Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Courtney Cronin talks about what we should make of reports that the Vikings want to extend Kirk Cousins

Episode Date: February 8, 2022

Matthew Coller and ESPN's Courtney Cronin get together to discuss why ESPN's Adam Schefter is reporting that the Vikings want to work out a contract extension with Kirk Cousins and whether it makes sense for them to have made up their minds already on what's next at the quarterback position. Plus Courtney talks about the process that led to the Vikings landing on O'Connell, what it would take to reach a Super Bowl with Kirk Cousins and passive aggressive advice for O'Connell as the new head coach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Folks, before we get into the show, I wanted to tell you that you can save 15% at SodaStick.com by using the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at checkout. That's S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com for your Minnesota sports-inspired hats, hoodies, shirts. Use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at SodaStick.com. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, along with ESPN's Courtney Cronin. And Courtney, are you prepared for a pie chart right off the beginning of the show? Oh man, I had no advance warning.

No, obviously I'm not prepared. All right, so ESPN's Adam Schefter said on the TV that he thinks the Vikings will try to work out something with Kirk Cousins to lower his cap hit. He didn't say exactly what, but I think the only route they have for that, other than adding void years, which would be a bad plan,

is to, I mean, that's not exactly what you want to do, is kick more money down the road. That sounds familiar. But the option is to extend Kirk Cousins if you're going to do that. So quick pie chart with only two options. As it stands right now, do you think the Vikings trade Kirk Cousins or sign him to a contract extension?

God, only two options, so I really can't screw this up all that badly. I'll go ahead and give you, I know you're going to hate me for this, like a 60-40. I know that's not like the sexy answer because it's almost 50-50, but I'll put it at 60% trade, 40% extension. I think that it's a bad mistake if you extend him now simply based out of financial issues. You're doing it to alleviate a problem that you put yourself in in the first place the last time you did this in order to create cap space, which you ended up using to franchise Anthony Harris. Like, what are you guys doing?

How about you don't do this again, right? Like, it is, I know it's such an absurd number to play at, $45 million cap hit, but I know it makes sense in a lot of different respects. Just let him play it as is. Like, you want a competitive team, allegedly. You're only going to get that with Kirk Cousins as your quarterback I'm sorry because there's a lot of teams that need quarterbacks there

not a lot of quarterbacks out there so if you want to be competitive in 2022 then you need to keep him at his number like but don't go ahead and cement yourself to him and his new coaching staff and your future like don't you're going to be making the exact same mistake that Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman did the last time around that this happened. So I think that trading him is still on the table. I truly think he either plays at the $45 million cap it that he's at right now, or he walks, meaning they trade him. But since that wasn't an option of keeping him at the $45 million cap it, I'll go 60 60 percent trade 40 percent they work out an extension although i just can't see it really happening well the the thing about the extension option is you walk into a new job and the quarterback who was in place was there when

everybody got fired yep it just would seem to me like, this is the person we want to stay with. And I know, you know, okay, here's where we obligatory. It wasn't all his fault. Like, okay, sure. It wasn't right. But like, usually when these things happen, when people get blown out as an entire leadership, not just, oh, they're changing coaches. Oh, they're changing general managers.

But the whole thing, usually they all go. I've used the Detroit example, but it makes a lot of sense that they would trade away Matt Stafford when Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell came in. We're starting fresh. They're going to bring in Jared Goff. Maybe down the road they draft a quarterback, that kind of thing. For the Vikings, the option of sticking with Kirk Cousins for one more year to remain competitive seems to me like Pennywise pound foolish. Like it just, um, right. Like the, the, the big picture here is that you need to try to win a Superbowl, right? Like what difference does it make if next year

you are led by Jameis Winston or Marcus Mariota or whoever, and you end up going eight, nine, nine and eight and competing for a playoff spot with one of those quarterbacks and a rookie backup. Like what difference does that make versus Kirk who could maybe get you one more win than those quarterbacks? Like if you're not talking about competing for a Superbowl, what is the whole point here? And with cousins, is a an issue i keep running into with talking about this with fans is when people say well we had these close games last year can't kevin o'connell just make kirk a little bit better and the answer is yes he could possibly make kirk a little bit better uh not worlds better but a little bit better maybe a little

bit more efficient a little bit better in the screen game a little bit better, maybe a little bit more efficient, a little bit better in the screen game, a little bit better, not running on second down and 10 all the time. But are you making all of this thing better to be truly competitive? And the answer is not with no cap space. You're not. And that's where I really would not understand even the idea of keeping him for one more year on the current contract and of course of course extending him uh would be such a bold move for them to do to double down on something that has not worked like none of it really adds up the thing that makes the most sense for me is that adam schefter is told this by kirk cousins agent or by the vikings who don't want to make it seem like they're desperate to trade him because if they're desperate to trade him. Because if you're desperate to trade him, then everyone starts saying,

well, how about a third round draft pick? I don't know. Pretty worried about that contract. How about you take on $25 million of the $35 million guaranteed base salary in addition to like the $10 million of dead cap you're going to have to pay to move him. Like financially, it makes sense to kind of appear that, yeah, we do like this guy. We're going to keep him in the fold. We might try to give him an extension, Kevin O'Connell to the future.

Like the whole thing, it's a posturing move. It makes sense if they want somebody else to be like, but wait, like, no, we'll take on cousins. We'll just work something out here because, you know, financially it's going to be expensive either way. And I think that ownership has got to be fed up at this point of how much they've spent with Kirk Cousins and where they've gotten in four seasons. And yeah, you can feel the competitive team, like eight and nine is competitive, right? Like it really is. It's not, it's not a three win football football team that's not competitive eight and nine you're

almost in the playoffs you're not but you're almost there there are a couple games that could have gone either way there's eight eight games eight losses that were decided by one score that's technically a competitive team if you kept him at the 45 million dollar cap it but i agree with you you're not getting any better with kurt cousins as your quarterback next year because there's so many other areas of the roster that are affected by his contract. Because if you work this out, like if you keep him at $45 million a year, you are probably cutting Daniil Hunter.

You're not trading him because no one's going to pay him. And no one, he's played seven games in two years. So his market is not very good. So you're probably having to to restructure Adam Thielen, restructure Harrison Smith. You have to keep doing all these other moves when there's one big problem, and that's Kirk's contract that you constantly have to work around. So why not just alleviate the problem? In trading him, it just would make things so much easier for this new regime coming in that you get the hard part out of the way first you get the biggest hurdle crossed immediately and

yeah it's going to be financially it's not going to be easy because you're going to have to work out some like really really tough deal kind of like what the broncos and the rams did with von miller's contract because of how much he had left guaranteed at the time that they traded him to la and they were on the hook for a you know considerable portion of that and then la with the with the draft picks and then taking on the rest of Miller's guarantees, all of that, like that's how it, this doesn't happen all that often in, in football. I wrote about this in December ahead of the Steelers game.

We see this more often in the NBA where it's like one team's responsible for like this portion of the player's salary. Then the trade, the team he's traded to is responsible for taking on this like it doesn't happen all that often in the nfl but this is a kind of more of a rare circumstance because of the guaranteed base salary that went into effect last year so um it's going to be expensive either way but i think that if you're a new coach and a new general manager walking in you have to have multiple plans here that you're presenting like hey here's how if you guys like

if i'm to ownership, but if they want to keep him for one more year and pay him 35 million, I can get X, Y, Z done in this year. But I would like, I would not, I don't think her cousins is part of my long-term plans. You can keep them in the short term and have different long-term plans and probably sell ownership and everybody else that you had to on, you know, why you made the move that you did. Here's a question for you that comes to

mind if they were going to extend kirk cousins which i mean sort of i'll believe it when i see it when it comes to that could be wrong this team could be unpredictable as we have found out through the entire history of this team but um how good would the roster have to be to compete for a Super Bowl? Because, yeah, 8-9, 9-8, even 10-6, this doesn't get you a Super Bowl. If you want to have a chance to win a Super Bowl, you have to win usually. And I know the Bengals are here with 10. The Bengals are an outlier with 10 wins here. That normally does not ever happen. Usually it's 12, and 11 is kind of the baseline for regular season wins

to even get you in contention. I ran this, that over the last 20 years, 80-something percent of the teams that made the Super Bowl won at least 11 in the regular season, and it was like 70% or 65% that won at least 12 games. So that's where you need to be to be a true competitor. How good does the roster have to be? Like what would they have to do in the next,

say they give them a three-year extension within the next two years to this roster to be good enough to actually compete for a Superbowl with Kirk Cousins as your quarterback, because the entire time they've had him here, there's been one year where they almost met that threshold, and that was 2019. They were a top five defense in points and top 10 in offensive points. And overall, in point differential, they were seventh in 2019. And it still wasn't good enough. Like, they went out to San Francisco and just got whipped as a 10-win team.

So, I mean, what would you have to do to the roster if you are crazy Adolfo Mensah and what would you have to do coaching wise if you're Kevin O'Connell, if you, if you wanted to be a true contender with Kirk cousins? Well, we have to think about like what they did before and like the, that the philosophy Mike Zimmer, you know, wanted to be a defensive first team, win games on defense. And even he had to realize, hey, that's not how this team is built post-2019 and kind of bought into shifting that mentality. My brain goes, okay, clean slate. Might they actually find a value in getting elite playmakers,

not just having like one Justin Jefferson, maybe having like two or three. I don't know. Kind of like the Cincinnati Bengals have multiple receiving options that are really really good so in addition to Jefferson you know Thielen's on the other side of 30 how many more years left or the Vikings is he going to be like a productive productive player that's not affected by injuries for the Minnesota Vikings you go out and you spend another high draft pick on a receiver you also probably have to, okay, Irv Smith has not played in two years, basically, because of the injury he had at the end of the 2020 season, missed all of this year.

If he's not your guy, that's this, like, dynamic over-the-middle-of-the-field threat, you have to move on and go get yourself, like, a really good tight end that can do that. So I think with, like, the weapons that you have, you know, keep Dalvin Cook, whatever. I mean, he could be a post June one cut if you really wanted to save cap space, but that's, that's in the belief that you keep Kirk Cousins in that situation. And there's a lot of things you'd have to do to get your cap healthy. I think that you first invest in, in those things on

offense to be able to give Cousins a lot more weapons. I mean, take a look at like what the Rams did and why they went after Odell Beckham Jr. Like why the Cincinnati Bengals made the right choice in spite of all of the sacks that Joe Burrow took this year. The right choice is getting Jamar Chase, do things like that. And then your roster can be in a better position to win, but that takes more than just like one off season, one draft, one free agency. So I think that that's what you do obviously this year.

And then you have to address things defensively. Like they've got a really tough decision that they have to make with Daniel Hunter. The only team that believes that knows him and believes that he's worth, whether it's 14 million, 14.4, where he currently is, which technically is criminally underpaid for somebody who has a stat line that he has, but he also hasn't played more than seven games in two years. The only team that knows like,

is he capable as a team that knows his medical and knows everything, you know, about him, which is the Minnesota Vikings. So do you draft an edge rusher this class with your first round pick? Potentially. I've seen several mocks today alone after the Senior Bowl that have the Vikings taking an edge rusher. So that's one way to do it. I think that you have to find ways to rebuild your pass rush

because when they can get after the quarterback, they can do a lot of things on defense that just make them a good team, but you don't have to win games on that side of the ball. I think they need to blow it up from a coaching perspective too. Like we've talked now shift into what Kevin O'Connell needs to do. I think a brand new defensive system here, like bringing in his guys, maybe like, I don't know if he's going to keep anybody from the current staff in,

in the fold from the defensive side, people who are under contract, all of that, they need a fresh philosophy and perspective with how they rebuild their pass rush and what they do in the secondary. That's the thing that I would keep coming back to is just how many steps would need to be taken over in a very short period of time when you are constricted. And that's the hard part. So I was just fiddling around with this on ESPN's website. They have the QBR statistic,

which is a little hard to explain to people, but it's not as hard to explain expected points added because that just means how you performed versus the situation, right? That's pretty easy to figure out. There is no point since Kirk cousins has been a Minnesota Viking where he is ranked in the top 10 of expected points added among quarterbacks. And you'll not be surprised at who the top 10 were this year.

Justin Herbert, what a shame that he wasn't in the playoffs. But Tom Brady, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Stafford, Dak Prescott, Derek Carr, Ryan Tannehill, Joe Burrow, Carson Wentz surprisingly got up there, Kyler Murray, and then Kirk Cousins, who is just ahead of Jalen Hurts, Derkar, Ryan Tannehill, Joe Burrow, Carson Wentz surprisingly got up there, Kyler Murray, and then Kirk Cousins, who is just ahead of Jalen Hurts, Matt Ryan, Mac Jones. And that's where it becomes difficult to make the case that there is a path to just putting this or that or coaching it this way or that way. It's a big gap that they have to make up the difference between epa

and kirk cousins and justin herbert this year is about 40 points like there's a there's a big difference there uh and i think that that really crystallizes it for some people is like ah yeah this the situational stuff that's where it really shows up when you actually watch the game is one of the things that i've just been thinking about lately is how every Vikings fan who throws out a bunch of statistics at you when it comes to Kirk Cousins, you're like, you watched it though, right? Like everybody watched it. Do we even need to run a bunch of statistics when every single one of us watched every single game together and saw that even with the weapons that they had, the defense that they

had in 2018 and 19, that you still ended up in mostly the same place. The only path that I've ever thought was possible is one that you mentioned about how Cincinnati drafted Jamar Chase, that I was arguing one time way back when in an off season with people about Antonio Brown. Now, Antonio Brown turned out to be a lunatic, but he also is a lunatic with a Superbowl ring because Tampa Bay said, you know what? One more great receiver. Let's go for it. KJ Osborne did a nice job for them last year, but they've never, they never really leaned into that. Let's get one more type of mentality. And they didn't lean into it at all. And let's throw all the time was only a thing that they did in 2018. And,

you know, that eventually was shut down by Mike Zimmer. He said, no way we're not doing that. The only thing is though, if you're making a massive, massive investment here, and this is where it becomes not as much about cousins himself and more about

the money if you're making this incredible investment where you're paying 35 to 45 million dollars on the cap every year that he's here you i don't think you want to do it based on imagining what it could be if right like that that's that's the difference between cousins and a lot of the other quarterbacks you talk about paying and even with stafford like i've seen a lot of the other quarterbacks that you talk about paying. And even with Stafford, I've seen a lot of comparisons. Well, isn't Kirk like Stafford? Well, not really because Stafford threw for what,

like 5,000 yards and 40 touchdowns early in his career? Like he had had these crazy highs and also some serious lows as well. But he had had these high- performances before just, you know, only so often. And it was kind of like, OK, if you catch that. If, if this was a rookie quarterback or someone on a rookie contract, and you said, if we only stack this guy with a bunch of weapons, then I would buy it because it would be like, okay, well, let's see how this works out because you're not in, you're not investing 35 to 40 million on that. That's where I just have such a tough time getting to a spot where this is possible and where crazy Adolfo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell say, Oh yeah, this is very possible. All we have to do is push the right butt. Yeah. I mean, the guy's going to be 34 years old this season. You know what he is like, that's the thing I don't understand where it's like, Oh, this new staff, they can fix him.

They can get the most out of Kirk cousins. Like you mentioned at the top of the show, maybe Kevin O'Connell will because of the type of offense that the system he's coming from with Sean McVay. We know like what all of that is. And we know what all of that means, but it doesn't mean that Kirk Cousins is all of a sudden going to become something he's not. We've talked about this every single time he switched offensive coordinators, which, oh my gosh, now you're going to be talking about that man. Like again,

like Kirk Cousins, new voice in his headset. Like, what do you want him to do? And it's like, okay, just deal with it. This is the narrative of his career. This is the storyline of his career. Like, it is what it is. But I just, we keep expecting him to reinvent himself. And every time that he's had a chance to reinvent himself,

he's been who he is. And like, which is a good average to good to sometimes great quarterback like there's not like there's not a consistent spot on that spectrum where he's where he sticks like he is a top 10 to top 15 quarterback and that's not a bad spot to be in but like if you're signing up for that for I don't know it's not somebody who wants to take long extensions because he wants to keep hitting him free agency even two more years of that which means he's with you for three because he's got this last year of his deal then like the extension let's say another two year 60 million dollar extension would get you to 2024 by the time you're able to like can do you're at the

same place you're at now so why are you delaying the inevitable? Like, I understand it's expensive. And those are things that in the short term at the position, your offense might take a step back because they're really, like I said, like there's just not a lot of quarterbacks that are out there right now for a market where there are a lot of like teams that need quarterbacks. Think about where you would fall in the pecking order there based on what you'd be paying for Kirk Cousins still on that and then trying to bring somebody else in like and if you want a quarterback in the draft which you know you're picking at 12 right now so it's not unrealistic to think that

they would end up with a quarterback but does that get you competitive if you want to call it that because everybody's got their own definition of what competitive means. But if competitive means Super Bowl only or nothing else, I don't know if that option is on the table, regardless of who's playing quarterback for you next year. Yeah, I saw a great quote from Troy Aikman. He was doing like a radio appearance, and he was talking about the Cowboys with this,

which I thought was a little on the harsh side to say about the Cowboys, but maybe it wouldn't be about the Vikings where he said, if you get knocked out in the first round of the playoffs, you're no different than the New York jets. Like it's just, and I think when, when you think of it through those terms, I don't know.

I know that you've said this before about the Wilfs that they just never want to view it as they view a playoff season as a success and being competitive at the end as as a success sort of late into uh january but or i guess into early january if they're still competitive but um that's how i look at it too i agree with troy aikman uh who's one of the great winning quarterbacks ever, right? It's just that like, look, if you're out in the first round of the playoffs or not in the playoffs, it doesn't matter if you were eight and nine or five and 12 or whatever. It doesn't matter what your record was. You were bad.

You're just a bad team that didn't, that didn't have enough, um, to be a truly competitive team. And I look at it as if you can't meet the 11 or 12 win threshold, don't even bother. Don't even consider that competitive because then you're just tricking yourself into thinking that, oh, we're not that far away. Like, well, yeah.

And that's a lazy inevitable when you get there. You get in that mindset of like, okay, okay, okay, okay. How about this? How about this? And you're just like, all right, let's throw something at the wall when your window's closing instead of like doing the hard thing which is blowing it up and starting over at a lot of positions all at once like but you don't get this many clean slate opportunities i think it's a shame that ownership said what they said that it was a kiss of death of we want to be competitive because it kind of is hard now to

walk that back although like from a public perception standpoint I don't think that they can just be like look like we looked at the circumstances we realized hey we were wrong we got a little like too big for you know got a little over our skis there they we said no we're a competitive football team like we want to win now well changing minds is difficult but I think that eventually you've got to be able to come to reality if you're the Wolves and say, it's too expensive for us to do what we think we want to do. And think meaning versus what they want to do versus what they should do. We need to consider the long-term play here. You just made long-term moves.

They don't want to be doing another head coach search or a GM search in three years. I promise you, nobody wants to do that. So I think that they'd be wise to let O'Connell and let Kweisi Adofo-Mensa have the clean slate approach of moving on from the quarterback. Let them pick their own guy. Maybe there's a short-term option in 2022 that's not Kirk Cousins, but is also not the long-term option. And that'd be fine because you could probably get some good draft capital

back for cousins and you get them off your books to be able to begin. Okay. Like he's gone. Now we can start building the other parts of the roster. While in the meantime, we do wait until we find what quarterback we want to be our longterm option. I have more questions and things to discuss with you,

but I, let me just present this question uh if if i told you these different scenarios you tell me which one gets you closer to a super bowl like they extend kirk and try to build around him through the draft and through savvy free agent signings which is they tried that before right they certainly did uh but that okay that's one another one is sitting with Kirk for another year, drafting say Malik Willis, and then moving on from cousins,

do the Alex Smith thing, turn it over to Malik Willis next year, or you win two games next season and you draft Bryce Young at the very top. You trade away everybody. You trade away Thielen. You get rid of Delvin Cook. You cut Daniil Hunter you go all the

way to the bottom and you barely win anything and Sean Mannion starts the whole season and then you draft Bryce Young like which one of those things is closer to the Super Bowl well I mean in reality we saw you know Bryce Young's a Heisman Trophy winner like that would of course be what I think can get you can get you there because you would have, like, it has to get worse most times before it gets better. That would be the rock bottom way to do this, but I just can't see them conceding like that. I think the second option is probably the most realistic, even though, you know, we know with Cousins, it's not all that often ever that he has a competent backup behind him that could technically challenge him

for the job and if the writing's on the wall i'm not so sure how cousins would perform under that kind of circumstance but that would be the right way to do it to be able to use the 12th draft pick that you have and i know a lot of mocks right now you and i are talking uh before that nobody had like people think that there's not going to be a quarterback taken in the top 10 like it's not just that the vikings can just sit at 12 and be like, oh yeah, our quarterback of the future, like take your pick, Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis, whomever, you know, we'll be sitting right there for you. They might have to move up if they really, cause I just, I it's, it's February. I don't think that it's going to stay this way, but it's, there's, there's a lot, there's a lot

of good in going the we'll call it the alex smith route because of what you would have for this year to be able to appease ownership and quote unquote stay competitive even if it is another eight and nine season and then truly beginning your you can kind of do like another rebuild within a rebuild at the same time yeah i think what's uh so annoying about the question is that everyone knows what the right answer is. Everyone knows the right answer is drafting Bryce Young with the top pick is the closest you would be to a Super Bowl. The other route, I mean, it could go right if Malik Wills clicks and then he becomes, you know, this great quarterback or Kenny Pickett or Sam Howell or

whoever you're drafting and they wait for a year and then they take over and then they're fantastic it doesn't have to be the number one overall pick that always becomes the best quarterback we've seen that at the same time it's the most talented guy and it's not close like Bryce Young is going to be a way better prospect than any of the prospects who are coming out and you would also have lots of draft capital and cap space for moving all those other players you'd be doing exactly what the Bengals did it's just that like you said I don't think that they can live in that reality that that's the closest you're going to be to a Super Bowl and I also think that if we were doing fan vote that Vikings fans would not support

having a horrendous God awful year where everything is terrible and every game stinks. Because that's hard. I mean, that is hard to come back from like, and that's hard to endure. Like, cause here comes the other thing,

you know, Justin Jefferson is not going to be happy during all of that. And then in the, is it a situation where after, what is he? He's going into his third year so he's going to be eligible for an extension like will he buy into the belief that you're going to do right by him and get him the right guy that's going to be throwing him the ball the next

year um or is he going to be so bitter where he's like i just can't do this trade me i'm not signing the extension whatever like force the vikings hand like that could be a really tough spot to be in and not just you know like the long-term play of that, but the day-to-day of making it through next year, like that's going to be, that's going to weigh on people. And we talk about trying to change the culture here. I don't know, like a losing season could be really, really challenging in order in trying to do that.

You know, I've just been thinking about, you know, the Jefferson part of it is pretty important. There's no question. But, you know you know if if you have a bad year there's nothing that justin jefferson could do about that like he's on his rookie deal and if he has a bad year it not him particularly i'm sure he'll catch a lot everybody if everybody else does larry fitzgerald still caught a lot of passes from all the stupid quarterbacks that they ran out there you know like they had a bunch of terrible quarterbacks john skelton was out there throwing passes josh mccown like he still caught passes um but i was just thinking about like the trajectory

of some teams that have drafted number one and not all it does not nothing nothing is ever there's always going to be a what about whatever but um you know it's it doesn't if you get it right it doesn't take that long like even with the cleveland browns the most inept franchise in the entire world who didn't even pick that good of a quarterback and they still had an 11 win season the third season of baker mayfield and so with with as it pertains to justin je Jefferson, he's on his third year, there's going to be a whole other fourth year. Then there's a fifth year option. Like it's a while before Justin Jefferson could do anything about this, which, you know, there's a whole

debate to be had about the system in the NFL and what they do to these rookies. But he's going to be a Viking for at least three more years and there's nothing in the world he could do about that. So you should be. And the same thing, like these contracts are going to be four years long. Like there is time here to be able to do something like that. Um, but I don't think that there would be a whole lot of support for it. I think most people would probably take the second route. It's just, it's, and it's, I understand it's an irritating thing to say because nobody wants that, but it's probably the right answer. Anyway. Um, speaking of right answer, do you think the vikings got it right with kevin o'connell um in a way yes like i think that there's still of course like a lot of unknowns

is you are hiring a first-time head coach and there are going to be people who say well he's never called plays before like how is that going to work out i think it's going to be just fine a lot of times like look nathaniel hackett has never called plays and he's a head coach now for the Denver Broncos. Like, I think it was the right play for the long-term move, like Jim Harbaugh and the way that that whole thing went down. And yeah, there is a lot coming out the last couple of days. And, you know, I reported, you know, right away, like on, on Thursdays or excuse me, Wednesdays, this whole thing exploded into smithereens on Wednesday night. You know, Har away, like on Thursdays, or excuse me, Wednesdays, this whole thing exploded into smithereens on Wednesday night. You know, Harbaugh went in thinking that job was his.

And I know that the Vikings, there are some people who were part of the interview process, some people who were making the decisions that said, yeah, this was a real interview. Like, no, we weren't going to give him the job. But some people internally did think the job was Jim Harbaugh's. So I think that there were some blurred lines of communication. And I wonder that had to have been conveyed to Jim Harbaugh by some people like, hey, come here and it's your job, not by everybody. But there were a lot of optics around that where I just don't think that he created that theory out of thin air himself that his job that was job was his anyways. This is the better play long term. And I know that there are people who will look at this and say, well, Jim Harbaugh was the better coach. You know, that's a very big boom or

bust type move. Kevin O'Connell's safer. And that's not necessarily a wrong thing to be like. It could potentially be, you know, five, six years of stability and getting this thing back on track because you have to take a step back in the short term in order to be successful in the long term that's just that's truly what i believe so i think that going the route a you got an offensive minded guy that's the way to go here with this hire it's somebody who you know is going to get his chance to to prove it's a play caller assuming that's what he wants to do we haven't talked to him yet but i would imagine as an offensive coordinator now not having the chance to call plays who want to do. We haven't talked to him yet, but I would imagine as an offensive coordinator now, not having the chance to call plays, he'll want to do that as the head coach and getting a chance to have like a

clean slate approach with, with the roster. And with a first time general manager, you both are going to be figuring this thing out as you go. I think it's actually like a pretty good play. And I know even before Jim Harbaugh's name got into the mix, whatever that Saturday was that O'Connell was kind of viewed as the favorite among the pool that they had left of these second interviews lined up, even before he got to his second interview. So I think it was the right move. I really do.

Do you have any sense for why they didn't interview Byron Leftwich? I know, I mean, with Dayball, it seemed like he was earmarked for the Giants via text messages from Bill Belichick. I mean, they hired a Bills executive and then he brought over his coach. So that was kind of a lock dead deal, it seemed. But with Byron Leftwich, it was odd that he was not interviewed. He's been interviewed for some other jobs. He decided, it sounds like, to not take the Jacksonville job. Doug Peterson, who is now in Jacksonville, also was never interviewed or they never announced an interview with the Vikings after an early report that he was going to be interviewed by the Vikings.

Why would that be? I mean, they interviewed a lot of defensive candidates, D'Amico Ryans, Raheem Morris, a lot of people that seem like they may not have ever really been in the running. Patrick Graham as well. I don't know why they didn't interview all the offensive candidates. You got to throw Bien-Aimé's name in there too, right? Why didn't they interview him? It was interesting because I thought Byron Lefkowitz was going to be a hotter candidate than he was in this cycle. And certainly Jacksonville screwed that one up royally. And not saying that Doug Peterson isn't deserving of that job or a good coach.

Guy won a Super Bowl. But the process there is just absurd. And good luck to Doug Peterson working with Trent Baalke. Good luck to you. But I think that, you know, they had so many candidates initially, right? They had five defensive coordinators, three offensive coordinators in that initial pool. That was before Jim Harbaugh and before Pat Graham entered the mix, which gave them 11 candidates effectively, right? I think that they looked at this thing and said, okay, like we have so many concerns with our defense. We should probably like make those guys a priority

and then ended up like seeing their off like they probably thought like with the amount of offensive minds that they had they all kind of got guys from the similar system right because nathaniel hackett is matt lafleur which is technically part of like the mcveigh shanahan um you know tree like all of that stuff is similar it's it's offshoots of the same system so I think that they kind of went at it that way and we're like okay we know that the quarterback we have right now might be here next year we need to find somebody who's from a system that makes sense without having to like start all over offensively and if we end up keeping cousins then it doesn't work out

or it's like a complete mess and maybe that's why they didn't go go after Byron left, which I don't have like a true answer. That's just kind of a theory. Cause I'm trying to remember Nathaniel Hackett, Kevin O'Connell. And what was the, who was the other offensive minded coach that they, they had another coordinator in there. Hmm.

Going, racking my brain. I'm going to do the D'Amico Ryans. I'm going to the initial ones, D'Amico Ryans, Raheem Morris, Jonathan Gannon, Kellen Moore. I'm going to the initial ones. D'Amico Ryans, Raheem Morris, Jonathan Gannon, Kellen Moore, Kellen Moore was the other one.

Oh, Kellen Moore, right, yeah. And Raheem Morris has the background with Shanahan as well. With Cousins too, yeah. And so, I mean, like there's, I think just like they were looking wide pool, some sexy names out there that were like the intriguing ones, and Kellen Moore's not getting a job. Like he's staying back in Dallas, which it's kind of wild. The team that, you know, I know they were a first round exit,

but like they don't have any changes on their coaching staff. That's kind of wild. I don't know how much Jerry's paying guys or what his overall master plan is, but that is kind of crazy. Anyways, I think it's just that they had their three that all kind of had similar ish offensive philosophies and went with it that way.

I don't know if it was much more than that, but I truly am not sure. Because it is kind of interesting that, you know, Bien-Aimé not getting an interview. He was in Minnesota. People always point to his background as kind of like the convenient excuse for why he wasn't interviewed. Maybe it's something more. But Lefkowitz is one I just don't really understand. Yeah. I mean, if you're using the whole thing about, well, you know, he worked with Tom Brady. I mean, so did Josh McDaniels who got hired to coach the Las Vegas Raiders.

I think that Josh McDaniels benefited a great deal from working with Tom Brady as well. And usually, shocker, most people who are possible head coaches, usually they had success, which usually means they had good quarterbacks. You know, Nate Hackett working with Aaron Rogers. So you're always going to get that is, well,

this guy worked with somebody good. The Rams are an all-star team. Kevin O'Connell worked with an all-star team when he was coaching in Washington. His offense was terrible because their quarterback was terrible, which is usually how it goes um so I don't know I never understood that reasoning with Byron Leftwich maybe everyone thought that he was going to be the Jaguars coach and it was headed that direction and then he decided yeah I thought that as well um but no no no Doug Peterson interest either which is kind of interesting to me.

I thought, yeah, Peterson's name was thrown around as like a rumored candidate early on, but no official interview, or at least not one that we know of. I, I was kind of surprised about that. I thought that for more teams, like I'm not surprised that in the end that Jacksonville ended up hiring him because the option for Byron left, which was was so right and made so much sense that, of course, they end up not doing what makes sense in Jacksonville

because they wouldn't let him bring his general manager candidate with him. So I just was surprised, though, that outside of Jacksonville, the buzz for Peterson just wasn't that much. Yeah, no, you're right. It didn't seem like he was at the top of a whole lot of people's list. Who do you think is the coach, the new coach in the NFL that got hired this cycle? That is the most likely to not be coaching next year.

And you can't, you cannot say, uh, lovey Smith because he's getting hired by the Texans to be fired. So that's not fair. That's a cheat code um okay so let's just talk about that really quickly i think that because of what happened with brian flores the teams that had not had head coaching hires until that time that

probably changed a lot of what they could do from a public, to avoid a public backlash, as bad as it would have been. Josh McCowan, for all intents and purposes, was always going to be hired by the Houston Texans this cycle. I think that what happened with Brian Flores and just like how bad of a hire that would look as a guy who's never coached, like never coached football, is now going to be your head coach. It was just too egregious that they couldn't make that move. So, you know, Lovie Smith is a good man. He's not a great football coach as a head coach. We've seen it.

Like, we saw what the results were, even at Illinois recently when he was in the college ranks, and we saw what happened at, you know, Tampa Bay and with the Chicago Bears like we've seen this experiment before it's not like he hasn't gotten his shot I just hope that they're not doing it because they're like shoot like just do something that's not like gonna get us in a lot of trouble and that's what kind of feels like it so of the others aren't there like seven or were there seven or eight openings I, maybe of the others that will not be coaching next after next year. Gosh,

a first year, first year firing. That's tough. Tough to see the NFL going that route again. Well, Denver can't do it. Cause that would be back to back years. And plus if they get Aaron Rogers,

they're fine. The Vikings won't do it because it's just not their MO. Maybe it's the dolphins. Yes. Maybe, maybe Mike Dolphins. Yes. Maybe Mike McDaniel ends up down there for one year and they end up back in the same spot because their owner apparently pays people to tank and all these other stupid things that happen there.

So that's a safe answer. I'll go with them. Yeah. If you're putting odds on it, it would probably be, well, Josh McDaniel's just walking away from the job after a year is totally possible or infuriating everyone around him and having uh them just not be able to stand him and then mark davis paying two coaches not to work although i'm not sure if they're paying john gruden or not they might that he might have violated his contract by being

resigned he didn't get fired so maybe maybe that would give it up. Yeah. Hard to say, but either way, a McDaniels has a great possibility of alienating a lot of people and getting fired in one year. Mick Mike McDaniel would be next because of the ownership. And then low key is Doug Peterson because their ownership is horrible too. And it might be one of those, like, this is, this is such an awful situation. I don't want to coach here anymore for Doug Peterson. Like, Oh, I'm, I'm back everyone. Oh my God, this is how you run your franchise. I'm done. Um, maybe, maybe that's it. I don't,

I don't think that Nate Hackett could be so incompetent that he would get let go after one year, uh, unless they traded for Aaron Rogers and then went, then went five and 12 or something like that. I don't know any other way that you could possibly get let go. And we don't know who's going to coach New Orleans yet. So maybe New Orleans coach X is a reasonable possibility because they have no answer at the quarterback position. And that's always kind of a, a red, well, a, a target on your back. If you don't have a quarterback. All right. Last thing I want from you is this. So Kevin O'Connell is going to be the new coach.

The other day I asked Brian Murphy to give advice to Kevin O'Connell as a new coach, as a Murph, having been someone who covered football for a long time. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to give advice to Kevin O'Connell, but in a very passive aggressive type of way that takes as many shots at the previous regime as possible. I'm not a native Minnesotan. I'm not one of us. You're not as good

at the passive aggressive thing, but you get it. You've been around. I always choose violence. You're more direct than Minnesotans. Well, I will go and bestow the advice that Rick Spielman's passive-aggressive self said on one of his many podcast trips this cycle. Have a relationship with the quarterback. That's super important as a head coach, whether you coach on the offensive side or the defensive side of the ball, to make the quarterback feel empowered. So, number one, start off on a good foot with Kirk Cousins because he'll get you fired if you don't have a good relationship. And if your whole thing is just not, if you guys aren't on the same page, that's probably my first piece of advice. I would say also then for like the second thing that I would recommend Kevin O'Connell do when he's here in Minnesota, you can never have

too many cornerbacks. Your secondary right now is terrible. So go ahead and try to like figure that one out. Maybe with your 12th overall pick, if you don't go the route of, I don't know, getting a quarterback. So it can't be the top priority, but it has to be a priority. Like try to figure this out. Try to rebuild parts of your defense because, you know, defense wins championships in some form and fashion. Maybe not here, but maybe don't spend $46 million in guaranteed money to do that.

Just saying. Maybe spend those resources elsewhere and not all on a bunch of fat guys for the interior of your defensive line. Yeah, and then on top of that, say hi to people in the hallway. Apparently that does wonders for a team. Don't make people walk on eggshells in the building. Be a decent human being. Maybe go home and sleep every once in a while and not sleep on the hide of bed in the office.

I would say when a player is hurt, don't try to pressure them through the media to come back. And also, if they have a career-ending injury a la shree floyd maybe don't take shots at them like that would probably be a good idea and don't call your offensive line soft do not call do not cut the heads off of stuffed animals and throw them around the locker room don't slaughter fat cats or whatever don't yell so hard your eye pops out allegedly don't allegedly get in an altercation with your offensive coordinator we don't know for sure we don't know for sure he's got a book coming out right yeah don't yeah right he said he said

he'd tell us in the book so maybe someday i know i'm still waiting for that. That was the last time he was asked about Norv. That's what, that's what he responded. I asked him about Norv and he said he would write it in his book. I would just say, understand that these press conferences are being streamed. So other people can hear you. Ownership can hear you.

You're just not in a room with a couple of writers saying stuff like that. There are different things. And absolutely. Like you said, I mean, say hi to people in the hallway, for God's sake. Also, don't don't treat rookies well because they're they're like play them, like empower them. Make sure that they don't feel like they're like at a dead end when they get in the building, unless their name's Justin Jefferson.

Okay. Kevin, when you come out at halftime and the sideline reporter walks up to you and says, let's say it's Christina pink. And she says, Kevin, your team is down 18 points at half.

What would you like to do in the second half? Don't say run the ball. God, he was so predictable he was so predictable in that sense even when they were down run the ball kevin if your quarterback oh my god happens to not have an appreciation for certain medicine and you don't like that just keep it to yourself i actually didn't hate him for that. I thought it was great, but. It didn't help his relationship with the quarterback. No, which all circles back to my first point. Thank you, Rick Spielman, for the advice that I am now passing on.

I'm stealing that advice from Rick Spielman, and I'm going to pass that on to Kevin O'Connell. I would say, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy is a good one, because that's like the cousins and modern science issue. Like, look, he's not changing his mind, no matter how many tracks you take at him.

And even though, even though scientifically speaking, Mike, you are correct. Like, and, and not even, and even not even scientifically,

but how about football speaking, football speaking, you are correct. That if he doesn't do this, he's not going to, and he's going scientifically, but how about football speaking, football speaking, you are correct. That if he doesn't do this, he's not going to be a leader and he's going to, right. He's going to be out of a game that you could win and stay in the playoff.

Like you're right. And Mike Zimmer turned out to be right, but he still got fired. Like being, being right is not always working with other people and being happy. So I think that, you know, that's,

those are some passive aggressive lessons that can be learned for Kevinvin o'connell uh well courtney good stuff as always and we will see where this goes because after this week after the super bowl then we are officially in like code red potential quarterback trade possibility space but we'll also have a head coach um press conference to cover and reaction to what kevin o'connell says i have never heard kevin o'connell speak i saw him speak on a zoom the other day oh okay how'd that go it was cool he said he's like wanted to focus on the present so um he doesn't know he's been hired as the coach of the vikings that's what i thought interesting big shock big surprise coming yeah actually, I don't on the show.

I never focus on the present. I'm always suggesting that they tank and draft number one. So I don't know. All right. Well, good stuff as always. And after we, when we speak again, there will be a Superbowl winner that we'll be able to discuss. So that will be fun. So we will talk to you soon.