Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Eric Eager talks Vikings free agency approach and PFF's Max Chadwick analyzes Michael Penix Jr.'s stock drop

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

SumerSports' Eric Eager drops by to talk about the Vikings' path to their quarterback decision and how they should approach free agency and the NFL Draft and PFF's Max Chadwick says that he's still high on Michael Penix Jr. and discusses other QB prospects' upside and defensive linemen that he's intrigued by Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here inside the Indiana Convention Center. And look who it is! If you're listening, you can't see it, but if you're watching on YouTube, you can. It's Eric Eager of Sumer Sports. Five straight years in a row, we have gotten together, well, there's been combines, to have a podcast at the NFL Combine. So it is great to see you. I hope you're having a good time. I had to wait for you to do another interview so you're doing media tours at the super bowl media tours here and i guess thomas dimitrov was combing his hair in the mirror and couldn't uh join you on this one or what what happened well you know i have been somewhat of a disappointment for people here uh but you are one of my best friends and so i made made time for you, um, as, as, as I want to do. Um, but I, I was, I was a disappointment. I was late. Uh, and then I went on a different show, but I'm here now. And then that's all that matters. Yeah. Yeah. None of that other stuff will be held against you later or come along with any bitterness at all. So why don't we just talk about the Vikings situation?

I mean, one thing, as we look back a little bit at the different combined conversations that we've had over the years. Sorry, the ones where we've always been right and predictive and gotten and nailed this team to a tee? Well, if we said each year that they're stuck in the middle and they had no way of really breaking out, uh, as long as they had a certain expensive older quarterback, then yes, we have been repeatedly right that that is where they have ended up landing, but you actually have

to go back even farther than that. I would say even to when they first signed Kirk cousins, where we didn't know what the results were going to be when they signed Cousins. And I was just talking to somebody last night, as we do around Indianapolis, about the 2019 Vikings, the last time they won a playoff game, which is crazy to think about that you and I were probably doing our first or second Combine podcast the time they won one playoff game. And you look around at how that roster was built and how long it took to put that thing together and how good it was and how many Pro Bowl talents there were and how far they got, not far enough, still didn't have the roster to get there. And I just think that if you are approaching this as the Vikings, as, hey, we can get back

there, we can win playoff games based on what we have right now. I just have so much trouble figuring out how that happens. And I saw somebody say it at the podium, one of the coaches or one of the GMs that when you look at free agency, oftentimes you're looking for one more person or you're looking for one guy to fill in a spot. And the Vikings have so many needs that their approach has to be building an entire team through free agency. And I just don't see how you could ever win doing that. And when I compare it,

I go like, who could you get that could fill out this team to where it would even be reflective of what they had the last time they want to play off game. And I just cannot figure that out. No, I mean, it's well, and I think everybody figure that out. No, I mean, it's well, and I think everybody knows that on the Vikings,

right? You know, Casey's certainly a very smart guy. And I think Kevin O'Connell's, you know, quite bright too. And, and it's the nature of the NFL.

I wrote for Sumer sports last week, the, you know, the free agency Proverbs and the number one, one is you don't win free agency. Like, you know, the free agency proverbs and the number one one is you don't win free agency. There was that classic Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2014 when Lovie Smith took over and he cut Daryl Revis because he didn't fit into the cover two. And then he signed Alteron Verner, Brandon Myers, Clinton McDonald, and Michael Johnson. And Vikings fans will remember Michael Johnson because he's a Zimmer guy.

And the funniest part about that was Michael Johnson was off the buck so fast that he signed back with the Bengals the same year the Bengals got the comp pick they got for losing Michael Johnson to free agency. This is not a means by which you win free agency. And the biggest example of it was when the Vikings got Kirk Cousins. And in theory, that should have been, you know, they had a performance gap between case keenum and the kind of quarterbacks that traditionally win super bowls kirk cousins kind of cosplayed as that for washington for all those years they went into free agency they paid up right and in free agency the reason it doesn't work is because you are competing against other teams right one of the reasons why this justin jefferson deal that they're going to crank out with him, hopefully in all likelihood, is going to be a deal is they're competing with themselves.

They have the benefit of time and they have the benefit of the franchise tag. They have one suitor for Justin Jefferson for as long as they need to. In free agency, you're competing with all these other teams, and so you just don't get efficiency there. So the answer to your question, there really aren't any players in the open market that you could add to this Vikings team that could make them a Super Bowl contender. And that's daunting. a young quarterback onto this team as we've seen with the Houston freaking Texans who were in the direst of straits you can be a contending team that that's exactly the kind of precipice this team is on and the choice that they may that they have to make which is do you move you bring in what's comfortable again which is Kirk Cousins, or do you kind of wade in the waters that are uncomfortable?

Because the other side of CJ Stroud, of course, is Bryce Young. And so I keep thinking about how when you put together all the factors, when you put together the age, the injury that just happened, how difficult it would be to sign and trade for other players to build a team immediately, the pressure that would come along with that for the front office and the coaching staff if you do bring back Kirk Cousins, and the thin line that you would have to walk in order to actually make it work, which to me, there's only one route to get there, to make this work, to be in the playoffs, to be a legitimate contender, which would be to have a top five offense. That is the only way you could do it. Could you sign Saquon Barkley and a left

guard and a number three wide receiver and then let Jesus take the wheel on defense? I mean, is that a possibility? Because I guess what I'm asking here is there still remains a good possibility. It feels like people in indie think that kirk cousins is going somewhere else but that's you know just the vibe it's not a fact and so he may at the last minute decide you know what the vikings offer isn't my top offer but i don't want to move to vegas i don't want to move to denver or something like that atlanta well yeah atlanta i could see a little more uh but you know what i mean um as far as where to move to. Justin Fields is from Georgia, so that could complicate things. That's what I was getting at as we keep hearing the, well, his wife's from Atlanta.

Have you heard? Yeah, I've heard. I don't know how much that would factor in, but the point is he doesn't want to go to a new franchise. He's familiar. It's a really well-run team. The NFLPA survey, the Vikings just knock that out of the the park and the coach is a really good communicator and it just gets along with Kirk Cousins on a different level from anyone that he's ever worked with before it seems so all these things if he decided to come back that's the only plan I could come up with that I might actually say you know what I didn't think this was exactly the right way to go about it but if you're going to do it then try to go full call pepper era who cares about the defense switch a wide receiver to

corner if you have to like it just that would be the only route i could see actually having a chance to get them back into contention but how does okay but how does but eventually you have to build a defense, right? And for all this team's warts, and they have a lot, I thought last year they got to some places. They moved the ball forward in a lot of really smart places. I mean, under Adolfo Mensah and O'Connell, the offensive line has gotten much better. You know, Bradbury has emerged and become at least an average center.

I thought Ed Ingram has been better than he was as a rookie. You know, Reisner is a free agent, but he solidified. And then both tackles, I think, are cornerstones of this team. And then, you know, so that was a weakness under the old regime that has been mostly a strength under the new one. And then defensively, you know, you do have to figure out somebody to rush the passer. I mean, it's going to be a long season if you don't at least have some real pieces in guys like Bynum and guys like Metellus, Blackman, players like that, where I think that there's... And so do you really want to kind of turn the back on progress there? Because really what these next few years represent is you look at kind of Kansas City's way. Of course, Patrick Mahomes is the big reason. But the reason Kansas City won

the Super Bowl this year is because their defense is incredibly resilient and they stack draft class after draft class of, you know, of kind of similar thinking of weak link systems and building the defense on players that none of them are all that superstar-ish other than maybe one or two guys. And to kind of like abandon that for Kirk Cousins, who's mid-30s and who's going to be expensive, to me feels a little bit short-sighted. And I get that it's comfortable, but I also think it's going to be uncomfortable because those Culpepper years were not – the Culpepper years were half fun, right? Watching him drop back and throw touchdowns to Moss was incredible, but watching like Waswas Serwanga try to cover somebody was not good. And like having your season depend upon dime store cornerbacks is not, I think, what Quasey and Kevin O'Connell really want to hinge their third

year of their four-year contracts to. And when you think about even last year, when you look at the totality of the numbers, you could say, wow, they were an average defense. They were pretty good. But that means if you just look at that number that you didn't watch closely, which I know everyone in our audience did, but if the outside is saying, well, they had an average defense last year, just bring back Hunter know add a piece or two but it wasn't really it was a defense that brian flores was pushing every single button he was mashing the keyboard to get everything out of that defense he possibly could with schematics but when push came to shove then they played cincinnati of weapons. When they played Detroit twice, they got run out of the building.

And then Jordan Love, who was on fire at that point, they just couldn't cover anybody. And Daniil Hunter's doing his best to create pressure by himself, but he couldn't do it by himself. And how do you rebuild the Kansas City Chiefs defense, for example? It's a recent rebuild that we've all seen play out, and it had to be through the draft. And it has to be through adding one more guy, usually. One difficult decision. And in the case of the Chiefs, it was Tyreek Hill, who was an incredible player for them,

and he's going to be a ring of honor player for them. And the same way that Kirk Cousins is probably going to make the Vikings ring of honor. But you have to make a difficult decision sometimes when you are trying to make five for one decisions and because that one player is going to be a pretty good player for you and Kirk has been a good player for the Vikings but you that they're this this team is more than one player away and and that has been painfully obvious ever since, you know, the ball has fallen off the table from 18 to 19 to 20, where they went from a playoff contender to not.

And Kirk has been part of the reason that they've been held back to, frankly, the reason that they've been okay, right? And I think that, and that's hard, right? Like when you go, when he went from the reason that they were held back from Super Bowl contention to the reason that they were okay, a lot of fans then kind of were like, well, then he's got to be the reason they stay.

And then that's what the counterintuitive part, it's like, no, actually, right? Like he, in many ways, he's got to be the reason you go. And in Kansas City, like Tyreek Hill was the reason that their offense was phenomenal. But in a lot of ways, it was also the reason that they that they as a franchise stagnated. Well, and they, you know, they use the money for Chris Jones, who is another elite player. And that's one thing the Vikings are really, truly lacking on defense. So when we talk about this free agency, could you get an elite player or could you take swings at players who might have a chance to have more upside? I mean, I think either one of

those strategies makes sense to me, but you aren't going to rebuild a defense without hitting on draft picks. And one of the problems the Vikings have had in recent years, and this goes back probably three years into Spielman, is on the offensive side, they landed two of the great players in the league. On the defensive side, we've got nothing. I mean, Josh Metellus took years to develop into a really difference-making player, and that's like what the best thing on Rick Spielman's resume on defense in quite some time, since 2015. And then the Vikings start off trying to rebuild their secondary with the Kweisi Adafo Mensah era by drafting three players in the secondary who don't

play or are not good. And that also is crushing because if they hit on Louis scene, if they hit on Andrew Booth Jr, if they hit on a Caleb Evans, or I mean, two of the three could even get on the field. Yeah. You'd be,

you'd be doing better, but you needed one to be really good and another one to probably be serviceable. And you've got, at this moment, nothing. Half a season of a Caleb Evans not being horrendous is not convincing to me. because you go all right could you trade three firsts to get drake may or something if that's what this calls for and you go yeah okay like i'm into that idea because he's going to be here for a while but then you only have number 42 and then not till the fourth round again they have been so severely lacking draft capital and i was laughing about this the other day when I saw praise for Brad Holmes' draft. And I was like, well, if you give me five or six top 50 draft picks, I could throw darts at a board in him. And that's not disrespect to Brad Holmes. He did a great job drafting. I just mean that this group has had very little draft capital to work with. They traded for Hawkinson.

That's a good trade but they've got very little top draft picks to try to rebuild these key areas which is why i think this is not a one-year construction but the other side of the hawkinson trade was a was the lions knowing that they were in the middle of a rebuild like the you know the the fact of the matter is the this team is needed is this team made a choice that was antithetical to the choice Detroit made. Quasey's part of the club. He's part of the analytics community. He would tell you the same thing. Brad Holmes has all those picks.

People like me will skewer him for the Jameer Gibbs pick and the Jack Campbell pick. Jack Campbell had a very bad rookie year, but it was overshadowed by the fact that Brian Branch and Sam Laporta had a great pick. You know, when you only pick once in the first few rounds or only three times in the first four rounds, you have to hit on, you know, whereas if you flip that math, it works out a lot better in your favor.

And the same thing with Hawkinson. I mean, that Lions team was off to a 1-6 start. And instead of, you know, continuing to buy in, right, continuing to, you know, throw good money at bad, they traded Hawkinson and they got those picks from Minnesota. And then they turned it around and finished 9-8. And so it's been, it's just sort of a contrast in approaches and where the Vikings are because they decided to go in on Cousins. And it's not to go back and say, oh, you know, they made the

wrong choices. I think a lot of Vikings fans are happy with three and, you know, 13 and four. And even last year where I think a lot of the season was magical in some ways, the win in Atlanta, the win against New Orleans at home and stuff. But it's more to say, if you continue the path with Cousins, right, if you continue the path of trying to be competitive to an extent, you're always going to have these troughs of not having resources. So start the resource train now and kind of continue to move. The thing about May or Jaden Daniels, whomever gets to the third pick, if you trade up, the one thing I will say, you will not have as much draft capital if you trade up for that, but you will have the cap space. And the cap space can, in some ways, buy you that draft capital, for example, if you take on bad contracts and trades during a down year or something like that. So it is part of the calculus

associated with that. And I also think, too, that when you have cap space, you can trade for younger players who their teams are not going to pay, but they're awesome. And that's the Bradley Chubb thing. That's the Tyree Kill thing for the Miami Dolphins. That's the Montez Sweat thing. That's the DJ Moore thing in Chicago, the other division rival.

It started to happen a lot because in a 32-team league in the year of 2024, teams understand timelines. And you can't just always try to be at the top and a lot of teams if they're like at the bottom and this is not a justin jefferson point stop it don't even think about that but a lot of teams will consider trading these players and you could be the team on the other side that says well we have the cap space so why don't we accept this a lot of times in fact it will be teams that are competing, but a need to sign other players or having a newly expensive quarterback or something like that. But, you know, Chicago trading for Khalil Mack when they had just drafted Mitch

Trubisky. Imagine if Mr. Trubisky was just OK. They would have been a very real Super Bowl contender because they made that move. So when you've got that, you've got its weight in gold. So you don't always have to hit on the draft picks. But what are we supposed to make of this small sample of Kweisi Adafo Mensah drafting? Because I think in life in general, first impressions and last impressions are the things that shape how our decisions are made and just to give you two vikings examples is the 2022 draft was everyone's first impression quacey is supposed to be a genius he's supposed to hack the draft he is supposed to now run ahead of the other teams

because he understands all the analytics and he trades way down he doesn't get a first and he has four five draft picks in a row that just don't work at all. And many of them are non-premium positions. And you go, OK, where was the analytics there, wizard boy? Right. Like that's what everybody. Well, you you genius Princeton man, where was it? Where was you outsmarting the league? And that all goes badly.

Now, history tells us it could have just as easily gone the other way, like Brad Holmes drafting non-premium positions and having it work out. But it didn't. It didn't work. Didn't like it at the time. It hasn't worked out so far. And then last impressions are Kirk Cousins popping his Achilles while he's playing the best game of this season is another thing. So maybe some of that on both sides is overstated because Kweisi Adafo-Mensa has, I think, 14 total draft picks, and maybe Rick Spielman took 120 players or somewhere in that range. But at the same time, we should be wondering,

what is this approach going to be? How can it be better than it's been in the past where he has one and a half to two good draft picks so far in his first two swings at that. Like what would be the analytical advice? What would be the thought process if he was asking you, what should I do with this draft? Well, I think for one, you know, it's just not to let the past affect you. Right. I mean, that's, that's a huge one where, you know, if they're look, I wouldn't take a safety in the first round again, but if it was something like an edge player

that had a similar outcome as Lewis Seen, you wouldn't want to not take an edge player again because you were, quote, bad at evaluating them. That would be a faulty one. But, I mean, if I was advising here, I mean, to me, this is a draft where you have to really consider if you have an eval on one of those two quarterbacks, May or Daniels. Now, I am not that high on Daniels relative to maybe the rest of the market. But if you guys do and your coach sees a path to him performing incredibly well,

I think you do have to move up and get one of those guys. At some point, you have to get a quarterback into this room that is on a rookie contract and you have to build around him and that's got to be your quarterback. And Minnesota, you talk about it, they have an incredible facility, have incredible coaches. O'Connell has done a really good job with Cousins, even though, and people don't really see this, Cousins' efficiency has not been all that great. I don't think he's performed even as well as he did

even in the Clint Kubiak and Gary Kubiak days, Stefanski days, certainly. I think that you have a situation where you have a good possibility of being able to build around and especially with Jefferson being there you have a and Hawkinson you have a really good opportunity to build around a young quarterback you are one of the franchises where it should be more successful than others and so you should lean into it while you know the Derrishaws of the world and the Jeffersons and the Hawkinsons of the world are in their prime

and give it a shot because I don't think anything less than that is going to cut it in this division. Do you think that the Bears with the war chest that they're going to have, whether it's Caleb Williams or the trade that they're going to make for the first pick or the Packers with Jordan Love and what he showed the last few months of the season and the playoffs or even Detroit and how well they've been playing the last few years. Nothing short of moonshotting, which is a young quarterback, is going to cut it in this division,

let alone this NFL. So that would be my advice. You really do have to identify the young quarterback and do what it takes to get him in the building because I don't think anything else is really going to suffice. I mean, as we go over the many different situations and scenarios, there really is no other answer because even if they did not draft quarterback and Kirk came back and you trade down or something, there's only so much you can gather and there's only so many spots you can fill

and they're not going to close the gap between you and the contending teams. And so it just keeps coming back to it. It's like all roads lead to it. It's like, how do we rebuild the defense? Quarterback. How do they draft better? Quarterback. You can look at Tampa Bay this year.

Tampa Bay, you know, Brady leaves, they bring break and Mayfield in and they clean up the cups right from the party. That was the, the, the Tom Brady era make the playoffs. Everybody underachieves in that division.

And yet there's still the, the, the bucks aren't any closer to contending even after what I, what I think was a fun season for them and a refreshing year. They still got to cut Shaq Barrett this year. They still have to let Mike Evans walk in all likelihood. And Baker Mayfield had a phenomenal year. Dave Canales, probably the reason he had a great year, is now in Carolina.

So congratulations. There is one, so there are two tried and true ways of winning in the NFL, having a unicorn quarterback that you pay and having a quarterback on a, on a rookie deal that, that, that, that you can build around. No other way is really going to help you win football games. And the Vikings are in neither situation. And as good as Kirk Cousins has been at times, he qualifies as neither. And that's a tough reality to face. Folks, have you ever heard of test driving a phone network? I did not make this up. It is an actual thing. And U.S. Cellular is letting you test drive their network for free for 30 days. You can try out U.S. Cellular wherever you have that spotty service, like on your commute to work, that one spot in your house where your service dips. Test drive

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Visit uscellular.com for details. And, you know, the AFC has been drafting these quarterbacks for a long time and the NFC gets Bryce Young and immediately he's not working out, but I wouldn't completely count him out. Now you're talking about potentially Caleb Williams, Drake May coming into the conference. So that's two young guys, potentially. I mean, I don't know if this is what's going to happen or not. There's everybody saying everything at this point. But there are multiple NFC teams that need to draft these quarterbacks.

And that's just more teams that are getting more of a head start on you. But the funny thing about this Vikings roster is it's both one of the most empty rosters in the league as far as starting positions. And it's also one of the best offensive situations for a young quarterback, which is, I think that feels wrong to say that a team could be really well set up for the quarterback and also still really far away for the rest of the parts. And it can both be a competitive side with the offense, but your defense, it needs several years to rebuild this, which is obviously a reason not to bring back Kirk, but very unique in that way. I mean, normally, if you're a team that's talking about drafting a quarterback and you're in a bad spot that we usually are talking about, like, oh, you need receivers, you need offensive linemen and so forth. You got to clean things up a little bit. This is a whole clean slate situation.

And it's almost like Kirk's Achilles and Dobbs, you know, wins hurt this, but his Achilles popping is the situation that you kind of needed in a way to be in position to draft one of these quarterbacks. But let me ask you about the quarterbacks. How do we figure out who we're supposed to like? And this is me coming off just doing an article saying nobody has any idea whoever is going to work out. But you have now looked at these numbers for so long with quarterbacks in the draft. I mean, how do we go about figuring this thing out of who is even going to be first round prospects? Because

everyone I talk to has wildly different opinions on, well, some people think Pennix could be a first rounder. Some people think he's a third rounder. Some people think McCarthy is top 10 and some people think he's a second round pick and the same with Bo Nix. I mean, even Jaden Daniels and Drake May, there's people out there saying, well, you know, he could be the one who drops. It's basically only everyone thinks Caleb Williams is good. And then everything else is who the hell knows. Yeah, I think that you really have to look at. Do the do people think that the guy has special arm talent is the first one like that?

And that doesn't sound analytical at all, but when you look at the history of the position, there haven't been that many players who have done all that well of late that have not had the special arm talent. Because since the 2011 CBA, offensive lines have been bad. And developing offensive lines has been hard for the NFL. And so and and that time you need to get to where Peyton Manning was or Drew Brees was or Tom Brady was where you were protected for all those years. And then you had that superpower where you could protect yourself. That hasn't been all that easy to get for a lot of these young guys. Right. And generally speaking, those, those lower pedigree quarterbacks fall into great places.

You know, even like Mack Jones, your one fell into a good place. Uh, Brock Purdy fell into a good place, but those guys, if they were taken high by these teams would stink right away. You know,

like that. So if you're taking a guy high, he has to have elite arm talent. He has to have good athleticism. Those two things are, from a traits perspective, those have to exist. And then from a statistical standpoint, there's a few things to me. Sack avoidance is the big one. And in this class, sack avoidance is tough because the top end guys are not particularly good.

Jaden Daniels is going to have the highest percentage of pressures that turn into sacks of any first round quarterback in the PFF era. So that's going to be a precedent that it's going to be hard. Guys like Justin Fields at all the great metrics. And before any of us uncovered the fact that this was a sticky one, Patrick Mahomes in his career, his college pressure to sack ratio and his NFL pressure to sack ratio per PFF are one tenth of a percent apart. It's a really stable statistic. You know, Drake May is about six percentage points lower, but he's still on the high end. It's about 18 percent. Caleb Williams is the same.

Caleb Williams and Drake May both regressed in that statistic last year when Jay Daniels got better. Michael Penix and Bo Nix are both really good. Both, you know sub uh in the case of panics sub 10 in that and bo nicks also similar but again those guys kind of played in mickey mouse offenses and so that that's a question mark but that's the biggest statistic is like if i'm going to draft a guy high he's probably going to go to an offense with a bad offensive line although minnesota's maybe not in that situation he's got to be able to avoid sacks who's under pressure and then the other and then you just look at things like accuracy and i think in the case of jj mccarthy who a lot of people are moving in you know with minnesota's did his offense trust him you know in basketball you know it's it's about

you know kyle corver has a you has a really good career three point shooting percentage, you know, similar to a guy like Steph Curry. But he's not the one taking off the dribble three point shots at the end of the shot clock. It's what your team asked you to do. And J.J. McCarthy is a winner. You know, he's won. He has a ton of really good statistics, even on third and fourth down. What his team asked him to do. But his team didn't ask him to do all

that all that many difficult things so i i want my team i want my quarterback to be from a place where they asked him to do difficult things so those are the things that i'm looking for in a quarterback to your point though a lot of these things have very mild predictive power because it's just really hard i mean i, Patrick Mahomes went eight picks behind Mitch Trubisky. I mean, this is an inning last year, CJ Stroud. I mean, there was a team that took 200 million of assets, you know, willingly and moved up to one to take a quarterback who's five foot 10 and draft him ahead of CJ Stroud, you know, so this isn't an exact science. No, it really is. And that's why with, uh, I wrote a very sarcastic piece on the newsletter just about, Hey, you'll

never believe it. The quarterbacks have flaws. Like they always, and then I took all the flaws of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and so forth from the draft analysis of those years and pointed them out because that's always going to be what we do is we overanalyze every single thing. And my question is how the NFL views the projectability of these players. I mean, I think Bo Nix is maybe more limited for upside and how much the NFL can teach him, but at the same time, he could be kind of a field general type with a little bit of playmaking. And I, you know, I think that there's something to be said for that because we've seen that work under the right circumstances with the right offense. Uh, but McCarthy is a, if it comes together, then he's got the arm talent to really fire it.

And they might be looking at that as well. And my answer is okay. Like just whichever guy you like is fine with me, which is not a hot take that you're supposed to have in draft season, but that is mostly my take. Let me ask you just one more thing. You are a Minnesotan, so you grew up with the whole thing. You talk about the Chiefs. You like the Chiefs, but you know, it's not the same. The Vikings get in your blood by being from Minnesota. What draft pick that the Vikings made as you were growing up, were you the most excited about that never worked out that you were like, Oh man, this is a great pick for them. This guy's going to be the difference maker, game changer, world beater. Some would say that failed. Well, the well the the worst the worst thing that i can

say to trigger everybody is randy moss because they never won a super bowl with moss and and and of course moss worked out but like they never won a super bowl and when moss came in i thought that they were going to win a million super bowls and but of course, Moss worked. The one – I'm always – I've always had that statistical mind where I've thought that they were – I've always been pretty tepid about draft picks. And so – So you never had one that you got super jacked about and thought, this guy is going to be great. You were always skeptical of the Vikings drafts?

The soulless, analytic person? Okay, here's one. John David Booty. Hey, the USC quarterback was a thing. He never played a game for the team. I think he was the second active quarterback. He was the second string quarterback in a game behind Tavares Jackson when Gus Farratt had a broken back one game.

But he literally never got on the field. And that was the year they traded to Kansas City, a a one and two threes and there was jamal charles brandon albert and i think one other player and they got jared allen and so they took someone named tyrell johnson in the second round who sucked and then they took uh john david booty in the fifth round john sullivan was in that draft too was a good center um but i thought john david booty was actually like going to be like a real quarterback for that team. And yeah, it didn't work. There's nothing quite like believing in someone in the fourth or fifth or sixth round for no reason whatsoever other than you're just, I like this guy.

Isn't it the craziest, though? I knew Lauren Woods, I thought, would work out for the Timberwolves in the second round. But I was so, you know, you remember when, who was Joe, Joe Smith. I was so like wolves pilled when I was a kid because, you know, they, they signed Joe Smith under the table. So they didn't have the first round picks for like five straight years. So every year you had to like talk yourself into the second round pick. And I thought Lauren Woods had a shot because every center that ever played for the wolves is terrible. And so he was like, so my, so i could tell you immediately who my answer was

for the wolves but for the vikings no i mean like i always kind of thought michael bennett would be okay like okay but i i always you know uh i was geeked out about randy moss but randy moss was good like you know dante culpepper i was kind of tepid about dante culpepper. I was kind of tepid about Dante Culpepper. Teddy Bridgewater maybe is another one and it didn't work out, but I don't think Teddy Bridgewater didn't work out because he sucked. It was circumstances was more of the situation. But even then, I think the one that ultimately was an absolute flop that I actually thought had a shot was John David Bo booty yeah yeah and that's what i mean is that everybody does this so last year when the vikings drafted jaron hall the number of people who were like oh i'm all i'm in jaron hall i just watched his highlights i mean i saw people are

doing film breakdowns and they're just like oh look at this how route then you're like bro that's byu uh but there's an irrational love for the mid to late quarterback. Maybe it's Brady. Maybe it's just quarterback is so interesting. And then the USC John David booty connection. It was just such a thing. They had pumped out NFL quarterback after NFL quarterback. It just, that makes sense. That's a good answer.

Don't take back that answer. Since I've been covering the team, it's really the wrong guest that I have been is I thought Treadwell was going to be awesome because i just watched him in college he was so dominant and when they drafted brian o'neill and i saw him in rookie minicamp i was like that that's a tight end it cannot be an offensive tag yeah it just absolutely cannot be and i was like what are they doing and then it turns out that he put on all the weight and also the dude is just a beast. Like he's just a really great player and he cares and all that. So sometimes we're right.

Sometimes we're wrong. And we'll see how that all turns out. And we'll have a lot more to talk about as free agency unravels here and the decision is made. So I have to have you back after the decision is made at quarterback for the Vikings. So I hope you have a good time. And Indy, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for having me. Good stuff, man. Thanks for having me.

It's been fun. Football. Football. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider inside the Indiana Convention Center here at the NFL Combine. Matthew Collar with you, along with Max Chadwick, who is the college football analyst for Pro Football Focus. Great to have you on, Max.

How are you enjoying your week, man? You enjoying the Indy buzz? This is your first time, right? No, second time. Second time. Yeah, I love it here, man. Honestly, man, it's so cool being on with you. I was telling you before, I literally was reading your book like the last couple of weeks. So the fact that I'm talking to you right now, man, you taught me more about PFF than working at PFF for three years has taught me, honestly. So I mean, that book is phenomenal. Check it out if you haven't already. But yeah, it's cool to be talking to you now, man. Look who's going to be returning to the podcast many times. It's Max.

I really appreciate that. It's great. There's been a lot of feedback on it. I did hear from a person that it was, quote, bouncing around our front office from a person in the league that they were reading it. So I've been very thrilled and was happy to tell that story. So again, football is a numbers game is the book if you didn't get it. But this week has been very interesting for me to go around in the evening times and I will just ask

people, how do you feel about JJ McCarthy? And that has been my way. So, hey, what was the buzz in Indy? Well well no one can decide what they feel about jj mccarthy so i i need to get your take on that but i also want to ask you a question about michael pennix okay because as i was watching michael pennix play football all year i was like football all right we got something here and you know i'm paying attention to the quarterback class and you know even some of his bad games he still found a way to win grinded it out and i was like man, I just like this guy. He looks like a Kevin O'Connell quarterback with his big arm and throwing the ball deep to Roma Dunze, who you could see being Justin Jefferson.

And then I arrive here and everyone's like, yeah, I don't even talk about that guy. That guy, he doesn't matter. He's nobody. I'm like, what? So why has Michael Penix disappeared out of the conversation for quarterbacks this year? I think the big thing that I would say that for Michael Penix Jr. is that, you know, everyone thought he's a top 10 pick, top 15 pick all year. The buzz around the league has always been, hey, the media is way higher on Michael Penix Jr. than the actual NFL. So I think people I think the media has kind of adjusted to that.

Obviously, the big question for him and hopefully be answered this week at the combine is the medical injuries you know the 220 sales in indiana shoulder injury indiana i think had four season ending injuries in his career now he's been healthy for two years which is great and you want to see that but medicals are huge for him this week he's throwing at the combine which is great too uh so yeah it's been weird i'm still very high on him i still might take him in the first round um i don't know about as high as number 11 overall but uh yeah i think that's kind of i think the media is just adjusting to what the actual nfl feels about him i think that's that's why he's kind of slipping into day two conversation and i also wonder about just everybody got super high on him after the texas

game right and you can literally see this if you go to like the mock draft database or grinding the mocks or whatever you can see where the mock drafts sort of just gain momentum right after the texas game like this guy's a top 15 pick the mock drafts had him up there and then he plays against michigan and he goes like no no no no no forget about that guy which is a silly way to do it right because he has a big sample size of playing really good football and i don't want to overreact to one game i also don't want to overreact from well the league thinks this because we haven't been really good at figuring that out actually right over the years so should i should i like hold steady on the fact that i actually like michael pennant you should

hold steady man i think that's a really funny thing that you brought up is the texas game and then right into the michigan game because you know my co-worker steve palazzo made the joke he's like man if it was completed that final pass and texas wins that game michael pennantnington is probably a top 15 pick like that could have been the best thing for his stock was to lose that game because then he would never play michigan and then we'd never know what happened of course michigan's got 11 nfl defenders on that defense with and jesse minter defense coordinator is now an nfl defensive coordinator so um yeah i mean i think it's silly to overreact to one game like that but i do think that kind of left a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths honestly and the other thing when he was playing so well there's a lot you have to kind of leave off to make him a first round pick which is the medical history and so forth and we

went through this a bit with Sam Bradford where he was healthy like for the Eagles for a year he was healthy for a year with the Vikings. But eventually, if you've gone through that much, that many surgeries, that many issues, that it does add up over time. And the difference between the way I look at things and the way the NFL looks at things is my opinion on quarterbacks is, look, if you draft a guy and in his rookie contract, you can get somewhere, then you succeeded and great job. And don't worry about anything after that. But teams tend to say, look, if we're investing a first round pick at a quarterback, then we need this guy to be our 10 year franchise quarterback. He needs to sign a second extension or the pick is a failure. And so for me, it would be like, well, okay, if you could bring in Michael

Penix and he's good, he throws deep bombs and you can win games on his rookie contract, then that's a total success. I just don't think the league generally views it that way because you're sort of signing off on like, this is our guy. It's the GM, head coach, quarterback trifecta, and it can't just be somebody. Even though we've seen somebodies kind of have success under those circumstances. Yeah, of course. Everyone wants the next Patrick Mahomes right now. There's only one, honestly. But yeah, Michael Penix Jr. I think the other thing with him uh is the age I think there's some NFL teams he's a six-year senior been in college for a long time obviously with the four season ending injuries so I think there's some teams who kind of look at him

as kind of a finished product and they might look at a guy like J.J. McCarthy and say oh we could mold him into something but you know it's the kind of thing where it's like oh you mean maybe he'll end up being Michael Penix Jr. So, yeah, I think that's kind of the thing, too. Again, I still really like him. I still think he should be late first round pick, early second round pick. But, I mean, I've heard from a lot of people around here like they're like, oh, you know, he's going third round. I'm like, dude, how you watch this 2023 tape and you say third round of that?

I don't understand that. So, yeah, I think he should still be a high pick. Oquasey Adafo-Mentza brought up something very interesting with us in regards to older quarterbacks, where he said that somebody staying for a fifth or the COVID year, he looked at it more like there's no minor league system in football, but that would be as close as you could get as having that opportunity to develop. And one of the issues that quarterbacks have just in general is there are very few opportunities to develop, right? There's going to be the UFL.

There's been the XFL, but those are not even used that way. The teams don't send their guys down. It would be really cool if they did. And maybe someday they will, but that's not how it works. So just more reps and more time on task for those quarterbacks, him and Bo Nics in particular might

ultimately be a good thing but it's really unprecedented we kind of don't know whether that's a good thing or not because all of us looked at chris winky and brandon whedon and said well neither one of those guys worked out so you can never draft an old guy and then hendon hooker uh was the same kind of thing also had the acl but same sort of deal where it's like ah he's too old and so forth we actually don't have a big enough sample size on this because it never happened before to really know if it's going to be a problem or if it could actually help them yeah and the one guy who like was old that actually ended up working out was joe burrow but joe burrow only played like two years of college football you know he he sat for a few years so like this

these bo nicks has been playing college football for five years, and he started all five years. Michael Penix Jr. has been starting basically his entire career as well. So I think that's the thing, that they have an advantage over J.J. McCarthy. J.J. is still raw in a lot of aspects. Penix and Nix, I kind of trust day one. If you, in a pinch, need to start them day one, I feel better about starting those two guys than J.J. McCarthy. Yeah, and there's another part of it, too,

that is just because he's younger doesn't mean he actually will reach the ceiling. But it's a thing that coaches love and teams love is when we draft him and then we'll develop him. And once our hands are on him, yeah, you can do it. Right, exactly. And there's very different ways to look at this because sometimes, and my friend Chris Trapasso from CBS, this drives him nuts when we say the league this, the league that, because there's a wild amount of opinions. And we see them all here.

There's so many people in so many organizations. We could say if a guy drops to the second round when we think he's the first, well, yes, the league didn't like Will Levis, for example. But usually if you ask 100 NFL nfl people you get uh you know a total myriad of opinions and mccarthy is that way for me it's i've just been going up to people and saying what do you think about mccarthy and i have gotten everything from this guy is going to go six overall yep to this guy deserves to be a second round pick so where do you stand on mccarthy i've heard like qb2 talk, which I think is crazy, but I like him. I think he should be a first round pick.

Again, I'm a little scared of taking him with the expectation that he's going to be your guy day one. I mean, Michigan rarely. I mean, that Penn State game, he didn't throw a pass in the second half. That was a close game. So he really has not been, I don't think, relied on too much. Yes, he won a national championship. And as Dave so far, we'll let us know time and time again but he actually wasn't really relied on too much to actually do that i mean he was a terrific quarterback for them but i i kind of want to

draft him and of course in the first round it never really happens anymore but i look at a situation like the patrick home situation where you draft him let him sit for here by alex smith jordan love sat for a few years that's the kind of thing I want for JJ McCarthy. Will it actually happen? Probably not. But as for the teams that are looking at him right now, but I think that's kind of if you do that, I feel really good about it. If you draft him, say, OK, day one, he's the guy. I'm a little worried about ruining his development that way. You know, and maybe the Jordan Love and Patrick Mahomes success stories and Vikings fans don't like when I say Jordan Love is successful but sorry uh he's won as many playoff games now as Kirk Cousins in his career

so I don't know what to tell you but these development stories may inspire but we always think that every time it happens yes we were referencing Aaron Rodgers for years because teams would never actually do it. There are some opportunities for teams to do something like this, but you have to have a very stable coaching situation where you know Andy Reid was not getting fired after they went to the playoffs with Alex Smith. The Vikings, I think, are in that spot. They just gave Kevin O'Connell an A-plus from the NFLPA. I saw that, yeah. The only guy to get it,

which tells you what he's done for that locker room. There are also a number of veteran quarterbacks that are on the market or the Vikings could bring back her cousins. To me, if you're in transition, it wouldn't make sense to spend that much guaranteed money on a veteran quarterback, but there is the Baker Mayfield. There is the Gardner Minshew. There are guys out there who you could play and stay competitive with. And I think the Vikings don't have an ownership that would just be demanding McCarthy play if they were to draft him. So I think if we're trying to map out ideal locations for him, Minnesota is probably one of them. Absolutely is. Yeah, I think Minnesota, especially if they bring back Kirk Cousins, which I've heard some talk.

I mean, you know better than me if they actually are going to do that or not but i don't no one does they don't they don't i'm sure they don't no one knows if uh if he's coming back yet so we'll see but carry on yeah of course if they bring him back though i love that if you take jason mccarthy because then all of a sudden kirk cousins is 35 years old you get two years or so of him probably and then jj takes over after that i feel great great about that. Atlanta at eight, Raheem Morris even said, he's like, we're upgrading our quarterback this year. We are going into next year with a better quarterback situation. They take J.J. McCarthy, he's going to play immediately.

It's not going to be Desmond Ritter and then J.J. McCarthy. So that worries me. But yeah, Minnesota, especially if they bring back Kirk or even sign someone like Gardner Minch or someone, then I feel a little bit better saying, okay, you know what, JJ can sit for a little bit and then take over maybe even his rookie year. But I think day one, him being the guy, that's when I get a little nervous about that. So my skepticism on JJ McCarthy is I didn't see him as a sharp passer.

Like I see the velocity, but I don't see the precision when he throws the ball. And the thing that the football people would know, Kevin O'Connell would know better than me, is what's correctable, what can be sharpened up. And I don't know that when it comes to this. That's the thing that concerns me, is that it's a little bit like there's a lot of velo there, but sometimes it's just all the time.

There isn't touch on the pass. And if he has to throw like a 15 yard hitch or something timing accuracy it's a little sprayed and i don't think he's a good enough athlete and we're gonna find out right here but i don't think he's a good enough athlete to be making like oh well anthony richardson wasn't that accurate or i mean even jalen hertz who is or josh allen like those guys are the 99th percentile type of athletes. I don't know that you can make that case with him. So I think we've seen a lot of flawed quarterbacks who we think, oh, we can fix them.

But it's really only the elite athletes who have been fixed. That's my skepticism. And also, someone's going to have to point me toward a first-round quarterback who never threw the ball. Yeah, exactly. Even Anthony Richardson, he was their whole offense yes and pennix is their whole offense and nix is their whole offense and joe burrow is the whole like which first round quarterback was like this i can't really find too many of them and i think that's fair to at least bring up that's talking about him that's what makes it so difficult is you watch him and you're

like dude he's just handing the ball off to quorum like 50 of the time or at least 60 on time even too so yeah that's the thing that scares me too is like i just don't know what he is yet you know i almost thought if jim harbaugh came back i thought jj might even return for another year be the guy and then we'll see what he is from there but yeah now he's kind of entering this draft like you said he's biggest i mean he controls the nfl draft basically because wherever he goes, the dominoes will fall from there. So yeah, again, I'm a little worried about him just because I just don't know who he is. Whereas a guy like Bo Nix or Michael Penix Jr. But that's the thing with him too, is that the allure with him is that he could be a lot better than them. And that's why, you know, you're seeing teams think, okay, we can develop into that. Whereas

Bo Nix, Michael Penix Jr., who they are is who they are. JJ McCarthy is kind of one of the guys with a higher ceiling probably than one of them so that's why I think he's kind of going to go over them ultimately in the draft and sometimes that whole floor ceiling thing we just don't know what we're doing like I mean how about this a good example Brock Purdy you would have said this dude's ceiling is to be you would have probably said a kirk but you would have said less i think even less where based on where he was drafted kirk was a fourth round pick you would have never said he could even be a starter no and if he did you would have thought well this is going to be a game manager it's not somebody that just based on his draft status and so forth and then he is an mvp caliber player right and even with jalen hurts that the idea was that

his passing was never going to be good enough for him to be that great and circumstance just controls so much with these guys yes and that's where it makes it so hard for me to try to project but i i do think if you're talking about best circumstances for any of these quarterbacks take the the maximum of what you think they can be with Minnesota because you have the greatest wide receiver on earth and you have a coach who this is his thing. Like even look at the Vikings coaching staff. They're adding more and more people to the past game. Like they want whoever's their quarterback to succeed and running be damned. But what is your hottest take on any other quarterback before we move to some other stuff? Because I know that there's a possibility the vikings will draft other players yes so uh what is what is your take that you feel like

deviates on any of the quarterbacks from the most common uh held opinions okay so i don't know if this really deviates from people but to me i think the top three guys are clearly the top three i think caleb williams is in a tier of his own. I think Drake May is in a tier of his own, and I think Jaden Daniels is in a tier of his own. I've heard people who, I've heard, you see, Bill Belichick yesterday said, I think Jaden Daniels is the number one player in this draft. So, I mean, there are people who I've heard have Jaden Daniels above Jake May.

Bill Belichick has him above Caleb Williams. To me, I think it's pretty clear. Four, five, six, and below, you can have any order you want, really, and I would understand it, but to me, I think the top three is the top three. And if they don't go in that order, I think it would be a pretty big mistake, in my opinion. Each of them have franchise quarterback talent. Right. That would be. And then there's, in my mind, a steep drop off to the next level. But sometimes we think that and then the guys in the next level end up working out. It's not

always the first quarterback, second quarterback. But as far as their potential to be special, to be the Mahomes, the Allen, the Stroud, it really feels like it's a three-man draft, which is why we're discussing, do you trade up? Can you get somebody to help you trade up? And Daniels is such an interesting one to me because when I watch, sometimes my eyeballs bleed because when I watch sometimes like my eyeballs bleed because i just you know i when i only cover

nfl right and then i watch college stuff and he takes some of the hits he takes yes and he's slow on some of the you know getting rid of the football or takes off when he has open guys i'm just like no that's not what the nfl does and you almost have to take like you could be concerned but also have to take that back a little bit because you're just every player's gonna have to adapt right so I don't even know how to weigh these things properly it's the same with Drake May's erratic nature where you're like all right he is erratic but he's also in college and the the every single quarterback comes in has a lot that they have to change so what can you change with those

guys but each of them have this superpower right where it's drake may's arm is deep accuracy it's caleb williams playmaking it's gestures at everything jayden daniels i mean the deep ball the running ability so how do you kind of weigh all of that like the criticisms of what we see of these guys versus like what they can become well as a college football guy you know i watch a lot of bad college football oh yeah so when i what like i'm watching like the rice games and i'm like and then you know it's a nice palate cleanser when you watch caleb williams like okay this is what it looks like so i understand from the nfl perspective when you watch like okay like that's not how it works um but yeah those guys man i mean i i think

the thing that makes me think that caleb and are clearly above, they have been starting for Drake two years, Caleb three years. We have known nothing but elite play from them. Jaden Daniels, it took him five years to get to this level. Now he's here now, which I think it matters. And look at Joe Burrow. It took him five years, too, and he's doing just fine for himself right now. But I think the thing with Caleb is he was a five-star quarterback coming out of high school. We knew he was the guy.

He took over Spencer Rother's job immediately I mean he led the first game he played basically was he led them on a comeback against Texas which is the biggest game of the year for them and so I think that's the thing is like he's always been the guy and I think talking yourself out of him that's a mistake now of course it does matter situation wise in which I think you made a great point I'm like Patrick Mahomes is he Patrick Mahomes if the Bears took number two probably not I mean he's you know wrap him into a really good situation. Obviously, he's made the most of it and then some. But I think that's a really key thing, too, is like I don't know how they're going to be in their careers, obviously, until I see where they go.

But I do think that, you know, right now, I think it's a pretty clear top three of Caleb and then Drake and then Jaden Daniels. So should the Vikings not need a quarterback, although they will have a second round draft pick as well. It's not a great situation when you draft, I think 42 and then something like 104 where the Vikings are. They it's easier to struggle in the draft when you have very few picks than it is if you have a million picks and everyone forgets about the busts and loves the success stories like uh say the detroit lions but they are going to pick other players and i have just a big red pen circled around defensive line yep what is your feeling on the strength of the defensive line draft maybe going into the

second round maybe the first round depending on where the vikings stand here and they really need difference making players because if they lose the neil hunter then they have a grand total of depending on where the Vikings stand here. And they really need difference-making players because if they lose Daniil Hunter, then they have a grand total of zero difference-making players. So they would need one at least in this draft. Yeah, they would. And I think that's a really interesting spot for them at 11 because I think the edge class is, unlike the quarterback class,

it is wide open. And the corner class too, which I'm sure we'll get to. But yeah, the edge class is so wide open. And the corner class, too, which I'm sure we'll get to. But, yeah, the edge class, I think, is so wide open. I love Laiatu Lata from UCLA. Now, that might be for me from a college perspective because he was so good in college, whereas a guy like Dallas Turner probably has a higher ceiling than him. But, yeah, I think those guys, that would be an interesting way

for them to go at 11. I mean, even if you go in the interior, like Byron Murphy has been rocketing up draft boards. I love Johnny Noon from Illinois. He's not going to go number 11. He might actually be there when you guys pick at 42. But I think that if you really want to go on the defensive line, I think you might have your pick of whatever edge you want.

I don't know if there will be an edge that goes in the top 10, honestly. That's what it seems like, that there's no real perfect Aiden Hutchinson type of level prospect. And my theory about the edge rushing position is you should either draft it super high or not drafted at all. Because there's just this whole, well, we'll just work with his tools and stuff. And the high ceiling, the number of guys that the Vikings drafted, oh, well, he's got a high ceiling. He's lanky. He's explosive. If he was any good and he's that physically gifted, he would be a first round pick. And there's a reason why he's explosive if he was any good and he's that physically gifted he would be a first round exactly and there's a reason why he's not and usually special comes with the miles garrett

doesn't always happen there's max crosby everyone could always throw an outlier but most of the guys are drafted at the very top that are going to be difference makers i look at the interior pass rush is the hardest thing to find in the nfl other than quarterback. You can find almost any other position, but if teams get an interior pass rusher, they do not let them go. They retire with that team most of the time. And if there's an opportunity to get one in the draft, that's the guy I think you should go after before a defense event. Yeah, I like that too.

And that's why I think Johnny Newton at 42, if he lasts there, I don't know if he will or not, but if he lasts there, I think it would be a home run pick, the defensive tackle from Illinois. He has been, for two years, he's been one of the best pass rushers in college football. He had a Jones fracture in his foot that he played the whole second half of the season on, and he was still grading out as one of the best defensive tackles in

college football. So I think he's a stud. He's a great run defender too. If he's there at 42, I think that is a home run pick, maybe my favorite pick in the entire draft. But if not, man, I think Byron Murphy could be an option at 11. I don't know if I would take him at number 11, but he's got a super high ceiling.

And, yeah, you made a great point. Like the edge rushers, we kind of know, like we know here in Indy, like who's the top guys. And we're going to find out who the top athletes are. That's a position that's so reliant on athleticism that we'll kind of know who the guys are they won't be available i agree with you if you're not taking the first round you're not going to find a starter probably so now are you against the team having two players named byron murphy that would

be that would be a problem i don't know how would you put the name on the jersey uh yeah i don't i mean i guess it would just be the same like two players wearing number zero or something college team offensive and defensive uh no i'm just kidding uh one of them is junior and the other one is maybe the second or something okay yes they put the two yeah maybe do something like that but byron i know byron murphy is junior so i guess they would just have to put the junior uh on it now i'm even questioning myself is he byron is he true anyway uh i am just kidding but speaking of byron murphy though the vikings only corner is Byron Murphy. They have Makai Blackman, who I thought had a very good rookie year.

And he, I think by PFF, was maybe the third or fourth highest graded rookie corner. So he stepped in and he seemed to fit with Brian Flores. I think he was handpicked by Brian Flores. But they don't have a guy. They don't have a shutdown, like difference-making, super freak athlete type of cornerback. And it showed last year. And what you had was Brian Flores trying to like,

all right, everybody hang back and just tackle. Like if you can. Not, hey, we can island Xavier Rhodes like they could years ago. We haven't really discussed corner because defensive line is just such an epic need for them right now but is there a corner that you would take at 11 should the vikings be there or is there one for 42 that you could see as a ceiling guy or something like that uh because this you could tell how many needs this team has yes my gosh it's everywhere but corner is the one that has not been talked about

a whole lot that I think is serious. I think it is, too. And I think that's kind of where I've been looking for them in this draft is at corner. Again, like the edge position, no matter who you talk to, you're going to get a different cornerback one everywhere. So I like Cooper Dejean a lot. I don't think he fits Brian Flores' defense.

I mean, you guys are heavy blitz-reliant, heavy man coverage. Dejean, I think, is more of a zone coverage corner. So a guy like him, maybe not, I would take there. But guys like Nate Wiggins could be a lockdown winning corner. Quinion Mitchell has been rocketing up draft boards recently. He could be an option there. I still love Kool-Aid

McKinstry from Alabama. He might slip. If he falls, that's another guy. If he falls, and I don't know if he'll fall to 42, but if he falls there, that's another home run pick for the Vikings right there. So I think his kind of key and why this week is huge for him, people worry about his speed a little bit. So if he runs a slower 40, he might be there at 42.

So that's a guy that I love. He's a great man corner. I think he would fit like a glove in Brian Flores' defense. McKinstry looks like an overthink it guy. Agreed. Agreed. You watched him play, and he was fantastic. And then if he doesn't have the right 40, doesn't have whatever then oh well maybe he's not

yeah right it was porter that joey porter like same sort of everybody knows this guy's great but we kind of talked ourselves out of it yeah i don't know how you could talk yourself out of a guy named coolid mckinstry i know yeah he seems like a perfect fit uh and vikings are purple purple exactly i can't imagine there'll be any memes on the internet if they drafted him uh I know. It seems like a perfect fit. And the Vikings are purple, purple, blue-laid. I can't imagine there'll be any memes on the internet if they drafted him. I think it is a very serious need for the Vikings, though. I just don't know if they're going to get around to it or if they will have already traded all their picks to try to get Drake May or something. Let me ask you one more thing about just evaluating the draft in general. And you've been doing this now for a couple years

for pff i am always so interested in looking at the pff data for every player yeah and i noticed last year for example like ivan pace jr was a guy who dominated the data and my former intern hayley english who worked for pff yeah uh now works for detroit lions we met up here yeah she's awesome uh she did a thing last year we called them haley's heroes okay where she went through all the pff data and tried to find players that would be underrated and might end up working out and ivan pace was one of her guys yep and of course he ends up being a legit high quality nfl linebacker is a UDFA. What have you found as far as using the PFF data to point us in the direction of players? Because the competition is all over the place. Yes. It's hard to say, well, this guy's a 90 and this guy's a 90, but those are two different

worlds from Toledo to the SEC or something. Exactly. And and yet i thought and she's a special talent hayley but i thought she was able to identify a number of guys who even in their first years were able to shine that were highly graded players in key areas how do you use it in your analysis of the draft while also using your eyes and what you hear and what you know that's i think that's the hardest part of this whole thing is like our database i mean you know this is so vast that we could tell you i mean how the highest graded guards in the mountain west are like instantly so i mean hayley did a great job with ivan pace i would have agreed with her like he he was a guy that i could not believe fell out of the draft and i would talk to actually some cincinnati people they're like dude i don't

i don't get how that guy and then obviously you broke out in a big way for the vikings this year so hayley nailed that i think hayley might be be getting looked at for some GM jobs pretty soon, honestly, based off that. But, yeah, I mean, listen, I think that's the hardest thing. Trevor is so funny with it because sometimes I go to him with a guy. I'm like, Trevor, this guy is awesome. Now I'm coming from a college perspective. So Trevor watches him and he goes, dude, he's not going to play in the NFL.

So there are some guys like that where it's hard to – because Trevor knows better than anyone. It's more than just playing good in college. You've got to have NFL projectable traits. And I think that's kind of the hardest part for this whole – at least me because I come from a college perspective is that you're going to look at a guy and say, okay, yes, he might be grading out as a 70 right now, and this guy's a 90.

But this guy, like I said, played in the SEC. This guy played in the Mountain West. And then also this guy has NFL tools that he could actually play in the league. This guy, this is probably his last time playing playing football on a high level so that's that's kind of the hardest part for me the thing i can get fooled on with the data sometimes is smaller school guys who absolutely crush but you know sometimes there's like uh what is his name uh keaton mitchell from uh was it east carolina maybe uh where was he yes it was east carolina yeah and then he shows up with the Ravens.

And then translates. A difference maker right away. But then there was a Jalen Darden, who I love. I was like, dude, has anyone seen North Texas ball? Oh, my God. That was a guy I sent to Trevor. And he was like, he gave me a look. How much fun was that guy?

And it looked like, well, look at his explosiveness and everything else. And then you see him try to return a punt in the NFL. He just tackled immediately. Man, this is a different game. I can't remember game remember yeah but both of those guys had spectacular data and how do you figure that out i think that's the biggest challenge of the draft but that's why they do the combine is to try to figure out are these athletic traits because obviously the guy can play football but can he he actually run away from NFL players? And there is a tie in with like J.J. McCarthy where runs away from college guys. He's not going to run away from Daniel Hunter in the NFL. Daniel Hunter tracked down Justin Fields from behind.

I remember like, yeah, this is this is just a different level. And I think it can be it can be hard to apply that data from even a Cincinnati. She was very right about Ivan Pace. But I see why the NFL might have been like, well, this little guy, he played at Cincinnati and racked up these numbers. But this is the NFL. This is for big people. And it turned out that he was just different. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what makes this week so valuable.

I know a guy named Kentley Platt puts out the relative athletic score every year and i love that because then that to me tells you okay this guy is an nfl caliber athlete this guy is not and then and then i think you marry those two together with the data that we have and the tape obviously you have to watch the actual tape but that's that i think that's why the nfl draft and that's why people get fired all the time because you just mess up on these guys a lot so i mean tom brady won the seventh round so like we yeah so we don't really know uh too often how these guys will perform but yeah i think that's sometimes the pff data is it's unbelievable because sometimes you could overload your head with it and sometimes you just have to watch the player and figure it out from there i think trevor does a really good job of that not letting the data overload him um so yeah

i think that's the key is just kind of looking at the data looking at these athletic scores and determining which guy is actually going to be a really good nfl player yeah and uh trevor sycamore just putting out the pff draft guide which i have open in a window all year long during draft season we still have like 58 days to go till the draft so uh you guys will have lots of content to continue working at and and we'll know better for the Vikings in two weeks whether we're looking at all those guys we just talked about for defensive linemen or if we're talking about more quarterback hot takes. Max Chadwick, what's the Twitter? Is it the Max?

At MaxChadwickCFB. CFB, there you go. Yes. Follow him on Twitter. Great follow. Doing great work at PFF. Really glad that we could meet here for the first time in person. Of course.

And I really appreciate you coming on the show, man. Dude, of course. I'm a little mad that I didn't bring the book with me. I was going to have you sign it, but I actually left it back at the Airbnb right now. But yeah, man, like I said, it's an honor being on with you, man. I really appreciate that. And why don't you just promote my book one more time? No, I'm just kidding. Thanks so much,

Max. I really appreciate it, man. And we'll talk soon. Of course, man. Thanks.