Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Jim Harbaugh speaks, Brian Murphy reacts to the Vikings hiring Kevin O'Connell

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

Matthew Coller opens with a rant about bizarre reporting surrounding the Jim Harbaugh situation and Brian Murphy and Sam Ekstrom talk about what the next steps are for Kevin O'Connell after he takes over as the head coach and why being the opposite of Mike Zimmer is good for the Minnesota Vikings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Folks, before we get into the show, I wanted to tell you that you can save 15% at SodaStick.com by using the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at checkout. That's S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com for your Minnesota sports-inspired hats, hoodies, shirts. Use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER at SodaStick.com. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. It's a Friday roundtable because we're recording it on Friday. Usually we record it on Thursday and release it early Friday, but different schedule this week because we had all sorts of insane news. Matthew Collar, Sam Ekstrom, Brian Murphy is back on the show. What is up,

Brian? How are you? Special guest appearance cameo. Yes. Good to be here here can i just quickly rant and then you guys can react to the rant uh jim harbaugh gave his first comments to uh mitch album and we assume that these comments are actually true sorry that's a mitch album joke if you went to journalism school you get it otherwise that goes right over your head anyway tuesdays with maury was legit guys uh so yesterday i was doing the friday mailbag and half of the questions were conspiracy theories about why jim harbaugh was not the coach because on the internet a lot of people have made it their brand to throw things out there that must be the case if it didn't go their way or if they want to spin it toward the team being a calamity or if they want to spin it toward the team doing everything right um i'll give you an

example when stefan diggs was traded we had a bunch of oh the guy is a cancer he's a bad teammate all these things on the internet it wasn't true it was a conflict between Zimmer and Diggs over throwing the ball. That was the reality. With this, it's the Wilfs must have undermined Jim Harbaugh. That's what it is. It's, oh, how dare they not hire him? What a mistake that they've made to hire Kevin O'Connell instead. He's a winner. He's the guy that could have taken you to a championship.

They must have done something wrong. It's got to be this grand conspiracy against Jim Harbaugh. It isn't. They talked to Jim Harbaugh and they decided on another guy. That's what happened. And Jim Harbaugh talking to Mitch Albom said they weren't as enthusiastic about him as he was about them. And there you have it, folks. That's the whole story. And then, you know, we have John Eubankin bringing up some minority owner to make it sound like that. I wonder who told them. Probably people from Michigan. It also seemed like there was a concerted effort from the Michigan side of things of we're hearing this, that it sounds like Harbaugh's getting the job. I wonder where that could have come from. Maybe Jim Harbaugh. Anyway, so that's the, that's, that's it. That's all I got. I, you can, guys can react to that, but I, it's just wild to me that sometimes with

internet people that if something isn't going their way, or if there's an opportunity to create a bunch of stuff out there and get a bunch of attention for themselves that they use every chance to stir up people and get people upset when the reality is they decided on a better coaching candidate to me kevin o'connell is a better coaching candidate for this job than jim harbaugh so that's my deal did you fall asleep in 2010 and just wake up? You're discovering that Twitter is not a place of rational thought. You know, it just is exhausting though sometimes because it feels like you're having to go like log on to just put out fires of insanity sometimes.

Look, Jim Harbaugh was a guy you probably have to talk to if you're Kwezi Adafomensa. But I'm seeing things about how dare the Wilfs undermine Kwezi. Like, what? You're telling me that if Kwezi was interested in Harbaugh and the owners of the team who have to write checks for seven years to somebody who has spurned everybody in his past, and they're not okay with that, that this is some crazy thing, like that you're undermining your GM, like what? You're writing the checks.

Everyone has to be on the same page with hiring the head coach. That's just like a fact of every coaching hire ever. The ownership also didn't have to grant the second interview. You know, They could have nixed it from the beginning. They could have nixed it after the, quote unquote, exploratory interview. They didn't need to get this far down the road. And I'm with you, Collar. I don't think

it's that unrealistic or unbelievable that a coach with a personality that's probably not a real organizational fit would come in and not sweep them off their feet, that there might be some differences. And if it's Jim Harbaugh, who has a tendency to rock the boat, I mean, then if that's the case, then everything else has to be perfect. The plan that he has has to align with what you're looking at. The contract probably would have been a problem. It sounds like they didn't get too far down the road there, but he might have not been able to get exactly as much as he wanted. Everything else had to be perfect, I think, to make this work. And it sounds like that some of the differences that you would have anticipated with Jim Harbaugh persisted, and they didn't make

that move, and they land on Kevin O'Connell. So I'm with you, Matthew. I'm curious to see what Murph thinks about it as an extra voice here, because I think Matthew and I are kind of in lockstep here. A Michigan man, in fact, Brian. But not as good a Michigan man as Jim Harbaugh, apparently. I never went back. I came to Minnesota and stayed. I thought this was a Jim Harbaugh operation from a minute ago. I mean, he swung his the Vikings were going to discover anything different with a sit-down, in-person interview than they wouldn't have been able to discover via Zoom or via the initial contact. And what happened is it all happened in a vacuum where it just sort of created a life of its own. It's as if the Vikings, well, we got to bring him in now. There's all this momentum. What are we going to do? He's probably not our guy. We're not necessarily a fan of him, but he's expressed interest that he

wants to come back to the NFL. We're going to look awful if we don't entertain that interest, or we're probably going to get pounded for looking the other way, even though it was, I mean, it was almost the reverse of the Flores suit, or it was a sham interview. I think they had no intention of necessarily hiring him, but wanted to appear like they were looking at all of their options. And, you know, look, Harbaugh's record speaks for itself as far as a winning coach everywhere he's been. It's his personality, his management style, his interaction with players, bosses that really came into question,

which he deserved that scrutiny. I just could never figure out why you're pivoting away from Mike Zimmer and a fractured environment that he created by his stubbornness and his crustiness and just downright aloofness and meanness toward the end. And you want to replace that with, you know, somebody that's about eight years younger and a little bit the same. I assumed all along they were going to pivot to the young, innovative way, which they ended up doing along the way. But in typical Vikings fashion, I mean, they can make changing a light bulb a nuclear crisis. I mean, they are just incapable of making anything easy, even though they got the result they wanted.

Well, and this is a good point because, you know, on the NFL side, the Ian Rapoport's and the Adam Schefter's, they were never Harbaugh is happening. There is a video clip of Schefter talking about Harbaugh when the Vikings were flying out to interview Kevin O'Connell, where he's saying, well, look, it's sort of exploratory. This isn't really something that I think is going to happen and so forth. And then momentum all gained from the michigan side so your point brian that it was a hardball operation to try and stir up momentum and it certainly worked from the fan base but luckily i don't think the wilfs log on to twitter to make all their decisions uh i i think that if you pull back just a little bit here and think about the last day of the season as the team is getting booed off the field and

what you would have asked for and what you would have said what's what is the ideal GM and head coach type of person we wouldn't have necessarily known Koisi Adafo-Menta I only heard of him when his name popped up Kevin O'Connell would have been sort of on the radar. But what is your ideal type of pairing? What do you want it to be like? You'd be pretty much describing what they ended up with. Now, that doesn't guarantee you that they're going to go win a Super Bowl tomorrow, but like a younger GM who's big on analytics and understands the value of an NFL dollar and an offensive minded coach who's a former quarterback that will, at very least, no matter who's playing quarterback, probably get along with him

and whose team passes the ball all over the place. Stafford had the third most passing yards in the NFL this year, third in yards per passing attempt. They throw it to their number one receiver all the time, where this guy comes from. And I couldn't help but asking in the Friday mailbag, the written version of just like, you guys are watching your coordinator on the sideline of the Super Bowl

and are mad. Like, what more did you want from this? I mean, I don't mean to, like, go crazy here, but it's just like, isn't this everything that you guys were asking for? And you wave a little Harbaugh in front of your face and people lose their minds. Like, I just, I don't know. I think that they landed exactly where they set out to go. And so we shouldn't be that surprised that it ultimately ended up with

Kwezi Adafo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell. Yeah, 100%. I mean, the process was, from the get-go, going to include a net that was cast wide. The Wilves talked about this. The Wilves interviewed eight candidates before Kwesi Adafomensa got in. They said, Kwesi, do you want to interview some additional people? Kwesi said, yes, I have this connection, so let's follow it.

And they end up interviewing, what, 10, 11 people for the job? I mean, along the line, there are so many leaks that are going to come out. There are so many different voices trying to feed into this process that you're probably going to get misled along the way. People were thinking Lane Kiffin would be the next coach, like within days of Mike Zimmer being fired. And that never amounted to an inkling of anything, right? But that was the buzz for a few days. There are just a lot of people that want to control the narrative.

So with Harbaugh, and you know what? I'm not convinced that Harbaugh is truly a Michigan devotee forever either. Like, I still think that he might, you know, salivate at the prospect of being an NFL coach one day. He's really like kind of stamping his his, you know, flag here to say I'm never leaving again. But that's a pretty big statement to make. So, you know, once again, I think Michigan could end up disappointed down the road. But I don't think the Vikings are going to rue this decision. I don't think that, oh, like if Harbaugh goes and wins the Big Ten three years in a row,

should have hired Harbaugh. It doesn't work that way. It's totally different universes from NFL to college. And to be honest with you, nothing that Jim Harbaugh has done or will do in college is going to bolster his resume enough for me to say, made a mistake. I mean, there's a recruiting element. The NCAA is so absurd in the way it operates, and Michigan is a name brand, and you've got the transfer portal like that's just a different ballpark that that he's playing in um so I don't think I'm gonna

lose sleep over not having Harbaugh I don't think Vikings fans should either well you know it's convenient for Harbaugh to say I'm a Michigan man and this is where I always want to be when there's really nowhere else for him to go at this point so it's like I'm sorry I was hitting on the girl over on the side of the dance floor but you're really you're you're you're my girl you know the girl I brought is really my girl so I what I you know Harbaugh you know again for all of his NFL success it's also been eight or nine years since he's had that success. Actually, more than that, because his last year was pretty much a disaster. That doesn't guarantee success. You know, eight, nine years in the NFL might as well be 30, the way that the game is transforming,

particularly offenses. In San Francisco, how did he win? He won with a strong running game in Frank Gore, a very, very dominant defense. He unleashed Colin Kaepernick as much as he could, but that's how they won. That was their formula for success. That's what the Vikings and Mike Zimmer were sort of wedded to. And that's what I believe the organization is trying to pivot away from. I mean, how many times did Zimmer come, come out for a halftime interview and say, yeah,

yeah, yeah. I wish we ran the ball more. Yeah, but it's 2022. That's not what people want. And that's not how the game is trending. So are you really going to,

I mean, Harbaugh always seemed to be Mike Zimmer light to me, both in philosophy, in interaction. And it seemed like if you're going to make this dramatic of a change, especially with a young GM, you're also putting Quasey in an awful position of having somebody 18 years his junior with a thick resume who insisted he didn't want roster control.

But I don't know what the relationship was with those two guys in San Francisco. I don't get the impression Kwesi was in the stakeholder meetings making major decisions with Harbaugh, whereas now he's going to be telling Harbaugh what to do. I don't know if that dynamic was going to work. Now what you've got is you've got a 36-year-old head coach who sounds young and innovative, who can work well with quarterbacks, which by the way, that needs to be resolved. I don't know how Harbaugh was going to interact with Cousins. Maybe O'Connell can squeeze one more productive year out of Cousins and they can make a determination down the road on him. I don't know if Harbaugh was going to be able to acquiesce. And Harbaugh was coming in to win now. O'Connell's here for the long term to build

something. So it never made sense. And I just find it strange that the Vikings sort of allowed Harbaugh and his influence to, as they say, drive the narrative and control everything. When at the end of the day, you ended up exactly with who you wanted, both in the GM position and in the coaching position. Yeah, Matthew, as you say, Oh, by the way, this guy's coaching in the Superbowl. That's not a bad thing, right? That's not a bad thing at all. So, but to have crawled over broken glass and drag your abused fan base over that broken glass to get to that point just seemed like a lot of waste of energy. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that there's a reason why zero other teams have interviewed Jim Harbaugh for positions because you end up with the same sort of thing. I don't blame anybody who's a Vikings fan who got excited about the idea of

bringing in a coach who had taken a team to the Super Bowl years ago and who has a big name and is one a lot and would be a very enthusiastic what does he say an enthusiast enthusiasm unknown to mankind or whatever he says i mean look the guy would have been a lightning rod and for us it would have been entertaining um but i think when you eventually land on the offensive coordinator on one of the best offenses, who's in the super bowl, it's not like you hired the Jaguars towel boy here. Like this is what I wrote about from the very beginning of the coaching search was beware of red flags, like hires who knows, right?

They're like draft picks where sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes your hire makes a ton of sense on the day you did it. It doesn't work out. And sometimes we're a little confused by a hire like Zach Taylor, by the way, never heard of the guy couldn't have picked him out of a lineup. Now he's the Bengals head coach in the Superbowl. Weird how it seems to matter who the quarterback is.

But, you know, sometimes there's a hire like that where you go, that's weird. Who's this guy? And he ends up being good. I imagine a lot of red flags, they end up coming to fruition. That actually happens with draft picks as well, that it's really more about the pitfalls

than it is the highlight reel. And I think we've seen that with Matt Rule. I think we saw that with Urban Meyer. So what you've hired is somebody that doesn't have those red flags and is, again, like you said, in the Superbowl, which is just kind of mind blowing to me, like I'm taking crazy pills here where people are saying, did they blow this? Did they, I think Murph,

you actually make a really good point that the fan base and what they've been through in recent years. And then just like historically recent years for younger fans historically for everybody else um i think there's a disposition that this team has messed it up because they could mess up a two-car parade to quote our friend patrick royce so i think that's kind of it but let me just pivot to a different conversation sam expectations for for Kevin O'Connell right away are another thing that I think where you would deviate from Jim Harbaugh. If you hire Jim Harbaugh, your expectations right away are you have to go take this team to the NFC championship because that's what you're here for

with Kevin O'Connell. I think you can have a season that the results are sort of like last year and you feel completely differently about it based on what you have as a roster who you're getting a look at what type of football you're trying to play that instead of feeling like this drag through 17 weeks as it did last season it could feel like wow we are learning a lot more about this team and its future. Say if they were to play rookies or things like that. I was just thinking about this last night about how you could easily go eight, nine and have this thing just feel completely different coming out of 2022. Yeah, no doubt. You know, here's a little stat nugget for folks to chew on. 24 of the 32 coaches in the NFL were hired for the first time ever in 2017 or later. So three quarters of the league's coaches are brand new. Kevin O'Connell among them. So the retread is out. Everybody's going fresh. Everybody's going new. And it's, you know what? It's working out for a lot of those 24 teams

less people are nervous that they passed on the veteran, the experienced guy and Vikings fans don't have a whole lot of experience either with sort of the fresh young head coach. It was like, ah, well, Childress spent time with Andy Reid, Leslie Frazier. He's a football guy. He played for the 85 Bears. Mike Zimmer, he's been around the block. This is a new feeling for people. But I think that Kevin O'Connell can show his sort of maturity as a head coach and Kwesi Adafomense can show his maturity as a GM if they take the long approach here. If there are two young guys coming in thinking they can win right away, I think they're full of it. If Kevin O'Connell thinks he has the keys that are going to unlock the Cousins treasure, I think he's full of it. So if that is something that is prioritized because of the one year that they spent together in Washington as a QB coach and quarterback

relationship, I think that's a little bit naive. So I would be so heartened and encouraged to see that they're looking long-term, that they have a realistic plan to build this thing for 2023 or 2024. And if they can, you're right, be a competitive team in the sense that last year's team was, but do it with sustainable pieces and not a bevy of one-year contracts and actually have 23 and 24-year-olds to build around in the future, knowing they have cap space opening up soon. That's sort of the sustainable model to build this thing. And, you know, I don't think it's unrealistic for them to turn to the Wilfs and say, I know you want to win. Just be patient for one year. And in 2023, we can try to hit this thing.

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You know, selling a rebuild or a quasi rebuild or a quasi rebuild. Oh, wow. Sorry. It doesn't, that's not what people want to hear and they never do, but I think it's the hard truth. And I don't think it would be refreshing to see them be as transparent as possible in selling that. Look, you got a season ticket base. You got a rabid fan base here. They're not going to abandon the team if the front office says, look, we may not be in the playoffs next year. They're not going to say that. But if the

guiding wisdom is, see what we're doing, judge us on how we're performing in building something, as opposed to scratching and clawing to a 9-8 finish that'll inevitably not end well anyway. So if they can frame that in the right way, I think people are willing, Matthew, as you said, to maybe buy into that and be a little more impressed with how they're winning eight games, as opposed to how agonizingly they are losing nine or 10, as what this past season was. I think there's, I think there's a window for them to have a little bit of grace and to be able to do that. But there's always going to be the, what if Harbaugh? And if, you know, look,

Harbaugh may go seven and five next year at Michigan and be an afterthought, but if he does win another big 10 title, or if he does win a Big Ten title and gets into the college football playoff again, there's going to be a certain segment as, well, great, we got a 7-10 team. We lost our quarterback. Cousins is gone and it's over.

We're rebuilding. And look what Harbaugh could have been doing here. I don't think that's a fair assessment, but it's going to hang over O'Connell for the rest of this calendar year because of that. But that's not what the focus should be. The focus should be they are pivoting philosophically, age-wise, administratively. It's a new way of thinking, and the fans should be excited about that as opposed to wondering what if. But again, this is a fan base that has

been so scarred and so burned by off-field, on-field tragedies in some ways that they're conditioned to expect the worst. So I'm not surprised by the reaction. It just seemed like a self-inflicted, not a wound, but a self-inflicted headache that the Vikings didn't need to create for themselves if they would have just ignored Harbaugh. I also think that there was a thing floating out in the Viking verse about them being close last year. If only this, if only that, that sort of thing. They had a negative point differential. The two teams that are in the Super Bowl are above plus 80, and these were four seeds that needed some crazy things to happen to get there. They needed Patrick Mahomes to fall apart in the second half of the game, which

usually never happens. They needed the Rams to come back from down 10 points. Normally, Super Bowl teams are at least plus 100, and the Vikings were a minus point differential, which to me is the easiest way to describe how far away they really were for last year, that some of the games were close. Sure, I mean, that's going to happen with every season. Maybe an inordinate amount of the games were close, but that doesn't mean that you were just unlucky and you were right around the corner. The other thing is that you don't get to take the team and copy and paste it to the next year and then just add to it. There's a salary cap, there's free agents, there's people who are leaving, there's things you have to deal with. And I want to know your

opinion on this Murph is how many people should they jettison here in now that they have this route that is much more clear to us the Harbaugh route was well what are they going to restructure everybody's contract and try to sign every free agent is that what they're going to do for Harbaugh but I think we know now I'd be shocked if they said okay Kevin O'Connell we're going to restructure everybody and we're going to do what you did with the rams because you're not close to being where the rams are roster wise um but i also think that if you just send everybody out that's not good either like having a rookie coach with no veteran players to guide the locker room is a big problem i but so there's this push and pull of like you have these contract situations with Hunter,

with Harrison Smith, with Delvin Cook, with Adam Thielen, with Eric Hendricks even, whose name has kind of been brought up, of like, who needs to stay for Kevin O'Connell to be able to do his job? Well, I think if you jettison Eric Hendricks, who came out with the, we shouldn't be operating in a fear-based organization, that doesn't look good. I mean, I think he's a guy that is clearly a locker room leader and you need him to probably trumpet. I think O'Connell needs Kendricks probably more than Kendricks needs O'Connell right now. All of that is valid, and the defense in particular needs to be both retooled,

restructured, refinanced, as it were. But all of that is just merely conversation compared to the quarterback position. You know, I've been using that triangle of reckoning phrase since September. Zimmer, Spielman, now it's Cousins. What are they going to do with Cousins? Yes, it sounds like Cousins and O'Connell got along great in Washington. Well, Cousins gets along with everybody. I mean, he's polarizing, but I don't think Cousins has bad relationships with people. He's just kind of a, I'm great. Just talk to me. I'm a fun guy. I'm a nice guy. I got along great with Kevin. I don't know what influence O'Connell is necessarily going to have with him. It may be a fresh set of eyes and a fresh set of expectations. And it may not make

philosophical sense to keep cousins. It may make more financial sense. But at the end of the day, the question that has to be asked is, are you going to be better without him for one more year? Or are you going to be decent enough with him to play out the contract and retool next year? Because as we know, the quarterback class is weak in the draft. If you want to work something in the trade market, there is that. There's going to be no shortage probably of suitors for Cousins because of his numbers, especially for a team that may feel like they're one quarterback away from making a run. That's what it's going to come down to. Would Cousins be willing to restructure? Would Quasey be able to convince him to do that will o'connell

convince him that hey give yourself another shot here we think i think i can work with you those that once that decision has been made then all the other ones i think will fall into place both philosophically as far as what they want to do next year or how they want to compete and certainly financially with how they want to retool where they have to retool, especially on defense. Yeah, Cousins is the domino and the only domino that matters. Now, I think that if you're looking at the other contracts in a vacuum, I think you ask yourself a couple of questions. I mean, number one, can they be productive when this team is ready to win again?

Someone like Michael Pierce, who has two years left on his deal, he's superfluous with Dalvin Tomlinson. He's probably a very cuttable veteran. Is he that impactful on winning football games? No. Someone like Adam Thielen, though. Can he still be productive in two, three years? I think so. I think his game translates well. You might want to adjust

that contract and take a little bit of advantage of his Minnesota roots and say, don't you want to retire a Viking, Adam? But I think that of those onerous contracts, a lot of them are for players that probably do still have a little bit in the tank. Obviously, Daniil Hunter is the best of them and probably has the largest amount of good years remaining. Harrison Smith's game has never been about agility and athleticism or speed. It's more about intelligence. And for that reason, he can probably be a factor two, three years down the road. But again, the contracts are a little crappy, but if you do pivot from Kirk Cousins to the rookie quarterback, then you can

absorb some crappy contracts. That's just the way that football works. And I think you also have to ask yourself, do we have someone that's worth replacing them with someone worth grooming like you would not cut Harrison Smith for who exactly like who who exists right now that would be his replacement that you would believe in Josh Metellus no I don't think so I don't think that so unless you draft someone in the first round who's willing to put the pressure on him, you probably don't need to make those moves early when you have nobody else to that could use those valuable reps. So for that reason, I tend to think that the 2022 veterans for the most part stick around and I would maybe leave room for one or two cuts. But otherwise, I generally think most of them have a role that can exist once the team is ready

to win again i think the x factor there is would someone trade for these fellas i mean would someone trade for harrison smith for or or adam phelan think about broken julio jones got a second round pick back uh if someone offers you a second round pick for Adam Thielen, that's a little hard to turn down because you're trying, like you said, you're not trying to project just to next year. You're trying to really project two years out. And that puts Adam Thielen almost in his mid-30s at that point. Now, I think that his game translates to being able to play into your mid-30s,

but that's a lot to ask of any NFL player. And two of the last three years, Thielen has been banged up and he has one of the highest cap numbers in the league for wide receivers, 17 million next year. Now they can, you know, mess with that a little bit, but I also don't think you want to mess with these things like they did in the past. I think that what you want to do is balance your books, that that should be really important to them. Harrison Smith is the same feeling for me is like, look, Harrison Smith is an unbelievable player. I mean, he's been really, really good for this franchise and all pro. Is he going to be an all pro two years from now? So if somebody that's win now comes in and says Kansas city might lose Tyron Matthew. Okay. they come in and say, man, we have been playing Dan Sorensen.

He's been bleeding points for us. We could really use this guy. We'll give you a second-round draft pick. A little hard to say no at this point because you're trying to project two years down the road, plus it helps you balance the books. I mean, that's where I think that I'm not sure, and maybe the Harbaugh thing is evidence of this, I'm not sure that a lot of Vikings fans have prepared themselves to be without some of the players that they've grown to really love.

But if you're Kwezi Adafo-Mensa, there's a lot of ways to justify that. And the way would be draft a safety or sign another safety, cheaper, younger, to a three-year contract or something, where the guy's going to be around for a couple seasons, learn whoever's defense, and go forward. I'm not sure that Vikings fans have prepared themselves for this idea that you might have to take a roundabout way to really aim for 2023 as your Super Bowl type of season. But I actually think it speaks to how quick you can rebuild in the NFL NFL that maybe it's one year of a detour and then back up. Philadelphia had one year detour and then we're in the playoffs this year. But with what you said, Murph, you're right that everything else just seems like who cares compared to what they do at quarterback.

And I don't have any feeling about Kevin O'Connell and what he would think of Kirk Cousins. I only know what Kirk Cousins contract is and how impossible his deal has made it for them to build around him. Usually if you have a quarterback contract that expensive, it needs to be Aaron Rodgers. And even Russell Wilson's contract has gotten in the way in Seattle when they didn't have very good draft luck. But here's a question for you, Murph. If they waived another quarterback on the trade market in front of your face, are you

interested? Or in your mind, is it only you have to trade cousins and draft someone? No, I don't think so. I mean, I think there's definitely a serviceable stopgap out there that you might have some success with because if the draft is, it's probably not going to be this year unless you find a gem later in the rounds. If you're trying to maybe find something next year, I don't know what the 2023 draft class looks like for quarterbacks compared to this year. I just know that I've read this year's is particularly weak. So if you're looking for just a holdover for the position, Cousins might make sense because you want to maybe try to get value for what you're paying him. It may be prohibitive to trade him. Maybe you may not get what you want in return. And again, at the end of the day, he does put up numbers. I mean, we've debated this ad nauseum. We know he's not an ideal leader.

We know he's not a proven winner, but he can sling the ball in the right circumstances and make plays and get you downfield. If you're just buying time for a year, it might not be the worst thing to hang on to. And the question is, what would you be able to get better in return? And is that return aimed for 2022 or 2023? Is it also, are you willing to give Cousins a chance? Again, Cousins isn't going to change who he is. He's baked in as a product. But a new, younger, fresh, innovative head coach may certainly empower him and trust him to do some different things when Zimmer clearly

did not. I don't know what you're going to wring out of him in 2022. At the very least, you can justify it by saying, well, he's going to play out his contract. We're going to move on from that and rebuild from there. Yes, I think you can bring in a stopgap established quarterback to maybe play the same role that Cousins would in his lame duck year and maybe not suffer anymore because of it. It'll look bad if Cousins goes somewhere else and wins, but I don't think we believe that's going to happen. So it is a conundrum, and we need to hear from, I mean, Kwesi wasn't going to address that much on day one, and I don't think O'Connell will either because he's probably still going to be hung over from a Super Bowl parade.

So I don't think he's going to be willing to go down the Cousins rabbit hole too deep. But I think it'll play out pretty quickly, and I think if they can find some measurable way to get production out of Cousins without just, you know, further eroding trust in the locker room while also trying to package this as a quasi-rebuild, I mean, there's just a lot of moving parts with that. But again, it all pivots with Cousins and what they believe they can get out of him for one more year so so what you're saying is is that feb 14 day after super bowl kevin o'connell sends cousins of valentine's card and says it's not me it's it's you and jettison's

him how long you've been waiting to use that come on yeah you got it written down on an index card in front of you ah you got me no i'm kidding no. No, I want to pivot and just ask Murph a question before we're done here, because I want his take on it. And it's a little bit, it's a subject change, but I'm curious your perspective. What is Mike Zimmer doing right now? What is his plan? What is he thinking as the arrows get slung?

Rick Spielman is on the PR path, trying to prop himself up for a GM or executive job. I haven't seen Mike Zimmer's name surface at all from a credible source to be anybody's defensive coordinator. So what's he doing? When's he going to come out of hiding? If I were him, I wouldn't care. I, I, I'd probably take a year off, come in as a consultant. If he even wants to bother lick his wounds, reassess, you know, he's 65. He's got a pile of cash. He's got a bunch of, he's got grandkids and he's got a nice ranch and he's got a hot girlfriend who's also going out and slinging arrows for him. I don't think he needs to make a decision right now.

You know, if I were him, I would let this settle down, take a deep breath, reassess. What are my priorities here for the next five years? Do I want to stay in the NFL? It didn't work out for me. I don't know if he's one for a lot of self-reflection. He could use some to understand why it went pear-shaped here in Minnesota. I have no doubt that he could be a defensive coordinator anywhere if he raised his hand. I think he's probably taking a break this season. I think he may want to be a little bit like Parcells and just kind of sit in the back and take phone calls from younger people and try to advise and then maybe reassess. I'm not sure he's got a future as a head coach. If he does, he's going to have a lot to answer for.

And he's going to have and I don't see him falling on his sword and being that self-reflective. Maybe a year off will do that for him. But he's a good defensive football coach. He's certainly a good defensive backs coach. He can find a job in the NFL if he wants it. But I would say what he's doing right now is I hope he's unplugged as much as he can be. I hope he takes a deep breath. I hope he enjoys some downtime. And I hope he has some time for some serious self-reflection because I think it would be

productive for him if he does want to reenter the atmosphere at some point. You know, I think that the final weeks of Mike Zimmer pretty much ruined any chance he had of getting another head coaching job. There were people who said, I think he knows that too. I don't think he cares yeah probably not probably not either there were people who said the teams would line up to hire mike zimmer if

he was fired by the vikings and that has not happened at all not that i expected it to teams are much more aware of how the public views them now and if you hire mike zimmer a guy who would just walk up to the podium and pull out gasoline and light a match i mean far too often and i mean really embarrass your franchise on many occasions i respected mike as a football coach i did not respect some of the things that he said and did uh publicly like most specifically that comes to mind is the Bashad Breeland stuff. Like, Mike, people are watching this. You can't walk up to the podium and say it's okay that your player told the fan base to suck it.

Like, that's just not a thing you could do as a professional front door to a billion dollar franchise. Probably if the Vikings sold today, they'd go for two and a half billion. Like you're acting like this is a high school football team. dollar franchise probably if the vikings sold today they'd go for two and a half billion like you're acting like this is a high school football team um there were way too many times he did that and the thing is people find out people know right around the league and i'm sure and what it sounds like is that spielman is willing to tell anybody who asks um what was going on there especially when it comes to getting along with the quarterback? Do you want to hire him for him to come out from the woodwork now?

And yeah, that's and these are this is what you have. This is what you had, folks. This is what you had. And Rick Spielman, somebody who wouldn't answer for anything that went wrong with his roster, including hiding away for months. And then when we finally get a chance to ask him about Jeff Gladney, he says, I already answered that, which was a complete lie. Like that's what you had.

And then, Hey, it wasn't there. Rick was afraid to talk to the media because he ran out and did a bunch of media interviews the day after he was fired, trying to get his next job. That's, that's the type of person you had there. So anyway, I guess it just, it's like you're triumvirate. Your Kirk cousin still has not spoken. We are on day 24 or 25. He's at the Pro Bowl with Justin Jefferson.

He did Instagram about that. I'm sure he'll get a sideline interview during the game where he says, well, if Kevin O'Connell is indeed our coach, I'm excited. I know Kevin pretty well. And that'll be all that gets said. But think of the leadership that you had. You had Zimmer burning things down. you have Spielman hiding away you have Kirk Cousins who can't so much as release a tweet about his coach GM being fired them hiring a new general manager

talk about you you to me you can't keep Kirk Cousins like you you just cannot keep this person as the leader of your franchise if you if you want to have a new feeling with the organization, you cannot keep a guy who has no belief whatsoever in the locker room and takes no accountability or responsibility for anything. You just can't have that. It's about much more than can he throw passes? Like if you go back and look at Marcus Mariota, there's a year where they rank 14th in scoring. There's a year where Mariota ranks 12th by PFF. Take that, take that because at least people will like the guy in the, in route to a nine and eight season, at least he'll dive for a first down or something, right? Like just show some toughness, show some leadership.

At least you'll get some of that. I know that that's not really the route we were taking, and that's kind of random. But to not say anything publicly tells you where he stands on this franchise. I don't think Kirk Cousins gives a hoot who he plays for. I don't think he ever has. It was the highest contract, end of story. And that's how he ended up here. So anyway, because I get this question all the time.

Would Kirk Cousins take less to stay to build? No. The answer is no. If this isn't obvious by now, the answer is no. The guy held Washington's feet to the fire and they lost their receivers and then went seven and nine in 2017. So anyway, here's where I want to end with this. Murph, you have covered many a coach in your day. Kevin O'Connell is going to be doing this for the first time. I would like you to give

Kevin O'Connell some advice as a new head coach, as he gets ready to take off. Wow. That's a, that's a great platform. I would say, be honest, be transparent, be respectable. If you can get two of those things down, that would be fine. You know, I would say be authentic, be who you are, establish relationships, but also embrace and acknowledge and be responsible for the fact that you are the franchise steward on a day-to-day basis. You know, you are maybe, maybe, maybe quasi appears more than Spielman does to talk, but I mean, traditionally the NFL, the head coach is, especially during the season, the face of the franchise. And if you can be a respectable steward for that franchise and be as transparent as you can be in explaining how you're, you are building this team in your image that's going to go a long way.

The crusty old war horse routine was fine for a couple of years with Zimmer when they were winning. At the end of the day, he was just an old crank that nobody wanted to deal with anymore. And that that's a big deal. And again, as you mentioned with the Breland stuff, the way he treated members of the media, I know no fans don't care if, if reporters are, are, are, you know, figuratively slapped around, but it's like, that's not the point. You are service. This is a public trust. An NFL team is a private ownership group, but it's a public trust. So much so that taxpayers shoveled hundreds of millions of dollars to help build your palace downtown and also your practice facility out in Eagan.

You know, show a little grace, show a little respect for that. But be yourself. I mean, don't try to be somebody else. Don't try to emulate this image or that image. You got here because of your merits. Have the confidence and security to be that way publicly. And, you know, if you don't want to answer a question, fine. But don't make it seem like, how dare you ask me something like that. That's the vibe I think that Zimmer put out the last few years is I don't want to bother with this. I just want to go and cut up film and and and lead men to victory. That's not what a head coach in the NFL can do in 2022. You're a public steward. Embrace that and be cognizant of that responsibility. Yeah, I've been told too that O'Connell is very

much the anti-Zimmer in like every social sense, which I think a lot of people will enjoy seeing maybe a coach who's a little more comfortable at the podium because this is how myopic things got with Zimmer toward the end. I mean, number one, the guy didn't know what day of the week it was all the time. He would, he'd be talking on Tuesday. He'd be like, is it, when did we play? Who did we play last week? Who'd we play two weeks ago? Like he had trouble remembering what happened because he was so locked into that day. He claimed that he didn't look at stats until Thanksgiving. You know, if that's true, that's alarming because you have to have a bigger view on your team. And I felt like, oh, we're losing.

I have to get up at 4.30 a.m. now. I have to work harder and grind myself into dust and tire myself out. That's not healthy for your interactions, for the way that you're being a steward of the organization. And Mike Zimmer kind of always was like a nose to the grindstone, almost like a defensive coordinator's heart. And he never, I don't think, ever quite adopted the head coach like, I need to oversee all of this.

Like, this is my kingdom. But he was still very focused on what's the thing I'm doing now in the present instead of like looking back at the past, looking forward to the future and bringing it all together. I think Kevin O'Connell probably have a little healthier view, at least from my perception on what that looks like. You know, and never mind how snippy he was with the media, because that never plays. And that's fine. I mean, and nevermind how snippy he was with the media because that never plays. And that's fine. I mean,

I I'm not there every day anymore, but we have a thick skin or we better have a thick skin. That's part of the job, but his indifference to the fan base and how he alienated the locker room. That's what matters. Those things count. If you want 53 guys to go out there and turn their brains into mush 17 weeks a year,

and you can't even give them the time of day in the building because you're a grumpy old man, then you don't belong being an NFL head coach. So it's about more than getting my guys to play the way I want to play them. No, you're getting paid a lot of money. You're the public face of an organization. It's about more than that. I was going to say, and you guys reminded me of the time Zimmer came up to the podium and started reading stats that weren't that good. It was like, we're 14th of defense.

You're like, it's 14th. Good. Do they put that on the Lombardi? You know, just like these stats aren't that good, Mike, maybe that has this kind of backfired on you,

but anyway, and some of them were inaccurate. I think not Not the point. With Kevin O'Connell, it's trust people. Mike Zimmer didn't trust anyone. Not that he should or would trust the people who were covering the team, but he had such a distrust for people covering the team that he was defensive about every question, even when it was generic stuff. Even if it was like, like you

said, Sam, hey, Mike, is today Monday? Why should I tell you? And to be like, okay. And then he would be so defensive that he would just give out a bunch of information that he wasn't supposed to give out. It would be like, you idiots are so stupid about Kyle Slaughter. I'm going to tell you how much he stinks. And we were like, okay, well, I guess I'll write that. But like, why did you have to dunk on the guy in public? He's your fourth quarterback. You know, things like that happened all the time where he would be so defensive that what the result was, is he gave up way too much information about his players that irritated the heck out of them. But you have to trust your players in. If Stefan Diggs wants to

talk to you about the offense, you need to talk with Stefan Diggs about the offense. This is not 1991. You play I coach this. That's not how anything works. And this is where I think there's some confidence in O'Connell because McVay has a very close relationship with Andrew Whitworth, connects with his veteran players. And McVay told us in 2017 that the first thing he did when he got to the Rams, when they hired or when they signed Whitworth was, he said, you're, you're my coach in the locker room. You, you tell me what I should be doing because you've been around and you know, like that's a, that's a trust of a veteran player.

And the same thing goes for trust your coordinators. Look, Clint Kubiak is probably better at his job than mike zimmer let him be and like i'm not saying that clint kubiak was necessarily qualified and wasn't in over his head but you have to just let kubiak call the game and that that's that's what you have to do with kevin o'connell you have to trust your defensive coordinator you have to trust your offensive coordinator and if you don't then fire him and hire someone you trust you have to trust your gm you have to trust your quarterback. I wouldn't trust Kirk Cousins either, but that's not the point. Like, here it is.

It's just like a marriage to being a head coach to a team. It's like, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Sometimes being right all the time. That was Zimmer's thing. He could not get over that he was right. I was right about Teddy. I was right about Kirkirk i was right about we didn't draft enough linebackers or or whatever it was always like just making it clear to

everyone spielman was wrong i was right kirk was wrong i was right the vaccination stuff like he was practically grinning when kirk cousins went out even though that ruined their playoff chances it was like he was like that's right nailed it i I'm like this too, but it's actually our job to be that way. Not, not the head coach. So, uh, you know, I think that's another thing too, is you don't always have to be right to be a good leader. Um, I think that's, that's important for Kevin O'Connell to know and having more social awareness than Mike Zimmer, which everyone does, I think will help him a lot. And being a former player will help him a lot too. Murph, was I Murphy-ish on this show of like the orneriness?

I feel like I was a little ornery today. Hey, my orneriness is A, part of my brand, I guess, but B, usually has a point to it. You had a point to things being ornery for the sake of being ornery is not fun. Being ornery when you have something to say is, is valuable. I'm glad we could do this. And, uh, I, I will, I will try to move on from the Harbaugh conspiracies. I've gotten a couple of emails from people that have made me feel better this morning of just like, yeah, I don't know why people are so upset about having a guy coaching in the Super Bowl. I mean, just get out your binoculars when you're watching TV, look for your coach

in the Super Bowl. And don't judge this hiring if the Rams lose 35 to 10. Oh no, you should. No, you should. Yeah. No, actually you definitely should. If the minute Stafford gets whirled around and throws a crazy interception, be like, I don't want O'Connell. I'm out. Should have hired Raheem Morris. Murph, great to get together with you again. I'm going to force you to write something eventually here about. Yeah. After the dog and pony show, when they finally bring O'Connell to town, I'll weigh in.

Exactly. And good stuff, Sam, as always. And we appreciate everybody listening here. And there will be plenty more speculation and conversation and less orneriness, maybe, as we go forward. And we'll talk to you all later.