Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Is there a gameplan for the Vikings winning with Kirk Cousins?

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Matthew Coller and Manny Hill talk about the excitement for Monday night's NCAA National Championship game and if there's a way the Vikings can work with the roster to put Kirk Cousins in position to take the Vikings deep into the playoffs if he returns Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, along with Manny Hill once again, as we continue toward a game that everyone can't wait for between the Vikings and the Detroit Lions. So of course, we'll talk about off-season stuff. And we also have a lot of discussion about the National Championship. Manny has made his list of crazy Vikings and Lions games, which some of them in the final weeks of seasons have actually been quite wild. But Manny, I have to start the show with an apology because unlike the NFL, I can admit when I made a mistake,

I went back, I looked at the tape and I made a mistake yesterday on the show that for some reason I can't stop making. So I'm issuing an apology for some reason. I keep calling him Jalen Daniels when his name is Jaden Daniels. And I don't know why. I think it's because every kid who's like 24 is named Jalen. And the only guy named Jaden that I know is Jaden McDaniels, but that has no why. And so I was talking also about Jalen Hurts and how Jalen Hurts developed like Jaden Daniels could develop. And my brain just went like, no, it's. And so it was a mistake. I heard number 70 when it was number 68.

Oh no, wait, that was Brad Allen. Uh, that was the refs in the, in the lions and Cowboys game. But I had, uh, more than a few listeners pointed out that I had said that again, three different times yesterday, Jalen, instead of Jaden here here's here's what I'll do Manny if the Vikings draft him I'll get it right okay like how about we do that well I'll trade me getting it right for them drafting Jaden Daniels and I apologize to him uh and his family and all those who like him. So there you go. I admit it. It was a mistake.

Well, I wouldn't feel too bad if I were you because there is, in college football, a Jalen Daniels. And he is a quarterback. He's just the quarterback for the University of Kansas and not LSU. And Kansas had a nice year this year, so he's a solid quarterback. He's not Jaden, but he's pretty solid.

I was looking up Jaden Daniels' numbers today on PFF, and let me tell you, pal, that'd be a good pick. I gotta tell you. I mean, his quarterback rating, college has different quarterback ratings and count sacks as rush yards, which is a crime against humanity and should be changed. And if I become elected official, that will be the first thing that I ever try to do is let's just get the college football stats on with the NFL stats. I don't know what sociopath decided on that, but luckily PFF has the quarterback rating adjusted to NFL instead of whatever preposterous system they use and also the rushing yards. So you can look up what they really were.

And Jaden Daniels, Jaden Daniels, I said, has a 143 quarterback rating. Perfect is 158 for his last season. That was just throwing the ball. And then you add what he could do as a runner. And I didn't realize also that he is as tall as he is. It's like 6'3", 6'4", over 200 pounds. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's okay. That's pretty good.

That'll do. And even when he had a clean pocket, Manny, he had a 94 out of 100 PFF grade with a clean pocket throwing the football. I mean, this is a good class of quarterbacks, man. That was my takeaway. This is a good class of quarterbacks. If the second

wave is michael pennix bo nicks and jj mccarthy because the first wave has three dudes who could be superstars absolutely and listen we've been talking for the last you know me you other people that that do this kind of stuff we We've been talking about, you know, Caleb Williams and Drake May as like, those are the top two guys. Who's to say like Jaden Daniels doesn't have a great combine and just like, I mean, he's already shot up everybody's draft boards,

you know, since the season started. Who's to say he's not the first quarterback taken, you know, with the numbers that he's put up, he's obviously a terrific athlete. If he comes in and just aces the combine, who's to say like one team doesn't look at him and just say, Nope, that's the guy we want even over Drake and Caleb Williams, who knows? I mean, that would be pretty wild. But when you look at them on paper, it's not the craziest thing ever. And we always think that we know when everyone's getting drafted, but it doesn't always turn out that way. And just just looking at this year, the PFF grades and look, you know, some people give me a hard time about citing these all the time.

But all it is is people who watch way more of these players than I did this year. I saw a little bit of each of them, enough to have an impression, but I didn't watch every single game like they did and gather all this data. Jaden Daniels, that is J-A-Y-D-E-N Daniels, had the highest overall PFF grade in all of college football. Bo Nix and Michael Penix were right behind him as far as the overall grade. J.J. McCarthy was ninth. Drake May also tied with him in the same grade at ninth. And Caleb Williams, I got to scroll down to find. So he did not have the same. I actually have to search his name to

see where he is on this list because he did not have. Oh, he was at 11th. Okay. So he, so he was the lowest graded. Now that doesn't mean that the ceiling for him, Caleb Williams ceiling could be incredible, but these, the way that these guys played these draft prospects this year, they, they kind of left a little doubt of how good they are. They all had terrific seasons. It wasn't like, and, and Williams was the most rocky but it wasn't like we're gonna be talking about well you know malik willis for example didn't have very good stats but maybe whatever whatever or last year with will levis well he doesn't have good stats but it's upside and you're gonna have no problem justifying the stats of these guys and something that blew

me away since i was just looking at this manny we're not going to talk about kirk yet uh bo nicks only had five turnover worthy plays this year and average getting the ball out in 2.2 seconds which is tom brady level of catch the ball and get rid of it and so now i'm like wait should i really like bo nicks also big guy athlete throws the ball pretty well i kind of like all of them and we've been harder on jj mccarthy uh because let me have let me go back to my stat page he only threw 314 passes this year like that's a very small amount of passes for somebody who's supposed to be a draft prospect like they usually run the ball but that was the point i was making with jeremiah searles the other day tell me how you feel about this manny i watched jj supposed to be a draft prospect like they usually run the ball but that was the point i was making with jeremiah sterles the other day tell me how you feel about this manny i watched jj mccarthy

and i'm like i don't know i don't really i don't really see it the same way i do with some of the other guys but if they draft him i'll be like all right great pick you buy into it and the guy has the good numbers when he throws the football in college like off we go that's how i would look at it yeah and and who's to say i mean we've we've been talking for weeks about you know kevin o'connell wants the the big arm quarterback that wants to push the ball down the field because it's kind of what we've seen with kirk cousins it's what obviously was what they were doing in in los angeles with matthew stafford the year they won the Super Bowl. And, you know, we kind of saw when Josh Dobbs was in there this year that, you know, he couldn't really, he wasn't really a guy that could just stand in the pocket, go through

progressions and just rocket that ball down the field. He had the arm to be able to do it, but he just, you know, up here, it just wasn't, wasn't really capable of doing those things. So we just kind of assume like, yeah, Kevin O'Connell wants a guy that's going to push the ball down the field that's got just this absolute cannon. And he might still. But who's to say, and I know we're going to get into this a little bit, but who's to say Michael Penix doesn't light up the Michigan defense on Monday

and he shoots up everybody's draft board? And then when the Vikings are picking, I don't know, 11th, 12th, wherever, Michael Penix isn't even there on the board because somebody took him like seventh. You know what I mean? And they weren't able to trade up and get in a position to take them. Now you are probably having a conversation about, you know, a Bo Nix or J.J. McCarthy, maybe, you know, maybe they would trade, then trade back and then take J.J. McCarthy like late in the first round or something like that.

And if if that is the route that they go now, you're probably thinking, well, maybe Kevin O'Connell might have a full offseason to kind of mold his offense a little bit more to what J.J. McCarthy is able to do. Maybe not quite the guy that can, you know, has the rocket arm that's going to push the ball down the field, but hey, let's throw some more crossing patterns into this system and get, you know, get in, make some easy throws for a young quarterback that, you know, like J.J. McCarthy. I mean, you give a coach a full offseason to kind of tweak his offense, add some things, subtract some things according to, you know, whoever is going to be leading that offense, you can kind of see it happen. Who knows? I mean, I tend to think that, you know, if they're sitting there at 12 and Michael Penix is there that I think they would be crazy not to take them. Honestly, that's just kind of my where I'm at with Michael Penix after what I I saw on Monday night um but who knows and at the end of the day I think for me I just want to see them go this route of

taking the young quarterback developing him you know utilizing this these next couple of years to kind of build a more talented roster around him so that he can have success while he's still on a rookie contract. Because if he plays well enough, you're going to have to probably pay him. And then it's going to get a little bit tricky with roster building and stuff like that. So I want to see Kevin O'Connell do that. I have quarterbacks that I like more than others, but ultimately it's just like, let's just take a guy and let's just have it work. Because this is what this franchise has been starving for for really a long time.

I keep looking at Jaden Daniels and thinking, how many draft picks would it take? Because this is wild. He had six games that were graded over a 90 last year, including his last four in a row, one of which was against Alabama. He also graded a 90 last year, including his last four in a row, one of which was against Alabama. He also graded a 90 against Missouri. So it wasn't even just the bum ass teams that he was lighting up. He ran for 1200 yards and, and was the top ranked one of these guys in big time throw percentage from PFF, which is what it sounds like. When you make a tight window throw, you drop a dime, drop the ball in the bucket. The guy who led the entire nation in total big time throws, Michael Penix.

And second was Drake May. These guys have the numbers that suggest that they were the best quarterbacks in college football. But the more I end up looking at Daniels, the more I think I really got to pound it into my brain of his first name, not being Jalen and indeed Jaden, because he is just absolutely fantastic on paper and a lot average 11 and a half yards per pass attempt, which was a whole yard and a half above the next guy. The next guy in college football was actually Jaden Milrow.

Wait, is it Jaden Milrow? Jalen Milrow. Oh my God. Jalen Milrow. Yeah. You're going to do that a lot. You're going to do that a lot. I'm already calling it.

That's going to happen. This is a disaster. This is a disaster. I was doing so well. Jalen Milrow averaged 10 yards of pass attempt, and he only threw the ball downfield, just like heaving it like Nick Mullen style. But Jaden Daniels had like one of the best college seasons I've ever seen and has translatable skill with size, arm strength, speed that we've seen work before. So to your point, would it be totally shocking if he's taken at the top?

No. And he, you know, we talked about Anthony Richardson being this type of guy last year, but as a project player, not somebody who put up the statistics like this and the league still drafted him fourth overall. So I think if the Vikings are going to possibly make a run for someone like Jaden Daniels,

they will have to trade up probably a lot of stuff to get there. And to your point, national championship is going to be something to watch because I think that Washington is outmanned by Michigan, player for player, position by position. That Michigan D-line is disgusting. Their secondary did a great job against Alabama, a plus job against Alabama. And Washington has a very good team, but it's really their quarterback, their wide receivers, their passing game that drives the whole success.

If Penix even plays well, he might end up being in the top 10. And then when you look at the teams that need quarterbacks, I mean, you could even end up with four out of the first 10 picks being quarterbacks. So all of a sudden we went from similar. This has happened many times before with Zach Wilson. The midway through the process, we went, oh, maybe the Vikings could be interested in the Zach Wilson guy if they pick in the middle of the first round. And then no, no no no no the hype train and and that's exactly with Anthony Richardson where there's YouTube videos of me last year

talking about hey you know maybe the Vikings should draft Richardson 20th and develop him for a year and instead he went fourth overall I I'm starting to wonder if that's what's going to happen with Penix if he has a good game against Michigan. 100%. I was thinking the exact same thing. And, you know, like you said, Michigan's defense is just absolutely loaded. Their front is outstanding. They have a lot of depth. Those guys are fast.

They're physical. This is going to be a challenge for Michael Penix. And, look, if he comes out and has a game, I don't think this is going to happen, but if he comes out and has a game like he had the Sugar Bowl, like he might get taken in the top five. If he does that against that defense on the biggest stage of the year and wins a national championship, he might end up going in the top five, even though, you know, and i know there's some people concerned

about you know well he's going to be 24 and i'm not as worried about that you know as i was even with my guy hendon hooker last year being like 38 getting drafted but um yeah i mean he it you just look at the physical tools and you and you look at at he just seems like a guy that is if there's a guy that's going to step in as a rookie right away and you never know with these guys. But if there's a guy out of this crop of quarterbacks that's going to step in and just be like. Almost like C.J. how it was this year for the Houston Texans, it just make an immediate impact. And it's just like leading the team to wins and contention. Michael panic seems like the guy to me, that's going to do it. You know,

maybe Caleb Williams and Drake may have higher ceilings, but it feels like panics. If there's a guy that's going to step in and, and be impactful right away and be ready to go, he seems like the guy that's going to be able to do it. And, you know, we'll see, we'll see how Monday night goes. It's, it's, it's going to be fascinating to go, he seems like the guy that's going to be able to do it. And, you know, we'll see how Monday night goes.

It's going to be fascinating to watch. What is your, before we get into the Kirk discussion, about if it does happen, how will they deal with it with the rest of the roster? What should be the plan? We'll get into that in just a second. But what's your list? What's your order right now? And this is something you don't have to stick to.

It is January 4th. They will not draft people until the middle end of April. So plenty of time to have your opinion shaped by whatever comes out between now and then. But as of this moment, give me your order for first-round quarterbacks, how you think they should go. I think they should go i think they should go well i mean jayden daniels has just been too good that i think he should be the first guy taken he's just been he's been it's just been outrageous like how do you as good as the other guys have been like how do you not just look at everything that he did on a team that that couldn't stop you or me

defensively like so the pressure was on him to produce and put up ridiculous numbers every single week because that defense couldn't stop anybody. And he freaking delivered pretty much the entire season. So he's number one for me. I would go Drake May 2, Caleb Williams 3, Michael Penix 4, Bo Nix 5, and then J.J. McCarthy, six. I'm trying to decide if I want to go there with Jaden Daniels after maybe only watching two games of him.

But one of those games was the Florida game, which is one of the most absurd performances I have ever seen by a human being on a football field. The high end of Jaden Daniels is Lamar Jackson, and you cannot lightly compare someone to Lamar Jackson, but he is that dynamic of a runner. And he is a more actually quite a bit better of a passer than where Lamar was coming out of college. Of course, as we know, it was overstated the shortcomings of Lamar Jackson as a passer in part because he didn't have a very good team, but he wasn't putting up numbers like this, like Jaden Daniels.

And that does make me kind of lean that direction of liking Daniels, maybe a little bit more than Caleb Williams. And I just can't help with the fact that when they USC put in another guy against the Louisville team that wanted it, and he threw six touchdowns in the same offense with the same team that Caleb Williams was struggling all year. And I have wondered with Caleb Williams, if there's a little bit of Baker Mayfield in him of like riding the roller coaster and being really emotional and uh just struggling with the pressure that I thought that got to him this year and I don't mean quarterback pressure I mean pressure of the

moment pressure of the situation I you watch Drake May though it's hard not to see CJ Stroud in the way that he throws the football that ball comes out beautifully and he's a playmaker too. And so there's like a burrow Stroud type of feel to him. Uh, and the other guys at Pennix has to be ahead. I think of Bo Nix a little bit, but I am getting more talked into Bo Nix than I was before. And there's going to be a senior bowl and he's going to play in it and, and so forth. But in my mind, it's almost like if theings could just get their hands on one of the five and then

i'm not as sure about mccarthy then i feel pretty good about that just with this the strength of this class it's almost like in the middle of the season there was a little bit of a maybe it won't be as strong and then these guys just went on a charge, especially Jaden Daniels and Michael Penix toward the end. And poor Bo Nix had to play against Liberty in the bowl game. So he couldn't really make a final impression other than throttling them. So let's talk a little bit about Kirk because our buddy at the athletic John Krasinski, I'm going to say implied that he thinks it's more likely than not that the Vikings will re-sign Kirk Cousins. Now, to be clear, we haven't had the combine yet, which means that there hasn't been backroom discussions at the steakhouses at two o'clock in the morning.

And all of the agents have not talked to the teams and said, well, what do those medicals look like anyway? I'm sure that there's going to be some screenshots texted to teams of the Achilles and so forth. But the challenge for Kirk's side, Manny, is that if he wants to go into free agency, he's got to either do that and go somewhere else or stay here and what i mean is because that 28 million dead cap kicks in if he hits free agency if you're going to stay here you got to make the decision before that and just forego free agency which would seem crazy to me with at least five teams that i could come up with off the top of my head that should be interested in Kirk cousins. And yet if the Vikings lay down a price that they believe is better than what they're going to get, or just as good as what they're going to get, I think equal price as the Falcons, the Raiders, whatever he would stay here because his whole family is here and he's been embraced

by the fans and everything else. I think that's what he wants. So if they were to do it, lay it out for me, Manny. You and I have both talked about how we feel about this, that we don't think it's a great idea. But lay it out to me what their next steps would have to be if they extended Kirk Cousins. Well, to me, I think that if you extend Kirk C kirk cousins especially if you go beyond one season which i think if you're going to extend it makes sense to do that um you got to start thinking about trying to make a run like that to me i don't i don't see any scenario where it makes sense to bring kirk to bring kirk cousins back unless you're pushing all your chips to the center of the table and you're going to try and make a run at the Super Bowl over the next.

If you sign him to a two-year extension, those two years are you're trying to win and you're trying to win right now. So you're not making decisions for three years down the line. You're not thinking about taking a young quarterback to develop him. Maybe you are, but I don't know. I don't know if you're using a first round pick to do that in that case. Now you're looking at,

you know, depending on the price, you're looking into the bargain bin, I think on trying to improve, you know, your defensive front as, you know, past rushers,

maybe you're trying to get another corner, you know, in free agency, you know, your defensive front as, you know, pass rushers. Maybe you're trying to get another corner, you know, in free agency. You know, what happens with Dalton Reisner? Do you bring him back? You know what I mean? He's shown to be a pretty good pass protector, not so great against, you know, not so great with the run. But if you're bringing Kirk back, you're going to need,

it's pretty obvious you need to have your your line needs to be solidified and stout and you're going to need to protect him you know what i mean that's a huge thing so now it's like a domino effect you bring kirk back all right well now you got to bring dalton reisner back you know you bring kirk back what are you gonna do with neil hunter be nice to have him back too because your defense is going to be weaker if he leaves and, you know, it's going to be harder to resign him if you do bring Kirk back as well. So those are all the things that they're going to have to think about. And you're going to, you know, the, the players who are contributing, you're going to want to try and keep as many of those guys around as possible because the thought is you're bringing this 36-year-old quarterback back on a multi-year, two-, maybe three-year contract.

You're trying to win this thing right now. You're trying to compete with the Lions for the division. You're trying to push Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, those teams in the NFC to try and contend. So that's where the mindset has to be. Is it feasible? I don't know. I hesitate to really think that you can just do all of those things

and make it really work. But if they bring Kirk back, that's got to be the mindset. There's two ways to win with a quarterback who is not of the Mahomes Allen type of level. One of those ways would be to entirely annihilate your future by saying, bleep them picks, which the Rams famously said, and had it pay off and won the Super Bowl. And nobody was more skeptical than me about that possibility. And they pulled it off. They came very close to not, I guess every team who wins the Super Bowl would say that they had a dropped interception. They had a great play at the end of the game, you know, a no look pass by Stafford and so forth.

And it turned out that my opinion on that was wrong, that I thought with Matthew Stafford, as great, as talented as he is, that he was too flawed to take up that much as far as his cap space, as far as the draft capital. And the whole thing was, it's all in on this one year, and that's it. You better win. And they did. And then the next year, they missed the playoffs. And the whole thing was it's all in on this one year and that's it. You better win. And they did. And then the next year they missed the playoffs. And this year they're a wild card. And even though I like them as a contender, potentially, I don't think that they can play with San Francisco or Dallas, the two best teams in the NFC. So there's that you could go out and you remember they got Odell Beckham. They got Vaughn Miller.

They traded for Jalen Ramsey. Like they were chips into the middle of the table at every position that they could go for. And they went for it and it worked out. That's one way. The other way is what happened with Dallas. So Dallas was a middling eight and eight type team that now Mike McCarthy's done a pretty good job with them, but it's no mistake. It's not random that they drafted CD lamb and Micah Parsons

after that, where they were eight and eight all the time. And then those two superstar players elevated that team and they already had a lot of good pieces, but then that took them to a completely different level to have an elite wide receiver and probably the best defensive player in football. Again, Aaron Donald, Micah Parsons. This is interesting. I'm noticing something San Francisco, Nick Bosa. Those are, I think the three best defensive players in football and they belong to these teams where it's worked with this. Whom do the Vikings have? That is a difference maker on that side. I don't know.

Like if, I mean, Hunter is a good player. He's not the best defensive player in football. So that's going to, that's going to be hard. You basically have to hope that you draft your butt off the, over the next two years and get immediate superstar players who can come in right away

and just be monsters for you with no real time to develop because your window to win with Kirk is basically two years. So you have, and it's probably accumulation of all of it. And what you would have to do with Kirk, because you can set up his contract where his cap hit for next year is not that high. They did this with Derek Carr. They did it with Stafford. They did it with Geno Smith.

So you can have a relatively low cap hit for Kirk Cousins next year only by completely screwing yourself down the road. And look, now Tampa Bay was paying $35 million this year for Tom Brady. But who cares? It was Tom Brady and they took every shot at it. Whatever. It makes no difference. That's the tough part about Cousins and this situation is even if you use every tool in your box and you're a magician with the salary cap, eventually the bill comes due. So if you didn't win in those two years where you had relatively feasible cap hits you're you're just out of luck but you're not out of luck short term you're out of luck for many years to come after that for several years uh to come to be able to clean it up in fact they just got it cleaned up just now after they screwed themselves through 2019 and what year is it

it's 2023 and they finally got their cap together so are you gonna be in that situation for three four years if you don't win in in two years that you got them uh that's that's where it becomes very difficult so those are to me those are the only two plans. And one of them you have no control over. Drafting players who are difference makers, you have no control over that whatsoever. That's the hardest part. 100%. And that's why, honestly, when it comes down to it,

I'm just, this is not about, you know, rather not, you know, we hate Kirk or don't like him or whatever. This is just about what is feasible and what makes sense for the long-term future of the franchise. And to me, it's, you know, they have tried this. They have kind of been in this when-now mode, certainly 2018 through 2021, the last four seasons under mike zimmer the first four

under kirk they were in win now mode every every year i mean every year they were moving money around restructuring kirk cutting this guy so that they could have some cast base to bring in this guy this guard that they didn't have the year before and bring in this nose tackle that they didn't have the year before and kicking money down the road. And now you have this opportunity to really kind of reset everything. And the best part about this opportunity is you have really good pieces to work with while you're moving on from the veteran quarterback. You can bring a young quarterback in and he can have success. Look at the two young wide receivers.

You've got one who's a superstar. You've got another guy who's really good and might become a star in his own right, the rookie. You've got, you know, obviously he'll be coming off a pretty significant knee injury next year, but you've got one of the best tight ends in the league. Your offensive line showed a lot of improvement and development this year. a pretty significant knee injury next year, but you've got one of the best tight ends in the league. Your offensive line showed a lot of improvement and development this year. And you've got some pieces on defense to work with too. And so to me, it just makes all the sense in the world

to just move on and just say, look, between two regimes and two head coaches, we tried with Kirk Cousins. We signed this guy and we drafted this guy for need and we restructured this contract here and we let this guy go to try and make it work. And all you've gotten is two playoff appearances and one playoff win out of the last six years.

To me, I just have to look at Kweisi and KOC and the Wilfs and just say, you want to bring Kirk back? You want to try and do this again? Have you not seen the last six years? And it's not all Kirk's fault, but it's like, you've been trying to do this. You've been trying to like finagle around with this contract and just try to pinch pennies on and and well not pinch pennies but you're you're going into the bargain bin when you're trying to sign free agents because you just don't have a lot of flexibility do you really want to keep doing this and and and hoping that maybe you go 13 and 4 and go to the nfc championship game like because if you don't do at least that it's all for nothing, really, if you continue

this, go going down this route. Well, and it's the, it would be the same as where Pittsburgh has been since Ben Roethlisberger or Seattle. There's a lot of teams that are stuck in the middle cause it's a 32 team league. And, uh, that's just how you like that. You can get stuck there and they have been stuck there for quite some time. And the, the idea, some people sort of brought up this idea of bringing cousins back on like a two-year deal and then drafting a quarterback. To me,

that's unacceptable. You, you either, you either draft the quarterback or you go with her cousins and, but you don't do both because that's going to be somebody else's quarterback. If it doesn't work out, by the way. If it doesn't work out, if you don't go to the NFC Championship in two years with Kirk Cousins, and we're talking about four years of Kweisi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell, and there's no playoff wins or there's one playoff win, guess who else is fired? How long would you want to give them? And then what's going to happen is, so I saw in the comments earlier, someone's talking about Davenport and Lowry, signings that didn't work out.

Guess what kind of signings you're going to continue to have to make in the future if you sign Kirk Cousins? Those. Unless, that's if you give him a deal that has normal cap hits for him in these next two years. If you totally screw yourself for the future future you can make it a little lower uh but even then there are teams with rookie quarterback contracts who can outbid you and remember the vikings had that twins thing going on where every big free agent it was like oh you know the vikings were in on that guy but they got outbid

joe tooney was this well they loved joe tooney but they were outbid because Kansas City at the time had Patrick Mahomes on a rookie quarterback contract and they outbid them and if you want to be in that spot still uh then you know then you can you know maintain you don't have to have your future completely destroyed but if you want to spend bigger on free agents then you do have to destroy your future and hope that none of those big free agents go bust. Look at Buffalo and Vaughn Miller. I mean, that one was a disaster. If you have a disaster signing its mark in Stavidport, okay, well, you know, not that bad.

But if you have it and it's Vaughn Miller, that's really bad. They're in a position to survive that because they have Josh Allen. But I mean, if the Vikings were to do that, what do you do in the future? The margin for error just becomes so, so thin. And that's why even when I ask you the question, what would it take? The answer comes back to, I don't know. I don't know what it's the whole thing. Everything you just said could have just been, I don't know.

Um, I, uh, this, this is funny. The, uh, the average age is for the comment section. Uh, the average age of the Superbowl winning quarterbacks is 30. So a rookie, even under 25 is the lowest percentage of winning quarterbacks when broken down. That is because Tom Brady and Peyton Manning won all the Superbowls. That is the problem. And, but I did want to make this point cause that's obvious, but I wanted to make the point that we shouldn't ever do anything by Superbowls because when when we look at just in recent history, there's a lot of Super Bowl, not Super Bowl winners,

but there's a lot of teams that made the Super Bowl that had rookie quarterback contracts. And then Super Bowl winners would be the Kansas City Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes over the last, there are two Super Bowls. He had signed his contract, but the big cap hit hadn't kicked in yet. And, but we can look at a lot of these teams. I mean, Buffalo didn't win the Super Bowl because of Kansas city. Cincinnati did not win the Super Bowl because of the Rams slash Kansas city. And are you good with those franchises? Like, do you want to be those franchises? Is that work for you? How about Philadelphia? They did not win the Super Bowl. They lost because Mahomes had a final drive where he had an amazing play. They were winning in the

Super Bowl with their rookie quarterback contract. Jared Goff lost to Bill Belichick, probably because Belichick stole his game plan before the game or something, but they were in the Super Bowl. Right. And Seattle's the ultimate example. Yeah. And what do all these teams have in common? They're all great, great football teams. So there are a couple teams in the NFC with expensive quarterbacks this year, Jared Goff and Dak Prescott, and that's where the drafting came in because Detroit tanked, so they got all those draft picks, and then they hit on them,

and they were able to build this great team around Jared Goff. That's not staying together forever, by the way. When Amon Ross, St. Brown, Aiden Hutchinson, when those guys get expensive, Penny Sewell, it's going to get a lot harder. So they have a very thin window. But the Vikings have not been drafting these players. Jordan Addison is great.

Who else? They have no other great player that they've drafted since Christian Derrissaw. And that's it. So, I mean, geez, you know, like it just is so hard to thread that needle where if you have so much more cap space, you can make a mistake. And I'll give you an example. The Chicago bears traded for chase Claypool. One of the worst trades I've ever seen in my life. And the moment they did it, it was one of the worst trades I've ever seen in my life. But when you have that much cap space and draft capital, you can make a mistake and still be in position to take your team somewhere. Detroit, I'm sure

has drafted bad players that, I mean, their draft this year, they're, you know, they took a running back. Who's pretty good, but their linebackers not that good. And yet, you know, they've, you know, they were able to, you know, do that. So maybe that's not the best example. Cause I'm looking at court rookie quarterback contracts, but you know, you know what I'm saying? Like if you have room for error there where you can make a bad move. Oh, I know Jalen Rager. That's what I was trying to think of Jalen Rager. You make a terrible jalen rager draft pick and then you go get aj brown because you have the cap space like that that's how this works if you have that room for error and here's another thought too what if and and just stick with me here folks what if michael Penix ends up being better than Kirk Cousins?

Like, what if he ends up being better than Kirk Cousins and you've got him for four or five years on like a cheap rookie deal and you've got all this cap space and you got Justin Jefferson on one side and you got Jordan Addison on the other side and you got TJ Hawkins in there and you've got, you've built up this really good defense because you have cap space because Michael Penix is really cheap because he's. You know, he's on a rookie contract and he's playing really good for you because like, hey, maybe he's better than Kirk. Like, how do we know? No. Again, like there's kind of this thought that like, well, you can't move on from Kirk because you'll never, you know, there's this idea that you'll never find a quarterback as good as him. How do we know? How do we know that? that when we talk about rankings of quarterbacks, there's this idea that it's an equal distribution between number two and number three

and number four and number five. So if you're in the top 10, you're fairly close to number one, but that's not true at all. If you look at offenses and production, the number 10 scoring team is way closer to the number 20 scoring team than they are to number one. And that's the Vikings. Like, like Kirk Cousins is not close to Josh Allen.

It is not remotely close in any universe close to Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes, but he is close to Gino Smith who might be the 18th best quarterback. So if you're the 10th versus the 18th, it's not the difference between being 10th and number two or something. Right. So what you're look, what you really have is an average quality starting quarterback. If you have the 12th best quarterback, because there's not 32, there's like 20. So you have a guy who's dead in the middle, which means if you're going to win with that, you better have the number one roster. So this is like a Brock Purdy thing. Brock Purdy is probably like the 13th or ninth best quarterback at doing this, but he's got the number one roster in the league. And so then he's,

you know, a much higher quarterback than that because of the roster. So if you're going to do this, you can do it, but someone's got to explain to me like i'm five how exactly you're going to build the roster that san francisco has because they had to draft in the top five to get nick bosa and not only that they had to get trent williams uh and is it any surprise that they can afford these players with their quarterback on a rookie contract like here we go you know so uh you're not going to be able to this was after they spent a bunch of draft capital to move up to take Trey Lance. It was a complete bust for them. And it still worked out OK for them because they drafted really well, because they have cap space and they got a quarterback on a rookie deal.

And they might go to the Super Bowl and win it this year. Yeah. And here we are again, making the case, even when we were supposed to make the case for how they would do it. The answer for how they're going to try to do it is probably going to be the same if they bring back Cousins as it was before, because there's not any actual unique answer. And they draftedfferson and derisal while cousins was still here so it's not impossible that you can get good players but completing the whole thing that's a lot harder and if you think oh we're gonna trade down or something uh that you know i mean okay well that that did not work in either. There's no guarantees when it comes to any of that.

And you need it. For me, you need like six players who could someday make an argument for the Hall of Fame in order to win a Super Bowl or at least at their peak, they're all pro caliber. So when we go to a team like San Francisco and Kansas City is a bit of an outlier for last year, because usually even teams with all time great quarterbacks need those players around them. Kansas City is just insane. But even then, they have like one of the greatest tight ends ever, one of the best defensive tackles in the league. But that was probably the weakest roster that we've seen win a Super Bowl in a long time. But if you go to the other side of the ball, how many all pro caliber players did Philly have?

How many all pro caliber players did San Francisco have? How many do the Vikings have right now? They have two. And if they don't bring back Hunter, they have two. It's just not good enough. Anyway, so we had a couple other things we wanted to talk about, some fun stuff. And using your historical brain is always something we want to play into. So you've made a list of the craziest Lions and Vikings game. Because the best thing we can hope for for Sunday is the Vikings losing, of course, for their draft stock. But also some madness, some excitement, some fun. The last time they played, it was pretty wild.

So not a total waste of your Sunday is kind of what you're looking for. So we'll get to that. But I wanted to ask you what season in Vikings history of you watching, did this year remind you of? Like, was there a year in recent Vikings history that you think was similar to the way that this went? Yeah, I thought about this. This was kind of hard to put together because it was –

I don't want to put it on 2020 level because that – there was just so much that year that just didn't make sense and just out of this world this was just kind of a weird season because the you know we had the four different quarterbacks starting and you know the the Dobbs phenomenon maybe like 95 I guess you know where it was kind of they were coming off a of a playoff season, winning the division, getting bumped out in the first round. There were some expectations. But for whatever reason, you know, the team just couldn't quite recapture some of the magic that it had,

you know, the year before. And it just, ultimately they just kind of ran out of gas late in the season. It just didn't have enough to get themselves in the playoffs. They were in the conversation for most of the year, but really just could not, could not put enough together to ultimately get in and just kind of melt it down late in the season. And that's kind of the vibe that this, you know,

that this season kind of has. The difference is that, you know, I mean, Warren Moon played that entire season in 95 and had a really good year statistically. I think he threw 33 touchdowns and threw for, I think he threw for 4,000 yards that year. They just had some games where they just couldn't stop any of it. Well, they played Cincinnati that year.

Last game of the season, blew a three-touchdown lead to the Bengals uh that year this was after they had found out that I think the Bears had won and thus like eliminated them from playoff contention in week 17 and then they ultimately melted down and just lost to the Bengals and finished eight and eight so that was kind of the season that I came up with, but it was kind of hard because this, this year has just been so weird with just starting four quarterbacks and, you know, Jefferson being out with injury and them kind of hanging around despite

Jefferson being out and Dobbs coming in and, and all of that. But ultimately they just kind of ran out of gas and just didn't, didn't we, we kind of saw the team for what they really are, what, you know, what they really were the last few games of the season. Thought that it might be like a 2015 season for a moment there where the

defense was coming together and they were looking like they were building foundational pieces on the roster, but maybe weren't quite there yet. At one moment for this year, it kind of had that vibe. But I think what we had here is more of a 2013 season with a better defense. The team was never going to be that good, and they played a bunch of quarterbacks. It wasn't really that good. And they played a bunch of quarterbacks. It wasn't really that fun. There's a couple moments there, but the San Francisco win is fine. You know, the, uh,

the, the green Bay win is, is a highlight until it wasn't. And then the, the Josh jobs two games. So that little tiny section of that season, the one quarter of the season is fun and the rest of it is completely miserable i mean they start one and four and they could end would be one in five uh at the end of the season so the middle section was okay but aside from that if they had had even a little less defense against san francisco or you know i guess atlanta they didn't have a great performance but you know new orleans they played really well defensively. If that doesn't happen, they, they could have very well ended up with like five wins and been similar to where the roster was just not there yet. And it was kind of coming apart. Uh, that one had like a little older roster and needed a

refresh. So it wasn't quite the same, but I was thinking just as a pure season and how unenjoyable most of it was. And there were a few games in there that they won and so forth. But I was going to say 2020 because going into the year, they had been in the playoffs the previous season. They had a good team. In fact, the 2019 team was better than the 2023, the 2022 team. 2019 was a better team than 2022 uh you look at point point

differentials like 100 points better in 2019 had some of the same advantages with the you know the schedule and so forth but i think a much better overall complete team much much better defense and we all knew what was going to happen because of the salary cap, because of the age of a lot of their players, Xavier Rhodes, Everson Griffin, Linvald Joseph. And they, that time, they kind of talked themselves too much into it. But even then, the Yannick Ngakwe trade is a little bit, if you squint, Marcus Davenport-like, where they still went out and got a guy that some other team didn't want and it didn't work out at all. And they hurt themselves. They just hurt themselves way worse

with trading for Yannick and Gawkway than they did for signing Marcus Davenport. But the same kind of, oh, well, we're going to split the difference. It will still be in the playoffs. It will still be good. And then right off the bat, it was like, no, no, you won't. And then the middle of that season, Whoa, maybe we're coming back. We beat the Panthers. We beat the Jaguars. And then the Packers game was just like the Christmas day game against new Orleans, where it was just, ah, now it's over. And then, you know, it sort of was what it was. And they also lost a bunch of close games. They lost to Chicago on a final drive kind of thing in that one, similar to what they did against Detroit.

There were fans in the stands this time, so that made it better. But same vibe, though, no matter who was playing quarterback, same exact vibe as 2020, and nobody had fun. And that's the way I look at this season. I don't think anyone will walk away going, you know what? It wasn't that great, but I had a lot of fun. I don't think this was that fun. I mean, there were games that on an individual Sunday were exciting, but not, but I don't,

I didn't get that. Like, oh, nobody expected us to be here anyway. This is fun. As soon as they benched Dobbs or as soon as he had zero points, as soon as they lost to Chicago and it became clear it wasn't happening. I didn't get a we'll see what happens this is kind of crazy sort of vibe it was more like oh this thing's over who cares yeah the dobbs the dobbs thing was kind of the turning point because they got off to that

bad start and they started playing a little better than kurt gets hurt and just kind of you know torpedoes the entire season just that whole thing just kind of, you know, torpedoes the entire season. Just that whole thing just kind of killed the vibe. But then Dobbs comes in, and for like two weeks, he's like, oh, well, this is awesome. This might actually work. And then the Denver game happened, but everybody was kind of like, okay, well, that's not great. But, you know, he'll bounce back against the lowly Chicago Bears the next week.

And then four interceptions and Montez Sweat happened. And Justin Fields hitting DJ Moore on a cold-blooded pass over the middle to lead to the game-winning field goal happened. And then at that point, it was like, yeah, this is probably not going to work. This is probably not, this, this ain't it.

This is probably not it. It's not going to go the way we want it to. And, and then at that point it was really, it was really kind of over in the pipe was the vibe was gone for sure. All right. So we'll do your ranking in just a minute. I want to do an impromptu ranking and maybe I'll think more about this

later for off season content, but because we are on the precipice of the end, like this is, this is the last podcast of the week before the game. And I'm thinking about the season ending. So, and if it doesn't, then maybe this changes, but I'm going to quick rank all the seasons I've covered by fun,

by how much fun it was to be there for the fans and all that for the Vikings since I got here in 2016. I'm going to rank them from top to bottom because going backwards is going to be too hard for me. I can't even say Jaden or Jalen correctly enough times so that you could see how hard it is for my brain to stay on track. I think the most fun season was 2017. Hands down, not close. NFC Championship game, Minneapolis Miracle, Case Keenum. I don't need to tell you the story. 2022 would be second.

Sheer entertainment. It lost a little bit of its luster at the end, not just the playoff game, but the whole end of the season when it was obvious that they were not as good as they had seemed. But the Buffalo game alone is enough to make it. Now, the next one after that, I want to put 2019 because they made the playoffs, but it was not a very fun season in the building because of Diggs, Kirk, zimmer the whole tension but 2016 also had a lot of that as well 2018 was not fun at all i i think i i have to go 2019 here but there's a part of me that wants to go 2016 because 2016 was so absurd it was it got to the point of just being hysterical like norv's quitting

zimmer and luckily his eye's fine now but like Zimmer's eye is injured and every player's getting hurt Sam Bradford's keeping him in the season 2016 was so crazy I'm gonna say 2016 was more fun because at least it had that hey they're five and oh this team could go somewhere with Sam Bradford that had its moments more than 2019 where I think no one ever believed in them. And then they won the playoff game and it was shocking. I remember thinking I was going to a funeral in New Orleans and they end up winning it.

But that was really the only fun of that season in 2019. Every big game they lost, we were talking about firing Zimmer at the end. So I'm going to go 2016 over 2019. And then it gets really hard. 2018 was entertaining because it was wild and there was a ton of crazy games. So I would put that ahead of 2021. That was just miserable.

And of course the worst season that I've ever had to cover 2020, nothing will ever come close. They, they could have had a great season that year and it just would not have been fun. No fans in the stands. Let me tell you, folks, you make this thing a lot more fun when you're there than when you're not.

When you're not, it's weird and it's creepy. So there you go. All right. You made a list of the craziest, five craziest Vikings and Lions game of your lifetime. Take us through your list, Manny. Interestingly enough, all of these games are from like the last like 15 years. Not not a lot of them from from my childhood, even though, you know, the Lions had some good teams in the 90s.

But just some of the craziest ones. Well, number five, I'm going to go with, well, the funny thing is, is four of these are from two seasons, believe it or not. But anyway, so number five, 2016, Thanksgiving. You remember this. Sam Bradford trying his hardest to move this offense, and it's just not working. They can't run the ball because it's Matt Asiata,

and Adrian Peterson is out with an injury at this point of the season. And the Lions end up getting an interception at the end to sort of seal the victory. Sam Bradford's trying to drive the ball down the field to get the Vikings in position to try and win. And it just didn't happen. Sam just threw a, I can't remember who picked it off for the Lions to seal it. And that was one of those infamous Jim Nance games that the Vikings can't seem to win because it was on Thanksgiving, national TV, CBS. And the Lions end up getting the win there.

Number four from that same season, 2016 at US Bank Stadium. You remember this one as well. Overtime, I just remember Golden Tate doing like, was it like a backflip into the end zone to get the winning touchdown and something like that or like a side flip type of thing was a side flip yeah that he he could have just ran into the end zone but then he tried to do this celebration harrison smith almost got to him and if he had he would have fumbled it out of the back of the end zone which everybody hates that rule but imagine that was i think i made a list not too long ago the craziest games that I've covered since being here.

And that was one of the tops on the list. That game was absolutely nuts. Uh, and, and was Laquan Treadwell's only catch of that season and a great catch. It was on a third down. The only catch of the 2016, his rookie season was in that game. And he did about a 10 minute press conference after talking about that one catch so that was but yeah that was though both of those games in 2016 were insane yeah and then it was like the long field goal i can't who was the lions kicker that year that drilled like a 60 yarder to tie it it was matt prater from i think 59 and uh andre rober Roberts coming across the middle. If you remember, the Vikings ran a jet sweep kind of thing with Rhett Ellison.

Go ahead. Yeah, but they did it too soon. They should have let the clock go down and had that be the last play. But Zimmer, I think, called timeout or something too early, giving Stafford 20 seconds, and he he made some absurd preposterous throw to andre roberts to set up that field goal that yes yep that was nuts uh 2013 is number three on my list week one adrian peterson coming off his almost 2100 yard season mbp season the year before first carry of the season first play from scrimmage for the Vikings. He takes it 78 yards to the house, puts the Vikings ahead seven, nothing.

And then he ended up with like 20 more yards the rest of the game. Christian Ponder throws like three interceptions and the Lions end up winning that game 34 to 24. And, you know, I just remember there being a lot of hype with the Vikings because they were coming off the playoff year, Adrian's MVP year. And so first play of the season, he takes it to the house and it's just like and and, you know, they hadn't given Adrian his new contract yet either at that point. And so it was just like everybody was like, pay that man. Everybody on Twitter was like, pay him, pay the MVP, pay adrian peterson yada yada yada and then he got like 20 yards the rest of the game they end up losing and it was a 5-10-1 season uh so number two on the list is um 2008 talked about this game before before some of the ugliest games after the Raiders game a few weeks ago.

But 2008, Vikings 12, Lions 10. We know the story already. Dan Orlovsky runs out the back of the end zone. The Lions end up going 0-16 that year. And the Vikings ended up winning the NFC North at 10-6 with Gus Farratt. And then Gus got benched for Tavares for the playoffs. So that's number two. And then number one,

this one will always kind of stick with me from 2013, last game of the season, Vikings 14, Lions 13. The final Minnesota Vikings game at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. They close out a bad season, granted, with a win over the rival Lions. But what was crazy about this game was, first of all, Cordero Patterson scored a touchdown in this game,

which he had kind of done some really great things his rookie year that year, and it was kind of like, let's get Cordero the ball more. It's put the ball in his hands more often. So that happened. But I don't know if you remember this, the Vikings in the second quarter had gotten down in towards the goal line and they put Jared Allen in at tight end. And so they run a play and Matt Castle rolls out to his right. And there's not a line defender within 10 yards of Jared Allen.

He is wide open, as wide open as you could want a guy to be. And Matt Castle sails the ball over his head by 10 yards. And then two plays later, Castle throws like one of the worst interceptions I've ever seen a quarterback throw in the end zone and just completely killed the vibe. But thankfully, they still ended up winning the game. So last game at the Dome, crazy stuff happening and sort of a lost season. That's my number one there. 14-13, 2013.

It was Mall of America Field at the Huber H. h humphrey metro i just want to make sure that we've got that completely right uh you know what this is one of my beefs with matt patricia is that he robbed us of any good vikings lions games for several years after he took over as the head coach there was yeah there was a lot of them that were mixed in. They were kind of nuts. Even 2017 Thanksgiving day where they blocked a field goal. We all thought, Oh my gosh, they blocked this field goal,

ran it for a touchdown. And then it turned out they were offside. And even the first one was, we came out of it. Delvin tours, ACL 14 to seven. Oh man, case Keenum.

It's like not going to work out. And then, you know, they never lose again after that. So just, uh, crazy stuff. It's,

it's always a little bit nutty. And especially when one team kind of has nothing to lose and could just give it all because they're not going to the playoffs. So we see these weird upsets all the time and maybe this will be it maybe it won't i guess we'll see uh manny thanks for your time really fun show as always and thank you all for uh a very very fun chat today and lots of good questions and comments and so forth so always appreciate that and we will be live after the lions and vikings Dane Mizutani will be in Detroit. I would have gone had there been a legitimate chance that they could make the playoffs.

I elected to stay here in the studio and I'll have Dane on the show still. So we'll, there'll be the normal post game show, but it'll be, you know, he'll be there and I'll be here instead of in the stadium. So anyway, thanks everybody for watching all week. It's been a really fun week and it's only going to get more interesting as the off season comes along. And I can feel, I can feel an energy here that, uh, there's a lot of interest in what's going to happen this off season. So appreciate you Manny. And, uh, we will talk to you all very soon. See you later.