Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jaylen Twyman is OK after shooting but his bad break may set him back in camp

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom react to the news that defensive tackle Jaylen Twyman was shot while visiting family. Luckily Twyman is OK but his unfortunate break could cost him a chance to get in the mix with the defensive tackles during training camp if he misses time. It seems like every year there's an out-of-left-field story like this -- what are some of the craziest? Matthew and Sam talk about Zimmer's eye, Norv Turner resigning, the protester hanging from the ceiling and many other wild Vikings stories. Plus they talk about Eli Manning being honored by the Giants and what his career says about QB stats and how he compares to Kirk Cousins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of Purple Insider presented by Scout Logistics. Matthew Collar and Sam Ekstrom here with you today. And something that is a staple of covering the Minnesota Vikings is that there are no days off, Sam, from Vikings news. It just this is why the newsletter gets published year round, because it never, ever, ever stops. And just when you think minicamp is over, we got a few weeks here to just kind of reflect and to look forward to the season and start preparing our training camp features and everything else and a player gets shot so uh jalen twyman shot four times when he was visiting family i believe in the dc area luckily his agent drew rosenhouse says he's okay he's going to be all right. They are, uh, I'm going to make the joke because he's fine.

It's it's a flesh wound, right? The, um, what is that? Uh, Monty Python is right. Yeah. It's a flesh wound. So, um, anyway, he's going to be okay. I think that actually it kind of might end up impacting training camp. It's it's's okay now that he's not severely wounded to talk about how this impacts his football, right? So I think this does potentially set him behind in training camp in a battle that's already not going to be easy for depth defensive tackles. Yeah, this is, unfortunately, this is the second incident of this nature that I've covered as a member of this beat. My first year on the beat was Mike Zimmer's first year, 2014, also Linvald Joseph's first year. Linvald Joseph caught in the crossfire at a club after a preseason game and that it was such a freak freaky event terrifying event um and similarly Linval was okay missed a little bit of time but then did return and then did play most of that season but also was not the Linval that like he turned into sort of the year after that in the

next four or five years where he was very good um And it did seem to affect him a little bit. And I can't even imagine the trauma that like that lingers with you after something like that. And it sounds like this Twyman thing. We know very few details, but it sounds extremely freaky, extremely random and unexpected. He was visiting his aunt reportedly and I think was in a vehicle and then gunshots come out of nowhere. So that's wild to me. And I think Twyman was probably already going to struggle to make this team. It wasn't impossible because there's not like a ton of good depth at that position, but certainly the Sheldon Richardson acquisition makes it harder. Like there's probably one or two spots that are available, you know, for young players. I think Armin Watts has

a really good chance to have one of those spots and then maybe one more. And that might've been Jalen Twyman's. If you read my feature on Twyman and his Pittsburgh, you know, comrade Patrick Jones from about two weeks ago, you'll learn a lot about the kind of guy Twyman is. And he's like a really intriguing person with a super unique profile. You know, he had the incredible junior year at Pittsburgh and, and that was enough to get him drafted without even playing his senior year. He opted out to train, but his training sort of led him down a path where he like gained weight and then had a really bad 40 time, but he was really good at lifting. So he's extremely strong and he's put good, good tape

out from college. I still think he was a long shot to make this roster. And it felt like a practice squad year for Jalen Twyman. And, you know, if he's not 100% in training camp, and I wouldn't blame him if he's not, you know, in two months, we don't know the nature of the gunshot wounds, but it could be a situation where, you know, he's not able to really kind of vie for those spots. Yeah. I was just given the impression because like you said, we don't know.

I mean, he might be back for training camp, but I mean, getting shot multiple times does And as you said, traumatic as hell, just for your body. I can't imagine what sort of shock you go through after something like that has happened to you. But from the football perspective, he comes across as a guy who is very driven to make it. And so just from a sort of a person perspective, that really, really is awful for him because this was his chance to beat out someone like Armin Watts or beat out someone like James Lynch, these other guys, and force the team to keep him around because a sixth round pick who had maybe the potential to be a little higher if he had had

a better pro day, like this is the type of guy that we created Mr. Mankato for to watch players like Jalen Twyman in these preseason games. And that's why preseason games were missed last year is because you would have guys like this who show up, get a couple of sacks and force the team to keep them around. And if he doesn't have that opportunity, then I don't know what happens. I mean, there's only speculation that we can have here, but I mean, does he end up getting put on injured reserve and then brought back at some point, or does he end up just not practicing

and getting released and then signed to the practice squad? Like, I don't know how this is going to play out, but if we were listing our players that we were sort of really interested in seeing for training camp, we might have to check one off the list already in Jalen Twyman after this happens, because he was going to be and you wrote about him, but he was going to be toward the top of my list of, hey, I know he's a sixth round pick, but he's kind of interesting for us to keep an eye on. Yeah, and since we're speculating, you can toss out the possibility, too, that in a weird, crazy way, maybe it helps him long-term because sometimes with someone like Kenny Willekes last year, seventh-round pick, long shot to make the roster, he gets hurt. That's devastating for him in the moment,

but also it keeps him in the building for the year and it's a free pass for the Vikings to keep him around and roster him the next year and if Twyman gets maybe NFI'd non-football injury list um then I believe they could keep him around and maybe he could have a fresh shot at it in 2022, depending on the severity of this injury. Now, I imagine that if he can get back to health, and hopefully he does, I'm sure he'd like to be there this August and battle it out. But when you break down sort of the defensive tackle options, I mean, there's not a breadth of talent really standing in his way kind of beyond the big three. You know, there's Dalvin

Tomlinson, Michael Pierce and Sheldon Richardson after that caller. I mean, there's a UDFA from, I think, Oregon. There is, you know, whatever you consider Jalen Holmes. I don't think he's a tremendous threat. He's kind of an outside inside hybrid without a true home. James Lynch is kind of the intriguing one to me because most of the time a fourth round pick sticks around for that second year, but we've seen so little from him that that's sort of the wild card. I think if James Lynch does not like kind of grab that spot and run with it, that opens the door for someone like Twyman. I think that Mike Zimmer is also ready to be ruthless with some of these guys too.

I mean, the way that they went out this year and just signed everybody that they could get their hands on on defense said, I don't care where you were drafted. James Lynch last year could barely get on the field. And when he did, he was getting pushed back 15 yards by guards. And so sorry, man, it just hasn't really worked out and that could be what they end up doing because Armand Watts I think is at least serviceable proved last year that he could be on the field at times which is as far as I'm willing to go with that but there were other guys who have proven in the past that they did not deserve to be on the field and think about like if you're

James Lynch and you're behind decent players and you're not getting on the field, okay, I get it. But you're behind Jaleel Johnson and you can't get on the field. That means you were not at all ready to play in the NFL. And so that doesn't give me a whole lot of confidence that he's got, he's the, he's going to make any noise here. And it also is kind of weird. Like this goes back to, we've had this conversation a little bit before, but like moving guys, drafting him. Now you're going to be this. Now you're going to be that. It just doesn't ever really seem to work out. And so that one might be one we look back at and go, uh, maybe you should have just left James Lynch at defensive end. Do you remember the name of the guy that like inexplicably jumped James Lynch and played in a game last year

who came off the street basically and played? Do you remember who it was? Anderson Abdullah or something, right? Abdullah Anderson. Abdullah Anderson. Yeah, close enough. I remember he's like number 66, which is the most forgettable, like no one ever wants to be number 66. Yeah, that leads to a rabbit trail story but someone told us that sheldon richardson had the option when he got to the vikings to have the number 67 and richardson was like heck no i'm not gonna be 67 give me number

nine i'll be single digit before i want to be 67 one thing that I have to admit on the show here about Sheldon Richardson is what's nice is you can say, objectively speaking, he's a really good player and he's going to help your defense. But from even our perspective, the guy is a caricature. I mean, like that was this classic Sheldon Richardson. I'd rather wear number eight than number 67. Totally agree. I mean, 66 and 67 are just the, you're not going to be here for very long. It's like when a pitcher comes up and is wearing number 88, like that's all we had in the back guy. You're not going to stay here very long, head back to the St. Paul saints. So anyway, I, I think that it is, we'll see. I think you make a fair point about how, I mean, even Hercules

Mata'afa stayed around for another year and kept getting more chances because in part he got hurt that first year. And so they were still sort of intrigued and the same thing could go. But we just don't know how severe the injuries are in a football perspective, because you're talking about going out there and battling with guys who are at 100%. And there's no way if you're getting shot with actual bullets that you can go out there in a few weeks and be at 100%, or I would not think so. So a really, really unfortunate break for Jalen Twyman. And we'll just have to see what ends up happening there. I did want to ask you before I moved on to a couple other things I want to talk about was where already does that one rank for the most? Let's just put it this way.

You open your phone and see Adam Schefter and go, what? In terms of Vikings stories, where does player got shot four times visiting his aunt fall since you've been covering the Vikings. Yeah. Shock value. So this is season eight for me, season six for you, I think. So like, and we're narrowing it down to stories that we weren't present for like Teddy Bridgewater injury. Like we were there when that happened. These are like out of the blue football, like, like breaking news items. Um, I mean, Linval Joseph probably is like on, on the same level, you know, when Linval Linval gets shot. Um, what, what else strikes you as sort of the, the Mount Rushmore, I guess, of, of these absurd stories, Mike Zimmer's eye, Mike Zimmer's eye might be number one. Yeah. Mike Zimmer's eye. Well, Teddy, for me was when I was just moving here. So I was not

out there yet at winter park. So I was actually unpacking boxes and I started to, my phone just started to blow up. And I got a ton of messages from people in Buffalo who are my friends, knowing that I was moving saying, are you, are you there yet? Are you at practice? Are you seeing what's going on with Teddy? I was like, what? I have no, I'm, I'm unloading boxes. I have no idea. And then I see ambulances out there and everything. I was like, I just moved here and this is what we're going to have to deal with. Um, so right there, it kind of started Mike Zimmer's eye goes number two for me, because that was totally like who would have ever guessed that we even talked to Mike Zimmer after the game in Chicago and his eyeballs looked fine at that moment. And then all of a sudden you wake up the next day and it's announced that he's having eyeball surgery so he can't talk to us okay uh but even then we didn't have the idea of how serious his eye injury was they kind of made it seem like oh it was like

a regular just eye appointment and he had to have something done and then it turns out that there's conspiracy theories regarding norv turner and his exit because those two things seem to strangely correlate mike zimmer said he poked his eye with a play card which is not possible because of the injury he had is something that people in car wrecks get the detachment of the retina it's not poking yourself in the eye so there remains mystery regarding that one but the most shocking was when the person hung from the truss in the stadium. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah.

I had went to the bathroom. So I was walking out of the bathroom and I see people like standing up and looking at something in the press box. And so I turn my head to the right and there's a person dangling like, excuse me. Like what? I mean, I thought like, is this like uh i don't know someone paragliding from the roof down like what what is going on here like is this is this like an in-game entertainment thing because it's week 17 that that was the most shocking and then brian murphy getting the person on the phone was unbelievable so that yeah that was surreal witnessing brian

murphy talking to the man on the banner. And how did I don't understand in retrospect how the game was allowed to continue. That's what's funny to me. Like that's such a major security breach that you'd think that would be taken care of before they continue with like second and seven. Meanwhile, there's a man repelling from the roof of u.s bank stadium let's get a split screen that big voice guy please avoid hanging from the trusses i mean what alan roach now you make a great point though because at the time it seemed to be an isolated incident and we couldn't really figure out.

So the person was hanging the banner. The first banner hung in that stadium. Am I right? Oh yeah. So, but the person's hanging in a banner, unlike the Vikings will ever do. And so that was odd and it,

but it didn't seem like a dangerous situation. Like the person didn't have a weapon or anything and they were just dangling there so maybe they figured okay well nothing is really happening but they were clearing out people below in case the person fell which was also under the category of totally surreal because you're thinking like second and 10, they're going to hand off. And then you like I did there. And then this person's going to fall to their death. Like your game recap, what a mistake by, you know, Pat Schirmer dialing up a handoff on second and 10 as the person plummeted.

I mean that we, I remember we had three people work working that game and we told somebody to stand back or to stay back and not go to the locker room in case the guy fell it was that it was that bizarre and we're like well you know we gotta have somebody there to see it i guess and uh you know whatever they end up arresting them and it's fine but that you make a great point that in hindsight why did you not stop the game until that was resolved that's crazy yeah fox was like ignoring it i think on tv and the players in the locker room were being so weird about it they were like what we didn't notice the man hanging from the ceiling the people were pointing to and we had no idea that was

happening but now that you mention it, wow, that's crazy. Come on, come on. You're not, you don't need, it was a meaningless week 17 game. You don't need to be that focused on football. Come on. By the way, I have another like jaw dropping event that totally slipped under the radar.

Adrian Peterson, 2014. I mean, I, how did I forget about that one? That was another shocker, you know, like one month after the Linval Joseph thing. And it was a Friday afternoon. I think the Vikings were heading into week two against the Patriots. And they had just come off a win against the Rams, Mike Zimmer's first game. Actually, a lot of momentum with the team, like a lot of excitement and the Peterson thing drops and the pictures come out with it. And,

and then that was followed up by the following week, the press conference where the Vikings said, you know, first they said, yep, Peterson's back. He's coming to practice today. Then the sponsors dropped out. Then then they they got back on stage and had to retract and the wilfs mentioned like 18 times we wanted to get this right and that was sort of their company line and it was so uncomfortable and you had like these bulldog reporters coming in like nationally and like news reporters locally who were not on the beat, who were just tearing Rick Spielman and the Wilfs apart with their questions. It was the most voracious press conference that I've been a part of. And I was like first year guy. I was just sitting back,

like taking it in. I had no clue what my place was. I'm not going to interrupt Pat Kessler trying to ask this question, but that whole saga from start to finish, like never made sense. And Peterson was like, you know, it's kind of sending messages through his own people that were weird. It was bizarre, man. I'm I be glad you weren't a part of that one. Yeah. Right. I wasn't here yet. Um, but I remember it coming right on the heels of Ray Rice. And I think that greatly impacted the reaction that the NFL had already not done enough to suspend Ray Rice. And the video comes out and then this one has pictures as well. So they felt like they really need to drop the hammer.

And what's interesting about that one is by the time i arrived here in 2016 i expected to show up to a place that just worshipped adrian peterson because of my perception is him of him as an outside observer that i mean this is a guy who gets a 97 ranking on madden right i mean just known as the rushing rushing god essentially and uh someone who had been the face of the franchise after randy moss and the impression of him was so much different than i expected you had people who either worshiped at the altar of purple jesus or you had the complete opposite of people who felt like he was self-centered and that he wasn't an all-around running back so he was kind of overrated even though his highlight reel goes up there with the all-time great

highlight reels that he didn't catch the ball he had key fumbles in big games including in 2009 but also in in 2015 in that Seahawks game there's a key Adrian Peterson fumble and so he at the time I showed up here was polarizing, especially because he was coming out off a year where he led the league in rushing, but only kind of like nod, nod, wink, wink, led the league, like also led the league in carries and only, you know, average four and a half yards carry, which is okay, but they kind of probably gave him the ball way too much. Right. So, so that was interesting to me that I expected. And, and as an aside, I had also expected the same thing with Joe Maurer. And I didn't realize that

there were these huge debates over Joe Maurer and whether he, uh, hit enough home runs or not and things like that. So that was fascinating. I think that that would not have existed. If, um, Adrian had not had that thing. Let me circle back in terms of the shocking stories to Norv Turner just up and quitting. That there's the conspiracy theories sort of behind the scenes. Did something happen and whatever? And I'm not here to tell you

that I've heard any of those are true or whatever. It's always been bizarre. Something doesn't quite add up there. But Norv Turner just saying, nah, I'm good. After they start five and all and lose two games. And then the guy is just out is what, I mean, how many times has that ever happened in an NFL season where an OC just says, I don't want to do this anymore and, and, and just leaves. And then I tried to mike zimmer to say what happened yes i did yeah a couple years ago i said uh because he had done an interview where after di filippo and someone asked him about like oh you you fired all these offensive coordinators and he said hey norv turner quit i didn't fire him and so i said is there anything you know do you want to do you want to tell us what happened or whatever and he said i'll write it in my book but um once someday that story with norv is coming

out and i can't wait to find out the what exactly happened there yeah so i mean i have theories i and and i don't know if it involves a fist fight like some people would would want to believe like that there was no wwe action um but but this was something that was simmering and and you know things that you know little whispers that i might have heard here and there there was i think some immediate tension you know between the two i think a little bit of ego battle because you've got kind of the stodgy old timer on the offensive side and the stodgy old timer on the defensive side who have very like rigid ways of doing things and they don't want each other's unit to mess things up for them. And I remember end of 2015, Teddy Bridgewater got strip sacked to end the game against the Cardinals. It was a big game and the Vikings were driving for a game tying field goal and Bridgewater got strip sacked on like a very long developing passing route down the field where he just held the ball too long.

And it was kind of that way by design. And Zimmer was pretty quick to criticize the play call, which I don't think he Zimmer tends to like, he doesn't talk badly about people he respects. And he's pretty quick to talk critically about people that he doesn't respect, i.e. John D. Filippo, i.e. Marwan Malouf. And those people don't usually last very long after sort of the critique becomes public. And I think it was starting to brew late 2015. And then 2016, there was probably an incident. And I don't know this for a fact, but there was probably like a things overheated after the two losses,

probably verbal sparring and differences in philosophy. But there was like, I think a singular event that led to the resignation. And on day one, they tried to spin it. Like this was a heartbreaking decision and Zimmer was torn up and he might have even like faked a tear in his eye, but it pretty quickly turned to, yeah,

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super soft super comfy shirts and hoodies you will love it follow them soda stick co on twitter go to sodastick.com for your original minnesota sports inspired goods code purple insider for free shipping yeah zimmer did get emotional um maybe it's crocodile tears i don't know but it's see it well the best part about that remains that the next question after he was getting emotional was what do you think of tj clemmings a legendary a legendary moment in our beat reporting but uh it's just um anyway so that one certainly falls into that category and i remember this even when i got here because i was sort of assessing the lay of the land i found it to be very odd that pat schirmer was a tight ends coach

like nothing against brian periani or any other ends coach. I'm sure you work very hard with your tight ends, but it's a position where you only coach like three dudes. And so Pat Shermer had this history where he was just working with Chip Kelly and he had been an offensive coordinator. And then they trade for his guy and Sam Bradford, like how is Norv Turner going to be the offensive coordinator here when he runs very different offense? Like, why would you bring in Pat Shermer? Like they all seem to not exactly add up to begin with, but still when you're only five and two and your dude just says, Nope, I'm out. That is one of the truly most shocking stories.

And then, you know, we've got a bunch of bizarre ones. I don't know if any of them fall into the category of like moves, like just like decisions, trades, cuts that really shocked you. I think even the Stefan digs trade was not surprising knowing the landscape, but when they did it, I remember just thinking, I can't believe they did it. Like, this is just thinking, I can't believe they did it. Like, this is just not, this is not going to work out for you. And it did with Justin Jefferson, but I remember being like, I, I can't believe they're actually going to part ways with a guy who just pretty much carried their offense on his back for a full season. Um, so that one,

I would say did surprise me a little, even knowing it was possible. I don't know if there's any other one that's really shocked you in terms of just trades or signings cuts. No, I was going to say it was pretty bizarre that we had to cover a Kirk Cousins apology press conference last year after he went on a podcast and said, if I die, I die from COVID. That was just an out of the blue like we per usual we're going out to golf hastings golf club every time dane mizzutani with us and i think maybe courtney as well and naturally this comes up and we have like the most non-football press conference like news item that you would ever want to cover on an off day. The hardest part about that was, I don't know what to ask him. Like, I just don't, I don't know what to say here. So I remember asking him like, so are you like knowledgeable about COVID? Like, I don't know. Like, what am I supposed to ask the guy was, were you joking?

Like, I, I don't know. What, what do we do here? What does any of us do here? It was almost like he needed to sort of clarify that he was still following the protocols and we had to ask him questions, but nobody knew exactly what to say. Like, so are you really leaving this thing to God? Like, I don't know. I mean, what am I doing here? I'm supposed to be playing golf. It's summertime. And that is perfect because it's exactly a reminder of how this went with Jalen Twyman being shot is you think it's summertime and then it's not. And this leads me to the last one, or at least it's not vacation time. The last one is Tony Sperano passing away is truly the most, I would say the most shocking

story that we've covered, uh, because it was right before camp. And so nobody even had a chance to like process this. So we're going out there and, you know, poor Riley reef who never wants to talk. It just is like not comfortable with media and stuff and run up to Riley reef. Hey, the guy who's, you know, your offensive line coach, who you were all really close with. that you went to the NFC championship with just passed away. What do you think? And then I chose not to go cover the funeral. I know other people did. That was weird too. Like what does sports reporters do outside of a funeral? I don't know. Uh, so yeah, that was, um, that was like really, really crushing for everybody. And you remember Tony's wife was also a training camp that year.

And so it's just like this, this very like heartbreaking type of, you know, situation. And I think it would be wrong to throw out the idea that that impacted them. Like, I think that that did impact them in 2018. And they said as much, like they didn't use it as an excuse during the year, but it was brought up after the season, kind of in retrospect, that that was a pretty difficult thing just emotionally, but also like your offensive line was already not good, but to, to lose someone that could sort of get the most out of those players. And then those players, you know, having to not only cope with the loss of

like, you know, someone pretty important in their like professional life, but then have to adjust to this new arrangement. Yeah. I believe that that had an impact as well. And that, that sort of sent the 2018 season off on an extremely sobering note. And the team never really recovered from that. Not only that, I mean, Everson Griffin then happens like two weeks into the season. Oh, I mean, now that, now that you're mentioning all of these, it's, it's crazy how they like, aren't top of mind, but it is something every year. You could almost go year by year. There's two or three various levels of shock associated, but there is something. And Twyman is hopefully the only domino that falls this year.

Hopefully there's not more of these, but I would be hard- pressed to to say with certainty that there won't be something else i yeah i was about to say like if this is it for most bizarre things that we covered this year i i hope that that's where it ends um but you know this is this is why everybody follows the team i mean because crazy stuff happens it doesn't stop happening i have a very strange transition here, but I want to make this transition because it's on my mind after seeing some tweets yesterday. So the New York Giants are going to put Eli Manning in their ring of honor. And every time Eli Manning's name comes up, it seems that half of the internet gets like angrily triggered about Eli Manning's career being celebrated. And I saw a tweet from a guy who I think got cut by the Vikings years ago about how Eli didn't win any playoff games outside of the two years that he won the Superbowl. And he's, and he said, just so happened to win the Superbowl,

which is like the Vikings just so happened to have not ever won a Superbowl. So sorry. Right. And, you know, Eli and his 12 playoff games is eight and eight and four in those games. But I, what I really thought was interesting is a couple of different sort of angles off of that. This is how we analyze quarterback play. And I got a great question from a listener when you and I had discussed EPA passing EPA and DVO way and different statistics that we use to evaluate passing. And I thought it was very interesting when I pulled up Eli Manning's prime and his best years, 2008 to 2012, he had kind of a pop-up season a little later on. Maybe it was 2015 that was decent, but it's really interesting because Eli threw a lot of interceptions

and took a lot of risks. But when I looked at the passing EPA for the New York giants during his prime when they won the super bowl in 2011, they were fourth. They were the fourth best passing game. They were regularly top 10 during his prime, but his quarterback rating doesn't really reflect this. And his adjusted yards per temp doesn't exactly reflect it because he threw interceptions. I think in part, because when they were down in games, he would just kind of go for it. But I wanted to just have a discussion about like quarterback stats and how we evaluate quarterbacks and especially coming off of what we talked about with Cameron De Silva about Jared Goff. And every time, every time Eli comes up, it's like, Oh, winning win loss record, winning in the playoffs, who cares or something. And I mean, I won't go on the rant again, but like they don't

build stadiums for quarterback rating. Okay. They build stadiums to raise actual banners and win actual championships. And Eli does not have to apologize to any freaking one of you for winning two championships and MVPs along the way. And if they put them in the hall of fame, then good because he, because you know how many guys have won two super bowls, like five. So anyway, that's, that's, that's how I always feel about it. But I just want to discuss like how like statistics are just so tricky with quarterbacks these days, because there's so many things to factor and the talent difference between the, the maybe fourth best guy and the 18th best guy might actually not be that much. And, um, Eli is kind of an odd test for like how much that's changed. Because when Eli is a top 10 quarterback for five or six years, there aren't that many good

quarterbacks. There's like 10 good quarterbacks in the league at most. And now I feel like there's 20 to 25 who can be good on any given year. So I don't know. I just said a bunch of things and you can react to them how you feel appropriate. Yeah, I know. I've had a lot of thoughts bounce around in my head as you've been speaking. So a couple of things just on Eli specifically, right? When you win a title fairly early in your career and the first Super Bowl that he won, I think was in his fifth season. So like kind of, you know, still on that like rookie deal zone that buys you so much equity. I mean, and it makes, it makes fans and front office members so much more tolerant, I think for the mistakes. And then, you know, two years later, he throws 25

interceptions, but you're not going to, you're not going to start contemplating cutting that guy loose. He won you a Superbow, and then he wins you another one. And by the way, the season 2011, where they won, six game-winning drives that year. And they were only a nine-win team. He basically dragged them to the playoffs on his back and then got them all the way to the top of the mountain against, you know, the dynasty of all dynasties. So his clutchness is like a gene that a lot of court, a lot of 500 quarterbacks do not have. Um, Eli knew how to beat good teams, even though his final record was one 17 and one 17. I mean, how, how crazy is that exactly 500 after a 16 year career that he would be exactly 500. But there's quite a bit of a weight in a lot of those wins.

Whereas, you know, look at another 500 quarterback locally. There's not a lot of weight in a lot of those wins. Those are against the Detroit Lions. Practically half of them, it seems like, right? So evaluating statistics, there's so much value in it because, you know, you break it down like, oh, this guy's a good play action passer. This guy is good under pressure. And sometimes I think those are more useful in a quarterback evaluation than touchdown to interception ratio necessarily. And there's value in that too. Like, I don't want to

see Jameis Winston interception totals, but I also, you know, kind of want to see like, are you able to throw under duress? Do you have like kind of a skillset with your intermediate and deep throws? That's why pro football focus has changed the ball game because they do take you that far. And I guess if Eli Manning had been in his prime, like in his mid-20s during the PFF era, how would we view him? I don't know. I don't know how he would have been graded. I guess you can go back and look at his stats in circa 2007, 8, 9,

if you want to. But I think quarterbacks like him probably wouldn't have been viewed as favorably if we had all the analytics like him probably wouldn't have been viewed as favorably if we had all the analytics um on him then that we have now what do you think hey everyone i want to tell you about our friends it's scout logistics and i really do mean it when i say friends they are fans of purple insider over at scout logistics and since they reached out wanting to support this show i want to tell you about what they do. Scout Logistics is just-in-time transportation for full tractor-trailer loads.

And if you're wondering what that means exactly, well, if you own or work for a company that needs shipping solutions, they are the preferred carrier of Fortune 500 companies across North America. And we have quite a few of those in Minnesota, right? They can ship perishable, non-perishable, FTL or LTL, and they have on-time delivery rate of over 99%. So if you're like them and you enjoy the show and you have shipping needs, check out scoutlogistics.com or call 855-217-2688 extension 232 to connect with them directly to find out how Scout Logistics can minimize risk and overperform and go the extra mile for your company. Well, I think that there's so far that you have to look beyond the box score stats to get the truth that with someone like Eli, when you pull it up and you just look at, okay, so he's got a career 84 quarterback rating, which is probably what, you know, Jake Browning might have if he started a season. Right. But that's different from playing in 2008. I went back and looked at 2008, the league average quarterback rating was 80. Now it's 93. I mean, that, that

is a gargantuan jump in passing offense over the last 15 years. And it feels like Eli was just in the league, but he really started his career in a totally different era of the NFL where running was more of King except for Peyton Manning and Dante Culpepper for a minute. But there were only a couple of quarterbacks who really dominated with the passing game. Even if you look at someone like Steve McNair's like pure statistics, you'd go, I don't know. Is that good? I, you know, because the era was so different and they were handing off every play to Eddie George. And I think that the other thing too, with Eli, you have to draw a line in the first and second halves of his career. First half of his career, 77 and 51 in terms of his win loss record. Like that's really good. And then

the second half of his career, he just falls off. He's just not any good anymore. And he just kept playing. And so like that really, it's almost like a musical artist who has a great peak, but then makes bad album after bad album after that. And you sort of go like, man, just like Eminem, for example, like Eminem's top music was highly acclaimed but after like his third or fourth album he's just garbage the whole rest of the way so if you just sort of let's say you you know you're 25 years old now you'd be like eminem is that guy good you know but you're like yeah well you should have seen back in the day i feel like there's some of that's eli manning but there's also even things that you have to look at around the edges. Eli Manning rarely got sacked. He had full seasons, many full seasons where he was sacked

fewer than 30 times. In fact, he was not sacked more than 30 until 2013 in his career. That's a huge deal. And that's where the EPA, that's where I like it. Expected points added compares how you perform versus the situation. And with Eli and his prime, he's always got good numbers of QBR and EPA. And I think that that says something about how he played that maybe the completion percentage isn't as high because he's pushing it down the field. Maybe the interceptions are a little high because he's pushing it down the field. But when that clicks, that's big as opposed to the Alex Smith sort of checkdowns and things like that, which are good and not turning it over is good. But it also may tell you a little bit about even a lot of those interceptions being downfield plays, which don't destroy your EPA all the time. That's where this thing gets so convoluted. And it's like, is Eli a Hall of

Famer? Okay. I'm going to need a long time to explain why I think he is, but it's fascinating that when you look at his QBRs, I mean, he's got years of 71, 67, 67. Like those are top numbers at that time. Now they would just be okay, but they were their top numbers at that time. So I think it's an interesting discussion and I think it's become extremely hard to look at a Kirk cousins or a dare car or whoever Baker Mayfield and say, well, this is their quarterback rating. So this means that they must be this good. And I just feel like there's a lot of these, you know, yards per game, touchdown interception ratio that have just become completely irrelevant when evaluating. So my favorite way to look at it is how did your passing game in an individual season perform versus other passing games in the NFL? I think

that tells you more about how effective your quarterback play was than anything else. Yeah. I like the way you're looking at it. And I think Eli kind of got burned a little bit by his longevity and the Giants loyalty, right? Like in his last hundred starts, he goes 40 and 60 and the Giants win more than seven games one time. Not a lot of franchises would have tolerance for that. And a lot of quarterbacks wouldn't be, you know, staying in the same place for that stretch, especially in their mid going on late thirties. And Eli did first nine years of his career, two Superbowls. And I think you gave the record, but he was real quick here, 78 and 57, you know, those first nine seasons. So i think that's a hall of fame worthy resume in itself and then i think the longevity even though it kind of kind of burned his like traditional

statistics by the end i think it also speaks to how he was viewed in those first nine years and then he played his entire career with one franchise i think that that helps his legacy actually more than it hurts it once we get you get a little further removed from the ugliness at the end of his career and getting benched and then getting unbenched and the coaching carousel that just wasn't good for him. It's so hard to measure clutchness. And Eli is like even harder to measure within that subset because he was so like the clutchest you can be in two years and not that clutch other years. You know, like he he was. Do you have do you have a modern day comp for him? Is he Matt Ryan like a little bit in sort of what he does in like the places where he fails most typically? I don't know if there's a great comp for him

i think that guys who are willing to take risks and push the ball down the field will have these stretches sort of like home run hitters in baseball will have these stretches where they're just unstoppable and things are just clicking think about like when uh ryan fitzpatrick started briefly for the Tampa Bay Bucs. Remember he was like leading the league in every category. He threw for like 400 yards, a couple of games in a row and six touchdowns or something nuts. And then sort of regression came for him. Well with Eli, I mean, he's much more talented than Jameis Winston or much more talented than Ryan Fitzpatrick. So a guy who had sort of the chops and didn't make a ton of huge mistakes,

like getting sacked or throwing horrible interceptions all the time. And then when it clicks of pushing it down the field, like think of his iconic throws, his two most iconic throws in the super bowl are what, what, you know, like throws that took so much guts to just throw it up there and make a play, but it clicked for him. And you get credit for that because you have to be willing to do that. And I think that's a very reasonable criticism of Kirk Cousins. And I wanted to tie this back into the win loss record,

because what I hear all the time on the internet from analytics people and so forth, and anybody knows that this is something I've studied for a long time. Everything that you look at has to be through the prism of winning as a franchise when it comes to a quarterback. So if you just told me to look at Kirk Cousins statistics from last year, just on the whole full season stats versus versus what actually happened, like what tells the story when we look, when we consider his wins or when we don't, I think it tells the story much better when we consider that the team started one and five and that it was largely on the back of the quarterback through that one and five start. Now, later on, it became the defense, but through that start, um, it was a lot on the back of the quarterback. And, and so I look at it and say, we have to decide why the question we're always answering is

why did you win or lose as a quarterback? And can you win as a quarterback? So we're always saying, can Jared Goff win as a quarterback? Can he get to a Super Bowl? The answer is yes, because he has. What did it take now is the next question. So can Kirk Cousins get to a Super Bowl? We don't know that.

There are certain things that would suggest that he can. There are certain things that would suggest that he can't. So then we're asking, well, what would it take then for him to get there? Right. So with Eli, well, what would it take for him to win a Super Bowl? Well, we've seen it two different times. And look, man, this guy in the playoffs beat Matt Ryan, Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady. I mean, that's, that's where I always come back to you. You're going to make fun of that guy.

What let's, let's see it. Let's see anybody else do it because of all the people who have ever tried to play quarterback ever in the history of the universe. There's like five who have done that. And then to do it against Brady is crazy. Oh, the defense like, right. Yeah. Well, the Vikings have had good defenses how many rings right so give give the guy credit but that's how I think of it is you have to know has has the guy been winning and what will it take for him to win or what did it take for Jimmy Garoppolo or Jared Goff to get to a Super Bowl. That's how I use the winning angle of this. Yeah, that's people can't lose sight of that equation. If you look at Eli's numbers in some of those later seasons,

traditional stats are actually quite good. Like in 2014 and 2015, he goes a 65-28 touchdown to interception, and they went 6-10 both years you know that and and that to me is kind of why I mentioned Matt Ryan because Matt Ryan is the classic big box score bad team um I think you have to to think about it and we like to talk about golf you know if you're playing an 18 hole round you and I within 18 holes we'll probably have a six hole stretch where we shoot you know couple over par like like close to par and then we'll have a six hole stretch where we shoot, you know, couple over par, like, like close to par. And then we'll have another six hole stretch where we double bogey, like five of the holes. And that's kind of Kirk Cousins. Like he just is not able to sustain it for the full 18

holes. That's how you win the U S open is you put it together day after day, after day, you can't have the ups and downs. And Eli Manning was able to put together kind of full seasons where he was, he was kind of locked in and Kirk Cousins hasn't done that yet. There are too many ups and downs. And wouldn't you rather it over the course of a 10 year career, if you've got a franchise quarterback, I think you'd rather have two or three stellar seasons where you know that a guy can perform for 16 games plus playoffs, rather than have the five-game brilliant stretch followed by the five-game slump that usually levels you out at nine and seven. And that's what the Vikings and Washington football teams have experienced with Kirk

the last seven years. And that's kind of separating him from, you know, being even remotely close to that Eli Manning conversation, even though record wise, they kind of are the same quarterback. There's another part of it too. And this is why it's so hard to figure out who's great at quarterback because we know Kirk so well, and we know Eli's career so well, because he's just been front and center in the NFL. Eli was not intimidated. He was not overwhelmed.

When the other team was better than his team, he had to win four playoff games twice to get a Super Bowl ring. He was never a guy who looked like it was just going too fast for him or the other defense was forcing him off his game or something. We've routinely seen that from Kirk Cousins and you can blame the left guard if you want. And there's certainly some blame that is required there, but then it happened in Washington too, when they had a good offensive line. And so there's a little bit of that too. There's, there's the statistical stuff, like not getting sacked. To me, that's a huge difference. Eli goes down the field, but doesn't get sacked which is

very impressive cousins does not take risks down the field and does get sacked so there's a very big difference there and you can rack up completion percentage when you throw shorter passes a lot um so there's there's that and when if you're about to get sacked if you never try to like throw it away but there's also the elements of, you know, cause this started out with the statistics, but the non-statistical stuff, you called it clutchness. There's a little bit of pushback from analytical people. Is it clutch or whatever? But I would say not ever going to Lambeau field in the playoffs as an underdog and not being overwhelmed there. I mean, that's, that's something that you can't replace. And to me, to me, to me deserves it's,

it's credit that's due. So winning handily, like not even needing to be clutch, just like winning really outright in that game. Right. And how many people have we seen look over at Tom Brady and just wilt? We saw the Seattle Seahawks do it. We saw the Atlanta Falcons do it. And how many hundreds of other teams have looked over at Tom Brady

and just fallen apart? And that wasn't him. So I just like to give him his credit when I can, but also comparing him to Kirk cousins is very interesting. Um, because there's also another part of it too, where Eli early in his career is great where Kirk early in his career doesn't even play. So they're very, very interesting to compare the two. Eli in his thirties is washed already. Kirk is in his thirties having his best years. So kind of an interesting comparison, but I thought, you know, Hey, like let's have this discussion because I see people wrongfully trashing Eli Manning again. And there are 12 teams in the NFL without a ring, not going to trash a guy with two who is the top player on the team. So anyway, well, this was fun, Sam. Um, and let's just finish by saying, thank goodness. Jalen Twyman's okay.

Yeah, seriously. Um, get well, Jalen.