Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Everson Griffen's stunning tweets and what we can learn about the Vikings from the opening NFL playoff round

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Matthew Coller and Paul Hodowanic discuss Everson Griffen tweeting something shocking about Kirk Cousins and Mike Zimmer and whether there is some truth behind his tweets and what it says about how some players felt/feel about Cousins. Plus we overreact to playoff things and talk about whether any teams have the blueprint for the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with Drizzly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate! Welcome to a Monday episode after 20 hours or so of football over the weekend. We've also got tonight a national championship game to watch, and I'm ready for that. So 20 hours of some great games, some not-so-great games, all sorts of poor refereeing, and interspersed into the weekend, some Vikings things to discuss. Matthew Collar here as always, and with me, Paul Hodowanek, formerly known as Intern Paul. And formerly, when formerly, when we would do hot routes where we would ask five questions, it would be Paul because he was the intern asking the questions to me, the not intern. But now we can ask each

other questions, Paul, because you are no longer the intern. Yes, I'm now a grown up. I've leveled up to where I can ask you questions or you can ask me questions now it's a big day right it is it's really a sign of your progress in life is that now you get to answer the questions so uh and plus you skipped out of week 17 and breaking down what happened after the lions game to do some work for the pioneer press which i know was a lie and there's no way that you were doing any work. You just didn't want to talk after that game. So let's just get it started, and I will ask you the first question, Paul. Okay.

And it does not pertain to the NFL playoffs. It pertains to Everson Griffin. He had been tweeting that he wanted to come back to the Vikings, or at least signaling that by retweeting a bunch of fans saying, Everson, come back to the Vikings, or at least signaling that by retweeting a bunch of fans saying, Everson, come back. And then he sent out on Instagram pictures of TCO Performance Center, which got people very excited. And then he tweeted out on Saturday morning that Kirk Cousins is, quote, ass, and that Mike Zimmer never wanted Kirk. We know that Griffin has a tendency to say some stuff that is maybe takes you by surprise, put it that way. But let's talk about the Zimmer never wanted Kirk part.

Because Kirk's ass is too much. I mean, that's way too harsh. Although I guess we can see what was being said inside the locker room a couple of years ago when Everson Griffin was here. But the Zimmer never wanted Kirk Cousins' tweet. Do you believe Everson Griffin when he says that? Well, first off, I just want to say I love Everson Griffin's Twitter account. Just scrolling through it to find the tweets. He's tweeting random fans that have, like, 14 followers, and I just love it. And it's it's like very much not consistent one way to the next.

Like he deleted the tweet, the Kirk Cousins' ass tweet, then said he got hacked, but then apparently seemed to take accountability for it after. So I'm not sure I would assume he did not get hacked. But moving on, I think I buy it that Zimmern, like I don't know if I could say never wanted him. I think I'd break this into two things. Did Mike Zimmer want Kirk Cousins, the NFL quarterback?

I think he could get behind Kirk Cousins, the NFL quarterback, see what he did well and saw that they could use it and he would be at least a stability upgrade over Case Keenum. Did he want Kirk Cousins' contract and Kirk Cousins' contract ability to take away him paying all the defensive players? I think that's a resounding no. So I think there's kind of two parts to it. However, obviously you can't separate those two things because they're one thing altogether. I mean, you detailed it like going back way way far like he did not want to get rid of teddy or the teddy bridgewater injury was a huge huge blow for mike zimmer just as a coach as a person he loved teddy

like that was a big deal and he did not see anyone being his quarterback other than teddy bridgewater for a very long time and so like yeah i can see him never really wanting Kirk Cousins because he probably would have rather just had a cheap quarterback. But after you finish 13-3 and you go to the NFC Championship game and you get throttled by the Eagles, like, you can't really say, okay, we're bringing back Case Keenum and we're going to go bargain hunting. Like, that's just not where the team was at the time. So can I buy that Mike Zimmer never wanted to go the expensive quarterback route? Yes, I can. Is it specific to Kirk Cousins and the way he plays? I don't think so.

I also think that Mike Zimmer said in his first press conference announcing Kirk Cousins that this was a joint decision between all of them, meaning Rick Spielman, Mike Zimmer, John DiFilippo at the time, ownership that everybody was on joint decision between all of them, meaning Rick Spielman, Mike Zimmer, John DiFilippo at the time, ownership, that everybody was on the same page. That's what he said. He even told the story and said, we watched every throw of Kirk Cousins' career, which, I mean, why, I don't know. Why you'd be watching throws from 2012 or whatever when he was a starter in 2015,

probably an exaggeration there. But the point being that on that day, he took responsibility for what happens with Kirk by saying this was a complete organizational joint decision. Now, do I think that Zimmer is, like you said, resentful of Kirk Cousins for his contract and for how much it probably kept them from signing defensive players and so forth. Yeah. I also was there at that press conference and I saw Mike Zimmer's

body language and he sort of sat in the corner and wasn't smiling and didn't seem all that thrilled when they signed Kirk Cousins. And I would guess that that was because he was nervous knowing that if you sign Kirk Cousins and it doesn't work, you're probably going to eventually lose your job. Now, he hasn't yet, and it's been three years with Kirk Cousins. But next year, there is that possibility that if they do this again, go 7-9, 8-8, don't have a great defense because they can't spend a lot of money, that ultimately Kirk Cousins will have cost him his job. And I also think that knowing Mike Zimmer enough, having been around him now for five years and listened to him talk all the time, a lot of the things that he will go out of his way to compliment other quarterbacks on are things that Kirk doesn't necessarily do well.

And he never brings up Kirk Cousins in postgame press conferences. When he has a good game, he'll say, Kirk played good. And that will be all we get out of him. There could be follow-up questions, and it will just be, well, yeah, he made some good throws, or whatever. Like, almost, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. He played fine. But it was the defensive stop in the third quarter was why we won, or that great red zone stuff, or something like that. And there's always been sort of this iciness between Zimmer and Kirk Cousins, where it's almost like they're just two ships passing in the night. There isn't this connection that you hear a lot of head coaches talking about with their quarterback. And maybe there is some

resentfulness there. To say that he never wanted him, I think is a little bit too much because look at the other options at the time. Now, I was on record at the time saying the contract would be difficult to work around to continue to win because that's the NFL. Like that's how it goes. Matt Stafford's contract, Derek Carr's contract, even Jared Goff gets a playoff win, but his contract is going to be hard to work with going forward. If you're not Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees, it's pretty tough when you're paying a guy that much money. But, you know, I also think that Kirk just has some traits to him that don't really match up with what kind of person Zimmer is. I think Zimmer and Teddy connected because Teddy was exactly Zimmer's kind of guy,

like he wasn't the most athletic, didn't have the strongest arm, but he had a lot of heart, had a lot of will, you know, that kind of guy, like, um, who wasn't the most athletic, didn't have the strongest arm, but he had a lot of heart, had a lot of will, you know, that kind of thing. And he was a leader and he got people behind him. And, you know, Cousins isn't the same type of personality. Cousins is more of the corporate quarterback. And I just think that Zimmer has never clicked with him. Uh, but same time you go back to that 2018 decision and you say, all right, well, what else were you going to do? Yeah, you could have waited until the draft and waited to see if anybody dropped in the draft, which Lamar Jackson did. But you didn't know that when you signed Kirk Cousins. Maybe you could have signed Tyra Taylor or you could have brought Case Keenum back.

And in all honesty, if you bring Case Keenum back, you probably end up with about the same amount of wins over the last three years, just being honest, because they've only beat three teams in the regular season that have winning records. So you're probably doing a lot of the same with Keenum. But the thing about Keenum was Zimmer had spent the whole season savaging Case Keenum after games and saying that he was getting lucky and things like that. So you couldn't really bring Case Keenum back and there was going to be some regression probably anyway. So it was actually a really tough decision, and I think always will be justifiable to bring Kirk in. But I don't want to say that Zimmer has no culpability

if the decision ultimately ends up that they don't win anything outside of that one playoff game with Kirk and they all get fired. Like, hey, because on day one you said that it was your call along with everybody else in the organization. So all of you, including Kirk have to own it. But also, Hey, don't say you got hacked. Just live with it, man. If you think it's not a, it's not a bad thing. If you think that that's interesting, like, Oh, okay.

I guess the leader of the defense over the two years that Kirk Cousins was there, well, wasn't so happy with his team's quarterback. Ass, I think, is a little aggressive. But, you know, all it does is confirm what we've heard a lot anyway. That, you know, especially in 2018, the locker room didn't really gel around Kirk Cousins. And it's not like he's a guy that brings everybody together, that that was never really him. So interesting insight, I guess, Everson, thank you for that. Yeah. And I kind of want to get your take on this,

but do you think this has any effect on if the Vikings would consider bringing Everson back? Because we've seen in the recent days he wants to come back. There are articles that are posted. He clearly is open to coming back. Zimmer said last year, like, I really like Everson. He's a great player. So you know Zimmer has a great deal of respect and admiration for him. But I'm also pretty confident that Zimmer's probably not super happy if it is, in fact, true that Zimmer never really wanted Kirk, that Everson is airing that out through Twitter. So when when Everson kind of blasts their decision to sign him, but then also is like, please take me back.

Like I saw some different uh Twin Cities media guys on Twitter saying like this he's got a zero percent chance of coming back I don't know I believe that but I I would guess I would wonder where you're at I'll agree and say it's now down to about a two percent chance it went from maybe a 50 50 like if you think about like he was decent last year considering who he's playing with two awful defenses that gave him no other pass rushers to worry about. He still ends up with a handful of sacks, and I think he was 31st in pressure rate, which is 12 spots or 11 spots higher than the top Minnesota Viking pass rusher, Afadi Adenabo. So think about, like, a bad year for Everson.

Six sacks, oh, that's it? Well, the leader for the Vikings had three and a half. If you don't count Yannick and Gawkway. So it would have actually made some sense to bring him back. If he was willing to take a little more of a rotational role because he's not the player that he was a few years ago, but you can't tweet that the quarterback is ass and still come back. I mean,

think about who signed the quarterback and who signed the quarterback to the extension and who ultimately would be negotiating your contract again. You cannot embarrass your general manager that way and your coach and be airing. I mean, if Zimmer ever said anything in the presence of Everson Griffin to that extent, like I never wanted him, and then he's airing that dirty laundry in public, I'm not saying that's what happened because Everson might've just tweeted

whatever. I don't know. But if that was the case in your Zimmer, you're going to feel really kind of backstabbed there. Like, Hey, you can't be telling people how I feel about these things secretly. Like that's, that's not for you to say.

Also, I think that players don't really know how coaches feel about stuff in general, because Mike Zimmer does not strike me as the type that cuddles up to players and tells them all of his deepest, darkest thoughts. I'm just saying, like, that's not really his personality. So anyway, on to the next question, your question for me. Well, let's stick with the Zimmer, like, theme. like theme um over the weekend a i believe it was pro football talk was the first on it that there is um at least one one one team that currently has a head coaching vacancy that seems to be

looking around at some current nfl coaches and might want to make a trade and so we saw this kind of last year maybe with the zimmer to dallas situation. So I think it's important to maybe bring it back up again. Is trading Zimmer a possibility in this offseason? Based on that report, it was very vague. It did not name any teams. It did not – the open teams with coaches, it did not name any of them that might be looking at this. It did not name any of the teams with current head coaches

that might want to move on. However, the next day we got Doug Peterson is on some uneven ground. So maybe you can connect those two a little bit, but there is no report connecting that at all. But just the idea of trading Zimmer, is it possible you think at this point? And if so, where would be a like ideal landing spot or somewhere that makes sense? I want to remind you about our friends at SodaStick. If you use the promo code PurpleInsider,

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Their apparel is screen printed here in Minnesota on super soft, super comfy shirts and hoodies. You will love it. That's SodaStick.com, S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com, original Minnesota sports inspired goods. Code Purple Insider for free shipping. Sounds like that vague report was sort of directed more toward Doug Peterson than it would be Mike Zimmer. And the reason that we talk about it with Mike Zimmer is that it was a report last year that Zimmer could be traded to Dallas if they lost the game against New Orleans. And I have confirmed that personally with a couple

of people that that was on the table. It might have not been at the final hour of papers being signed or anything like that, but it was a thing that was being discussed for sure. And so that makes it more interesting to talk about since they've already discussed it and that possibility. And here's the justification for why you would consider trading Mike Zimmer. I mean, A, you could use a draft pick or two to get back. B, if you want to fire Mike Zimmer, even after next year, if it doesn't work out, you're still going to be paying him two years of his contract. That's a lot of dough to be handing out if, you know, you've lost a bunch of money this year.

So then the other part of it is I'm just not certain that the pressure on Zimmer and the timeline to where they're rebuilding and where they can possibly be for next year exactly match up. Like if you are looking for 2021 to be Super Bowl or bust, I think that's too much to ask with the situation that they're in. I think they're in a good spot going forward. They might be in a better spot than the Packers if Aaron Rodgers doesn't play like this. But even from a roster and a salary cap and a young player's perspective and all those things, I mean, I've made the case that 2021, the Vikings are in the best spot in the NFC North.

And I wouldn't back away from that completely just because the Packers are great right now this year, especially they turned it on after they played and lost to the Vikings. But if you look at it like, well, why should we continue with a coach that sort of run his course and is on the hot seat all the time? Why not just move on now and bring in an offensive minded coach to maximize Justin Jefferson and have that be the future of this franchise that makes sense and you don't have to say Mike Zimmer you're a horrible coach because he's not a horrible coach by any means he's done a great job of taking this franchise from the depths to

now being a team that when they go seven and nine, you go, what the heck is going on here? You know, because you shouldn't go seven and nine with Mike Zimmer as your head coach is, is become the expectation that says a lot about what he did over his time in Minnesota. But if you're looking at it and saying,

well, maybe the next era though, needs to be somebody else who's pushing Justin Jefferson and Kirk Cousins to the maximum and adding more weapons and all those things and isn't entirely focused on how they can rebuild their defense then from that perspective it makes sense if you're a team like the Houston Texans where your culture is a freaking disaster do you want to bring in Adam Gase or Matt Patricia to fix that because they have Patriots connections? Or would you rather bring in somebody like Mike Zimmer, who's done it and who worked for the Dallas Cowboys? And, you know, Atlanta might be the same kind of thing.

Your defense has been a disaster for how long now? And you want to get the most out of Matt Ryan here, bring him in, invest on the defensive side, hope that he can bolster your defense to make you competitive next year when, hey, Breeze and Brady might be gone out of that division. So there are teams where there's a case to bring in Mike Zimmer. And I even thought, and there's been no talk of Cincinnati changing coaches, so maybe this isn't a possibility, but Cincinnati made sense to me too. Young quarterback situation, which people think that Zimmer's going to ruin young quarterbacks, but he got along great with Teddy.

So I never really bought into that. But yeah, I mean, I think that there is certainly something to think about there when you consider what you want 2021 to be. If you want 2021 to be the first of three more years of Zimmer and you're locked into him and you're treating him like Pete Carroll or Mike Tomlin, where job status isn't even a discussion well that's fine either do that or trade him putting him on the hot seat all the time I don't think is a really great way for him to have to coach or it's kind of like um it's like if you have a girlfriend and you talk about breaking up you've kind of already broken up you know what I mean like if you get to the point where you're

discussing breaking up then you've broken up and I I. You know what I mean? Like, if you get to the point where you're discussing breaking up, then you've broken up. And I feel like in some ways, we sort of got there at the end of last year with Mike Zimmer. And yeah, you make a good point right at the end. And I think it could be like a reason that last offseason and this season were just kind of a weird messaging mix, because heading into the offseason, there weren't contract extensions yet for Kirk Cousins, Mike Zimmer or Rick Spielman. You signed Kirk Cousins right away, but then you kind of held off on the Spielman and Zimmer things.

Like you were forcing them to kind of make win now moves. And then you rewarded them with long-term extensions to where now like the, like the philosophies kind kind of butted heads. And so I don't think that was probably the best way to go into last offseason with that much uncertainty. Just either make them do all these win-now moves and don't extend them and then just see how it plays out, or extend them and kind of let them know that they're going to be here a little longer

so they can game plan a little bit more. But yeah, I don't think trading Zimmer would happen necessarily this year. I think the Dallas one made sense because he has familiarity with that organization and Jerry Jones. So like with the Doug Peterson one, it was like, it was maybe rumored to teams that had experience with Peterson in the past. And that's kind of what I would look for in a Zimmer type transaction too. So that would be a Dallas or that would be a Cincinnati. Neither of those jobs are open at the moment. The only other thing I could see is George Patton continues to get interviews for GM openings. I don't know what his relationship is with Mike Zimmer. Obviously, Zimmer seems to

maybe have a little bit of a rocky relationship with some in the organization so I don't know how that would be but if Patton finally decided to jump for a job that he actually wanted maybe you could see him making a move to then bring Zimmer with him if he wanted some familiarity there early that's the only thing I could see but other than that I't know. It seems like those coach trades kind of happen when there's familiarity on both sides. I haven't done the deep digging into the Jaguars front office and these different front offices. If there's some guy that Zimmer knows, but there doesn't seem to be that easy thing like there was with Dallas last year where it made a lot of sense. And you had a guy in waiting and Kevin Stefansanski like last year it was kind of lined up on both ends dallas wanted him he made sense zimmer probably wouldn't make too much of a fuss about

going there and you had the guy in waiting there isn't a guy in waiting here there's not a clear idea of if you traded zimmer does that mean spielman gets to stay like spielman i guess is making that decision so then are you letting him pick the new head coach is that what you want or it seems they're tied at the hip so I I don't know it doesn't seem particularly likely especially considering they didn't even do it last season and it seemed much more of a ready scenario right does it make sense yes will it happen no it's kind of like drafting a third wide receiver like I will talk about why it makes sense to draft a third wide receiver in the first round, but you'd also have to commit to using that third wide receiver. So on to the next question for you. So Jared Goff beats Seattle this weekend with a broken thumb,

and that's mostly because his defense was unbelievable against Russell Wilson and Seattle. Does that give you confidence that the Vikings can rebuild their defense and win in the playoffs that way against top quarterbacks with Kirk Cousins, who is somewhat like Jared Goff. And just side note, I do think we need to respect Jared Goff a little bit more. I mean, he went to a Super Bowl and just beat Seattle with a broken thumb. I mean, he didn't play perfect, but I mean, gutsy performance by him. I just want, I want, you know, somebody like that to get a little more respect and, oh, it's just Sean McVay pulling his strings.

But he is similar to Kirk Cousins, a similar setup. He's an expensive quarterback, and they built this freakishly great defense with a great defensive coordinator that was able to win at Seattle. So does that give you confidence that the Vikings can do it if they rebuild the defense? No, it doesn't really. I think we've seen over the last years that just offense wins. In every facet, offense usually wins. There are some teams that win with defense, and they come up. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Rams just can't keep up with the Packers next week.

Offensively, they're an injury away from it not going well. Like Jalen Ramsey is healthy. Aaron Donald was healthy. He got hurt. We don't know how he's going to be. But if he's suddenly gone, like then it's not looking great. So, no, I don't think the team should build on defense. I think the Vikings already tried that.

They got to kind of the ceiling that it could go. Everyone was healthy in 2017. Everything broke right. If you could say that, like in terms of health on the defense, obviously you had Case Keenum as the quarterback. So not everything broke right, but every like things were going well for them in 2017. You wrote a whole book about it. Like, I don't need to tell you about 2017. Right. So no, this doesn't mean the vikings should follow their lead like they have sean mcveigh an elite offensive play caller who uh can like scheme a lot of things for jared goff even if he's not doing that well they have a defensive coordinator who people are raving about about maybe getting potential head coaching, bringing in really like transformative schemes and things to the defensive end.

And then they have probably two players that are the best at their singular position in Jalen Ramsey at cornerback and Aaron Donald, who's just the best defensive player in the world. I don't think those are exactly things you look to and say, those are repeatable. We can do those things. Now, just kind of glancing through the Rams roster there are like a lot of similarities I feel like just in terms of the roster and the way it's built they both have an expensive quarterback who isn't going to go out and singularly win you games they

both have a talented group of wide receivers they both have decent tight end groups the Vikings have the edge in the running back area the Rams probably have the edge in the running back area. The Rams probably have the edge in the offensive line. So their, their offenses are similar. They're built around like a really highly paid defensive player, Aaron Donald and Daniel Hunter in the case of the Vikings. So there's talent like equivalencies on both ways. But I think the way that the Vikings elevate themselves to a type of team like the Rams who are perennially in the playoffs or sniffing around it

or occasionally making the Super Bowl is transforming that offense because the offense has more potential than that Rams offense does I would say Kirk Cousins is better than Jared Goff Dalvin Cook's better than any running back they have Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen are better than Cooper Cupp and Robert Woods in my eyes at least like they have some like parts. I think the Vikings path would be through offense. I don't think the defense thing is repeatable. We see it over every year. Defense is very, very variable. The Bears had a world-beating defense.

They couldn't get it done. They're back in the playoffs just to actually now probably blow it all up. Like I don't see the defensive path. Yeah, you're right about um chicago how many years did they have here trying to rely on mitch trubisky and an elite defense and didn't get very far the 2018 rams can be used as a good example though of i mean a a team that had a quarterback on a rookie contract that's always going to come up but also they were second in points scored and 20th in points allowed.

So we've seen recent teams reach the Super Bowl that were not elite in their defense, the 2016 Falcons, the 2018 Rams, and they weren't even number one in points. They were number two. And when you look at the weapons that they had in the offensive line that they had for that year, Robert Woods, Brandon Cooks was healthy that whole year, which is a complete rarity for him. He had 80 catches. Cooper Cup was healthy for only half the season, but had 40 catches in eight games. And Todd Gurley was a huge part of that offense, had 17 rushing touchdowns that year. So they had

that third wide receiver we talk about all the time, but also the PFF had them as the seventh best pass blocking team in the NFL that year and the number one best run blocking team. And so if you want to have Jared Goff be the guy who could take you to the Super Bowl, I mean, that is a common thread of these teams that have that one great season is their offensive lines are healthy and they're phenomenal. The Philadelphia Eagles, same thing. I mean, in the NFC Championship game 2017, Nick Foles was sitting back there for four or five seconds before he's having to throw the ball against the Vikings, and that was a testament to their offensive line.

So those people who want a guard or a tackle in the first round, I don't disagree with you, and I don't disagree that offensive line is extremely, extremely important. But to your point, I think we've seen more success from teams that don't have perfect defenses that have great offenses than we have average offenses with great defenses those usually win a round and that's about it and I would bet on that for the Rams like you won a round you should be happy Jared Goff did it with a broken thumb gutsy performance good for him but I'm not sure that that's the route with you know Seattle they should just be ashamed like that was that was pathetic but you know we still see and that was

unusual to see an offense as good as theirs fall apart like that but also it seemed like they dialed it back from early in the season and they sort of made their bed of not being able to play in a game like this if they weren't letting Russ cook, which is just didn't seem like they were something was way off in that game. Cause that was the worst Russell Wilson. I think I've, I've ever seen.

So it's, yeah, I don't think that that is the model to win with defense. I think that the Rams are still a good example of why you try to load up around Kirk. So sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say like like, the Rams won this playoff game,

and that's great, but just kind of looking through their schedule, week 12, they lost to the Nick Mullins-led 49ers. Then they beat Arizona. They beat New England, which isn't that big of a feat, and then they lose to the Jets. This team with such an elite defense lost to one of the worst teams we've seen in a really, really long time. They then lose at Seattle.

And then they beat Arizona 18-7 in a game that, like, Chris Strebler is playing. So, like, I don't know that they were exactly, like, humming coming into the playoffs. And, yes, we're going to get more to this in my overreactions. But Seattle was just bad yesterday like they they completely just like fell off a cliff from where they were earlier in the season especially offensively so if the Rams maybe progress a little bit farther we can have maybe another discussion but I'm not too sold on the Rams as a team in general so I don't think it's a team built on role like like that you can rely in general. So I don't think it's a team built on role like,

like that you can rely on. And there, therefore I don't think the Vikings should be building towards that. And you mentioned teams that have a great offense and a suspect defense have a better track record. I think that's an easier path for the Vikings than to have a great defense and have an average offense with what they have right now. The pieces around this team should be to get an elevated, great offense

and an average defense, and that should be their winning. All right, your next question for me. This kind of goes maybe a little bit with what you're talking about, but what playoff team that we watched this week can the Vikings most closely grab onto something or try to resemble like to get back to the playoffs like what did we watch this week that's attainable for this Vikings team that they can maybe take and try to use to get better because there's some quarterback like there's some teams that I don't know if the situations match up but there are some teams

that do really match up situational wise to to the Vikings. What can they learn about some of those teams and how to get back to maybe this level? Well, you know, the hardest one to bring up is maybe the most obvious to talk about, and that is Buffalo. I mean, that is a young quarterback who has great physical gifts, is certainly not perfect as he tried to fumble the game away at the end, and he almost threw a key interception in the end zone too that ultimately got overturned so Josh Allen to me was not perfect in that game but even with not being perfect his physical skills when Indianapolis

would pressure him and he could roll out and throw the ball 40 50 yards down the field with the flick of a wrist and he could you know do a quarterback keeper and run for 30 yards uh sometimes in big situations i mean i'm not saying that they should try to run with kirk cousins more or he's not he's never going to get a stronger arm but i think when you're talking about a quarterback who is very physically gifted and very cheap then you can put the things around that quarterback to make them great. And I think Josh Allen and Carson Wentz are looking at each other in the mirror. You know, Carson Wentz, a big, giant guy, great athlete who is not perfect and turns

the ball over and can be inaccurate at times. But when he had everything set up for him so beautifully, he was great. And the same with Josh Allen. And their offense is, this is where I would take it from, though. I mean, part of that is if you want to draft a quarterback like Trey Lance, who's a great athlete, and then go that route, there's, again, a case for it to be made. But also with the fact that just Buffalo throws all the time.

I mean, I don't remember more than a couple run plays to their running backs in the entire game. Like, their running game is a passing game it's just a short passing game and they didn't play perfect and they almost blew it against Indianapolis and I was kind of sad to see Philip Rivers maybe end his career that way but sort of in perfect fashion in almost uh some you know down by a score with a chance to win it and not being able to pull it off like that's perfect Philip Rivers but I think that that's the biggest one is you know that even with a not perfect quarterback if you put enough around them and you dedicate yourself to throwing the ball that you can make a lot out of that and you know maybe next year you'd love to see Delvin Cook take off you know

50 runs and have you know 50 throws go his way or 50 throws go to him and Amir Abdullah and Mike Boone and that kind of thing, because they were even using running backs out of the backfield in their passing game quite a bit. I just think that that's the way you stay in games against teams who are playing well against you. You can get ahead by explosive plays and by throwing a lot and moving in chunks. And the game is never over when you have that kind of passing game either. So that's probably the biggest one that I would have to take away from. And also they throw it to Diggs all the time. You should throw it to Justin Jefferson all the time, things like that.

I would say that I got way too many tweets about how the Vikings never should have let Taylor Heineke go. Please stop that. That's not a thing you should learn from this. Hey, great have let Taylor Heineke go. Please stop that. That's not a thing you should learn from this. Hey, great. I mean, good for him. Great for him. I'm very happy that he did that.

I saw a tweet that was like, I'm convinced if Taylor Heineke didn't, like, kick that door that the Vikings would have never signed Case Keenum. Taylor Heineke would have been the starter. They would have been bad. And then we would have drafted Deshaun Watson. And it was by, like, a guy that that I like respect and I was like okay I I don't really know how this goes but I I don't think Taylor Heineke kicking a door was the like was the moment that the Vikings fans lost Deshaun Watson like I think some other things happened I'm not sure he was going to be the guaranteed Case Keenum replacement but yeah yeah I also don't

think that he was going to be the guaranteed Case Keenum replacement, but yeah. Yeah, I also don't think that he was going to be the franchise quarterback either. Again, he showed a lot of guts. That's not easy to do. But somebody brought up a mailbag question that asked if, you know, the Vikings should have regrets. This was a long time ago about letting go Taylor Heineke because they didn't trust Sean Mannion. And my answer was like, look, the guy is not even an NFL quarterback as we speak. So no, you don't have any regrets. And even though he played one very nice game, you still don't have any regrets. Like that's a backup quarterback. And you got to give him credit because a lot of people just fall apart and score three points in

that game and just, you know, cry themselves, you know, to sleep that night because they played so poorly against Tom Brady and Taylor Heineke didn't. But he's going to be a backup, guys. I mean, if he pulls a Jake DeLome or something, good for him. That would be an amazing story. Or a Kurt Warner. And I would love to see it. But more likely than not, yeah, I don't think the Vikings should have any regrets about

that one. So I don't know. And the other thing is just Tennessee. Don't punt do not punt at the 40 yard line when it's fourth and two i don't think mike zimmer is as bad at this as people say he is i would put him much more in the middle of the league one year he was fourth best by um edge sports which tries to analyze these decisions and i don't know how trustworthy that is exactly, but football outsiders post their stuff. So we'll go with it. You know, one year he was fourth in decisions and this year he was 21st. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. But if you're going to do that Mike Brable thing and punt on fourth and two, you're going to lose. You're asking yourself

to lose anytime you bet on defense, even if you have a good one, which Tennessee doesn't. Anytime you bet on defense, you're asking to get get beat and that was exactly the case let's give it back to a guy who won the mvp a year ago that's a good idea that won't bite us in the behind so anyway yeah those would be mine and in tennessee is kind of a very like like a team you could really compare with the vikings just if you're looking at oh yeah dominant, play-action quarterbacks, bad defense. And Tennessee made it work, and they made the playoffs. But I don't think that's exactly the team that the Vikings should be modeling themselves after.

The Titans are very much built on a freakish running back who apparently doesn't get hurt and just can continue to plow forward, but then got stopped for however many rushing yards he had today, and that was the end of the entire team's offense. And I think the idea you just should take, and it can be about the Bills, it can be about the Chiefs, it can be for many of these teams, but it's just maximizing the talent that you have and maximizing the scheme to the talent. Like the Bills have done that in Josh Allen. Like they could have tried to rein in some of his like bad impulses,

but they kind of just said, we're going to work with your bad impulses because when you kind of start to fine tune it, you're going to turn those into really, really awesome plays. And so we're just going to kind of let you play within the system. We're going to let Stefan Diggs like do everything that he can. So if I was giving advice and you were looking at the Bills as a team that had a dominant defense and then it kind of fell off a cliff, they were able to be malleable. They were able to mold to their players and they were able to find ways to win and not saying the Vikings didn't do that in some respects.

But, like, I think they can learn in how to get Justin Jefferson the ball more, how to just let Kirk cook if we're going to do that again. But, like, I think the Bills are a good team to look at and say, yes, we understand our quarterback has some deficiencies, but instead of trying to take the ball out of his hands and limit those deficiencies, we're going to give him the freedom to do things and maybe make some mistakes, but count on him to, you know, make good plays with it and potentially win games.

And that's what the Bills are doing. And it's allowing Josh Allen to be really successful and allowing them to be a real threat to the Chiefs. Two more points. The Washington football defense, Washington Sharks, they were fourth in the NFL this year, and Tom Brady put up 31. That's another lesson that, again, you rely on defense, but you'll probably play someone as good as Tom Brady in the playoffs at some point, or the Eagles in 2017. You'll probably run into a quarterback who's really good, who can beat top defenses, and you've got to match them. So that's just a thing to think about. Also, Ron Rivera, people always complain about retread coaches and they always want the younger, sexier guy. And I get that and I understand why because of all the things we've been talking about.

But Ron Rivera and the way that team played against Tampa Bay, it was a much better team. Washington is playing a third-string quarterback, just deserves so much credit. And I don't know if he'll ever win a Super Bowl or anything else, but they went from a joke, an embarrassment, to playing hard in the playoffs, despite having a third string quarterback being in the game. And that's a lesson about Zimmer too, that you always want to keep in mind, and this is the hard thing for ownership and the hard thing for everybody who wants Zimmer fired, of which there seems to be a growing contingent. Like keep in mind though, just like

with drafting a new quarterback, if you pick the wrong one and you end up with Matt Patricia or you end up with Jay Gruden in Washington or whatever, you can have somebody completely implode your franchise and then have it, you know, and Zimmer is somebody who is not ever going to do that. Like he is always going to have your team be at least competitive and then give you a chance at his best to really win something. And I see Ron Rivera and Mike Zimmer as being similar. Flawed, certainly not perfect. Certainly not, you know, Bill Belichick or Mike Tomlin. I wouldn't put them up there, but guys who reach a certain threshold of you can win with this coach, I think. So let me just ask you the last thing here, which is overreact.

Pick something. We always do this. We always decide that the first round of the playoffs is a referendum on whatever team won, whatever team lost, the whole NFL as a league, and I want you to overreact to something yeah well I I kind of teased this earlier but it's it's the Seahawks for me and I'm not sure I think Pete Carroll like should be gone but there needs to be like some serious serious questions with that team because the talent that they've had on that roster over the past however many years they were that close to winning a second Super Bowl but the fact that this team hasn't been better in the playoffs and hasn't maybe gotten a second Super Bowl is becoming a little confusing to me and that game yesterday was just on a silver

platter for them to win like John Wolford is starting then he gets knocked out Jared Goff comes back in with pins in his fingers. And then Aaron Donald goes out in the third quarter, and the defense doesn't seem to, like, skip a beat. They're still stopping Seattle. And so I don't understand what's really going on there. Like, earlier in the season, it seemed like they were going to open things up for Russ, and it was working.

And then at some point along the way, it stopped working. I don't know if that was coaching going off of it or something happening to Russ, but it, it, it wasn't working. And I don't, I'm not calling for Pete Carroll's head, but like you said earlier, like it's just one of those jobs. We don't even talk about the job security after the game. Pete Carroll said, I didn't even envision a scenario in which we lost to this game.

Like I was expecting us to win this game. Like with the obvious flaws that the team had on the defensive side, which was rounding into shape, albeit against some inferior opponents, like they just need to be better on offense with Russell Wilson and DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. And this kind of comes back to the Zimmer question of whether it's on the head coach or on the offensive coordinator, but it's on the organization in some respect of why they just can't be

getting more out of this team. Like I, it baffled me that they could lose that game with all that the Rams were going through. And maybe it's a credit to Sean McVay, but I don't know. It kind of stunned me how bad the Seahawks looked, and it probably doesn't help that my Twitter is full of analytics-friendly Seattle fans who are just angry

at any decision that the Seahawks make. Maybe that tints my view of what the Seahawks really are, but just a lot of baffling decisions. So I'm not saying he needs to go, but he can't be in the untouchable range anymore because there have been too many question marks that have popped up. I want to tell you about Blue Wire Hustle, a brand new program where you can host your very own podcast here at Blue Wire. Hustle was created to give everyone the opportunity to take your podcast to you next time. Discord, and e-learning course full of tips and tricks. And on top of that, we'll help you get your show pushed out to Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, and all listening platforms. The best part is you can get all of this for $15 a month, the same rate as any other hosting site would charge for an initial setup.

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who's a safety who could only have so much impact on your defense. That your defense was not close, like the Rams' defense was close, and they get Jalen Ramsey, and then it makes the difference. But Seattle's defense had a ton of holes. Otherwise, they couldn't really pressure the quarterback. They had no good corners. And a safety was not going to change that. As we saw this year from Harrison Smith, he was great.

And it didn't change a thing about the Vikings defense. Even a great linebacker like Bobby Wagner or Eric Hendricks, it didn't change much to have just one of those players. If it's a lockdown corner on a great defense otherwise yes but not a safety so maybe that's an overreaction to the you know jaylen ramsey trade has worked out and the jamal adams trade is not but i also think like that's right that that you don't trade that much for someone who's hopefully going to be your final piece um i would say overreaction would be fire every referee um all of them let's just try again let's just clear them all out this offseason and try a whole new group and let's include sky

judges because what in the world was the refereeing the call at the end of the bills game was a complete disaster there was a penalty at the end of the Ravens game that was a mess. There were plenty of challenges that needed to be issued on plays that should have been pretty obvious. There were other challenges that they did, and it was obvious, and they didn't make the right call anyway. So that's partially my overreaction is just fire every referee. Let's try 40 new human beings or whatever, how many ever it takes, and 50, 60, whatever. The number of referees in the league is all new

because this is supposed to be the best of the best, and it was a bad, bad weekend. I think in the first two days there was eight penalties total. In three football games in the NFL there was eight penalties total. How in the world does that happen? And then the challenge at the end of the Bills game was a complete mess. The penalty against the Ravens was a joke when they hadn't been calling anything. The other overreaction that I might have is I think freaking Tom Brady might win the Super Bowl again

because he was unbelievable. I know you love Taylor Heineke. Everybody did. It was great. Little engine that could, but Tom Brady is the highest graded PFF quarterback for the weekend. And here's Chase Young. Here's that defensive line after him all game long, and he's dropping dimes down the field. They showed that picture of him and George Blanda next to each other at the same age of 43. Blanda looked like he was about 78. Tom Brady looked like he was about 27 in that game.

Everyone should be horrified to watch that when they see Tom Brady looking that good, that accurate, and executing that offense to that type of level. And Antonio Brown was open in the game and Mike Evans was healthy and Chris Godwin uh you know he dropped a couple balls but Brady put around the money so uh I I don't know I don't know maybe it isn't an overreaction to say the best quarterback in history uh looks pretty good you should be terrified but I didn't really consider them a big time Super Bowl contender going into this and now I do okay and I think I think part of it might be you know we're watching Drew Brees throw some ducks we're watching Mitch Trubisky throw some weird passes we're watching yesterday we're watching Philip Rivers throw some ducks but I agree with you the zip

that Brady had on some of his deep passes was just like incredible he was pushing the ball down field it like he did not look old and he looked really good and this kind of moves into my last thing because I'm gonna push back a little bit on the Tampa thing um because I want to know like if there's any team that you watched this weekend that you feel like should like pro like prohibit a Chiefs Packers Super Bowl from happening because I was high on the Bills but the Bills like the Colts probably should have won that game in all honesty like the Bills shouldn't be here shouldn't be here right now and the Bills were seen as kind of the biggest like rising threat to the Chiefs I don't see them as that anymore maybe you can talk about the Ravens but as well

as Lamar Jackson ran the ball today like they're still going to need a lot of offensive firepower, and 20 points just ain't going to do it against the Chiefs. Maybe the Ravens defense can put together another performance and Lamar can throw it a little bit better, but Tennessee's defense is not like a great defense. And so, like it's great that Lamar got his first playoff win. I'm happy about that. I'm happy we can stop talking about if he can win a playoff win.

At 24 years old with no playoff wins. Can he do it? And like if we could just get over the Lamar Jackson quarterback is like that style going to work in the playoffs. Like I don't want to hear any of that. Like I'm glad he won. But the contenders I saw in the AFC just kind of fell flat this week. And maybe you can talk about Tampa and I, and I would hear that argument,

but we just watched the saints bears game, the saints, like, yeah, they beat the bears, but like, I don't know what you want for that. Like they, the bears were terrible. The bears were terrible. Like the, the saints just weren't like that impressive to me. And so I guess the argument is, is can Tampa beat the Packers? They did it earlier this year, but I'm more thinking this could be a chalk like Super Bowl and Chiefs Packers, because I didn't see someone coming out of this week as we're here, we're ready to take the NFL by storm. I will say that the one case I would make for Baltimore to beat the Chiefs is that teams that pressured Patrick

Mahomes actually had a chance this year now he beat a great great road schedule and was amazing this year and was a borderline MVP if he's not the MVP it's Aaron Rodgers and that's you know pretty good competition to lose it to uh but there were some games the chargers did it to him and the falcons oddly enough did it to him where he was slowed down a little because of the front four getting pressure and baltimore has a really deep group of pass rushers they have a great blitz package that they use all the time and and that was kind of what atlanta was doing was being very aggressive in blitzing i i feel the same way that it's to be chalk, that it's going to be Chiefs and Packers. And I'm going to get old takes exposed for earlier this year saying on this podcast that the Packers didn't look like a Super Bowl team.

And somebody tell me how that wasn't right at the time. But their defense has really come along and their offense has been unbelievable. But if someone is going to Lambeau and is going to beat the Packers, are we betting Tom Brady? I mean, I'd say so, right? And the team that beat them earlier this year. And if we're betting that someone's going to go to KC, well, that's the thing is that, you know,

Josh Allen showed some of his strengths and his weaknesses against Indianapolis. And Patrick Mahomes doesn't really have any weaknesses. So if you're always going with who's got the better quarterback, we'll probably win. That was the case in almost every game, except for just the one we were talking about with Seattle. It's usually the quarterback's probably going to win.

So I, I agree with you at this moment, I would say it goes the two one seeds into the Superbowl eventually, but yeah, I mean, you're right. The Ravens were not super impressive even though Lamar Jackson got his win. So, well, this was fun, Paul. This is fun. I would have preferred on this day to be talking about what happened in the Vikings playoff game. Maybe next year we will have that. So let's get together again soon to do some more hot routes at some point.

And you enjoy being a grownup. Thank you.