Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Justin Jefferson breaking the bank (part 2)

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

The second half of Matthew's conversation with Vikings fans about Justin Jefferson's Radio Row comments and much more, including Bo Nix talk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Purple Insider is presented by PrizePix. Go to prizepix.com and use the code PURPLE for a first deposit match up to $100. prizepix.com, code PURPLE. billy possibly tired of me railing on the justin jefferson thing he says why does jayden daniels get a pass for having one good year but it's a knock on bo nicks yeah that's an interesting discussion i mean i think I think, well, with Jaden Daniels, it really has to do with his tools. He has such an easy, easy arm strength throw. Like, I don't put that weirdly, but he just has such easy arm strength, like flick of the wrist, explosive throwing the football velocity wise. And you see that from someone like CJ Stroud. It's obviously not as polished maybe with Jaden Daniels, but it's, it's unique that someone can

create that much velocity without any sort of real windup. And that's special. And the other part of it too, is that he can run, I would guess in the four, three, four, four range, which are very few quarterbacks who have ever been able to do that. And you can see Lamar Jackson like running ability from him. Very, very special. The ability to dodge tacklers, the pure speed, the explosiveness that is like a running back. He would be a top running back prospect with his speed. That stuff is different from Bo Nix skill set wise.

I think he's also a little bigger than Bo Nix as well. So Nix is, I think, a really good athlete, but more like a 4'6 athlete, not a 4'4", right? And I think that Bo Nix has a good arm, but he doesn't have that incredible arm power that a Jaden Daniels does. And I mean, you're right though. He has taken Daniels time to progress much like it did Lamar Jackson, but the athleticism level, Nick's is good.

Nick's is, and he's up there. It's like a seven out of 10, eight out of 10 athletes, very good athlete. Daniels is like a 10 out of 10. And I, and being a raw player that finally brought it all together

i will say though about bo nicks i don't knock him for having great stats i i always ask what was he supposed to do better than complete almost 80 of his passes to throw 48 touchdowns or whatever like what was he supposed to do better than that um so i i like i like bo nicks because of that uh but i think daniels is a next level prospect because of the raw tools and that's how you end up like college stats just don't i think mean a ton to the evaluation and we've seen that from josh allen and we've seen that from anthony richardson that if you are in their category of the arm strength size speed all those things and you look like he's not quite speed, all those things, and you look like, he's not quite like a Cam Newton, but if you look like a bigger Lamar Jackson or something,

then you're going to get more attention than someone who has closer to average build and a little above average speed. If you're, it's like, this could be the best athlete in the league for a long time, or one of the best athletes in the league at the position. That's just something that teams are willing to take higher in the draft. But I won't criticize Bo Nix for playing great football. Definitely not. Scotty says, getting all this draft capital isn't guaranteed to work out for teams in recent history.

Lions were the only success if I can remember. 2012 Rams. Wow, that's a long time ago. Whiffed with their hall what did they give up yeah i don't remember the 2012 rams trade was that sam bradford what did i don't remember what they traded for at that time i guess maybe it would have been uh that's going back like a really long time the raiders did whiff with khalil mac uh i agree with that that definitely people acted like the raiders robbed Khalil Mack.

Actually, no, that's that's a great example, Scotty. I just I was trying to recall like what that trade was for the Rams. But that is a great point that I'm sorry, I'm just blanking on that. What that you'll have to remind me in the comments. But with Khalil Mack, that trading away Khalil Mack was looked at initially like, wow, great job Raiders. You got all this draft capital, but they got Khalil Mack and had Mitch Trubisky been even okay, then that team would have had a great chance to go to a Super Bowl. And in fact, Mitch Trubisky is another shining example of how you don't even have to draft a

perfect quarterback. Like if you draft a good quarterback, and he wasn't even good, but he was good that year, and they miss a field goal in the playoffs against Philadelphia, if they make it, they've got a decent chance to make a real playoff run with somebody who was a bust quarterback. They still put together a really good team, in part because they could trade for Khalil Mack with where they were. So I really think that that's a good example with Khalil Mack of,

yeah, you think I'll trade away Jefferson and you'll get all this draft pick stuff. But if you don't hit on those picks, then, I mean, if you hit on them and got Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Larry Allen, then maybe you'd be in good shape. But what's the likelihood of doing that? And here's the other thing, too. Whoever is trading with you is not trading you for the for Justin Jefferson if they're terrible. They're doing it if they feel like he's a final piece to go win a Super Bowl. So they're not going to give you the number one overall pick. They're probably giving you the 25th overall pick, which does not have the greatest odds of getting you a superstar anyway. And then you just chase

your tail forever and we never have good football. So that's, I just, yeah, it's been driving me a little bit crazy, but I knew that was going to come up today quite a bit when he was on Radio Row. John says, if the Vikings drop Cousins and push JJ's money forward, the cap from Cousins will move to JJ. I'm not sure exactly what you mean. There's a pretty big difference between the numbers of salary cap for quarterbacks going forward as they're expensive and what Justin Jefferson's going to be. And I don't see any issue with working around jefferson's contract especially since the way you can shape that to your potential timeline meaning that you will still have opportunities within his early part of his contract if they do it in an ideal way and that could get it could be

problematic i mean if they want to do five years which they probably do if they want to do five years for him we've seen them work out contracts to extend windows before they did this with all those guys who were drafted in 2015, that they had to sign to all huge contracts at once. And it wasn't until 2020 that that became problematic for them. So there's always options and things you can do for a player like that to kind of mold it around what you have. So, you know, I think that it won't be an issue to build around Jefferson, but you have to hit on draft picks. You have to find good free agents.

You have to find other elements of this team around him. And you're going to have to be savvy with when these players get expensive and how you shape those contracts as well. But I look at it as being quite a bit different from a quarterback contract that just takes up so much of that cap space. And then if you have him, you know, if you had cousins and Jefferson, uh, at the same time, that would be, I would, that'd be pretty tricky. So, uh, Jason says crazy report came out today with Washington taking Harrison Jr. and trading second to the Bears for Justin Fields. Oh, okay.

So let me follow this. I love hypothetical drafts or trades at the draft. So we're talking about Washington taking Harrison Jr. Oh, a second rounder. Okay, I see. Sorry, I initially read that as number two. So they take a receiver rather than Drake May and then trade for Justin Fields. I would hate that for Washington.

I mean, they could do it because until further notice, just like we did with the Lions, further notice you are washington and i know daniel snyder is out but that doesn't mean that the new people are geniuses and the way that they handled this ben johnson thing they basically threw a hissy fit after he turned them down i made me like a little bit skeptical on the new ownership of washington that it might take some time for them to figure things out uh but as far as them taking someone else other than Drake May at number two, then everyone should celebrate. I think Harrison is going to be a really good player,

but without a great quarterback. I mean, if it's Justin Fields, would you like to play in the same conference as Justin Fields again? Sure, it's been fine. Hasn't been a problem. I don't think he's getting way better. I think he'll be a good quarterback as in you could potentially have one pop-up year where things go right for Justin Fields and he could win 10 or 11 games or it could go bad for him and he wins seven. And that's just who Justin Fields is going to be for his career.

And when that year comes, because I think he is gifted enough to have that year that everything goes right for him, then everyone is going to say, well, the bears, you know, they gave him up and he turned out to be great and everything else. But I think that over the longterm, he's going to be much more of a middling quarterback kind of at best. And with a really good wide receiver, it could help. He also had a really good wide receiver this year if Marvin Harrison Jr. becomes uh DJ Moore then that's a really good outcome and what did that do did he throw what did he throw 3,000 yards or something like that's yeah if you're in the NFC East you're totally fine with that the thing that you wouldn't want was them to draft uh Drake May Daniel says manifesting a 2015 type draft. I never heard this word before,

the manifesting. Apparently it's been around longer and I just don't exist in spaces where it's used because Josh Metellus was talking about this when he signed his contract. A very good contract, by the way, very savvy of the Vikings to sign him before he had his huge breakout year. And I saw Josh Metellus was co-hosting on NFL Network this morning. He's one of those people that probably irritates everybody around him because he's good at so many things. He's just a really, really, really sharp guy. And I'm not surprised that he could play all those positions and that things have succeeded for him. But when he signed his contract, he said, I had been manifesting this for a while. And maybe this is just me living in a football hole. Cause I was like manifesting, like, what does that mean? And then he explained it, you know, he explained it

meant like, I still don't really totally get it, but he would write down everything that he wanted and then think about it and try to make it happen. I guess that's what it is. So think hard about the 2015 draft because that's what the Vikings need so badly right now. They really do. They really need a draft that's going to propel them because they just haven't had that recently.

I mean, they've gotten a few players out of these two drafts, but missing on those guys at the top of 2022 has set them back. Now you're looking at trying to fill those spots in different ways, and that's not going to be easy to do. It might take a couple years of drafting to do, unless you get a 2015 draft. Preston says,

Would Vikings be in a better position if Spielman would have stayed and hired KOC instead of a new GM? No, I don't think so. I mean, the thing about where they stand right now is I think that they have put themselves in exactly the position that they envisioned when Kweisi Adafomensa and Kevin O'Connell were hired. Like it. So they come in and they're asked to win right away and they go out and they get Z'Darrius Smith and they bring back Patrick Peterson and those guys play really well. And they have a very good offense under Kevin O'Connell. They win 13 games and whether it was,

you know, fueled by things that wouldn't be repeatable over a hundred games, doesn't matter. You know, they had 13 wins. They put themselves in a home playoff game, which was the goal from the ownership when they got hired. Okay. Now, if they had tried to run it back and they had 13 wins. They put themselves in a home playoff game, which was the goal from the ownership when they got hired. Okay. Now, if they had tried to run it back and they had brought back Thielen, Cook, Kendricks, all those guys, and then gone seven and 10, I would be apoplectic, right? Not that that would ever happen to me, but I would.

If that's what they had done, I'd be saying that they have no idea what they're doing, but instead they did not extend cousins. They put us in a position here to be having this conversation about what to do at quarterback. They saw the writing on the wall with an older running back and projected what that would become. And Delvin cook was a complete non-factor for the New York jets for this entire year. Right And Thielen played pretty well, but he wasn't better than Jordan Addison. And Kendricks played okay in Los Angeles, but he wasn't better than Jordan Hicks or Ivan Pace, who they turned the ball over to. Halfway through the season, I kind of liked where the secondary was headed with Makai

Blackman. I think Byron Murphy Jr. is a good player. Better to do that than to bring back Patrick Peterson and waste everybody's time there. So they made the right moves last offseason. They took some shots. Some of them worked. Some of them didn't. They had a draft pick that worked out really well,

another one that's worked out okay, and other players who I think could be promising, like Jay Ward, might eventually have a role on this team, or Jaqueline Roy could have a role on this team, maybe, eventually. And so if it's following along with a plan a role on this team uh or uh Jaqueline Roy could have a role on this team maybe eventually and so if it's following along with a plan that was hatched from the beginning then I am okay with that I think if it was Rick Spielman you would have been talking about bringing all those guys back again and I don't think the results of this season are any different because if Kirk pops his

Achilles that's the big risk of bringing everybody back with a 36-year-old quarterback is if he pops his Achilles, then we screwed our cap for the next three years. How long has it taken for Kweisi Adafomensa already to get the cap into a good position for 2025? That is because of all the deals that were signed before that pushed money down the road, and they were dealing with those contracts and dead cap hits until just recently. So, no, I don't think it would have been better to have Rick Spielman and KOC together because it still would have been that all in mentality. And I don't think that they would have. I think they would have bent to Kirk Cousins and signed him to whatever extension he wanted and brought everybody back and tried to do it again and then still failed.

So, you know, I mean, I just I think that they're in a good spot right now. But this is where this is where we find the fork in the road. And this is where we decide if this organization is in the right spot. This is where we decide whether Kweisi Adafo-Mensah can run this team or not. I have defended a lot of things along the way because I've been willing to be patient. I'll defend the 2022 draft only to say drafts are pretty random. And had it worked out, we'd feel great about their secondary, but it didn't. But that happens. First draft, they've picked 16 players, maybe total. Like, that's not very much.ick spielman drafted like

70 over over a five or six year period so give giving it time same with the justin jefferson thing i'm not saying that you guys are 100 wrong for sure that they've blown it that might happen but i'm willing to wait i'm willing to see how this plays out with justin jefferson i'm willing to wait. I'm willing to see how this plays out with Justin Jefferson. I'm willing to see how this off season plays out, how it plays out at the quarterback position and which direction this team is ultimately taken. And I'm willing to see what they do in free agency in the draft to get them on a path where they can build around a rookie quarterback. Or if they bring back cousins that I'm really going to have to see some

stuff, but I'll, I'll see it. I'm going to say on the day, if they resign cousins that I don't like it and I don't think it's right, but I'll, I'll see how it works. I'll see what they're going to do before we decide. And then when we get to that moment, we'll all know. And I think that what we love to do in sports is we like to call it. So then we can go back and go, see, I called it.

So I'll give you an example. Cause do this too i do this too uh how about like i tweeted on the day patrick mahomes was drafted patrick mahomes will be the best quarterback in this draft class and i've retweeted myself a few times so we all do this now i've had other quarterbacks that i like that did not work out but i got that one so we like to do this. So we like to declare like, Hey, they don't know what they're doing. And there's a lot of history of them not knowing what they're doing. But from the big picture perspective so far, they haven't done anything that to me would say they don't know what they're doing. And that includes Justin Jefferson and not getting an extension done with him last offseason i think it was disappointing because that should have been on the list of things that need to happen is just like get that done but it doesn't make me think oh my gosh you're so screwed

uh because there's still time to negotiate that deal just like now i don't think that they're screwed they have a lot of work to do and i want to see how they're going to do it. And then we'll decide if they're screwed. Evan says, is there a PFF rating for impact on rush against certain line positions? Say left tackle so people can stop presuming that it's not important. No, left tackle is important. Yeah, left tackle is very important. Sorry, I just looked up and realized how long

we've been going i need a need a little diet dr pepper here um yeah so there is uh pff does have a stat where you can look where the pressure came from from each quarterback or each team so how often the left tackle left guard and so forth. But as far as like which pressure is more dangerous, I remember PFF tried to do something like this with left and right tackle many years ago and found that left tackle, like pressures that came off of the quarterback's backside did cause more strip sacks,

which so the EPA was a little bit different and then the right tackle, but it wasn't so wildly different that you should only pay left tackles and not right tackles. And that was one of the things that we've actually seen over the years is right. Tackles salaries start to increase. And plus guys like Nick Bosa and Aiden Hutchinson, they line up over that side and they still eat people alive.

But yeah, I mean, left tackle is important. All everything on the offensive line is important. I think when it comes to an offensive line, it's really, it's about having, I think elite tackles. If you want to have the best offensive line, because that's where the edge rushers are.

That's where the scariest people are. And then not having any blatantly weak links in the middle, which the Vikingsikings have had over and over and over because teams are very good at attacking those weak links and if there's something that like kansas city might do well against san francisco it might be run sim pressures where four people come at the offensive line but you don't know which four are coming brian florist did this all the time and their offensive line's not perfect and they and they might give up some pressures that way um preston we can do better than this randy moss zero super bowls calvin johnson zero super bowls top wide receivers

money better spent on multiple positions okay let's uh let's throw out my homes because that's my homes that's the greatest quarterback and uh. And Kelvin Johnson played a while ago now. And let's kind of work our way back. Philadelphia was in the Super Bowl. And they had A.J. Brown. San Francisco is in the Super Bowl. And they have two elite wide receivers. The Los Angeles Rams, I believe their wide receiver,

won offensive player of the year when he was in the Super Bowl. The opposing team that they played had Jamar Chase, who was fourth overall draft pick. Our recent history is leaning pretty heavily into wide receivers dominating and playing a huge role on offense. Again, Stephon Diggs goes to the Buffalo Bills. They win four straight divisions and Josh Allen, look at Josh Allen stats before Diggs. And then after they got Diggs and this year, I think Diggs was not as good as he was in the past, but he was a top five wide receiver for several years. I mean, wide receivers, a big deal. Tom Brady goes to the Superbowl in his older age and has Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, two great wide receivers.

It's a big deal. And here's what you should really look at is the expected points added through the pass. And San Francisco's number one. Most of the time, the teams that are reaching the Super Bowl are elite passing offenses, which are, of course, helped by elite wide receivers. So that's that's become, in my mind, the second most valuable position in the league and throwing out one great receiver, Kelvin Johnson, who was playing for the worst organization in sports. And Randy Moss was in the Super Bowl.

I mean, Randy Moss is one, what, Eli Manning throwaway, right, from winning the Super Bowl? That's a, I mean mean Randy Moss shows up how about a Gary Anderson kick Randy Moss shows up to the Vikings in 1998 takes them from a team in 2000 or in 1997 that had made the playoffs and had to win on a weird onside kick thing in the first round and then got eliminated and took them to the greatest offense ever at the time. Wide receivers have always been really important. I can go back anytime through history. You want to talk about Lynn Swan being a big deal? John Stallworth, you think those guys helped? They've always been big. That was like a Terrell Owens, Randy Moss. These guys haven't won the Super Bowl, whatever. Like wide receiver Super Bowl win seems to be a bit of a stretch.

But Terrell Owens was in the Super Bowl for Philadelphia and constantly in the mix when he was with all of his teams. And he was a disaster personality wise. Receivers have always been there. Hey, did Jerry Rice win anything? I don't know. The best receiver ever. Did he win any? John says there will be good QBs in the second round.

They won't be able to start right away, but you can sit them until they are ready to go here's my issue with that john is look up the second round quarterbacks jalen hurts worked out and then no one uh go back back back back and then you find derrick carr and jimmy garoppolo and jimmy g went to a super bowl so you could say that one worked out, but second and third round quarterbacks in your mind, it makes a lot of sense to draft them and develop them. But in practice, it doesn't, it doesn't. Folks, if you've been listening to the show, then you know how much fun we have been having with prize picks this year. Just go to prizepicks.com slash purple. Use the code purple for a first deposit match up to $100. And let me tell you how it works. If you haven't heard

us talk about it enough yet, or you haven't tried it yet, very simple. There are yardage totals on prize picks. You either pick more or less and boom. Each week has been a roller coaster ride of fun. And the best part is that when I have a bad week, I didn't lose much. It doesn't cost much to play. You can turn $10 into $250 very easily. And if things go sideways for you, you're not out a whole heck of a lot of money. That is prizepicks.com slash purple. Just more or less

on yardage totals. And you are in prizepix.com slash purple, the code purple for a first deposit match up to $100. Oh yes. Yeah. I went, I went semi-viral over the last couple of days. I, I wasn't on Twitter a lot cause I was busy in Vegas, but yes, my book went mildly getting aggregated and then people got really weird about it. Bob says, Quacey said he uses PFF. Why would people think that's lazy? Everyone uses PFF. That's correct. Yeah. And hopefully it sold some books for me because I wrote 75,000 words on how it's used and where it came from. And then aggregators pulled one quote and then people lost their minds over it. And I think they even misquoted what he said, which was even funnier. Or they hacked up the quote. They're bad.

Like aggregators are just bad. Follow real reporters, for God's sake. I mean, geez, all those people are trying to do is get as much attention as possible and stir stuff up in any way possible. And the reason they never link to their sources is so you can't click it and read the actual article and see that they were spinning it to get themselves more retweets. So don't bother with those people on social media. They're just looking for attention because they don't actually know how to put in any work to do any real reporting. So anyway, Kweisi D'Affomensa, when he was with San Francisco, the team in the Super Bowl, worked with John Lynch, the GM whose team is in the Super

Bowl. And one of the ways that he contributed in their front office, you know, to the team that's in the Super Bowl, the way he contributed was by using PFF's college data. And he studied that data and would give them reports. And that's where the analytics exists in the NFL world is the coaching side of it is different. But from the management side of it, it's a seat at the table. It's a voice in the room of here's what we're seeing in the numbers. That doesn't mean that anyone, especially not John Lynch, like a Hall of Fame former player, is just going like, oh, numbers. Okay. Same with like, I don't think Casey just goes numbers. Okay. Then we do number like that. That's how it works. When you're the GM, you're

running an entire organization, which means lots of voices in the room, lots of seats at the table, and you're trying to make the best decision you can based on all the information. Why would anyone throw out mounds of information? And yes, PFF works with all 32 teams. Every single coaching staff for every single game plan is using PFF data, every single one. And front offices, it probably varies for how much weight they're putting into analytics. But when you look at Seth Walder from ESPN tweets out sometimes who works in analytics for teams, and the list is just growing and growing and growing. There's a lot of people that are being hired to study the data that they're getting, whether it's PFF data, because now we have an increased sample size, which means we can study historical things and figure out what matters. So which PFF grades

tell you the most? And Eric Eager has started to do stuff like this as a data scientist when he was at PFF, but that's what Kweisi Adafomensa was doing. He was trying to look and see which one of these numbers do matter and which things do correlate to success. Why would you not want that? Why would you not want that? And if anybody thinks that he's just looking at great,

no, he told me exactly in the book, for our interview in the book, how he uses the grades as a tool to study, to learn from what their data says and try to make correlations between that and success, what their grades are, what their different data is for certain types of players. And also as a comparative tool, if your coaching staff is way different than a PFF number, that doesn't mean you fire your coach. That means you go all right well

let's let's look at this and try to figure out what is happening here right if if tj clemmings is grading super low by pff but his offensive line coach loves him then there's got to be something going on here like what is it that is causing that differential? Again, why would you not want to do that? Because PFF is an unbiased group who's doing their grading versus maybe your coach drafted that player and they're trying not to be hard on them or they're harder on their veterans or what, you know what I mean? Like all these, all these things can bias anybody's grade. So they're doing it all the same. So why not look at that?

And you know, the strengths and weaknesses of how they do it when it comes to the analytic side of things. This doesn't make a good GM, by the way, it might not like long-term. It might not. I really don't know. Um, but when it comes to the analytic side of things, you would much rather have someone understand how all this stuff works and try to get an edge as opposed to somebody like Dave Gettleman who made fun of it and then got fired a couple of years later because he didn't know what he was doing. So Dave Gettleman was once a good GM in Carolina. It helped that he drafted what? Oh yeah. An MVP quarterback. That's right. That's why that's how you become a genius. So anyway, you know, a lot of these things,

a lot of these things are small margins. You're looking for small edges, but then you draft eight players out of 250. You get to pick eight. Maybe you pick the wrong eight, even if you do it right. I don't know. That's why all of it's hard to evaluate. But why would anyone not want their general manager to understand where all sports have gone? All sports, every single sport is being deeply influenced by numbers. And this data is not going

away. So you want to be better at using it than the next guy. You want to understand it better than the next guy. You want to understand where to throw it out. And San Francisco is extremely good at this. It's a good example. San Francisco threw out the numbers on Christian McCaffrey. They said, you know what? We don't care that it's a bad idea analytically to trade a first round pick for a running back. We don't care. We need this guy. We need him now. And it worked out and that's okay. Like sometimes you're going to go against it because of the circumstance, but knowing when to do that and knowing how it all works, that's pretty important. So anybody who was taking that quote from quacey to trash him for being

knowledgeable about how to use the best data that's out there that seems pretty silly to me we're gonna have to work harder for these criticisms are you gonna do that's what i think i think some of the criticisms have been so silly uh but that doesn't mean that like i think it's all gonna work out i just think that one specifically is pretty wild uh let's see um sorry i've fallen behind now on the uh on the comments so i'm i'm scrolling here um michael says why are some teams always relevant and some teams are always bad well there's 32 teams so there's going to be some of everything uh but the thing about the nfl is though that's maybe kind of true for like the jets or the jaguar has been pretty bad arizona pretty bad but for the most part teams are always rising and falling and that is sort of this whole discussion about cousins and about jefferson and how you do this uh like how you build for certain

windows right i think i think that is really the game is finding when you're going to peak and if you have lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, there's no such thing as windows. You just try to win every single year and some year your roster will fall apart. But then the next year you go all in again, there's five teams that are all in all the time. There's probably several teams whose owners or management is super inept and they don't have any idea what to do. There's probably a couple of teams that are completely clueless and then everybody else is rising and falling. This is why go back and look at last year's standings.

Then look at this year's standings. Then look at two years ago's standings. They're always changing. In 2022, one of the reasons they ran it back was because the division was garbage. By 2024, the division is great. That's how this sport works careers

don't last very long the salary cap exists you're always kind of rising and falling and so if you can be the team that it picks out the right time to go all in or the right time to dial it back which i think the vikings did last offseason they were the right pick the right time to dial it back, which I think the Vikings did last offseason. They picked the right time to dial it back and move on from older players. That's where the biggest edge outside of quarterback is probably in the entire sport. Guns Donovan says, so where does a quarterback like Cousins fall analytically? That's a good question. It's probably one I could spend a lot of time on because there's a lot of different numbers that you could look at, whether it's his PFF

grade or QBR by ESPN, which actually don't usually match up for him, interestingly. So QBR is a stat that takes into account game situation. So when you throw for 300 yards, if you were ahead the whole game or you were neck and neck and you were just having to match your opponent by throwing and throwing and throwing and then you come out 38 35 but you're going to get a good score by espn's qbr but if you were down 28 7 and then you threw for 300 yards qbr is going to be like ah not really counting those and we know that that's been some of the case for kirk cousins so that one has always kind of dinged him, but PFF has always liked Cousins because he's accurate throwing the football and they grade the throw. So it's every

throw. And if a lot of the throws are a very high accuracy quality, he's going to grade very high where I think that some numbers get a little bit missed with Cousins is we don't think too much about running or scrambling. And I remember this crazy stat from last year that Daniel Jones had more first downs, not last year, but you know, 2022 more first downs than Delvin cooked it. Like those first down scrambles and runs like they matter. Sacks matter. Strip sacks matter. I think Kirk Cousins is one of the most strip sacked quarterbacks in the NFL. All those things play into it.

Three and outs matter toward your quarterback. How often your team produces points. So when we look at Cousins and the accumulation of his analytics, they come out actually with exactly what you think. You probably think that cousins is a very good quarterback who is not in the upper echelon by the numbers, by what you see. And a lot of times analytics and your eye tests do match up. And in this case, that's what I would say for, or for, um, Kirk cousins. Uh, Daniel says I already bought a Jefferson Jersey. So by that standard, he isn't allowed to be traded.

Look, if you trade Justin Jefferson, you know what it's going to be. It's just going to be one of those things where he goes to another team that wins a Super Bowl immediately. I mean, that's just going to be the worst thing that you're ever going to do. Tyler, what is my annoyance level at the moment? No, I'm never annoyed to, uh, break these things down and go through these things like step-by-step analytically. Uh, like let's talk about the argument forward against, but where I do get tweaked a little bit, I think is when the arguments seem like they're just with the intent of kind of riling people up rather than you actually believe

it that that's where i'm like okay we got to come up with better counter arguments because i like topics that have the the layers to them and the levels where you can make this argument or you can make that argument and the argument for trading jefferson is just so it's just so weak or the arguments that he's greedy or something are so weak that i i just kind of have trouble with them sometimes uh lewis says you claim justin jefferson is worth baker mayfield and wins per pff that is clown show level analysis so the person who did that analysis actually worked in the analytics department for the detroit lions who went to the NFC Championship.

Just throwing that out there. Just so you know that. Just so you know that. Minus JJ in 2022, Cousins would have thrown the ball to someone else like he did in 2023 for two games. I mean, was it three games? Three games without Justin Jefferson that they survived?

I don't know. I don't know how many it was. Four? How many games did he play without Jefferson? Maybe they survived? I don't know. I don't know how many it was. Four? How many games did he play without Jefferson? Maybe four games? Look, when Justin Jefferson was the offensive player of the year in 2022, they won 13 games. How many games would they have won without him?

Five that season? I mean, we can't be – this is where you talk about my annoyance level. We can't be coming and starting to claim Justin Jefferson ain't worth it. That's my thing. We can't start saying, well, he's not that good. Like, oh, no, he's that good. He is that good. You should talk about how to build around with the other players

because that's the one you already have. That's what I'm saying. And shout out to Haley english former intern again who worked for the nfc championship lions their analytics department because she's very very smart and uh i think also did you watch the nick mullins games where justin jefferson nearly won them single-handedly look you're a way better football team with him than without him that's not even worth debating it's not even worth having a conversation about that. So, um, Matthew says, uh, did you see more people celebrating or broken from their Vegas experience after your time there? Yeah. Uh, last night I was going back to my room

and I got in my, uh, just in the hotel's elevator and I was in there with another guy and he said, uh, did you get lucky today? And since I don't gamble, which I know is weird to go to Vegas and have a good time without gambling, but I just, I just don't, I just can't stand to lose money. Now, if you guys tell all your friends to sign up for the newsletter and increase the channel and make me wildly rich and buy my book and all those things, then maybe I'll gamble away some of that money. But for now, I'm too much of a cheap person to do that. So I was like, I'm fine. I'm like, yeah, I had a good day. And the guy says, it broke me. And then he walked off of the elevator. And I was like, damn, that didn't inspire me to go down and start gambling. Honestly, tell you the truth. But there's some people in tough. What ends up happening in Vegas is after midnight,

you either have people who have completely lost everything and look disheveled and broken and are just going back to the bar time and time again, or you have people that are having the time of their life. And those are the only two types of people. Let's see. Extending. I assume you mean KOC would enhance the chance of taking a quarterback

this year and give jj enhanced comfortability in that regard uh david says um yeah i mean with uh kevin o'connell i mean i think that you want this group to have a chance that That's how I would put it is you don't want them to feel like they're on the hot seat. And if ownership is doing that, then that is bad. That's what I would say. You want them to feel like they are given enough time to see it through. And if that's the case, then you can potentially have success. I mean, I know that nobody wants to hear about the Packers, but I don't know that it's a total coincidence that the Packers don't have an owner that is impatient. They don't have an owner at all and that they've been able to take long-term approaches to certain things, to the wide receiver position,

which a lot of us criticized them and made fun of them for, or taking Jordan love when they should have maybe taken a receiver at that time and so forth, but they let it play out and they let a multi-year plan to let it play out and not just like all in, all in panic, fire a coach, whatever,

like they've stuck with coaches until they really use time to fire Mike McCarthy. But then, you know, Matt LaFleur, it's not like they had a bad half a season. And then there's talking about getting rid of him or something. Having a long-term approach is very, very valuable, I think, in the NFL. So if it takes an extension, I don't know. That's fine if that's the way they want to do it. But just to have them have job security enough to see this through. And if it fails, then you fire them.

Or if they panic and bring back Kirk and they don't win, then you fire them. That's okay. But if they want to draft a quarterback and build around them, then let's give them that time to be able to do that and see how that ends up playing out for at least another two seasons, unless it's going really terribly, which I don't think it will. At least another two seasons, if they're really terribly which i don't think it will at least another two seasons if they're going to take a long-term approach and then see where we're at but i mean how about like chicago even chicago halfway through the year ibraflux was a dead man walking we're talking about ryan poles who's going to be the next gm and then they make a

montez sweat trade everything starts to kind of go their way a little bit more. DJ Moore starts lighting it up, and now they look like a team of the future. So things can change, and there's always these rocky moments when you're having to take a step back with your roster. There's going to be difficult and rocky moments. So how do you manage through them? Well, definitely not by putting your coach in the hot seat. So if that's an extension that it takes, then that's fine. Then do that.

One Before I die says, do you think that Minnesota will gauge potential trade up market before making a firm decision on Kirk? Like say they know a hundred percent, the top three aren't getting traded. Could that make them lean into Kirk? Yeah, that's a really good question. That is really what the combine is for. I mean, I don't know where they stand on Kirk. I've a second for Justin Fields or something. So they're going to try to get intel and have meetings and conversations and everything else at the Combine to get a sense for maybe where the top of the draft does stand and if they can trade up. And you do kind of get this feeling a little bit, going back to what Ben Gessling said a while back, you kind of do get this feeling that maybe they want to trade up and that's like the answer for

them. And if there's a sense that they might be able to do that, then it could influence them moving away from Kirk or even what their offer would be, because that might be the most ideal thing in their mind. For i'm not entirely totally sure about that but i mean i think that you're right to say that they should gauge where all these things stand uh john says jim mcmahon and a great defense won a super bowl that is very true john uh is that an argument that the vikings should win with the 85 Bears defense? 1985, my man. The 2000 Ravens get farther and farther away, don't they?

There's three examples of teams that I can think of that won with their defense and only their defense. And by the way, no Jim McMahon slander, though. He was great. Jim McMahon was the perfect quarterback for the situation but if we're talking about like winning with defense as your main feature yeah there's like three teams winning with a great quarterback how many a lot winning with a great offense a lot almost everyone ever so that's that's where my focus usually is. But with this team, you need still a good defense to have a chance. And I mean, you look at San Francisco, you look at Philadelphia last year, it's usually offense and defense. Shockingly,

the model is to have everything. That's usually how it goes. So that's what you're looking. You're looking to build a complete team, even Kansas City. I mean, they have a very good defense and that matters. Like they have a complete team. It's probably the most complete team they've had minus the wide receiver position since Mahomes has been there. But as far as like their interior offensive line, we'll see about Joe Tooney. If he plays, they have a running game with Pacheco. Now he's getting on the same page with Travis Kelsey and some of their receivers. They have a really good secondary. They have at least one elite pass rusher.

They kind of got everything. And if you're going to play a 32-team league, you probably need just about everything. Spencer says manifesting is trying to bend the universe to your will. It's like praying to yourself as the master of the universe. Wow. That is intense. Does that work? I'm not mocking it. I just like, I, I've never, I've never really understood that, but I think that something like that, and I am not knowledgeable in stuff like this. I am a very,

all I do is football. I did, I did all those interviews at Radio Row. And then I was in a casino one o'clock in the morning with another talk host. And we were talking about the salary cap in football. Like, that's just all I do. So forgive me on stuff like manifesting, because I don't, I don't know, like, where these things come from or how they work. But if you yourself write down, I think it's been one of those things that people have said is a correlation to success, people who write down their goals. So you if you write down, I want to make it,

I want to make it as a safety in the NFL, if you're Josh Metellus, I think that there's a real driving force behind, right? Like you're making your goals very clear. So whether you think it's bending the universe, or just making your goals clear, and focusing on chasing them, it's probably a lot of the same thing. But like, don't quote me on anything regarding manifesting. But that's interesting that that's the concept. And I thank you for explaining to me. Let's see. Javier says, why do I feel like I'm being taken advantage of whenever I see Kirk doing interviews and talking about how much he looks forward to free agency?

Something about it feels like I'm a victim. I mean, if you're Kirk Cousins, what you're going to do is you're going to do interviews and you're going to talk about how good your Achilles feels and you're going to smile for the camera and you're going to say, Atlanta, come pay me. Or Vikings, you know what the dollars are, right? Because that's what you should do. You should do that. If you're Kirk Cousins, you should try to weigh it in any way possible. He's

not doing anything wrong by doing interviews or talking about his health or anything like that. He's not doing anything wrong by trying to put himself out there and, you know, let it let it be known to come get him and give him the best offer possible. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. So it does make me feel like he's excited about those conversations, though. That's the one thing that I have also kind of kept coming back to with cousins, where it's like, this man kind of wants people to call him. He wants to be wanted. And that was clear in his final press conference with us. And it's been clear in these interviews where he's been like, yeah,

well, I guess we'll see where it goes. This should be interesting. It's like, oh, okay. He's not saying nobody like don't lose my number. Falcons lose my number Steelers. He's not saying that. Michael says we still need defense of course that killed us the last three years tired of seeing us get run over all the time last year

was good midway but it fell apart well that yeah i mean that's that really connects to more of the point let not about jefferson for me that to me doesn't have anything to do with jefferson and much more about the quarterback because if you're going to have numerous really, really good players that will drive defensive success, doing it around a quarterback contract will be really tricky unless you hit on a bunch of draft picks. And that's hard to do. So that's where this all kind of drives back to is if you want to do that like have a much better defense i think that flores can weigh the odds better for you in the draft i think we already saw that with him

picking mckay blackman they just they didn't have a second round pick like there wasn't a lot of opportunities there but i think flores and his scouting background his development is going to be pretty good at you know finding these, developing these players for his defense so they can fill in those parts. But if we're talking about getting and acquiring really, really good talent, it either has to come at the very top of the draft, which they might have to spend on a quarterback or it's spending the money or spending in a trade, which usually is the money and so forth. So, uh, yeah, like this is what, this is why we talk about this with the quarterback where it's, it's really,

really, really difficult to have an expensive quarterback and build all those rest of the parts of the roster. I think you can have it for a year or two. If you already have those other pieces in place, but trying to grab them in free agency by signing Davenport or by signing, you know, Byron Murphy jr.

Like this, just not going to get it done. I'm going to work through these a little quicker now because it's been a long stream, but it's been a really fun one. Javier says, do you think you can give your two cents on my timeline question regarding New England and trading for three before free agency? Would love your two cents. As far as like before that we get to free agency, like making that trade up.

Yeah. I mean, I think that the timing probably they have to go to the combine and they have to figure out where everybody stands and what the opportunities are, what the price tag would be to potentially trade up what New England is doing. And I think Kevin O'Connell knows Gerard Mayo, like what they want as far as the quarterback position and try to figure that out and try to figure out what the price tag would be. And you can make that trade whenever you want. You could certainly make it before a free agency. Yeah. And I think your point is that if the decision has already been made on Kirk and he's left, then teams are going to jack up the price. But I don't know that that's really the case because trading up from 11 to three is always just going to be an insane price. It's kind of like the Jefferson thing where it's like this price can't really move. It's always going to be absolutely all the way through the roof. Preston says, I'm trying to make the point

where everyone argues that you can't win a Super Bowl if your quarterback makes more than a certain percentage of the cap, that it seems like they don't make the same argument when it comes to JJ. That's because the numbers aren't the same. I mean, they're just not. The AJ Brown contract is a great example, and it's the most expensive contract by fully guaranteed money, is that when you sign that deal,

you can have several years of it not being painful to you. It's impossible if the guy makes $45 million to have it not being painful to you. It's impossible if the guy makes $45 million to have it not be painful to you. And it's also not that you can't get to the Super Bowl with an expensive quarterback. There's an expensive quarterback in the Super Bowl. He's also the greatest quarterback of the generation. And we saw Aaron Rodgers win 13 games in MVP seasons, but it's not that you can never pay a quarterback. It's this quarterback. And when is it worked to pay him and try to build the entire roster around him? And that that's kind of the point. Yeah, I agree with it.

What, what, what would you expect JJ to say about cousins? Yeah. I mean, of course. Yeah. And he should, and he always should, he should always support his quarterback. Every player should let's see. The good enough angler says, what's the last receiver you remember that got paid as the highest paid receiver in the league and on the contract that ended up winning a Superbowl. So I just brought up AJ Brown. The Miami dolphins were really good this year with tyree kill was it like did that restrict them from winning look uh stefan diggs was right there like as one of the highest paid why look if we do stuff by just who won the super bowl and the rams

won the super bowl with cooper cup i don't know how what his cap hit was but they signed him to an extension didn't they so but it's not really the point like who won the super bowl is just not a way to evaluate stuff uh how like how good because the eagles are three points away like i guess doesn't count like it doesn't count well then nothing counts because the same quarterbacks have won all the super bowls but uh yeah i mean i i went through them i went through the receivers like having a receiver that uh can drive the success of your offense is really important and almost every team that's gone to the super bowl julio jones how much money was julio jones making when his quarterback won mvp and they went to the super bowl and we're up 28 to 3 i

don't know there's like a ton of examples of great wide receivers being a huge part of these offenses that went to the super bowl. But again, that's just not even like a good way to do it. We should look at like, how can you build the best possible offense? Let's see. I Odin says the PFF guys mentioned your book on today's live stream.

Well, I appreciate them doing that. I very much appreciate them doing that. I have to say that the support for the book and everything from all of you guys who listen and watch on YouTube and subscribe and, uh, the other media, uh, who brought me on their shows and talked about it, even people who were like, are not analytics people, but took their time to talk about it. Some of them had even read it before. It's just been, it's been, it's been amazing. It really has. I just, I have such a, I don't know what's the right word, like great appreciation for that. Um, feel indebted to all the people who helped me to do this. Um, you know, the editor who helped me put together the book,

like just, just like a success in anything in sports it just like takes and i'm not saying it's a success like i'm happy about it but uh it just takes a lot of people to make something happen and uh you know i really appreciate everybody who supported it so anyway well uh very very um interesting stream here tonight And I appreciate all you guys watching, playing along and we'll have a Superbowl stream tomorrow with me and Manny. And I hope that you guys will show up and play along with, we're going to do some trivia. We're going to have some fun. They're really going to talk about the game.

And if stuff comes up again, like today with Justin Jefferson, we'll definitely dive into that. We'll definitely take Vikings questions, but also try to have some fun with the Superbowl as well. So thanks so much, everybody for stopping by. Some of you were in the chat for the whole stream, which is amazing.

And I just can't thank you guys enough. So thank you so much. We'll see you tomorrow night, 8 o'clock Central, as always. And thanks, everybody. Football.