Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Former Vikings QB Sage Rosenfels joins from the NFL Combine to talk about the Combine's future, pass rushers and QB wins

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

Live from Indianapolis, Matthew Coller and former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sage Rosenfels talks about his experience at the NFL Combine back in the day. They talk about why defensive end should be at the top of the Vikings' wish list, the future of the Combine and an article by PFF about quarterbacks and winning Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to the Indiana Convention Center. Matthew Collar here along with Sage Rosenfels, former Minnesota Vikings quarterback. And we're here, Sage. We're here in Indy for the NFL Combine. We made it. We got our credentials and everything is fine. After two years of really no media being here the last couple seasons because of the pandemic, we were here three years ago and and a very similar spot in the convention center doing some podcasts as well. It's good to be back. The weather's been great so far. We're going to be 60 degrees today, which is nice because it is sort of a walk around mentality here, outdoors, preferably to indoors, because you're going from hotel lobby to hotel lobby to restaurant to occasional bar

to back to the convention center to in no particular order of course occasional bar of course as as a quote-unquote adult now uh a non-player uh at this thing uh 2001 was the year that i was here as a player um the whole thing has changed a lot, but also in some ways is still the exact same basics. Most of the players staying over at the Crown Plaza right across the street. That's where I stayed. I stayed in a train. They have these trains over there. I think they're still there that they turn into hotel rooms. And you have a roommate. it's really not a great setup for the players. I think for everybody else, for everyone that works for the teams, all the equipment managers have to come, all the trainers have to come.

I ran into a whole bunch of Vikings people last night, Sugarman, the team doctors, they were all having dinner. Everybody in some form or fashion pretty much for an NFL team has to be here. And I think it's great for them. But for the actual players themselves and to put out like their best physical performance it may not be the the the perfect conditions for those players it's interesting that there's some sort of things that work for the future of this event one of them is that the New York Jets decided not to bring their coaches here that that Robert Sala is not coming.

And there's also some buzz for players getting paid to show up in the future because it has become such a content machine that they probably should be paid for their time. I mean, if NFL Network and ESPN and everybody else is going to show up and hundreds and hundreds of writers and content creators and use these players as a platform to make a bunch of money like they should be included in that piece of the pie as opposed to having to pay their own way here and everything else like that i mean so i think that like this thing can go in a lot of different ways i mean because you also have a lot of the top players

who are saying well look i mean i'm going to be a number one or number two overall pick why should i come here and risk you know whatever risk there might be of getting hurt doing the bench press or getting hurt running the 40 when everyone already knows that i'm a top pick and you're just using me for your show and so i think that that will eventually happen that we will see more of a monumental change and also i'm not sure that it's going to stay in Indy forever. As you mentioned, I mean, I like Indy a lot. I think this is a really cool place. I think it's awesome it's here. But I think that maybe the agents and the players and everybody else might want it to be like in L.A. or Vegas.

So a couple of things there. One, as we all know, the NFL will look to do whatever it can to suck every dollar out of every corner of this business. When I was in the Senior Bowl, the practices weren't on TV. The game was on TV on the Saturday, but that was it. Now those practices are on NFL Network, right? So people are watching that and money's coming in. The Combine was not a TV event in any way. Of course it is now. And these college players leaving college, they're sort of stuck in the middle. They don't have a contract yet.

They're not part of the sort of NFL Players Association. They don't really have any rights per se. So they don't have a lot of bargaining power. I will say about the location, I do think Indy, oddly, is maybe one of the best spots for this thing. One, it's an inexpensive town. It's not like you're in Los Angeles. It's really much more expensive hotels. And everything is right here. So the NFL is saving money. The whole sort of the whole combine, if you can include like the hotels and the sort of

this whole circus, everything's about a six block walk from each other. Yeah. Very easy to move around. Yeah. From sort of the east side of downtown Indianapolis to the JW Marriott on the west side and the convention center, sort of right in the middle. Everything is a short walking distance. And there's really not that many NFL cities that have that. New Orleans is one. I don't think the combine being New Orleans is a good idea for anybody. Los Angeles, you're just not going to get those clusters of hotels uh that are really easy and great to walk around um you know it's a very quiet downtown downtown la has you know skid row and all

sorts of issues going on right there las vegas obviously the casinos and and if you ever walked around las vegas it's a long walk yeah to get from like one casino hotel to another i mean it's like a mile to that one that looks like it's about 100 yards away and then you start walking it's a lot so it's a very sort of spread out uh unless they put everybody at one hotel or something like that um so you know i'm not like the biggest indianapolis fan like oh this is the greatest place to be but for this event i have been here now you know other than playing three or four times, and I thoroughly enjoy coming here. And the weather, it seems like it's been mild the last

couple times we've been here. And even if it's not, there's, they have like the indoor walkway, sort of like Minneapolis. So it really is, I just can't think of a sort of better location in this country where the Combine should be. And it's not a glitz and glamour town but this is a business there's the combine which is the show which could be anywhere but then there is this huge business side of of the week for for each nfl team and i just think it's a really easy place to do a lot of business no i agree and i like it from the perspective of being a reporter that it's really easy to move around like you jump in a taxi you come downtown and then like you said you're within a mile of everything of walking

distance or you can grab an uber real quick or whatever and you kind of know the gathering spots for everybody it's just like classic nfl fashion that someday they might decide no actually we're going to sponsor this thing and you know figure out whatever other ways we can to make money in bigger places. I hope it doesn't change. It would be awful to be in a car driving from one event to another or something like that. And yeah, it's sort of a perfect size city for it. And what I said, the fairly mild weather. A couple years ago, it snowed when I was here, but it still didn't seem like it wasn't bad to go from,

I said, one side of the town to the other. Also, I think this town so much embraces the combine. Yeah. It knows. Indianapolis has a lot of things that it's sort of known for, I feel like. Basketball probably being the number one thing, and maybe the Colts being there. But this combine, it's like the college world series in Omaha where I live. It's people know about it. And so I think this town sort of does the bends over backwards a little

bit or whatever those words are, uh, those phrases are for this event. You know, those, uh, steak houses that sort of turn into bars, they're open until three or four o'clock in the morning. I don't know what the rules are or the legalities of that, but I know in Los Angeles it is a hard 145, everyone's out. They don't mess around in a lot of these cities. I think in this town they sort of bend or allow the rules to be bent a little bit because they want to be a great host for all the people coming in here. Well, let's talk about your experience as being a quarterback

coming to the combine and a quarterback who actually really helped your draft stock at the NFL combine. Because, you know, as we get here every year, there's always talk of like, how much does it matter? And, you know, does, does it really make that big of a difference now when they have a lot of other information and everything else? And i think the answer is that it still very much does and uh if you come here as somebody who's on the fringe and has a chance to show that you have the athletic ability or have the arm strength or whatever that stuff is not always super easy to tell how it's going to translate from college tape uh especially probably back in your day where maybe it was only TV tape. I don't know.

But I think that the quarterbacks who are showing up here, they're very much clustered. And it's like I've seen different orders from everybody. Some people think Sam Howell's the best. Some people think Malik Willis is the best. I've gotten some Desmond Ritter takes that people think he's the guy. And they come here with an opportunity to do a workout in a high pressure situation and show what they have and give themselves a chance so how were you able to emerge as someone who deserved to be drafted because i looked at your college stats your analytics were not that

impressive my college tests were terrible i threw for i, I believe, I think I threw for under 52%. It was like 51.6% my senior year. 10 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, but I ran for 10 touchdowns. Right. And, yeah, so we were not a throwing team. We would run draw on third and seven all the time, and we were very sort of conservative. It was that old Wisconsin Barry Alvarez style of, like, try to play good defense and just grind it out on offense with a really

good running back and that's what we always had when i when i was there we did not have much of a passing attack i'd throw the ball 20 25 times a game and so um you know these scouts these these quarterback coaches coordinators head coaches that are involved with the quarterbacks they've watched all these guys on film maybe not all their their games, but they've probably watched. You look at the stats and go, okay, let's watch two or three good games and maybe a couple of bad games. And so you see the film, but the problem is the cameras are not on the field. The cameras are way up in the press box. And so it's just hard to see that the tangible size of these guys, you know, how big, you know, you'll see Justin Herbert like, wow, that is a big man. And that does have an effect on what you think of somebody as an athlete, how long they can play when they do run. Well, it's like, man, they ran a good time and they do all these drills. Well he's a big guy but if he was three inches shorter and 15 pounds lighter maybe not as impressive and so um it said that there's a there's opinions that

get formed with all the film and then this just is more information you're in this world of analytics well i'm sure analytics people want as much information as they can and so this is this is probably like the original analytics of an actual individual player so you have these tangible numbers anything from hand size we were talking about my hand size last night enormous yeah you know the biggest hands of all the quarterbacks in the 2001 draft um it didn't feel like that when i was a player because i still struggled sometimes to hold on to the ball uh like farve just had giant, but his hands were also like giant sausages. They're like the kielbases.

They were just – he had these super, super thick fingers. He was probably baling hay more than I was as a kid working on the farm. But, yeah, it gives you these sort of these tangible numbers, your size, your weight, of course, your different – you know, defensive end, arm length matters. It really does, especially as you are trying to sort of guess what the potential is, the ceiling of these players. And it's just more information to add into it. And of course, those interviews, those interviews are important. I think that for me was, you know, again, you watch film,

you don't really know anything about the actual kid, just the physical abilities you see on film. But when you actually talk to somebody, you get a better feel of, do I want that guy in my team? Do I want that guy in my organization? Does he have his head screwed on right to be worth really an investment? Because that's all these teams are, is investing. I would like to use the word draft capital. But investing. And they only have so much capital in various ways. And at each organization, you have the salary cap.

But then this is you only have so many draft picks. And so this is investment in the team's future. And they're going to want to collect as much information as possible. What was the interview process like? Because I'm sure that hasn't changed a ton, except for maybe the inappropriate questions that they used to ask can't be asked anymore. But I think there's still ridiculous things like coaches who want to do a staring contest with players, coaches who want to play rock paper scissors was one that came out last year

with Nick Sirianni from the Eagles. It's like, okay, I guess I understand some of this, but like, what, I mean, what are you, what are you gaining? Are you, are you trying to figure out if the player plays along or rolls his eyes at you is that more of it than to see if he's actually good at rock paper scissors it was did you have stuff like that or was it like i don't think i had anything to you know it's pretty straightforward i felt and i think it has become much more organized over the last 20 years where it really was you'd be at the hotel

and like the sort of lobby convention sort of area over there at the Crown Plaza and people would just grab you. You'd be a guy wearing a Buffalo Bills hat would walk up and say, hey, can we get you right now for an interview? And I'd be like, well, I'm walking to go do the interview with the Cowboys quarterback's coach. Can we get you after that in 30 minutes? Sure.

All right, we're going to be right over here. Come on. So it was like very just sort of grabbing people and trying to set things up. There was no organization. I think it's much more organized now. Yeah, for sure. Which is much better. But, you know, sometimes you do those interviews.

A lot of times it's just the quarterback's coach, especially this one, right? If teams really like you, they will maybe at your private workout or maybe down the line do it where it's the quarterback's coach and offensive coordinator or maybe like the whole organization. But when I was here, a lot of times it was just the quarterback's coach. A couple times I feel like it was a coordinator also. But there was definitely – I had one time basically the entire Kansas City Chiefs, it's like I walked into their suite. And it was Herm Edwards, it was Carl Peterson, who was a general manager, Corvass coach, coordinator, wide receivers coach, probably 10 or 12 people in the room.

That was a different interview. And that also makes you feel like, they must they're spending their their time their time capital on on me so obviously they were they're super interested in drafting me well about I don't know a month later right before uh the draft they traded for um Trent Green uh uh who Kurt Warner had sort of won that job in St. Louis until training so that was sort of sort of ended my chance of being drafted by the Chiefs. But, but you know, that, that was, that was an interesting interview too, to have, uh, like really the whole organization and you're sort of sitting there like the, the FBI is with the light on you, like to answer the answer to these questions. But a lot of it

sort of get to know you, uh, type of stuff and just get a feel for how you talk, how you communicate. Uh, you know, they'll ask you a lot of times, what are your goals? And what would you, you know, and you're going to, everyone gives the same goals. Well, I want to be the quarterback of a team that wins a Super Bowl. And that's my goal. And everyone sort of says a lot of that same stuff. It's probably like office space where it's like, my goal is not just to be, just to not be hassled.

I just, I've got eight bosses and I just don't want to be hassled. I don't think, you know, it's quite like that. But, you know, I think a lot of guys have, you know, sort of prescripted answers in a lot of ways to these questions. But yeah, I think they try to ask odd ones sometimes. I don't recall anything too off the wall. Sometimes they'll also make you do little physical tests. They'll have like some sort of machine that's testing maybe your reaction time or how you react to things and some computer software system or some light thing where you're pressing buttons on it to sort of see weird reaction things. It's these, you know, the sort of the, not the team doctors, but like performance

coaches that are trying to probably hired as a third party, like help the teams get the, you know, it's, it's a never ending battleending battle to try to not miss if you're an organization. Not only that, but think about how much money owners pay for stuff that doesn't matter. I mean, I cannot imagine that flashing lights that your eyes are supposed to dart around to are telling you whether you could be a good NFL quarterback or not. It's just like, what? You would think, I will say this though, and when we talk about quarterbacks in particular, but really all athletes, what is the hardest thing to, to judge the hardest thing to find to put a number on, uh, put a ranking on is the processing of physical and mental information in, in, you know, it's, of course

it's in your head, but there's a, there's a, an aspect in your it's of course it's in your head but there's a there's a an aspect in your own brain of processing the physical things that are going on around you and we all see the athletes who man all the numbers make sense he should be good but there's just something that's not there uh and at crunch time or or the confusing defense the blitz is sort of mentally overwhelming for them and that is something that teams are more and more coming up with various tests. I've worked with some companies that do things like that. It's the actual processing of information. It has nothing to do with smarts.

For a long time, it's like, oh, he's a smart quarterback because he had a 3.8 at so-and-so college, so he must be smart. But smart and processing information is from a physical standpoint have almost nothing to do with each other. And so I think that's where a lot of times teams guessed wrong when they went after like the smart quarterback

rather than the one who actually processed information faster. Because I don't know how smart Pat Mahomes is, but his mind processes physical information at an extremely high rate. I think we have some evidence to suggest Brett Favre might not be a Rhodes Scholar at times. Dan Marino scored like a 13 or something on his wonder lick too. Well Ryan Fitzpatrick I think had a perfect wonder lick that he finished within like 10 minutes or something. Yeah yeah so very very smart and I think Fitzpatrick

probably processes a lot of information but his greatest strength is his like sort of screwed attitude. I'm gonna go out here and just ball out. He releases his mind from all of the overthinking of the information, which can be a challenge sometimes with like, quote unquote, smart people is that sort of paralysis by analysis as they overanalyze things so much they can't let their body just uh just flow and do what it's supposed to do yeah and i think that fitzpatrick also has this personality that is completely unique in getting people to believe in him and play with him even though he's never really been good in the nfl people just flock to ryan fitzpatrick there's something about would you say likability is like a word i feel like that's a phrase that people don't use when they describe quarterbacks enough because it's like a it's like no one really wants to talk about it like do guys on the team players coaches do they really like that guy yeah like do they really like having him like i i and if you didn't if you like played

for the saints for all those years and maybe uh uh you didn't love drew breeze but you respected him so much that it just sort of like he raised the the bar for everybody in the organization yeah and so you became a sort of very likable person on that team and i think that is one of the that's probably of all the things one of the hardest things to to judge and those interviews they do their best but likability is a very very because these coaches you know that they're trying to like a like a player but player and player player relationships and coaches player relationships are very very different and they really like i mean there's a lot of quarterbacks i play with that other players like

ugh didn't like that guy he was. He just didn't have any sort of pizzazz, any sort of swag, as you might say. And like Derek Carr, I think has a ton of swag. I love watching the guy play. And he's like very straight and narrow. They're a very straight and narrow family, but he has this like confidence, this sort of aura around him. I feel like that he believes, he truly believes that he can get it done. And I think that sort of uh aura around him i feel like that he believes he truly believes that he can get it done and i think that's sort of infectious uh um you know on that team and so you're always looking for a quarterback that has that sort of magnetic personality that he doesn't have to be allowed or whatever but something uh that uh is very very likable and there's a lot

of quarterbacks out there that aren't yeah there's probably like different categories to it so like tom brady would be the the master and commander of the ship so like everybody knows who's in charge and it doesn't matter if you like tom brady or not he's in charge 100 and nobody questions that uh there's probably relatability which was the teddy bridgewater thing where it seemed like every person who came in contact with teddy bridgewater he found a way to relate to them whether they were a seventh round draft pick or the star of the team or whatever it was and i think people wanted to play with teddy because of that yeah um guys you can connect with and i always thought the brother the manning brothers i always said that was one of their greatest strengths and greatest accomplishments from their parents on down as they grew up wealthy

private school kids they had every reason to be sort of disconnected from the the guys in the roster that were not from that world which is the vast majority of them but but they had ability to connect to all those guys uh and that that is that is really important right and so i thought that you know malik Willis talking about getting to know everyone at the Senior Bowl and making a bunch of friends and things like that, that matters when you get into the locker room. And most quarterbacks are not going to be Aaron Rodgers,

who knows what his personality is, but he's so good it doesn't matter. And he's the commander type anyway. I also don't think Aaron could sort of do what he does now 12 years ago. Right, right, right. His fourth year in the league, second year after Favre left or whatever, he couldn't be sort of the way he is now. Sometimes sort of a handful in some ways.

But he's so good and he's done so much, and everyone watches him play, and they see how sort of amazing he is. You become very likable really fast as far as – but they believe, despite all those other things, they believe that he is their best bet at winning the Super Bowl and getting deep in the playoffs. And so that makes you pretty likable pretty fast. And that was the other thing I was going to bring up is that do they believe in you?

Do they believe that when you have the ball in the last drive that you're going to get it done? And even when you don't, they still go out on the field the next time believing that you will. I think that those three things are really hard to isolate in some sort of interview situation. So if you're sitting down with kenny pickett and you know whatever we saw this in the gruden camp stuff which i thought was really instructive

that you know he would sort of try to pick at them a little bit he'd be like you know with the spider two wide banana thing with andrew luck like why did you do this why didn't you throw to the full back what's your problem what were you thinking there and sort of just see how they would react to stuff like that. I thought that was really interesting. And that's the stuff that goes on behind the scenes here that we don't get to know about or get to see that might be the difference between someone being a first round pick and not.

And overall, the NFL is very good at picking out which guys should be first round picks, which should be second, third, fourth. So they do deserve their credit for that, for that due diligence. It's just once they're a first round pick pick you don't know who's going to succeed and who doesn't but i wanted to ask you we haven't talked yet to quesia dafl mensa or kevin o'connell there will be a follow-up episode um that's coming out soon after we talk with them later on but what what should we be looking for here because for me it's really hard to talk about anything except the quarterback situation it's like are we looking for corners

for defensive ends like yeah maybe you know maybe a playmaker whatever and i'm intrigued by a lot of these players it's supposed to be a great defensive end draft they're going to be looking at a new set of defensive ends including outside linebackers that they have not in the past. Everyone's talking about those guys are going to light up the combine and everything. I just cannot move myself off of the conversation about the quarterback. I don't know that we're going to get an answer this week. I'm sure of it, not at the podium or in the side session with those guys. And I'm not even sure like how

much weeks should make of any answers that they give i don't think there's going to be a trade this week but i i do think that if these quarterbacks show that there is more there than has been talked about that the physical skills show up or can he pick its hands suddenly turn into yours uh that might be influential in a vikings decision because i i think i personally would not make a ton of it being a quote weak draft i think nfl people do though even the nfl people who have all the analytics and know what the odds are and everything else i think that they make a lot when their scouts evaluate and say guys there isn't a sure thing quarterback that teams do get scared of that

and this week is sort of an opportunity for two or three guys to emerge to give teams confidence i think it could be influential in the vikings decision i mean every year there's a couple quarterbacks that end up being legitimate good starters every year and uh it's not always the first one or the second one picked sometimes it's a it's a third rounder like a russell wilson um or tom brady as a sixth rounder right i mean there's always those guys that sort of fall through the cracks but every year there's going to be a quarterback or two or more they end up being very very good the question is you know it is which one it is always easy to talk about the quarterbacks especially in the viking situation where they

spend a ton of money on their starting quarterback who is not an elite quarterback. So you're already getting bad value there. Right. So it's an easy thing for us to talk about. But I would like to talk about, by the way, the defensive ends and that's the defense in general. When I look at teams that are rebuilding their roster, like when Shanahan and Lynch got that job with the 49ers um as the as cleveland was turning over there from a terrible team for years and stuff you know it was it was defensive ends um and and really good defensive lines uh if i were you know and i when i went to houston with kubiak in 2006 we had we had the first pick of the draft 2 and 14 the year before everyone thought oh we're gonna do reggie bush the most you know he's the marshall fock of the future why would you draft

him um vince young we needed a quarterback vince young's from houston local legend texas legend we should have drafted him we went with mario williams because we needed a stud defensive and there's usually only a couple of those guys in each draft guys that are just freaks of nature they're sort of like the one in the one in the billion dna and i do think if i'm building a team when you have a really good defensive line that stops the run and creates pressure in the passing game without having to blitz and try to confuse and you can just sort of play solid in the back end you can make the entire team better with a great defensive line you get more chances on offense makes your corners better because they

might get some some freebies out there uh you know the quarterback's gonna have to get rid of the ball quicker which means they can sit on routes uh so i do think that the vikings should you know and they and they always have but really should and they've never really done the first round defense events right and in a long time i think i i saw you tweet that a week or two ago they like his second rounders they like the third rounders like you're looking for deals um but if this is a really good defensive end draft i would recommend them going out and and really trying to get uh we're trying to get one of the good ones you made this point to me a while back, is when you get a defensive end that is really good, they usually are good for a really long time.

Where corners, other positions, they can be a little more inconsistent, a little more up and down. Corners get hurt a lot more. Or great for six years, and then they pull a hamstring, and then they're just not quite as fast as they used to be, and that's a game changer for them. Right, whereas defensive ends and pass rushers, they will be good into their 30s

if you draft a guy who's really good. And there might be a little slower of a curve for them to jump right into the mix, but I think that the Vikings don't necessarily need someone to step in right away and get 12 sacks. If you bring in someone and they show progress in the first year and they look like a future starter, well then, then you've hit on that draft pick. And I think if the Vikings don't decide to go with a quarterback that we

should do a quick ranking here. I mean, I have defensive end is number one. If they do not go with a quarterback in that position over corner, because I think that they do need a great corner but there's only like a couple of guys even over the last decade who have been the island corner that truly transforms your secondary i think you kind of need to throw numbers at that like the way that tampa bay built their secondary was they just drafted a bunch of corners in the second and

third round and a couple of them worked out yeah And then they had backups who at least were fairly high draft picks. I think it's numbers. I think it's scheme. I think there's more schematic things to sort of help just average corners. Like, hey, we don't have a great secondary, but there would be scheme things. They give those guys a chance to be successful. You can't really – defensive ends are defensive ends.

There's not like, oh, we're going to scheme all this stuff. that guy is going to be better than the left tackle. Is he or isn't he? And to have a guy or really two, really even three, like I look at these teams that win Super Bowls, the Rams, of course, they sort of fell in the luck with the Von Miller thing situation, but they had like three Pro Bowl-style defensive ends, of course, Aaron Donald as well, on that football team. Leonard Floyd. I remember the Giants when I was with them and they won the Super Bowls. They would have, of course, your Justin Tuck and O.C. Umanura and your starters,

but they had backup defensive ends that would come in on second long, on third long, and they'd really have four defensive ends on the field they take out those the big tackles and the obvious passing situations and so they needed like all the depth of these guys that could rush the passer because we love talking about the quarterbacks the passer but it just as important as the guys who are trying to get the quarterback to prevent him from passing which are these defensive linemen right and i think that you know what pff found when they studied like pass rush and coverage was that coverage has more of an impact on wins but the thing is you can't really separate those two because the coverage is going to be positively impacted by the pass rush and the vikings had this crazy thing last year where they got a lot of sacks

with one like one of the best in the league but their pressure rate was one of the lowest in the league and think about what they had on the defensive line in 2017 Tom Johnson situational player but really really good at rushing the passer Brian Robison was coming in off the bench on third downs to rush over the guard I mean he's a guy that was a you know seven to ten type of sack player everson griffin and a daniel hunter in their primes and linval joseph i think had five and a half sacks that year and a really good pressure rate for a nose tackle and i mean there's what it often comes down to is there are situations in games where you kind of have to rush for like all right it's you know third and ten and you need to stop and you got to rush four. Is everybody going to be able to cover for four seconds? Of course not. Not with a team that's got good receivers. You need to be able to create pressure that way and not just be, and this is sort of what they became last year, predictable that you were going to send some sort of blitz every single third down and i think that even though they still did okay on third downs that hurts like that allows for big plays and if you you know

get it wrong with the blitz it's a touchdown or it's a big play and they gave up a lot of those and that has to start somewhere in terms of rebuilding this i think that interior pass rush is probably more valuable than people think but having having that Nick Bosa, having that Vaughn Miller, that is an incredibly good place to start. And with Ed Donatel coming here and doing a 3-4 type of thing, it seems like every great 3-4 defense always has that amazing outside linebacker. Yeah, this is a game of having great pass rush. And having a pass rush helps the secondary be better.

You can go back and be like, oh, the Vikings or another team were 23rd in the league in pass defense. But a lot of times that's correlated to the pressure rate from the defensive linemen. Well, we don't have a good D-line. Guys were hurt. We didn't draft well. We're not getting pressure. Well, of course the quarterbacks can be completing balls all over the secondary. It also has a big effect on the other side of the football.

You know, when there's a lot of sacks, when there's a lot of sacks on third downs, you get better field position. There's momentum swings in sacks. The offense gains confidence. And so, you know, having a defensive line that is uh creates a lot of pressure uh is good for all other aspects of the football team so what would you have after that i mean they need corners but something that stuck out to me is that the rams kept drafting wide receivers even after they had wide receivers and this is something i would love to see the vikings

doing i mean there's a couple receivers in this draft who look like they're going to be really good who are in the middle of the first Garrett Wilson uh the other guy from Ohio State I mean Drake London has the most amazing name uh but he's another guy that's mid first round type of draft pick I think if they picked a receiver in the first round people would be like excuse me like what are you doing I would praise it I would think it was a great idea Adam I mean well one I've been you know at the top of the roof screaming for a number three wide receiver but also like Adam Thielen two of the last three seasons has been banged up and he's getting into his 30s

and at some point you're just not the same explosive receiver he averaged 10.9 yards per catch last year that's like not big numbers that's more possession receiver like if he has a transition of being a larry fitzgerald where you're a number three possession receiver on a great team that's great but man if you can pair justin jefferson with another dynamic playmaker and whoever your future quarterback is we'll get to walk in and just like have a palace of gold to sit on i feel like they've settled way too many times and said well you know we should probably just draft another corner or something or you know let's get the tackle which i think daris all will be good and i have no problem with drafting a tackle but that extra weapon when phelan went down last year cousins numbers went in the tank

and it seems like that's been the case every time um that someone has gotten hurt or there's something that's off so i think that if they follow that and be ramsey if there's like one way they could be ramsey i think that that might like be the thing that surprises on offense the Rams are an interesting team you know they're these other than Whitworth it's sort of a bunch of no-namers along the offensive line um and they love the the three receivers the Vikings don't have a ton depth at tight end so a lot of times you're talking about receivers it's like well what's the tight end room also look like oh we have three really good tight ends well if you want those guys in the field you don't need the receivers quite as much.

And Conklin's a free agent, probably will end up elsewhere. Right. So the tight end is not a strength, a huge strength for this football team. Right now, they could use some depth there as well. But if you're only going to have one to two consistent tight ends on the team, you need that third, even fourth wide receiver, as you said. Also, prepare for guys being injured. And when Adam Thielen's down, Justin Jefferson's going to get so much double coverage, and because everyone respects him so much, you just need to have another threat on the other side.

The Rams got super lucky with Odell falling into their pocket. If he doesn't, I don't know if the Rams win the Super Bowl. I don't know if they win some of those early playoff games. Of course, he got hurt win the Super Bowl I don't know if they win some of those early playoff games of course he got hurt in the Super Bowl but having him with the other receivers going down on that with Woods going down on that football team and some other guys to have somebody opposite Cooper Cup was absolutely huge for them and you can't Cooper Cup just couldn't do it all by himself and and so having Odell was huge and so having second, even third guy for the Vikings would be good. I'm a big believer in the lines. I'm a big believer in when you're sort of starting over, in a sense,

new general manager, new head coach, that the more you can bolster line play. At the end of the day, I was at a New York Giants game this fall. They actually played the Rams. It was like an early October game, I think. Went out to new york and i was talking to somebody with the team excuse me and we were discussing those those 2007 2011 new york giants teams and there's a person just like in community relations who ran the community relations department for the giants he goes you know at the end of the day it still is a

game of the lines and i was like it is it is it's it's i mean all the things we loved we like talking about it's like it's like having a car and talking about all the options so look at the options the color the this the that the spoiler look how cool you know but what's the engine what is really the thing inside that powers it and in in football on both sides of the ball it's it is those lines you know uh running the ball pass protection is those lines. Running the ball, pass protection, brushing the passer, stopping the run. None of that has to do with the quarterback. None of that has to do with the DBs. But those are a little more fun to talk about because that's sort of what you see.

When they do trading cards, the linemen are not the ones that you're looking for. It's the quarterbacks and it's the receivers and running backs. Back in the day, I had lots of Alan Fanica cards and Steve Hutchinson and stuff when I was growing up with football cards. But no, you're exactly right. If you're rebuilding a team, having a defensive line, because this team is probably a free agent guard, a free agent center away from having a decent offensive line for the team is probably a free agent guard a free agent center

away from having a decent offensive line for the first time in a long time because they have the tackles figured out and i think the left guard situation is okay with ezra cleveland so they just need a couple of spots but like when uh detroit uh drafted penne sewell and not jamar chase i think they made the right choice and Cincinnati made the right choice with Jamar Chase because well obviously Detroit drafted after so they couldn't have taken Jamar Chase but like picking Penesul to start setting the foundation you need a couple of years for that guy to become a true impact player whereas a wide receiver can impact right away and you know it also depends on how you're handling it with free agency and a lot of things like that i saw daniel jeremiah tweet about how a lot of the offensive

lines you know that are good are built in free agency a lot of times like you're you're figuring out those final pieces after drafting guys and i think that's what you know the vikings have to do as well that if they drafted a guard in the first round or a center i think you'd be like oh man like i get it but also those guys are available in free agency the ram center is available in free agency and a lot of times i think that's where you got to get your final pieces whereas the receiver the thing about a receiver is it's sort of becoming quarterback like where if that guy's unbelievable he's going to make 25 or 30 million dollars million in the future. When the Vikings eventually sign Justin Jefferson to a contract extension, he might be the first $40 million a year receiver. So getting those guys on rookie contracts,

think about Stephon Diggs in the Minneapolis Miracle. I think he's making $1 million a year at the point that he walks into the end zone in 2017. Think of the value the guy gave them in 2016, 2017. So there might be something to that as well. Since this new GM is, I guess, he's big into analytics, right? It's sort of this new wave of the smart people in the room, actually, and not just sort of like the gym teacher, no offense to gym teachers, but the gym teacher mentality of like, look at that guy.

He's big, strong, and fast. He's going to be a football player. It's way more sort of analytical and detailed now. Going back to where he came from, what were the drafts like and what did they draft over the last three or four years? And coming from Cleveland, my interest is what did they draft over the last three or four years? That's like the best guess of what they may draft over the last three or four years that's like the best guess of what they may draft over the next three or four years yep yep and they and they stock the lines the same way that you're talking about okay so I know people want to hear you talk about Kirk

Cousins of course and we're going to do that in our next episode which is after um you know Kweisi Adafomensa and Kevin'connell talk with the media because i figured it wouldn't make much sense to discuss the kirk thing and then potentially have it change with how we feel about where they stand with what they say i don't think it will but if we recorded something and then they said oh actually we just agreed to a trade uh then i would feel really dumb so let's we'll talk about that later but I want to set the stage for that conversation with something our friend Eric Eager wrote, and I'm going to try to catch up with Eric this week.

He wrote this about quarterbacks and QB wins, and he was writing about how the CBA has made it the best way to win if you don't have a truly elite quarterback, is to have one on a rookie contract, and he wrote about the math behind that and why teams shouldn't be afraid of not like drafting the next mahomes like if you just draft someone who's good you've got a chance at success but he wrote this about qb wins now you are qb and you had wins so give me your reaction he said i have absolutely zero reservations about conflating team success with quarterback success

as quarterbacks have a bigger influence on team success than any individual player in any team sport well it has become popular to say wins are not a qb stat i very much disagree now by the way eric eager is a phd in math who is meeting with all 32 nfl this week. I'm just saying, like, credibility here. He says there are zero stats, completion percentage, touchdowns, interceptions that are perfectly correlated with quarterback performance and team success is simply somewhere on a continuum with these other ways of measuring quarterback performance. So QB wins.

Eric says he has no problem conflating those with team success your thoughts the quarterback touches the ball the most there's a million stats you can throw at to throw out there to guess how good a quarterback is but at the end of the day the only stat that matters is winning. And the person that, one, gets paid the most, but two, has the most responsibility, the most effect on a football game, yes, I believe that winning is a quarterback stat. It doesn't mean like Matt Stafford for all those years

was a bad, terrible quarterback because Detroit was bad and terrible. They're a part of the whole thing. There's just too many elements to it's not a black and white um issue with a broad sort of spectrum and it's all sort of somewhere in the middle but absolutely i think uh uh you judge a quarterback on generally over time how successful they are as far as wins and losses well and matt stafford too also was drafted by a team that picked number one overall and sometimes when you look at somebody's record i mean jared goff has been on two of the worst teams roster wise imaginable and and like played like it per his record he's probably better that. He was also on several teams that were incredible, and he won. Some quarterbacks are a reflection of what you have as a roster,

and some quarterbacks add more to what you have as a roster. In my mind, Kirk Cousins is a guy that has played for teams that were basically 500 talent teams outside of maybe 2018 that was a little more stacked and that's what they've been they were a seven type of win team this year and they won seven games when it mattered and then there are guys who if you have a team that is a five win team they can get you the playoffs if they have a 10 win team they can win you a super bowl and i think with stafford stafford is exactly that too with a little more upside with like if he gets hot he can do crazy things with his arm but you go

through his career a lot of 500 Detroit teams go 500 with Stafford this roster for the Rams like nobody got hurt their defense played amazing in the playoffs I mean if their defense isn't as good in the San Francisco game they just lose if their defense isn't as good in the Super Bowl in the playoffs i mean if their defense isn't as good in the san francisco game they just lose if their defense isn't as good in the super bowl in the second half they just lose so he's a reflection too i think of what you have with just a little more upside than cousins but i don't think it's unfair to say that like that's the level of team you need to get a matt stafford to win and that's why the bar is so insanely high for who you pay because you, in order to win with one of those quarterbacks,

you can't just have a good roster and he'll take you the rest of the way. It's gotta be like hall of famers. I saw today a PFF stat that Aaron Donald himself was worth as much in terms of like wins above replacement or value as the next three highest graded players at his position alone just aaron donald he's on a completely different level so you need aaron donald you need odell beckham you need cooper cup you need these like otherworldly stars and they had the best pass blocking in the nfl this year that's what it takes to win with a stafford that's how i look at qb wins is what like what does that quarterback need to get you

as a team to the top and is it like how high is that bar is that bar at where with Stafford where I think it was truly you need a 10 out of 10 roster or is it more of a 7 out of 10 and he can get you the rest I think the hard part is with all the stats. There's the stats that are like the crunch time stats, the third down conversions, the key points in the game, the fourth quarter, the two-minute drills. Those all add up to me and to the quarterbacks that excel at those moments. It's not just the yards that you throw for. It's when you throw for those yards.

And that is sort of too complicated to always decipher as you look at a box score after a football game which is what most sort of fans look at oh he threw for 300 yards he must have had a pretty good game and but it's when he threw for those 300 yards early in the game late in the game right before the half at crunch time and what matt stafford did uh and the way I look at quarterbacks, in the National Football League, to go out there and throw the ball to guys who are open, that should be a guarantee. For them to catch the ball in a pretty accurate throw,

this is what these guys are doing for a living. The first 32, the second 32, the backups, they all should be able to hit these targets pretty accurately most of the time. The question is, when there's other issues that make that harder, offensive linemen missing and getting some pressure, then what do you do? Right. So how do you make other people around you, in a sense, you make up sort of for their mistakes?

That's going above and beyond i'm throwing to the guy that's open accurately that's the bare minimum basically the national football league that's like hitting an open shot in the nba if that's all you do you're not a great player you're a part of the thing but you're really just doing your job which is stay in the corner hitting an open shot right so the quarterbacks that go beyond that and add more value in other ways there are many times statistically are not even a stat it's these subtleties uh and then it's also do they occasionally make great plays right right uh pat mahomes two or three times a game makes great plays right two or three times maybe more than that yeah for him yeah

probably stafford uh in the super bowl made a couple great plays of course the the no look pass that's a great play all right and those plays um at the right times those are what separate the sort of average quarterbacks to the to the ones that are in that sort of top 10, that top five. So it's not just like, did you hit the open shot? It's did you hit the open shot fade away with the guy in your face as the clock was going down? Ends up being one for one either way. But the level of difficulty to make is very different. And the quarterbacks to me that are the best ones are they make up for everyone

else's deficiencies because everyone has them and you try to make up for for everyone else's that lifts the sort of lifts all the boats in the high tide and again it's it's occasionally occasionally making a great play right and how many times over the course of the last has Kirk been in Minnesota five years now four yeah four years how many times has he really been like wow that was a great play or you know the the left guard completely whiffed on his guy Kirk is in the pocket going back makes the guy miss steps up runs to his left and throws a 60 yarder Pat Mahomes does that like every game right Kirk's never done that probably or rarely does that he just that's not

he's not the type of athlete to do that he doesn't have that high window or that high ceiling upside physically to make great plays he just simply doesn't but he's paid to do those things and that is one of the imbalance issues with him and and uh in his role on the football team with salary cap and and on all those things right which is why i think uh that these studies on recent quarterbacks are showing more correlation with success and athleticism because the defensive lines are getting better the defensive ends are getting better the pass protection is not getting better from year to year and there's more need for that i think there's always been need for that of course but there's even more i think with teams increasing how much they pass and everything else like that

uh opponents dialing up crazy blitzes that offensive linemen can't possibly diagnose like it just keeps sort of trending that way so when i train quarterbacks by the way i talk about there's the play that's called a play that is designed and then called talk about there's the play that's called a play that is designed and then called and then there's the play that occurs right all right and about half the time the play designed and called is a quote-unquote executed whether it's thrown bottom of the field or it's thrown to the running back as the third rebate executed correctly the other half is some sort of off schedule all right and that's the you know so, so it's not, you know, you throw 25, 30 balls a game and half of those are going to be not as designed and not as was called. And the question is, what did you do on those plays?

Right. And it's amazing. The information we have is that I could tell you the exact amount of plays like that is about 33 percent uh because uh if you look at the league average of first read throws it's about two-thirds or first read throws and then a third of the plays so over a season you have 600 dropbacks and that means you know 200 200 of them right quick math 200 of them are going to be something that wasn't what you were supposed to do with the first read when i when i got in the league uh in washington our coaching staff marty schottenheimer had come from kansas city and they had joe montana so i was i was watching i one day i went to the you know i was a third third quarterback or whatever and i went into our oc's office i was like could i watch

some old joe montana film so i was probably watching like a vhs or something yeah that's awesome but i'm watching this old joe montana stuff and he's at you know he's 36 years old I was like, could I watch some old Joe Montana films? So I was probably watching like a VHS or something. Yeah, that's awesome. But I'm watching this old Joe Montana stuff. And he's 36 years old, 37 years old at the end of his career. But the way he moved around subtly and made plays, you know, he played basketball at Notre Dame. All right. So when I go forward now, I have to remember seeing that because he's not some physically imposing guy. He's not Justin physically imposing guy he's not justin

herbert or josh allen um but now when i when i watch quarterbacks i look for those that subtlety it's not extreme athletic feats it's not josh allen jumping over anthony barr in the middle of the field all right those are nice to have it's the the subtle movements that are winning sort of plays. And Joe would regularly, he'd be in the pocket, he'd make a throw, get hit right in the face, get up. He'd also get in the pocket and move around a little bit and hit a guy in the run and create a play that was there. So it was like the play called the play that actually occurred. That's sort of how I learned that philosophy. When I watch Joe Burrow, there's the play called the play that actually occurred. That's sort of, I learned that, that philosophy. When I watched Joe Burrow,

there's the play called, which he generally executes. And when it's not there, he generally has enough moxie, enough movement capabilities that he can move around, but he's not going to jump over people in the middle of the field either.

Right. Like, like Josh Allen. Yeah. He ran for like a hundred yards. So it's like subtle athleticism. And, and that's extremely valuable.

And I do think, I mean, Drew Brazier's a great high school athlete, and the way guys move in the pocket in those things are, you can't just go back there to your six yards and stand there and throw the ball and hit two or three times very often. It's just that the sport is too hard, the defensive linemen are too good, and you just don't have that type of time so let's leave it there and we'll continue the conversation on our next episode which will come later on tonight i'll probably post it for tomorrow morning but uh if you're i mean if you're listening to the feed there's going to be just this week

sort of sporadic uh new podcasts that are popping up and i'm really excited about that so that's one but we'll have another after we talk with quasi ad Adafo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell, a very exciting day here in Indianapolis. So obviously keep it here, purpleinsider.substack.com or just the purpleinsider.com. Now, have you seen the new site? It's beautiful.

Oh man, it's nice. So go there, check it out and we will catch you later from Indy.