Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - How valuable is Justin Jefferson to the Vikings' success in 2020?

Episode Date: August 14, 2020

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Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matt McCullough here along with Post Total Thought Focus' Jordan Trahury. He is the co-host of the PFF Forecast podcast, which I must say, Jordan, I am very impressed. You guys have taken on the interview model over the summer and have had some really great conversations recently with your boss, Chris Collinsworth, included. But I love the tweak of the PFFFF forecast podcast and where you guys have gone. I appreciate that because we're honestly, you know, you're always trying to like get a little bit better. And sometimes you need to hear it from not just other people, but yourself too.

So I was listening to a bunch of them, you know, and I was like, you know, there's something missing. And I realized what was missing was that it was just Eric and I talking the whole time. And as wonderful as I think we are, you need freshness in there, right? It really helps to have conversations with people that have a different perspective and are intelligent and think about the game of football a lot. And so I've learned a lot. I've really enjoyed these conversations.

They've been great. I mean, we had you on a few weeks back. We've had, as you mentioned, Chris, had a great conversation with Robert Mays, Mina Kimes, Scott Frisco, Josh Hermsmeyer coming on again this week. So it's good stuff, man. I appreciate you shouting us out. Yeah. And Cliff Averill on a recent episode to talk about the value of pressure. So that inspired me to want to talk to you for this podcast about how valuable stuff is. That is probably going to be the name of the podcast. How valuable is this thing? So I want to start out here with Anthony Barr. So it's a random place to

pick, but I think it's a good one because I was just on a conference call with Adam Zimmer, the co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the Vikings. And he talked in depth about how the sack numbers and the interception numbers do not look really great for Anthony Barr. And his PFF numbers have painted him mostly as an average player or below, depending on the season versus what he gets paid. And he was talking about a lot of the things that maybe you don't see or you don't quantify, like how he commands the defense

when he has a tight end or running back covered and they don't throw it in his way. It doesn't count for his numbers of attempts versus completions and things like that. I wonder about how valuable you think of a player like that is, maybe over what your PFF grade would say, or do you think that a PFF grade can encapsulate some of those things? It's a great, great question.

We were talking about this with Jamal Adams, where it was like, okay, a singular defensive player, am I really that enamored with it? I mean, you saw what happened to the Chicago Bears. They got a great singular defensive player in Khalil Mack, and it's like, okay, well, what do you have to show for it? Your quarterback sucks, and therefore you've been, you know, below average. And the idea being that you just can't make your team that much better with one of those guys.

But I think there's an interesting nuance to this conversation, which is in coverage, having guys that are, I don't know what the best, you know, just players who can play anywhere, positionalist coverage players, sort of like what you see in the NBA with a lot of the players that are currently dominating. They can play anywhere. What does that do for the rest of the team? Because does it allow you to take a guy that would normally be a huge weak link

in coverage in a certain position, say in the slot, for example, and move him somewhere, you know, maybe it's outside where he is, because you have that chess piece that you can move. And so I do think there is a component to that with Jamal Adams. And one of the ways to look at it is to say, okay, this guy generated X, you know, wins above replacement. And let's say it was, you know, 10th or 15th or 20th. That's great. But how did the rest of the team do? And what do we know about the linkages between players and coverage? And our buddy Eric Eager wrote a fantastic piece talking about how it's not good enough just to have one, you know, good coverage player. You need three. You know, you need guys that the stuff that we can grade show up first. Right? Like,

like Richard Sherman doesn't get targeted a lot because he's good. But when he does, it's still not good for the other team. You know, like, he does that he still is our highest graded corner over the past decade. So when it comes to saying, look, he doesn't do all the things you can quantify well, but those intangible things he does well, I always want to say, you know what, you've got the order wrong. So while that may be true, the first thing is most important. So that's why I push back a little bit on it. And I think there's a little bit of anchoring there, you know,

with players that either we like or we've drafted highly or gone highly in the draft or are talented. We want to accentuate those positives that we see because it makes us feel better about our decisions. So that was a long-winded way of respectfully saying that I kind of disagree with Mike Zimmer. Well, and I think that everything that the coaches are saying about Anthony Barr is true, that he's a highly intelligent player, that he is the guy

who's calling out the signals, and that there's value in that, and that there are plenty of things that maybe, you know, in some plays, you might have a guy like Anthony Barr rush to an area to draw attention, to draw the blocking scheme toward him, which opens up someone else to get a sack. And you're not going to give Anthony Barr a very high grade necessarily on his pass rush, or he's not going to get the pressure number. But I would also say he can't be the only guy in the NFL who has this same role. And yet there are guys who consistently rank in those splash plays that are going to get them higher PFF grades.

But one thing about Barr that is really interesting, George, is the variance from year to year on his PFF grades. So maybe you could explain how that would happen. Because from my watching Anthony Barr, playing injured in 2016, and I think that that hurt him and his PFF grade a lot, wasn't playing injured as far as I know. Last year, some years he's been way up there, some years in the middle, some years toward the bottom.

Like how does that happen with a linebacker if he hasn't really changed as a player? You know what, I think that speaks to what I was just talking about, which is if you think a guy is bringing the rest of the players up with him, wouldn't you expect some consistency from his play? You know, and injury is certainly something that needs to be accounted for because we do, we work very hard not to incorporate that into grading, right? If you're on the field and you're playing, we're going to grade you by the same standard we'd grade a healthy player. And that's important for our mathematical evaluation afterwards, because you can then bring, you know, injury data into it.

There are a couple of facets that are particularly, you know, volatile. Coverage is one of them. And, you know, I just keep thinking back to that rams game uh you know a thursday night in the far distant path uh path where you know he got picked on kind of mercilessly and those are the types of games when you have when you're a linebacker and maybe your sample of plays where you're targeted and coverage is lower your grade is just going to be able to fluctuate a lot more. And so that's one area. And I'll also point out, you know, on the pass rushing side of things, a lot of that is also scheme dependent. So what are you asking the player to do?

You know, are you giving them opportunities to be, you know, to be a guy that gets more pressures or are you not giving him those opportunities i will say this though we do a very good job i think in the pff grading system of giving guys credit for things that don't show up on the stat sheet so just because a guy doesn't make the tackle you know if he takes on two blocks and eats up you know space so that someone can come through and make a tackle or get a sack that is something that we are watching. You know, that is a huge component of football. So that's something that we do great accurately.

There's a couple of good examples of that over the years. And there was a Jets linebacker duo that, man, I can't remember the names of the two of those guys, but one guy kept making all the tackles, and his counterpart was the one that uh had the higher grade because he kept eating up the blocks steve palazzolo will tell that story uh really well and it's because he's older than me and he's been around for so long but um that's that maybe that was the uh the mo lewis era or something of that's it was it was uh yeah not quite that, but you get the idea.

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is obsessed with Shamar Steffens, what he does in terms of his role, and they will always make the same point. Well, you know, if you look at just sack numbers or pressure numbers or something, well, that's not what he's coached to do. And if you're already factoring that in, and he's still not scoring extremely high versus peers that are doing the same thing for their job, I think that that tells you, you know you that maybe he isn't performing as well as you could get out of somebody else, even though they like him and they're glad that he's doing what he's supposed to do. Now, I want to ask you about this.

The Vikings will have three new corners. Let's just say one of them is not good. And the other two are good, or at least average to above average what is the value of one corner being bad like can the other corners make up for that out of three assuming they're playing nickel all the time or not this is there has never been a time in the NFL where the third corner has mattered more. You know, and quarterbacks are smarter than they've ever been, they're more accurate than they've ever been, they're more athletic than they've ever been,

and they're going to take advantage of that guy. You know, how your third best corner performs tells you as much about your defensive success as how your best corner performs tells you as much about your defensive success as how your best corner performs. And as crazy as that sounds, it makes sense when you think about how the offense attacks. You never go into a game and go, you know what, the best corner is Stephon Gilmore. Let's attack the hell out of him. No, no, you go and you you go who's the worst coverage player how can we get a mismatch with this guy and it's only when you don't have a real weakness across the board that that you can really start to to play around and have fun what the Patriots did last year um the Niners by and

large had a pretty um a pretty strong secondary you know I know uh Mosley came in for Witherspoon in that game in the playoffs against the Vikings. I thought that was really what won them the game. I mean, Witherspoon kind of kept them in it with a few poor plays against Diggs. And so it speaks to why it's so important to take shots on coverage players. Because first off, as I just alluded to, you really don't know. Like you can do all the research in the world. You can have all the greatest models in the world, you know, and there's still a lot of variance in how a guy's going to turn out just from

season to season in coverage. And so you have to have a lot of ammo in the cupboard ready to deploy on the coverage side of things so that you avoid the situation where, exactly as you said, I've got two guys that are average, and I've got one guy that, you know, you couldn't cover, even though they do have a good amount of talent in a first-round draft pick and Jeff Gladney in two Pro Bowl caliber, I'll say, players since Anthony Harris did not make the Pro Bowl, despite leading the NFL in interceptions last year. Just ridiculous, by the way. I mean, ridiculous. There are times where interceptions and PFF grade do not mesh.

In fact, there's a lot of those. His intersections are fluky as hell. This was not one of them. Well, that's what I was going to ask you is how much can that cover up, though? I mean, like, do you find that if you have players at a linebacker position, a safety position, because I think just from observing myself, last year Anthony Harris and Harrison Smith, along with Eric Hendricks' cover ability, I think just from observing myself, last year Anthony Harris and Harrison Smith,

along with Eric Hendricks' cover ability, helped the Vikings' defense survive even though they had one of the worst outside corners in the league in Xavier Rhodes and a below average one on the other side in Trey Wayans. Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about earlier, the ability to kind of cover up for these spots, you know, and whether it be in the slot or, you know, deep, you know, when a guy gets burned deep, do I have a safety that is the range to scare, you know, and to make plays and to scare quarterbacks away from making plays. And I just don't – I don't think that's a risk that I would be willing to take.

And so that's why I like how the Vikings attack things. Like, okay, we're going to get Jeff Klapman and hope that he becomes an above-average cornerback. And we're going to take some shots. We're going to end the Xavier Rhodes experiment, right? And move on from that because I just don't think it's tenable. It's not something that I'd be wanting and hoping each year going into it. You know what? I really hope my linebackers can cover up for my corners.

Or, like, I really hope that, you know, Anthony Harris can cover up for my outside corners because you're playing with fire in that moment. You want those guys to be able to make plays and be strong in coverage so they don't get taken advantage of. But when you start asking them to do things that other guys are paid to do, I think that's where you run into trouble. So I would predict that the Vikings, because of this issue, that Mike Zimmer is not a fool.

He's going to know that these young corners are going to get beat sometimes. Even Jeff Gladney, rookie corners generally struggle. How much is it worth to increase the pressure that they dial up? Obviously, everyone wants four-man pressure. That would be a wonderful world if everybody on defense could have that. But in terms of blitzing, risk versus reward, Zimmer's blitzes on third downs have baffled quarterbacks for a very long time. He switched from mug looks, where you have the linebackers over the guards to zone blitzes over the last few years. And it's really been brilliant.

But how much of that can you do to make up for corners that maybe are not the best or at least ready to be that good at this moment? Yeah, I don't, I think that the other way around where you need good corners to blitz effectively. I think about what the Baltimore Ravens did last year. Baltimore Ravens blitzed more than any other team in the NFL. I mean, they blitzed more than half the time, I want to say. It was 53%, which is ridiculous.

I mean, they were just so blitz happy. And the reason you can do that is you have this stable of corners where you're like, I know that I'm not going to have Marlon Humphrey get his ass kicked. I hope I can say that here. You can, yes. FCC rules apply, I think. I routinely break rules. This is what I do.

I'm a real bad boy here. The ability to cover is so important in being an effective blitzing team because if you were playing a good, I always think about you want to beat a good quarterback. I want to beat a Tom Brady,

a Drew Brees, a Patrick Mahomes. Those guys routinely kill the blitz. Why? Because they diagnose it, they identify the weakness in coverage, they get the ball out quickly. And sure, you'll be able to get away with that against Mitch Trubisky if you don't have strong corners, right?

But if you want to beat the best, you've got to be able to cover for two seconds when you blitz. So I actually would see it the other way around around where I'm not necessarily trying to cover up. You know, I think what I'm hoping is that I can have just strong enough coverage where my blitzes will actually be able to get home and won't get taken advantage of. This is actually an old defensive coordinator saying is you blitz the bad ones and cover against the good ones right because they will tear you apart uh even kirk cousins when other teams blitz he has a very high quarterback rating according to the the pff numbers and there's ways to look at that but um clearly from what we saw in 2018 the the better coverage a lot of good quarterbacks if you're

not mahomes are not throwing into coverage all the time still. And so, yeah, basically I've been asking you, but what about, can this make up for the quarter? Can that? And the answer is no, no, and not really. On the offensive side. Now here's a funny one. So I know that PFF has done a study on this to find that left guard has the least amount of impact on what your offense does of any position on offense. But that is not for the Minnesota Vikings, where your quarterback refuses to move right or left unless he is poor that a lot of times your Kenny Clarks and Eddie Goldmans and Akeem Hicks are just walking right back to him and having a sack party. So how valuable is it for the Vikings to get it right with their guard competitions?

Yeah, right. It's all about the quarterback, isn't it it i mean uh that's such a good point the reason that in general it's such a it's not that valuable of a position is that you know your best pass rushers generally are on the outside and you've got a little more ability to kind of slide and help right on the interior um it's important right i, you've got guys, you know, you've got Dakota Dozier. He's played 350, I want to say, snaps, like, over the course of his – he's yet to play, sorry, more than 350 snaps in any of his five seasons. And, like, you just can't afford to have a total disaster in there. That's kind of how I would think of it is, like, you just can't afford to have a total disaster in there. That's kind of how I would think of it is, like,

Kirk Cousins may not be Patrick Mahomes, but if I can at least get somewhere near average play, it's not going to show up that much. You know, it's just not. And that's why we talk about the importance of how you can play from a clean pocket versus when you're under pressure. If I know that I've got a decently average set of guys on the interior, maybe they're a little below, but they're not disastrous, I still feel really confident that 65% of the dropbacks,

Kirk Cousins would be able to throw from a clean pocket. Like, I have confidence in that. And what you need to avoid are those, you know know exacerbating situation where you just get whipped right from the start you know Aaron Donald just tosses your your guard and tackle over to the sideline and eats your quarterback for lunch if you can mitigate some of those because they're just they're just able to hold on for another tenth of a second I don't think it'll show up as much as we might fear that it will. Okay, I'm pulling this up right now that I think you still should be afraid because last year pass-blocking efficiency among all interior offensive linemen, Pat Elfline, dead last.

Yeah, he was not dead. And Garrett Bradbury, withhold your comment after this. 69th out of 80. It's hard not to do it. 69th out of 87. So it's got to be better than that, basically. And if it's not better than that, it will be a problem. But I agree with you.

If they could get to average, then it shouldn't make that much of a difference. Now here's my next one for you. How valuable is it that Justin Jefferson, or i guess i'll put it this way how much do they need justin jefferson to be really good right away like how valuable is it to them to have that second that true second option pop right back into the offense after trading away stefan dicks i want to be careful of how i say this but but I would say if I'm looking at this division and I take quarterbacks out of it, I'm not sure that there isn't a player who could swing this division more than Justin Jefferson. Wow, that is spicy.

Yeah, it's kind of a hot one for you. But here's the reason I would say that. It's not that I think he can be, you know, the best non-quarterback, right? It's that there's so much variance in a guy like Justin Jefferson. You know, he was so fantastic at LSU, but he played from the slot. Is he going to be asked to go on the outside? Can he win from the outside? And then you look at that team and

you look at where, you know, where the biggest drop off is. And I would say the Packers have a pretty big one too, but I don't think they have a guy coming in. Certainly not. They don't have a guy coming in at the wide receiver position who could, you know, when you take a receiver in the first round, you have a profile like Justin Jefferson, you could be, you know, in your range of outcomes, a top 10 receiver. And what does that do for your team? Well, if you've actually strengthened the other positions on your team, and you're able to replace Ish, Stephon Diggs, man, that's massive, you know, that's huge. But if he's not, you know, and it's Laquan Treadwell 2.0, you know, I hate to bring that in.

I hate to use that. But that's also in the range of outcomes, right? Laquan Treadwell is a guy people were really excited about. And I know, you know, people will yell at, you know, start yelling at their phone or wherever they're listening to this when they hear that, right? And I don't think he's going to be Laquan Treadwell. I really like Justin Jefferson. But think about what that would do to the Vikings. You'd be sitting there like, man, this sucks. I've got one receiver out there. And you're hoping

that Irv Smith turns into vintage Jimmy Graham because that's the only way that you can have a feasible passing game. So, you know, there might not be a player and it kind of sucks, you know, for it to be a rookie receiver because I know we always think those would never have a shot to, you know, to be great in their first year. But we saw two really, really, really good receivers last year as rookies. You know, A.J. Brown was so crucial to that Vikings, sorry, to the Titans playoff run, and I don't see any reason why that wouldn't happen again this year. I know that the whole COVID thing, you know, look, they've never been able to practice together and all this stuff. These guys will, you know, have figured out ways to get on the same page, and I think it's still a possibility. Is there something that points to success for receivers that you could pinpoint with Jefferson?

I mean, college production was outrageous, but also with the number one overall pick quarterback, also mostly out of the slot, also, you know, with a team that was unbelievable. But I think that a guy's ability to do things with the ball after catch and things like that kind of points to you can find a role for him even if he isn't perfect with many other aspects. Yeah, teasing out scheme and in college, you know, is tough. But when we do, when we project, you know, this is the beauty of math, right? You don't have to use just one variable. You can take into account a bunch and you can adjust for those things, you know, using mathematical, I don't want to get too technical here, right? But just using different techniques and different modeling techniques to

kind of weigh those appropriately, you know? And so you can weigh appropriately how good the quarterback is you can weigh appropriately how strong the competition was and you can adjust your your um opinion you know the math's opinion will adjust on how they feel about a player based on those other components and we do that for our projection uh from college to pro and justin jefferson it was still a guy that was in the top, you know, of our list. He was a guy that both Eric and I really liked and talked about when we were doing kind of our pre-draft stuff and our mock drafts is a guy that we would have, we would take, you know, pretty high. And,

and obviously some teams agreed but it, it doesn't mean you totally mitigate that risk right you know it's like it's the same thing that you know this is a guy that was taken right in that area right that the eagles took jaylen is it rager reeker i believe it's rager yeah that's what i thought that's how i think a sane person would pronounce it we usually get these pronunciate right we usually get these pronunciations at rookie minicamp, and then we're good to go for, like, the rest of the guy's career, but no rookie minicamps.

Right, right. So I'm going to stick with Rager because I think it sounds better. But, you know, he had the exact opposite situation where, you know, his quarterback couldn't throw it in the ocean and, you know, didn't have a lot of opportunity. And when he did get opportunity, he had the ball in his hands. He was electric. So, you know, how do you project that of opportunity. And when he did get opportunity, he had the ball in his hands. He was electric. So, you know, how do you project that forward?

You know, his athleticism looked incredible on the field. He, you know, people would argue ran his 40 officially with, like, a weight tied to him. He was so slow. And, you know, like there's all these – there's so many things there that it's just impossible to mitigate. And it's always going to be a question mark. But it's not, it's not that we're, you know, we're certainly taking it into account with these guys.

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They're like, oh, my gosh, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. And then it takes them a while to get it. Last thing for you, George, your co-host on your podcast, Eric Eager, was on this podcast not too long ago talking about how he thinks the Vikings will go 6-10 and he is under. And you know what's surprising is that i didn't get a lot of ragey emails or tweets i think a lot of people went like you know it's in the range of possibilities when you have so much turnover in such a weird year but if you are because you guys focus a lot

on the gambling elements of the game if you are gambling on the vikings uh does Does Eric have a point? I think he does. I think he has a very good point. We get really excited about rookies because that's how you win championships. You draft well. You know, there's no – there's a reason. But producing in their first year and relying on them in their first year is asking a lot. And so I would say, look, I'm more bullish on the future two years from now than I would be with this year. And I know that's tough to think about when you've got, you know,

Kirk Cousins, who is a win-now guy. But that's how I would look at it. And I wouldn't be – maybe that's the reason that people have taken that really hot opinion by Mr. Eager of 6-10. I would go – I know Eric so well that I know there's this, like, built-in one-win pessimism that he has. So I'm going to go 7-9, God willing. Look, 6-10, 7-9, that means you played 16 games. And I would be stoked about that regardless, you know, even if it was my team.

But, yeah, I'm taking the under there for that reason that I just stated. And the second reason would be that I have a pretty high opinion of the other teams in the division. The Packers, look, they weren't a 13-3 team last year. They weren't that good of a team. But just because they drafted poorly doesn't mean they're going to be a three-win team. And that's how people are acting. So I'm not as worried about the Packers this year, you know, falling off a cliff. And the Detroit Lions, with a healthy quarterback, were a top-five offense in the NFL.

So, you know, I think all three of those teams, the Vikings included, are very strong. And then the Bears, I mean, they've had one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL for the past couple of seasons. So you get average quarterback play. That's not a pushover team. It's easily one of the strongest divisions, and that's going to be something that's tough to overcome. So 7-9, my official prediction.

So you're saying that the Vikings should root against divisional bubbles, which I believe is your idea on the forecast podcast. What do you think about that idea? Oh, I love it. I mean, anything that makes it happen so we have sports, I'd be like, I'm getting convinced to do almost anything at this point. But if it goes sideways early on and after week one we have a bunch of outbreaks and we have to shut down the league, I think it's the only option.

And I do think it would be, like, historical and cool to have one year where everybody played just in their division and then we had playoffs. It would be wild. And I think Collinsworth brought up a good point. By the end of that season, I mean, we would just have brawls at the end of the games. Oh, yeah. With each other that much. So, I mean, it would be fascinating.

It would be fun. It would be unique, kind of like what the NHL, NBA, WNBA are doing with their bubbles. And it might be the only way to make it happen. And then, I mean, the secret of this COVID thing is like, I don't even know if, you know, next season or whatever is going to be normal. So if you're the NFL, you should be planning right now for that as your backup plan. I couldn't agree more. The NBA bubble has been fascinating. Imagine having that, but times, you know, multiple times over and having one that's in your region,

you know, if you're covering sports, that could be something that really breathes some life you know back into it because it's so close to home um and the the the lack of clarity on where different divisions stand within the league would be fascinating you know you'd have these raging debates college football is kind of a you know a disaster when it comes back because it's just all people talk about. But it would be fun in the NFL for one season for people to be like, I have no idea if the AFC West is any good at all, all this stuff, or the Chiefs, do we know that they're good yet?

I'm here for those conversations because they're fun and it would be interesting. I think you make a great point, which is we have no idea in the spring, you know, next year is another thing, but we have no idea in the spring if it's going to be, you know, I hope so, but we may still have to be really careful. And so, you know, you, you just kind of have to prepare for, for that being the case and not get too optimistic with things because when you do, you fail to prepare and that's we end up with no games and that's obviously you know despite what some have said i don't think

there's anyone out there rooting for no games no of course so if so find them and let me know because i'm i did i did think about like just for a second being the twitter troll who tweets like i'm a football journalist and i want want no games, no work for me. Like, it's just, you know, just I don't know because it's so asinine. But, you know, I just think what we should be hoping for is that they have a backup plan, and if it doesn't work out in the first couple of weeks, that they can pull it back, take a month off or a couple of weeks off, and then get back into something that's going to work better. I am in the same boat right now as Mike Zimmer being cautiously optimistic,

but getting through the first couple of weeks might be possible. It's after that when we all just sort of settle in, you know, then how's everybody staying away from bars at that point, you know, is kind of a thing that I'm thinking about. But we will be hopeful. George, this was absolutely terrific, super fun, and insightful, as always. And I highly suggest everyone go back and listen. If you haven't heard those interviews that you guys have done throughout the summer,

they've been great, and I've really enjoyed listening to it, man. I always appreciate it. Thank you so much for those kind words. Stay healthy out there and i look forward to uh next time we can all talk whether it's in person or on zoom it all works man it's all beautiful someday someday i'll come back and visit the uh cincinnati offices and you'll actually be there the last time i went down you were not there so i'll do my best all right thanks george sports are coming back.

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