Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Fans only: Vikings fans ask about Adam Thielen's contract, edge rushers and coaching up Kirk Cousins

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

Matthew Coller answers Vikings fan questions, including whether the team should look for a veteran edge rusher, why they should believe that Kevin O'Connell will get more out of Kirk Cousins, whether Adam Thielen's contract hurts them down the road and what different types of fans there are. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here along with you. And I'm alone today and I'll tell you why. Because I'm starting a new thing here on the show and we will get back to timeline week with more guests and discussions about the Minnesota Vikings timeline as we go along. But I get so many really good and smart questions on Twitter and through emails that it's almost too much to cover just in the Friday mailbag written wise. And so I decided that we need to do this maybe a couple times a week with episodes where

I just answer fan questions because as many topics as I like coming up with and trying to be creative and fun, you guys are really good at asking smart questions and giving me a lot to think about with the Minnesota Vikings. And I also think that a lot of people probably have the same questions that are being tweeted at me and good discussions that they want to hear us talk about here on the show. So I'm just going to go through these and answer questions. And if you want me to answer your question, what I'm going to do is put out

every couple of days, kind of a call for questions on Twitter. So you can follow me there at Matthew Collar or, you know, go to the Purple Insider site, shoot me an email from there, and I'll see if I can answer the question right now. I only tweeted this out maybe an hour ago and it already has 47 questions. So I'm going to go through these in multiple episodes and they'll be spliced in between our guests and between our conversations with Sam Ekstrom that happened a couple of times a week, Paul Hodowanek, Courtney Cronin, Chris Trapasso, you know, our consistent guests, but this is just going to be an addition. So a little more Vikings talk for you and I hope you enjoy it. So I have a Diet Dr. Pepper with me and I'm going to open that and then we'll

get going and start answering these questions. All right. Hopefully that wasn't the worst noise that anyone's ever heard on a podcast. Okay. I'm going to start off. This one comes from ale at ale strain. I'll try to read everybody's name. So you know that your question's being answered veteran edge guys that work on the 3-4, there are still a few of them like Jerry Hughes, Melvin Ingram, and Justin Houston out in the market. They should be really cheap, right? Yes. And last year, Melvin Ingram was really, really cheap and he signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers. They traded him to Kansas City and in the playoffs, he was putting pressure on Josh Allen and making plays

in the postseason and I don't really understand why Melvin Ingram wasn't more sought after last offseason or honestly why the Vikings didn't show interest in him maybe they felt like last year he wasn't so much of a scheme fit for them with the way that Mike Zimmer wanted to play. But there were also times where they avoided players because of scheme fit that maybe could have helped them. And Melvin Ingram was probably one of them. But you're right that these other guys that you're talking about, Justin Houston's been doing it for a long time. Jerry Hughes, I think, has played in both systems, but has been a very effective veteran

edge rusher. And as the Vikings get to a point where their salary cap has almost nothing left to work with, they're going to have to try to see who's left. And one thing that's really developed over the last couple of years is once the market goes dry, it goes dry. And if you don't have a job yet, if you're an NFL free agent, you're getting almost nothing. And the Vikings might be able to benefit from this. And there will be more questions about this as we go forward. But when you look at the Adam Thielen extension and just the accumulation of the way the Vikings have handled the off season, it's hard to argue that there's any sort of rebuilding element

of this. So they should be looking for these veteran players who are on their last legs, but also could be contributors. And some of the better deals of the last few years have happened late in free agency. So I think going after some of those guys to be rotational pass rushers is a good idea. The only thing I would caution against is just that, as we saw last year, if you're hoping for those players to be starters and give you a lot, like Sheldon Richardson or like Bashad Breeland, that's where you're looking for more of those backups or rotational players, or if it works, it's great.

If it doesn't, we're fine. That's where I think they are with the edge rushers. So I like that idea of trying to wait them out and seeing right before the season, if you can end up getting a cheap deal. So the pauses are me taking sips of diet, Dr. Pepper. Okay. Hmm. That's got, that's gotta be a terrible noise. I'll try to not do that. All right. From Adam West here is believing that you could get significantly more than ever out of a 34 year old quarterback whom your mentor couldn't even get more out of is it hubris or just coach speak to the public so talking about kevin o'connell and the vikings trying to get more out of kirk cousins and what he's referring to with the mentor is sean McVay in Washington. Now, one thing I would say for

Sean McVay in his favor, and then we'll talk about why it doesn't exactly apply to this is that cousins had the most productive offense he's had, or one of the most productive offenses he had in his entire career. When playing with Sean McVay in 2016, uh, that the Washington offense was very, very good. And in terms of passing expected points added, which tends to correlate to success, that was the only year where Cousins quarterbacked the team into the top. I'll check exactly what the number was. I think it might've even been top five, top seven. That was the only year that he's done that. Now they missed the playoffs that season. They had a very poor defense and there was a lot of playing from behind that year. As you guys kind of know the story with some of these statistics that they don't always tell you the exact truth when it comes to the box score you perform versus the situation. And so it was a similar, now this is

going back a while, 2016. Think about where you were in your life. They were fourth that year. Washington's offense was fourth in passing EPA in 2016. So if there's anything that you're kind of trying to hang on to a little bit with Kevin O'Connell can completely revamp Kirk Cousins and get much more out of him. I think that that's maybe something you're looking at is, Hey, when he was with McVay, that was their most productive passing offense of his career. And this type of offense has done that for multiple quarterbacks. Like Jared Goff is probably a good example there that there were years where Jared Goff was leading a good example there that there were years where Jared Goff was leading number one offenses and you know it's Jared Goff like we know that he's not

that transformational quarterback or even someone who can raise the level of a tanking team to have them even competing a little but I'm going to pull up a stat there that this is why you know analyzing stats can be so difficult because, uh, and I'll pull this up, but looking at Kirk cousins that year in 2016, uh, in terms of the playing from ahead, playing from behind that year, he threw 373 passes when trailing in 2016 and only 115 well-leading. And you won't be surprised that his quarterback rating was at its absolute peak when he was trailing. So there's always context to every type of statistic that you're looking for to try to

figure out, like, is there something there? Can it be better? But this is a pitfall of their decision is Kirk Cousins' age. And it's not something that we really think about a lot with Kirk Cousins because he's had such impressive health over the years, but I don't think health is necessarily the thing you're worried about. I mean, if you look at the trajectory from someone like Matt Ryan, who I think is a, a similar type of quarterback to Kirk Cousins, maybe not earlier in his career, but sort of late career Kirk Cousins. And in Matt Ryan's age 33 season, that's where, you know, you started to see age 34 season

is where you started to see the dip in his play, where he went from 2018. He's got 108 quarterback rating. He's throwing for over 300 yards a game. And then by the very next season, that quarterback rating dipped from 108 to 92. And he went from 35 touchdowns and seven picks. I know these are traditional stats. And like we just said, they don't always tell the story, but there was a big drop off. I mean, Matt Ryan led the league in time sacked in 2019. And then the last three years, Ryan has been a middling quarterback from age 34, 35, 36. And I think it's a legitimate question of the age of the quarterback and whether there is not a steep Peyton Manning type of hill to fall off of,

but maybe just even a dip in his play that you can scheme it up as great as you can scheme it up if you're Kevin O'Connell and they can add people to this offense. They could draft a receiver. They could still sign somebody. And yet it's just age comes for everybody. But trying to figure out when that's going to happen is pretty much impossible. I mean, we've seen quarterbacks play well into their forties. We've seen quarterbacks drop off in their early thirties and saying, Oh, I know he's going to

fade. I don't know. Um, is it hubris for them to think that they can get more out of cousins than anybody else did that? I would say it is. Um, there's some evidence to say that Sean McVay gets more out of quarterbacks, but the Vikings have had a system that has really worked for Kirk cousins. It really has. I mean, not, not all of the overall arching philosophy and the running the ball and everything else, but the way they've designed their pass game. When you have a quarterback who's at the top of the league and clean pocket passing and

in play action, passing and passer rating. I mean, that means you're drawing it up, right? That doesn't mean that the guy's just running around and making a bunch of crazy plays and bailing out his offensive coordinator. That means that the offensive coordinators, when they've passed the ball, have drawn it up pretty well in the past. I think that what they really need to focus on is just maximizing more passing with maintaining the efficiency, right? So like keeping that, usually when you pass more, your efficiency goes down. We saw that in 2018.

So passing more, but still being unpredictable and still maintaining the clean pocket and play action stuff. It's a very dicey thing. It's a very dicey thing, especially when they haven't given themselves much of a parachute by signing Jesse Davis at guard. He's kind of just a guy, and he's more of your Josh Klein, like he's not a disaster, but also not a difference maker. And so far, they haven't added any weapons. And I tend to always think it's the players who drive, you know, rises and falls in success more than changes in scheme, except for in extreme circumstances. And by the

way, I'm not going to answer every question that long, I promise you. But this will be multiple episodes. The questions that have been sent to me, I'll probably sit here and answer them all at once and then cut the episodes into a little shorter. So you're not listening to two straight hours of me just answering these questions. Uh, all right. This is from LFC may on Twitter. Uh, what's the biggest, uh, or what is the biggest could, Oh, I get it. What's the biggest, what could have been moment of the last decade, uh, can be draft injury game related. Um, Yeah, that's a good

question. I think the, what could have been moment, there's a couple of them that come to mind. The biggest one of the last decade for the Vikings is Teddy Bridgewater, because if Teddy Bridgewater doesn't go down in 2016, they are making the playoffs in 2016 and he's their starting quarterback through 2017. You can pretty much assume that the roster would have been what it was because the bones were there already. Now, does Anthony Barr still hurt Aaron Rodgers? You know, I don't know, but Teddy Bridgewater, what he's become now is he's going to be kind of a journeyman fringe backup starter, a Chris Chandler of sorts, if you will, but where he was trending was not what we see now. A guy who had to miss serious time, a guy who is not the same in terms of his mobility or from when I watch him, just not the

same in terms of his confidence that he was really growing in confidence heading into 2016. And he's a better quarterback than Keenum. You're talking about the same weapons, the same offense for Pat Shermer that was quarterback friendly. I mean, I'm not saying for sure that they go to the Super Bowl, but are you 14 and two that year? Do you beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Philly? Do you not get that interception from Case Keenum that swings that game? That's kind of the biggest one that comes to mind. The other one is in 2020, where you get through the 2019 season. I mean, I guess, actually, sorry to circle back, but Sam Bradford getting hurt is another

part of this too, because Sam Bradford also a more gifted quarterback than Case Keenum. But there was a debate back then, Is it, you know, it would Bradford have done as well as Keenum because Keenum was gutsy and all that stuff. But, um, but going into the 2020 season, the Vikings ownership decided to extend Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer. And then they decided that it was a good idea to extend Kirk Cousins, despite the fact that most of the roster was coming apart and that Stefan Diggs wanted to be traded. And when you think about if they had hit the reset button there

and said, all right, the group that was, you know, in the NFC Championship game a couple of years ago, it's over, folks. It's done. Like, they're all gone. And we need to change this whole thing around and not necessarily tank, but revamp this whole thing and start rebuilding for the future. And look, we need to do it with a new coach, a new GM that are a little fresher. And we're just

going to go all forward and say, this didn't work and a good day to you. Probably George Payton is your GM. I mean, you can almost guarantee that he's the current GM in Denver. Kevin Stefanski would be the coach. I almost guarantee that he would have been named the head coach and where it goes from there. I don't know, but that's the, what could have been is would they have drafted a quarterback that year? Does that quarterback turn out to be Justin Herbert in a trade up or do they end up drafting Jordan love or drew lock or I don't know, does, you know, a quarterback come available and want to come to Minnesota? I mean, it's, it's so hard to say

where that would have gone, but I think that it's one of the biggest, what could have bins of the last decade, especially where we sit now as the Vikings try to run it all back and do a lot of the same things again it's like you know just two years ago when a lot of players left on the roster which don't underrate the fact that that's true for this roster I was looking at the starting lineup for last year in week one. I mean, there's a lot of different faces. They're going to be on this defense again from last year to this year. It feels like a lot of it came apart. I mean, Everson Griffin is not here anymore. And Sheldon Richardson and Patrick Peterson and Michael Pearson, you can say, well, Hey, look, none of those guys, uh, Xavier Woods, none of

those guys played incredibly well. And that's true, but they're all NFL players and they were all graded at least a 60 by PFF. And so, you know, I mean, you can end up with your Jaleel Johnson type situations or a Fadi Adenabo where you have to turn it over to somebody and then they're just not really up to the task. And you're relying on the health of Z'Darrius Smith and you're relying on the health of Zedarius Smith and you're relying on development of corners or rookie corners. And so, you know, they're kind of repeating history a little bit when it comes to 2019 to 2020. Um, so that, yeah, I think those are the biggest two that come to mind. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of micro ones like, you know, what if this guy had worked

out or what if that draft bus hadn't happened? And you know, is it fair to say, what if this guy had worked out or what if that draft bus hadn't happened? And, you know, is it fair to say what if they had drafted Lamar Jackson in 2018 when he was on the board instead of Mike Hughes? I think that's in terms of a, what could have been, yeah, you would have been two years later, turning the ball over to one of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the NFL who was capable of winning an MVP. So. Folks, Minnesota sports teams are competing for the playoffs, and it's time to load up on your Minnesota sports-inspired gear from SodaStick. Use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER for 15% off your wildflower Marc-Andre Fleury design, or if you're excited for baseball, get your Fast as Buck Byron Buxton shirt or hoodie. Go to Sodaastick.com. Use the

promo code of purple insider for 15% off. Uh, all right. So this, uh, comes from, I'm just going to call him G he knows who he is. It's G and a bunch of numbers and letters, uh, with the reveal of the details of Adam Thielen's contract, I ask you this one simple question. What the bleep are we doing here? This never-ending kick of the can to make room for fringe players. Who is actually pulling the strings here? WTF? Sorry, that was three questions.

Well, G, the Thielen contract, let's talk about that for a second. I was poking around over the cap last night, and they loaded it in kind of as I was messing around with it to over the cap.com. If you've never played with it, I mean, it's really fun. There's lots of stuff you can do there. Look up everybody's contract, but also you can use the free agency tracker or you can kind of build your own team. You can restructure contracts.

And yeah, Jason from over the cap. I know I've mentioned him before on the show, but he's done just an incredible job at that site. Okay. So here's what we got for Adam Thielen's contract restructure this year. His cap hit is going to be 11.7 million, pretty manageable there, but next year it is set to be 19.9 million and if the Vikings were to cut him pre-June 1st they would take on a dead cap hit of 13.5 million and only create six and the next year 2024 if they cut him they would still take on a dead cap hit of 7 million and then there's a void year in 2025 when Adam Thielen is set to be 35 years old. Now, when you're talking about win now or rebuild, and that's been our whole timeline week of, you know, should they have tanked or should they have, you know, tried something

different with the quarterback or what is Kirk Cousins timeline? We've talked about all these things so far on timeline week, but this one is just out there. It's just out there. I mean, no matter how you feel about the direction that they're going, I mean, let's say you're happy with it. All right. Let's say that you think, and this is okay, that you think like, all right, well, last year didn't go so well because of coaching and they're going to change some things and they're going to run a lot of the same players back and they'll have a better offense and the NFC is down and they'll win more. Okay. All right. That's fine. Uh, and we'll see how that plays out. If that, that's not how I necessarily feel about what they've done so far, but I'll accept that

angle. Okay. Um, but you still can't tell me how this contract is. Okay. That's, that's one of the problems is the way that they've reworked these deals with Harrison Smith and Adam Thielen. We've kind of on the show sort of talked about, well, they've done this, they've done that and haven't gotten deep into the numbers because, you know, sometimes that's tough, like reading cap numbers, right? You guys really want me to read everyone's cap number? Maybe you do. But $19.9 million cap number next year, and they can probably change some bonus to base salary and do that whole deal,

or base salary to bonus to lower that cap number for next year. But the reality is, if Adam Thielen has a down season, and look, I mean, he's been a tremendous, tremendous player for them, but he's been hurt in two of the last three years. He averages 57 catches per season over the last three years. And anytime you're in your thirties, you're just taking your life in your hands with players. So if he struggles, if he hits like an Eric Decker wall, you can't cut him basically, unless you want to take on this huge dead cap. And that's what they did in some ways with Anthony Barr, where it was

set up to guarantee he was on the team for so long. And then when he got to one point where it would have really crushed them to cut him, they reworked the deal, add more void years, which are currently hurting the Vikings. This is where I just want to understand the logic of this thing, because he's not going to play under a cap number of $20 million in 2023. They'll make changes to that. But anytime you make changes, that does something to you down the road. And it's just at some point you have to get this thing organized to be able to spend on more than just Jesse Davis at right guard. You have to be able to fill these spots and maybe the long-term plan is to draft a quarterback, move on from cousins that will make it all okay. But if you're trying to win now and win next year, and that is like a mini window for you,

if that's the way you view it with Cousins in his final years of his contract, this does not make it easier if Adam Thielen has a fall off this year. And that's the whole point is they have made things more difficult if anything goes wrong. If Thielen is fantastic and catches 90 passes and 20 touchdowns and looks great as spry as ever then okay then you just change that cap number around next year but if he gets hurt again and he is slowed down a bit because again life just comes for you in your 30s in the n, there is no out of this thing without pain. And they have added extra pain anyway, in terms of the void year, because there's no real good way to change

that, um, eventually outside of another extension, but at 35, that's not happening. So, uh, your, your question is who's pulling the strings WTF. I mean,TF. I mean, there is certainly a feeling that ownership wants to keep the players who are popular. And I mean, this is a situation where once again, the agent really won against the Vikings, really won with this contract because it locks him in more or less for the next two years and gets him a lot of money for somebody who is still very good, but has become the clear number two.

Not the 1A, but the clear number two to Justin Jefferson. All right. This comes from CJ. CJ McCauley, I think it's pronounced. A longtime supporter of the show. Appreciate you, CJ. Matthew, please craft a pie chart. Please craft a pie chart of four-ish categories of Vikings fans that they fall into based on your observations and social media interactions and then assign appropriate percentages.

Can't wait to see the results. Well, for one, everybody is different in their fandom. So let me say that first. I'm being asked to do this, and so I will do this. But I do want to say that everyone has their own story of why they root for this team and what it means to them. So there are people that I've met who are longtime Vikings fans who grew up this way. And every single year, they think that this year is their year. And you'll see a lot of people make fun of that, but I would not make fun of that. Because it's meaningful to them in that they've always gotten to the fall or to the training camp and with their family and their friends always got excited about

the Vikings and always hoped for the next year to turn out to be the one that they finally win a Superbowl. They finally achieved that goal that they've been waiting for so long. And I'm not going to make fun of that. I mean, that is, I mean, sometimes it's, you know, a little irrational. Of course, if you go into a season where you end up 13 or three and 13 and thought that you were going to win the Superbowl, yeah, it's, it's irrational, but, um, cheering for things is usually irrational anyway. Right. So, uh, I want to say everybody's got their own story.

There are people who follow the Vikings who are from Minnesota, but they love the puzzle of it all. They love the schemes. They love the free agency, the draft, and, and of it all. They love the schemes. They love the free agency, the draft, and that's how they engage with the sport. And I think that's what makes it so great is that there's something for everybody when it comes to football. So again, I just want to say that if I'm categorizing sports fans, I mean, it's not really fair, but it is interesting to kind of talk about that. I think that, uh, there's probably, probably a quarter of the fan base that, um, pays attention

on a very like, Oh, is the game on type of level, right? Uh, where they're going to watch on Sunday and they're going to talk about it at the water cooler, but that's kind of it. And then there's a much bigger chunk. I don't know what to call it. Maybe I'll just have to break it into quarters here because an on the spot pie chart is difficult, but there's probably another quarter that will just defend the Vikings to the death. And they know every single player and they know every single thing that's going on all the time. And I mean, these are the people who get really irritated when Alexander Hollins is the last cut. Like, what are they doing? The people, the people who as much as, as much as

like defend them, but also live and die with everything that they do. I think that's probably 25%. And I think it's, you know, maybe another quarter of the people who I was talking about that really loved the study of a team and even more so than putting on, you know, the Viking helmet or whatever else. They like to just talk about, you know, the NFL and how the Vikings should win and those types of things. And then I've left 25% more that I'm not sure what to do with exactly. But, you know, I think that you're sort of implying that maybe it's just other is the other 25%. But I think that like with the question

implying a little bit that some people can be just really crazy and really aggressive about this team. I just, I don't, I mean, if 20% is other than 5% is people who get really, really wired up about it and go nuts. Uh, so, um, yeah, I think that every fan base probably breaks into this, this type of way, but what's unique about Minnesota. And we mentioned this on a show the other day, is just that this is a region where people are from Minnesota a lot of times. And it's not like I was in Seattle once I was talking to some people in Seattle about their sports landscape. They're like, yeah, everybody's kind of a fan of a lot of different teams. Like they're popular, of course, like the Seahawks and their fans and everything else.

But you get a lot of people from a lot of different places. This person is from there. This person's from there. Minnesotans are usually from Minnesota, not myself, but a lot of them are not all of us in the media. But, um, and so I think that there's that, there's that very, very deep connection with the team that, uh, I think is one of the reasons that on a Wednesday in March, I can throw out there, hey, you guys got any questions? And I get 50 in like a half an hour because there's a lot of care about this team. So, okay. Let's go to JRM531, ask this. It's been an odd off season from a fan writer point of view, but from an owner standpoint, does it make more sense?

Like an experiment, you need a control. If KOC and KMS, Kevin O'Connell and Kweisi Adafl-Mensa are the experiment, perhaps keeping a competitive roster is the control. How many wins per season can coaching give you alone? That could be how they look at it, that Mike Zimmer was the bad man for last year.

And at times he certainly was. You can listen to my old shows that are questioning a lot of things that Mike Zimmer did. But I also think that if you could take the same roster from last year and give it to Jim Harbaugh, who I consider to be the best coach in the league, Bill Belichick, I don't know, like Harbaugh's a little better with the game management and stuff or Sean McVay, just, you know, pick your top five quarterback that ever, or I'm sorry, pick your top five coach that everybody agrees on. Okay. And then put them

on the Minnesota Vikings. Are they in the playoffs? Like, Yes, they are. If Sean McVay is the coach, if Jim Harbaugh is the coach, John Harbaugh is the coach, then yes, they are in the playoffs. And heck, I mean, if Jim Harbaugh is the coach, they're probably in the playoffs too. Zimmer did not do a great job last year. The problem is you don't get to run it all back. And you don't get to have the same performances. Kirk Cousins, at the beginning of last season played absolutely great football and they didn't win those games. I mean, you can't just like get those back. Uh, he'll play great football, I'm sure for other games, but you can't

just say, Hey, remember in Arizona when you had a 87 PFF grade and you threw for whatever number of yards and this and that. Well, he'll just do that again because we're just copy and pasting onto this year. Like it doesn't work that way. And on the defensive side, there's a lot of places on this defense where you go, this is actually worse than last year. Now, whoever plays for Brashad Breeland, fine. But you know, whoever plays for Patrick Peterson has to be as good as he was last year. Cam Bynum has to be as good as Xavier Woods. And, well, Zimmer made a lot of mistakes in different areas with the offense, with Kirk Cousins, with game management was probably the biggest criticism along with a leadership issue on defense. They still, uh, we're scheming them up on third downs and getting off the field on third downs. And they created a ton of sacks last year. Um, you'll forgive me for

just looking things up during the show. Usually I look it up before, cause I know the topic, but in this case, um, kind of going on the fly with these questions, but last year they were able to create, and a lot of this was scheme because they weren't winning one-on-ones, a ton of sacks. The second most in the league, 51 sacks last year. And I mean, even when you look at their passing EPA against how they played against the pass, they were 15th. They were not horrendous.

They were horrendous against the run, but they were not overall by the were horrendous against the run but they were not overall by the epa horrendous against the pass so they have to repeat that result they can't be worse against the pass this year than they were last year or the defense is going to be worse so that's my point is that it isn't it isn't a control they might think that and i think that's an astute question by you but it's not it's not the same situation and as we mentioned these players are a year older and every year changes your life in football and it changes who you are as a player for the future anytime you get into your late 20s and early 30s and then beyond and so you know even if Kevin O'Connell coaches better than Mike Zimmer, which is very possible,

it just doesn't guarantee different results. So I think that if that's their way of thinking, it's got a lot of flaws to it. It isn't a control. It isn't a proof that it was Zimmer's fault or not Zimmer's fault. There is a lot to improve on there, but how many wins that's worth, how many wins coaching can give you alone? Well, here's the way I think about that. The best coaches in the league are probably giving you multiple wins per season over the average coach. And the worst in the league are probably taking away multiple wins per season. If you had Matt Patricia, if you had Joe Judge,

you're losing two, three games, just based on the fact that you have those guys, anything in the margins though, anything in the middle, anything between the 10th and the 20th best coach in the league. I just don't think there's a huge gap there. Uh, okay. this comes from Al Notano, N-O-T-I-N-O, at Al Notano on Twitter. Do you think the Vikings will start the season with Sean Mannion and Kellen Mond as QB2 and QB3, or will they try to find a better backup in case Kirk Cousins ever misses a game? That is a good question. I believe it will be Sean Mannion and Kellen Mond.

Do you know why? Because they have no money. It's really that. There was another question that was asked in the Friday Mailbag last week of, why do they keep bringing back Sean Mannion? Like, what is their problem? This guy can't play. Like, oh yeah, they know.

I mean, they know that they can't start Sean Mannion for five or six games or the season is over. And again, as always, respect to the journeyman quarterback. But they have no money. and backup quarterbacks cost money. Once again, I'll be looking up something here, but I mean, just to even look at Teddy Bridgewater and what he brought in the free agent market Bridgewater, I think at this point in his career is clearly a, a Ryan Fitzpatrick type that you're not paying a whole heck of a lot of money. And he's just, you know, going to be your, you know, your, your bridge guy or your backup. Okay. But he's still going to make $6 million or $8 million of trying to find his contract 6.5. He's making $6.5 million as a backup quarterback. I mean, Nick Foles is making $10 million as a

quarterback. Mason Rudolph is making four. Um as a backup quarterback mason rudolph is making four um you know what did marcus mariota make last year let's see if i could pull that up as sort of the best of the best backup quarterback um mariota is as good as you could get and with the raiders what was he making 3.5 that's actually a really good deal for them last year uh that he was only making that or what was his cap hit? Yeah, 3.5. In 2020, it was 9, though. And if you're looking to sign someone who's a very competent backup quarterback, normally it's going to cost a couple mil.

And they just don't really have that to spend on a backup quarterback, so they have to trust that Sean Mannion is going to be able to hold down a single game. The problem is that last year they asked him to hold down a single game against the number one seed in the NFC on the road in the winter. Not exactly what you're looking for. If Sean Mannion plays the Lions at home in October, I think you can win a game with them. Having seen a lot of Sean Mannion in training camp. You probably can, but not in those other circumstances. Now, Kellen Mond, though, is another interesting part of this conversation because, I mean, can he show something in training camp? Like bringing back Sean Mannion says that even the new regime does not feel like there's much there to work with and they need somebody else

as a just in case. But the biggest jump always comes from the rookie year to year two in any player's career. And if Kellen Mond has gone in this off season, knowing what he has to do to get better, is it possible he could win the backup job? Yeah, I think so. But Sean Manning is so similar in like the poorest of poor man's versions of Kirk Cousins that usually teams like to have someone who is similar as the backup quarterback and so Mond is going to have to win that job he's going to start his QB3 and he's going to have to win it last year he was so far behind the the eight ball in training camp and in preseason. It's just really, really tough to say, oh yeah, this is like your future guy. Or even this is your future backup because you have to be able to trust them to operate the offense in a single game.

So, you know, I don't think that they'll try to get a better backup. It's possible if Mannion looks really bad in camp and so does Mond. But I think that that's probably where you're at with the backup quarterback. And it's weird how just in football, everybody always wants to have that backup that at least they can maybe think about like, oh, is this guy something or what could he be or whatever? Or, hey, we love this guy, this Frank Reich or what case Keenum was. He could come in and he can win games for us. Unfortunately, you really have neither. Um, let's see.

So this comes from, uh, J R G underscore 2154. I want to be intentional with my question. Very funny. J R G. Uh, there, uh, are there examples of teams who did a competitive rebuild? Um, I think so. Now that is, that's a different question from that worked, right? Uh, you know, clearly the Atlanta Falcons did a competitive rebuild,

but it didn't work with Matt Ryan. They tried to hang on for dear life. They tried to draft Kyle Pitts instead of Justin Fields. And look, I don't know if Justin Fields will be good or not, but I can tell you which one of those two players will have a bigger impact if they're good. And it's not Kyle Pitts. So, you know, they did a lot of win now stuff. They changed their coach and they believed, oh, it was the bad man, Dan Quinn. He was just a bad coach. It was his fault.

We just have to bring in an offensive guy who runs the boots. And Arthur Smith, you know, just lost a bunch last year and, and they won seven overall, but had like a minus hundred something point differential. They were very bad team last year and they're going to be a very bad team again. And they ultimately had to live in reality. The Cincinnati Bengals come to mind too, that where they tried to transition out of a lot of those players that they had drafted in the Marvin Lewis era with Andy Dalton and try to transition to new players.

And if you look at their draft history, you totally get what happened. They hit on a ton of draft picks, and tell me if this sounds familiar, and then all of a sudden didn't. The well went dry with hitting on draft picks, and suddenly Marvin Jones left, you know, a bunch of other good players left or got old and they tried to hold it all together with Andy Dalton, but it was Andy Dalton. And they just sort of slipped slowly down the mountain. Now the Baltimore Ravens sort of tried to do this in late Joe Flacco and then drafted Lamar Jackson. And that was really the change that they were not a great team in the later years of Joe Flacco and tried to sort of competitive rebuild where they would add players in the off season, fill needs in the draft. I mean, remember they drafted a tight end before they picked Lamar Jackson. So clearly they were not thinking, oh, we're going

to go into this draft and get our future quarterback. They just sort of fell backward into it. But aside from that, I mean, the Vegas Raiders have been trying a competitive rebuild for a while. The whole Khalil Mack trade was kind of that where it was, you know, we're not going to completely tank because we have Derek Carr, but we're going to move this big asset. And that's more competitive rebuildy. Like this Thielen contract today coming out, it's like, this isn't competitive rebuilding at all. The Tennessee Titans have sort of been brought up. You know, they, they changed quarterbacks

to Ryan Tannehill, and then they were able to stack some players. They hit big time in the draft with AJ Brown. And that was a major part of it. They were able to build a really good offensive line, have a, you know, amazing running back in Derrick Henry that was a major part of it. They were able to build a really good offensive line, have a, you know, amazing running back in Derrick Henry that could be the center of their offense, sort of rebuilt that defense to be very good last year. That, I guess you could call that competitive rebuild, but they were competitive before as like a nine win team. And then we're able to get a little bit farther because their quarterback play was competent with Ryan Tannehill, as opposed to, you know, very mediocre with Marcus Mariota. Aside from that, I mean, a lot of teams have tried it. That's the thing I would say is a lot of teams have tried it.

And if you're asking if it works, that's a much harder question. Detroit 2020 comes to mind for this of a team that attempted to, you know, sign some players in the off season, give Matt Patricia another chance, things like that. Um, you know, New England has kind of done this. You could call it with New England where they took a bit of a step back with Cam Newton, but even signing Cam Newton was a, we're going to stay competitive type of move because they could have played Jared Stidham and won two games. And then they draft Mac Jones, which is a rebuild the thing to do signs of free agents, competitive rebuild. So it does, it does exist. Um, you know, it's, it's not like the Eminem or I guess it's like the Eminem and Santa Claus commercial is like,

he does exist. Like, yeah, it does exist. It's just that your team isn't doing it. I mean, they're not doing any rebuilding. They're just trying to win this year by all of their moves. And we'll see how that plays out. And we'll evaluate that as we go along. Okay. This comes from Lambo moon on Twitter. If you could travel back in time and prevent the Vikings from doing one and only one certain move during the Zimmer era, which one would it be not making them do something that they miss like drafting the homes. Ooh, that's a very good one.

So it has to be something that they actually did. Well, I think the cousins extension in 2020 is probably the right answer, except for don't have Teddy practice that day. That might be another one, but I mean, even if we look at Cousins and everyone likes to make everything that's said about Cousins just entirely about him, but it's always within

the context of who they are and what they've done since that you cannot argue that extension worked. You missed the playoffs back to back years. It's just like a, it's just, you can't say that it did not work. He played well and you still missed the playoffs. It did not work. I think that if you decide to give yourself flexibility with the cap, not lock into that cap hit. And remember the way that that thing was structured was to give his lowest cap hit in 2020 when they were doing their most rebuilding on the defense. And then in 2021, it goes up. So they

sign all these players, but it was harder to compete for free agents. And that's why they missed out on a lot of them and ended up having to sign the bottom barrel guys. So they didn't even really structure that contract to work. Even if you were to argue that keeping cousins was the right move there. And maybe there's a case for that. You still can't argue that the structure of that contract worked. That's that is by far the most obvious one, but there's, there are other ones that are just, they get brought up a lot, but they're funny. I mean, trading for a kicker slash punter is just like, I would prevent them from doing that. I wish they had walked over to me at training camp and asked, should we trade for a kicker slash

punter? Like, no guys, no, you shouldn't. Should we trade for Chris Herndon? No, no, no. They, I'm telling you, they need a director of somebody who can tell them. No, you know, here's like, should we do this? This sounds like a good idea to us. No, nope. Don't do that. But yeah, that's the most obvious one, you know, trading for Yannick Ngakwe. Here's another one is not trading players amidst the 2020 season at the trade deadline. They traded Ngakwe and then they held on to everyone else because they won a game in Green Bay and thought that it was bad luck that they had gone one in five and deluding themselves has become sort of the definition of what this team has become. All right.

So there's our first. We got to call this something. Just fans only because there's the only fans. I shouldn't know what that is. But fans only is what we'll call it. Fans only episodes. And we're going to do, I want to do a lot of them over this off season. And I hope that we can even continue into the season. And I feel silly that I didn't think of this before. So these

were great, great questions. I really enjoyed them. I have dozens more to get to. You can tweet them at Matthew Collar, uh, go to purple insider.com. You can email me questions there. I will try to get to all of them as we go along. Um, and we'll put out episodes. It'll be about, about 35, 40 minutes long. Like this one, this one's a little excessive, but, um, I like this. I like this style. And I really like these questions. I mean, as you heard, all of these questions are either really fun or very interesting. And, uh, so we're going to keep doing that on a regular basis. I hope you enjoy it. I would love your feedback. Uh, if you could send me a note, whatever DM, Twitter, email,

whatever you want to do. And, uh, we'll talk to y'all later. I'm purple insider.