we'll be at the top of this organization. We'll see if there is an answer to what Rob Brzezinski's role is going to be. Is it going to be something that is possibly above Nolan Tisley or? is there going to be a triangle or maybe some sort of square or rombus of power with rob

bersinsky included in that or will he go back to his old role and work under nolan tisley that's the remaining question here but let's get into where he comes from what our expectations are and why the minnesota vikings would want nolan tisley first i should say is a very interesting story he's a guy that got out of football and then was in marketing for a handful of years and Tom Pelliserro tweeted this that he sent emails to all 32 teams looking for any way to get back into the National Football League. And exactly one person gave him an interview. And that was John Schneider of the Seattle Seahawks. And they hired him as an intern 13 years ago.

And Nolan Teasley has worked his way up and up and up and up the latter to become the AGM for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. So he got to see the tail end of the last build from John Schneider that won a Super Bowl, the group that was still there. And then also the long road to building a Super Bowl winning franchise with the Seattle Seahawks. So let's start with the fact that he is not connected in any way to the Vikings organization. I think that this will be very popular with Vikings fans that Teasley was not somebody who was going to come in and already kind of know how things work and fall into line maybe with the way that things have always been done or were done during a previous regime with Rick Spielman.

This is someone who is coming from a premier organization in the National Football League in the Seattle Seahawks, but also one that is completely different. And something that I really wanted to see, whether it was Reed Burkhard or whether it was Terrence Gray, whoever it was, what I wanted to see was new ideas. is, right? Not just come in and do things the way that they've always been done with this organization. And of course, this has been a fairly successful franchise. I mean, they've had 14 win seasons. They've had 13 win seasons. So it isn't like you want someone to come in and just say, this is all trash.

We need to take out the garbage. Just get rid of everything and tear it all down and so forth. But you do want someone to come in and be able to say, this is how we built a super Bowl winning team in Seattle, something they've been able to do twice. They reached another Super Bowl. They were a handoff away to Marshawn Lynch from having three Super Bowls over the last 15 years. That is something that the Minnesota Vikings organization can't say, even if it is continued to be competitive.

So finding that gap between you're competitive every year, you're a good team every year, and to you're a great team. You're a Super Bowl champion caliber football team, which Seattle under John Schneider was able to do twice. And I believe he's the only general manager ever to win two Super Bowls with all completely different 53 man rosters. So you're coming from an organization that is led by the premier leader in the entire NFL in John Schneider. And it's somebody who he has brought along personally year after year after year, moving him up to, you know, starting with the intern, then into the scouting department, then into the player personnel, and then up to the assistant general manager position.

And it was always notable that all of the candidates were known for their ability to evaluate talent. And that's a really, really important part of this. And when we look at the way that the Seattle Seahawks were built, the team that just won the Super Bowl, it's really not that hard to figure out how they're, were able to do it. I mean, hitting on all the draft picks, yeah, that's something that's hard to figure out, but they did it through the draft.

And the Wilf's, I think after Quasi Adafo Mensa, after they struggled so deeply to draft well, after they gave away all sorts of draft capital, and then we're not able to use the small amount of capital that was remaining to build a complete team and instead had to spend a lot, a lot of money and take a lot of risks in free agency and a lot of hope. in free agency that there would be players there that they could woo to Minnesota, that is a short-term type of solution. It is not a long-term type of solution. And too often during Vikings history,

there has been these flashes and bursts of, well, you built one shot at it and then it didn't work out and then it all kind of went down the drain or it all faded, which I know is the NFL and it's how it works a lot. But if you want to build a team that's going to have multiple shots at it in a window, it usually has to be built through the NFL draft, where you get, and Detroit is an example of this. Of course, Seattle is a premier example of this where you have teams that were competitive

year after year after year and kept growing on that rather than, uh-oh, we reached the top of the mountain, maybe when we didn't expect to. So now what do we do? We spend a bunch of money because that's the only thing that we can do without X amount of draft capital, X amount of players. rookie contracts, then you pin yourself up against the salary cap. I mean, it was really notable that the Seattle Seahawks won the Super Bowl and then had one of the highest amounts of salary caps based remaining despite the fact that they paid

a quarterback. And there's only a couple ways that you can build through the draft, right? It's number one being very good at evaluating players and you're never going to hit all the time. If you look at the Seattle Seahawks and their draft record recently, it's been really, really good. But there were some years where they missed on players. But one thing that they consistently have is a lot of draft capital.

And hiring a draft-centric, evaluation-centric type of general manager says to me, you're not going to be the team that is trading everything you have for one draft pick in Dallas Turner, who we like and we think is a good player. It is on the upswing, but they gave up a lot. It's not the wisest move to make or giving away draft capital to pick up this veteran or that veteran here or there or that trade or that so forth. Having a more patient approach. And that is what really stands out to me the most about the Seattle Seahawks build in general is that it did not happen overnight. It wasn't this short term.

Let's spend all this money. Let's do all this crazy stuff. Or let's hit on one draft class. And then that draft class will just take us to the Super Bowl. It wasn't like that. It was they moved on from Russell Wilson, which they did at the right time. They also moved on from Gino Smith at the right time. So those were very savvy moves.

But they moved on from Russell Wilson at the right time. They made a good trade. It got them draft capital. And then they built year after year after year. And it was nine wins and it was 10 wins. And this could take some patience from Vikings fans if they're going to take this approach. because building through the draft, year after year, adding a little here and a little there and a little more there, it doesn't happen in one season where you just, oh, we're all in and this is the time.

I mean, that every once in a while works like with the Los Angeles Rams, but even that team had been built over a number of years. And then what they did on top of that. So hitting on draft picks was huge. They didn't even just hit superstars. Also, a lot of role players, a lot of depth. players. But then when the moment arrived, they made some very good moves to bring in talented players that were on teams that were flailing. And you'd like to see the Minnesota Vikings do this

as well. Rashid Shahid was a good example of that of making a trade at the deadline to just get that one more player because you sense that this is the year that you're one of the best teams in the NFL. DeMarcus Lawrence was stock down type of guy with another team. They end up getting him, bringing him in. He was a huge part of their Super Bowl win. And the one that stands out the most to me was Leonard Williams, where Leonard Williams was on the down swing. And they pick him up. They put him in this environment. They have drafted very well around these players, but they had to go out and get some veteran talent at the right times. And they've invested an incredible amount. If you just look at their draft capital and you

look at just how much, you know, they've invested in all sorts of. of different, you know, positions and they spread it out a lot. But it was a lot of trenches. It was a lot of trenches for the Seattle Seahawks. It was Byron Murphy. It was Gray Zabel. It was Charles Cross. It was Boyet Maffa.

I mean, they put a lot in to that group and then found the veterans that could fit around them. And of course, Jackson Smith, the Jigba at the skill position, Devon Wetherspoon at the skill position, those guys all, you. younger players who were up and coming around the same time over a number of years of drafting and built a behemoth, which has a chance to run it back for this year, run it back for next year. And that's the point about Seattle.

If they had not won last year, they would have still gone into this year as a Super Bowl favorite or a team that was a possibility. And if they had not won in 2027, when you look at the players they have, you'd still say that they have a remarkable core. And what this reminds me of a little bit is the way that the Minnesota Vikings built their strongest team of the last decade, which we all know was 2017. And despite not having a Sam Darnold level quarterback, we're able to reach the NFC championship. But that roster build, you could go back to 2012 when that really started through the draft

where you pick up Harrison Smith one year and it's Anthony Barr the next year. And then it's a big draft where you hit on Dineal Hunter and Stefan Diggs and Eric Kendricks and Trey Waynes. But it wasn't just one draft. It wasn't just one move. It was picking up a piece, picking up a piece. And Seattle was able to do this well being competitive, which we know is really important to the to the Wilfs and to this ownership.

And I think what Seattle is proof of, and I would also say this about the Los Angeles Rams, who Seattle has competed against and who is. certainly raise the bar, but, and you know, look, I mean, some teams that have gone all the way to the bottom have had a lot of success in bouncing back, especially in this division. But if you're an ownership that is not going to accept going to the bottom, you have Justin Jefferson on your team, he's not going to accept going to the bottom. So you're always going to have to be running out the best you could possibly do year after year. well, then this is the type of model that you want to follow along with, right?

Where they have hit on, they did have two top 10 draft picks, and it was very helpful to have that Russell Wilson trade and have that fall apart in Denver. But they've had a lot of draft picks that were in the middle or in the back end, and you have to be able to find players who can contribute when you're not drafting at the top. And that goes to asset management. That also goes to good decisions from the front office when it comes to. to who you're going to sign, who you're going to let go, who you're going to keep around. I mean, those things are absolutely key in building a team that can win consistently.

And when we think about that 2017 team, they really had a window that opened in 2015 and closed in 2019. And that's what the Minnesota Vikings are looking to emulate here, where you want four to five years, where you're talking. talking about enough young talent. Those are rookie contracts. And you're going to have to pay people sometimes. And there's a big salary cap to be able to do it. The other thing is, too, that Seattle did this around paying a quarterback. They had Gino Smith cheap for one year.

And that was a really good season for him. And then they did have to work out a contract for him. And that might be the case for the Vikings and Kyler Murray. And then they did have to work out a contract for Sam Darnold. and they got a really good deal on Sam Darnold, who won them the Super Bowl. So well done to them on that. But the point just being that, yes, it's a restriction if you have to pay Kyler Murray eventually for Nolan Teasley. But also, it would not be the first time that he's ever had to maneuver around a quarterback like this.

So just the study of how the Seattle Seahawks got here and rooting it in so much in drafting successfully and evaluating successfully. And while I have long believed and many studies will show you that drafting pick by pick is pretty random, I also think that when you're coming from a place with a general manager and John Schneider, and this was his person who has twice done this, it might not be quite 100% random, right? Just because something is somewhat random, it doesn't mean it is 100% random. And I don't think it's 100% random that the Seattle Seahawks have been as successful as they've been building through the draft.

And a major part of that is believing in building through the draft and not panicking if the roster has weaknesses in selling off your draft capital. Not panicking if you're having a good season and saying we have to absolutely go get this guy or that guy and send a bunch of draft capital out. but then valuing it correctly when a Leonard Williams becomes available, and he's had elite moments in his career but was on the down swing and you get a good deal for him. Folks, if you find yourself hunting search engines for different hairstyles that might cover up your receding hairline, or if you're studying every actor and athlete you see of a certain age to see how they're handling their hair loss,

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Seahawks is that they have done a really good job of valuing their players, whether it's when to let someone go or how much they're going to spend in free agency or what they did in building this Super Bowl team in multiple instances was identifying when another player who's actually good, their stock was down. And this also goes for Ernest Jones as well. Their linebacker. His stock was down in Tennessee as anyone's probably would be. And they went out and got him and he's played a huge role for them.

DeMarcus Lawrence, his stock was down with the Dallas Cowboys. That organization has not really figured out defense in a long time. They bring him in to play a role. And then Leonard Williams is probably the biggest, most key example of that. And the other thing, too, is that they had a very clear identity, which I think is really necessary in the NFC right now. Because there's no Lamar Jackson, there's no Josh Allen, there's no Patrick Mahomes in the NFC. And maybe Jaden Daniels or Caleb Williams will someday turn into that guy or whatever.

We don't know. But as of right now, when you look around, it's really a roster building contest. Who can build the strongest roster with the best identity as a team? And Seattle was able to do that. And of course, you're going to say, well, yeah, they were the toughest, strongest, most violentest. That's true. And everyone wants to build their team that way. So, of course, when you hit on great football players, they usually are tough and violent and nasty, right?

That's how good defensive players are often built. But there's a couple things that I notice from their drafting that pops out right away. Number one is athletes that they have looked at these guys. and looked for what is your freakish element. And they did this with John Schneider in their first build, where you had players like Cam Chancellor, players like Earl Thomas. There's a freakish nature to those guys.

Great athletes, guys who are going to be, just even if you just look on paper, very impressive. And that's Nikki Minwere for sure. That's Byron Murphy for sure. That is, I mean, even Kenneth Walker was a very, very good prospect in terms of athleticism and Cesar. size and you saw that play out as the season went along. Gray Zabel is another really good example of a guy that, yeah, he went to North Dakota

State and may have not had the most experience, but put that guy on paper next to anybody else athleticism-wise, and you have a really good fit. So a focus on elite athletes there is number one. And the other thing that I notice is just production. Jackson Smith and the Jigba is not quite as freakish as some other wide receivers, although D.K. McHaff was a huge part of their offensive success for a long time. There's another freak guy. But when you look at Smith and the Jigba production.

So the bets that they are making in the draft in Seattle are ones of along the same lines that we've studied over the years that have had success. So if the idea is to be bigger, faster, stronger, number one, which I think the Vikings have lacked a little bit of since DeNeil Hunter left, It's been a lot of, and not that Jonathan Grenard's not a good athlete or Dallas Turner isn't a really, really good athlete. But DeNeil Hunter is like an all-time athlete. And when you look around the defense, it's a lot of high IQ. It's a lot of smart guys.

It's a lot of people that you would love to have over for your house for dinner and teach you football and will become coaches. But how many on this team are, whoa, like put that guy in the gym and you are going to. to have your mind blown, right? There's not really that many players on this entire roster like that. And I think the Vikings need to add much more of that as they go forward through the draft. And if Nolan Teasley, the new Vikings general manager, if he decides that he's going to follow a lot of the same principles as Seattle, then I think those are some of the ideas that will be brought over to Minnesota.

Now, questions that I have, number one, of course, is where does Rob Brzezinski fit into this? Because I like the idea still of Brzezinski having a high position with this team. I think he did a great job getting them through the offseason. And if you're Nolan Teasley, the first thing you should do is give Rob Brzezinski a big old hug. Because Rob set up, what do you want most as a general manager? You want flexibility, right? you have flexibility, a quarterback, they could decide that they don't want to stick with Kyla Murray, and they could draft this new general manager's next great quarterback.

You're also looking at a good amount of cap space going forward. They did not extend certain veteran players to keep the flexibility for him to decide, do we want to extend Brian O'Neill, do we want to extend Blake Cashman and so forth, and then extra draft capital. It's not a million extra picks, but it is nice to have. have an extra third round draft pick. And I think that maybe some of the Jonathan Grenard trade, which I didn't love the Vikings not having Jonathan Grenard.

But I think some of it had to be looking toward the future and possibly the next general manager and thinking, what would I want? And if you're Rob, if you were in that position, what would you want? Or if you're Nolan Teasley or anybody else that they were going to hire, what would you want? You would want draft capital and you would want cap space and you would want if you don't have a franchise quarterback, the ability to decide whether Kyler Murray is that, which Nolan Teasley is very familiar with Kyler Murray, by the way. I mean, Seattle has played against

Murray many times, and lately it has gone, you know, in Seattle's direction because they've had much better teams and much better defenses, but he's very familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of Kyler Murray. And now there's going to be a decision that can be made with Teasley and the rest of the staff in whether they want to go forward there, but they get to make that decision. You aren't locked into, hey, you got a $50 million quarterback. And if you don't love them, then I don't know what to tell you. This is a situation where he can truly shape this roster the way that he wants to shape it.

And I do think someone asked the other day if it was favorable for the Vikings to hire their general manager now as opposed to in, you know, January. And I think that the answer is going to turn out to be yes. Now, I don't think this is going to become some sort of trend in the NFL where teams fire their GMs way after the end of the season and then do their hiring process in May. But it actually does make a lot of sense for the way that it ended up playing out because now what Nolan Tisley is able to do, rather than trying to figure out where to park and figure out where his family's going to live and all this other sort of stuff while also learning

every player on the roster and the ins and outs and the coaches and everything else. This can be a evaluation process over a long period of time over this entire season. So getting acclimated, getting to know the roster before you have to make decisions as opposed to just arriving. And I'm making decisions now three weeks later after I just got my apartment or whatever or bought a house. And now this can be a slower and more methodical process for Nolan Teasley. But where Rob Brzezinski fits into this whole thing will be quite interesting to find out.

And I'll have to check if social media has reported this already or not. But I'm interested to find that out. The other thing is, how is the relationship with Kevin O'Connell going to work? Because Kevin O'Connell knows the Seattle Seahawks organization inside and out. He was with the Los Angeles Rams. They competed against Seattle. And I also think that O'Connell and Brian Flores are really dyed in the wool. Former NFL player, Brian Flores came up in the scouting universe, which I think was always a disconnect between Quasi Adaf Olmenza and the guys calling the shots on the coaching staff is there's just different ways of looking at football.

and from the scouting perspective, I think that there's a language that gets spoken there. There's understandings there. And from the former player perspective and the locker room perspective and so forth, where Nolan Teasley earning his way from the absolute bottom of an intern to the top of one of the elite organizations in all of professional sports, that comes with, of course, he's going to speak the language to work with John Schneider. but it comes with also cash a, I think, in credibility with the coaching staff of this is someone

who is going to understand the way that they are viewing the game. And also the fact that Seattle did manage their assets, their salary cap and their draft capital and everything else, well, to me is why they are the organization to emulate as much as you possibly can because you did combine those things. It's not like they're bringing in a 72-year-old scout who, why, I don't know, you know, Roman Gabriel or something back in the day. Like, this is someone who's seen a modern build from a very modern and forward-thinking type of franchise like the Seattle Seahawks, but also has that, that like out of the dirt

built up through the ranks type of element that someone like Kevin O'Connell, who broke in as your lowest level coach and worked up and up and up and up. And Brian Flores, who famously started in the scouting department of the new. England Patriots and worked up and up and up and up and up and on to the coaching staff and everything else. I think there's a natural connection there, but you never really know how the coaching staff and a new general manager are going to work. I think on paper, it makes a lot of sense to have an evaluator like Nolan Teasley,

who can bring ideas from another franchise that have worked, but also understand where Kevin O'Connell and Brian Flores are coming from. from the distribution of decision making they're not going to come out and tell us well he has 53 power or uh you know he has final say or whatever we did get robbed to uh acknowledge that he had final say which does make me think that nolan tisley would likely have uh as the general manager final say which i believe that uh previously um it was uh well wait a minute do we got an update here well hold on we got an update here uh this is from ben gessling says that Rob Brzezinski will stay with the team.

The Vikings plan to pair Tisley with Brzezinski and Kevin O'Connell in their new leadership structure, which does not give a ton of detail there. So I guess we're going to have to wait to find out what the detail is because Rob was already part of the leadership structure. They didn't just randomly pick him out of a hat to become the general manager, the acting general manager, that is, for Rob Brzezinski. He had been with the organization forever and was in a top position already. He was not sitting in a dark closet like Ryan Howard on the office and just cooking up salary cap stuff.

Like he was a major part of all their decision making. He just didn't have the final say. So how that's going to work is interesting. But it confirms what we expected that Rob would still be a major part of this, which I think is super important for the Viking. to keep Rob Bersinski as the liaison to ownership, somebody that they trust there, and someone that they bought into to the point where they gave him final say during this entire spring to operate the roster and the draft and everything else. To have that sort of trust in him is really important and speaks to his credibility

and what he's done in his career. But also, now I think the will still having someone that they can call up, and say what's happening there, right? I think that is really important. So Rob Brzynski, what that title is going to be? Is he going to be the one that becomes president of football ops, where he is actually above the general manager? Is it going to be a triangle of power or maybe a rectangle with Brian Flores?

I think that's still to find out. But that confirms that Rob Brzynski, Nolan Teasley, Kevin O'Connell are really your triangle of power. And these guys are going to be responsive. for building the team. But where Nolan Teasley fits in and this is interesting because is he supposed to be the main scout evaluator guy, lead the scouting department, evaluate players, really functionally just run the draft and then evaluate potential free agents for them.

And then Rob is going to work on the money side and the asset side of, hey, there's a player available to trade for. No, we don't want to trade that much for him or it's too much or how are we going to manage the cap going forward? Or is this kind of Nolan Teasley's show and everyone else is sort of circling around him? Because the relationship with O'Connell, and this is something that when they have the press conference and we'll, I'm sure, have as a question for Nolan Teasley, is how he sees the relationship working with O'Connell.

Because, well, O'Connell is a little down at the moment after a nine-win season, he still is one year separated from coach of the year. He's one year separated from a gigantic contract extension. The same thing goes for Brian Flores. There's a lot of power that goes along with that. With those two guys being two of the highest paid at their position in the entire league. So is part of Nolan Teasley's job to evaluate the coach along with evaluate the players or not?

I suspect not. I suspect that the Wilfs and Rob Brzezziensky in this case, might be the ones much more in terms of evaluating what they want to do at head coach long term because, I mean, is Kevin O'Connell under pressure or not? At this moment, I tend to think the answer is not. I think that they want O'Connell here long term, that when you reach a certain bar that you're not just going year to year saying, well, if we don't have good results this year, then get out of town. I think O'Connell has earned their trust from that perspective.

Or is it on the other side of that? That's what I think. Is it we want Nolan Teasley to figure out if he wants this guy to be his coach or not? Because when it's a little bit more of arranged marriage as opposed to you're hired at the same time, you're walking down the aisle at the same time, GM head coach, they're paired together, as opposed to, well, hey, coach, you're working with this GM now. Sometimes we do see where the general manager decides that he wants to go in his own direction. So how that triumvirate is distributed with power.

If we could get hints on that or any sort of idea of how that's going to work, title might tell us just a lot from what they give with Rob Brzeinski, but clearly going to stay with the organization as I would have expected and go from there. So Nolan Teasley is the general manager of the Minnesota Vikings. And here's what I'd like to know for the chat. First, like, what's your reaction? What do you think of the Vikings going in this direction? and also what's what's the thought process?

Like what do you want to see as a plan for the Vikings? Not just short-term moves. I mean, short-term moves are, hey, get Leonard Floyd or something or extend this player or whatever. But what would be your plan for building for the Minnesota Vikings? Because I think the hire to me says this is all about stockpiling draft capital and all about a year-over-year type of build where, okay, Maybe you're starting day one at 2027.

Yeah, you're going to be competitive, but you know that there's holes. You're not going to panic to try to fill them. You're going to try to find. And this was really a staple of the 2017 team, is that they were able to just kind of find some guys. Tom Johnson or Adam Phelan that maybe didn't necessarily pop off the screen at first. And then all of a sudden, they get thrown into a certain position. And it has felt like the Vikings have not had. a lot of those success stories.

I mean, you could say Josh Mattelis would be one, but he was a draft pick. Guys that they just sort of get and then all of a sudden are playing pretty significant roles, that's something that you need in order to build depth and have success there as well. So we will get into your questions and comments and thoughts here in just a second. But also, hey, so your fan dual question of the day. Here's your fan dual question of the day. The Vikings right now are playing. plus 500 to win the NFC North on Fanduel.

What do you expect that to be going into next year after a year of Nolan Teasley? Like, project out into the future. Like, do you think the Vikings will be a team that takes a step back a little bit next year, 2027 and build slowly under Teasley? Do you think that they'll be considered a favorite? Like, look out into your crystal ball for the Fan Duel question of the day. All right. Let's get to your questions, comments, thoughts, and feelings on Nolan Teasley,

hired by the Minnesota Vikings. Matt says for a long-term quarterback, continue to build out the trenches, keep KOC and Flores. And yeah, I mean, right away, that is my thought as well is it's very hard to keep a group together like that because things happen. There's ups and downs. And then when there are downs, there's a lot of pressure on everybody. And it's not the easiest thing to go through when you have that. And already we saw Kwaya daffo menza fired.

So that's kind of proof of when you have those dips and the fingers get pointed and there's a lot of pressure on everybody, it's hard to do. In a rational world, which the NFL is not always, what you would really like to see is that this trio stays together over a number of years. And I think, you know, not to make light of it at all, but Brian Flores in his lawsuit is probably the death knell to him ever getting a head coaching job ever again because this thing is coming to light. just recently, if you haven't kept up on it, it is going to come to light after a four year or whatever it is battle between Flores and the court system and the NFL, but the Supreme Court

said we're not going to hear it, so we're going to go with whatever the lower courts decided and the lower courts are deciding to let this be dealt with in court rather than an arbitration. So there's stuff that's going to be revealed, which means I think Brian Flores can have a very long history here as a Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator

because I can't see him getting too many head coaching opportunities after this. And with Kevin O'Connell, you can have a lot of debates over Kevin O'Connell. And when things go wrong, people look at, well, is he tough enough on the players? And does his offense really work and, you know, trick plays and third down and ones and things like that? But I think when you look at the functionality of the franchise, if you're projecting over long term, even a year like last year where things are going totally downhill and they're able to steer the ship back to being respectable. I think that says a lot about Kevin O'Connell. I think it says a lot about the culture that he's built, which really matters here when you're getting ranked at the top of the NFL year after year.

And I know that's not a championship. But I think it does project really well for them eventually trying to build one. So I think that's one where the grass is not always greener. with the way O'Connell operates, you want this long term. But with a new general manager, that person suddenly coming in, he's the one that now has a little more of the stability there or the power there when it comes to whose job is on the line because the first person who's going to get blamed is the coaching staff.

It's just when you can build a coaching staff like this with Flores, you just don't want to let that go. And I think long term we've seen other franchises get good. coaches and work out over a long period of time where they get their one shot and they take advantage of it and they win even if they're not absolutely flawless. So yeah, but to your point, though, on the quarterback, yeah, the long-term quarterback decision is the biggest one for Nolan Tisley right away. And the thing is he doesn't have to decide today.

He can sit and wait and see what happens throughout this year. I think that's really favorable for Nolan Tisley. And the trenches, look, they've spent a lot of drafts. capital on the offensive line. And they just got Caleb Banks and they just got Dominique Orange and they have Dallas Turner. So they have been investing in the trenches. But where they've been a little bit short is defensive line depth.

And I also think that even just like front seven, they've had to, well, we get Blake Cashman from free agency and they had a home run on that. That's a hard thing to do. Eric Wilson, home run on that. But wow, like Eric Wilson, really? and they've had to kind of have these, even Isaiah Rogers, where you almost have to get lucky. Even if that's great evaluation by Brian Flores,

to have those players contribute what they have is not something you would expect to be a sustainable model. And we definitely saw that from Hargrave and Allen. So continuing to build out that front seven, the secondary is another part of it that's going to have to be addressed, but doing it through the draft so you can develop those players as opposed to trying to get them when they're 27 or 28. and then you have to pay them is the right way to go about it.

Oven-Baked strudel says ownership has stated previously that the GM is the head dude. Nobody knows that better than me since I was the one that asked Mark Wilf that question at the owner's meetings. I asked him if they wanted to have a structure with president of operations and then the GM below and then the head coach involved in that. And he said that they like the structure that they currently had. So if Rob Brzezinski isn't above Nolan Teasley and is just back at the position he was in before with maybe a little more on the decision making side, well, that's fine. I mean, that's the way they want to do it.

I think what's important, though, for me is that you have a situation where you're not budding heads with the head coach and the general manager and the ownership finds out three years later. That's the really important part to me, that maybe this even increases the trend. trust and the communication between Rob Bersinski and ownership. And maybe that's part of the role is to oversee that relationship is maybe part of it. But I'll be curious to see what the definition of Rob Bersenski's job is. It is just a good thing in general that they're not firing him or he's not taking his ball and going home that he is still getting rewarded here. Junk Buster says this hire is very me for me.

Just hope he brings us stability in the draft process. Well, I mean, if it's me for you, it's hard to figure out what wouldn't be me to you because, I mean, they're taking someone and it doesn't always work. But they're taking someone from not only a team that won the Super Bowl, but a team that has been consistently very competitive and just well run over the entire time that John Schneider has been there. And this is someone who started and was mentored by Schneider and brought up through the ranks there. So again, it doesn't guarantee that Nolan Teasley is going to be the next great general manager. But at the same time, it's hard to find something more exciting unless I guess they hired, I don't know, like Randy Moss. I'm not sure. I really am not.

Like, I really don't know because to me, it checks the major box. The biggest box in terms of excitement for a new general manager here is they came completely from out of this world. You have this environment that the Vikings have operated for a very, very long time. And we thought when they hired Quasi Adolfo Menza, and here is the big key for Nolan Teasley, we thought when they hired Quasi Adafel Mensa, wow, this is just going to be totally different, and it's going to be entirely reshaped, and there's going to be supercomputers on the walls, and there's going to be abacuses everywhere, and it's going to be this analytics environment. They're going to hire 15 physicists to try to win football games.

None of that really happened. And I'm obviously kidding about exaggerating about that stuff. But then it didn't really happen. We just couldn't really find where anything was shifted. So with Tisley coming in, that is a question. Can he implement what they want to do in Seattle? But I think he brings the credibility to add to what they have rather than a complete, massive overhaul.

DJ Willie says, How do you not let the GM pick his head coach and scouting personnel? So, well, we'll see on the scouting personnel. We don't know that yet what they're going to do with that. So there may be people from Seattle or from his past. And the timing on that could be interesting because usually contracts run out in May. So there may be some people in Seattle who have been kind of waiting to sign their contract, who might be potentially making their way over here, I would imagine.

I mean, Quasi did get to bring his assistant general manager, or eventually Ryan Grigsden became assistant general manager, and Demetrius Washington did too. So he did get to bring some of his people. I have to imagine that Nolan Teasley is going to have at least some ability to be able to do the same thing, which is bring over some people from Seattle. in terms of picking his head coach, here's the thing about picking his head coach.

I mean, number one, did you want like KOC fired in January when they fired Quasi and then wait till after the draft with no coach and then try to start now? Is that what you wanted them to do? That doesn't really make any sense. I mean, ultimately, it's very possible that, you know, Nolan Teasley will have a say in Kevin O'Connell's future after this year. But the Wills have always done it this way. They make the call on the GM.

and the head coach. Nobody else. I would like Rob Brzezinski to be in their ear about that. I would like him to be consulted about that, but they have always been the ones. And that's they're right, man. They own the team. They can decide who's going to coach their team and who's going to be their general manager. So in terms of the evaluation of O'Connell, Brzezinski and Tisley, they may have a part of it, but I doubt they do. I think that's coming directly from the very, very top. And look, if any of us own the Minnesota Vikings, we would also, make the decision on who the head coach was going to be. Not anybody else, not a GM or whatever.

It would be us. We're deciding. So that's how it's going to go. In terms of a scouting personnel, most times when a GM is hired, they don't just clear out everybody. Now, what can happen is you can move people out that are in those key decision-making processes or positions. but the guy who is flying to northern Pennsylvania to watch some high school kid or whatever

to try to get, well, I guess there's a Bresto system. I think they have a Besto Scout. So Blesso is this company that helps them try to get ahead on the next drafts. So let's just say a random college that you're flying out to in northern Pennsylvania to watch a FCS player who could someday be a draft pick or something. I'm just making up a scenario. You're not firing that guy. You're not coming in and going, all right, you know, scout that goes to Virginia

Tech football games for us in the Southeast Scout. Get the hell out. I mean, you might bring in some of your people that you like for scouts, but you're not doing that. Now, director of college scouting, that may change. Or player personnel, that may change. He may bring in new people. And I think if you're taking that job, you would want to be able to give some of the

executive positions. to folks that you have a lot of trust in. Will the Vikings allow Tisley to do that? Is somewhat of a question, I would say. Curtis says this means nothing because you have no idea how much power he has. Does he have to collaborate with a committee before making decision? Nobody knows.

And the clowns covering them won't tell. Oh, it's a conspiracy. It's a conspiracy. We won't tell you. We'll probably ask it in a press conference. And if I find out exactly, then I will tell you. So that's my promise to, you, Curtis. Rather aggressive for a Saturday for exciting news, Mr. Curtis. But to your point, though,

does he have to, look, listen to John Schneider talk after winning the Super Bowl. And does he say, I did this, King John Schneider, let's go me, put the crown on me, I'm the guy. Did John Schneider say that? No. John Schneider said it was a collaborative. effort between their entire front office. That's what he said. He said, it's not just me. It's a whole bunch of people. See, I think there's a misunderstanding sometimes of how a front office works. It's not that different from whatever company you work for, where there's an executive structure and people answer to people and they have roles and jobs and the person who is the general manager is in charge of decision making, but he does not sit in his office 24-7 and grind tape and then make all the

decisions by himself and the Super Bowl is all on that person. No matter what job Nolan Tisley eventually got because he was a rising candidate, someone who was thought to be next in line for a GM position, not just after winning the Super Bowl, but for a couple years now as someone who was thought of his rising in the industry, no matter where he went, he was going to have to work with other people. So there's kind of this misperception, I think that, well, one, because Quasi Adolfo Menta was not effective in doing that. He was not effective in connecting with the rest of the front office and getting their buy-in and their belief and feeling like their voices were being heard by Kwezi Adafel-Menza. So whoever he was going to go to, they was going to have to work with the rest of the front office.

And that was what we heard with Rob Brzezinski when he was running things, is that. that people enjoyed in the front office feeling like they were heard, feeling like their jobs mattered to the entire process of going through this draft. And I think Nolan Teasley is going to have a lot of respect for that because he started at the bottom and had to have his voice heard to work his way up to be at this point. And that's why most GMs come from this world of the bottom of the wrong is the mail room, right? It's the, it's going out to whatever I was talking about with northeast Pennsylvania to see whatever FCS player or whatever.

Like, it all starts there with the scouting intern. And then you move your way up from the mail room to the office. And then you get the bigger office with the corner. And then you get the C-suite and then you're in charge, right? Like, that's how football works too. It's not different than that. So you have to work with people the entire way through. So,

Evan says, first thing Tisley has to do is hire a veteran edge on Monday? Well, yeah, you know, June 1st, they do get some extra cap space. So he could do that. I think that in terms of right away with the roster, yes, there's a couple of little additions that could be made that would be along the same lines of Joanne Jennings, maybe not quite as expensive, whether it's Leonard Floyd, Kyle Van Nuoy, whoever else that they might want. Certainly he'll have some opinions on who they should bring in because I don't think the roster is completely settled. So there will be a little bit of a stamp, probably, early on.

I think the biggest thing is to try to figure out in the coming weeks what they're going to do with some of these players who need contract extensions or I should say want contract extensions, but, you know, they might decide that they're not going to do it to keep the maximum amount of flexibility. Reconnected says need a general manager who isn't afraid to say see a later to veterans. I think that that's very important. And, you know, Quasi Adolfo Mensa, we can't act like everything that he did along the way was stupid and terrible because it wasn't and they still have a good team right now.

So it wasn't. I thought the best thing that Quasi Adolfo Mensa did the entire time he was the general manager was exactly what you're talking about, was to look at some players that were on the decline and say, this just isn't a smart idea to give Delvin Cook more money. It's not a smart idea to keep Adam Thielen around. And then they kind of violated that principle when they, went out last off season and traded for Thielen or signed Javon Hargrave, signed Jonathan Allen, re-signed players.

Like, I mean, Aaron Jones is a great player. And I think that he will be better in the role that he's going to have for next year. So it's better if your football team has him. But from a, from a pure economic standpoint, it's not a good idea to give $10 million to a 30-something-year-old running back. And Kwezi Adaflmenza, I'm sure, knew that, but was not able to execute that. so they end up with just a bad contract. That is really important.

And I think Seattle has done a good job of that over the years. The most shining example is Gino Smith and just saying, Gino Smith is not worth the dollar figure he's asking for. So we're going to go out and get somebody who might be a better fit for our offense in Sam Darnold. Oven-baked Struel says great hire doesn't mean great GM. As a prospect, he is a great hire. I agree with that. I definitely agree with that because it is tricky when you hire someone, and this is the

downside of it, right? Like I'm talking about that structure. There is, I'm sure some of you've heard of like the Peter principle where you keep getting advanced until you're kind of in over your head. That does happen at times. It is very, very different. This is why I think it's really nice to have Rob Brzecky still there and why I think it's nice to have time for Nolan Teasley.

It is different from being an assistant. it is different for being a scout where you are managing people and i've told the story before about rick spielman having to make some sort of decision about where a sponsorship sign was on the grass it's like there's way more that goes on you have all sorts of companies that the team works with and vendors and you have the person at the very top kevin o'connell to the person all the way down at the bottom who you are in charge of managing and overseeing the entire operations So it is different than anything that an assistant GM has ever done before. But I agree with you as a as a let's look at him on paper.

Let's look at where he came from. Let's listen to some of his interviews, which I spent half an hour the other day listening to a Nolan Teasley interview with a couple of podcasters. We'll try, folks. But, you know, like he was breaking down draft picks and stuff like that. And it just the one thing that I noticed from that is I. I do not think that Nolan Teasley has any real flair to him. And I mean that in a positive way. Like, this is a football guy.

And I think you're going to notice that. Like, this isn't someone who comes in with a stick or with a big voice or an act or whatever and a bunch of silly, stupid phrases and things like that. I'm not saying Quasi was that. I'm saying that you see this with coaching hires. You see this with GM hires where it's an act. You have some sort of act that enough people have bought into. I don't get any sense of that from Nolan Teasley. And I think when he's introduced, you all are going to see that.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Let's see, Jordan, the scouts play a huge role, and the general manager is running the business. They can't watch 20 hours of film a day. They deal with everything all the way up to vendors. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Right. So, no, look, the scouts are a big deal. But we don't know who's actually good.

This is a point. We don't know who's actually good at scouting for the Minnesota Vikings because they never draft anyone. They never have high picks. They never have, they three pick. Like this last year was super fun for all of us to break down a bunch of draft picks. But during Quasi, they just didn't. They just didn't ever have top 100 picks because they traded them all away. And that may have been his economics thing.

Like maybe he believed that the assets were a little too volatile and it was less volatile. The trade for bigger names in the draft. moving up for Dallas Turner or it was less volatile to trade that for a T.J. Hawkinson or whatever it might be. And sometimes that's a good idea. But if you end up with what did I, what did I count it up? It was eight top 100 picks the entire time that you're the general manager. It probably is not going to result in a whole lot of foundational players, right?

Because that's where they're going to come from. So Nolan will have to evaluate himself. And this will be part of the process, I'm sure, over the next year, who he wants to stay. because the assumption that every scout that works for the Minnesota Vikings is a big dummy is probably wrong. In fact, their reputation-wise, there are people in the organization who have really great reputations in terms of being scouts and evaluators. It's just how often does that actually get implemented when you're basically not drafting ever?

So, Jordan says most of the media was hyping Nolan and Reed and do not. sit here and pretend the wilfs don't watch and read what they do i i'm not sure about some of the reaction there that's targeted it at us um i don't i actually don't even know who you're saying would have been hyping uh nolan tisley so um that's that's that's that's a lot odd some odd comments here uh evan says uh you know the scouts don't have any part of drafting right yeah that's it's exactly right like they the scout well they do i mean they usually day three is called Scouts Day and a lot of times scouts are kind of submitting their favorite players and then

the general manager is making the calls. So it does have some part of it, but we can't evaluate from our seat, the scouts. So that will be something that Tisley has to do. And circling back to a rational point here would be how much he changes of this front office is a major story. So if we're doing, and I'll probably write this article wise, like five questions about Nolan Tisley, if we were doing that one of the questions certainly is how much does he get to overhaul the front office, how many new faces will come in here. And most of them, you'll never know from the outside what they do,

how good they are at their jobs unless they become a rising star. And then you start to hear more about them. But Nolan Teasley will know and it will play a role in whether they succeed. So how much are they able to revamp certain parts of the front office is something that I'm really interested to find out. So, you know, because, you know, when you're saying no one ever criticizes the scouts, that's because you don't know what they do. I mean, you just have no idea what they do.

They go out, they gather information, they present it to the front office. That's their job. They don't make the decisions. So I know you want everyone fired all the time, but I don't think that that's really the right way to do it. The truth says Van Nuys not an option. per Omar Kelly of the Miami beat. He and B flow were not best friends or used to be best friends going back to New England

and then fell out after Miami cut Van Nuoy for cap reasons. Okay. Felt betray. Okay. That's interesting. That's interesting. All right. Didn't know that.

But I still think it is a business, you know, and Eric Kendricks went back to work with Mike Zimmer after saying that he had built a culture of fear. So, you know, if the Vikings offer the most money and they can get past their differences, then it should, you know, I don't know. Usually they're able to bury those types of things. Joel says, why do you think ownership went with the one guy that had no connection to the team? I don't know that having a connection to the team was part of it or not. I mean, these are all people who were assistant general managers who came from the scouting universe.

If I'm sitting in the Wilf seat, so we haven't heard from them yet, we will when they have their press conference about why they wanted to hire Nolan. Teasley. But if I was sitting in their seat, what I would want to hear is the best plan, the best analysis of what I have and the best plan to build the next great Minnesota Vikings team. And I'm probably picking the guy who has the best plan to build the team. And I think with someone like Teasley, where he has an advantage is they just won the Super Bowl. So you have that edge on you. you could say, this is how we end up, you know, winning the Super Bowl, right? Like, we went, we did this and we did this and we did this and this is our process for scouting

and evaluation and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right? So there's that. I mean, you could present, you got a lot in your favor if you've won the Super Bowl recently. But I think that the biggest thing would be, here's how we're going to emulate that. Here's how we're going to repeat what happened in Seattle and do it again. And here are the specifics because in one of those meetings, the guys who have done this before and talked about it publicly sort of talk about like a binder, like bringing in, you know, an analysis. And I talked to former GM about this a few weeks ago for a story just about how this whole process works and what you're trying to present. So it's what you're going to do with the roster, how you view the structure of the front office, what you think of the coach.

And then according to, uh, who was it? I want to say, well, someone, I don't want to attribute the wrong person, but somebody reported that, I think it was Albert Breer or maybe Jonathan Jones. Someone reported that Kevin O'Connell was involved in the second round of these meetings. So how they click with Kevin O'Connell is going to matter to the Wills. They want O'Connell to be their coach. And I know some of you don't, but they do. So O'Connell's opinion as well of who he feels like. has the plan that most clicks with them.

And this is the identity that O'Connell wants because, realistically, the coach is the one that's setting up the game plan every single week. The coach is the one that understands what works for him from a culture perspective, from a schematic perspective. So those two have to be at least relatively on the same page. And we saw during Zimmer when they weren't, when they got off being on the same page, what happened there. So how well O'Connell clicks with the plan, how well the Wills understand the plan and like what they're hearing for both the front office structure and for building a roster would matter a lot.

So I don't think it's as simple as, well, this guy was from the outside. So we like that more. I think it was probably best man wins with their presentation to the Wills.