Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert analyzes which early training camp storylines are a big deal

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Matthew Coller brings you the most interesting comments from Adam Thielen and Ed Donatell's press conferences and then sits down inside TCO Performance Center with ESPN's Kevin Seifert to talk about whether the biggest storylines of camp so far like Garrett Bradbury, the backup QB situation and the vibes are worth talking about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here inside TCO Performance Center. I want to bring you a few things from press conferences, and then I have a fun conversation with Kevin Seifert of ESPN. So let's just get into it right away with Adam Thielen. And one of the things that Adam Thielen was asked about today was vibes, which know has been a big part of the conversation and Kevin and I will get to that later with our thoughts but Adam Thielen was asked specifically about the fact that during practices Kevin O'Connell rarely ever seems to get too worked up when the team makes a mistake we don't look over and see Kevin O'Connell's eyeballs bulging out of his head or see him screaming at players. And Adam Thielen gave his thoughts about where that type of approach

could have some value. No, I think that's what's really cool is you're kind of almost like, it's kind of almost awkward when things aren't going well and you're like waiting for, you know, coach to blow up. But the positivity and the energy that they bring, even when things aren't going well, is something that's really going to set us up to handle adversity. The way that they can coach through those tough moments

when we put a couple of balls in the ground or things are a little lackadaisical, there's a sense of urgency still, so he's still on us. But the way that they can coach through those is is something I think is going to really set us up to to handle that adversity through a season also from Adam Thielen's press conference if you guys remember earlier this year Justin Jefferson made it very clear what his goal is for this season and that's to end the year being talked about as the best wide receiver in the entire NFL so Adam Thielen tried to contextualize what Justin Jefferson meant by his comments about that

and setting his goal to be the best in the NFL. And also he was asked as a follow-up just about Jefferson specifically and his attention to detail. You know, I think if you read the, if you look at the whole, you know, picture of what he said, he said that that's his goal, that he knows that he's not there right this second, but that's his goal. But that's, that's exciting, right? That's what you want. You want a guy that believes in himself, that's confident. We're confident in him. We know what he's capable of. And if he keeps putting the work in, he definitely has an opportunity to do that. So, you know, I think that just shows his maturity level, that he's not saying, you know, that he's not proclaiming it right now, but he's saying that I'm working towards that. So I think that shows a lot about his maturity level

and where he's at in his career. What are some of the things that he does that allow him to play beyond his years for such a young guy? Yeah, I think it's his ability to pretty much do everything. You know, not a lot of guys in this league can be a deep threat, to be an underneath guy that can shake and move, to play outside, to play inside, and really do it at the highest level at all those different criterias. So that's what's impressive. I mean, that's what I noticed from day one when he came in here,

the ability to do everything. And that's like a coach's dream. I mean, these coaches that haven't seen him before in person, they come in and they're kind of like, wow, this is awesome, just because it's literally a coach's dream. All right, we also spoke with ed donatel the vikings defensive coordinator and a big part of that discussion was the 3-4 defense and now we know that the 3-4 is just their base defense but they're not going to use it as

often as they will the nickel and the dime, but the defensive ends slash outside linebackers will still be doing a lot of different things. And Donatello talked about how that's different from the four, three. Yeah, there's things, you know, these outside edge guys, you know, and Mike Smith does a great job coaching our edges and it's a craft. It's a, it's a doggone craft and it's easy to say set an edge but there's so much information that goes into it so much toughness so much ruggedness so much transition to rush when to when not to all these things coming to you on the edge so uh that that that's a place the other thing that makes that tough is a lot of the guys that play that position

are for three ends in college and so when they got to come up there's a year usually for you know a transition involved in that so that that's a tough one the rest of the stuff is similar now secondary isn't a lot different okay it's really the edges and in the setup also the three four base defenses have become a little more in vogue with the Vic Fangio system being copied throughout the league. And Donatello went into some depth about how his past in the 4-3 was helpful and why the 3-4 has become so popular throughout the league. It's always evolving. The 3-4 has. It's evolved since we've been together these last 11 years, Vic and I. But it just really comes down to your personnel. This group won't look the same as any other group we've coached

because every group's different. And when you've coached enough different groups, you know how to adjust it as a coach. And it's a tremendous advantage to have been 4-3 because you know what things you want to draw from both systems. And I like all those teachers that I had in the early part of my 3-4 education and then being with Vic. There's a reason for it is really the RPOs guys when they're standing up they can see more all

the jet and fly motion so there's so many things happening to the edges of your defense that those guys have to have information and when their hands in the dirt and they're down low they don't see those things and it makes it difficult to play okay that's enough for the press conferences for today let's get into my conversation with kevin seifert of espn kevin you have made plenty of appearances on the show we've talked xfl we've talked big picture NFL stuff, rules, referees. But you know what we haven't done? We haven't done a pod since you were back on the beat. So how are you doing?

How are you enjoying camp? Are you grinding? I'm good. I'm rising and grinding every day, which I'm told is what we do in training camp. I was telling somebody the other day that the last time I was on the Vikings beat or any team beat on a daily basis, Twitter didn't exist. Or at least if it existed, none of us had it. 2007 was the last year. So things have changed a bit in terms of how we deliver information to the audience, which we used to call the readers and now it's the audience. But in the end, it's still football. It's still, uh, uh,

gauging how well we think they're going to be or play or not play. Uh, and we go from there. And, uh, the bones of it are still the same. And you know what I've really discovered though, that even though it's not in a newspaper form and people don't have to wait until the next day to get it, that sending out training camp updates is sort of cute and sort of fun. And our friend Judd Zulged, I went back and looked at all of his old ones

from when they first got Twitter, and he was a complete lunatic about it, as you might expect. But still, what I find is that readers want the information in stories and want to know what's going on, and they want to learn about their players. And so even though it's like eating a cookie on Twitter, people still want the full meal. So I don't think that fundamentally a lot of this has changed, except for maybe you get the reaction a lot faster and directly at you, as opposed to maybe someone writes an angry email or something to the newspaper. Yeah. There used to be very little feedback at

all. Uh, the most, the most, uh, you know, even when I first started newspapers in the stone ages, uh, we didn't have newspaper emails. So people had to write letters and put them in the, in the post box. Uh, if people know what those are and have the, uh, have the, uh, the postal service delivered to us. And that's how we found out what they thought of what we wrote. And so now there's very instant, uh, instant return on that. Um, I've been trying to figure out, man, I don't know how you feel about it. Like, like people obviously will look at your tweets, uh, if you're telling them what's happening at this minute in training camp. I wonder like, if that's like, if it's like just kind of like, you know, a side, you know, bit of gravy that, that people get,

or is that actually where people are getting their information and do we need to value that as like the like like that has to be our best stuff i think we massively overrate social media as like i think it's still the reports that are coming out that have the full story that people are interested in and maybe maybe that's giving them too much credit, but my experience in purple insider is people listen to the whole show. And when I pull the things from press conferences that I think are interesting, as opposed to just like a little tweet and we have more of a conversation about them,

I think people like that more. And at least by the open rates of the newsletter, like that's where they're getting a lot of their stuff is reading the whole thing as opposed to just the tweets. So I think that you can leave an impression from Twitter. Like, for example, Garrett Bradbury loses a couple of reps and all the questions the next day are like, hey, is this going to be a huge problem?

Like, spoiler alert, yes. But I think that there's little nuggets that people could take from that. But if you're trying to really paint the whole picture of a training camp, it has to be in a longer form. And football fans, I think, just have time for it. Yeah, I think that's that's probably the case. And, you know, you mentioned like Garrett Bradbury, you also run the risk, I think, sometimes of saying, like if you put out that he had a really bad five minute period, then that means he needs to be cut, you know, and no, it's, he had a really bad five minute period and Justin Jefferson's going to have a bad five minute period. And we need to, I think one thing we do lose on Twitter is the context of, of in the broader sense, because we don't have enough room to include all of that. Yeah, that's absolutely

true. And I tweet less and less and less because of that yeah especially because one tweet i mean how about the other day so i tweeted kirk cousins quote about zach davidson almost running 21 miles per hour yeah and got a bunch of responses that were like let's see before we crown him and it's like i didn't say anything here so the the the sort of uh i don't know how this works in people's brains of like connecting one thing to the other to the other based on this very small piece of information i i think that it's like doing a disservice to tweet out too many things that could leave an impression like we now have to think about that stuff as opposed to when twitter first came out it was like tweet as much as you can yeah fans will love it it's like i think we have to be more like thoughtful and how like what we tweet out and

observing from training camp. And I've seen that happen. You see it happen in politics a lot where somebody will, you know, a reporter will tweet out something that a politician said. And it spreads like wildfire. And maybe they didn't hear it right. Maybe one word was off a little bit. Maybe they had a typo that, you know, we all have typos. And so I thought about that, too.

It's like, you know, there's going to be something I'll probably get myself in trouble with in covering the Vikings this year. that we all have typos. And so I thought about that too. There's going to be something I'll probably get myself in trouble with in covering the Vikings this year. I don't want it to be something that I tweet. Well, I feel the same way. It's just like it's not really worth it to me. Let it be the story of the century on the Vikings if they're going to be upset about it rather than a tweet. So let's talk about what we've seen.

Here's how we can frame this because I promised you we'd have some fun and there's like and i'm counting on i'm gonna storm out if we don't okay all right um so we'll we'll really toe that line to make sure it's fun for you yeah uh well let's do it this way is this a thing let's do it that way okay so i'm gonna throw some stuff at you that have been storylines you tell me if it's a thing okay great place to start would be garrett bradbury yeahuggled the last few years. I don't think he's shown anything to make me think it would be different. And this coaching staff in front office decided to buy in. But then all of a sudden we see Chris Reed taking second team center snaps.

Yeah. Is this a thing with Chris Reed and second team center snaps and with Bradbury struggling? Or is it just going to be Bradbury's job? Like, what do you think of that situation uh I don't think it's a thing right now uh is that I don't know if that uh toes the line well enough or not but I I if they're already in week two of training camp after deciding having the whole offseason to decide whether they want to go with this guy as a starting center or not. I'd be shocked if they've already started, you know, having second thoughts. I don't think we're that it could be, that could be the case. And they haven't really set themselves up to have, I mean, Chris Reed, obviously, you know, some of the other guys they signed, uh, you know,

can play center in a pinch and, and as part of their value as a, as a multi-positional backup type guy. Um, but know i they haven't really set themselves up to have an obvious answer if he isn't going to be it if they're not going to be able to play him and so i i feel like they've kind of you know they've tied themselves to him at least for a while there's always cuts around labor day you know the final cuts and guys come available there's trades that happen all the way up to all the middle of the season and the trade deadline and so it's not like they're completely 100 you know stuck if if he doesn't work out but they haven't given themselves it's not the type of situation where you often see where people are hedging you know there's no hedge here at least on the roster right

now i think it might be a thing okay if they go through these next few weeks because we have what seven practices in eight days yeah i feel like this is dog days this is where we find out because we've only seen two padded practices and if they go practice after practice after practice and then look at the tape and go uh oh yeah this was maybe worse than we thought it was going to be we thought we might be able to scheme around it. I think at very least you might see pressure put on Garrett Bradbury. And I'm only basing this on the fact that he was actually benched last year. If he had not been benched, I would say, no, they must see something a little more than the PFF grades or than we do.

But he was benched. And that's not secret information. So they have a guy who suddenly goes from right guard competition to taking center snaps kind of projects is that can play any position type of guy i think that it's really going to be determined in these next seven days or seven practices will this be a thing or not if bradbury has taken all first team reps we see no chris reed yeah then it's very unlikely it's going to be a thing but i was going to ask you about what you think of like the JC Treader situation. It's like been talked about a lot. Everyone asks me about it. Every mailbag and every, you know, podcast. Why do you think he doesn't have a job? Like,

is it the NFL PA thing or is it that maybe he's just worn out or it just seems odd that he did so well and played a thousand snaps last year and then the man just doesn't have a job. Yeah, and it could be that he's waiting for the right situation too, and so maybe he was pretty adamant during all the pandemic stuff about the lack of value in training camp, so maybe he doesn't think that he needs to go to training camp. I don't know. I think that the leverage point on a J.C. Tretter or Garrett Bradbury

will be after those practices against the 49ers. Yeah, okay, good point. Because those are going to be significant, probably more significant than preseason games in terms of evaluating frontline guys because they're going to actually participate in those as opposed to – and a little bit that Kevin O'Connell has talked about, he's gearing up for those.

He is putting a lot on that. And I'm sure Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers are too um and so that i think if and that's a pretty good defensive line over there as you know um if if they get run over or he gets run over or it's like obvious to people like you and me that there's an issue then that's where action could potentially happen i would i don't know why they would uh be worried before then like i would want i would want to see that you know first before i i got you know to be making any changes the one-on-one reps were pretty noticeable i mean you talk about if we can notice for the sideline if if someone's ending up on their back, you're like, okay, this really shouldn't be happening. Yeah, it could be.

Having seen him play, I doubt that was the case. All right, well, here's another one that comes up a lot and want your perspective on it is the backup quarterback situation. We have a rule on the show that we don't talk about it. Now, I'll tell you what I think is going on, but it just doesn't matter. Because if Kirk gets hurt, there's no one you're bringing in here that's going to matter but it's since it is a point of intrigue yeah i haven't seen anything to change my mind about either player even in the slightest about kellen mond or sean manion but you're getting fresh eyes on them so tell me what you think no i i would say i mean i thought there was some interesting things that Kellen Mann was doing early in terms of, like,

the things that they're looking for from him are decisive reads, decisive throws. You know, is he making the right throw for the defense, or did he decide the night before when he saw what the script was where he's going to throw the ball? And that, I think, is something that young quarterbacks who aren't quite along the lines of being ready to play do. And so there were some intriguing things that he was doing in that regard.

Like, I think, so this is Friday. The practice on Wednesday where he's dropping snaps, like, that was bad. You know, it was just, you know, maybe it was a, you know, combo platter of who was in was responsible for that but uh you you know in a full pads practice in training camp when you're competing like putting the ball on the ground before you even drop back in the pocket is bad the reason that this is a little bit more than just your basic backup quarterback thing is the long term i mean he was a he was he was in the first round pick last year but he was high enough that people were intrigued like one day kirk cousins is going to be gone is this somebody who could potentially replace him and i don't think that he was drafted

in that with that in mind i don't know that there's anyone around the league who's thinking about that but that's the one added thing is like is that when you have a young quarterback who has a chance to make a jump can he get himself to a spot where you start talking about him as a future starter well you have to find out yeah if you're the coaching staff and that goes for a lot of things right it goes for even Garrett Bradbury where they did not want to be overconfident in the evaluation from before or why the previous coaching staff benched him and they said it's a first round pick yeah and I'm sure some people in the building were Bradbury defenders because they drafted him with that high of a pick yeah so if you're leaning on some scout evaluations,

here's what he needs. All he needs to do is X, Y, and Z. Then if you're crazy, Adolfo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell, it's like, okay,

well, I guess we have to give it a shot then. Even if, you know, some things went wrong with it. I look at Mond is the same way. You wouldn't, it wouldn't make any sense to just say you're QB three or,

and that's it. Or just cut him. Like you have to see if there's something there because the guy does run a four or five, seven, and he's got a strong arm. We saw him whip it down the field, like 50 yards.

It's just that when you watch these camp practices and you see cousins, most of the time, it's like read, read, throw the football guy, catches it, read, read,

you know, and sometimes it goes wrong with these guys they've done they like barely complete passes and i think that it's kind of hurting the evaluation for everybody else when you have backups that can't even complete passes it's like this has always been chase daniel's value right like he can certainly evaluate everybody on the second team or run a scout team i'm not sure either of these guys can even do that no and that's a concern and that's why i like i you know we talked you know manion mon manion mon like don't you know we shouldn't we and this i'll put this on me also like we shouldn't just limit it to that like there's gonna be guys out there um as cuts happen uh it wouldn't be the first time

that a team started a season with a backup quarterback, including this team, that didn't go through training camp with them. I don't think they want to do that for obvious reasons. They want one of these guys or both of them to make them make a very difficult decision about who should be number two. But I also think that the GM and the coach have the total freedom to basically dump them both if they need to because they didn't you know they did re-sign manion but almost no you know money that that they wouldn't get back um they didn't draft mond you know they they could you know have looked at it as a due diligence situation behind a durable starter uh we did it it didn't work out you know we'll bring in the next couple guys and

i'm sure they have a list of people they would consider in that in that regard as well but even last year manion gets cut by seattle he ends up here as the backup quarterback uh before we move on to the next is it a thing uh give me the quarterback battle that you spent the most ink on that did not mean anything at all covering training camps or leading up to the season. Interesting. Probably the Sage Rosenfels Tavares Jackson battle. And I say that not because it wasn't significant because that would have been 2010. They ended up Jackson quote unquote won it. Sage Rosenfels was traded to the Giants and that was the year that Favre ends up getting hurt. Right. And they actually needed, you know, somebody to come in and play decently and Tavares got hurt

and they end up just, you know, rumbling down a list of names that they wished they hadn't. And, but that was the reason, like the reason that that was, it didn't matter was because it was decided before the first day of training camp. Right.

Brad Childress had drafted Tavares Jackson, and he still had thought of him as a starter at that time. Tavares was a great guy who it just, you know, you could tell it just wasn't going to probably work out, but he had not, Brad had not given up on him yet and wanted him to be the backup to Favre. Preseasons, you know, at least Sage is by far the better quarterback in camp. To the best that you could see, he was better.

And so really what happened is that Sage had won the battle and had to be traded because that was the only way you could justify Tavares as number two. And I wrote that then. And so when you say that, that's the one that comes to mind. And there's been many, but that one was one of the wildest ones I've seen. Were you in on – you probably weren't in on like John David Booty talk or – I was –

You were John David Booty era? I was around. I don't remember if that was when I was on the beat or if that was when I was doing NFC North blog for ESPN. But I remember when they drafted him and he was – he did not work out. No, not so much. Or McLeod Bethelpson who's still in the cfl you know what i actually did a mcleod bethel thompson story this year this year because he went

to the cfl and he's earned a starting job he is not the best quarterback in the cfl but he has finally translated the gun that he has in that arm into, into a sustainable play. And he talked about how like having the arm that he had maybe was the biggest detriment to his NFL career because, and I don't know if we want to go all the way down that his life story, but I mean, but it was, it was, it was wild to hear him talk about that. Like my arm was too strong. i it was like i didn't have it i got he said that norv turner cut him because he didn't have a change up he only threw a fast

ball and like that was the sort of the you know the terms that they used and so and like any but any joe blow like us could watch him say how is this guy not just killing it and he finally has gotten into a spot where he's playing regularly in professional football so it's kind of cool i'm glad i asked i mean this this show is into journeyman quarterbacks yes sage comes on from time to time good to hear and uh we went to the to the combine last year not not a bitter man about being traded because he got to go play with the giants and like manning so there's that but uh all right on to more this is this a thing vibes of camp being very uh positive we heard adam thielen adam thielen gave us a whole dissertation yeah about how the positive coaching

yeah not referring to anybody in the past wink wink but uh the more positive coaching will help us when adversity comes i do have to say kevin adversity has not treated this team well in recent years they have not responded well to it they have faced a lot of it and i think by the end every time something went wrong another blood vessel in mike zimmer's eyeball popped every time and i do think that it's a thing but you're gonna have to tell me if you care about it or not no i do and i think it is a thing and even though like part of it is it's just natural nfl cycles that you hire you have a coach whose blood vessel is going to pop every time a mistake is made to a guy who's laid back southern california grew up in san diego kevin o'connell who doesn't seem ruffled by

anything um but i i actually talked to theeland a couple days ago for a story that's going to post over the weekend and he was talking similarly about that and he was like the difference is and he said this is not just the previous coaching staff he said it's every coach i've ever had high school college uh you know his first year on the practice squad i think was leslie frazier and then zimmer and now you know every coach he's ever had has been different than what Kevin O'Connell has been. And the difference is that he's just emphasized process over outcome throughout the spring, throughout training camp. They have not lost sight of the fact that you're evaluated

on whether you win and lose games, but there's no games to win right now, no games to lose. So he said, and it almost gets awkward, and he used that phrase again today, because bad things happen and you're like, is he ever going to rip us? And that's what Thielen says. Is he ever going to rip us?

And no. And the answer is not right now because we're going to – that was – you made a mistake, but that was good because now i can point it out and say that's not what we want we want this instead so let's go do that and let's treat everybody like adults and assume that they're going to learn from their mistakes and so that's where they're at right now so that is a different vibe um i like i have a feeling that o'connell is a little bit of a blow a stack behind the scenes guy um not necessarily in a you know really bad or angry

way but he's got a i'm sure he you know and you know there's indications that that's the case and he even admitted he says sometimes when he's losing his mind you know ed donato in staff meetings kind of brings him down and back to earth and so uh but in terms of like what happens on the practice field what happens in in player meetings player interactions with the media, extremely level, happy but a little boring and probably intentionally. And that's just his style. That's the style that he – I think he's just being himself. But I do think it's different than what a lot of these guys have ever experienced. And if you're not blowing up

sometimes in meetings then i'd wonder if you're like on drugs if you're a football coach right like you are a football man right so i i don't doubt that and there are times where i've thought especially when kevin o'connell was talking about how quote productive the backup quarterbacks have been yeah i've been like oh okay this isn't the zimmer era anymore where we just take everything he says about players at its face. So that is different, but that also manipulated so many players. So from a reporter perspective, I'm like, yes, Mike, tell us about Anthony Barr.

Tell us about whoever else. Because even whether it was good or bad, he was giving you what he really thought. I think O'Connell is going to protect his players and not say anything that's super insightful unless it's positive and then he'll give you some example but if it's negative he's just not going to go there which i think that in some ways that could be good in other ways you can read those quotes as players and be like what is he talking about why is he saying this so

it is a very delicate dance of being the players coach and being the positive guy. Cause when I was in Buffalo before I moved here, I was, it was Rex Ryan. Sure. And Rex Ryan was like, Oh, well I'm going to be, you know,

I'm going to have the players back all the time and they could say whatever they want. And he lost control. So that's the thing that Kevin O'Connell has to balance because this has a lot of veterans that if you're not on your stuff, they'll take the team over for themselves. Yeah. Yeah.

And I, if he ends up being someone who's only referring to them in positive ways or he decides to take the blame for something that's obviously not his fault, that'll just make him like many other coaches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then occasionally he'll maybe have an unguarded moment when he's really mad after a game or something and he might say something. But that would make him, you you know we talked just a bit ago about how things he's doing approaching

it in a much different way than a lot of these guys are used to in terms of his public pronouncements about players I would put him right you know down the middle of most NFL coaches oh I agree yeah they're they've moved away from the zimmer style yeah i think that we had something that was a relic of the past and i mean it's a parcells guy and parcells do the same thing right i mean you just don't see it we led the league for sure in like bleep this player quotes i mean it wasn't even close yeah um and probably also led the league in like ridiculous comments back to questions of ours that were very reasonable too. So I've noticed that O'Connell, especially even just coming out and saying, here's what's going on with Irv. That's how it's going to be.

Like that is super useful, not just to us, but to fans to know what's just going on with a player. Whereas Zimmer in the past got to the point where he resented everybody so much. Us players, people in the front office. office it was literally do you exist around here he would just be like I don't have to tell you anything in camp about injuries so bleep you and be like Mike you could tell us if someone's day-to-day right you know and so I think that that not only hurt him with his public perception it hurt him with players though because he just was so like angry at everyone and resentful. He's taking shots at people in preseason.

Well, I guess we don't have any depth because of our drafting. It was like, okay, this needed a reset. And I feel like it's gotten the reset that it needed. Yeah. And while everything you said is 100% true, I also think my own philosophy on NFL head coaching is that the shelf life is a lot shorter than what people realize. Oh yeah. And if it gets past four years, it's either a super, uh, unique situation or the owner is just not on the ball. Um, uh, and, and, and has decided just, you know, like has fallen for a coach with it. He shouldn't have. And so, uh, when you get to year eight,

like that's like sometimes like you don't even, you're not even thinking straight. You've been in this microscope for so long. It changes you in, in psychological and sometimes permanent ways. And I think that's, it took Zimmer, I'll take all of Zimmer's sort of cute eccentricities that we identified early and turn them into monsters basically. And so I I've seen it happen with many other coaches as well. And, you know, you always say, well, this guy is so calm. You know, that's not going to happen. Everybody gets affected by being in the microscope of a head coach, you know, if you're in the job for more than four years.

And most of them aren't. And there's a reason why. Well, also, when they sign Zimmer to a short-term contract extension, you're just asking for trouble. Because if you're saying, we don't really believe in you that much, prove it. That's tension.

That's pressure. And even with Spielman, like you're trading for Yannick and Gawkway, you're trading for a kicker. You're just doing like all these panicky things. You're drafting centers to start right away. Why are you doing this? Oh yeah.

Cause you think you're going to get fired if you don't win. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cause then you start doing desperate things and it doesn't work. Okay. Last one for is this a thing? Sure. Greg Joseph. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to.

It's not going to be the last one. You look great, though. Oh. But no, anything Kirk related. Is anything, and I mean anything Kirk related, an actual thing? Well, there's probably some things, you know, that are things about them. And the big one is when you normally when you see even veterans undergoing a coaching transition, there's some stress. Yeah. And there's some concern that no matter how much money they've made, no matter how long their contracts are for,

all of a sudden there's nothing they did that matters. They're a rookie like everybody else. And probably to credit to O'Connell, but Cousins seems very much at peace and at ease, and he knows who he is. He knows what he can do. Everybody externally has talked about all the things that they're hoping o'connell can get out of him uh that he hasn't produced before but my sense of him right now is that

you know and he can be kind of tightly wound is that he's not you know on a relative scale according to him he or at least based on how he has been in other cases in other years like he seems to to have a very like at peace at peace is the best thing I can say. And maybe that's because they gave him a couple of extra years and he knows the worst thing that can happen is he's got $70 million coming his way. But, like I said, even as crazy as it sounds, that usually doesn't assuage players, veteran players in these situations.

They get nervous. They get worried. They get insecure. And I'm not sensing any of that from him right now. i was really almost taken aback by his press conference the other day because he seemed so relaxed yeah relaxed to the point at the end of the press conference he kind of admitted enjoying his time off last year when he hit the close contact and i was like kirk too much making a covid joke too far buddy don't go there right but he was very relaxed and talking about teammates talking about the offense how he's giving feedback to o'connell and i also think that

cousins when i don't know that he always like responds to someone like mike zimmer very well yeah like mike zimmer is so much in your face and so much out in the public. And somebody told me when they signed him, that cousins was made very uncomfortable by how Zimmer had just crushed case Keenan for every mistake. And I thought this is, I thought, first of all, Kirk,

good luck keeping doing that to you. Cause that will happen. Yeah. And for the first year or two, he tried. And then it was just like, ah, bleep them.

Right. We haven't made the playoffs. Who cares? But, uh, two he tried and then it was just like ah bleep them right we haven't made the playoffs who cares but uh i think that having someone at head coach who no matter thick or thin with you is going to have your back in public and is not going to attack every mistake that you make as in it's like the apocalypse which i think that with zimmer it was like you got to lead better you got to throw more downfield you got to do this you got to do. And at one point he's mad at him for throwing picks. And then the next year he says, it's okay if you throw picks and you need to, it's like, what do you want from the guy? Even I know this with the media where it'd be like, Kirk's saying too much to you guys. It's

like, wait, are the same Kirk, the one that we cover, you know, I think he was just sort of always unhappy with something Kirk was doing. And if there's anything that becomes a thing, it's that this relationship between O'Connell and cousins is much better a fit for his personality, which if it can bring his anxiousness down even a little bit when it comes to big games, maybe that shows up somewhere. Yeah. And we have to be careful. Um, and I fall into this trap sometimes too, of not judging someone's totality based on their press conferences or how they interact with us for 10 minutes, but just watching them during practice, you know, they've shown a few interceptions. I haven't seen any, like, like the signs of stress,

like stomp feet or like, you know, his, I just, I don't know. I just did a lasso thing with my arm. I don't know what that means, but that's what I did. Uh, or, or like, you know, head down or curse or like yelling or anything like it happens, you know, you throw intercepts sometimes it happens. Um, and you're just like, so it's not just, you know, how he's speaking to us or how he's speaking about people. It's just really just the way he is carrying himself. time we see him anywhere we see him i i think that does go into the category of a thing and as long as they're as healthy as they are right now and they're taking this better approach sport science wise then maybe you know the tension doesn't start to get to cousins i feel like when things change that he doesn't expect whether it's you know

circumstances defenses injuries things like that. That's where it starts to get a little tense for him. But as of right now, this is the calmest we've seen him. I think in any training camp since he's been here, which I think is definitely a thing. Um, I final thoughts from you championship. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, if you, how about this, do you want to tell another camp story and old school camp story? Did you cover Brock Lesnar? Oh, yeah. I was there for Brock Lesnar. Brock was great because he arrived at training camp with his girlfriend,

who happened to be a professional wrestler, Sable. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. She was promptly dismissed from the grounds because there was a no girlfriend, no wife rule., uh, rule. And so she had to get back in the Porsche or whatever they drove down and go back home. And she was all done up, you know, and like the same, it was like they walked into the gauge hall the same way they would walk into the squared circle, I guess, you know, at, uh, at a wrestling match.

And so that was, uh, that whole, his, that whole summer was just wild. He was really down to earth. You know, some of us had gotten to know him a little bit when he was a wrestler at the U before he became a pro wrestler. But that was we never really figured out why they did it. You know, other than the fact that he's a great athlete, like he wasn't built to play defensive line, like most of his body weight was upper body and he wanted to wrestle with people and offensive linemen were happy to wrestle with him because guess what? You're not getting if you're just all tied up with the so they uh so that so he wasn't really you know that it was never really destined to work it was fun to watch him cover a kickoff uh which he did and i think those videos are still on youtube if people want to check those out but that was a that was if you ever you know wanted want to you know figure out how you escape the daily routine of training camp, just invite a pro wrestler to try out and you'll find out. I saw. So my wife started watching a little wrestling during the pandemic. It was like on on Friday nights and discovered it.

And we watched a Netflix show about women wrestlers in the 80s, which is actually really good. It's called Glow. Yeah. Great show. Glorious ladies of wrestling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's super good show. Yeah yeah and so we watch it i was like no all this stuff is really legit about like all the wrestling and she's like no way okay we've got to watch it so we started watching it and then she wanted to go and so the event here it was roman reigns former viking against brock lesnar at the very end they like slammed each other or something uh so it's kind of funny like here in minnesota two former vikings out there in the in center stage wrestling each other it's pretty crazy so anyway well uh glad to have you back on the beat i have to say you're not the same as courtney you're a little different your approach maybe a little more even keeled a little less

aggressive at times um she was more of a leader in the room i got so you know you're good coming back you got to take that role like the only person i want to lead is me all i care about is yeah that's the thing i'm from the old school like you know don't be friends with the other people in the in the media room i know we don't tell anybody that we're friends changed a little bit no i won't i won't i'll protect you the sanctity of thank you uh okay well but it is great to have you back. And we will do this again soon, man. Thanks.

Sounds good. Thanks, man.