Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert talks about whether the preseason predicts what will happen next

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

Matthew Coller and ESPN's Kevin Seifert start out by talking about Kevin's experience covering the Vikings and whether he was able to get a feeling for how good or bad a team was going to be based on training camp and the preseason. They also discuss the pressure that Mike Zimmer is facing this year and which NFL storylines Kevin is most interested in this year as we prepare to start the season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here and joining me from ESPN is Kevin Seifert. What's going on, Kevin? How are you? I'm really good. Thanks for having me. You are one of the few people in the world, there's probably a dozen of us, who understand what it is like to be taking a nap on the couch and wake up and look at the internet and see that the Vikings have broken news on a day off. So we're recording this on a day off and I'm hoping that we could just carry that on. I know that this is not a thing that is new

for Minnesota Vikings beat reporters. No, and actually when you say falling asleep on the couch and waking up to finding news, it reminds me, this must have been like in the early 2000s when the Vikings were for sale. Literally, they had their bye week coming up, and we finally got to Friday because in those days they practiced during the week during the bye. Got to Friday.

I just kind of came home from their morning practice, just collapsed on the couch, turned the phone off, turned the TV off, turned everything off. And when I woke up like an hour and a half later, it was only like an hour and a half later, there was a report that the Vikings had been sold. And this was on the Friday before the bye week. And if you're ever going to have a quiet weekend, that would be the start of it. And as it turned out, that report was premature, but it didn't mean that we weren't working all weekend. So nobody has any sympathy

for us on that. But it is very quirky how those things tend to come up when you earn it. Apparent quiet time, and this weekend being an apparent quiet time, everybody should have their antennas up and be ready for something. Yeah, I mean, you expect news to hit during the middle of the season, but in my first time here, the day I moved here, Teddy Bridgewater got hurt. I was unpacking the U-Haul as Teddy Bridgewater got hurt and affected his career forever. Then, I mean, I remember even just waking up to Norv Turner has quit. I mean, there's just, it always kind of goes that way. The reporters before I got here talk about the Adrian Peterson news with his kid, where it was

like a Friday, everybody's ready to go home from the media room and then some report comes out. So that is always how it goes. Now, I wanted to ask you, based on your previous Vikings coverage experience, I've felt from covering training camps that you get a vibe, that you can't pick the W's and L's necessarily based on what you saw in training camp and preseason, but you come out of that with a general feeling. Did you ever find predictive power in what you saw in preseason and in training camp to what was going to happen in the regular season? I don't know if I realized it at the time. Like I, you know, and this is true of all predictions. When you get to the other side of it, then you could look back and say,

oh, you could see that coming. Now that I think about it, you think about this moment in training camp, you think about this happening, this guy being upset, this guy looking better than anybody thought he ever would. And you can sort of connect the dots. I would usually come out of training camp and everybody's asking me, what do you think? What do you think? And I would have an answer, but I don't know if I was right any more times than I was wrong on that. There were years when I thought they had made big mistakes by how they deployed people in the preseason. And then you get to the regular season and it didn't matter and vice versa. So the longer I have covered the NFL, the less confident I feel in my predictions and what my

gut instinct tells me. But that could also just be me losing my touch with the league, who knows. But I think it's almost like the longer you go, the more you realize you don't know. Yeah. And I agree with that. I think that what you can take in is maybe the things that could be problematic and it's much harder to say the things that will be good, right? Like for example, I mean, in 2015, I know people thought that Stefan Diggs was an emerging player in training camp at preseason, but I don't think that they would have thought, oh, this guy's going to be your top receiver by like week five, right? I mean, so all those things tend to happen that surprise you throughout a season where somebody steps up or some. But I think that when you can clearly see on a daily basis something doesn't work, I'll take this for last year for training camp. I mean, they were playing Jaleel Johnson as a starting defensive tackle

and Shamar Steffen. It's like, that's not – nope, sorry. That's not going to stop anybody. Sorry, guys. So for this year, I'm thinking about like, okay, well the Irv Smith injury is pretty obvious. But even – and we'll get more into this – but even just the general tension

surrounding the head coach and the quarterback, like this, this has potential to be problematic. And in 2018, when it was tension between Mike Zimmer and John D Filippo slash Kirk cousins, it clearly showed throughout the length of the season that it had the potential to go into a bad place. And I feel like that's exactly how I'm feeling coming out of this. Like they've got the talent. Injuries are always going to be a thing that we talk about, you know, being concerned. But that part, the quarterback and head coach not being on the same page, that's a hard one for me to just say no big deal.

Right. And because it's got multiple levels, there's, there's the personal level of Mike Zimmer making clear. He wants to see everybody get vaccinated just for the sake of getting vaccinated and protecting your health, but also the, you know, the, the very obvious feeling that he's expressed that people who aren't getting vaccinated players who aren't getting vaccinated are potentially hurting the team. And so like, even if, if Mike Zimmer was the biggest anti-vaxxer out there, and I don't think he is, but even if he were, he would want people to get vaccinated simply to reduce the chance that they would be unavailable.

And if the starting quarterback is unavailable, that's a really big deal. And when the starting quarterback has made that decision, it could potentially, and this has been the case, I think, in some other teams as well. It can sort of be a permission structure for other relatively established players to do the same thing. And then you're talking about because I think this is a bigger story than just the quarterback head coach, because the quarterback is getting all the heat for not getting vaccinated. But he's not the only unvaccinated, prominent, unvaccinated player on the team. And we all know that. And you can see by who's wearing masks on the sidelines and who isn't, um, and who has been, uh, required to do the five day, uh, waiting period and who hasn't. And so that, um, that's a, you know, you talk

about a vibe coming out of training camp, Set aside whatever personally might be going on or not be going on between players and coach. Just the fact that there are so many, relatively speaking, so many prominent players on the team who are one exposure away from either missing a week of practice or missing a game and practice on either side of that or both, that is a really concerning thing to have happen, come out of camp and heading into the regular season. So I know that your approach has always been like you're not a hot take guy. I can be, but I get fired up sometimes. But you try to cover the whole broad spectrum of things. But I have a question for you about this, because this is something that I have struggled with with the unvaccinated players is, is it fair to criticize them for being unvaccinated? Yes, I understand that a lot of people in America are making their own choices about their body and health.

I get that whole part of it. But 93% of the league is vaccinated. And if somebody misses a game, they're hurting their football team. And I am a football reporter. So from football perspective, you made a choice that caused you to miss a game potentially, right? If that happens. And I think that it does become fair then because all the people who paid for tickets to show up at US Bank Stadium to see you play and see you win a football game, you made a choice that caused you not to be on the field. But this is very tricky though, I think. It's very dangerous waters to wade into

with how much this subject, I guess, gets people going. Yeah. And but there's also the idea that you made a choice for yourself, but it's not just a choice for yourself. You made if you're unvaccinated by all accounts. I don't think this is disputed medical information that you're more likely to transmit the virus if you get it. And we all know that even if you're vaccinated, you can acquire the virus and be positive and even have symptoms, hopefully not too severe because you were vaccinated. And you're much more likely to get that based on all the data that has come out from an unvaccinated person. So if you're an NFL player or if you're anybody, but in this context, if you're an NFL

player and you chose that, what was best for you was not to get vaccinated, then you also chose that, you know, to, to raise the risks for the people who think otherwise. And that's the part that like, I, you know, it, you know, we, we, we as football reporters were put in a, you know, in a spot where we're commenting on things that aren't our expertise and aren't the way that the reason why we're in these jobs. But if we even just keeping it in the football context, it's they've objectively made things harder for other people, not just themselves and riskier for other people, not just themselves. And so that's the part that I think can be criticized

because that, you know, it's almost, there's almost a disconnect where everyone might, you know, my choice, my body, it's not, it's, I mean, it is your choice, but it's not just your body. And so that's the part that has really, I think, been the inflection point around the league and not just in the NFL and other sports as well that, you know, people's true colors are being shown. You know, what are they, you know, everyone says they're committed to a team concept. Everyone accepts that the team is, you know, greater than any individual piece. But when push comes to shove, there's some instances where people are saying that that risk that I'm that I'm ascribing to others now and raising for others is is not something I care about. Right. And when Mike Zimmer more or less said Kirk Cousins is not being a leader by not getting vaccinated. And your point holds true that there are, I mean,

a lot of people whose careers are at stake with the quarterback and not necessarily with a wide receiver running back, you know, just in terms of like what matters the most in football. Like, of course, if Delvin cook were to miss a game, that would be a big deal, but it's not the same as missing your quarterback and having to play Sean Mannion. So, you know, but I was sort of like, am I comfortable with that? Right. Am I comfortable with saying like, someone's not a leader because they chose not to do this. And with Cousins leadership and him have never really been synonymous anyway. But then Josh McCown said that in an interview with the pioneer press, where he said, look, you're not really being a leader if you're not making sure that you're available.

And so I think that I am comfortable saying it. And again, I want to pull back to the like, this is football. OK, so we're having to look at everything through the football context. And if you're potentially putting yourself at risk of not being there and potentially causing people to lose their jobs, then I think it's fair to criticize you. But this is a lot harder, Kevin, than deciding whether it's hard to criticize an interception or something. You know what I mean? It's very dicey. Yeah. And I'll just go back to if it were solely a decision that affects that individual, then I think it would be a lot harder. I would be

personally having the same kind of moral dilemma that you're having, but because that decision isn't a decision just for that person, it's a decision for all the people that that person is around more directly than a lot of people like to admit, then I, then that's what gives me, I don't want to say comfort, but that's what gives me the justification to say that, that they've made a choice that puts other people at risk. And that's to me, not certainly not one that should just be let go and, and explained away as, as you know, everybody has the decision, you know, can make their decision for

themselves, uh, that the people who didn't get vaccinated in NFL locker room made decisions for other people too. And those people that those decisions were made for don't have a say in the matter. And that's, what's really, um, at the crux of it to me. And I guess, you know, I've gotten some messages I'm sure that everybody has of like, Hey, you're being too judgmental about this or that and i i guess i just want everyone to know like we think hard about these things and how we approach them i don't just turn on the mic and start yelling about whatever like this has been this this approach has been thought through of how do i cover this because it's completely uncharted um territory so i appreciate your uh your that. And it makes me feel a little better. Kevin,

I appreciate it. Glad to have gotten to that point. Now, let me ask you about the other part of this though, that the cause of this is not just that we're aware that at any moment, Kirk cousins could have close contact or get COVID and be out. And that's something that's going to have, I think every fan on pins and needles,

when you buy your tickets to go to the game, you're going to be like, well, I hope that he's, you know, doing what he's supposed to do, or, or just having good luck really too. Um, because we found that, um, you know, it can just be completely random as well. But the other part is the Zimmer and cousins relationship already. Uh, I don't think there was much of one, but then this, it put a lot of sort of all of that into the public of how Mike Zimmer feels about his quarterback. And I guess I wonder what you thought of that because we haven't talked really since that happened and what it might mean. Like because Zimmer's a defensive coach, it mean nothing or does it mean that you know after games now we're gonna see the gloves come off for Mike Zimmer and what could

that mean I mean I think that this one is hard to figure out too like how much they will matter that Zimmer and Cousins are not on the same page here yeah I mean part of me wants to think that like they probably have never been best buddies. Like we all know who Zimmer's guy is. And that was Teddy is Teddy will be Teddy Bridgewater forever. You know, probably. And and we all knowing Teddy just a little bit. I think we all know why, like any coach would love having Teddy Bridgewater play for him. And especially the things that that those guys went through together in terms of the injury and, and everything else. And, you know, what it makes you, you, you know,

I know the Everson Griffin tweets have kind of come into, into new light this summer, you know, him saying like, ask, ask Zimmer if he really wanted cousins, you know, I don't have any great insight into how that all happened. I find it hard to believe that, that in the end, the Vikings imposed a quarterback on Mike Zimmer. They didn't want, maybe it wasn't his first choice. He wasn't, we know he isn't Teddy, but I, I, I just have a hard time thinking that like this, you know, that this was just, you know, foisted upon him and that he

had no role at all in Kirk Cousins coming here. But, and I don't, and I don't think that you have to have a great personal relationship. Like, I don't know that, you know, especially towards the end, like what was Tom Brady's relationship with Bill Belichick? You know, were they having, you know, beers together? I don't, I don't think so. And, and I don't think that the head coach and the quarterback need to do that, but the head coach has to be convinced. And Bill Belichick certainly think that the head coach and the quarterback need to do that, but the head coach has to be convinced. And Bill Belichick certainly was convinced of this with

Brady and vice versa, that, that the quarterback is willing to do whatever it takes to win, you know, and in this case, he hasn't, you know, there's, it's, it's a slippery slope in terms of asking someone to, to take a shot that would, you know, to prove your willingness to, to help the team win. But the decision that was made makes it harder for this team to win, you know, just, that's just the way it is. And so I, I think that this team can succeed with the relationship the way it is. But if you want to talk about what is it going to mean for next year, you know, if there's a next year with this group, then that to me is a very relevant conversation.

But I think that they can, especially with, you know, the head coach focusing more on defense than offense, I think they can have a successful season this way. I don't think that I have no knowledge that their relationship has deteriorated to the point where they can't even be in the same room together. They can't talk to each other the night before the night that before cousins came back, they apparently had a long conversation that at least got them to the point where they can function on a daily basis. So it's not, it's not what you would prefer, but I don't think it's prohibitive to them having a good year. And I think they've mostly always been sleeping in different rooms here.

Kirk, in his first year, I think got kind of the, well, it was DeFilippo's fault, a lot of this. And that might have brought, I don't know, Zimmer and Kirk together a little bit on that issue. I'm not 100% sure of that, but at least there was the, it's not your fault. It's the offensive coordinator type of thing. But, and then the next year he wins a playoff game. And so that kind of clears things out. But last year there was little, little peeps from Zimmer about like, well, you know, Kirk does tend to lock onto his first read and that's how that interception happened and, you know, things like that. And I think that this year where it could go sideways is if something goes wrong and they lose a game, they're not supposed to lose. Let's even say week one against Cincinnati. Can Zimmer keep it shut? Probably not. Right. Probably not.

He just that he hasn't at any point during this preseason. And from that perspective, we've all been critical of Kirk Cousins for sure. But from that perspective, I feel like it is unfair what Mike Zimmer does to his quarterbacks. And I don't know that there's any other coach who does this that will so often come out and say, yeah, Case gets overexcited. That's why he threw that interception. Case Keenum, you know, he just goes off and does crazy things or whatever he said to us, you know, has a gosh, I should have this on the tip of my tongue. What was it? A lucky charm around his neck or something, you know, like things like that, that I know that cousins didn't like that Zimmer did that to Keenum. And I think Mike has tried to not do that post game to cousins. I just wonder if that eventually starts to be like, well, look,

I'm not even sure if you're here next year or me. So I'm just going to say what I'm going to say. Yeah. And quarterbacks and kickers, I think they, they both get the same treatment and, but, but honestly, like that's Zimmer, like that, like I, somebody sent me a clip and I was looking at it from when he was on hard knocks and like from with the Bengals um that year and and like that's who he's always been you know like he probably didn't get

interviewed as much uh in those days um and so there wasn't an opportunity for him to call people out but like I I just think that he like you know that like whatever he is is what he's going to stay and and so it'll even if he's holding back it'll be obvious that he's going to stay. And, and so it'll, even if he's holding back, it'll be obvious that he's holding back and like the point will be made regardless. And, and it's not a terrible, like I, it, to me, it's bad. It's bad news when a coach who's like 99% of the time, you know, milk toast and just giving neutral answers and never criticizing anybody suddenly like just jumps on a

guy. You know, to me, like that's where that's when it tends to hurt. And maybe those coaches view it as a strategic. But, you know, the real thing that bugs people is when coaches say things in public that they're not saying in private. And I don't have any evidence that Zimmer isn't also saying these things in private as well. And so that's the other part. It's like maybe it's embarrassing and, and, you know, it hurts the family especially because they get exposed to something to, to that negativity. But you know, that that's, you know, there's by all evidence Zimmer has been more than willing to say those things to people privately, too.

And and so if we hear it publicly, we know that it's it's not coming as a surprise. And that's giving us a glimpse into what's happening behind the scenes, if nothing else. Hey, everybody, the season is on the way. Fans are going back to stadium. So you have to be ready with the best Minnesota football gear. That's why you have to check out soda stick I saw a ton of soda stick gear around training camp I expect to see it in the stadium as well there are so many cool designs on hats t-shirts and hoodies for the fall weather

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is a different universe from the present hard knocks yeah yeah the cincinnati i went back and watched that one i think last summer and so good the cincinnati yeah uh but uh especially zimmer's famous uh sideline is probably what it's really like on game day with the sideline of of mike zimmer for sure what do you think about the pressure on him uh you've covered many a coach uh i just because when it feels like there's a pivot point for a franchise uh i covered one of these in buffalo with rex ryan where it was like if this doesn't go well you know it's not going to be good for rex right and rex ryan changed in his demeanor and i think you saw it kind of um hurt their locker room and so forth as the pressure ramped up on him. Now, Mike, I think, always thinks he's getting fired, so I'm not sure that he changes.

But I go back and forth all the time about Zimmer and job status and so forth because we were talking the other day about, like, could he be last man standing with this, with the general manager, with the quarterback, you know, and all that sort of thing. But it seems like we have reached this sort of end game for this year, and I wonder how you sort of view that. Yeah, like, I mean, you can see, like, if you would just hold them to standard NFL structure that, you know, given the amount of time these guys have been here and the amount of how they make these decisions. They fired Tice basically, you know, like every owner would have because they had just taken over

and, you know, they were going to, they wanted to get their own guy in there. The Childress firing came when, like, there was literally no other option because the entire locker room had had collapsed Childress was lying was was was lying in public and not being forthcoming to them in private and it was just untenable and so like no one was surprised when that happened and they actually were surprised it it took that long and then Leslie Fra, they kind of gently nudged out the door, you know, as a gentleman and, um, totally, totally was the time to do it. And so I, I, I don't, all that's to say is that I don't think they're like quick trigger owners and they've, there's nothing in the history to say that, but there's also not a lot of, uh, um of that connecting to do that would give us an idea of when they will have had enough and who's in their ears telling them it's time to have enough because that's changed over time too.

But if you hold them to the standards that probably most NFL organizations operate, you would say this is obviously a make or break year. I just, the wild card is how the Wilfs feel about it, how they feel personally about him and Rick Spielman and the rest of the crew there. And, and if the people who are in their ears, because even though I think they are pretty involved, they're not here every day, certainly on the, not involved in the football operations every day. We don't know what they'll hear from other people as well and so their tendency I think is to sit tight but eventually they'll reach a point where that won't be an option anymore and we'll see how long it takes them to get there yeah if if they hadn't gotten close in 2019 to making big changes I probably wouldn't talk about it as much but they. So after coming off of a season where you go seven and nine and miss the

playoffs, I think that it is all ramped up. And like you said earlier, the decision to sign Kirk on that day, they said, this is a unanimous decision. So you don't get to go back and say, Oh, it was my quarterback. Sorry, man. You guys not only signed him once, but you signed him twice. And Mike Zimmer's he's calling the shots on everybody else on the roster. You can't separate yourself from that. So really I vote, I guess I've always kind of thought you have to lean into cousins if you're Zimmer and you have to support them

strongly and you have to get them more receivers and more, they've tried with the lineman thing, but still like you let your left tackle go and so forth. Like you have to get them more receivers and more they've tried with the lineman thing but still like you let your left tackle go and so forth like you have to just do everything you can and they really haven't and so I kind of have thought like this arranged marriage uh even if you know Zimmer was hesitant about paying cousins that much you kind of got to own it because in some ways you not ever accepting it has been part of the reason why it hasn't fully worked. And nothing is going to change in the amount of time you have left to, quote unquote, save your job, prove yourself, whatever. That's going to be any better than that. They're not going to get another quarterback that's better than Kirk Cousins, certainly for this year, unless Kellen Mond somehow turns out to be that guy. And there's no indication that he's remotely close at this point to being

somebody you could, you could say that about. And so, yeah, it's like, you know, you hate to say make the best of the situation, but that's 90% of what the NFL is. Nobody has the guy they want at every position and not many coaches have the quarterback that they would dream of at that position either. And the, the way I, maybe it's different for Tampa because they had kind of a dream team last year, but in most years, the way you win is you have a couple of key players that you're all in on and, and you make

it work with everybody else. And that's the nature of the NFL. Your scheme, you've, you've come up with a scheme that's perfectly matched the players that you do have. And you're, you spend much more time working on that than belaboring and bemoaning the fact that you don't have the kind of players that you need, the type of players that you need to run the things that you think you need to do in order to win. It's so interesting to me to think about the sort of psyche of Mike Zimmer and how he struggles to let things go. He's still giving us a hard time about Daniil Hunter's tweak because he said it was a tweak and then we made fun of them. And then he's, you know, it's sort of become like a joke now,

but you can still see that he's annoyed that we made fun of him so much for it. But I think of the same way with things with cousins where he just has trouble letting it go. And there's like another universe where Zimmer sort of fully backs his quarterback and just says, you know, he's our guy and everything else, but we've just, that's just never been the case. Cause Mike is going to be Mike. Right. Let me ask you something before we wrap up here, Kevin, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Two things.

Do you think the Minnesota Vikings will be good? And what are you excited about? Like, who are you excited about? Not on the Vikings, but I mean, in the NFL, like, what can't you wait to see as we are very, very close now to starting the NFL season? You know, in the context of the NFC North, I think the Vikings have a chance to be good. You know, they're not as good as the Packers. I think they should be better.

Everybody should be better than the Lions and the Bears. I don't have a lot of faith in. So you always have to start there because those are the teams you play most, you know, more games against than anybody else. So they, you know, especially in an expanded playoff situation, which we found out last year, how that works, they, I think they have, they should be in definitely in the mix to, to, to be a playoff team. And so that, that to me that I still think that's good, even though there's more playoff teams than there used to be. So that's, that's kind of how I, you know, despite all the vibes we talked about, despite all that it always has to be in context of all the other teams. And every, every team has a, have reporters right now having podcast conversations like this, where they're having similar discussions about things, all the things that could potentially trip them up. And so no team is immune from that. And then the context of it,

I think the Vikings are in, are in decent shape. What I'm excited to see is I guess the first thing, the first thing that comes to my mind is how some of these quarterback situations are going to work out. Is Mac Jones really good or is he closer to what the Patriots want than Cam Newton is? I still can't believe that that's going to be as seamless as everyone has already anointed it to be. But I could be wrong. I just have not seen it with Mac Jones, and I'll be interested to see if that really happens. I want to see what's going on in Miami because they definitely have had discussions about Deshaun Watson

and whether it was serious or they didn't shut it down. So you drafted a guy number five overall the year before into a, and then you're, you don't, you randomly insert him in the lineup last year when, when starter was doing great and Ryan Fitzpatrick, and then you start benching him at certain times. And when things are at the most hardest, at their most difficult is when you're bringing in a backup to replace him and so and then this and then that's

his rookie year and then as his sophomore year his second year you're already talking about potentially trading so i want to know what's going on there and see if tula is going to be an all-time flop or if somehow that this was just them doing their due diligence the past two years and just treating the quarterback differently. San Francisco, I want to see, like, are you really going to play two quarterbacks or is this just a way to ease Trey Lance in and ease Jimmy Garoppolo out? So those are the, you know, everybody wants to watch the quarterbacks, but these backstories in so many of the towns, you know,

and then how can we forget Aaron Rogers? Is this going to be his last year and, and is his desire to be more involved in personnel and, and roster decisions going to be going to be answered, or is he going to feel shut out again and want to, and want to leave? Or is he just on such a different existential plane right now that, that none of no material thing is going to be it's going to determine whether he returns or not but it'll be

something else and so those are the things that i'm interested to watch um you know last year this time i was mostly interested to to know if they were going to actually have a season um you know i think covet is going to be more of a, of a theme than we thought it would be for this year, but having seen what they were meant, they managed to do last year. We know there's a way to do it, even if it means meeting virtually and practicing in parking lots and all that kind of stuff. So those are the things that come to mind for this year. And, and I'm sure more things will pop up that we couldn't even imagine right now. Yeah, that's a great list. Anytime you have to check with the FBI before you trade for a player, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, probably hard out there.

Yeah. Well, I'm aside from Viking stuff, just most interested in teams that we've already decided are going to be good because there's always one or two that just aren't. And I've sort of circled the Rams as the one that everyone is crowning that I think will actually be not good or not that good, like a lower seed. And Buffalo, I think they have huge pressure because once you sign Josh Allen to the contract, we know that even for great quarterbacks, it gets harder. And did he have a Carson Wentz one-year wonder season, or is he really that good um that I think you know we have anointed uh other young quarterbacks as oh this

guy is like a top five quarterback you'd take Carson Wentz over anybody else after that near MVP season and then now he plays for the Colts so right um I'm very very interested to see how that plays out well Kevin you do tremendous work work and you are an absolute must follow for, I mean, for everybody, like all Vikings fans and the NFL, but like, especially for reporters who need to know what the hell any of this is. Like that, that is your beat. Yeah. I'm the, I'm the, I'm the non-football football writer.

Right. Like what is going on here with rosters and COVID and everything else? Well, I'm sure you've got something on it. So appreciate your time. Glad to catch up with you. And we'll do it again, man. Thanks a lot. Thank you.

Thanks for having me.