Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - How good is the roster the new Vikings GM is inheriting?

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

Matthew Coller and former Minnesota Viking Jeremiah Sirles analyze the Vikings' roster strength from a GM's perspective. How close are they to having a good offensive line? If they keep the weapons like Dalvin Cook and Adam Thielen, would that make for a good setup for a new quarterback? How long is it going to take to rebuild the defense? How far away are they really? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Now look, this is different, folks. This is very special. Matthew Collar, Jeremiah Searles. It's just left guard at this point. It's not even a day. It's just left guard. But this is different.

This is not Tuesday morning left guard. This is the first leg of three episodes in one day on Saturday because it's Vikings decision 2022 football bonanza Jeremiah Searles are you excited oh I'm ready the body is willing Matthew calling the body is willing the spirit is ready let's do this thing okay the two other episodes are with Derek Klassen who writes about quarterbacks and we talk about Kirk Cousins and his future, and then also Jim Moniz, former director of player personnel for the Buffalo Bills, who I think was just leaving as you were arriving. Yeah, I don't think him and I crossed paths at all. No, he did not, but he works for the XFL now, and it's a very insightful interview about what the heck a director of player personnel does, because no one actually knows.

So let's start out. Here's what I want to talk about in football bonanza decision Vikings 2022 or whatever order that's supposed to go in the internet, Jeremiah, about the strength of the roster and how close they actually are to being a real contender. So I want to go through it. I want to go through, I want to look at the positions and I want to talk to you about how strong you think they are. And I think the right place to begin with you is the offensive line. And I got a good question the other day, like what year will the Minnesota Vikings actually have a good offensive line? So give me your opinion on what they have to work with for the new person coming in, which Ryan Poles is an offensive lineman guy.

So if he's the person that they hire in Vikings decision football bonanza 2022, how far away do you think they are from having a very good offensive line you know i think luckily the two positions i feel the most confident about going into next season are the two tackle spots you know i think a full from what i saw from derisaw this year a full off season of getting his body right and if he can stay, I think he can make the jump to being a very good, not a great, but a good left tackle as a second-year guy. You have an elite right tackle in O'Neal, who I think, again, you can start on the bookends.

If you can start your offensive line on the bookends, that's a huge, huge win, right? But then you just go inside, and it's just a complete dumpster fire. So, I mean, you have to start with, okay, is Garrett Bradbury going to be my center or not and if he's not well then who is right that's where you build out that's the priority number one is who is my center and if i'm getting a if i'm gonna stick with kirk right this the kirk plays a role in this because if i stick with kirk then i can get a younger center. If I get a rookie quarterback or I draft a quarterback

or I go get a younger quarterback in the league, then I need to get a more veteran center. They're a direct correlation of the two in order to control things. And then, I mean, we all know that they're not going to spend any money on the guard spot, so they're just going to hope that Wyatt Davis leans himself out over the offseason here. But again, we're not saying he's fat. We're just going to hope that Wyatt Davis leans himself out over uh over the over the offseason here but again we're not saying he's fat we're just saying what we know and then you're gonna have to go probably draft another guy I think we're two years three years

away from having an elite offensive line uh I think that you can say an offensive lineman is fat I think that is allowed um out of shape out of shape is different lots of guys are fat and in unbelievable shape if you've seen trent williams move that does not make any sense for physics i'm gonna need bill nye to explain that thing um now here is the uh the thing is that if they bring in someone else um who has a priority to fix the offensive line i know that i mentioned ryan poles because he's a former lineman and that was a huge priority of Kansas city to rebuild their line. It's been very good this year. I think it's possible that they would spend money on that guard position. That doesn't mean necessarily going big game hunting and getting the number one guy out there

and spending $80 million like Kansas city did on Joe Tooney, but they have ranked at the bottom of the league. And I mean, 32nd in offensive line spending, which is such an incredible indictment of Rick Spielman to have seen it go sideways year after year and still end up being dead last in money that you spent. And yet number one in everybody's hearts and in the salary cap and nose tackle spending, it's like, what are we thinking here?

And then Rick Spielman is on a podcast with NFL network where he says, you know, with certain quarterbacks, you can't have the pocket collapsed up the middle and you're like, if only we could find the person responsible for that happening. What? But I, I, and who's to blame here? If only I had found that person.

If only I knew how to fix this problem. They will not provide us with any more unintentional comedy, which I will miss. But I think that they could actually spend, I mean, give me this first though. The center position, it's not highly paid in the NFL, but if you've got a great one, oh, my gosh, is it really helpful. Maybe you can explain just why Mitch Morris is a guy like this or Alex Mack in his prime, why these guys are so valuable when you have one of the best.

Yeah, when you have one of the best, you can take a lot more off of the quarterback's plate. And I mean, when you have the combination of a veteran stud quarterback and a veteran like stud center, I mean, the offense just it's so much more efficient. And because the quarterback's not worrying about trumping the young center, right? He's not like, oh, well, I know that this young center is going to come up and just call the base rule of the protection, right? If it's a Mike base protection, boom, Mike's right.

He just calls it. He's not looking at anything else because he knows the quarterback will Trump him versus when I played with Ryan Khalil in Carolina, like him and cam, like cam trusted Ryan fully to put things where they needed to be. And that allowed cam to operate other things, right? Audibles, hot routes, looking at the defensive, where he can see them and full trust in Ryan to have that.

It also allows you to put younger guards in there, like young guys that you're like, okay, maybe they're not mentally quite ready because of the playbook. But guess what? I know our center will put them in the right position. And so he's just, the center's the fixer. Like a center is looked at as a fixer. And when you have a great fixer in the middle who can get you right and put you in the right place.

And guess what? Even if he's calling it maybe wrong, but all five guys follow him and all five guys are wrong. You can still make it right. That's a really valuable thing to have, which is why when you get those guys, you see them stick on teams for four or five, six years, because that's a really hard position to replace. And I think that it was something that's hard to know and hard to pin somebody with the blame, but the amount of confusion that there was on the offensive line, like, okay, we have a veteran quarterback. So if the center can't get this right, he should be commanding it. But just as he has acted since his head coach and general manager got fired kirk is not responsible for any of this i mean just not the guy who's going to be like in charge of

anything um i don't know how many days i think we're at like uh 12 days still no sentence from kirk cousins about his coach and gm being fired which is um leadership if i ever saw it but that's the point right is like if he wasn't going to be the guy who's commanding it, then you have to have a center who is really in charge. And if they do change quarterbacks, then you can't just run out Garrett Bradbury if he wasn't good at it or Mason Cole who gets crushed in the middle. You can't just grab somebody.

You have to have somebody who is a real commander of the center there. Yeah, I mean, think about all the rookie quarterbacks that Zimmer destroyed, right? It's because he messed with them and he screwed with them. Go back and look at when Zimmer sometimes struggled with his blitz packages. It was veteran quarterbacks or veteran centers that were able to film study and know how to pick up those blitzes. So that's a big question mark is that center position there. And then obviously, are they willing to go?

I'd have to look and see who the top free agents are guards this year i haven't gotten that far down the the road yet we're still in draft season um so we'll have to take a peek at that and see if maybe that's something that they gotta really go explore but again they don't have a lot of money like we don't talk about this enough like the cap is not where it needs to be to fix the problems that we need right and a lot has to be done there. Yes. Trading the quarterback would be a huge start, but I mean,

they could rework contracts and everything else. But a lot of times that goes with kicking money down the road. And that's where you end up looking at that dead cap number going, Oh, that's a problem. And there's just only that. That's the thing that there's a cap expert from pro football focus, Brad Spielberger, who's very, very smart and dialed into the NFL.

And he would come on the show and say, it's just kicking the money down the road, folks. It doesn't make it disappear into magic land like that still exists. And that's how you end up in a situation where they're at now. OK, let's talk about Christian Derisado for a second as we are in the state of the roster that the new general manager which i'm thinking is going to happen next week uh what what he's taking over here i think if you're mr new gm or mrs new gm uh you're stepping into this position saying yes you you're you're all set at right tackle how would you evaluate evaluate left tackle a little more in depth

on darisaw because i looked at what he did this year and said, I mean, that's pretty good for a rookie because a lot of times those guys step in and then they might turn out to be good players like Colton Miller or Andrew Thomas, and they just get run over right away. And not everybody is Rashawn Slater. Who's incredible right off the start. I thought, I mean, he was the second highest graded uh pff rookie at tackle that he showed a lot of potential and the biggest thing for me is he's just a mammoth person who's really strong you're like okay you can work with that because that guy is not getting

run over yeah and i agree with all those things you just said i think for me his size and his athleticism are the two things you can't coach, right? You can't coach big people that are really fast. I love Trent Williams, right? You, it's just God given. And when you have that as the base blocks, then you can say, okay, technique wise, we can get this guy right to where he can't just be a really serviceable left tackle, but a stud, right? And that's what every football team's looking for when they draft a guy that high. And so I'm really,

really excited to see the jump that he makes from year one to year two, because it's usually a really big jump. Guys that are that good make big strides from year one to year two after getting an entire off season in them from OTAs to mini camp to training camp. And you're not doing the extra two hour rookie meetings and doing all the extra bull crap that you have to do so now you're focusing strictly on ball and you're just a professional and to have that building blocks for what we saw from him this year even though he missed all of training camp he missed all of otas he physically was probably still not in his greatest shape as he wanted to be in he could really emerge next year as a really really important cog in the machine for us and this may sound silly but i just feel like he

has the perfect personality for a left tackle like he's quiet he's kind of a bright guy it seems from talking to him a couple of times but he is is inauspicious. Like he's just sort of what you want over there. You don't want a whole lot of drama or big personality or anything else like that. You want a guy who kind of just fits in in the room and I don't know, tackles linemen. That's kind of how they are. Yeah. I mean, I hate D linemen because they're the loudest people in the room all the time.

And it's just, it's so obvious when you walk in somewhere and you hear someone, you're like, Oh, the D lines over there. over there like oh limer just kind of do their thing we just kind of gel and and hang out and and do our thing and i'm yeah i think that room has some good personality to it not big but just good personality good people in it and uh that's half the battle with no line room is just getting all the guys in there together to trust each other love each other work together and i think the bones of this room and the pillars of this room are really good you know what i didn't hear from him either in the times that he talked was any excuses like that's with linemen i kind of look for that like well you know uh the thing that was happened in

here because you get your ass kicked a lot and i think that i think that some guys when that happens they start looking for answers too much like i think it's such an incredibly difficult mental position because i mean it's the old saying that you only get noticed when you get beat but it's really true is that everyone sort of just expects you to do your job but a lot of times i mean storm norton we were talking about the other day when uh you stopped by when some of us were at the restaurant there and i mean it was just like, imagine being Storm Norton, where you're just getting killed by Max Crosby every single play. And then you got to go out and keep doing it and doing it.

It's such a straining position that when I hear guys make it excuses or, well, what happened was this, that you guys don't understand this, that you think like, oh, this is going to be hard for you. But there's like, he's just like a straight down the middle kind of guy. no excuses of like yeah i feel like i'm just trying to come along that kind of thing it's the right mentality to have especially as a young player right like when you're a young player that the right mentality is like yeah i got beat but i learned from it i grew from it right that's what the that's what you guys want to hear that's what the public wants to hear like and so he's saying all the right things and that tells me that not only is he probably a good guy but he's surrounded himself with good people

and his camp like you or something i think i think derisaw's camp is is full of good people that are helping him be the best player he can be which is what you really want out of the left tackle how many players have a camp like out of a 53 how many have a camp you wouldn't have a camp jeremiah still no probably the top probably top 15 guys if you're first rounder you have a camp right and then probably the top 15 guys on a team that have big marketing deals and all that crap who would be at the lowest level of player that would have a camp the lowest level of a player like could you be a special teams gunner but you're really good at and you have a camp like does matthew slater have a camp no no okay he probably has a couple guy people he doesn't could you be a nickel corner

and have a camp yes oh really nickels get paid yeah okay nickels if you if you make if you're making if you're making five million a year plus you probably have a camp i know who is in this camp you got your agent so you got your agent you got your publicist trainer you got your trainer you got your marketing rep and then probably whoever else you like look to for advice right maybe an old coach or probably like five to seven people that you have in your quote-unquote camp of making decisions right you got a family member who's a little overly involved and people wonder like is he stealing money on the side like you got a family member who's a little overly involved and people wonder like is he stealing money on the side like you got it i don't think i don't think nickel corners

have camps unless you're the best nickel corner well then you also mean every camp's got to have the doug stamper right from house of cards you watch that at all oh yes yeah you gotta have the doug stamper where you're just kind of nod you're like this needs to get done and it just gets done right every camp has doug stamper whether that's like hey go talk to this team even though we're not supposed to talk to this team but like you're kind of not really involved so just put a few feelers out there and then all you can say is it come from the camp right no one knows who it actually is right right it's the greatest smoke screen right it's just well from camp we're hearing right the julio jones camp says he might want out of atlanta

or something and you're like okay well who is that because the agent has that wasn't me but someone you could track the things back to the agent so the yeah okay so then the agent's got his own little camp uh-huh what a crazy world it is oh it's fun uh the offense on the whole so we know the weapons we know who they are and what they do and irv smith's coming back tyler conlin, probably not. If you want to run a two tight end system, you'll need someone else. But you should feel really good about where Irv Smith is, his training camp. I mean, he was one of the players we walked out saying, wow, this guy's had a great camp. And then, of course, in very Viking style, legs, knees, ankles, you know, things like that always go wrong. And the last preseason game where maybe it's not a good idea to be

playing irv smith jr next coach uh but uh so you're you're pretty good shape there thielen's got the contract issue we'll see how that ends up working out i mean there's a lot of different ways that could go and also feeling in his camp could be saying you know the kansas city chiefs might be an interesting team for me to play for uh but that's all things that are going to have to play out. Let's say it stays as is for the weapons and everything else. How would you grade this? Like, how would you evaluate where they stand for either cousins going into next year or if they want to bring in a different quarterback? You know, I think you look at all the teams that have had coaching vacancies and the Vikings offensively are probably one of the best you know I think offensively when you're just talking purely skill position not quarterback in skill but purely skill

position I mean you've got two-time pro bowler maybe a three-time pro bowler and Adam Thielen you got the youngest maybe the second highest rated youngest receiver next to Jamar chase and Justin Jefferson. And those are things that again are generational type things, right? I mean, Thielen is on the backend, but if you can restructure it and keep him,

and then you have a Jefferson, you're not going to really have to pay big money for another, probably two years, right? I mean, you might have to restructure him after next year. If he has another, if he goes all pro three years in a row, then like, I mean,

he should have been all pro this year. He got absolutely. Second team. Second team. Second team. But I mean, if you're. I don't want to argue about this, but who are you taking off is my question. Cooper Cup, Devante Adams, Debo Samuel.

Debo should have been on there as like an all-purpose guy. I don't think you can just call him a receiver. He made all pro because of the stuff he does for running back spots too that's that's the argument i have for him is he's not a true receiver and you're looking up some kind of a stupid stat right now i can see it i can see the gears and i can see the steam coming out of the old magic collier engine here what do you got look i mean he had 1400 yards receiving an average average number one in the nfl 18 yards per catch so that's even without any of the rushing that he added on to that which i think was like 300 yards i was trying to find how much rushing yet uh it was 300 365 yards so it wasn't like an insane amount of

rushing yards that's really good that's still a lot. But he led the NFL in yards per reception and had over 1,400 yards and then also ran the ball too. I'm just saying it's pretty hard to take him off. Jefferson is very deserving. Four guys were deserving. Three other teams made the playoff. Sorry, that's life. That is also true.

That's fair. But anyways, back to our original discussion. I think that if you grade out the vikings weapons between dalvin cook and herb smith jr and justin jefferson adam theelin and um oh gosh osborne i mean again i think he's a guy that is emerging big time too like you think you have wide receiver one through three completely set you have tight end number one coming back if it's a coach that only likes running a lot of 11 and not as much 12, then you don't really have to worry about trying to find another big name

tight end. And then you have one of the best running backs in the entire NFL in the backfield there. And you have a quarterback who's serviceable if you bring Kirk cousins back. Right. So I think that it's a really attractive spot for an offensive coordinator or an offensive head coach. Folks,

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shirt on a hat and also randy moss is the goat the purple people eaters bud grant designs for the old school fan plus the hockey and basketball teams are both actually exciting this year and soda stick has you covered there as well go to soda stick that.com that is s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com and use the code purple insider for 15 off yeah and that's i think a really difficult thing for the person evaluating this entire roster because once we talk about the state of the defense for our vikings decision 2022 bonanza i mean it's not going to sound like it just sounded we're like oh a good left tackle a good tackle good receivers should have been other all pro like oh no it's not gonna be that conversation on the other side uh as we evaluate

it but that's that's part of, I think, the reasoning that you would go a different direction at quarterback is in part because you can give whoever such a great situation. I'd love your opinion on this because I think what we see all the time in the NFL is you have certain guys who are almost bulletproof where, I mean, Tom Brady's team, he's got linemen getting hurt, he's got receivers taking getting hurt. He's got

receivers taking their clothes off and running off the field and all sorts of things are happening. He's like, that's okay. I'll just kill the Eagles and your dad and I win. And it's just like, man, how does he do it? I saw this year that he had like the most receiver caused incompletions in the league and led the NFL in passing. Like cool cool, Brady. There's five guys like that, four guys like that. Everybody else kind of goes one way or another based on what's around them and then kind of what their extra talent is, whether it's some guys run and whatever else.

Some guys throw down the field more. But I think that if you're talking about how much could you get out of quarterback X versus Kirk Cousins, you can give quarterback X so much to work with as cousins has had so much to work with in recent years. And the stat that really blew my mind, what does that mean?

It was that the Vikings had one of the highest team quarterback ratings under Mike Zimmer, like under his entire era. Why would that be digs feeling Rudolph, Irv Smith, Jefferson, like weapons everywhere for them. And Case had career years. Bridgewater played his best ball. Bradford played his best ball.

And Cousins has played his best career football. Like, so no one else could do this? That whole thing of like, who's it going to be then if it's not Kirk? Like, well, you can give them a lot i i agree with you and i also think that when you come in and make a change like head coach gm acts right like the next guy on the list is the quarterback like he he is number one on the list now there's other factors as far as buyouts trades and all that stuff but if you're really looking to make

a change and you're really looking to take a full pivot in the direction of whatever the team is going in in that moment you change the quarterback too it's just it's just natural right you can change because everyone's like what about just changing ocs tried that like what about just like head coach like okay we can trade the hedge coach but i don't think that's going to be all of a sudden like life-altering changes for kirk cousins you know i like kirk i think he's a good serviceable quarterback what teams kill to have kirk cousins right now yeah probably but if you want to take the whole thing in a different direction you gotta kind of move on from him because he's gonna keep bringing the old narrative with him even if he has a great year it's still going to be the narrative

will always be well when's he going to screw it up because that's what it's been that's what it's been in the last couple years so i think that you need to change the narrative of the quarterback position if you're the wills yeah i think so too and even just to i mean it hasn't worked right like when you think about the franchise success you can look at how an individual played but when that individual is so tied to the success of a franchise quarterback is just so much different than left guard or something like that sorry uh but i'm sure you're crestfallen so yeah i know uh but it's so tied into the success of the overall team that you could say well they didn they didn't have a good defense. They didn't have this or that. But when you only win 13 games that matter, take out week 17, week 18,

it didn't matter over the last two years. Like that's a long way to go where you've got a quarterback in his middle ages that maybe there is a team that's closer to winning the Super Bowl. And this is kind of the next transition of things i want to talk about with you in the roster is i i know we keep hearing that rebuild is a bad type of word but i think it's a very difficult thing as the gm to step in and look at what we just talked about in offense be like yeah okay sam howell or matt corral look at all the things you get. And then, but don't look over at the defense. Oh, the guy's going to look great in camp, right? Oh, my gosh.

They just roasted Harrison Hand again. You know, it's just like his confidence will be sky high. Oh, yeah. He's going to be out there just slinging the rock around. And then he's got this first preseason game and be like, oh defense jaylen ramsey i've never seen that before but i really do think i really mean this that it is hard to talk about because they're so far away on defense with so many positions to fill and yet your offense feels like it's very much in a position where you could be a competing team yeah i mean if you look at this defensive side of the football man where do you even start right like i think that's the number one question and in my

mind being who i am the d lines where you got to start the problem is you dumped some good money into that d line last year already and loved neil hunter to death but he hasn't been able to stay healthy and i know they've been two kind of freak injuries right the neck and the pecker they're not related by any means whatsoever and I don't think Daniil's still so young that he still has a ton of football left in him so you can kind of rely on Daniil Hunter but I was less than impressed with Dalvin Tomlinson's play this year I mean I think he was good but he was he one of the higher paid D linemen good no Michael Pierce again got rushed back from injury hurt himself again same song and dance we've heard multiple times from the Vikes in the

in that place and so he was kind of dinged up I don't know how much I don't know if he was 100% for 30% of the games this year right and then you go on the other side you have you have Wanham who had career year but still was lackluster right I mean a guy that has a career year and you're still like well that wasn't that wasn't awesome all the time and and so you just got a lot of issues there because you look around especially just look at the NFC North what are they built on pass rushers and big interior defensive linemen that get after people and if you want to just start by hey okay we got to compete in our own division. Not about, hey, let's make the playoffs. Like, hey, we got to compete weekly in our own division

with Green Bay and Chicago and Detroit. Then it starts on the defensive line, and then that's where we can try and build off of that because if you can't rush the passer or stop the run, it doesn't matter how good your corners and safeties are. So out of 60 starting defensive ends who have enough snaps to qualify uh dj wanham was 56th in pass rush win rate so even though he got himself some sacks and if you're wondering who's at the top max crosby rashaun gary miles garrett tj watt nick bosa

trey hendrickson joey bosa and oh, Everson Griffin, who really was quite terrific before. He was having a great year. Yeah, he really was. Now, that's one thing where I would empathize with Mike Zimmer when it came to that, because when you lose those two guys, that is such a huge deal. And that's where when we talk about how they're going to rebuild it, the quarterback is such a central part of the draft.

But also, this idea of drafting dudes who are in the third or fourth round and trying to develop them. It usually takes freaks to be great at that position. But the thing is, if you hit on a great edge rusher, they could be a great edge rusher for a really long time and you could pencil them in to being great. So there's kind of a conundrum here of not only like, how do they create cap space to sign people? And there isn't like a great edge rusher outside of Vaughn Miller to sign a free agency. It's also how to spend this draft capital when you know you need that edge rusher who's going to be locked in for a long time, but you also need three corners and you need one safety. That is a lot to have to try to fill and it just feels like it feels like

the more pragmatic approach would just be to kind of let it play out to draft some guys and let's see how it goes and then try to fill it the following season i don't know if anybody wants to do that but i also think like what did you just try last year? Sign everybody and plug holes with one year contracts and then have two of them work out. Like, I don't know that that's the right way to go for a new GM. I don't either, but that might be the only way to go. You know, like it might not be the right way to go, but the only way to go might just be trying like bandaid over open heart surgery for this year because it really again but it all really goes back to the wilfs looking at the new gm being like okay scorched earth burn

this thing down and let's re-go or hey we do have lightning in a bottle on offense right now like let's try and patch together a serviceable middle of the road defense so we can just race to 40 every game right i mean and that could be a road that you go down with too but you're right you got to figure out glaring needs because every you could almost say every position on the defensive line or defensive side of the ball is going to be standing on the table on draft day on night one like draft this guy right like and the offensive side is going to be there's a quarterback we need quarterback right like so i mean there's going to be so many pulling and tugging of what do this gm and head coach actually

address and what do they deem is the number one cause and i think that if you see them draft a quarterback early you know they're not going for scorched earth rebuild and then you can kind of really start to expect i mean free agency too you'll start to really see where they're starting to sign guys how long are they signing guys what What's this look like? They could go the bills route. The bills did in 2019 for offensive line where they just signed a ton of guys to one of your deals, right? And then a lot of guys, it wasn't even that much money up front, but it was a chance to compete and be a starter where guys will come take a little bit less money. If you're like, Hey, you could be starting all 18 weeks or 17 weeks this year. Right. And guys will do that.

And so that's, that's a strategy that I think that you could see do is bring a bunch of guys in on one-year deals in the corner position and the safety position and say, okay, there's five of you running for two starting spots here. Ready, go. And that could be an older guy, a younger guy, and a draft guy, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways you could fix that, but that's another strategy I've seen teams use as well. And I think that what you're alluding to is much more of a try to find free agents with some potential who maybe were a role player somewhere else and their contract is up. And then, OK, can we get a nice find here of someone who was maybe buried and is now looking for another spot? Like use Tyler Conklin, for example. If Tyler Conklin had not gotten to play this this year he'd be hitting free agency with 28 catches but somebody else could look at that and go well he's actually got some skill to be a starter there but we don't

have to pay him a ton of money now they will because he had all those catches but uh that's what you're looking for or even somebody who's been good but has potential to be really good like micah Hyde. I mean, I remember he was a guy in Green Bay. And when the Vikings would play them, you'd know who he was. But he's a star, man, and he's an excellent player now. And so maybe there's spots like that. That's not what they looked for last year.

What they looked for last year was like Rashad Breeland. He won a Super Bowl. He's a veteran. We need him to fill this spot right away. Not he has upside. He had lots of downside, but he did not have any upside, except on Twitter. Yeah, Johnsons. Big, big Johnsons.

But no, I agree with you. I think that you got to look for those diamonds in the rough, and that's what makes really good GMs, right? I mean, good GMs and good player personnel guys and pro personnel guys. That's what makes great front offices are guys that can evaluate that and find those type of guys. So again, GM comes in, probably bring some people with him from where he comes from or she comes from. And you got to hope that you bring the right people. I just got a text as we were doing this that this is this is just some reckless sourcing that that ryan poles seems to be the leader at the quarter poll huh get it ryan i'm going to

unfollow you on twitter if you keep doing this oh i'm i'm not going to stop ever but uh that that could be interesting. It would be very classic for us to finish recording a podcast and then have breaking news drop. That would be so on brand for this. It'd be very, very on brand. Not only that, I have a whole bonanza. I have three freaking episodes.

So let me give you maybe a metaphor here to work with for the final assessment of the roster before you love to see it, hate to see it. Let's say the Super Bowl is in Los Angeles and the worst team is in New York, the New York Giants. So the difference between getting to the Super Bowl is from New York to L.A. And the Minnesota Vikings have been in the middle. You like this? I like the middle of the country. Uh, how far are they from being in the middle of the country or what, what is the things

that would have to happen for you to believe that they could make their way out West? Like how far are they between being in the middle or can they even get in one off season can they get to colorado can can they make it past montana in one season or do they have to go the long route back through ohio and then out to la you know i think the more i watch football this year i think they're gonna have to take the long route because even being in the middle look at what the seventh seed got destroyed by the Kansas City Chiefs yeah right and that's that's just from one to seven that's not from one to 15 right and I know that's only half of that's only on half but I mean even on the other side look what look what Tampa Bay did to the Eagles right like those are playoff teams that made the playoffs as the

seventh seed but they're still so far away from the two seed that they couldn't even hold a stick to it so then you even drop back even further to middle of the road like you're really far away from being playoff caliber and being championship caliber teams so I think they're gonna have to take the long road they're gonna have to go through ohio down through maybe hit illinois quick stop and then start their way west down i mean iowa nebraska the flyover states and they might have to even dip south again into texas take the road up through arizona but i don't think that this is just a a couple things and we're there i think that this is a two, three year process of finding those free agents that you and I talked

about earlier about the guys that have up and coming, making sure you hit on your draft picks. I think that we forget Rick Spielman didn't hit on a ton of draft picks. He hit on his top ones, but those middle of the road draft picks towards the end here, they just didn't really contribute. If you can start doing like Tampa Bay

where you draft Antoine Winfield Jr. in the third round or fourth round or whatever it was and he contributes right away like that's so helpful with your roster building capabilities and you're not having to go buy a guy but she's on a rookie deal making rookie minimum of 800k a year right and so those type of things are the things that maybe accelerate that process a little bit but those aren't things you can bet on. So I think that they're going to have to take the long way to get their way out West and piece and things together. And what really might suck is right when they feel like they're getting over

Nevada, because it takes a couple of years, you're going to might have a piece leave, right? You might have a Justin Jefferson leave because he's, he's on to bigger and better things. You might have Adam Thielen towards the end of his career, be done. Daniel Hunter, right? It's going to be a long road, but that have Adam Thielen towards the end of his career be done. Daniil Hunter, right? It's going to be a long road, but that's what makes the NFL so freaking hard, man. And that's why when teams feel like they have lightning in a bottle like Tampa Bay did,

they just have to squeeze that thing as long as they can because they know in a year or two, it's just going to blow up because you just cannot keep teams like that together for so long with all the star power and all the money. Yeah, it's incredibly difficult as we saw the struggles that the vikings had after 2017 and draft luck does pay a big role in that because if you miss on a corner who say is indicted and not on the team anymore then you know that's kind of a bit of an issue uh but that's it i mean that's a huge spot that's just a huge open gaping hole on your team that if you had hit on that draft pick you would feel like okay that's all set

um and there's so many fewer things to do and that guy's on a rookie contract and if he's good on the rookie contract like this doesn't just work for quarterbacks it works for all positions um all right love to see it hate to see it what do you got love to see it as Joe Burrow and my Husker alum Zach Taylor the Cincinnati Bengals man those those guys just having a great season there towards the end of the year they really put it all together they were able to really come together and Joe Burrow is gonna be so fun to watch for so long and just that team you can tell they got love I think they're running to a bit of a buzzsaw if Derrick Henry's back for the Titans. But, you know, I think that they're going to give him a game. And I really is excited for the Bengals.

Yeah. I mean, same with you with Joe Burrow. Like, already ready to put him under those quarterbacks that could be the next sort of Manning Brady with Mahomes Burrow and Allen mixed in there as well. So maybe that's your Kelly Marino and Elway of the NFC or something. Well, I'll give you my hate to see it. Is Dak Prescott saying it was cool to throw things at the refs when he was indeed wrong for not sliding earlier, not knowing who to give the ball to.

That is not the ref's fault, my friends. That is Dak Prescott's fault. And then he had to apologize and got fined $25,000 for doing it don't blame the refs folks it's rarely the ref's fault no I mean you have a young center in Tyler Beatus who and when the bullets are flying and the clock is rolling like again he's a young guy you got to think if I'm that center and you're an older guy you're going don't give it to me like you just put your hands back like little T-Rex hands, right? Like I don't want that.

Give it to the umpire. Like figure it out. And then how about the, how about the guy just bodying deck Prescott too? Like, excuse me, just moving them out of the way. So yeah, you got to know the rules and critical situations and critical times in the game. That's when they show up the most. And I don't know, McCarthy has never gone over that or what what but we used to go over those type of plays all the time

on fridays and one thing zimmer had us prepared for was critical situation football and and same with sean mcdermott and same with every great head coach of all time ever so i think that that's something that's really sad my hate to see it is big ben my gosh man like i hope you're done like right claypool came out i was like well he still hasn't told us anything it's like but has he like but has he like he needs to be done he needs to be he's had such a great career like don't don't let it end like this right like don't let this be it's like with a person that dies it's like i don't want you to remember me like this like don't let us remember you like this ben let us remember the good times of 12 guys hanging off for you to deliver a dime in the back corner of the end zone like just ride off into the sunset man great career that was a little dark uh the the word cloud from nbc

family man and all that stuff with uh roethlisberger like i hate to see that also hate to see uh mike m Mike McCarthy saying it was the right call. I wanted to add that in like, no, there's a difference between we had an idea that we thought was a good idea and it didn't work and saying it was the right call. Like that's just to me, peak arrogance. Like here's how I know it wasn't the right call scoreboard didn't work. Doesn't seem that you won. Doesn't seem that you won. Like I, that drives me crazy with the, if they go, if you go for it on a fourth down and you miss it and you lose, then it wasn't the right call.

I may have agreed with your thought process. I may have done the same thing, but it was not the right call because it didn't work. Like those are two different things. So I don't know. That's always, it's maybe nitpicky, but it always drives me crazy because it just sounds so arrogant. It's like, wait, I saw it fail fail so it wasn't the right call um anyway so you'd love to

see it my love to see it is kansas city buffalo in kansas city arrowhead stadium holy cow i mean this is just and you know what too 5 30 central time on this what is that sunday i mean the sun is going down in kc you know it's just like everything everything is perfect for this football game it is perfect peak football i wish it was the afc championship but i mean this is this is one that has potential to remember for many years yeah and if i wasn't gonna be on a plane to la i would oh no billion percent be at that game right it's three hours away i got jet i already hit jet up jet mckinnon who's having a great playoff run love that kid uh hit him up i got buddies on the bills like that would have just been an all-time game to be at and i would have been going through tables again like i did last

year at the afc championship game and yeah i would have been there with i'd had the blue on for sure but i would definitely love to be there. Cause that's going to be that, that might be one that you hear that like at like 20 years where they had the classics, right. A cold night and arrowhead. So yeah. Excited for that one.

Also, so just, this is the best weekend of football. I think divisional weekend is the best. Why everyone likes wildcard week is there's a lot of games. They were all trash. Best weekend of football. Conference championships usually aren't as good. I think this is by far the number one football weekend of the year. And we're the football bonanza.

Someone just told me. Oh, boy. That the GM thing could be happening soon. Of course. Of course. Of course. All right. We'll see. We'll see we'll see ryan pulls maybe maybe all right thanks for your time jeremiah now i gotta edit this post it and it might be worthless in five

minutes so uh ryan pulls maybe here's your um heard it here first here's your roster breakdown buddy just listen to this yeah thanks jeremiah bye