Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Eric Eager breaks down what research says about playing JJ McCarthy right away

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Matthew Coller talks about Dr. Eric Eager of the SumerSports Show about the Vikings picking JJ McCarthy and what is outlook should be for 2024. Plus, was the Dallas Turner pick a reach? Was drafting a kicker bad? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, along with Eric Eager, probably the most requested guest from my listeners to come on and break down the Minnesota Vikings draft. Yes, you, you and also Jeremiah Searles, who railed against... Another Nebraska corner star. Yeah, all Nebraska, but he railed against the jj mccarthy pick so i'll have to connect with him very soon and get his reaction but uh why don't

we just start out the show by getting your your broad strokes here then we could dive into your research on sitting or playing first year quarterbacks but how did you think that the vikings handled a draft where a lot of people thought they were going to have to trade up to get JJ McCarthy? They stood at number 11, waited as long as they felt like they could, and then jumped up at the last minute to get McCarthy. We'll start there and then we'll get into the Dallas Turner thing and the discussion about the draft capital with him as well. but how about we just focus on them landing McCarthy without having to trade up yeah I thought that that was really well done I mean uh Quasey you know held his water um now it's unclear whether or not they wanted Michael

Penix or not or whether they wanted how much they wanted Drake May and whether that difference there. It was really funny. I was talking to somebody who works for one of the teams in the league, and he was saying, how much does it make sense that the Giants wanted to give up this much stuff and move up to three to get Drake May, But then they wouldn't take McCarthy at six. Do they really think that there's that much difference between Drake May and J.J. McCarthy? I mean, Kwesi unveiled the fact that there's probably that much distance. I'll take him at 10, but I won't trade up for him. Which is exactly kind of what he telegraphed in the press conference where he said there are guys you trade up for because they're everything, everywhere, all at once type players. And then there are guys you sit back and build around with the picks, and that's McCarthy. So I think it was a pretty good move there for him to hold his water. And Atlanta took pennixance i don't think

any of us expected that to happen even though you know in hindsight it makes some sense he's older he's productive he's kind of ready to play even though he's not going to play right away in atlanta and so yeah i like that much and they didn't give up much. In fact, especially for a quarterback trade-up, perfectly fine. I'm okay with it. I think as far as landing spots go, the Vikings are the best landing spot for a quarterback other than Chicago. So this, you know, very good job by Kweisi on that particular pick. Well, let's talk about that difference between Drake May and J.J. McCarthy, because the Vikings had made final offers upon final offers upon final offers to New England, at least per

reports. They were calling all the way until the last minute to see if they would accept their offer to move up and get Drake May. And I imagine that it was going to cost them three first round draft picks, number 11, likely number 23 and the next year's first round draft pick and with McCarthy when it got to number four number five now I could also look at this and say that number four and number five were also such tremendous prospects and you could say this for the Giants as well such tremendous prospects that they couldn't be passed up that

the Arizona Cardinals could not move back and pass up a chance to get Marvin Harrison Jr. or even Joe Alt to the Chargers. And Malik Nabors has this same argument for the Giants. I never believed that the Giants would move up because I think they have to justify the Daniel Jones thing, or at least play it all the way to the end. If they were to get rid of Daniel Jones, he becomes good somewhere else. They draft a quarterback who doesn't work, then they're super fired, right? So they have to try to at least show, no, we were competent when we extended Daniel Jones for that $40 million a year. And that's a lot of the politics that go into the GM position that I think we maybe don't think

about all the time when we're analyzing moves. But none of these teams outside of the Jets really had a lot of motivation to move too far back until you probably got to number seven. And by number seven, the Vikings must have been thinking, we're going to get to number 11 here, and we're going to have our pick of the secondary litter between Pennix, McCarthy, and Bo Nix. And then all of a sudden, the Atlanta Falcons come out of nowhere and then just made the decision for the Vikings. I would have been fascinated to know who they would have picked if both guys were on the board. But I think that once it became clear that those top prospects were going elsewhere, then it was kind of an easy choice for them to just wait and see how it played out. But do you think in your mind, of analytically speaking that it is worth the

difference between drake may and jj mccarthy because i think three first round picks versus not is probably not worth it even if i also in my head had a big gap between may and mccarthy as a prospect yeah three first round picks is a lot right and i i don't in a situation so let's think about it like patrick mahomes like chiefs went 27 91 and a future one to move up 17 spots to get him in a draft where the it was they could have gone with watson with a similar trade-up or to sean kaiser that gap probably justifiable and even then a still a big pay-up or to Sean Kaiser. That gap probably justifiable. And even then, still a big pay-up and still needed to really hit for it to work out. In this case, you have to fold in a lot of assumptions too. Like Drake May in New England has probably got a much lower chance of succeeding than J.J.

McCarthy. The talent differential might be washed out by the supporting cast gap between New England and Minnesota as well. And so that's kind of where I see it. I think that if you are Ad Daffo Mensah and you've built this roster or you've inherited some of this roster and built some of it to the point to where it is only for you to sort of have traded up all this stuff to get McCarthy. Again, I was sort of, when I was sort of tweeting through it before I was thinking

if McCarthy was going to go at four, then you might as well just trade up for May at three, because that gap makes a ton of sense. If they had intel that McCarthy was going to fall to 10 or that Penix was kind of in that realm, which again, from the public's perspective was not true. Like from the public's perspective, McCarthy was going, you know, his betting market number was five and a half, right? So he's only two picks different. If that's the case, then just, it's a rounding error to go up for May. But if he's truly picked 10 and Pennix is pick eight, by the way, Pennix expected draft position for grinding the moxers 25 in the betting

market. So it's 32 and a half so you have again a different information in hindsight than you're doing in doing foresight i think the way it shook out perfectly acceptable for him not to have piled on like it would probably had to have been another day two pick at most at worst and probably another first rounder and this will get to what we talk about in the later picks and maybe where I think he's there but not having given those up it's probably smart given what they're gonna have to do to to support a guy who is a very flawed prospect from a preparation standpoint from a you know just a just an overall standpoint of you know how prepared he is to be an NFL player. Yeah, I think that one thing Kweisi Adafomensa does extremely well is, and he's gotten better at this as you would expect since he became a general manager,

but it's laying out what their thought process is in a way that doesn't leave us guessing too much. I mean, he said that you always have to have a walkaway price. And I think for anyone that you're going up for three, even if you have a significantly better grade, there has to be a walkaway price. Is that walkaway price a fourth first round pick, which it may have been from the new England Patriots? Is it, Hey, if you throw Christian Derrissaw on top of this, then we'll take it. Well, that's not something that the Vikings could do in their current position. They can't be giving away players who are going to make your first round quarterback better. So they clearly got to that walkaway price, decided, nope, we're going to be comfortable

with whether we get McCarthy, whether we get Pennix. I think the Vikings did have Pennix as graded highly and would have been okay with him if someone else picked McCarthy, which also allowed their price of not trading up to be pretty low as well. Or I guess I should put it as like their desperation to trade up was not much knowing that they could take one of two guys. It seems like the only quarterback they would have been less enthused about was Bo Nix, but even he ends up being a top 12 draft pick. So if they had ended up with any of them, they are still getting a prime prospect. And I'm sure that now we know they were telling the truth when they talked about loving multiple quarterbacks in this draft, because they acted as such as if

they did love multiple quarterbacks in this draft. The thing about McCarthy that's interesting to me though, as we're evaluating lots of different quarterbacks from all sorts of different circumstances is when they should expect to play him. Now, everybody in the comment section who is saying, well, you've got to let the camp battle play out. I know today is not the camp battle that will be, um, oh, I don't know, like months from now. So why don't we talk about what your research says about this yeah i know we need a break ready for a nap at this point i'm ready for rookie mini camp actually um but the point just being that like let's talk about what your

research said about this because that's something you've looked into obviously if jj mccarthy comes out masters the offense by the second week of camp, demolishes Sam Darnold, throws for 14 preseason touchdowns. Yes, he is QB one. All right. I think we all recognize that that doesn't need to be said, but historically, what did you find when you looked into quarterbacks? Because McCarthy is the youngest and the least experienced of all of these guys so he is the most likely not to be starting in week one yeah i i think that the the the evidence so we all we all see the hits with mahomes who sat year one jordan love who sat for three straight years obviously aaron rogers sat now you have to be careful about uhating from time when Aaron Rodgers sat because the economics are different.

When Aaron Rodgers was drafted by the Packers in 2005, he signed a five-year, $7 million contract with no fifth-year option. So when he started year four, the Packers still had two years of team control at really inexpensive prices. So they got a good deal for him when he started playing and started playing well. And so it's really not the same. And it's illustrative to say, like, Jordan Love, the Packers had to make a $20 million decision on him before he started his second game with the team. So sitting him was not i mean they're lucky he's good and he was good for half a season so you know they kind of lucked out there

all the people that say sit jj because he's inexperienced or whatever like trey lance was inexperienced and went to a team good like you know better than the vikings are right now but the 2021 Niners were quite good. They had a win total. And so the way I looked at it was, I looked at my hypothesis was going to a team that had a weaker record versus stronger one as per preseason, basically Vegas odds, win totals, or chances to make the Super Bowl. And among the starters that started right away, the guys that played for the weaker teams played better. And that's just, to me, draft capital. The higher you're drafted, the better you are. So all the idiots on Twitter who are like,

we know nothing, are actually wrong, right? The draft curve slopes down. Caleb Williams is, if you run the simulation of the universe 10,000 times, Caleb Williams will be better than Jaden Daniels, and Jaden Daniels will be better than Drake May, and Drake May will be better than Michael Penix, and Michael Penix will be better than J.J. McCarthy more often than not. Not every time. That's why the world's fun, but more often than not. That's what's going to happen. And the guys that start right away that curve slows down now for guys for there's also this class of players and and vikings fans will know this like christian ponder and teddy bridgewater where they try to sit the guy right away right the

intent was for donna mcnabb to play the whole year he just just sucked. The intent was for Matt Castle to play the whole year. He just sucked and broke his foot. And so like for those guys, the better the team, the better the guy plays. That's how it goes. So, and the NFL is pretty damn good at sorting the guys that start right away and the guys that don't start right away. And the guys that don't start right away, they're as good, generally speaking, their outcomes track with how good the team is that drafted them, okay? And then there's the guys that sit the first year,

and it actually, they're successful at it. And those guys are a coin flip. There's Paxton Lynch, there's Trey Lance, there's Patrick Mahomes, there's Jordan Love. And those guys, it's whatever, it's vibes, right? And we remember the Patrick Mahomes. There's Jordan Love. And those guys, it's whatever. It's vibes, right? And we remember the Patrick Mahomes. We forget the Paxton Lynches and the Trey Lances of the world. And so to me, it's exactly what you said.

Kevin O'Connell puts his eyes on J.J. McCarthy, and if he's ready to play right away, you play him right away. There's no reason to sit the guy if he's ready to play. The NFL is pretty good at determining he's not going to go out there if if if you don't ruin quarterbacks by playing them it's mostly what i'm saying and i and they're so if he's ready to play like look what better conditions than to play than with brian o'neill christian derrissaw jordan Addison, Justin Jefferson, TJ Hawkinson, Aaron Jones, and Ty Chandler. Like, in a dome. Like, there's no better way to play. So they should play him right away if he's ready. If he's not ready, then they won't play him.

That's how it works. And that's how it should work. They should not sit him on principle. So here's the way I look at that. it's hard to analyze historically because one of the things that you don't know is intent or stink do you know that it was the intent to sit a quarterback or did they not start right away because they were immediately bad and their team knew we screwed up the draft pick and now we can't play this guy. And they would say publicly, everyone would say publicly, oh, yeah, yeah, we're letting him develop. I think in the case of the Vikings, you can see the intent because they went out and paid more money than you would expect for Sam Darnold to come in with the idea that he could be ready to start. And he is the youngest and he has the least experience. And you can sort of put together the logic.

Now, if it's Paxton Lynch or Christian Hackenberg or something, there isn't much logic for guys that were physically ready for guys that were, you know, with their teams, not necessarily going to be competitive. So they would have had every reason to just throw the starting quarterback in there right away. They just didn't get in because they weren't any good. So if the Vikings plan from the beginning, because they feel like they can start Darnold and compete and win games with Darnold, if they have to, and the, the idea all along,

if they tell them from day one, look, I mean, you would have to go way above and beyond to start, but otherwise we feel like that quarterbacks can be ruined. And it is, see, I think that that's where I would maybe not agree. It's not that if you're a great quarterback and you get thrown into a crap situation, you can fight through that. If you're a great quarterback, if Drake may is fantastic, well then you know why KJ Osborne is going to have a career year receiving and Kendrick Bourne is going to make the pro bowl if he's truly great we've seen that for Patrick Mahomes but I also don't think that Mahomes should be used as examples for anything like oh look you can overcome having bad receivers someone like Sam Darnold was likely to be prone to throw a butt ton of interceptions

anyway but when he was put with Robbie Anderson and Jamison Crowder and Adam Gase and just all this complete garbage when he was with the Jets you could see where that would take a young quarterback at 20 years old as he was when he was drafted and set them back and then you lose confidence and then you get frustrated or you get injured because you're not identifying stuff fast enough you see how this can in in life, it can sort of unravel where I agree with you that, you know, somebody like Joe Burrow takes over a terrible team. He's battling through right away in that first year. By year two, they're fantastic.

But I look at JJ McCarthy is you could do it with intent and you can have a development plan with him and be as patient as you want to be from the very start, not be sort of trying to grade each day through training camp going, well, should we start them? Should we not start them? Whatever. I think this is a unique situation that way. Yeah. It's funny. My, my boss, Thomas Dimitrov, who actually was part of this sample, had me look through first time defensive head coaches and there, when they took a quarterback with their first pick of their career and the success rate and it's about like 25 to 30 percent and of course he had mike smith and took matt ryan and that was a success story and we were trying to like

hypothesize because here in atlanta now raheeem Morris is not on his first stint but he was the coach with Tampa Bay like 15 years ago so it might as well be his first head coaching stint defensive-minded coach takes a quarterback first why doesn't it succeed and it gets back to kind of like my whole issue is if you are an organization that is going to ruin a quarterback, you are going to ruin the quarterback the whole time anyway. Right. So whether you ruin him and starts one, two, three, four, five and six and seven through 17 is independently. If you were the Patriots and you were going to make Joe judge your offensive coordinator at some point during the Mac Jones era you were going to ruin him anyway so the fact that Mac Jones started year one is not material to the to the argument

you know what I'm saying so like the fact that Bill Belichick had lost his fastball and was still the head coach of that team is why Mac Jones failed in addition to the fact that Mac Jones isn't that good anyway. Right? So what the fact, and this is like, this is my positivity towards the Vikings. Kevin O'Connell very clearly has a clue, right? He's very clearly a good head coach. So whether or not JJ McCarthy starts the first six, like, do we really think that he's going to ruin McCarthy by playing him one through six games? And then all of a sudden the light bulb is going to come on and he's going to ruin McCarthy by playing him one through six games and then all of a sudden the light bulb is going to come on and he's going to nurture the heck out of him for game seven through seven? No, that's bullshit. He's going to produce an environment in the first

six games of the year that is going to coddle him and make him learn the game pretty well, or he's not going to play him because he's not ready to play. But either way, he's not going to play him because he's not ready to play but either way he's not going to nothing out of principle is the right thing to do right if he's if he's better than Sam Darnold or he has better upside than Sam Darnold which is probably what you should do anyway you should play him and again most of these like do we think Kyle Shanahan ruined Trey Lance? No, Trey Lance just didn't have it. And so whether or not Lance started year one or year three or year two and broke his foot isn't the deal, right? So most of the time when we see Justin Fields was ruined, it's like, okay, well, that was because Matt Nagy was out the door.

Ryan Pace was out the door. And the next group was not all that invested in his success. So that was the whole point. So I don't know. Like, this is all my way of saying, like, Vikings fans, relax. If they play J.J. McCarthy the first game of the year, he's ready to play. And Kevin O'Connell will make him good because he's made, he made Nick Mullins pretty good. He made Josh Dobbs pretty good and he made Kirk Cousins pretty good. So this will be okay. Like, I just don't see a reason to sit JJ McCarthy just to sit him.

Folks, we all have smartphones and we know that they are pretty amazing, but they can also be amazingly distracting, especially when we're around other people. So U.S. Cellular wants us to reset our relationship with our phones by putting down our phones for five. That's right. A company that sells phones wants us to put down our phones and see what we can find. Learn more at uscellular.com slash built for us. That's uscellular.com slash built for us. Oh yeah, no, I agree with that. I guess I look at it as the air on the side of caution when it comes to your young quarterback, because I do believe that their confidence can be smashed. And I'll just give you an example.

And I know this guy's not going to play really in the NFL. And we're likely to see him maybe as a Birmingham Stallion at some point. But after they started Jaron Hall, we talked to him in the locker room after the game. And it was like he had been hit by a train. I mean, you just saw the look on his face where it was like, I can't do this. I like this is, it was so overwhelming to him. And of course, JJ McCarthy is vastly more talented. It's just an example of having seen it before where when you're the quarterback of a franchise, there's so much pressure on you to begin with. And you step in and you already have

to lead a bunch of people who are way more experienced and way better at football than you. Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison's now been here for a year. The offensive tackles are very experienced. Aaron Jones is running back. You can't, if you're not ready, go under center and operate an offense where Aaron Jones and Justin Jefferson, the ballers of this league, are on your team looking at you to make the right plays. If you're not ready to do that, to get the right calls, to get the right protections, if you are not ready to do that, then you shouldn't play. And we should wait until you're ready to do that.

And I think all I've tried to say is that Vikings fans should be prepared for this and should be okay with this, that I don't think that there's any downside to sitting him. And when we talk about the rookie contract and stuff, I always look at that as starting year two anyway, because no rookies ever win the Super Bowl. The Vikings aren't winning the Super Bowl with JJ McCarthy. So you're not wasting a year of that rookie deal. And you're just maximizing it when you get to year two, when he's completely ready to play. So we'll, we'll see how that all that all plays out I mean that's going to be a process that begins literally rookie mini camp and then goes through OTA's training camp every day we're going to be talking about this of is he going to be the starter in week one but since you researched it had to get your take

now let's talk about Dallas Turner because all I have seen from the analytics world, Eric, is that the Vikings screwed up and getting Dallas Turner. And you know what I did? I pulled out all these draft analytics charts and I ripped them up because I like Dallas Turner. That's why. It's a hard one for me because when you look at how much they gave up for Dallas Turner, it's a lot, especially when you consider how they got to 23, then all the way up to number 17. That is a lot of draft eggs in one basket.

Here's my other side of that though. Edge rushers are ridiculously expensive. They are not easy to find, certainly not game changers. And if they looked at this draft as having three to five defensive players that were truly worth a high draft pick or in a elite tier versus maybe a good team, like let's say you had top seven grades on these guys versus the maybe three to five players versus, well, maybe a first round grade on somebody else, or maybe an early second on somebody else, then you are early second on somebody else, then you are getting a vastly better prospect in the mind of your organization than you would be if you waited for six or seven more spots. So I understand why they did that. To me,

it comes along with a lot of risk that would have been smoothed out by having four more draft picks as opposed to this. And yet I watched the player and go, I see it though, man. The guy runs a 4-4-5, sack the hell out of everybody in Alabama. Take your shot at getting potential greatness at that position rather than maybe just a guy who fills a spot. Yeah, okay. So let's start by saying analytically, like all my friends that listen to this, like trading up, they gave up like a three-eighths of a win just on that trade up alone.

Generally speaking, trading up for a non-quarterback is going to be dropping value. And generally speaking, there is no such thing as a steal in the draft. Like my old, you know, I was Timo Risky's boss at PFF. He wrote the article that said, you know, when the guy falls, it's the whole league determining that he's not that good, right? And that's a wisdom of the crowds argument, which is sound. That's established. And when you reach on a player, that's one team making an assertion and so it's there are reaches there are not steals in general okay now all that all that aside

from quasi's perspective what you're seeing is dallas turner's betting market was nine and a half so if you want to redo the numbers let's assume that the market's right, the betting market's right, or let's assume that you're the Vikings and you maybe had him as the eighth best player in the draft, let's say. Let's also assume that if you're Kweisi Doppelmense, Kevin O'Connell, and even on your worst year, you're picking 11th, which you are. Right? Your quarterback got hurt and you bled out. You picked 11th this year. So you're not making a habit of picking in the top 10 which given edge look at they paid a ton of money for jonathan grenard who's not a household name if you want to get premier edge talent in the nfl it's a pretty easy position

to evaluate it which means it's efficient if you're big fast and strong and you're productive you're going to go high and every at the elvis doomerville's of. If you're big, fast, and strong, and you're productive, you're going to go high. And at the Elvis Dumervilles of the world, you're taking chances on. Danelle Hunter doesn't happen very much, guys. Like, go through the list. Well, let's just get this out of the way. All the other Andre Patterson projects sucked, okay? they, like, if you want to pick an actual edge player, you have to pick them high. So from his perspective, Quasey's, you're getting a chance to trade up, not to 17, but to trade up to like eight to get this player that's going through his mind. That's what's that's the thought process there. Now, analytically, what we would say is you're way too overconfident in that evaluation of the player. But that's ultimately what they're doing.

And look, if you come out of a draft with a starting quarterback and a rock star pass rusher, that's a start to a great roster. And look, that's what he said in his press conference like sometimes you gotta swing for the fence to win a super bowl and i back up and the last time i was on this show and they did the competitive part of the competitive rebuild and during that time two teams in your division won three more playoff games than you did so you like you you failed the competitive part of the competitive rebuild. It's time to rebuild. And Detroit, Chicago, and Green Bay, you're looking up at them. You have the fourth highest odds to win your own division.

You have to swing for the fence to get back into this thing and to win. And so I understand the math, and I agree with the math, and I'm going to go to my grave on the math. But I kind of agree with you in the sense that I get it. I understand what he's trying to do. And I understand what he's, what he's thinking about as far as you got to come out of this with, with some real players. And now, you know, if he ends up being like Chris Dolman type or, you know, a great edge player type player, no one's going to remember that they traded up to 17 for him.

And if he doesn't, the average GM has three and a half years anyway. So I think that this is kind of the whole deal. He sort of understands this kind of you don't win by winning. You don't stay a GM in the NFL by winning nine and a half games a year. You, you try to win a Superbowl and this franchise hasn't won a Superbowl and he's trying to. And so I respect, I respect him for being bold. The way that I look at this, and I try not to apply this when any team does anything crazy and you just say, well, you know, they took their shot because you can't do it that way. Or then you're just

agreeing with them on everything and they're not right on everything. They do do stupid and crazy things. Sometimes in the NFL, they make bad moves. But in this case, in particular, we can look at broad draft value math and charts and say over a thousand drafts, this would be right. This would crush everybody else. Consensus boards are the same way. Over a thousand drafts, this would be right. This would crush everybody else. Consensus boards are the same way. Over a thousand drafts, the consensus board would crush any individual team that was just doing it off their own scouting. And I think we know that from the history of these things and what the math says. But I also believe in this case that you don't go deep in the playoffs.

You don't win the super bowl unless you have greatness and that's what i always come back to and when they traded down in 2022 it drove me crazy because they traded out of potential greatness which turned out to be one guy in that group which was kyle hambleton now they might have drafted jordan davis or jameson williams and not gotten greatness but top 15 is where it usually comes from most of the hall of famers ever are drafted at the top that's why we make such a big deal when adam phelan is from detroit lakes and ends up going to man and making the vikings because it's usually the top players the nfl gets those guys right uh most often and with d Dallas Turner, he has the ceiling of someone who could

be a superstar type of talent where even a few picks later, I'm not sure that that's the case with that many more defensive prospects. If it was, then some of them would have been taken over offensive tackles. So I look at like his, also his fit with this team, which which is particularly great he's the outside linebacker he's got some versatility to his game like there's a lot of factors that we have to look into and sort of funnel to this specific situation that's not just the draft chart if we do it all by the draft chart well then i i mean i think eventually we'd get it right but we would get individual ones like this potentially wrong. So I think it's just, I would put it under the category of risky, but worth it to get a great player at that particular position.

Speaking of a reach though, the biggest consensus reach, no doubt was Michael Penix. And one thing about the consensus on quarterbacks is I don't trust it at all. I trust it for a lot of things. I don't trust it with quarterbacks because I don't think that people who evaluate quarterbacks are that great at it because they miss all the time every year. No one had Pennix anywhere close to McCarthy. He gets drafted higher than him. Most people had Bo Nix's, you know, whatever, a ninth round pick or something and love Spencer Rattler and said he should be at the top of the draft and just let it all out, Matt, just by about 50 freaking miles on that one.

And then I see the the coping online by all these people who just mis-evaluated terribly on these quarterbacks. So, you know, it happens every single year. The Will Levis, you learn nothing from it, the way like we my favorite my favorite my favorite drink at the bar is the same mistakes being made every draft cycle the same freaking mistakes that like no one i'll say it i i i missed on kids bop jim mcmahon i thought zach wilson would be good and and like did i learn yes You have to learn from these things. Right?

We make the same mistakes all the time on quarterbacks. We are too – there are only a few things that you can hang your hat on for quarterbacks. And even then, those are incredibly noisy from college to pro. It's an incredibly different game, and it's incredibly different game. And, and it's, it's incredibly dependent on other things like Bo Nix could be good because Sean Payton's good. Yeah, no, you most certainly could. I guess what I was thinking about was just how difficult it is for the the, the outside world to figure out what the NFL is going to do when it comes

to reaching for quarterbacks or which order they're going to go in or who they're going to let drop because they have intel that they don't know about or whatever else, something like that. And so Penix goes number eight. And there was only a little bit of hint that that could happen from an Albert Breer report about them meeting with Penix in the last minute. At first, now this is by far the most controversial thing. It's getting debated all over the place. At first, I had the same reaction as everyone else, which was to laugh and to think that it was insane that they decided to do that.

Where I've come around to is the part about information we don't know about. And that would be when it comes to Kirk Cousins' health, the longevity that he might have, and if they are concerned about the possibility that Kirk Cousins might not last more than a year because of his Achilles. And yes, they will have dumped $ hundred million dollars into him for that. But if there's any other physical issues that he has, they have a quarterback on hand where they would know what the next group is going to look like quarterback wise for next season. They don't think they're going to have an opportunity to draft one next season. I guess I wonder about the possibility that they look at his age and think this is a year-to-year

thing and we need to approach we need to approach it that way yeah I well and what happens if Cousins plays poorly plays plays poorly play you know gets injured isn't ready for the start of this season like there's all these things the other part is and and this can't go unnoticed because you know they did fire Arthur Smith and hire Raheem Morris didn't fire Terry Fontenot and they got rid of Rich McKay well not not rid of Rich McKay Rich McKay now runs Arthur Blank's, like, entertainment, like, soccer side, all this kind of stuff. There is a void at, like, team president, senior football executive type. Like, Terry Fontenot pushed for the Belichick thing to not happen, right?

And so he doesn't exactly not have a hot seat and there's there's i think about this with the jets too like the jets had a great draft in my opinion and everybody talks about how oh you know the jets should have just taken brock bowers because if they don't make the playoffs they're all screwed and getting fired it's like yeah but what happens if the jets make the playoffs and then everything's barren like like the 2010 Vikings, guys, right? Like, we've all seen this thing here. You have to plan for the future. And Terry Fontenot, they got Kirk Cousins because it's been since Thomas Dimitrov was the GM of that team

that they've won more than seven games. 2017, that's pre-Kirk Cousins Vikings era that they've won more than seven games. 2017, that's pre-Kirk Cousins Vikings era, that they've won more than seven games in a season. So he's got to serve two masters. Terry Fontenot's got to win eight or more games, which Kirk Cousins, brilliant at. Then he's got to plan for the future because Kirk's old, and Kirk's not physically gifted the way that other old quarterbacks who

make it to 40 are we saw Matt Ryan who I think is similarly endowed physically from a arm standpoint how he fell off the table fast right we saw that guy in Indianapolis and he was cooked right that's enough that's one to think about right if? If you're thinking about Cousins in Atlanta, that thing ended fast. When we think about, oh, Tom Brady made it to this year, Aaron Rodgers, all those guys were big, fast, strong, with good arms. That's not Kirk Cousins. Kirk Cousins is a guy who overcomes physical limitations. So you add that with the injury they're trying to win

eight ten games this year with Kirk and then set the thing up for the future to me the only thing that's messy about it is the thing that you you and I'll come back to which I think they should have taken a younger quarterback but back to your point we don't know a thing about quarterbacks so just take the one you think is better. Well, right. And I also. Not the public Joe Schmoe idiot that doesn't know anything about quarterbacks. I also think the age thing this year was super overrated because of the sheer number of older players that were in college football because everybody got an extra year due

to COVID the number of 22, 23, and 24 year old players, even that they were competing against was wildly more than it had ever been. You just have to adjust for that. And Kweisi Dapflamenta called it like a minor league year for somebody like Bo Nix or like Michael Penix. But I don't think we could just look back at history and go, well, you know, Brandon Whedon failed. Okay. Yeah. Brandon Whedon did fail, but he was also 28 and his winky was playing. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. But instead it's not, it's not 19 and 20 year olds that they were playing against. It's a lot of older and more experienced players that they were playing again against last year in college football may have made college football a little better last year to be honest with you

the fact that there were more players and they looked clearly at Pennix and said this is a guy who we expect and I'm sure they took a very deep dive on his medicals to be a quarterback who's good until 34 so if that's what we really believe in him. So I think I could justify it easier if he had been the 20th overall pick than if he's the eighth overall pick, that's where the Rogers and Jordan love comparisons, uh, sort of lose you a little bit is you were drafting so high, but then it's very easy. Second guessing to go, Oh, well they could have traded down and got them really because what if Minnesota actually liked him more than McCarthy then you are not so I I like the fact that they did this even as crazy as it seems in the case that they think that cousins might not make it through the next two

years and your point about older quarterbacks I mean there is not a lot of precedent for non-hall of fame quarterbacks thriving past the age of like 34 right yeah like they're they're just i mean tom brady has more passing yards over the age of 40 than everybody else can buy like what are we talking about like the idea that cousins is going to age gracefully is simply not supported by data. Like it's just not. And, you know, and it's only a recent phenomenon. Warren Moon was a backup for the Kansas City Chiefs, you know, when he was old. Steve DeBerg was out of football, came back.

Like this is not something, like to your point, Kirk's a nice quarterback, but he's not of the Hall of Fame arm talent type of player that's going to, it's just, it's going to fall off. And Matt Ryan's a much better quarterback than Kirk. And it was ugly for him when he got to the Colts. And it was ugly for him his last year in Atlanta. We, like all the hipster football people are like, well, if you squint, it would look good under, like, no,

they went after a serial blank instead of having him there and and like that that should have told us everything the Kirk is there to win 10 games this year for Atlanta everything else is gravy and that's and everything else is gravy there right yeah and uh i think that shocking and actually hilarious are quite different than wrong and so i don't know that you can truly say logic wise that the falcons were wrong or insane but uh i do think it was very shocking to everyone and pretty funny with the way that kirk talked and like look if you're the team that let him go and you're the fan base that let him go, and then he goes to Atlanta, he chooses them instead of you and talks about how he's actually loved there. And then they instantly pick a quarterback. It's hard not to just be struck funny by that as I was very much on draft night. I need your opinion though. I want to move

on to the kicker because they picked the kicker. I was sort of confident that they wouldn't pick a kicker and then they picked a kicker. And this is a great kicker in college. Will Reichardt, he was as good as it gets. But you wrote the article that it's not a good idea to pick a kicker. Where I'm at with this is mostly on your side, though the guy has a five year sample of kicking. That's maybe more than you would ever get from a kicker before a lot of times somebody has one good year in college and then they draft them he was really excellent from 50 plus which might be indicative of things he's going to have to do in the nfl i think it's okay in the sixth round but my concern it would be that john parker romo ends up being better than him

and then all of a sudden uh you don't know what to do because you just drafted will reichard with a six round you know what to do you were going to play the guy you drafted right because that's right like that's how it goes like the issue with kicking and and i agree like and Michael Lopez, the NFL's director of analytics and data point in the South, Timo Ryska as well, the sample size issue is, of course, an issue. But you can't get over the two things that are huge here, which is the NFL is terrible at selecting these players, right? Usually the draft curve slopes down, and it doesn't. It simply doesn't the the if you're picked in the fourth round you have no better chance of being good than you were

picked in the sixth round they were not picked at all so whatever we think we saw from will reichert in alabama we were probably imagining things and and that's historically so you could think he's different but you're going against all of history and then the second part and this cannot be overstated you only have one kicker and so when he loses you a game against green bay in week two and you cut him and then he goes on to las vegas and becomes a great kicker like that's that's a thing right or when mac gay same thing when mac gay loses tampa bay a week three game against new york giants and then he goes on and wins the super bowl with the la rams and then gets a big contract with

the colts that's a thing and again it's you it's just different than other positions when dallas turner goes 50 past rushes and gets no pressures in week one guess what folks he's still on the team and he's he might they might not dress him the next day or they might just make him get 25 reps behind van ginkle and grinar the next day but he's still on the team and there's a there's a fundamental difference when will reicher goes out and goes oh for three and they lose to caleb williams and the chicago bears people are going to ask kevin o'connell at the press conference what are you going to do about your kicker and when it's blair walsh and you just signed him to a big contract extension to save the marriage you're going to lose a bunch of games and then finally let him go for kai Forbath a couple games too late, right? And missed the playoffs in 16 because of it and other things.

But that's the whole problem is that the dynamics of the position are such that you need to be able to move off. Or you need – and maybe Kweisi will do this because I think he's innovative enough to possibly do it. You need to be able to carry two kickers, but you won't because these teams don't even carry three quarterbacks. So they're not carrying three kickers. So that's my problem is that what happens when he goes out there and has a rude, like a normal person slump? We saw it with Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer. They cut him and he ended up being good. Yeah. I think in that circumstance, if it was the current Vikings, they wouldn't because they, the panic would not be at the same level as it was in 2018. They freaked out because they

were like, we're in a win. Now we can't lose any games. We can't have a tie. They probably got the idea that the division was going to be pretty good that year with the Bears and with the Packers. And so they thought, all right, well, you know, we've got to make sure that we can kick Will Reichard all the time that he needs to develop, uh, rather if there is such a thing, um, to, you know, step in and have ups and downs. If he does throughout the season, rather than panicking, uh, they could put somebody on the practice squad. You can do that with, you know, bigger practice squads now than you had in previous years. Uh, he, he won't make it through. Like you have to cut the guy, run them through waivers. Like there's a dynamic there that actually is a thing like, right.

And I saw, you know, in the comments, it was like, well, if they cut a sixth rounder, they cut lots of six rounders. You'd be surprised that the, that the tie is going to go to the draft pick. They put so much effort into it. They believed in it so much to take a position. they didn't really, you don't usually take. And so now they're saying we're different. And I'm sure Kweisi knows that historically that taking a kicker is not the smartest move. So that guy is very likely to make the team. It's riskier. It goes along the same lines, but in a very different way of, okay, you guys like him,

but it's riskier to take him. And maybe the upside is higher than picking up the guy from whatever UFL team. That's just crushing it right now in the pros in the UFL. But I don't, it's, I don't like that part of it that you feel beholden to that guy, that it should just be a totally open competition where you don't want any skin in the game when you're talking about making that decision rather than saying ah you know daniel carlson's a draft pick he kicks a nicer ball so we're going to cut kai forbath even though kai was the better kicker uh last thing for you though uh eric and i appreciate everybody checking in in the middle of the day uh here and you taking your time as well. I want to know what you think about the timeline because you brought up the NFC North.

This is something that Kwesi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell have just talked so much about the competitive rebuild. In my opinion, the competitive rebuild is over. I suggested a new day, calling it a new day because it is. It's very fresh. It's very different. It's entirely their team. It's Kweisi and Kevin O'Connell's team right now.

They have enough to compete. They don't likely have enough to compete for a Super Bowl. So how do we factor all of these things? The NFC North, where they are as a team, the young quarterback for how we should shape our expectations for Kweisi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell going forward? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that they were too, they were in hindsight, they were too good to, to, to rip the bandaid off, even though I think you and I probably would have wanted them to. I think that there were good pieces there.

And unfortunately, they were, I think, a product of their own success, especially in 2022, where you end up with the fifth best quarterback in the rebuild draft, right? Which, as I said, everybody in the comments can say, well, that doesn't mean he'll end up not being great. The fifth best quarterback, you know, was Ken O'Brien in the one draft or whatever. He's ended up being good, blah, blah, blah. I get that. It's still a lower – we all said this a priori.

We all said that if you play just a tip with being competitive, you are not going to get what the Bears got and the best quarterback in the draft. So that happened. However, I think that there's an aspect of this where O'Connell's a great coach, Adolfo Mensah clearly has a clue, where even though they're working with less, they can still produce more. The thing that I don't think that they anticipate in 2022, even though some of us thought the Lions would be good, is the Lions becoming good, the Packers becoming good, and the Bears getting as lucky as they've got no one expect like carolina was literally expected to pick like 14 right last year and they ended up picking first so the bears got really lucky with that trade that they ended up picking first and ninth and getting a dunza and and williams so i think that it they've gotten as unlucky as they could get during the competitive part, in my opinion, in both directions.

They were unlucky in that they got 113 games, and that's kind of pushed them in a certain way, you know, from a draft pick and capital standpoint. And they got unlucky in the other teams in their division. Everything flipped over really well for them. You know, Green Bay getting a great quarterback out of their whole deal. Detroit ended up being pretty good. And the Bears ending up with a bounty of things. And so they're behind the eight ball. I think that they can be competitive.

But I think Adolfo Mensah's move, specifically the Dallas Turner one, suggests that they know what they're up against, which is that they need to hit some home runs in this draft to get to a place where they're competing for the NFC North. If McCarthy hits, they're a Super Bowl contender. That's true about every team that drafted a quarterback on Thursday, and I think that that's true about the Vikings, given that they're a supporting cast.

If McCarthy is a middle-of-the-road first-round quarterback, think of like Tua Tungavailoa, Jared Goff type, I still think that they can compete in the NFC just like the Rams did with Jared Goff. So, you know, I'm optimistic. I just think that. What they have up against them is so much more fierce than probably what they anticipated when they started this in 2022. The NFC changed fast.

And even when it comes to the commanders, I'm not totally sold yet on the commanders as an organization with who's running them. But it's a hell of a lot better than Daniel Snyder. They were just a non-factor. It's just not even a team. Arizona looks like they have a clue. San Francisco. The Rams looked dead last year, and they've come back alive. The Bucs won a division after Brady.

This conference is much spunkier than we expected it to be. Right. So you mentioned that other teams with quarterbacks who we consider to be good and not necessarily elite have made it last question for you how good does jj mccarthy have to be let's say in 2025 for them to legitimately compete for a super bowl because i think that's when the window begins. 2025, you've got all that cap space that Kirk left you as a present, and you can use it there. 2026, 2027, those are when J.J. McCarthy is going to be cheap.

So where is the bar? How good does he have to be in order to say, yes, this team could go deep into the playoffs? I think if he's like to a Tonga-Vailoa level, they're a Super Bowl contender. Okay. I can buy. Yeah,

I can buy maybe with a little more scrambling ability than to, but I could have a better offensive line. They don't have as good of a, I mean, no, I'm not disparaging Kevin O'Connell, but like Mike McDaniel is probably better than him, but they have a better offensive line.

They have as good of weapons. I would say maybe a better offensive line. They have as good of weapons, I would say, maybe a better tight end. So I would say that that – and they're in a weaker conference still. AFC's still better. So I would say that they – if next year he's in that Jared Goff, Tua Tungabailoa category, which is not anything to sneeze at their accomplished quarterbacks. Then I think that he, I think that they will be in contention.

All right, Eric Eager, Sumer sports show you and Thomas Dimitrov. I am later going to go for a jog. And when I go for a jog, I listened to you and Thomas Dimitrov all the time. So I can't wait to hear what you and the former two-time GM of the year have to say about the NFL draft. Excited about that. If you're not familiar with Sumer sports show with Eric,

make sure you go check it out. Thanks everybody for watching slash listening so much more to come. I cannot tell you how much more this week that I am extremely excited about for this show. So appreciate your time. You and I will talk again very soon. It's W season. So, oh, can't wait. It's happening.

And we'll talk very soon. Football.