Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - JUSTIN JEFFERSON SIGNS $140 MILLION CONTRACT

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Finally Justin Jefferson has signed his contract extension making him the richest receiver in the NFL, let's talk about it live with Vikings reporter -- not rumor monger -- Matthew Coller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to the emergency podcast that all of you have been waiting for for a very long time. Justin Jefferson has his contract extension. is a four-year 140 million dollar extension with 110 million in total guarantees and the number that matters the most to justin jefferson 88.7 million dollars due at signing the fully guaranteed number that would be very important in these negotiations 88.7 is by far the most any wide receiver has ever made. And so is $140 million. I got out my little calculator, added that up and it came to $35 million per year for Justin Jefferson. So you have your wide receiver, your all-time great wide receiver through the first four years of his career, signed now to another four years. And we'll have to find out if that means starting next year or starting right away. I guess I would assume it means starting right away.

But if someone sees that information, let me know. But you have your gigantic extension for Justin Jefferson. Now he is locked up deep into the future. And if you do the math there, that should take Jefferson through the entire JJ McCarthy rookie contract, which is what makes this all possible. And yes, the reason that I am wearing the Oakleys is not because i ever bought oakley's but i had a sponsorship once they sent me these glasses and they look like the same that justin jefferson wears in the picture of him that adam schefter tweeted out uh but also this is to protect me from the snark that i am about to spew onto this podcast because it's going to be brighter than the sun.

I don't want to make it all about that because we need to dive into what this means, the contract, how they're going to work around it, what the structure might be, and what it means for Kweisi Adafomensa to have solidified this thing that has gone on for such a long time. But the only place that we can really begin is that there is a reason that over the last year, I have said to you, the loyal audience

that supports this show, be patient. This is going to happen. It will take some time. It's going to be pretty expensive. so those aren't the easiest contracts to work through and ignore the rumors ignore the trade proposals they always happen under every single negotiation i google searched all of them for the highest paid players and guess what every one of them came up with, should they trade for this player? Should they trade for that player? A bunch of trade proposals for Nick Bosa and so forth. And every time to a tee, the player ended up signing their long-term contract. So we stayed the course, folks.

We stayed the course that none of this was going to matter, that it was all just either clickbait or hearsay nonsense or just completely made up that Justin Jefferson would ever play for anyone else. And here's what we also know that has been pretty straightforward with Minnesota Vikings fans, which I think is a really good thing for the general manager, rather than than being like I don't know guys we'll see to actually say we plan to sign Justin Jefferson I don't want to be the GM without him he matters so much to this entire operation and to tell Vikings fans through the whole thing through this whole last year that they plan on signing him and then doing it.

They talked about the quarterback situation and how they were going to draft one. And they did. They talked about drawing a line in the sand with cousins and they did. All of these things, all of these things that they have said about the direction of the franchise and the importance of Justin Jefferson come to fruition today with a massive contract for the wide receiver who is in the middle of his prime and the Vikings have set up their salary cap for years with the plan to sign him, not trade him on draft day to the new England Patriots or for another wide receiver or whatever the rumor was, but instead sign Justin Jefferson. So this is a lesson to all of you to keep in mind as we go forward with the Minnesota Vikings that

A, they are going to kind of tell you what's going on behind the scenes that a lot of organizations, they try to say as little as possible when they get in front of the media. And instead, this one is pretty straightforward with you. So when they say something, believe them, they didn't want to trade Justin Jefferson. And I mean, imagine how many articles there were, how many rumors there were, how many people were saying oh man you know the the Arizona Cardinals should trade whatever number pick for them and that's the and everybody wasted their breath the entire time so I chose not to waste my breath and this is a good day for all of us because we did it together we battled our way through on a daily basis all the way together to get to this point

and didn't buy into rumor mongers or the idea that Kweisi would go some crazy full money ball and trade away Justin Jefferson. I think what he understands is that having Justin Jefferson as your centerpiece of your franchise is a winning model if you have a quarterback on a rookie contract. So in the future, it's just worth remembering that a lot of the stuff that happens on the internet is designed to rile people up. It's designed to bring attention to certain people, but it's not fact and it's not truth. And, uh, we saw it a lot through the draft season. We've seen it recently quite a bit with Justin Jefferson. And, uh, I think that more of the stuff these days,

where you can get paid for just tweets or, you know, where clicks are creating so much money and stuff for people, which, you know, look, I like people to watch me too, but I also like the truth better. So anyway, it just, it's a good day for that to just remember that not everything you see on the internet has truth, that there are not truth to all rumors when it comes to things like this. And that was proven again today with Justin Jefferson signing a $140 million contract with the Minnesota Vikings that works out to $35 million a deal. I'm sorry, $35 million a year for Justin Jefferson. And that puts him right in line with Nick Bosa,

which is the player comp that we had used when talking about this number for some time, which is Nick Bosa signed a contract last year that made him by far the highest paid non-quarterback in the NFL. And with Justin Jefferson, he was unique in not just being a wide receiver, but having put up numbers that no other wide receiver was even approaching over the first four years. And when I looked at some of the data about, and this was a chart from a Twitter account, Football Insight, that used

PFF data to show that Jefferson against man coverage and zone coverage was only in the ballpark of Julio Jones, that there was no other wide receiver outside Julio Jones since 2014 that was as successful against both coveragesages that most wide receivers, even if they were really good, were not in the same range as Justin Jefferson. So that puts him apart from other wide receivers, that this is not just someone who is good and who puts up fantasy numbers. This is someone who can be the center of an entire offense and drive that offense in the same way that we saw from Julio Jones and the Atlanta Falcons for a long time. And what would often come up, I mean, I guess what we can do through this is we can work our

way through as long as I'm wearing the sunglasses, all the things that I don't agree with that have been thrown out there about why the Vikings shouldn't sign Justin Jefferson as a way to break it down, because I am, I do have the snark glasses on at the moment. So we could start with, you know, well, look, this is a quarterback contract. So how are they going to be able to build around it? Number one, it's not a quarterback contract. And I'm sure that when we get the structure, you'll see that it's not. The number that you're really talking about here to work around is the fully guaranteed money, the $88 million. So what they have to do is that's got to be paid out, but the rest can be manipulated. And when you look at Nick Bosa's contract, what you see is that he doesn't have high cap hits until three years into the contract. So my expectation is

that Justin Jefferson is not going to have cap hits that go beyond 20 to 25 million until several years down the road, and then those will be restructured. And the last time I checked, if you want me to get snarky about it, the last time I checked, Netflix and Amazon and all the people who are buying NFL games are not going anywhere. I don't think Amazon is going to stop buying football, and I don't think the NFL is going to stop making more money, which means the salary cap is going to go up. So the Vikings will have likely three years before this Justin Jefferson contract becomes

bigger than say what Brian O'Neill's cap hit was. I didn't hear anybody asking, how are we going to afford Brian O'Neill? But he's got a pretty big cap hit as well. So that's one thing we'll have to wait for the complete structure. And maybe that's another emergency podcast to break down. But when over the cap.com has the year by year cap hits, we are going to see that this will be affordable for several years. And then they'll be able to either extend or restructure the same way that it is with TJ Hawkinson, where last year, as they were negotiating the deal with TJ Hawkinson, there was a lot of this guy shouldn't be the highest paid tight end in the league. And how are they going to afford them and everything? And then the terms of the

deal came out and he was the highest paid tight end. And I don't think he ever had a cap hit within the first four years that actually met what the average annual per year went to. So when will it actually get to 35 million or more is something to keep in mind. So is he affordable? Can they do it? Yes. It's not just because of the structure and how I expect them to work it out. But it's also because of what they've done in recent years. And this is why, you know, somebody asked me the other day, actually, Gabe Henderson, who works with the Vikings, I was on their Vikings podcast. And Gabe asked me, he said, you know, why is your coverage felt like it's been pretty positive this offseason? You know, like, what have they done that you liked? And I thought to myself, I almost feel like sometimes I need to say something

a little bit more negative just to get back to being the old me with criticizing the organization. But when they've checked every single box that I thought that they should check this offseason, they drafted a quarterback. They moved on from Kirk Cous season. They drafted a quarterback. They moved on from Kirk cousins. They extended Justin Jefferson. They added Dallas Turner on top of it. It was one of my favorite prospects in the draft.

They bring in Andrew Van Ginkle and Jonathan Grenard, two guys that we talked about on the show. And I think that the way that they've set up the salary cap going back two years now was a pivot point in the entire organization, maybe in its history, when they decided to move on from those players like Eric Hendricks, Adam Thielen, Delvin Cook, and we just don't talk about it enough how bold that was for the Vikings to do that. I don't know of any 13-win teams that take five or six of their Pro Bowl players

and they go, all right, we'll see ya because we got to think about our future. We have to set up our salary cap down the road to make sure that we can afford Justin Jefferson. And the same thing with not signing Kirk Cousins. And this is why you have to draw a line in the sand with Kirk Cousins, no matter how much Kevin O'Connell liked Kirk Cousins and maybe even wanted him to stay, that you can't go over a certain years and over a certain number because they knew they were going to have to sign Justin Jefferson. So the salary cap is all built over two years plotted out to make sure that you've got space for this and that they'll have players, namely JJ McCarthy, but also Jordan Addison as well as a big one. When you think about

what wide receivers are making now, drafting a wide receiver last year looks very smart when good wide receivers are making over 30 million dollars a year and that was another part of their drafting the last two years taking these positions where you have surplus value that all plays into how Justin Jefferson can be affordable because now if Jordan Addison catches 80 passes, that guy's worth $25 million, but he's making six. And if Dallas Turner in the next three years gets 10 sacks in a season, that's worth 25 to $30 million, probably 25. And he's going to be making five or six. So they're creating a window to build this team around some of the rookie contracts that they're going to have, especially the quarterback.

But also don't forget Dallas Turner, because that's another big one. They will have to extend Christian Derrissaw. That's the next one that's going to be down the road that will be expensive. But having planned out for this by moving on from Cousins, it makes it all click together so it can work financially. big contracts to fill out this, you know, this roster and try to take the next step because they will still have enough cap space to do it. And they can start to use all those methods that drove us insane because they were using them at the wrong time during the Zimmer and the Spielman era. Because once you open the window to win, once you are at this point, which is usually year two, year three of the rookie

quarterback contract, think about Brock Purdy year two to the Super Bowl, Jalen Hurts year three to the Super Bowl. What Jared Goff in 2018 was his third year because he was drafted in 2016. There's a lot of recent quarterbacks that make it. Patrick Mahomes made it to the Super Bowl in his third year. And I know these are all good quarterbacks or the greatest quarterback, but this is the hack that you're looking for. And everybody knows, and it goes without saying, that in order for this contract to work, in order for the Vikings to make the most of this situation with J.J. McCarthy on his rookie contract, he's got to be good. Nobody disputes that. If he's not good, then the Justin Jefferson money

is not going to matter that they kept him around or that they traded him for eight draft picks. It does all revolve around whether JJ McCarthy is good, but this is the other part of the deal beyond the money is when you draft a quarterback, you have certain odds that that quarterback is going to succeed just historically, just go through them. And let's even say over the last 10 years, and I looked at this during draft season, you had about a 10% chance of nailing someone who is a top three to five quarterback. You had about a 40% chance of nailing someone who was good enough to win at least 11 games on their rookie contract. And that even includes someone like Baker Mayfield who had one successful year with the Cleveland

Browns. So even like that's the bar to clear, you got a 40 to 50% chance of doing that based on the recent history. And then the other side of it is there's another 25% of quarterbacks that become decent, but just not good enough. And then there's 25% that can't even play at all. But here's my thing about Justin Jefferson and why it was so essential, so essential to extend him, make sure that he's here, do not trade him away, don't even consider it, is when you have a receiver like Jefferson, and he goes along with Addison in context of the offense, he's not a one-man show, that he can take that quarterback from one of those categories to the next one. that what we have seen in the NFL is supporting cast. And I believe that there was some of this

with Adam Thielen, Stefan Diggs, even with Kirk Cousins, and Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison with Kirk Cousins, that his numbers were pushed into a different category that he would not have been in if he didn't have those players. Not to say that he wasn't good or that he couldn't play anywhere else. He could be a starting quarterback for any team. But as far as putting up top-notch numbers, that these wide receivers played a huge role in that. So what Jefferson has the ability to do

is if JJ McCarthy is on the 25% of quarterbacks that are drafted that are just okay but not quite good enough to ever have 11, 12 win seasons, he can push you from one category to the other, and along with the other wide receivers that they have. And if he's good, he can push him to very good. Because at the end of the day, what really matters is not how good the ESPN debate show thinks your quarterback actually is. What really matters is the expected points added through the passing game that you produce. Because if you go back and look, every team that makes the Super Bowl is elite when it comes to

expected points added. And there are a couple exceptions, including Kansas City was only a good passing game last year and not great. But in the playoffs with Patrick Mahomes, they were great. And so that's an exception. 2015 Broncos are an exception. But if we look at the Vikings as needing to be much more like the 2021 Los Angeles Rams top of the heap when it came to expected points added through passing, which is just a number that gives you the performance versus the situation, how many points are expected on a play versus how you performed. So factoring in situation, if you are a top passing game, you have a great chance to be in the playoffs every year to go to the Super Bowl if you're elite in that.

And I didn't see any way that the Vikings could be one of those teams without Justin Jefferson, that he is such a driving force of that. And just in a team building situation in general, in any sport, what you have is very few drivers and a lot of passengers. You have a lot of players in the NFL whose success is determined by the circumstance. You have a lot of players who are good and are starters, but whether you ever hear anything about them usually depends on what is going on around them. And I'll give you some examples. Everybody who has played with Harrison Smith is an example of this. Everyone who plays alongside Harrison Smith turns out to be good. I don't think that that's a coincidence that two undrafted free age or what was uh anderson day it was he was undrafted or late round draft pick uh journeyman guy who would play in the ufl and anderson day ho ends up becoming a good player for them on a number one defense and then anthony harris was

undrafted he ends up having a season where he leads the league in interceptions and cameron bynum now has come in as a fourth round draft pick, switched positions and turned out to be a pretty key player. And even Josh Metellus has developed that way too. I'm starting to think that Harrison Smith impacts everybody on that back end, right? And the same thing goes for wide receivers and their impact on the entire offense and the quarterback in JJ McCarthy. So it's worth paying for when you have the wide receiver who can most single-handedly increase the odds of success for your quarterback. And we just don't have to work very hard on this when it comes to receivers, because I

remember about 20 years ago, there was this opinion and it was not good, but it was out there that when the Patriots were winning Super Bowls and they didn't have elite receivers, people would say, well, you know, these, this Randy Moss and Terrell Owens, they never win anything. So what's the point of having great wide receivers? You need a bunch of decent guys in an offensive line. That's what was being said. And so I still hear that from time to time. But when we look at the teams that have had the most success in recent years, and again, we can't really talk about Kansas City because of who their quarterback is, but even if we do, the Kansas City Chiefs were more successful on offense

in the regular season when they had Tyree Kill. And they were pretty good last year, of course, because of Mahomes. But the years before, that's where Mahomes and his rookie contract shot to superstardom was with Tyree Kill. And then Tyree kill goes to Miami and immediately to a goes from being an average quarterback at best, who was grinding out nine wins to leading the NFL in passing. And I'm sure that Mike McDaniel had a role in that as well, but wide receivers are impacting these quarterbacks. So significantly Brock Purdy would not be the same Brock Purdy without Brandon Ayuk and Debo Samuel. In fact, in the one playoff game where Debo Samuel got hurt, it looked like Brock Purdy wasn't going to be able to pull it out because he was struggling in that game without Debo Samuel.

And then Jalen Hurts, for example, the franchise shifting move for the Philadelphia Eagles with Jalen Hurts was trading for A.J. Brown, who is now the second highest paid wide receiver in the NFL to Justin Jefferson. So if you are just joining, $140 million over four years, 110 guaranteed. And the number that matters the most, 88.7 due at signing, which is the fully guaranteed money for Justin Jefferson. And let me pull back to some of the snark. Did we really ever think, did anyone with any logic ever think that Justin Jefferson, because Kirk Cousins left, was going to say no to $88 million at signing. That means that today, when he strolls out to TCO Performance Center, he punches in his little key code that shockingly still works and for some reason doesn't work for Malik Neighbors. It works for Justin Jefferson,

not Malik neighbors to get in TCO performance center. Weird. I'm going to have to work on that. But he's going to walk in and he's going to go into an office with Mark Wilf and Rob Brzezinski, and probably a bunch of other people and his agent. And he's going to sign a piece of paper that then someone has to call a bank and tell the bank to transfer $88 million.

And we ever thought that he was going to be like, nah, you know, let me see how Sam Darnold throws the ball first. What? Who thought that? All of these things. Now we could go one by one for all the rumors and all the reports and make fun of every single one of them because of how ridiculous it ever was, the idea that they would move on from this player or that he would not sign this contract extension. So it is a good day for having been patient. And a lot of you who listen to the show regularly, I think, got frustrated by the amount of times that we had to talk about this, the amount of bogus rumors, the amount of drafts, you know, trades that people proposed and everything else, the amount of clicks that people raked out of a man just normally negotiating a situation. And that is what is notable here as well, that there was never any evidence.

There was never any sign that Justin Jefferson would do anything except this. Never, never, not for a second, any legitimate sign that Justin Jefferson, nothing that he said, nothing that he leaked, nothing that the team said, zero indication. In fact, Justin Jefferson said something about breaking the bank at the Super Bowl. He was kind of baited into that a little bit. And guess what? Today, his bank is going to answer that phone call.

Yeah, we're transferring $88 million. They're going to be like, what? Most things you could do online, I don't think you could transfer $88 million online. I think you actually have to call them or someone has to go to the brick and mortar bank to transfer $88 million. But no matter who it was or when it was, he always said that this is a deal that my agent's going to work out, the money's going to come, and the team had said we want nothing more than to sign him. And today he is signed. And now we can see the future of what the Minnesota Vikings roster is going to be. But we can also say this, and it's still early in the morning,

so I need a sip of Diet Dr. Pepper here. We can also say this, from Kwesi Adafo-Mentz's perspective, this was the last hurdle that he needed to get over in order for us to say mission accomplished good off season this is what you were supposed to do this was the plan you have to complete the plan that if you guys play video games and adventure games you always think that you've completed the game and then one final boss shows up and you're like oh i thought I thought I had won the game, but then Bowser arrived and now I've got to beat him. That was this, this, this contract extension was the final boss for the

Vikings off season. And when we go back through it, having drafted the quarterback after the extensive search and all the plans and all the ideas that they had during the draft to get their quarterback, they end up with JJ McCarthy, who was someone that it appears through all, again, all evidence that we have that they wanted and was on their wanted list to get JJ McCarthy. So now they have a quarterback that Kevin O'Connell can develop over the next couple of years with this offense around him. They dropped their quarterback into a situation where he has three of the best pass catchers in the entire NFL,

two of the best tackles in the NFL. They brought Dalton Reiser back, so they did bring in the veteran guard. There's still some concerns there. But they brought in Aaron Jones, the veteran running back that was on the wish list of the offseason to improve the running game, improve the screen game, the short passing with Aaron Jones, and Ty Chandler is with him as well. They lose Daniil Hunter in the offseason.

Once again, they had to manage that because giving Daniil Hunter $45 million guaranteed over the next two years would have given them less flexibility. When you sign Jonathan Grenard to a four-year contract, then you can extend it out. You can mess with it a little bit. You can renegotiate it. If you sign Dani Daniel Hunter to a two-year fully guaranteed deal, there's nothing you can do. That's just a big mound of money on your books. So they managed that. They replaced Hunter's excellence with three players who can do that job

in Dallas Turner, Andrew Van Ginkle, and Jonathan Grenard. They did not improve the defensive tackle position as much as I would have liked, but they still added some guys who have been around, including Jerry Tillery, who's kind of intriguing to me, actually. They brought in Blake Cashman, improved at linebacker. They brought in Shaq Griffin. As far as I know, they did not give up a comp pick. So at every, or at least that's what they've said to Ben Gessling,

that they did not actually give up a comp pick for Shaq Griffin and they were able to keep Brandon Powell around David Questenberry some of the depth guys that worked for them last year and now we have the complete picture of the offseason for the Minnesota Vikings now we can give this offseason a grade how did they, you know, that's going to be, I'm sure a whole separate podcast and so forth, but, uh, I, I can't, what would you guys give it in the comment section? How would you grade the off season? Uh, it's hard for me to give it anything outside of at, at worst a B plus there's still some things that maybe were left on the table. The interior offensive line being one of them, interior defensive line that maybe weren't improved as much in a dream world.

I guess if you were talking about the quarterback that you would have liked starting out the draft season, a lot of people would have said Drake May. I don't think that the odds are much different from Drake May and JJ McCarthy based on history, whether it's the third quarterback or the fifth quarterback, but they're both top 10 prospects. The way that they played the draft in not having to trade up for JJ McCarthy, Daniel says A plus on the off season, Amir A minus. That's what I mean. It's pretty hard to go much lower than B plus when it comes to this off season. But if you extend it into the A's, the A minus, the A minus basically means we are nitpicking away at the off season. If you are a huge Drake

May fan, then maybe you could say that you wanted Drake May more than McCarthy. From my perspective, when I was looking at it during the draft, I would have said, yeah, I would prefer to have Drake May over JJ McCarthy because of some of the concerns that I had about McCarthy. But once the player is drafted, we know this, that nobody knows what's going to happen once the guy is drafted into the NFL. So I don't believe so much in my own draft takes that I would degrade them for landing that quarterback. What we knew though, was going into the draft, they had to draft a quarterback and they were

able to do that in JJ McCarthy and get him in the top 10 without paying extra, without trading Justin Jefferson up into the top three, no matter how many mock drafts suggested trading Justin Jefferson, that was never going to happen. So when we look at the accumulation now, as this puts the period on the end of the sentence, Minnesota Vikings off season 2024, then it really comes into view of how they did everything that they laid out with their plan. When they got here, the competitive rebuild is now complete and now it's just next step,

which is winning football games they should be held to a standard for this year to win football games if you're going to pay just the jefferson this much then you should win and you should compete and be in the playoffs but then over the next couple of years then we're going to be talking about how do you build on the foundation that was made here from the last couple of seasons and off seasons that went from the teardown to rebuilding the parts to making sure that you keep Jefferson as a centerpiece. Let's see.

Heinous or Hannah's. Sorry if I got your name wrong. Says, I don't understand how you can't give an A. 100% accomplished what was possible. It was impossible to address all the needs in one offseason. No, no, you're right. You're right about that. You're totally right. The double negative threw me off for a second there, but you're right that how can you not give an A when you're talking about all the things that were possible. So if we are saying, Hey, you should have added a defensive tackle. Hey, you should have added a guard that was better than Dalton Reisner. It's difficult to do all of those things with only so much cap space for this year.

And plus they want to be able to carry on some of their cap space onto next year, there isn't much more that they could have done this offseason, even if we all would have preferred another defensive tackle, another guard, maybe a wide receiver three that was a little more proven. But these are edges of the roster. These are kind of like, okay, you'd rather have someone a little better than Dalton Reisner, but who exactly were they supposed to sign when you look at the prices? I really wanted Christian Wilkins for this team. I thought he would have been perfect. But then you look at the contract he signed, that would have meant not getting Jonathan Grenard, who I think would be a good fit.

If you gave me the choice, I would have had Christian Wilkins. But again, we're talking about kind of picking nits here with the off season. This is the best off season that the Minnesota Vikings have had since what? Since 2014, when they were able to draft a quarterback and get Anthony Barr and change coaches to Mike Zimmer, who eventually led them to the NFC championship. 2017 offseason, they brought in Riley Reif, which was a big deal for them on that offensive line in 2017. But it's been some time since they were able to, I think, follow along with an actual plan.

That was my frustration for so long for numerous offseasons for the Vikings when they would run it back and extend Kirk Cousins and sign Delvin Tomlinson. And you just think, well, where does this really get you? It gets you into being competitive, but it does not get you anywhere else. And so this off season now puts them on the same trajectory as other teams that have built winners. And you needed to finish this off by signing Justin Jefferson to make sure that over the next few years, they were going to be able to give J.J. McCarthy everything that he needs to succeed. So maybe I haven't been quite snarky enough, but I've layered in quite a bit. Yeah, these are the, just for those just

joining, welcome and good morning. I'm sure that a lot of you woke up to the news and went, okay, here we go. The Oakleys are from when I had an Oakley sponsorship and they sent me sunglasses that Justin Jefferson wears. So I thought that it was appropriate to wear the Justin Jefferson shades to block out all the snark that was going to come. But just to go back to that for a second, we have to, in the future, always just take a slower approach on things than the internet wants to take. And for me, I always try to be the referee here for all of you that read rumors and see, you know, Instagram things with one sentence of a quote or some insider report.

I was told early on in the process that Justin Jefferson didn't want to play the insider game. He didn't want to have his agents leaking stuff. He didn't want to have the Vikings leaking stuff. He didn't want to negotiate this through the media. So that made me believe throughout this entire process that we would not be getting very accurate information and updates from the outside. And so I always just figured that everybody who was reaching to try to report something on it was just doing so because that's what their job is or because they know that it stirs the pot. But it was never going to be the actual stuff that was coming from the building or coming from

Justin Jefferson. And so we just waited it out. And that was the right approach that in football, we so often need the, I don't know what people could call it, the dopamine hit or just the tension that comes along with football, the excitement. What's going to happen here? Is someone getting traded? Are they going to get rid of him? What's going to go on? And the world seems to often be rooting for this.

The world loves people getting traded. They love drama. There's a reason why all these reality shows are still on. People love drama. They can't get enough of it, but there was no drama here. This was no drama. They negotiated last year, and that was unusual for them to negotiate with Justin Jefferson last year because he was not up against the wall to make his decision. It was the first moment he was eligible and they jumped on it. The minute that he was eligible to negotiate an extension, the Vikings said, oh, let's talk, let's get to the table, let's have this conversation. And at least my understanding is they came somewhat close to a deal last year and talks broke off with the start of the season.

Had the start of the season been a week later, maybe they would have come to an agreement, but Jefferson did not want to negotiate inside of the season. He came out, he had a tough injury, but when he played, he was as dominant as ever. He didn't take any reps off of practice. He came to mandatory mini camp, talked to the media, explained his situation and so forth. Anytime he was ever asked about the negotiation, he said, you know, this is something we want to do, but you know, obviously it's going to cost them and it's going to take a while. And I'm focused on what I'm supposed to do. There was no drama there, no drama with Jefferson. He went to the Superbowl radio row, got coaxed

into saying something because he's a friendly guy. And sometimes in interviews, he wants to make the interviewer like him or happy. And so he said something about breaking the bank that made a bunch of headlines and that made a bunch of people, maybe I should put the glasses back on. That made a bunch of people say, oh, Jefferson is greedy and they should get rid of him and look at him grandstanding in front of the media when they only saw a two second clip and they didn't see that the host kind of said, hey, you're going to break the bank, right? And they say, yeah, I'm going to break the bank. There was nothing there, but there was an attempt to make that into some sort of drama.

And then throughout these last couple of weeks, he misses OTAs, which are voluntary. And numerous times we talked about it's voluntary. OTAs are not important. There's a ton. I mean, they're important to JJ McCarthy, but they're not important to Justin Jefferson or this negotiation. This is not a huge power play. He wasn't here at OTAs last year.

I think Lamar Jackson wasn't at OTAs. Like there are some teams and players that are veterans that just say, I'll, I'll show up at mini camp and, uh, I'll just continue to go on vacation or stay with my family. Cause it's a long season. And, uh And Jefferson last year said something like he had some obligations or whatever. Maybe he was doing a power play, but it never really seemed that way, especially when he got out on the field for training camp. And then there has been no leaks from his camp the entire time. And no matter how many times

certain people wanted to say, is he going to stick around with Kirk Cousins leaving? Is he going to be mad that the Vikings may have talked about other options or rumors that are reported? And is he going to not sign with that? People are writing articles saying, is Jefferson going to not sign this extension and whatever? And through this entire time, it was just, all right, let's wait. Let's just wait, wait through the noise, wait through all the BS that always comes along

with a very popular player and his contract. And what you know is that when someone like Justin Jefferson is up for a contract that a lot of people will be Google searching in and looking for any information that they can get. So forcing his name into any report that you can get, even if it's nothing, is favorable for a lot of outlets. So that's exactly what happened. And I agree with Jeff here in the comments says, JJ is nothing like Diggs or Harvin. He really isn't. He really isn't. And I have deep, deep respect for Stefan Diggs. I think some of you are unfair to a guy who gave a lot to the Minnesota Vikings, considering he was in very different circumstances than Justin Jefferson with Kevin O'Connell these last few years when he was in a run first offense and it should have been a pass first offense. And you can see the frustration

of wanting to win there. So I, I apologize for a digs in some ways because it's different, but Justin Jefferson handled this in the quietest way that you're ever going to see from a player of his caliber. There was never at any point where he put anything on Instagram or took any shots at the organization. And so that's where all the evidence pointed to Justin Jefferson signing this deal. So I don't want to make the whole thing about the snark and so forth. I'll take the sunglasses off. I don't want to make it all about that because it doesn't matter. It's just the internet nonsense that is going to happen all the time in football.

And we're all used to it at this point. But with Jefferson in particular, I did get frustrated. I did get frustrated because I never bought any of it for a second. And I mean, any of it, anybody's mock draft, anybody's insider report. It never passed the smell test that they would move on from this player. So now you have a franchise player under contract for a long period of time with another wide receiver in Jordan Addison paired together as a duo to build on in the future. And yes, Cade, it is time for Christian Derrissaw's deal probably next year. They could start negotiating that this year if

they want to, but I think that one will be more traditional where they wait. And then we'll be doing an emergency podcast talking about how Christian Derrissaw signed his extension. That one will come with less drama because there are fewer clicks to be had around a left tackle than there were a superstar wide receiver that every fantasy person wants to know what's going on. But more than anything, that now that you see the numbers in the light of day and you see the context of which this has taken place. And, and I do want to get to Justin Jefferson, his personality, where he fits in the organization. But when you've seen the numbers now compared to the other wide receivers, it's only a little bit more than Amon Ross St. Brown. It's only a little bit more than AJ Brown. Are we all okay with that? It's nowhere near top quarterback

contracts by average annual value. And this is why you can't compare it to Kirk Cousins, but by average annual value, it's still 10 million short of your good quarterback contract. But with Kirk Cousins, Cousins signed, well, did he sign technically a four-year deal with a million void years? But that's why it's different, right? In order for Atlanta to sign Cousins, they had to give him a hundred million guaranteed and then give him extra years down the road that are fake. That's not what's happening here. These extra years are not going to be fake. They plan on having Kirk Cousins for four seasons to play for them. And

the Kirk Cousins contracts in the past, those contracts were short and fully guaranteed. So they offered very little flexibility to the Vikings around them. And the major, major reason why Kirk Cousins contracts of the past are different from this, is that Justin Jefferson ranks no lower than number two at his position. You might be able to argue Tyreek Hill is a more impactful wide receiver. I would still say it's Jefferson, but here we, you know, whatever. Jefferson is more of a complete package of a wide receiver. You don't have to really scheme much. You just let him run routes and get open and make catches. It's a little different from Tyree kill, but one, two, or three is where you could place Justin Jefferson. If you place them any lower than three, you don't know what you're talking

about, right? With Kirk cousins, it was always 12. It was always 14. When you go look at the tier rankings that Mike Sandel would do, where he talked to NFL coaches and executives and have them rank the tiers for the, or for the quarterbacks, Kirk Cousins was always tier three, tier four. That's if you're paying a guy who is the 12th best quarterback or the 14th best quarterback, like he's the best quarterback that doesn't add up. And that was always the issue, right? If quarterback contracts had worked and been tiered out. So Kirk cousins was only making $20 million as opposed to $40 million, then it would have probably been okay. But with Justin Jefferson, if he's number one, number two, number three in the NFL, and he's getting paid like it, that's fine. Like that's what you want. I would only compare

Justin Jefferson's impact on the organization to someone like Aaron Donald or Nick Bosa, because those players are foundational pieces that you try as best you can to never let go. And there is a difference by the way, as much as I do apologize for Stefan Diggs. And I think that he is one of the better wide receivers in the NFL. I don't think that Diggs was on the same level as Justin Jefferson, as far as being unstoppable. And then when you look at the age factor as well, if you have a hall of fame caliber player, which Justin Jefferson is, and that's an extremely, extremely high bar, then you have him for his entire prime. That is worth paying for. That's not something you just replace with draft picks in a league that is driven always and

forever by superstars. So this was the right move for the Vikings to do. It was well handled by everybody. They got this done before training camp, which is now two months faster than they got TJ Hawkinson's deal to just for everybody to keep in mind how quickly this came together. They made a concerted effort to get him here in the ideal position to work with Sam Darnold, to work with JJ McCarthy, to be a part of everything that they're going to do this off season as they build new relationships with these two quarterbacks. And if Sam Darnold is going to have the season that a lot of you think that he's going to have, which is this step forward for him, It will start now tomorrow, or I don't know if they get on the field today. We're there for three days, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I am

absolutely certain we will talk to Justin Jefferson tomorrow and hear what he has to say about this entire thing. And I am kind of curious to hear his opinion on just, you know, all the noise that was out there throughout this time and what he was thinking, because I had heard from the Viking side that they wanted to say something publicly pretty bad about all the rumors and everything else, but stayed the course with just coming out and continuing to say, we want to sign Jefferson. We're working on it. We're almost there. And then Kwesi Ad Adafo-Menza did, we read it correctly, folks. He did give us the final hint, which was saying right before the draft, yeah, we want to make sure Justin's got the whole week to himself. Here it is. Here it is.

The whole week, minicamp, everybody's going to be around the organization. There's going to be legends that come out to TCO Performance Center. You'll see Paul Krause walking around or John Randall or whatever at TCO Performance Center during minicamp. The perfect time to have this kind of celebration for Justin Jefferson and his contract extension, and that is what is going to happen. Now, Jefferson, the person, my observation from him from really day one is, and this is where it is important, that Justin Jefferson wants to be considered one of the

greatest players of all time. And I remember talking about this in 2020 and it got pushed back because I said, he talks about worshiping LeBron James and viewing himself as wanting to be that in football and a lot of people could say that I mean I think Cam Bynum once said I want to be the best player of all time everybody wants to but the drive that Justin Jefferson has and how he's come back each season a little bit better every year and been a little bit more unstoppable every year, no matter what defenses do against him, the way that he's handled some very difficult times, whether it was during the Mike Zimmer era and the disastrous 2021 season, or whether it was just, you know, some of the Kirk Cousins contract drama and everything else think about about the way that he handled that when he was asked repeatedly uh talking about kirk is his guy

and so forth you really could not create in a lab someone who has represented the franchise better over these years what is he most notable for a dance that's what he's most notable for uh other than his performance right it's like outside of the world just personality wise he invented a dance that's what he's most notable for uh other than his performance right it's like outside of the world just personality wise he invented a dance that everybody likes i mean think about that uh that's how he's represented the organization and that's how he has handled himself uh throughout this entire thing so i mean uh oh this is you know that's a a good point that may be uh waiting until the Timberwolves were done with the playoffs.

But I don't know if you could really do that because they wanted him at mandatory minicamp. You wouldn't want to fine him $100,000 because the Wolves were still playing. I wish they were. That would be fun if they were. Or maybe the week in between the Western Conference finals and the championship, maybe that would be what you're saying locally to make sure that Jefferson was on the front page and not the Timberwolves. That's a good point. That may have been what they were waiting for. It has just felt like since the draft that they have been really close, ready to make this deal with Justin Jefferson.

And then today it all comes to fruition. So if you've got reaction, if you've got questions and thoughts that you want to throw out there about this, we can continue to have the discussion. Just from my perspective, I will say that the most important thing for me all the time is to get it as right as I can. And I can't always predict what they're going to do. I can't always have sources on every single thing that are telling me, yeah, this is what we're going to do.

Sometimes they surprise me just like they surprise you. But it was important to me to not play in the dirt when it came to this one. That Justin Jefferson doesn't deserve that. The rumors and everything else and all the nonsense. He doesn't deserve even for me to come on and talk about should they trade him. And so I always tried to answer the question from people when they asked or when they proposed fake trades. But I think that a player like this is someone that you want your organization to have forever for the entirety of their career. So that saying they should trade him or something like

that never made any sense to me. And it never sounded like something that made any sense to them. Staying the course was important. Telling the truth was important. I always believed this would happen. So it is when it comes to fruition. And I feel like I did justice to the audience. So it does feel good because I saw a few of you say, hey, it's a good day for the show and so forth. It is. It is a good day for the show because that's important to me. And like I said, sometimes they surprise me. I'm really terrible at picking games over the years. When you guys listen to the podcast, you know that even though I cover the team, I'm not better at picking any sort of games any better than everyone else. But when it comes to the facts and when it comes to the truth, that's what we're trying to do here rather than,

you know, making up nonsense or just trying to, you know, look for a headline that's going to get people paying attention. So that does make it a good day because we always thought that this would have, that this would happen. So anyway, let's, let's start off here. Sean says, as Addison grows, Powell, Naylor, TJ, Hinson, healthy, uh, Adams, uh, out of the backfield, um, uh, Madison, do you mean Madison? Uh, you can't double team JJ or get burned single cover JJ. You'll get burned. If the old line stays healthy. So good. Yeah. When TJ Hockinson comes back, that is a big blow to them for the first part of the season is that he's very likely going to be out for a while.

I'm kind of looking at maybe after they come back from London for TJ Hockinson to come back and then they possibly get 10 or 11 games out of him this season. That does make it more difficult. I've actually liked, I should mention this more that Robert Tunyon looks pretty darn good. Robert Tunyon looks like a player. So he might mitigate a little bit of that impact of TJ Hawkinson. In fact, I can already see it.

Robert Tunyon catches five or six passes and has a good game. And we get the, should the Vikings trade TJ Hawkinson because they have Robert Tunyon or whatever, but he might be able to help them survive it. The whole point of keeping Justin Jefferson on this contract is that the players that you named, um, the, the, the players that you named with Addison and Hawkinson, and then we'll see what happens with Jalen Naylor and so forth. And it's Aaron Jones coming out of the backfield. And you know, what they give is every

opportunity for Sam Darnold to succeed or every opportunity for JJ McCarthy to succeed. That's the most important here is you will win in the longterm because your quarterback play is good. Always in forever national football league facts go back to you know roger staubach or something like you're gonna win if you've got good enough quarterback play and they needed uh justin jefferson to solidify that because otherwise you're kind of chasing your tail for someone who's unstoppable you need the cheat code in order to actually compete um you know that is, Ben says, NFC North is kind of fresh with all the quarterbacks.

It is, it really is. And this is another part of it too. Do you want to compete with those teams? Are you going to be able to do it in the longterm if you don't have one of the best players in the NFL? The answer is just no, you're not. Because Jalen Johnson plays for the Chicago Bears. That's going to be tough. And the Detroit offense is top five and that's going to be tough. And with Green

Bay, the way that they have constructed their roster with a lot of young receivers and with Jordan Love, who could take even another step next year, if he does, then you have to be just that much better in order to compete with those teams in the North. And that's fine because if you're a real contender, then you can compete with them. If this was the Kirk Cousins era and it was, you know, maybe they can win 10. If the division's really bad or something, then it wouldn't be good enough. And it was another reason to talk about not extending Cousins because it wasn't going to be good enough. And it was another reason to talk about not extending cousins because it wasn't going to be good enough. The NFC is now tough. The NFC for the last two years has been flopping around like a fish. Just like, I don't know. Yeah, there's a couple of

decent teams and San Francisco and Philly are good and everybody else, you know, whatever, since Tom Brady and Drew Brees and Rogers got old, nobody's super serious except for maybe two or three teams. Well, now there's a bunch of other teams that are on the rise that look like they are serious. And a lot of them are in the NFC North. So if you're going to compete with them, then you need to have players who can compete on that level with elite teams like Justin Jefferson. Wade says Jefferson, McCarthy, and Turner will be the faces of the franchise for the next decade. All have great character.

NFL is based on hope, and I am mainlining hopium 24-7 right now. Well, to your point, the foundational franchise players, let's look at their ages. Justin Jefferson is, I don't know his birthday, 24. He'll be 25, whatever it is. Mid twenties, JJ McCarthy is 21. Dallas Turner is 21. These players, if McCarthy ends up being good and Turner ends up being good, are the players that you can build around for a long time. And if we just look over at some other franchises, if he's good, then Cincinnati, for example, is a team that drafted a good quarterback in Joe Burrow

and then put Jamar Chase with him, put T. Higgins with him, built that defense to where it was at least good enough to contend, and they fight their way through the playoffs and all the way to the Super Bowl at some point. Since I've been covering the team, I've never wanted to talk about it through any other lens than the Super Bowl. And I am not saying that the Minnesota Vikings next year are going to reach the Super Bowl.

But we can look at teams that have been and say, hmm, that looks similar. We can look at what they have been and say, hmm, that looks similar. We can look at what they had at wide receiver, for example, and not Kansas City always. But the other teams with Debo Samuel, Brandon Ayuk, A.J. Brown, Cooper Cup, by the way, Cooper Cup had a Justin Jefferson-like season when he went to the Super Bowl and they had to get Odell Beckham for him. That's kind of your Jordan Addison situation. How about when Tom Brady went to the Super Bowl and they had to get Odell Beckham for him. That's kind of your Jordan Addison situation. How about when Tom Brady went to the Super Bowl? Yes, Tom Brady, but the older version of Tom Brady needed more help than the younger version. And they went and

got him. Well, he already had Evans and Godwin and they've been very successful there. Probably no mistake that Baker Mayfield was better last year with those two. And then they added Rob Gronkowski. They added Antonio Brown. More weapons make it more and more, you know, hard to fail. If you're the quarterback that you have to be even worse as a quarterback than you would normally be when you have weapons of this caliber. And, you know, go back to 2019, George Kittle's at his peak. Debo Samuel's still there with San Francisco when they make the super bowl, Tyree kills on the

other side. I mean, we can go through all these teams and we can point to how a lot of them were built through rookie quarterback contracts, how a lot of them were constructed with their weapons and their wide receivers and go, I see this. And there is one person that will not get mentioned a lot on a Justin Jefferson contract extension podcast that I think is really important. And that's actually Brian Flores to this operation. If they were still floundering on defense, there would have been a better argument for Trey Jefferson. Look, you've got nothing on defense. You've got, you know, you just don't know what you're doing. And I would have never been okay with it,

but I'm just saying it would have been a better argument. But when we have witnessed what Brian Flores can do, and we're fairly certain that Brian Flores is going to be here for some time because reasons with the NFL and so forth and him struggling to get a head coaching opportunity, but he didn't even get an interview this last year, which I think means that he's been pretty well blackballed by the NFL for being a head coach. But that loss, which is very unfortunate, is his gain and the Vikings gain on the defensive side. And now they could also spend the extra cap space to fill that out

even more than they did this last year. So he's an important part of this operation too, because I think you need a great defensive coordinator. Steve Spagnuolo doesn't get any credit for the Chiefs. It's just Mahomes, Mahomes, Mahomes. The defense guided them during the playoffs last year. What was the final score to the Super Bowl, 2017 or whatever? I mean, they had to play extremely well on defense and have a guy calling the shots as a defensive coordinator that was really good at his job and really experienced at his job into the playoffs, and the Vikings have the same thing.

So we can check the boxes. Doesn't mean it's a guarantee. Nothing's a guarantee with the Minnesota Vikings organization. It just means that you can seriously discuss the path more than any other time outside of 2017. Here's the path. It's right there. They had won 13 games in the division going into the playoffs. But since then, the path, you could could talk about in the 2018 off season with

cousins, Hey, if they're the best defense in the league and cousins plays X well, then they'll make it. But after, after 2018, when were we seriously able to talk about the super bowl as a, as a place that the Vikings were even building toward? It was so much more just like, okay, all right, well, maybe they can make the playoffs and every other team will get pneumonia or whatever. That was always more of the discussion than it was, hey, they are doing things that other teams that have actually made it could,

like right now as an organization, so this could work. That's where we're at right now. And it feels like signing Jefferson is the final piece to that because almost every team that is going deep in the playoffs who has elite offenses that are going to get you there,

they all have receivers like this. And that's what's going to help you get there. Trading him away for a couple draft picks was not going to do it. Evan says, does the availability of Hawkinson have any impact on whether they play J.J. McCarthy in the context of having all the weapons possible? I don't think so. I would guess that it's going to be entirely based on, is J.J. McCarthy ready? Has he worked through whatever leaps and bounds that Kevin O'Connell

wants him to get through? So I think he called it yard markers or benchmarks or something like that. Has he got enough confidence in running the offense, in throwing on time, the footwork that's required, understanding the defenses in practice and what they're seeing from him enough in order to prove that he should be on the field. Because if you try to wait until everything is perfect, we've seen this every year, somebody gets banged up, somebody's out. Well, you can't do it this week. Brian O'Neill is banged up or you have your backup center, you have your backup tight end. You just really can't wait in the NFL until the offense is fully healthy, unless you're talking about starting him in week one. So I would guess that it doesn't. They also have professional tight ends. If it's Robert

Tanyan or if it's Johnny Munt or Josh Oliver, these guys have been around. So it's not like they're just going to run the wrong way and he's going to throw an interception. It would be much more that they'll be able to do their jobs. They're just not as skilled as TJ Hawkinson. But I don't think that that will have an impact on it. I think it's just entirely, does Kevin O'Connell trust him to walk out on the field, call the right play, get the play in the headset, get everybody lined up, call the right play, drop back, see what he's supposed to see, throw it on time to the place he's supposed to throw it. It it's kind of a simple game in that

way, but there's a lot of complex layers to doing that, that simple thing. And one of the reasons that I love the UFL, by the way, is that they mic up all the quarterbacks and stuff. And you'll see how many times the quarterback goes to the line of scrimmage and he has to say to his receiver, no, no, no, you're over there on this play or, or to the running back, you got, you got this guy blocking. Like the quarterback has to know every single player's assignment and understand what he's going to get defensively and understand the timing of the throw. because a lot of these NFL throws, you got to let it go before the guy is open and you're throwing to a spot. And Kevin O'Connell mentioned this at one point about Drew Brees throwing to spots.

And Drew Brees was so good at understanding where everyone was going to be in the context of the offense. He knew it so fluently in his head that with his eyes closed, he could do a five-step drop, hitch, and throw, and he would hit it accurately without even being able to see anything. That's where you want J.J. McCarthy to be. Of course, that's going to take a while, but not at Drew Brees' level, but you want him to have the amount of comfort to be ready,

and that's what's going to determine it. Wade says, no need to rush T to rush TJ back in a transitional year. I predict he come back and starts for the same game as JJ McCarthy's first start. Yeah. I mean, we don't even know if JJ McCarthy's going to win the job out of training camp or not, which I would still leave the door open to. I don't think it's that possible, but making sure he's at 100% DJ Hockinson is a good thing. It is, you know, we can talk about the expectations for this year now that Jefferson is signed. I mean, when you write a check, is it a check?

Is there an actual big check? Like, do they have a check for him and they just slide across the table with that guaranteed it's signed? I don't think so. I don't think there have a check for him and they just slide across the table with that guaranteed it's signed? I don't think so. I don't think there's a check. Maybe like a ceremonial check.

Here you go. Here's the $88 million. But when you sign Justin Jefferson to that much money and you're the Wilfs and you're the ownership of this team and that is coming out of your bank account and into the bank account of a player. Now, I know they've got the money and that they're not going to be suffering because of this, but I don't think that you sit back and go, all right, well, we'll just wait till 2025 and see what happens.

I think when you write that check, you have expectations for this year and we, we still should. And transitional year is the right phrasing. But I also think that there are expectations for this season that it's more than just kind of a vibes year and let's survive until the next off season. If this was Madden, a lot of us would just simulate the year onto the next season where we had all the cap space and where McCarthy was in year two, but the owners of this team don't look at it that way. And we talked to Mark Wilf at the owner's meetings and we kind of tried to even give

him that grace when we're asking the questions like, yeah, but you know, it's going to take some time with a rookie. Right. And he was more kind of, no, we want to see this team win. And there's a bar for that. I'm sure if you win seven games and it's a really fun year and McCarthy looks good, then that's fine with everybody, but they want to be in the playoffs. And on the day that they signed Justin Jefferson, we can now look at the full roster and we'll see it on the field during mini camp. What does the full roster look like? And it's going to, I think, look like a team that should be at least competitive for the playoffs if the quarterback play is even decent.

If it's the 15th best quarterback play in the league, then you can compete for a playoff spot. If they could survive the early part of the schedule, then they can compete for a playoff spot. So that's where I'm setting the bar for this season. When I picked the schedule, I tried to get to nine wins because I think that's the expectation is to be in that playoff race. But transitional year is probably right. It maybe reminds me a little bit of Detroit when they went nine and eight, beat Green Bay on the last day of the season and didn't make the playoffs. If the Vikings have a similar season, then it's a success for them, but there's still, there's still expectations on this. It isn't just sort of a, eh, you know, whatever happens happens type of, um, season for me, at least I'm going to spend way too much of purple insider revenue on travel for it to be just

a vibe season. Uh, starting with when we go to Cleveland for those joint practices. Miles said, am I traveling to preseason? No, I can't, right? I can't travel to preseason games. That's a waste. It did come to my mind. Maybe if McCarthy's going to play, I should go, but I'm not doing that.

I'll go to the one at US Bank Stadium. Miles says, for the first time in probably a decade, I feel great about the team's long-term future. I wouldn't go back that far exactly. In 2016, when I got the job, I thought this is going to be a team that competes for a Super Bowl. I didn't know that Teddy was going to get hurt when I moved out here. He got hurt after I got here, and then all hell broke loose. But I remember having a conversation in 2017 in Mankato, the last year in Mankato with Judd Zolgad, where we were on the radio together. We were talking

about how the Vikings still seemed like with Sam Bradford that they were going to be a middling team. Now we were wrong in 2017. They were not a middling team and Sam Bradford wasn't the quarterback, but it seemed like that was what was going to happen. And I recall proposing to Judd this question of, would you rather have someone clip that? This is, I recall proposing to Judd. I posed a question to Judd about whether they would rather be the Vikings or the Cleveland Browns who were tanking at the time, which franchise would you rather be? And I was making the argument for the Browns because I thought this team has a better chance to draft at the top and build a really good and complete franchise roster than the Vikings did.

Now, when the Vikings made the NFC Championship, of course, that was wrong. You'd rather be them than the Browns. But after 2017, had that season not happened, had the Vikings lost to the New Orleans Saints in the first round, we all would have gone, if that stop doesn't happen with Linval Joseph, and I think, does Anthony Harris make the tackle right before New Orleans is held to a field goal. And then the Vikings have enough time for the Minneapolis miracle.

But if the miracle doesn't happen, we are looking back and going, I mean, they got nothing out of that entire run of just being middling. So this is the first time where it feels like they are building it in a way that other legitimate teams have that actually compete for the Super Bowl. It doesn't feel like they are just flailing around in the middle here. And the biggest point is the one that I'll continue to make is that they executed the plan. That was the biggest point with the Jefferson extension is that when they laid out, when they got here, this is what we want to do. Here's how we're going to do it. Here's when we're moving away from Kirk cousins.

Here's when we're moving away from all the veteran players. And then they did it. And here's the point where we're signing Jefferson. And then beyond that, here's how we're going to work around that. To have that plan, it makes you think that they can execute the next part of it. But we do have to keep in mind on such a big day for them that the next part of it is really important. It is the only thing is the next part that doing this to this point has all been the easy stuff. Moving on from players is the easy part. Maybe in the public eye, it could be hard when you tell Delvin Cook to go away and people accuse you of tanking or something.

That's not always easy, but that's a heck of a lot easier than finding the right players, drafting the right quarterback, drafting the right quarterback, building a Superbowl contender. So the hard part then comes next. The next moves are going to matter the most for Kweisi Adafo Mensah, where it's take this roster and plug in the few more pieces that makes Chicago and Detroit and Green Bay nervous about you as opposed to the other way around. So there's more to be done. And of course they have to compete this year and develop players this year. And I just wrote an article today about how, you know, Ivan Pace Jr. and Jordan Addison, these are year two players. There can't be sophomore slumps. They have to continue to

follow up on what they've done. So there's a lot to happen between point A and point B. It's just that when you can see it all come to fruition, then as Miles is talking about, you believe that it's possible that they can make this work. And of course that all goes along with JJ McCarthy succeeding, and that's all connected to Justin Jefferson being his wide receiver. Hold on one sec. All right. Digits says the Vikings by waiting one year to sign Jefferson saved maybe 8 million to use toward this year's deal. Stock market average

gain here, 9% Justin bonus 80 plus, but I don't understand the stock market part of it, but there was a little bit of a question about when they didn't sign him last year, the dollar figure and what that meant. And it's always in my mind, the most important thing is to look at the salary cap percentage that each year, uh, he's taking up and we're going to find that out as we go forward here. That's the most important part. They did retain some money from last year. And then this year, you know, the salary cap goes up. So had they signed him last year, it likely would have been a similar amount of money as far as guaranteed goes,

fully guaranteed money at signing and all that. They would have factored in for the cap going up, but the cap went up more than anyone expected it to. And instead of paying, maybe it was going to be 30 or 32 last year, they pay 35 this year. The cap goes up by more than that. And then as the years go by and the cap goes up even more, then the deal will look even more reasonable than it does right now. Because 35, a couple of years ago, and I included this chart in an article, Tom Belisaro tweeted out the salary cap for each year. And this is how we have to recalibrate our brain every single year, because a few years ago, if you said 35 million for Justin Jefferson, you'd go, what's no way you can't do that. But it was only

five years ago that the salary cap was 70 million or something less than what it is right now. And that makes a lot of difference to how we evaluate a contract like this is that paying a wide receiver 20 million five years ago is similar to paying him $30 million now. And it is a lot of money. There's no question for Justin Jefferson. And they will have to find ways to work around it, most certainly. But it's a lot more manageable when the salary cap just keeps going up every single year. Evan says, felt like we've been aggressively in the hunt for years.

And now KOC and KAM actually trying to build the championship team. That's how I view it. They may fail. I don't know, but they had the right process in my mind. And that's the only way we can really judge is how did you think that they did logically at the time when they made these decisions? And we go through each one. Maybe last year there was a, should have traded some pieces, should have made sure you were drafting a little higher. But then they ended up getting their

quarterback without trading up very far, one spot. Congratulations, Sean Payton, in tricking the Vikings into trading up one spot. But they didn't have to trade up. So that ended up working out okay for them. Logically speaking, though, drafting the quarterback, not paying Cousins when he's coming off the Achilles, and the team is not ready to win with him, as we saw from last year and the way they started the season, all of that fits in logically to the things that you would have suggested them to do to try to actually chase a Super Bowl,

which would not have been to hang on to Adam Thielen or to hang on to Delvin Cook and just have it be like legacy players here that weren't winning anything. In the NFL, you always have to do this. You have to be constantly refreshing your roster every single season and then build around a couple of superstar players, one of them being Justin Jefferson. Bite Me says, if J.J. McCarthy isn't ever a top 10 quarterback, the defense needs to be top five to get to a Super Bowl. So the thing about ranking someone top 10 and do the Vikings have a top five defense? No, not yet. I don't think yet. I think that they will eventually

need a top five defense because if you're going to win a Super Bowl, you just have to be great at everything. That's always in forever. What's the model to build a Super Bowl? Everything. You have to be great on offense, great on defense, great passing game, great coverage, great pass rush. And they are not there yet. They might be with this roster, 80% of the way there with the key players that they have, but they're not there. And the biggest part of it is the quarterback situation. And if, when it comes to a top 10 quarterback, it's really about what is your production? Is your production top 10? Because if McCarthy has his flaws and people say, well, he's not a top 10 quarterback, but your offense is ranking in the top five. This is like a

Jared Goff thing. When people do their quarterback rankings, they'll put Jared Goff as the 10th best quarterback in the league. And then his offense will rank fifth. I don't care what you rank him. I care where they rank as far as their offense. I don't care if you thought that Brock Purdy is the 14th best quarterback in the league. They were one of the best passing offenses. So I don't, I'm not going to worry about what people say as where McCarthy ranks so much as what they produce offensively is going to matter the most. And the reality of the thing is if you want to be a true contender, you have to be a top five to seven expected points added passing game. That's why Jefferson is so valuable and maybe even underpaid considering his role in being an elite passing

offense. When Kirk Cousins got hurt in the KOC era, they were seventh in passing in the, or I'm sorry, seventh in points. And if they end up in that ball in the or i'm sorry seventh in points and if they end up in that ballpark and have a defense that's in the top five now now we're talking and that's where they need to be uh our aryan says uh breezes in the hall of fame or as a hall of fame quarterback calm down the comparisons uh you know you gotta you gotta listen close to the show this is important you have to listen close to the show so here's the the drew breeze comparison is that with nfl offenses a lot of times it is synced up so well with the footwork the route combination and the timing and the anticipation of the throw that that's how you have to succeed.

Drew Brees is the ultimate example of someone who did all of that stuff at an A plus level, which is why he didn't have to be a scrambler, which is why he didn't have to be very big is because he could do all that stuff, throwing to a spot, throwing on time, getting the right footwork, understanding the playbook. So that's the peak example. And the point is just that JJ McCarthy has to do all of that stuff effectively. He doesn't have to be Drew Brees. He has to be effective in doing that. And that's why you got to listen close because that's what I was saying about the comparison where you have to do all those types of breezy and things at least to a B plus level in order to play for Kevin O'Connell and

be a starter. So until McCarthy can do that, they're going to probably use, uh, Sam Darnold until he's ready. So, um, anyway, uh, let's see. Uh, Wade says, uh, the front office knows the exact off season cap for next year to target top guard, uh, guards, defensive tackles. Well, that's right. And that's when we talk about the plan that it wasn't just for this year. And then they go, Oh, well now what do we do? Like, no, they already know who's going to be.

And I even did a mock free agency earlier this offseason. I got tired of everyone's way too early mock drafts because that is just completely stupid. And so I thought, well, we can actually look at the free agents and make a pretty good guess at who's going to be there. And there are opportunities at all those positions to improve. Truly says, watch your podcast yesterday. Nice guest that said the Vikings could sign him before training game. My podcast yesterday did not have a guest. You can go look. Are you talking about a different podcast? Because I didn't have, there was no guest. It was just me. And I said that, I think I said,

maybe by tomorrow morning, we'll be doing an emergency podcast. And we are. And it's been really fun. And I really appreciate everybody joining. And so make sure you subscribe and go over and check out the newsletter. Once I'm done with this podcast,

I'm going to run upstairs and start writing about this reaction as well. So the newsletter has articles that come to you every single day from TCO Performance Center, features, columns, all that stuff. So purpleinsider.com is the best place to do that. Yeah, no, you're right. What about Bob says the Browns tanked and then went full Rams. Impressive.

They did. Yeah. With Deshaun Watson. And I, and that's where the Vikings maybe are at an advantage where their ownership is not insane. There has been criticism for the ownership before of wanting to be middling and, you know, just wanting to be in a position to be in the playoff hunt and so forth, that that was the critique of the ownership before. And maybe they extended Kirk Cousins too many times because they were afraid of taking a step back. That, I think, is a fair criticism of them that they were so locked into, we need to make sure we're competitive

that they didn't agree to take a step back. But when Kweisi Adafo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell got here and formulated this competitive rebuild plan, the step back was built into it. And that was last year. And ultimately last year could mean that it's something that propels them into legitimate competitive competitiveness for a long time because they did take that step back. So the ownership does deserve credit for being on the same page here with Kweisi Adafo Mensah and Kevin O'Connell. And that's where,

when we have gone through all these interviews with these guys over the off season, you know, I was there at the combine. I was there at the owner's meetings. I've been every press conference. That's, that's my cheat code is that I show up at every single thing. And the message was never sounding different when anybody talks, it always felt like they were on the same page. And then what we've gotten to is exactly what we thought where we would get, which is signing Justin Jefferson as the final exclamation point on the end of the off season. And there you go. So they have a group that is in alignment. That's not always an easy thing to do, allowing Cousins to walk. Now, maybe the ownership did say, I don't really want to pay

X number of dollars for Kirk Cousins guaranteed and then pay Justin Jefferson as well. And that might end up working out very much, very much in the future for them that they made that decision. I guess we'll see what happens in Atlanta with Cousins. And at some point we'll find out what their penalty is for tampering and all of you could be happy. So anyway, hopefully I got to enough of your questions and comments here. A very exciting day. Let me just put a bow on this by saying that the Minnesota Vikings organization overall through its history has had an unbelievable group of wide receivers, whether it's Ahmad Rashad or Sammy White or Anthony Carter or Chris Carter, Jake Reed, Randy Moss, Stefan Diggs, Adam Thielen,

and now Justin Jefferson. It is a tradition for this team. But so often through their history, they allowed those players to walk or they did not maximize those players' abilities. And rather, those players were asked to help Warren Moon squeeze out whatever was left, or Jeff George to elevate his play, or Case Keenum to elevate his play. Now, they are asked to help develop a new quarterback at JJ McCarthy that has won a championship in college, that is a former five-star recruit that has the skill and the ability to be a top quarterback potentially in the league. And what signing Justin Jefferson does is gives him every opportunity to do that. So if we've seen in the past that these great wide receivers can elevate quarterbacks who are maybe less than that, the Gus Farrats that played pretty

well with Randy Moss or even the Dante Culpeppers in putting together a season like he did in 2004 when you have those types of wide receivers and quarterbacks where you can elevate your passing game to being elite without necessarily an elite quarterback. Although, you know, call pepper was, but a lot of times throughout the season or through the seasons, they were not, uh, at that level for the rest of their careers, the, the case Keenums and so forth, even Kirk cousins put together way better numbers in Minnesota than he did when he was in Washington. So there is a impact that exists with great players at this position. And now to know that he is going to be here through the entire development of JJ McCarthy, that the future

foundational pieces are locked in place for the next four years for this team to build around is extremely significant and very, very refreshing. I'm sure to Vikings fans to not only have a receiver, have it play out well, I mean, because it hasn't always for digs or Harvin or Randy Moss, that it hasn't always played out well in the long run with those guys, but to have him sign this extension and be in a good place and then develop this quarterback along with him compared to where this franchise has been for a long time, just kind of hoping and praying that maybe this quarterback from another team can potentially possibly if we give them the right stuff. And now you don't have to do that.

Now if this quarterback hits with these wide receivers, you have something that could be very, very good for a long time. And the way that they've handled the offseason overall, including this and not having to wait until training camp, not having to find Justin Jefferson and all those things, not having to go through any more drama with Justin Jefferson and all those things, not having to go through any more drama as, you know, with Justin Jefferson and the extension and the outside world, the pining for any information and all that, that now you can focus on the important things in life, the kicking

competition. It'll be fun to go out there tomorrow and we'll listen to Justin Jefferson, presumably with a press conference and all that stuff and hear what he has to say about this. But this is one to celebrate because you have this player who is at the true top of his craft now for a very long time to come and an opportunity to really win. And that's what I'm thinking about today for this organization. So thanks so much for everybody for joining this emergency podcast, huge crowd at 10 o'clock in the morning. Hopefully, uh, all of you skipped work, ignored, taking your kids to school and, um, or got in car crashes because you were watching on YouTube and so forth, but no, really, really a very exciting day for Vikings fans today to sign Jefferson. And he will be a foundational part of this sports market for a very long time to come.

And you know what? I think you just enjoy watching him play football. And let's not worry too much about anything else at this moment. He's going to be playing football for you for a long time. So thank you so much to everybody for watching or listening, tuning in and really appreciate it. And tomorrow I'll have a podcast reacting to what he said and what we saw on the field.

Alec Lewis is scheduled to join the podcast from the athletic. That'll be great. So thanks everybody again, and we will see you all very soon. This was a lot of fun football, football.