Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Courtney Cronin joins for a Friday roundtable on the Carson Wentz and the first offseason domino to fall for the Vikings

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Carson Wentz was traded to the Indianapolis Colts so we have to ask the question: What does his trade mean for Kirk Cousins's potential trade value? While a Cousins trade seems unlikely, it's interesting to track teams moving on from big contracts like the Rams with Jared Goff and the Eagles with Wentz. Also when it comes to free agency, which move will come first? What decision will have a domino effect on everything else that happens? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizzly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate. Oh, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Scout Logistics. Matthew Pollard here. A thing that we're going to do now that Sam Ekstrom is part of Purple Insider is Friday roundtables. And for today, Courtney Cronin joins us to talk everything Vikings. What is up, Courtney?

Hey, guys. Congratulations. Thank you. I know that the news came out this week, and I am super stoked that Sammy, our golf partner, is joining us on the pod and joining you doing all things Purple Insider, and I am jacked. I know, and it allows us to do a lot more cool things like this, like have little roundtables with multiple people on the podcast. And if you have not checked it out, Sam and I did different free agency rankings, the bargain bin versus the big fish.

And Sam is also doing some Friday mailbag questions, big features of his own. So lots going on at purpleinsider.substack.com. A reminder real quick that we have a winner in our soda stick giveaway. So congratulations to Patrick and thank you to all the people that sent in the word video games or that signed up at the sub stack. I did a very legitimate process of putting everyone's email in an Excel sheet, assigning it a number, and then using randomnumber.org. So that was my very scientific process of assigning a winner. So congratulations to Patrick.

We'll have all sorts of Soda Stick giveaways as we go along. I want to start right out with you guys on Carson Wentz being traded to the Indianapolis Colts. And let me just ask the obvious question for where we have to start. And, Courtney, why don't you begin on this? Kirk Cousins. What does it mean for Kirk Cousins that Carson Wentz was traded to the Colts? And I'm sorry for asking. Well, okay.

To start out here, I actually was just pulling up the article because i want to make sure i had the compensation correct so sorry for hearing a little bit of audio there so they agreed to the trade eagles and the colts um the eagles then got you know they gave a 2021 third rounder and a conditional 2022 second round pick that could turn into a first rounder so the whole possibility of oh two first round picks for carson wentz or even one first round pick that could turn into a first rounder so the whole possibility of oh two first round picks for Carson Wentz or even one first round pick for Carson Wentz that didn't happen um obviously there's a condition to the 2022 pick that could potentially be you know the the first rounder but but nonetheless it's compens it's less compensation than we thought it would be so

what does that mean for Kirk Cousins? You know, people who were coming at my head last week when I suggested the mere possibility that the Vikings at least entertain the thought of getting Cousins getting in on the quarterback carousel, and potentially if somebody named Kyle Shanahan said, hey, here's Jimmy Garoppolo in a second, and that they should jump at that opportunity. Um, you know, after seeing what Carson Wentz did not go for today, I think that that is still a pretty good trade compensation, if you ask me. So if the Vikings really do, you know, see the benefit in trying to get up from out, get up from under Cousins contract,

then now would be the time to do it. But you're not getting a first-round pick for him. I'm sorry. Like, and I'm not saying, you know, we can argue all day if you think Carson Wentz is a better quarterback than Kirk Cousins or any of the ones that are going to go on this market, what have you. But to me, I think that the compensation, you're not going to see quarterbacks go for unless your name's

Deshaun Watson for first round picks or multiple first round picks all of that that's just not happening and now that Wentz was the first domino to fall I am very curious to see which other teams start dipping their toe in that pond I thought when seeing this that Kirk Cousins is better than Carson Wentz at least right now like what they just did Cousins had a very good season Wentz had about as bad of a season as you can have but Wentz had a higher peak to his career in terms of wins in terms of a lot of statistics than Kirk Cousins so the Indianapolis Colts are making a little bit of a bet here that Carson Wentz can bounce back to that where whoever would be offering a trade for Kirk Cousins knows exactly what they would be getting and for that reason I think in a way the compensation that anybody would offer Sam would probably actually be

similar to this even though we would look at it and say okay well Cousins is coming off a way better season but Indianapolis is not projecting Carson Wentz to have the same season as he did last year because they're going to give him a much better team and a coach that he worked really effectively with. Well, it's interesting because you have to take the Goff-Stafford trade into account here as well, because if you say that the contracts with Goff and Stafford cancel out, then the difference in talent between Goff and Stafford was deemed two firsts and a third. In a case where you trade Kirk Cousins to, say, a team like Denver, who's not going to give you a burdensome contract back, they would

just be doing you a favor and absorbing that most likely, then you don't have to, there is no canceling contract. So then you say, okay, well, well, what is the value to Denver then to, to upgrade their quarterback situation? I think, I think Wentz creates a floor at a third round pick because he got traded at his lowest point, huge contract, going to look horrible on their books if it doesn't work out for the Colts. And they still gave up a third.

So I think that means if Cousins were dealt, I think second round then becomes the floor. If it was Denver, you're not going to get the number nine overall pick. But the 40th overall pick, yeah, they could take that. If they trade for Garoppolo in San Francisco, where you do absorb a burdensome contract back, yeah, then I think you can ask for a little bit more because then you're just going on the difference in their talent. And I think, yeah, I think Cousins is better than Garoppolo. I think

Cousins is better than Wentz. Is it drastically better? No. I mean, does Wentz still have upside based on his age? Yes. But as we saw with, again, the Go with again the golf stafford trade the veteran who's been around the block for a decade who has a lot more information was actually valued much higher than the younger more volatile prospect so i i think that they're both interesting test cases to sort of gauge cousins value i think also what it says courtney is that um with the stafford and carson wentz trades is that teams think what they think about quarterbacks and what they just did in their circumstance and their stats and the PFF grades and all those things don't matter quite as much to the teams that are doing their

evaluations on these players as opposed to how we might look at it from the outside and so we might look at it from the outside and say are we might look at it from the outside and say, are you seriously giving Matt Stafford or two first-round picks for Matt Stafford, comma, a quarterback worse than Kirk Cousins statistically over the last five years? And the Los Angeles Rams are saying, yes, yeah, we would, because we think he's more talented than Kirk Cousins, and we think that circumstance played into it. Now, I don't necessarily agree with that and I've said before I think that the Rams are probably going to be a little

disappointed in Matt Stafford and I don't think the circumstances were quite as bad as people said or that Kirk Cousins has been quite as propped up by circumstances for his whole career as maybe they think he is but that's kind of a takeaway for me here. Also, if you were to trade Cousins, I noticed that in this Wentz deal, there's a little bit of a, oh, if he plays X number of games. Sure, that's what the conditional pick's about. Right. Then you get, I think it's a first, right?

And so I wonder if you could work that into a Cousins trade. Again, I don't think that a Cousins trade's going to happen. I don't think any of us think that. But if you worked it into, hey, you trade into a Cousins trade. Again, I don't think that a Cousins trade is going to happen. I don't think any of us think that. But if you worked it into, hey, you trade for Kirk Cousins, and if you win a playoff game, then you get more or whatever, then we get more compensation back, something like that. That kind of adds an interesting wrinkle to this that feels NBA-ish when you don't really see this a whole lot in the NFL.

No, and that's the thing. Like when Stan was talking about, you know, absorbing Jimmy Garoppolo and his cap hit, I mean, his number for San Francisco this year is 26.4 and his base salary is 24.1. I mean, do you want to rework that? Do you want to extend him? I don't know. I mean, to me, this would be something where the only reason you make this move is because you see a window to replace and to fix other parts of your roster.

Like, let's remember who the head coach is of this team. He wants to win on defense still. He likes the offense the way it is. That's why he kept Clint Kubiak around. That's why they're going to run the exact same scheme and probably not change up much. And he has a quarterback who can run that well kyle shanahan runs a similar offense so you'd be getting somebody that you could plug and play essentially and not expecting all that much to change um so you technically you'd be offloading

kirk's enormous contract because remember third day of this league year that base salary for next year becomes guaranteed fully guaranteed um and his base salary next year is 35 million so unless you're going to do some finagling with the cap ahead of free agency to where you're trying to get him to restructure and keep kicking this thing down the road this would be your only chance to get rid of the kirk cousins contract and just the strain that it puts on you to never be active in free agency. Now, you know, when you look at the, you know, the potential compensation and, you know, all of the stuff, I mean, that conditional first round pick that the Eagles, you know, could potentially get from Indianapolis, you know, that's a big deal.

Like, that's how I think you'd have to structure it for someone like Kirk Cousins. Cause you're just not, I mean, why did the Rams end up giving all of that to the Detroit lions? Because they had to absorb Jared Goff's contract because remember he was extended two years ago and he still had all that money left. And if you're going to be doing that, you kind of have to sweeten the deal to be like, look, like take him off our hands. Here's our first round pick for this year first round pick for next year what have you um you kind of have to know knowing that somebody else is going to take on your financial liability

that you have to sweeten the deal that way so i wonder if the vikings would end up having to be like kirk and something else um you know for and i keep going back to garoppolo just because i keep thinking that that's like the most seamless thing and at least that's the one that makes the most sense um but it could very well be another team where they'd have to essentially sweeten the pot to get somebody to buy into it i've had this same thought sam um as courtney was just laying out that i can't figure out who's given draft picks to who in any sort of Kirk Cousins deal because the fact that he's owed so much guaranteed money means that if anything goes wrong,

the other team has to eat it all. But at the same time, they're getting a good quarterback that they probably really want. And Washington gave up, I think it was, what, a first-round pick or second-round pick and a player to get Alex Smith. And that's kind of the type of quarterback that Kirk Cousins is. Now, Alex Smith came off a year where he was leading the NFL and passer rating when they made that trade.

But still that that's kind of how I think of it is like, I'm not really sure because the Rams gave up a similar quarterback. And I do think that some of that was to take golf's contract potentially, but trying to figure out the thinking for teams, it might be very different between one team says, okay, we would give up something, and another team says, nah, you're going to have to give us some draft picks if you want to get out from under that. Let me ask both of you this question, Sam first, then Courtney, follow up on this. Should the Vikings regret drafting Jeff Gladney and not Jalen Hurts last year?

I know they needed corners, and I'm not calling Jeff Gladney a bust. But it was funny to see how many times this happens where when Russell Wilson is taken by Seattle, it's, well, what are they doing drafting a quarterback? Are you crazy? And then same thing with Jalen Hurts. Why are the Eagles drafting a quarterback? Are they out of their minds? And then here they are now, at least right now,

we don't know what's going to happen in the draft, appear to be ready to give Jalen Hurts the car keys. And I wonder if there's some thought for many Vikings fans or you guys that, you know, I wonder if they had drafted Jalen Hurts instead, how they would feel about all this movement and all this demand for quarterbacks on the trade market. Two things first. Number one, I want to give you credit, Matthew, on Jalen Hurts because we sat at the golf show at the convention center last year doing a show together, and you were bullish on Jalen Hurts. I totally squashed it.

I didn't think he was going to be that good. I think you – I'll give you credit for the Jalen Hurts success story. So good job there. Number two, it's too bad that Doug Peterson became the fall guy in Philadelphia because the fact that he sort of had the cojones to make that move and had the foresight to see, early in the year that this guy can help us even if if Carson Wentz is going to take the majority of snaps um we're still going to try to use Jalen Hurts because he's talented and then to make the move to Hurts and help them uncover

their next franchise quarterback uh good for him it's too bad he won't be there in the future and you know now they've got what Nick Ceriani, I think is the name of their new coach, but back to your original question. I don't think it would have made sense last year after extending Kirk Cousins, if they chose to not extend Kirk Cousins, have him go into the third year of the original contract, then, then it would have been malpractice not to draft Jalen Hurts. But the fact that they extended Kirk, it kind of sends mixed messages, right? Because then it looks like you're being just financially irresponsible. And I know

that you can make the same argument for Philadelphia, that they were also financially irresponsible and they're about to flush $30 million down the drain, but at least they have trajectory. So you couldn't look at it that way, but you also might not hit on that quarterback. If you're picking someone, where did they get Jalen Hurts? Was it in the 20s? Second round. Second round. Yeah, there's no guarantee that you're going to hit on a quarterback

in that round ever. So that would be a pretty big gamble for this GM, and I don't know if he's quite – I don't know if this is the front office that makes that kind of decision. I mean, again, we say this a lot. There's what they should do and what they will do, and I don't think that's something they would have done. I agree.

And just to Sam's point about extending Cousins when they did, that's a lesson that the Vikings can, they won't admit to it now, but the Rams can certainly admit to it. The Eagles can certainly admit to it. I don't understand why teams get so freaked out about wanting to extend guys. They always go a year too soon with these things. We've seen it play out time and again. And then these contracts are absolutely terrible. And what happens?

You end up forfeiting, you know, you know, quite a bit in dead money. I believe that, you know, that dead cap hit for Carson Wentz, $33.8 million. That's the largest dead cap hit that any team ever has taken for a player. So, you know, and I know with, you know, when things were awful in Minnesota back when they were one in five to start and people are talking about, well, what about Kirk? You know, all the guarantees there've been a 44, $41 million dead cap hit. Like that's catastrophic. You don't do that, but they're pretty darn close. So, you know, that doesn't, that doesn't surprise me,

but this is the thing that kind of frustrates me. Cause I just, what's the hurry. Like if the guy is going to hit free agency and if he, if you are not completely certain if you're not Patrick Mahomes or Deshaun Watson or a quarterback that you're going to build your franchise around what's the harm in waiting one more year if the guy has a awesome year then you extend him you pay what the market owes him and what the market's going to command instead of taking the gamble and risking it to where you're like, man, we're overpaying for this guy. He doesn't want to be here.

We don't want him here anyways. Like you put yourself in an even worse situation. I remember saying that back during the offseason for all four of them, Cousins, Zimmer, Spielman, and Cook. Why not make them play out the final years of their contract and earn the extensions because, frankly, three or four of those people probably should have had to do that, considering what the result was in 2020. Hey, everyone. We're in the full swing of winter now, and SodaStick has you covered. If you're a hockey fan, check out the North State Icon shirts

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Code Purple Insider for free shipping. So, Sam, to your point first, I'm not declaring, by the way, that Jalen Hurts is going to go into the Hall of Fame just yet. But it is interesting that he played and they decided, hey, this is a guy who at least we're going to go forward with in some extent, and maybe if Justin Fields is there, they draft him, and he ends up being their quarterback. But the way I looked at it was, if you go back through the recent drafts of the Minnesota Vikings, tell me which one of these players who got picked recently

you wouldn't trade for Jalen Hurts right now if you're the Vikings. And the only guy you come up with is Justin Jefferson. I mean, you would trade a center. You would trade broken Mike Hughes. You would trade even Jeff Gladney, who, you know, in the first year didn't really show signs of someone that can be a top-notch corner. And if it's anybody that could be replaced, you would trade it for a quarterback that has any chance to be your franchise quarterback. And I also I also think too that what these trades show you is even if you're reckless even if you make huge mistakes and you sign these extensions someone will take your quarterback and that would be the reason to not wait until the seventh round to take Nate Stanley and rather take Jalen Hurts because if you have him as your backup, then you just have

a good backup. And if eventually you want to turn it over to him to have the cheap quarterback on the rookie contract, someone will take your quarterback. That will always happen. So I want to move on to another topic here because Adam Schefter reported that the cap floor is going to be $180 million, which means that the ceiling, which hasn't been put out there yet, will probably be close to 190, 188, somewhere in that ballpark, which still puts the Minnesota Vikings over the salary cap. Right now they're at, I think, 193. Let me pull that, 193. So that still puts them over the cap. It kind of puts them exactly where we thought. But I want to know from you two guys, Courtney, go first, what do we think is going to happen first?

Like as we do a Friday roundtable here and we go into a weekend and then on to next week where some dominoes could start to fall and some reports could come out and things could start to happen, what do we think the first move or the first decision that will affect all the other decisions is for the vikings regarding the salary cap well um if blind loyalty doesn't get in the way which it has with this team um you go to anthony barr and say sorry dude you gotta take a pay cut and he can tell you no and you can be like well there's x y and z you can try to trade Anthony Barr.

I don't know what the market is for trading a player with a torn pectoral muscle and had season-ending surgery, but I would imagine they try to do things that way to get themselves in a better position. Because right now I think they're just under 10, somewhere between 9 and 10 million over the cap. So there's a number of ways that you can do that. Obviously, Kyle Rudolph is the first one that makes sense to me, and you can designate him a post-June 1 cut.

Basically, that move alone would get you into the black, but I don't know how long the wait on it. The first thing I would do, though, pick up that option with Riley Reeves. Beg him to extend, and if he doesn't, then be like, all right, you're here for one more year and start building it around that way. I don't think that he's going. I think Bradley Reif is well within his damn right to say no more discounts because you

screwed me over making me take a $5 million pay cut for a guy that was on the roster for six games. So I think that that's one of the first things that happened, that he is still part of this team once the date to pick up his option and that whole thing passes. But in order to help themselves out and get over that hump of where the cap is right now and kind of just restructuring and all these things, I think Rudolph's the easy one. I think that potentially with someone like Harrison Smith, who is a pending free agent after this year, I think you try to extend him, get that $10.25 million number down. Here's a wild one for you.

If they don't do anything exciting in free agency, that wouldn't surprise me. But if they trade Daniil Hunter in free agency, if they try to get super freaky here and free up some cap space, get some assets back in return, then that would be – I would put more money on that happening than them trying to trade Kirk Cousins. What do you think, Sam? Yeah, well, that's quite a hot take. That's sizzling. But if they are going to do a move like that, if they're going to do a move like that, that has to be the first move, because then you know what you're dealing with within free agency. I think he's a guy that you want to keep around because of how good he was last year and seems to be weirdly improving with age.

But he also represents the biggest cap savings if you cut him. Like if you cut Barr, you're only saving half of that because he has a lot of dead money. I think you cut Rudolph, but again, that's only a $5 million savings because of his dead money. So Reef is like, okay, we're going to clear $15 million or so with this cut. We're going to double our available cap space. That's pretty tempting. And then if you could somehow reinvest like a chunk of that, find a bridge tackle, move Cleveland to left tackle, and have the bridge start until he's ready, you could actually use the savings there to address some other positions. But it's murky.

It's a question mark. Then you still have an open offensive line position you have to fill, and it leads to more questions. So I'm with Courtney that you try to get him to sign like a two-year extension with some light guarantees, kick the can down the road a little bit, get that number down. And I've seen mixed reports on what his actual cap hit is this year because of the renegotiation i don't know if it's 11.75 or 13.95 or 16 i have them at 13.95

and then okay the savings would be whether it was post june june 1 or not it's 11.75 um and the dead money you have with that's only 2.2 okay so it's that five million dollar roster bonus you got to make a decision quick because that comes right on the third day of the league year right well i mean clearly reef um was okay taking the pay cut this year and and i guess it we'll see how how much he digs his heels in because this is not a great year for veterans to walk away from money and hit the market because you never know what's going to happen in a depressed salary cap off season. You could get frozen out. You could end up signing like a $2 million deal somewhere and then you're going to be regretting the decision. Suddenly you're in a new system. You might not ever get that offer back on the table.

So I think it's pretty compelling to accept that restructure. And if you're Anthony Barr, the same goes. I think you don't want to wind up on the street when the cap is depressed to 180. You just don't. I mean, teams cap planned for what, 210? Like when they were cap planning ahead of time? So this is like a 15 cut on what these teams expected to have there's going to be tough decisions all over the place

there's going to be a flooded like veteran free agent market just sitting there and teams are going to want to be patient they're going to wait until july or august and then try to sign these guys for dirt cheap so i would and that that gives the vikings some leverage here uh i think to keep guys like that like riley reef i decided that i'm out on riley reef i i've made the decision personally and i'm making this announcement now you're canceling it then i'm out i mean yeah canceling right real uh and i'll tell you why i was doing some research for an article, and I ran across this stat. Last year, the pressure allowed by guards by the Vikings, 90 pressures to 53 from the tackles, 15 sacks on the inside just from the guards, not even including Garrett Bradbury, 15 to 4 from guards versus the tackles.

Now, that is because the tackles are more talented. Of course it is because Reif and Brian O'Neill are better players. But I also think it has to do with the quarterback and who succeeds against the quarterback. I think teams have attacked the guards because of their weaknesses, but I also think that because Cousins is more susceptible to pressure from the guards or from up the middle, that it ends up having more of an impact on him. And since he's been here, the tackles have largely played pretty well, and yet he's still at the top of the league in the pressure rate.

And so that makes me think that it's easier to replace, oddly enough, as weird as this sounds, in this particular situation, easier to replace someone playing tackle than it is guard, or that you need a higher threshold of good to protect Kirk Cousins at guard than you actually do at left tackle. And the other thing too is when a guy has a career year at 32 years old, the bells and whistles just go off in my head. I mean, this is a guy that we talked about cutting last year that they wanted to get Trent Williams instead, which Williams is an elite player, but like they were looking at Riley Reif and saying, yeah, you know, I don't know if his

body going to hold up and we'll see where this goes. And then for one year, it was great. He played excellent. No taking that away from him. But as you try to project forward, do you want to get yourself in the same situation you've continued to get yourself in over and over again with, hey, well, the guy's come off a pretty good year. I know he's older, but we got to, you know, he's great in the locker room and he's a good teammate and all these things that they talk themselves into time and time again. It's like there are some decisions that you have to make that are tough.

And I think not gambling on a 32 year old who will be what, 33, not making that gamble would be, I think, okay, since you just especially drafted a guy who's a left tackle. So in that case, are you drafting guard highly? Are you spending a lot of your free agency capital at guard? Because you have to, if what you say is true, then, you've got to figure out the guard spots because you can't go with Dakota Dozier again. No, I mean, he's – no, absolutely not. I mean, that's the thing that I get a little, you know, wary on because as we're talking, we are one month and a day removed.

So it's like 30 or 29 days from the start of free agency or the official start. The legal tampering window opens on the 15th so what are they gonna hit first are you gonna go get a defensive tackle in free agency or are you gonna get a guard you cannot do both you really can't which you know when i was talking about that daniel hunter thing sam's right if you're gonna do that do that first so you know what you're working with yeah um and i just you know for me I don't know that the market for tackles and in edge rushers and everything they need to fix a defensive line I'm not so sure it's there in the draft and this could be me talking February 18th a little bit too premature but like I think when you look at all

the opt-outs and all the people who had one year of experience playing and you're thinking, that guy is worthy of a 14th overall pick, not saying it's the same thing, but, you know, you know who else they thought was, you know, really good with one year of experience and really hasn't panned out? Armand Watts. I know he was a six-round pick, but it's that same sort of philosophy. Yeah, one good year of production, that just that just drives me it's maddening but um you know i i just think that if you're comfortable with cleveland at guard leave him there for now because you need you don't know how much longer this window with cousins like how much longer you can honestly afford it so it's like if your one issue is interior your past

production protection it's the biggest one i'm'm okay paying Riley Reif that $5 million roster bonus and keeping him there. I'm praying and saying, Riley, please. We're really, really sorry about unique and Gawkway and making you feel awful and making you take a $5 million pay cut, but please consider a one- or two-year extension. He's coming off, as you said, his best year as a pro. Was it great? No, but was it more

than serviceable yes you hope he doesn't tell you to buzz off because he is well within his right to do that um if you try to come to him with an extension because he's going to be like hey i'm hitting free agency but you can then make the argument that in a depressed year with the cap um he might be making less he might be making just as much as he could have made to stay in Minnesota, stay in the zone blocking scheme. So I think it all kind of depends. But, you know, I'm kind of with you guys on that, just thinking that I wouldn't want to mess with it any more than it needs to be messed with. Like, if you can just look at the left guard spot and say,

hey, we have one major gaping hole on this offensive line. Let's fix it. Just try to do that instead of trying to make things even more complicated by moving pieces around and having to assign new players to new spots. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. But here's the way that I'm thinking of this, is if we believe that an upgrade from the worst guard to an average guard would be massive, right? I think

we all agree on that. And you're talking about Riley Reif. Now, he's good, and he's been fine. But when you look at, you know, overall on the PFF grades, he was 26th in terms of tackles last year. The sack numbers were low, but actually, do I have the wrong year? Sorry, I have the wrong year. But he was in that ballpark. Let me get it.'s see 34th okay that's where he was 34th so he's like dead in the middle of the league in terms of his grade and his sack numbers were good but i don't look at that as irreplaceable for cheaper somewhere else especially when the pressure seems to be coming up the middle so can you remove one riley reef giant cap hit and get three linemen to battle for two spots and hope that two of them are good?

These are all like everything that this team has to do when they're up against the cap like this. It all has to be roll of the dice because there aren't going to be sure things. And I want your opinions on this. So Sam and I went back and forth on the website on here's the big fish that they could go after free agency. Here's the kind of low key guys that might be in the bargain basement. Which approach do you think that this team takes to free agency?

Bring in one guy that's exciting and they take them to the steakhouse and we all stand outside in the cold and wait for them to come out and interview them? Or is it the let's get four Josh Klein-level type of free agents and see what they do to fill in those spots? Courtney, which approach do you think is more likely with this team? More likely the less aggressive one, just because I know this team and I know what they do. Should it be the more aggressive one just because I know this team and I know what they do. Should it be the more aggressive one?

Yes, because this is the first year of Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman three-year contract extensions. They enter this year on some sort of lukewarm lowest setting of the heat on the seat. It's not flaming hot, but they've got pressure added to them. You should be hella aggressive going into free agency and trying to fix this roster

because if you really believe that Kirk's your guy and you're fine with it then you need to aggressively address this defense in ways that you have not been able to do because you've been so financially limited so you're trying to upgrade wherever you can that would come by trading away a Daniil Hunter and maybe you know you could recoup so much from that. Or even, you know, I don't know, doing something else that you're able to truly get the assets you need to go get a three technique, an expensive one, a good one. But I just don't know if they're going to be that aggressive. I just have a gut feeling that they're going to kind of do what they've done the last few years.

Why? Because Kirk's contract is a ball and chain on them. It prevents them from being very active. They knew that when they signed him. Hey, if you've been listening to the show lately, you've been hearing about Scout Logistics. And trust me, I've been trying to get them to come out with a line of Vikings merch or something because my listeners are hearing their message all the time now. Maybe we can get them to partner with SodaStix for the draft in those Scout Logistics scouting reports. Anyway, Scout Logistics joined up with us here at Purple Insider because they enjoy the show

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have chosen Scout Logistics at 855-217-2688. That's 855-217-2688, extension 232, or at scoutlogistics.com. Yeah, I think they have to be conservative because I crunched the numbers. We've already established on this show that probably about $10 million over the cap today. So let's say you cut Rudolph, save five cut Steph and save three cut like a specialist like Colquitt save two um reduce the cap hit to Barr and Reif save like let's say 12 you're you're 10 to 12 million under like you don't and you have to extend Brian O'Neill too so you don't have a lot of wiggle room you got to sign your draft class.

I don't know how you even have the money to make one big splash. Like last year, they went the Michael Pierce approach. They went for the one big fish. And he was a big fish, literally, figuratively, and he didn't play. You know, he didn't play at all. And they kind of got burned by that. And then their other premier free agent signings were Anthony Zettel and Tajay Sharp. So I think, and maybe I'm biased because I wrote this part of the piece, but I think that there are starters on the market that you can get for like 4 million and under, and at least have them compete for a spot. You know, if not like a depth role, maybe even a real starting role legitimately and team that's how teams fill in the cracks.

Like look at what the Buffalo Bills did last year. They filled out their roster with a bunch of like medium level free agents and had an awesome team. I think that's an approach that's worth considering. So I'm more about the, you know, be smart in free agency and try to diversify and cast a wide net and get a lot of little fish instead of one big one. Well, here's the thing.

Like, I mean, and I understand that approach. What did they do in the draft? They cast a net that was literally, you know, size of Texas. Big one. Got 15 fishes. And, you know, I think about that strategy and I'm like, if they do that in free agency and then they're going to say they're going to try to do it in the draft because they think more is more is more and more is good. It's not like, you know, you bring in those guys, those those lower tier free agents to compete with, you know, to compete for jobs. Then you get a Josh Klein situation. Was Josh Klein any good? Was Tom Compton any good? No, but they were bargain

bin free agents. I think that I'm with you guys. They've got a lot of problems that they've got to do. They've got to figure out with the cap, a lot of cap gymnastics if we want to call it that, just because you're not going to be able to be the flashy

team that's signing up all these free agents, a la what cleveland did a couple years ago you just you just don't have the money to do it you have to get creative and i also i'm gonna stress this again i think that the blind loyalty that they have had so many of these guys for so long that's got to end in 2021 if people want to keep their jobs um before we wrap up i want you guys to do this i want you to make up a fake rumor about a draft prospect that the vikings would want to fall to them because i see already some teams have zach wilson as their number one guy over trevor lawrence and it's coming everybody i mean there

was the zach wilson was not a captain uh even though there's a c on his jersey in every picture he was he was a captain just not like out of camp but he became a captain so just real quick make up a fake rumor about some player that the vikings would desperately want to drop to them sam well this this couldn't be any any for me, but I think this is where Rick Spielman gets on the pre-draft press conference and tries to say the opposite like he does every year. And he'll say, you know, we're really interested in receiver this year. I think we're going to go to the old Arizona Cardinals, you know, spread, air raid, four wide receivers.

And I think we might uh be interested in one of those alabama kids because they'd like to be missing yeah they're just gonna feed into the jeremiah mock yeah and all the while they just want to take um rashaun slater hey they need an offensive lineman and I think he can play multiple spots. So I'd be all for that. My fake rumor, what would be one that would really irritate people? There's so many cornerbacks in this class that they can wait until day three, and I think that they will. But my rumor would be something around the fact that they would go after a corner

with the 14th overall pick. Which they might. See, I was thinking along the lines of – No, you've got to wait. It's such a deep class this year. I was thinking along the lines of, Pene Sewell has thin blood and he can't play in the cold or something. Like, you know, Pene Sewell is not good on grass.

How is he going to be able to play at Chicago and Green Bay? Pene Sewell was soft because he opted out, right? Right, yeah. Well, we're going to hear able to play at Chicago and Green Bay? Penny Sewell was soft because he opted out, right? Right, yeah. Well, we're going to hear that probably from some people. But I was thinking true level of ridiculousness. Like, Jamar Chase doesn't like ice fishing, and so you couldn't possibly. Jamar Chase was just, what's the word? He was mean to Justin Jefferson.

Yeah, he was vulturing. He was vulturing all the yards because Jefferson was the diversion. Right. People inside the LSU program believe that he bullied Justin Jefferson on video games, and so Jefferson does not want him around because he doesn't want to lose a Madden. Those are the types of rumors I was thinking about. Courtney Cronin, Sam Ekstrom, guys, awesome stuff. And we're going to try to do

a round table for every friday here sometimes it'll be courtney sometimes be somebody else and we'll have some fun with it and of course courtney our draft scout will return with more draft sims very very very soon i promise so uh thank you both for your time we'll do this soon soon.