Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - How much are circumstances impacting Kirk Cousins and the Vikings' offense?

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

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Kevin Cole, what is up, Kevin? Not that much. Yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm glad that I'm catering to that huge, huge audience of analytics geeks out there in football. They're probably a big podcast audience, though, because they're not watching the game. They're just listening instead, doing calculations and listening. You have to avoid watching at all costs.

Right. They're focused on doing some calculations from box scores and running different things through the play index on pro football reference and then making charts where you see all the little football helmets. Oh, yeah, the logos. It's all about logos and the dots. If we could ever transform football just into dots permanently, that would be fantastic.

Oh, yeah, the moving dots are great, the next-gen stats. I really enjoy those. After someone throws a terrible interception, you're like, okay, which little dot was in the way? So anyway, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, Kevin, is in part because you had a really fascinating conversation with our friends George Shahuri and Eric Eager earlier this offseason about quarterbacks and their circumstances and different things that impact quarterbacks. And I feel like I am just in a great position here with the 0-2 Vikings to ask you,

especially about losing Stephon Diggs and the offensive line and how those things are impacting Kirk Cousins. Because I can tell you my last three or four days have been filled with everyone suggesting that the Vikings move on from Kirk Cousins, tank for Trevor Lawrence, tank for Justin Fields. And I'm not saying that it's without merit to want that especially those of us who simmed seasons on Madden to draft number one overall and put the punter at quarterback I get it but I just don't see that as realistic so I think we need to talk about what they lost and how they can get it back around Kirk Cousins and maybe we could just start

with Diggs dominating in Buffalo with just with Josh Allen over the first couple of weeks. And how big you think the loss of Diggs is actually turning out to be? Yeah, I mean, I think there was always a suspicion that it could be a big deal. I mean, we heard that a lot in the offseason, the fact that Kirk Cousins was the best quarterback as far as these deep passes, the amount of efficiency on those types of throws. Josh Allen was the worst. We're seeing a reversal in that in a very small sample. I mean, one thing I'm encouraged by, at least with the Vikings, is he still has one of the highest average depths of target. I think he might have the highest average depth of target. So he's still throwing the ball downfield. And,

you know, there's definitely truth to that. There's definitely truth to the fact that how much he's missing Stephon Diggs. At the same time, you know, my reflexive instinct is going to be when you have only a couple of games, when you have these types of plays that are just high variance types of plays, whether you, if you connect on three in a row, I mean, even Josh Allen, I was talking about how great Josh Allen this year is on 20-plus yard throws. It's 10 throws. He's 6 of 10. He misses three of those. He's looking just like he did before. He's that 30% thrower from downfield.

I think everyone maybe pumped the brakes a little bit on the moving van to get Kirk Cousins out of town and everything else and just see what happens with this offense. I think also in the first game of the season, most people just threw the last three touchdowns that they scored out the window because they said the game was over by that point.

But those aren't meaningless. So I think the offense was actually okay in that first game. They did throw the ball down the field and were successful doing that. So I'm willing to give it a little bit more time than some others are to really put the nail in the coffin as far as that's concerned. So when it comes to the concept of having two great receivers, as the Vikings did for a long time, and then taking one of those away, is there a way to quantify what that would mean in terms of,

I mean, there's things that we always just say, and I'm not sure that they're even true. Like, oh, they're going to double team Adam Thielen all the time. Like, I mean, I've watched back the first couple of games, and sometimes there's a safety over top of them. Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes Kirk throws it. Sometimes he doesn't.

I'm not sure that that's as true as we think. But I also look at Diggs and someone like DeAndre Hopkins, too, as so much of an all-around receiver that you can do anything in the world with him that you want. You can throw quick passes to him. You can go down the field. You can intermediate. He's open all the time. And I think that with a quarterback like Cousins, who only seems to like to throw it if someone's wide open, I think that maybe these situations can vary, right? Maybe one quarterback would be impacted more from losing his top receiver than another. Yeah, that's definitely true.

I mean, the one thing that we can do is we can try and pick out these on-off splits when a player's on the field, when they're off the field, and try to gather what sort of effect that may have. I mean, Diggs has missed some time, but he's been more of a receiver who has been hampered as opposed to straight missing games during the Cousins era. So I think I would say that it's been difficult to tell. I know that I ran a bunch of numbers on guys. There were certain guys who popped like a Will Fuller,

talking about DeAndre Hopkins, Will Fuller, and what Deshaun Watts' on-off splits are with him. But I also did an analysis where I tried to, rather than just look at these specific players, because you could be led astray by the smaller samples, is try to find similar players, group them together, look at those groupings of those players with their quarterbacks and the on-off splits, and what do we end up finding out?

And generally it is more, even though you wouldn't think it's the case, it is more of the, you wouldn't necessarily think it's the case, it's more of the DeAndre Hopkins, like target hog sort of guys who are missed more than the deep threats, even though a lot of people think about how the deep threats open up the team. I think there's just really a variation amongst those deep threats. So that's one way to kind of get at it is say who are similar guys, how have they affected the quarterbacks in the past.

But, again, every player is unique and every system is unique. So we don't want to generalize too much about it. Yeah, and, well, I think of with Diggs last year how he was kind of the sole focus of their passing game and then throwing screen passes to Delvin Cook. And that's kind of the next topic to talk about is just how they can build out these weapons around Adam Thielen because, like you said, it is only two games. Vikings fans have gotten to 0-16 pretty quickly. I know our friend Eric Eager has also gotten to that point and has them trading for Jameis Winston because he's a lunatic.

But aside from that, aside from that conversation, which I don't even know what to do with, you know, I still think that the Vikings are looking at this as a really tough start, but not season over. And if there's any way they're going to win, they realize it's not going to be shutting people down on defense. Mike Zimmer acknowledged this after the last game. He said, we're going to have to have a change in philosophy because we can't just run the ball and play defense and try to win that way. Not that that ever really works that great to begin with, but that's another conversation. So these other weapons that they have have been underutilized in these first few games. If you have a bunch of good players who can be used versus one or two great players,

I guess, I guess, which would you rather have? Because they had Thielen and Diggs before, but that was it. And then it was Laquan Treadwell. But now it's Thielen, Irv Smith, Rudolph, Cook, and, you know, a couple other guys, Justin Jefferson is mixed in there, hasn't gotten a whole lot of work yet so far. I mean, I guess what in your mind is the difference between those two types of groups of weapons? Yeah, I mean, I think that the problem with the guys who are stepping in who you may think they have kind of more of a breadth and depth of talent is it's still pretty underdeveloped.

And we're talking about Irv Smith, who is in his second season. Tight end is the slowest position to develop historically. So, you know, it's going to take them. It's probably going to take them a little bit more time. You know, Justin Jefferson is there. Rookie wide receivers generally aren't doing a whole lot. I mean, he's stepping into a lot of opportunity, but it's a lot of opportunity to run a high percentage of the routes that are run,

but they're just not running that many routes. They're not throwing that many passes. So again, it's a little bit tougher for him to get going there. So I think this is something where multiple weeks into the season, it can start to get going a bit more. But I think generally, the high-end talent is something that you can't really replicate, especially on offense where you're the one setting the tone. I think on defense, the high-end talent, at least in coverage, is important, but it really depends on how you can structure the entire offense around that high-end player because nowadays most passing attacks do have enough depth where they can decide to ignore their wide receiver one,

let's say, if he's being shadowed by someone and go elsewhere. enough depth where they can decide to ignore their wide receiver one, let's say, if he's being shadowed by someone and go elsewhere. Whereas on the other side of the ball, on the offensive side of the ball, when you're dictating what's going to happen, I think it really helps to have that high-end talent. Yeah, and we saw that. I mean, Diggs, you look at his numbers in terms of when he's targeted and what quarterbacks have done when throwing to him. I'm not terribly surprised that Josh Allen all of a sudden becomes better

because I saw Case Keenum go 13-3. And Case Keenum was willing to heave the ball up to Stephon Diggs, and he's able to make plays unlike a few other wide receivers in the NFL. So not terribly shocking to see that impact from one particular player. But I agree with you on Irv Smith, where it's going to take more time than maybe even I thought watching him this offseason in camp, because it looked like he was ready to take a big step. But he's still in a weird position with Rudolph being the number one tight end. And he's kind of a sometimes you line up in the slot,

sometimes you line up outside. So I'm not sure how that's going to develop as the season goes on and maybe he needs to be wide or a tight end one at some point now on the offensive line this is a conversation that goes back for the entire Mike Zimmer era of how is the offensive line impacting Kirk Cousins it seems like a very your uncle would say kind of thing. He's got no time to throw back there. But watching the game against the Colts, Kevin, I came away from it blaming Kirk Cousins less than I thought I would. He was awful, of course, a 15 quarterback rating. But on so many plays, they were struggling with interior pressure.

And I guess I wonder what your take is on how they can overcome that if that's even possible or do we overrate what the you know the interior pressure would mean to an offense and maybe I'm giving Kirk too much credit for for having that pressure against the Colts yeah I think the interior pressure is something that's become a lot more relevant because of how quickly quarterbacks get rid of the ball. The thing is, the interior pressure is becoming a bigger percentage of total pressure that's ended up being generated on the quarterback. It's becoming a little bit of a bigger percentage of the sacks that are generated.

But generally, the pressure you get from the outside, from the edge, is where you're making the more negative plays for the offense. So I think in some ways it might be tilting towards being a little overrated at this point, but it's only because it's come so far in that era. I mean, when I look at a lot of Cousins' stats, now some of this may be influenced by at the end of the Green Bay game that he was able to do so well and do so much. But his pressure isn't really up that much year over year.

I think when you run a heavy play action system, sometimes you can take a decent amount of pressure because you're holding the ball longer. His time to throw hasn't really changed that much. His average depth of target is a little bit higher, although that might be influenced by he was throwing up some Hail Marys at the end of the game, and he's thrown it so few times that that's going to have a big effect.

But what we have ended up seeing is he's just not performing well on the play-action passes, which are fairly or more unstable year over year than a straight drop back, and he's just not performing well on the high-leverage third and fourth downs. So while those are the most important plays that you can make, they also give you some hope in the fact that if they turn around and if that rectifies itself, which it is just as likely to do as first or second down to get better, that'll have a huge effect

on the offense. So I feel like over the last few years, I've said the words play action and talked about play action more than I ever dreamed. It used to be a play on Madden that didn't work all that well because you would just get sacked when you tried to run it. Because the guy would do, you know, I mean, the graphics weren't that great. He'd do the handoff and you'd go back there and then you couldn't, like, throw it quickly. And anyway, it didn't work. And then so over the last few years, because of the PFF data and because teams have sort of figured this out we've just seen huge leaps and bounds in play action but i wonder what you think that the limitations are of a play action based offense because that's what this is i mean last year we saw cousins i think he got into the top five or top six in play action

percentage and he has not been there at this point in part because the game situation dictates that. And that's, to me, that's the biggest limitation is that if your best thing you do is taken away based on the game situation, that makes it tough to play a certain way. I think it makes it tough to play like a shootout type of game. It actually plays better when it's sort of close or maybe you're ahead and then you can run and then run the play action off of it. But I'm curious about sort of your opinion about its strengths and weaknesses of building your offense around it. Yeah, I mean, I'm probably more skeptical than a lot of people are. I mean, we see these things come in waves. A couple of

years ago, it was about the Matt Nagy's of the world who are coming from that Andy Reid tree, the Doug Peterson's, while they may be using play action, it's not your traditional play action. It was a lot more of a RPO style system. And that was the trend. Now it's Shanahan is king. McVeigh was king briefly. And then Shanahan, who was of a similar mold, is king, and this play-action system is king. So, I mean, I think I agree with you in a way. I think the high-end outcome may be higher in some of these play-action systems if everything goes right, and I think it also allows a quarterback who may not be as talented to hit some of those high ends as you can. But if you have a quarterback who can really process and can play the quick game,

like Patrick Mahomes or, I mean, Ben Roethlisberger is another guy who really doesn't use play action much at all. Mahomes is worse with play action last year than he was without play action. If you have one of those types of quarterbacks who can buy time in the pocket, who can, like I said, process really at the line of scrimmage, then you probably don't need to do that. Now, who is Kirk Cousins? I'm not sure. I'm more comfortable saying like your Case Keenums of the world

really, really would benefit, really did benefit from a play action type of scheme and from Diggs and from the offense there. Kirk Cousins, I mean, he played pretty well with Jay Gruden too. So it's a little bit – it's tough to say, but I agree. I think that the benefits may be overstated of the play-action system. I want to remind you to go to sodastick.com to get all of your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. If you haven't seen this stuff yet, you've got to check it out.

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and look for the contactless symbol and tap to pay with a contactless visa to help support your community because where and how you shop matters. Visa, everywhere you want to be, official partner of the NFL. Well, I think the thing here is we have kind of a comparison with 2018 and John DeFilippo trying to run that more of a Doug Peterson-style offense right after he wins the Super Bowl as the quarterback coach of the Eagles and then tries to bring a lot of the offense philosophy to Minnesota, and that didn't work as well with Cousins.

And then last year he has a career year and a lot of metrics. But there are always things that we don't really factor in and just deciding that that was completely the answer, including the schedule that they played, which was one of the easiest in the NFL in terms of opposing defenses, right? And as dominant as Delvin Cook was early in the season, it seems certain teams freaked out about Delvin Cook. I mean, everybody bites on play action, but there's games early in the season, it seems certain teams freaked out about Delvin Cook. I mean, everybody bites on play action, but there's the games early in last season against the Lions,

where I don't think I've ever seen the linebackers come up farther up the field and leave more space behind, maybe in part because of Delvin Cook's impact there, at least through the first section of the season. So I look at it as, I don't know what the answer is for taking this offense and turning it around or getting it to be to a point where you can play these shootout type of games to win. Because I still look at this through the lens of the Vikings have too much talent to say tank for Trevor. Their quarterback is probably just too good.

It's not like they're going to bench him and put in Jake Browning. That's not going to happen. They're going to play Kirk Cousins and they're going to have Pro Bowl players around them and try to succeed. So if they do, let's just say they get into the playoff race still after this disaster of a start, how would it have happened in your mind if they were able to do that? I mean, with the – well, let's think about it. I mean, number one, you have a new playoff format, so you have an extra spot. That helps.

That's helpful. It helps. You're going to have to have a lot of cannibalization in the NFC West where those guys just all beat up on each other. You're going to have to have – it looks like the Bears – well, the Lions continue to lion and not win anything. And then the Bears to come back down. And I wouldn't even say come back down to earth because not like they've been good. They've just won. They've just won games. So I think if all those things happen,

there's definitely a path there. Losing these first couple of games, I mean, the Colts were seen coming into the season as a favorite to win the AFC South. I mean, now the Titans are a pretty healthy favorite there, and the Titans who are, you know, the Vikings are facing this weekend, correct? So, yeah, so that's going to be a big game. And so I don't think the schedule is that bad for them. You're just going to need to sneak in, basically. And for that case, it's not necessarily going to be beating the Packers for the division, but it's going to be hoping that someone like an Arizona Cardinals falls off so that you can grab that last wildcard spot.

Well, I was thinking along the lines of, in terms of on the field, what would have to happen for them to not be horrendous. I mean, because these first two games have just gone so badly. And I totally get why this is for the fans. I mean, when you watch those two games back, there, there is nothing there that you can grab onto outside of Dan Bailey's tremendous kicking to say, Hey, well, Hey, all they have to do is blank. Because if they had lost to the Colts, 35, 31, you would have said, well, this could be a fun season. You could have a bunch of shootouts, and all they need to do is have these off.

I mean, this was really in 2018 against the Rams. They lost the game 38-30, and it was fun as hell to watch both teams fly up and down the field, and we thought maybe there's a season of that coming. But at the moment, their offense has struggled so much. I guess I wonder what you think the answer might be in terms of what they need to do, what needs to happen in order to at least make them like mildly competitive. Yeah, I mean, again, I'll point to the fact that I'm not as discouraged by the offense, I guess, because of the way that they played in week one. I know

it came late, but it happened. I don't think we can fully discount that. So I think there's some help there. And if you're looking at all phases of the game, the one phase that we know the least about, and it comes out in our grading and it comes out in a lot of things, is the coverage side of things. They have a lot of a new and young secondary,

which has been particularly poor to start the season. But that is the one thing, if you're going to take any aspect of any team that's playing, that can turn around, that can have an unexpected jump. So I think that would be it. I mean, it sounds silly to say, but it would be these guys who have been either bad or non-factors just starting to play a bit better. And then on the offensive side of the ball, not getting these penalties. When they had multiple first down conversions taken back by penalties,

Kirk Cousins has four interceptions. I mean, I don't think he's going to end the season with 32 interceptions. But, I mean, he had four turnover-worthy plays. That's not great. But normally you'd see about a ratio of, I don't know, like eight to five in turnover-worthy plays to interceptions. So he still has more interceptions than you'd expect based upon how he was throwing because I think some came off of a semi-drop and some other things that have happened.

So it's kind of, you know, better luck starts happening. Passing the ball a little bit more would be nice. I know that they've been more successful running the ball, but the fact that they're only averaging about 24 attempts a game, even though they've been getting crushed, is a little bit low. And it's that coverage unit starting to come together. And that can happen. We see that happen a lot where that defense, the pass defense, can switch a lot from one half of the season to the next. So that would be the thing you're hoping for. Yeah, and that happened with Kansas City last year, that they sort of flipped the switch and turned it on.

I remember a couple of years ago, even with New England, that that kind of happened. They got off to a tough start and then improved. And I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see them improve under Mike Zimmer just because of his prowess as a defensive backs coach. At the same time, you have several positions that are so well below average that I can't see them being anywhere near a good defense. It could be a little better and not a complete disaster,

but when your three technique and your backup defensive ends are in and you've lost Michael Pierce and Daniil Hunter's not playing, you end up in a really tough spot. Now on the matter of the Vikings long term, because this is kind of the conversation that at this moment, Vikings fans are more interested in that this could change in two weeks. I keep saying it in two weeks, they could be two and two. And then you all be talking about, you know, them turning it around and how genius Zimmer was. And you, I don't know, Kubiak getting his fastball back or something.

That's what happens in football sometimes. But the conversation that is more interesting at this moment is the long-term, and I think that with Cousins as the quarterback, a lot of people feel hopeless. They feel like you are sort of trapped in this cycle of only getting to being so good with Kirk Cousins, and that's about the ceiling that you hit is maybe a 10-6. Maybe it's a one playoff game, so even if they build up all these other parts with all these other players, that from now to the time his contract extension is over, you're kind of resigned to your fate. Is that too dark for you, Kevin?

Yeah, I think it's a little bit too dark. I mean, if you look at Cousins, you know, the monster cap hit is going to come for him in 2022 so you know I think people focus on these quarterback contracts a lot but we are talking about one of you know 53 players on the on the active roster there are plenty of other places to try to squeeze value out where you can afford to pay someone like Cousins, who, you know, isn't a top five quarterback, but can play like a top 10 quarterback sometimes. I mean, I guess the problem with the Vikings is the way that they've structured contracts is they haven't really let

people go, and they're just very top heavy. So they end up being a little, it ends up being fragile when players start to fall off or if they get injured. I mean, I think just the way they're constructed, I can't imagine any sort of tanking scenario until 2022 would probably be the way there. There's just so much dead cap even on a bunch of these high-end contracts next year that, yeah, I just don't see it'll end up happening. And, you know, I still think the Vikings have the baseline talent to compete, like I said, with this extra expanded playoff formula. So I think 2022, or if things go really bad next year,

that would be the time to really think about a transition. So the concern that I wrote about for my old humble website is that they become the Cincinnati Bengals after 2015, if you recall. And I know that the ownership is different. The way they spend money is different, but kind of on the 30,000 foot view that you have a team that in 2015 and the Bengals reached their peak, they went 12 and four bad break. Andy Dalton gets hurt. AJ McCarron loses a playoff game because I think his running back fumbled is why they lost it.

But anyway, so you kind of miss your chance, just like with the Vikings last year. You get to a peak, or 2017, you get to a peak. You miss your shot to get to a Super Bowl. And then you keep thinking that there's just a button you can push, a player you can sign, a guy you can trade for, a draft pick who's coming in next that is going to salvage it. But if you don't hit on draft picks, as Cincinnati didn't, and as the Vikings have not recently, then you sort of get in this slog of being a six or seven win team. And I think that just for fans, that is the hardest place to ever be, is when you have a quarterback that can't pull you up to being a 10 win team when you're a sixwin team, that he's kind of every bit of what you put on the field around him, and yet you have all these

pieces that you can't really move or go anywhere with. So how do they avoid that? Yeah, next year, it's going to be difficult, quite honestly, to do it. I mean, Kirk Cousins has $41 million of dead cap next year. Like, what are they going to do? I don't, I mean, I just don't understand. Even if you wanted to move on from something like that, it becomes really, really difficult. So, I mean, there is cap space.

I do think that they're going to have to let go of some guys. I mean, I know that they've, you know, retained, that they've, you know, that they've retained guys, but it's going to, I think it's just going to, there's going to have to be some difficult decisions, and you're just going to have to hope for some upside and some luck there. And the comparison to an Andy Dalton, I still think Cousins is probably better than Dalton. If you look at who Dalton had around him that year in particular, that 2015 year, I mean, he had Tyler Eifert, who was healthy for most of the season. He had A.J. Green. He had Marvin Jones. He had Moe Sanu.

He had, you know, Gio Bernard, all these different pieces. The offensive line was working well together. So that was kind of a real, like, once in a 30-year type of scenario. But I still think the range of outcomes for the Vikings may not be the highest. But if you can get into the playoffs, you know, one out of every 15, 20 years, and then more often for someone like Eli Manning, you can end up winning a Super Bowl with that type of team. Let's get back to the conversation in just a second.

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why i think a lot of vikings fans are tweeting me about trevor lawrence and justin fields because you feel trapped in that place i mean if you could get if you could get one of those guys there's no there's no assurance of like how bad you know getting getting that if you could get one of those guys yeah i mean clearly you don't say oh you know we're going to trade back from trevor lawrence because we have kirkousins under contract. You'd probably – you'd figure out something where you can eat a bunch of his dead money and then maybe trade him to someplace else, however difficult that may be. So I agree with that.

But that's not the plan. I understand it's going to be the plan, and it's certainly not the plan with Zimmer there. So maybe that probably has to be step one is whether to deserve it or not in people's minds. You probably have to move on with him. I don't see asking him to go through a conscious rebuild at this point. Right. Yeah. No, right.

And when you extend Zimmer for the next three years, you're not saying we're going to go through a complete rebuild. What they tried to do is they tried to walk a thin line of we're going to retool and win at the same time. And so far that has not worked out for them very well. Now, let me ask you, since you are always studying very closely these types of things, we're only two weeks into the season, but is there a particular football trend or something that has stood out to you deep inside the numbers that might be different or interesting? I mean, I know that's kind of a broad question, but it also is exactly what you do. So I know you've got something on this, Kevin. Well, I mean, I think the more interesting thing that we've seen

is we got a lot of old quarterbacks in the NFL right now. So at least digging through that, we've had this suspension of aging that's happened for a while now. And I think now there is a little bit of this coming due at this point. So there's a couple of different things. One, some of the accuracy has been off for some of these guys,

but we've seen this a lot across the league that some of the most accurate quarterbacks are really having problems going down the field. We talked about play action. Play action has been a little bit less successful so far this year than you would have hoped for. And I think that may be partially because defensive coordinators and defenders themselves are more aware of it, maybe just because of the hype that we're hearing about it. So I think that's another big trend.

And, you know, guys who study a lot of the formational sort of things, I think defenses are also evolving and changing where we're going further and further away from, first we went away from cover three. Now it's like a lot of quarters. Now a lot of two high is being played. And the two high is helping prevent a lot of those deep play action passes that we talked about in the past. So that's another trend across the league. I think this is a great point because last year there were a couple of teams that played too high against the Vikings and they usually succeeded. I mean, even it was weird, but Washington, that was a tire fire last year, but in the first half of their game against the Vikings before Case Keenum got hurt and then

Haskins came in and didn't know what he was doing yet, but they were playing too high and they were keeping everything in front of them. And my thought was that night, if other teams that are better at football copy this and use this against the Vikings, if they believe that they can stop the run with the front four and not commit so many people to it, that they're going to make life really difficult on the Vikings, and this might be one of the reasons that they've struggled through these first couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, I think typically we see this cycle of adaptation on the offensive side of the ball and then response on the defensive side of the ball.

So in terms of, yeah, like these play-action schemes that we talked about, I think we're seeing the response on the defensive side of the ball. Now it's going to be up to the offense to decide what the next adaptation is going to be. And, you know, I'm interested to see it. I don't know. People have talked about McVay making a little bit of a jump this year. You know, I don't know well enough to really be able to pinpoint if he's doing something that differently than he had done before. But I think that's really going to be the next levels to see whether or not there can be the adaptation. Yeah, I noticed that the

depth of target for Jared Goff is essentially a handoff at this point. So yeah, yeah, he's using the screen game. He's using the running backs a lot more. And I think that's also been a trend. I mean, you've seen guys like Russell Wilson are using the running backs a lot more in the passing game. So I think that can also be a trend is for some of these teams that have been too conservative with running the ball in the past is you want to switch more and more of that into running back passes. And that, again, it brings the defenders up when they're when they're playing

back against play action so I think it's kind of pulling trying to pull them in two different directions yeah and just applying that the Vikings have not used Alvin Cook uh in front of the line of scrimmage basically since he's played here and that's something that's sort of confusing uh to me he's really successful with screens but then the next year everyone's going to game plan for that. And, you know, at some point also, some of these running backs are going to argue. Remember how tight ends were trying to argue? I'm not a tight end. I'm a wide receiver. Some of these running backs are going to make the case, look, I shouldn't even be called a running back. Stop doing that just because you lined me up back there. And I think that it's got to be frustrating for Delvin Cook, who can catch the ball, that the Vikings don't use him more

going down the field in any way, even if it's like a flat route that takes him two or three yards down the field. Yeah, I mean, I can see that. I think when it comes to running back salaries, we are starting to see a little bit of a rebound. I think there was this talk about the devaluation of the position. Partially it was because it was being devalued. Partially it was because there were not many good running backs

that were drafted into the NFL, let's say from about 2015-ish. I know Gurley came in then, and he was a hit, and he got injured. But even before that, you had the first running back taken being someone like a Bishop Sankey of one year, who I liked coming out by the way a very brief viking by the way he got yeah so yeah so it was those types so you know devon devonte freeman was getting the largest largest contract in the nfl so so from the peak which which you know well of that adrian peterson contract where he's making 14 million of the

year which would be the equivalent of 20 something million uh nowadays that there's there's been a trough, and now these players are fighting against the franchise tag in order to get more money. But as you get more and more, and as you get enough players into the mix, and now we're seeing a whole bunch, and we're going to have more in the future with Barkley coming up and some of these larger contracts, you're going to see those contracts start to come back up. So I think the running back position, hopefully it won't be as bad in the pocketbook as it has been in the past for those guys.

Well, I think Delvin is very happy to have his deal done because this year he might have some struggles running up the middle behind the Vikings interior line. Well, yeah, that franchise tag next year was going to be brutal too. So I think it's good. Yeah, it's good for him he got that done before having to deal with it. Kevin Cole, Unexpected Points, so I think it's good. Yeah. It's good for him. He got that done before having to deal with it. Kevin Cole, unexpected points podcast. Again, it's terrific. I know that they made fun of you on the forecast podcast. It's like, this is, this is the best name for, I mean, if you're listening to your podcast, then you've got to know what that means.

So anyway, I, uh, I very much appreciate your time and of course, love your work. PFF.com is where you can find it. And, um and she's off the top of my head. Is it? Are you one of those underscore people now? No, no, I've just been. I don't think so. I'm a maverick. I'm a maverick.

It's at KevinColePFF altogether. Oh, okay. All right. Well, yeah, I don't like the underscores anyway. So thanks for your time very much. Appreciate your work, and we'll do it again soon man all right thank you the wait is finally over football is back you might not be at the game this year but you can still be in on the action at bet online bet online is going the extra mile to make sure that you can get in on every possible change to win this season. From game spreads to totals to team and player and coaching props,

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