Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Kevin Cole breaks down the Vikings' odds at contention after the bye

Episode Date: October 11, 2025

Kevin Cole of the Unexpected Points newsletter joins to discuss what the Vikings' chances of being a contender are after the bye week. The Purple Insider podcast is brought to you by FanDuel. Also, check out our sponsor HIMS at https://hims.com/purpleinsider Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This episode of Purple Insider is presented by Fandool. Hey, everybody. We welcome in to the show, the unofficial analytics dude these days of the Purple Insider podcast. Kevin Cole of the unexpected points newsletter. I open it up every single Sunday. And I was very curious to see what you had on the Vikings performance in London. And one number stuck out to me right off the back, Kevin, which was Carson Wentz, I believe 13th in EPA since taking over as the Vikings starting quarterback. And also when it came to passing success rate, the Vikings have done pretty good with Carson Wentz in at quarterback.

So why don't we just jump into this situation with the Vikings at QB and the possibility of J.J. McCarthy coming back. I've looked at Carson Wentz like, hey, that's good backup quarterback play. That's what you hope for when you sign a backup quarterback. But would they have a legitimate chance to win with Carson Wentz? Because I've been sort of leaning toward there's a ceiling with that and it's probably just going to be okay and nothing more. But if he plays top 15 quarterback football the rest of the way, I mean, they've got a chance to make the playoff.

So where are you sitting with the Vikings QB situation? Well, I'm, you know, I'm someone who thinks of Carson Wentz almost entirely in terms of expectations. So if he is your number two overall pick and you give him a big contract with the, with the eagles and then things start to turn sideways, he's viewed quite negatively. Of course, you know, a little bit of a flame out in Indianapolis and then in Washington thereafter somehow getting picks along the way, which I think also added. to this expectation and then disappointment when things invariably kind of go wrong for him. At the same point in time, I do these rankings where I call them Bayesian because it looks at some past performance and he weights things more equally. You know, when I run him through the old machine, the old model, when I click go on that

to see what he looked like when J.J. McCarthy was out, he comes in slightly worse than average. in the landscape of the NFL, and the landscape of the NFL, of course, is a collection of, you know, elite quarterbacks, young guys who we don't know that much about, but we're probably going to be bad. And then a bunch of quarterbacks that maybe have bounced around to different places who can either look good or bad depending upon that given week. And I think that's who Carson Wentz really is. The question for him and the problem that he had in the past was maybe a bit of like a, what we would call a high variance type of quarterback and how we sort of played. maybe he's tamped down on that a little bit.

But he had an entire season in 2017 where he was a legitimate MVP candidate based upon making these big plays that were somewhat unsustainable. And then I also think when things had turned sideways and gone the wrong way, it really rubbed people incorrectly. So he hasn't quite had that yet. But I think if you were going to say Carson Wentz is our guy, overall, you're expecting averageish sort of performance. But there's going to be some rough patches along the way.

And that's normally when he loses the fans. Yeah. And we saw that again. the Steelers where he held on the ball too long, tried to make some plays, although that also sounded like Sam Darnold when you were talking about it when Donald got here last year. One thing that I have noticed from Wentz that might sell Kevin O'Connell, because right now, we just don't know what direction they're going to go, whether they're going right back to McCarthy. Also, there's a shoulder injury for Wentz that's mixed into this, but just in the scenario

that they might decide to stay with Wentz until the wheels come off. What I have noticed is that O'Connell, especially against Cleveland, was able to draw up a lot of stuff that made it really straightforward for the quarterback. And sometimes that's been a critique of ours, you know, the downfield stuff, the multiple reads, the multiple motions and asking your quarterback to just do a lot. But in this case, there was a rollout that he just drops the ball off to Jefferson. It's a first down. There's just a little out route to Jefferson where he gains 14 or 15 yards. You're like, yeah, that stuff is, if you can read it, you can throw it. And is it possible that the QB whisperer can whisper enough for Carson Wentz not to be the guy,

as you mentioned, even the last time he started with Indianapolis, it's 400 yards one week and 100 yards and three interceptions the next week. Can he not, can he not be that guy because of the environment? I think he can for stretches of time. The question is when you're pressed, what ends up happening? I mean, one of the advantages you could say that you have with this style of quarterback, and you wouldn't think it would necessarily be the case. But with a good defense to back them up is that you're put in those situations less often

where you feel like you really need to make a play. But, you know, the flip side of that equation is you can play your way out of games that you might have been able to scrape by and win as long as you just did the functional sort of thing. And I think the Sam Darnold comparison is apt in that. And we saw what happened at the end of last season a little bit. And, you know, it isn't something that really factors in. This is one of these hard things to do when you're thinking of doing, you know, doing modeling and predictions and statistics and other things is like the propensity to make bad mistakes.

I think Donald's someone who has displayed that throughout his career. And then Wence is also someone. And normally it's kind of thinking you can make that spectacular play where you can't quite get there. which of course, you know, but the elite quarterbacks are the ones who attempt to do that and then can can also do it. So it is something that you don't want to completely squelch within, within quarterback play. That's the difference. Will Wentz become a guy who will just, you know, do what's drawn up and not do that? I say it's unlikely, but, you know, unlikely does not mean it won't happen.

You know, he's a guy. I made the comparison of me being, say, 24 years old and how I used to be able to jump up and hang on the rim. And if I try to do that today, well, yeah, no, I mean, I had some hops. I've never been able to do that. So go ahead. I can touch, I could touch the foam on the back of the backboard sometimes after the layup. You know, you slap glass. I would slap foam. That was my thing. Okay. So we're a little different in terms of our vert. But, uh, the point being that if I try to do it now, both Achilles might just rip underneath me as I land. So I stay to the ground and shoot free throws instead that is not Carson Wentz from what we've seen is that even when he got hurt

he's trying to go 23 24 year old Carson Wentz and take on two defenders and trying to juke him or something like that was way in the past my friend it's not there anymore and I think that that probably might apply as he goes on to certain throws as well hey I've I mean he still does have a live arm but hey I could fit this in there I can make this happen and that doesn't always necessarily mean it's going to happen. The way I've looked at it, Kevin, is that there is a ceiling on this with Carson Wence, and that ceiling might be the best case scenario if you feel like you can't play J.J. McCarthy, but I would prefer to be on the side of seeing how J.J. comes back with

Christian Derisaw, with Jordan Addison in the lineup, and see if he could do some of the simple things that Wentz has been doing, but add on a playmaking element to his game, uh, how I would you work out knowing you have so little information the differences between what this could be with Wentz and what it could be with J.J. McCarthy? Yeah, I mean, I think you've pretty much nailed what I would say on this is that you're still going to have the potential for the true upside kind of elite quarterback play outcome much more so with J.J. McCarthy than you're going to have with Carson Wentz. It would be how you want to play the different, you know, the starting scenario is going forward is something to think about maybe a little bit.

Do you want to put McCarthy in immediately upon being healthy knowing that in a week or two he could get pulled and then Wentz may come back in and then McCarthy may come back in. After that, would you prefer to just keep Wentz in, let him kind of play out the string for a, I won't say inevitable, but likely move later as he has a couple of bad games, not really knowing what you have. I mean, for me, assuming that you're not going to win a Super Bowl with Carson Wentz, which is an assumption you can't necessarily make 100%, but it's, it's rather unlikely. I would rather play out McCarthy now, go ahead and put him in now. And I know, and we talked a little bit before the show about the fact he doesn't have the most experience beforehand.

Obviously, he missed his entire rookie season. I guess I don't put as much weight in playing experience. I think most guys kind of have it or they don't. And it's not a universal rule, but I think it's, I lean in that sort of direction. So if he's ready to play, if he can go out there, sitting on the bench even longer and watching, I don't know what the development curve is really affected there. So I would go ahead and put them back in at this point, hold off as long as possible. But if you need to make a move because you're on that precipice of making the playoffs or not,

which would be the most likely scenario in which you would make a move, I mean, you could do worse than Carson Wentz as a guy to come in. And I do think there's some similarities between him and even someone like Nick Foles who came in for Carson Wentz, where you have a guy who knows, you know, maybe a little bit of a gun-slinging nature can give you some upside in a playoff run versus your standard low, high floor, low ceiling backup quarterback. If you guys have been wearing hats or trying different haircuts in order to cover up for your hair loss, trust me, I totally feel you. And maybe you've tried different hair loss solutions and nothing works. Well, I've got something for you then. It's called Hymns.

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yeah real picture well it was real art someone actually made it uh of it was case keenum and blake Bortles and Tom Brady and Nick Foles. And it was like the four guys walking into the championship weekend. And somebody said like, we're going to have this again, aren't we? And I don't think it's going to be that extreme. But I also look at the NFC. And I do wonder about if they will factor this in when you look around the NFC, heck, if you look around the AFC after the chiefs just lost to the Jaguars, the bills just lost to the New England Patriots, I still think those teams are favorites, but they are certainly not as strong as they were in past years where they matched up in the AFC championship.

And then you look at the NFC and you go, Philadelphia's got their problems and who else is perfect? Is Green Bay perfect? No, Detroit's missing some guys already this year. And you might say we need to see if we can hang in the race. And then if we fall behind, that's when it's time to go back to the kid. Yeah, yeah.

It's weird. I think that the NFC is okay. as far as the topsy-turvy start to the season. The AFC is kind of all out of whack. I actually think the Chiefs are not that bad versus how good of a team they were last year and the prior year. It's just they got all the breaks then and maybe not so much. Now, I don't think the Ravens are necessarily that bad,

but without Lamar Jackson and a defense, which has performed incredibly poorly. But that's something that's happened to them in the past, and they've turned it around the second half of the season. And so those are more of a function of record where, at least in the NFC, you do have teams like the Eagles, the Lions, the Packers, Sam Francisco 49ers, if Brock Purdy, you know, gets healthy, that have pretty good records this year and would be teams over the last several years you could point to as being, you know, teams you would assume to contend. So I do think the NFC is a little bit more stacked right now than the AFC when you combine win-loss record and the competition in that regard. So that might prompt the decision to be made a little bit earlier than you would like to see. I guess I would just try to hold off on that as long as possible if you can with the Vikings,

knowing that even their defensive performance that we've seen so far, it's been great, but that is also a little bit subject to who you're going to play going forward. Right. And you mentioned that. I look at just our friends at Fanduil here over the NFC East. and they've got Philadelphia minus 210 to win, but also the division that is Washington is plus 260, which is not too far away. The Vikings have both those teams on the way.

Even Dallas is plus 850 and his higher odds to make the playoffs than the Minnesota Vikings right now. So it's not like you are just running through the AFC South from last year or something. It is going to be a very hard road if you're going to get there, which I guess in one way you might say, Well, that that's a reason to just play McCarthy and figure out what you have. There's politics at play.

There's a receiver who wears number 18 who's done really well with Carson Wentz at play. There's behind the scene stuff in practice. The COC wants to see that we can't figure out. But how about this just in general? You've watched a lot of football in your day. I saw a tweet the other day about Chad Pennington. And I know this is going back a long way. But the tweet was about how Chad Pennington didn't start.

for his first couple years out of Marshall throwing the ball to Randy Moss and then he finally gets his chance with the New York Jets performs really well wins like eight out of 11 games going down the stretch we all know the Jordan love the Aaron Rogers but there's a lot more examples of that throughout history of quarterbacks who did not succeed right away and then we're given time to develop what are we supposed to do with that though because because we we need to know and you need to know with the rookie quarterback contract and you need to know if you're going to have a competition next year and all those things and at the same time there's just a lot of guys not just those main examples the mohomes and the rogers who have worked out after their teams were being

patient yeah yeah pettington's interesting because i was thinking the other day that they hadn't the jets if you want to talk about woeful quarterback drafting i was like i don't think they've had anyone like legitimately good at quarterback since joan name but then someone mentioned chad pettit i was like yeah that might be the only other guy that they've had during that that entire stretch since Broadway Joe. You know, here's, here's why I look at it when it comes to quarterbacks. If you say, we've had guys who have succeeded, who have started immediately, we've had guys who have succeeded who haven't started immediately.

We've had guys succeed where we said they were NFL ready, but they did start immediately, but they didn't start immediately. We've had guys that said, like Patrick Mahomes, where there was one famous commentator who said he need two years to sit on the sidelines before he'd be ready. Of course, you won an MVP in a second year, that we assume are not going to be ready, but they come in early and they look good. So all these kind of things kind of point, at least for me, of saying generally, again, not the case for everyone.

Generally, if you're good, you're good. The downsides of playing early are that you are worse as a rookie. You do take more hits in sacks as a rookie, even if you end up being an elite great quarterback most of the time. So there is that downside risk in that regard. And then the downside of not playing someone early is, you know, it's hard in a rookie year to get a truly extraordinary, like MVP, you know, type of campaign has never happened, although Dan Marino probably played like an MVP when he was, when he, when he started as a rookie. So you're giving that up. But what you're also giving up is a look to figure out who these guys are. And I think nowadays with a lot of quarterback talent out there where you can get, you know, decent backup play and floor level play, the longer.

you stick with someone and the longer you wait to make your next draft pick going forward are the downsides there. So for me, I just say, you know, just play them and you got to work out the competing agendas. Now, in this case, I don't know, you're the insider, literally. You're the purple insider. So you would know this better than me. But I mean, I think GMs probably lean more towards playing the guy who I drafted and coaches

probably lean more towards playing the guy I'm going to win with next week. So it's going to be those two competing visions also probably for deciding who is going to actually play. Yeah, right. Because if you're making the front office big picture decisions, it's a lot easier if you have more information on that quarterback. And if you're the coach, you're trying to win next week's game. So you're saying who is the quarterback who gives us the best chance to win next week against the Philadelphia Eagles? Though I think that if you were going to talk about this team in particular, Kevin O'Connell is much more than just the exes, and O's coach. I mean, he really is the, you know, overseer of all decisions regarding the quarterback in this franchise, including getting on the horn with Aaron Rogers for, you know, maybe a short conversation about coming to the Vikings in the off season that leaked its way

out into the media. But, I mean, he is the guy who is leading the J.J. McCarthy development train. So I've said if he doesn't feel like he's ready to play, then, you know, who am I to kind to tell him. I don't know, Kevin, you are friends with Tom Brady and played in the league with Brady and everything else, but I'm pretty sure I know more than this about this situation. So I don't want to be that guy. But at the same time, I also want to start finding out and the fans also want to start finding out. And I do think that if it clicks, the chances are better that they could get into a playoff game and he's playing really well. And it goes from there, kind of a Brock Purdy type of situation, possibly there.

Now, here's another angle to this would be how many games would we need to see of J.J. McCarthy to feel like we have some sense, not all the sense. I noticed that Bo Nix was both a bust in it and a great success in one half, you know, the other day. Many such cases, many such cases. And this happens all the time, right? Now, today, Trevor Lawrence is a franchise quarterback. maybe two weeks ago, not so much.

But so we know these things change. But how many games would we at least have a feel for what J.J. McCarthy is? I mean, that's a tough one because I don't think there's really a cutoff point here. I got into a little bit of trouble amongst in the second city last year where after, I think it was like only three or four games, I said that, well, you know, if you're redoing the NFL draft, you have to take jaded Daniels before Caleb Williams and not because I'm like certain that one guy is good and one guy is bad, but I'm like one's the number one pick one's the number two pick. One guy's been better. It's a coin flip type of decision. So why not do it?

And as part of that analysis, I looked into rookie year performance. And you'd be pretty shocked to see three, four, five, six games into their careers where it's not a determinant of how good they will be. But there is a pretty strong correlation between how good these guys end up being based upon whether or not they are good. I mean, there are some like Jared Gough, Matthew Stafford, who really struggled going on who ended up being, you know, I guess people are calling Jared Gough an elite quarterback, but he's put up elite numbers at least from what he said. So that ends up happening. But most of the guys who do end up being elite were pretty good early on. So I wouldn't wait too long. Like if he played out the string this season, it's not that I would necessarily

say, you know, kick someone to the curb, but I would be looking, you know, like skeptically upon the future performance going forward. And another thing when it comes to sitting quarterbacks or not, which I didn't mention last time, which could come into this decision being played, is there is a signal in not playing someone, depending upon who your alternative is. So you could mention certain guys who didn't play, who ended up being good, like, for instance, you know, Aaron Rogers or Jordan Love or Patrick Mahomes sitting behind Alex Smith, who was kind of having a career MVP adjacent type of season, those sorts of examples. But the examples where a guy sits for a full year behind a quarterback who's not good,

not good, not great, not great results going forward on that. So if Kevin O'Connell feels like he doesn't want to play him, you also have to say, maybe things were not going well for a long time here. Maybe he hasn't been seeing something for a long time here. And all he needed was a few respectable games from Carson Wentz to decide that he's going to shut things down here. That's kind of a bad signal from my perspective, knowing that it's a guess. It's a guess. But I would say most times it's a bad signal for the future of the quarterback.

Right. I mean, if Carson Wentz goes out, let's say they play a. against Philadelphia. And then the Chargers back to back games in four days. And he throws eight touchdowns, no picks, 550 yards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, fair enough on not starting JJ McCarthy the, the following week against the Detroit Lions. But I don't really see too many outcomes that are like that. And how I've felt about Wentz's performance is give this an a plus backup quarterback stepping in and winning a couple of games. But it's not an, a plus if it was Josh Allen playing. It's not, wow, this guy just went full legend on the Browns,

beating them in the final drive by, you know, four points or whatever. It's, it's been great backup quarterback play, but it hasn't set the bar so high that you would never go back to your first round draft pick quarterback. And yet, the door has been left very much ajar to them sticking with Went. So there may be, as you said, signal there on the decision from Kevin O'Connell. I have a very analytics question about the Vikings defense. They have been pretty well torched in the run game and I think are maybe tied for 19th or something in yards per carry against. They've given up a lot of explosive runs. And yet when you look at the EPA per play, the Vikings are terrific. And there's only been one game where they've been on the negative side of EPA on defense, which is hard

to do. What do we make of a defense that clearly is not going to be sure? shutting down the opposing team is this is not a Williams wall situation when it comes to the run game versus they have been effective at slowing down opposing quarterbacks for the most part. I would not say the Aaron Rogers game. I don't think they were good there. But aside from that, we have not seen big performances from quarterbacks against them. Yeah. My rankings of just just looking at 2025 performance and adjusting as best we can for strength of schedule has them being slightly worse than the Browns, but kind of right in that category of being a top two, maybe top three type of defense for how they perform this year, giving more, now I give more weight

to the past defense and the run defense, but there is this weird thing where run defense typically shows more stability year to year at least. So, you know, have they been playing from ahead a lot in some of these games, which makes the other, which makes the other teams, you know, not multifaceted and what you can do with that? I don't know. Like, you know, I'll let people debate that ad nauseum for what's going on. But I think fundamentally you could say like all defenses, except for, you know, with the exception of some extraordinary, you know, once every five years, once every few years types of defenses where they can legitimately shut down even the best quarterbacks, I think they're subject to who they end up playing.

It'll be interesting to see them against the Eagles because the Eagles offense is not good really so according to my numbers now I build in the fact that they have talent so I give them a little bit more of a boost so I think this is just going to be a really interesting performance going back to back against the Eagles and then also facing some other quarterbacks who are you know at least name brand type of quarterbacks but haven't been maybe as good as you're expecting going forward and seeing them start to play but they do get some bump up from the fact that you have continuity when it comes to defensive coordinator who's not the quarterback of the defense, but there's maybe the closest thing you can find to that and year over year,

you know, multi-year type type of performance. So the Browns have also been really good for multiple years too. So I've kind of put those two in a category by themselves as being maybe the two defenses we can really believe in the rest of the season. Of course, subject to what evidence rolls in. Well, I think that this defense under Flora is now going on three years. It absolutely murders bad quarterbacks or at least makes their life very, very difficult. Jake Browning murdered. Dylan Gabriel didn't have a great day. Made a few plays and thought showed some promise, but didn't have a great day throwing the football against this defense. And when we've see great quarterbacks play against them, they usually are not that shook, whether it was the

first time they faced Justin Herbert and he completed like 90% of his passes or the times they've faced Jared Goff, who in this house is an elite quarterback because of the way he's played against this defense. Stafford, same thing. So veteran quarterbacks have not been. is spooked by all the deception and pass rush and they get rid of the ball quicker and stuff like that. We saw that from Aaron Rogers. So the way I look at it is they're good enough to win with and they're good enough to turn a game with their ability to take the football away, which I think over three years we could say that's an emphasis for them and they have players who can do it. You can't guarantee it every week, but they do it better than other teams. At the same

time, they're just not going to be perfect. You can't just roll out there and score 10 points and expect to win. I don't think that's really true for any team now when you start with the football at the 35 yard line as well. But let me let me just look at the landscape around the leagues. We're kind of just pulling back here a little bit in the by week. So I'm looking at over on Fanduil, the Super Bowl odds. And I'm going to read them to you for the first few teams that are listed here. And it looks a little funky after the last couple days. But I just want you to give me your take here so right now the bills are the super bowl favorites at plus 500 Philadelphia plus 700 both those teams with pretty bad losses Detroit plus 800 after that so their third

green bay fourth at plus 800 Kansas city plus a thousand is in fifth and then sixth Baltimore and seventh the Rams and then the chargers Colts and 49ers I mean what do you what do you make of this list I mean just yeah this week was not great to be at the top of this list, but it's, I mean, the Baltimore Ravens are still right there with Kansas City in this conversation. Green Bay seems like they might be a little too high for me based on maybe even the way that someone like the Rams has played. How do we shuffle all of this out for who are the real contenders are? Yeah, I mean, it's strange. I noted I put out my famously loved power rankings earlier this morning.

If you want to get engagement, just send out some power rankings. I do call them the only 100% correct power rankings. So that probably helps bait a little engagement on there. And I'm also not like adjusting based upon what happened the prior week. It just sent out and was like, oh, how can you do this when this team lost? But so big picture and it plays into somewhat of what we're talking about here is like, nothing really changed for the top seven or eight ranks there, which is surprising because we have several losses that came from those teams.

So what happened is when the rankings don't, this is like the difference between rankings and looking at some sort of metric like points better than an average team on a neutral field, which is how I go into the rankings is it does narrow though. Like it is narrowing, which is a little bit strange because typically what you see is for that type of metric. And even if you look at betting markets and you can impute what that is, that sort of metric is normally at the beginning of season, it's narrow. And then as the season goes on, it spreads further and further as quarterbacks get injured, as you learn more about teams, as you have confirmation that teams are good. This year, it's kind of like it's spread and now it's not going anywhere. So I think what it's telling us is that there are a lot of contenders this year from what we know right now with a combination of the fact that teams are legitimately not

playing as well as you would hope the top teams the NFL and teams that you might have the most faith in their quarterbacks. Let's say the chiefs and the in the Ravens. So that's like gives you this unique ability to say, okay, I get it. They've been bad, but it's okay. They don't have the record, right? They don't have the team record, which is, which is part of the formula of being able to, you know, make the playoffs to get the number one seed, do all those things that are going to help you get to get to the Super Bowl. So because of that, I think of what it's telling you is we just have a little bit of a muddled mess near the top. Now, I do. think we have strong elite quarterbacks who will eventually end up, end up proving themselves,

but it's been a little bit of a struggle so far. It has for teams that even as recently as last year looked sort of invincible. And there's also a lot of teams that were kind of left for dead last year, like Jacksonville, that have enough talent to be in that conversation and in New England having enough talent to be in that conversation to at least make it interesting. I've always thought that the middle section of the season is, the one that tells us the most truth. So the beginning is weird because some teams get injured and who knows,

coaching changes, all sorts of stuff. The end is kind of weird because you have playoff scenarios and all that sort of stuff. But the middle section kind of teams are at the strength they're going to be at. They've got their schemes down. They've got their data in and how they're playing and all that sort of stuff. It tells you a lot. I think we're going to see that separation as we go forward. Last question for you, Kevin.

what's the most hopeless team in the national football league make make viking fans feel a little better about their franchise who do you look at like this is the worst team by far to be a fan of at this moment in 2025 all right guys so many choices here there's a lot of choices let me let me let me let me think let me think for a second I mean I hate to say it because I don't I like I like some of the people I know who work over there and uh okay I was about to say the dolphins but actually they might actually go they could go in a little bit of a run but I was I'm trying to think here's my here's what I'm trying to get trying to get bad can't necessarily like flip over and turn the corner in an easy way next off season so that's why I was saying saying the dolphins

there I mean I get the are the Raiders going to have to stick with Gino Smith I mean the thing that's weird about the Raiders is they went all out this offseason saying we're tired of being terrible if we can just be like in a playoff hunt at the end of the season even with no chance of winning the Super Bowl. That is our goal and it's gone completely up in smoke. So I don't know. I would say one of those two teams because I mean, I think you have enough guaranteed money on Gino where I don't know what what they're doing right now. So I would put it as one of those two teams. I think that those are some good selections because when you're talking about teams that are truly horrible, like the Saints and the Jets.

Yeah. Well, you're going to draft high. So at least you know where you're at, you're at as a franchise that you're kind of building. And shout out to Spencer Rattler, who I kind of made fun of a lot, uh, during the time of the draft where the analyst thought he was a second round pick. And hey, they missed one one time, the only one they've ever missed badly. But, uh, you know, he's doing a job to keep the train on the tracks and like they don't

look like the biggest joke ever. And so, okay, the Jets kind of do, but at least they're tanking. I think if you were not tanking and it looks like it, that's where it's really truly awful. And I might, I might toss Arizona into this mix, not just because of what happened against the Titans, because what's, what's your path? Tell me how you're not an eight win team every single year as long as you're paying Tyler Murray. And as long as you have a mediocre coaching staff, oh my gosh, they added a couple defensive linemen like, congratulations that your quarterback is still. the same. And, uh, your wide receiver is not generational, which maybe we should stop using that. But, uh, anyway, so Vikings, you're not them. There you go. There you go. There you go.

They're at that point of the season. Is it? Yeah, I'm of two minds with the Cardinals. I still think there's some hope for Murray. If he just like decides he's going to run the ball all the time, but I don't think that's, I think he's, he's kind of faded doing that. And, you know, obviously what we saw last week was, know it's not a great week not a great week for positive feelings we're in there they're in the tank of despair over there uh in arizona for sure Kevin Cole unexpected points newsletter an absolute must read so if you like the purple insider newsletter make sure you go uh check that out as well and great stuff man great insight uh into the national football league as we stand and kind of step back sit around for a week everybody take a deep breath um

this is a good conversation to have so thanks for coming on again man appreciate it thanks for having me