Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jalen Reagor cut, a new running back is here and... does a JJ deal get done soon?

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Matthew Coller chats with Vikings fans about the Vikings' decision to cut Jalen Reagor and put Kene Nwangwu on IR. Who is Myles Gaskin? Can he help the Vikings? And does there seem to be momentum toward a Jefferson extension? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here, and if you're watching live on YouTube, welcome to the slightly new setup. So we changed the lighting a little bit. By we, I just mean me. And here are my 1980s NFL flags that were sent by a longtime listener, Jason, who's become a friend. And I saw him at training camp this year. And he said, hey, I've got these things for your background if you want it.

Because, yeah, I know you're building that podcast background. So here's some vintage old flags. He mailed them to me. And now I have them in the background. And honestly, I think they are super, super cool. And if you're going to tell me that they're not perfectly straight, maybe you're right. Cause I was never good at art projects, but I love them. I think they're awesome. And I'm trying every time you log in to watch the show, I want it to be every so slightly better or at least different to try to

catch your eye with what's new with the background. So that's what we got. We got Minneapolis here. We got us bank stadium. We got the book. We got the logo, a random lamp because I'm doing YouTube live and then classic vintage eighties helmets.

So love it. I love outlooks and you you know i'm glad they're there with me going forward and by the way a lot happened today with the vikings roster that we have to talk about oh here's the other thing that i have going on i'm working on look at this a multi-cam setup so there's two different looks at me so this is like the side view that you could see all the flags put up there and you could see where the other camera is so i'm not looking like directly into your soul the entire time i don't know if you guys like the side view or not but that's you know that's what i'm doing here So I'll continue to take your suggestions. You guys said,

Hey, what you want is a little more color in the background, maybe a little less violent light, which I think I had. And so I've tried to add, you're suggesting some colored light. I've added this thing. It's not that powerful, but I didn't want it to be like purpley because I've seen a lot. I mean, I watch a lot of YouTube, like the rest of you. And sometimes the YouTubers I think have gone out of control. It's just like purples and blues and all over the place and reds. That's a little too much. So I've got my old school football elements and we've got a little bit of different light. And now here we are. Paint the wall purple. Yeah, well, I wouldn't trust myself to paint the wall. So let's get into some football talk.

Oh, the Vikings also have a practice squad, which is very exciting. So we're going to go through that. And, okay, I sounded sarcastic, but every cut that people were upset about, the guy's still on the team after yesterday. And what I thought the Vikings were able to do, if you want to start there, was they were able to reward players who had good training camps with spots on the practice squad.

And one of the best things to come out of the pandemic in football, like I don't know about society, is this expanded practice squad to allow for veteran players. That has been a great addition because a guy like Sheldon Day played his butt off. I think he can play in the NFL.

He's proven that. He's appeared in something like 67 NFL games over his career, but they needed to keep other players on the initial 53. He's got a job still. He's depth still for them, even though he's 29 years old and he's been around even when I started covering the league and up until 2020, it was hard because if you were that guy, you were just cut and out on the street and you just had to wait and wait and see who was going to get hurt in order for

you to get a job in some other city. Now, if your team likes you, but can't fit you on the 53, because there's other players with contract considerations or players that opposing teams would pick up like Andre Carter, the second that's, I would say the reason that they didn't cut Andre Carter and try to get them on the practice squad because they assumed that he wouldn't. And I saw a stat today that only 2% of players were claimed. And the Vikings did have a player claimed, Ben Sims, the tight end, who made that great catch at the end of the game that was illegal from Jaron Hall. If you were watching the end of the game for some reason. But Ben Sims did get claimed by the Packers,

but only 2% of players who get cut are claimed, which the person who tweeted it out was saying, well, this is a reason not to be afraid if your favorite, you know, end of the roster guy gets cut because he'll probably make it to the practice squad, but also teams like the Vikings go out of their way to make sure that they put guys on the 53 that they think will get claimed. So that's one of the reasons that not that many do the Vikings did that.

Sheldon day gets through, um, Tristan Jackson gets through, they kept three wide receivers and I thought all were deserving. Lucky Jackson, the XFL guy, that's cool. And then, uh, Thayer Thomas, who I talked about kind of every so often that he was popping as long as he doesn't ever try to return a punt ever again. Thayer Thomas can actually play wide receiver. So he's a guy they keep on the roster. That's another good addition as a practice squad player. And he can go from there. And just to read you the rest of the list, Benton Whitley and Luigi Villain. So Luigi Villain fan club, if you got a tattoo on your neck

that says Luigi right here, you're still good. He's still on the team. You could still leave that. But Benton Whitley also had a good preseason. He led the team in pressures. Dwayne McBride, they're going to give him time to progress.

I think the biggest issue for Dwayne McBride, they're going to give him time to progress. I think the biggest issue for Dwayne McBride was simply how difficult it is to go from UAB to an offense that asks a lot in terms of pass blocking and receiving from the running backs. That was the biggest issue. Ty Chandler's even struggling with it in year two of playing for this team, then you could see why it would be so difficult if there were expectations on Dwayne McBride. So he's able to stay on the practice squad as well. Jalen Williams had a couple of plays throughout a training camp and the preseason. Jawan Williams was a cut. We talked about where it was a tad surprising when he was let go because we went like, oh, that's a little

weird because he was the one taking the first team reps when Makai Blackman got hurt and not Andrew Booth Jr. So why would this be? I mean, in part because you're trying still to develop Andrew Booth Jr. You spent a high draft pick on him. You have to give it time. Also, you spent a high draft pick on him you have to give it time also you take a negative cap hit if you cut a second year second round draft pick what's the purpose in that there's no upside you don't even create cap space and also they probably figured if we cut joan williams no one's going to pick him up which happened and now he's back on the team. So he can still, that's the thing with the practice squad is these guys still can act as depth for the Vikings as practice squad players, because a lot of these guys who are on the practice squad have some experience, whether they've been with the team already

or were with someone else or the XFL, like they have pro experience. And a lot of them can act as depth and not just pure development, which again is very, very different from the past of the practice squad. I like these rules so much more because they allow you to have a little bit of both. CJ Colvin Jr. I don't think we talked about him a lot throughout the preseason, but he's one of those rookies. So is Allen Ali. You just need another guy who could snap the football if you need him to. And TJ Smith, who I thought had a pretty good camp depth on the defensive line. So that is your practice squad.

Is it weird to say this is probably the best practice squad I can remember? I would trust a good number of these players on the roster if they had to be called up, which normally if you're talking about dipping into the practice squad, something has gone wrong. You're in trouble. Call a hospital. It's not good, right? But in this case, if you're dipping into Jawan Williams, all right, well, it's not the best, but it's also, this is a guy who's played in the league before, hasn't been a total tragedy when he's played. Yeah, I mean, the, the Patriots didn't keep him long-term. He had the injury and so forth, but in 2021, he had his moments. It's,

it's better to have him here, knows the defense and so forth. Sheldon day played in the league. I would trust Tristan Jackson if they had to call him up. So it's like weirdly a good practice squad. Uh, how much to practice squad players make? I don't know. Everybody's salary off the top of my head. Sometimes they're a little bit different levels of practice squad, but it's like six figures. I mean,

it's, it's not a lot. I mean, it's a big pay cut for sure. Unless you have, well, no, if you have a contract,

yeah, then it would be your guaranteed money, but it's, it's six figures, but it's not like you're talking about millions of dollars or anything to be on the practice squad. It's better than nothing, though. I mean, making $100,000 is a backup, and then maybe you get called up, you get a couple of paychecks for games.

You know, you can feel pretty good about that if you're on the practice squad. It's not a bad place to be. And the big key is you're not out of the league. And for the Vikings, being able to keep, I mean, I think it might be relatively important to be able to keep Tristan Jackson if they do have some injuries in the receiving core, to be able to keep him, to be able to keep Sheldon Day, who can play a little bit on the defensive line if they need him to. I think there's a number of guys here who you could actually trust in a real game,

which again is not something you see all the time on a practice squad. Hunter says, I was surprised to see Alexander Madison's receiving grade really, really low. What do you think about that? Let me see what his receiving grade actually is. I will check this out because I've never really looked. The thing about running backs and receiving, and I know that I've mentioned to you guys that I think he has good hands and could be a little bit more of a weapon, but yeah, you're right. Oh, gosh, 42.

That is really bad from last year. The year before it was in the 60s, you'd be hard-pressed to find too many running backs, I'm going to poke through this, that have great receiving grades because there just aren't that many opportunities to catch the ball in any sort of way. That's not like a routine catch. Most of the time, it's just check downs, dump offs, screen passes, swing passes. And every so often you get a little rail route, which is where they kind of do a swing pass, but then go deep. But aside from that, I mean, Christian McCaffrey, of course, is a dominant player in this area. But I mean, there's only, I'm looking right now, there's only 11 guys last year who graded above a 70. And once you get into the 60s, it's average, which tells me that there's only, and Leonard Fournette somehow was one of them. So there's only a handful of guys who would give you anything more than just those things.

But having watched Alexander Madison since the outset of his career, I think he has good hands. I think he drops the ball less than Delvin cook, but in a small sample size from last year, you could have one or two drops if you're Madison or one or two bad routes or something and get crushed by the PFF grade because of the small sample. That might be the case, but I think that he's trusted when it comes to throwing him the ball with his hands. And we've seen him run like over the middle routes and stuff like that

before. I don't think it's going to be some huge weapon for them though. It's not going to be like, Hey, Madison go ball. I don't think we're going to see that. So circling back though, Jalen Rager, this is why yesterday when we talked, I think I ended the show by saying this all might change pretty soon. And I in my article about yesterday, the 53, I wrote, call it fluid because it's going to change fast.

And by the time you got your morning coffee in, it had already changed when it came to Jalen Rager. I thought that Jalen Rager had a good training camp relative to Jalen Rager, but he didn't have a training camp that was better than Brandon Powell by so much, or maybe in their eyes, not even better than Brandon Powell enough to say, Hey, you're our guy. I looked this up last year. The Vikings were 28th in punt returns, like yards per punt return. That's just not worth it. Like the guy is not an exceptional receiver. It's not even a starting wide receiver caliber player. He couldn't even really fill in as a receiver because the one time they needed him to for just a handful of plays, he got two balls intercepted by not having the route details right

against Indianapolis. So that's not good. And I think his history proved that that was really the case. But if he was an exceptional punt returner, then I think they would have said, okay, like at least you got something here with him. At least you got something for a conditional or a seventh round pick and a conditional fourth, which I'm sure it's not meeting the condition. So I don't think they'll have to give up that fourth. That's just my guess. all the way to the end of his contract or plays in so many playoff games or has so many catches. But I doubt that he got that condition if it was as high as a fourth. So let's just say a seventh round pick if he had even been an okay punt returner, but he wasn't. So then they bring in Brandon Powell, who historically has been a good punt returner. And then Powell comes out, runs sharp routes, catches the ball, makes plays in training camp, looks like a real wide receiver that you could use. Not that you're going to use him very often,

but let's say that Naylor isn't ready to go yet and Jordan Addison tweaks an ankle in week one. What are we going to do week two? It's a Thursday game. You're playing the Eagles. Somebody's got to get in here, learn the game plan fast and go, well, Brandon Powell, you could trust for that. Jalen Rager, you couldn't have trusted for that. So they were not going to keep both. And I think that our instinct was that they weren't going to keep both when they did like,

oh, okay. But there was the rumors of the trades, which once again, and I'm not trying to go after anybody, but once again, the national reporting on this team, not great. They're taking trade offers, but he wasn't. And it was way more favorable to trade him by the salary cap hit. Although Ben Gessling reported that they could, if, if, if someone else picks him up, which is not a guarantee, but if someone else picks him up, then they will get a little bit of that cap space recouped. And I'm not sure how much, but it's called offsetting language. So Ben obviously got a hold of that contract to be able to tell. So it's not going to crush them or anything. It's going to be a little bit of dead cap to get rid of him. Probably like a million bucks, not a huge deal. I would still say

that I understand the strategy of why they got Jalen Rager. And I think when they looked at the spectrum of outcomes, they figured worst case scenario, the guy returns punts gets eight nine yards a return we feel pretty good about that doesn't fumble the ball good to go best case scenario that he develops a little we give him a little bit of encouragement and then he becomes some sort of playmaker for us maybe catches 25 passes runs a handful of ender rounds we get him the football and he's just that extra little weapon and receiving depth. That's best case scenario. There's no scenario at that point where he becomes Jerry Rice, but maybe he becomes a guy for you.

He didn't. So it didn't work out. I understand the strategy. I think that you're playing with fire a little bit when you're asking any of those guys to be anything. So if you're trading for a Ross Blacklock and you're asking him to be the interior pass rusher from last year after they got rid of Armond Watts, that's a little bit risky to me. That's where it's too far for me. I don't have any issue with, and I would support, getting players like a Jawan Williams. Okay, if you pick up a Jawan Williams and he's going to

be cornerback depth and that's where you're sticking him, well, that's totally fine. But if you're saying we actually need Jalen Rager to be a good punt returner for this to work out, or we need him to be receiving depth, need this to work out. That's where it's a little bit more questionable. But overall with that one, I don't think you can really blame them for it going wrong because those moves are not going to go right more often than they're going to go wrong. You're just going to look for one or two of them to click.

If you're getting a player who somebody else got rid of and hope that it works out. But the Jalen Rager era was as underwhelming as the Michael Floyd era, just to show you that the previous regime does the same stuff as the current regime, because lots of teams do exactly that, just hoping to find some sort of diamond in the rough situation. Although Floyd was a really good player at some point, but every team tries this from time to time. Didn't work out with Jalen Rager, better to move on. Brandon Powell is going to be the better player for them. And, uh, we just kind of shrug our shoulders at that. Uh, but they use the roster spot to get Dan Quessenberry, David Quessenberry, because Dan Quisenberry was a relief pitcher for

the Royals. So I'm going to accidentally call him Dan anytime we talk about it. But David Questenberry played for the Bills. They let him go. Two years ago, he had to be a starter for Tennessee and graded really well as a run blocker, but was one of the worst pass blocking tackles in the NFL. He gave up 11 sacks in 2021 when he had to play a whole season. I think with someone like that, it's a, it's a very Dakota Dozier-y situation where if the guy has to play a game or two, you feel like, okay, he can, he can handle a game or two. We'll protect him. We'll figure it out. But if he's got to play more than that, maybe not so much. Does make you wonder a little bit about Ole Udo. Not that they're going to cut Ole Udo, but in how confident they might

be. We all saw preseason. He got smoked far too many times by backups for a guy that has played as much as he has in the league. So I don't know if this was in part response to that or not, but it certainly seemed that way. They picked up a couple more linemen, taking shots at guys in the practice squad. And the only other thing of real note is that Kenny Wong Wu did go on IR. This was a move that we very much anticipated

that Kenny Wong Wu would be on injured reserve and they brought in miles gaskin who a number of you brought up i i think that you guys are you guys are sharp i mean you saw six tight or six safeties four tight ends miles gaskin you guys know what's going on a lot of times that was a a good call. And Miles Gaskin is an interesting one because I was looking at Miles Gaskin's statistics and it's kind of strange. In 2020, the guy had a legit good year. He averaged over four yards carry. He caught like 40 passes at almost 10 yards a catch. And then he also was a good pass blocker. I mean, you would have thought that Miles Gaskin was going to be a pretty solid,

like a David Palmer type or a Chester Taylor. Maybe even closer to Chester Taylor with that resume. I don't know. Maybe Chester Taylor's a little too good. But you thought he was going to be a rotational back who was really effective. And then in 2021, it was not good. He went down in every category. He averaged like four yards a catch, 3.8 yards a rush.

His pass blocking tanked. And then last year, he barely played for the Miami Dolphins. And he ended up on IR at the end of the year and just got cut out of training camp this year. So is there something there with Myles Gaskin that worked in 2020 and did not work over the last two years? Or was it a flash in the pan based on circumstance that he just didn't fit in with what Mike McDaniel wanted to do? Does Brian Flores have good intel on Miles Gaskin? And that's why they decided to go with him. But one thing you do have with Miles Gaskin is experience that when you look at the backups right now, I mean, you have Dwayne McBride in the practice squad, Ty Chandler. I mean, you, you would almost end up playing CJ

Hammett running back for half of a game if something happened to Alexander Madison. Because I just don't know that Ty Chandler or Dwayne McBride could hold down an entire game of all the assignments. I mean, they might have to just run C.J. Hamm out there on every third down to pass protect. You don't want that. So at least Myles Gaskin knows what he's doing. Is he going to be a diamond in the rough that they find that becomes the next great random running back to come out of nowhere? Probably not. But maybe he rotates in certain situations to be a pass catcher or to be a pass blocker if he's actually good at that. And he just gives you a little bit of an insurance policy. So if that's the case, well, then that's okay, right?

That's fine. Maybe there will be a discussion at some point. If he has to play, if Madison were to get hurt, then maybe there would be a discussion of, should you have just ponied up? And this goes for Dalton Reisner too. Should you have just ponied up and gotten Kareem Hunt? That's going to be a question that maybe we ask or maybe we don't.

It might just entirely depend on Alexander Madison. If Madison is fine and he's carrying the ball 20 times a game and he's handling that load, that's totally fine. They won't have to worry about it. If there's some injuries and Gaskin can't handle it, Chandler can't handle it, and they struggle, then maybe there will be a discussion because that guy was not only there, but they also brought that guy into the building and decided that they were not going to keep him.

Sean says they should try to get Matt Corral to the practice squad. Did he get, oh, is he just out there? Did he get cut by somebody? Did he get cut by Caroline? I don't even know what Matt Corral is doing. This sometimes is crazy how NFL careers work. I mean, Matt Corral was a pretty exciting college player, undersized and so forth, but pretty exciting college player. And then he comes in, he gets hurt right away and just like failure to launch,

no opportunity. This is where I was hoping that the number three quarterback rule would play in the favor of quarterbacks like that but it turns out that it really hasn't i saw this from pro football talk yesterday is um uh from pro football talk yesterday reported that only one more team than last year has a number three quarterback on its actual roster. So it seems like they tried to get that emergency quarterback rule to maybe get more jobs for quarterbacks and maybe get more development for quarterbacks. And it seemed to have played into the Vikings decision to keep Jaron Hall, but it did not influence a lot of teams around the league. Daniel says the Duke Shelly hype train is back and I'm here for it. Well, that's the next topic at hand is

just what's to do next. They still have four tight ends. They still have six safeties. Are they going to roll with that into the season? I wouldn't be terribly shocked. I mean, Theo Jackson graded very well as a special team player last year. And that's one of the hardest things for us to know because none of us really understand special teams. And when we watch back the film, unless something happened and we're looking for what happened. We usually don't look at, hey, this guy's done a really good job blocking on, you know, punts or something. But it's important to block for punts. But are you really looking back and saying, oh, yeah, I really wanted to study who blocked

well for that punt? No, not really. But someone like Theo Jackson stands out there. They might want to keep him because of that. And, you know, we'll'll see if he actually sticks. But on the Duke Shelly point, I do think that they need to have another corner. Because right now, even with Juwan Williams, maybe they elevate Juwan Williams to the practice squad to start the season. I don't know

if they would do that because he's just here. They did keep several cornerbacks, but it still feels like with the number of cornerbacks with experience who got cut around the league that, you know, maybe it's a good idea to go out and add one more or maybe we're done and this is it. The Vikings brass is going to talk tomorrow morning.'ll have a breakdown on the i don't know if it's going to be on the channel or if it's just going to be on the podcast feed might just end up on the podcast so um they're going to talk about the moves that they've made so far the 53 cut down and kind of where everything stands right now that'll be interesting to find out to hear from from Kweisi Adafomense and Kevin O'Connell post-cuts. So that'll happen tomorrow. And maybe we'll get a little more insight into some of the decisions like the four tight ends and so forth. But I think

they should still be looking at cornerbacks. We've pretty much pinned down all the other moves. We knew that there was going to be likely a Rager move. We knew that there was likely going to be additions to the offensive line because going into the season with eight was not going to happen. And I like it. And I know that a lot of you have brought up, Hey, why aren't they doing more with the offensive line? They did go out and bring in some other guys who had good preseasons as potential development players on the practice squad so that was probably a good idea as well for them to do to just throw more bodies at it and see if they can find some diamonds in the rough there uh as well so i'll get to whatever

questions you like that's kind of the rundown for the moment i'd still keep an eye on corner and um we'll see how that plays out daniel asked when is the cornerback sign or trade coming uh i don't know i mean with duke shelly when was it last year i think it was right around this time last year that they picked up duke shelly and if they want to bring him back i mean by all means uh it is a very different defense and maybe there would be some concern about his size or something. I don't know in this defense, if that's different or not his playing style, but it seems to me like they should bring him back. He was a good player for them. He's depth. He's not a starter, but depth. So I'm good with it if they do that or some other veteran player. I don't know if they'll look at someone like Bradley Roby or not, but that unit,

when Mike Zimmer said you can never have too many corners, it really hit me how often you end up playing the fifth cornerback on your roster. I mean, look at last year. They started out with Cam Dantzler. He got hurt. Caleb Evans got hurt. Andrew Booth Jr. got hurt. And the same thing happened in 2020 to them. So it does happen relatively often. And this team, you can't get down to Jalen Williams and CJ Colden.

You just can't. That means that the season is in a very bad place, more likely than not, if you're down to those guys. Let's see. From TheRaphCave, any TJ steam? You mean like toward a contract extension, TJ Hawkinson? No, and we'll see what they have to say about it tomorrow that you know it's interesting to see some justin jefferson reporting that's nothing we wouldn't already know that has come out which is a couple of national reporters saying i think albert breer diana racini that they've heard that the team is trying to work as hard as they can toward an extension for Jefferson. Not really insightful or surprising,

but that's what I would expect, that they're trying to work toward it before we start the season. But at least there's something there. At least there's a kind of a hint of, hey, maybe this could be on the way. With Hawkinson, there has been none of that. And I am very curious, I'm sure that those will come up

to hear their responses and just try to get a read on how confident they are that those things are going to happen uh I guess if I was it's been a while since we did meters for or like percentages for confidence and uh with the confidence there I think with these couple of reports coming out from, you know, when it's multiple people, it feels like a little steam, as you called it, from the Jefferson side. I think that your percentage goes up for the chance of them getting something done. I've always thought that they would because it benefits both sides a lot. And the fact that Jefferson practiced full every single rep through the entire training camp, it just made me feel like he must think that this is going the right direction or otherwise he'd be doing a little hold in action.

Wouldn't it? I mean, that's what so many players are doing around the league. Christian Wilkins just did that in Miami. And I think he ended up with still no contract extension, but with Jefferson, there was no hold in. There was no even limited practice reps like Delvin cook had in 2020. You got to feel like that's a good sign toward getting an extension done so i'm i'm like 75 80 percent that jefferson is done right before the season starts maybe even i think next thursday is going to be his first press conference maybe he's coming out and telling us all about his new extension so that's very possible i i just feel like it's really moving in that direction and it makes so much sense for it to happen even if it's complicated with hawkinson i would have probably said hey this one should be fairly easy to get done at the beginning of training camp so maybe a couple weeks in it's going to happen we've gone

past that we're now getting into the jefferson buzz for an extension which makes me think it's like look over there at that other one uh so I'm feeling less confident about that. I'm like 30% that TJ Hawkinson extension is actually going to happen, which then we'll see what happens after that. I still think he's a very, very valuable weapon, but once there's no extension, then we move on to that discussion for next year. Digit says tight ends are mismatch guys in the modern defensive schemes against smaller linebackers, right? I think so, yeah. I definitely think so. It's one of the reasons.

There's a few reasons to like paying a tight end. One of them is that if you pay a tight end, you are probably paying them less than a receiver. And so if you're, say, re-signing KJ Osborne, it would likely cost you more. And it's like, if the price is really, really high for TJ Hawkinson, then that is not true anymore. So there's got to be a price point there. If you're KJ Osborne and you have 75 catches this year, let's just say as a great year, I mean, you're asking for what, like $18 million a year plus. So you want to, you want to,

I think, spend on tight ends that are generally between 13 and 16 at their most expensive. And that's what Evan Ingram gets brought up every night on the show. But that's kind of that benchmark for me of, all right, that gives you pay more than that because he's better than him, but he's not so much better than him that you go too far away from that. So you're trying to get that edge. But the other edge is exactly what you're talking about in the X's and O's, where when defenses are going smaller, they're getting smaller linebackers. Of course, you've seen that here as well. They're going smaller personnel

packages, a lot of dime stuff. And if you've got tight ends, it's hard to stop. I think Baltimore has caused problems for teams with their offense, not just because they have Lamar, but because they can run those guys out there. David says, I still think a veteran should be brought in on onto the active roster, minimally the practice squad of a veteran at what, I mean, of any position at what position were you talking about i'm sorry sometimes i

don't know what you're responding to because i'm a little bit behind like on the scroll so let me know what position you met oh a veteran oh i'm sorry i had to scroll more veteran defensive back totally agree with you david yep 100 i think that they very much do need another veteran defensive back. Just experience in that room matters. I think it even matters on a week-to-week basis, like Patrick Peterson, Terrence Newman. I think these guys are calming forces for that unit, and that unit deals with a lot.

I mean, every single week, they're just attacking you. And sometimes you give up 400 yards and have to bounce back. There's a ton of tendencies, alignments, all these things to prepare for going into a game. I mean, think about it this way. Like, so you guys know, I like to play chess. If you are playing with the white pieces, then you prepare your attack. So if you're playing with the black pieces, it's harder because you don't know what way you're getting attacked. So you have to prepare for a bunch of different stuff. That's what it's like to be a defensive back.

You have to prepare for everything that the opposing offense can throw at you. And that just takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of film work, takes a lot of understanding of football. And if you have a veteran tackle. Can this guy play guard? Well, let's go see. I don't think so. I think he's more of just a tackle,

but let me find out. Let me type it in. See if he's ever played. This is, this is a great world, isn't it? Where I could just check. I mean,

some things about technology, I can't stand. But this is not one of those things where I can just go see. Does he ever play guard? Basically, no. No, he's a tackle. That, to me, would say that maybe they're a little bit concerned about Udo as their swing tackle. Their answer at guard right now is Austin Schloteman can play guard and Blake Brandl has moved to a rotational guard or a backup guard position. And you're not confident in the guards

they have starting, right? Much less the backup guards. If you get to the backup guards, it's probably going to be not good. That's just how it is. That's probably how it is in every team in the league. Questenberry has experience playing tackle. He could play if you absolutely needed him to, but any backup offensive lineman you get is not going to be all that good. The Chiefs were able to get a seventh for Amir Smith-Marset. Yeah, that's true.

Jalen Rager is completely just like put on tape enough to know that there's no potential there. Last year, there was still some debate if there was potential and Amir Smith-Marset, there's ever so slightly enough proof of potential from his preseason that someone would say, you know what, why don't we take a shot at that? If I had to guess, Amir Smith-Marset probably only plays in a handful of games the rest of his career and spend some time with about eight other teams. If I had to guess, there's just so many of those guys. If you track their careers, they're just a fifth rounder that somebody liked onto the next team, onto the next team, onto the next team.

They, they play for them in training camp at preseason. Maybe they make the roster. Maybe they don't, maybe they get traded for a seventh, but with someone like Rager, he's just been on the radar for so long that it's, I mean, I mean, everybody knows exactly what's there and they would decide now we're not going to give you anything for that. Um, let me take a look. Uh, more Matt Corral love here. Matt Corral, just as interesting as Nick Mullins or Jaron Hall. Well, Nick Mullins isn't about being interesting. Jaron Hall is about being interesting because I think they see him as a future Nick Mullins, which I know it sounds silly. There's a lot of value in having Nick Mullins because if Kirk Cousins goes down, Nick Mullins can play in that football game and it's not a guarantee you lose because if Nick Mullins

is throwing to Justin Jefferson with a game plan, I promise you he's better than what he was doing in preseason. And I know this because Nick Mullins has played in real games and won real games. That doesn't mean he wins all the time or he's really good, but he's done this before and he could win you a football game. He's a competent NFL backup quarterback. Jaron Hall is not right now. Not what we saw at any point in preseason would make me say competent NFL quarterback.

There was lots of bad throws and some really good throws. That's all about potential to grow and become a good NFL backup quarterback. At some point, Matt Corral would be taking a shot at, Hey, this guy has literally never played. Like you think that Trey Lance has never played. This guy's really never played and had reason to think that there was upside there i'm kind of intrigued if that opportunity came about and they could put him on the practice squad i guess but i also think that the idea of taking shots at quarterbacks is like trading a seventh for amir smith-marset it's not going to do anything for you. In 1993, it probably had a chance because you had a lot of those quarterbacks, you know,

your Matt Hasselbecks or your Mark Brunels. Like you had guys who would be backups for a while, Elvis Gerback, and then become a starter somewhere and it would work out for them. But in today's NFL, it's pretty much like they draft you. And if you don't succeed right away, it's over. And you're just a journeyman. Or if you're drafted in the mid rounds or something, and you were supposed to be a top prospect, you're probably a journeyman. The Vikings next quarterback is going to be a guy that either pay a lot for or a guy that they draft in the first round.

Dalton Reisner is still a free agent. What am I missing? Good question. What are we missing? I think the same thing. Does he not care if he plays? Does he have a dead set price? Is he unliked in the NFL?

Disliked in the NFL disliked in the NFL. I really don't know. I really don't know. But if I find out, I will let you know. I haven't asked anyone because I just figured that his price was too high that the Vikings would want to pay or look, if you're Dalton rise there and you're looking for a starting job locked in so if you came in and said and i don't know this i'm just supposing if he came in and you said look i'm

going to start or i'm not signing here and they said well what if you compete with ed ingram and then we see how it goes and he said no i got to find a place I'm going to start. Well, then it's just not going to work because they were not going to just bench Ed Ingram and say, Dalton rise there. You're in now. Maybe some of you would say that maybe I would even say that, but they weren't going to say that they were going to make it a competition. Or if he says, I want 8 million a year and they say, well, we really don't have the cap space for that. How's four? No. Okay. But there could be other factors at play.

When somebody with that much playing experience at a fairly quality level is not on a team. I mean, David Questenberry is on a team and doesn't have anything in his stat page that would make you think, oh, wow, this guy definitely has to be on a team. So there's a lot worse linemen than Dalton Reiser. I don't know. I'm very interested to find that out. Let's see. A.S. asks, thoughts on the Hall breakdown from the QB school. JTO Sullivan, former Viking quarterback, briefly came in right after the love boat. I wrote an article about it, interviewed JT. He was great. And I love his channel,

the QB school. His breakdown on Jared Hall is excellent. And I will be honest with you. I steal a lot of my quarterback opinions from JT because a, he knows way more about playing quarterback than I do, but also the way that he breaks it down. Anybody can watch, anybody can understand and enjoy it. So I love his channel, QB school and his breakdown on Jaron Hall showed in the first half, some really excellent quarterback play a couple of throws where he hit the

back foot, let it go and looked like it was in time, real solid quarterback play. A couple of throws where he hit the back foot, let it go, and looked like it was in time, real solid quarterback play. And then in the second half, and some of it, Kevin O'Connell excused for the substitutions, but the interception was pretty bad and he broke down why that was. He talked about the last play when he really should have just taken off and got the first down sort of a situational awareness thing but overall there were some moments where he talked about hey this looks pretty good this looks like an nfl quarterback and then said this looks like a practice squad guy there was a throw down the sideline that was just awful and you know and

that's what exactly we saw throughout the entire training camp was oh okay and i think you know one day on the channel we talked about like he had a really good day in practice and then there were other times i'd come home and say no that that's not going too good so a lot of ups and downs for jaron hall very much rookie stuff but i understand why they kept him i think there's enough potential there for him to grow into a quarterback and it's just going to take some time. Donkey Kong says the Vikings are headed for an eight win season. Not too bad. That might be true. I don't know. I've got them at 10. If they won eight, I wouldn't be shocked, but here's something I thought of today, and you cannot undervalue this.

The preseason was awful. It was miserable. I did not enjoy it. A little bit of the Seahawks game was fun at first, and then just, bleh. There was a lot of bad. And I know you guys felt it too when you were watching it, because I was watching Twitter, and people were like, what is going on? What's going on is that they are being very diligent about their

health and sometimes it's even frustrating because you want to watch these preseason games with excitement and get excited about players and see rookies and all these things and they just rest everybody but they are going into the season with one guy on IR one. And they talk about precaution and we get frustrated that Jalen Naylor is not practicing. Where is he? Where's Jalen Naylor? Is he real? Is he exist? Where's the hype? What's going on? And then the season starts. Jalen Naylor is out there and he's ready to play. And so their preseason and training camp was very successful from a health perspective.

And sometimes the difference between you saying they're going to win eight and me saying, well, I think they'll win 10 is just who stays healthy. So they go into the season healthy, which I think is a huge, huge win. Seriously, Larry says every quiz and Barry is a day. Hey, I mean, Larry says, every Quisenberry is a Dan. Hey, I mean, shout out Dan Quisenberry. If you know him, you were watching baseball in the 80s. He was a great pitcher. Great, great pitcher.

David Quisenberry is always in my head going to register as Dan Quisenberry. Miles Gaskin, RB2. I think you're right. And they're going to take that bet that he is more the 2020 player than the 2021 player. So, you know, Miles Gaskin, that's funny. Miles Gaskin, Phillip Lindsey,indsey maybe maybe he's not that old and he is uh as larry says he can catch passes that's true he has uh you know blocked before successfully at least one of his two seasons graded well he was the 10th best pass blocker by pFF in 2020. But in 2021, it was worse.

He just didn't have a good season in 2021. So how that works out, I don't know. Larry also says, is Mike Boone available? He is. He got cut today by the Texans. And I got to say, that's what I'm going to hang on to. Going to hang on to thinking that Mike Boone is good. That's what I'm going to, I'm going to hang on to. I'm going to hang on to thinking that Mike Boone is good. That's what I'm going to say with that.

He averaged like five yards a carry for his career. I don't know why it hasn't worked out. Every time the guy gets the ball, he's pretty good. So I've always liked Mike Boone, and I think if they brought him back here, that would be a good addition. But I think Myles Gaskin is about as well as you can do for right now. When you look at all the waiver claims and everything else, I mean, all the free agents, I mean, Kareem Hunt, you could argue it would be better. But when you look at his numbers last year, is he really? And the age and so forth. I mean, he hasn't really had a career that has suggested outside of the very beginning that he would be that much better than taking a shot at Myles Gaskin. So you never know also when a guy who's young-ish as a running back can just have circumstances play in their favor and be pretty good.

Corey, good to see you, Corey, says, why do you think there are so few waiver claims? I feel like they should be way more common with the talent out there for sure. I think the main part is just that teams structure their 53 to not let anybody go that they think someone else could claim. So if you're claiming somebody on waivers, what are you usually looking for? Because who's getting cut? It's 90% young players, undrafted free agents, late round picks. So what you're looking for is anybody with upside. You're saying, well, maybe we could grab this guy because we thought in the draft that he could be a starter someday. But opposing teams, they know that. They also think, okay, if we cut Andre Carter, then the Jaguars are going to sign him.

Because they probably have a sense for who else was interested and how much they were going to pay an undrafted free agency and what their depth chart is. Like they, they pay attention. There's pro personnel people. This is their whole, whole job. This is what they do. And so they've got all this laid out. So they figure, all right, we can cut these guys and here's who we're okay with them taking off our hands.

Here's who we're okay with them taking off our hands. Here's who we're not. So, you know, I think that that's the main reason. Digit says, I've really liked to come to like Jaron Hall. The kid has agility, pocket awareness, and a good arm. His reads are coming along too. You know, I think that what we saw in the first preseason game was a kid who was in over his head in the NFL a little bit, and that's very common. But what I liked about Jaron Hall was that game two was better. And then game three in the first half was legitimately good. And that's what you want to see is someone who can grow and progress even in a short span of time. And I liked that. And this is stealing from the JTO Sullivan film breakdown. But when he was running on the bootlegs or he was even on other plays that we saw him take off, there was some jump there. There was athleticism there. Agility, you mentioned, is a good word. And also just some top speed where

he could run away from a defensive lineman. The arm part is where I would be a little concerned. I think that in very Kirkian-like fashion, when he steps into a throw, he can really put something on it. The one that he made to Blake Prohl, I mean, that was a BB. That was a great throw. And the, the back angle of that really showed the tight window. He threw it into, but if you're talking about off platform, you really have to let it loose. He just doesn't really have like that big cannon or anything, but I, I agree with you. I mean, I think that the more he learns that he handles himself well, uh, I just like the way that he approaches the game, that he approached the training camp. So I agree.

I agree. I do think that he had overall about as good of a training camp preseason as you might've expect from him. Hatfield barbecue says, how many studio changes can you make? Yeah, that's the thing. So we bought the new house, if you follow the whole thing, bought the new house a few months ago. And part of it was to create this studio space. But any of you who have ever bought a house before, you know how hectic

this is. And then training camp comes along. And so initially, I just put up something to make it look like I wasn't a hostage anymore, which is how it looked in the old house. And then I started to get some ideas and try to formulate how I wanted it to look, the camera angle, the lighting, those sorts of things. I found this picture on, I think it was like Etsy or something. I was like, this is perfect. This is great. Then I bought these little tables and we're just trying one day at a time to make it look a little better. If we can just be 1% better with this studio space, then I'll be happy. Just 1% every day. Donkey Kong says the Lions have the North locked

up. That's great. I guess we won't play the season. So, well, I guess we could talk about the 2024 draft then. That's funny. You know what? It's interesting. It's an interesting time because I always think about how did our viewpoints change of the team that I cover, but then everybody else's team, you know, everybody else's team as well. Like, how did they change? How did the viewpoint locally change? How did the van fans feel? Do they feel different? Do they feel more energetic about their team? Because it really does change through the, you know,

through the summer. And I think with the Vikings, there was a bunch of potential potholes that they could have stepped into. Health was a big one. And they didn't step into any of them. I mean, okay, so Kenny Wong got hurt. All right, well, that's disappointing because he was a player that we looked at as having some potential to be RB2. And I think they looked at it that way, too. But aside from that, best-case scenario with Jordan Addison.

Best-case scenario with Jordan Addison best case scenario with Brian Flores and his fit so far how that goes we'll see best case scenario probably with the vibes the only real thing that hasn't been checked off is just these um you know the the contracts but the roster as a whole it was going to have depth issues pretty much no matter what. That was part of the deal of getting rid of players who were older and expensive. That was going to happen. But,

you know, we saw McKay Blackman emerge as well. The only other thing is nobody from the 2022 class in those top three rounds changed our mind, but a Caleb Evans is going to start at outside corner, which I think we just accepted early on and haven't thought about it since because that's how it tends to work. We kind of look at what's on fire.

Like, oh, the guard position had a bad week. Like, let's talk about that. But Caleb Evans had a good camp. And where that goes, I guess we'll figure it out. So Matt says uh do you write for a local newspaper espn just curious on your background besides the book and buffalo experience would love notes uh where to look out for your stuff so two places to look out for my stuff currently which is uh substack purple insider you can can find that at purple insider.com.

Just scroll down. You'll see all the articles there. You could sign up for the sub stack, get the articles in your inbox every day. That's where my main writing is. Some of my articles go on sports illustrated website, si.com. So sometimes when I do a Vikings feature,

it will be shared. So if you look up my name in Sports Illustrated, you can find my articles there. And in Buffalo, I worked for the radio station WGR 550, which was the home of the Bills, wrote for their website. I have written for ESPN. I used to write hockey for ESPN. So if you Google me and hockey, you'll find a bunch of old NHL articles when it was ESPN Insider and not ESPN Plus. So yeah, I've done a lot of that and then freelance for different places. But right now it's the si.com stuff in the sub stack. So feel free to check that out. Oh, and then when I moved here to Minnesota, it was to write for 1500 ESPN.com.

And that was the radio station I was on before starting Purple Insider. I know that a lot of you who are joining on the YouTube lives are not as familiar with my background. So that's a good question and take you through that. So let's see here. Let continue to scroll loved how many of you are participating but sometimes that makes it for an overwhelming uh chat let's see hunter says i think they should pay tj even if you overpay a little bit and make him the highest paid tight end he's such a good fit maybe that's a hot take though well we wouldn want that Hunter. We wouldn't want a single hot take on this chat. That couldn't happen. Uh, we, I mean, just a minute ago, someone decided the season was over and the lions already won the division. So the first time for them, since, since these helmets looked like this behind me on these little flags, basically. The overpay is a really interesting concept

because usually when the moment you sign the contract, TJ Hawkinson would be overpaid. But if you structure it out, the only thing that really matters is the cap hit for a given year. And a lot of times you can restructure that and cheat the system when you need to. So one of the problems that I had with the Vikings in the past is that they were restructuring things when they shouldn't have been doing that. When they needed to rebuild, they were restructuring contracts and kicking money down the road. That was not what they needed to be doing. And they were hurting themselves in the future out of desperation. That was a bad idea. But if you set up TJ Hawkinson's extension, so today he's overpaid by average annual value. And of course, whoever breaks the story will be

like, he's the highest paid tight end in history. But what really matters is that structure and those cap hits. That's what's important. So I pointed out a few times, but it matters. AJ Brown and Evan Ingram, look at their extensions recently. Those guys are getting paid not too high cap hits

for right now. Eventually those cap hits go through the roof and they'll have to restructure and figure out a way to deal with those. But for the right now, it's in pretty good shape. So can you structure it in a way that when you feel like you need it to be lower, then it's lower for TJ Hawkinson. That's the question. Because I think if you try to have a really rigid figure, we won't go over 16 million. Okay, that's fine. But if you can make it work to have lower cap hits, then you can make him a high paid tight end without harming yourself or with setting it up where you're still going to be able to extend Derrissaw and Jefferson and everything that you

need to do. And I agree with you with the part of the offense, because I think when, and whenever a player wants money, the first reaction is get rid of him. What money get out of here, but he's not worth it. And that's maybe true that he's not worth more than George Kittle, but you know, the, the, the cap is always going up and the prices are always going up. So you'll be the highest paid today. And you know, two weeks from now, you won't. So over, I think you have to be flexible and not rigid with some of these things when a player is important so i agree uh kenny on rir is he out for the season according to the old rules he would have been this is another vast improvement to the rules he is not out for the season he's just gonna have to miss the first four games, I believe. Correct me if I have that

wrong, someone, but I believe it's the first four games, which is a big improvement because I think it used to be the whole season. So if someone had a half a season injury, it was either you're out for the year or you take up a roster space for a long time. Like that, that was not a good idea. So this is pretty helpful that he can be out for a couple games, but that means Ty Chandler's the backup to start the very beginning of the season and Miles Gaskin, you're going to have to be ready. Let's see. Mark says Muse is here because Hawkinson is acting up. I don't think that's true. I think Muse is here because Muse was good i mean we saw him right he was he had a really really good training camp he emerged as a player and i think when somebody does that you want to

be able to reward them for that when it's a young player that you've developed and that's what we were talking about with you know the 53 and everything you want to be able to say like we're not having players stolen from us after we've developed them for a couple of years so i don't think you want that uh newt says the handling of the interior offensive line was unacceptable and this dates back 10 years it really does date back 10 years new Newt. You are not exaggerating because I went through this offseason and I looked at the inconsistency of the offensive lines and they haven't had the same five start two years in a row in literally 10 years. How crazy is that?

Not even just back-to-back years. And the guard position has been where almost all of the changes have undergone during the early part of Kirk's career. Tom Compton, Josh Klein was the best they did. Dakota Dozier, Drew Samia, these were starters. These weren't just randos that showed up because of injuries. These were guys who they planned on on that they assessed as being good enough or they worked their you know they or they didn't try to work their cap uh even more like

they signed michael pierce but not a guard i don't know that some of that was bizarre but the uh unacceptable part the problem with that is that they have put as far as the handling goes a ton of draft capital into it and we also just have to keep in mind just just just to try to make a little bit of a counterpoint on that that number one the quarterback does not move and it is hard on his guards because there's one place he's going to be and everybody knows it. They've put guys in weird positions. I mean, Ed Ingram was a left guard in college for three years and they moved him over to the other side. Ezra Cleveland was a tackle. Now you're a right guard. Now you're a left guard. I mean, and with Garrett Bradbury, he was supposed to save the outside zone, but they forgot that he has to block Kenny Clark and Akeem Hicks at the start of his career. Situation kind of matters here. When you have two great tackles, teams are going to know that draft capital into it, you'd expect that to get better results than it has. But I also think that if you were talking about maybe a different situation, it's not as bad as it is with this situation. more of a backup plan for this year or that those other decisions were right. But when you put that much draft capital, and I think there is still the potential for

this group to be better in part because of the chemistry that they have in the same offense for once, uh, they have the same offense, same offensive coordinators, same teammates, like, but here's what I will say. If it is not better, then fingers should be pointed. Your take is right. If it's not better and you knew how bad it was last year in the interior and did not make any effort whatsoever, then, I mean, that would be unacceptable.

That would be unacceptable if it's not better. So I, I, it's like, I agree and disagree at the same time. All right. Uh, let's see. Fit, uh, figured Ben Sims would be claimed. How many great tight ends can a team have? That guy made some catches. He made some plays. Is there any question that Ben Sims ends up with three catches this year and two of them are touchdowns against the Vikings? I think so. Talking about Jaron Hall, his old film shows he has a decent arm. Yeah. So the NFL standard for arm is just different. I mean, decent. He made some decent throws that had some juice. But when we're talking about a good arm in the NFL, no.

He doesn't have a good NFL arm. Like NFL arms, we're talking about like at the top of the list, Josh Allen, you could throw the ball 80 yards in the air like this. You know, that's not Jaron Hall. Jaron Hall has a backup caliber, probably physical profile. He's not that big, doesn't throw the ball that hard. But here's the thing. Like, that's not an insult.

Like to say that someone can become a quality NFL backup is not an insult. It's just to say that that's probably the ceiling for somebody like that. Hall is a mini Russell Wilson. Russell Wilson's pretty mini, actually. Russell Wilson is smaller than Jaron Hall, but that's the arm that you're talking about. Russell Wilson, if you want to be an NFL starter, that's really good. Thinking that's how the Vikings envision him. No, I knew. I don't think so. I don't think they envisioned him becoming Russell Wilson in any way, even like a light version. I don't think that I

think what they're, what they're looking for is a player that's mature, intelligent, which from speaking with him, I think that's the case has a good enough arm that meets the standard of the NFL to step into a throw that's on a run, you know, a guy running across the field, 20 yards down the field and hit him, which I think he can. And then learn an offense, be able to lead an offense. I don't think they're looking at this as a starting quarterback anytime soon. This is not their guy they're developing to be the starter. This is somebody that if he's your backup in the future, you feel really good about because he has some athleticism. He has some arm talent, but he was way too erratic

in the preseason. And there were just some throws where you went like, okay, the arm is not of that caliber. But that, I mean, again, not an insult. I thought that he played pretty well. Jerry says Chandler is a top 1% all-time combine 10-yard split. Is he really? And runs sub 4-4 besides running crisp routes with good hands. Quasey traded up for him. Well, it seems like you're a big Ty Chandler guy, Jerry.

Are you, Ty Chandler? So I think Ty Chandler has a lot of talent, a lot of talent. Every time he gets the ball, he's motoring. He has some bursts that is very, very impressive. But from my seat, I have big ears. I listen to everything really closely that they say. And at many opportunities to endorse Ty Chandler as RB2 and talk about how much they love him, they just never did. And then they go out and get a running back

that there's some familiarity from Brian Flores with. It just never has felt like there's a ton of confidence there. I don't disagree on his athletic ability. His athletic ability is a matter of fact. But there has to be a trust factor there with Ty Chandler. There has to be, we believe that you can play the entire game. And if you don't believe you can play the entire game,

then, you know, that's what Russell Wilson does. Hey, if he becomes Russell Wilson, that'll be a hell of a draft pick who was it that said maybe i have a hot take that they should overpay hawkinson by a little now that now that's nowhere close jaron hall's the next russell wilson now that's a hot take that's that's one you bring after nine we should have like a thing like the after dark

version so like the first hour of the show is all rationality but once we get into that once we get in past an hour all hell breaks loose somebody says barry sanders the other days barry sanders couldn't have run for any yards in that preseason game today we've got jared hall is russell wilson like let's go i'm all for that so uh koc raves about him uh no he doesn't i'm at the press conferences he is that's that's just not true so well first of all kevin o'connell raves about everyone so that's always a thing that does happen but when it comes to ty chandler it the way that they have acted about ty chandler the entire offseason is that they love his physical tools but if you listen to every comment there's a but he still needs to work on the pass blocking he still needs to work on the details there's a lot of details to this running game and you have, you

have to be in the right spots at the right time with the right timing. It's not just about having a quick motor. So that's, I like his ability a lot, but there's a reason why they would be looking at other, you know, veteran running backs and things like that is because of that. So, I mean, we'll see if throughout the season he develops into that player, then that would be really good. That would be really good. But I also think that there's reason to wonder if they view Ty Chandler that way based on what we've heard. But obviously you're a big Ty Chandler guy, which is fine.

Leonard says, if 2022 Adam Thielen had been peak Adam Thielen, how would that have affected Hawkinson's production? If Addison is Rookie of the Year, how important is Hawkinson? The one thing is about weapons is you're going to have a really hard time saying to me, no less weapons, because I think historically, and, and, and these football helmets behind me and these flags and their beauty inspires me to even reach back farther than I've ever reached into NFL history. But let me tell the tale of the, there's one flag that's not up here because it's really unfortunate as a football team, but I'm going to reference them anyway. The Washington football club, 1991, Mark Rippon, pretty average quarterback had an unbelievable season because he had three of the best wide

receivers you're ever going to find. One of the great wide receiver combinations in football history. Now, this has happened many times since then. But again, how far can I throw back? And they dominated and they won the Super Bowl and they crushed a really good Bills team with all their weapons. And since that moment in my childhood where my hometown club got murdered by another team that had all these great receivers, I have felt like more weapons is good. And so if Addison is rookie of the year and Jefferson's the greatest receiver on earth and your tight end is really good and your number three receiver is also capable. Thank you. That's great.

You probably have a top five offense. And here's the reality. You don't go to the Super Bowl in today's game without a top five offense. It's only happened once since 2015 and the team ranked seventh. That was the Rams. Every other team to appear in the Super Bowl has been a top-five offense. So, yeah, all the weapons. All the weapons. And Addison being on a rookie contract, like, this only helps you. So, yeah, I mean, I think that there is that thought of, like, how much should you pay him, whatever.

And I'm not saying pay him anything. But having another guy who can line up all over the field, make plays, catch balls, show up in a tight or in a, in a playoff game. He's a, he's a good player, but it just seems like we've reached impasse land with TJ Hawkinson.

Let's see. Tyler says, let, this will probably be the last question for the evening. Great stuff from you guys tonight, as always. He says, do you think that there's still a chance they sign Reisner after week one, especially if Ingram struggles?

I do think that's possible, yeah. And there might be something to, somebody else mentioned the guaranteed money. That's true, that you don't have to pay the guaranteed money after week one. Is that how it works? I think that's how it works for a veteran player. It's, you know, so maybe there's something to that.

They'd be willing to overpay and all that. So it's possible. Oh, Horse Feathers. When are we having a Grillmaster tailgate? Yeah. Yeah. Our friends at Grillmasters. We'll get that read in tomorrow for grill masters,

but I got a box on the way. Grill masters. So shout out to them. If you haven't checked out grill master club.com, you should, because they sponsor the show and I won't give you the whole thing, but look into it because it's, it's,

it's good. They give you a lot of different options. If you're a grill guy and look, I'm not even even a good i can't even put up flags behind me straight i'm not a great grill guy but i seem like one with grill master club so anyway uh now now now now look uh we got a gp correcting a mini russell wilson because he plays like Look, that's totally fine to have a hot take. You should lean into it. You should go like all in. It should be like you're a cycle if you don't think that he's the next Russell Wilson.

No, I was making fun of you more than anything for just using Russell Wilson on a guy that is the number three quarterback behind Nick Mullins. Like we need to give it time and we need to see how he progresses. I thought he showed some flashes and the way he can actually escape people and make a good throw on the run on a bootleg. Yeah. But we'll see where that goes. I think it was probably the right move to keep it.

And he showed enough to keep it. So Cleveland, oh, look at at we got to end every show with offensive line like don't we interior offensive line fear cleveland may be more of a problem than ingram that might be true depending on how it goes if cleveland doesn't develop might be true uh great stuff tonight guys i was inspired by a little bit of the new look here and also inspired by how many of you show up and participate and uh have fun and um and and jerry who's the big ty chandler fan respect to ty chandler we'll see how it goes and uh new studio tomorrow yeah absolutely it's gonna look completely different i'm not not disrespecting Ty Chandler.

I'm just giving you the facts, as is the job, Jerry. So we'll do that again in the future. Jerry, Jerry, I read the quote. I was there for the quote. You're going to have to include the part where he talked about him not pass blocking. All right. Good night. That's where we're at. Football.