Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Eric Eager thinks the Vikings' time to rebuild is now

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Eric Eager of the Sumer Sports Show was tweeting about the Vikings' future on Wednesday so he joined Matthew Coller on Purple Insider to talk about why he feels it's time for the Vikings to start thinking about a long-term approach rather than running it all back next season. How can they pull that off with the dynamics of the front office? And what's the best route of they aren't allowed to rebuild it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and returning to the show because he was just tilted online and decided to tweet about the Vikings all morning. Eric Eager, the Sumer Sports Show with a two-time GM of the year, Thomas Dimitrov, as your co-host, formerly of Pro Football Focus. People know who you are at this point. Huge WNBA fan. We got the league starting soon. The draft is on the way. Big 10 tournament in downtown Minneapolis. Lots going on, Eric. What's up?

Yeah, thank you for having me. It's always fun to hang out. I can't wait to see you and all of our friends at the combine next week. I got to get your take out of the way, though. I know this is not a WNBA podcast, but are you worried at all about the quality of play in the league now that all the good players are playing for two teams? I'm excited to use my season tickets to see those two teams that are going to play against the Lynx this year But I mean, I don't know, like this is basketball, right? It's kind of the history of basketball is super teams. And nobody was really all that concerned when the links and the sparks were super teams or when Houston was a super team back in the day. So this is kind of how it goes. And also, I mean, in the W I think it is more of a guarantee that those two teams will meet in the finals.

But in just basketball history, it hasn't always been. I am old enough to remember Carl Malone and Gary Payton trying to join the Los Angeles Lakers and having that blow up. So it's not always a deadlock. But I think that having those kind of two teams on a collision course in New York and Vegas, it is exciting. I mean, people love these. They love the bulls. They love superstar. Like that's when the NBA went to the next level. That's when the W went to the next level with Maya Moore, Candace Parker. And now I think it can go even farther with sort of the social media effect.

So now it's like, can those two teams set records for wins, you know, things like that. But it, yeah, it's already been a crazy off season for the W. So would you, would you bet one of those two teams or the field for a championship? Oh, I think one of those two teams is the, yeah, those two, the or there is a favorite for sure. I, I would just, I'm more concerned because, you know,

obviously like we live close to Indiana, we go to a fever game. We'll watch fever, fever games here. And like they were live close to Indiana. We go to a Fever game. We'll watch Fever games here. And, like, they were at times unwatchable last year because I do – you and I disagree on, like, whether or not the league should expand. Like, I don't necessarily know if there are enough good players for the league to expand. And I worry that, like, three or four teams in the league will look a lot like the Fever last year because of the way

that talent has been distributed. But, no, I mean, look, the Aces and the Sky, their games last year were phenomenal. I thought that the finals as well, phenomenal. So I have no doubt that once we get to playoff time, things will be great. And yeah, I think that those two teams should be favored against the field for sure. Yeah, people should start if you are not watching the W already. Although on expansion, one of the things that I love about the league is that there is such a concentration of talent. So I would not want to change that, but we should talk Vikings here. By the way, the Minnesota Lynx, this is, I'll make a comparison. The Minnesota Lynx had Maya Moore

and they were competing for championships every year. And when Maya Moore stepped away from basketball, they fell into kind of a middle ground where they still had great players and played entertaining games. You and I went to some at Target Center. They were in the playoffs a couple of times, but last year they did everything they could to make the playoffs. They did not make the postseason on the final day. And now they are set to draft either Haley Jones from Stanford, Diamond Miller from Maryland, or potentially even Aaliyah Boston, depending on how people look at it, from South Carolina. She's more likely to go number one, but you never know. Those are three amazing prospects that they are going to be able to start rebuilding their team with. And I don't think I have to work too hard to find the Vikings connection

here, but the links, they battled and battled and battled to stay around in the middle and sort of didn't let it happen of going to the bottom to draft. And it just happened naturally. And I think that if the Minnesota Vikings do not take a radical course this off season, where they're moving on from their quarterback quarterback they're letting adam thielen harrison smith eric kendrick's delvin cook all those guys go and then just focusing on rebuilding through the draft if they don't take that route it could be a similar kind of thing where they try to scratch and claw but basically just the forces of nature come for them next season so i wonder if you think that they should

just let that happen or if they should take more of a radical route this offseason and just start right now with tearing pieces apart. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so hard to, you know, for Kwesi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell because last offseason they kind of did the competitive rebuild thing, right? And they said, you know, look, you know, this is a really weak NFC. If things go our way, we can win a lot of games and, you know, we can kind of smooth this thing out. And I think they were right on the one side. And we talked about this on a few shows. Like they were very correct about the NFC being wide open and specifically their own conference you know their own division I'm

sorry being wide open Green Bay you know they traded their best receiver and unlike Kansas City they didn't put a good receiving core together to replace him and so they they fell off defense wasn't quite ready for prime time that's an underrated part of Green Bay by the way that might mean that they're competitive this year is that their defense is a year older and more mature and has a lot of talent. Detroit was 9-8, which is great, and they gave the Vikings two really good games, but they weren't quite ready to win that division yet. And Chicago, of course, tanked and has the number one pick now. And so the Vikings did win a lot of games and you know whether or not we believe that they were truly a 13 win team or not they did that the problem then with the with the whole competitive rebuild part was they're right back to where they were right like they they they didn't

get any closer right and part of that is the fact that their draft class wasn't good but the one of the reasons their draft class wasn't very good was the competitive part of the competitive rebuild meant that you wanted to play uh uh cam bynum over lewis scene because he was better than him last year that you wanted to play you know cam uh cam dansler and patrick peterson over andrew booth because they're better at right now than those guys were and so you're a year in and there were some unlucky things Booth got hurt scene got hurt you would imagine that they would have played but Brian Asamoah didn't get a ton of snaps because he played two veteran guys over him because he wanted to get on the green from a from a record perspective Ed Ingram was really the only

rookie that played significant snaps last year and so now you're a year into this competitive rebuild you have to basically go to ownership and say hey guys uh you know that team that won 13 games that we put together it's actually not that good we have to tear this thing down that's a tough sell and why i never really agreed with the competitive rebuild because you just never either it burns in your face and then it wasn't worth it anyway. You should just rebuild fully. Or you actually have success, which they had. And you're almost like, well, shoot, we didn't want to go all the way in there.

Right? And do that. Because now your rookie class has had no experience or no positive experience. And your quarterback played well enough. I actually enjoyed watching C watching cousins play last year. I actually thought it was one of the first years where he was really bought into the team and successful and like took chances and made his stats look worse to make the team look better. And, and yet at the same time, it's like, you're stuck. You didn't go anywhere. You work.

You watch the super bowl. They're not anywhere close to those two teams. And the Super Bowl they're not anywhere close to those two teams and and yet they're not anywhere closer to rebuilding so in my opinion to answer your question you've got to just start you've got to rip the band-aid off now you have to play for 24 play for 25 because going sort of halfway in we're going to be having the same exact conversation on February 22nd 2024. so here's what's different though about the conversation from this year to next year uh you did mention some of it which is the landscape changes every year so if Carolina gets like Derek Carr or something I know you're not a big believer in the Derek Carr experience and neither am I but that means Carolina's probably

a playoff team. And if the Saints get Jimmy Garoppolo, like they're probably competing for the playoffs. Like all of a sudden it can happen quick where last year it's a disaster, but then Detroit might be stronger. Or if Aaron Rodgers comes back and they add a receiver and Christian Watson and some of those guys are in their second years, then Green Bay is probably just as competitive or more so. Chicago is absolutely going to be better. They can't be worse. And they're not tanking anymore. They've got lots of money to spend, et cetera, et cetera. Like the landscapes change so quickly and your schedule changes so quickly that it's different because this last year you could have looked at your opposing quarterback schedule and gone, oh my God, who are these people? Like even at the beginning of the year, I remember

writing this, that Kirk was the better quarterback clearly in about 12 out of 17 games. And that was including Rogers being better than him. And last year Rogers wasn't better than him. So I mean, they were even, it was like going to be Zach Wilson or Mike White or Joe Flacco. Like those were not good options. And you knew that from the very outset. Now next year, you know, from the outset, that's way different. It is a murderer's row of quarterbacks and offenses that you have to face because you were in first place and the NFL set it up to be that way. That's one thing that's blatantly different than last year.

But the other thing is that quarterbacks signed contracts. And so when you signed Cousins to a one-year extension last year, it was like, well, you haven't won recently, and the QB market hasn't really blown up yet. So here's like 30-something million. Give us a little cap space. Everybody can be happy. But then Kyler Murray signs for 45 mil a year.

Russell Wilson has his mega deal. Like everything changed with the quarterback landscape. And I think that going to Kirk and asking him for that short-term deal that's really team-friendly after winning 13 games is just a lot harder. So I think that they can look at it like, oh, well, we can run it back with a better defense and we'll get the same results. But there are a lot of things that are pretty different here as far as the landscape yeah for sure and you know burrow is going to have a deal herbert's going to

have a deal this offseason lamar jackson's going to have some sort of deal i would imagine this offseason um daniel jones might have i mean look the worst thing that could happen to the vikings is daniel jones getting his way and getting a 45 million APY deal because then Kirk Cousins is better than Daniel Jones so he's going to be like hey guys uh you know and I think that this is the problem with the Cousins era too right because you know let's let's compare it to the Mahomes thing right because I tweeted out the other day I said look if you have a quarterback on a rookie deal the irony is he doesn't have to be Mahomes for you to have success. If you have a quarterback on a veteran deal, the quarterback's got to be Mahomes-like for you. I mean, Mahomes is the only quarterback in the history of the league

that won a Super Bowl with a cap hit above 13% or 14% of the cap. I mean, that is the ball. And the thing with Mahomes is he wins no matter how you slice the data. He wins throwing over the top in 2018 when no one knew that they were that good. He wins throwing underneath in 2021 and 22 when everybody ran the two high stuff. He wins with Tyreek Hill. He wins without Tyreek Hill.

He wins with a running game. He wins without a running game. He wins with a good offensive line. He wins without a good offensive line. He wins with Mike Kafka as his quarterback coach, without Mike Kafka as his quarterback. Good defense, bad defense. Every way you slice the data know he wins with mike kafka as his quarterback coach without mike kafka's good defense bad defense all every way you slice the data he wins and it's weird because vikings fans when they talk about cousins they do the same thing and i and it's weird because in five years kirk cousins has failed to win no matter how you slice the data, right? 2018, 2019, they had a great defense, right?

Since then, they haven't had a bad one. He's played great in 2020, 2021. Then he's played meh in 2018 and 2022. He's, like, they've had a great running back. They've had a running back over the hill. They've had great wide receiver play. They've had deep wide receiver play. They've had shallow wide receiver play. They've had great tight end play.

They've had mediocre tight end play. They've had young interior offensive linemen. They've had shallow wide receiver play. They've had great tight end play. They've had mediocre tight end play. They've had young, young interior offensive linemen. They've had old interior offensive linemen. They've had great tackles. They've had bad tackles. They've had like, they've had five offensive play callers and they still can't win. It's like, does it, do we, do we need to change any knobs on this dial anymore? Like, and again, he's been fine in all those circumstances like it's the same thing as Mahomes Mahomes has been elite no matter how you've turned the dial and Kirk's been 12th no matter how you turn the dial and and it's and so I feel like you have to go back and say like this is just not good enough and and it's and so you know good schedule bad

schedule all that kind of stuff you really what is the goal for this team if the goal is to if the goal is to win and win sustainably they have to think elsewhere and and to your point like i i see the the changing wins in the nfc you can look at the other way and say well rogers might go brady's gone already um you know you know golf is probably not going to be as good this year as he was last year and so there's other reasons to buy into him but we say like he's been kind of who he is impervious to the whole league and that is bad because we've seen in five years they got one playoff win one division title that's it and and do we see anything

changing from there on out uh i keep thinking about the dynamics of this whole thing, because like what you just laid out is something that I mean, our audience knows well. It's just this conversation about how many things around cousins have changed and how the results are the same and the price tag and all those things like we've been over it many, many times, many, many, many times around late February. Usually when we're talking about what they're going to do with their future is when we have this discussion. And every time we kind of come to the same maybe conclusions about just like where this is likely to go. And last year outperformed any of the conclusions that we that we had around this time talking about whether they extend him or not but this year this year just feels like it's the opportunity where every year you could talk yourself into it for one reason or another and there was actually an argument to be made it wasn't necessarily my argument but like think about this way like in 2019 they go to New

Orleans they win a playoff game and they decide like well you know what he had a really good year But like, think about it this way. Like in 2019, they go to New Orleans, they win a playoff game and they decide like, well, you know what? He had a really good year in 19. I think he did play actually quite well that season. And okay, well, what we're going to do then is we're going to draft corners. We're going to replace digs and we're going to kind of have this little bit of a competitive rebuild type thing. And then they freaked out and traded for Yannick and Gakwe. I don't know what that was, but like you could sort of see it like, okay, I get why you're doing

this. That you think that you're fairly close and then you just need to do this, that, or the other thing. But with this, it was like, I don't think anything more could ever go right for you. And if you're saying, well, maybe if, you know, they hadn't had Ed Donatello or something, but on the offensive side, you were healthy the whole season. And, and like, there's always been that, like, well, a lot of things did go your way, the one score games and everything else. So while the defense was bad, it's the whack-a-mole game we always talk about. So I guess, so I guess my thing is though, that like when, when you have Kweisi Adafomensa, you have him to know all this, right?

Like, that's why you have Kweisi Adafo-Mensah, you have him to know all this, right? Like that's why you have him here. So it's not Rick Spielman talking on the PFF podcast about how he draft a running back over a cornerback if the running back's a better prospect. That's psychotic. And that's why you move on from him and get someone smarter, right? That's the point. Even though, by the way, Spielman drafted two all pros his last two years in the first round. Derrishaw is an all pro. That's Trent Williams right there.

And obviously Jefferson, by the way, my old colleague Deontay Lee, my brother in Christ, we need to – Jefferson is the best non-quarterback in the NFL. And Rick Spielman gave that player to you. I mean, we look at Spielielman deridingly right but like this thing could have been a lot worse like he did spielman drafted what like five hall of fame players potentially potentially i'm not gonna give him his flowers though looking at the defense this year whereas was bracy bracy hasn't drafted a good player yet, but knows what he's doing. I think if you look at process-wise,

it just shows how uncertain this whole process is, right? Yeah, I think that what I'm getting at with Kweisi is that the process is supposed to be smarter. Like with Rick Spielman, he drafts, and I know Kweisi made this same error last year, but like he drafts Ezra Cleveland and moves them to guard. So he takes them from a premium position to a non-premium position without ever even trying it. And then that may be the coaches as well, but like, you got to be on the same page there, right? They drafted a running back in the second, a running

back in the third, thumping linebackers, like just, oh, well, he's a good prospect. Like, the point is about Spielman is you have Kwasi to know better than to just sort of run it back and do these things. But here's my thing. They want to be a big old brotherhood there with Kevin O'Connell. How do you tell Kevin O'Connell after winning those 13 games? Kevin, you actually shouldn't believe in yourself like I know you think that you can get back and I know Brian Flores just came here because

he thinks he's going to be the guy to improve the defense but no actually you can't you can't do it like that's a that's a hard sell right oh 100% I think that that's you know that's that's why they pay Casey the big bucks though right I mean he's got to be able to be that guy that says softly deliver the message, but the message has to be definitive. It has to be this is 2022 was to get everybody back excited about this team again. 2023 is about 2024. I said this in a tweet. I think what you have to do is, you know,

the message has to be to O'Connell, like, look, you guys in LA, you developed some pretty good role players there. You think about, you know, um, Skoranek and, and, uh, I think about like the Troy Hills of the world and the John Johnson's of the world and the line Ernest Jones is of the world. And, um, even a Sean Robinson and guys like that. Gaines, I can't remember the first guy, the guys, Greg Gaines, I think is his name, a defensive lineman who's pretty good.

The offensive line, you remember how good they were when they first started in L.A. with John Sullivan, former Viking, Whitworth, Roger Saffold, and guys like that. A lot of those guys left, and then they won a Super Bowl with some linemen other than Whitworth that we weren't particularly sold on right that Joseph Noteboom was a really good player uh in that playoff run when um uh when Whitworth was injured that's O'Connell right and like O'Connell that has to be like the the role he plays which is to say look Louis Scene's got to be an NFL starting safety by next year uh Andrew Booth has got to be an NFL corner. One of the top three corners on your team. Ed Ingram's got to be above replacement level guard.

Brian Asamoah's got to be your middle linebacker. Because, you know, for the money to work, you've got to let Eric Hendricks, you've got to let Jordan Hicks go. Or one of those two, at least. And I would imagine Hendricks first, which I know Mike Consentz will be bad at because he has had a great career in Minnesota. Jalen Aylor's got to be a wide receiver that contributes for you. Like that draft class has to include players.

And this year it did not include players. And that was a really rough one. And additionally, if they stick with the, what, four draft picks that they have going right now, those guys all have to be able to play by 24. That's got to, if I'm thinking about the motivational factor for O'Connell, if I'm coming at him as, you know, as Kwesi, it's that, right? It's like, that's where your magic has to be. We gave you veterans.

You weren't able to beat the New York football giants in the playoffs. So we're taking a step back and, you know, and making, you know, allowing you to apply some of your skills to this new team in 2023? Kweisi's role kind of reminds me of when I worked at McDonald's, because what we had was you have a corporate structure, okay? So you had ownership of all of McDonald's, and then you had like your regional manager and then assistant to the regional manager. And then you had like your individual store managers. Okay. So the, we all thought as employees, as burger makers and order takers that, um, which is harder than people think,

by the way, people at McDonald's should get paid, but that's a whole different story. Uh, but we would always think that the manager was calling the shots so we would always just be like why is the manager doing this what a dope this manager is so silly they don't know what they're doing and what i didn't realize until at working there for a few years was that they weren't the ones making those decisions that it was coming down from the very top here's how we're doing this now and that that was how decisions were made and i wonder if quesia dafl mensa is in the same position where it's like we all want to point at the guy with the gm hat and i don't know this this isn't

like reporting but like we all want to say like well you you're the one who wears that role so you're the one determining the course of this team but i i mean i don't know if that's true like we're going to find that out but i don't know if that's true so let's just say that he is the assistant to the regional manager in this equation and he is not corporate and they are telling him from up top, no, we won 13 last year. We're winning 13 again. Go make it happen. How can you, if you're Kweisi Adafo-Mensa, make it happen, but also not completely screw yourself for the future? I don't know if that's possible because I, like, look,

this would be like the Saints all over again. And the thing that the Saints had or had was a quarterback that made everybody better. Drew Brees elevated the play of those around him. And, you know, Kirk Cousins is a good quarterback. He's a top 12 guy, let's say, even on a bad year and top eight guy, I think on a good year. But he doesn't make the players around him better. There's a reason why on his contract he's never been able to have sustained success he's never been able to win against teams that have that quarterback that does elevate the players around him that that

you know and so that that's not a lever you can pull you can't all of a sudden make Kirk Cousins a better player um I think you know if they want to do it you know I I do think post June wanting Adam Thielen is is essential I don't think think having feeling on the roster makes them a better team um so that does save them some cap space but that only gets them so far you probably do have to extend cousins for a year um to smooth out that cap hit but again you already tacked on two voyeurs to his deal like you're already paying for for yesterday uh tomorrow and that you know that doesn't help them they probably have to re-sign Smith re-sign uh Hunter they probably have to get an extension for Jefferson that is backloaded instead of front loaded and again like part of and I didn't put

this in the tweet but like part of doing all the hard work of getting rid of all those players that I mentioned in the tweet is putting together an extension for Justin Jefferson that pays him a ton of money now and makes that ton of money. Like, if you give him roster bonuses now as opposed to a signing bonus or something, if you pay him up front now, by the time he gets to year four of that deal, he's going to be a surplus for your team, like a huge surplus for your team. And if you decide you need to win this year, then the whole thing, it turns actually the opposite direction.

Whereas Jefferson's going to be a $40 million cap hit in the future. You know, Danelle Hunter's going to be a $25 to $30 million cap hit in the future, and so on and so forth. And I guess if the mandate from ownership is you have to win now, that's what you have to do. Like, those are the kind of deals you're going to have to make. But, you know, the problem is, like, who knows when Danelle Hunter is going to stop being good? Who knows when Zedaria Smith is going to stop being good? I mean, he, you know, declined down the stretch last year, let alone, you know, next year.

And who knows how much longer, I mean, Jefferson is young and he seems hungry and everything like that, but who knows how long he's going to be the best player in the NFL who's not a quarterback. So that's kind of how you have to do it. And then you basically have to hit on all of your draft picks. I mean, the people forget, and this is where, this is how razor thin it is. I don't want to use the Chiefs because I'm a fan, but I do want to use them because I'm a fan of their process. They have the best quarterback in the league by a mile. They have one of the best coaches in the league. They hit on eight of their 10 draft picks.

They're one of the healthiest teams in the NFL. And they won the Super Bowl by three points and probably got lucky too. Like this is how hard it is, right? And so if you're going to try to split this hair here, it's just incredibly difficult. Give yourself some slack. And I hope Vikings ownership sees that because the Eagles didn't have to hit on everything. The Eagles traded Jalen Rager to the Vikings because he sucked. They got James Bradbury to replace some bad corner play to that.

They traded for Chauncey Gardner-Chauncey because their safety play wasn't good enough in 21, et cetera, et cetera. When you have a quarterback making $1.6 million, you can have those problems. When you have a quarterback making what Cousins makes, you have to have all the luck that kansas city had to win the super bowl and that is what the quarterback who's much better than cousins is yeah i mean that is a amazing to think about um the afc is a little harder than the nfc that is that is true but uh no no i mean you're exactly right that like even for cincinnati to be in the position that they were in like again like a lot of things have to come together a lot of people have to be healthy you have to play you know at an extremely high level and have a lot of your moves work uh which is a big thing like if jamar chase

had not worked out for them they're not there but instead he's a superstar so like a lot of these a lot of these things they're so out of your hands with the draft, because as we've talked about many times on the show, like you just really don't know on the night that you're drafting those players. But one thing that Kansas city did have was a lot of draft picks and the Vikings certainly don't have that, but I want to, I want to, I want to work on this.

I want to try to figure this out because there was a report today that made me think like, oh, I don't think that they're going to make major changes, which is that they pushed back Delvin Tomlinson's date for when they need to decide to extend him or not. Initially, it was a couple of days ago and there was a lot of confusion over that. So they worked with his side and pushed it back to the start of the league year. Now that's significant because if they extend him, they can push out their dead cap money. And look, I don't see any real reason to do that unless you're actually considering bringing him back, which means you're considering being competitive and trying to actually win again.

So you can sort of follow us down the trail here. So if Kweisi is in that position where corporate has told him, this is what you're doing and you have no other choice is there is there a way can we you and i galaxy brain our ways up because i don't think the answer is extending delvin tomlinson i don't think the answer is signing another veteran corner who's sort of been around because we've been down that road i mean i think there's really only one answer And it's when you look at the offenses that make the Super Bowl, they're usually about, you know, by expected points added 100 points better than the Vikings where they were by EPA. By actual points, it's probably like 75 to 100 points. So the offense to me is the only way to do this. And you just pray the defense did what it did last year, which is create a lot of turnovers, even if they aren't very good.

One of the reasons I put Zedaria Smith and Hunter in my tweet to keep is like, if you have a pass rush, you do have a chance. Like your secondary, you know, and you put a lot of, you know, one thing that I'll give Quasey a lot of credit for is he's at least thrown numbers at the secondary. Whether or not it'll work is another question,

but they have thrown numbers at the secondary. Okay not it'll work is another question but they have thrown numbers at the secondary um okay so let's start with some basics here though you let dalvin cook go right i mean there's there's no real reason to keep him he wasn't good last year um he had some explosive plays but you know for the most part down to down i he's bad for a couple reasons for this team a he makes enough big plays where you do feel like you have to give him the ball it was it's it's the sort of Tyree kill part of the Chiefs where he's good and and has history and he garners inefficient plays Tyree kill was actually when the before the Chiefs traded him two and a half yards averaged up the target decline from one year to the next and it cut 200 yards off of Travis Kelsey's year the previous year.

Much like a bush where you cut off some branches and you let the rest of the bush grow. That's what Dalvin Cook is to this team. So you let Dalvin Cook go. I think Ty Chandler, I think Kenny Nwongwu, those guys can do the job. And there's a lot of free agent running backs. So maybe you can bring back. Alexander Madison in a normal year would probably have a market but he probably won't have a market this year because he's competing with josh jacobs uh you know saquon barkley uh i'm trying to think of the other ones like jamal williams like there are a number

of really good so you could bring back those three players for a combined like five million a year you know so get rid of get rid of dalvin cook whether you post june one of them or not or So you could bring back those three players for a combined $5 million a year. So get rid of Dalvin Cook, whether you post June 1 or not, or whether he can actually garner something in a trade. I'd be fairly surprised if he could. With Cook, you probably have to post June 1 that thing to get the savings to $9 million. So you go with Dalvin Cook there. You post June 1.

That's one release. I do think you have to pre-June 1 Eric Hendricks. I think that you just say, look, we drafted Asamoah to be one of the linebackers. Jordan Hicks was fine last year. Cutting him would save us $5 million, but cutting Hendricks saves you about twice that money so you go in the league you say you can you can understand having asamoah and hicks as your two linebackers that doesn't say we're we're trying to lose that much right so that that one's there um you extend jefferson you extend hawkinson you extend hunter to kind of get their numbers down you push that money into the future that helped you know you extends it area smith you you say look you had a great year you were a pro bowl player you're going to be a viking for life you know push that money all into the future so that that helps you

get there you try to bring patrick peterson back and say look you were on you were on the way out of the league before you came here now you got like 12 interceptions or something last two years come back home you know give him eight million know, give him $8 million, right? Like give him a raise from last year. You probably – that gets you to Harrison Smith. And I want to ask your question. Like Louisine, Josh Metellus, Cam Bynum are safeties you can pass the laugh test with. So do you cut Harrison Smith post-June 1

to save some money there? Because I think you have to if you're trying to do enough things to be a winner while also staying cap compliant. Yeah, I think that the problem with post-June 1 is that it always sounds so wonderful, but then everyone's already signed. Like, you can't use that money right away. And if you don't do the Harrison Smith thing post-June 1, it really doesn't save you a whole lot. Also, I think if you're trying to win this year, you're probably just restructuring that and seeing what Brian Flores can do.

Now, I mean, I agree with the face that you just made, but I think that like, I mean, I just think that like, if you're trying to win, that's probably the one guy where you feel like he's going to be a lot better with Brian Flores than he was with Ed Donatel. I don't know how age is going to impact Harrison Smith, but I know what I've seen from him in the past when he's played with an aggressive defensive coordinator who moves him up to the line of scrimmage and then they have to hope and pray that lewis seen is way better but you're focusing in my mind in the wrong part of this like what they do on defense is anybody's guess to whether it's going to work or not right like last year i don't think that you and i thought they were going to be the worst defense in the league we thought like oh well maybe they could

be like 18th or something but then you get the wrong system. A few things go wrong. And then all of a sudden you're horrendous. So I don't know about defense and you can fill some of those spots and whatever else. To me, it's 1997 Minnesota Vikings are completely stuck there. They win a playoff game that was kind of bogus against the new york giants with a onside kick and everything else and i guarantee you from 1997 if everybody was is like smart about football and how everything works then they would have been saying boy this team is just stuck in the middle and we're never going to really compete and everything else they got killed by the niners in the playoffs it was like they're not that close right and there was one

gentleman one human being that changed everything and you already kind of have Randy Moss but can you find the other guy and I don't know who it is in this draft but to me that's the answer it's like it or I mean I don't know if Odell Beckham is the answer but like probably not at this point in his career but if you're talking about how you could make it happen, it's making up those hundred points to me. And the running game was horrendous last year. It was a negative by EPA. It was one of the worst in yards per carry.

So that, that needs to be better. And you could probably make up like a couple of touchdowns worth of points just by running the ball fairly effectively. If Kevin O'Connell like wants to. But in my mind, the only, the only chance you have is to look at San Francisco and say, is Brock Purdy and Jimmy Garoppolo really that great? Or do they have wide open freak star players making plays all the time?

They have four or five stars. Iuke is a star Samuel Kittleittle they bring in mcafree and they use them really well like that's to me that's the only answer to even give it a try and if it blows up then oh well because if if it's off the table to take it all apart now then at least go all in the way that you might actually have something click for you and have a crazy explosion of offense that you've never had before so i i i agree with you but i think that the hard part is is we've been as vikings observers we we fixate on jefferson we fixate on digs and we forget about laquan treadwell we forget about you know the the players that

because my like look Jackson Smith the Jigba probably is really good right and you know much like Jefferson we might be focusing on other people because you know like Jamar Chase was better than Justin Jefferson in college right so like Justin Jefferson came at a discount because he only played in the slot and he you good, not great relative to Jamar Chase. Jackson Smith and Jigba didn't play that much this year because Marvin Harrison Jr. and others were in front of him and he was a little banged up and he wanted to play for the draft.

Like, look, he might be that player, but if he comes here and busts out, that's one of your four draft picks. And I agree that like you, my issue with the Vikings is that the offense has been pretty damn good for like three years now I know that they lead the league in you know uh three and outs and like there are structural issues with how they go about picking up yards and points but for the most part like the issue is that they don't have a defense

that can get them above you know and and if you're going to win you're not going like I hate to say it you're not going to win a Super Bowl because of your offense when Kirk Cousins the quarterback you're going to get to a frustratingly high level of high play that is not enough to win with and and then you're going to look and like every single year you're going to make excuses for Cousins because the other stuff didn't get up, you know, up to par. Like I agree with you that, that we're sort of getting to this conclusion that you can't win with cousins. Like that's what we're getting to. Right.

But the, your only chance, I agree that your only chance is to beef up your offense and to make it amazing. But I, I, I just disagree that you can go that far. Like they've gone that far. They've had Thielen. They've had two or three great wide receivers, a great tight end, and a running back who's amazing.

I just don't see it being able to happen this offseason for them. Like wide receiver in free agency, your best guy is Juju or TJ Sharp. Like you're not picking that guy up in free agency, and so you're going to the draft. In the draft and the draft. I think we're overestimating the Vikings likelihood to hit because they've hit before and, and, and they've hit spectacularly. I just don't know if they can do it. So like for me,

if I was given the mandate to still succeed this year, I would make sure that the defense had as least amount of weak links as possible. And knowing that that's probably going to fail, because if you just turbo charge the offense, the offense will fail at the breaking point. Cousins will show himself to be a not good enough quarterback to win with. So it kind of reminds me of one of those Superbowl or not Superbowl superhero movies where somebody tells the superhero like you can't do it or uh Ivan Drago and Rocky where it's like you can't win he's too strong and it's like Vikings you can't win the forces are too strong but Rocky Rocky drew on the hearts and minds of

the Russian people who wanted there to be peace. And I don't know what the comparison is for the Vikings, but I think it's offense. Like that's the, I just think like there was no chance Rocky could win unless somehow he got the crowd on, on his back. And then he was able to like demoralize Drago. There's, if you'd say to me, well, there's no real chance the Vikings can get to the Super Bowl no matter what you do and I guess I would say well then at least take the one route that seems totally like a little counterintuitive compared to where they were but actually might have the chance of clicking and probably is the only thing that could actually get you there would be having a beastly

offense and hoping that Brian Flores can improve you to an average defense and of course you know trying to talk yourself into this is our yearly tradition I just think like that if you're going to deviate from Spielman this kind of ties back to the point with Spielman because what you just laid out to me is what Rick Spielman would do he'd be like oh let's see if we can get like a veteran linebacker in here. And it's like, no, no, don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Let Brian Flores blitz the hell out of everybody. And you'll just win or lose on the variance and go crazy on the offensive side. That's the, that's the only way. I'm not saying this is a good idea in comparison to like drafting a quarterback and setting yourself up for the future. I just think that if you are told you have no other choice, but to fight Yvonne Drago, well, that's, that's your one choice is to give an amazing speech and say, if I can change, then the Vikings can change.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. I mean, and look, there's nothing, I mean, Matthew Stafford won a super bowl, right? I think that there, the problem with that is that you look at the Rams defense and they have Aaron, they had Aaron Donald, Von Miller, you know, Jalen Ramsey, like those players don't exist for the Vikings. You know, they have, they have stars, but I just don't think that the stars are as starly as they were for the Rams. You're going to need Kirk to kind of black out for six weeks, right? Late January to early February. And, you know, we've seen him play fantastic football at times.

I think second half of the year, like he was great. I thought, you know, for the Vikings relative to where he was early in the season and obviously 19, he had his moments, 20, he had his moments as well. And so I guess if you put put more you make that offense more resilient yeah you know they that that you know hawkinson was a good addition um do you have to put one more kind of intermediate threat to to go with jefferson probably um should you add a guy that can take the top off um the defense you know kind of like uh you know i you know i always think of mbs for the chiefs who are like he didn't put up a lot of catches in yards, but he ran the routes away from the guys

who were trying to be productive. Could you do that? Sure. And they have two great tackles. There's a lot to work with on the offensive side of the ball, to your point. But I just don't, I think they're bad gambles. To go to the draft and say, look, out of our four draft picks,

we're going to get one offense-changing wide receiver, to me is just a really bad gamble, especially in this year's draft. And I just, you know, with all the other needs they have and with all the other roster problems they have, like, I just don't know if that's going to fly in the building either. I thought you'd be more on board with this. I thought you would love this. I'm not. I mean, I like more on board with this. I thought you would love this. I'm not.

I mean, I like what you're saying and I understand. I just, and maybe this is just my cynicism growing up here and everything. I just don't see a way out that makes, that doesn't get everybody, that doesn't put us in this exact same spot a year from now. I just don't see it.

And so I think that the time to make some really hard decisions is now. I think you have cash from winning 13 games. I think there's two ways that 13 wins could go. It could go, well, it's a mandate to do more or it's a, or it's a license to, to draw from the bank account,

you know, another year and say, look, Hey fans, we gave you a great year. We know that this has all good things have to come to an end. Let, you know, let, you know, have, let's have modest expectations for what 2023 looks like that, that to me would be what I would do.

But I know that that might not be the reality that they're facing. So we're going to see each other at the combine. We're going to hang there. We only have to really look for one or two players for the vikings because uh they don't have any draft picks you think that i think that trading down out of like 24 into the second round is probably a good idea because i don't think that the gap between the 24th pick and it's 24 right uh 24th and and 34th or something. I don't think there's really a big gap there between prospect caliber. I do think there's a huge gap between say top 10 or 12 and 32. But I think what people are going to, should be setting themselves up for is the disappointment

of draft night of not having a pick. I think that's what people really have to prepare themselves for, for the draft. Yeah. And you wonder if they don't just make the trade like days ahead of time, like the, like the saints and the Eagles did and just like, get it out of the way. Right. Like, cause, cause I always remember, you know, early in the John Dorsey era with the chiefs, like they would make trades. You know, the Chris Jones trade was a trade back they they wanted Paxson Lynch you know it's crazy

like no one understands quarterback the team that drafted Mahomes in 17 wanted Paxson Lynch in 2016 um but they trade back and everybody's like oh you know like we all came to this party and then you know they're not going to actually have a pick in the first day but ended up being Chris Jones who's obviously their best defensive player. I wonder if they don't, you know, think about something like maybe, maybe that's part of it. Maybe there's an edge in like sort of creating some of these trades before

they happen so that they know beforehand that they might have six picks, but the first one's 40, as opposed to having four picks in the first one's 24. Like, I think that there's, there's an, there may be an edge and be able to being able to do that. Like, I, I personally think that there's, there's an, there may be an edge and be able to being able to do that. Like, I,

I personally think that if you're like, look, we're not going to trade the pick unless we see this one guy that we absolutely love. I think that's a bad process. So I do think that they might be benefiting. They might benefit from you know, trading back early and sort of like planning their, their draft out that way. Okay. So I know we've had a long conversation.

I've just broken up the middle of your day working for Sumer Sports and building all sorts of ingenious data tools for NFL teams and so forth. But I have an important question though to finish the show. So there's some Twitter accounts that tweet out old NFL stuff.

And of course I follow every single one of them. And one of them tweeted out a Pizza Hut commercial that had Rich Gannon, Michael Strahan, and Chris Hovand. And so I tweeted like, okay, I don't get how Chris Hovand gets into this. Like, did he have a good agent or something? And every response was like, oh, he had a minute of being really good. It's like, what, wait, what? I don't ever remember Chris Ho a celebrity NFL player so Chris Hovan so like again I grew up here my dad's a Vikings fan like all this stuff like Chris Hovan was good for like a minute and like and and that's the funny thing so Hovan was a second team all pro in 2002 the problem was and like people like we

gotta we gotta do a podcast about this because it's too much fun because it's it's similar to what we're dealing with now uh watching the vikings 2001 that was the year that cory stringer died everything fell apart you know my my mike tice took over at the end of the year for dennis green dennis green literally left the cupboard so bare in 2000. And the cap, this was before Brzezinski. So they were terrible at the cap. They were starting something called Andrew Jordan at tight end because they couldn't afford Andrew Glover anymore. Like these things happen.

And there was a time when Mike Tice, and Mike Tice was perfect. You guys would have loved Mike Tice because he told everybody everything. So he goes to the podium. He's like, you know, our defense, there's only one untouchable and it's chris hovind everybody else is up for grabs so like literally chris hovind was the only player that mike tice was considering not moving on from after 2001 so he had his moments but i also remember so 2003 happens they draft kevin williams you know, kind of Hall of Fame type player because they missed the first two picks, right?

They weren't in time. And so they had to pick him ninth. Something called Ryan Sims for the Chiefs went ahead of him, a bust. And I can remember who went eighth. And maybe it was the batter in left which. Kevin Williams gets 10 sacks as a rookie. Chris Hovind gets like two and a half.

He's like falling out of favor. I once went to a game against the Jaguars where the Vikings healthy scratched Hovand because he was so bad. He lost his job to something called Spencer Johnson, who eventually went to the Bills and had a decent career. Hovand's fall from grace was immense with the Vikings, but he did have a moment when he was like second team all pro

because he was you know pretty good he was pretty good on a bad defense I would love to know a list of players in the NFL who had one good year and ended up in commercials like you know like the list would probably be incredible just like one one year somebody is great they end up in national commercials and I mean Tim Tebow is kind of this but that class of matters too because like hovan was a first round pick so like if you're a first round pick that shows some promise they'll they'll buy into you as a player on the media side and like that was hovan like that was a hovan to a t i still think it's wild that he ended up with the nfl mvp rich gannon and mike strahan also a former viking rich gannon indeed indeed he was and then 12 years later he became great or whatever uh eric eager is great great to catch up man we will uh see each other

at the combine and uh we'll see what happens in a couple of weeks we'll really know all the answers we might do a podcast at what's that what's that bar called at the JW Marriott? Oh, what is it? It's like Nitronic or something. Yeah, yeah, Nitro or something like that, yeah. Yeah, something like that. We'll have to think about doing that. But yeah, I'm excited.

The Super Bowl was a lot more hectic for me than it was at PFF, but the Combine is going to be less hectic because the PFF schedule was always a little bit more crowded. So this will be fun. I'm looking forward to it. All right. Perfect. Sounds good. Thanks, Eric, for all of your time as usual. And thanks everybody for listening.