Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Kevin O'Connell is the next head coach and he makes more sense for the Vikings than Jim Harbaugh

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Matthew Coller and Sam Ekstrom react to the news that Kevin O'Connell will be the next coach of the Minnesota Vikings and talk about his timeline for a rebuild and whether Vikings fans should be upset that Jim Harbaugh didn't work out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, welcome to another live stream between Purple Insider, myself and Sam Ekstrom, Matthew Collar, Sam Ekstrom here, and bring me the news. And we certainly have been brought to the news today with Jim Harbaugh heading back to Michigan and the Minnesota Vikings set to hire Kevin O'Connell of the Los Angeles Rams to be their next head coach. And so here we are, not our usual time, Sam, but reacting to this breaking news. And I guess my first take is it's never normal that Vikings could not just hire a GM without drama and they couldn't just hire a head coach without drama. But ultimately, Sam, they end up landing on a very good candidate who is operating an offense that is in the Super Bowl.

100%. And I personally have been banging the drum for the offensive-minded coach now for several weeks. And I think they arrived at the right place. I mean, honestly, I think this guy probably has a little better resume than Kellen Moore. I think he's done more with probably a little lesser quarterback than Aaron Rodgers, which was maybe the concern with Nathaniel Hackett. And yeah, he engineered this offense that had a record-breaking season from a receiver with a new quarterback and got them in the Super Bowl. I think it's kind of exactly what the league is trending for. And will it 100% work out just because he's offensive-minded?

No, but I think this is the stab you had to make. The Harbaugh stuff is fascinating. And will we ever truly know his motives? Will we know who wanted him in the Vikings facility and who was maybe bad-mouthing him behind the scenes? I mean, there's so much conjecture. I mean, we had reports from a lot of kind of secondary Michigan outlets saying that it's a done deal. He's leaving and now he's going back. Was it a leveraging ploy? I have so many questions and so few answers, but I think the end result is good.

And a lot of people got led on. A lot of people gave their heart to Harbaugh today, and they were very excited about it. And I saw some people that were detesting the decision. This was a very polarizing move that I think it's already got this offseason off to a cracking start. Excuse me. Give me your theory. What is your theory about why Jim Harbaugh did not end up as the Vikings head coach? I think that Harbaugh was genuinely interested, but I think also willing to, I mean, obviously,

I think he was willing to do an about face. It sounds like there was resistance behind the scenes with the Vikings. Now, my take is, is that Kwesi comes in, has this relationship that, you know, might have been fringe at best in San Francisco, but says, hey, we should look into this guy because I've seen how he operates. And they say, okay, but there are reservations. We need to sit down with them. We need to chat with them. And I genuinely think the voices in the heads of the decision makers were maybe a little too loud. Some of the dissenting opinions were not enough to outweigh the possible pros of this hire. And even without maybe having some louder voices in their ears, I think there were still plenty of reasons to be cautious about this. His strange antics, his strange relationships with

the media, the way that he burned bridges in the previous spot with certain people. I think those are all causes for concern. And maybe it's not fair to Harbaugh that it sounds like there are some pretty powerful people that are against him here. But I think that not everybody was on board with the Vikings. That's my theory. And it can't be unanimous for a decision this important and one that would have been costly, right? We're probably talking a John Gruden type contract here that Harbaugh demands. I think you all have to be in agreement and it doesn't sound like they were. Well, and so that was part of what I was discussing as we led up to this throughout the week on the show was like, there are reasons to be concerned about

Jim Harbaugh. You cannot deny that. I know that getting excited about something kind of leads to people often throwing caution to the wind. And, you know, this reminded me actually of, as we got toward the Kirk Cousins signing back in 2018, where a lot of the discussion was, okay, guys, this is really exciting, but it's really exciting, but it's going to cost a lot. And, but other teams that have done this, it hasn't always worked out and so forth. And a lot of times that gets shouted down in the name of something really exciting. And the reality of exciting things for Vikings land is sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I mean, it worked. Drafting Randy Moss, for example, was the exciting thing to do. Pick a wide receiver. I'm sure the Vikings had other needs that year. I don't know what they were, but who cares? They picked Randy Moss and lit the world on fire with Randy Moss, right? But there are other exciting things that they've tried to do that did not work out that well, including, and this is the big throwback, but like trading for Herschel Walker,

let's go all in to try to win that Super Bowl. So sometimes these things end up turning out and sometimes not. And I think a lot of people were willing to say, hey, I don't care what happened in San Francisco. I don't care that Michigan was ready to fire him just a year ago and made him take a pay cut a year ago. He's been successful, so I don't care about the rest. But if you're the owners of the Vikings

and it's your money that's going into Jim Harbaugh's bank account, I can promise you you care about those things. And the other thing is, too, if you're Kwesi Adafo Mensah, you also care about what the relationship is going to be like the shared vision. And I will tell you a story that I heard once about Jim Harbaugh. Now this has not been confirmed by any other reporters. So I'm telling you, this is just a story. Somebody told me was that Peyton Manning had initially planned to sign with San Francisco and not Denver, but Jim Harbaugh and Peyton Manning could not get on the same page with what kind of offense they wanted to run.

And so that's why he didn't sign with San Francisco. That's never been reported by anybody else. That's one of those maybe things that you just hear, but I think it sort of speaks to Jim Harbaugh has his way of doing things and you have to go along with that way if you're going to hire Jim Harbaugh if they wanted to all be on the same page Kwesi Adafo Mensah the Wilfs in saying it's your team you do it your way you draft your quarterback you run your offense the way you want to run it and you call timeout and punt the way when you want to punt and whatever else that's how you have to handle Jim Harbaugh and if you can't get on board with everything he wants then he can't be your guy with Kevin O'Connell you are much I think in much better of a situation to say uh Kevin we've got these numbers that say here's what you should do in

these situations and have a conversation with him. And that goes for everything that goes for roster building that goes for, do you want a third wide receiver? Do you want, how do you want your offensive line to be built? Here's why your scheme works in these ways and doesn't work in others. According to our data people, you've got a much better chance of all of that playing with Kevin O'Connell than you do Jim Harbaugh. And that is my theory. But the other theory could be correct because the people who were reporting on this for Michigan basically came out today and said, well, there's this little hiccup that somebody who's involved with the Vikings ownership as a minority owner does not want Jim Harbaugh here. And Hey, I mean, if there's somebody who

has a connection to Michigan who says, I don't want Jim Harbaugh there because I don't like the way it's gone to Michigan. That's, that's not a person that you could just ignore, right? You can't just ignore people who have some decision-making say, and I agree with you, Sam, if you can't all be on the same page with Jim Harbaugh, then you can't hire Jim Harbaugh. Yeah, you know, I think the owners were probably the ones that that had ultimately the final say on this, as you would expect when when they're the ones paying the salaries. And I think that if they're truly going to preach collaboration, then it's good that they're listening to all opinions. My, my gut would say that,

that quasi was open to this because it was since quasi was hired that Jim Harbaugh became a candidate. He was not a candidate before the GM. So the GM might've even been on the same side and as, as Harbaugh and got shot down here. But I think you're right. You need unanimity when you're doing something like this. And it doesn't sound like there was that. I think that everything you read about Harbaugh, it's very unorthodox. He's very polarizing.

The Seth Wickersham stuff on him from san francisco is fascinating if you want like a look into who harbaugh is and was read the wickersham piece where people basically say he and they didn't use this word but he's not a jerk but he does jerk things like he just acts in a very strange way and um i think it would have been interesting to conduct press conferences with them. It would have been a strange media coach relationship. And part of that would have been kind of compelling to me and kind of fun to navigate. But this, from a team building standpoint, I think is the correct pivot to get Kevin O'Connell, who, by the way, Matthew, former quarterbacks coach of Kirk Cousins. There's a connection, a connection during Kirk's worst year. And that is, that's

always the next natural thing to talk about with Kevin O'Connell, because the reality is we don't know a ton about Kevin O'Connell. Kevin O'Connell is kind of a guy that took the same route as some other backup quarterbacks into being a quarterback coach and then up the ladder to being an offensive coordinator. And the thing about him though, and I'm really excited to talk with Sage Rosenfels about this at some point, our friend who comes on the show is this particular coaching tree has a lot of similar personalities who have really worked quite well in the NFL. The NFC championship is two former Shanahan Kubiak guys, Gary Kubiak and Mike Shanahan worked together in Denver for those under the age of 35 and won the Superbowl with John Elway there. And then Kubiak goes to Houston.

He hires a lot of these guys. I mean, he hired Matt LaFleur, Kyle Shanahan, so forth. And then they end up in Washington with Mike Shanahan, where you have McVay, you have O'Connell, you have LaFleur and Kyle Shanahan at different times. So they're all sort of part of this tree and this general offensive philosophy that we've seen really play out in Los Angeles with great success. And now Cincinnati, as Zach Taylor is part of this as well, is in the Super Bowl.

It's not the exact same offense, that's for sure. I think there's a lot more of spread it out, let Joe Burrow do his thing. But what is it all built around? They're all quarterback guys. They're all in lockstep with their quarterback. Everything is about how do we make it easier? How do we maximize the quarterback? And I actually think that the most impressive thing that the Los Angeles Rams, Kevin O'Connell and Sean McVay did this year with Matt

Stafford is they made adjustments when things went wrong for him. When it seemed like Stafford was doing that teeter-totter thing where he falls off the edge and takes his team out of the playoffs like he did with Detroit a few times, they got him back on track and they've just made a lot of things easy for him. I've enjoyed following some people on Twitter who are coaches, who follow closely the X's and O's and strategies and things like that. And the quarterback friendly is the best way you could describe it. What that means for Kirk Cousins, I want to hear your theory on. But either way, what you'd be talking about is going fully, completely opposite of Mike Zimmer, someone who wants to lean into their quarterback, wants to do everything in the world possible to maximize that guy.

Not somebody necessarily who's running on second and 10, somebody who's forcing the football to their best receiver. This might be the most exciting thing you could talk about with Vikings fans is what they have done with Cooper Cup is insane to have him catch this many passes when the other team knows it's coming. And yet they keep forcing the ball to their number one guy, proven model. It works. That's what you want to see here because you have that level of quarterback, that level of wide receiver here. And once you do a quarterback, they're going to step into a situation where you have Justin Jefferson open a lot. And the offense is focused on Justin Jefferson.

That is the thing I think that you would be the most interested in, bringing someone who's worked with Sean McVay here. Yeah, I just ran the personnel grouping filter. Rams, number one by a long shot in 11 personnel, three wide receiver sets. It's not even close. They're 8% higher than Cincinnati, who is Zach Taylor, another McVay guy. So that's what might be coming to Minnesota. And that's, I think, an exciting prospect for fans, maybe not as exciting for Dalvin Cook, who probably is seeing a sharp reduction in carries. And you know what?

That's fine. If you get him more of an Aaron Jones-like workload than a Derrick Henry-like workload, that's going to be better for his efficiency. It's going to be better on his body. It's going to make him more of a change of pace versus kind of the status quo the defenses are expecting. Because as we've seen, it's a yearly tradition where he gets worn down,

becomes less effective, and the Vikings were always trying to run to get ahead when they should be passing to get ahead and then running to close out games. And I think they can kind of find that new balance with this new coach. Now, what does it mean for Dalvin Cook's longevity? That might be another story. I would assume that he's on the roster still this year, because I think he's still a pretty good weapon to have. And when healthy, he still is very, very effective. But to have a coach that's willing to spread it out, I think. Go get weapons. He's seen the value of bringing in Odell Beckham,

how that really changed the Rams midseason and electrified their offense. And having just a bunch of tight ends you can go to and several running backs. It's an arms race on offense, trying to get as many weapons as you can. That's exciting football. Like people, even though the name recognition isn't Harbaugh, the style that Kevin O'Connell is going to play should excite people. And I think that should excite you, whether it's Kirk Cousins or the next guy. I mean, that's going to hopefully bring the best out of this offense, something that we couldn't say with Zimmer and either of the Kubiaks. I have a statistic that you'll like that relates to Kevin O'Connell, that Vikings fans, I think maybe if you want to get on board with doing things the

Rams way, which has put them in the Super Bowl with two different quarterbacks over the last two years, doesn't mean that everything will go that way, but it's not like you're a million miles behind the Rams in weapons. They have Cooper Cup and Odell Beckham, and you have Thielen and Jefferson. I think this guarantees Adam Thielen is here, by the way. That's been a little bit floating out in the air of, you know, would they want to pay Thielen and how they'll work that out? I would imagine they're just going to restructure that contract and make sure he stays.

But the stat that Vikings fans would love about Kevin O'Connell and the Rams is that they were number one this year by PFF grade in, you got to guess, Sam? Say guess. Sorry, I was typing. Number one in PFF grade. Do you know where I'm going with this? The team or player uh team the team

pass blocking that's right pass blocking correct that and uh if we've got a guess where the vikings land scroll way down 27 yeah that's right uh kevin o'connell also was a part of that washington franchise when they built their offensive lineup. They drafted Brandon Sheriff, they drafted Trent Williams and built their offensive lineup as well. And it was one of the reasons that Kirk Cousins emerged as a very good starting quarterback in Washington was their offensive line was really excellent. And they had weapons all over the place. When Cousins has been at his best. He had what Vernon Davis, Jordan Reed, uh, Deshaun Jackson, Pierre Garcon. And now, you know, you have the, uh, you know,

Jefferson and you're bringing in Irv Smith and you have Thielen and you can add others to this mix, but also put focus on this offensive line. They've drafted along the offensive line, but they haven't spent along the offensive line. And who is the anchor of the Los Angeles O-line? That is Andrew Whitworth, their left tackle, that they spent a heap of money on to bring there, and he's been a huge part of that. This opens the door for now building to have an offensive line

that sets you up to run the ball more effectively, pass block, create more clean pockets. And that's been a huge thing for Matt Stafford this year, that he is certainly known as a guy that can perform pretty well when it comes to having a messy pocket because of his arm strength. But he's one of the least pressured quarterbacks in the playoffs. And think of who they faced. Tampa Bay, San Francisco, two of the best D lines in the league and their offensive line gave him time to throw. If you give any quarterback a lot of time to throw, you're going to have a chance. Now, the question is whether Kevin O'Connell would think, let me empower Kirk Cousins and give him the keys to the franchise, unlike Mike Zimmer ever would.

Or let me just watch my senior bowl tape and so forth and go to the combine with the idea that we're watching quarterbacks and we're watching quarterbacks only. That's the thing that I wonder about with Kevin O'Connell. And I would have loved to been in on the interview to know when that came up of, Hey, you worked with Kirk cousins before in his worst season, where he alienated everyone in Washington, DC, by the way, 2017, but you worked with Kirk cousins while you were there. Is he the guy that we just need to lean into more? And Zimmer was, didn't treat him well enough. Or do you want to pick your own guy I lean heavily toward pick your own guy because I think that the Zimmer part of this wanting to

run the ball so forth the impact of it is something it's not nothing but it's far from everything it's far from everything for the reason you were eight, nine and seven to nine. And, and the reasons that you've made the playoffs only one time with Kirk cousins. I think that Kevin Stefanski and Gary Kubiak put him in a lot of situations to succeed and the results were, you know,

okay. And then when it was just a little bit less with Clint Kubiak, the results were you go eight, nine and you miss the playoffs. So I think that there's some reason, Sam, for people to think, okay, well now this guy's really going to, you know, both paddle the boat or whatever, row the boat in the same way with Kirk Cousins. I think if you're Kevin O'Connell, that's the best thing you can ever have is a coaching

situation where you could pick your own guy and have time to work with that rookie quarterback over a number of years and build the roster around that player. But I mean, give me your perspective on the Cousins-O'Connell connection. Well, you know how I said that Quasey was probably in for some awkward conversations with some of these veterans, including Kirk. Kind of an awkward conversation between O'Connell and Kirk, too. Hey, coach, loved working with you in Washington. And does he send back new number, who dis?

I can't imagine that any new head coach doing this for the first time would want to marry themselves to a quarterback that kind of gets coaches fired, gets organizations in pickles because he doesn't win, puts them in purgatory, and he's not a super adaptable quarterback. He's aging. He's expensive. We've written articles this week. We've got more coming out about the timeline of this team. It is so hard to spin a realistic narrative that this team can win with that contract. He's taking up so much cap. Even if you restructure it, he's still taking up a lot of cap. and if you can get under the cap this year it's going to be a problem the year after that um i think that you know o'connell can wash his hands of it he can like leave it up to quacey but i think behind the scenes the two would

say yeah let's let's let's move along kirk is a good guy but i think we need to start fresh and i i think that that's the prudent move now if if if they're insistent on like writing it out for the final year of kirk's deal and somehow making that work i mean i guess i if that's sort of your way of stealth tanking but i would rather get the clock going right away get your guy in here as soon as you can so that you can start rebuilding this thing and maybe even win ahead of schedule in like 2023. That I think could be a realistic target with all that cap space freeing up. Folks, want to tell you about HelloFresh.

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Again, HelloFresh.com. Don't you think that O'Connell and his perspective in Los Angeles would be shaped by the fact that they moved on from Jared Goff and went to the Super Bowl? I just don't know how it wouldn't be right. That you saw a quarterback that was basically a plug in the numbers into the little X's and O's into the guy's helmet. And then he operates it. That was Jared Goff and anything that went wrong. Jared Goff couldn't overcome. That was the reason they moved on from Jared Goff that the one game in the playoffs where their defense didn't play as well. They just lost the game because Goff wasn't good enough. Kirk is very similar. I think he's a

little better version of Jared Goff. Sometimes I've thought the opposite. Sometimes I've thought that Goff was a little better than Kirk, uh, at times when he was with the Rams, but I think, you know, Detroit, who knows there, they just have no, it's like what Kirk did in early days of Washington was golf in Detroit, where there was, they were just abysmal and you lose a lot of games either way, but that's who these quarterbacks are is sort of a reflection of what you have and what you can do for them. As opposed to Stafford, who I admit, I underappreciated that he could use that arm strength, um, to overcome some issues that happened with the team or that they could put him in a position where he just is so physically capable of doing

things, especially hitting deep shots, throwing into tight windows, that it takes you to another level from Jared Goff. It just simply did. They were one of the best passing attacks in the entire NFL this year. That's where you look at the draft class and say, look, nobody's perfect here. But that's almost never the case. And even the guy who was purported to be perfect, Trevor Lawrence, is not perfect. And he showed in his first year that if you gave him bad coaching and no players and a bad offensive line that he didn't come in and light the league on fire. So you have a bunch of prospects who will need time and need patience.

What this gives you, and I think why I, of all the candidates, Hackett was at the top of my list. Don't understand why they never interviewed Byron Leftwich, but he was way up there for me. Same thing with Kevin O'Connell. Was that ability to to have him pick the next quarterback and pair those two together and grow together the timing is right think about with matt nagy matt nagy showed up in chicago and he was like oh well

here's a trabisky you want it he's like no not really too bad like that's your guy i mean how often do we see a new coach come in with a quarterback that's already there that's not elite that's not tony dungy showing up with peyton manning or something and it works i think that what you could do is weirdly follow the detroit lions sort of model except for you're better than them where they they came in, they made a trade with their quarterback and they can pick somebody new when they feel like it instead of Jared Goff and then build with Dan Campbell or whoever else. If Dan Campbell has, you know, sort of a footballed his way out of Detroit eventually, but that's, if you make that your plan, I think it gives you the best chance to have that connection to where it's not a coach blaming a

quarterback. He's not good enough. You paired me with this guy. Why did you do that? And also Kwesi Adafo-Mensa and Kevin O'Connell can together pick the quarterback based on the numbers, based on the scouting reports, based on how they want to play offense. This was always my thing with Harbaugh. If you hire Harbaugh, he picks the quarterback. Sorry, Quazy, you don't have a choice in this matter. That man is picking the quarterback. That's how it's going to work. And now you can make it an entire franchise effort

to decide how you want to handle this quarterback situation. And that's a better spot than this team has been in, in a long time. I mean, I made this joke and I know people got mad at me on the internet, but I made the crack, which is true. I think that the closest the Vikings have been to a Superbowl since Favre is when they almost drafted Andrew Luck. Because if you did, and you could have paired Andrew Luck with the rookie contract with a new coach and gone forward that way, I mean, you would have had a chance to win a Super Bowl. I'm not saying the next guy will be Andrew Luck, but that's your goal.

Your goal is to pair a coach with a quarterback that you draft and go forth and build everything around it, make the whole organization's effort is about making that guy good. That's the Buffalo thing with Josh Allen. That's the Kansas City thing. thing around it make the whole organization's effort is about making that guy good that is that's the buffalo thing with josh allen that's the kansas city thing kansas city should have been in the super bowl they blew it mahomes blew it but think about what they did last offseason like uh our offensive line wasn't good enough build the whole thing vikings our offensive line wasn't good enough maybe only udo can play guard, right? Like this is the difference between when you're all in on a quarterback and

when you're not. Yeah. Great points, caller. I think that there should have been more fear than people were letting on with Harbaugh that he was going to go in on Kirk. I think people should have been concerned about that. And for all we know that cost him the interview. We don't know. But if he at any point said that he would commit to Kirk Cousins, that should have been an immediate red flag. Because if that guy is going to demand that they keep Kirk, force you to finagle your way under the cap and try to build around that,

I think that would have been a huge hindrance. So the fact that they can, now I think there is a bit more urgency than Detroit has because the way things worked out in Detroit, basically all your weapons were free agents. And it was easy for you to just sort of sit on your hands for a year and say, all right, here you go, Jared. I'm on Ross St. Brown. See what you can make of him. The Vikings do have talent on this offense that I don't think you would want to squander with someone who can't be a steward of Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen. You wouldn't put Sean Mannion in charge of this offense.

Let's put it that way. You do want capability, but I think you want capability that also allows you to build. And if you can now go into free agency and start that building process, then at least you'll be ready. You'll be ready for when that quarterback comes along and hopefully you can find an acceptable bridge between now and then, unfortunately, and talk about not going in on a quarterback, I don't know if the previous regime did anything to better Kellen Mond from the time he was drafted. I'm not sure if he's developed at all. for your bridge guy. That's unfortunate. But getting someone who can at least give this offense a fighting chance, I think is prudent. And you look at what the Vikings accomplished

last year, very disappointing, 14th in points scored on offense. But the teams that were 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 15th, all made the playoffs because their defenses were better too. So that is a part of the equation. This defense does need to be, if it's just middle of the pack and the offense is also middle of the pack, you have a fighting chance.

Well, this is why the timeline is so important to me because if you hired Harbaugh and you were expected to win right away, my question was always, how are you going to rebuild the defense? And the answer was likely to be if they hired Harbaugh, it was likely to be the same way they just tried to build it last year. And I just don't see that as a winning type of model, which is let's keep the expensive quarterback. Let's go cheap everywhere else. Let's go cheap everywhere else. Let's try to draft guys and hope that that works out, but they're not high draft picks.

They're 20th overall draft picks. And there, you know, other draft picks that you trade away for Chris Herndon and so forth that you don't have. I think that the way to build a defense is that you, you want to sign some guys of course like Cincinnati did this where they signed basically a whole new secondary but they threw a lot of numbers at it because they had money they failed on the Trey Wayans deal but they just signed three other dudes after that like being able to throw kind of numbers at it which means draft picks uh signing free agents looking for savvy free agent signings I mean mean, the Vikings tried to do this, but they leaned on it. So Mackenzie Alexander seemed like, okay, that should be a savvy signing,

but it was, if Alexander struggles, there's no backup whatsoever because they hadn't developed players either. And they had missed on draft picks. Like this is usually a couple of year process. Can you get to being a decent defense next year and a good offense, whether it's Kirk or Marcus Mariota or Gardner Minshew or whoever else, or if it's Matt Corral or Malik Willis, I don't even know who's going to be, you know, what direction they're going to go. But on the defensive side, it's probably not going to be good enough. Trying to rush it there is just asking to be back at square one. This was the problem that we had after 2019 when they traded for Yannick Ngakwe. It's like, you're

trying to rush this and that's not the way you ever get anywhere in the NFL. You can sign or trade for final pieces like Vaughn Miller or like Odell Beckham. You can certainly pump up an offense with one more playmaker or a draft pick like Jamar Chase that steps in right away. A defense is a lot harder to just snap your fingers and all of a sudden you're great. Sometimes it happens, but it usually requires a lot of money spent and just some fantastic drafting. But normally it's something that takes time over a couple of years and i think that if people are willing to sort of see what the vision has to be and i mean also quasi

adolfo mensa too that he has to see also that this isn't something you can just analytics and all of a sudden you fix everything um but if you make a couple of signings that are decent players to multi-year deals that can stay with you and you can build together and you're able to draft some players at key positions, corners, pass rushers. How about a pass rusher, you know, in front of the fourth round or something, right? Like get pass rushers that actually have a chance to be good, that actually have a chance to have high ceilings. I mean, these strategies, I think were kind of lost with the Vikings in the last few years because they were desperate. And now what this is, is I think you make much more sound decisions in the NFL when you're not desperate, when you have time, and when you can do everything in a logical process way.

Process goes out the window when your seat is hot. But when it's not, and when you have a four-year deal for Adolfo Menta, I think you'll probably have a four-year deal for Adolfo Menta, I think you'll probably have a four-year deal for Kevin O'Connell. And they'll say, here you are guys, here is your canvas, go ahead and paint. And that gives them time to build this defense the right way. I just got a text from a former member of the Rams organization. Here's what he has to say about the hire. He says, love the hire. I'm a huge KOC fan. He's the man. Great get for the Vikings. So there's an endorsement from within the Rams.

Wow. Sources. Sources. That's right. I was going to cite the Bengals because I wrote about this on the website where the Bengals did an unbelievable job of kind of building that defense without over committing themselves, but also developing some continuity, you know, getting multi-year guys, um, that like Trey Hopkins, for instance, like a moderate long-term deal, Xavier, um, Suofilo, I believe like moderate long-term Vaughn Bell, but they're not breaking the bank on any of these players. DJ reader, like they, they signed a bunch of serviceable pieces that could blend meld together.

And, and they have like $56 million in cap space next off season. They're ahead of schedule. Think of how much better the Bengals can get with $56 million and a quarterback Joe Burrow on a rookie deal. That's what you aspire to. You don't overcommit until you're there. And the Bengals were smart. They sort of withheld. They held back and said, no, we're not going to go all in yet. We could, but we're not. We're not going to overspend. And they're in a phenomenal spot. So that, I mean, that's kind of the aspirational model is where you are in purgatory.

You flip the whole thing over, you get the right quarterback in and you win in a year or two. That is like picture perfect. That's the print that the Vikings are trying to duplicate. Right. And this is the whole point about rebuilding and timelines and things like that is often when people hear rebuilding, they think, and this is why the Wilfs wanted to stay far away from it. This is the rebuilding hire, by the way, but they wanted to stay away from rebuilding because people think tanking and they think owner of the dolphins trying to bribe their coach to lose football games. Right. I mean, and I totally get that. I totally understand that that's not what anybody wants to hear and that this is not a team that needs to tank.

But timelines can change so quickly. And I remember we talked, gosh, when was it? Months and months ago about the Rex Ryan Buffalo Bills and how like they, you know, once Rex Ryan was gone, they had one season where it was kind of a step back where Josh Allen got in and did some exciting things, including beating the Vikings. And then the next year after that, they're in the playoffs. They moved out a lot of their veteran players and they built around a quarterback. They rebuilt their defense with a top cornerback draft pick in a Trey white that they took. They rebuilt their offensive line with the sort of throw numbers at it in free agency thing, which the, the Vikings already have two very good offensive linemen.

And another one that I think is fine. Andra Cleveland like you've only got really two spots to fill there it's not some huge disaster so that what that says to me and the Eagles might be an example of this too you don't have to just be trash forever I think that there are sports where you do I think if you're trying to tank in baseball I mean think about you draft the number one overall guy and he's like 18 years old. So you're going to be two, three, four years before that guy can play in major league baseball. That's a lot harder to do in the NFL. The players are kind of ready-made coming out of college and it usually takes only a year or two for them to develop, including the quarterbacks.

Here's a second year quarterback in the Superbowl. That, that to me says that should be your timeline. And I know that you and I started writing about the timeline for the Vikings before the Harbaugh slash O'Connell news came out. I think the Vikings timeline should be reset your cap situation. That's very, very important is creating that cap space to be able to spend two years from now and look at it as 2022 should be a step forward in terms of process they could talk about that all they want we're doing things smarter 2023 can be we're aiming for a super bowl it it does not have to be well i guess we'll put the uh binoculars on and out and uh what's that 2029 that's when

kevin o'connell will get the job done no it doesn't it doesn't work that way and even the rams they took a little bit of a step back after going to the super bowl and then a couple of years later they're back there because once you get to all-in mode then you do the things where you make the big signing then you do the thing where you trade the first round pick for the big superstar or something. Brett Favre. Right. Strike at the exact right time. And you've got a chance to go to the Super Bowl.

That time won't be this year, but it doesn't have to be in 2029. Well, look at the last four or five Vikings coaches without having great quarterback play. Look how quickly they got competent teams out there. Dante Culpepper, obviously the best of them, but it took Mike Tice until year three with Dante to be competitive. And they missed the playoffs that year, made it the next year. Brad Childress with Tavares Jackson got to the playoffs in year three. Leslie Frazier, year two, after being three and 13, they made the playoffs his second year.

Mike Zimmer, second year, right? With a very average quarterback in Teddy Bridgewater. So it really doesn't take that much to at least become competent again. Getting to a Super Bowl level though is one thing. And that's where being financially responsible will help you get to that point. Folks, we've got an even better offer to tell you about from SodaStick. If you use the promo code PURPLEINSIDER, one word,

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And SodaStick has you covered there as well. Go to SodaStick.com, that is S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.com, and use the code PURPLEINSIDER for 15% off. Sorry, our friend Sage Rosenfels just found out from me that the vikings are hiring kevin o'connells was trying to call so i'll be interested to get his reaction um but uh yeah i think your point about 2013 to 2015 is right like during the 2014 season the adrian peterson stuff was going on so that's what that season is really remembered for. But I also remember going into 2015 and people around the league,

smart people around the league and in the gambling community were saying, you're going to want to watch out for the Vikings because Bridgewater is going into his second year and they're developing players. And this is another point to salmon. And this is where you have to reset. Also, is there, are there guys that we feel like are developing and ready to be there in a year or two with players they've drafted recently?

And the answer is maybe a couple, but Mike Zimmer and Rick Spielman would not let us find out. I mean, they absolutely would not. They wouldn't even play Cam Dantzler this year. And he was the best dang corner that they had. And it was like, no, no, no, Breland, he's the veteran. So like Wyatt Davis absolutely can't play in week 18. We can't even get one sniff of Wyatt Davis and even have any clue what the guy looks like this next year for

Kevin O'Connell gives them an opportunity to evaluate everything that they have, but also develop the things that they have. Cam Bynum is a guy that's kind of interesting to me. He has to start like you can't go out and just sign a veteran safety. You have to find out if Cam Bynum can play. You have to find out if Amir Smith-Marset is a receiver for you, right? You have to find out if some of these young guys, Kenny Wongwu, play the man, give him the football, see what he can do. I feel like in a McVay-style offense, by the way, Kenny Wongwu could be very, very interesting.

Screen game and things like that. That would be a delight for them if they could dial up some sort of screen game that they haven't had since kevin stefanski the point just being that that right there is more exciting to fans to be able to see young players develop and find out who can play and who can't then it is to have a miserable eight nine season where the head coach is coming out every week and saying well yeah guys we uh we're actually good even though we just lost our second game in a row and we've dropped two games below 500. It's like, OK, if you had gone eight, nine with all young players that were interesting for the future, I think that that's got a lot of excitement that goes along with it or intrigue that's got to go along with it. And instead, I mean, there wasn't any, it was just misery. It was just like,

Bashad Breland's getting cut at the end of the season and like, what? So I think as you look forward, that, that opportunity is there to have a very interesting 2022. Yeah. Do you want to hear my like back of the napkin plan for the 2022 Vikings? Top of head. This is how I'm going to spend the limited money I have. I'm going to find a corner to play opposite Dantzler because I don't think you need to develop Chris Boyd anymore. I'm not sure that Harrison Hand is the future. So I think you need to go find one corner. And after that, I think you prioritize edge rusher in the draft. So get someone else in and then maybe you can get something to click with DJ Wanham, Kenny Willekes, or Janarius Robinson, right? But then I think you put some faith in the guys that were on this roster and start them.

Cam Bynum, Blake Lynch, Armin Watts, Wyatt Davis. Just send them out there. See what they have. Resign Mason Cole to compete with Garrett Bradbury at center or find someone in free agency on the cheap. Don't overcommit. See if you have some in-house options. The only thing I would want to invest in is corner because it can get ugly. If you've got one corner that's super inept, I mean, they're going to need to

bolster that somehow. Other than that, I think you have at least semi-viable options across the roster where you don't need to go out and find one-year veterans to plug in like they did last year. That was a frustrating method. And I think they can at least give the fans a little bit of hope this year with some of those younger guys. Now, normally this is kind of where we start to wind down the show, but the number of people that are watching, I think is probably a record for his streaming on Bring Me the News. So I'll continue this. Let me ask you this question.

Should anybody be upset that they didn't get Jim Harbaugh? I feel like we didn't talk about this at all, really, so far. Like what we've talked about entirely is here's what's happening. You're not getting Jim Harbaugh. He's going back to Michigan. Kevin O'Connell is your guy. Sage texted back and I didn't ask for permission to read it, but he basically said, look,

people who have worked with McVay and Shanahan, they understand like what it is to create an offense around a quarterback. And that's the key like that, that these guys who have come up in this tree, they get this. So, but the question about Harbaugh, I imagine there will be a lot of people who had sort of given their heart to Harbaugh and said, this is the guy I want. I want us to bounce back quickly. I want Aaron Rogers to get traded to the Titans or Broncos and win the division and have a chance in an NFC. That's a little bit down right now. Is there a justification for being disappointed that Jim Harbaugh is not the coach of the Vikings?

In my opinion, no. And I'm not going to say you're a terrible person. You're a terrible football mind. If you really wanted Jim Harbaugh, you're allowed to. But when you have a coach that's going to be a bit erratic, that's going to lead to disagreements in the locker room. It's going to lead to disagreements between Harbaugh and ownership. Harbaugh in the front office, he's got a former GM and a former owner. Whether those guys are in the right or not, who are basically trashing him around the league and i'm not saying again i'm not saying this is right but he made three nfc championships in a row had one down season a 500 season and they were so far off the same page they were talking about trading

harbaugh in before the bad season even 2013, they were entertaining a trade to Cleveland. Things deteriorated even before they got bad with the 49ers, which it's all a very bizarre circumstance. And you know why? Because there were a lot of egos involved and Harbaugh was one of those egos. Now, is that going to work everywhere you go? No, it's not. Like the sample size, I know people, we like to say that, well, he's won everywhere he's been. That's kind of a small sample size, right?

I mean, he had a good run with the 49ers. He's had an okay run with Michigan. For what Michigan represents, he's had an okay run there. Stanford, he got lucky with Michigan. For what Michigan represents, he's had an okay run there. Stanford, he got lucky with Andrew Luck, but he was not like he walked in there and won right away either. He needed to get the right quarterback in. So I'm not going to say that he's like a magic elixir that is going to automatically win. I think he's got some kind of bizarre techniques. And he would have been under so much scrutiny. And when you're under that much scrutiny.

You invite fodder that's going to tear you down. And I think that would have been a difficult dynamic. So I am not disappointed. If I were a fan, I think I would be applauding this move. Throughout the week leading up to this we expressed a lot of trepidation about jim harbaugh based on that past based on is it is it easy to project that because he went to nfc championships before that the magic wand gets waved and you'll just go again like Like that hasn't really played out with history that sometimes coaches who have great histories of coaching up teams and you know, they, um, you

know, we'll carry that over. And sometimes they won't like, it's not like Jimmy Johnson went from the Dallas Cowboys to the Miami dolphins and started raising trophies. Like they were okay, but they didn't all of a sudden just wave a magic wand because you hired Jimmy Johnson and win Superbowls. And this goes for a lot of different coaches who had had past success. It was a while ago. And so it wasn't just the power issue that I had. It was the league has actually changed kind of a lot over the last five to seven years think about this think of if we were talking about a coach punting at the 45 yard line on fourth and two like kyle shanahan did would there be a freak out like only by a handful of analytics people

now i think the front office would freak out and the analytics people would be like, what are you doing? But you know, things have changed that quickly. The amount that teams pass has changed quickly. And it's not that I'm saying Harbaugh was way behind because he had a running quarterback in Colin Kaepernick and they worked an offense around Kaepernick that was impressive. So I'm not saying the guy is like an old stooge. I'm just saying that it doesn't like past results don't guarantee future success. And so losing out on him doesn't mean that your franchise lost out on your one big shot to win a Superbowl. I don't think that at all. I also think too, that I just couldn't figure out in my brain how you could match up Kwasi Adafl-Mensah and

Harbaugh contract-wise. If I am Jim Harbaugh and I'm looking at what Matt Rule got or John Gruden, and I'm that kind of guy, and I'm saying, what, four-year contract, which is what Adafl-Mensah has. No, no, no, I don't think so. I want to be here twice as long as the GM. So then when we get to the end of the GM's contract, if I'm still here, I can decide if he gets to stay our GM or not. John Gruden ran out the GM out of town in Las Vegas. And actually Sean McDermott did too in Buffalo where their GM was Doug Whaley and McDermott got hired by Whaley and GM was Doug Whaley and McDermott got hired by Whaley and then threw him out of town and got Brandon Bean in there.

So a lot of times the coach can take a power play basically. And if you're Kwasi Adafomensa, I think you want someone who is on the same page as you, who you are working together with. And I don't know what their relationship was, but Kevin O'Connell was with San Francisco for a year as a special project. That sounds like a crazy arena if there ever was one, right? I feel like that's sort of something that, you know, the office would make fun of as someone who got hired for special projects. But I mean, don't you, I just think, don't you want someone that is paired with your GM? Because I think a lot of the successful teams, whether it's Kansas city or Buffalo or whoever

you want, they have everybody kind of in lockstep coach quarterback GM. What we just had was power struggles. And it seemed to me inevitable that there would be power struggles with Jim Harbaugh, that if you're Harbaugh, you come in saying, look, I know I have a job at Michigan. We just were in the final four. So I can ask for anything and everything I want. It would be like, you know, if you're, if you're a talk radio host and the whatever company across the street really wants you and you go in and you say, well, here's what I want. Here's everything. That's my perfect job. But I already like my job over at the other radio station.

So if you don't give me everything, I'm just going to go back there. If that's what happened with Jim Harbaugh, that's fine. Then then you didn't want that anyway. You didn't want someone who is going to take over the entire organization. And again, these are things that we sort of expressed throughout the week, not just suddenly it didn't happen. So now we're justifying it. Like these were all concerns before. That is my best guess at why this didn't happen is just that they could not get on the same page with contracts, power, roster, and even vision for what they wanted to do in the future. And if that's not the case, then you want Kevin O'Connell instead. Yeah. I mean, coaches have agents like Jim Harbaugh is aware that John Gruden signed a 10

year, a hundred million dollar deal. This would have been the splashiest hire since then, I think. I think splashier than Urban Meyer and probably in the same ballpark financially because the agent is going to say, hey, look what this guy made. And I think they're kind of in the same stratosphere with the personality and the track record. They're very different. They're very unique guys. But when you look at what the GM probably envisions for this thing, O'Connell and he can be in lockstep now versus the head coach bulldozing the GM, which I think might have been the case.

So I think that those dissenting voices that shot this down, whatever their motives were, might have done the Vikings a favor. Because it sounds like those, you know, they might have had personality issues with Harbaugh in Michigan or what have you. But I think that the Vikings arrived at the correct place. I know we're circling back to where we started this thing now. But for those that tuned in late, I think that Kevin O'Connell was the correct choice all along, at least on the offensive side of the ball. And I think this is a good move for the Vikings. I really do. You know who's having a good day is the Michigan recruits who on signing day decided they were still going to Michigan and now they get the head coach that they planned on actually at Michigan.

So good for them. But you know, the whole point of like getting on the same page, I don't know that there's ever any getting on the same page with Jim Harbaugh. And that's one of the most important points is it's, it's Harbaugh and that's who your franchise becomes. And I don't know if you want that. That's who San Francisco became. It was Harbaugh is the biggest celebrity in town. The minute he arrives, it doesn't matter who your quarterback is, who your receivers are, anything else, who your GM is.

What is your assessment on the whole now? GM search completed, head coaching search completed, and all the reports are is that Kevin O'Connell is the guy for the Vikings. The other candidates have been told that they're out, and they have to wait until after the Super Bowl to officially hire Kevin O'Connell, and then we'll get a press conference reaction pod. It's always one thing after the next, but on the whole, the GM search, the head coach search, now that we are basically over with it.

Well, they did what a lot of teams traditionally do. They did the opposite. They, they, which made sense because I think the opposite was going more modern, going younger, streamlining things, and maybe getting rid of a little bit of that football, football, you know, machismo that sort of infiltrated this organization. I think that this will get the Vikings on the right track from a schematic standpoint. I think they'll start looking at things more efficiently in the front office. And now, you know, next steps looking ahead, who's going to fill in around them. We have to see Kevin O'Connell create a staff. We have to see who he retains on the staff, if anybody, and what the Vikings do next, because now the moves can start happening.

But I think they put the people in place that you can trust to make the correct moves for the long-term health of the organization. So I think it's a B plus or better. I mean, I think that for all the candidates and some of them, I think you scratched your head at for both GM and coach, I think they ended in the correct spot. They cast a wide net to their credit, and I think that they arrived correctly. So I think they did a good job. At the very beginning of this thing, on January 10th, when Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer were fired, we talked about where will they go next? And what we thought

at that moment was they'll probably hire the most progressive general manager that they can find. Not an old scout, not somebody who's done it before, somebody young and somebody with a background in numbers. And then they did. They eventually did. They had a lot of interest in Ryan Poles, who now works for the Chicago Bears and is not anti-analytics, by the way. He made that very clear in his press conference, but does not have a Wall Street background. So they went very different with Kwezi Adafo-Mensah. You could not have gone much different than Rick Spielman, old scout guy. And then now with the head coach, even though they dipped their toe in the

Harbaugh waters, which would have been very surprising if they had gone that way. When, if we were talking about a January 10th, it would have been very surprising to us that they would have brought in anybody who had any coaching background before as a head coach would have been a little surprising because it just seemed like a total reset was in order for the franchise. And that's what they landed on. We went some weird directions with this. We went to, well, they're offering Ryan Poles, but they're not offering him enough money. So he's going to Chicago. And then now it's Adolfo Menta, who is their second choice, but is actually maybe the right fit for them. And the same thing as it goes with Kevin O'Connell, where it's, it's the right fit. A lot of times when you take the route that is not

as splashy, but is just like more pragmatic and more savvy. It's being the tortoise and not the hare sometimes to win in professional sports. And I think they ultimately landed on a spot that is the best for the organization, whether it works, who knows. The last thing I wanted to ask you, and I greatly appreciate everybody who's tuned in tonight to react to this. The Vikings have a coach at a GM, man. I mean, wow. Like we're here. And so welcome to the rest of your lives or however long this lasts. But there's so much more to come.

What do you think timeline wise is short term? We've talked about the big timeline, but what about the short term? When will they make a decision on cousins? When will they decide what to do with Daniil Hunter and his contract situation? Whether they're going to move any veterans like Harrison Smith or Delvin Cook or whoever else. I mean, to me, this stuff has to start happening pretty quickly. Yeah. You've got about six weeks until you start tampering. So you've got six weeks to figure Kirk out. I don't think there are any obvious cuts that you make right now. I think that just about every veteran contract that's suspect, I think you would probably try

to restructure it before you just flat out cut a guy. But Kirk really dictates everything as we've established. And I think that, you know, the conversation between O'Connell and Kwesi probably has been had. It probably was had in the initial interview. They probably readdressed it when they went and flew out to LA and talked to him. And I don't know what kind of legwork a head coach does for a potential job when they're prepping for a Super Bowl. So that might distract him a little bit. But I would assume that post-Super Bowl, which is February 13th, so Valentine's Day, is when the stuff starts happening. And I keep going back to the Wentz

timeline. The Wentz trade was February 18th. I think that's a fair ballpark. I think like the week after the Super Bowl, you might start to see the wheels turning and the dominoes falling. The question to me is, do you want to be the first team that trades a quarterback or do you want to wait until the market gets set? Because Jimmy Garoppolo is getting traded. They're working on this right now. That is happening. Now all trades have to wait until the official league year starts, but they can get reported before. And it was only 15 days in Detroit after Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell were hired. Or after I think Brad Holmes, their GM was hired. It was 15 days before they traded Matt Stafford.

And I could see it being the same way. Like you laid it out there. It's gotta be pretty quick here so they can decide what they want to do. I mean, the combine comes up, you should do it before the combine. So you can go all in on these quarterbacks that you're looking at. And, uh, you know, this is where there's going to be this race of teams that are jockeying for, are we getting Garoppolo? Are we trading for Deshaun Watson? Do we want to go down that route? Are we drafting someone in an allegedly weak draft, which I'll believe when I see, because I think some of these guys have potential, but I mean, there's going to be this sort of, are you going to go first? Are you going to go first? Are you, but I think Garoppolo has, they've been working on who they're going to trade him to for a while.

And he even admitted in his press conference, imagine doing a press conference after the season that he has been working with San Francisco to where he wanted to go all along that they made promises. Hey, we'll send you somewhere where you can win. So is that Denver? Like, who knows? But whatever Garoppolo gets traded for, you kind of have a price for where you might decide to trade Cousins. And if you want to stay with Cousins,

then you've got to do an extension pretty much right away or Kwasi Adafo-Mentz's first free agency is going to be pretty boring. He's going to be watching everybody else sign everybody because they won't have any cap space. So I think that what we're going to have here is more emergency podcasts and emergency streams with Bring Me the News, where we have big breaking news and things to react to. So if all of you who are watching tonight, which I thank all of you for joining, want to listen to more to us, do our daily podcast, go to wherever you get your podcast, type

in Purple Insider. That's where we do it. Our written work is on Bring Me the News. Our written work is also our newsletter, purpleinsider.substack.com. You can go there. You can follow each of us on Twitter at Matthew Collar, at Sam Ekstrom. And we always tweet out our work there at Purple Insider as well. Sorry, I've just thrown a bunch of stuff at you.

Just type in Purple Insider where you get your podcasts. Go listen to us. And appreciate everybody jumping on. It's an exciting time, I think, for Vikings fans here, Sam. I want a final thought from you for the night. Because I'll give mine mine you can give yours i think that the refresh button i've probably used that word too many times because i can't think i don't i don't have thesaurus.com up it's what this place needed so badly that they had sunk into a rut

of doing the same things making the same mistakes running the same things, making the same mistakes, running the same things back. Even their philosophy on the field didn't seem to change for how they were running their offense, when they were running the football, when they were drafting receiver, like everything had just sunk into the same and it all equaled 500 or less. And now the door is open to change all of the things that were mistakes in the past and build on the things that you have that are good, like Justin Jefferson and Brian O'Neill and Christian Derrissaw. And this is the, I would say this is the closest they've been to something really good since 2017, basically. And that I think will be very interesting to study because that doesn't mean it's all going to come to fruition.

But at least for Vikings fans today, you can feel like this could go somewhere, which it has not felt that way in a long time. Yeah, they are charting the proper course. Everything was predictable last year, stale. There was apathy. Everything you don't want in your favorite team's path. And I think that if you're a Vikings fan, you can sleep well tonight

knowing that they have now hired another guy who's going to win the press conference. You're probably going to be excited for next year, even if it doesn't look like the team will be that good. You're still going to be interested in what product shows up on the field. And you know what? When expectations are lower, that's when you can actually be more satisfied as a sports fan. When your team is like good when they're not supposed to be,

that's a really satisfying part of the arc. So by lowering the bar, I think, with this hire, which I mean, because again, we assume Harbaugh would have wanted to win sooner. I think this gives you a more realistic timeline. It gives you a little bit of leash and it allows you to enjoy the building process instead of watching them slap band-aids and trying to plug all these holes in a sinking ship and scrambling to stay afloat. That's just not a fun way to go about it. I think this will be a lot more fun if you're a consumer of the product. All right. Thanks again, Sam, for your time. Thank you all for taking the time to watch here tonight. I know there's a soccer game being played

as we record this in minus three degree weather that I was kind of intrigued by, but here we are with big Vikings news. So thanks so much, everybody. If you haven't listened to us before, this is the first time again, Purple Insider, wherever you get your podcasts and check us out there. And we will be doing regular streams continually here on Bring Me the News. Keep your eye out and we will catch y'all later. Thanks for watching slash listening.