Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert talks Danielle Hunter trade reports and Vikings' risky future at QB

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

ESPN's Kevin Seifert reacts to Kevin O'Connell's comments regarding Danielle Hunter, what they mean and whether he's getting traded soon. Plus Seifert has been obsessing over the Vikings' QB situation. Does he like the way Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is playing this or does he feel like they're walking a tightrope? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here joining me in just a second. Kevin Seifert from ESPN. Just a quick little update on an injury. Jalen Naylor is out for a couple of days and we were unclear what happened to Jalen Naylor and we learned from Kevin O'Connell today that he's just got a little banged up with a leg injury and should be back at some point next week as far as scheduling goes the Vikings are off on Sunday and then we'll practice all through next week the night practice is next Friday and the pads come on and then everything gets super serious as we go forward so after every practice if you want to watch i'll be doing youtube live streams and of course dropping in

additional episodes like this with you know kevin seaford alec lewis from the athletic is going to come on next week as well will raggets is going to join for an episode of Hot Routes. So everything is rolling along here on the Purple Insider podcast. And I did want to mention that I had a little issue with the website. And I know that I've always called out for fans only questions to be sent at purpleinsider.com, but it's kind of gone a little bit sideways and the contact us hasn't been working. So if you sent me an email recently with a question from the website, I probably didn't get it. And I just wanted to apologize to everybody.

I'm sorry. I just discovered this the other day because I was thinking I haven't gotten emails from the website in a few days. What's going on? And did a couple tests. We're going to get it fixed. No problem. I'll let you know when that's back up and running. But probably the best way is through Twitter at the moment to

send me emails if you want to reach me or just send a DM or jump on those live streams. I mean, if you've got questions, we're usually doing it every night around eight, sometimes 830 on YouTube live. Just go to the YouTube Purple Insider page, check that out. And it's a lot of fun. A lot of people have been joining in. It's been a lot of Vikings fans with questions, good discussions about what's going on in camp. I kind of empty the notebook after every day.

And then, you know, we're going to have a lot of these other discussions going on as well. So make sure you check all that out. If you missed the conversation with Matt Daniels, the Vikings special teams coach, also please, please go back and check that out. Really enjoyed that discussion, and hopefully we'll have a few more of those as camp goes on with different people. So, all right, on to Kevin Seifert. All right, we welcome into the show from ESPN Kevin Seifert.

What's going on, Kevin? You having fun? Absolutely. It's training camp. The weather has gotten much better. We have less of a chance of melting out there, so I'm ready. You know what? I thought it was fine. We survived. Survive in advance. You had your bucket hat going on. I'm still going to have the bucket hat. I'm not losing that. No, but I mean okay it was all right i mean it felt like walking into an oven a little bit but up there we got enough of a breeze we got a little bit of shade there was football going on i think we were all right but you know who was in the nice cool air conditioning inside yeah well we were out there at practice was daniel hunter who is allegedly

here i have not seen him. I have not seen him. No. You have not seen him. The Vikings claim to have seen him. Yeah. I mean, I guess I could sneak around the side and look in the parking lot if I could figure out what he drives. It's probably something very expensive.

Yeah. What do we make of what Kevin O'Connell said today about Daniil Hunter? He actually said words. Yeah. Were they meaningful words? I don't know, but they were words. Well, they were enough to let us know that it's not as if Daniil Hunter. He actually said words. Were they meaningful words? I don't know, but they were words. Well, they were enough to let us know that it's not as if Daniil Hunter reported on reporting day and then hasn't been back. So O'Connell said this in his press conference today, and it sort of comports with what I've heard behind the scenes, is that he is coming to the building every day,

walking through the doors. His security card still works, or his code has not been disconnected, and he's at least having a daily conversation with O'Connell. What he's doing beyond that, if anything, is unknown. And I would say it's closer to if anything than a lot. There's plenty of places to work out if he doesn't feel like he wants to do that here um you know he's had conversations with brian floris my guess is he has at least a a you know some level of fluency and what they're going to be trying to do um as floris kind of joked the other day you know your job is to go get the quarterback it's not too difficult in his system and so uh but there's the contract situation is very real they've been talking a long time everybody knows the parameters they're not close enough for him

even to feel like he can get back on the practice field so to me it's a very much an open question whether he's on the team this year or not there has to be teams making phone calls to quesia da flamenta at this point right i mean once a guy is not getting out on the practice field and call it whatever you want hold out hold in hold left hold right it doesn't matter like everyone in the national football league knows that daniel hunter is on the trade block and that they would trade him for the right price if that that was not the case, they would have just paid him whatever he wanted by now. But the question is, what is the price that it's going to take? And how does Kweisi Adafo-Mensah avoid a Delvin Cook situation where you just waited and waited and waited and it never actually got resolved?

It seemed like if there was any opportunity to actually trade delvin cook that time sort of passed them by yeah and then they just ended up having to cut him well you can't do that with daniel hunter but this does need resolution by what like the end of august you would think uh well in time for for at least for the season to start you know pass rusher is one position where you can jump into another team's system and have a relatively immediate impact if not maximize your potential in their scheme right away. And so it's not like you're trading a quarterback who you have to spend a certain amount of time.

So I think they've got that in mind. The Dalvin Cook thing, I think, was a little complicated by the shoulder injury. And at the time that you would want to trade him, they probably couldn't because he wouldn't be able to pass a physical. And same thing with Jimmy Garoppolo the year before. So that complicated thing happened. You know, Jeremy Fowler, one national insight, one of our national insiders at ESPN reported that the Vikings want to extend him, but not at the sort of market level, uh,

contract long-term that you would, you know, that he would hope to get, um, on the free agent market, for example. So, um, not a repeat of the contract he got, you know, the five-year $70 million or whatever it was at the time. And so that comports with all the other things that the Vikings have done really in the past two years with Kweisi Adolfo Mensah in charge of the front office. And that's, you know, maximum flexibility. Don't lock yourself into something you might later regret or you can't get out from under it's the same reason kirk cousins is entering his final year um you know he's older than than than daniel hunter but at a more important position so if you're willing to go into a year with kirk cousins uh in in the final year of his contract without a replacement on board then

he's you know clearly determined to not pay Daniil Hunt or something that will hamstring them in future years. And not so much from a salary cap standpoint, but just from a roster flexibility standpoint. I don't think he ever wants to be in a position where this person is on our roster because there's no alternative. Right, right. And that's how the Vikings have, in past years, set up a lot of their contracts just with Rob Brzezinski, where it's usually a five-year deal, but it's a three-year deal and everybody knows that. And just as a side note, I'm sure Justin Jefferson, if he wants a three-year deal, it's going to be a three-year deal. It's not going to be the BS three-year deal that gives the team more power than the player. But in Daniel Hunter's case, even though he was really good last year, you can look back

over the last couple of years at the injuries. And when you say he's 29, not everyone is the same 29. I mean, he's been in the NFL since he was 20. He's played a lot of years in the NFL and you do worry about the future injuries. And also at some point you're sort of approaching quarterback money with certain positions with top wide receivers top defensive ends and i i like what you said about just it seems like this is how quesadilla flamenco has played every situation in part because he can like in this competitive rebuild thing which i do want to get into you

with you uh he can play hardball and say you're going to do this at our price, or we're not doing this at all because we're competitively rebuilding. And look, we let everybody else go out the door. We're refreshing this roster and I'm making it mine. I think for this moment, that is okay. And it's okay to play it this way with Daniil Hunter in the future or with Justin Jefferson or TJ Hawkinson. I don't know about that approach. But with Daniil Hunter specifically, I think that's a fine way to go about it. I think it is from the long term, but I think if you're on Daniil Hunter's side, you say, what are you going to do without me? What's this year going to look like?

The competitive rebuild is a two-edged sword. You're saying you're going to be competitive. Who's going to rush the passer? Who are NFL teams going to focus in on or feel like they need to make any kind of offensive adjustments towards if he's not on the team? Is Marcus Davenport going to be that guy? He has not been in his career.

Maybe in this scheme he would be, but there's nobody else that an offense would look at this defense. They might look at whatever Brian Flores' blitz scheme is going to be and have to prepare for that. But there's no – and that includes interior rushers too. There's no substitute for a guy who can just beat every one-on-one and require a double team. Most teams want to have that.

The Vikings have one of those on their roster, and the contract talks are not going well. So I don't know if I would go so far as to say Daniel Hunter has him over a barrel because of the long-term things you talked about but for this season he kind of does well and that's the question is does Quasey look at it like offense matters much more to your success than defense last year they and I know a lot of it it was crazy stuff but they still won a lot of football games with a good passing offense and if they know they're going to have a good passing offense you can work

around what they have on defense being uh maybe ineffective and you know also you look at brian florist 2021 they didn't have a monster edge rusher now they did have christian wilkins and that guy is really good so the v the Vikings don't have that guy. But they had, like, Shaq Lawson getting four sacks. DJ Wanham's gotten some sacks before. But it really was him scheming up a bunch of five sacks for this linebacker, four sacks for this safety. And they still had a reasonably good defense.

But, you know, Dean Lowry's not going to probably get more than three or four harrison phillips isn't a pass rusher so from the front four perspective i totally agree but i would be curious about brian floris's perspective like you already got rid of zadarius smith yeah so it's not like we were ever going to be great at this i'm gonna have to scheme it up anyway let's just see how it goes well i i think is there's no doubt the coaches have kind of made their points clear and every coach i can't imagine there's a coach who would think any different than yes i'd prefer to have daniel hunter versus not and that because the coaches think about this year and that's their job but um you know more if the vikings can count on brian flores to work magic which is basically kind of what you're talking about.

Not just do a good job, but, you know, scheme a pass rush where one wouldn't otherwise exist, then more power to them and more power to him. And good luck next year when he's the head coach of a team next year. Um, and we can get into that too, if you want later, but, uh, like that's a lot to put on the guy. I mean, he's good. You know, there's no doubt about that. But, like, you got to, like, there has to be pieces in place in order to make any scheme work. I think if I was trying to look at it from Quasey's perspective, and now this is an interesting point because, as you know, when you win 13 games, everybody is like best friends and go into college basketball games together. You trade the best edge rusher and then rank 32nd in defense and then it might be a little more tension yeah within the building and and this really i mean this was a zimmer spielman thing where once kirk got here and took up that much cap space zimmer couldn't get the free agents and stuff that he wanted

and then looked over at spielman like fix this. A couple draft picks go sideways, and those guys couldn't stand each other. These things sort of escalate quickly when the coaching staff wants a guy and the GM doesn't, and there's politics within the building. And you could see this situation ending up being like that a little bit. Like, how could you not keep Daniil Hunter for us? My gosh, from the coaching perspective. And that's why I wonder where Flores stands on this. If he thinks, well, I can scheme around it.

From my perspective, I'm always looking at kind of the big, how do you go from point A to Super Bowl? And I think with Daniil Hunter putting that much money into one guy that I'm not certain will be this good for that much longer or that that's the best investment i think this is not a bad idea if you trade him for a second and a fourth because at some point next year in the draft you might and this is where quacey's thinking this way o'connell and flora's probably not but next year in the draft if you're drafting 17th and the quarterback is there at 10th

you got to make that trade up you might not regret ever giving away deniel hunter if you If you're drafting 17th and the quarterback is there at 10th, you've got to make that trade up. You might not regret ever giving away Daniil Hunter if you can throw in an extra second that gets you there. Yeah, absolutely. And when you said there's probably lots of teams calling it, there's probably a lot of bargain seekers calling right now. Right now, blood's in the water. The camp has started.

Guy's not on the field. He's barely in the building. It's clear that they're far, you know, pretty far apart. And he's only in the building because the coach is trying to, to massage the relationship if he does get him back, you know, and that's totally understandable. But like if they got the second and the fourth grade, but I wonder, you know, my guess is like, that's not what's coming through right now. What if they told you that if you were in Hunter's shoes and they were like, well, look, Kevin, we won't find you that if you were in hunter's shoes and they

were like well look kevin uh we won't find you but you got to be in the building for eight hours a day like the other players yeah i mean are you like bringing some video games some reading material i just i just envisioned daniel hunter like playing something on his phone during meetings or whatever like what how much could he be in here what is he doing then you get into like honestly like not to make it serious again but like you get into if you aren't sure he's gonna be with you are you letting him in your meetings right like yeah like and they're not gonna trade him to the packers the lions the bears but like it might be a team you're playing this year it might be you know like like that's that kind of you know you know macro or micro competitive stuff happens in the NFL all the time.

And so that's something, like, I don't know the answer to that right now, but I know I'm sure there's people in the building who would prefer to not let anyone who's not fully committed to the season into anything where they could get information that might be valuable to another team. Well, and I didn't hear the words, he's in meetings. No, no. Normally they might say that if something, right right so it's just we've had dialogue and they've they've like he's talked to flores what you know what flores said he had to sit down with him and that

he had had many talks with him prior to and so it's not as if he's a stranger and i actually asked flores that have you actually met this guy you know like this because he just got here and like there was no off season but he said yes and so there's there he's probably got enough of the parameters of what he would have to do but um you know and if i'm daniel hunter like i don't know if i want to want to be in the meeting you know you know he's he's doing whatever he and o'connell have agreed is the minimum and so i wouldn't be shocked if he's in very few, if any, meetings. Folks, want to remind you that the biggest pro football contest in Las Vegas is back again for its fifth year with $14 million in guaranteed prizes only at Circa Sports. Enter in Las Vegas, play from anywhere with two ways to win and no rake.

Play the Million Pro Football Contest with quarterly payouts and 100 payback pick a winner with the survivor contest select one team each week with no point spread get your share of 14 million in guaranteed prizes visitcussports.com for details. What do you think of this? I don't want to say soft approach because that makes it sound like something I'm not trying to say. This player-friendly approach to the way that they talked about Jordan Addison. I was envisioning what Mike Zimmer would have said about Jordan Addison. And then Addison's out there taking first team reps the first day.

I cannot imagine that under a rookie does that. And he would have been on the third team for like two weeks. And he wasn't even, he didn't even do any of the OTAs. So it was like, you could easily, I've seen coach as well. He didn't do any OTAs. He'll work his way up.

And so like, like even if there'd been no speeding ticket, you know, so that, that comes up too. Right. And the approach was, well,

it's a mistake. And I didn't think they were like dismissive of it, but was well he's gonna have to learn about it and so forth where again i mean with mike zimmer uh i can't remember exactly what he said about jayron curse and mike hughes when they got in trouble but he was not happy about it and then with this daniel thing it's yeah sure we'll let you in the building and we're not gonna fine you and again i don't know how well that would have flown with the previous head coach now that doesn't mean zimmer's right and they're wrong and it's talked about as being more modern to be kind of putting your arms around the players but i also think that there's probably a curve with that where it starts to go to where

people take advantage of you so i guess i wonder what you think about like o'connell's approach in general to discipline with his players it's who they are and it's what they wanted is the the the you know most concise way i can put it uh you know they had the spielman you know zimmer years there was an obvious sense you know during the search process to replace those guys of people who had a different personality and that's not you know dissimilar from a lot of the way NFL teams work in terms of hiring the opposite of the people that they are replacing. But they very much wanted emotional intelligence, empathy,

people who would be good colleagues in the building. And that's the Quacey too. I think they applied those same parameters to the general manager too. And so this is the type of approach I think the owners and the people who did the hiring wanted. And frankly, it's who O'Connell is, especially like, would you want him trying to scream and throw stuff in his office as a player after he gets arrested? That's, I mean, the player would like, that's not his personality. You can't fake it.

I would rather him employ his instincts and see where that goes because that's who they hired than to say, well, this was very serious. I'm going to scream and yell at the guy. But then you go beyond that, like, should there be discipline? And if there was there's not been any on-field discipline maybe and there's limited ways you teams can find players

and and do other you know types of things internally whereas you know most of that's governed by the cba and the nfl would eventually step in there and do that and so um but that's what they wanted i think and so like i'm okay with it in the sense that like it's not a secret they're not trying to be mr nice guy and then you know acting behind the scenes like i would i have seen coaches there have been coaches here who changed their personalities based on what they thought was needed at the time and people see through that so like it will it work will he get taken? Maybe, but you could have said that was a consequence on day one. And in the end, do the consequences outweigh the benefits

or do the benefits outweigh the consequences? And so at least last year I think it was absolutely the right approach. And maybe Jordan Addison will turn out to be this great citizen who made a dumb mistake, and the fact that they didn't overdo it when he made his first mistake with them will be to their benefit. Yeah, that's entirely a will see. And my mom was a teacher for her entire life. And so, of course, discipline is part of being a teacher.

And it was always a case-to-case basis. I mean, some people need different things than others. Some people need to be called out in public probably as players and others do need an arm around their yeah uh you know them and so forth but i guess i just thought wow um no you know reps taken away or anything like right but were you surprised like okay no i wasn't but i just i was curious because this stuff didn't come up last year no i mean oli udo got arrested but it turned out to be like nothing so i was just is he gonna do something is there gonna be a harsh comment is there gonna be a hammer that gets dropped but you're right that really isn't who he is and as a former player i i think that he tries to put himself in their shoes

but i guess if there is another incident then there has to be something because then it's like okay then the players can do whatever they want that's fair um but when it comes to uh the overall direction we mentioned the competitive rebuild where hunter fits in i wrote a column basically saying if they trade hunter it's not a competitive rebuild it's a rebuild yeah which i'm comfortable with but uh you tweeted out at the beginning of camp like i'm not letting this quarterback thing go kirk does not have a contract i thought the opening press conference was are you okay with not having a contract uh-huh are you okay with not having a contract for kirk uh-huh yeah and off we go yeah uh what do you make of this because it's the number

one thing people ask me about all the time um actually my dad i called him the other night and he's like so what are the vikings going to do with their future quarterback yeah of course i and my answer is i guess draft someone but i don't know what what do you think about this situation i think it's a tightrope man they have it's it's possible that they'll get from here to there in a safe way and that maybe it's just k has another you know Kirk type year and they're like yeah of course you know we'll resign him it'll be a very you know uh unacrimonious non-acrimonious situation with Kirk has said he wants to stay here they give him a competitive uh offer for a couple years and he's going to finish out his career as the Viking starter but if not or if he something

happens that makes him think well well, I'm going to go see if Kyle Shanahan wants a quarterback, or I'm going to see, like, there's going to be three or four teams that, that probably need a veteran starter. Maybe I'll just finish out somewhere else. Then they're screwed. I mean, they have put themselves in a position where they, you know, if you, if you, if you start the process of replacing your long-term starter, when you no longer have that long-term starter, then you're screwed. You're not in the short term at least. Is it screwed?

I mean, screwed seems aggressive to me. Who's going to be the starter if Kirk isn't the starter next year? Then whoever they draft. And it's a tough year, and then they go on. Are they going to be able to? I mean, they could finish 6-11 or 7-10, and Kirk didn't play in a way that they want to bring him back, and they're not going to be drafting high enough to get anybody

that you would want to start next year at least. That is true, and I call this the Matt Schaub scenario because after Matt Schaub was done in Houston or just started throwing pick sixes every other pass, they had Brian Hoyer and Ryan Fitzpatrick. Because I looked at a bunch of historical situations that were like this. I remember that. Cincinnati, of course, had the best situation

where they go from Andy Dalton to completely tanking to getting Joe Burrow. But Buffalo went from Tyrod Taylor and being a good team and then to Josh Allen pretty seamlessly. And they had to trade up to do it, just like Kansas City had to trade up to get Mahomes, just like the Bears traded up to get Fields. I don't, I mean, I don't, like when you just say, oh, they'll just trade up for someone,

it's way easier than what if there isn't anyone? What if it's the Malik Willis year or whatever? But I do think you make a good point that you can get sort of trapped in that uh-oh we don't have the next guy so we've got to get brian hoyer in here starting but i also think and this was a a take that made some people upset last year what is really the difference between a good quarterback you can't win the super bowl with and a mediocre quarterback you can't win the super bowl with and a mediocre quarterback you can't win the super bowl with other than that you draft higher the next year like if you get trapped into we've got to play jamis winston for a year yeah then you draft one

the next year right like you just keep going until you can draft one but then you're talking about like and the wilfs are relatively patient owners um but then you're talking about year three of the quacey kevin regime going into a season with jamis or i always keep saying next year's derrick carr which might actually be derrick carr but like that kind of starter so now you're in year three and you're really no closer to figuring it out like how many years out can you push that transition before like you aren't winning enough games and it's not that I don't think the Wilfs have a quick trigger at all, like, I think they would let the process play, but,

like, you're just pushing out that transition, and that transition is almost always a step back for a franchise, I mean, the Packers had to wait, you know, three years for Aaron Rodgers, and even in his first year, they had a losing record and didn't make the playoffs um and so then you're talking about going into year four of the regime without having you know at best with starting a new you know another new quarterback would have been the third in three years so i tend to think it through it in that lens like if they have if they had 10-year contracts then what you're talking about yeah yeah sure but, sure. But nobody does. Nobody gets that much time. And so you have to at least consider that too. And I don't think that they are any more

prone to being survivors, I guess, than anybody else would be. And so I don't know that they're going to like panic and make short-term moves as a result of trying to save their jobs. But if you listen to Quasey, like he keeps talking about the three-year horizon like three years that's next like this is year two uh the next year would be three you're talking about jamis winston in year three when when the plan that he apparently has sold and he's talking publicly about is supposed to be reaching the climax folks i may have discovered the greatest thing to ever happen in barbecue history i found the perfect solution for barbecue lovers looking to up their grilling and smoking game the team of certified pitmasters at the grill masters club has cracked the code on delivering award-winning small batch

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and the Grill Masters Club is helping me out to explore new ways to grill. Go to thegrillmastersclub.com to take your grilling and smoking experience to the next level. And also, get 50% off with the promo code PURPLE. 50% off at grillmastersclub.com by using the promo code PURPLE. And so then this is where the Kyler Murray idea comes up and things like that. Because there always are quarterbacks that at this point we don't expect will be available and then they end up being available of course and you know nobody expected brett farve to be a viking or tom brady to be a buck or russell wilson to be a bronco or what like well if the plan is to wait for something unexpected to happen then that's not good but it always does though right it's like unexpected but also expected i guess what i'm

saying is that even if you look at tennessee where they Marcus Mariota and he won a playoff game and it's like, well, okay, we can win nine games. Didn't Mariota win like nine games, three years in a row or something? Like we can win nine games with this guy, but we want to move on to somebody else. And they end up getting Ryan Tannehill, which at the time seemed like nothing, but they had great players. So they were able to stay competitive and eventually. And now of course, I there, that franchise is going to stay stuck in the middle,

but they were right. They won the entire AFC. Like if I put in not James, Winston's a bad example. Cause he stinks, but I understand what you're saying though. If I, if you put in someone decent with Justin Jefferson and this coach and a

line that's growing and everything else, can you not have the similar results if that guy isn't paid much for a transition into the next draft pick potentially i i guess i would go back to thinking about this way it for the three year to be in position to compete for a super bowl in year three or at the end of year three, their own, like basically it's 90% that it needs to be Kirk. And it needs to be a situation where Kirk plays well enough this year that they, everyone agrees we're signing him. He doesn't try to, to, you know, shake it up or go somewhere else. And he agrees. And that, you know, they go into a window of Justin Jefferson at his prime, Kirk Cousins still playing very well,

Brian Flores running a really good defense, and Kevin O'Connell being at the cutting edge of offense. That, to me, is sort of the biography of their best chance to be competing for a Super Bowl in the time frame that they've been talking about so that's really interesting that you bring up the three years though because i hadn't really taken that seriously uh but think about like or like or at the end of the third year heading into the fourth year but now when we go back he said when i got here a three-year time horizon do you think based on of course what came up in the usa today article that the

original timeline was to win eight games in the first year move on from kirk draft somebody in a quarterback draft that was that had a lot of them last year and then have it be the third year where that quarterback's going into his second year because i think you could interpret it that way yeah that it was originally a three-year timeline when he said competitive rebuild but it might have to be a four-year where you're talking about drafting someone and then developing them spending on the roster and it really ends up being more like 2025 that is your super bowl window started maybe i mean i feel like i've heard him i just have to go through the transcript i feel like i've heard him. I just have to go through the transcript. I feel like I've heard three. Maybe he's added four years to it. But like that is part of the game. Like I know, look at Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch going to San Francisco. Everybody knew what their plan was and it may not have changed it to their

benefit you know and so sometimes circumstances create obstacles but you know if they if they can if they can you know go into next year with a drafted quarterback and then be competing for a Super Bowl by 2025 that's an impressive feat I'll put it that way tell me what else you're interested in out here what What do you got? I mean, there's a lot of stuff. I mean, this is, for me, the most, like, oh, look over there. There's a position battle. Oh, another one. And even I was asking O'Connell about the backup running backs,

and I didn't feel like the endorsement was as strong as I expected for Kenny Wongwu and Ty Chandler, so I would still leave the door open for a veteran maybe after what he said. But I'm interested in the running backs behind Madison. Yeah. I don't know. What, what is it for you? I'm interested in watching how the transition from, from Dalvin to, to, to Madison goes because that, um, you don't see too often where this kind of clean, you know, backup promotion happens maybe in corporate America a lot where the assistant manager gets promoted to the manager. Peter Principle.

Yeah. And I don't know if it's even like that he's not qualified, but you see usually if you're a backup for a few years, you have to go somewhere else to start. Right. And I think he probably thought that. If you think back to the end of the playoff game and Alexander Madison's standing on the field

and looking around and taking it all in and praying. And he was doing all the things that players do when it's their final game in a place they spend a lot of time in so he he's probably as surprised as anybody that it played out this way um but and he's been a guy who's he's just like in the from when I was growing up and you were growing up like the classic off tackle runner that and that doesn't really they don't really use them that way anymore but is getting you know pretty likely going to get four or five yards, but you're going to have your third down back come in if you want an explosive play. And so, um, they've talked more about efficiency than explosion from their running game. And so that's one thing I'm really

interested in. Number two is I'm on the Josh Oliver, you know, bus right now. Like that guy is a bus. Um, you know, how big is that guy is a bus um you know how big is that guy i mean he's like he's insane he's over 200 he's got like i think west phillips said he's over 270 pounds and he's probably got like one percent body fat like he's just a stud and so and he looks like a pretty good receiver you know in the you know we we were watching with no pads and it's basically you know seven on seven one even when they're in 11 on 11 but i don't know that he's gonna fare any worse once contact starts he's gonna like the guy that big is gonna probably like it's more to his advantage and so i am really interested to see how they use two you know weapons at tight

end the way they seem to have yeah you know with josh oliver i i feel like there's been so many tight ends over the years where it's their second team that loves them and their first team, you know, they develop them or whatever. Sort of like the Ty Conklin thing where Tyler Conklin was the fifth round draft pick. We didn't talk about it much. He gets thrown in the fire and it was good.

And then now the jets have him. He's playing with Aaron Rogers. Like what? That happens all the time. So I like that. And it might be, I thought when they signed him, is this a little bit of a hedge on, you know, Haw just in case but i think it's just tight end greed like i think

kevin o'connell loves tight ends he's got quacey on board on the tight end train and like you can't argue with it when you look around the league and how the best tight ends or the best used tight ends can impact games okay last thing we were discussing this in the media room, whether we could catch a ball off the jugs machine. I think, so I asked Alexander Madison this, does he think that an average kind of person, average athlete guy can catch a ball off the jugs machine? He said that if it was on a slow setting, we could probably nab it. And I think that's true. But at the highest speed, like KJ Osborne catching it or Justin Jefferson, absolutely no way. So my question is, what is it out there when we watch them that you feel like you could do and not hurt yourself significantly or completely embarrass yourself? go the uh what do you call the chains i could i could be the chain yeah does that count does that count i one thing i've learned and like maybe just i've just been on the sidelines of things for so long and multiple sports is just like it gives us such a unique perspective on how

different how much the universes are different between the regular person and the pro athlete not the college athlete not the high school athletes. They're great too, but just the level that they get to and to watch the speed of, of the jugs machines, to listen to the sounds that are created when people hit each other, to see the body fluids that fly when that happens. And it's a, it's a minute by minute thing that keeps happening. So I, I, you know, have no have no – I was not a great athlete to begin with. That's why I'm in this spot. So I don't think there's anything inside the white line that I would ever claim that I could do on a pro level.

I could catch a fade pass with no one guarding me, just a little toss probably. I would probably jump and come down and break my ankle. Yeah, you were on a cart last year with the ankle. Right. There is very little. It's just I really think every person who thinks that they could do anything on any pro field, any, any. Like there was the, well, I could win a point from Serena. Oh, my God.

No, you couldn't. Not just not Serena. Like the local best college player at the U. Like you couldn't win a point off of her. But there's levels to this. And we were, what, 25 feet away from Justin Jefferson when he made that catch the other day? Yeah.

And you just go, I can't believe it. That is astonishing. And to see him, like he makes, like all those guys are in another universe. And for him to make those other people seem like they're not in his universe is like you need the Hubble telescope to find him wherever he is. And so there are moments like that when they weren't in pads. But just like when you can do something that none of the other elite people around you can do,

it's just stunning. Justin can pick up a football and throw it 55, 60 yards. Yeah. I mean, I think I might be able to throw that ball like 25 yards. It's big. Yeah. And my hands aren't that big. So anyway, well, we'll stay on the sideline.

Absolutely. But glad that we could get together. Yeah. I really appreciate your time. And we'll see you out there in the sweaty heat. All right. I'll enjoy it. Thanks for having me.

Thanks, Kevin.