Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - ESPN's Kevin Seifert thinks Kevin O'Connell is making a Coach of the Year case

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Matthew Coller sits down with ESPN's Kevin Seifert to get his perspective on the Vikings' head coach and how he's operated the Vikings through a 0-3 start to the driver's seat for the postseason. Does Seifert believe he has a chance to win Coach of the Year? Why has he clicked with Josh Dobbs so well? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here inside TCO Performance Center and with me, Kevin Seifert of ESPN. I know, Kevin, I didn't tell you you were going to be on video, so I understand why you don't have the ESPN, the whole makeup thing. But I think you look great and we're ready to talk some football. Podcast casual is what I'm calling my style right now. Does that work? No. Yeah, that's, that's perfect. I think you look like a football reporter. We all look exactly the same. Anyway, I'm going with vest season here because they don't know is we're not wearing pants, but that's what you can't see below the waist. And that just became more awkward than I needed it to be. So let's talk about football

instead of anything else. Yeah. Uh, I, here's where I want to talk about with you because I have noticed that you've been taking quite an interest in the coaching situation as everyone has for Kevin O'Connell and the way that he has handled losing just the Jefferson losing Kirk cousins. And here we are a five game winning streak. Let's just start with like the hottest way I could phrase this coach of the year, right? Like at this point, does Kevin O'Connell not have a very strong case to be talking about coach of the year? He absolutely does. Now, if the question is, is he going to win it?

I would bet it's D'Amico Ryan's at this point, because it's usually the newcomer who gets more wins out of a team than is expected, which will raise the question about why Kevin O'Connell didn't win it last year. But that was last year, and I guess there's nothing we can do about that. But I can't – I mean, what he has produced in terms of wins, like forget style, forget anything else, like what he's produced in terms of wins given the amount of players he's lost, having to start three different quarterbacks in three different games, navigating Josh Dobbs, who I don't care if he's the president of Mensa.

He still needed a lot of help to get through that game in Atlanta and to basically be his eyes and ears was incredible. And then to continue it, to think of it all without Justin Jefferson, at least this five game winning streak, is just an incredible accomplishment. someone who has stepped way beyond the scheme and way beyond play calling to be a genuinely impressive leader in a time when they very easily could have crumbled. And I think that that's what stands out to me is how often we roll our eyes when coaches talk about their culture and their pet theories and everything else but they usually don't get tested until things get very hard yeah and for last year i'm not saying there was no adversity for them last year but man kevin o'connell must have felt like he did something really right with god the way

things worked out yeah they won every late game they didn't have any real key injuries and and everything just went right for him. The locker room came together pretty quickly. Her cousins played very well last year, especially at the end of games. And then he goes into this year and it was like, Oh, that deal with the devil it's up. And now he comes to take your soul in the form of fumbling the ball at an insane rate to start the season. You start Oh, and three, the defense looks pretty terrible at the beginning of the year and and there was really no reason at that point even at one and four to believe that this was going anywhere except for a fairly high draft pick town yeah and yet the way he's brought it together it we see it with the players connecting with each other in in even like

small ways like justin jeff is hurt, but he's on the sideline. We heard about this today, helping Jordan Addison identify coverages and stuff that he's getting. Like there seems to be all these micro examples of players coming together, which I think starts with O'Connell. Do you feel like that is the that is the key to this? Like what what is it that is separating him from other coaches in this ability to keep everybody pulling together?

Well, I think it's belief, partly. I think back to the Vikings, when they win, they always put his post-game speeches on their social media. And the post-game speech after they beat Carolina, their first game of the year, he's very excited. He's going through it. And at the end, he goes, and away we effing go. And kind of laughed you know honestly because you just went to beat you know arguably the worst team in football and you needed to get three sacks from Harrison Smith to do it and including the play I mean it wasn't a resounding victory by any stretch of the imagination but he believed it was and and and sometimes you can will a little bit of that into

existence I do think it's also just his personal approach. Like I kind of laughed at like at that, at what he said, but not the way he said it. Like it was very genuine and like it wasn't over the top football coachy. And so and I think players, by the time they get to the NFL, most of them, especially a veteran locker room like this, like they know the difference between a guy trying to give a speech and somebody basically giving them his, his honest feeling. And his honest feeling was that they were poised to, to go. And since that point they're five and one. And so I, I think that as part of it, it's not the only part. I even think last year, like we all talked about how lucky they were and they were lucky, but there were not all of the reasons they were winning games was luck.

Like there was a nuance there that I think people just kind of glossed over to be that consistently good at the end of games means you have your situational mastery under control. You have taught play, you know, as the coach and you've taught the players how to play in those situations and given them the empowered them to be able to do that. And you set up a culture that supports it. And so I think while they were absolutely getting a lot luckier last year than they did in the beginning of this year, it wasn't the only reason they were good. And if you take, if you look at the beginning of last season until now, he's got like the fifth best winning percentage of any coach in the NFL. I think what we often see when a coach goes through what they went through early in the season is it's not so much that the players stop trying to win or anything like that. I don't think players in the NFL really give up. I mean, you got to be extreme.

You got to be like whatever's happening with the new england patriots yeah players really give up but for the most part you'll even see a team like hey houston texans won that last game of last year to get themselves cj stroud there are many many of these examples where the jaguars even under uh when urban meyer gets fired or was he still there at that point when they beat philadelphia or or no indianapolis yeah they beat indianapolis to keep indianapolis out of the playoffs with carson wentz like these are professional players and they know what they put on tape is important so they're not going to stop trying but what we see a lot of times is the coach goes crazy yeah like just with the amount of pressure and the amount of things that they try to overcompensate for when they're losing and making too many changes and the even-handedness of o'connell through that moment

was to me defining for how i felt about him as a head coach and what it means to this organization going forward that the dobbs thing is crazy but that's like an aberration i mean that's a once in a decade even more I don't know how many times I've ever seen it where a guy has to come in and doesn't even know what to do. And the coach gets in his headset. That's going to be what stands out more to people. And because he's a former quarterback, he's capable to me. It's more of how the one, the Owen three and one and four was handled. Yeah. And just, I mean, look at another coach who was hired at the same time as him, Josh McDaniels, and look at everything that's leaked out. We always find out when the players don't like the coach eventually. You know, the Urban Meyer you mentioned is another example. It doesn't always happen in real time, but we eventually always hear the stories that the players are experiencing. They're telling their agents, they're telling other people around the league, and it gets out. There was none of that here. And I'd be really shocked if we come to find out that

there were a lot of players rolling their eyes at O'Connell when he was saying, and away we go, and all that, like, or when they were going through the 0-3 start. Like, I really don't think that was the case. You know, the one moment I thought maybe like some players would look at him a little cockeyed is when he said that he basically implied they would start benching people if they fumbled the ball. And we knew that probably wasn't likely to happen. And it kind of, you know, they stopped fumbling eventually. When they started hitting people with weird apparatuses, I will tell you that I thought,

do you really want to go to Amazon and start ordering whatever you can? Kind of somebody either he or somebody said that they basically ordered everything you can order off the Internet because the resources here are are on are on uh yielding i guess they can always get the resources to buy whatever they want but i and that to me was a little bit like i got i don't know if you want to show up with some kids blow up thing that they play and bonk each other in the head on a hot summer day in the pool or whatever and so i don't know if you necessarily want that, but like, you know, whatever, if you want to credit that or you just want to credit to the ups and downs and ebbs and flows of turnovers, you can,

but they got it fixed. Yeah, and to me, yeah, I don't think a coach has the ability to solve fumbles. The fumbles were, they are random. Also, who recovers them is random. So they had an absurd amount of fumbles, but it was crazy that they almost never recovered their own fumbles or the other team's fumbles still i will tell you that i was looking at every other metric you know yards per play all these other things and there was nothing that

indicated to me that this team was going to be different i thought they would get back in the playoff race because i've seen this movie many times before, but I'm now realizing that there's a different director to the same movie that, you know, they might've been able to pull this off in 2021 had the director not have lost his mind in the middle of that season, which all the things that happen, I understand why Zimmer did, but still there wasn't an even handed that ness there, there was players at the end of that era who were calling it, what was it? Culture of fear or whatever it might've been. I think that O'Connell being a former player. And so recently a former player, not like 15 years ago that he has this real finger

on the pulse, like a real awareness. And that might be his, his best trait about him where he's also like, I found this interesting even today. So an awareness of like what players need from him for one, what they do and what they don't need. But even like one of the criticisms coming out of Sunday's game was that they were too conservative in the second half. Yeah.

And trust me, the last coach that I covered would call us a bunch of idiots for asking about that and telling us we'd never seen a football before and everything else and o'connell basically said that's right like i'm gonna assess how i handled that which i personally didn't have a huge problem with you're still playing with a backup quarterback yeah you're trying to run the clock down you don't believe that the other team can score maybe played with fire a little bit too much but his ability to constantly be reassessing himself and a self awareness to say, you know what, maybe they are right. Like maybe there is some criticism there about how conservative I was. I feel like now you've covered more coaches than me. I feel like that's unusual for football. Yeah. And this was something I was thinking about, um, talking to

another colleague in another city. Like, I feel like he, and this is sort of an extension of what you're talking about. Like he's up for any question from us. Like, I can't think of a time when anyone going back to the very start of last season, um, as asked him a question that he basically said, like, that's not a worthy question. Like, even if he thought it like, like he creates the facade or, or, or creates the culture of like anything, you know, all bets are off. Like you don't have to worry about him trying to embarrass you publicly. You're certainly not. You're going to get an attempt at an answer from everything. And so that's the way he's with us. I'd imagine it's like I'm sure he has he he has more authority over the players. And so he has to manage them differently than he manages the media.

But like, I've been impressed because I also think that he knows as a former player that players, if they're not reading the stories that are written about the team, they're hearing about it or seeing social media clips. And so he's very aware that what he says to us is probably going to be consumed by the players. And so you can see the,

the, the, the, the, the, the wheels turning in his head is like, okay, you asked me about Justin Jefferson. I'm going to say something here and Justin Jefferson is going to hear it. So I want to make sure it's something that we're all on the same page with. So I, and while that's, I mean, sometimes that helps deliver a message. It also helps prevent fires that happen almost on every team, every season where a player sees something in the media and says, you know, and gets ticked off justified or not. And so I, I'm sure as a player, he wouldn't, didn't want to read, uh, things said about him that hadn't

been said to him. And so I, I also, I see that's just a very small part of it, the interaction with us, but I see that as having a larger sort of impact on his relationship with players. I completely agree. And because former Vikings players have told me about with Zimmer, one of the things that would drive them crazy is when they would hear something from the head coach. And I hate to make this a comparison, but it's the only two coaches I've covered. And it's very different approaches yeah and so zimmer would say some things to us that were different than his actual message inside the locker room and to the players

and and sometimes it was also way too far of being way too revealing to us like saying anthony bar has a tendency to coast things like that like that really upset the locker room because Barr was playing through an injury that year right and everybody knew it was like wait a minute tendency to coast like the guy's playing out there hurt he probably shouldn't even be playing and so then like you said like those things every family watches them they all read what what's written about it that the press conferences are streamed so if there's something that gets said about a player there's tweets that are tagging that player they're not going to miss it yeah and the delicacy of the jefferson situation is just another example of this where i he that man wants justin jefferson back on his football team desperately wants him back i mean like he's

you could praise jaylen nailer i thought nailer was fine he ain't just jefferson right he's probably watching cd lamb being like i have that here i just want to get it back so he could easily and we've seen coaches do this before pressure through the media well you know jefferson's you know he's just got to push it you know he's got to push himself and instead he has played it very safely he He's depressurizing it. Right. Like we want more information, bro. When is he coming back? Please tell us right now. And at every turn he's been like, well, you know, we don't want to get them hurt and everything else,

which is what Justin doesn't want. And so those messages are matching up. And I can't remember a time where, whether it was cousins or whether it was him, maybe the fourth and eight check down, there's almost no times where we've been like, oh, a player told us this, but then the coach told us this. So who's actually got it right? That is very difficult to achieve.

I feel like when you have to talk for 20 minutes four different times during a week. Well, he's obviously gifted of Gab, with Gab, of Gab, about Gab. Has the gift of Gab. He can gab um and people forget like after he retired as a player he was kind of trying to figure out what he wanted to do and he was in the media for a while he was um not only was he like doing color analyst on uh cbs college football but like he was if you go to youtube there's like random interviews he did in the hallway at the combine for i think, CBS or somebody like just totally random. I think it was one of them was like Andy Dalton or something. It was a weird combination

of people. But so he definitely has the ability to articulate his thoughts and like and say them in a measured way and not get himself into trouble. I think back to what Adam Thielen said during training camp last year. So basically their first training camp with the guy and he, you know, things had, you know, they'd had a bad practice or whatever. And Thielen's thought to himself is like, is this guy ever going to rip us? Cause he'd had, he was, he was just saying like, you know, sort of the kind of positive way of saying like, we can do better than this or something very, very kind of pleasant, I guess, in football terms, at least. And Thielen was just like, so blown away. It's like, what do we have

to do to get ripped? And he's like, it's not just that I'm used to Zimmer. He's like, this is my high school coach, my college coach, my peewee, you know, Pop Warner coach, all football coaches rip the crap out of people for sport during practice. Like that's your invitation to speak like exceptionally rudely to people and like insult things that you would never be allowed to do in any other workplace and it's totally normal and O'Connell doesn't do that um you know and and it was part of when I was reporting a story last year about uh the relationship between Kirk Cousins and and O'Connell and how it was probably easy to say well uh you know know, Cousins was treated badly by Zimmer and great by O'Connell,

and nobody accepted that premise. But what I remember Patrick Peterson telling me is that, you know, it doesn't have to be like one guy's bad, this guy's good. There just has to be the good match. And O'Connell has a way of identifying and being a good match for all of these guys. And I'm sure there's players who've been upset with him. I'm sure there's people out in the,

in the world who wish Kevin O'Connell wasn't the Vikings coach is just a, you know, a fact of life, but he's exceptionally good at, at personal interaction, keeping it positive, keeping it productive. But also like avoiding conflict conflict I guess is the best

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Sam Bradford told me that they would text about ball. They would talk about all sorts of different coverages, different things. Obviously, everyone knows the Teddy Bridgewater relationship. And that's why I don't like to say hey zimmer was hated quarterbacks and then whatever else but it was clear that he and kirk cousins never gelled and whose fault that is i guess you can probably debate that too but cousins already had a previous relationship with o'connell and the best way i can describe it is o'connell handles head coach like a position coach because usually position coaches are a lot more the the

good cop to the bad cop head coach who's bad at the players all the time so they kind of embrace and that's been interesting what i wondered about when he was hired and early in the process and it still comes to my mind sometimes it's like can this guy like turn it on if he has to get his team in line but the thing is that they are already in line it's not like you have to push some button that like sends a message to your players when they kind of always fly the same way that presumes that there's always a call there's always going to be a call for to be a jerk you know to be a football jerk i guess i should say and like curse people out you know throw the training tape, dump the training table, all the things, you know, from Boulder and we're going to date ourselves, but make everybody run in the shower and then

read them the riot act. Like that assumes that that's the only way to get through to people. It assumes it's the only way to motivate people. It assumes it's the only way to, to turn around, you know, to write a sinking ship, I guess. And it's not. And like, maybe that's something that wouldn't have been accepted 10 or 15 years ago. And maybe when you're a 38-year-old head coach, you need to do that. You're not in a position to stand on a chair and scream and yell. And maybe when he's 58 and coaching, you know, being a head coach,

he'll act differently. But one thing he said, I think, and so many people, I think, have smartly said is that you can't fake who you are. Like no one who knows Kevin O'Connell would believe it was genuine if he started, you know, profanity-laced tirade and became profanity-laced tirade guy. That would not be genuine. No one would be motivated by that they would think he was just um acting that way and it wouldn't work so he's best he's best off and this is what he's pursued using his own personality his own approach seeing and seeing how far that will take it and and i think when we evaluate coaches a lot of times it's game day and that's's because that's like the biggest moments.

And that's what everybody sees. Like all the fans see game day. But what I found is that there are shortcomings in his game on game day. I think. I think he is so focused on the quarterback that there will be some decisions that he regrets from when to be conservative versus when to be aggressive. Not that he doesn't acknowledge some of these things, but it's not perfect. And I don't know that there are any coaches, maybe John Harbaugh is as close as it gets to like nailing all the

numbers, things time in and time out. But I think that we put too much on that. Like, did you punt? And look, I'm as big as anti-punt as anybody in the world but but what i think i've really we've really seen here is the combination of connecting with your team and game planning yeah to get receivers open and blocking schemes and just little things that have been done because i want to talk about that part of this whole thing yeah with his connection with josh dobbs the headset thing is wild and i don't't know, I'll ever see it again, the way he did it. But I thought this week was as impressive to prepare him for a full game plan to get it blocked up against a really good team. They've done little things that I wondered if it

would even work, like put CJ Hammond on third and long. I was like, I don't know, man, is that, but it actually has been effective for them to, to be able to block it up. And that's where it all comes together for me. When we talk about the best coaches in the league and look, I'm not crowning the guy there's six and four, like this could go any way or whatever, but just as we work with the information we have, and we think about Pete Carroll, we think about Mike Tomlin, like right to the the to the top of your head John Harbaugh Kyle Shanahan all these guys I feel like they always have a schematic advantage that goes along with just being them yeah and who they are to start with like you begin with a prepared team

you begin with a schematic advantage and I saw a really interesting tweet from Greg Rosenthal of NFL.com he said if the Vikings and Saints switch coaching staffs yesterday, the Saints win. I thought, you know, I think I agree with that. I think I actually completely agree with that. And that is where it's marrying it together is Mike Tomlin's defenses are still nasty. They're still winning games without getting 400 yards. Like that's where you can have a great motivator and you can have a great guy who connects with your players maybe leslie frazier was like that but if you're not also answering the bell schematically which i thought they did exceptionally

well yeah against new orleans then then it doesn't mean anything but to be able to do that bring in a new quarterback find what works for him and and be able to prepare him against the good defense. That was what took it to another level for me. Yeah. And, and expand it out. It's not just offensively defensively. Like you talk about the game day aspect of O'Connell. I thought that was his biggest failing last year was being unable, whether through it, because his personality, he's 38 at Donatello is older i'm not exactly sure he's probably around 60 but been around a long time um he was unable to get ed donatel off of the way he was calling games and that's that was his job like he hired him to do a certain thing he wasn't doing

it and not only was he not doing it but o'connell increasingly public ways, was trying to get him to do something different. You know, talking about how, you know, got to look in the mirror and make changes. And he wasn't able to get him to do it the entire year. And it ended up being, to me, I know fourth and six and their fourth, you know, the T.J. Hogneson throw, but to me, fourth and eight. OK, it's been brought up occasionally. I'm sure. And I know that play was bad. But like to me, what knocked them out of the playoffs was they couldn't stop the giants uh you know defensively and so

that ended up scuttling what was otherwise a great year so so he but he did you know make the change and you know brian brian flores i think is just a much better defensive coordinator than ed donatel and we don't even have to debate that. But O'Connell has gotten it to where he and I think and Brian Flores are on the same page in terms of what he wants them to do. And he I think they kind of worked through some of the early blitz rates and have gotten to a place where everybody's really happy. So the that part of O'Connell's performance last year has dramatically improved, if only because the person he has in the job is more on the same page. But we can talk about all the things that O'Connell did with Josh Dobbs and has done with the scheme without Justin Jefferson.

But I think he also gets some of the credit for managing a much better defense, managing an improvement in the defense through a coordinator that is able and willing to execute the vision that he had in the first place. Well, and also acknowledging that mistake that defense was not a fit for his own personal philosophy and how defense should be played and fixing it. I also think, too, have you ever heard the the George Carlin famous baseball and football thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so if you haven't heard it, go find it. It's on YouTube. So if you're watching on YouTube, wait till the end of this, go find it.

Uh, but George Carlin's famous bit was basically like baseball. It's sunny outside. And if it rains, we all go home football. They send blitzes and they're in the trenches. That to me is coaching offense versus coaching defense fair. And with offense offense it's like we're route combinations and look at how many different fun creative things we could do at defenses we need to murder opponent and we need to blitz and send people and play physical and you know i think floris has a lot more than ed donatel for that grit to him yeah that is That is what is needed. And the aggressive approach, everybody feels like they're involved with him as well. Uh, but the aggressive approach is always going to resonate more with players. Then let's just sit back and let the other team complete a bunch of passes on

us. I mean, I just feel like the buy-in on that defensive side has been really valuable. And I think this speaks to, it's not just brian floris keenan micardo here's another receiver under keenan micardo like jordan addison looking like a star brandon powell is not a guy who was really considered a receiver before this year he was a running back and i don't want to connect a hundred percent like receiver coach to look at this yeah but how can you not and so i feel like quarterback coach who's had to manage all of this and be an extension of O'Connell. Chris O'Hara, you know, no one knows his name, but this is another guy. They're offensive line coach. They all of a sudden pass block and they bring in Reisner.

And now, you know, Dobbs has time to throw. I think one of the biggest failings of the previous regime was the coaching staff really corroded over the year. I don't think people wanted to work here. And now they have, I think one of the best and most complete coaching staffs, which I guess leads me to, are we going to be talking like this in a couple of weeks, right? Because this is the NFL, right? So it feels like this has all come together in a way that I've only seen a couple of times. 2017 is probably the best example with good coaching players, everybody fitting into their role, buying in. But they're losing Jordan Hicks here.

That's going to be a problem. We don't know when Jefferson is back. Josh Dobbs still does have a previous record of turning the ball over a lot. We just spent a lot of time saying, wow, they are just amazing. Do you want to pour some water on that? Or like, how are you feeling about that? Well, eventually, you know, personnel attrition will get you, you know, they're also, you didn't mention there, you know,

Alexander Madison is in the, in the concussion protocol. And while he hasn't had the greatest of seasons, you don't have the backup that they wanted there either in cam acres. And so now you're talking about going to Denver and starting your number three running back with a kick returner as the number four. And then maybe a rookie that's been on the practice squad and Dwayne. Miles Gaskin also. Miles Gaskin was just signed. You know, frankly, you might think, you know, and this is other teams have done this, too.

When you get in a real emergency at running back, you go fullback, you know, CJ Hamm. But that will wait on that one. But eventually, if you don't start getting some of those players back, and we know Justin Jefferson is going to be back sooner than later, if not this week, but it hurts. And like, I mean, there's no rule that says, you know, now Ivan Pace is going to be the green dot for Jordan Hicks. Like, what if he gets hurt? Or what if he just isn't able to do it? Like, what do you do then? And so eventually you run out of players. This is what it eventually comes down to. If it's going to be this kind of season, maybe they've just hit a, hit a bad spot and these things ebb and flow. And some of these guys that we're talking about are definitely going to come back. It does sound like Jordan Hicks, you know, barring complications from his, uh, compartment syndrome

will be back at some point. Um, and you know, there point. And they'll start getting more players. But they do have a very favorable schedule here for the next three weeks. And then you get into the Cincinnati and Detroit twice, which we've always talked about. It's going to be a really tough end to the year, and especially if you're going to need to win some of those games to make the playoffs, as I think they probably are going to. Folks, I cannot believe how many sports are going on right now.

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And the bye week is brutal for us because this is a lot of football we've covered without any sort of time off. Not that I'm complaining. Football. But for a team that has been as banged up as they are, having it late in the season gives them an opportunity, like even Marcus Davenport, you know, potentially coming back and Jordan Hicks at some point will return that they could be healthier down the stretch going

into those games than your average team, which could play in their benefit. None of this is going to matter though, if Josh Dobbs doesn't continue to play great. So let's talk about that. The quarterback situation is the fascination of the entire football world. Everyone is talking about Dobbs mania or whatever you want. I don't know. Magic. Yeah, whatever it is. I think with Dobbs, there's a lot of things that I see that could continue, like his physical skill is just not going away.

How smart he is, how well he fits with a quarterback coach who's going to put a lot onto his plate and ask him to read. And also his communication seems to be tremendous with the coaching staff. All of that can carry on. I've also seen one of the smartest people on earth, Ryan Fitzpatrick, have hot runs and then fall off the edge of a cliff. Josh McCown, who probably knows more football and more systems than any person on earth. He also had that run with Chicago where he was amazing. And then Tampa Bay signed him. And after that, you know how it went.

I mean, what's how are you feeling about this? Like, I guess if you want to talk short and long term or short first and then long term, just like what is your sense after watching two really remarkable and memorable games of josh dobbs yeah i thought this last week after atlanta and still think this i think he was sort of the perfect candidate for exactly what they needed which was somebody to come in and be smart enough to get his wits about him to the point where he could function on a snap to snap basis um but also with the athleticism to to uh to counteract the times when he didn't know what to do or couldn't find a guy to throw to or didn't feel comfortable yet throwing

to it. So he had these really two unique skill sets that are awfully important when you're dropping in, you know, you're parachuting into a team. And the third thing is, frankly, having O'Connell, you know, and having the play caller be a former quarterback who is not that far removed from his career is exceptionally scheme oriented, exceptionally calls plays based on defensive expectations. And maybe all guys do that, but he's been very open about that. So he has really so three unique skill sets, one of which being the head coach. And so you mentioned Josh McCown in Chicago.

If I remember right, I think that was either Mark Trestman or Mike Martz, whoever the offensive coordinator was then he and McCown were locked in. And like, it was almost like if they stayed together for the rest of the time, like McCown would have a different career. And sometimes that's the case. And we've seen that, you know, a lot in NFL history where just the right combination of people lead to the best outcomes in a career for those all the people involved. And it just can't stay together for whatever reason. But I do think that, you know, especially right now in this in this what's really still a crisis management mode, you know, it's still triage to to the quarterback position when the top three guys are gone. Um, and you're just, you're just hoping that your offense can function and anything beyond that as gravy. I think he was probably the perfect candidate for that. I like, I'm not really entertaining, uh, the idea of what it means for next season or the Kirk cousins negotiations or all that. I think that will be is not evident yet,

but it will be. But if they have to play the rest of the year with Josh Dobbs, that's a good thing. That means that he didn't get hurt and or didn't fail to the point where they had to turn to whichever of their backups is healthy at the time. I do think that someone like Brock Purdy and if Josh Dobbs continues to thrive in this may make us rethink a little bit how we feel about quarterbacks. But there's been lots of examples through history of this. Yeah. But what you've seen in recent years is pretty much you're either a franchise quarterback or it's a rookie who's either going to sink or swim. And I think that's a major part of why like offense is down this year league wide i don't think it's down for the best teams but i think a lot of teams that are not the best have put all of their eggs in young quarterbacks

10 rookies starting right and if those guys struggle which they often do then you're in a lot of trouble but i also kind of think about like we've moved on from the rogers and the nfc maybe forever i don't know maybe mid-december is what he says but probably not and drew breeze is gone and there's been a like a shift of some of the older franchise quarterbacks who have retired or are not the same versions of themselves and what i feel like we are seeing is some guys be totally situation oriented like josh dobbs in arizona cannot thrive he is the 30th best quarterback in the league but here it's just different that doesn't mean it can work for anybody or forever right or forever

yeah it's a great point which i know you just said let's let it play out but it's the end of the show which is where you have to start talking about predicting things otherwise we just have to end awkwardly and it started awkwardly. So we can't end awkwardly. So how do we, how do we think this plays out? Because to me, the range is very wide and there's still a range that involves Kirk cousins returning, but by each week and each scramble specifically,

which I think Kevin is really enjoying. Yeah. I think it becomes less likely that cousins returns with each, with each great game by Josh Dobbs, not just because of Dob draft next year or the year after. Not saying he's going to be their guy for the next 10 years. Could be Jaron Hall that takes over for him one day, although I think they're only like three years different age-wise. But ultimately, when they have to decide Cousins versus Dobbs, they'll probably have to be thinking, if they have to decide this, they'll probably be thinking is the mobility and probably the lower financial impact that Dobbs would bring worth whatever drop-off there would be. And there is a drop-off in the precision

downfield passing that Kirk had mastered here and will probably be able to replicate next year and beyond here or somewhere if if he's not playing here and that's the calculus that that Kwesi Adolfo-Mensah will have to decide like that chunk like the the difference there is which what's more valuable to him and so it might be that they you know they say hey you know we have a pretty good team like let's not mess with it. Kirk has been great. He's going to be 100%. But certainly it's tempting to have that thought, I think, at the end of the season if he continues to do what he's doing. And even then, I mean, the Case Keenum here,

the reason Kirk Cousins ended up here is because the Vikings decided that Case Keenum coming in as a backup and taking them to the NFC Championship game was not enough to get them to commit to him long term. And that might have been the right decision. That might have been a perfect storm of him and Pat Shermer as the offense coordinator being in lockstep. And everybody, you know, that was sometimes things just happen in a bottle for one season. And the biggest mistake you can make is thinking that it's going to continue on. And so I think that'll be a lot of what the rational thought process will be i don't know

what the crazy uh range is on either side but to me that's where it'll all end up and they're also going to have to evaluate what they think of these quarterbacks uh jaylen daniels looks fine to me from lsu there's a guy who can run and throw the ball pretty impressively he's kind of uh i think emerged more recently as someone who is intriguing as a potential draft pick but there's quite a few of these guys even bo nicks is a pretty good athlete i just just am gonna rest on this one moment that i'm gonna think of for a while when dobbs runs into the end zone and o'connell turns around and throws his hands up to the crowd. Yeah. As in like I screwed up that play call and that man scored a touchdown. Yeah. And how many times could we say that? A lot of times it would be post games of, hey, what happened on that third down?

And while that's on me, I didn't give him the good enough play call. It's like, well, you didn't give him a good enough play call on that touchdown either. But he scored a touchdown. Right. That's kind of the point is that a lot of the reason the Vikings would have would rest on, did they convert third down and long or not on a week to week basis? And they wouldn't have a highest scoring percentages on drives and a lot of three and outs and a lot of punts,

despite high statistics for cousins is that he can't make you right. And so even though he could complete a pass and a third and 10, he can't get the first down a lot of times. And that's just a dynamic that I think seeing that at play has to be pretty attractive. But I think that like, like cousins can't make it right on the ground, but there are definitely plays where he's made throws that Josh and other people probably can't,

that he saved a bad play call with a great read or a great precision throw or just having a communication with a receiver that leads to something off schedule. So there is value in that too. But clearly, if you have the ability to make it right by just making people miss, that's a lot higher percentage than getting that precision type throw that most quarterbacks can't make yeah to me it's continuing to keep the sticks moving yeah more than what are your stats look like but of course cousins was really good at not turning the ball over too much um at times and you know with dobbs

that's still a concern and with a rookie quarterback it's very much yeah well now do we view ourselves as a team that's ready to win but we're going to bring in a rookie but then chicken or egg can a rookie win right away which we have seen before in history if you have the right setup for them so it's a still remains a very complicated situation that dobbs has added another very interesting layer to, which guess what? We're going to talk about some more. And you know what? There may be another podcast down the road where you and I discuss the quarterback situation. I guess we'll find out. And there could be other players involved that we don't even know who they are at this point.

Maybe Kyler Murray looked pretty good. I don't know. Hard to say, but we will be here to find out. Kevin Seifert of ESPN obviously does tremendous work, as you all know. And thank you all for watching, listening, or however you're consuming this. Take care, everybody. Football.