Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Friday roundtable with PFF's Eric Eager on the big picture of the Minnesota Vikings' free agency decisions

Episode Date: March 12, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom are joined by PFF's Eric Eager to talk about how the Vikings would approach the coming weeks if everyone in the front office had no threat to their job security. What does that say about where Kirk Cousins stands with his performance and contract versus the rest of the roster and how far the Vikings need to go in order to be a Super Bowl contender? Plus who is each of our favorite QB in the NFL draft that isn't named Wilson or Lawrence? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Get Coors Light in the new look delivered straight to your door with Drizly or Instacart, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate. Hello, welcome into our Friday Roundtable here on Purple Insider, presented by Scout Logistics and by Stim Bowl, your stock market for sports. Matthew Collar and Sam Ekstrom and our Roundtable guest today, Dr. Eric Eager of the Pro Football Focus Forecast Podcast. Great stuff. You guys just did an episode with Chris Sims, which was extremely detailed on how to look at quarterbacks in the draft.

We've got a lot to discuss, Eric. How are you? I'm doing great. We're almost a free agency. We're starting, and this year is a different wrinkle in that, like, we're seeing starting caliber players getting cut in you know early so we're really already started free agency uh this past week and and it'll be interesting to see what we we get even up until monday matthew and i wrote our our top five free agent targets

at each position this morning and i already think it's obsolete like i think there's already been additions that probably would have made the list it's's crazy how fast it's going. Oh, I'm always surprised that more players get tagged, like Cam Robinson, Marcus Williams of the Minneapolis Miracle fame. Like all those guys get like more Allen Robinson, more guys get tagged than we think too. So like all these wishlists we have end up being obsolete to your point. And then some guys that get cut are actually like reasonable players. And you know, players,, like, Vikings might luck into actually having a chance at getting, given how many there are. Yeah, I was really surprised to wake up and see that the Chiefs no longer had any tackles left on their roster.

And that's just 2021 offseason for you is that this, I mean, people say unprecedented a lot about COVID-related things, but this really is because the cap has always gone up, and these teams plan multiple seasons out for how to handle it, and now all your plans were blown up. But, Eric, where I wanted to begin for the main topic is something that I threw at Jeremiah Searles the other day, and he had a very interesting answer, and I felt like since you look at an entirely league-wide perspective on your show and with your data analysis and everything else at PFF,

that you could give a good perspective on this. If the Vikings did not have job security as a factor for their coach or their general manager or anybody else in the front office, how would they handle this offseason versus the reality, which I think is that there is job security on the line for 2021? I mean, I think it's going to be totally different. You know, we talked off air, like, I mean, they're putting a lot of eggs in the quarterback basket. And I think, you know, as much as we've given Kirk a hard time at times, like he's good enough to get you six or seven wins with bad support.

You know, there's a really thin band of outcomes with Cousins. It's, you know, you're never going to get more than nine or ten wins. You're never going to get really lower than six or seven. And like to me, that's like the bet that they're making collectively, which is let's fake it till we make it here. You know, we did not plan for the pandemic. And there are a lot of teams that are in crappy cap situations, by the way, where everybody's giving them flack and it's like, well, their choice,

they don't have, there's not one choice that's good and one choice that's bad. Both are bad and they're making like a better of the two bad choices. The Vikings are kind of in that realm, but they've also pushed so many cans down the road that it's also part of their bad choices. The Vikings are kind of in that realm, but they've also pushed so many cans down the road that it's also part of their bad decision. So I think what Spielman and company are trying to do is to put enough pieces in important places and then sort of fake it with the rest

and then hope against hope that the 2020 draft or the 2021 draft turn out like the 2015 draft, which is like, you know, a royal flush of players that can come in and be valuable at valuable spots, buoy them up a little bit, get them to nine wins or something like that. And then that buys them time to sort of rebuild the roster once, you know, they get more, you know, the TV deal comes in and the money comes in from the cap.

Like, I think that's what they're doing. I being sort of more of a probabilistic guy, would say if I had, you know, a six-year contract for my coach and a six-year contract for my GM, I'd probably trade Cousins to a team that's looking for that, like, next QB. And build the thing back up and say, and do kind of what Detroit's doing, which is like, look, if we win three, four games this year, that's fine. It's the first year for all of this. Matt Patricia left us with nothing.

The problem is in Minnesota, Spielman left himself with nothing, and that's kind of the issue. Well, the real look-ourselves-in-the-mirror rebuild should have happened a year ago. And think about if they had taken this tact last year, coming off of the coach and GM getting extensions. And I know you don't want to take a big step back after winning a playoff game, but if you would have just realized your defense was going to dissolve, let your quarterback's contract run out, and then reevaluate after 2020,

they could have let Kirk walk, and they wouldn't be in this quandary, and they would actually be one of the rich teams in this free agency. If they didn't have that Kirk Cousins contract on the books, they would probably have, you know, some more draft picks because they might've sold some pieces. They would have a lot of capital to really go and build this 2021 team up. Whereas I think because they tried to hedge their bets in 2020, now they're kind of doing the same thing in 2021 a little bit,

and they don't have the money to do much to improve this roster. So it should have happened last year. I think that's the reality of it. Well, and the quarterback class is such that, you know, at 14 they might still get one, you know, but, you know, let's say they had a more sober view. And, you know, we've all followed the Vikings for sober view and, and, you know, we're, we've all followed the Vikings for quite some time. And, you know,

I followed them since I was a kid. It's like the, the root of a lot of their problems is really misunderstanding what some key events in Vikings history have meant. 2019 was a year where they got to play David Blau. They got to play Brandon Allen. They got to play Mitch Trubisky. You know, I'm trying to think of the other backups. Matt Moore, they lost to him, by the way. Chase Daniel.

And they go 10-6 and they win a playoff game, and they view that as the harbinger for things to come, when in reality it's like, no, you guys had some good pieces to press luck a little bit and make it to the second round of the playoffs, but, you know, you're not a long-term winner. And if they go into last season with that view, maybe they keep Kirk around and he plays that well. But I can guarantee you they don't spend a two on Yannick Ngakwe.

I guarantee you they don't put the franchise tag on Anthony Harris. And they probably trade Riley Reif when they're sitting there at one and five. And if they do that, now we're talking about the eighth pick of the draft, the seventh pick of the draft. And now you're looking at this as a Vikings fan thinking, oh, my goodness, we get Matt Jones. We get Trey Lance. If we want to get Spunky, we move up to the third pick, right?

Miami's already got their quarterback, and we can get Justin Fields or Zach Wilson, whomever falls there. Now you're sort of in a position where like the only way out of this for Vikings fans is to put a bunch of lottery tickets out there, draft a ton of players and hope that five or six of them become the Kendricks and the digs and the hunters that they got in 15. And they can turn this thing around quickly. And I just look, when I look at the data, I just think, you know, that's,

that's a good bet to that. That would be the bet I'd made if I made the universe of having Kirk as my quarterback, but that's not the, that's not a bet that wins very often. I was thinking about this the other day about just these days, as we enter free agency, as we enter real draft season and and how they would be different if the Vikings had let Kirk Cousins' contract play to the end. How different it would have been if they had moved on from Mike Zimmer and said, all right, new coach, Kevin Stefanski, for example, how about

you play out the last year of Kirk Cousins, which probably turns out the same, considering the defense. You're not winning much with the 29th ranked defense, no matter who it is. And without Zimmer, maybe they're 32nd with their talent last year. But we would be looking at this roster and saying, there's all sorts of cap space. There's all these free agents. There's a high draft pick. There's like, everyone will look at a situation, not everyone. A lot of people will look at a situation and say, and this includes the Vikings, we don't want to tank. We can't have one of those years. We can't have a really big step back. And then when you actually get there, here you are on March, whatever, 2021, you go,

you know what? I guess that would have been kind of worth all the things that we would have gone through, wouldn't it? And I just think like that was the fork in the road. That was the, you can go down this road and you can try to stay relevant and win whatever number of games and maybe make the playoffs, or you could go down this road that is a little scarier because it involves some pain, but it usually comes out to a better place or it can come out to a better place ultimately than you've ended up where you are now. Well, and the thing that you're maintaining isn't all that great to begin with,

right? I mean, I think, you know, I'm 35 years old. The Vikings have really only had five or six like really bad years in my lifetime and they almost always come out the other end, right? I remember 2002, Mike Tice took over the team and he said in the paper, he probably said it to Judd, or Royce, and he was like, we have two starting caliber players on this defense. Everybody, every other position's up for debate. It was like Chris Hovand, and I can't remember who else, like maybe Brian Williams or Corey Chavis or something. And it was like, and in 2003, they started off 6-0,

and they were a silly pass by Josh McCown away from making the playoffs. You know, 2011, they're 3-13 under Leslie Frazier. They just drafted Christian Ponder. He didn't look like he could do anything. Adrian Peterson tore three ligaments in his knee on Christmas Eve. And the next year, they're in the playoffs. Like, the Vikings, you know, I think that the cognizant around the Vikings is like, well, we can't do X, Y, and Z because then we're not going to have meaningful games in December.

And I look at this past December and I'm like, really, you had one game where you were leading for a playoff spot. You go to Tampa. You're completely outclassed. You lose at home to Trubisky. Like, how much did those games really actually, like, who cares, right? Like, build a sustainable product there and then give yourself an opportunity because maintaining, like, a band around 8-8 is, to me, I think, boring and something that I feel like is when you look at this, you know, if you're a fan and you want them to win the Super Bowl,

you have a completely different objective function than maybe the organization that wants them to remain relevant for as long as possible. Those are two different things, and I think Kirk serves a better purpose for the one than he does the other. Kirk serves the purpose of the Gary Kubiak phrase that he used last year, getting back to the hump. And I wonder how much that mentality permeates the organization, because that seemed to say that we're okay with being a little bit mediocre as long as we're in the mix as long as we're having those meaningful quote-unquote games in December and can occasionally make the playoffs and give us give

ourselves a chance I don't know the teams like that that's like Atlanta making the Super Bowl one year kind of randomly or Jared Goff making the Super Bowl one year kind of randomly, or Jared Goff making the Super Bowl one year randomly, or Joe Flacco. You need to catch fire with a middling quarterback, and all the stars have to align. That's basically what the Vikings are tacitly saying they're okay with if they have a high floor, low ceiling. And I wonder how that approach will change when and if this regime ever kind of moves along and ushers in a new generation. Because I think modern thinking across sports, like you don't want to be in the purgatory and in the NBA.

I mean, that's the worst place to be. You want to be really good or really bad. And I think the Wolves management locally understands that. They're better at being bad than anybody is. Like they got it. They got it down. The Wolves management locally understands that. They're better at being bad than anybody is. Like, they got it. They got it down, the Wolves. They're superb at it. I think they are statistically the worst team in major pro sports history

by winning percentage. So we have that going for us here locally. But the Vikings haven't picked up on that methodology. Yeah, I agree with you. And, you know, a lot of the, you know, you look at the Vikings have really contended for the Super Bowl about once a decade over the past, like, 30 years. And it's almost always exactly what you're saying. Randall Cunningham catches lightning in a bottle. They get Brett, they find out and they get Brett Favre for a season. And

then, obviously, Case Keenum in the defense in 2017. And then always the issue is looking at that for something that it's not, which is like if you're Tampa, for example, like good on Tampa for getting there and then winning it because there's never a guarantee you're going to have them – like we have them as the most valuable defense in the NFL last year per dollar. Like you're just not – that's just a random-ass thing that just doesn't

happen very often. So if you get that like the 2017 Vikings did or the 2017 Jags, something like that, you've got to capitalize on it because otherwise the actual cream that rises to the top, the New Englands, the Kansas Cities, the Steelers, they're there just to make up for your mistakes. And we see that in Vikings history. 98, Cunningham caught lightning in a bottle, and they signed him to a five-year deal. And he lasted one of those years. They brought

Favre back infamously. And then obviously in 2017, they knew at least to move on from Keenum, but I think they went obviously about it in the wrong way, which is to say, let's get a quarterback that's good enough to win with this defense, not knowing that that defense is not going to – you don't sustain number one caliber defense year in and year out. And so they probably needed a better solution at the QB position, plus a little bit of luck. I mean, they haven't had good luck in the draft since probably 15, if you sort of grade it out.

And taking a step backward can be really bad for you. I mean, the New York Jets are a good example of this, of a franchise that is bad at everything. And even when they get a good player, he is unhappy and wants to be traded to Seattle. And they drafted the wrong quarterback, possibly, seems like they did in Sam Darnold. I'm not a believer that that turns around massively anytime soon. So you can get stuck with just having one miserable year after the other. When I was in Buffalo at the beginning of my radio career, it was this way. It was just six and 10 and six and 10 and six and 10.

And it was, well, Ryan Fitzpatrick will do it. And then Tara Taylor will do it. So you can get caught into, yeah, let's rebuild, let's rebuild. And then you never get yourself out of a rebuild like Sam was saying. And that's what I want to ask is like, so how do you make sure that doesn't happen if you do that? Like if the Vikings were to say this year as they go into free agency, and I don't think this will happen, but let's say they did. We are not going to spend all this money on stuff. We're not going to throw all this money at one big free agent or something. We're going to

take lottery tickets, like you said. We're going to get some guys far down the list and see if they work out. And if they don't and we go seven to nine again, that's okay. And we'll keep drafting people and we'll have a long-term plan for the quarterback. Like, I look at that as a better result than saying, well, we won nine games and everybody's coming back and we must have done the right process because we got to the playoffs. Like, I think it's just favorable even if it can go really bad for you and you can get stuck in that. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, when you look and you talk about Stefanski,

Stefanski, he took the Browns to the playoffs for just the second time since Bill Belichick was their coach. And you look at Detroit, Detroit's last home playoff game was the first playoff start in Brett Favre's career. So we're talking about long, sustained awfulness. And I think when Vikings fans just look over and see those teams, that's, I think, what they see when people are like, hey, let's rebuild. Because they don't see the Kansas City Chiefs, or they don't see –

like Kansas City was 2-14 the year before they hired Reid. Like they don't see – well, they don't even see the trajectory of Cleveland. They don't see the Baltimore Ravens sort of breaking it. Like one year they just broke it down and said, we're going to draft a quarterback, and we're going to start Flacco until the wheels come off. They're 4-5, and basically since then Lamar has won 70%, 80% of his games. There are obviously issues.

Minnesota fans do not want sustained awfulness, and I think the hard part is just sort of being able to divorce the – let's say Detroit, divorcing the Jim Caldwell-ness from the Matt Patricia-ness, right? Jim Caldwell had the Lions on the right track, and that team hit the panic button when they went 9-7 a couple years and put in an awful head coach and completely flipped over that franchise. You know, there is a chance that, like, Rick Spielman's the right GM for the Vikings, and he just had some bad runs at it in the draft. Because you look at his other draft history, like Harrison Smith's great.

Sheree Floyd was good without this sort of injury. 2015 draft was fine. They've gotten some diamonds in the rough, too. I don't think necessarily firing Spielman's the best move, but there has to be sort of a position in place to be like, look, we haven't had success over the past few years, but we need to keep the people in place if they're good. And there also has to be a place for, yeah, we had some success on paper,

but it was maybe despite somebody like, you know, I'm not putting this out there, but like despite somebody like Mike Zimmer, right? Because that to me is always the issue. Like the wins and losses in every year oscillate so much, but you need to be able to look at the process and say, Hey, this is a long-term sustainable winner here, or this isn't. And we need to make, we need to make a change. And I just don't know if Vikings, well, the fans for sure aren't, but I don't know if even the Vikings organization is maybe ready to sort of ask those tough questions.

Yeah, and the record is not always indicative of whether you are a long-term sustainable winner, like you said, and then the inverse. Whereas I think the 2016 Vikings were built to win, and they started 5-0, and then injuries struck. The offensive line got decimated. They missed the playoffs. But I think the foundation was there, and then we saw what happened in 2017. And the opposite in 2012 where they win, what, 10 games and then fall apart in 2013. But that was a little more predictable. And I think a little bit to your point, Vikings fans have gotten very accustomed to being perpetually competitive.

There have been no sustained stretches of losing. And this franchise has history, except for like the first seven years of the franchise existing when they missed the playoffs. Since then, they've been good. Like every decade, like you said, they've kind of had a shot, maybe even two shots or maybe even four shots, if we're talking about the 1970s that they didn't come

through on um and I think it's interesting that it took like three four years for Spielman and Zimmer to sort of like settle on the direction they wanted to go like they they finally leaned into okay we're really gonna run the ball hard. We're really going to, like, you know, they leaned into this wide zone thing with the run first. And, you know, that wasn't Pat Shermer. That wasn't John DeFilippo. Like, they didn't know that that's what they were going to be for a long time. And now that they've settled on this system, they've sort of, like,

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Yeah, and I mean, the wide zone thing to me is just, it has a couple of aims. One of them is to get the, is to recoup the value that they got from not only paying Dalvin Cook, but also trading up to draft him in the second round, where a lot of smart teams don't even touch running backs.

Like a lot of that was sort of to get that value back. And another one was to, I mean, you know, hang a banner and say, like, look, this was a successful signing with Kirk Cousins. I think that they saw in 2018 that if you went three wide receivers all the time and put him in the shotgun and, you know, had him throwing on early downs, like there were, especially if your schedule was tilted, like, you were going to experience some bad things. And, you know, again, this is a part of the incentive thing.

Like, I don't know if running the wide zone thing is so much about winning as it is, you know, proving to ownership that the decisions that we made, signing Kirk and, you know, drafting and then signing Dallin Cook were smart and they were a good use of capital. And, you know, I get like that happens in every walk of life, right? Like there are people whose sole job it feels like to convince their boss they're doing a good job as opposed to doing one, right? So to me, I think that that's really the tough part.

And, you know, because I just, you look around the NFL and this is not a sustainable way to win. And, you know, the Niners popped up one year but then predictably crashed last season. I think Cleveland's going to be a nice test case as to whether that's sustainable. But even then, Baker Mayfield's on a rookie contract, you know, not a Kirk-level contract. So, you know, that's also part of my frustration is, like, if you're going to sign a quarterback So, you know, that, that's also part of my frustration is like, if you're going to sign a quarterback to a, you know, a 30 plus million dollar deal and in cap, it might be end up being more like 40. You got to use them. I mean,

I know the Dallas Cowboys are going to use Dak Prescott and whether or not he that that team is good is going to be entirely based upon how well he plays. There's a couple of things that I think about a lot based on what you said. One is these Kirk years, do we all agree this has not been good? I mean, because you get a playoff win and they've clutched onto that thing like it was a championship. And that was like the absolute lowest of expectations was a playoff win through three years.

They had set the bar when he got here at going to a Super Bowl or going to an NFC championship. And I think Mike Zimmer recognized they would need better quarterback play because he didn't expect to be able to just win every game with defense. And he saw what happened when the defense couldn't pressure the quarterback in Philadelphia. So I think that was the process, but the process didn't play out. Like the quarterback in Philadelphia. So I think that was the process, but the process didn't play out. Like the quarterback was not able to, you know, make up the difference between where the defense fell off even just a bit and where they needed to be, especially in games that mattered the most. And so sometimes I think when we analyze Cousins, like we like to look a lot at the micro stats and sort of the small, like, hey, well, he's very good graded by PFF.

He's very good when it comes to some of this statistic or yards per attempt or whatever. But the bigger picture is this really didn't work for what you thought it was going to do. If you had said if you were a 4-12 team and you were trying to get relevant, you signed Cousins and you have these last three years, you might feel okay. You might be like, well, we got us back to a certain bar, but that wasn't what you did. So let me ask you this, I think, challenging question. What percentage of this, where they sit right now in the situation we just laid out where you're stuck in the middle and you don't have money to spend and you're kind of banking on draft luck. What percentage belongs directly on the shoulders of Kirk Cousins? I mean, only the most delusional Vikings fans think that the signing was a

success. And I'm not saying that Kirk isn't a successful quarterback. That's what we can't – we have to be able to divorce. Kirk is playing really good football. isn't a successful quarterback. Like that's like the, that's what we can't, we have to be able to divorce. Kirk is playing really good football, but I'm telling you, like, that's like saying, you know, I buy a Porsche and I put it outside my house, but I can't pay my mortgage and I can't pay heat. And my kids are, you know, are cold.

And it's like, but my Porsche is zero to 60 in two seconds. And like, but you're not a successful person, you know, like the Porsche is doing what it's being paid to do, but everything else is crumbling as a result. And I think that's where we get, like, I don't think any of us think Kirk sucks. Like, no, Kirk's a top 10 quarterback in the NFL on a good year, but you're paying for that too.

And you're paying for that at the expense of gestures at the entire team right now. And the other thing, and again, not all of it falls on the feet of the Vikings. You know, the pandemic caused, you know, salary cap issues that were undeserved by a lot of teams. But that's the point. When you put, when you shove all of the chips into the middle of the table, like all the bad luck stuff, that quarterback that you're paying a ton of money to has to overcome it.

And I'll tell you what, Kansas City's banking on Mahomes doing that, and Dallas is, for better or worse, banking on Dak to do that. Houston was banking on Deshaun Watson to do that, and et cetera, et cetera. And those guys, you know, Deshaun was the third best quarterback in the NFL last year, and people are like, well, they were only 4-12 type of thing. And, again, that does fall on the quarterback's shoulders. So even though, you know, I would say like probably 50% of Vikings Twitter believes the Cousins signing was a good move, I still think it's a failure, and not because QB wins or a staff,

but because the goal of the signing was explicitly to get over the hump. And you've fallen back down a little bit. And so I think, like, I think the Kirk Cousins signing is probably responsible for at least 50% of the issues that currently, you know, keep the Vikings from being where they want to be. And again, none of it's because Kirk can't average eight yards of pass attempt. It's because that money requires Kirk to probably average eight and a half like Pat Mahomes. And he's just not capable of that. I agree with you, Eric, and you took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say Kirk is 51% responsible. I will give him the majority of the pie chart for these last three years.

I think anything that happens from this point on with Kirk and this team falls on the front office's feet because they're the ones who wanted to extend this experiment. They saw what happened in 2018. They saw the year when your defense, I think, was still equipped to go deep in the playoffs. We started to see the signs of decline, and then they set in more in 2019. But that defense could have gone a long way. They made maybe a bad choice. Well, it was a bad choice, an offensive coordinator for what they expected to do. And obviously, you know, Mike Zimmer didn't know what he didn't know when they made that hiring.

But Kirk wasn't able to overcome that season. And then after seeing, you know, what happened in 2019, yes, he was better. He took care of the ball a little bit more. But that was also an outlier of a season. And you only won one playoff game, and you didn't play well in a lot of the biggest games, like at Chicago, at Green Bay, at Kansas City, at San Francisco, all these big road games they had where Kirk Cousins fell flat,

and they gave him the extension. And I think now they're on the hook. I don't think you can blame Kirk Cousins anymore because you know what he is. I think you have to put it on the feet of the decision makers that are bringing it now into 2021 and beyond what they signed up for initially. Yeah, Kirk does – I mean, that's the thing. It's like at this point – and I – Kirk said – mercenary is the wrong word, but, like, it's a different thing with him, right?

Like, Pat Mahomes, his contract is structured in such a way to be very friendly to kansas city because his goal is explicitly to win five super bowls six super bowls seven super bowls tom brady you know be probably because his wife makes more money than him but also because like he's getting money whatever it is right but he took less money from the Pats so that he could explicitly win seven Super Bowls. You know what I mean? Troy Aikman took a pay cut in 1995 so Deion Sanders could sign with the Dallas Cowboys because he was irritated that they gave one of those Super Bowls back to the 49ers in 94. Like, that's a different kind of quarterback, whereas Kirk, I mean,

Kirk's explicitly in it to make as much money as possible. So everybody who's like, he should take less to, and it's like, no, like, he's not, at some point in time, he's not the issue. You know what he is. And the only way out of it is to, you know, is to sort of move on and chart a different path. And I understand that that's scary because you could deal with 4-12 every once in a while. But I'm telling you, you're not winning a Super Bowl with the way the thing is

currently constructed, unfortunately. What's interesting is that Kirk Cousins cannot be blamed for being absolutely, thoroughly, completely, and 100% Kirk Cousins all the time. Like, this is what he is. It's what he was before. And you should have known as the Vikings what it would take to get him to a point where you could win so here you have this very clear baseline of play from Cousins that is the most likely outcome he is the most consistent quarterback in the NFL nobody is more predictable

year to year and I mean that for better and worse like how he'll play against certain teams when he'll show up how many games that are going to give you a chance to win per year. So you know all of these things. Now maybe you didn't know quite as clearly the first time through because it was only a three-year sample, but those three years were very much Kirk Cousins. So now you get a bigger sample of two more years, and you look at the roster and say we still needed a top five defense

to get a sixth seed in the NFC and a single playoff win. We still needed two elite wide receivers. We still needed an elite running back. You can't go much farther than that without an elite or very, very good offensive line. All right, so how are you going to do this? Now, if they had said let's make him the long-term quarterback long long long like seven-year deal 10-year deal whatever he is quarterback for the foreseeable future like

Mahomes is for Kansas City then you would have this approach that we discussed earlier where you could take the long game and you could hope to get Jefferson and other players on rookie contracts because the thing about 2017, Eric, is they were actually spending a lot of money on the quarterback position. But all those superstars were on rookie contracts. It can be done. It's not entirely just if you sign a quarterback to a big contract, your life is over.

It is you better find a way to work around it. And that way is not trading for Yannick Agakwe. And when I look at their situation right now as they cut Riley Reef it's almost like I used to do this I would mow a lawn for my neighbor I get 10 bucks I would run right to the card store and spend it on a $10 card and I'd be like yes I got a $10 card um just because you got 10 million dollars of cap space don't run out and give it to somebody that is going to take up that one position and repeat the same mistake. Sorry, but it circles back to the short-term

nature of the deal. If Kirk says, I'm only taking a short-term deal, like, well, but that's not really fitting with our windows, so maybe we just shouldn't do it it is kind of the process that I think they should have had in hindsight. Well, and then the weird part was the deal last year at this time was sort of like, give us some space so that we can do what we need to do this year. It's like, what were you doing this year? Like, I didn't get that. And they were, yeah, they were just really like I don't know schizophrenic about how they were going to handle 2020 in a weird way and I just don't think that they were equipped like 15 draft picks is a great step in the right direction but then Michael Pierce and you know and and then

but then having absolutely no freedom during training camp to sign Logan Ryan right like you know like they're not that bad at talent evaluators. You know in preseason that Jeff Gladney can't play yet. You know that Holton Hill and Chris Jones can't play. You know that, like, you don't have – and they went out and got Ngakwe, but they paid up for him. You know, like, there were plenty of players, and there are going to be plenty of players, by the way,

this August that are available for cheap because they're not being signed now. There's such a surplus of players right now. Teams are in love with the draft. It's like it is, and it is as valuable as I think it is. So there's going to be tons of players in August, and there are going to be teams like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, by the way, who until this offseason never gave a signing bonus to any player in the light, you know, sort of draft part,

who have $4 million to give to Leonard Fournette, right, when he's dirt cheap, that end up being players. But you can't do that if you're constantly, as you talked about, you know, working today to pay off yesterday. And that's basically what the Vikings have been doing for a long time with a lot of the stuff that they're doing. And they ran out of it. Like, we talked about this on another podcast, which was you look at their team and there's

literally no players anymore after Riley Reif who have a roster bonus you can convert to signing bonus to do the trick. They've run out of all the tricks, right, that the Bills do. And unfortunately, like, for them, they just have to chill out for a little bit and that's not going to be good for people who are sort of fighting for their own jobs in the front office and at the head coach spot hey everyone i want to tell you about our friends it's scout logistics and i really do mean it when i say friends they are fans of purple insider over at scout logistics and since they reached out wanting to support this show, I want to tell you about what they do.

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Yeah, and Antonio Brown, too, for the Bucs. You mentioned Fournette. How about Brown? How about bringing in those veterans that the Vikings have been pretty hesitant to do for whatever reason. They're not really all about supplementing this roster with a lot of outside guys. Rick Spielman cares about his draft picks a lot, sometimes too much, to the point where you've got third-year players taking up roster spots because they think they might become something in what a rotational role like the leash is very long with their own guys and very short with anybody from the outside and

calibrating that I think this year is going to be key because you've got this massive draft class from last year you're going to have a massive draft class from this year as well. So you've got like over a third, probably close to half of your 90-man roster will be 2020 and 2021 acquisitions. You're going to have to cut bait on some of those guys, you know, before they've had their three-year stint on the roster where you think you need to fully evaluate them. You'll have to make some tougher decisions. And hopefully, to compensate, you bring in some $1 million veterans that can play or at least try and give them a chance to make an impact instead of clinging so tightly to these 23-year-olds that probably aren't very good.

Although I would love, Sam, to see very exciting things happen for our hashtag content uh when it comes to the first day of free agency hey i think we're on the same page all of us that signing some cheaper free agents because you're not in a position or at least you haven't shown that you're going to trade deniel hunter trade harrison smith tear this thing down look to trade cousins or any of that but i do think that quarterback is not out of the realm of possibility. And partly because the Packers just did this last year. Like, yes, they have needs all over the field, but there's no bigger need for your franchise to know where you're going at the quarterback position. So I want this answer from both of you. Let's say that you can only

draft one of the top five, or I'll add Kellen Mond here and make it six, quarterbacks for your recent podcast with Chris Sims, Eric. But it can't be Trevor Lawrence, and it cannot be Zach Wilson. I think the other three slash four have a chance to fall and be there at 14. We never really know. We always think we know because of, like, Dane Brugler's mock and, you know, whatever, but there's always one, there's always two, and we're always surprised at quarterbacks that drop. So if you could pick one guy to build the Vikings' future franchise around

that is, of course, not Zach Wilson and not Trevor Lawrence because those two guys are decidedly off the board, who would it be? Do you want to go first, Sam? The guest goes first. You got it, Eric. Okay. I'm going to go with Justin Fields. I think Justin Fields is – I don't think he has the upside that some people

think, but I think his floor is really damn high and i also think that he's tough i also there's a lot of things we like ding kirk for and while i think fields as far as like the the statistics the on feels like he fits perfectly into one of those offenses the shanahan and the kubiak offenses but he's also just I mean, he beat Clemson with like five broken ribs. He's just got an it factor that I think, you know, all of us gravitated towards Teddy when he played for the Vikings, even though I think we'll all admit he's not a great quarterback. There's intangible things that people love about playing with certain players.

I think Justin Fields, while there is a gap, I think, between he and the top two guys, I think he's a very, very good prospect, especially given the economics of football right now, which is if you surround him with talent and you put a good offense around him and you give him a platform from which to throw, I think he could be extremely successful for the Minnesota Vikings if you were to come even close. I mean, if he gets to pick seven or eight, the Vikings should just trade up

and take him. And, you know, the Kirk thing is tough because his contract will be guaranteed by them. But they should still take the shot at it. Yeah, I was going to go Fields as well. But Trey Lance is not far behind. I think that Trey Lance, because there's so little information about him, and, again, because he's an FCS product,

it's possible that he actually is, like, the second-best quarterback in the draft and we just don't fully realize it. Also possible that he is a bust. Like, there's boomer bust potential here but just based on like he he's a modern quarterback obviously with the mobility he's got great size there isn't necessarily a fragility risk like you had with kyler murray i mean he's a big body and i think he has pretty good arm strength too so i would take Lance and just try to revamp things like like do something different um let's get ahead of the curve like if everyone's going mobile quarterback let's be one

of the teams that uh is kind of ahead of the curve on this while while there still are like a lot of statuesque quarterbacks getting shuffled around out there be different than your peers and uh and try to be unique. So I think Trey Lance would represent a really exciting shift for the franchise. And like I've told Collar, I am a little biased because I just want it to happen. I think it would be a lot of fun to cover. Sorry, I would go Justin Fields as well, but I get you on Trey Lance. I just think with Justin Fields, Eric, that everyone's starting to overthink it.

Like he's the overthink guy. He's the, like, Lamar Jackson should play wide receiver. Uh-oh, he didn't run the 40 at the combine. I don't know if we can draft him. Or can he throw outside the numbers? You know, they seem to be doing the same sort of picking apart of Justin Fields, even though I like Zach Wilson better. But if Justin Fields becomes Ryan Tannehill,

you can get to a championship game with that level of quarterback if he's not expensive the a couple things on Lance that I think are interesting um so he in 2019 the year he started every game for North Coast State he had 22 dropbacks in a game while they were trailing and so like that's like very Kirk 2019 like right where everybody's like Kirk is turning the corner and it's like, well, actually Kirk never had to bring the Vikings from behind except in a Denver game against Brandon Allen. And then the other one that's really interesting about Lance.

And it's why I really do like him as like a Mahomes type prospect where you already have a starter and you bring a guy in and you let him sit. And if you can tell in practice, so there's a great story about Mahomes, my boss, Chris Collinsworth, when they were playing, when Kansas City was playing New England on the opening night of 2017, the Patriots reportedly planned for Mahomes. Mahomes was so, like, impressive during preseason. He was so, like, you know, Andy Reid could not stop talking about him.

But he, like, did not believe Andy Reid that he was going to start Alex Smith for another year. So like that's, I think Lance has that kind of upside. But one of the interesting points of data besides that was he had more yards on passes that traveled more than 20 yards downfield than between 10 to 19, which is just sort of like 10 to 19 is where the bread is butter in the NFL. So for Lance, I don't think you can draft him into a situation where he has to play in year one.

But he is, I think, a pretty good prospect just from like – I mean, he just throws the ball really well, and he moves well into your points. He's got some physicality to him too, which I think is probably why he'll be drafted in the top 15. Yeah, I think so too. And I think that tools are what everyone's going to focus on now after Josh Allen developed into a very good quarterback for a year.

We'll see if that sustains for a long period of time. Carson Wentz was also a great quarterback for a year and I'm not entirely sold on Justin Herbert either, but the toolsy guy is in. So that's why it's weird because I think that, you know, Fields as accomplished as he is, there's also that Ohio State thing and there's the wide open receivers running underneath and there's the your team is like the Big Ten is not good. So like you're playing against inferior competition all the time,

but then, you know, Trey Lance has that same sort of thing. And this is why we get it wrong constantly with quarterbacks and your guy might not be the guy that that turns out but i think that's an interesting discussion last thing for maybe both of you can give me an answer here the free agent that you are very very interested to see where he lands i mean for me i I think it's Kenny Galladay. I think Kenny Galladay had, you know, a little bit of a claim to being the best wide receiver in the NFC North before last year.

And I think obviously Adams grew the distance between him and everybody else. Jefferson emerged, Steelen kind of fell off. Galladay to me is like a number one wide receiver that didn't play much last year that everybody started sleeping on that we're all going to look back and say, why the hell did we not see this coming last offseason? Yeah, there's a lot of options. I think Alex Smith is interesting just because is someone going to hope he can be a bridge quarterback in like an interesting situation?

Probably not. But I'd like to see where he lands. Boy, the Kansas City tackles, honestly. I know Fisher had the injury, but seeing where Mitchell Schwartz lands as well, see where they kind of slot in. Because I think that tackle group is getting deeper and deeper by the day. Like it started out, it was just a few guys, and now Reif joins the mix and Fisher and Schwartz.

There's some options for you there. So, yeah, let's see kind of the hierarchy of the tackle position. Do you guys think that Riley Reif is the number two tackle on this market? I have him like third or fourth. I don't think he's number two. Well, and the thing about this tackle market is, you know, I always think about Irvin Santana when I think about, like, how much tackles cost.

Where, like, you know, the Twins didn't have – and they get, like, a number three starter, he's $15 million. I'm like, God, that's a lot of money. And it's like, well, you have to spend that much money to get competence. And I think, like, tackle is another one where, like, you come up for Aaron, and you're like, wow, Eric Fisher makes more than Mitchell Schwartz, and Mitchell Schwartz is the best right tackle in football. But I think that might turn around this year.

The reason why I think that is you have so many tackles that are available in the draft. You also have the carrot that is Orlando Brown, and Orlando Brown, I think, rumored to have a possibility of going to Minnesota. Minnesota, obviously, all the trades with Baltimore end up well, it seems like. And then you have these tackles who are sort of like none of them are perfect. Trent Williams is the closest thing to that, but he's even like a year removed from cancer. So I think that the tackle market might be suppressed enough where,

you know, some team might get a really good deal. And, and I wonder, I wonder whether that deal is going to be in the draft where everybody sort of signed free agent tackles or probably more likely after the draft where, you know, maybe reefer, maybe a Fisher, you know, maybe Schwartz, although it looks like Schwartz might retire. Like one of those guys is going to wait until after the draft to find a team that wasn't lucky enough to select one in round one where there's kind of a crop that's like relatively full of them come April.

You know, my pickup is Cam Newton because I was just watching Cam Newton's game against Seattle early in the season before COVID. And he looked really good. He's throwing the ball well. He was moving the ball on the ground like he used to. And then he got COVID and played some really poor games and then had some bad luck in games too. I mean, he fumbled at the end of a game against Buffalo where they almost won.

And they still ended up 7-9. And one of those losses went to Jared Stidham, right, or Brian Hoyer.rian hoyer must be yeah in kansas city they really didn't have a shot in that game right so if you are say the bears or if you're the broncos and you're picking up cam newton for eight hundred thousand dollars i think you're making an incredibly good move as opposed to signing jacoby brissett or ryan fitzpatpatrick or Tyrod Taylor to be your bridge quarterback and the New England Patriots were not just bad they were absolutely horrific Tom Brady couldn't register a 90 quarterback rating the year before with that roster and that roster was better the year before because they had a bunch of opt-outs so Cam Newton is number one on my list I'll be interested to see where he goes and if the Bears don't get him this time, I think they've made a mistake.

And the Pats, you know, they have the third most cap room, I believe, maybe third or fourth. And part of the reason was is they treated last year much like we thought the Vikings should have, which is to sort of, you know, Cam Newton gets you on the green, right? As you said, some bad luck putts, and they're 7-9. And, you know, the defense kind of eroding a little bit, like they had no pretense. Like, their defense started

to erode in the second half of the 2019 year, where they were 12-4. Brady was like a 6.5 yards per pass attempt guy with that offense, and it just got worse, because Edelman didn't even play, and they have nothing at the tight end position. We look at Cam, he still managed 20 total touchdowns.

He's 12 on the ground. Like, Cam is one of those players that I think, again, where, like, almost everybody's wrong about him. The people that think he's a bum are like, you know, they have never watched football before. And the people who think he's, like, the best, I think, is, you know, they're obviously, I think, a little bit overvaluing him. But to a team that's going to pay him even like $5 million,

I feel like is going to get a quarterback that can at least give them a shot. The PFF Forecast Podcast. I listen to every episode. Your last one, Chris Sims, is a must-listen because if you want to hear how a former NFL quarterback breaks down quarterback play, I mean, he really gave a dissertation on it. It was terrific. So you and George do a great job.

Sam, thanks for your time. Eric, thanks for your time. And another successful Friday Roundtable. Thanks, guys.