Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - FansOnly: Was it worth it, what the Vikings gave up to get Dallas Turner?

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Matthew Coller takes some time to answer a bunch of your Vikings questions, including whether the haul the team gave up to get Dallas Turner was worth it? Why so many receivers in camp? Will the CB play improve this year? And so much more...See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Coller here, and this is another fans only episode where I take the questions that you guys have sent me and we talk about them. So if you want to get on one of these episodes, best way to do it is to send me an email, Matthew Coller at Gmail, very simple there, Or shoot me a note on Twitter at Matthew collar. Just send me a DM. My DMS are open and I would be happy to get you on the show. Also, if you sign up for the newsletter, Purple Insider dot football, I do a weekly

Friday mailbag there as well. You can get involved with that again. Purple Insider dot football. Great way to support the show as well So let's dive right into this with our first question here. And also I want to do a lot of these in the offseason There's a lot of space to talk. There's not as much news Which means there's a lot of discussion to be had with you guys and anything you want me to talk about Great way to do it is these episodes so first question

comes from at Asa Arnold for says do you think that the Vikings are really capitalizing on their assets with the Dallas Turner trade costing roughly a top five pick worth of assets especially now with the Van Ginkle resigning, even if Turner ends up being really good, I feel like Minnesota is hedging their bet too much. So I want to start out with just one thing about Dallas Turner, that yes, technically speaking, they did send a equivalent to a top five draft pick worth of assets to get Dallas Turner, but we have to remember that the main reason that they traded from the second round up to the first round last year was so they would have enough to make sure they got a quarterback. They didn't do that to get Dallas Turner. It wasn't we'll go up to the second round then move up or go up from the second to the first then up in the first just to get this one edge player. It was let's make sure that if there's any chance to move up and get Drake May or Jaden Daniels, I don't know which one they were targeting, but

clearly they were trying to trade up with the New England Patriots to get to the number three overall pick that there was no secret that they were trying to do that. And the other part was to that if they had to move up to get JJ McCarthy to make sure they got their quarterback, they needed to be able to do that. And the other part was too, that if they had to move up to get JJ McCarthy to make sure they got their quarterback, they needed to be able to do that. They could not come away from last year's draft without a quarterback. If that had happened. Well, it turns out it wouldn't have been as big of a disaster as we would have thought because of how good Sam Darnold was. But at the time, J. McCarthy say gone to the New York Giants. They would have needed to make sure that they didn't lose out on a quarterback. They would have had to have trade up to try to get Michael Pennex or the other way around.

If Pennex had gone to the Giants or another team had jumped up. They needed to have a trump card in their back pocket to make that move. So we can't lose that perspective. When we talk about Dallas Turner that the Vikings actually lucked into having JJ McCarthy right there. No other teams trying to trade up ahead of them, even though some of those teams and especially the Giants probably could have used one of those quarterbacks rather than picking

Malik neighbors. Not that I'm down on that pick, but we have to remember the context of it rather than just saying, well, look at all these assets that went'm down on that pick, but we have to remember the context of it rather than just saying, well, look at all these assets that went into that one draft pick. And then they did use some assets to move up from, was it 22, 23, whatever it was,

to number 17 to take Dallas Turner. But when we look at Brian Flores' defense, keeping Van Ginkle, that's only a one-year extension, by the way. It's not a five-year extension. It's not a five year extension. It's not like they've locked in that position forever, but where they are right now in this two year window, how could they give up on Andrew Van Ginkle and let him hit free agency or

even let that negotiation start next year where if he has another great season, you could be looking at him pricing his way right out of Minnesota. If he had a phenomenal season, double digit sacks, a couple more pick sixes to his name, then it might be 30, 32 million dollars to get Andrew van Ginkle by the time you hit next year's free agency. So doing it now, they have been very savvy in making sure that they do some of these deals early like Josh Mattelis, Christian Derrisaw, now Van Ginkle get the money in the guy's pocket, he's happy to be loved,

and also down the road the Vikings end up saving some money. But Van Ginkle's role does not take away from Dallas Turner's role in my mind. They should be ultimately similar as Dallas Turner continues to develop. But what you're looking for when you draft Dallas Turner is not a one-year, two-year player. You're looking for somebody to be on your team for a decade when you draft a guy of that talent who was often mocked in the top 10 in the draft by most analysts last year and somebody who was so young when you took them like think about Dan, uh, Dan, Danille Hunter, for example, when they drafted Danille Hunter, he was 20 years old and with Dallas Turner, he was one of the younger people

in that draft last year at 21 years old. Look how long Danille Hunter was a Minnesota Viking. That's what you're hoping for with Turner. So with Van Ginkle, yes, he is in the way of Dallas Turner, technically speaking right now for this year and next year, but that doesn't mean you can't play Dallas Turner. If you look at the Jahad Ward snaps last year and the Patrick Jones snaps last year, they add up to about 900 snaps. There is plenty of opportunity on a defense that is constantly rotating players in for Turner to take a big next step toward ultimately reaching

his prime whenever whether it's this year next year, the year after that. A lot of these players who come in at 20, 21 years old. It is three, four years before they reach that pinnacle. Normally there is a big step and that's what we're looking for. And if he doesn't take that then that does become problematic of what they gave up to move up and to get him in the draft. But I think we're going to see plenty of Dallas Turner and Andrew Van Ginkle and Jonathan Grenard. The other point is too that last year Van Ginkle and Grenard were unbelievably healthy.

I mean they played two of the highest snap counts in the entire NFL. There is a chance that one of them gets banged up this year. They both came in last year with some injuries and if anything crops up, then you have Dallas Turner to be able to slide into that spot. So if he's not there, he's still rotating in because that's the Patrick Jones type of roll that they use all the time. Even on a second down and long, that's a pass rushing type of roll. Plus they were working him in a little bit on the inside as well. And we know the mad scientist of Brian Flores, he's going to move guys all over the place. So Van Ginkle might be the middle linebacker and Turner coming off the edge with all three of them on the field. The point just being that I think

a lot of people want to judge the Dallas Turner draft pick based on what they saw last year. And to me, we're not even close to that. I think it's probably going to take three years to really have an understanding of what he is with looking for progress this year. And you might say, well, look, if it takes three years for him to become a great player, then they spent too much. But I would say look around the league.

That's how it often goes when you draft younger players, but you're not just looking for him to be here for a couple years and make an impact right away and then, you know, go on his way. You're also realizing that Van Ginkle is 30 years old, 31 years old. Like he's going to probably, you know, not be a Minnesota Viking forever. So yeah, I still think that that draft pick is fine. And if you're doing the redraft thing, you can always finagle some way for your team to be right or team to be wrong when it comes to these decisions. But if they feel that Turner has franchise player potential,

he just needs more experience, he needs to put on weight, he needs to learn a little bit more about how to beat offensive tackles in the NFL. If he gets there, I think we know this that his ceiling is still extremely high. So let's play it out first before we do revisionist history just now and say, well, they didn't handle their assets well, or they didn't do enough on that. I just want us to give it time. And I also don't want every single game that Dallas Turner isn't a beast

to then come back to they gave up everything to get him and we just don't need to do that. Even if he turns out to not be the mega star edge rusher and he just becomes a good player for you. Well a lot of draft picks become nothing for you so I'm not always going to go back a million times. I know that's what we love doing because there's so much obsession over the draft. Why don't we just judge the player as the player and then we can look back on the decision as a as a separate thing. What he's bringing to the team matters the most at this moment and then we can always do the revision history thing, but I just can't stand it when we do

this with a player over and over. They spent this he was this pick He was that pick and meanwhile there will be guys who are sixth round picks that become great players like Josh Mattel is I just it's the draft. It's weird. I Don't think we need to put it all on Dallas Turner of they made this decision He didn't make that decision for them and I know we're playing GM made this decision. He didn't make that decision for them. And I know we're playing GM. Maybe this isn't the rant I need to be making because I'll never convince people to do that. But the draft status just seems to be an obsession when it comes to evaluating these players.

And that drives me crazy. Okay, so let's go to the next question, which is from smart guy Ryan on Twitter says, uh, why do the Vikings always sign 30 receivers going into training camp because they need their quarterbacks to throw a lot of footballs. And if you have Justin Jefferson run every route and Jordan Addison run every route, then those guys get tired and you don't want them to get tired when it comes to OTAs, mini camp, training camp.

It's just about getting reps out there. If you want JJ McCarthy to throw 500 passes a day, they can't throw 500 passes to Jalen Naylor, Jordan Addison, and Justin Jefferson. And you also want to give those guys day days off and be able to rest them when they need it and have other people rotating in. That's why they call it a camp body. Like that's what a lot of these guys are.

The other part of it is every once in a while you find a diamond in the rough. And we have definitely seen that in the past with a guy named Adam Thielen, but also even Chad Bebe ended up making the team and making some plays for the Minnesota Vikings. He was one of those randos that they brought in. I think he had something like 25 catches in his senior year and a handful of punt returns, but he had a short area quickness that actually translated pretty well to what they wanted to do on offense. And every once in a while, it's really hard to know that too. By just watching college tape, just looking at college numbers, who is actually going to translate to the NFL because it's a different game.

Sometimes it's based a lot more on who can get to the right landmarks correctly. Who has the quick enough feet to create this much separation? Who tracks the football down the field? Who had bad quarterback play in college? And then all of a sudden, now that they have good quarterback play, they're a good player that happens all the time as well. So take a bunch of swings, bring a bunch of guys in, see if you've got anything there most of the time you don't, but every so often a kid from Mankato shows

up and makes plays and becomes one of the better you don't, but every so often, a kid from Mankato shows up and makes plays and becomes one of the better receivers in team history. So you never know. I think it's always a good idea to bring in players at all positions if you can, but wide receiver, I think is one that's pretty hard to evaluate because it's not a pure physical skill type of position. So if you look at defensive tackle,

there's just a price of admission must be unless you're John Randall most of the time. It's must be this tall must be this wide must be this fast, but that's not always the case for wide receivers. That's not to say Adam Thielen wasn't fast, but he wasn't a four-two guy or something like that. A lot of times it comes down to details. The best receivers in the league, the Justin Jeffersons, the Jordan Addison, the Stefan Diggs of the past,

a lot of it was footwork, ball tracking, route running, things like that, that aren't necessarily just height, speed, weight, that kind of stuff. And not knowing who's gonna emerge because of that makes it worthwhile to throw a bunch of names at the wide receiver core and see if anything sticks Next question comes from aoke five Chuck my friend Chuck aoke Says Shaq Griffin and Stefan Gilmore graded in the mid 60s by PFF last year solid but not spectacular

by PFF last year, solid but not spectacular. Cornerback has been a big question. Is it fair to suggest that, well, the play could certainly dip? It's also well within the realm of possibility that it improves as well. It's not like they lost prime Daryl Rivas. Yeah, I think that that's very reasonable to say. The big difference is that the guys that they're replacing,

or that are replacing Stephonmour and Shaq Griffin, are a lot less experienced than those two. So Stefan Gilmour had been the MVP of the league and one of the best players of the last decade, and Shaq Griffin had played a ton of football. And now you're talking about bringing in, in their spots, at least the way we're projecting it right now. Mackay Blackman has one year in the NFL and then that was just 2023. He's missed an entire year due to an ACL and Isaiah Rogers has never played a full-time role before.

He has over 500 snaps one time in his career. Last year. He was a rotational and fill-in player for the Philadelphia Eagles, but the sample size is just not super big. The amount of experience is not enormous for Isaiah Rogers as being an actually starting outside cornerback. He has just been a rotational player, which doesn't mean he can't do it. It just means that these are harder to project.

I liked a lot of what we saw from the Kai Blackman in 2023, but it just becomes harder to project when we're talking about 400 something snaps versus someone like Stefan Gilmore who knows everything and anything about the National Football League. You can put any scheme. He could show up at the end of training camp, step out there week one, do a great job against the New York Giants.

That's a different caliber of football mind and football experience than we're talking about with these other corners. And that even goes into the depth as well, which I think is why a lot of people have talked about wanting to get another corner in the room because Dwight McClothern hasn't played. Jeff Okuda has some playing experience, but it hasn't been very good. So far in his career, there's just more variance there.

But when we talk about the raw skill, I don't know what Shaq Griff, while Shaq Griffin still fast, probably because he ran under a 4-4 when he came out. But Stephon Gilmore, I don't know what he would have been running for a 40-yard dash last year, but I promise you it was not what he ran when he came out in the draft. Isaiah Rogers was a 4-3 guy when he came out. There's more raw speed there and that might make up for some other issues or just getting used to a new defense and Mackay Blackman was not an athletic freak when he was drafted but again we're talking about younger legs for sure than the other two guys which may hold up a little bit better as the season goes along.

I think what that stat really tells you though is that in Flores's system he's creating pressure so often and forcing quarterbacks to throw short so often that the corners do not have to be dominant freakish players with seven well okay so Byron Murphy did get six interceptions but I was gonna say with seven picks and with 15 pass breakups and playing man- man one-on-one against every single team's best wide receiver, I think the cornerback position in the old Belichickian type of defense where they had a keep to leave and Revis at one point, right? Revis and definitely Stefan Gilmore.

That was a little bit different of a defense than what Brian Flores is doing now. And I think it covers a little bit for the corners or makes life a little bit. If you can get it, if you can master it and you know where you're supposed to be, life is not as hard as if you're playing a cover three where you got to be Island out with some wide receiver one on one and playing man coverage all over the field anywhere the guy goes That's a lot tougher than what they do here So if you do perform just average or a little above average the defense can still be in the top five

With this secondary, but it's a question and it's going to continue to be a question until we see it Succeed out on the field just because these guys have not really truly done it before. Next question comes from Skoldok. Are you concerned with the Vikings run defense stepping back in 2025 and if yes, does it matter? Well, based on who they're playing, they will not perform as well against the run. That's a promise because you are playing the best teams at running

the football and the entire NFL this year on your schedule, Detroit, Philadelphia, the Baltimore Ravens, these guys are going to run and Lamar Jackson, Jalen hurts. You have running quarterbacks. Uh, Jaden Daniels is also on the Viking schedule as well. And just by proxy of that and the Green Bay Packers twice, you know, they're going to run Josh Jacobs a lot. It's going to be hard to rank as high. Not only that, but I thought Jonathan Buller did a phenomenal job

for what his role was as being that run stuffer and Brian Flores has got his work cut out a little bit for how much he's going to have to adjust Along that defensive line to having J von Hargrave and having Jonathan Allen How often are they both on the field together? Are they mixing in other guys like Jalen Redmond who was very good against the run or even? Takita Imani who was also a nose tackle type a big giant gap stuffer Are they going to use somebody like that? I was trying to make a 53 man roster, which I'll do a podcast on at some point.

And I was having trouble filling out that defensive tackle room and getting all the young guys into it and still keeping it to 53 players, just because there's a lot of them that are competing for different spots. But outside of time, Manny, who is a young player, has almost not played any football at all, but he is that run stuffer, big beast type. Levi Drake Rodriguez is more of a guy who has a reputation as going after the passer, but maybe that becomes part of his role

and maybe you're just mixing and matching to some extent to try to stuff the run a little better. I do think that they're sacrificing some of that ability to stop the run to have a huge gain in getting after the quarterback. It's not, it's also not that Allen and Hargrave can't do it at all. You're not talking about two guys who just if they try to run they're going to go, I quit. You're not talking about two guys who just if they try to run, they're going to go. I quit. Although Alan and Hargraves numbers by PFF did drop, but we also don't know their assignments because sometimes the teams will tell their defensive tackles.

Hey, you know, you stop the run on the way to the quarterback. So it's all about just doing whatever you can do early in after the snap to try to chase the passer. And if it's a play action, then you're trying to get a sack. And if it's a handoff, the guy might run by you and you're hoping your linebackers make the place and that is a just a one particular way to go about it. The Vikings might do that a little bit differently, and they might also have to just rely a little more on their linebackers to make those tackles

and Harrison Phillips to do his job as well. But I don't think there's any question that it's going to drop back because of the opponents. How much it matters is the other point. Here's what we know. Teams that run the football, they have an edge. And if you can just lean on somebody hand off hand off hand off It can get pretty frustrating to watch on the defensive side at the same time Even when Philly did that remember two years ago in Philadelphia

The was that the Deandre Swift game where he went off against them even then it wasn't the most impressive performance by Philadelphia's offense because they had to rely on five yard gain, six yard gain. Now with Saquon Barkley in the backfield, then you're gonna be a little more concerned. But even then, it's hard to just lean on a run game the whole game. They will have to pass, and that's where the Vikings are looking for big plays,

sacks, interceptions, which they've been excellent under Brian Flores. This is going to be a hard schedule. It is not going to be easy for this defense. That's why they went out and got those guys, but maybe just a little adjustment in how they're asked to play could mitigate some of the drop off. But if they went from a top top run defense to staying in the top 10, probably not that much of an impact unless it really falls off the table.

It's still a passing league is going to get you where you want to go, and the better you can stop the pass, the more turnovers you can cause, the more sacks you can cause, that's going to, I think, outweigh the sacrifice of giving up some against the run. Let's go to at progressive sale. Should the Vikings consider a post June 1 trade for Jalen Ramsey or any other splash edition before the season? So this offseason has been by far the most active from the Minnesota Vikings that I have covered since I got here in 2016. They have done everything.

I mean, even the draft, they didn't make a bunch of trades go crazy, but it was still interesting enough for the decisions that they made and they made additions that they can plug in and play at left guard and even at that death wide receiver spot. But you look at the free agency and all the things they did, the trade also for Jordan Mason the Resignings of Aaron Jones and Byron Murphy keeping those guys around I don't know what more we can ask the Minnesota Vikings to do here. It's almost like they have Provided you with those those hits of excitement with so many moves. You're like do more stuff

Come on. Why aren't you doing more stuff? It's been so much fun to watch you do stuff. You'd sign and players making trades, acquiring people. We can debate it. Oh, Aaron Rodgers is in the mix. That was crazy. I'm not saying that was that fun, but it's been a very, very eventful. I mean, how many weeks have we even had in the off season since free agency started and even felt like before that because there was the lead up with Sam Darnold where we haven't had something going on to talk about.

But I think that the line has probably been drawn on the off season. I could be wrong. They could always surprise me with the Jalen Ramsey trade. I think the roster is the roster though for now and maybe you bring in one extra corner or you wait to see through the spring how you feel about it. And then if you don't really love how it looks maybe you bring in a guy before training camp or even what they did last year, which was had an injury early in camp brought

in a veteran to see how he looked. They didn't love it. They went out and got Stefan Gilmore. That could be like a Mike Hilton, who I believe is still a free agent or some other guys that are out there, but making a move for Jalen Ramsey. If you've looked at that salary cap hit that contract situation, that is extremely risky for me. He's still a good player. I don't know that he is still the player. He was when he won the Super Bowl with the Rams a couple of years ago. He would be a good addition to this team.

He is physical. He's enormous. He can make plays on the football. Like he's a good player still, but if you're talking about salary cap hits in the 20s for a single corner, even the JJ McCarthy advantage of his rookie quarterback contract does reach a point where we go, all right, well, you can't do everything without making some sort of sacrifice into the future. And as we go down the road, there are going to be bumps that they run into with a Christian Derisaw extension, a Jefferson extension,

and if they need to extend someone like Jordan Addison, they have spent a lot into the future. They're betting on the cap going up and so forth, but if you want them to still be able to spend into the future and free agency, it's pretty hard to take on a player like Ramsey. Now that said, let's say you get halfway into the season and you are six. I forget when this when is the trade deadlines a week eight or nine. Let's just say you're six and one six and one you're dominating McCarthy's playing great and you just just need that one more piece. That's where I would say start looking around to make that big type of move. If they did it, it would be very exciting and it would make this secondary pretty

phenomenal if they were able to bring in someone like Ramsey. I just think that at some point financial considerations do have to be brought in and the age of the player and how long he's under contract and what that's going to mean into the future. But he can still play. So I wouldn't count anything out with as active as this group has been this off season. Next question goes to Billy LG 73 Billy left guard 73 BillyLG73 says, I wonder if even subconsciously the lack of a contract extension made Quacey less inclined to trade down from 24 based on future picks. I support the guy and thought he should be re-upped before the draft.

I don't think that's the case because these decisions are not made by a guy in a bubble. It's not like Quasidafel Mensa goes into a room and he goes, all right, it's draft time. I will be drafting today. It's not you and your fantasy drafts where you go downstairs, turn out the lights in the basement, and all you can see is where you're drafting that your next great 17th round wide receiver or something that you think is going to blow up. That's not how the real draft works. I mean, it works as they spend weeks leading up to the draft, formulating every plot and plan as a group. So that's scouts. That's the coaching staff.

That's quasi. That's the coaching staff. That's Quacey. That's O'Connell. That's the Wilfs getting involved and understanding what they're going to do. It's not one guy going, I'll just take players to help us win now because I don't have a contract. It's it wouldn't work like that. Now, ultimately, when they have bad drafts, we do need to have someone's name on them.

And that's Quacey Adaphalmensa. But it's not really fair the, we do need to have someone's name on them, and that's quasi a daful Mensa, but it's not really fair. The way we do it, we should really pin every draft on or an organization. They did this as a unit and this guy was running point on that. It's like any other business where you have a CEO, but I also think that in this case, because the Wilfs want it to be so much of a collaborative effort, it's even more so like that. I think in the past, it was a little bit more. The scouts provided their reports.

The ultimate decision was made by Spielman, but I think now they want it to be even more so of a group effort. So if one guy was just, let's get a left guard to fill this position so we can win. That's actually more of a coach thing. Who, by the way, who doesn't have pressure on them for next year? Kevin O'Connell, one coach of the year. He's on every show. And how do they how do they introduce him?

Well, he's the quarterback whisperer coach of the year. 14 wins with Sam Darnold, the great Kevin O'Connell, right? You don't think he has pressure to get a left guard that's going to block for JJ McCarthy. Like I think he's got pretty good motivation in order to do that. I don't look at this as well. They really gave up the future to get this left guard, but also it's done in context because there is a real roster here that has a chance in the next two years to legitimately compete for a Super Bowl.

So drafting for right now does make sense. My issue with some of the drafting for right now in the past was they had already missed their chance. And then they're drafting for a right now player a couple of years in a row when that bus had already left the station and they really needed to be thinking about filling key pieces for the future. So just for example in 2019, you're taking an Irv Smith, Jr. At Garrett Bradbury to help you right away with the two tight end sets and with a zone center because you hired Gary Kubiak and that that 19 team was still good. It was kind of their last hurrah.

We all knew they were still good, but also the following off season. We also knew that all those guys were going to leave and that's not the case here. Like this foundation is very solid for the next two years. It's not like they were going into the last year and then everybody was going to exit stage left because of their contract. So it's always different. It's always in context. It's not like drafting for need is always bad or anything like that. Also, it matters who you were going to trade down and get like was their next player on the board.

Where was he? If it, you know, maybe let's just say hypothetically, they had liked Jaday Baron and then Donovan Jackson, but the next player that they wanted was not going to be there, right? If they traded down. So I you know, there's a lot of different scenarios we can go through. I also think that this will just get taken care of soon enough. The way that Mark Wilf talked at the owners meetings felt like they're close

and they should get it figured out and Quacey should continue going forward as the general manager of the team. Anything else would be pretty surprising considering that they're at a 14 win situation. But as I mentioned, we get to training camp. Then suddenly it's real. It's real lame duck general manager as of right now and the way it was discussed going into the draft doesn't feel like that. We'll see what happens, but it doesn't feel like that. This didn't feel like a guy desperately drafting just to win this year knowing he was going to be out. But weird things have happened in the NFL.

Wasn't it John Dorsey that drafted Mahomes and then got fired? I don't know. Things happen. So next question comes from Jay Grimes 90. The Vikings took a lot of risk in free agency signing injured players. The medical and training staff get touted as being the best. What are they doing that leads the front office to believe

it gives them such a competitive advantage over the rest of the league. So they hired magic healers. Now, sometimes you would think so the way that they're talked about. And I will say this injuries are still random, even if you can do every possible thing to help them. And I think because they've had so much success working with some players that had injuries in the past

that they might be on the a little bit overconfident side that everyone's going to stay healthy. But just like we were talking about within a draft, there's also context to every injury. So just for example, a torn was it a torn pack for Jonathan Allen? Well, that turned out not to be as serious of a torn pack as it was initially thought. He came back. He played in the playoffs. So we do mark him as injured player, but at the end of the season, he's on the field for his team in the playoffs healed from that injury. It every time they have to cut you open.

It's bad. That's for sure. But he was already back on the field after that injury. So it's not like it's holding him up into this season. Even with someone like Will Fries, we're talking about a broken leg for a 27 year old guy. That's something that should heal. He should be able to come back from that. Like every injury has its own story as Kirk Cousins used to say about every interception,

but that is true and them understanding which injuries might be treatable versus which injuries might be problematic could also be a part of this. So here's another example of that. Will Johnson was probably a top 15 prospect, but the reason nobody drafted Will Johnson is because the medical staffs looked at his knee and decided this thing might not hold up for more than a couple years. They have so much data on every different type of injury and research that they can

look at their numbers and know what percentage chances that guys continue to come back, how they perform after, and also how they might be able to treat them. So something like Aaron Jones, hamstring injuries, soft tissue injuries. Well, they can form a plan for that. They clearly did form a plan to give him the best percentage chance to stay on the field. Now, randomly, he could have always fallen and broken his ankle so that we can tout 17 games that he played or say, well, he did get pretty lucky and also played through being banged up a few times and maybe didn't say, well, he did get pretty lucky and also played through

being banged up a few times and maybe didn't play as well as he could have. But even with the intravene ginkle entry from last year, the foot thing, it was clear they knew that they could treat that and go forward and work with it. So I think that's part of it. It's not just that they go, you're on the field. I don't think that's what's happening. I think that there are very well researched and thought out and data driven training staff that can advise on these things while going into it

and what they're going to be able to deal with and what they can't. But I'll still say that, you know, it is a roll of the dice with with bringing in guys that have had some injuries. It's also really hard to sign any free agent who hasn't. And you just go around the league. Almost all the top free agents at some point have injuries because they played football in the NFL. If you try to stay away from every player with injuries,

you're just going to have backups because if you're playing, there's a chance that you get banged up. Next question is becomes de-haunted. Oh, oh, de-hunted. Oh wow, that's ominous. Says, do you think that there are significant changes to the defensive structure?

Year one was absolutely insane with blitzes because of the lack of proper edges. Year two saw something more normal, but changes for the secondary due to age in corners. What if any major changes for year three? Yeah, they still did blitz a lot. I think they were maybe one or two in the league in blitzing last year.

You're right though, that it often just depends on what they feel like they have for a roster and then Brian Flores molds around it, which is an incredible way to go about it. You need some high IQ players who can adjust on a fly. You're not just teaching a system and saying, go out there. You're teaching a lot of different concepts that everybody has to understand and then adjusting those on the fly for who's on the field, who you're playing. That's why they keep players like Theo Jackson or her convince Harrison Smith to come back or pay Byron Murphy because the more that your guys can do,

the more they can handle mentally, the more different shape shifting Brian Flores can do. I don't think we're going to see a massive change in much, but there's going to be a lot more four man rushes. I think we can absolutely guarantee that with Jayvon Hargrave and Jonathan Allen in the mix. And I think what they want to do is play in sometimes just a more simple and straightforward type of coverage, a four man rush, drop everybody into a zone and say, beat it. And that's really like the Vic Fangio stuff. That's why it works when you have great players on a defensive line. And Vic Fangio was great in Chicago when he had Khalil Mack and Akeem Hicks. And he was great last year when he had all those defensive linemen, Jaylen Carter,

especially. And so you can do that sometimes. I'm not saying that he's going to go full Donatelle and just drop back because even when Donatelle had all those defensive linemen like Zedarius Smith, Danielle Hunter and Delvin Tomlinson, that still didn't work. So you're not going to do that a lot. But I think it's a tool in the bag that he didn't have before that now you can just say we're playing quarters here on a third down and just send him for and drop him back.

And there's not going to be as much deception on this particular play, but everybody's going to be rock solid in their zones and make the quarterback be patient while he's got these beasts coming at him. And the other part is to on first down. Sometimes for his head the Blitz on first and second down. Not sometimes a lot just take a swing at it or sometimes it would be a run blitz and someone would be able to get in. But a lot of times they were having to use blitzes on early downs just to create something that wasn't off the edge. Well now I think there's going to be less of that, but he's

a hard guy to predict man And that's what makes it so great to cover Brian Flores his defense is we're always looking for those little new things Little nuances new players that we didn't expect Getting into the mix you go into an OTAs a mini camp a training camp and you go Well, I wonder what players gonna emerge this time because it seems like's always someone. So I don't really have the answer to that. He hasn't let me in his office to show me, but I do think that the main thing will be just that four-man rush.

I know that's the obvious answer, but it's true. You're going to see that a lot more than you did before. All right, last question. This comes from KMBRB09. There's letters and numbers. Thank you for the question. It's KMBRB09, just for the record, to make sure I didn't screw that up. Says, one of my biggest complaints with this defense

has been utilizing Harrison Phillips as a nose tackle and the lack of adding a true nose tackle. Phillips profiles better as a 3-4 defensive end in my opinion. His nose tackle not that important in BFLO's defense. What's causing this staff to play him out of position? Well, I think I would have to argue with that they played him out of position because the results are the results. Top five defense, elite run defense. That's what Harrison Phillips does best, but I did call up his PFF page to see how often he was playing nose tackle because I kind of wanted to throw a flag on that. I don't remember seeing him play a true nose to me.

A true nose is not just the guy in the middle. It's over the center. That's what a true nose tackle is. And Harrison Phillips rarely played that. He was playing on one side or the other, on the either left side or right side defensive tackle, 90% of the time last year and only played the nose. Well, let's see, we've got 122 snaps directly over the center

and then shaded on about another 60. So I shouldn't say 90% of the time, let's say 60% of the time he was playing the other two spots more of a moved over into a gap. Harrison Phillips explained it to me this way when it comes to his role is that he's kind of a body mover where he's going to line up on the left or right side and oftentimes he's going to go one way or the other in order to move bodies that way. So instead of taking up two players by just using your fatness and plowing into them like a Pat Williams or like a Ted Washington or Gilbert Brown, any of those big giant beasts where they just move forward into humanity and take up two players because otherwise they'll just steamroll them and get in the backfield.

Instead, he's using quickness for that. So he is going from lined up in one spot to rushing or coming off the snap in another way that draws the guard to the left or to the right, which opens up opportunities for linebackers to hit gaps against the run or for linebackers to blitz. And that's oftentimes what he does. And I think what Brian Flores wants is that foot quickness to be able to do stuff like that rather than just one guy who's always in the same spot because that's Flores is big advantage is that he's not often using anybody in the same spot twice So this play Harrison Phillips when I look at left versus right for Harrison Phillips 183 on the left

278 on the right when he's playing more of a three tech type role and then mixing and matching on the left and right shade at Nose tackle. I don't think he's a defensive end though. I don't think I think he is a run stuffing defensive tackle I don't and I know what you mean by the three four defensive end, but I think that those guys still usually have Pass-rushing prowess. That's not really Harrison Phillips's thing. He's moving bodies so the pass rushers can succeed and they want to be able to do that on early downs because I mean remember some of the big defensive tackles. They don't get any pressure at all. They buy themselves. They just force themselves onto a center and maybe push back the pocket, but they're not really creating actual pressure themselves.

So they're doing it by just taking up bodies. He's doing it by moving bodies. You got different options. Taki Taimani is also this kind of guy, and I'll be interested to see if he makes the team. I just struggle to think that they've been really screwing up someone's job when the results are the results over the last two years. It's just a different type of way of achieving kind of the same thing. But instead of them knowing every time this nose tackle is on the field, he's going to do one thing. Now with Harrison Phillips, he's got different things that he can do, but they really don't have anyone else that can play the role of Harrison Phillips.

Maybe that's Jalen Redmond, maybe that's Levi Drake Rodriguez, Tayamani. We'll have to see. That battle is going to be really interesting. So thanks everybody for all the questions, and again just great way to get questions on the show. Email me Matthew Coller at at Gmail. Send me tweets. I got a good number of them still backed up to be able to use for more. But it's summertime and the weather is great, which means that we're doing fans only because it's your time. So thanks, everybody, for all the questions and the comments.

And we'll talk again soon. Football!