Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Is a QB in the draft really realistic for the Vikings?

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Matthew Coller answers Vikings fan questions, from the possibility of the Vikings drafting a quarterback to a stat pertaining to Lamar Jackson to whether the Vikings' ownership is holding them back from being more bold this offseason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar, and this is a fans-only episode. And normally I have some sort of intro with an update on what's going on or some specific topic to get into to begin. And then we jump into your questions, but I got nothing. This is one of those periods of the NFL where we're just kind of in sit and wait mode. And then once the clock clicks over to April, then it's kind of all in as we go in the weeks leading up to the NFL draft. But at the moment, the draft buzz is a little quiet and we don't have a lot going on as far as Vikings news.

So why don't we just jump right into your questions? A lot of interesting stuff philosophically, to debate here from our fans. And by the way, if you want to send in a question to fans only, send it to purpleinsider.com. Go to contact us. You can send it there or send me a direct message at Matthew Collar on Twitter. Those are the two best ways to get your question in the show. So let's fire it on up. Let's start with Michael here. How likely do you see the Vikings moving up to get a quarterback?

And if that happens, what do you think the Vikings will do at wide receiver too? Yeah, that's the thing about this draft, Michael, is that it's going to have to be a give and take. You can't get everything you want because they don't have enough draft picks to do that. And if they do trade up, that means trading other draft capital, which may include, I don't know, maybe the third or fourth round pick or something else, even from this year that could reduce even the amount of draft capital that they have from right now. And then, you know, you go into next year, probably dipping into that in order to move up to get a quarterback.

So essentially, if they do get a quarterback, this year's entire draft is about the quarterback. How likely do I think it is? I would say if we were doing kind of pie chart of outcomes and let's say it was trade up for a quarterback is one of the selections. And another one is stay at 23 and draft the best player available. And another one is trade back down, or let's say go wide receiver no matter what, right? Just to give us four options.

I would say trading up to get a quarterback is probably 20% right now. And I would give a lot more to the trade down, which I think we'll talk about a little later in the show, maybe 40% to the trade down another, just to make things even a 20% to a best player available. And then another 20% to wide receiver, no matter what what because they lost Adam Thielen. I do think that wide receiver is a very important position for them to look at in this draft. I know some people have asked about Josh Oliver and whether they're just going to run two tight ends all the time. That's really hard to do, to just run a two tight end offense all the time. I think they wanted Josh Oliver in part to have somebody really gritty so they could run block and a guy that kind of takes pride in his run blocking. Also, maybe someone to develop a little more just in case TJ Hawkinson doesn't sign that extension. I think he probably will, but that hasn't happened yet and it's no guarantee for sure. So maybe you're looking at

a future option of somebody that showed a little upside in the past and could develop for you and then also contribute right now. I don't think though it means that they're just going to ignore wide receiver two slash three, depending on what you think of KJ Osborne. There has to be an answer there and it's not likely to be in free agency. And unless they have the in with Odell Beckham, because Kevin O'Connell knows Odell Beckham, maybe they do. If they're a contender for him, well, then more likely than not, they're looking at the draft for that to be their top selection. But of course, you can make an argument for cornerback as well.

They do have two young corners and they did just sign Byron Murphy. So they might feel like they have the starters there. But as a philosopher once said, you can never have too many corners. And it's totally unsure when it comes to Andrew Booth Jr. and Caleb Evans. So those are probably up there. And then, you know, best player available might be, of course, best player available at one of those positions. So maybe there's some crossover in our pie chart.

I just kind of invented it on the fly. But the point just being that, you know, I think that if you're looking at what wide receiver two is going to be, it's either draft one at number 23 or it's draft one, say in the third round and go by committee where you would have say Brandon Powell mixes in who they just signed no guarantee he even makes the team but they just signed him and he's a former Ram so maybe he mixes in and then Jalen Naylor Jalen Rager on a quick route type of thing or running you know some of those end arounds or whatever he is going to bring to the table and then a third rounder who competes for that position it doesn't really feel all that promising when you put it that way if they don't draft someone at number

23 so I think that that's what I would have is maybe my leader at the moment for the most likely position either that or cornerback but I don't think it's that that likely that they'll make some massive trade up for a quarterback, but at the same time, it does make sense with their timeline. It's just that for someone like Will Levis, again, totally possible that they love him. Wouldn't say that they didn't or take a guess at how they feel without anybody directly telling me, but there are a lot of concerns with somebody like Will Levis and the accuracy and the numbers he put up. And if you are putting your franchise all into a guy, I just don't know how likely that

is that they will put everything into somebody who struggled so much last year to throw accurately. That again, who knows? They might be that Kevin O'Connell absolutely loves him, but there's just not a lot of evidence to point to with Will Levis where you could say, yes, quarterbacks like this succeed. Usually they don't. Usually they turn into Brady Quinn or Blaine Gabbard when they look like Will Levis. So not that I'm trying to be a wet blanket when it comes to that idea because he's the most likely quarterback to drop.

It's just that when you ask about trading up, that is something where if you're Kweisi Adafo Mensah, you make a trade up the quarterback. If he doesn't work out, you probably don't survive it. You usually don't. If that is the way that it ends up going as a GM. So would they be all in on that? It's tough to see. And then Anthony Richardson, it's always possible that we don't know anything. And Anthony Richardson

drops. It just doesn't really seem that way. I mean, when you look at his athletic profile, how he played last year at Florida, the upside, how dynamic he was as a runner. I know that some people have said, well, is this different than Malik Willis by a lot? Yeah, because Malik Willis took sacks all the time and Malik Willis was not the size of Anthony Richardson, which is a big deal in the NFL. Still, I mean, when you're talking the offensive and defensive linemen are six, five, six, six. So if your quarterback is only six feet tall and he struggles with taking sacks and pocket presence and isn't anywhere near the raw athlete, he's a good athlete, but not anywhere near what Anthony Richardson is, which is an all-time great athlete at the position.

So I still tend to think Richardson will go very high. There's also a ton of teams who need him or need a quarterback. I think Seattle's got their hat in the ring. I wouldn't be surprised if the Detroit Lions would even take it under consideration to draft somebody like him. The Raiders are not locked into Jimmy Garoppolo long-term. It's just hard to see it being anyone but Levis, but I also don't want to fall into the overconfidence trap. So I would say 20% at best that they trade up and more likely than not, they're aiming for wide receiver two slash three, depending on what they think of KJ Osborne at number 23 overall, or maybe if they trade back that being one of the players that they take. I did run across

an interesting stat before I move on to the next question, which was that KJ Osborne took over 50 something percent, 58% of his snaps in the slot and had 137 quarterback rating coming out of the slot. That's according to PFF. So as they consider, if they do drafting a wide receiver, they have to make sure that they're still using KJ Osborne a lot in the slot. And another thing I would say, it's a common question. Can TJ Hawkinson basically be a wide receiver? And I looked this up his entire career. He has eight receptions on throws that traveled more than 20 yards over four seasons.

KJ Osborne already has 11 in two seasons and he's not a deep threat necessarily. So that kind of tells you the difference of, yes, it's great to have that underneath tight end slash wide receiver who, by the way, already lined up a lot in the slot and outside around half of his snaps for TJ Hawkinson. But it's just, I don't see that as, oh, we're set at wide receiver two slash three because of him. It's not the same kind of threat to defenses as a wide receiver would be because of the speed. All right, moving on to Joe here, scenario, play one more year with Kirk and run it back and then trade this year's first for a first and a third next year, then go get your guy next year. I don't think where they're at as a roster overall, they could really afford to trade

their first round pick and be left with nothing. Because at some point, what you're looking for is to drop a quarterback into a position where he can quickly develop and then be very good and win within the first three years. That's what you're really looking for when you look down the road here. Now, running it back with Kirk is fine for this year. If they do draft someone like we talked about, then yep, you could see that player, if it's Will levis or hendon hooker whoever it might be sitting behind cousins then they get the starting job in 2024 but what you want to make sure is that by 2024 2025 your draft picks have developed and you've got a more solid team to be able to spend the extra cap space that you get eventually after the whole Kirk, you know, dead cap situation is over with, and then fill up that roster around that player.

But you have to have guys that you draft to fill out a roster. Like it's a, this guy has to be a thing. And I think that this year, if you're looking at number 23 and saying, Hey, what if it's Jackson Smith, the jig bud, he's there, the wide receiver from Ohio State or Jordan Addison, who we brought up a couple times on the show from USC, or if it's a potential starting corner, like you need these foundational pieces that usually have to be drafted in the first round. And the other thing is too, that next year they would have an opportunity to kind of go all in. I'm assuming that they are going to draft a too that next year they would have an opportunity to kind of go all in. I'm assuming that they are going to draft a little higher next year.

If they don't and they have a great season, then you end up in this very tricky spot again. But trading back out of the first round when you already don't have a lot of picks, that might be something that you would do if you had a lot of picks. And you could say, why don't we sacrifice one to move back and if somebody gets desperate now i do think though that if they're not going to do the quarterback thing that trading back in a draft like this does not seem crazy to me at all because you just need more dudes and when we look around the roster there's still a lot of holes on this roster one year down the road like if we try to play this out we don't

really know what daniel hunter's situation is or how good marcus davenport's going to be or if zedaria smith is going to be here so edge rusher still a down the road need interior defensive line they have patched that thing up but there's nothing there to really speak of linebacker jordan hicks is gone after this year safety le, Louis Scene is supposed to come in there, but Harrison Smith, who knows how much longer he's going to be there. And then of course, at wide receiver, KJ Osborne, Justin Jefferson, but you're always looking to have two really good players at that position in order to dominate offensively so that you can make a case that you need a bunch of different things in the draft. If you trade out of this

first rounder, just in hopes of using it to get a quarterback next year, you're sacrificing an opportunity to get a foundational piece player for the future on a rookie contract. Now, here's the counter argument to that, and probably why you like the scenario is nothing matters more than that guy. Nothing matters more than getting your quarterback. And I would agree with you there. That is kind of the trump card here of this argument is look, I don't really care about whether they draft another wide receiver or another cornerback or linebacker or whatever. They need to figure out what they're going to do in the future at quarterback.

And they likely will not be a terrible team in 2023. They'll likely be right there in the race for the NFC North. So if they were to win the NFC North, then how are they going to draft their next quarterback? Even if they won it with nine wins or something and they were ready to move on from Cousins, that's where this whole thing does get a little dicey. At the moment, it seems like you're going to have to have a pretty high draft pick to get one of the top two guys, but they would also be in a position with a little more draft capital next year to dip into the following season to move up. But that's going kind of so far down the road. So I don't think you're a crazy person at all, uh,

for bringing this up. I just think that with a roster, that's going to have a lot of needs in the future. You have to make your pick or trade back and make multiple picks this year, and then address that next year, because there's lots of different ways you could approach it. You could even look at, you know, other veteran quarterbacks who might be on move if they're moving on from cousins, a lot of, a lot of different scenarios, I think. But you know, it's, it's not, if they did it, I would say it's probably a little galaxy brain, but it also might end up working out really, really well for them to look a year down the road. Interesting idea, Joe. Thank you for that. All right. Kyle is up next. Says, I have a coworker who's a big analytics guy. And he said, Lamar's Lamar Jackson's splits against top half defenses and bottom half defenses

were quite telling. Is that something you could look into? So I did take a swing at this to try to look around and figure out how I could determine how Lamar Jackson performed against good and bad defenses. But one of the problems is that they're good defenses. So they perform good against everybody, right? I mean, the thing about Lamar Jackson is, well, I did run across an interesting stat though, if you want it. Lamar Jackson, I looked up his worst performances, trying to figure out like who were they against or what might've happened for some of his worst games. And so I just sorted it by individual quarterback rating for that game. I figured it's kind of the best way to eyeball it. And one thing I noticed is that the Baltimore Ravens, they won nine of the 16 worst quarterback rated games by Lamar Jackson. And seven of those, they scored more than

20 points. I think what that tells you is that his running does so much for them and is worth so much to that team. This is not, oh, it's nice to have a guy who can run. This is the most prolific and effective runner, maybe since Michael Vick or maybe ever. I think it's either, it's either one of those two things. Like there's a game that he only had nine for 20 passing Lamar Jackson, any other quarterback in the league that goes nine for 20 passing is having the worst day. And yet they scored 30 points and won the game against Seattle 30 to 16. Because at the same time he was struggling passing that day he ran 14 for 116 and a touchdown i mean that's just that's what lamar jackson does for you is evens the playing field even if the other team is able to slow down certain parts of his game so when you say that his

splits is like this is that in quarterback rating is that in pff grade because i looked at the pff grades and i couldn't find this this monster gap between oh he put up all of his 90 grades against these horrible defenses or whatever so i'm guessing that it's more of the box score stats but that's what's interesting is that they found ways to win those games and found ways to score points the other part is too that even because i couldn't separate this, unfortunately, it was trying to parse through the stats, but even with several games played by Tyler Huntley mixed in, since 2019, the Baltimore Ravens

have the fifth best scoring offense in the NFL. And that's even with their backup playing. So if they didn't have, if it was lamar the whole time and it wasn't how many ever games of tyler huntley this would probably be higher but the point just being that if he's struggling against these quality defenses well that's not shocking because usually that's what they do that's why they're the top rated defenses is that they are harder to play against so you're you would assume that your numbers would not be unbelievable against the best defenses, but at the same time in the broader picture, usually what it takes to compete for a Superbowl is having a top five offense. We know

that all the teams that have gone to the Superbowl since that mess of a Broncos offense in 2015. They've all been in that top five range in scoring. I think maybe the only outlier was the Rams might've been seventh or something like that in scoring, but everybody has been an elite scoring offense. And through this longer sample of Lamar Jackson running the Ravens offense, they are elite, not just pretty good, not just hanging around the middle, but an elite scoring offense. So that's what you're really looking for to have a chance

to compete. And I would also say this, and I don't want to completely act like Lamar Jackson has no flaws. Of course he does. Lamar Jackson is not Patrick Mahomes. There's one Patrick Mahomes and he's Patrick Mahomes. That's it. And everybody else is behind him. Everybody else, you could talk about what their flaws are. You can go through their statistics. And there's a saying about stats that if you torture them enough, they'll tell you anything. And I think that if you're looking at every single stat and trying to parse it out and search it and mold it that, you know what, with Lamar Jackson, yeah, you can find some imperfections. You can find some blemishes in his game where he hasn't been exactly the same in 2020, 21, and 22 as he was in 2019.

But also all these things require some context, which, you know, he didn't have Justin Jefferson for any of those. So how does he perform against elite defenses? If he has the best wide receiver on earth, maybe that could change things. I don't know. But I also think like, let's not go forest through the trees here with Lamar Jackson in this discussion. The big picture on Lamar Jackson is if he were to come to the Minnesota Vikings, they would have a legitimate chance in the NFC with the quarterbacks in the NFC and the best receiver on earth to compete for the Super Bowl today. And that eight and a half win total that we talk about, it's going up. It's going up over 10. They are going to be right there with Philadelphia, San Francisco, the minute that happens. So let's not lose perspective over, oh, well, you know, the owners are saying that he does this or he does that or his injury history or whatever. The bigger picture is that that would

be the closest the Vikings have been to a Super Bowl since Brett Favre threw an interception the minute they signed Lamar Jackson. That's the reality of the thing. Is he perfect? No. Who is outside of Patrick Mahomes? And if you want me to give you a perfect option for the Vikings at quarterback, I was just hemming and hawing about 2024 or trading up this year and kind of going through and well, you know, Levis doesn't have good stats and well, are you really going to be able to draft this high? If someone has the scenario where you get a quarterback that is the best player in the league with no flaws, please let me know. Because I think there's only one of those guys out there in the NFL at the moment and he's in the AFC. So you could face him in the Superbowl. If you have the best guy in the NFC, which you would have with Lamar Jackson,

or at least then a tie with Jalen hurts. And so I think that's kind of, it's kind of a bottom line thing for me more than it is. And I don't mean I'm not looking at his numbers, but I think we already know what the man can do. There's really only two questions here. The big question is how much would it take? And like, can you do it? Can it be done if he wants 200 million guaranteed or something? And then you have to give up two first round draft picks. That's very hard. It's very hard to do.

Plus the Ravens could just match it, right? And then it's over on the spot and he's a Raven. But if that's the price and he's a raven but you know if that's if that you know if that's the price that's very hard to accomplish with a roster that has so many problems okay so i think that's valid to look at it that way i think it's also reasonable to look at it and say if you're the team that makes that offer every other team's going to be pretty mad at you that all of these owners have to look at the economics and the politics of this thing and say, if we make that offer to

Lamar Jackson, then what is going to happen in Cincinnati with Joe Burrow? What's going to happen in Philly with Jalen Hurts? What's going to happen with Justin Herbert in LA? And you have relationships with these teams, even though they're competitors, they're kind of all in it together to make money and succeed. There's a lot going on there. There's a lot of moving parts to the Lamar Jackson situation. But as far as Lamar Jackson, the player,

you pair him with the greatest receiver, two phenomenal tight ends, an offensive mind that is vastly better than Greg Roman. And we've seen the peak of what Lamar Jackson can be. He's 26 years old. Give me three years of that and we'll see how it goes. Because all the other options are draft a quarterback, totally random. You could draft Carson Wentz and have some success or Baker Mayfield and have some success, but then the guy's not actually good and then you're doing this dance again, right? What is perfect? What's perfect? What is predictive? Well, a guy who's been in the league for this long and you know everything he can do already. But no, he hasn't won the

Super Bowl yet. And until you do, there will of course be people who say, well, you choke or you can't win the big one or defenses can figure you out or whatever else. But I will take my chances with somebody with his talent and his ability to win, even if he's not having a great game, his ability to put up points. I'm going to take all those things with an incredible supporting cast that he can make better around him because of his legs or can bail out when things go wrong. That's the way I would look at it. But, you know, I understand the price tag might just price everybody out of being able to get him. So, you know, it's that's but it's just the thing about the stats, which can be so tricky because we love analytics here on the show, as all of you

know. But at the same time, it's kind of like we're almost approaching with a stat like that. Like, you know what? I'm a little concerned that Byron Buxton has trouble in day games. You think it's a day game problem? Like, well, I don't know if that's really a stat that's going to actually tell us a whole lot. So because there's a lot of other people on the field, You know, I don't know. It's like when somebody is as accomplished as him through here, that feels like nitpicky. Anyway. Good question. On to Jerry.

Why can't the Wilfs general manager and head coach say the word Super Bowl? I've never heard them utter the big words. Is this because they want to remain competitive and not setting their sights on sights high enough? So I think actually Mark Wilf did say at the owners meetings, the Super Bowl is their goal. But it's always going to be a question as long as they do the stuff that they've done this off season, do you really want to go for it? Do you really want to do what's necessary to try to win a Super Bowl? Because I think what we know and what has been studied recently by our friends at Sumer Sports, Eric

Eager wrote an article about this. He wrote about teams being transient in the NFL. So going from one place in the league to another, how often do teams go from elite to terrible? How, how often do teams go from above average to below average? How often do teams go from terrible to elite, right? Think about it that way. And he found that teams go from terrible to elite faster or more often than they go from average to elite, which makes sense, right? Because when you're not good, you draft high and get great players, often quarterbacks. And then if it hits, you're up with the elite teams. That's Cincinnati for you.

Just a couple of years ago, they were a laughingstock. Just a couple of years ago, the Bills are a laughingstock and now they are elite. So, you know, that's how it goes in the NFL. It's hard to do that. And I think that from the Wilfs perspective, they have always seen a lot of talent on the field and thought we're only a couple of pieces and a couple of breaks away. And are they completely wrong about that? I don't know. I mean, I've never thought that they were a Super Bowl contender outside of 2018 going into a season and then they turned out not to be. But even 2017, I still remember having conversations about like, what exactly are we

doing here? Like, is this really a contender or not? Or would you rather be another team that's at the bottom of the league than the Vikings in the middle? So we have had this discussion really since 2016, because that was a season they were going into the year with Teddy, feeling like they could really compete and then, you know, have their guy on the rookie quarterback contract, go forward from there. And since then,

it's been a lot of discussions every off season, every year of, well, you know, the roster's pretty good. You got some stars, got some big weaknesses, going to need everything to go right. But they've always had too much talent to be really bad. And it's counterintuitive to be saying that if they were really going for the Super Bowl, at some point they would have tried to be really bad. But that's proof. There's proof in the NFL.

But I can understand why they would look at the roster and say, well, you know, we've got this and we've got that and we've got these players and we've got, you know, whatever coaches and everything else. So why don't we do as most as we can and then hope that things go right in the playoffs? I understand that perspective from them. I think it's way easier for us to sit here and go, why don't you just tank?

What are you doing? And Kweisi Dapomensa talked about that when we asked him kind of about timelines and time horizons and stuff like that at the Combine, where he said that he hates the idea of tanking because you're talking about a lot of players and the players are not going to do that and things like that. So that's kind of a typical GM answer. But I think it also said like that that's not what they're really going to be in a position to do here unless it's after Kirk leaves and maybe it's a rookie quarterback in his first year, or maybe they don't get that quarterback and they have to go through one of those bad, ugly years at some point to get the high drafted quarterback. I don't

know. I feel like time comes for everybody when it comes to this, that eventually the natural tank will hit you. But through this whole thing, through all these years where we've had the discussion, they've always had a lot of talent. They have Harrison Smith on their team. They'd have in the past, Everson Griffin, Daniel Hunter, Adam Thielen, Stefan Diggs, like who's tanking with those teams. And then, yeah, because you don't have the elite quarterback, you have ended up stuck in the middle. So it's a weird thing, but I'm always very hesitant to say, to like put words in their mouth and say, well, they don't really care about a championship. That doesn't sound right to me.

But I think that they really don't want to be bad in part because they've always had a lot of good players. And in that way, if you own the team, would you say, all right, let's be horrible. You know how hard it is to be horrible? You know how painful it is? And look, nobody celebrates tanking more than this guy. But I just, like in a real practical application, it really hurts. People get fired. It is horrible and miserable in the locker room. I can guarantee you that part of the reason the Vikings scored so high in the NFL PA study

is because they won 13 games. That plays a big role in it. If they won eight games, six games, four games, yeah, okay. They'd still have good sports science people. But I don't know if some of the other things would have graded quite as high because the culture is impossible to keep it good when you go down to the bottom like that. It really takes its toll. And I mean, yes, it's by technical terms, by historical terms, it's the way. But I could also see them being very afraid of going to the bottom and never coming out of it like some

other franchises have. And the Jets are certainly the example there. So yeah, I just understand this perspective, but it kind of reminds me of like cheap pole ads or something that people used to say about the twins. And maybe there was some truth to it, but I also felt like it's probably, it just seems like a thing that people came up with that kind of was like catchy, like we'll still want to win. She pole ads. Like, I don't, I don't think that's really the case. I mean, they certainly put down a lot of cash to try to win over the years. I mean, 2018 is a good example. They certainly put down a lot of cash when they could have stayed with Case Keenum. That was a big all-in swing to try to win.

And I think that they may have gone back to that well too many times, but it's not like they, they tried nothing. They tried trades. They, they tried signings. You know, they tried a lot of different stuff, including a coaching change, a culture change, all that stuff, but we still kind of ended up in the same spot. So now in my mind, it was the time to transition the roster and they've sort of half done that, which is typical for the way that they've handled a lot of these recent years. But it can be, it can be a place where you get stuck and it gets very frustrating. But I also have a tough time saying, Hey owners, why don't you just create a terrible team so you can draft somebody? Yeah. I don't know. Cause I don't know what other move

outside of Lamar Jackson, we would have been talking about here as far as like trying to win the Superbowl. But as the, as the verbiage goes, I have heard them say Superbowl anyway, onto, and now, and now, yeah, I mean, I can just sort of hear people like, oh, why are you defending them so much? And I'm, and I'm not like, I'm not saying of hear people like, oh, why are you defending them so much? And I'm not. Like, I'm not saying that they've handled this the right way. That there were times, especially from 2019 to 2020, where they clearly should have just cleared the deck. And they didn't.

And that's how they ended up here. But again, I get it. That's what I'm saying. I get it. It's not that I think that they nailed it. It's that I understand why they've taken this approach and why they did it last year, because all the players, they came to them and said, we need a better culture. That's all we need. You had Patrick Peterson, you had Eric Kendricks, you had Adam Thielen, all these

players. We need just that little extra and we can be great. And then they won a lot. So anyway, Kwezi Duffelmintz also said at the Combine that it's his goal to set the expectations for the ownership. And that's what I would be very curious what the behind closed doors expectations for this year and the future are set. That's interesting too. Anyway, onto the next question. It's a complicated one. So it usually ends up taking a long explanation when someone asks about the ownership and that whole thing about, you know, galling all in to win. From John, with respect to Kirk Cousins' contract, if he leaves next year, I understand they will take all of the dead cap remaining from his void

years in 2024. Is that correct? What if they re-sign him? Yeah. So the way that his contract works out, and as it was just coming out and was restructured, it was a little jumbled from what was out there, but we got it kind of cleared up. And the way that it works is if they cut him before a certain date, it's in February, I think,

then his dead cap space accelerates and is all in 2024. And that's for, I believe, $28 million. So they'll take on a dead cap hit $28 million. If that is not the case, it gets spread out over a couple of years if he is around longer than that. And then they release him. But it's a lot for those years. So it's not all 28 next year, but it's a lot like for 2024, it's a lot for 2025

and so forth. And it goes on like that. I think until 2027, if they let it go past that acceleration date, if they were to sign him to a contract extension, they would still have to pay the bill on the dead cap space. However, they could spread it out a little more favorably in the next contract. So they could extend him. That has to be there as part of his cap hit, but you can spread it out through the future because the way that is, it's the cash that you pay out, you have to have on the cap. And they've already paid this money, this actual money, this into his bank account money. So that's just sitting there. And that has to be paid for eventually. It's like you already ate the food that you charge

your credit card on and you go home and you don't want to pay it until next month. So you wait. And that's kind of where we're at with Kirk Cousins. So they would still have to make that part of his next extension. And it's not that fun to be able to do, but that is a way to kind of not work around it, but make it a little easier. And teams do deploy that concept fairly often. So that's kind of how it works. But yeah, if he is released early after the season next year, they get hammered hard in 2024

and then they are free of it is my understanding. And if they don't, it gets spread out and it keeps hitting them for a few years um and that's kind of how it works on to the next question from jamie here let's see i'm not that on board with wide receiver in the first round how dare you how dare you jamie that is blasphemous for the show and you're banned forever from fans only i'm only like 70 percent no i'm i am I am kidding. Uh, let's see. My dream is finding a guy like Duran pain at number 23 overall, but that's tough. And I want nothing to do with Will Levis. You know, I think you're being fair about Will Levis. Uh, you know, I waffle a bit because I always am going to stay with that. We don't know. And I'm going to stay with the idea that

if the Vikings evaluate him as a first round pick, if their scouts, if their organization has looked at him and said he's a first round pick, then, hey, he's got equal odds to almost anybody else because there's no predicting this thing. I'm too afraid of that. Same with Hendon Hooker. Too many red flags. I'm afraid of that. I get you. I feel you. And I think that there's teams in the league that would also say the same about both of those prospects. Now, Duran Payne. It is tough to find a guy like that. And I think that Kalijah Cansey played himself right out of that into the top 10, into the

top 15. He's the pass rusher from Pitt. That's going to be hard now because the guy went to his pro day and went to the combine and just showed everybody. He is an amazing athlete that matches up with his production matches up with his tape. And now it's got a chance to be a higher draft pick. If he's there at 23, it would be hard not to pick him. But I think that is tough. There is Brian Breezy, who is the defensive tackle from Clemson. Some decent production there. I think once you drop, this is my thing with defense, is I think there are some positions you can develop. I think safety

is one. I think linebacker is one. Nickel corner probably, maybe situational rusher, and definitely run stuffer i think you can develop those guys but if you want somebody to be a monster more likely than not you got to draft them high that's just kind of the price to play poker there are the grady jarrett's there are players who drop and become good but for the most part there was a cool article i think i've referenced once or twice about from the athletic looking at the all pros and how most of them were just top draft picks or top recruits out of college because a lot of the best defensive players are just incredible athletes who are highly talented and come out where it's a little different when it

comes to wide receivers, where there's a little more technical element of it. You have to adapt. You have to grow more, not just the physical part. Not to downplay all you great defensive players, but the price to be great is usually the combination of technical skill and elite athleticism. If you're just an okay athlete, way harder to be a great defensive player. So if there is someone there as a defensive tackle that can rush the passer, go for it. Like that's a good pick.

And if you want that more than wide receiver, I think you can make a good case for that. I personally like the wide receiver idea better, but the interior rush is really important. And it's whether they can find a guy there because it just seems like defensive tackle is maybe the weakest in this draft. I was looking over the defensive tackle group, trying to find guys potentially to look at for the Vikings. And I was struggling outside of two or three guys that could be there. So I'm with you that that is a major need. How easy that's going to be to get, I'm not sure. And I also think that if they draft

one of like four positions, everyone will be on board. Mostly. I mean, there's always debate, but you draft a corner. Okay. Get it. Drafted defensive tackle, defensive end, quarterback, wide receiver, any of those positions people will be in, I think. And we'll spend more time going over those positions as we go forward and who their potential

targets could be. All right, this comes from at rat trapping our friend, a usual presence on fans only here. Let's see with all the changes on offense and with the perspective of adding another starting wide receiver by free agency draft or trade, what type of offensive scheme does this lean toward? I don't think they want to make major changes in the scheme. I think what they want is a curveball. That last year, they were out of the shotgun a lot, and it was three wide receivers a lot. Sometimes Kirk was under center more than other quarterbacks, but that was a lot what it was. 11 personnel, three wide receivers, a lot of deeper route combinations that I think that Cousins didn't always feel comfortable throwing and ended up

with a lot of underneath passes early because of it. But I think it was a lot like what the Rams had done, or at least it looked that way to me early on. It was a little more complicated than they thought, but it was a lot of three wide receiver stuff and running out of a single back and all that kind of stuff. And I think what they're looking for is to have more of a curve ball. So they barely use CJ Ham last year. They bring him back, which to me is an assumption that they're going to use him a little more. And they bring in Josh Oliver at a decent size contract, not as big as the original numbers for the folks who were upset of three years, 21 million. It was kind of a, kind of a, I don't want to say bogus, but he's not going to earn 21

million from the Vikings more likely not unless he's amazing. So they can do that now. Johnny Mott was very limited, and he might still end up being on the team. But he's no kind of receiving threat, where Josh Oliver might be a little bit more. And when he came out into the draft, he was known as a wide receiver type tight end. And he is absolutely enormous, by the way, having met him at his initial press conference. He is a huge guy. So I think they're looking to be able to mix it up and to be able to on first down and 10 run out two tight ends, a fullback plow forward for five, six yards. And then on the next play, run a play action out of that same formation and throw it to the one

receiver going deep, which is Justin Jefferson. This has always been a theory that has worked in the NFL. It's what Gary Kubiak absolutely loves and made a whole career out of. And I think what Kevin O'Connell wants is not to become Gary Kubiak, but just to be able to say, let me dive into my Kubiak bag and pull out this more often than they did last year. And I think that teams on defense, the more that they use these deep coverages and these two steep safeties, the more vulnerable they are to putting a couple of tight ends on the field and

daring those teams to bring somebody else up into the box. This is the whole math of why Gary Kubiak succeeds, right? Is because, okay, all right, we're afraid of getting our face run into or run over, and now we're going to only have one safety. And then you run a play action and you get Justin Jefferson deep one-on-one and then it works. And from 2019 and 2021, they hit a lot of explosive plays out of that. He's got to know that. And that just really wasn't there last year. They were one of the few teams in the league that didn't have a lot more success running play action, which is very unusual for Kirk Cousins.

So that's what I think. I think it's just to have a change up and something different and maybe to mitigate the loss of Adam Thielen. I do agree with you that they will add another wide receiver, but where that comes from, how ready that person is. I mean, you could draft a guy and he's not good or he's not ready. And then you kind of have to have that change up in your bag more often. But I think that's kind of how it plays in.

I don't think it's like this fundamental shift over, unless he called Gary at the ranch and said, Hey, Gary, stop watching old TV and fixing fences. Come up here and teach me how you did it with Howard Griffith and Byron Chamberlain. It's possible could happen. Uh, this from Jordan is quasi addicted to adding void years. Is this normal? Uh, mildly normal, normal for some teams, not normal for others. Uh, the team that does it the most is new orleans that comes up all the time they're psychotic about it and they've paid for it um as you always do but you could understand it a little bit more when they had drew breeze that they would do anything to make enough cap space to work things out because they had the final years

of drew breeze and they're trying to win a Super Bowl. That made more sense than continuing to do it, just like that makes more sense than doing it now with some of the guys that they have. I think what happened here with this offseason, at least the way that it feels, is that they got backed into a corner because they had some expectation of certain guys that were going to help them create cap space. And of course, the Eric Hendricks thing did. But with Adam Phelan, it didn't create a ton of cap space. It will in the future, but not really this year. Only a couple million dollars. And maybe they expected a Kirk extension to create a lot more.

I don't know. That is a possibility that they had that as their expectation. And then that didn't work out with the offer that they made. I don't know that, that they may have planned to have that extension done, but there was other things, including like Zedarius Smith, including Delvin Cook, that maybe they had assumed they were going to get worked out to be cap compliant. And then when they weren't, it was like, okay, what now? What other buttons can we push to make sure we get cap compliant? Because that's the biggest thing.

You have to do that. But if you wanted to sign players who you had your eye on, the only way to do it was to add some of these void years. And I don't like that strategy. And I thought maybe there were some other things that they could have done instead, but nothing is good for you. Like restructuring Brian O'Neill, that's not good for you. That's going to hurt you just as much as adding void years down the road because it's the same sort of deal. So it was really that they were backed so much into a corner to be cap compliant and to add a couple of players in the free agent market that they had really no other choice than to do things like the restructure with Cousins and the things that they had to do with

Murphy and Davenport and Lowry's contracts. It's not great. Eventually, they will have to dig themselves out of this cap hole. So it's not every off season just trying to squeeze out these kind of minor signings or decent little signings like Harrison Phillips or Jordan Hicks and be able to actually sort of take swings at the big boys because they're cap healthy. But as of right now, not cap healthy. And once you are in that spot, it's hard to get out of it because you keep having to push money down the road and borrow from the future. At some point that needs to stop. But I think that they're looking down the road two years at, well, if Cousins isn't the quarterback, then you have that opportunity to get the cap space again. But it still is not going to be easy for even next year. So I don't think he's addicted. I think he's forced. Okay. Two more questions. This one

from Joe, my new theory, Hunter and Zedaria Smith with a few picks to trade up and take Will Levis, maybe from the jets at 13. So Daniil Hunter is hard to trade at the draft because if you trade him before June 1st, it comes along with like a $6 million or something in that ballpark range of a dead cap hit. That would be hard to afford for a team that has no money whatsoever. Zedaria Smith, I just, and I could be wrong, but I don't know who's giving up enough to make that significant. Is someone trading you a third or a second round pick for Zedaria Smith? I just can't see it. So it would just be pocket change. It would just be fourth, fifth, sixth round picks because they know that he wants a new

contract. They know that the Vikings are in tough with the salary cap. They wouldn't have enough right now to even sign their draft class. So the other teams can kind of wait them out and not give them what they really want as far as trades go. But could they trade something and draft capital up to get Will Levis? Yeah. No, they could.

Is that the guy that you want to go all in on? I think that it's very, very risky. And especially after the statistical analysis we did the other day, there's just a lot of worries there that that's going to be one of those big arm prospects that doesn't ever really turn around the things that, you know, he struggled with in college. But if they love him and they did it, then I would support it. Can I, can I, you know, walk on the fence that way? I think that, I think I can, I think I can walk on the fence of saying you're really risking this, but I give you credit for doing it. So if they do have plans to trade

up and take somebody, whether it's Will Levis or if Anthony Richardson drops, or if they're just going to stay put and take Hendon Hooker, then I'll give them credit for taking the risk and laying out the path for the future at quarterback. But it will definitely be a risk if that's what they decide to do. But hey, look, I mean, you're putting it down on paper now. If that's what they do, we can go back to it and say, wow, well, he nailed that. On to our final question from Jeff. I am firmly against any tradebacks on draft day, except in the rare occasions where we can move back one spot and gain another pick quality versus quantity thoughts.

Um, yeah, I think that there's a, there is a point for all of that. Like if you kind of picture like a chart and two lines crossing where you're not moving down far enough to really take you out of the area of getting great players. And you are getting enough to increase the odds of getting a great player by having two draft picks. I hope that was worth saying with my mouth, but like think about last year, this was my criticism of last year was they moved so far down they took themselves out of that discussion when rick spielman and then we you know don't like to give him credit for anything on the show which you know is fair sometimes the trade down to draft christian derisaw is amazing they moved out of a spot that was very good, slid down a

couple of spots, figuring based on the board, they could still get their guy, got their guy. Now he's a superstar. I mean, that, that was, you know, aside from, Hey, should they have drafted a quarterback? But that whole thing was handled brilliantly. They moved down just the right amount. I thought last year they moved down too much. Now that opinion could change a lot. If a Lewis scene comes out this year and is a dominating gray player, which he could, I mean, he only played just what a couple of games last year. So if he comes out and is great, then this might look genius. If Andrew Booth Jr. is really good, it might look genius. What they did last year. Making those odds match up at the exact spot is hard. But let's just say you get to number 23

and there's five players at key positions that are high on your board still remaining. And you'd be happy with any of them. Let's say it's two receivers, two corners, a defensive end. And you trade from 23 to 29 or 30, figuring that one of those five players will be there based on your intel. Well, you got to do that, right?

You have to do that. Now, if you trade to 40, then you're losing out on better players. So it's all the situation to me. And I like to know what the draft charts say. I think the Jimmy Johnson's was a very common sense one. And I think that the analytical ones have a lot of value in trying to match it up a little closer.

I don't like, I don't like when there's a chart that says, Hey, this team, like, I think it was San Francisco. This team got this many compensatory picks, which is equal to the first round pick. And I know it's not, it's not, it's not, no, it's not,

it's not, it's not equal to a first round pick because with a first round pick, you have a chance to get an all pro player and drafting a bunch of guys in the fourth and fifth, you could draft 10 straight guys and none of them even start. That's just the difference. So I totally get what you're saying, but I look at it as very situational, very case by case. And I think this year there is a good chance they could move back five, seven spots and get

an equal prospect to what they could get at 23, depending entirely on how the board drops. But I, I think it's a likely scenario. The only thing I'm rooting against, only for you guys, and a little bit for me, is a trade completely out of the first round because we would spend all this time. You know how this goes. The draft starts at eight o'clock or something.

By number 23, we're like three hours deep. So we're going through all these picks and we get to 23 and it's, no, they've traded to 34. What? What? I got to do this all again tomorrow. So, you know, hopefully that's not the case, but if it is, it might be the statistically

right thing to do. But I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying that once you move away from those first round picks, you really risk the chance of missing out on star players, which are what ultimately are impossible to replace. Average players are replaceable. Superstars are not. And superstars win Super Bowls. So that's why they call them super.

That's a great way to end, isn't it? All right. Thanks, everybody, for all the great questions. Phenomenal. Super questions, in fact, from everybody again, purpleinsider.com is the place to send those or to me on Twitter at Matthew Collar. Just send me a DM and I will get it and put it in the show. So I appreciate all of your audience participation and we'll talk to you again next time.