Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Courtney Cronin reacts to new Vikings GM Kwasi Adofo-Mensah's opening press conference

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

Matthew Coller, Sam Ekstrom and ESPN's Courtney Cronin get together to break down new Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's first press conference in which he talked largely about his background and not as much about the big decisions facing the team. What can we take away after getting more details about his rise? What is the biggest challenge facing a GM that wants to "collaborate" with the rest of the front office? Can we figure anything out about the rebuilding path for the team from his past employers? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

from inside tco performance center a friday round table and a very special one matthew collar here with you purple insider along with sam extram Sam Ekstrom, as always, and ESPN's Courtney Cronin as we react to Kwesi Adafo-Mensah's opening press conference. And I'm just going to start out with this, Courtney, that we now know a lot about Kwesi Adafo-Mensah. We don't know a lot about what he's going to do from today's press conference. I think we learned just about his background. We could talk about how he views the analytics thing, which he really doesn't seem to want attached to him in the way that he talks. But we were given no indication of how much roster control he has, which he didn't want to answer, or where he's going to go with different things. And he said he was just going to start talking with the leadership council and calling players basically after he talked with us. I think that's my biggest takeaway of today is that we have a really good understanding

of who he is, where he came from, who influenced him. But the rest of the stuff we're going to have to find out with actions and not so much work yeah i think that he danced around the 53 man roster question probably the best way that he could because he doesn't have a head coach in here you don't necessarily want to affect the head coaching search and have a gm say i have the ultimate say at the end of the day what if that sways a head coach it did not want to come here. Not saying that that should be like the ultimate deciding factor. Most general managers and personnel people who are executing these contracts, executing, bringing these players in, usually end up having the final say, which is something that Rick Spielman did have here.

But I thought he'd give a good political answer from it, where it needs to be a partnership. And that's the thing I took from this entire press conference about the collaboration effort. And when he talks thing I took from this entire press conference about the collaboration effort. And when he talks about analytics, it's not, oh, here are the number nerds coming in and trying to tell you how to play football with a computer. It's, hey, there's nuance to all of this. A talent evaluator can watch film, can grind the tape, can be looking to see if somebody has oily hips. But somebody else with an analytics background might come in and say, okay, well, we missed something here, and the numbers will tell us

why we missed it. So I think melding the two, and same thing with the head coaching search, where he talks about getting into it already, that it's not just going to be him deciding on it, that if you ask anybody around him, he's somebody who asks questions. He checked all the boxes that Mark Wilf wanted to be checked when they talked about 10, 17 days ago, however many days it was, that they fired Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman of great communicators, great collaborators, great leaders. So far, he won the press conference because every single answer traced back to one of those things. Yeah. You know, Rick Spielman wasn't the most comfortable in front of cameras. And I mean, Quasey is very comfortable.

Like he's extremely, he's just fun to listen to. And we had a little bit of a back and forth with him after the fact. And he was really comfortable there, too. And biographically, I feel like we know a lot about him more than I ever knew about Rick Spielman. So that certainly helps inform his thought process. And I get the sense that he's trying to separate himself, I think, from sort of his Wall Street time. And he doesn't want to be pigeonholed as the analytics guy, as you mentioned. And he said that in his Cleveland introductory presser two years ago.

John Lynch said that about him, that he hates the analytics buzzword. And it seems like he wants to be viewed as a football executive and not the analytics Wall Street guy, because he's only nine years removed from sort of that life. And he shows up at the MIT Sports Analytics Conference and has this connection to the 49ers. And he's making spreadsheets for them and teaching about financial literacy. But he evolved from that. And in Cleveland, he had a legitimate job with the personnel and the roster and decisions that were being made, strategies there. And I think he does want to be viewed as a football guy

and not just sort of the myopic analytics guy. And he did seem to introduce that as a piece of what he's doing, but certainly not the whole package. And I think he does bring credibility to the table in that he's been part of some, like, a San Francisco club that made a Super Bowl in his final year there. A Cleveland team that sort of came out of, you know, mired in mediocrity and made it to the playoffs. So even though he's only been in football for nine years now, I think that he is a trustworthy voice

and I think he can lean on his credentials, even though it's a short career and say, hey, I've done this. I'm more than just a numbers geek yeah and I here's the thing like in front offices across the NFL like as much as people try to be oh we're forward thinking we partner with PFF you still have people who are in the old school football realm of I'm an evaluator I'm out on the road watching players I know who has good technique and technique at the end of the day. Whoever's ass you can kick in the trenches, that's going to win you football games. There is a need for that still, but I think with Kwesi coming in and effectively disarming the notion that, hey, I'm a quant, that's a divide between, quote-unquote, traditional football people and people who have the analytics background, where it's, oh, this person's coming in, they're saying they're smarter than me because they know how to do equations and put graphs together and spreadsheets and all of that.

And I liked his story he told us that when he was in San Francisco, I think it was when he was, you know, one of his early years in research and development where he comes in and says, you know, they're all going around the room and he talks about who he is and that he's like, I don't know what analytics is. And he's like, I dropped an expletive in there to, you know, sound extra footbally. And I get it because I know that I laugh about this because, you know, you know, I like to have fun about football people and football men and how emotional they are and all these other things like he seems to get that part too because that's not how you can walk into a place and walking into a scouting staff here where you have Jamal Stevenson and Ryan Munnins who have been with this organization for two decades along with Rob Brzezinski two plus decades like you can't come in and just start like all of a sudden wiping the slate clean, even if that is eventually your intended approach, like you've got to meld those beliefs because even the truest of grinders of the tape still need analytics to make their job work. This is 2022. You're not just, you know, you're not just going and taking measurables at the combine and expecting that that's going to yield you somebody

who's going to win a Super Bowl. There's a big element that I think that they were missing here with that. And what Kwesi, from his economic background, if you don't want to call it analytics, we've got to call it numbers to a degree and quantitative analysis. That stuff is important and what he's going to be able to do here and how he's going to overall change the process. He had a really good line about it when he was asked about the analytics, talking about how analytics and scouting try to cover each other's blind spots. Yes. I love that part of that answer. Right. Because numbers can't tell you about someone's personality, which is a, we've all covered players whose personalities were the reason they succeeded. I mean, I think of

Terrence Newman of being able to play late into his 30s when his physical skill still wasn't there anymore. And Anthony Harris, who went from an undrafted player or Adam Thielen, who didn't necessarily have unbelievable pro day numbers. I mean, those players personalities, their football character is the reason that they had such great success. So that's something a scout can tell you much more than a number can. But at the same time, there are numbers that could tell you, hey, maybe this isn't the right player value wise to draft, or maybe there's an analytic red flag with a certain player that doesn't have production that matches up. And that doesn't mean you never do it. It just means that that's something you have to pay attention to and the thing is that the edges are so small like every team puts so much money into all of this that the the biggest edge can be if

someone says hey our numbers say that you should not draft a center in the first round and i've gary bradbury's been catching some strays on the show and i'm sorry to him but that's one of the worst draft picks of any team of the last 10 years because of when they picked them and how bad he was and how much he played and hurt the team because he was a high draft pick if you're if you are an analytics person you look at that pick and go you can't be serious with picking a center you just can't i know your scouts love them but that's not where you pick a center and that same draft has aj brown debo samuel these other players who have massively impacted their franchises that they didn't get because they loved

how the guy outside zone blocked it's like that's a blind spot where a scout the scouts were probably right like what he could do the best but the blind spot was not having the numbers to direct you in the right way that this is not a good value pick And that's the thing I really liked what he said, where analytics and traditional evaluation scouting, watching players, it's all information gathering, right? The numbers and the analytics, that helps you, like Matt was saying, figure out, okay, what's the best value? And I think the draft is going to be the biggest place we first start to see that return on investment of having a new thinker in that spot somebody who ultimately will be pulling the strings on who gets drafted and who gets drafted where think about where they're picking right now I

believe it's 12th like cornerback obviously comes to mind quarterback also comes to mind and we didn't get a chance to talk with Kwesi about the quarterback situation, the massive one that they have to figure out ASAP when they get a head coach in here, but of how all of those things are going to factor into the value and what they're doing with the roster and the players that they have on the roster, the return on investment they can get from them, but also the value of who else they want to bring in, whether it's a free agent or whether it's a draft pick, because there's ways to like, I think he has enough experience in seeing how Andrew Barry did it in Cleveland,

where they were taking all of this quantitative research and analysis, which I know a lot of people will roll their eyes at and say, well, you can't build a team off a spreadsheet. And it's not just measurables. It's not just how fast a guy runs a 40 or how far somebody can throw a ball. It's the melding of all of those things. And if you see something with your eyes and you trust your eyes and your evaluation process, you also have to look and say, OK, what did I miss? Because the analytics will tell you probably what you missed or what you actually might you know have done in the right way like it could end up it's I think it really what I think it boils down to is it this is going to kill a lot

of biases which is good like because those type of things don't necessarily lie now analytics when it comes to like going forward on fourth down and all of those things, that's a different subject. And that's a different thing when it comes to what Kwesi Adofo-Mensah's role is going to be and the stuff on game day. That's different. But we're talking about roster building here. And we're talking about how you bring the right players in. There's a way to do it that I don't know. How many times did Rick Spielman talk about the offensive lineman studies that they've done?

What did that yield? Like, I'd like to see actual research and the analytics that will provide you the better draft picks and the better. If you think about it, the draft rate is 40%. That's a 40% hit rate. Like, you can't just be like, we're going to draft and be amazing like I think that having somebody like this with this background coming in who can see outside of the box and honestly the whole answer of we've always done things this way I don't think that's going to fly here anymore even though it's one person coming in with all of these staff members he's going to retain at least through the draft yeah then there certainly are some biases

with the way this roster was constructed they They valued the running game because of who the head coach was. They paid their in-house guys even though they were at positions that are not a high value. So Kwesi comes in. They're paying a safety a ton of money. They're paying a linebacker a ton of money. Two defensive tackles. A wide receiver with a very high cap head. A running back, yeah.

I mean, I wrote about the personnel decisions on our website. He's got's got to come in and he's gonna have to rattle some cages right away like and i know that he said he's gonna go and call all the players and say hi to everybody and learn the names and it's gonna be some awkward conversations there particularly with number eight who he's gonna call and i mean that's the elephants in the room that your contract is what is holding this back. Yeah, absolutely. And it's much easier for me to make one move, get rid of that QB money and not have to upset everybody else and have to renegotiate, ask guys to take pay cuts, cut guys in training

camp just to be cap compliant. So he's going to have to come in and do a pretty quick audit and realize the inefficiencies, how to get more efficient, and then figure out, all right, what is the best method of approaching this in free agency and then the draft. And I actually love that within three months, guys, we're going to, I think, have a pretty clear view of how he operates because we're going to see who he values roster-wise, how the draft gets approached. The Vikings were so formulaic in the draft and so predictable.

They would always go for need in the first round, kind of regardless of talent. Then they would go fourth-round defensive end, fifth-round wide receiver, seventh-round linebacker, trade back four times. Find a quarterback on day three that ends up not being anything yeah or a udfa who they give a lot of money for no reason like i i'm really excited to see the first moves he makes what the order of operations are to get a view into his perspective

i personally think nate stanley was a better athlete than you guys thought he was remember that from draft day where we were told nate stanley is a better athlete than you guys think you're like didn't they say something about his arm his how great his arm was he had a long neck he could see over the offensive line he was no mike glennon uh so so here's the thing about the draft i will forever and always until this changes believe that no team is better than any other team in the draft when it comes to the hit rate that you talked about that over a long period of time every team will have the about the same and over years and years and years about the same there could be hot stretches of drafting and cold stretches of drafting which the vikings have gone through recently but it's also about where your hits and misses come from if you draft a center and he becomes the best center in the league,

how much did that really help you? Like, is this team a Superbowl contender? If they hit on that first round pick? No. If they had drafted Debo Samuel, it might be different. I mean, we might be talking about covering playoff games right now, but you know, that's the thing. It's like, if you hit on Justin Jefferson and miss on Laquan Treadwell, you made the right choice drafting both of those guys. It's just one hit and changed your franchise. It changed what a new GM gets to see. That's the whole point about drafting the right players. The other thing is that our buddy Arif, he does the consensus draft board. And what it's shown from the consensus draft board is that teams that reach usually end up paying for it. Like that doesn't often work.

Players that fall kind of 50-50, sometimes you get a great steal, sometimes you don't. But if you're reaching, if you're doing the Raiders thing and you're drafting Alex Leatherwood, who's a second or third round draft pick in the middle of the first round, you are playing with fire there. And it's numbers like that

that can help you avoid a big mistake that I think that they started to disregard here with Rick Spielman. A lot of things that when they built it the first time, it seemed like the second time around or the second section of Spielman Zimmer, they just started to disregard red flags for desperation. Like you mentioned, Sam, for need. And that's one of the things that Qu quasi has here is there's no desperation. I think that, and somebody sent me an email today, disagreeing with this assessment. So you can tell me Courtney, what you think, but I think that the fan base is so refreshed by hearing a GM who talks like this, feeling like they're cutting edge, having people talk around the league about

like, wow, this is quite the hire that you've made this process driven person this modern person I think there's patience to make the right moves and make the right process moves and not feel like well you know we lost the corner in free agency better draft corner yes and I want to answer that kind of in a two-part way because I remember 17 days ago now when Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman were fired when Mark Wolf kind of gave the new coaching staff the new GM I thought a kiss of death by saying no we don't think we're in a rebuild we think that we can field a competitive team next year I thought that would scare away a lot of candidates because when you think and oh my god this team did this in 2018 when they went after Kirk Cousins, they were so careful to never say,

we think he's going to bring us a Super Bowl. That's the expectation. He said, we feel like we're a quarterback. He was the missing piece. That's what they were alluding to. And it worried me when Mark Wolf said that because if you're a GM, you've got the clock ticking on you from the second you get in the building of having to field a very competitive team.

This is a different candidate. This is a candidate who is rooted in creating processes and seeing those processes through. A process is not an overnight thing. So will he get a little bit more leverage from ownership of if they have to take a step back this coming year in order to be competitive a year from now, because Sam and I were talking about this off air, because I waffle on this every single day. I can see benefit in trading Kirk Cousins absolutely because of the albatross of his contract. I can also see a benefit in just keeping him here for one more year and then figuring it out, whether you go to the draft this year, whether you look at next year's's draft class with the quarterbacks because it tends to be a deeper class at least

just from first glance and if you have to field a competitive team if you're the GM who feels the heat from ownership of hey we still think we're pretty good like just help us get bridge the gap you're keeping cousins because if you don't your offense looks like it did in Green Bay and you're probably like the Giants struggling to score 10 points a game that's tough but I tend to think that the breath of fresh air that you talk about and just you know this is such a departure from what they had for 16 years and not saying that like Rick Spielman was you know bad at his job or things like that he had some really good draft picks he also had some really bad ones a lot of GMs around the league do that like if we're going to be giving Rick Spielman a lot of flack, let's go give John Robinson a lot of flack for the contract that he gave to Ryan Tannehill and some of the other stupid things

that the Tennessee Titans did at playoff team that just found their way out of the first round. That's like, that's everywhere. But the approach that Quasey has, because it's so different and that I think that these fans are so starved for just wanting something different, because if they would have kept any sort of the same order that it was before, it would have been, here we go again, we know the outcome before it happens. We don't know what this outcome's going to be.

We don't know how he's going to meld with the rest of the front office. Like, he won the press conference today for sure, but nobody can project, like, oh, five years from now, the Vikings will have gotten to another NFC championship because of the GM that they hired. They hired the best candidate for what they want for the long term. Now, we can go into Ryan Poles and that whole thing. It's a whole other argument and discussion topic of who they really wanted at first versus how this thing ended up turning out. You had polar opposite sides of the spectrum. topic of who they really wanted at first versus how this thing ended up turning out.

You had polar opposite sides of the spectrum. Polsler opposites? This is kind of like your Harrison Smith pro bowl LOL headline that will forever be in my hall of fame of headlines. But I'll give you that one. That was a crazy pun that you just made. You're making me crazy over here. It was so smart that I'm now a Mensa member okay oh I hate my life um anyways no I mean there's I do think that there is a lot of optimism that

I haven't seen in five years covering this team and that's typically what you get starting ground like from the ground up but like are we do we look at like our colleagues down in in Florida or excuse me not Florida in Chicago and think okay Matt Eberflus is the head coach Ryan Poles is the head coach is there that much optimism around that well I don't necessarily think so because you got a football guy as your general manager and you have a defensive coordinator from Indianapolis who's now in Chicago like that's kind of like the same old, same old. You're not reinventing the wheel there. You're just kind of doing what you've always done.

This is something that they haven't done. Of course, I think the big thing I've seen in Cleveland dealt with this too, with bringing in Paul DePodesta, bringing in the Sashi Browns of the world. People think, oh, you can't have business people running the show or you can't have baseball analytics guys because show, or you can't have baseball analytics guys, because that's why I can't stand baseball. Baseball's way too many analytics for me. My brain can't handle all of that. That's the only pause that I get from fans, at least in my Twitter mentions, of like, don't turn this into money ball. Don't turn this into something it's not. you can use what you know to implement here and help the system and help the

process but like don't don't try to go wide left just to go wide left don't say wide left sorry don't take don't take a hard left turn just to do it folks support for purple insider is brought to you by manscaped they are the best in men's below the waist grooming manscaped offers precision engineered tools and they recently launched the ultimate men's hygiene bundle performance package four million men have trusted manscaped and you can check out their exclusive offer for 20 off and free shipping with the code 20 insider at manscaped.com manscaped sent me the performance package and i could say that it's a game changer, especially when it comes to their nose and eyebrow hair trimmer called the Weed

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I appreciated sort of his realistic statements where he said, you know, on Wall Street, you make some trades, you look at your bets at the end of the day, and your scorecard's not always going to be good. Yeah. And I think he's realistic that some moves won't work out. And we didn't hear a lot of that from the previous regime. Like think about the times when Rick Spielman would talk to us. It was pre-draft talking about, you know, how great the draft process is they have and how great free agency was. And then talking during the bye week about how hopeful they are for the season. And it was always couched in an optimism that didn't always sound authentic, but there was rarely accountability. Like we wouldn't hear from

Spielman after a failed season. We wouldn't hear from him after a losing streak. It was always sort of him talking about how great everything is. And it was, it got to the point where we were seeing the results and hearing something different. And it felt kind of like gaslighting. And I think keeping in mind that there is a grass is greener bias with someone new like this, it feels like there's going to be a little more accountability and a little more sort of realism that we're going to put this process in place. It doesn't ensure results. But if we're process-driven, then over time, the results will come knowing that progress is not going to be linear. And that's one of my tenets is that there's probably going to be some ups and downs. And to your point, Courtney, about what to do with Cousins, I think there's a couple conversations happening.

Number one is, does keeping Cousins for a year just stall the process? Stall the process? Stall the inevitable? Sure. Because I think we can all agree he's not the quarterback of the future. So does that just put the process in neutral and stall you for a year? But what are your other options? That's what Quasey has to come in here and justify to ownership, to the rest of the scouting staff, to the coaching staff that he gets in. I I mean that's the thing like he's got a couple days pretty much before like I tend to think they're

going to hire somebody by next week you have to because you have like Sam was saying you have eight or nine big roster decisions that you have to make none none as big as Kirk Cousins but you've got to make that process you got to go fast because by the time the combine rolls around, you have to have an idea of what you're doing going into that. Does he, if they want to be competitive next year, and also factor in the financial stuff that the Wolves have to deal with, they're paying two people a lot of money to sit home and not be working on football teams next year. Does that factor into we don't want to pay 20-something plus dead cap in having Kirk Cousins go play somewhere else?

And you also have to understand, like, no one's taking Kirk Cousins straight up with that contract. You'd be taking on a portion of that to be able to get his ass out of here. Like, that's just what it is. And so, like, he has to come in and, like, evaluate all of those things to understand what the best course of action is. And if it is delaying the inevitable, you can get your cap healthy in other ways. But I still go back to if they think they're going to field a competitive team next year, you've got to look at what the other options are available to you.

Are you going to try to trade for Derek Carr? And then you have to sign him to an extension? What are you going to do? So my question is Derek Carr and then you have to sign him to an extension like what are you going to do so my question is do you think you are LA or you're Detroit in this Stafford for Jared Goff sure like because if you think you're if you think you're in LA you're living in a fantasy land if you think you are Detroit then you're much closer to right this roster has more good people than Detroit had last year but make no mistake like that's you when you look at how Detroit performed in the last two years of Matt Stafford like that's you a team that every year went into the season saying let's sign Trey Flowers

he'll be the difference he'll get Matt Patricia's defense going a defensive head coach who was a bully and didn't really get it that sound familiar like Matt Stafford kind of kept that thing afloat to where they could be competitive when he was in, but he also had some injury issues and they stumbled around in the dark for several years as their roster just fell apart after the Jim Caldwell era. So they traded him away in a great trade for Detroit. They got tons of draft capital. They moved on from their longtime quarterback that I'm sure was difficult, but he was always good, not Mahomes great. He's been excellent in the playoffs

for an outstanding team, which by the way, was PFF's number one graded team. So all the grades of the players combined, that's what their roster is. That's not what you have here. You have a team that was mid pack or lower for the complete overall accumulation of talent with a few really good players that you could also maybe move on from and start anew you don't have to do the complete tank but you're much

closer to where detroit was in making that trade and that's when the baker mayfield thing comes up and everything else like you're much closer to where they are than where LA was. And I wonder how they view themselves because I don't think if you're Mark Wilf, you come out and say, Oh folks, we are rebuilding those 99 jerseys you have get rid of them. Oh, do you like Delvin cook? Ha LOL. Like he's gone.

That's not get the Delvin cook. Number four Jersey folks. It's not going to be in cook number four jersey folks it's not going to be in not going to be in purple right you can't say that you can't say it but like the way that he he was so aggressive on that answer of like no like i would say we think that we need to rethink our processes to say that to say we do not see this as a rebuild because rebuild 10 like they're going to be rebuilding on the defensive side of the ball quasi comes in here and absolutely knows that because look at how you have eight or nine bubble guys that are still under contract yeah and may or may not be on your roster and that includes also

like the people who are pending free agents but that's going to be a rebuild whether you like it or not call it something else if you have to but But I think that that was not the right way to approach it when he said it right after the season ended and you fired everybody. Be more realistic about it. Maybe now that time's passed, they will be. We'll eventually be able to tell how much that mattered by reflecting in the moves that they make. Well, one i i think that fans want that i mean i think that fans want them to take the long approach because the recent approach was bad i mean think about this they played 31 games the last two years with playoff

implications so they played two meaningless games 31 they won 13 i mean you went 13 for 31 in the last two years with this quarterback this roster this approach of trying to rebuild quickly and make desperate moves like nobody could be sold on that and i feel like this is where quasi has to look at it and say guys if if your ownership is saying we we need to be like la we need to trade for vaughn miller and that's how we need to do like LA, we need to trade for Vaughn Miller, and that's how we need to do it. It's got to say, guys, that's what you were doing. And that wasn't working. So we have to take a new approach because it does not take somebody with whatever from Stanford to tell you that it wasn't working the last two years. As you said,

Sam, the results tell you right there. There was one thing I wanted to say that I came away with. I don't think he has any idea how hard this job is. And the good part of it is he's got time to find out. Because I walked out of there and said to Sam as we were walking out, this is a person who's very naive about how hard this is going to be. You are not the third or fourth executive down the line. You are the guy who takes every bullet. You are the guy who has to bullet. You are the guy who

has to live and die with every single move and everything is attached to you. And he said something to us like, Hey, you know, I mean, after a loss, I'll still say, hi guys, how's your weekend? I'm like, no, you won't. And you shouldn't like, none of these guys are like that. Like, I don't think he has any quite idea what he's getting into exactly until he gets punched in the mouth a few times, which is fine because you've got at least a year to reset everything and start. It's like a college coach that takes over rebuilding their program. These aren't my recruits yet. That's how I look at it.

These aren't my players yet. So until it's really his roster and that'll give him time to transition into that. But I think this job is way harder than he thinks it is right now and he's going to find out how hard and he's learned under some really talented people I mean John Lynch was a first year general manager who really screwed up with that Reuben Foster pick I know because I was there I covered technically Kwesi and I would have uh overlapped the 2016 season and then I was there for like the beginning of 2017. Was he on your radar when you were there?

No, I didn't know who he was. No one really knew who he was. No, I mean, obviously the guy he mentioned, Prague Marity, who's their EVP of football operations, he's there, Brzezinski. Brilliant mind. Their cap guy out there is really, really talented. And so when he mentioned that that's somebody who was a mentor to him, I was like, okay, good.

You've got really smart people in your corner. And obviously the guy is very smart himself but like he got to learn to see what a first year general manager in both spots both John Lynch and with Andrew Barry seeing the hits and the misses that both of them had made it's not like he walked into a situation and had like a super seasoned vet I mean I guess he would have been there with Trent Balke in San Francisco, but those were after the Super Bowl year, and he saw how drafting cornerbacks in the third round with ACL injuries

is never a good idea. But I think that that's a benefit to him where he's seen younger people like himself, first-timers, do this and learn in the first two or three years what works and what doesn't. Like I just think it would be different, and there would almost be a sense of disconnect when if he walked in and he had, like, a Rick Spielman here. Like, remember, like, the buzz that was supposed to be around here, that Rick was still going to be in the building.

And, of course, if he was, you have him, you could either view it one of two ways. Like, he's there as guidance or he's looking over your shoulder and you're feeling nervous about every decision that you make I think he's been in a really good spot with Cleveland a young group of executives a lot of them who have business degrees economics degrees the non-traditional football sport management sport whatever background a lot of these people have so that's that's huge and so I I think he's actually walking into a situation, I know, and you think, you know, you might be naive about it. And of course, like, we're all optimistic and wanting to change the world when we get these jobs. And not that we're general managers, but like,

everybody walks in with a lot of hope. You could get humbled very, very quickly with that. That's what I mean. And I think that will inevitably happen to everybody everybody it's just a matter of what do you do this off season to try to limit that humble pie that you're gonna have to eat because yeah you can come in here and you can you can make really hard decisions and piss people off along the way that's fine but that business is business strictly financial that's what you have to do in a case like kirkins if you are going to trade him and trying to just be like, all right, rip the band-aid off, get it done now because you're delaying the inevitable.

Again, I can see why he'd be on the roster in 22. I can absolutely see why a trade would happen here. But either way, he's going to be making moves that are not going to sit well with every single person, but he's got to be strong enough mentally and with the wherewithal be like I can't second guess myself on this I'm not the top evaluator in these meetings but I have to trust all of my gathered information which comes from the analytics which comes from talking

to scouts which comes from talking to your personnel directors and make the informed decision from there and stick by it that's what I I liked about what he said, where in the sense of bringing them championships, he talked about we have to have the wherewithal and the ability to, once you make a decision, stick with it at that point. Folks, I want to tell you about HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes

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Analytics, efficiency, evaluation, that can be a very impersonal process. And if you only make decisions based on that, you will upset some people because these are human beings and there are other opinions. And if you're going to incorporate the collaboration that he's also talked about, sometimes those two things are going to clash. It might be tough for him to disappoint a new coach to say, hey, man, we're going to decimate this roster a little bit. And I know this is your job and you would like to be here a while and not be on the hot seat next year but this is what I have to do I'm gonna have to disappoint some guys that he may just be meeting on the roster you know that's those are all gonna

be hard decisions and he seems like an affable person who wants to be liked he wants to make a good impression on everyone. And that could also lend itself to not wanting to rock the boat as much. And there's probably a portion of the fan base that doesn't want to see them tear the thing down. And they're okay with kind of being in the hunt. So he will have to disappoint some people. And will he be willing to do that? And we'll find out, like we said, right away if he's willing to make those tough decisions. Right. How ruthless are you going to be? And because I think it does take ruthlessness.

And there are people in the front office who have ties to these players that mean a lot to them. I scouted this guy. This guy means a lot. We paid and with Spielman, like I always understood it. I didn't think it was right, but I always understood it. If you are the guy that found Anthony Harris and then he leads the league in picks, you want to pay him. And if you are the guy who drafted Harrison Smith and he's in his 30s and he's making all pros, you want to pay him. And you want to be like, look at these great players. That's the human element of football. When they try to pretend it's not there, those are the decisions you point at being like, you all of a sudden thought Anthony Harris was deserving of a franchise tag

after one season where he led the league in picks, and then you see how much Philadelphia paid him after that. And then they couldn't trade him either. What were some ruthless decisions that Spielman even made? I'm trying to think where he ranks on the ruthless scale. One to ten. One to Bill Guerin. Maybe the only one is just like,

bye, Case Keenum. Yeah. See ya. But can't you draw parallels to that too? Because the franchise is at a turning point right now. You can go one way or you can stay in mediocrity and nobody wants to be rooted in mediocrity. And that was a year coming up short

where they make the NFC Championship game off of a miracle play that really, in know, in theory probably shouldn't have happened that way. And then they go get blown out in the NFC championship. So they saw it as, hey, you guys can't help us anymore. Get to our ultimate goal. That's why they went after Cousins to begin with. Now you have to look at it and say, on this roster right now, I think about Daniil Hunter and the tough decision that they're going to have to make with him.

The guy's played seven games in two years. Yes, he could be a franchise piece, a cornerstone piece that you build around, but are you willing to hedge so much of your financial liabilities in him because you just still consider him this blank slate, this blank canvas at 27 years old? I don't know. Like, there are some hard decisions that he's going to have to make. And, you know, we talked about Adam Thielen.

He's got like a $17 million cap hit next year. It's expensive. Like, do you ask him to restructure? Do you cut him? Do you try to trade him? Like, there's a lot of guys on this roster. And, you know, I thought about Kwesi, and you mentioned Dalvin Cook. My brain was like, well, you know what the first move that they made this offseason was or last offseason in August.

They extended Nick Chubb. So like it's Quasey walking into this being like, he likes running back. I'm going to keep him like that was the first move before Denzel Ward, before the offensive lineman. I think they did recently before Baker Mayfield. So like I think there's some parallels that you can draw and be like, oh, like be how you can do that when you have a quarterback on a rookie contract you could do something that doesn't really make sense uh but I mean I don't know if that tells us what he's going to do with Delvin Cook or not I do think it makes it so vital the head coach that he gets and having them be on the same page and what you can really say then is anybody in this front office who isn't with us

is against us and we're going to move on from you and that doesn't sound like the oh we're going to collaborate and listen to everybody's takes but that is a ridiculous notion okay that is not possible it is not possible to be like oh we're just going to hear everybody's opinions and then we're all going to decide like a democracy that somebody has to be in charge that's what they keep trying to sell. Like, gosh, Spielman tried to sell that. And there were four voices at one point that made every decision on this roster. It was Scott Studwell.

It was George Payton, Rob Brzezinski, and Rick Spielman. They can act like groupthink was the way to go about like, let's get to a consensus. At the end of the day, there is a decision maker. Because if there's not an adult in the room, then you end up like spinning your wheels and making the same mistake after mistake. Now, I'm not saying like, I hope that there's collaboration. I hope that they open the processes up differently and do different process, like have different, you know, organizational structure of how you have people that are currently in their roles, whether you elevate them, whether you give them different responsibilities, because it grew stale. It grew stale, their approach, like 16 years of the same thing. You need to shake that up. Right. I also think that like they just

stopped listening to what mattered. Like if someone came to you and said, maybe you shouldn't sign Kyle Rudolph to this huge extension because that's ridiculous. Rick Spielman said, I don't care and I'm doing it anyway because we got to win now because I's ridiculous Rick Spielman said I don't care and I'm doing it anyway because we got to win now because I have to save my job I think that's very different than saying like I'm the guy in charge and I know these are small things but I'm just talking about how difficult this is going to be and maybe he doesn't realize it when he says shout out to all my football ops guys in Cleveland Tuesdays will never be the same it's like it ain't it ain't the guys anymore.

You're the guy. You're not going to make a lot of friends early on. That's going to be tough, I think, where before you were part of the process, but Andrew Barry was the one pulling the strings on what happens, and ultimately the blame falls on him. You were the 1B, and now you are the head honcho. So it changes. As Michael Scott showed us, you can't be friends with your coworkers, right? I mean, isn't that the fundamental problem with the office that Michael Scott has is that he wants everyone

to be his friend and it just doesn't work. And so I think that that's going to be a transition process that happens behind the scenes with him to understanding how to be the guy in charge. I just get the impression that he doesn't really know how to do that yet and doesn't give that off yet. And like you said, wanting to be liked is a clear thing from him. Like even saying to us, oh, yeah, I want to ask you guys how your weekend are. I'm like, yeah, but you really shouldn't, though. Like that's like I mean, that's fine. But like we're not friends and that's not going to be how this works we want we want accessibility

we want answers for fans but that's not how that works like us liking you can't matter to me i tend to think though remember how big of a buzzword culture was the last day that everybody well the first day of the new era when zimmer and spielman were gone everybody talking about, I don't want to be in a fear-based organization. I want people in the hallway to say hi to me. I think he's trying to disarm people to be like, hey, I'm not like the last people that were here. It's not just this that he's tasked with, like the football stuff.

Building the culture is not just the coaching staff. He's got to communicate with the business side here. He's got to make this a non, not what the coaching staff. He's got to communicate with the business side here. He's got to make this a non, you know, not what it was before because I think it got so toxic and so out of hand that now you're starting to hear stories coming out behind the scenes. You have Rick Spielman going on podcasts or Con Coward Show and saying that your quarterback has to have a relationship with the coach and especially if it's a defensive coach.

Like, huh, wonder who he's talking about. about like it's very clear where things were frayed and I think that he's coming in as somebody with an optimistic viewpoint of you know like I really did appreciate the one thing that he talked about where gratitude like my mom always told me this the people that you meet on the way up are the same people that you're going to meet on the way down and that means that like you are gracious and you're kind and that you're respectful of everybody that works with you because one day they might be your damn boss. Okay.

Like, and I think that he, that's what I garnered from that where it's not this, I coming, I'm coming in and I know everything. I'm a genius. Every, your question's dumb.

Like I didn't feel that anything went in there. Like I didn't feel like anybody asked a dumb question in there. I wish we would have had time to ask about Cousins, but that's a moot point. I felt like he came across as respectful in trying to level with people of like, hey, we can be on the same page. Time will tell how that works out as far as the relationship with media, the relationship with the personnel staff, the relationship with the coaching staff. And his first task in getting that right is go out in the next five days or so before the dominoes keep falling because there's two coaches now off the market and go get one. Right.

My whole point, and we can sort of wrap on this, is just that this will take time to understand what this job takes. Yes. And everybody has the answers when they do their first press conference. And then things get really hard. And the Gerson Rosas example is a good one. He had a press conference just like that. He talked about the organization just like that. And two years in, people inside the organization are saying, he's a tyrant. He doesn't listen to anybody. All these sorts of things. And still made great personnel moves that are like manifesting now right but the other stuff was terrible right like

so you can be good so i mean quasi might be great at the interpersonal and terrible at the personnel and we wouldn't necessarily know all the whole picture but that could be going on behind the scenes right we're going to learn this over a number of years how this plays out and not today but i think that him being in a position where he doesn't have to fix a roster tomorrow and learn how to run an organization tomorrow and this can happen over at least a year into maybe 2023 is when you start talking about okay now you've got a rookie quarterback that's on his second year and now all that sort of stuff i think it's the right fit for the timeline of the Vikings for where they're at.

And the realistic timeline. Yeah, the realistic one. And the next step is the head coach. And the next step after that is the quarterback. And of course, we will be around for these things. So thank you, Courtney, for all of your time. Thank you, Sam. As always, another Friday round table.

But I'm aiming for another Bonanza over the weekend. I'm trying for that to have more episodes that come out over the weekend. So you could listen to him leading up to the game. So we'll see how many I can get, but I know my friend Danny Cunningham from Cleveland is going to talk about crazy in their front office as well. So appreciate everybody listening as always. And it is exciting times for football.

Have a good day. Thank you. Football.