Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Kirk Cousins probably isn't going anywhere

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

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the Chevy Silverado is in a league of its own. Strong, advanced, and dependable. Download TE1 today, wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here. And right on time to join the podcast is Arif Hasan. What's going on, Arif? Not much.

Had a nice relaxing nap earlier in the day. That was nice. And now I can relax with a leisurely, on-time podcast with you. Right. Well, let's just hope that you're more focused and uh don't have any other missed calls that you had earlier today but we're here and uh we're gonna talk some vikings football and there's a lot of stuff that i want to get to here because you and i are similar in our intrigue for players that are not necessarily the superstars and kind

of how they're developing and how things are playing out and different theories about drafting and all this sorts of stuff. But I've got to start with one thing that's starting to get to me a little bit, Arif, and that's people's exit plans for Kirk Cousins. So here's the story. I'm really sorry to inform you that there are very few options to move on from Kirk Cousins, and the likelihood of the Vikings moving on from Kirk Cousins via a trade after this season is also not very high.

And this is just me taking a bucket of reality and splashing everybody's face with it, because I know that these last two games have been a horror show. They have been a horror show. They have been the two least enjoyable games maybe of my life, and I'm from Buffalo. But that doesn't mean that the team that just invested a huge contract extension for Kirk Cousins is going to start trying to trade him, and it also means that if they go 3-13, no one's trading for him, in part because his salary cap hit is huge in 2021, and it's huge among us in 2022. So he's not really favorable for another team to trade for. probably awful like he has been in the first two games, and it means who is trading you a first-round pick for someone who just went 5-11,

had a career-low year, and makes a ton of money, especially if you're in a quarterback-needy situation where you'd be probably trying to draft someone instead. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm not saying that Tampa Bay or New Orleans or somebody couldn't, you know, have their old quarterback retire and still think that they're in championship mode and want to trade for Cousins. But I just see it as a very low likelihood situation that it's fun to play

around with scenarios. But even with his contract structure, they can't cut him unless they're taking on masses of dead cap it. So react to my opening rant. I don't know why you need me here. You're doing pretty well on your own. Yeah, no, the thing that gets me is that, like, the only reason he agrees to a contract extension, one that reduces his cap it for this year,

is to exchange it for security. That doesn't evaporate when he plays poorly. That's the point of security. You can't get rid of me no matter what happens. That's the whole idea. And so there's no way his agent, there's no way he agrees to a deal with the Vikings that doesn't create some protections for him in case he flounders.

Every player has all the confidence in the world until it comes time to determine what are the guarantees in the contract. So, yeah, I don't think that it's reasonable for us to envision a world where Cousins goes away. And then you're left with the prospect of, and, you know, I'm totally fine with the Vikings like drafting a quarterback in this draft, right? That's totally great. But then you, you've got, you've got to deal with this, this prospect of,

you've got a quarterback who's under contract for 2021 as well as 2022. In 2022, there's in theory an out, right? Because you cut them and you only take a $10 million dead cap hit. And depending on how the salary cap stuff works, if they're going to prorate some of the losses from this year into 2022, that can be even bigger than we thought. But, yeah, you've got this, like, bridge quarterback that you're paying $40 million in cap hit for,

and you have to be, like, really hopeful that whatever quarterback you draft is absolutely ready in 2022 to go, because there's no way you're keeping both this $45 million cap hit and your first-round pick on the team at the same time if the $45 million cap hit isn't playing. So, yeah, again, I think they should draft a quarterback. I wanted them to do it last year. We talked about it last year.

But you have to kind of negotiate the situation and figure it out, and that does not include getting rid of him for the 2021 season because you'll take not just the cap hit from his actual contract that year, $31 million, you'll take an additional $10 million on top of that. That's just how guarantees work. Right. So that's a great way to lay it out, and I appreciate that. It was less ranty than mine, but it was reasoned.

And so just looking forward here with Cousins. The other thing, too, is if you're in the front office and you signed him to this extension, boy, are you going to let it play out. Because if you don't and if you panic because he's had a couple of bad games and you start looking around for other options and how can we get out from under him? I think the people that employ you are going to go, Hey, wait, didn't you think that he was great like a minute ago? And so if you are in the front office of the Vikings and you've signed him to an extension already, then what you have to be arguing is a we'll turn it around this year.

Unlikely, but possible or at least to get in an in the hunt graphic or make it fun at least I could see this offense actually putting up some points someday maybe this week against Tennessee since Gardner Minshew put up 30 against Tennessee and if not for some Jerry Judy blocks maybe Denver or blocks drops maybe Denver blocks, drops. Maybe Denver does that too on opening night. So I'm not sure that Tennessee has the best defense. I know that Houston doesn't have the best defense. I think you'll feel a little better about Cousins going forward. It's just that these two game skids happen all the time with him. And there's always, if someone gets interior pressure, it's just kind of over for that day for Kirk Cousins and trust me I get it I

get all the frustrations but if you are the one that signs the extension you're going to be saying give us time to build the roster back up around him and make it better so when you go into this next draft it's still a hard sell for me that if they're drafting fifth or eighth or something like that which to me is where I would put them right now. I don't think you're getting worse than the Jets, who could go 0-16. And so if that's where you're at, you're trying to draft the best tackle, the guy from Oregon, or you're trying to draft a guard or maybe rebuild your defense, a three technique for the first time

since Sheldon Richardson or something. That's going to be the argument that gets made realistically. I don't even know how bad Kirk would have to play this year to have them saying, let's trade him. And then you're saying, trade him to who for what? Who is doing that? Sam Bradford, that was the example Intern Paul used the other day, is, hey, Sam Bradford got traded from the Eagles to the Vikings

for a first-round pick. It's true, but Bradford was actually legit that year in 2015 for Philadelphia. If Kirk struggles this much with his salary cap situation, who's doing that? Who's making that trade? So I just kind of wanted to kind of clear that out a little bit that I get why this is going to be a conversation, but prepare yourself right now for an offensive lineman getting picked in the next draft and start thinking about how can they replace Stephon Diggs truly? How can they replace a lot of bodies on defense that we were told, no, it'll be fine. It'll be okay. It's not okay at the moment. So any more thoughts on that before

I move on to what I wanted to discuss? I'm really excited to find out what you wanted to discuss, but yeah, I think that the front office will do everything they can to keep the job like any human, I think. And that involves giving themselves time to win their decisions when they need to win them. And so in extension for cousins and, and they, they made an insane gamble this year. We've talked about it. I've written about it.

I bet you've written about it, about the tightrope they tried to walk between rebuilding and setting the stage and taking advantage of this window, one that included trading one of their best players potentially in Anthony Harris and then actually trading one of their best players in Stephon Diggs. So it was like a crazy tightrope they tried to walk, and I was like trying to envision what it would look like, and it required just a knockout draft class. Not just a knockout draft class, one that had an immediate impact. And so we're not seeing that.

And so for the Vikings to be able to kind of retain their jobs all through the front office and the coaching staff, not only do they need to turn it around, they need to turn it around with the decisions they intended to make. And so, yeah, obviously, Kirk Cousins, I mean, I don't think he's going to play as poorly again as he did against the Colts. I mean, there's a reason it was like his career game, because he hasn't played like that ever before.

And so in all likelihood, he won't play like that again. But, you know, not having Stephon Diggs, obviously that matters to a quarterback that is very dependent on the quality of a supporting cast. Not having, you know, either guard kind of work out for him like that. Who could have seen that coming? Just everybody on the planet, right? And so they're going to let Kirk figure it out and not, like, leave him out on an island.

They're going to try and work with him to make it figured out. But they're going to let this process play out until the point of no return, until you can say it's an absolute failure. Because they don't have any other option. Because, like we just discussed, what are you going to do if he does fail? You can't do anything. And, yeah, I think the example of Sam Bradford is really instructive because Bradford was supposed to be a bridge quarterback.

It's like if Ryan Fitzpatrick balls out this year, like they're probably going to trade him because they've got Tua, right? But the point, and that's exactly what happened to Alex Smith. They have a quarterback whose whole point is to just bridge you to the next guy. If Tyrod Taylor balls out, great, he'll be worth a lot. But we're talking about the exact opposite situation, where you don't have any quarterbacks on the roster, and the one that sucks costs a lot, and now you're going to tell a team,

yeah, this guy is absolutely worth a first-round pick, and we're going to use that first-round pick to trade up for Fields or whatever. It's not happening. Right, and whoever is in the position to draft Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields will draft Trevor Lawrence or Justin Fields. If you think, I mean, okay, the Giants are bat bleep crazy, but I think even them would look at those two quarterbacks and say, well, they'll probably fire Dave Gettleman

after this year anyway. So whoever the new general manager is, we'll say we're drafting Trevor Lawrence. Okay. We're drafting Justin Fields. Okay. They've basically put themselves in the Josh Rosen position with Arizona of whoops, we drafted a bad quarterback. And the same thing goes for Darnold. At this point, you're ready to say, look, the guy probably isn't going to be great, so let's pick someone who could potentially be great. So if the Vikings aren't at number one or number two, you're not getting those guys. They're not trading out of those positions.

They're going to take them and try to turn their franchises around, and that's what makes it even tougher. So now you'd be likely talking about, okay, you're going to pick the third or fourth or fifth best quarterback who's in the draft, and then do what? I mean, are you going to leave them behind Cousins for two years? Are you going to try to take a draft pick and put it with Cousins and trade it to someone else and say, we'll give you our whatever to take him off our hands, which seems really weird for a guy that you just extended it's like this is it's almost like being mad at the weather honestly it's like yes it's frustrating but you can't

change it and so that's the position that you're in at the moment so there's a couple of things I was thinking about because you and I did a full review of the offseason. And I think that we did it sort of Imaginationland style. Like imagine they didn't extend Kirk. And we talked about whether that would have been a better position for them. And I think what you get to right now is, of course, the answer is yes right now. Because they did not seem to anticipate how bad this could get when you rebuild. And there's always sort of been this thing of, like,

can we get the big names to stick around or the big names to come here, and then the rest we'll figure it out because we'll draft good. And when you don't draft good, which was my original premise for this, then I'm using good the way Mike Zimmer does. So when you don't draft successfully, then you can't just throw in guy X, Y, and Z. And if you ask rookies to take on huge jobs, you have to sometimes expect that they will get eaten alive like Garrett Bradbury in his first year or Cam Dantzler or Jeff Gladney.

But there's been this thing like oh Yannick Ngakwe he'll fix it we'll just trade for him he'll sack all the people and then good to go and hey you know okay Xavier Rhodes he wouldn't play very well but we'll just pick somebody else and then they'll come in here and be good and um that just it just hasn't played out because if everything didn't go exactly their way, this was what was going to happen. Hunter injury, now the bar injury, those are things not going your way. So I wonder if even right now they would go back if they could in time

and say, okay, maybe we should have just let his contract play out and then see what happens, whether it's a Cam Newton ends up available or whether it's a draft pick that ends up working out for you or whatever. I think that they would kind of take that one back if they could, rather than creating enough space to sign a guy who didn't play this year in Michael Pierce. Right. Yeah, that's right. It was really interesting that when they extended Cousins, we waited forever to see kind of to what end, right?

Because they ended up having just $12 million in cap space just kind of floating around doing nothing. And that was, I think, even after they signed Michael Pierce, they had a good chunk of cap space that they just weren't doing anything with. And I don't think they themselves anticipated trading for Yannick Ngakwe. So it was just like, okay, we're just kind of floating around. We're going to rely on like seven new starters in the defense or whatever. The thing that really gets me is that I think that there was just kind of a feeling that some of this would just inevitably work out on its own. We kept on asking Zimmer multiple times, like, hey,

is this going to be an offensively driven team? And he's like, well, I've never had a bad defense. And it's like, well, nobody really wanted to say, yes, you did. It was in 2014, because that's not his fault. Those aren't his players, right? And they weren't very good players. And so you don't want to like, but that's not the point. They're not very good players now.

It turns out you can't, you're a phenomenal defensive coordinator. You cannot design a great defense without good pieces without good players and you've got a ton of new players that a lot of people you know didn't necessarily want like if jaleel johnson hits the market who's signing them right like it's going to be tough to to build this defense with uh with the guy that you picked up off the waiver wire starting for you a defensive end which is why you traded for yanni kingakwe in the first place. And then also you got a downgrade on this offense.

So I think that's one of the things. But the other thing is that they just kind of figured that they would be able to get Everson Griffin back if they wanted to. You know, they just kind of figured that they'd be able to attract free agents. And it just feels like, when has that been true? When have the Vikings won a ton of free agency battles? Like, it was really great when they signed Linvald Joseph and Captain Munderland, who were neither of them with the top free agent on the market.

But, you know, they failed on, like, Rick Wagger, who sucks, and they went after him. They failed on Clint Bowling, who has a relationship with Zimmer. Like, the guys that you're getting are second, third, fourth-tier free agents. I don't know that you'll be able to use that cap space to effectively always go after the top guy in free agency, and it turns out you can't even go after your own guy who wants to be here. So, yeah, I don't know. Like, the fact that Zimmer was extremely confident Everson Griffin was coming back, the fact that he was extremely confident that they'd find a way to just make the defense good,

even though this was, and some of these discussions happened while Anthony Harris was on the trade block, like, again, this defense is going to be great. We don't need the safety that might be better than our captain. It's just wild to me. Yeah, just a remarkable lack of planning. Yeah, if they go back and, you know, they have knowledge of the future about how a lot of these decisions work out, yeah, they probably don't extend Cousins because it's clearly going to be time to go. And I don't think the season's going to go 4-12. I think the season's probably going to end up, you know,

maybe five wins that would be kind of the low end of my expectation, even after what we watch. But, yeah, I can see a seven-win team. Yep, I agree. It doesn't have to go – but I think that they would just be like okay we've done enough with cousins we like we know what that looks like we've got another year right because i think they had another year under contract before this extension anyway so you know we've got a bridge quarterback we don't have to worry about it but now they're just kind of locked in

and it's just like all of these parts and pieces um but hey they extended Delvin Cook so but that well and that's the thing is that you have the parts and pieces that are good but there's so much to be done to paint over the bad that you need a lot of capital to do so because these drafts haven't hit which was my original angle to kind of look back at these last few drafts that have just not worked out the same way it did in 2015 and how much that's impacting them right now but think about I think about this a lot with you mentioned Captain Munnerlyn he wasn't there in 2017 but in 2016 and 15 he was on good defenses Terrence Newman comes to mind as well that when we look at defense it's really about the weak links more than it is

about the strongest pieces and when an offense knows that you at the three technique position are well well below average when they know at the nose guard position you're below average when they know that at corner none of your guys have ever played football in the NFL before like they can attack these spots and not worry about Harrison Smith or not worry about Eric Hendricks because you're not even going after that guy. There are so many other places that you can attack. And I think one of the key lessons of the 2015, 16, and 17 defenses are you had a lot of average and a little above average.

Terrence Newman was not a mega star nickel corner in 2017. What he was was competent as hell. And the same thing goes for Captain Munderland. The guy was competent. He was making a tackle when it comes his way. He knew the defense. And the same even goes, you know, Tom Johnson comes up a lot on the show because Tom's awesome as a guy who's great to cover,

and he's a good player who didn't get enough credit. But again, I mean, we're not talking about Aaron Donald. We're talking about a guy who was average in his position for what his role was, but average is very good. And so now my question is, if you guys, as the Vikings, are going to rebuild a full roster to have all these good pieces, like a B-Rob coming off the bench to rush on third downs as opposed to Hercules Mata'afa who is still here apparently and that's where there is so much work to do but not a whole lot of space to do it with and that's kind of

because you had to re-sign everybody in sight. And that right there to me is the biggest thing that I would question, aside from, of course, the extension where you could have gone full rebuild, is going into this offseason, like, did you just think that all these things would kind of click and work and not having any depth whatsoever and having lots of positions that were not certain to be anywhere near average like was that was did you convince yourself that that was going to be okay because i didn't get the impression at any point a reef that they were rebuilding they wouldn't say

it when we asked about it they laughed at us i mean harrison smith harrison smith straight up mocked it he said oh i didn't know we were supposed to be bad. Wow. Surprise, buddy. Right. Yeah, you were in for something then. And so from this season, there's a this season, and there's a long-term perspective of you've got a lot of places to fill. And you thought by drafting everybody under the sun it would do it, but I'm not sure that it will.

Yeah, and the thing is, like, it is analytically sound to make, like, 15 or whatever draft. Like, you're probably at an upper limit near there. But it is, yeah, it makes a ton of sense to throw all kinds of darts in the draft, and that's great. That doesn't mean that when it works out it's going to be in year one, right? Like, they invested, you know, two picks, the first two days they invested two picks at cornerback, one on the offensive line, one at wide receiver, and they took a step back at every single one of

those positions. That's not a shock, but that tells you a lot about what they were relying on and what they needed to have work in order for this team to just keep on chugging along. Because, yeah, you cut your best guard for whatever reason. I still haven't really figured it out. And now your guard play is totally garbage. I've got your best guard for whatever reason. I still haven't really figured it out. And now your guard play is totally garbage. I've got to thank injury for Josh Klein, right? Yeah, because he hasn't signed anywhere else, right? So there's got to be.

Yeah. But even then, I'm sorry to interrupt, but like Ron Leary, I mean, this was the point. You traded for Yannick Ngakwe and took up all your cap space. And I think Ngakwe's a good player, but if you were going to win this year and your expectation was playoffs this year, there were a lot of spaces to fill like, how about a veteran corner? How about a veteran guard? And instead you went... And there are all kinds of corners that now have experience in this kind of system, right? You don't just have to go after Dark Houston Art, although hey, maybe you could have. But you know,

there are people who have played now in, like, Paul Gunther systems that are very similar, right, that have experienced with Oakland and Miami. You know, there are people that have played in Belichick systems that are actually very similar to what Zimmer asks his corners to do, even down to the shuffle and the match zone reads. So, like, there are corners that are familiar with what you're going to ask them to do. Just have a floor. Like you just said, like, a lot of defense is about weak links.

And the Vikings, you know, I think that they were probably making the correct choice when they gambled that, hey, you know, we're going to enter the season with a lot of uncertainty at cornerback. We can get a lot better at corner. We can also get a lot worse. The thing is, we don't know, right? And I think that that's right because the only way you can get a lot better at corner we can also get a lot worse the thing is we don't know right and i think that that's right because the only way you can get better is take a risk that you'll get worse fine that makes sense there but that doesn't mean that you can't put some like

insurance in there and make sure that instead of like trying to figure out whether or not you want to roster mark fields you've got you know a guy that you know is like all right like dark houston art like like captain monroland not a star that's fine you need a bunch of, a guy that you know is like all right, like Dark Houston Art, like Captain Monroe, not a star. That's fine. You need a bunch of not-a-stars. So you could have had somebody who's familiar with the system. I know that, you know, you've got this offseason where you don't get to teach people stuff, and I, you know, all the sympathy in the world, right? Thirty-one other teams have to deal with this.

But there are people that are familiar with what you're going to ask them to do. Go get them. They're better than the guys that you have, potentially. And if they're not, great. You've got the best backup in the world, you can never have too many corners. How many times have you said that? So, yeah, it's really weird how they approached a lot of this offseason where all they're trying to do is hit home runs.

And, you know, you can't just rely, if you've got a low batting average, you can't just rely on hitting home runs. I want to remind you to go to SodaSt.com to get your original minnesota sports inspired goods they just launched their official collaboration with bud grant yes bud grant you can now get your official bud grant shirt and man cave art print if you haven't seen it yet you have to check it out and we're going to hook you up with free shipping for your order use code purple insider for free shipping that is soda stick s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k dot com original minnesota sports inspired goods code purple insider for free shipping get back to the conversation in just a minute but first visa knows that local businesses are the heartbeat of

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Visa, everywhere you want to be, official partner of the NFL. And to circle back, all of this stuff really connects to the, you didn't commit to a rebuild, and you didn't really commit to, we're going to keep going 10-6 and get to the playoffs this year, because all the moves we just laid out, if you get Prince of Makamura, if you get Dre Kirkpatrick, like those are moves to help you win the NFC North. And if you don't do any of these moves and you also don't extend Kirk Cousins or even Mike Zimmer for that point, then you're saying, well, actually we're going to rebuild.

So I think about when Chicago drafted Mitch Trubisky, and I think they had Mike Glennon as their starting quarterback, and John Fox was the lamest of the lame ducks. Or even take where Jacksonville is right now with Doug Marone. Doug Marone, hey, he might keep it close and keep his job and all that sort of stuff, but probably not, right? So they probably go like 4-12, and then they change coaches, and everyone goes like, oh, okay, moving on,

because we were clearly rebuilding with all the draft picks and everything and we moved on from players uh and in this case there was never a very clear signal from the moves that were made starting with the extension of kirk cousins okay we're going to rebuild which i think that from a Viking fan perspective, you would have had a 75% to 90% approval rating from fans to say, okay, look, that last era, lots of fun times, lots of crazy bleep. But like, okay, maybe we need to take a step back to take a step forward. In a way, Washington is clueless, of course. But Washington, 2017, they let go of their veteran receivers.

They moved on from a lot of people and clearly took a bit of a rebuild and clearly were not locked into Kirk. And, okay, there's been a lot of pain since because they're super inept. But if you think about that situation, that's what we could have been looking at here. Okay, they let everybody walk. Now they're rebuilding. But that was not the clear signal from the Vikings this offseason and like you said if you're going to walk that tightrope you better have Chris Boyd or somebody

turn into a really great player or Drew Samia or all these players that they thought hey maybe there's a shot this guy takes the next step and really none of them have which we need to talk about because I was going back to the 2016 draft and you have absolutely no one left from that draft on the team presently. So there's a whole draft that wasn't that long ago. Remember their contracts took them through 2019. So you have no second contract players from a whole draft. Yikes. And then you go to 2017, you have paid a running back, always super risky. your third round pick is on his third position in three years so that's not really a good thing and hurt uh jaleel johnson

is just getting pulverized uh ben gideon's career might be over rodney adams career i think is over danny isadora bucky hodges stacy coley, Jack Toccio, the only guy who's playing is Afadi Adenabo, and he's an NFL player, but you're not really sure that he can play much more than situational. And then even you get to the 2018 draft. Jalen Holmes is proving that he can't play in the league. Tyler Conklin is a third tight end. Daniel Carlson had a hell of a kick for the Raiders the other night. He did.

The other guys aren't on the team. Ade Aruna, who knows what happened to him. Who knows if he ever even existed. And then, you know, 2019, we should start finding out in year two where these guys stand. B.C. Johnson can't handle a number two role. That's probably the case. Armond Watts has got whipped the first two weeks.

Tristamia, oh, my gosh, I'm glad that he is alive, considering what happened. You got another running back. Congratulations on that. And, you know, Garrett Bradbury and Irv Smith might still be good players. So there isn't those, hey, this Diggs guy from the fifth round, look at him. Daniil Hunter from the third round. They have not had that.

And I think that they were counting on that in the way that they shoved all the cash to 10 people and then said well everybody else you better develop and you know what like you said Mike Zimmer graded scheme Andre Patterson graded teaching but we can't take not talent and just mold

it into NFL talent yeah and I think the thing is like some of the guys you name, great picks on it, like Afadi Adenovo, great pick, right? But that's not the same as getting a real contributor that's going to make your defense good, right? Like, it's fine that you got value out of the Armand Watts pick. He's already outperforming.

He got whipped, but he's already outperforming six of them picks, right? That's not the same as having a starting three technique. That is putting yourself kind of on the path to being able to deal with the punches when they come. Like, it's fantastic that the Vikings have Eric Wilson, especially in light of this Anthony Varnus. Like, that's kind of where you're at with these late-round picks that are not good in terms of like comparison to starters but are working out in comparison to where you are and if you like tricking yourself into thinking that that means you can just take a ton of picks like a ton of

shots and know that you're gonna like you know hit on all these picks and and for you hitting means outperforming draft slot instead of getting a starter then you're going to be in a bad spot when you get rid of a bunch of starters and now you've got a bunch of guys that can't play at a starting level but are still, like, good picks, right? Like, it's like asking for extra credit when you didn't get a beat. Like, okay, fantastic. Like, you had a bunch of good picks.

And from that perspective, those picks were great for what you paid for them. But you need to fill out a roster that isn't going to get constantly terrorized by opposing offenses that have the ability to kind of pick and choose where they attack. Here's a good example. So Josh Allen, we both made a ton of fun of him over the years. He was pretty bad. These last two weeks he's been electric. The thing that's really interesting to me is that he when they played miami uh you know just last week you byron jones goes out after like three snaps

and miami's forced to play a guy that might still end up being good but the rookie corner noah igbenakini and josh allen is like that guy i've got stefan diggs i've got john brown i've got cole beasley i'm going after ighani. And he targets him like 13 times in this matchup for 11 receptions for 154 of his 400-odd yards that day. Like, that's what happens. You've got a quarterback that I don't know if he's good anymore. Like, I mean, he's taken a bunch of steps, and that's great. And he looks really electric. We'll see how that turns out. You've got a quarterback that had some issues kind of processing and making quick decisions early in the draft.

We don't know where he is. And Miami has Xavier Howard and Byron Jones and Christian Wilkins, and they've got like a bunch of pieces that are pretty interesting and maybe the first good coach to come out of the Belichick coaching tree we'll see, right? And they have one injury. They make one mistake. They've got a rookie in there. And Josh allen is focused and has the game of his life get like terrorizing this guy

and the vikings have like four of those guys right yes yeah and uh jeremiah searles made a good point that if jonathan taylor hadn't been a rookie he probably runs for another 50 60 70 yards in that game and also ty hilton bring it, bring it in, bring it in. It's right there for you. Same with Valdez Scantling the week before. So this could have even been worse. And they've been given some opportunities to stay in games where they probably even shouldn't have been as long as they were

over these first couple of weeks, which really tells you just how bad the situation is in terms of the roster. And that's, the way you put it, is exactly what they're dealing with. And it kind of reminds me last year of how teams would go after Xavier Rhodes. But Xavier Rhodes knew the defense. He could tackle anything. So if you threw in front of him, he was going to tackle the player in front of him. And also everyone else was decent mckenzie alexander was decent trey was not great but he was an nfl outside cornerback who again could tackle anything that came his way and so you immediately go from having all competent pieces even at your worst spots

to having a bunch of places that are not competent and now here's where you push it forward is when will they be though if you continue to take this approach and not the approach of you might actually have to bring in and do kind of what philly did this a little bit uh when they won the super bowl in 2017 where they signed a bunch of people and it wasn't always stars it was was like – no, actually Los Angeles is Nickel Robey Coleman. But they signed what? The nickel corner there, Robinson. Patrick Robinson. They didn't need to have a spectacular year for that year to work out for them.

He did end up having the only good year of his career. But yet now they signed a bunch of people, right, because they had like Timmy Jernigan on their defensive line from Baltimore. They grabbed Chris Long from New England. Vinny Kirk's guy has been around there for a long time, right? Yeah. So like they grabbed a bunch of guys to fill out kind of the bottom end of the back end.

They got Stefan Wisniewski as depth that year. I'm taking a look at the – Torrey Smith was also a receiver who was kind of at the end of his career, didn't have much left. But not much left for Torrey Smith is a heck receiver who was kind of at the end of his career, didn't have much left, but not much left for Torrey Smith is a heck of a lot better than maybe, and I'm not saying there's no chance, but maybe B.C. Johnson, right? So it seemed like their thing, when you spend all the way to the salary cap

on seven people, including your quarterback, that it makes it really challenging. Like you have to hit, you have to find a Torrey Smith level player or a Patrick Robinson level player or a Vinny Curry level player in the draft. And so when you don't have that draft luck and it doesn't click, that's where you end up with this situation. And my question for you is, because you probably know how I feel about this, is how much should we look at these drafts and say, what the heck?

Because I could go pick by pick. There are some that I question. Of course, I mean, Garrett Bradbury is a first-rounder as a center because you were desperate to get a center who could handle the zone blocking. That's a hard one. In comparison to, like, a tackle or a Debo Samuel or an AJ Brown. And if you knew that your number one receiver was very pissed, then maybe it would have been a good idea to pick a DK Metcalf, for example.

I'm just throwing that out there. But whatever, you can go with some logic picks. But I tend to think that it just is rolling the dice every time. And these last couple of years with the late rounds past the third, fourth round, it just is rolling the dice every time and these last couple of years with the late rounds past the third fourth round it just hasn't gone their way and this is the position you put yourself in and you expected it to kind of keep going the way it did before yeah well and you could even hear that when they were talking about these picks like dj wanton reminds me of daniel hunter like yeah he's tall um but but, you know, no one knew that Daniil Hunter,

he wouldn't have been picked in the third round if we all knew Daniil Hunter was going to blow up. Like, you know, believe it or not, you get credit for Daniil Hunter. You were the team that figured out that the super athlete without a ton of, you know, pressure production at LSU would turn into a really great, you know, player. But, you know, you can't just say, hey, man, KJ Osborne, like Stephon Diggs,

was a kick returner at a school that didn't have a good quarterback, so we're gonna, you know, he's gonna be the guy, we're gonna figure it out, right? And obviously, you know, they weren't, like, banking on Osborne, right? They grabbed some other receivers, but for the most part, you know, the way they talked about some of these players made you think, what is your projection of these guys, and when do you project them to meet those, like, expectations? Because you're going to need someone to be able to, and I'll admit it, I was high on Adenabo, but to me, he was a starting quality, you're not going to get a star, you know, player out of him, right? But, like, you're going to need some of these guys to become

instant contributors in a way that, you know, we just don't see very often for rookies. And hey, you know, Stefan Diggs, he didn't, he didn't ball out until like week four, week five. He got the start week five his rookie year. He had a really great game week four, and that's how he earned his start. The Vikings were like, oh, who knew that you were better than like Charles Johnson, despite the fact that you outperformed him in practice every week. Yeah. And so, you know, maybe Justin Jefferson, you know, know has that but I don't think I'm a little skeptical of that because first we saw Stefan Diggs in practice and he was just nuts insane good uh and second like Stefan Diggs produced as soon as he got an opportunity Justin

Jefferson's had opportunity right so there's a difference here but you know maybe Justin Jefferson turns it on week four maybe you know hey Mike Hughes actually had a pretty good game against the Colts so you know maybe you know unless he has to trumps it on week four. Maybe, you know, hey, Mike Hughes actually had a pretty good game against the Colts. So, you know, maybe, you know, unless he has to go up against Amari Cooper again, you know, he'll be fine going forward. But, like, there was nothing where the Vikings had a really good set of odds for hitting year one. A lot of these guys might end up being hits. You know, 15 picks, I expect, you know, some of these guys might end up being hits you know 15 picks i expect you know some of these guys to really perform i just don't think it's going to happen year one and now the vikings are realizing it ezra cleveland wasn't even active week one right and it's like yeah you keep telling us to

invest in the offensive line hey we invested in the offensive line you know not to any end but we did it right right so yeah you know these draft picks are... I'm kind of excited to see... Irv Smith had a pretty bad game. I don't project that to keep going forward into the coming weeks. I'm excited to see how some of these guys work out. But the talent coming in, you can't reasonably expect it to match

the talent coming out. And if that's the case, what's your plan? Your plan is not Kirk Cousins. He's not a solution. He's just kind of not a problem right and it all and it all ties back into that too because you're starting dakota dozier at left guard and not ezra cleveland and so you move him to left guard you tell us oh no he's actually a left guard and that's that's where we see him and you go okay well you drafted the left guard in the second round who can't dress right away.

That's not great. But why is Dakota Dozier starting at all? I mean, maybe they thought. He was victimized, which no shock to anybody, but they were trying to sell him a little bit right before the season. Like, oh, he's gotten a lot stronger. Wasn't it like year six or seven for him? Yeah, right.

He's gotten a lot stronger. Right. Discover protein year six or seven for him? He's gotten a lot stronger. Discover protein shakes for the first time? What's happening, man? Yeah, he got whipped. And the only thing saving him is the fact that Drew Samia had the performance he did. Get back to the conversation in just a second. But even though sports took a break, your business didn't. You have to keep moving, and that makes hiring more important than ever.

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Offer valid through September 30th. Right. And this, it all goes back to you didn't see this coming. Like you didn't think this was going to happen. You didn't think you'd end up in a rebuild, a full rebuild year. Because otherwise, you start Ezra Cleveland. You let, let I mean Riley Reif is long gone in that case and you move O'Neal the left tackle and you play Rashad Hill or Ole Udo who everyone seems to want to put in the ring of honor in my Twitter but you know it's no person did you get the tweet sorry I just I have to do

this did you get the tweet that was like which reporter is going to hold the vikings feet to the fire are going to grill the vikings on why oli udo didn't start at guard i know none of us man he doesn't play guard we're not gonna ask that question be one of my first thoughts is he also also by the way and i will admit that i made this mistake, but Armond Watts dominated Week 17, and it might have just been that the Bears didn't care. It might have been. It could have been. Now, I still think that the guy has some talent, and we'll see if he goes forward and has success.

A lot of people have gotten whooped against the Indianapolis Colts offensive line and Quentin Nelson and Kelly in there. But still, not a great start for him either and I think just counting on hey uh Ole Udo had a handful of snaps against Khalil Mack who probably had his bags packed for the Bahamas or something like you know flying right out of MSP after that game so just trying not to get hurt uh yeah hold your you know here's the one thing though that we can say is that if someone's not starting, they're probably right about it because Drew Samia was not starting over Elfline,

and we went, well, I don't know, maybe they should just try Samia. No, no, not good, not good. But I will say that the fact that Dozier is starting, and they tried to have Avion Collins compete with him someone who's 27 years old none of that says hey we're just throwing all the draft picks out there boys and we're gonna see what the hell happens then this actually might be fun I think this is why it's so upsetting to the fan base is that it is a we were supposed to compete for the division. And I went back through just over the last couple days looking at everybody's predictions around national media, not us, because local medias always tend to set the bar a little higher when picking the games and stuff.

But a lot of national media picking the Vikings to win the division. And I think part of that was the way the Vikings presented themselves as, hey, we're not going to fall off the face of the earth. And then that's where the question comes in of, all right, so did you really think Dakota Dozier was going to work out? Like I have much respect to a guy who's in the league as a swing guard and can play a couple positions. I mean, you got to be smart to be able to do it. And, like, I respect you, man, but you can't start.

It's just not a thing that you're able to do uh and he's an above average backup like yeah like that's clear right yep um but did you think that joe berger situation was happening here it's just you know what's funny is okay i'll give you a golf example because i don't think you're a golfer at all. I'm not. I'm very excited for this. Okay. So let's just say that I accidentally grabbed the wrong club out of my bag and I get a six iron instead of a nine. We've all done it. And I chip in from like 15 yards away, which is always something that you would use a nine with.

If I go, oh, pure skill, everybody, not whoops, I grabbed the wrong club and just got lucky on some things. The Vikings not realizing when things have gone their way in the past and factoring for that seems to be becoming a thing. Yeah, healthiest defense of 2019, and I think also 2017, and they were just like, yeah, that's going to keep going, and this is what happens, right? Like, I'm glad they figured out that they needed depth at linebacker

because it was, like, pretty glaringly clear that that was going to be an issue. And they, like, magicked away into it, but now they need it even more. But, yeah, Daniil Hunter goes out. Anthony Barr goes out. No one's fault, but these are just things that happen. And so for you to think that, like, you know, what happened last year is going to happen again but better. Tad's just remarkably naive for, you know, a veteran front office and a veteran coaching staff,

like in every sense of the word, right? Right. And it's just like, well, you've seen teams fall apart. You've been on teams that fall apart. You can say I've never had a bad defense. Everyone knows that's not true. We just respect how good you are, right, to not, like, point it out point it out but this is what like what would it look like for you to fail well it looks a lot like this what would it look like for you to succeed uh probably not making the same moves and just

having them happen to work out like if you don't have a vision for what it's going to look like for uh the worst case scenario and for the best case scenario and to try and work around those visions like those kind of pathways to success and failure. What are you doing being like in the front office or being a coach that's trying to, you know, generate constant playoff appearances? Because if you can't figure out what the worst case scenario looks like, which looks a lot like this, and not have plans to deal with that before they occur, then you're not doing your job. So let me ask you this before we wrap up here, a very entertaining conversation for me

because I've done a lot of yelling and I'm sweating. I can see that. Yeah, I'm glistening a little bit on the video here. It's hot in my sun porch tonight because it's a beautiful evening, one of the last ones of the year. Anyway, let's suppose it gets turned around to some extent, to a reasonable extent. So I'm not talking about them going 11 and 5 at this point, but let's say the 7 and 9 scenario that you laid out there. Two questions. I mean, one, how does that happen? Because, oh man, has it been rough through the first couple of weeks. But the second question is,

is that bad or is that okay? Like for the future? It's not good. No one would ever think it's great to go seven and nine. Is it, is it real bad or is it okay if they go seven and nine? Well, it kind of depends on how that turnaround happens. Like, if the turnaround happens because, like, they're slayed of quarterbacks that they're about to play, all get injured, like, then it's just like, well, okay, fine, great. You lucked into, you know, a wild card in the first 14-team playoff in NFL history, great. But if it happens because Justin Jefferson takes the next step,

if it happens because Jeff Gladney, you know, switches it, right, then you can say that there's switches it, right, then you can say that there's like elements here that you can take advantage of. Maybe you don't have to talk about who's on what hot seat in terms of the coaching staff. And you've got some pieces, a lot of pieces that maybe can develop, right? But it really depends on how it happens. If Kirk Cousins has like just has a lights out October, and you're like, well, we've seen this before, and then just kind of, it just kind of peters out to be functional for the rest of the season.

Then I don't think that's necessarily good because you can't just rely on that to keep happening. But if it happens because Justin Jefferson has figured out the offense, if it happens because Ezra Cleveland has, you know, taken Dakota Dozier's protein shakes and become a lot stronger and play guard, right? Then you can say, well, great. You know, this season didn't go the way we wanted it to, but there are so many things I can point to that say we're really setting up to actually

take advantage of the window we said we were in. And so it really kind of depends on what the circumstances are. You know, if Harrison Smith has the best year of his career, I'm not sure I'm going to count on that for 2021, right? He's 30, right? Right. But if Anthony Harris is doing a great job and you find a way to extend him partway through the season, I'll say, yeah, sure. It's not inconceivable that a 26-year-old or however old he is

is going to keep playing well. That makes sense to me. So it really just depends on the nature of it. And, hey, if Riley Reif keeps playing at this level, that's kind of interesting. Like, he's playing well. You know, it's difficult to see it because everyone around him is just collapsing. Right, right. But, you know, some of these things, like, maybe Ezra Cleveland ends up becoming the

guard of the future, and then Riley Reif is actually not terrible to have for the next couple of years. And now you've got something you can build around, but it really depends on how they get to seven to nine, because if they get to seven to nine through a bunch of flukes, then, then now you've got a bad draft position. You've got a useless playoff game that you might've called.

I don't even know if seven to nine makes it this year, but you know, you've got a bad draft position and you've got things that you can't rely on. But if it comes from young players developing in ways that seems sustainable, then yeah, that's okay. It's not, like you know, you've got a bad draft position and you've got things that you can't rely on. But if it comes from young players developing in ways that seems sustainable, then, yeah, that's okay. Like you said, it's not good, but it's okay. Here's what I would say if you're a Vikings fan.

I'm sorry about the thing with Kirk Cousins, the truth that we had to lay out a little bit there in the beginning. But I would say this. This whole next 14 games is going to be pretty fascinating. So breathe it in. Waft it. Breathe it in. It's totally new.

This is different, not from Vikings history, of course, but this is totally new for the Zimmer era, and it's been a long time since you've been through this. So breathe it in because it's very different and in a way having a season that is a very messy wild all over the place we're assessing everybody we're trying to figure out what the hell they're doing that doesn't happen in a while i thought last year the complacency from vikings fans really stuck out it's like yeah okay we beat the giants? You know, just a lot of, oh, David Blau, they beat him. That's nice. That's very nice.

And then if you haven't had the playoff win in New Orleans, it would have been looked at as the most meh season in a very long time. Yeah. Which required, like, one of the best coaching performances I've ever seen, plus a little bit of luck. Picker misses a field goal for the Saints at the end of the half. The Saints lose a coin toss, and Kyle Rudolph

may or may not have pushed off. Yeah, and I think maybe, I know we're closing out, but I think the next interesting question is how good was it for the Vikings to win that playoff game? Because it might have given them a little bit more unearned confidence than they needed heading into the offseason. That's a different podcast. That's at least another 45 minutes or more, but

short answer is we'll find out. We'll find out. I mean, they extended people based on it, so they did. We'll find out. All right. Arif Hasan, read his work at The Athletic. It's terrific. He probably podcasts for Zone Coverage something. Yeah, no, I do. Football Machine. Football Machine. You're still doing Football Machine.

I was kind of like, you're still doing Football Machine. Okay. So look that up. It's fun. And we'll talk to you later. The wait is finally over. Football is back. You might not be at the game this year, but you can still be

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