Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - How does the current Vikings rebuild compare to the first Mike Zimmer rebuild?

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Matthew Coller and Dave Campbell of the Associated Press get together to look back on when Mike Zimmer first arrived in 2014 and how he turned around the team quickly. Are the Vikings in a similar circumstance presently or are there different challenges? Plus is Jake Reed the most underrated player in recent Vikings history? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado, and as always, celebrate. I'm Shanae Oblomacare. Golden, Colorado, and as always, like Emmanuel Acho. People that show love to me, I forever got their back. Vivica A. Fox. If the foundation isn't right, then the rest of it's going to go wrong from there. And more. Subscribe to Front and Center today. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and we welcome in from his beautiful front porch on a gorgeous morning, Dave Campbell of the Associated Press. Dave, just looking at you makes me feel better about the world, especially after a long night last night, but we won't get into that. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing well. It's nice to be back. I kind of believe, especially when you live

in Minnesota, there's no problem that can't be solved by fresh air, so here I am. Yeah, well, and it adds to the ambiance of a Mike Zimmer Zoom call, which we just jumped off, so we didn't learn a whole lot from this one but I want to talk about Zimmer and the first time that he built a team and whether a we think it'll be a second time that he gets to build a team and be what worked the first time around what they could take away what they can repeat what they can't repeat. So let me get your opinion on the Vikings not doing anything at the trade deadline. I think that even though it is more circumstantial than anything else, I think if someone came in with a second round pick for Anthony Harris, they most certainly would have done it.

But the prices were not very high. And so you could kind of understand around the entire league that nothing was happening but I also think at the same time that it is a sign that they believe that they can go forward here and have success through the rest of the season and be at least at the end of the day a respectable football team unlike what they were after the Atlanta Falcons lost so give me your take on what it means for Mike Zimmer and even Rick Spielman to that extent that they kept everything here. Yeah, it does. I agree with the point you just brought up. It does show on some level that the season is still salvageable.

I mean, that extra playoff spot is huge, right? And now we've heard that if they have to deal with any league-wide COVID cancellations, that there's a 16-team tournament on the table. So there'd be an additional spot, potentially. And the next thing, when you look at the schedule, all of a sudden, I mean, there's a lot of really winnable games, even despite their, you know, massive injuries and inexperience at cornerback. They're done with the Packers. They're done with Seattle, like as far as their schedule goes. So it really is not silly to say that

they're like, quote, in contention. I didn't expect anything to happen really at the trade deadline. Not specific to the vikings just just how this works in the league you know you there are legitimately good players out there you know who could help get contending teams over the hump at certain positions but every team and and justifiably so but they're just so obsessed with draft pick currency and what the what the analytics basically tell you about shelf life of players um and investing accordingly under your salary cap that you know you know people just don't trade high picks for for you know um mid-career expensive players especially in a year when there's so much

uncertainty about what the next cap is going to look so and you know on some level to me it actually is kind of irritating like like these are like legitimately good players that get so devalued by just the the numbers like the way it's similar to baseball how you know analytics end up trumping like uh the human element so much. I mean, if I were building a team, and you just take a couple of Vikings examples, you heard Harrison Smith and Adam Thielen tossed out as potential. If they were going to really tear it down, they'd even look to move on from those guys. But why?

I don't think any of us would see any reason why those particular guys would continue to be very productive players for three more seasons. And things can change so quickly in the league that, you know, even if this season were to be lost and next season was still rebuilding, like you can get back pretty quick in the NFL. That's another reason why it's just, you know, the teardown thing, it's not like baseball. And people who follow sports, like, tend to, I think, carry over our views on how one particular sport works and apply them to the sport we're looking at currently.

And, like, baseball trade deadline hype and, you know, rental players, we just sort of assume that that kind of stuff in play, like just in mainstream conversation in football. But it really isn't. You know, like teams just don't want to, whether that's right or not, teams don't even want to give up a, you know, a mid-round pick for, you know, a solid starting caliber player. Which I think is a mistake in a lot of cases by contending teams because there was a study done not that long ago about the age of teams that win the Super Bowl. And a lot of times the Super Bowl teams have a bunch of veterans. And this is why usually you love to have the quarterback on the rookie contract because you can fill in all these spots with veteran players and you can pay

those veteran players to be good. And as we've seen this year, there's a lot of value in just knowing where you're supposed to run or knowing what the leverage is as a cornerback or like simple technique things that veterans know and guys on rookie contracts don't always know. I also think that there's huge value, and this would be maybe the case if you were talking about trading Harrison Smith or Adam Thielen, is the Vikings went into this year with a lot of star players, but they didn't go in with across-the-board good players.

And I think what we end up seeing is, I mean, star players, of course, especially on offense, your quarterback, your wide receivers, those are going to be huge difference makers to whether you win or not. New England all of a sudden not good without Tom Brady, a shocker, right? But at the same time, at many spots, it's how many good guys do you have? And we see this on defense. Harrison Smith and Eric Hendricks are playing all pro-level football, and it doesn't

make a difference because you see the corners not knowing where they're supposed to go. So I think that maybe the argument for moving on for players like that would be you need so many bodies more than you need stars. And that's why I want to go back to 2014 because Mike Zimmer has made this same comparison where he said he got here to Minnesota and looked at the roster and watched through the tape of the guys that he had and said, we've only got like three starters that are any good. And he likes to talk about that because I think he's proud of that defense even being respectable as opposed to this year's, which was not.

But do you have a sense for if there's a comparison there? Because I'm not sure that there is. I mean, maybe on the defensive side, but they had guys that they had just drafted really high, like Xavier Rhodes and like Harrison Smith, who were on their rookie contracts and they were young players kind of coming up, but they had had a couple years under their belt for Zimmer to inherit. They knew what they were doing. And even guys like Everson was young, and I think they signed him to another contract,

but he was the same sort of thing, like established or starting to establish himself as an NFL player. So I'm not sure that there is a difference. But what do you remember about kind of the feeling of the second half of that season where they actually started to kind of gel together and play better, which I think is what a lot of us are now projecting for this team? I really don't even think, I don't remember that 2014 defense feeling like a problem ever. Unlike this season when you've already seen, you know, several games where it was a major vulnerability. I think there is similar reasons to see much better performance

in the second half of this season. Really, and like I alluded to earlier with the schedule, like their first seven games, they have two Aaron Rodgers and one Russell Wilson. So, you know, the back nine is not going to compare to that. It won't even come close as far as the opposing quarterbacks that they'll'll face uh you could even throw in a man ryan in that first seven you're right i i think he i do remember the um sort of the the narrative in 2014 that you're alluding to and and i mean certainly he um i think zimmer really proved his reputation as a defensive strategist

and developer with the way that defense got so good so quickly. But they inherited, he inherited, I think, a lot more talent immediately in 2014 than he took into this 2020 season. You know, just like you said said with the recent high draft picks he's starting off with Anthony Barr, Harrison Smith, Xavier Rhodes um which is already I think better you know it's more of a that's that's a that's a higher group of talent than Jeff Gladney, Cameron Dantzler, DJ Luanam right I mean it's it's just, can't really so much to even compare that. But you're right too about you need enough good players to fill out those spots. And that's a

good point about having, you know, a collection of stars is not going to be enough. And I think that's why, that sort of points to how well the 2017 team worked and why they were so good. They had some of these same stars that are still playing now, but they also didn't have very many positions at all that you'd consider a weakness. You know, you think about Jarius Wright or even Linval at that point maybe wasn't a star. But, you know, Trey Waynes is a good example of that. He was never a problem. He probably wasn't worth them signing to a second contract.

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because with Kirk Cousins' contract and if they're keeping Anthony Barr, they're keeping Adam Thielen, I even think there's a reasonable possibility they work a new deal with Riley Reif because of the way that he's played this year. If they continue to kind of do the same things that they've done and and there are some guys that they just have to pay like Brian O'Neill you can't just let a really good tackle go but you paid Delvin Cook as well and when you pay everybody that means that you've got to have a bunch of guys at every other position on rookie contracts the problem with that is most of your draft capital has been in the seventh

round the last few years, the fifth, sixth, seventh. And those guys just don't hit very often. In 2015, we saw a few of those guys hit. But in general, they don't. And so the guys that you're talking about, and this is where it's funny because someone the other day, and I don't even remember how it came up, on Twitter was talking about how Trey Wayans is kind of a bust for the Vikings and my thing is not really because he'd be a solid starter for several

years for you we set the expectation for guys who are drafted as like oh you better become a superstar but we don't even know if Jeff Gladney becomes a dude who can play in the National Football League I mean there are a lot of guys who get drafted in the late first, and we're seeing this from Mike Hughes, that just aren't that great. I mean, the true superstar franchise-changing talent is usually in the top five. So what you're looking for is can you draft guys who can fill out the roster, and if you miss on those, and I think that this is going to be their mistake as opposed to before as opposed to before i think they had a lot of guys who like you said were just solid

and your captain munterlands you're jarius right i'm glad you mentioned him um i think we all had an appreciation for what he could do in certain situations um that you could rely on him i think that they're sort of going down the same path, and they made the same mistake with someone like Yannick Ngakwe, thinking, oh, one star will change everything. And that's just not the case. You could sign somebody who was off the street for $2 million who would give you remotely similar play, and you wouldn't have to give a second-round pick at $13 million to him and bail halfway in because you kind of realize where you're at with the guy.

I think that that's just sort of the nature of the league is stars are great, but they don't necessarily mean that that's going to get you where you want to go. And this is why when I look forward, I think what we're going to hear, Dave, this is me looking into the future here. I think what we're going to hear when they finish seven and nine is guys next year, next year, guys, next year, see all these young players, but DJ Wanham is not Daniil Hunter. And Jeff Gladney is probably not as good as Trey Wayans.

If he works out, he's as good as Trey Wayans at this point to me. He's definitely not going to be Xavier Rhodes. At least at this moment, I can't see it. I don't think he's got even the physical ability to be an elite shutdown corner even for a time like Xavier Rhodes was. And so I think that they've sort of painted themselves into a corner with the salary cap and with all the people that they've paid it's going to be really really difficult and I think that next year we're still going to be having the same conversation even if some guys do improve I'm

not saying Gladney's a bust just that the ceiling is probably not Xavier Rhodes and these other draft picks that you you take you take 15 guys but you don't know who's going to work out and that's why they used to be able to go out and get someone like Terrence Newman or Captain Munderland to fill spots and I still think looking forward that's going to be really really difficult to do and I also think that a 2015 type of draft is a once every two decade type of thing that you can't count on so I I guess I have trouble looking at this team and saying that what they're going to tell us is necessarily true unless they have other moves that they're deciding to make I agree with all of that I think that even sort of supports our earlier point about why contending

teams wouldn't be more willing to to trade you know mid like second third fourth round type picks for key players to get them over the top because what what the success rate is 50 50 at best uh and and and even a success story in a second or third round player is still has a ceiling, you know, of, you know, Trey Wayne's type ceilings. Like let's say we're not typically, not typically going to find six time all pros in, in those rounds. You can, but it's, that's an even more of a stretch. So I think you're right.

Well, they've definitely painted themselves into that salary cap corner. And you know what? I would say no one should feel any regret in that organization for doing that. Like, look how close they got. It was worth a shot, right? I mean, if Atlanta completes that pass against Philadelphia, then the NFC Championship game in 2017 is at U.S. Bank Stadium, and they very well go to the Super Bowl.

So it was worth a shot. I mean, they're obviously paying the price now for doing all those second contracts with their homegrown players and trying to squeeze everybody in to keep Zimmer's defense as talented as possible. I think you're definitely going to be looking at a heavy dead money situation for 2021 that they're just going to have to deal with right like even if like taking Anthony Barr's situation as a pretty good example you know even though it would be a whole lot of dead money to just move on from him the savings

that they could get under the cap versus keeping him you know might actually be worth it because they're going to need that to shore up some other holes. And obviously, if they wanted to replace him with Eric Wilson, that would require another contract too, but still be cheaper than Barr. So I think you're right. With the exception of Justin Jefferson, there's not an offense. Defensively, there's just not enough players that you see like much higher ceilings that they can reach. And, you know, maybe let's – of these seven guys,

seven rookies played on defense on Sunday, well, let's say even – maybe even one or two of them maybe exceed this the ceiling that we see in it and that that would help them out a lot but that still means you've got a whole lot more work to do to rebuild that defense and such a limited cap space to do it in right and circling back um just to the point about anthony barr i mean he's kind like, it's more about post 2017 and how they reacted and how they handled it than it is pre 2017. Cause I look at that as the line you draw right down the middle of the Zimmer era where you say in 2017, they had built up that team pretty well. I mean, the only thing that you might regret in terms of asset management was the trade for Sam Bradford and not that not

that I I would justify that trade at the time because you had a very very good team and he was under contract for two years you didn't know what the deal was with Teddy you needed a quarterback and you weren't going to play Sean Hill for 16 games like he would have survived maybe three I think uh before they would have had to pull the plug on that. Much respect to Sean Hill, though. So, but, you know, that, okay, so asset management, that would be one you'd regret. And when you look back, it's sort of the domino effect of things like that, though. And there will be maybe some of Yannick Ngakwe even, it's like when you trade for a big shiny object and you lose a first round pick, it's not just like, oh, well, you got a good player back, but you also got an expensive player back.

And there's this constant thing of this math problem you have to do. is trying to juggle this how much do we invest in these positions, in these star players, versus how many spots we really need to be filled by, guys who just we need to get lucky on and have work out, and first-round picks. And that's where when you have guys who are first-round picks like Mike Hughes or like the one that you sent to Philadelphia not work out, you might not feel it at the time, but later on, it's like when you get in a minor car accident, you're like, oh, I'm fine. And then the next day you wake up and you go, oh, I'm feeling that neck. That's kind of how it is, but it's a couple of years later for a lot of these things. So if they wanted to change their fate, because here's what I think their fate is for 2021.

I think it's they go into the offseason they make some of these moves they cut Kyle Rudolph I don't think they cut Anthony Barr maybe they try to convert salary bonus to cap or whatever they do to lower the cap hits because um Rob Brzezinski can just sort of wave his fingers and then all of a sudden there's different cap space but um i don't see it being vastly vastly different than this um i think that they're going to have ups and downs the same way that they will now and the only way to change their fate in terms of long term is to draft a quarterback in the first round and of course uh maybe you've seen on twitter i've've been getting into the scouting early, much earlier than I usually would in terms of the draft. But what is your feeling on that?

Because I think it played a really big role in how they built the first team around to even have Teddy for two years. And then Bradford, I remember him having a decent-sized cap hit, but I don't think it was monstrous. And most of their stars were on their rookie contracts that were coming up, like Xavier Rhodes, like Anthony Barr. They hadn't signed them to those mega deals yet at the time. But I think that even if you're listening and you're a huge Kirk Cousins fan,

you have his jersey, and you think he's great and it's not his fault, you can make a case for that. But the smartest way, I think, is to have the quarterback on the rookie contract because then you can bring in the Captain Munderlands and Terrence Newmans and Linval Josephs and those other players to fill out your roster around that guy. That's a great point. That first-round quarterback, that high first round, something could happen. The surest or, you know, I guess highest potential way to take a bigger step in the long term. I 100% agree.

And it's going to be, it's going to make this draft, well, even the rest of the season, fascinating to see where they end up. There's just so many bad teams. I don't think they're going to land in a draft slot that's going to give them a chance at one of those three quarterbacks that are widely seen as D3. And let's also remember this. Based on NFL history, probably two of the three will work out, right? One will guarantee to be a bust. And that's actually, you know, if two out of three hit,

that's actually pretty good. I mean, I think quarterbacks are coming into the league better and better. But as intrigued and fascinated as I am by Trey Lance, like they're not even playing this season. He's 20 years old. So for the team that, assume he declares, and for the team in 2021 who picks him, well you really

have to be patient and you really better hope that you've got some good quarterback developers on your coaching staff and some good support staff around them. I will say it is about time that you started paying attention to the quarterback position. I really feel like it's been a missed opportunity

for you content-wise. It's never too late to catch up to that. I had another point. Oh, yeah, the quarterbacks and the rookie contracts. So in 2011, when the last CBA was enacted, that drastically changed the rookie pay scale. Since then, the only quarterbacks to go to a Super Bowl not on their rookie contracts are named Brady, Manning, and Matt Ryan, I'm pretty sure.

Like, that's amazing. That's 20 Super Bowl quarterbacks in that new era of the new salary cap reality. And the only exceptions are Brady Manning and Matt Ryan, who was the MVP that year. I guess you could count Nick Foles, but he's, you know, that's not his rookie contract, and Foles was just the journeyman. So that doesn't really break, you know, that's not an exception to that rule. So there you go, right? I mean, I think I would be willing to bet that Patrick Mahomes is the next guy to

join that club to go do a Super Bowl with an insane amount of salary cap space being taken up. But I don't know what other quarterbacks out there, maybe Aaron Rodgers could do it. But there's not many. Even though

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That's BLUEWIRE, all one word, BetOnline, your online sportsbook experts. Right. Rodgers has been close, and Drew Brees has been close, and they've been competitive, and they've been good. And so you can do it if you have that level, and I don't think that the Vikings have that level. Even the current version of Aaron Rodgers, which is not as great as, say, 2011 Aaron Rodgers, he still is, to me, in a different air of someone that can elevate the entire team around him.

And I guess what I keep coming back to is if they go 7-9, like you said, I mean, you're probably drafting a corner. You're drafting a corner you're drafting a defensive tackle you're drafting I mean uh even a potentially a guard or a tackle or something you know one of these other positions which is good and that's going to help you but it doesn't really answer the long term of here is the formula that you need um in order to to do it and I'm not sure that Cousins is quite at the level of someone who can have everything falling apart around him and still be able to succeed. Now, that is where I want to finish on this question, Dave, which is just what does that mean for Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer

long term? Because, you know, I guess there have been a couple of times, and this is where it's unique for me, where we go down to New Orleans and people are having the conversation about will they get rid of Mike Zimmer after this? Will they trade him to Dallas? And then this year when I do radio interviews or whatever, the host is asking me, is Zimmer on the hot seat up there in Minnesota where it's cold? And it's like, well, I have no idea. I really don't because I thought, man, if they lost by 40 to the Packers, would that be it or would that not be it? I really don't know, Dave. Yeah, same, right?

I mean, everyone can pretend to know, but, I mean, really, it boils down to two people, V Ziggy Wilf and Mark Wilf really um and they they you know they're pretty uh they keep a pretty tight circle I I thought the hot seat stuff is so interesting even Aaron Rodgers picked up on that this past week he he said it uh I think you know in in his midweek uh press conference he talked about seeing Zimmer on the hot seat and thinking that's crazy because he has such a respect for him and his defenses. And then I saw postgame, he was sort of breaking down the loss. He's basically saying how it was unacceptable to lose to a team that had coaching questions.

No matter where this thing is going for the Zimmer-Spielman era in the future, I would say with confidence there was no chance of something happening during the season. In a pandemic season, having just committed three years to both those guys, what in the world would be the point of making an in-season change, especially when your heir apparent, I guess, or your most obvious replacement would be Gary Kubiak, who's, you know, he's not going to be a head coach again. He's said that pretty consistently.

So it's not like he'd be getting an early look at Kevin Stefanski because he's gone, right? Or, you know, there's just not that – there wouldn't be that incentive to make some kind of in-season change. Yeah, I think – honestly, I think, you know, we talk about how there's so intertwined with the quarterback in any regime in the league, but I think it boils down to these young defensive players uh a lot of a lot of it i think um let's if if the last half of the season uh apologize for the airplane noise i was gonna say people are gonna be like

wait is that over me or is that on the podcast richfield south minneapolis podcast that's sort of the the uh price you pay but uh i i think you know if there are some signs that you know i don't know how closely like the wilfs would would look at this type of thing like more x's and o's stuff but if there are signs that gladney and dansler and you know wanham and hughes and holden hill whatever are actually playing better. There is an actual ascension, and they're showing like this. They had to take a step back this year, but there's reason to believe that they're headed back toward building another credible defense.

Well, I think that would certainly maybe help their fate to just say cool off the seat a little bit. No matter what happens this year, though, almost definitely be in some kind of prove-it mode heading into 2021. And, you know, we always tie them together. But given their ages, given how consistently ownership has synced up their contracts, I think it does seem to be a package deal at this point, right? Like, you're not going to just, if you decided to move on from the head coach, well, why would you keep the general manager to be the third head coaching choice? And even the other way, like, if you're only, you know,

disappointed in the general manager and wanting to make a change there, you're going to keep a 64-year-old head coach. I mean, you know, I don't know. I just don't see that. I'm enjoying the play. You don't have to mute it. People love to hear the plays. Anywhere you're in Twin Cities.

We said you were outside. There was full disclosure about that. Delta 586 probably headed somewhere west. You know what? Maybe Denver. That couple of weeks there where there were no flights really was kind of the creepiest thing since I've moved to Minnesota, just in Richfield, because the planes are flying over so often. And then when there wasn't any, it was like,

is the earth ending? And the answer was kind of yes. But anyway, one last fun question for you, you and I got to run to player availabilities here in a second. So I tweeted yesterday, something about Jake Reed, and i call them the most underrated viking southern and uh i got zero pushback from twitter every person how about this america was brought together by the idea that jake reed is the most underrated viking do you agree or is there a more underrated viking and i don't mean by vikings fans or journalists like we know everyone we remember terrellinkfield's story okay so like it's hard for us to underrate or overrate anybody but just on a national level Jake Reed for several years especially with Warren Moon

was an elite receiver I was looking up his numbers he had 1300 yards averaging 18 yards a catch in 19 freaking 96 and the guy was dominant. And then, you know, of course, he becomes part of three deep and doesn't get quite the catches. But still, the efficiency, if you threw at Jake Reed, you were very successful. Is there anyone more underrated, like, in terms of just remembering great players from this franchise than Jake Reed? I love this question.

And I was a huge Jake Reed fan. You know, for me, my knowledge of the team really only goes back to the Jerry Burns era. I couldn't possibly. Let's just both agree that there's probably five players on Bud Grant's teams who could win. But we'll just say from 1986 on. I mean, off the top of my head, I can't say you're wrong.

It's so hard to deal in absolutes. He's number one. He's the most. But if you said if you got no pushback, maybe it was the kind of day on Twitter where there was distractions from other things. Yeah, that's a good point. Didn't have time to formulate their analysis because they were thinking about a bigger picture.

But I like that nomination. I really do. I think he was – I was a huge fan of him. I remember some games early in the Denny era before Moss. They were pretty, I would say, a chronically underachieving team. There was a lot of talent there. More on offense, but they had a lot of defensive stars, too. And I remember when they got Moon in 94, the offense did have – you sort of expected it just to be awesome. But there was a lot of games where they didn't produce much. I think Chris Carter was getting a lot of attention,

even though he had over 100 catches that year. But I remember several games where they wouldn't have won if Jake Reed hadn't stepped up with a whole bunch of huge third-down catches and that kind of thing. I think he's a great example. And even, you know, you look at the numbers, and that's also from an era when, you know, it wasn't quite as tilted. So pro passer, you know, based on rules and just based on the overall quality of quarterback play.

And obviously Warren Moon was a Hall of Famer, but he was also late stage career. And, you know, he didn't immediately like thrive when he came that season. So in 94, I'm thinking. So, yeah, that's a great nomination. Why not? Let's go with it. I love the 90s Vikings. I think they're great.

Like, you know, there's so many great players, and the quarterback is just a merry-go-round. So, you know, sometimes it's Sean Salisbury, and sometimes it's Rich Gannon, and sometimes it's Warren Moon, and sometimes it's Warren Moon and sometimes it's Brad Johnson and sometimes it's Randall Cunningham and it's just it's like a great don't forget Jeff George yes yes the only time in his whole life Jeff George is good is right there except for maybe just a blip on the radar in Atlanta and my those are my favorite highlights to watch, too, is Jeff George to Randy Moss. Like, it's not a combo that lasted very long in the NFL, but it's the best highlights. Because, you know, they would say, like, you can't overthrow Randy Moss. Like, I think Jeff George actually could.

Yeah, he had an arm. It looks silly. It looks like a cartoon gag when he throws it 50, 60 yards in in the air and it doesn't even have to go high it's just it's it's super fun to look back at those and watch like warren moon remember when warren moon would drop back when his shoulders would be faced like the wrong direction i've never seen a quarterback do it since they used to do it but like his shoulders would be faced to his left as he was dropping back and then he would spin around and almost use it as like a slingshot kind of thing. It was really fun to watch.

So anyway. The 90s was a great decade on so many levels. Well, of course. I mean, this is us being like, oh, we're back in our day, like our parents with the 60s and 70s. But I think specifically with those teams, they were a lot of fun, and they were good, but they were never quite like championship good, and there were always people ahead of them.

But fun teams. Well, the 98 Vikings were championship good. Right, yes. Of course. But you're right. Otherwise. Let's just, one quick before we go. 99, think about how crazy this is.

They start two and four, and they bench Randall Cunningham for Jeff George. Like what other team in the NFL these days would ever have two quarterbacks, like two super old but pretty accomplished quarterbacks on your roster, and it would make that switch? Like you would almost always have a developmental guy to go to. And they did have Culpepper. They drafted Culpepper um that year and he was he was the third string guy in waiting but uh they did that all the time in the 90s that's

like one of my favorite parts is like the late 80s and 90s like benching tommy kramer for wade wilson wade wilson bench for tommy kramer then there's gannon is benched for wade wilson and then he's benched for sean salisbury. That's just tremendous. I love it. You're right. They almost never had a young quarterback for about two days. Dave Campbell, Associated Press. Well, we got to run, and I really appreciate your time.

This was a lot of fun, and I am excited to get together again soon, man. Let's do it again. Enjoy your nice morning. Will do. See you on the other Zoom.