Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Kevin Cole talks about how the Vikings will design their offense around J.J. McCarthy

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Matthew Coller is joined by Kevin Cole of Unexpected Points to discuss how the Vikings can design their offense around rookie QB J.J. McCarthy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here and joining me on the show, Kevin Cole, the Unexpected Points newsletter. One of the top analytics analysts in the world. And now that our friend Eric Eager is joining the Carolina Panthers, I mean, that slides you up a notch, right? Kevin, how are you, man? I'm doing well. Yeah, I was going to say, you have a lot of slots to fill now. When Eric would come on and pretend not to be a Vikings fan, even though he knows more about the history of the Vikings than pretty much any living individual, I think, in the

world. Oh, yeah. Actually, that's how I ended up meeting Eric is in 2016 when I moved here to cover the team. He reached out to me and started just chatting Vikings and I learned a lot of Vikings history a lot of it that I didn't need at all uh just through having conversations with him but if folks did not hear uh yes Eric Eager who is a consistent guest on the show formerly of PFF was working for Sumer Sports was hired by the

Carolina Panthers to work in their front office so very very proud to see guests of the show formerly of pff was working for sumer sports was hired by the carolina panthers to work in their front office so very very proud to see guests of the show moving on up which means that we got a spot here for a consistent analytics guest and that is now you uh kevin cole so i didn't tell you at all what we were going to talk about before going on the show i kind of like it that way sometimes like i don't want you to prep for this. Here's the idea. The Minnesota Vikings have a lot of pieces in place, but in some ways they have a clean slate. Now they can design their offense the way that they want to around JJ McCarthy. And maybe for this year, Sam Darnold. So I want you to talk to me about what the Minnesota Vikings should consider as they build this offense around JJ McCarthy, because with Kirk Cousins, there were certain limitations and

that doesn't mean that Cousins wasn't good. And we've been over that many, many times that they found offensive systems that fit for him when Kubiak was here, a lot of play action stuff, a lot of deep shots. And with Kevin O'Connell, there was more put on his plate, but kind of took advantage of his experience, his accuracy, his ability to throw the ball with anticipation. But now that they have a rookie quarterback, where would you begin from scratch? If Kevin O'Connell called you and said, Kevin, I trust other Kevins. Where should we begin in building our offense to be the most analytical and efficient offense we could possibly have?

Well, some of that's going to depend on what you think about as far as the evaluation. McCarthy, now that he's in the building, it's always shocking to me that we have this very you know profound and extensive pre-draft process and then i've heard gms talk about i've heard coaches talk about it um whether the quarterback position or not that they claim at least now some of this could be some some hindsight bias they claim at least that you get these guys in the building and after three weeks you're like oh well this is not going to work after you've done, you know, months and months and months of, of prep on them. So I think the, probably the biggest differentiator when we're talking about how you're going to structure the offense and we're talking about a rookie and

things like that is whether or not you feel like they can deal with the speed of the game, you know, full field reads, all of that sort of stuff. But I don't think that's anything that you would say is an expansive type of view versus what you would have with Kirk Cousins, whatever you think of Kirk. I think he's a pretty good thrower of the football. I think he's obviously a very diligent student of the game. So I don't know if you're going to get expansive that way, but where McCarthy and even Darnold to an extent, although he gets himself into trouble when he does this sometimes, what they can do is maybe make a little something out of nothing that you couldn't have before. But I'm not convinced that that's something that you necessarily have to game plan for as much as just having a Trump card where the play you call on, let's say third down, most of the time

is what we're talking about. The significant gains are being made, isn't going to work, but then something, some sort of wrinkle happens where they are able to make it work. And I think we saw that even to a degree with someone like Brock Purdy versus Jimmy Garoppolo, every now and then he can make a play. He's not the most talented quarterback, but it's not as if they had to really call plays differently because of that, other than maybe letting them roll out sometimes.

It's just, you can make something happen sometimes. And I think that's what you would hope for, for the Vikings. You're going to get, you know, Kirk Cousins type of play within structure. And then maybe a little bit outside of structure, which is you just give them the thumbs up afterwards and say, good job doing, making that out of making something out of nothing. No, that's certainly true. And I think that's a major part of JJ McCarthy's game. And it's not a major part in the same way it is for Lamar Jackson, but it's a major part in the idea that he can escape and also have a pocket presence, which I think you did see at Michigan where he would adjust himself in the pocket. He could keep his eyes downfield where he was sliding around. By the way, I think it's totally true that they get a guy in the building and they go, oh no, because even from rookie minicamp, they put a lot on these guys' plates where they're doing a full install

of the offense right away, the defense right away. So you're sitting in meeting rooms for a bunch of hours and then having to take it out onto the field to even run basic stuff. And so you get an idea, does the guy show up on time? Is he paying attention in meetings? What does he look like just even physically when he's standing out there? One of the crazy things that's happened to me in the past

is you'll look at a guy's height, weight, and you'll go, okay, he's about the size of this other player on the Vikings. And then you go out there and you go, no, it doesn't look like that. Was it pumped up for the combine? Did he have batteries in his pockets when he was weighing it? What happened there? And with J.J. McCarthy, it was kind of the opposite, where I thought on tape he looked pretty slender, and then he gets out in front of us on the field and I go, oh, he's actually quite a bit bigger than I expected. So these things definitely do happen. All right. I want to pick apart a few different elements of the offense and get an understanding of what we should think of their philosophy. Kevin O'Connell likes to throw the ball down the field. And when Nick Mullins played, he loved that. He was just gunning it down the field, left and right, like Nick Winston.

But for JJ McCarthy in college, he did not do a whole lot of just heaving the ball deep down the field for 50-yard plays. Where do we stand right now on deep balls? Because it felt like for a little while, go back to maybe 2019, 2020, it was all deep crossers, explosive plays, and then defenses started playing differently, and now we've gone to more quick-hitting short stuff, and I think it was only about 8% of Jared Goff's passes went more than 20 yards in the air. So if you're designing an offense and you're O'Connell and you'd like to go down the field, but defenses try to take that away. Like, how do we balance that? Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's the million dollar question, I guess, when we're talking about these sorts of offenses. I mean, there has been a little bit of a progression defensively.

And I think Mike McDonald's probably the guy that people are pointing to now, having taken defense forward a bit and what he's doing, where it's still kind of more of a deeper shell. It's still less blitzing than, you know, when he took over for Wink Martindale and they were just bringing the house all the time. But there's a little bit less of a sitting back-ness, I guess you could say, to it. He gives his players a little bit more freedom to react to what's happening and not just let everything happen underneath, as a lot of teams are doing.

So with that freedom always can probably open up some opportunity, I think, too, for offenses being able to make plays down the field. Now, what you say about Kirk Cousins, and I think sometimes he makes amazing throws where you're like, how did he get the ball into that window type of situation? But at the same time, you'll notice, I think, that he doesn't, at least typically, he's not a big interception thrower. He's not a big risk taker situationally when it comes to things like third down or even, you know, in a very bad situation to the fourth down sometimes where you really got to do something where he's not doing it. So I think that could also be an interesting way to open up the offices. Some of it is just your mentality for being

willing to make these plays. Now, some people, there is a pretty strong correlation sometimes between draft position and people's willingness to take risks because they know if you throw an interception you're a fourth round pick and you're Kirk Cousins or even if you're someone who grew up your entire life and didn't quite have maybe the prototypical sort of mold if you throw that interception even if even if you're doing the right thing let's say statistically on average you're going to potentially get benched and potentially lose your spot and never get that that back again. I think Kirk played like that a little bit. If you look at some of his numbers, he would convert like third downs and fourth downs under

expectations, despite the fact that he's extremely accurate quarterback when it came to throwing the ball. Nick Mullins is one of those weird guys that just like does the opposite. He's just a late route pick, but doesn't realize it. I think there's a lot of other guys who play like that. Sometimes we play like Brett Favre, but don't have the arm for Brett Favre. So you'd hope for McCarthy, you're going to get like the accuracy maybe of Cousins, but then also the willingness to take risk.

And he's going to have a lot more rope. And I think as being that type of prospect, so that's what you're going to hope for this year. And I think it's sometimes it's just a mentality of being willing to take the option that's available. Because these, on these, on these plays, we still have long routes that are happening. Those are still opening things up and just whether or not you're choosing to take them sometimes. And that can really be a thin margin. Matt LaFleur said something very interesting. Once we had a conference call with him before a Vikings and Packers game. And I think Kirk had

had a run of interceptions and somebody asked LeFleur kind of what he thought about that. Is there something you could take advantage of? And he said that because Kirk doesn't have a rocket arm, he had to throw with anticipation really for his entire career, which may have made him a throw, you know, a handful of interceptions where you're anticipating one thing over another, as opposed to just Josh Allen gun it into the window when you see it. But the other part of it too, is I think that he didn't always believe in the velocity of the ball actually getting there into a tight window where, Hey, you have to throw it into a back shoulder here to make this work. And it was like, yeah, that's, that's pretty tight.

Can I actually get it there? And I think there was some hesitation on his part that is not there for JJ McCarthy. And so after seeing him only for one rookie minicamp practice, and I'm going to build on the sample size eventually, but that's all I've got right now. The one thing I did think of him is the arm strength, but also I think he wants to make plays. I don't think that he's the Alex Smith game manager that people have said, because when I think of Alex Smith, I think of exactly what you described as a guy who never threw any interceptions, never really turned the ball over. But when it was third and 10,

he was getting about four yards and getting a completion, getting off the field, making sure he punts. And I didn't see that with McCarthy at Michigan. I thought that when he had chances and wanted to make plays, he was trying to push the ball past the sticks. And I definitely saw it already in his first mini camp where, oh, I got that window. Let me fire it in there. Whoops. I threw an interception, but like, whatever, we'll, we'll get it next time. So I think there's a mentality here that he wants to be that playmaker more than he wants to just be Mr. Safe guy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, part of that is what I'm talking about, the risk aversion and the, you know, losing your starting spot, something like that. I mean, that could even filter through

to practice, right. That can even filter through to, um, I remember Patrick Mahomes, I believe he threw a bunch of interceptions when he was in the, in the preseason and earlier. And part of what he said he was doing was just testing his limits. You know, he's in a new, he's in a new game now he's testing his limits. Now, if you test your limits and you're fighting for the backup or the third string, or maybe to hold on to the first string position, that could be a little bit more dangerous. So yeah, I mean, and part of it is just being willing to try a bit more. It's interesting that you mentioned Alex Smith because Alex Smith's last year in Kansas City, when Tyreek Hill kind of had his breakout sort of year, if you looked at, and this could

become a mistake when we talk about numbers and how you look, if you look at deep passing, Alex Smith was the best deep passer in the league, but we're also looking at this on an efficiency standpoint. So it's only judging you really by the attempts that you make. And the reason that a lot of people, there was even a thought of like, well, can Patrick Mahomes even be any better than Alex Smith? Well, you don't have to like replicate that outstanding efficiency. If you're just throwing it more often, but at a lower efficiency level, you could be doing better for the team as a whole. So I think that's also a big part of it. So the willingness to do it, it So the willingness to do it is the willingness to do it. And the ability to do it off platform, it reconfigures timing from a quarterback's perspective,

because Kirk Cousins would have, everything would have to be on time. And if it wasn't on time, then he wasn't going to throw it. Well, now timing becomes less of an issue. If your feet don't have to be in the right place, if your body doesn't have to be facing the right direction, all those sorts of things. Now the timing is opened up, which will open up these passes down the field. Even if you're not going to be as good as a Kirk cousins, perfectly timed throw ball down the field,

sometimes just throwing it by itself is going to be better than doing the alternative, whatever the alternative may have been of not throwing the ball. And I definitely think in practice, they're going to have to work on scramble drill a lot more than they would have because there are moments in McCarthy's tape in college where it's not exactly Russell Wilson, where he used to run all over the place or Kyler Murray does this, but there's some of it where he's on the move and he's going to try to keep the play alive and make a play. What I think is really valuable for this team is a little bit taboo in the old

analytics department, which is running the football. And I say this because I've seen offenses with Delvin cook that ran the football spectacularly. And I have seen the last two years with the Vikings where it was downright sad and often pathetic how poorly they were running the ball. And I do think that there's something to the idea of the play action. We kind of like dismissed that early on because the people had play action success despite poor running games. But when you've watched linebackers jump up at Delvin Cook over and over and over and over again, you go, I think there's something going on there that that's an advantage where you can use play action more often. You could definitely use it more often

second and five than you can second and eight. And those negative runs are absolute killers. You hand off on first down, and then you're looking at second and 13. That is horrendous. So what kind of impact do you think that Aaron Jones could have? Let's say that McCarthy plays, I don't know when he's going to play, but it plays throughout this year, bringing in Aaron Jones with him, I think could be really important for them. But do you disagree with that? No, I think it can be important. I mean, I think you're, you're completely right about the, some of the conclusions when it comes to how effective the running game is versus play action. And I mean, I've talked about this a bit, sorry, there's a little bit of an aside, but I think this is important when we, when we're

hearing these kinds of analytical sort of arguments is it's really like a measurement error, I would say, because what you're trying to measure is the perception of a, of the defense, really the linebackers there, but also the coaches, if they've been feeding into linebackers there but also the coaches if they've been feeding into linebackers but i think it's probably more on the individual players sometimes than others their perception for how aggressive they have to be or what sort of anticipation what level of anticipation they need to have in order to stop the run now as as nerds uh who have looked at this they're going to say oh well, well, they should have the highest anticipation for the offenses that have the highest EPA per play running the

ball. And that's just not really how it works. I mean, they're saying, I want to stop Derrick Henry. They're saying, I want to stop Dalvin Cook or the Vikings when they are running a lot, things like that. So if we had a better way of measuring that perception, and again, this is something that's going on in someone's head. So maybe you could say volume times efficiency, but even that doesn't work sometimes because you fumble the ball, you lose a bunch of efficiency,

all this sort of stuff. But I do think there's something to that. Obviously there is a reaction that's affected. Now I do believe the nerd thing where it says you don't have to establish a run because I think on play one of the game, you're concerned about Derrick Henry just as much as you would be on play 10 or 11 of the game. So I think the nerds are okay there, but I agree that it's tough to measure there. And I think it helps. I mean, it helps give quarterbacks a break, a mental break sometimes too. And not everyone is like Patrick Mahomes. Not everyone can sit back

and then have to make a play over and over again. And where it really becomes a difference, I think is being able to convert those third downs, being able to be able to put in situations where, you know, most of the time, if it's third and five, you're passing almost all the time, but you can maybe pick up some, you can get in position, um, scrambling or running the ball. But if it's beyond that, it's almost a hundred percent of passing situation. So you really do tell the defense exactly what you're going to do. And, and, you know, certain quarterbacks are going to perform better than others under those situations. So yeah, avoiding those types of outcomes is going to matter a lot for certain quarterbacks. And it's not going to matter as

much for someone like, like a Mike Mahomes or a josh allen these other guys who convert in those long situations you want to give them extra attempts because you don't care as much about getting into the third and eight and third and ten situations folks we all have smartphones and we know that they are pretty amazing but they can also be amazingly distracting especially when we're around other people. So U.S. Cellular wants us to reset our relationship with our phones by putting down our phones for five. That's right. A company that sells phones wants us to put down our phones and see what we can find. Learn more at uscellular.com slash built for us. That's uscellular.com slash built for us. I think that we have done a tremendous job as analytic folk of identifying some of the major

things that determine whether your team is going to be successful or not. I mean, just for example, I think that every team that's made the super bowls in the top five and passing EPA since Peyton Manning couldn't throw the ball in 2015 or something really close to that. And so if you are a super efficient and effective passing game, just overall, you have a great chance to be a super bowl team. And that, but around the margins is where a lot of things are determined in the NFL, whether you are a playoff team or whether you're a seven win team. And I think that things like running the ball effectively are one of those margin things.

They're not the thing that's going to determine are you actually good or not? Because if you're 28th and passing expected points added, sorry, it doesn't matter if you run the ball really well, you're not going anywhere. But if you're like seventh and then you run the ball really effectively, you're going to have a pretty distinct advantage, I think. And they play off of each other at least to an extent that I think

defenses have to prepare so much more for a really good run game. And I feel this way about screen games too, where running is like stolen yardage to me. You didn't do anything. You just hand it off to somebody and you got seven yards, like the easiest play in the world. I think screens are the same way. Vikings have been absolutely terrible at throwing screen passes and you go, how can I make my quarterback's life easier? Running the ball in screens, I think are at the top of that list. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And I know you mentioned Aaron Jones and that's good. You know, he's a player who's a little bit of a veteran, so you never know when, you know, the, the, the cliff will come, but I think he'd still looked pretty explosive. And that was really his thing as even, I think he was a fifth round pick coming out is he didn't have like timed 40 time

that looked that great, but he was very explosive in a lot of other drills that you would have looked at. But I think it's going to come down beyond Jones. You know, a lot of times the idea is you bring in a new running back to fix the running game. And that's, you know, not really how it works. The running back and his efficiency is probably more dependent upon the offensive line and how the quarterback is able to attract attention and set up plays and things like that. So that probably is also true of the screen game. I mean, there's something to be said of having the ability to seamlessly catch the ball, be in the right position, take off, make a man miss, that sort of thing. That's going to boost the efficiency of the screen game. At the same point in time, you know, you look at well, well, uh, scheme screen games screen games, and you couldn't throw anyone in there running back,

but a lot of it's going to be based upon everything else. So I think that would really be the determinant factor of the Vikings, whether they can get better there. And I think generally when you've been really poor as far as run blocking and things is, things are probably going to get better rather than getting worse, but you can't exactly bank on it by bringing in a new running back no i agree with that i think that they got such poor play out of their running back the last two years delvin cook got off to a decent start in 2022 but then faded down the stretch as older running backs want to do and then the alexander madison experiment was just

a straight up failure so uh that did not work out so well for them. And I think that there is that area that they could improve through the running back, but you're right. I mean, a lot of it is the schematics of it, the blocking of it. That's really going to determine whether it works out. And the fact that they didn't improve their interior offensive line makes me a little bit skeptical about that on McCarthy. How much can they put on a man's plate in the first year, if he is going to be the starting quarterback? And that just means that he has reached the baseline of what Kevin O'Connell would need to see for him to actually be out there. But is there any way we can look at previous rookie quarterbacks and say, Hey, they kind of protected this guy and it worked out

pretty well, or they threw this guy to the wolves and it worked out pretty well. Kind of thinking of Brock Purdy right away, CJ Stroud right away. Like, was there some common thread with the guys who had it work with the way that the offense was set up? I don't know. That's an interesting question because I'm trying to think of others. I mean, Purdy, I don't think he started until midway through the season. So he wasn't necessarily week one. I think it makes a difference. I think it makes a pretty big learning curve difference if you're starting even a bit later on

into the season as you would have. Stroud is someone who started from the very beginning, has been one of the more successful quarterbacks. Again, we're dealing with a pretty small sample here, but obviously his offense from what I know about it was more simplified version of what they're doing. So that's probably true. The other most recent quarterback who was very successful, who I believe was week two or three after they punctured Tyrod's lungs, was Justin Herbert coming in. And I don't know, with Herbert, it's one of those things, he can really throw the ball. He can really throw the ball. He got them out of a lot

of situations. He made a lot of big plays down the field when they were doing there. So I don't know if it's necessarily, you'd want to just like applicable to other sorts of situations. Cause I think he was also a guy who went through all four years at college, despite the fact that he probably could have been a number one pick if he had come out earlier in his career. So that's another one that was successful. Dak was another one who's been very successful as a rookie. Again, another more run dominant type of scheme where they could throw the ball down the field. Russell Wilson was very successful as a rookie.

These are the most successful guys. So I think maybe the contrast between like a Herbert and an Andrew Luck were two guys when they started off, they had a lot on their plate from the beginning. Maybe didn't have the best surrounding offensive line and other things, but were just extraordinarily talented. And in the case of Luck, you could say that it eventually played into the end of his career, having so many injuries and not being able to come back. So I do think there is a tension there and you don't want to, you also don't want to overextend your quarterback too much early because of the fact that they are not going to be their best as, as rookies anyway,

even a CJ Stroud's rookie season, even a Justin Herbert rookie season, we're talking about guys are like the eighth to 10th best quarterback in the league. And they can then make that subsequent jump. So I think you want to develop them without having to think you want to damage them in any sort of way, which can happen. It's probably overstated. Um, like the David cars of the world, we're probably just going to be not good no matter what happened. But obviously we do have a test case of someone like Andrew Luck that, uh, you

know, it probably really affected his career, having those injuries and having to rehab from them. That's a, it's a great question about whether maybe we could just take a pit stop here on this discussion and have it because whether teams ruin quarterbacks or quarterbacks just aren't good enough is a kind of a fascination of mine because the Vikings believe that teams ruin quarterbacks. And I'm not so convinced about that. I was reading Tyler Dunn's piece about Justin Fields and it sort of jostles back and forth, oscillates back and forth or jostles, those two words together,

back and forth between, well, Justin Fields couldn't see the field at all and so he was bad, but also their situation and their environment was toxic, but he was also bad. And you're like, yeah, I think that if Justin Fields had actually been good, it would have washed all the rest of that stuff away. The NFLPA survey, I think the Chiefs were like last in the NFLPA survey.

And they didn't like, I'm not sure that they loved Eric Biennemi as much as the internet did. They didn't like their owner. They don't like their facilities. The food isn't any good or whatever. And my home's just like, I don't care. I'm just going to win the Superbowl because I'm that good. I think that great quarterbacks can wash it away, but there has to be maybe some threshold

of someone who teeters where you go. If they had just done whatever, maybe he could have gone to the other side of good. I'm thinking maybe Baker Mayfield in Cleveland here, like if they had maybe not put a running back coach with no experience in as their head coach right away or something like that. I don't know. How do you feel about it? I mean, I think it's fair.

Okay. I would say the most accurate and probably factual, truthful sort of thing is it's more about the quarterback than it is about anything else. That doesn't mean it applies to every situation. It doesn't mean, you know, 100% of the time you should think about that. But I think that's more true than anything else.

I think the biggest factor where we can be deceived is not someone that we see for two, three, four years in a quote unquote bad situation eventually becoming good, but it's more someone who just doesn't really get the opportunity at all to play who might've been good. If like, you know, we, we, we never know who Brock Purdy was, if he didn't get to play, Tony Romo was an undrafted free agent who ended up coming in. Supposedly, according to some stories, when Tom Brady came in, it was almost a coin flip between him and another backup quarterback, so they don't really know. So I think that's in the circumstances when they do come in, how lucky do they get? Do they win games where maybe they didn't deserve to win sometimes versus lose games? So I think it's more about that than

anything else, although some quarterbacks have a different development curve than others, whether that aligns with when they're set up to have playing time or not, we don't know. At the same point in time, we're not, if you're an NFL GM and coach, you're not a impartial observer and sitting on the outside and saying, you know what? It's mostly about the quarterback. So, you know, I guess I'll take a long lunch and not worry about what's happening here. The most, I mean, other than rare circumstances, you draft a quarterback early, especially that person's your quarterback, or you give them a big contract eventually if they're good.

And guess what? That quarterback fails. You are gone. You are dead. You're not coming back any longer. So in some ways, does it benefit you as a coach or a GM to recognize the cosmic luck that you're involved in that situation? Or should you just say, I'm going to,

even if you're deceiving yourself to a degree, should you say, this is on me and I have to make this happen. Maybe that's actually the most effective way to getting the best results in that situation until you eventually pull the plug. And maybe that's where teams don't quite do enough. So I guess I would separate those two things. I think from a team perspective, I get it why they're saying that. I don't think it's me sitting on the outside as looking down like Zeus on the situation.

I can say, no, the guy just is not good, and you have no chance of being good with Justin Fields, but my job's not tied to Justin Fields either. I think you could look at someone like Justin Fields and say, could it have been better? Yeah, it definitely could have been better, but there are fatal flaws. So what we know about the Vikings is that when it comes to JJ McCarthy, they are going to

pour everything into this and by their roster with the tackles, with the receivers, with the tight end and with Aaron Jones here, they're going to give him everything that he could possibly need to succeed. How fatal are your flaws? And someone like Sam Darnold or Jameis Winston, their fatal flaw is turning the ball over and kind of freaking out and doing something totally insane. And I don't know how you ever coach that out of someone. Maybe over one year they could luck into like, Hey, the interceptions were dropped this year. So instead of throwing 30, you threw 14 and then you looked like a good quarterback for a single season.

So when it comes to LASIK was not the solution, but there was that like very brief time in new Orleans where Sean Payton sort of put the reins on him a little bit or whatever, and held them back from throwing a gazillion interceptions he still wasn't good but he didn't do all the completely insane stuff it's like that's not a franchise quarterback but it's better than it was when he was just whipping the ball to anywhere and everywhere so when it comes to McCarthy it might come down to how can how much can you train as far as the decision-making, and does he have something that is fatal or not? If he can't see the field like Justin Fields, and I think Justin Fields had no confidence.

I mean, people use alpha dog or whatever you want to say, but I thought there was no leadership, no confidence. When he struggled, he just completely gave up up and that's not good. I don't know if that will be McCarthy or not. Strikes me as probably not, but college football is way easier. So there's these things that I can sort of guarantee you cannot coach that out of Justin Fields in no world, but the other stuff you probably can up your odds by quite a bit by how you coach and how you build your roster yeah i mean what i would say is that i think this this comes down to for for winston for darnold as you

mentioned um another example of someone i think who plays similarly but had a much was much more talented and had a better risk calibration with someone like tony romo probably when he was when he was playing his career i mean even if you wanted to say, you know, Brett Favre or whatever you want to say, someone like that too, is I am not sure that Jameis Winston or Sam Darnold would be a better quarterback if they weren't taking risks than they are. Like, I think, I think in some ways they're actually well calibrated for how good they are. You know, it's very weird. And you look at Jameis Winston and his stats, and I know he had the, you know, the, the, the 30 interceptions and then the season, everything else was, it was, it wasn't 40. It was 30. I hope it was 30. Yeah. Yes. 30,

30. I was like, did he do the Jose Canseco 40, 40? No. So, um, so he, so he, you know, all the interceptions, everything else, his numbers actually from a pure efficiency standpoint, we're not that bad. It's just such a backbreaking killer, just soul crushing types of mistakes where in the reality is he's probably like a better quarterback and actually will bring you more success than you think. Because it was also combined with having really, really bad defenses when he was playing with the Buccaneers than you think. So I don't know. I think those are just more fundamental to someone's makeup. They can get a bit better. But I don't know if Sam Darnold would play any better if he reined it in a little bit, quite honestly. Because he has had stretches, which have fooled people a few times,

where the mistakes don't come and then the mistakes pile up afterwards. I think he's just probably, again, it goes back to the, his things, things of, he's probably just not good for that reason. This is the way he wants to play. He's not quite good enough there. He doesn't quite, I don't think I have the arm either. And a little bit of a windup to, to get the ball there. Sometimes same thing with Justin Fields.

People say, oh, he needs to take more risks or try to fit the ball in where he's not sometimes. But if he was doing that, I have a feeling that bad things would happen a lot. So he's also kind of maximizing what he's doing, but he's leaving out this huge hole for what you need to be a complete quarterback. I think it just demonstrates how difficult it is to be a really, really good quarterback. Like how thin the margin is between being Jameis Winston and you're mostly on the bench for your career versus being Patrick Mahomes where you're the best. And both of them are risk takers and try to throw it into tight windows and do all sorts of stuff like that. But Mahomes has a remarkably low number of turnovers

for somebody who does as many crazy things. And that's kind of what it comes down to. And I was watching Sam Darnold. He had some throws with Carolina that were just breathtaking. You couldn't believe that a guy could have arm strength like this off of no platform and throw it 25 yards down the sideline and hit somebody back shoulder. But then the very next time he does it, it's picked off. You go like, I don't know, man. How do I tell you which one of those things was right to do and which one of those was not? And if you tweak the sliders by 5%, the guy's a star. And that's kind of just how crazy it is. As far as McCarthy, I don't know how much to use his college stuff now that he's in the NFL

and looking back at it and trying to project and so forth, because it's been my philosophy to once they're on the team, I look at them as an NFL player practice by practice. And I don't worry. I will never watch Michigan JJ McCarthy ever again, but based on that sort of data that you have what, what is your, what is your feeling on McCarthy? I don't know that I exactly know where you stand as far as what he could become, where he was drafted and the sort of unique elements of his game. Like the fact that he just didn't start a lot. The fact that he doesn't have a ton of passes thrown compared to some of the other quarterbacks this draft class? Yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot to go on quite honestly. And I think part of that, or most of that, if not entirely, is just a

respect for the fact that, you know, you hope to check certain boxes. You prefer good play versus poor play. You prefer like good traits versus poor traits, but then other than that, we don't really know. I mean, some of the few things that I will look at to at least to get an idea. And again, we're dealing with small samples. We're dealing with very different sorts of plays when we're talking about under pressure or things like that. I do like to look at how quarterbacks play under pressure. It's, it's, it's a weird situation because um clean pocket stats translate better so if someone's good from a clean pocket even within the nfl one season uh and then they're good from being pressured one season next season it's much more likely they'll continue to be good from a

clean pocket than there is they'll continue to be well from a pressured situation and the reason i mean i think and this is again i'm just like a philosophical sort of way of looking at it without having the evidence to back this up is, you know, clean pockets are fairly similar and pressures are pretty different. I mean, sometimes you have a pressure where you're moving around a bunch. Sometimes you have interior pressure.

Sometimes you have two guys about to bear down on you. Sometimes you're almost inviting the pressure and you're running around and then, and then finding someone again, and you're playing outside of structure too, which I think is going to increase the variability for what your results are going to be on certain plays like that. You're more often going to make a big play on results like that, which will skew the averages and those sorts of results.

So if you look at McCarthy and again, we don't have much sample. We don't have much pressured samples. It becomes an issue also with quarterbacks who come from good programs is they, they, they don't get pressured a lot. What was good about what we saw from him is he fits the two things that I kind of like to see in conjunction with each other, which are the ability to scramble in those situations. You don't want someone scrambles too much necessarily, but he at least has that ability to scramble. So he has a pretty high scramble rate, which he was able to be pressured. And at the same time, when he's pressured,

how often is he taking sacks? Because normally those two things go hand in hand too, because if you're willing to scramble, you hold the ball longer, you take more sacks. A lot of sacks are like failed scrambles or scrambles are successful sack avoidance. And he was pretty good at not taking sacks when pressured. Again, this is all small sample size.

So I think those two things are good and they're not pointing towards the Justin Fields type of situation of the world, the Marcus Mariottas. Those guys showed that in college that when they were pressured, they were either scrambling or taking a sack a lot of the time.

And I think we can also view that as the flip side of like successfully, you know, doing something quarterbacky on sort of like throwing. I know that word got, got besmirched when it came to LeVar Jackson, but still it's like, you, you gotta, you gotta be able to do something that's not just a sack or a scramble when, when you face pressure. So at least he was good at that in college. And that checks a box along with, you know, the age along with size and physical attributes. And he had pretty good efficiency stats in college. So he kind of checks all those boxes. And now we say, now we shake the dice and you throw them down and you say, what, what did we end up getting from him? Quarterback. Yeah. He did some quarterbacky stuff when he was under pressure. Well, that's, I think if we were talking about things that I was most impressed with, absolutely his ability to scramble and

throw on the run, because we see certain quarterbacks who, if they are running, this was Alex Smith to a tee. I remember the game so well with San Francisco and New York, when the 49ers had a chance to go to the Superbowl with Alex Smith. If he could have made a play on the move a single time, they go to the Super Bowl, but he just couldn't. And even quarterbacks who aren't known as runners, if you can just get the ball out to somebody when you are scrambling away from pressure, it's such a difference maker. It makes life so much harder on the defense. And that's something he could definitely do. I think maybe a baseball background or whatever, like tweaking the torque in the hips or whatever it is that he does. But that was one of the parts of the game that is so noticeable on his tape that I think gives him a chance that even if he doesn't see things perfectly right away, that he could create something out of nothing.

I want to ask you about the roster building here, because I think the biggest question coming out of the draft from Vikings fans was you sent all of your draft capital for different things and different people. And I saw you did some writing on this and talked about how the Vikings traded the draft picks and took an L there, but they also got a premium position that you could take a W with surplus value if Dallas Turner is great. We don't have to break that one down. There's been too much discussion of that on the show. But the overall bigger picture is they don't have much draft capital for next year, but they have a lot of cap space.

How do we weigh these things as far as taking a good roster right now and within the next two years pushing that over the finish line to be a great roster. Well, I mean, what I think they want to do is look at where in free agency you can build and find some high level talent. That doesn't have to be elite talent, but, you know, above average kind of value add. And then you fill in enough of those spots, even if you're paying a premium versus premium versus what you know obviously you draft someone and they hit and they're very cheap you can build out those sorts of positions which will allow them to concentrate their their few draft picks on maybe some of the more premium positions going going forward i mean you do have a window here with mccarthy now i think that the whole rookie quarterback window uh discourse is probably a little bit overplayed because I prefer to just have like a good quarterback. And then, and that's, that's the main reason of drafting

a rookie for me is to, is to get a higher level of quarterback play. And then you can figure out some of the contract issues later, but you do have that, especially when you're thinking about it in conjunction with Justin Jefferson and what you're going to have to have to end up paying him. So what I would say is you mentioned the interior offensive line. That would be something that I would address heavily when it comes to free agency and using that cap space. When you're looking at the backend defensively, I think that's another area where you can look to address that in free agency next year. And in the draft, see if there's any way even this season if you have any pieces that that may be tradable to to build up some some more draft capital next year that's also another

another way you can go as long as again you're not trying to like damage your chances um of building McCarthy into the quarterback who you want him to be because I think right now it's a first a third for cousins and then two fifths maybe there were going to be. Because I think right now it's a first, a third for Cousins and then two fifths. Maybe there were going to be two thirds, but there's all this talk about comp picks and other things are going on. So yeah, I mean, it's pretty light. It's pretty light there.

At the very least, I would say you're going to, I would want to turn that first round pick into multiple picks and then have as many shots as possible on guys going forward. But the first things first, which is don't be scared of spending in free agency. Just do it in the right sort of spot. So I do think something like interior offensive line

when you have a young quarterback is a great place to spend money. Yeah, when you say comp picks, I curl up into a ball and climb underneath the table. I just can't do it anymore. That went from something that was like, nerds are like, oh, we know about these comp picks and no one else knows, ha ha ha.

And now everyone is just way too, everything's a comp. Every single time a veteran's traded, it's like, oh, well, that's a comp pick next year. I'm like, well, that's not quite how it works. Like they have to take free agency off in order to get those comp picks. Like everything's just assumed to be a comp pick nowadays. So people have kind of flung all the way

to the wrong direction. I think rookie contract window, we also had that, that was like, Oh, we have this interesting concept of what's going on. And, um, it was funny. I was listening to the, the, the, uh, the athletic pod. And I listened to an old one where they did this quarterback draft and you could see how that shifted because a few years back, um, I think it was Mays chose Justin Herbert above the homes for the number one pick and i assume it's because of the rookie contract that he was on after having played a year or two and now we've all been dissuaded of that so it's funny how we go through these phases of of what's going on and yeah i would agree comp pick is something that's that's that's way too we're we're right down front

everyone's it's like it's what the the football observer wants to sound smart to talk about sort of thing where now its effect is being overstated. I'm trying to think of how I could apply the comp picks in my marriage. Just like if I lose an argument, do I get like compensation on the other side? Like that means that means I get ice cream later or something like, well, I lost this. I lost this debate. So you have to take out the garbage i need but then but if you you have to like you have to give up on a debate but then next year you also have to not debate though because if you debate then you offset your your

so you have to you have to stay out of that where it's so it's difficult it's you have to do like teams do where you plan one off season where you're going to collect all your comp picks and not spend. And then going forward. So you have to plan it out in advance. It's hard work. Right. So if I lose like four straight arguments, then we get to go to dinner where I want to go. Right.

I think that's then we get pizza or something. Last thing for you. I was really focused on the vikings during this draft season you can guess why with uh one of the biggest decisions in their i guess franchise history maybe uh tell me about the do you like to talk about the discourse and what people are saying what were people saying about coming out of the draft teams something that you were debating on the internet with people writing about, I should say,

I mean, it make you sound like you're just on Twitter all day, but unexpected points. What, what was like really intriguing to you coming out of the draft that had nothing to do with the Vikings? I mean, I think this is something where,

so looking at this kind of big board value that that teams are getting uh i think it was last year was more of a thing or the last two years i focused on this a lot the last two drafts where it was like completely out of the consciousness of anyone that if you drafted a player um two rounds after where they were supposed to go. That wasn't like a massive super genius move by Howie Roseman or something like that. This year, people started to catch up. So I thought that was interesting. I thought there was at least some pushback to like Howie Roseman drafts Daniel Jeremiah's off of Daniel Jeremiah's board is maybe not like maybe Daniel Jeremiah doesn't know as

much as people inside of actual NFL buildings who are who are making these decisions who decided not to draft those so I thought that was a really interesting one that is going on and I mean how can you not talk about the quarterbacks going so early and I'm not even sure how to view for instance things like surplus value that I'm looking at on here because you're dealing with in football, you're dealing with like a, a small sample. So you don't have much samples. You have a lot of uncertainty. And then it's also, there's this, sorry, bring all this nerd, the nerd stuff up, but this thing called non-stationarity, which means that like it does, it changes throughout time. So you're looking back on historical evidence and you're applying it till today.

So if I'm telling you how much surplus value you're going to get from the number, uh, you know, 12 pick in the NFL draft, is that, um, you know, right. Deshaun Watson, right. And Patrick Mahomes, or is that Bo Nix, you know, sort of, sort of rage, like maybe those two things aren't the same. Now I think people overestimate maybe how different they are because we know that Patrick Mahomes is great. So they would have said, oh, Patrick Mahomes is going in this draft. He would have been, you know, number one overall. It's like, oh, I don't think so.

But that is a big issue. So I think the quarterback thing, if, when or if, you know, Knicks, if two or three, let's say of Knicks, Pennix and McCarthy fail, we're going to get this idea of like, that was a huge mistake. No one should be doing that anymore. And quarterback shouldn't be drafted early where I still think quarterback should be taken earlier than, than most people do. But the discourse will go that way. It was interesting to see the NFL move so far in that direction.

In a lot of ways, it's interesting the NFL moves so far in the direction that I'm at, where I'm really thinking, okay, how do I analyze this going forward? Where now our numbers are built off of kind of the mistakes and the value you can find when less than that value is probably available going forward. Yeah. I think when you see Baker Mayfield and Daniel Jones get the contracts that they get, you think, oh, Nick sounds fine. Or Jared Goff, as we just saw. I was doing the math on this. I think that J.J. McCarthy, I might be wrong.

This is just off the top of my head. I don't think that he clears like $8 million for a cap hit in his first four years, and Jared Goff is making 53 per year. That just keeps growing and growing and growing. And so if you're saying McCarthy's like 5 million a year or something, right. So, so even if, even if Jared Goff, like they finagle the cap a little bit and they have 17 void years or whatever, he's still going to have somewhere

in the ballpark of a $40 million cap hit at some point during that contract in which the Vikings will have 35 million between what Jared Goff is and what JJ McCarthy is. And so even if McCarthy is as good as Baker Mayfield plus $20 million, I mean, it's just, I mean, this is always added up. It was always the thing that never worked with Kirk cousins, but that, that gap is now more than it's ever been. I thought it was a lot when it was like $15 million. And now you're talking about 25, $30 million between even your guy and an average quarterback that makes it worth it to me to take a shot on that guy. And I also think that we've seen a lot of this. It's weird because the conference perspective is

different, but Dak Prescott has had elite seasons of top offenses. Jared Goff has had elite seasons of top offenses. Brock Purdy has a Jalen hurts. These guys are all good, but none of them is Josh Allen and none of them is Patrick Mahomes. And yet if you have enough money and you have enough star talent, you can get there with someone who's maybe the eighth best quarterback. If you have enough money to put into your roster. So all of these things kind of factor into, I agree with you, you should just take that guy and see what you can do around him with the money that you have. Yeah, it's funny with the whole Jared Goff thing.

This is not a draft thing that I've noticed, but this has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. And the Lions fall into that a little bit this off season where I was calculating the amount of money, and I have them as being their three most valuable players for golf and Penny Sewell and Amon Ross, St. Brown were averaging combined about,

you know, 30, 33 million a year cash spending these last three seasons. Now they're APY, they're combined. APY is like 115 million now going forward. But what, what,

what they get, like I'm, I'm taking all fun out of, out of the draft again, you know, steals aren't fun anymore. Also resigning your own players is not fun. Not that much fun because everyone's like, Oh, like we're applauding this. Like that's the easiest thing you could do. The easiest thing you can do as a GM is give out market setting contracts to all your players. That's not really what differentiates whether you're going to be a relatively good team in the future. It's actually who do you let go in some circumstances? Who do you negotiate with a little bit harder than others? How do you figure out how to fill

these sorts of voids? So I guess that would be my one thing. And I don't think we'll ever get to that in the near future is although people aren't necessarily that happy about the Jared Goff contract, just like giving, giving GMs maybe a little bit too much credit for bringing back their own players at market setting contracts. Like it's fine. It's, it's better, I guess, than getting in a protracted battle, but it's a very minor value add if they're going to outplay those types of contracts. And then on the other side, there's the don't pay anyone because it ruins your entire franchise thing. And we're going, that's the Justin Jefferson trade people where you just, okay, all right, stop, pump the brakes. It's okay to pay people. There's a salary cap. It keeps going

up. As soon as you sign him, the next day, the salary cap is going up higher than it was. And you have a better deal than you did on the day that you signed him. Like the reverse of buying a car where it's worth less. Like this is actually better every single day that goes by for that contract. So, but yeah, I think that how you manage everything else around those contracts becomes really under the microscope and that's, what going to matter for detroit and how much money your owners are willing to spend to allow you to kick all the salary cap space down the road which uh you know i think they'll do and the vikings will definitely do anyway uh very interesting discussion with you kevin always

great to get back together with you unexpected pointsxpected points newsletter. People should go find it really terrific. You are a go-to for all things, studying the data of the national football league. So I really appreciate your time and we'll definitely do it again soon, man. Yeah. Yeah. RIP eager,

but I'm ready. I'm ready to step in. Bring you in from the bullpen. Thanks, Kev. Bye.